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THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 
 
 OF 
 
 THEISM 
 
 AN EXAMINATION OF THE PERSONALITY OF MAN TO ASCERTAIN HIS CAPACITY TO 
 
 KNOW AND SERVE GOD, AND THE VALIDITY OF THE PRINCIPLES 
 
 UNDERLYING THE DEFSKCLE OF THELSM 
 
 UNIVEESITY 
 
 SAMUEL HARRIS, D.D, LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN THE THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT OF YALE COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YOEK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1883. 
 

 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 f/.3 
 
 1883. 
 
 GRANT, FAIRKS & RODGERS, 
 
 KLKCTBOTYPERS & PRINTERS. 
 
 Philadelphia. 
 
TO 
 
 WHO IN SUCCESSIVE CLASSES HAVE BEEN 
 UNDER MY INSTRUCTION 
 
 IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE 
 
 ~\<*i \> - 
 
 AND IN 
 
 BANGOR AND YALE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS 
 
 THIS BOOK IS 
 RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 When I began to give instruction in systematic theology, the 
 discussions in the class-room were continually forcing us back to 
 preliminary philosophical questions, pertaining to the reality, pro- 
 cesses and limits of human knowledge, and to the constitution of 
 man as a personal being. I thus found it would facilitate our 
 work to treat these questions together in a course of preliminary 
 lectures on the Philosophical Basis of Theism. Students in 
 successive classes have found these lectures and discussions helpful 
 both in their studies of Apologetics, Theodicy and the Philosophy 
 of Religion and in the clear and intelligent apprehension of the 
 Christian truth and life. Many of them, from year to year, have 
 assured me that they had been greatly helped by them and have 
 expressed their earnest desire for their publication. From these 
 annual lectures and discussions this volume has grown up. I 
 publish it, partly because, with the volume before us as a text 
 book to refer to, I shall have more time for examining with my 
 classes the subjects which belong more distinctively to systematic 
 theology ; and also with the hope that discussions, which have 
 already been helpful to many young men, may be of service to 
 others who are striving to solve the great theological and religious 
 problems of our times. 
 
 Yale Divinity School, June 23, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 1. DESIGN OF THE BOOK 1 
 
 2. NEED OF IT. I. The question being, does a personal God exist, we must 
 
 first ascertain what personality is. II. The ultimate question with the 
 atheist pertains to the reality of knowledge. Atheism denies that man 
 can know God. Atheism rests its denial on false theories of know- 
 ledge. Every atheistic theory of knowledge involves agnosticism. The 
 real question with the atheist. III. False positions of Christian theo- 
 logians. IV. Results to be attained 3-9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 3. WHAT KNOWLEDGE is. Implies subject, object and knowledge. Is always 
 
 the intellectual equivalent of reality. Is a primitive act, incapable of 
 definition. Known in the act of knowing 10 
 
 4. AGNOSTICISM. Partial agnosticism involves complete 10-11 
 
 5. REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. I. A primitive datum of consciousness. I.Man's 
 
 knowledge of himself and his environment. Objection that this is not 
 a demonstration answered. 2. Knowledge of first principles. 3. Know- 
 ledge of God. 4. The Ego, the World, and God. 5. In what sense from 
 experience. II. Agnosticism not tenable. Denies the trustworthiness of 
 human intelligence. Contradicts universal consciousness. Not defen- 
 sible by argument. Is self-contradictory Hegel's maxim. Continuous 
 equipoise of thought impossible. III. Any theory of knowledge in- 
 volving agnosticism is false. . 11-20 
 
 6. KNOWLEDGE AND FALLIBILITY. Objection stated. I. Answer that it 
 
 involves agnosticism. II. Assumes as fact what is contrary to uni- 
 versal experience. III. The rational ground for persistent belief. IV. 
 A nucleus of knowledge within a zone of probability. V. A great mass 
 of knowledge persists. Changes in the progress of physical science. 
 Changes in the progress of philosophy. Changes in the progress of 
 
 religious belief. 20-26 
 
 vii 
 
jii CONTENTS. 
 
 7. CRITERIA OF PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE. I. Self-evidence. II. Impossi- 
 
 bility of thinking the contrary. Applicable both to Rational and Pre- 
 sentative Intuition. Primitive belief not the result of mental impo- 
 tence. The unthinkable distinguished from the inconceivable. Objec- 
 tion that God is unknowable because inconceivable. III. Persistence. 
 IV. Consistency with all knowledge. Use in science and all reflective 
 thought. Applied to test primitive knowledge 26-31 
 
 8. KNOWING, FEELING AND WILLING. I. Are distinct, not separate. II. 
 
 True philosophy must recognize the distinctness and the inseparable- 
 ness. 1. Present tendency to overlook the inseparableness. Exempli- 
 fied in Theology. 2. Errors from overlooking their distinctness. In 
 what sense feeling is said to be a kind of knowing. Feeling and willing 
 not ultimate criteria. III. In what sense feeling and willing test and 
 verify knowledge. 1. In rebutting Spencerian agnosticism. 2. In im- 
 plying objective reality. 3. In finding scope for realizing the highest 
 ends. 4. The action of the individual and of mankind tests what is 
 true. IV. Errors of skepticism and materialism from overlooking the 
 relations of knowing, feeling and willing. 1. Final causes. 2. Wrong 
 conception of love of truth. 3. Right moral character favorable to the 
 investigation of truth. 4. Explains the fact that knowledge is advanced 
 by the growth or development of the man 31-43 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 
 
 9. CLASSIFICATION. Intellect, Sensibility and Will. Intuition, Representa- 
 
 tion, Reflection. I. Faculties. II. The Mind active in knowing. III. 
 Element of intelligence contributed by the mind. IV. How acts of 
 knowledge are distinguished 44-45 
 
 10. INTUITION OR PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE. I. Definition. II. Presenta- 
 
 tive Intuition and Rational. 1. Presentative intuition defined. Includes 
 sense-perception and self-consciousness. 2. Rational Intuition defined. 
 3. Intuition is primitive knowledge. 4. Intuition the common name of 
 both. III. The mind considered as capable of Rational intuition is the 
 Reason 45-47 
 
 11. REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE. Definition: representation and memory. 
 
 Self-evident knowledge in memory. Relation to other knowledge. 
 Theories of Huxley and Mill. Physiological Explanation 47-48 
 
 12. KNOWLEDGE BY REFLECTION OR THOUGHT. I. Definition. 1. Pre- 
 
 requisite that the object and regulative principles be given. 2. Pre- 
 sented indeterminate. Not minima visibilia. Nebulous matter of in- 
 tuition. 3. Apprehension, Differentiation, Integration. II. These 
 three the processes of all human thinking. III. Thought merely dis- 
 covers. IV. Subsidiary objects of Thought 48-54 
 
 13. THOUGHT DISTINGUISHED BY ITS OBJECTS. I. Abstract or Formal. 
 
 II. Concrete or realistic. III. Creative or Imagination. 1. Fancy its 
 lower form. 2. Its higher form, creates ideals. 3. Leads in every 
 sphere of intellectual activity. IV. Science advanced chiefly by con- 
 crete thought. 1. Formal thought inadequate because it stops in words. 
 
CONTENTS. i x 
 
 2. Inadequate for synthetic processes and judgments. 3. The three 
 axioms of formal logic insufficient. 4. Leibnitz' Sufficient Keason. 
 Prof. Bowen's three principles. 5. Principles underlying concrete 
 thought. 6. These last principles at the basis of all scientific thought. 
 7. All science empirical, philosophical and theological, advanced chiefly 
 by concrete thought. .' 54-61 
 
 14. INDUCTION* AND THE NEWTONIAN METHOD. I. Simple or Baconian In- 
 
 duction. 1. Extends knowledge beyond observation. 2. The principle 
 on which it rests. Known by rational intuition. Indefinite statements 
 of the principle. The uniformity of Nature defined. 3. Distinguished 
 from erroneous conceptions of it. 4. This brings no discredit on Induc- 
 tion. 5. Induction and Hume's objection to miracles. II. The hypo- 
 thetical, or Newtonian Method. 1. Differs from induction in data, meth- 
 ods and results. 2. Illustrated from common life; the lost camel. 3. 
 The hypothesis created by imagination. 4. Aided by previous know- 
 ledge, habits of observation, analogy. 5. Verification: two requisites ; 
 a third way sometimes. 6. The intuitive principle on which it re- 
 7. Importance and general use of this method. 8. Now called induc- 
 tion; improperly so. 9. Neither method peculiar to physical science. 
 10. Anticipations 61-72 
 
 15. RELATION OF REFLECTIVE THOUGHT TO INTUITION. I. Reflection gives 
 
 no elemental material for thought. 1. True only when intuition in- 
 cludes presentative and rational. 2. True only of primitive or elemen- 
 tal realities. II. Within these limits knowledge enlarged by thought. 
 III. Can discover the unknown only by the known. IV. Reflective 
 knowledge always preceded by spontaneous knowledge. 1. In what 
 sense faith precedes knowledge. Not peculiarly applicable to religious 
 knowledge. 2. No Faith-faculty as the distinctive organ of religious 
 belief. 3. Various meanings of faith. 4. Belief of Testimony. V. 
 Reflection and experience become spontaneous in common sense. . . 72-81 
 
 16. RELATION OF REFLECTIVE THOUGHT TO UNIVERSAL REASON. The 
 
 universe is grounded in and the manifestation of Reason. I. This the 
 ultimate ground of knowledge by inference and by induction. II. Only 
 by this can thought solve its ultimate problem. 1. Thought culminates 
 in finding the unity of the manifold. 2. Must be the unity of rational 
 system. 3. Possible only in recognizing a personal God. III. Primary 
 motive of scientific investigation. Kant's three questions of philosophy.81-85 
 
 17. PROBABILITY. I. Assent according to degree of evidence. II. When the 
 
 improbability is slight, it is unnoticed. III. Assent on probable evi- 
 dence a guide to conduct. IV. No peculiar significance in application 
 to religious belief. 85-87 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH PRESENTATIVE INTUITION. 
 
 18. WHAT is KNOWN THROUGH SENSE-PERCEPTION 88-91 
 
 19. WHAT is KNOWN THROUGH SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. I. Object, subject 
 
 and knowledge known simultaneously. Essential in every act of know- 
 ing. Object and subject are two realities known in one intellectual act. 
 
: CONTENTS. 
 
 Implicit or virtual consciousness. Formulas expressing direct and in- 
 verse knowledge. II. Knowledge of our own mental operations. 
 Comte's objection. Answer. III. The mind has knowledge of itself. 
 1. The error that the operations may be known, not the mind. 2. Error 
 that we are more certain of the operations of the mind. 3. Error that 
 mind is a series of states of consciousness. 4. Mind conscious of self 
 only in its operations. IV. Individuality and identity known in con- 
 sciousness. V. Rationality and Freedom known in consciousness. At- 
 tributes of Personality. Knowledge of personality positive not negative. 
 Can know others as persons. Knowledge of self as person prerequisite 
 to knowing God 91-99 
 
 20. KANT'S THING is ITSELF. Statement of his doctrine. I. Phenomenal- 
 
 ism his fundamental error. II. Error of presenting noumenon and 
 phenomenon in an antithesis and reciprocally exclusive. Origin of two 
 incompatible types of thought. III. Misinterprets and contradicts con- 
 sciousness. IV. Not a noumenon or necessary idea of reason. 1. Is an 
 attempt to conceive of substance without properties. 2. The postula- 
 tion contrary to reason. 3. Assumes creation in thought of an element 
 not given in intuition. V. Discredits Reason by making its ideas 
 fictitious. VI. Involves absurdity. No knowledge if a mind knowing. 
 Knowledge of the unknowable the condition of knowing. Implies a 
 faculty above reason to criticise it. The only way in which Reason can 
 be discredited. VII. Issues in agnosticism 99-109 
 
 21. RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE. I. Objection stated. First form. Second 
 
 form. Third form. II. Answer to Third form. 1. Answered by $$ 18, 
 19, 20. 2. The statement of the objection implies knowledge of 
 reality. 3. Involves absurdity. 4. Issues in agnosticism. . . . 109-113 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 
 
 22. UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES NOT PARTICULAR REALITIES 114-115 
 
 23. RISE AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONSCIOUSNESS. I. Are constituent ele- 
 ments of reason. II. Appear in consciousness on occasion in experi- 
 ence. III. Regulate thought and action before they are recognized in 
 thought. IV. Not innate ideas. Dr. Biichner's mistake. . . . 115-117 
 
 g 24. SIGNIFICANCE AS REGULATIVE. I. Significant only as applied to beings. 
 Distinguished from Mysticism. II. Do not guarantee correctness of 
 judgment. Objection that the ancients believed antipodes impossible. 
 Objection by Helmholz. III. Determine the possible and the impos- 
 sible. 1. What is possible to thought. 2. What is possible for will- 
 power to effect. 3. What is possible in nature. . 117-121 
 
 g 25. VALIDITY OF RATIONAL INTUITIONS. I. Sustain all the criteria of pri- 
 mitive knowledge. II. Indispensable in Reasoning. -III. Verified in 
 experience. In common sense. In physical science. Exemplified in 
 Mathematics. Prof. Clifford's objection. This verification continually 
 going on. IV. Essential to interpret sense-perception. V. Objection 
 that not universally believed. 1. Unknown to infants and savages. 2. 
 
CONTENTS. x j 
 
 Not necessarily believed by the cultivated; J. S. Mill's objection. 
 Inane objections. VI. Objection that they are self-contradictory; 1. 
 Kant's Antinomies explained ; Prof. Clifford's use of them. Hamilton's 
 use of them. Hansel's use of them. 2. If the objector's assertion is 
 true the objection is fatal; but it is the only objection. The objection 
 itself appeals to the authority of reason. 3. The antinomies rightly un- 
 derstood are not contradictions but complemental truths; examples. 
 4. The true argument from the antinomies. Kant's explanation of it ; 
 and why inadequate. 5. H. Spencer's Antinomy and agnosticism. 6. 
 Kant's admission as to his phenomenalism. VII. Objection that ra- 
 tional intuitions arise from the experience of the individual by associ- 
 ation of ideas. Statement of Mill. Statement of Diderot. 1. Individual 
 experience inadequate to account for them. 2. If thus arising, they would 
 be inveterate prejudices. 3. Falls into subjective idealism and agnosti- 
 cism. 4. Has been found inadequate and is abandoned. VIII. Objection 
 that they are the result of the experience of the race in its evolution. 1. 
 Admits they are now constitutional and a priori to the individual. 2 
 Admits they are valid and give real knowledge. 3. If so, their origin is 
 of minor consequence. 4. Evolution does not account for them. 5. Ob- 
 jection that evolution reaches back of the primitive man. 6. Laws of 
 thought not in continuous flux. IX. Objection that rational intuitions 
 are subjective and illusive. 1. Is a specific application of the theory of 
 relativity of knowledge. 2. Incompatible with the theory of ancestral 
 experience. 3. Without rational intuitions knowledge is disintegrated 
 into subjective impressions. 4. Reason is everywhere and always the 
 same. X. The validity of rational intuitions involves the existence of su- 
 preme and absolute Reason. 1. Truth has no significance except as a 
 mind is its subject. 2. These principles not peculiar to an individual. 
 3. They have reality only as truths of absolute Reason. 4. Reason in 
 man the same as in God. 5. Christian Theism explains and confirms 
 them by the truth that man is in the image of God. 6. Objection ; this is 
 anthropomorphism. 7. Objection; this involves Pantheism. XI. The 
 only reasonable explanation is that the intuitive principles are truths of 
 Reason. Failure of the three empirical positions exhausts the resources 
 of empiricism. XII. Three conditions of the possibility of science. 
 XIII. Atheism rests on some theory involving agnosticism. . . 121-151 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE ULTIMATE REALITIES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 26. MEANING OF ULTIMATE REALITIES. Categories : Aristotle's use of the 
 
 word and Kant's 152 
 
 27. MATTER AND FORM. Plato's " Ideas." Kant's error as to forms and 
 
 categories. The true position 152-153 
 
 28. CLASSIFICATION. The two classes and their subdivisions, and why. 
 
 Aristotle's classification of categories. Knowledge begins as knowledge 
 of particular beings ; issues in knowledge of the Absolute Being. 153-154 
 
xi j CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ULTIMATE REALITIES PRIMARILY KNOWN IN PERCEPTIVE INTUI- 
 TION; BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 
 
 $ 29. BEING. I. Known in perceptive intuition and cannot be denned other- 
 wise. II. Is a particular or determinate being. III. In perceptive intui- 
 tion known as existing in various modes ; in rational intuition known 
 by reason in its true significance and reality. IV. Known in its whole 
 reality as substance and quality. The Greek usage. Does everything 
 flow? substance, persistence, existence. Not essential to being that it 
 be eternal, self- existent, etc. Synthesis of being and phenomenon. V. 
 Being is fundamental ; all other realities pertain to being. Aristotle's 
 genera of Being. The concrete determinate Being is the unit of know- 
 ledge 155-158 
 
 $ 30. MODES OF EXISTENCE. I. Power. Power in motion ; intellectual power ; 
 will-power. Quality. Substance and cause. Power hypostasized. James 
 Mill's denial of power. Cause: agent, transitive, reactive, free. Object 
 or recipient. II. One and many. 1. Individuality and identity; origin 
 of the ideas. Does not imply simplicity. In what sense indivisible. 
 Belief in existence after death from belief of personal individuality 
 and identity, not from shadows and dreams. 2. The individual and 
 other beings. Knowledge of the outward object. Things and persons. 
 3. Number ; origin of the idea. III. Extension in space. Origin of the 
 idea. Not a subjective form of sense but a form of things. The fourth 
 dimension of space. IV. Duration in time. V. Quantity. VI. Differ- 
 ence and relation 158-167 
 
 | 31. INFERENCES. I. Knowledge ontological in its beginning. Critical point 
 against agnosticism. II. Knowledge begins as knowledge of personal 
 beings and impersonal. Mansel's objection. Excludes materialism and 
 idealism. Kant's phenomenalism. J. G. Fichte's attempt to avoid it by 
 knowledge of self. Hegel's attempt to avoid it. His near approach to the 
 true philosophy and his failure. These failures prove that knowledge 
 must begin ontological if it ever becomes so. III. Knowledge begins as 
 knowledge of determinate being. 1. Excludes the error that being is 
 primarily in the genus or the universal. 2. Being is not the one onlj* sub- 
 stance of pantheism. 3. Finite persons and things are real beings. IV. 
 Being is not an attribute but the subject of attributes. Not the sum 
 total of all attributes. Affirmation of being not the weakest of affirma- 
 tions. Attributes common to all beings. V. Determinateness of being 
 is not limitation. Omnis determinatio negatio est. The fallacy of ag- 
 nostics and pantheists in reasoning from this maxim. God determinate 
 but not limited. VI. Origin and necessity in perceptive intuition of the 
 distinction of science into physical and metaphysical 167-179 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE TRUE: THE FIRST ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON. 
 
 32. THE FIVE ULTIMATE IDEAS OF REASON. Meaning. Nouraena. The 
 Five Realities of rational Intuition named and defined. Rational Intui- 
 tion does not give knowledge of being 180-182 
 
CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 33. THE TRUE: THE FIRST NORM OR STANDARD OF REASON. I. Defini- 
 tion. II. Are principles of things as well as of thought. Are archety- 
 pal in Absolute Reason ; Plato's Ideas. Rational beings know the su- 
 preme reason 182-184 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE RIGHT, OR LAW: THE SECOND ULTIMATE REALITY OF 
 
 REASON. 
 
 34. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RIGHT OR LAW. Definition of Law. I. 
 Law to intellectual and physical power. 1. Determine what it is possi- 
 ble for power to effect. Laws of thought. Laws of Physical Power. 2. 
 Definition of Right. 3. Law of nature as commonly used, distinguished 
 from Rational Law. 4. Some so called laws of nature are laws of rea- 
 son. II. Principles of Reason are laws to Will. 1. Declare what the 
 will ought to do. 2. Right denotes conformity of action of will with 
 law. 3. Truth as Law to will is moral law. III. Common characteris- 
 tics of Law to thought, force, and will 185-187 
 
 3">. ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RIGHT AND LAW. I. Origin. II. Signifi- 
 cance of Ethical Terms. 1. Ought, Obligation, Duty. 2. Right 3. 
 Law. 4. Authority. 5. Government. Moral Law distinguished from 
 statute law. III. Ethical principles are of the highest certainty . 187-190 
 
 36. MORAL LAW UNIVERSAL, IMMUTABLE, IMPERATIVE. I. Because it is 
 
 truth of Reason known as law to action. -II. Implies tl :e existence of 
 God, the Absolute Reason. III. Falsehood and absurdity the intellectual 
 basis of wrong doing. IV. Law requires conformity to the constitution 
 of things. V. Transgression must issue in failure and loss. VI. En- 
 forced by penalty. VII. Answer to the objection that intuitive ethics 
 is void of significance 190-193 
 
 37. INTUITIVE ETHICS DISTINGUISHED FROM FALSE THEORIES. I. Theories 
 
 of association of ideas. II. Theories attempting to derive the idea of 
 right from happiness. III. That moral distinctions originate in the feel- 
 ings. IV. Hutcheson's theory of the Moral Sense. V. That moral dis- 
 tinctions rest on the will of God. VI. That truth and law are eternal in 
 the nature of things independent of God 193-203 
 
 38. THE FORMAL PRINCIPLE OF THE LAW AND THE REAL. I. The formal 
 
 principle of the Law. II. The Real Principle. III. The significance 
 and necessity of the formal principle. 1. Gives the distinctively ethical 
 ideas. 2. Declares the real principle to be law. 3. Gives the aspect of 
 virtue as obedience to law or doing duty. 4. Gives the aspect of virtue 
 as harmony of the will with reason. 5. Recognizes virtue as harmony 
 with God and the constitution of the universe. IV. Significance and 
 necessity of the real principle. Without it no knowledge what the law 
 requires. Without it duty, if known, would be done without love. So 
 done it is debasing as a blind obedience. The will consents to the formal 
 principle only in the act of love 203-207 
 
 39. EVIDENCE THAT THE REAL PRINCIPLE OF THE LAW is THE LAW OF LOVE. 
 
 I. So declared by Christ. II. The rational ground is that man exists in a 
 
xiy CONTENTS. 
 
 rational system. In such a system selfishness is absurd. III. Know- 
 ledge of the moral system being presupposed the knowledge of the law of 
 love is by rational intuition. 1. Arises on occasion in experience in a 
 particular case and is operative before it is recognized or formulated. 2. 
 The application varies with the conception of the system. 3. Its full 
 Christian meaning presupposes the idea of a universal moral system 
 under one God. 4. Sin and evil in self-isolation. IV. Man's subjection 
 to the law of love indicated in his constitutional sensibilities. Egoistic 
 and altruistic sensibilities. V. Verified in experience. 1. The solidarity 
 of mankind a fact known in experience. 2. That obedience to law of 
 love promotes the highest good is verified by experience. 3. The theory 
 that the good is attained in selfishness logically issues in pessimism. 
 VI. Confirmed by the common consent of mankind. 1. Practically re- 
 cognized when not formulated. 2. Acknowledged by thinkers whose 
 principles it contradicts. 3. Attested by deniers of Christianity. 4. 
 Confirmed by scholarly investigation of religion, philosophy and liter- 
 tare. VII. Objections: 1. No agreement in moral sentiments. Agree 
 in principle differ as to its application. The same act of different signifi- 
 cance in different cases. 2. Savage tribes destitute of moral ideas. If 
 so, undeveloped ; children of larger growth. No evidence sufficient to 
 establish it. Testimony of Anthropologists 207-226 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE PERFECT: THIRD ULTIMATE REALITY OR IDEA OF REASON. 
 
 40. OKIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IDEA. Implies a rational standard. 
 
 Is the Norm for the realization of all creations of mind 227 
 
 41. IDEALS. I. Definition. Distinguished from a conceit of fancy. II. The 
 
 material given in experience, the creation guided by Reason; a crea- 
 tion not a copy. III. Nearer to perfection than the object. Truth to 
 nature. IV. Possible only by virtue of reason. V. Practical import- 
 ance of ideals 227-230 
 
 42. BEAUTY AS KNOWN BY THE REASON, OR PRINCIPLES OF ESTHETICS. 
 
 I. Beauty defined. 1. Is perfection revealed. 2. Revealed in some con- 
 crete object. 3. Revealed in a finite object. 4. Objects are beautiful in dif- 
 ferent degrees. II. Beauty the outshining of truth. III. Beauty dis- 
 tinguished by the modes of existence in which it is revealed. IV. All 
 beauty is spiritual beauty. 1. Reveals a spiritual ideal. 2. True of 
 beauty of nature as well as of beauty of art. Nature a medium for the 
 expression of spiritual ideals. 3. Beauty of the human form analogous 
 to that of natural objects. 4. Higher type of beauty of the human form. 
 5. The Cosmos beautiful as the expression of a pervasive spiritual pre- 
 sence. 6. Admission of Evolutionists compared with the rational phil- 
 osophy. V. Beauty has objective reality. VI. Beauty manifested only 
 to rational beings. In what sense the mind creates the beauty which it 
 perceives. VII. Universal standard of beauty. 1. Authority : Goethe, 
 Plato, Geo. Eliot. 2. Inferred from principles already stated. Ana- 
 logous recognition of the universal reason in all science. Unity of specu- 
 lative, ethical, and sesthetical philosophy. 3. Models. 4. Objections. 
 VIII. Sublimity. IX. The ugly. X. .Esthetic emotion consequent 
 on intellectual idea. 230-243 
 
CONTENTS. xv 
 
 43. .ESTHETIC EMOTIONS. I. Distinguished from other feelings, natural or 
 
 rational. II. Prompts to share with others. III. The mind is in the 
 attitude of a seer; emotion in view of the expressiveness of things. 
 IV. Emotions with which aesthetic emotions are often improperly 
 confounded. 1. Wonder. '2. Certain merely agreeable sensations. 3. 
 Pleasure of excitement. V. Emotions of sublimity. VI. Emotions 
 awakened by the ugly 243-248 
 
 44. ^ESTHETIC CULTURE , 248-250 
 
 45. ^ESTHETICS AND THEISM 250-251 
 
 46. ERRONEOUS THEORIES. I. Variety of them. Burke's. II. Theory of 
 
 Association. III. Theory of Prof. A. Bain 251-255 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE GOOD : THE FOURTH ULTIMATE REALITY KNOWN 
 THROUGH THE REASON. 
 
 47. THE QUESTION STATED. I. Definition of terms : happiness, well-being. 
 
 II. Occasion of the rise of the idea of good and evil. III. Necessity of 
 a criterion. IV. Two answers as to what is the good and its criterion. 
 1. Hedonism: good is enjoyment measured by quantity. 2. Good is 
 worth estimated by rational standard. V. The empirical and rational 
 elements. VI. The greatest good and the true good 256-258 
 
 48. HEDONISM is FALSE. Various ethical theories more or less Hedonistic. 
 
 I. Necessary outcome of Sensationalism; incompatible with Rational- 
 ism. II. False maxim that the ultimate motive is the desire of happi- 
 ness. 1. Every desire has its specific object. 2. Motives are many, not 
 merely one. 3. Any one passion may gain ascendency. 4. Incompati- 
 ble with free-will. 5. Incompatible with subjectivity of happiness. 
 
 III. False maxim that all pleasures are of the same kind. 1. Enjoy- 
 ments discriminated : by their sources ; by their tendencies. 2. Enjoy- 
 ments not essentially good and may be evil. 3. Enjoyments distin- 
 guished as to essential worth. 4. Common sense rejects the Hedon- 
 istic maxim. IV. Hedonism gives no test to discriminate superior 
 good from inferior, as to degree. V. Incompatible with distinction 
 
 of right and wrong 258-266 
 
 49. THE GOOD ESTIMATED BY REASON. I. The rational standard defined. II. 
 
 The rational idea is that of worthiness or worth. III. Presupposes the 
 ideas of the true, the right, the perfect, IV. Distinction of good from 
 evil, eternal and immutable. V. Error of Ethics confounding the good 
 and the right. VI. The question as to the true good distinguished 
 from that as to the highest good. VII. Worth estimated by reason 
 distinguished from value in political economy. VIII. Good is the ob- 
 ject acquired, not the object served. Teleology 266-271 
 
 50. IN WHAT THE GOOD RATIONALLY ESTIMATED CONSISTS. I. In what the 
 
 essential good consists. 1. Personal perfection. Inference from the 
 foregoing. Begins in right moral character. Right choice the essential 
 germ of character is good in itself. Development of all the powers to 
 perfection. Realized only by action in love. No absolute perfection 
 to the finite but progressive. 2. Harmony with himself, with God, and 
 
xv i CONTENTS 
 
 the constitution of things. 3. The happiness necessarily resulting. 4. 
 These three distinguishable but inseparable. 5. Stoicism excluding hap- 
 piness is false. False ethics resulting. Objections of Hedonism are 
 against this error. Hedonism excludes the rational element of good; 
 Christian Ethics recognizes both elements. II. Relative good. III. The 
 evil. Essential. Relative. IV. A man's good is in his own power. 271-281 
 
 $ 51. MERIT AND DEMERIT. I. Definition. II. He that merits true good attains 
 it. 1. Because reason is supreme in the universe. 2. Every right act receives 
 immediate reward. 3. Answer to objection from the inequalities of this 
 life. 4. The true good is the highest good ......... 281-283 
 
 I 52. THE FEELINGS PERTAINING TO THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. I. The feel- 
 ings presuppose the idea. II. Subdivisions : ' 1. Self-respect. 2. Pru- 
 dential. The two are called self-love ........... 283-284 
 
 I 53. PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE IN THE CONDUCT OF LIFE ...... 284-285 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 FIFTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON. 
 
 54. THE ABSOLUTE. I. Definition. II. Known by rational intuition arising 
 
 in the effort to complete the process of thought in any line of investiga- 
 tion. In the back-ground of human consciousness and at the basis of 
 knowledge. Opens a new sphere of reality. III. What the absolute is, 
 is known not a priori, but only in its accounting for man and nature. 
 The absolute is the All-conditioning. Kant's objection. Significance if 
 explained as the registered experience of the race transmitted by 
 heredity ...................... 286-288 
 
 55. THE PSEUDO-ABSOLUTE. I. The Pseudo-absolute ; some forms originate in 
 
 attempting to develop the idea a priori; others from developing it em- 
 pirically; the sum total of all things mistaken for the Absolute; also the 
 largest logical concept. II. Current objections founded on false ideas of 
 the Absolute. 1. The Absolute is "pure being" "the thing in itself," 
 "out of all relations." 2. Objections founded on the false idea of the 
 Absolute as "the ALL," or sum total of all things. 3. Agnostic objec- 
 tion that personality is incompatible with the absolute ..... 289-291 
 
 56. PERSONALITY OF THE ABSOLUTE. I. The Absolute may be a person. 
 
 II. The Absolute must be a person ............ 291-292 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 57. DEFINITION OF SCIENCE ................ 293-294 
 
 58. THE THREE GRADES DEFINED I. First Grade: Empirical Science. 
 
 Its two divisions. II. The Second Grade : Noetic or Rationalistic science. 
 Why called Noetic. Three divisions of it. 1. Mathematics. J. S. Mill 
 that Mathematical axioms learned by experience. 2. Logic. 3. Phi- 
 losophy. Subdivisions: Speculative, Ethical, ^Esthetic, Teleological. 
 
 III. Third Grade: Theology. IV. Must pass through all three in the 
 complete knowledge of any being. V. Knowledge in each grade is sci- 
 ence. Appropriation of "science" to natural science only. . . . 294-301 
 
CONTENTS. xv ii 
 
 59. PKOOF OF THE DOCTRINE. I. From the constitution of the mind. 1. 
 
 Why it begins as Empirical science. 2. Why two spheres of mind and 
 matter opened in perceptive intuition. 3. Rational intuition necessitates 
 noetic and theological. II. Common recognition in history of thought. 
 III. Reciprocal dependence. . . . * 301-304 
 
 60. HARMONY OF THE THREE. I. Science in a lower grade, depends on the 
 
 principles of the higher. 1. Empirical science depends on rational in- 
 tuitions. 2. Noetic science depends on Theology. 3. Theology contains 
 its principles in itself. II. Science in a higher grade depends on the 
 lower for content. 1. Noetic science depends on empirical for content. 
 Also for discipline in empirical methods. 2. Theology depends on noetic 
 and empirical science. Cannot develop the idea of the absolute a priori. 
 Misrepresentation of Theological method. 3. Source of contents of Em- 
 pirical. III. Science in a lower grade raises questions for science in a 
 higher grade to answer. 1. Empirical. 2. Noetic. Theology ulti- 
 mate. IV. Also depends on the higher grade, to complete the unity of 
 thought and things. V. Scientific thought legitimately culminates in 
 Theology. VI. Science in a higher grade stimulates inquiry in the 
 lower. VII. Claim that empirical natural science alone is science. 
 VIII. Science in the three grades must be in harmony with itself. 304-319 
 
 61. THE ALLEGED CONFLICT OF NATURAL SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. I. 
 
 Arises only from error or ignorance. 1. From incompleteness of know- 
 ledge incidental to its progressiveness. 2. From error of method. 3. 
 From the claim of science in one grade to be the whole of knowledge. 
 II. Reconciliation possible only by correcting error and attaining know- 
 ledge of truth. 1. How to meet the exclusive claim of natural science. 
 2. The alleged error of method. 3. How to treat conflict arising from 
 ignorance or error. III. The alleged historical antagonism exagger- 
 ated. 1. The great natural scientists have been believers. 2. Theo- 
 logical antagonism to scientific discovery comparatively rare. The real 
 influence of Christianity on civilization. 3. Discoveries more opposed 
 by scientists than by theologians. IV. Correction of theological opinion 
 to meet discoveries in science. V. Principle as to the competence of 
 non-scientists to reason on scientific discoveries. VI. Legitimate to 
 oppose atheism and agnosticism promulgated under the guise of science. 
 
 I. Because the promulgator transcends empirical science. 2. Danger of 
 a scientific hierarchy. 3. Legitimate moral interest in opposing atheism. 
 4. Is not opposition to science but to atheism. VII. No extraordinary 
 reason for alarm now. 1. Overlooking God's action in it. 2. Skepticism 
 not more prevalent now than in former epochs of skepticism. 3. Epochs 
 of skepticism incidental to the progress of Christianity. 4. Christian 
 progress destroys no truth. 5. Common representation of existing decay 
 
 of faith exaggerated 319-344 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE SENSIBILITIES. 
 
 62. DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. I. Definition : motives and emotions. 
 
 II. Classification : Natural or Psychical and Rational. III. Natural or 
 Psychical exemplified. 1. Instincts. 2. Radical impulse to exertion. 3. 
 Appetites and desires. 4. Natural affections ; sympathetic and repellent. 
 IV. Rational sensibilities ; five classes 345-347 
 
xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 2 63. THE DESIRE OF HAPPINESS AS A MOTIVE. How it may be so. So far as it 
 
 is a ruling motive, it is morbid and hurtful 347-348 
 
 64. FEELING AS A SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE 348 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 THE WILL. 
 
 65. DEFINITION. I. Definition of the will. II. The determinations of the will. 
 
 1. Determinations of two kinds: choice and volition. Self-directive and 
 self-exertive. 2. Distinguished from causal efficiency. 3. Distinguished 
 from sensibilities. 4. Distinguished from determinations by the intellect. 
 III. Power constituted will by being endowed with rationality. Name 
 of the mind itself. Energizing or practical reason. ...... 349-351 
 
 66. CHOICE AND VOLITION. Determinations self-directive and self-exertive. 
 
 L The distinction is real. 1. Recognized in consciousness. 2. Essen- 
 tial to freedom and responsibility. II. Choice further explained. 1. The 
 object chosen always the object of action. 2. Choice presupposes com- 
 parison. The choice a simple indefinable determination, known directly 
 in consciousness. Error of Hazard and Bowen that the comparison is all. 
 Signs or manifestations of choice are volition and complacency. 3. 
 Choice is an abiding determination. 4. Choices ; supreme and subordi- 
 nate. III. Volition further explained : Exertive or executive. Resolu- 
 tion, purpose, intention, immanent volition. IV. Volition not a com- 
 plete determination but is the expression of a choice 351-357 
 
 67. ETHICAL APPLICATION. I. Object of supreme choice always a person or 
 
 persons. Two spheres: Object to get, persons to trust and serve. In 
 the former the good is the ultimate end. This cannot be the supreme 
 object: further question, for whom. A person is an end in himself of 
 trust and service. The good is nothing real except as the good of a per- 
 son. II. Object of right supreme choice is God in the moral system. 
 Objection that the right supreme choice is consent to reason The ob- 
 ject of a wrong supreme choice. Trust and service of persons the entire 
 activity of man. III. The love required in the law is a free choice. 
 Distinguished from love in popular use. IV. Moral character primarily 
 in the supreme choice, and secondarily, state of the intellect, sensibilities, 
 habits. V. Christian ethics contrasted with modern illurninisni. 357-361 
 
 68. FREEDOM OF WILL. I. Definition. 1. Inherent in rationality. 2. Does 
 
 not imply consent of will to reason. 3. Freedom as inherent in ration- 
 ality different from Edwards. II. Determination distinguished from 
 strongest impulse. III. Knowledge of free-will of the highest certainty. 
 1. Appeal to consciousness. 2. Has the criteria of primitive knowledge. 
 3. Proof from human history. 4. Involved in being endowed with rea- 
 son. 5. Denial of free-will is the denial of moral responsibility. 6. As 
 an hypothesis free-will accounts for the facts. IV. Objection to free- 
 will commonly founded on false theories of knowledge. V. Objection 
 that man is determined by Cosmic agencies. 1. Countries under similar 
 cosmic agencies develop unlike civilizations. 2. The same country 
 in different periods has unlike civilizations. 3. The true progress. 361-376 
 
CONTENTS. xix 
 
 69. FREE-WILL AND MAN'S IMPLICATION IN NATURE. I. In what sense im- 
 
 plicated in nature. II. Also endowed with reason and therefore free. 
 III. Freedom from control of circumstances a matter of fact. 1. May 
 resist natural impulses or concur. Plato's chariot. 2. Under any cir- 
 cumstances may do right. 3. May reverse the motive. 4. May change 
 his circumstances. 5. May avail himself of aid from men. 6. May 
 avail himself of aid from God. 7- A limited power to control the effects 
 of Cosmic force on the body. 8. Controls the forces of nature to effect 
 results. Natural selection displaced by man's selection. Man the Lord 
 of nature. Psalm via. IV. Implication in nature indicates him above 
 nature. Nature not a boundary but a sphere. Senses open the realm 
 of nature to perception. This the occasion of rational intuition. Reveals 
 his reason to himself and the universe to his reason. Similar thoughts 
 as to will, reveals sphere of action and power to act. Death a liberation. 
 Man the end of nature. The spiritual body and the power of mind. 376-386 
 
 70. DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF FREEDOM. Moral, physical, real and formal 
 
 freedom ' 386-389 
 
 71. THE INFLUENCE OF MOTIVES. The question stated. I. Definition of 
 
 motive. II. The motive not the efficient cause of determination. The 
 will is the cause. No causative act between the will and its determina- 
 tion. The argument of Edwards. Hamilton's argument from antino- 
 mies. III. The motive does not determine the will. IV. The action of 
 motives on the will is influence. V. Determinations always made under 
 the influences of motives. VI. The common formulas of the influence 
 of motives ambiguous and worthless. VII. The uniformity of human 
 action not thus explicable 389-396 
 
 72. CHARACTER IN THE WILL. I. A choice constitutes character. II. De- 
 
 terminations influence subsequent determinations. III. Voluntary ac- 
 tion a continual formation of character. IV. Man always free to change 
 his supreme choice. V. After a character is acquired determinations 
 are not transition from complete indetermination 396-399 
 
 73. THE UNIFORMITY OF HUMAN ACTION. I. Uniformity sufficient to be 
 
 the basis of confidence. II. Law of averages cannot explain it. III. 
 The uniformity actually existing is consistent with free will. . . 399-402 
 
 74. SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL. Sociology may be consistent with free- 
 
 will. I. Sociology denying free will cannot be science. II. Sociology 
 will never reduce human acts to mechanical and chemical laws. III. 
 Sphere for Sociology compatible with free will 402-407 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 75. DEFINITIONS. I. Person and Impersonal. II. Moral Agent. III. Na- 
 ture and the supernatural. Man personal though implicated in nature. 
 Lotze's explanation. Duke of Argyll's objection. Different uses of the 
 words nature and supernatural. IV. Spirit. Theological conception of 
 its relation to space. May act through material organisms. Matter and 
 Spirit not antagonistic. Matter ; its old use and its use now. Material- 
 ism of this day defined. The doctrine of spirit 408-414 
 
XX 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 76. MAN is A PERSON. Certainty of the knowledge 414 
 
 77. MAN IS SPIRIT. Conditions of possibility of materialism. I. Spirit ne- 
 
 cessary to account for facts of personality. 1. Difference of properties. 
 2. Accords with methods of physical science. 3. More evidence of Spirit 
 than of atoms, etc. 4. Accords with dynamic tendencies. II. Necessary 
 to account for the physical universe. It is not mere mechanism. Grav- 
 itation not explained by persistence of force. Similar difficulties in 
 cohesion and chemical affinity and all interaction of bodies molar or 
 molecular. III. Scientists recognize need of some power above matter. 
 Universe more analogous to an organism than to a machine. IV. Ma- 
 terialism cannot account for and explain the facts either of matter and 
 force or personality. V. Conclusion that man is spirit 414-427 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MATERIALISTIC OBJECTIONS TO THE EXISTENCE OF PERSONAL 
 
 BEINGS. 
 
 78. FIRST MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION; FROM SENSATIONALISM. Subjec- 
 
 tive Materialism. I. Inconsistent with materialism. Inconsistent with 
 Spencer's Agnosticism. Materialism inconsistent with Spencer's Agnos- 
 ticism. These theories commonly confounded. II. Inconsistent with 
 physical science. III. Is self-contradictory. Matter defined only by 
 relation to mind and mind only by relation to matter. Issues in medi- 
 aeval jargon. Spencer's transfigured realism. IV. Difficulties removed 
 only by existence of spirit. V. The source of materialism in popular 
 unscientific impressions 428-434 
 
 79. SECOND MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION THAT MENTAL PHENOMENA ARE 
 
 CORRELATED WITH MOLECULAR ACTION. I. The objection stated. 
 II. Explanations. 1. That mental action is accompanied by molecu- 
 lar action and waste of brain not denied ; but materialism cannot ac- 
 count for the connection. 2. Not necessary to prove that finite spirit 
 ever exists and acts apart from a material organ. 3. Not necessary to 
 deny that vitality is correlated with motor-force. III. The correlation 
 not sustained by physical science. 1. Mental phenomena cannot be 
 identified with motion. 2. If energy is transformed into thought it dis- 
 appears. 3. The energy in the molecular action transformed into physi- 
 cal movements. A "closed circuit" with mental phenomena excluded. 
 4. This refutes materialism. IV. Physical explanations of mental 
 phenomena inconceivable. 1. Registration of sensations in memory. 2. 
 Unity of consciousness and identity. 3. The multitude of registrations. 
 4. Explanation by registration transmitted by heredity. V. Physical 
 science has no explanation of mental phenomena. Dogmatic material- 
 ism impossible. VI. The existence of spirit explains the phenomena > 
 and avoids the difficulties. 1. Physical science limited in two directions. 
 2. Existence of spirit transcends the limits. Energizing Reason. 3. Ne- 
 cessity of assuming the existence of personal spirit. 4. Elements of the 
 idea given in the knowledge of self. 5. Objection that we have no ex- 
 perience of disembodied spirit. 6. Objection that mental phenomena 
 must be resolved into molecular motion in order to be cognizable by science. 
 VII. Correlation of facts of personality with motion is incompatible 
 with the facts themselves 434-454 
 
CONTENTS. xx i 
 
 80. THIRD MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION : FROM EVOLUTION. The Objection 
 stated. I. Distinguish materialistic evolution from scientific. II. Evo- 
 lution as a law of nature not scientifically established. 1. The law con- 
 ditions all other laws. 2. The four subordinate theories not scientifically 
 proved. 3. Laws of Evolution not scientifically exact. 4. Evolutionists 
 while regarding the universe as mechanism, substitute the idea of or- 
 ganic growth in carrying out their theory. III. Scientific Evolution 
 consistent with personality of man and God. 1. It does not involve ma- 
 terialism. 2. Not inconsistent with personality of men. 3. Not incon- 
 sistent with moral law. 4. Consistent with Theism. IV. Scientific 
 Evolution no help to materialism and itself discredited if held as neces- 
 sarily materialistic. 1. Evolution factual, Materialism metaphysical. 2. 
 Evolution removes no difficuiiies ot materialism in accounting for physi- 
 cal universe ; proves them irremovable. 3. No aid to materialism in 
 making mind a function of matter. Leads to the contrary conclusion. 
 4. Materialistic evolution gives no basis of good morals. First: No data 
 for constructing an ethical theory. Secondly: Only law deducible for 
 determining conduct is immoral, viz : Might makes right. Thirdly : Xo 
 basis for rights of individuals in relation to the State. Fourthly : No 
 practically effective motives to virtue. Fifthly : Immoral tendency. 
 Sixthly : Contradicts moral intuitions. 5. Issues in the extinction of per- 
 sonality ; lapsed intelligence. 6. Materialistic evolution unscientific. 
 V. Scientific Evolution at every stage reveals a supernatural power. 1. 
 Implied in the meaning of it as scientists use it. Incompatible with 
 materialistic evolution. 2. If mind is to act through matter, the matter 
 must be prepared to be its organ. Analogy of generation. 3. Accords 
 with a universal law of the elaboration of matter in preparation for man- 
 ifesting a higher power. The elaboration not yet completed. Existence 
 after death. 4. Planes or grades manifesting successively higher powers. 
 First, manifesting mechanical force. Second, chemical force. Third, 
 vital force. Fourth, sentient life. Fifth, personality. Are distinct. 
 Higher power acts on next below ; not on still lower grades. 5. Force in 
 a lower grade does not create force in a higher. Beginning of motion. 
 Every interaction. Beginning of elemental or chemical force. Begin- 
 ning of life. Conditioned on previous life. Beginning of sensitivity, 
 and of human personality. Lower force held in abeyance by the higher. 
 6. Matter in the higher grades does not originate but reveals the higher 
 power. 7. Evolution a continual revelation of hypermaterial power. 
 Concurrence of different schools of thought. Evolution incompatible 
 with materialism. 8. Appearance of Personality. 9. Conclusion. VI. 
 Evolution, if true, demands a personal God. Evolution emphasizes the 
 teleological argument. 1. Presupposes always a higher power revealing 
 itself. 2. In this higher power the powers evolved exist potentially. 3. 
 The Absolute Being is a rational or personal being ; is the Absolute Rea- 
 son. 4. Finite beings have real existence distinct from the Absolute. 5. 
 In what sense the universe created by God. Evolution presents no 
 peculiar objection to creation. Evolution requires creation. 6. God im- 
 manent in the universe. 7. God's action in creating, sustaining and 
 evolving is individuating. 8. God's action the continuous realization in 
 the finite of an ideal eternal in the Absolute Reason. 9. God's action 
 expressing the ideal or plan of Reason is progressive. 10. God's action 
 in the universe uniform and continuous according to law. Objection 
 that theism supposes capricious will in nature. 11. The Moral system 
 
xxii CONTENTS. 
 
 gives a sphere for endless progress which is impossible to materialism. 
 12. Objections by Spencer and others 455-537 
 
 $ 81. FOURTH MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION, FROM ATTRIBUTES OF BRUTES. 
 I. All the mental qualities of brutes are qualities of men. II. Man has 
 also the attributes of personality which brutes have not in any degree. 
 1. Different qualities in intellect, sensitivity and will. 2. Brutes lack 
 these attributes of personality. 3. The higher attainments of man im- 
 possible to brutes. III. If any animals have attributes of personality it 
 would prove only that those animals are persons, not that men are 
 brutes, nor that all animals are persons. IV. Man though implicated 
 in nature, is supernatural. 1. Objection that brute sensitivity not corre- 
 lated with motion. 2. Unscientific to affirm that life is merely a mode 
 of motion. 3. The difficulties removed by theistic evolution. V. Man 
 is spirit; the brute is not. Objection that all brutes, even the infusoria, 
 must have souls. Threefold classification of man as body, soul, spirit 
 unnecessary. Lewes' objection that the spiritual hypothesis unscientific. 
 Spencer's objection from babes and savages 537-554 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE TWO SYSTEMS OF NATURE AND PERSONALITY. 
 
 82. A PERSON'S KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER PERSONS. I. .What person or 
 
 spirit is, is known only in consciousness of self. Empty speculations as 
 to the origin of the idea. II. Man has knowledge of personal beings 
 other than himself. 1. The denial of this involves agnosticism. 2. Basis 
 for this knowledge in Kant's philosophy. 3. Involved in perceptive in- 
 tuition. 4. When personality is known in self it can be recognized in 
 others. 5. Mistakes of savages as to the Supernatural no objection. 6. 
 Objection from anthropomorphism 555-559 
 
 83. THE Two SYSTEMS. -Man knows himself in each 560 
 
 84. EXISTENCE OF THE PERSONAL GOD A NECESSARY DATUM OF SCIEN- 
 
 TIFIC KNOWLEDGE. The key-stone in the arch of rational knowledge. 
 I. Necessary to trustworthiness of human reason. II. Necessary to 
 the community of knowledge. III. Necessary to the completeness of 
 human thought. To solve the ultimate and necessary problem. To the 
 unity of the system of nature. To the unity of the rational and moral 
 system. No antagonism between the two systems. Sin the only evil 
 and only essential antagonism. Conflict not between spirit and matter. 
 The good progressively prevails over the evil. The new birth of the 
 creation. .... . 560-564 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 1. Design of the Book. 
 
 A CHRISTIAN man knows God in his own experience ; all that is 
 of highest worth to man in life rests on his experience of God's gracious 
 presence and power in his own moral and spiritual development. In 
 the strength of such knowledge many a Christian has lived a life of 
 Christ-like love or gone to a martyr's stake, who never attempted to 
 define or defend the articles of his belief. And the spontaneous reli- 
 gious beliefs of ruder men rest on what they have felt and known of 
 the presence and power of the supernatural in and about them. Thus 
 the knowledge of God begins, like the knowledge of nature and of man, 
 in experience. 
 
 But since man is rational he cannot rest permanently in this 
 spontaneous belief. As he advances in intelligence and intellectual 
 development, he must reflect on what he thus believes, must define to 
 himself what it is, and interpret and vindicate it to his reason as 
 reasonable belief and real knowledge. This must be done if religious 
 belief is to commend itself to thinking persons ; it must be done anew 
 from generation to generation if, in every period of intellectual ac- 
 tivity and of advance in knowledge and culture, Christianity is to 
 retain its preeminence as the light and inspiration of human life 
 and the universal religion of mankind. The knowledge of God, like 
 the knowledge of man and nature, begins in experience, and is ascer- 
 tained, defined and systemized in thought. Even where God tran- 
 scends our knowledge, we- at least mark definitely the limits of the 
 known. In this transition from spontaneous to reflective knowledge, 
 questions of two classes arise. First are the questions : Have we 
 
 1 
 
2 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 knowledge of God ? What are the sources of this knowledge ? How 
 can we vindicate its reality and validity against objections? Then 
 come questions of a second class : Admitting that God exists, what do 
 we know of him, and what is the practical significance of the reality 
 known of him to us and to mankind ? The answers to these questions 
 of reflective thought constitute Systematic Theology. Accordingly 
 this is naturally and conveniently treated in two parts : Fundamental 
 Theology, which answers the questions of the first class; Doctrinal 
 Theology, which answers the questions of the second class. 
 
 But in answering these questions we find underlying them funda- 
 mental questions which must be answered and fundamental principles 
 which must be ascertained. If the student begins with asking, Why 
 am I a Christian ? he is forced back on the question, Why am I a 
 theist? For Christianity presupposes the existence of God, and de- 
 clares that he has revealed himself in redemptive action coursing 
 through human history, and especially in Jesus the Christ. And when 
 he asks, Why am I a theist ? he is forced back on questions which 
 reach to the profoundest depths of human thought. Among these are 
 questions as to the reality, the processes and the possible sphere of 
 human knowledge ; the principles and laws of thought ; the capacity 
 of man to know God ; the distinction between empirical science, philo- 
 sophy and theology, and their necessary harmony; the basis and 
 nature of moral distinctions and of moral law and government ; the 
 capacity of man as a free agent to be a subject of moral government 
 and to love, trust and obey God ; the distinction of the personal and 
 the impersonal, the natural and the supernatural, spirit and matter ; 
 the real existence of personal beings and the materialistic objections 
 thereto ; the synthesis of the personal with the absolute ; the reality of 
 the two systems, the physical and the moral, and their harmony and 
 unity in the universe of God. These and similar questions necessarily 
 arise in the attempt to translate our spontaneous, indeterminate, 
 unreasoned knowledge of God into knowledge rationally defined, 
 interpreted and vindicated ; for God is the absolute Ground of the 
 universe, and the rational setting forth of our knowledge of him and 
 the vindication of it as real knowledge must bring us down to the 
 principles which are at the foundation alike of all thought and of all 
 things. Christian faith in God may exist without answering or even 
 asking these questions. But when skepticism forces them on the 
 thought, it is necessary to investigate and answer them in order that 
 the intellect may thread its way through the labyrinth, into w T hich it 
 finds itself thrust, of doubts, perplexities and objections confused in 
 tortuous and mazy ways, and may come, with faith now illumined 
 through and through with intelligence, to the presence and vision 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 of God, to an intelligent and restful conviction that the universe is 
 grounded in Absolute Reason energizing in perfect wisdom and love, 
 and that this Energizing Reason is God. 
 
 The examination of the personality of man is necessary also in 
 answering theological questions of the second class and setting forth 
 what we know of God and of his relations to the universe. Accord- 
 ingly theologians in their system of doctrine have their chapters of 
 anthropology not less than of theology. Communion between God and 
 man is of the essence of religion. Therefore the knowledge of man, 
 not less than the knowledge of God, is necessary to the right under- 
 standing of religious truth. Misapprehension of the personality of 
 man and of the rational principles involved in it has always been a 
 fruitful source of erroneous theological doctrine. 
 
 This volume is not designed to present in detail the evidence of the 
 existence of God ; it is designed to examine the constitution of man as 
 a personal being in order to ascertain his capacity to know and serve 
 God, to answer the philosophical questions involved in the controversy 
 with skepticism, agnosticism and materialism, and to set forth, clear 
 from misapprehension, and vindicate the principles on which the de- 
 fence of theism must rest. It is not intended to be a treatise on 
 psychology, ethics or metaphysics. I have given psychological defini- 
 tions and classifications so far as they are necessary to explain my use 
 of terms. Aside from this I have confined myself to those topics, the 
 right exposition of which is of critical significance in deciding the 
 controversies now rife between Christian theism and unbelief in its 
 various forms, and in the discussion of which I have hoped to contri- 
 bute something to the clear and exact apprehension and the true and 
 convincing answer of the questions at issue. 
 
 1 2. Necessity of this Investigation. 
 
 In what has been already said we see urgent reasons for this investi- 
 gation. Its necessity is further evident from the following consid- 
 erations. 
 
 I. The fundamental question of theology is, does a personal God 
 exist ? Preparatory to even asking the question the theologian must 
 ascertain what personality is. But man cannot have even the idea of 
 personality unless he has first found the elements of it in his own 
 being. Therefore he cannot inquire respecting the personality of God, 
 till, by studying the constitution of man, he has found out that man is 
 a person, and thus has ascertained what personality is and what is the 
 distinction between persons and impersonal beings. 
 
 II. The question with the atheist is ultimately the question as to the 
 reality of knowledge. Atheism, in its usual forms, is founded on the 
 
4 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 denial of the capacity of the human mind to know God. It does not 
 assert positively, There is no God ; but only that man is incapable of 
 knowing that God exists. 
 
 Some atheists have indeed asserted positively that God does not exist. 
 This was asserted by Chaumette and Clootz in the first French Revolu- 
 tion. It is not only asserted, but the assertion is made the basis of a 
 proposed political and social revolution and reorganization, by the 
 Nihilists and by many of the Communists. This assertion, however, 
 involves the assumption that man has capacity to know God, has also 
 the true idea of him, knows also all the evidence of his existence 
 which the universe contains now or ever has contained or ever will 
 contain, and knows also that the evidence is inadequate and that God 
 does not exist. This form of atheism assumes as its basis the omni- 
 science of the atheist ; for if he does not know everything, that which 
 he does not know may be God, or the evidence of God's existence 
 which would convince the atheist. A negation involving such ab- 
 surdity cannot enter the field of intelligent debate. It is the atheism 
 of ignorance, prejudice and passion. 
 
 Atheism, which rests on intelligence sufficiently to admit debate, can 
 go no further than to deny the capacity of man to know God, to 
 declare that therefore the existence of God is not a legitimate object of 
 inquiry or investigation. We are met at the threshold and warned off 
 from theology as inaccessible to knowledge and shut against explora- 
 tion. When we discuss a question of history or astronomy, both parties 
 appeal to knowledge, examine facts, and decide according to evidence. 
 But in discussing the existence of God, the atheist admits no appeal to 
 knowledge and to evidence. If God exists, no evidence can prove his 
 existence to us. He is out of all relation to our faculties ; and what- 
 ever idea we may form of him cannot be the correct idea ; for any idea 
 formed by our faculties cannot be the true idea of a reality out of all 
 relation to our faculties. 
 
 Thus atheism forces us at once on the investigation of the nature 
 and extent of man's capacity of knowledge. The question between 
 theism and atheism is not the question whether there is evidence that 
 God exists ; it is the question whether the human mind is competent to 
 know Him. 
 
 The theories of knowledge, on which atheism, in its different forms, 
 rests its denial that man can know God, are various. They are usu- 
 ally theories denying the knowledge of God but admitting the reality 
 of knowledge in other spheres. Such are the various forms of phe- 
 nomenalism ; the theories of the relativity of knowledge ; the physiolo- 
 gical psychologies, which, crediting man's lower powers to the discredit 
 of the higher, regard the senses as the only source of knowledge ; the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 denial of the validity of rational intuition and of metaphysics ; the 
 patronizing recognition of religion as legitimate in the feelings and the 
 imagination but excluded from knowledge. In all these forms of 
 atheism the primary subject of debate is not the existence of God, but 
 the theory of knowledge on which the denial of the knowledge of God 
 is founded. 
 
 I expect to show that every theory of knowledge which is the intel- 
 lectual basis of atheism involves in its essence complete agnosticism or 
 universal skepticism. This necessary issue is usually hidden, often from 
 the atheist himself, in what claims to be a theory of knowledge-. But 
 every theory of knowledge which affirms the impossibility of knowing 
 God, will be found on examination to deny at some point the trust- 
 worthiness of man's intellect in its normal exercise and so to involve 
 complete agnosticism. It will be found to be a theory which can be 
 defended and justified only by appealing to objections which equally 
 justify universal skepticism or complete agnosticism. 
 
 This fatal issue of all these theories is easily kept out of sight. 
 Skeptical objections which are regarded as of great force when urged 
 against theology, are often disregarded as frivolous when urged against 
 other departments of knowledge to which they are equally pertinent. 
 We are so constantly in contact with common things that, when 
 applied to them, the fine speculations of skepticism that we know only 
 impressions, and that knowledge is phenomenal, or is relative, or im- 
 possible, are brushed away by our senses and our common sense. But 
 God and the realities of the moral and spiritual life are less obtrusive, 
 and common sense does not react so instantaneously against the denial 
 of them ; therefore against these men discuss objections as formidable, 
 which when applied with equal pertinence to common affairs or to 
 physical sciences they disregard as quibbles. 
 
 The question with the atheist, therefore, as I expect to show, is 
 ultimately the question as to the possibility of any knowledge what- 
 ever. If man cannot know God, he cannot know r anything. Con- 
 versely, the existence of God is essential to the possibility of rational 
 knowledge. 
 
 III. Some Christian theologians unwittingly take false aud indefen- 
 sible positions. They adopt theories of knowledge logically involving 
 complete agnosticism ; or they misapprehend what personality is ; or 
 they give definitions logically involving the denial of man's freedom, or 
 of his constitutional religiousness, or even of the distinctive elements of 
 reason, and thus accept- the errors on which atheism rests. Many 
 have attempted to construct theology in accordance with Locke's 
 theory of knowledge and so have labored to find out God by empirical 
 methods. An evangelical clergyman has recently published an article 
 
6 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 declaring that in metaphysics " theory is regarded as its own verifica- 
 tion," that " the metaphysical method was the dream of the scholastic," 
 that if any theological doctrines "are inseparably bound up with 
 metaphysics " they must be abandoned, that theology must " begin to 
 adjust itself to the new conditions and transfer its doctrines to the new 
 ground," and that " the new ground " is " the Positivism of Comte." 
 And so we find clergymen ignorantly joining with the skeptic and 
 ridiculing metaphysics, w r hich investigates the first principles of reason 
 and the universal laws of thought, as a mediaeval jargon of words. 
 Some, at the opposite extreme, have supposed the knowledge of uni- 
 versals to precede the knowledge of particulars and have attempted to 
 develop all truth by the a priori method and thus have plunged into 
 idealism and pantheism. Others have been so intent on the analysis of 
 personality in man and in God, that they have crowded the unity of 
 the person into the back-ground and have scarcely remembered that 
 reason is the person considered as illuminated with reason, and will is 
 the person considered as determining and energizing, and sensibility 
 the person considered as the subject of motives and emotions ; that will 
 is reason determining and energizing, and reason is will rational. 
 They push their analysis to disjunction. They are like the daughters 
 of Pelias, who cut their father in pieces, but waited in vain to see him 
 rise in youth and beauty from the witch's caldron. Hence comes a 
 theology jejune, arid, and in conflict w r ith itself. 
 
 Closely allied to this is the habit of abstract thinking about general 
 notions and propositions expressed in words. Abstract thinking is 
 always indispensable. But in proportion as it becomes dominant and 
 exclusive it shuts out realistic thinking about concrete realities ; and 
 without the latter, scientific knowledge is impossible and the thinking 
 issues only in words. Theologians have no more escaped this tendency 
 than thinkers in other departments of knowledge. Since persons are 
 concrete realities not less than things, concrete, realistic thinking is as 
 indispensable in theology as in every other sphere of knowledge. It is 
 commonly said that theology is exclusively occupied with abstractions ; 
 but this is no more true of theology than it is of astronomy, chemistry 
 or sociology. So far as theologians have allowed abstract thinking to ex- 
 clude the realistic, they have fallen into false thinking and inextricable 
 embarrassments, and laid themselves open to unanswerable objections. 
 The result has sometimes been that the very concepts, definitions, 
 propositions and systems intended to reveal God have become a veil 
 that hides him ; formulas of doctrine have 'filled the eye instead of 
 God active in human hearts and human history redeeming man from 
 sin, the letter of a scripture instead of the living Word and the ever- 
 present Spirit of God. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 There are also theologians who assert that religion is founded only 
 in the feelings and that it is only by a faith-faculty, distinct from the 
 reason and rooted hi the feelings, that man comes into communication 
 with God. They overlook the fact that reflective thought in every 
 sphere of knowledge presupposes primitive, spontaneous, unelaborated 
 and unproved beliefs ; that it presupposes intuitions, involved, in the 
 nebulousness of the primitive consciousness, which assert their regu- 
 lative power only on occasion in experience and are recognized only 
 as the mind reflects on its own action. They overlook the fact 
 that, therefore, there is the same reason for a faith-faculty in every 
 science as in theology. What is demanded of the theologian is that he 
 show the synthesis of reason and faith ; that he show that the primitive 
 belief in the supernatural and in a divinity is a reasonable belief, is 
 itself the manifestation of the reason, is the soul's consciousness of God 
 moving in the darkness and formlessness of its own primitive feeling 
 and intelligence. But these theologians declare a sharp antithesis and 
 separation of reason and faith, as well as of reason and the witness of 
 the Spirit of God in the heart of man. In fact recent theology almost 
 overlooks the witness of the Spirit which was prominent and dominant 
 in the thinking of Calvin and the reformers. Thus these theologians 
 concede the whole ground to the agnostic, who admits that religion is a 
 matter of feeling and that the imagination in each generation may 
 shape an object for it, but denies that God or any object of religious 
 feeling can be an object of knowledge. There are also theologians who 
 do not recognize God as the Supreme Reason, but exalt Will to 
 supremacy, teaching that the distinction of right and wrong results 
 from a fiat of God's will, and thus agree with the atheist that theism 
 makes a capricious will supreme, and deprive themselves of all answer 
 to the objection thaj; the order and law of nature prove the absence of 
 will. Others teach that the principles and laws of reason are eternal 
 and independent of God, and thus accept the atheistic position that the 
 ultimate ground of the universe is in the impersonal or, as Hartmann 
 calls it, " the Unconscious," and leave no place for God and no reason 
 for His existence. 
 
 It is evident, for all these reasons, that the study of theology must 
 begin with investigating the reality, rise, conditions and limitations of 
 human knowledge, defining what constitutes personality, and setting 
 forth the principles of reason on which theism rests. And of the same 
 purport are the words of Ulrici : " Whoever undertakes to discuss the 
 question of the existence and essence of God, must found his investiga- 
 tion on a definite and determinate theory of knowledge. In reference 
 to the old doubt whether metaphysics is not all an illusion, he must 
 ascertain whether and how far metaphysical inquiries are justified 
 
8 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 scientifically in accordance with the ultimate grounds of being and 
 events." * 
 
 IV. In pursuing this investigation we shall find that true meta- 
 physics investigates and declares ideas and principles on which all 
 science depends, and reaches results the reality of which cannot be im- 
 pugned without disintegrating the results of all scientific thought. 
 Empirical science must deal with metaphysical ideas and assume met- 
 aphysical principles as really as do mathematics, logic, philosophy and 
 theology. The physical science of to-day rests on metaphysical ideas 
 and principles, and is largely occupied with the discussion of meta- 
 physical and theological questions. The complete positivism of Comte 
 has proved itself inadequate to the needs of scientific thought and has 
 been renounced. 
 
 We shall also find that the true theory of knowledge, while trans- 
 cending the theory of Locke long dominant in English philosophy and 
 theology, does not issue in mysticism, idealism or pantheism. It re- 
 cognizes the dependence of all scientific knowledge on the observation 
 of facts either by sense-perception or self-consciousness, as w r ell as on 
 the first principles of. reason. It teaches that the principles of reason 
 assert themselves in consciousness only on occasion in experience, and 
 have no significance as knowledge, except as they are principles true of 
 observed reality and making a scientific knowledge of it possible. 
 Philosophy and theology depend on observed facts as really as em- 
 pirical science ; and empirical science depends on rational ideas and 
 principles as really as philosophy and theology. 
 
 We shall also find that the true idea of personality is consistent with 
 the true idea of absolute being ; that man is " in the image of God ; " 
 and that this truth, announced in the first chapter of Genesis and 
 fundamental in revelation from the beginning to the end of the Chris- 
 tian scriptures, is also fundamental in philosophy and in empirical 
 science. Without it no science is possible. For if man finds not in 
 himself the image of that Energizing Reason which is at the basis of 
 the universe and gives it its unity under law and in systematic order, 
 the discovery and declaration of which constitute science, then he does 
 not find it anywhere. But if unreason and not Reason is at the basis 
 of the universe, then science is impossible, and nothing is left but a 
 fragmentary observation of what appears to happen, with total ignor- 
 ance of what lies beyond our senses in the past, or in the future, or at 
 the present moment in the distances of space. Hence we truly say 
 that the consciousness of God lies in the background of man's con- 
 sciousness of himself; that the true knowledge of himself involves the 
 knowledge of God. As the late Professor T. H. Green, of Oxford, ex- 
 * Gott und die Natur, s. 7. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 presses it, " knew yourself as you truly are, and you will know the 
 truth of God, freedom and immortality." 
 
 And we shall reach the conclusion that the reality of scientific 
 knowledge depends ultimately on the reality of the existence of God 
 as the Absolute Reason energizing in the universe, and the primary 
 ground of all that is ; that the knowledge of God is not merely a ques- 
 tionable belief to be remanded to the feelings and the imagination 
 because it cannot be vindicated to the reason ; but that the existence 
 of Reason, universal, unconditioned and supreme, the same every- 
 where and always, never in contradiction to the ultimate principles 
 regulative of all human thought, the ultimate ground of the universe 
 and ever energizing in it, is essential to all scientific knowledge, the 
 key-stone of the arch of all rational thought ; and that ultimately the 
 question with the atheist is not whether man can know God but 
 whether he can know anything rationally and scientifically. 
 
 We thus reach the synthesis of faith and reason. In our spontane- 
 ous religiousness the whole man, intellect, sensibility and will, responds 
 to the contact of the supernatural and the divine. In reflective 
 thought the intellectual is distinguished from the emotional, the motive 
 and the voluntary. We find that we know, not merely what we have 
 subjectively experienced, but also that what we have experienced rests 
 on truths and laws which are not subjective and peculiar to our experi- 
 ence, but are universal truths regulative of all thought and laws to all 
 action ; and thus that our faith is veritable knowledge and itself the 
 utterance of reason. Even the primitive religiousness of savage men 
 is an utterance of reason though not recognized as such, and though 
 distorted by ignorance, and false judgments and fear. The richer 
 experience of the Christian is a consciousness of God manifesting itself 
 in the spiritual life, transcending, illuminating and enriching the most 
 advanced knowledge, culture and civilization. This also is the utter- 
 ance of reason, though it may be still unrecognized as such. It is only 
 because man is endowed with reason that he is susceptible of religion 
 and conscious of the presence and influence of God. 
 
 The knowledge that the thoughts set forth in this volume have 
 already been helpful to some, the hope that they will throw light into 
 some dark places, will make some difficult subjects more intelligible by 
 presenting them from a new point of view, will remove some misappre- 
 hensions as to what Christian theism truly is, and so may help some 
 still mazed in the labyrinth of doubt, are the motives for publishing 
 this book : " Non ignarus mali, miseris succurrere disco." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM 
 
 I 3. What Knowledge is. 
 
 Knowledge implies a subject knowing and a reality known (objec- 
 tive or subjective). The knowledge is the relation between them. 
 Both a subject knowing and a reality known are essential to know- 
 ledge ; if either is wanting, knowledge is impossible. This is the first 
 law of thought. 
 
 Knowledge is always the knowledge of reality. This is of its 
 essence ; if it is not the knowledge of reality, it is not knowledge. 
 The validity or reality of knowledge is essential in the idea of know- 
 ledge. Knowledge is the intellectual equivalent of some reality. 
 
 The act of the mind in knowing is a primitive act incapable of 
 analytical definition. It cannot be explained any more than light can 
 be illuminated. It is the inexplicable act by which the mind takes up 
 a reality into itself in an intuition, an apprehension, an idea, in some 
 intellectual equivalent, and knows it. We can declare the conditions, 
 physiological or others, under which knowledge arises ; we can analyze 
 the processes by which the mind attains it. But the mental act itself 
 by which an object, external and unknown, suddenly stands clear and 
 definite wdthin the intelligence, remains a mystery. And all physiolo- 
 gical facts as to, its connection with molecular action of the brain leave 
 it as mysterious as ever. 
 
 What knowledge is, is known in the act of knowing and known only 
 in the act of knowing. That it is knowledge is also known in the act 
 of knowing. My certainty of a reality is simply my consciousness of 
 knowing, which, whether attended to or not, is essential in every act of 
 knowledge. "I know that I know" means no more than "I know." 
 Otherwise every act of knowledge would be conditioned on an act 
 preceding and knowledge would fail in a vain regression along an 
 infinite series. 
 
 \ 4. Agnosticism. 
 
 Agnosticism is the doctrine that the human intellect in its normal 
 exercise is untrustworthy and incompetent to attain knowledge; and 
 10 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. H 
 
 that therefore knowledge is impossible to man. The doctrine has also 
 been known in philosophy by the names Pyrrhonism, Nihilism and 
 Universal Skepticism. 
 
 It is not the denial of the possibility of knowledge in a particular 
 case for lack of evidence, or on account of the limitation of the human 
 mind. In affirming that man's knowledge is real we do not affirm that 
 it is omniscience. Reality may exist known to minds of a superior 
 order, but entirely beyond the range of the human mind in its present 
 development. It is one important aim of philosophy to determine the 
 necessary limits of human knowledge and so to prevent the waste of 
 intellect in vain attempts to know the unknowable. 
 
 Agnosticism is a denial that the human intellect is trustworthy ; it is 
 the consequent denial that man is competent to attain knowledge 
 within the range of his faculties and in the normal exercise of all his 
 powers. He may have necessary beliefs in accordance with which he 
 must think ; but he can never have confidence that his necessary belief 
 is trustworthy or that by any intuition or any reasoning he attains 
 knowledge of reality. 
 
 It follows that a partial agnosticism necessarily involves complete 
 agnosticism, and is therefore self-contradictory and untenable. If at 
 one point the intellect is found to be false and untrustworthy, that is 
 the discovery at that point of a falsity and untrustworthiness which 
 discredit the intellect at every point and invalidate all that is called 
 knowledge. For example, if the intellect in the normal exercise of its 
 powers persistently and necessarily believes a certain self-evident prin- 
 ciple or axiom, and yet w T ith equal persistence and necessity believes 
 another self-evident principle contradictory to the first, it is exposed as 
 false and self-contradictory and discredited in all its action. The 
 agnostic may assert a partial agnosticism while admitting the reality of 
 knowledge in other particulars; but it is only because he has not 
 thought far enough to see the reach of his denial. The partial necessi- 
 tates the complete agnosticism. 
 
 1 5. The Reality of Knowledge. 
 
 This topic is sometimes designated " The Validity of Knowledge," 
 and the discussion is of the question "Is Knowledge Valid?" But 
 validity is of the essence of knowledge ; invalid knowledge is no know- 
 ledge. The question, therefore, resolves itself into this: "Is know- 
 ledge real? Does man know anything?" This form of statement 
 clears away irrelevant matter and holds attention to the precise point 
 in question. 
 
 I. The reality of knowledge is a primitive datum of consciousness 
 
12 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 underlying and conditioning all human experience and essential in all 
 human intelligence. 
 
 1. The reality of man's knowledge of himself and his environment 
 is a primitive datum of consciousness. This is implied in the first law 
 or primordial postulate of thought : knowledge implies a subject know- 
 ing and an object known, and is the relation between them. When I 
 say knowledge is real, I simply formulate in thought the primitive 
 consciousness, " I know." But this primitive consciousness, " I know," 
 declares alike, " It is I who know," and " I know something." Thus 
 the primitive datum of consciousness that knowledge is real involves, 
 as of the essence of knowledge, the reality of the Ego or subject 
 knowing, and the reality of the object known ; for if either is unreal 
 the knowledge does not exist ; and thus it involves the reality of the 
 knowledge in its essential significance. In every act of knowledge, 
 man's" knowledge of himself as knowing is an essential element, and 
 without this there can ba no knowledge. Thus his whole conscious 
 activity in experience is a continuous revelation of the man to himself. 
 It is the same with the object known. In every moment of conscious- 
 ness man finds himself knowing something that is not himself. The 
 existence of an outward object is a datum in all his consciousness ; and 
 his whole conscious experience is a continuous revelation to him of the 
 outward reality ; and if this is not real all knowledge vanishes. H. 
 Spencer says, " The co-existence of the subject and object is a deliver- 
 ance of consciousness which, taking precedence of all analytic exami- 
 nation, is a truth transcending all others in certainty." * 
 
 By the testimony, the words and the works of other men we know 
 that human knowledge is always in like manner the knowledge of the 
 subject knowing and an object known. I may say that the entire 
 experience of .mankind is the continuous revelation of these realities 
 to the human consciousness, and that all human experience is condi- 
 tioned on their real existence. Man lives in their presence and in 
 every act of intelligence sees their reality. If, therefore, the primordial 
 postulate on which human knowledge rests is false, all human know- 
 ledge vanishes away. 
 
 Thus it appears that the reality of knowledge is a primitive datum 
 of consciousness underlying and conditioning all human experience 
 and essential in all intelligence. 
 
 But, it will be said, this is not a demonstration of the reality of 
 knowledge. The assertion is true. Knowledge cannot originate in 
 reasoning, for reasoning presupposes knowledge. If we must prove 
 everything we cannot prove or know anything. For the same reason 
 
 * Psychology, Vol. i. p. 209. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 13 
 
 we cannot prove the reality of knowledge by reasoning. We can 
 reason to what is unknown only from what is known. We cannot 
 dive beneath all that is known and in the vacuum of total ignoranc 
 prove the reality of knowledge itself. We can reason only by the use 
 of our own intellectual faculties. We cannot transcend these facul- 
 ties to prove that they themselves are trustworthy. If one denies the 
 reality of knowledge no proof can refute the denial. Every reason 
 urged in proof of the reality of knowledge assumes that reality and 
 derives all its force as an argument from the assumption. Every 
 reason urged to prove that our intellectual faculties are trustworthy, 
 can be a reason only because those faculties are trustworthy. It is 
 therefore illegitimate and useless to attempt to prove the reality of 
 knowledge or the trustworthiness of our intellectual powers. So far as 
 this question is concerned, we do well to say with Goethe, " I have 
 never thought about thinking." The speculation which entangles itself 
 in this fruitless discussion merits the mockery of Mephistopheles in 
 Faust : " I tell thee, a fellow who speculates is like a beast on a dry 
 heath driven round and round by an evil spirit, while all about him lie 
 the beautiful green meadows." * 
 
 Nor does it discredit the reality of knowledge that its evidence is not 
 a demonstration. It is more than a demonstration ; it is the very es- 
 sence of knowledge itself; it is the primitive datum which underlies 
 every demonstration and makes it possible. Man lives in the light of 
 the knowledge of himself and of the world, and all his experience is 
 the continual illumination of these realities. 
 
 Nor does it discredit the reality of knowledge that it is subjective, 
 and that the mind itself contributes an element in the knowledge. If 
 an intelligent being exists, he must be constituted with capacity of 
 knowing ; and when he reflects on himself, he must find in himself 
 that original capacity, and the act of knowing must be the warrant 
 and evidence of the power of knowing. No outward influence on a 
 stick or stone can make it know, because it is not constituted with a 
 capacity of knowing. It can be no objection to the reality of know- 
 ledge that knowledge is the act of a being constituted with the capacity 
 of knowing and that it is by virtue of this constitution that the 
 being knows. When the subjectivity of knowledge is urged against 
 its reality, the absurd objection is flatly propounded that knowledge is 
 impossible if there is an intelligent being who knows. 
 
 The primordial postulate is not from the beginning formulated in 
 
 *" Ich sag' es dir ; ein Kerl der speculirt, 
 
 1st wie ein Thier, auf diirrer Heide 
 Von einem bosen Geist im Kreis gefiihrt, 
 Und rings umher liegt schone grime Weide." 
 
14 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the words, " knowledge is real," or " our intellectual faculties are trust- 
 worthy." It exists, rather, in every act of knowledge, as the man's 
 \menunciated consciousness of himself as knowing, of an object known, 
 and of the knowledge. It is a waste of intellect to carry the question 
 through metaphysical discussion. This postulate which underlies all 
 human experience, conditions all human knowledge, and is the primi- 
 tive datum of all consciousness, admits of no debate. Knowledge 
 begins with knowing ; it reveals itself self-evident, as light reveals itself 
 by shining. It originates as knowledge, the perpetual miracle of 
 Minerva springing full-armed from the brain of Jupiter. 
 
 2. The reality of man's knowledge of the first principles which are 
 regulative of all thought is a primitive datum of consciousness. Man 
 finds himself unable to think in contradiction of them. They over- 
 arch and encompass his thinking like a luminous firmament, which 
 enlightens but cannot be transcended or escaped. It is the knowledge 
 of these principles underlying and conditioning all thinking, which 
 makes it possible from any process of thought to conclude by inference 
 in knowledge. Thus in the experience of life all thinking is a con- 
 tinuous revelation of these truths and of the reality of our knowledge 
 of them. In a similar manner we come to the knowledge of truths 
 which are obligatory on us as laws to the will. 
 
 3. I expect also to show, what I will merely indicate now, that the 
 reality of our knowledge of God is a primitive datum of consciousness. 
 Man being rational is so constituted that in the presence of God, and 
 of his various manifestations of himself, he will know him ; and he 
 will know that he knows God in the act of knowing him. In thinking 
 of himself and the beings about him, he comes in view of the absolute 
 being. In knowing the universal principles and laws of reason w r hich 
 are regulative of all human thinking and doing, he comes to the know- 
 ledge of absolute Reason in which they are eternal in the fullness of 
 wisdom and love. The development of man's consciousness of himself 
 in his relation to the world, is the development of his consciousness of 
 God. As in the experience of life, the unfolding consciousness of man 
 is a continuous revealing to him of himself and of the outward objects 
 of knowledge, so also it is a continuous revelation to him of God. The 
 revelation is real to all ; its right progress presupposes the . normal 
 development of man ; its completeness, Tightness and harmony will be 
 proportioned to the completeness, Tightness and harmony of the de- 
 velopment of the man. 
 
 4. The realities which I have considered are the elements of the three 
 objects of all human thought and knowledge, the Ego or person, the 
 World, and God. These are not mere ideas spun and woven from the 
 processes of our own minds. They do not exisj, because we know them ; 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 15 
 
 we know them because they exist. I exist; therefore, being constituted 
 capable of self-consciousness, I know myself in my own thinking and 
 doing, and therein know personal being. The world exists ; therefore, 
 being constituted capable of perceiving outward objects, I know them 
 when they are in my presence. God exists ; therefore, being consti- 
 tuted capable of knowing God, I know him in His various mani- 
 festations. 
 
 5. It is sometimes claimed that real knowledge is that alone which 
 is founded on experience. But the reality of knowledge, which is the 
 condition of the possibility of experience, cannot be founded on ex- 
 perience. We may truly say, however, that the entire development of 
 consciousness in the experience of human life is the continuous revela- 
 tion of the Ego, the World and God. Kant admits that in our moral 
 convictions we have content in consciousness for the idea of God 
 already known as a necessary idea of Reason. God also reveals him- 
 self in the knowledge of universal principles and in all spiritual motives 
 and emotions ; for these bring us face to face with the absolute Reason 
 in the fullness of its power, love and wisdom. In this sense we may 
 say that we know the Ego, the world and God in experience. 
 
 It is commonly said and widely accepted as unquestionable, that 
 physical science, being founded on observation and induction, is certain 
 knowledge; but that theological belief is only a faith which never 
 becomes real knowledge. But physical science and religious know- 
 ledge are, as knowledge, the same in kind, differing only in their 
 objects. The observation and experience on which physical science 
 rests are self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge. The prin- 
 ciples on which all the inductions and deductions of physical science 
 rest are self-evident, unproved and improvable knowledge ; such are the 
 principle that every beginning or change of existence has a cause, the 
 principle of the uniformity of nature that the same complex of causes 
 always produces the same effect, and the axioms of mathematics. And 
 its verifications also are simply self-evident, unproved and unprovable 
 knowledge by cumulative observation and experience, by persistence in 
 which in the face of conscious fallibility and many mistakes, it attains 
 what it rightly claims is real and indisputable knowledge. And this 
 scientists call the scientific method; and because this knowledge has 
 been attained in this method, they hold it for true in the face of 
 unanswered objections and the utter inconceivableness of many of its 
 conclusions; receiving it with all its inexplicable difficulties, as a 
 learned professor of natural science has said, " without a wink." But 
 the process of attaining theological knowledge is just the same. It 
 rests on the trustworthiness of the self-evident and unproved primitive 
 knowledge of observed facts and universal principles, just as physical 
 
16 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 science does. It rests on the experience and observation of mental 
 and spiritual phenomena as indisputable as the phenomena of sense, 
 and essential and dominant factors in the whole history of man; 
 phenomena which physical science confessedly fails to account for, and 
 which it therefore most unscientifically ignores as beyond the pale of 
 science. It also proceeds in its own sphere to verify its conclusions by 
 cumulative observation and experience, and in the face of conscious 
 fallibility and many mistakes attains to real knowledge. And it 
 rightly holds it as real knowledge in the face of unanswered objections 
 and unexplained mysteries. Thus physical science is founded in faith 
 in the same sense in which theological knowledge is so founded; 
 because its knowledge both of facts and of the universal principles 
 underlying all its reasoning is self-evident, unproved and unprovable 
 knowledge. And theological knowledge is founded in experience as 
 really as physical science is. 
 
 We properly accept this knowledge both of the natural and the 
 spiritual as real knowledge because its reality as knowledge is a primi- 
 tive datum of consciousness, even if we rest on that as an ultimate fact. 
 But theism gives also rational ground for the reality of knowledge. 
 For theism affirms that God is the Absolute Reason, and the universe 
 is the expression of the truths, laws and ideals of Absolute Reason and 
 the progressive realization of the ends which reason approves as 
 worthy. The constitution of the universe therefore expresses these 
 archetypal principles of Absolute Reason. Theism also teaches that 
 man is in the image of God ; his reason, then, however limited, is the 
 same in kind with the absolute Reason ; and Reason whether in God 
 or man is everywhere and always the same. Thus theism gives 
 rational ground of the reality of human knowledge. It gives rational 
 ground for a man's knowing the reality of his knowledge when he 
 translates the facts of the universe even to the remotest space and time 
 into his own intellectual and scientific forms, factual and rational; 
 when he assumes that the necessary principles of his reason are not 
 merely subjective and regulative of his own thinking, but are princi- 
 ples of reason everywhere and always the same, the laws of things as 
 well as thought, and thus finds them in the constitution of the uni- 
 verse. It gives rational ground for the postulation of the correspon- 
 dence of man's knowledge with the reality of nature, of the uniformity 
 of nature which is the basis of scientific induction, of the identity of 
 plan in it which is the basis of classification, analogy and systemiza- 
 tion, and of the objective universality of the primitive principles of 
 reason which regulate all thought. It gives rational ground of the 
 reality of scientific knowledge in declaring the common origin of the 
 universe and all beings in it in the power of God, the eternal Reason, 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 17 
 
 energizing in its creation and expressing in its constitution and in the 
 laws of its ongoing, the archetypal thought of his eternal love and 
 wisdom. 
 
 If it is necessary to the reality of human knowledge that all know- 
 led re be demonstrated, or that the mind knowing must have a power 
 above itself to criticise its own highest powers and judge of their trust- 
 worthiness, or that it must know reality out of all relation to its facul- 
 ties and compare with it what it knows by its faculties, or that know- 
 ledge must have no relation to a mind, then certainly knowledge is im- 
 possible to man. But each of these demands involves absurdity and 
 self-contradiction. 
 
 We see then that man has knowledge. His knowledge begins in ex- 
 perience as self-evident, primitive knowledge, it proceeds to the know- 
 ledge of realities beyond experience by processes of thought under the 
 regulation of self-evident and universal principles, and it issues in the 
 knowledge of God and of the universe in the unity of a rational, 
 scientific system through its relations to God. And, theism, when at- 
 tained, throws its light back on human knowledge, and by disclosing 
 God the absolute Reason, man in his image, and the universe as the 
 expression of his thought, enables us to look beyond the fact that the 
 reality of knowledge is an ultimate datum of consciousness and see the 
 eternal ground of its being so. 
 
 II. Agnosticism belies the constitution and consciousness of man, 
 debars itself from the possibility of argument in its own support, and 
 contradicts and nullifies itself. 
 
 Because it denies knowledge on the ground that human intelligence 
 is untrustworthy, it denies the possibility of knowledge and thus 
 equally denies all knowledge. If man knows anything whatever, he is 
 proved capable of knowing, and agnosticism is totally false. I have 
 already explained why agnostic objections are entertained, against 
 theology more commonly than against knowledge in other spheres ; but 
 logically and rationally, theology is no more invalidated by these ob- 
 jections than astronomy or chemistry, or than a man's knowledge of 
 the road home, or that he was once born, or that the beast he rides is a 
 horse and not a sheep. As equally denying all knowledge, agnosticism 
 is equally poAverless against all. 
 
 It contradicts the fundamental and universal consciousness of man, 
 which persists as the consciousness of knowing, and controls the entire 
 action of mankind not excepting those who propound agnostic specula- 
 tions.- If one should carry out in action the doctrine of agnosticism, 
 it would prove him insane. 
 
 Agnosticism precludes the possibility of argument or evidence in its 
 support. Argument and evidence presuppose knowledge. It is impos- 
 2 
 
18 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 sible to appeal to knowledge in proof that knowledge is impossible, or 
 to reason to prove that reason is irrational and untrustworthy 
 
 The affirmation of agnosticism is self-contradictory ; it is the affirma- 
 tion of knowledge and implies its reality. Agnosticism is a theory of 
 knowledge. Hegel says : " No one is aware that anything is a limit or 
 defect until at the same time he is above and beyond it." * An ox 
 cannot know that it is ignorant of the multiplication table and incom- 
 petent to learn it. If man were incompetent to know he would 
 be equally unconscious of his deficiency. If I say that my beliefs 
 are delusive and not knowledge, I assume that I know what true 
 knowledge is, and by comparing my own beliefs with it I know that 
 they are illusive. If I say that my intellectual faculties are untrust- 
 worthy, I assume that I am conscious of a higher faculty by which I 
 know the norm or standard of truth and judge my other faculties un- 
 trustworthy. Hegel's maxim is applicable also to partial agnosticism. 
 If I affirm that I have knowledge only of phenomena, not of the true 
 reality which exists as a "thing in itself" out of all relation to my facul- 
 ties, I assume a knowledge of the " thing in itself " and of phenomena 
 as distinguished from it. When Mr. Tyndall says he has no faculty 
 and no rudiment of a faculty by which he can know God, he already 
 reveals the faculty of knowing him. If the existence of an object in- 
 volves no contradiction and I can form a conception of it, then I am 
 competent to know it if evidence of its existence comes within the 
 range of my experience and my thought. When Hamilton and Mansel 
 affirm that we have only a negative knowledge of the Absolute (which 
 is no knowledge), and Spencer affirms that the Absolute exists but is 
 the unknowable, they are already looking over the limits of the finite 
 and know the Absolute as existent being. If they had no power to 
 know the Absolute, they would be as unconscious of their ignorance as 
 an ox is of its ignorance of geometry. Accordingly Hamilton teaches 
 that we cannot know the Absolute, yet that by an entirely un- 
 explained act of faith we believe in its existence and accept it as the 
 supreme object of worship, love and obedience. When Mr. Spencer 
 speaks of " the unknowable," he unwittingly reveals knowledge of it 
 by describing it as "the Absolute," as "Cause, Power, or Force of 
 which every phenomenon is a manifestation," as "some Power by 
 which we are acted on," as "omnipresent" and " persistent." f So 
 others, who deny that man can know God, refer to sin and suffering in 
 the universe as incompatible with his existence and thus assume know- 
 ledge of God and of how he would have constituted and governed the 
 universe, if he had existed. 
 
 * Encyklopadie, Vol. I. p. 121. 
 
 t First Principles; pp. 96, 98, 99, 258. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 19 
 
 The affirmation of agnosticism is also in itself an affirmation that 
 man has knowledge; he knows that he cannot know anything. If 
 agnosticism were proved true, at the same moment it would be proved 
 false, for it would be proved that we know the truth of agnosticism. 
 Aujrustine has exemplified this contradiction in a passage which almost 
 dizzies the reader by its rapid turns. " I am most certain that I am 
 and I know this and delight in it. In respect to these truths I am not 
 at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians who say: ' What if 
 you are deceived?' If I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot 
 be deceived ; and if I am deceived, by this token / am. And since / 
 tun, if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am? for it 
 is certain that / am, if I am deceived. Since, therefore, I, the person 
 deceived, should be, even if I were deceived, certainly I am not 
 deceived in the knowledge that / am. Consequently neither, am I 
 deceived in knowing that / know. For as I know that / am, so I 
 know this also, that J know." * 
 
 If the Agnostic says that he does not dogmatically deny the exis- 
 tence or reality of everything or anything, but only affirms his igno- 
 rance, he at least avows knowledge of his own ignorance and of himself 
 as ignorant. Ignorance itself is knowledge of something by a person 
 knowing, with the additional knowledge that the knowledge of that 
 something is limited. 
 
 If he says that he does not affirm even his own ignorance, but that 
 his mind is in a state of continuous skepticism, doubting, questioning, 
 in a continuous equipoise, neither believing nor disbelieving, still he 
 affirms his knowledge of his own skepticism ; also, some knowledge is 
 prerequisite to the possibility of skepticism, questioning or doubt. 
 And such an equipoise is a state of unstable equilibrium, the existence 
 of which in the conscious experience of man even on a single question 
 is comparatively rare. We may safely say no man was ever perma- 
 nently conscious of such an equipoise on all objects of thought. 
 
 Agnosticism is therefore self-contradictory and self-annulling. It is 
 not a legitimate topic for argument, and has no claim on the considera- 
 tion of any rational being. It continues in debate only because skep- 
 ticism thrusts it on us in its objections. Otherwise its discussion is no 
 more pertinent as preliminary to theology than to astronomy. 
 
 III. Any theory of knowledge, any system, or any proposition, 
 which involves agnosticism, is thereby proved false and has no claim to 
 further consideration. 
 
 There is little danger that agnosticism will find acceptance when 
 distinctly avowed as such. It is not likely to infect men's minds 
 except as it inoculates with its virus some theory ostensibly affirming 
 *Civitas Dei, Book xi. 26. 
 
20 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the raality of knowledge, but essentially involving universal agnosti- 
 cism and supported by objections which, if sustained, equally invalidate 
 all knowledge. It is a sort of intellectual trichiniasis which can be 
 communicated to man only through the "stye of Epicurus" or some 
 other. It must hide itself in some theory which in words affirms the 
 reality of knowledge, in order to conceal the unreason which is its 
 essence and to disguise the deadliness of the negation which it injects. 
 
 But however disguised, every theory, system or proposition, which 
 essentially involves agnosticism, is demonstrated to be false so soon as 
 the agnosticism essentially involved in it is exposed. 
 
 For example, while reality may exist unknowable by man in his 
 present condition and development, we positively know that no reality 
 can exist out of all relation to the human faculties in the sense that it 
 is contradictory to the necessary and universal principles which are 
 regulative of all human thinking, nor in the sense that it is the only 
 reality and that all which man know r s is phenomenal and not real. 
 For this involves agnosticism. 
 
 Another example is found in the phenomenalism of this day. Prof. 
 Clifford says, " If we were to travel forward as we have travelled 
 backward in time and consider things as falling together, we should 
 come to a central all, in one piece, which would send out waves of heat 
 through a perfectly empty ether and gradually cool down. As this 
 mass got cool it would be deprived of all life and motion. But this 
 conclusion, like the one we discussed about the beginning of the world, 
 is one Avhich we have no right whatever to rest on. It depends on the 
 same assumption, that the laws of geometry and mechanics are ex- 
 actly and absolutely true and that they will continue exactly and 
 absolutely true forever and ever. Such an assumption we have no 
 right whatever to make." * But if the mathematics on which astrono- 
 mers rest their calculations is not the mathematics of the planets and 
 the stars and if our geometry is not the geometry of all space, then our 
 astronomy is good for nothing. By thus denying the universal truth 
 of mathematical principles Prof. Clifford destroys the foundation of 
 physical science, and by discrediting the principles of reason, discredits 
 all human knowledge. And thus phenomenalism is proved false, be- 
 cause it necessarily terminates in agnosticism. 
 
 g 6. Knowledge and Fallibility. 
 
 One may be certain and yet afterwards find that he was mistaken ; 
 
 he may be sure that he has true knowledge of reality and afterwards 
 
 find that it was only an erroneous belief. J. G. Fichte "developed, 
 
 with most admirable rigor of demonstration, a scheme of idealism, the 
 
 * Lectures and Essays, Vol. i. p. 224. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 21 
 
 purest, simplest, and most consistent which the history of philosophy 
 exhibits. And so confident was he in the necessity of his proof, that on 
 one occasion he was provoked to imprecate eternal damnation on his 
 head, if he should ever swerve from any, even the least of the doc- 
 trines which he had so victoriously established. But even Fichte in 
 the end confesses that natural belief is paramount to every logical 
 proof, and that his own idealism he could not believe." * Hamilton 
 was sure that Fichte had confessed himself mistaken ; but he himself 
 may only have believed an error; since others, perhaps better ac- 
 quainted with Fichte's writings, insist that his later works are the 
 consistent development of his earlier. Similar experience is common 
 to all men. Every person has often believed to be true what others 
 with equal assurance have believed to be false ; has been certain that 
 he had true knowledge of reality, and afterwards has found that it 
 was only an erroneous belief. 
 
 It is objected that facts like these disprove the possibility of know- 
 ledge ; that when one has found himself mistaken in his certainty, he 
 can never be certain again. He will say, I have before assuredly 
 believed that I had true knowledge of reality and have found myself 
 mistaken. If I am equally certain now, how can I have confidence 
 that I shall not again find myself mistaken ? Therefore, the objector 
 argues, even if a belief is true, it can never be known to be true ; it 
 cannot be discriminated from false belief. But belief which cannot be 
 known to be true is not knowledge ; it is uncertainty or doubt ; and 
 the objector concludes that therefore knowledge is impossible. 
 
 I. I reply that the objection, if valid, proves complete agnosticism. 
 Therefore it is not entitled to the attention of rational beings and may 
 be dismissed from further consideration. 
 
 It is, however, a favorite objection of skeptics against philosophy 
 and theology. Like all agnostic objections it is urged as having a 
 special significance against these, though of equal force against all 
 knowledge. Mr. Lewes has written what he calls a History of Philos- 
 ophy for the avowed purpose of proving from the mistakes, uncertain- 
 ties and disagreements of philosophers that philosophy is impossible. 
 The objection is specious and sometimes perplexes sincere inquirers. 
 It is necessary, therefore, to delay a little in order to show that the 
 co-existence of knowledge with conscious fallibility is entirely reason- 
 able, and no necessary inconsistency exists between them. 
 
 II. The objection assumes as a fact what is contrary to the universal 
 consciousness of man. 
 
 It is not a fact that the consciousness of having been mistaken 
 precludes certainty. The man is at least certain that he was mistaken. 
 * Hamilton in Reid's Works, p. 796. 
 
22 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 It is according to common experience and observation that the mis- 
 takes which men discover do not prevent certainty afterwards, even in 
 respect to the subject about which they know they have been mistaken. 
 But the objection rests on the assumption that certainty under this 
 condition is impossible. The objection thus assumes as a fact what is 
 contrary to the universal consciousness of man. 
 
 III. The fact that man is constituted capable of knowing and at the 
 same time finite is a rational ground for the persistence of knowledge 
 after the discovery of mistakes and for the co-existence of knowledge 
 with conscious fallibility. Man cannot cease to be conscious of knowing 
 unless he divests himself of his own constitution ; yet being finite, his 
 knowledge must always be limited and can be increased only by pro- 
 gressive acquisition. In acquiring knowledge he is liable to mistake. 
 As constituted rational he is capable of knowing ; as finite, he is liable to 
 mistake. The objection implies that the reality of knowledge is proved 
 by reasoning and may be disproved by argument ; but the knowledge 
 that I know is inseparable from the rational constitution of man ; it 
 persists through all mistakes and dissolves them into knowledge, like a 
 perennial spring whose living water flows through the snow which 
 obstructs it and dissolves it into its own swelling volume. 
 
 The objection, therefore, implies that finite or limited knowledge is 
 impossible. It insists that an infallibility which precludes all mistakes 
 is a necessary prerequisite, and the consciousness of it a necessary 
 element of all knowledge. But such infallibility implies omniscience. 
 The objection then is simply the absurdity that the knowledge of 
 everything is a necessary prerequisite to the knowledge of anything, 
 and that the consciousness of omniscience is an essential element of all 
 knowledge. And for this nonsense we are asked to acknowledge that 
 all human knowledge is unreal. The objection belongs to that type of 
 thought which denies the reality of finite being and insists that the 
 only reality is in the Absolute Being. 
 
 IV. In human intelligence there is a nucleus of knowledge sur- 
 rounded by a zone of probability, opinion and doubt. In the nucleus 
 of knowledge having the highest certitude there is no mistake ; mis- 
 takes are in our reflective thinking on this knowledge, in our interpre- 
 tation of it and inferences from it, from which comes the zone of prob- 
 ability, opinion and doubt. 
 
 When I am in pain I may mistake its cause, but I cannot mistake 
 as to the fact of pain. I may mistake as to the shortest road home, 
 but I cannot mistake, if I understand the terms, as to a straight line 
 being the shortest distance between two points. I may know with 
 indefectible certainty that darkness is not light, or that two and 
 two make four, though aware that I have sometimes mistaken the 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 23 
 
 light of the rising moon for that of the rising sun, or have incor- 
 rectly added a column of figures. 
 
 The changes of belief alleged as proving knowledge unreal are often 
 found on examination to be changes of opinion never held as certain. 
 There has been a rapid succession of changes in the science of geology 
 for many years; but the changes have been in theories devised to 
 account for the facts rather than in belief of the facts themselves. 
 Or, changes in scientific teachings are of conclusions from hasty or 
 incomplete induction or deduction, or from insufficient observation, 
 accepted provisionally as probable until further investigation gives 
 certainty. These theories and conclusions are often put forth and 
 received as science ; but intelligent persons hold them only as opinions 
 or theories having as yet no claim to scientific certainty. There is 
 nothing in a change of opinion or theory to throw doubt on the reality 
 of knowledge, although such changes are often used as facts by which 
 the objector would prove the instability and uncertainty of all human 
 beliefs. 
 
 In many other cases the change is of a belief which has never been 
 scrutinized and formulated, and whose grounds and reasonableness the 
 believer has never investigated. 
 
 V. Through all mistakes and changes of opinion the great mass of 
 knowledge persists. The changes of belief are steps in an enlargement 
 and confirmation of knowledge, not in its subversion and destruction. 
 
 The primitive knowledge, which gives the material for thought and 
 the laws which regulate thinking, necessarily persists. Aside from 
 the primitive knowledge, the greater part of acquired beliefs persist; 
 as my beliefs that I was once born, that the Roman empire once 
 existed, that wheat is nutritious food, that a certain neighbor is not a 
 drunkard. Many of these beliefs are continually receiving confirma- 
 tion from experience. 
 
 The same is true of scientific beliefs. The recent discovery by 
 astronomers that they were mistaken as to the exact distance of the 
 sun from the earth is not accompanied by any change in the great 
 mass of astronomical knowledge. It is not true that man's beliefs are 
 in continual transition and flux. The mass of them persist as know- 
 ledge; the ocean remains though the waves are always rising and 
 breaking and falling on its surface. Physical Science is advanced, 
 with many a mistake, by the cumulative evidence of persistent obser- 
 vation and experience, and inferences therefrom. 
 
 The same is true of changes of spontaneous belief when scrutinized 
 by reflective thought. A man grows up in the religious belief of his 
 childhood, without inquiring as to its grounds. The first objection of 
 skepticism disconcerts and distresses him ; and as new difficulties are 
 
24 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 suggested, he is ready to think all his religious faith and hope must be 
 abandoned. But as he proceeds to investigate, he may find, as multi- 
 tudes have done, that the objections are not valid, that his belief rests 
 on reasonable grounds. Thus his belief returns, sustained and con- 
 firmed by reason, clearer, stronger and more reasonable for the doubts 
 which it has looked in the face and found to be unreasonable. It has 
 sent down its roots to the depth where is perpetual moisture, and its 
 leaves no more wither and it does not cease from bearing fruit. In 
 this sense it is true that the way to true belief is through honest doubt. 
 
 If the objection were urged on an astronomer that the repeated and 
 great changes in astronomical systems prove the untruthfulness of all 
 astronomical science, he would reply that this objection was the denial 
 a/like of reason and of common sense. And rightly ; for in its greatest 
 changes, like the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican sys- 
 tems, astronomy has brought along with it into the new system a mul- 
 titude of truths and facts already known in the old, and but for the 
 knowledge of these it could not have advanced to the new system. It 
 is simply an enlargement and growth of astronomical knowledge, not 
 its extinction. 
 
 The empirical scientist, if candid, will allow the same explanation 'of 
 changes in philosophy and religious belief which he gives for those in 
 empirical science. In urging this objection, the objector commonly 
 includes agnosticism in philosophy and urges it as proving that philos- 
 ophy is self-contradictory. But both empirical science and philosophy 
 presuppose the reality of knowledge, and agnosticism is no more a 
 part of the latter than of the former. This error in applying the 
 objection being corrected, certainly the differences and changes of 
 opinion and the controversies attending them in philosophy are 
 scarcely more numerous and frequent than in physical science. And 
 as through all changes of physical science, so through all the changes 
 of philosophy a mass of truth common to all philosophy is carried 
 forward and becomes greater and clearer in the progress of philosophi- 
 cal thought. Renan says, " Who knows if the metaphysics and theol- 
 ogy of the past will not be to those which the progress of speculation 
 will one day reveal, what the Cosmos of Anaximenes is to the Cosmos 
 of Laplace and Humboldt?"* And in philosophy as in physical 
 science, the differences and the changes of belief have been steps in 
 the enlargement and completion of philosophy, not in its subversion 
 and destruction. 
 
 The same is true of religious belief. It has been well said, " Nothing 
 has been so disputed about in the world as the Christian religion, un- 
 less it be nature itself. It is because, more than anything else, it has 
 *L'avenir Religieux des Societes Modernes, subfinem. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM, 25 
 
 the simplicity and complexity of nature."* There is truth common to 
 all religions. In the divisions of Christianity the beliefs held in 
 common are usually more in number and more important than the 
 beliefs which differ. Because religion is life, and the decay of re- 
 ligious life is attended with decay of religious belief, the problem of the 
 progress of religious knowledge is more complicated than the progress 
 of science, and a sinking from a greater knowledge to a less and from 
 belief of truth to belief of error is more likely ; yet even in religious 
 knowledge the changes of belief have been predominantly incident to 
 the enlargement of the knowledge. It is not the Christian who goes 
 back to polytheism, nor the polytheist who goes back to fetichism, any 
 more than the Copernican goes back to the Ptolemaic system of 
 astronomy, or the chemist from belief in oxygen to belief in phlogiston. 
 And as men have advanced from the lower types of religion to the 
 higher, they have brought with them whatever of their religious beliefs 
 remained true in the presence of their enlarged knowledge, and have 
 sloughed off only those which had been exposed as errors.f 
 
 Fetichism recognises the supernatural every where in nature. Poly- 
 theism does not cease to recognise the supernatural in nature, but 
 recognises it with more intelligence as divinities distinct from nature, 
 energizing in its several realms and through its mightiest powers. 
 When in the Roman Empire polytheism was carried to its extreme 
 development, when an infant had one guardian divinity in its sleeping, 
 another in its rising, another in its crying, and another in its walking, 
 when in the growth of wheat, the germinating, the growth of the blade, 
 the forming of the joints in the stalk, the setting of the grain had each 
 its separate divinity, J this was the recognition of the divine presence, 
 activity and care in all nature and in all human life. Monotheism 
 perpetuated this truth and clarified and enlarged it in the knowledge 
 of one personal God pervading the universe with wisdom and love, and 
 ordering all its courses for the realization of the highest rational ends. 
 The gods that had crowded the world vanished and the world was 
 filled with the fullness of God. 
 
 * E. D. Mead, " Carlyle," p. 27. 
 
 fUnter der Hiille aller Religionen liegt die Religion selbst. Schiller. 
 
 jVaticanus the deity that opens the infant's mouth in crying; Levana lifts it; 
 Cunina watches over the cradle ; Rumina brings out the milk ; Potina presides over 
 its drinking ; Educa over the supplying of food. 
 
 Seia cares for the grain when sown beneath the ground ; Segetia for the rising 
 blade ; Proserpina for the germinating of the seed ; Nodutus presides over the forma- 
 tion of the joints and knots ; Yolutina over the sheaths infolding the stalk ; Patelana 
 over the opening of the sheath ; Flora over the flowering: Lacturnus over the grain 
 while in the milk; Matuta over the ripened grain; Tutilina over the harvesting: 
 Runcina over the removal from the soil ; Spiniensis over rooting out the thorns ; 
 Rubigo protects from mildew. Augustine Civitas Dei, Lib. iv. 8, 21. 
 
26 TH^ PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 During the first Christian centuries the Roman polytheists were 
 outgrowing their ancient religion and were introducing from the East 
 religions that might better meet their wants. Before his conversion to 
 Christianity, Constantine w r as a believer in one God, the Sun-God of 
 the Persians.* When he saw the cross on the Sun, it signified to him 
 that the Christian's God, who is a spirit, in righteousness and mercy 
 redeeming the world from sin to Christ-like love, is superior to the 
 Sun-God whom he had worshiped, and must rightfully displace him. 
 Whether the story is historically true or not, its significance and 
 pertinence remain unchanged. 
 
 Thus under all ignorance, doubt, probability, and all changes of 
 belief is knowledge of reality, which from childhood to age in the 
 individual and from century to century in mankind is becoming larger 
 and clearer and is putting away errors in its growth. And though 
 other errors spring up, tfrey are incidental to investigation and to pro- 
 gress in knowledge, not effective of its subversion and destruction. 
 The legitimate influence of mistakes is not to annul our knowledge, but 
 to lead us to greater carefulness and thoroughness of investigation. 
 
 All this is only saying that man, though limited, is constituted intel- 
 ligent and rational, that is, with the power of knowing ; that he can 
 enlarge his knowledge and clarify it from errors by observation and 
 reflection, and that the pursuit of knowledge is a legitimate function of 
 the human mind, and not, as Lessing has represented it, an ineffectual 
 seeking prosecuted for the mere pleasure of the search, a fruitless hunt 
 prosecuted for the mere excitement of the chase. 
 
 3 7. Criteria of Primitive Knowledge. 
 
 The question now r arises whether there are criteria by which we can 
 discriminate among our beliefs those which are primitive and true 
 knowledge of reality from those which are not% It has already been 
 shown that we know that we know only in the act of knowing. 
 Therefore the only possible criterion must in some way be knowledge 
 itself. Four criteria, consistent with this restriction, may be named. 
 
 I. The first criterion is of course the knowledge itself as it rises clear 
 and convincing in its own self-evidence ; it is the self-evidence of the 
 knowledge. This is the true significance of the criterion of Descartes: 
 "Having observed that there is nothing whatever in this, '/ think 
 therefore I am,' which assures me that I say the truth, save only that I 
 see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to be, I concluded 
 that I could take for a general rule that things which we conceive very 
 clearly and distinctly are all true things." f That is, knowledge is real 
 
 * Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity and Heathenism. 
 fOeuvres Vol. iii. p. 90, Principes de Philosophic. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 27 
 
 and true when it stands in the mind clear and distinct in its own self- 
 evidence and asserts itself as knowledge. 
 
 II. The second criterion is the impossibility of thinking the contrary 
 to be true. This is merely the first criterion reversed. The positive 
 knowledge is tested by an effort to reject it and believe the contrary. 
 If it is found impossible, the reality of the knowledge is more clearly 
 disclosed. It is analogous to testing the strength of material, first by a 
 direct strain, then by a transverse. 
 
 This test is commonly applied to the universal and self-evident prin- 
 ciples which regulate all thought; for example, it is impossible to 
 think of space as discontinuous, or to think of both of two contradic- 
 tory propositions as simultaneously true. In these cases it is impossi- 
 ble to think the contrary as true in any place or time or under any 
 circumstances or conditions. 
 
 The test is equally applicable to knowledge of a particular reality 
 present to consciousness here and now; for example, my knowledge 
 that I feel a pain. In such a case it is possible to think the reality to 
 be unreal at another place and time or under other conditions ; but so 
 long as it is present in consciousness I can no more think it to be 
 absent, or unknown or unreal than I can think that a thing may be 
 and not be at the same time. In the knowledge of a primitive and 
 universal principle the impossibility to thought of its contradictory is 
 universal. In the knowledge of a particular fact the impossibility to 
 thought exists only in a particular place and time and under partic- 
 ular conditions. Herbert Spencer states it thus : " In the one instance 
 the antecedents of the conviction are present only on special occasions, 
 while in the other they are present on all occasions. In either case, 
 subject the mind to the required antecedents and no belief save the 
 appropriate one is conceivable. But while in the first case only a 
 single object serves for the antecedent, in the other any object, real or 
 imagined, serves for antecedent." * 
 
 The fact that this second criterion is the converse of the first is im- 
 portant, especially in its application to the primitive beliefs of universal 
 principles which are regulative of all thinking. It implies that these 
 beliefs do not result from intellectual impotence, as Hamilton teaches 
 in respect to the causal judgment, but from positive knowledge. The 
 belief of the principle does not result from impotence to think the 
 contrary, but the impossibility of thinking the contrary results from 
 the self-evident and positive belief. It is not a negation of knowledge 
 arising from incapacity to think, but knowledge so positive that it 
 carries in itself the consciousness that it is impossible to think the 
 
 *The Universal Postulate; Westminster Review, Oct. 1853. See also his Psy- 
 chology, g 426-437. 
 
28 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 contrary. It therefore gives no basis to the doctrine that God is 
 unknowable, which is inferred from Hamilton's theory of mental 
 impotence. 
 
 It must also be noticed that that which is impossible to thought or 
 unthinkable must be distinguished from the inconceivable, whether by 
 the inconceivable is meant the unimaginable, or that which is not 
 conceived in a logical concept or general notion. This distinction is 
 important because it is often urged by agnostics that because God is 
 inconceivable he must be unknowable. 
 
 If by the inconceivable is meant the unimaginable, that which can- 
 not be pictured in the imagination, we need not look far to discover 
 that the thinkable and knowable is not restricted to the conceivable. 
 A person blind or deaf from birth knows that there are people who see 
 and hear, that there are light and color and sound. But the blind man 
 cannot picture light and shade and color to his imagination, nor the 
 deaf man sound. Dr. Maudsley says of Kruse, who was completely 
 deaf, that " musical tones seemed to his perception to have much ana- 
 logy with colors. The sound of a trumpet was yellow to him ; that of 
 a drum red ; that of the organ green." * So it is possible to think of a 
 being endowed with a sixth sense, although it is impossible to imagine 
 what the revelations of the sense \vould be. I know there is a branch 
 of Mathematics called Quaternions, but I cannot picture its methods 
 to my imagination because I have not used them. The general 
 notion horse is thinkable and knowable ; I can denote it by a symbol, 
 spoken or written ; but it is not imaginable ; if I try to picture it to the 
 imagination I get only a particular horse, of a definite size, color and 
 action. It is idle then to argue that whatevever is inconceivable in the 
 sense of unimaginable is therefore impossible to thought and cannot be 
 known as real. 
 
 If by inconceivable is meant that which cannot be formed with 
 other individuals of the same kind into a general notion, it is also 
 evident that what is possible to thought and knowledge is not re- 
 stricted to the conceivable in this sense ; because the knowledge of the 
 individual precedes the knowledge of the general notion ; the know- 
 ledge of the general notion is conditioned on the knowledge of the 
 individual. 
 
 Therefore this second criterion must not be understood as affirming 
 that a belief is true w r hen its contrary is inconceivable, but only that it 
 is true when the mind in its reflex action on its own knowledge, finds 
 it impossible to think its contrary as real or true under the existing 
 conditions; and, in the case of intuitions of primitive and universal 
 principles, finds it impossible to think the contrary true under any 
 
 * Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, p. 45. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 29 
 
 conditions ; finds in fact that the assertion of the contrary would be 
 
 use, words used without meaning. Thus the common objection of 
 
 agnostics that God is unknowable because in either or both of these 
 
 C 
 
 senses he is inconceivable, is seen to be without force. 
 
 III. The third criterion of knowledge is its persistence in face of all 
 efforts of reflective thought to disprove it. By the persistence of belief 
 in face of objection, ratiocination, and all reflective thought upon it, 
 the mind ascertains that it is impossible to think the contrary and that 
 the belief stands impregnable in its clearness and evidence as know- 
 ledge. 
 
 This persistence may appear in two ways. It may appear as persis- 
 tence of intellectual assent notwithstanding all argument against it. 
 It may also appear as persistence of spontaneous belief practically con- 
 trolling action, even when, as the result of speculative thinking, it is 
 conceded that the belief is untenable and its contrary is affirmed as 
 true. Thus the idealist continues to be practically controlled by belief 
 in the real existence of bodies, and the materialist by the belief that he 
 is a free and responsible agent. 
 
 In applying this principle we may refer to the persistence of know- 
 ledge in our own individual experience, and also in the experience of 
 mankind. We are not, indeed, to decide between the true and the 
 false by the votes of a majority. But in investigating the experience 
 of mankind we are not seeking to decide any question by votes, but 
 simply to ascertain what are the persistent, essential and primitive 
 elements of human intelligence. There is difficulty here in ascertain- 
 ing the facts ; for the multitude of men have given us no information 
 as to their conscious experience. But from observation, literature and 
 history we have attained a large knowledge of the characteristics of 
 humanity, and the researches of anthropologists are continually in- 
 creasing it. From these sources it is possible to ascertain what senti- 
 ments and beliefs are found persisting in all the experience of man. 
 And if we find knowledge either of a particular reality or of a univer- 
 sal principle which has been an element in all human experience, has 
 consciously or unconsciously controlled all human thinking, and has 
 persisted through all the changing conditions and progress of men, this 
 persistence we accept as a mark of primitive, self-eviflent knowledge 
 springing directly from the human constitution and revealing the ex- 
 ternal environment common to all mankind. 
 
 It may be objected that illusions of sense persist through all the ex- 
 perience of mankind ; to the vision of man the firmament is always an 
 azure dome, the heavenly bodies move in it, parallel lines seem to 
 converge; and it is objected that these persistent illusions make the 
 criterion useless. I answer that all that persists in these so-called illu- 
 
30 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 sions is true and real. In vision, for example, the man sees the 
 external objects precisely as the eye presents them. In the seeming 
 convergence of parallel rails his eye reports truly the physical reality of 
 the lessening of the angle of vision with increasing distance. His intel- 
 lect interprets the sensation. If there is any error it is not in the 
 sensation but in his interpretation of it. And this error does not per- 
 sist. The belief that the heavenly bodies move around the earth or 
 that the firmament is a solid dome, has not persisted. 
 
 IV. The fourth criterion of primitive knowledge is the consistency 
 of itself and its necessary outcome with all knowledge. This criterion 
 is of great practical importance in scientific and all other reflective 
 thought. It has recently been said, " Internal consistency and harmony 
 was the only test of truth known to antique thought ; and it supple- 
 mented the appeal to actual authority characteristic of mediaeval 
 thought." * This is an example of a common style of remark depreci- 
 ating ancient and especially mediaeval thought. Such remarks grossly 
 misrepresent the facts. And the depreciation of this criterion as of 
 little value is contradicted by the continual use of it in modern 
 thought. The verification on which science insists so strenuously as 
 necessary to establish an hypothesis is nothing but ascertaining the 
 consistency of a conclusion of reflective thought with the results of 
 observation. It is true, the mere self-consistency of a conception does 
 not prove that it is a conception of reality. I may form a consistent 
 theory of the government of fairies by Oberon and Titania. It is con- 
 sistent with all know T n facts that beyond Neptune there may be a 
 planet belonging to the solar system. These are only creations of 
 imagination or conjectural possibilities, and do not present themselves 
 in consciousness as knowledge. Mere consistency of thought cannot 
 originate knowledge, but it may test it. Man has varied powers or 
 faculties, and knowledge obtained through one faculty or from one 
 sphere of investigation must be consistent with knowledge obtained 
 from every other. This consistency is a criterion of knowledge. What 
 I perceive by the eye I test by the hand. The correctness of an arith- 
 metical division is tested by multiplication. If a necessary inference 
 from a supposed principle is false, it compels us to doubt either the 
 truth of *the principle or the correctness of our reasoning from it. 
 Speculative conclusions must be tested by observed facts. If an 
 observed fact contradicts an accepted conclusion of science, the obser- 
 vation must be repeated and corrected or the scientific conclusion must 
 be modified. The whole process of verification is an ascertaining of 
 the consistency or inconsistency of the results attained by one intellec- 
 tual power or process and from one sphere of inquiry with those at- 
 * The Value of Life; A Reply to Mallock, p. 73. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 31 
 
 tained from others. And so far as from all we obtain successively the 
 same results, our knowledge is tested and confirmed. 
 
 The same criterion may be applied in testing what is primitive 
 kn )wle<l_re. If the intuitions of reason contradict each other they are 
 proved false and at the same time reason itself is proved untrustworthy. 
 If what seems to be primitive knowledge and its necessary outcome is 
 inconsistent with itself or with other knowledge it is not primitive 
 knowledge. 
 
 But the criterion is not merely negative. If primitive knowledge is 
 found to be in harmony with experience, if the first principles which 
 regulate thought do not lead us in our reasonings to error and contra- 
 diction but to conclusions which all our powers in concurrence acknow- 
 ledge as truth, if what we in our philosophy hold to be primitive 
 knowledge conditioning experience, is in harmony with our actual 
 experience, then we may properly say that it is continually verified by 
 experience. It is consistent with itself and with all knowledge. 
 
 It must be observed respecting the. four criteria, that the mind does 
 not consciously appeal to them in the primitive acts of knowing, but 
 only in reflection on its own acts and in answer to the question whether 
 knowledge is real. If then it is seen that the knowledge stands out 
 clear and distinct in its own self-evidence, that it is impossible to think 
 the contrary as real, that the belief persists in spontaneously regu- 
 lating thought and action in the face of all speculative objections, and 
 that it not only does not contradict any other knowledge, but is 
 accordant with all our thinking and experience, it is accepted as real 
 knowledge. If not, knowledge is impossible. 
 
 g 8. Knowing, Feeling and Willing. 
 
 I. Knowing, feeling and willing are distinct but not separate. 
 
 They are not separated in human experience. In every feeling there 
 must be knowledge or belief. Every act or will involves feeling which 
 is its motive, and knowledge, which is the light in which the determina- 
 tion is made and without which freedom of determination is impossible. 
 And knowledge remains but nascent and cannot be apprehended in its 
 complete significance until it reveals itself in feeling and discharges 
 itself in voluntary action. The Speculative Reason cannot find the 
 content and significance of its own necessary ideas nor solve its own 
 necessary problems until it becomes the Practical Reason. 
 
 Dean Swift compares the man of culture to the bee, which " visits 
 all the flowers of the field and of the garden and by an universal 
 search, much study and distinction of things, brings home honey and 
 wax. . . . thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest things, 
 
32 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 sweetness and light."* Matthew Arnold has popularized Swift's con- 
 ception of culture as comprising sweetness and light the light of 
 knowledge and the sweetness of right feeling, action and character. 
 These are necessary elements of culture because knowing, feeling and 
 willing are indissolubly united in man's personality ; they exist simulta- 
 neously in the same mental state, and no one of them can in fact 
 complete itself without the others. The light is for no purpose without 
 the sweetness, and the sweetness runs to waste and disappears without 
 the light. 
 
 But w r hile, in human experience, knowing, feeling and willing are 
 never separated, they are distinguished. They are not disparted organs 
 or faculties ; but they are different aspects of the same mental states, 
 different poles of the same mental energy, different phases of the same 
 indivisible personality. They are clearly presented in consciousness 
 and recognised in thought as different. The difference of knowing, 
 feeling and willing is apprehended by every mind and is at the basis of 
 all reflection on the mental processes and powers. To deny it is to 
 make all psychology impossible and all language respecting mental 
 acts and processes unintelligible. 
 
 II. True philosophy must recognize both the inseparableness and the 
 distinctness of the three. Any theory of knowledge which overlooks 
 either the one or the other is false and necessarily prolific of errors. 
 
 1. At present perhaps the more common tendency is to overlook the 
 close factual connection of the speculative intellect with the practical 
 side of human nature, to insist that true knowledge can be acquired 
 only in the complete isolation of the intellectual process from all feel- 
 ing, volition and choice, and so to exalt the speculative intellect at the 
 expense of the moral, the sesthetic, the religious and the practical in 
 man. This tendency may explain some of the defects and errors of 
 psychology, metaphysics and Christian theology; it is even more ob- 
 trusive and more potent for evil in the materialistic speculations which 
 swarm, like poisonous flies, around the head of " star-eyed science." I 
 will exemplify it in Christian theology. Some theologians have in- 
 sisted that the Spirit of God can influence the human soul only by 
 presenting truth to the intellect. An eminent divine preaching in 
 Boston many years ago declared: "If I could present truth to the 
 mind as clearly as the Holy Spirit does, I could convert souls as easily 
 as He." This supposes man to be a creature of intellect alone, whose 
 action is excited afld directed invariably in a sort of mechanical way 
 by processes of logic. But in a multitude of cases every man acts 
 from feeling with scarcely the consciousness of belief or thought. If 
 he meets a tiger in a jungle, his fear makes him run without a process 
 * Battle of the Books ; Swift's Works, Vol. i. pp. 203, 205. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AXD AGNOSTICISM. 33 
 
 of reasoning. So preaching when addressed exclusively to the intellect 
 is dry, while eloquence touches the whole man and in enlightening the 
 intellect fires also the heart. And what is the power of music? Why 
 does a cheerful face diffuse its sunshine, and gloomy looks spread like 
 a chilling mist to all? What is the power of a commanding presence, 
 or of the self-possession and courage of a single person in a time of 
 danger and general consternation? What did General Sheridan impart 
 to his fleeing army in Virginia, when his mere coming into sight 
 changed defeat into victory? The power of mere argument in deter- 
 mining the opinions, conduct and character of individuals, the courses 
 of history and the development of civilization has been greatly over- 
 rated. The element of feeling commonly enters into the formation of 
 opinions. Men adopt opinions, not because they have logically proved 
 them, but because they suit their feelings, are in harmony with their 
 characters and their views of human life and accordant with their 
 chosen ends. Nor must opinion be erroneous because founded on the 
 feelings. If the feelings on which it is founded are right, the opinion 
 will be likely to be right. If a pure woman passes on the sidewalk the 
 entrance to a by-way to hell, whence come up the reek of the stews, 
 the babble of drunkards, and the words of obscenity and profaneness, 
 her pure feelings drive her away before she has time to think. A pure 
 spirit in heaven may follow his feelings as safely as his judgment. 
 There are as many erroneous opinions founded on false logic as on 
 wrong feelings. Men do not commonly believe in God because they 
 have proved his existence, but because their whole spiritual being cries 
 out for him, is smothered without him, and refreshed, inspired and 
 ennobled by his presence. The soul responds to the touch of the di- 
 vine as the string of the viol to the touch of the musician. An atheist, 
 who had been pressed with many an argument without conviction, was 
 one day felling a tree. As the tree came crashing down, these words, 
 from the memory of childhood, flashed on his mind : " As the tree fall- 
 eth so it shall lie ; and as death leaves us so judgment must find us." 
 It awakened his consciousness of responsibility and of sin; and he 
 found no peace till he found it in faith in God. A most reasonable 
 conversion, though unreasoning. For whatever may awaken the spir- 
 itual in the constitution of man awakens it to the consciousness of God. 
 Hence the unexpected and seemingly inexplicable breaking down of 
 religious unbelief in the great crises of life. When the shadow of 
 death is glooming on the soul and the body is sinking to its last sleep, 
 the spirit awakens and finds itself, as it always must when it awakens, 
 face to face with God. 
 
 The intellect, therefore, is not the only inlet by which the truth can 
 enter and influence a man. His soul is like a great cathedral admit- 
 3 
 
34 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ting light through many windows, each stained its own color and hav- 
 ing its own pictures ; yet not falsifying the light, but showing in the 
 varying colors its real elements and its diversified richness and beauty. 
 
 Therefore the only true philosophy is that which germinates from 
 the entire constitution of man and grows with the normal growth of his 
 entire life. This is the only philosophy which can safely be the guide 
 of life. A French writer has said regretfully, " There is in each of 
 us a poet that died young." It is the characteristic of genius that this 
 inborn poet lives the whole life long with all the dewy freshness of 
 youth. It is the characteristic of Christianity that passing through the 
 intellect it quickens and keeps fresh all the purest and most beautiful 
 sentiments of humanity, all that is noblest and most divine in the spi. 
 ritual life, so that always in the freshness of spiritual youth, " as little 
 children " we enter into the kingdom of God. 
 
 2. Errors also arise from identifying knowing, feeling and willing, 
 or obscuring the difference between them. These errors do not arise so 
 much from definite denials of the difference, as from admissions or at- 
 tempted explanations or lines of thought and argument which imply 
 that there is no difference. Such, for example, is the assertion that 
 choice is a judgment of the intellect; and such is the use of the popular 
 saying, that feeling is a kind of knowing, as if it were a philosophical 
 definition. 
 
 In respect to errors of this class two points must be noticed. The 
 first point is that in cases of which we say the feeling is the knowing, 
 there is a belief or knowledge present with the feeling. If fear moves 
 a man to run away from a tiger, the fear involves a belief or know- 
 ledge that the tiger is a dangerous beast. If a pure woman is driven 
 by her feelings away from impurity, she knows what impurity is and 
 knows that she has come near it. And the knowledge in these cases is 
 just as different from the feeling as if it were separated Jrom it by some 
 hours. In all these cases the knowiedge, in the order of dependence 
 and thought, is presupposed in the feeling. How can one fear if he has 
 no knowledge of danger? It is only in instinct that the feeling and 
 action precede the knowledge. And evolutionists suppose that in in- 
 stinct the knowledge originally preceded the feeling and action, but by 
 heredity through many generations the knowledge or belief has become 
 merged and lost in the feeling. 
 
 The other point to be noticed is that feeling and willing cannot in 
 themselves be ultimate criteria. of knowledge. If one person lives for 
 sensual gratification and another for the service of God and man in 
 obedience to the law of love, their respective feelings w r ill lead them to 
 different lines of conduct, to different views of life and to different 
 opinions. Feeling may guide to right action, and opinions founded on 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTI 
 
 feeling and character may be right, 
 feelings and the character are right. Any testing of opinions by their 
 conformity with our own feelings and character necessarily presupposes 
 knowledge of what feeling is right and what is wrong. And, further, 
 the very act of testing an opinion in this way is an act of thought, and 
 not a feeling; the comparing of character and feelings and judging 
 which is right is an intellectual act; and the standard of judgment 
 between right and wrong is the truth and law of reason, and is not in 
 the feelings. 
 
 III. Feeling and willing may be used, with the qualifications just 
 mentioned, in testing the reality of knowledge in general, and in veri- 
 fying particular beliefs. 
 
 1. Oar feelings, choices and volitions, the whole practical side of our 
 constitution protest against agnosticism as really and effectively as do 
 our reason and our knowledge. Mr. Spencer's doctrine that the abso- 
 lute being, the ultimate ground and deepest reality of the universe, is 
 unknowable, is contradictory to reason and knowledge. If the true 
 and ultimate reality is unknowable all reality is unknowable ; what we 
 take for reality is merely phenomenon, and what we take for know- 
 ledge is merely illusion. Mr. Spencer himself contradicts his own 
 agnosticism by declaring his knowledge of the unknowable ; for he 
 declares that the Unknowable ground and reality of phenomena is 
 absolute being, exists, is power, is everywhere present, and is mani- 
 fested in all the ongoing of the universe. To the agnostic, belief in the 
 existence of an unknowable absolute as the ultimate ground and 
 reality is self-contradictory ; even a genius like Herbert Spencer cannot 
 enunciate the doctrine without contradicting himself. And if the Ab- 
 solute Reality is unknowable all reality is unknowable and knowledge 
 is impossible. 
 
 This agnosticism is equally contradictory to the rational constitution 
 of man on its practical side. To say that the ultimate reality of. things 
 is unknowable, and yet to insist that it ought to be the object of rever- 
 ence and even of religious homage and that we ought willingly to order 
 our actions in cooperation with the manifestation of the unknowable as 
 it reveals itself in the evolution of the universe, is certainly absurd. 
 We are told that religion is legitimate in the sphere of feeling and that 
 imagination may picture the unknowable, in whatever form it will, as 
 an object of worship. But can a sane man revere and love and serve 
 what is unknown and unknowable? Especially can he worship what he 
 knows is a fiction of his own imagination and revere it as the Absolute 
 Being? So also Hamilton and Mansel declare that the Absolute is 
 unknowable, that what is knowledge and truth and right and love to 
 us may not be knowledge, truth, right and love to God; and yet that 
 
36 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 we ought to love, adore and serve him. The doctrine contradicts both 
 the pure or speculative Keason and the practical. It is alike absurd 
 and immoral. If that, which is most real in the universe and is the 
 ground of all that is, may be unreason and not reason, may be the con- 
 trary of all which we know as true, right, perfect and good, may be 
 the antagonist of all which human reason approves as the objects of 
 our highest aspirations, our best affections a"nd our noblest endeavors, 
 then our whole moral and practical nature not less than our rational is 
 an abortion and a lie. Man has no scope for his aspirations, affections 
 and powers. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" becomes the only true 
 account of human existence. No philosophy or science which involves 
 this can ever gain wide or permanent control of the mind of man. 
 
 2. The practical side of our being also implies objective reality. 
 Fear, joy, pity, anger imply an object of fear, joy, pity and anger. If 
 these feelings are purely subjective the feelings themselves cannot exist. 
 In an important sense we perceive objective reality through all the 
 feelings as really as through sensation. Our feelings are a sort of 
 reaction on the outward object. A philosophy which denies that the 
 feelings imply objective reality, would deny that our. feelings have any 
 relevancy to the world in which we live and thus would annihilate all 
 motives. Such a philosophy cannot be believed. 
 
 It is equally true that choice and volition imply objective reality. 
 All enterprise and energy assume the reality of the universe as the 
 sphere of action, and of the objects sought by enterprise and energy. 
 The man striving with all his might to remove an obstacle, to over- 
 come an enemy, to gain house and land cannot doubt the reality of the 
 objects. A philosophy which denies the objective reality of things is 
 as fatal to all energy as it is to all knowledge. Man cannot believe it. 
 Man is a part of the universe. It acts on him and he reacts on it, not 
 in his intellect alone, but also in his feelings and his will. And this 
 reaction, whether in knowledge, feeling, choice or exertion, is always 
 attesting the reality of its object. 
 
 3. And since we are so constituted that we judge some feelings, aims 
 and actions to be worthy and noble and others unworthy and ignoble, 
 a true philosophy must teach that the universe gives scope to our in- 
 tensest action for the realization of our highest aspirations and our 
 noblest ends. A philosophy which denies this is Pessimism ; it denies 
 that life is worth living ; it declares that the universe gives no scope 
 for feeling, or action or achievement of any worth. The Eeason, the 
 Feelings, the Will revolt from it. The truth of opinions is tested by 
 their bearing on action and character, their teachings as to what are 
 the highest ends of human life, and their power to quicken and guide 
 to the realization of those ends. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 37 
 
 And the practical side of humanity also attests the reality of man's 
 spiritual being and of the objects of his highest aspirations and en- 
 deavor. For men live but a little time. If the universe is to give 
 realization to their highest hopes, satisfaction to what is best in their 
 affections, scope for their noblest endeavors, their lives must be more 
 than " little breezes " which 
 
 "dusk and shiver 
 Through the wave that runs forever ; " 
 
 they must be immortal. And this practical attestation of the reality of 
 the spiritual is precisely the same in kind with the practical attestation 
 of the physical, which in fact compels the belief in its objective reality. 
 Man perceives the reality both of the spiritual and the physical through 
 his feelings, choices, volitions and exertions as really as he perceives 
 outward reality through the senses. There is a true and profound phi- 
 losophy in one of the "preliminary principles" of the Presbyterian 
 " Form of Government ; " " Truth is in order to goodness ; and the 
 great touchstone of truth is its tendency to promote holiness, according 
 to our Saviour's rule, ' by their fruits shall ye know them.' There 
 is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and 
 duty. "* Some scientists teach that, as the inevitable result of evolu- 
 tion, the whole universe will come to a stop and all life and motion 
 forever cease. .Our whole being revolts against, resents and resists the 
 conclusion. In accordance with the foregoing principles the impossi- 
 bility of this belief and the revolt and resentment of the heart against 
 it are founded in a true philosophy. It is safe to predict that any 
 theory which necessarily involves this conclusion will never gain cur- 
 rency among men. In like manner, when we are told that the universe 
 gives no scope for the realization of our spiritual aspirations and that 
 the objects of them have no reality, that our endeavors to attain the 
 noblest ends of our being must be abortive, and that the progress of 
 science is destined to chill and still all such aspirations and endeavors 
 forever, our whole being revolts against, resents and resists the conclu- 
 sion. And this revolt and resistance also are justified by true philo- 
 sophy ; and we may safely predict that a theory involving such a 
 conclusion will never control the action and history of mankind. 
 
 4. The greater part of human actions are acts of faith. In every en- 
 terprize a man risks something of the present to win something in the 
 future. He does it in faith that events will be according to his calcu- 
 lations. If he succeeds he knows that his calculations were according 
 to the realities of the universe ; that is, according to truth ; for truth is 
 reality intellectually apprehended. If he fails, he knows that he was 
 
 * Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. p. 344. 
 
38 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 in error. In either case by his voluntary action he acquires knowledge 
 of reality. And in this way a great part of human knowledge is 
 acquired. 
 
 But a man may aim at unworthy ends. The universe makes both 
 good and evil possible to him. If now he can ascertain any principles 
 determining what are the highest possibilities of his being, those princi- 
 ples must be true ; because those highest possibilities are what the uni- 
 verse itself makes possible to him in his reaction on it. 
 
 Man is so constituted that principles of action present themselves in 
 his consciousness as regulative of his thinking, and feeling and will- 
 ing. He distinguishes the reasonable from the absurd, the true from 
 the false, the right from the wrong, the perfect from the imperfect, the 
 worthy from the unworthy. In the true, the right, the perfect and the 
 worthy he recognizes the highest possibility and supreme good of his 
 being. In reference to these there are problems which thrust themselves 
 for solution on every generation, questions which every age must answer. 
 Are the highest possibilities and noblest ends of human life attained by 
 acting in supreme selfishness or in universal love ? by lives of self-indul- 
 gence and ease and being ministered unto or by lives of energy and 
 service? by lives conformed to the negations of materialism or to the 
 large and positive principles, promises and hopes of Christianity ? These 
 are legitimate criteria of knowledge. The materialist appeals to these 
 and similar criteria as constantly and as earnestly as the theist. By 
 these criteria the experience of the race is establishing the supremacy 
 of the law of love and the reality of man's spiritual interests and rela- 
 tions. Christianity has already advanced far in proving itself true by 
 its effects. When in the lapse of time its principles are all realized and 
 its promises fulfilled in the civilization of mankind, the demonstration 
 will be complete. 
 
 IV. The errors and superficiality of skeptical and materialistic scien- 
 tists rest largely on their disregarding the real relations of knowing, 
 feeling and willing and attempting to construct a science of the uni- 
 verse as if it were an object of thought alone. 
 
 1. It is this which leads them to reject, in theory, all argument from 
 final causes. I say in theory ; because in fact they habitually use it in 
 their scientific investigations. 
 
 Man's knowledge in all departments is closely connected with the 
 satisfaction of his feelings and' the accomplishment of his purposes. 
 He accepts the statements of fact and method accordance with which 
 enables him to accomplish his designs. He accepts as true the princi- 
 ples which enable him to realize what both the reason and experience 
 of man pronounce right, and perfect and of true worth. The practical 
 Reason is as real a factor in his knowledge as the Speculative. The 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 39 
 
 recognition of final causes is in the essence of his knowledge, as really 
 as the recognition of efficient causes. Nor does the knowledge of the 
 efficient, preclude the reality of the final cause. Some unmusical per- 
 s6n once described the playing of a great violinist as scraping catgut 
 with horse-hair. It is a correct description. But it would be foolish 
 to insist that this physical force and its instruments are all that science 
 can recognize in the performance, and that it knows nothing of it as 
 the intentional production of enchanting music. As Bulwer says: 
 " Science is not a club-room ; it is an ocean ; it is as open to the cock- 
 boat as to the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots 
 and another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? 
 Why say to the intellect, 'The deeps of philosophy are pre-occupied?'" 
 
 2. The principles which have been presented expose the error that 
 the scientific spirit is the pure love of the truth, defecated from all 
 admixture of feeling, preference or choice. Of the love of the truth in 
 this sense Mr. Lecky says that it " is perhaps the highest attribute of 
 humanity;" that they who possess it "will invariably come to value 
 such a disposition more than any particular doctrines to which it may 
 lead them ; they will deny the necessity of correct opinions ; " that is, 
 love of the truth will entirely cease, being displaced by love for a cer- 
 tain disposition or feeling; love of the truth will be displaced by love 
 for the love of the truth. Mr. Lecky goes so far as to insist that chil- 
 dren ought not to be religiously trained lest it should prejudice them. 
 This would equally imply that the child ought not to be trained to 
 virtue, since this training also implies doctrine. The necessary infer- 
 ence would be that a child must not be taught to love God and his 
 neighbor lest he should be biased and prejudiced. Professor Huxley 
 characterizes a religious belief founded on the spiritual aspirations and 
 needs of the soul as immoral. Prof. Clifford, in his essay on the " Eth- 
 ics of belief," says that to believe even the truth without scientific 
 investigation and evidence is morally wrong and incurs guilt ; and that 
 if a busy man has not time to investigate he must not believe. But a 
 large part of human actions are ventures on beliefs which have not 
 scientific evidence, in the sense in which Prof. Clifford uses the phrase, 
 and which nevertheless are beliefs so decisive that men venture on 
 them property, reputation and even life.- Would the professor call all 
 these acts sin and say that the actors incur guilt ; that is, that they de- 
 serve punishment? 
 
 In this conception of the love of the truth the mistake of our modern 
 illuminati is that they conceive of man as divided against himself; they 
 isolate the intellect from all the other constituents of humanity. They 
 do not join with crass practical materialism in saying that man liveth 
 by bread alone. Their maxim is, rather, that man liveth by intellect 
 
40 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 alone. The feelings and the will, all that belongs to moral character 
 and practical activity and interests are conceived as in antagonism to 
 the right action of the intellect ; and this antagonism is conceived as 
 man's normal state. Hence the only security for the intellect in its 
 search after and knowledge of the truth is its complete isolation and 
 protection from its natural enemies, the feelings and the will, the moral 
 character and the interest in the practical activities of life. In order 
 to the successful use of the intellect our modern ill ami u ism requires the 
 student to unman himself; to divest himself of all feeling and char- 
 acter, of all choice or preference, even of the preference for right 
 rather than wrong, or for enjoyment rather than misery, of all, in fact, 
 which moves him to action and makes him capable of achievement, 
 which makes him of any use or his life of any worth to himself or 
 others. Plainly this can only lead to agnosticism and not to the know- 
 ledge of the truth ; for it assumes that falsity is organized into the very 
 constitution of man. 
 
 The real condition of discovering the truth is just the contrary. It is 
 not the isolation of the intellect from the feelings, choices and volitions, 
 but it is the harmony of intellect, feeling and will in the complete de- 
 velopment of the man in the unity of his being to the realization of the 
 rational and normal standards of truth and right, of perfection and 
 worth. Eight feeling and character must be in harmony with the 
 knowledge of the truth and helpful to its attainment. It is not feeling, 
 choice, purpose, determination which bias men against the knowledge of 
 the truth ; it is only wrong feeling, choice, purpose and determina- 
 tion. 
 
 In the very definition of the love of the truth, as conceived by our 
 illuminati, are obvious inconsistencies. They push the analysis of men- 
 tal processes so far that they seem to regard them not only as separate 
 faculties or organs, but as separate entities in conflict with each other. 
 In insisting that the love of the truth must be defecated from feeling, 
 choice and purpose, they contemplate truth as an entity existing isolated 
 from all relation to human interests. But this is to say that the uni- 
 verse itself has no relation to human interests;- for truth is the reality 
 of the universe intellectually apprehended. As such it has powerful 
 and constant influence on human interests. The very conception of 
 seeking truth isolated from human interests is itself falsehood. The 
 supposed isolated truth, if discovered, would not be the truth, would not 
 be the reality of the universe apprehended in the mind ; it would be 
 unreality and falsehood. At best it could be only a partial and one- 
 sided apprehension of reality. The definition involves another incon- 
 sistency. The love of the truth itself involves feeling ; seeking to know 
 truth under its influence, is seeking under the influence of a feeling. It 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 41 
 
 may mislead to disregard moral duty and culture and all the truth in- 
 volved therein ; which would be as real a bias misleading away from 
 truth, as the moral feelings themselves can be. 
 
 Tliis conception of the love of the truth reveals its insufficiency and 
 erroneousness also in its practical development. There is a common 
 impression that men devoted to study are weak in practical affairs. So 
 far as this is the necessary result of confinement to a particular line of 
 work it is no disparagement to the scholar ; as it is no disparagement 
 to a lawyer that he does not understand medicine. But if study is 
 prosecuted with only a speculative interest there is a weakness of the 
 man and not merely a necessary professional limitation; for his de- 
 velopment is abnormal, his culture sickly, and his knowledge awry. 
 
 One result is that his interest is concentrated on the inquiry, not on 
 the truth ; he studies for the enjoyment of his own intellectual acti- 
 vity. This is the purport of Lessing's famous saying : " If God held in 
 his right hand all truth, and in his left hand the single always urgent 
 impulse to search after truth with the condition that I be always and , 
 forever in error, and should say to me, Choose, I should humbly turn 
 to his left hand and say, Father, give me this ; the pure truth is for 
 thee alone."* This saying has been repeated by many in different 
 forms as expressing the true scholarly spirit ; and Hamilton approves 
 it as expressing the true end and value of philosophical investiga- 
 tion. But it certainly does not express the love of truth. On the 
 contrary it declares that love of truth is entirely displaced by the en- 
 joyment of intellectual activity. And what a picture is this of the life 
 of a student a life of amusement only. For what is the difference be- 
 tween spending life in hunting the truth or in hunting foxes, if the truth 
 is no more valued than the fox, and in each case the sole end is the en- 
 joyment of the exercise? Hence comes dilettanteism, a mere amusing 
 one's self with literature, art or science hi entire indifference to truth 
 and to its applications to the regulation of life. Hence hypercriti- 
 cism and fastidiousness, a languid and luxurious disposition to get the 
 most enjoyment possible out of life, and yet a fastidiousness which can 
 find nothing to enjoy. Hence the tendency, which appeared in the 
 decline of the Roman empire, to long and arid controversies on barren 
 questions. Epictetus ridicules a question much discussed in his day. 
 It was this : " If a man says of himself, ' I lie,' does he lie, or does he 
 tell the truth? If he lies he tells the truth; but if he tells the truth 
 he lies." Chrysippus wrote a treatise on this question, entitled the 
 " Pseudomenos " in six books, said to have been famous in its day. f 
 Another tendency is to Skepticism as the ultimate issue of all intel- 
 
 * AVerke : Vol. x. pp. 49, 50. Ed. Berlin, 1839. Eine Duplik. 
 f Epictetus ; Discourses, B. ii. chap. 17. 
 
42 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 lectual endeavor ; a perpetual inquiring, " ever learning and never able 
 to come to the knowledge of the truth." The whole significance of life 
 comes to be expressed in an interrogation point. Sterling and James 
 Blanco White were examples; seeking a faith and never finding it; 
 passing from one faith to another in perpetual unrest, like a man lost 
 in a Dismal Swamp, leaping from one quaking turf to another till he 
 sinks in the suffocating quagmire a life of intense activity but of no 
 achievement the whole energy spent in seeking a place to stand. 
 Another result is indifference to truth both in itself and in its bearing 
 on human welfare. Underlying this false conception of the love of the 
 truth is the assumption that truth cannot be known ; that all opinions 
 must be held as doubtful ; that the scientific spirit requires that we 
 must be indifferent to what we hold as truth and always ready to receive 
 its contrary. This precludes the conception of any principle believed, to 
 which the will consents in allegiance, by which the man regulates his 
 life, and for which he would willingly die. Paul must meet the Athe- 
 nians on Mars' Hill as ready to believe in Jupiter as in Christ. One 
 writer has taught that the existence of a revelation from God of princi- 
 ples true for all time would be incompatible with human progress. 
 Another has expressed doubts whether ever a martyr for truth acted 
 wisely. All such representations imply that truth cannot be known ; 
 that the deepest principles on which human knowledge depends may in 
 the future be found false ; that everything is uncertain. Thus this 
 theory of the love of the truth is in its essence agnosticism. 
 
 While this theory reveals its insufficiency and erroneousness in its 
 practical development, it is disproved also by the fact that all great 
 epochs of human progress have been characterized and carried forward 
 by the presentation of truth in its practical bearing on life, and with 
 glowing feeling and steadfast purpose on the part of those who have 
 been agents in the progress. Their love to the truth has not been 
 defecated from all feeling nor sublimated into indifference. They have 
 loved the truth in the sense that with all the powers of their being they 
 lived for it and if necessary were ready to die for it. Freedom of 
 inquiry is a condition of progress ; but it is only a condition, never the 
 power by which the progress is effected. Noble characters are formed 
 and great deeds done, not by inquiring after truth, but by believing it 
 and acting on it. 
 
 The great change wrought by Lord Bacon in physical science itself 
 was not effected by his teaching men to reason by induction. Men 
 have always reasoned by induction as well as by deduction. But Lord 
 Bacon wrought the great reformation in science by calling men off 
 from merely speculative inquiries, such as occupied the mediaeval schol- 
 astics, to investigations bearing directly on the welfare of man. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM. 43 
 
 3. A right moral character and a devout and reverential spirit, 
 instead of being hindrances to the investigation of truth, are essential 
 to the condition of mind most favorable to such investigation. They 
 are component elements of a true scientific spirit. This is so because 
 they are essential to the wholeness and harmony of man's development. 
 These are helpful in the study of physical science. They are indispen- 
 sable in the investigation of moral and religious truth. The greater 
 the purity, delicacy and earnestness of the moral and religious life, the 
 greater the fitness to appreciate moral and religious truth. A cleanly 
 person is a better judge of what cleanliness is than a savage hi the filth 
 of his wigwam or an old monk who has always religiously abstained 
 from washing. A pure woman is a better judge of moral purity than 
 a rotten debauchee. A mean man is a poor judge of what is honorable 
 and a swindler of what is honest. It is the same in religion. Paul 
 and John are better judges of religious truth and its evidence than 
 Simon Magus or Pontius Pilate. This is the philosophy of the New 
 Testament: "The pure in heart see God;" "Except a man be born 
 again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Pride, selfishness, sensu- 
 ality, the heart of sin blind the mind to religious truth. To such a 
 man religious truth is foolishness, and the whole Christian life unintel- 
 ligible. But as Schelling truly says: "To remain unintelligible to 
 such an one is glory and honor before God and man. Barbarus huic 
 ego sirn nee tali intelligar ulli." * 
 
 4. The doctrine which I have been presenting is accordant with the 
 familiar fact that knowledge and culture are advanced indirectly by the 
 growth and development of the man, quite as much as by direct study, 
 argument and examination of evidence. Obscurities which by dint of 
 thought we once could not make clear, difficulties and objections which 
 we could not argue down, we find, in later years, to be obscurities, diffi- 
 culties and objections no longer. It has come to pass as the result of 
 growth. If all knowledge must come by direct intellectual effort, 
 isolated from feeling and willing, this result would be impossible. But 
 because knowing, feeling and willing are inseparable in the unity of the 
 person, the growth and development of the person insure an advance in 
 knowledge and intellectual insight. 
 
 * Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre ; Sammtliche Werke, I. 433. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE ACTS AND PKOCESSES OF KNOWING. 
 
 9. Classification. 
 
 THE powers of the mind are commonly considered in three general 
 classes : Intellect, the mind considered as intelligent or capable of know- 
 ing ; Sensibility or Feeling, the mind considered as susceptible of motives 
 and emotions ; Will, the mind considered as self-determining. 
 
 The acts and processes of knowing may be considered in three 
 classes: Intuition, Representation, and Reflection or Thought. All 
 knowledge arises in Intuition, or in Representation, or in a process of 
 Thought. 
 
 I. I speak of powers or faculties merely as a matter of convenience, 
 to denote the mind itself considered as capable of various acts or states. 
 This is well put by Lotze, who says, in substance, that for the whole of 
 every circle of similar phenomena we ascribe to the soul a peculiar 
 faculty or capacity to act in a way which proves it competent to the ac- 
 tion in each circle of phenomena. As many as are the distinct groups 
 of acts which come under our observation, so many distinct faculties for 
 the soul must we assume but not a distinct number of qualities laid out 
 adjacent to one another and imprinted on its nature, but so in affinity 
 with each other that they all concur, as distinct expressions of one and 
 the same being, in the wholeness of its rational development.* 
 
 II. The mind is active in knowing, not passive. The object known 
 does not imprint itself on the mind in a state of passivity as tracks are 
 imprinted in mud. Knowledge is an action of the mind. All know- 
 ledge consists in knowing. 
 
 III. In all knowledge the element of intelligence is. contributed by 
 the mind itself. In perception there must be. the object perceived, the 
 subject perceiving, and the perception. The perception is the act of 
 the mind ; it is its primitive intelligence ; it is the intellectual equiva- 
 lent of the object known in the act of perceiving. Every inference is 
 an act of the intellect ; and the intellect can draw an inference only 
 because, by virtue of the constituent elements of its own rationality, it 
 
 * Mikrokosnms ; vol. i. pp. 183, 184; Book II. chap. 2. 
 
 44 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 45 
 
 knows principles regulative of all thought, which make an inference 
 'iiing possible. Knowledge without any element of intelli- 
 gence contributed by the mind itself, is inconceivable and unthinkable ; 
 the words are without meaning. 
 
 It is objected that because in all knowledge the element of intelli- 
 gence is contributed by the mind itself, therefore all knowledge is sub- 
 jective and unreal and our intellectual faculties untrustworthy. This 
 objection is mere nonsense. It is the objection that knowledge is im- 
 possible because there is a mind that knows; or that knowledge is im- 
 !e because it is knowledge. In other words it demands that the 
 definition of knowledge must include the denial of all the conditions 
 which make knowledge possible. 
 
 IV. Knowledge cannot ba distinguished from knowledge as different 
 in kind, but only as differing in the conditions under which it arises 
 and in the character of its objects. A geometrical demonstration is a 
 process of thought; but the process consists merely hi bringing the 
 different elements of the figure successively into juxtaposition before 
 the mind, so that it sees the relations between them. AVhen thus 
 brought before the mind, the knowledge of the relations springs up 
 clear in its own self-evidence. The process is a passing successively 
 from knowledge to knowledge. Reasoning could never establish its 
 conclusion, were it not for this always inexplicable act of knowing, in 
 which, at each successive step, the mind knows the relations of things 
 brought together before it. 
 
 g 1O. fntuition or Primitive Knowledge. 
 
 I. Intuition or primitive knowledge is knowledge which is imme- 
 diate and self-evident. 
 
 It is immediate in the sense that it is not attained through the 
 medium either of a representation, or of any process of thought. It is 
 face-to-face knowledge. 
 
 It is self-evident; it needs no proof; it cannot be proved, because 
 nothing can be adduced in proof more evident than the intuition itself. 
 
 II. Intuition is distinguished as presentative or perceptive, and 
 rational. 
 
 1. Presentative or perceptive intuition is immediate and self-evident 
 knowledge of some particular reality in some particular mode of ex- 
 istence present to the consciousness. 
 
 This includes sense-perception and self-consciousness. Sense-percep- 
 tion is intuitive knowledge of external objects through the senses ; it is 
 man's intuitive knowledge of his environment. 
 
 It has been objected that sense-perception is not immediate know- 
 ledge, because it is through the senses. It may be replied that the 
 
46 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 objection is equally valid against all intuition, since all mental opera- 
 tions involve the action of the brain and nerve. It may be replied, 
 further, that while these physical changes are important facts of physio- 
 logy and must be taken into account in any complete investigation of 
 mental phenomena, yet man has no consciousness of them whatever, 
 they do not explain the facts of consciousness nor make a bridge for 
 thought from the motions of matter to conscious knowledge, feeling and 
 determination. On the other hand, these states of consciousness are 
 real and well-known facts, distinct from the physiological processes. 
 They are themselves the mental phenomena which we are seeking to 
 understand. They are distinctively psychological facts and must be 
 defined and discriminated as such. Sense-perception is immediate 
 knowledge, in the sense that it does not arise through the medium of 
 any other psychological act or process ; it is not attained through the 
 medium of representation or of a process of thought. 
 
 Self-consciousness is the intuitive knowledge which the mind has of 
 itself in its own operations. Sense-perception and self-consciousness are 
 sometimes designated as external and internal perception. 
 
 2. Rational intuition is the immediate and self-evident knowledge of 
 a universal truth or principle. 
 
 It is not asserted that the truth or principle is universally believed, 
 but that it is universally true ; not that all men believe it everywhere 
 and always, but that it is true everywhere and always. And as such it 
 asserts itself in the consciousness ; it must be so, and under no circum- 
 stances or conditions can it be thought contrarywise. 
 
 3. Intuition is the original primitive knowledge, which gives the ob- 
 jects about which we think and the principles which regulate all think- 
 ing. 
 
 Presentative intuition gives the particular realities about which we 
 think. They may be called objects, or material or data of thought. 
 
 Rational intuition gives the principles which regulate all thinking 
 and which make reasoning and inference possible. It also gives, in the 
 knowledge of universal truths, material or data for thought transcend- 
 ing the particular realities given in presentative intuition and so opens 
 to our knowledge the supersensible, the personal and the divine. 
 
 4. The name intuition has often been restricted to rational intuition. 
 It is more properly applied both to this and to the presentative intui- 
 tion. Both are alike primitive, immediate and self-evident knowledge, 
 and therefore ought to be designated by the same name. The designa- 
 tion of all primitive knowledge as intuition is also accordant with the 
 etymology of the word and with the usage of philosophical writers of 
 the highest authority. When thus designated the name expresses the 
 common quality of all primitive knowledge and emphasizes the truth 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 47 
 
 that all objections against rational intuition on the ground that it is 
 immediate and self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge, are 
 equally valid against sense-perception and self-consciousness. 
 
 III. The mind, considered as capable of rational intuition, I shall 
 call the Keason. Reason as thus used must be distinguished from 
 reasoning, which is a process of reflective thought. So Plotinus speaks 
 of " the transition from reason to reasoning." * 
 
 11. Knowledge by Representation. 
 
 Knowledge by representation is knowledge of a reality formerly pre- 
 sented. in intuition and now re-presented in a mental image or concept. 
 The mental image or concept is called a re-presentation. 
 
 When these mental images are not recognized as re-presentations of 
 realities previously presented, they are known merely as mental images, 
 and are the objects or material for the creations of imagination. 
 
 The recognition of a mental image or concept as a re-presentation of a 
 reality previously known, is memory. Memory is the power of repre- 
 senting the past and of knowing it again through the re-presenta- 
 tion. 
 
 Memory is self-evident knowledge. It stands independent of reason- 
 ing in its own self-evidence. In this respect it agrees with presentative 
 intuition. It differs from it in that the knowledge is not immediate, but 
 through a representation. It presupposes a reality formerly known in- 
 tuitively, and now known again through a re-presentation. 
 
 The reality of knowledge through memory is essential to the reality 
 of all knowledge which rests on a process of thought or involves any 
 lapse of time. Without it observation and experiment can ascertain no 
 facts, reasoning can reach no conclusion, experience can accumulate no 
 knowledge ; for the knowledge of this moment would vanish irrecover- 
 ably in the next. 
 
 The attempts to vindicate the trustworthiness of memory otherwise 
 than as giving self-evident knowledge are futile. Mr. Huxley holds 
 that certainty is limited to the present consciousness. Yet he says that 
 " the general trustworthiness of memory " and " the general constancy 
 of the order of nature " " are of the highest practical value, inasmuch as 
 the conclusions logically drawn from them are always verified by expe- 
 rience." f He argues that the present act of memory may be trusted, 
 because in past experience a multitude of remembrances have been 
 found to be correct. But he can have no knowledge of any past re- 
 membrance and its verification except the knowledge given by memory 
 
 * Merd/3a<Hf cnr6 vov it? to-ytafiov; quoted by John Smith, Select Discourses; Cam- 
 bridge, 1673, p. 94. 
 f Lay Sermons, p. 359. 
 
48 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 itself. He cannot know in a single instance during his process of veri- 
 fication what he is verifying nor on what premises his logical conclusion 
 rests, except as he remembers. How can an intelligent man gravely 
 propound such a begging of the question as argument, and claim that 
 he is scientific ? The trustworthiness of memory cannot be established 
 by experience, since it is itself a condition of the possibility of experi- 
 ence. 
 
 James Mill explains our belief of memory as the result of the associ- 
 ation of ideas. But this is an impossible explanation? A visit to a 
 house in which I once dwelt may be the occasion of mental images of 
 various scenes arising in my mind ; but it does not in the least account 
 for my knowledge that these are representations of scenes in my past 
 life. Or when he says that the ideas of past experience are irresistibly 
 associated with the idea of myself experiencing them, and this irresisti- 
 bleness constitutes belief, in this statement itself he assumes a know- 
 ledge of past experience and of myself experiencing it as already exist- 
 ing and as the basis of the entire effect attributed to the association of 
 ideas. 
 
 Physiology explains memory by " the organic registration of the 
 results of impressions on our nervous centres." Whatever is present in 
 consciousness is attended by action and waste of nerve, and leaves 
 behind in the nerve itself a trace, which Dr. Maudsley compares to a 
 scar, or a pit left by small-pox. * This implies that every object seen 
 during a lifetime leaves a trace like a scar on the retina of the eye, 
 that these innumerable scars imprinted on this exceedingly small 
 surface and new ones momentarily added, are distinct and without 
 confusion, and that each one remains identified with the object Avhich 
 originally caused it and ready at every moment to represent it in 
 consciousness without commingling it with any other. This explana- 
 tion is simply inconceivable, and itself needs explaining as much as 
 the fact which it professes to explain. And the difficulty is multiplied 
 by the five senses, by all the nerves of feeling and motion, and by the 
 several parts of the brain if the theory is established that each of them 
 has its special function. At the most, physiology can only describe the 
 physical conditions of intellectual action. It cannot find thought and 
 knowledge in the structure or functions of the nerves, nor explain 
 them by molecular motion, or by the traces of its action which it leaves. 
 
 12. Knowledge through Reflection or Thought. 
 
 I. Reflection or thought is the reflex action of the intellect attending 
 to the reality known in presentative intuition, and apprehending, dif- 
 ferentiating and integrating it under the regulation of the principles 
 
 * Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, pp. 182, 183. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 49 
 
 known in rational intuition, and concluding in a judgment. Discrimi- 
 nating or distinguishing may be used as synonymous with differentia- 
 ting, and comprehending or unifying as synonymous with integrating. 
 
 1. It is a prerequisite to thought that both the reality about which 
 we think and the principles which regulate our thinking be already 
 given in intuition. 
 
 2. The objects of thought as presented in intuition are indeterminate. 
 They lie before the mind in their reality, differences and relations. 
 But they lie before the mind as indeterminate or nebulous matter, 
 present to the consciousness but undefined. 
 
 Neither consciousness nor reason gives any ground for the theory of 
 Reid, Kant and others that we first perceive the minima visibilia, and 
 then proceed to unite them in thought, the mind passing from one to 
 another so rapidly that the transition is not remembered ; or that the 
 object perceived is, as Kant calls it, " a synthesis of intuitions," or as 
 J. S. Mill calls it, " a group of sensations." Every intuitive percep- 
 tion, according to Kant, being contained absolutely in one moment,* 
 can be only a perception of an indivisible' unit of extension and an 
 indivisible unit of time. But we have no knowledge of an indivisible 
 unit of extension or of time. We know the ego as the indivisible unit 
 in the sphere of personality. We have an hypothesis of the existence 
 of atoms as the ultimate indivisible units of matter ; but these atoms 
 are not the units of perception. This theory of successive perceptions 
 of minima has no warrant. On the contrary the material for thought 
 is presented by intuition in an undiscriminated whole. It is sometimes 
 called the nebulous matter of intuition. The primitive knowledge 13 
 often associated with the feelings ; the feelings themselves carry know- 
 ledge undiscriminated and unformulated in them. In the intuition all 
 the elements of the reality are presented to the consciousness in solu- 
 tion ; it is only at the touch of reflective thought that the solution crys- 
 tallizes and all its parts stand out distinctly and in order. In the 
 nebulous, unelaborated matter of intuition the mind by reflection notes 
 the particular realities, their differences and relations, and thus attains 
 clear, definite and complete cognition, which can be declared in a judg- 
 ment or proposition. 
 
 3. Reflection or thought consists of Apprehension, Differentiation and 
 Integration, f 
 
 The reflex act of thought is primarily attention, alike in apprehend- 
 ing, discriminating and comprehending. The mind turns back or re- 
 flects on the reality presented in intuition, and notes what it is. Real- 
 
 * Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic, Book II. Chap. II. Sect. 
 III. 2. 
 f " Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis." J. G. Fichte. 
 
 4 
 
50 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ity consists of beings, their differences, and the relations by which they 
 are in unity. The mind as it reflects on this reality notes the beings 
 which are presented in it, traces out their differences, and notes their 
 unity in various relations. These are the tjjiree acts of thought, appre- 
 hension, differentiation and integration or comprehension. The unit of 
 thought is a particular being, simple or complex. The first act of thought 
 is the apprehension of a particular being in the qualities, acts and modes 
 of existence in which it is presented to us in intuition. For according 
 to a necessary law of thought we do not apprehend qualities and acts as 
 appearances merely, but we apprehend the being that appears and acts 
 in them. Hence apprehension is sometimes called identification, be- 
 cause it is the identifying of the qualities and acts with the being that 
 appears and acts in them. I cannot apprehend color, form, solidity, 
 motion or thought except as I know some being existing (ex-sisto) or 
 standing out to view in the color, form, solidity, motion or thought. 
 Conversely, I cannot apprehend being except as existing in some qual- 
 ity, action or mode. 
 
 Apprehension, therefore, is the reflex act of the mind attending to 
 some particular portion of the reality given in intuition, noting what it 
 is, and thus making it an object or unit of thought. Thus one walking 
 in the evening has the starry sky before his eyes, spread out as an un- 
 discriminated expanse. Presently he fixes his attention on Sirius, notes 
 its size, brightness and bluish tint, and thus apprehends it. In a busy 
 city he hears a confused mingling of sounds, discriminating none ; pres- 
 ently he attends to a particular sound and apprehends it as a charcoal- 
 vender's cry. Or he feels at once the chair on which he sits, the table 
 on which he leans, the pen which he holds in his hand, without noticing 
 any. Presently he attends to one of these things, notes something about 
 it which interests him for the moment and so apprehends it. He attends 
 (at-tendo}, stretches his mind, as it were, about the object and grasps it 
 as an object of thought. His apprehension may go no further than to 
 note its figure in space, or it may extend to a more careful and com- 
 plete observation of its qualities ; but in either case he apprehends or 
 grasps it in his mind. The first act of thought, then, is attending to 
 some portion of reality presented in intuition and apprehending or 
 grasping what it is which the intuition presents to the mind. 
 
 Language recognizes this distinction between the mere presentation 
 of a reality in sense-perception or self-consciousness, and the intelligent 
 apprehension of it by the mind ; as in the significance of look as dis- 
 tinguished from see ; listen as distinguished from hear ; touch, handle as 
 distinguished from feel; and in the French language the same distinc- 
 tion is extended to the other senses ; flairer and sentir ; savourer and 
 gouter. Apprehension by taste is exemplified in a taster of teas. He 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 51 
 
 tastes the infusion in one of a row of cups, attends to it and appre- 
 hends what the flavor is. He then distinguishes or differentiates it from 
 teas of different flavors already known to him ; he then integrate* 
 or comprehends it in a unity or class of teas of the same flavor and 
 pronounces it Souchong of the second quality. A delicate eater attends 
 to or apprehends the flavor of every morsel and thus gets pleasure, 
 while another, intent on other objects, eats without noticing the flavor 
 of his food. 
 
 Differentiation or discrimination is the reflex act in which the mind 
 turning its attention on the reality given in intuition, notes the peculi- 
 arities of an object already apprehended and thus distinguishes it from 
 other objects. 
 
 Integration or comprehension is the reflex act in which the mind, after 
 having apprehended two or more objects and distinguished them from 
 one another, continues to fix its attention on them, and takes cogni- 
 zance of them in their real relations and thus integrates or comprehends 
 them in a unity. 
 
 A relation is any real connection between two or more objects by 
 attending to which the mind comprehends them in a unity of thought. 
 Having differentiated them, by perception of this relation it brings 
 them back (re-latiou) into unity of thought. The relation is not 
 created by the mind as a mere subjective thought, but it is objectively 
 real and perceived as such. Thus we discover relations of distance 
 and position in space, of antecedence, sequence and simultaneousness in 
 time, of degree and equality in quantity, of resemblance in quality, of 
 causal efficiency, of knowledge connecting a subject knowing and an 
 object known, and many others. 
 
 The process of thought may be compared to the resolving of a nebula 
 wdth a telescope. In the faintly luminous mist as it appears to the 
 naked eye, the astronomer finds the stars, distinguishes them from 
 one another, comprehends them in the unity of a cluster, and is able to 
 comprehend them in the profounder unity of their astronomical rela- 
 tions. So in the nebulous matter of intuition, thought apprehends the 
 particular realities, distinguishes them from one another, and then 
 comprehends them intelligently in the unity of their real relations. 
 The process of thought may be compared to the development of life in 
 the incubation of an egg ; the homogeneous yolk is diversified into 
 lines and parts distinguished from each other, and these parts are then 
 integrated in the living organism of the chick. 
 
 Ulrici makes all thought to consist of differentiation.* Hamilton 
 makes it all to consist of comparison. But it is evident that before two 
 objects can be compared or comprehended in a unity, they must have 
 * System der Logik, S. 66 and ante. 
 
52 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 been known as distinct ; and before they can be differentiated, each 
 must have been apprehended as an object of thought. 
 
 II. All human thought consists of apprehension, differentiation and 
 comprehension or integration. 
 
 By these processes men think on all subjects. If thought is the 
 observation of a sensible object, it begins with apprehending what it is. 
 I once heard Prof. Agassiz say that when he found an insect of a spe- 
 cies new to him, he was accustomed to spend some hours in close in- 
 spection of it, and thus he got it so completely in his mind that he 
 never failed afterwards .to recognize it. This was his apprehension of it. 
 He could then distinguish it from all other species by the properties 
 peculiar to it, and could by resemblance assign it to its proper genus 
 and species. The same are the processes in the, farthest range and 
 most complicated action of thought. In all thinking the mind follows 
 this beaten track. In the most complicated processes of thought the 
 mind can do no more than to apprehend, discriminate, and compre- 
 hend. It has but three questions to ask : What is it ? What is it not ? 
 How is it related to other things in the unity of a harmonious whole ? 
 Thus the ancient Greek philosophy classified the objects of human 
 inquiry : TO 6v, TO grepov, TO ev being, its difference, its unity. 
 
 When two or more objects have been apprehended and discrimi- 
 nated, the mind proceeds to cognize them in a larger unity or whole 
 and in real relations not discovered at the first glance. This whole 
 becomes a new unit of thought to be differentiated and integrated 
 again. And this process the mind continues till it comprehends all 
 material things in the unity of a Cosmos, and it and all spiritual reality 
 in the unity of a rational system under the government of God. 
 
 All error in thinking must be in one or the other of these three pro- 
 cesses ; and thought should be carefully guarded in each. Error arises 
 when the thinker does not clearly, correctly and adequately apprehend 
 the object under consideration; or when he confounds it with that which 
 differs ; or when he integrates the discriminated realities in false and 
 unreal relations, or in a partial and one-sided unity excluding realities 
 and relations essential to the comprehensiveness and completeness of 
 the thought. 
 
 III. Thought does not present to the mind the beings which are its 
 objects, nor their differences and relations ; it merely apprehends some 
 reality which intuition presents, and under the regulation of the laws 
 of thought traces out the differences actually existing between the 
 apprehended objects and discovers the real relations by which they 
 exist in unity. Thence it may proceed, beyond what is presented in 
 intuition, to infer, according to the principles of reason, the existence of 
 reality not actually observed and to determine its differences and rela- 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 53 
 
 tions. This process we call reasoning; but it is only apprehending, 
 differentiating and integrating under the regulative principles known 
 by rational intuition. 
 
 The necessity of thought has been illustrated by comparing the un- 
 discriminated content of intuition to light falling on the eye without 
 shade or color, which would make sight as useless as it would be in 
 total darkness ; or by the supposition that every object was of the same 
 shade of blue, which would destroy all knowledge of color. * But 
 these analogies are misleading ; for they seem to imply that thought 
 creates the qualities, differences and relations of reality; whereas it 
 only takes cognizance of them. If in the reality presented in intui- 
 tion, there were no qualities, peculiarities and relations identifying and 
 distinguishing the reality, thought would be forever unable to appre- 
 hend, distinguish and comprehend it. 
 
 IV. Thought, as thus far considered, has for its object beings, their 
 differences and relations, and those complex unities and larger systems 
 of beings which thought discovers. These may be either present in 
 intuition or remembered. For we have seen that every process of 
 knowledge which has duration involves memory. 
 
 There are also certain subsidiary objects of thought, necessary to the 
 best prosecution of our thinking about these realities, yet deriving all 
 their significance from the fact that they stand for them. 
 
 One class of these subsidiary objects of thought is the mind's own 
 representations, not with memory of the objects represented, but present 
 in consciousness simply as representations. These the mind apprehends, 
 differentiates and integrates, forming ideal creations. 
 
 We can also attend to a being as it appears in a single property or 
 act and distinguish it from or compare it with the being appearing in 
 another property or act. This process is called abstraction. By ab- 
 stracting single properties and acts and making them objects of atten- 
 tion, we are able to apprehend, differentiate and integrate them. It 
 must be noticed however that the object of thought here is still a being, 
 though attended to as appearing in a single property or act. 
 
 We also form logical concepts or geneial notions. The necessity for 
 these is in the limitation of the human mind. If it were necessary in 
 thinking to .know every object in all its peculiarities as an individual, 
 and to designate it by a particular name, the multiplicity of objects 
 would overwhelm the mind and confound alike the power of expressing 
 thought and the power of thinking. The mind, therefore, resorts to 
 the expedient of grouping together in a concept 01 general notion indi- 
 viduals which have certain common qualities, disregarding qualities in 
 
 * Ulrici System der Logik, S. 65. Hobbes says, " Sentire sempei idem et non 
 sentire, ad idem recidunt." " To perceive always the same is all one with not 
 perceiving anything." Physica, iv. 25; opera, I. 321, Molesworth Ed. 
 
54 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 which the individuals differ and designating the concept by a symbol 
 oral or written. We as it were bind these individuals in bundles, 
 labeling each bundle ; then we can handle them and pass them from 
 hand to hand. Man's power of using general notions and of designa- 
 ting them by language whereby he is able to lift himself above the 
 multiplicity of objects which confuses him, master it with knowledge, 
 and communicate, perpetuate and accumulate his knowledge, demon- 
 strates his pre-eminent greatness. Yet in another view the necessity of 
 resorting to this expedient reveals his limitations. God alone knows 
 all objects severally in their individuality and "calleth them all by 
 name." 
 
 3 13. Thought Distinguished by its Objects. 
 
 Thought may be distinguished by its objects into three kinds : Ab- 
 stract or Formal; Concrete or Realistic; and Creative. In each case 
 thought consists of apprehension, differentiation and integration ; the 
 distinction is only in the object on which the thought is employed. 
 
 I. Formal or abstract thought has for its object a logical concept or 
 general notion designated by a general name, and consists principally 
 in the analysis and distribution of the content of the general notion by 
 means of the syllogism. 
 
 II. Thought is concrete or realistic when its object is a particular 
 reality presented in consciousness or remembered. In concrete thought 
 general notions and words are used, but the object to which the thought 
 is directed is a concrete reality presented at the time or remembered. 
 For example, when a chemist is investigating the properties of oxygen, 
 he has some particular portion of oxygen before him and the judgment 
 in which he affirms the result of his observation and experiment affirms 
 some particular action of that particular portion of oxygen. When 
 a botanist examines a plant or a zoologist an animal, his thought is 
 upon the particular specimen before him. After examining many 
 specimens and finding the same property common to them all, he is 
 able by induction to predicate that property of all individuals of the 
 kind. But in every case the object of his investigation is not a general 
 notion designated by a word, but is the concrete reality itself. 
 
 Some of the processes of concrete thought are Observation and Experi- 
 ment, Classification, Co-ordination in invariable sequences or laws of na- 
 ture, Colligation of facts, Induction, Deduction, Verification, Interpre- 
 tation and Vindication of facts to the Reason and Systemization. De- 
 duction, as it appears in concrete thought, consists of inferring effects 
 from a known cause, particulars from a known universal principle or 
 law and mathematical truths from the forms of space and number. 
 
 III. Thought is called Creative when its object is a mental represen- 
 tation. 
 
THE ACTS AND, PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 55 
 
 Creative thought is the reflex action of the mind on its own represen- 
 tations, apprehending them, distinguishing them from each other and 
 comprehending them in a complex whole. The primitive process is the 
 same as in formal and realistic thought ; but as the objects of thought 
 are the mind's own representations, the results can be only mental re- 
 presentations ; just as in formal thinking, since the objects of thought 
 are notions and words, the result of the thinking can be only notions 
 and words. The power of creative thought is the Imagination. 
 
 1. In its lower forms creative thought is fantastic; that is, it is not 
 regulated by rational truths and laws. In this lower action it may be 
 called fancy or phantasy rather than imagination. A centaur, or a 
 tree with leaves of silver, blossoms of precious stones and fruit of gold 
 are fantastic creations. The creations of fancy are sometimes pleasing. 
 I recall, as an example, a pretty French picture of autumn, in which 
 cherubs are putting out the flowers with extinguishers. Another ex- 
 ample is Ruckert's " Der Himmel ein Brief" in which he compares the 
 sky to a letter of which the sun is the seal ; when night takes off the 
 
 ^seal, we read in a thousand starry letters that God is love. 
 
 2. In its higher form, the imagination creates ideals accordant with 
 rational truth and law, in which it embodies its highest conceptions of 
 the perfect. The creations of imagination differ from fantastic combi- 
 nations in that they express the deepest truth and reality ; they differ 
 from imitation in that they begin with ideals and proceed to express 
 them outwardly, while imitation begins with the outward object and 
 tries empirically to copy it. Imagination seizes its object by the heart 
 and works from within outwards. 
 
 3. While the imagination cannot of itself carry knowledge beyond its 
 own representations it takes the lead in every sphere of intellectual activity. 
 
 Imagination creates the ideals which the artist expresses on the can- 
 vas and in the marble, in words and music, in buildings and parks. 
 
 It creates the ideals of mechanical inventions. When Hargreaves 
 upset his wife's spinning-wheel, he saw in the revolving vertical spindle 
 the ideal of the spinning-jenny. Watt saw the steam-engine in the 
 uplifting of the lid of a tea-kettle. Galileo saw the principle of the 
 pendulum in a swinging chandelier. 
 
 It takes the lead in scientific discovery. When it flashed on Newton, 
 as by an inspiration, that the law according to which apples fall from a 
 tree is the law of the solar system, he created in his thought a solar 
 system regulated by that law. Kepler created in thought the orbit of 
 Mars ; in fact tried nineteen hypotheses before he hit the geometrical fig- 
 ure in which all the known facts as to the positions of the planet could 
 be colligated. Harvey, seeing the valves in the veins, saw the circulation 
 of the blood, creating in imagination the circulatory system of the body. 
 
56 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 The creative faculty is equally essential in criticism. The critic 
 must penetrate through the work of art to the ideal which it expresses. 
 He stands before the finished work, as an explorer and discoverer 
 stands before the complicated realities of nature. He must create in 
 his own imagination the ideal of the work and the plan of the artist in 
 expressing it, and thus find its intended unity and significance before 
 he can criticize its execution. It takes a genius to understand a genius. 
 It takes a Goethe to reveal a Shakespeare, an Addison to reveal a 
 Milton. 
 
 The creative power is equally essential in teaching and in all com- 
 munication of thought. The ideal, the whole created in imagination 
 according to its real principles, must be presented and grasped before 
 the learner can analyze it into its elements or construct its scattered 
 elements into the real whole. 
 
 Even in practical affairs the imagination is equally pre-eminent 
 whether in a statesman constructing the plan of a wise administration 
 of government, or in a general planning a campaign, or in a merchant 
 or manufacturer planning his business. 
 
 In every sphere of human thought it is the leading power of the 
 intellect, the queen of all the faculties of intelligence. In its higher 
 inventions and discoveries it is "the vision and faculty divine" of 
 genius. Where a common mind sees a kettle lid lifted, a spinning- 
 wheel thrown over, a chandelier swinging, a genius sees the application 
 of a power which changes the history of the world. Where a common 
 mind sees only a mass of intricate and confused facts, the genius sees 
 the principle and law by which they are constructed into the unity of a 
 system. The facts lie heaped in tables of figures and collections of 
 books. It is only to the Orphic music of a master-thought that they 
 move and arrange themselves in the harmony and beauty of a scientific 
 system. This is the effect of the imagination, the creative power of the 
 
 mind: 
 
 "Which in truth 
 
 Is but another name for absolute power, 
 And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, 
 And reason in her most exalted mood." 
 
 IV. Scientific investigation is principally by concrete thought, 
 though necessarily supplemented by the abstract and the creative. 
 The imagination creates hypotheses and suggests lines of investigation ; 
 but it cannot of itself go beyond its own representations. Formal or 
 abstract thought is indispensable because we must use words and gen- 
 eral notions ; but it is inadequate. 
 
 1. Formal or abstract thought is inadequate on account of the 
 thinker's tendency to stop in the general notions and words. As its 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 57 
 
 objects are notions designated by words, the thought itself often fails to 
 go beyond them. But scientific thinking must needs penetrate within 
 the general notions and names to the realities signified. Boole says : 
 " By some it is maintained that words represent the conceptions of the 
 
 mind alone ; by others that they represent things In the 
 
 processes of reasoning signs stand in the place and fulfil the office of the 
 conceptions and operations of the mind ; but as those conceptions and 
 operations represent things and the connections and relations of things, 
 so signs represent things with their connections and relations ; and lastly, 
 as signs stand in the place of conceptions and operations of the mind, 
 they are subject to the laws of those conceptions and operations."* 
 But though the word is the sign of the concept yet it is only a sign or 
 symbol of it ; and though the concept is a concept of things yet it can 
 be designated only by a symbol and can be imaged as reality only in 
 some one of the particular things included in it. Hence the danger 
 that the thought stop in the words, and the necessity to complete intel- 
 ligence that the thought pass through the words to the things. 
 
 " Battles are bloody " : the mind assents without emotion. The sight 
 of a battle, a visit to a battle-field directly after the fight, a narrative 
 of the experience of a single wounded soldier, fills up the words with a 
 terrific meaning. " London is in England " : but it takes the experi- 
 ence of a lifetime in that city to learn what it is in England which 
 is denoted by the word London. Through thus stopping in the words 
 and not going through the words to the things comes so often the 
 unreality of knowledge gained out of a book through words. Thought 
 about things is necessary to give freshness and significance to thought 
 about words and concepts. As Carlyle says, to think it is to thing it. 
 Ludwig Noire says : " The only correct method of investigation is to 
 verify things by things " ; and he exemplifies the difficulty of reaching 
 reality through words by relating that a number of eminent philolo- 
 gists had a feast prepared according to some ancient Greek recipes, 
 with the result that it thoroughly disordered the stomachs of all who 
 partook of it and caused the death of one of them. An extreme ex- 
 ample of sticking in the letter he gives in the story that when the 
 Florentines began eagerly to look through Galileo's telescope, the priests 
 rebuked them from the Scriptures with the words, " Viri Galilaei, quid 
 statis spectantes in coelum " ? And he quotes a warning against this 
 danger of empty thinking from Thomas Aquinas : " Names do not 
 follow the mode of being which is in things, but the mode of being 
 which is according to our cognition." f Spinoza gives a similar cau- 
 
 * Boole's Laws of Thought, p. 26. 
 
 f Ludwig Noire; Die Welt als Entwickelung des Geistes, 10, 11, 12, 13. 
 
58 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM, 
 
 tion : " Whence it is easy to see how carefully we should avoid, in the 
 investigation of things, the confounding of the entities of reality with 
 the entities of thought. It is one thing to inquire into the nature of 
 things, another to inquire into the modes in which they are perceived 
 by us. If these two are confounded we shall neither be able to under- 
 stand the modes of our receiving nor the nature of the things itself."* 
 Examples of confounding psychological processes with logical, and of 
 substituting logical concepts and forms for reality are frequent in 
 the Avritings of Hamilton, Kant, and notwithstanding the warning just 
 quoted, of Spinoza himself; and the exposure of this confusion is often 
 a sufficient exposure and refutation of their fallacies. The pantheism 
 of Kant's successors in Germany was little else than a resolving of the 
 world-process into a process of logic. Beings, their qualities, differ- 
 ences and relations are not known from the logical concepts of thought ; 
 the logical concepts are formed from the knowledge of beings. 
 
 2. Formal or abstract thought, being limited to the analysis and 
 distribution of concepts already formed and named, is insufficient for 
 the synthetic processes by which we enlarge our knowledge of reality, 
 and for the synthetic or ampliative judgments which enunciate the new 
 knowledge acquired by our investigations. It is incompetent also foi 
 the scientific analysis of real things, to which the most intractable 
 compounds reveal the secret of their elements. Modern science, em- 
 pirical, philosophical and theological, has not been built up by the 
 analysis of concepts and words. 
 
 3. Accordingly the three primary axioms of formal logic, the princi- 
 ples of identity, of non-contradiction and excluded middle, are not a 
 sufficient basis for the logic of realistic thought engaged in the investi- 
 gation of reality and the discovery and systemization of facts. These 
 axioms of pure or formal thought are founded on the categories of 
 unity, plurality and totality, which pertain to number without neces- 
 sarily including any content of reality. But the principles of real 
 thinking must carry reality through the whole process. Reality in its 
 individuality, diversity, complexity, is much more than the mere forms of 
 unity, plurality, totality. In realistic thinking, the judgment of identity 
 expressed in the formula, A is A, is not the identical proposition, 
 " Whatever is, is," which some logicians f have propounded as the first 
 principle of all thinking. Rather it is the judgment that the A of 
 thought is the intellectual equivalent of the A of reality ; and this 
 reality is not a general notion expressed by a name, but a concrete 
 reality apprehended in the concrete qualities and activities which mani- 
 
 * Cogitata Metaphysica ; Appendix Renati Descartes Principiorum Philosophise. 
 Pars prima, Cap. i. 9. Bridges' Ed. Vol. i. p. 102. 
 
 t Prof. Jevons, Principles of Science, p. 5. See Ueberweg Logik, 77. 
 
THE ACTS AND PEOCESSES OF KNOWING. 59 
 
 fest what it is. It is the judgment which declares the result of simple 
 apprehension; that is, it declares in respect to any portion of pre- 
 sented reality which has become the object of attention, what the 
 reality is which the intuition has brought before the mind. 
 
 The realistic judgment of difference, A is not B, must not be con- 
 founded with the judgment of non-contradiction, A is not not- A. Two 
 contradictories cannot co-exist ; one excludes the other ; but two objects 
 that differ are both known to exist and to exist as different ; the other 
 is as real as the one. 
 
 The judgment of excluded middle, " everything is either A or it is 
 not- A," in which formal thought is completed, recognizes the sum total 
 of thought merely as a total of number. But a complex whole of 
 reality is much more than a total of arithmetic, because the parts are 
 individual realities differing from each other, and the relations which 
 unite them are real and diverse. Of this no notice is taken in the 
 formal thought which forms its totals by counting and rests on the 
 maxim that the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts. This is a 
 maxim of arithmetic which deals only with number, but not of science 
 which deals with concrete realities. A family, a nation, steam-engine 
 is more and other than the sum . of all its parts. The substitution of 
 the empty forms of number, unity, plurality and totality for reality, with 
 its individualities, differences and relations, and the errors consequent, 
 are conspicuous in the writings of Hamilton ; in consequence of which 
 his " absolute " fluctuates between an arithmetical total, and a logical 
 concept comprising all things and distinguished from nothing; his 
 grand law of thought includes all that is conceivable in thought between 
 two extremes contradictory of each other, and yet both necessarily 
 believed; and his only resource to save reason from being entirely 
 discredited by its own antinomies, is to recognize its impotence ; so that 
 the necessary beliefs of reason are resolved into the mind's conscious- 
 ness of its own self-contradiction and incompetence. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of the law of excluded middle, which recognizes 
 the universe merely as a numerical total composed of A and not- A, we 
 have, in concrete thinking, the judgment, A is related to B, C, D, &c., 
 in the unity of a complete whole. Or, all things exist in relation to 
 each other in the unity of a complex whole or system. 
 
 4. To supplement the inadequacy of the formal logic Leibnitz sug- 
 gested the additional principle of the Sufficient Reason ; of which he 
 says : " This principle is that of the need of a sufficient reason why a 
 thing exists, why an event happens, and why a truth is held." * This 
 principle may be accepted ; not merely in the sense that thought must 
 
 * Fifth Letter to Samuel Clarke, 125; also Theod. I. 44. 
 
60 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 account for every beginning or change by finding its cause, but in the 
 broader meaning that thought must account for and explain all reality 
 by its accordance with the truths, laws and ends of reason in the unity 
 of a rational system. It is impossible for a rational being to rest in 
 any thought as completed until this accord with reason is discovered. 
 
 Prof. Bowen proposes to reduce all these principles to two: "All 
 thought must be consistent with itself; " " All thought must be conse- 
 quent ; that is it should never affirm or deny a union of two concepts 
 without any ground for such affirmation or denial."* But this still 
 keeps us within the limits of formal or abstract thought. The fact that 
 thought is consistent with and consequent on itself does not prove it to 
 be knowledge of reality. 
 
 5. The principles, which underlie realistic or concrete thought, and 
 are the basis of a logical science of its law r s, seem to be these : 
 
 (a) Thought must be consistent with reality as given in intuition. 
 
 (b) Thought must be consistent with itself. This is the positive 
 form of the law of non-contradiction. While consistency of thought 
 with itself does not prove it true, its inconsistency with itself or its self- 
 contradictoriness proves it false. 
 
 (c) Thought must be consistent with the regulative principles of 
 reason. 
 
 To these may be added three others, which may be called laws of 
 things as well as laws of thought. 
 
 (d) Knowledge is correlative to reality. This, as has been shown, is 
 of the essence of knowledge. Thought then must not only be consistent 
 with intuition, carefully including all and excluding nothing which 
 intuition gives, it must carry with it also the certainty that intuition 
 rightly connoted is knowledge of reality. 
 
 (e) What is contradictory in thought is impossible in reality; or, 
 stated positively, all particular realities are consistent with one another 
 in reciprocal relations in the unity of a complex whole. Contradiction 
 is no more possible in objective reality than in subjective thought. 
 Co-existing realities are always compatible. 
 
 (f ) What is contradictory to the necessary truths of reason is impos- 
 sible in reality. The absurd cannot be real. Or, stated positively, all 
 particular realities must be accounted for and explained to the reason 
 as existing in a rational system consistent w r ith the truths, laws, ideals 
 and ends of reason. 
 
 6. These principles are at the basis of all scientific investigation. 
 Science assumes them at the start. It starts with the assumption that 
 things are concatenated, that there is unity in all diversity, and that 
 
 * Logic, pp. 48, 53. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 61 
 
 every object in the universe exists in scientific or rational relations, 
 whether it can or cannot be scientifically known by us. When a new 
 animal, plant or mineral is discovered it is taken for granted that it 
 can be scientifically classified ; when a new fact is observed it is taken 
 for granted that it can be co-ordinated under natural law. All science 
 starts with the assumption that the universe is a rational system and 
 that every reality in it must be in relation to other reality in that 
 system ; and, if accessible to our knowledge, may be found hi its place 
 in a system of scientific thought. 
 
 7. That advancement in science is made chiefly by the processes of 
 concrete thought is true of philosophical and theological science, not 
 less really than of empirical. Philosophy and theology are not the 
 knowledge of propositions, notions and words, but of beings, their qual- 
 ities, powers, conditions and relations ; they are the knowledge of these 
 in their accordance with the truths, laws, ideals and ends of reason, and 
 in the unity of a rational system expressing the archetypal thoughts of 
 the absolute and supreme reason. The object of religious faith is not 
 doctrine, but the living God. 
 
 3 14. Induction and the Newtonian Method. 
 
 A special consideration of induction is necessary not only on account 
 of its intrinsic importance, but also because the students of the phy- 
 sical sciences are designating them as distinctively Inductive Sciences, 
 thus appropriating the word and insinuating that induction is used in 
 no other sphere of thought ; it is necessary, also, because the word in- 
 duction is now used ambiguously and confusedly to denote two distinct 
 methods of reasoning. These two methods I shall consider in succes- 
 sion. The first I shall call Simple Induction ; or, because Lord Bacon 
 used the word induction to denote it, Baconian Induction; or, because 
 until recently the word induction has commonly been used to denote 
 this method, Induction, without any qualifying word. The second I 
 shall call the Newtonian Method, because it was used by Sir Isaac 
 Newton ; or, the hypothetical method, because it begins with an hypo- 
 thesis. 
 
 I. Simple induction is the inference that because all observed agents 
 of a particular kind under certain conditions manifest a particular pro- 
 perty or produce a particular effect, therefore all agents of the same 
 kind, not hitherto observed, will, under the same conditions, everywhere 
 and always produce the same effect. 
 
 1. By induction we extend our knowledge from that which has been 
 observed to that which has not been observed. 
 
 What is observed is a uniform or unvaried sequence ; that is, every 
 agent of a particular kind, under particular conditions, so far as 
 
62 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 / 
 
 observed, has always produced the same effect. The inference by 
 induction extends our knowledge beyond observation to all agents of 
 that kind under the same conditions wherever or whenever they thus 
 exist. All observed specimens of oxygen combine with iron in certain 
 definite proportions. By induction we infer that all oxygen in existence 
 combines with iron according to the same proportions. A sequence ob- 
 served in comparatively few specimens of oxygen and iron, is known 
 by induction to extend to all the oxygen and all the iron in the uni- 
 verse. A sequence observed in comparatively few instances is known 
 by induction to be a uniform sequence or law in all instances of the 
 same kind. 
 
 Some logicians define " perfect induction " as the knowledge of a 
 uniform sequence obtained by observing every existing individual of 
 a kind ; for example, our knowledge that all the planets of the solar 
 system revolve around the sun. But this is not induction, it is mere 
 observation. Induction always carries our knowledge from what has 
 been observed to what has not been observed. 
 
 2. The principle on which induction rests is this : The same complex 
 of causes must always and everywhere produce the same effect By a 
 complex of causes I mean the various causes and conditions which 
 concur in producing an effect. These causes and conditions combined I 
 call a " complex of causes." This accords with the maxim of logic, 
 " Causes, partiales in toto concursu stant pro uno." My statement of the 
 principle, therefore, is scientifically exact; and it is necessarily and 
 universally true. Rev. Dr. Wm. Thompson has stated the principle : 
 " Under the same circumstances and with the same substance the same 
 effects always result from the same causes." All that he specifies, how- 
 ever, is properly included in the " complex of causes." 
 
 This is a primitive principle regulative of all thought and known by 
 rational intuition. It cannot be known by experience. It transcends 
 experience. It is impossible for man to examine every portion of 
 oxygen in the universe to learn by observation whether it supports 
 combustion. No human experience can have observed every instance 
 of bodies gravitating towards each other. No observation can bring 
 within the knowledge of human experience to-day what will not happen 
 till to-morrow. 
 
 Nor can this principle be itself established by induction. Dr. Wm. 
 Thompson and J. S. Mill, though differing widely in their statements of 
 the principle, both affirm that the principle itself is the result of in- 
 duction. * But that the principle on which all induction rests 
 should itself be the product of induction is as impossible as that a 
 
 * Thompson, Outline of Laws of Thought, p. 307; Mill's Logic, B. iii. chap. 3, 1. 
 
THE ACTS AND PPvOCESSES OF KNOwUjJ^ $%< 
 
 ^. /> * OB' 
 
 IN. L, /I fc _ 
 
 child should be its own father. Much confusion and 
 have been occasioned by indefinite or incorrect statements ol 
 ciple on which induction rests. Perhaps the loosest statement is that 
 used by Reid and Stewart : " Our intuitive conviction that the future 
 must resemble the past." This is inadequate, because induction carries 
 us beyond experience, not only into the future, but also into the past 
 and into remote space ; also because it does not define in what respect 
 the future must resemble the past. Thus loosely stated it is not true. 
 It is not true of civilization in every age and country, that the civiliza- 
 tion of every future age will resemble it. It is not true that the sun 
 will rise every twenty-four hours forever ; nor that it has so risen in all 
 the past. It is commonly said that the principle of induction is, that 
 nature is uniform in its operations. This also is inadequate, because it 
 does not define with scientific exactness what the uniformity of nature 
 is. In fact some scientists have of late endeavored to escape being 
 held to any exactness in stating it. Prof. W. G. Clifford speaks of two 
 kinds of uniformity, exact uniformity and reasonable uniformity, of 
 which he says even the first is not entirely exact. * Prof. Jevons also 
 rests induction on a loose statement of the uniformity of nature. " The 
 results of imperfect induction," (induction in which observation has 
 not extended to every individual of the kind) " however well authenti- 
 cated and verified, are never more than probable. "We never can be 
 sure that the future will be as the present. ... It is the funda- 
 mental postulate of all inference concerning the future that there shall 
 be no arbitrary change in the subject of inference ; of the probability 
 or improbability of such a change I conceive our faculties can give no 
 estimate. . . . Inductive inference might attain to certainty, if our 
 knowledge of the agents existing through the universe were complete, 
 and if we were at the same time certain that the power which created 
 the universe would allow it to proceed without arbitraiy change." f 
 
 The principle of the uniformity* of nature, exactly and correctly 
 enunciated, is simply the principle on which induction rests, as I have 
 already stated it. The uniformity of nature consists in the uniform or 
 invariable sequence of the same effect, whenever and wherever the 
 same complex of causes acts. A law of nature is simply the enuncia- 
 tion of this invariable sequence in respect to any particular complex 
 of causes and its effects. Nature is uniform in the sense that its laws 
 remain unchanged whatever be the changes in the actual succession of 
 phenomena. 
 
 3. We can now distinguish induction from erroneous conceptions of 
 it and its functions. 
 
 * Lectures and Essays, Vol. i. p. 141. 
 
 f Principles of Science, 3d Ed. pp. 149, 151, 239. 
 
64 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Induction does not guarantee the correctness of our observation 
 either as to what is the complex of causes which produces an effect, 
 or as to its factual continuance unchanged. Certificates of the effi- 
 cacy of a nostrum in curing a fever are not a basis for induction, 
 because there is no certainty that the medicine was essential in the 
 complex of causes leading to the convalescence, and also because what 
 is called fever in one case may have arisen from a physical derange- 
 ment entirely different from that which caused what is called fever in 
 another. The principle of induction is not "post hoc, ergo propter 
 hoc." It presupposes an exact scientific determination of what the 
 complex of causes is and of the uniform sequences in the cases ob- 
 served. 
 
 Induction does not guarantee the continued action of any observed 
 complex of causes. Another cause may arrest its energy, or disjoin its 
 elements. Nor can induction inform us, in that case, whether or not 
 the complex cause will ever reappear. Anthracite coal may be burned 
 and the heat resulting be used to drive machinery. But the supply 
 may some time be exhausted ; then that particular complex cause will 
 no more act. Lime and water combine and generate heat ; but the 
 water of the moon, if it ever existed there, has disappeared, and it is 
 now impossible to slake lime in that satellite. Even a sequence known 
 to have been invariable during the whole history of human experience 
 may hereafter be interrupted. Causes already known may be in ac- 
 tion which, if continued, must bring it to an end. "We are now 
 told, in accordance with the views of Thompson and Mayer, that the 
 earth is already oxidated or burnt through its crust half-way to the 
 core; that it is grown so cool in the course of ages that it could not 
 now melt a layer of ice ten feet thick in a hundred years ; and that 
 the lunar tides which act as brakes on the rotary motion imparted by 
 its primordial heat must in time cause it to spin more slowly and 
 feebly, until at length it shall flutter on its axis as a dead world like 
 the moon, ever turning the same pallid face to the sun." * The sun 
 will then cease to rise and set as it has done through all human his- 
 tory. 
 
 So long as no cause is known to exist which may disintegrate any 
 particular complex of causes or arrest its energy, we believe that it AY ill 
 continue to exist. But even then we cannot predict its continuance 
 with certainty ; for some hitherto hidden potency may be discovered 
 which will arrest its action. Scientific hypothesis has made us familiar 
 with aethers which transcend sense ; and already the conclusion of the 
 authors of the "Unseen Universe" is seen to be possible; "that the 
 
 *Prof. Shields, Final Philosophy, p. 444. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 65 
 
 available energy of the visible universe will ultimately be appropriated 
 by the invisible, and we may now perhaps imagine, at least as a possi- 
 bility, that the separate existence of the visible universe will share the 
 same fate, so that we shall have no huge useless inert mass existing in 
 after ages to remind the passer by of a form of energy and a species of 
 matter that is long since out of date and functionally effete. Why 
 should not the universe bury its dead out of its sight ? " * 
 
 4. But all this brings no discredit on induction ; because induction 
 makes no claim to prove the continuity of the existence or action of 
 any particular complex cause, and also because the law of nature re- 
 mains unchanged, even after any particular agent to which it applies 
 has ceased to act or to exist. The laws of nature are the same in the 
 moon as on the earth, although water and living beings do not there 
 exist. Whatever doubt may arise from suspicion of inaccuracy of 
 observation or of the agency of unknown causes, the conclusions of 
 true induction are of unerring certainty and universal application. 
 The same complex cause, whenever and wherever it acts, must pro- 
 duce the same effect ; and thus amid all the diversity of events nature 
 in all its action is uniform and orderly under law. 
 
 5. The true principle of induction and of the uniformity of nature 
 gives no support to the assertion that an event contrary to the previous 
 universal experience of man is incredible and cannot be believed on any 
 evidence. This assertion could have gained credence only when founded 
 on some indefinite and incorrect statement of the principle, like that of 
 Reid, that the future must resemble the past ; it has no support from 
 the principle of induction rightly understood. When potassium was 
 discovered, the fact that it ignited in water was contrary to the univer- 
 sal experience of man that water extinguishes fire. Traveling on land 
 forty miles in an hour, communicating by telegraph across the ocean, 
 hearing words spoken across a large city were events contrary to univer- 
 sal experience until the respective inventions of the steam locomotive, 
 the electric telegraph, and the telephone. 
 
 So far from conflicting with the uniformity of nature, the occurrence 
 of unprecedented events is incidental to its progressive ongoing. The 
 first plant, the first animal, the first man was each a new thing under 
 the sun. 
 
 Hume urged the objection that a miracle is incredible because it is 
 contrary to universal experience. The objection is without force against 
 the true principle of induction and the true conception of the uniform- 
 ity of nature. 
 
 II. When effects are observed while the cause and law are unknown, 
 
 *The Unseen Universe, pp. 118, 119. 
 
66 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 science discovers the unknown cause and law by the method of hypo- 
 thesis, deduction and verification; sometimes called the Newtonian 
 method, because used by Newton in discovering that the law of gravi- 
 tation extends to the whole solar system. He began with the hypothe- 
 sis that gravitation, already known in the fall of bodies to the earth, 
 extended also to the moon ; he then deduced what must be the positions 
 of the moon if the hypothesis were true ; he then verified it by compar- 
 ing the results of his deduction with the actual positions of the moon 
 given in astronomical tables. The verification failed at first on account 
 of errors in the tables, but was successful when the tables had been cor- 
 rected by more accurate observation. 
 
 1. The Newtonian or hypothetical method differs from simple induc- 
 tion in its data, its method and its result. Its data are observed effects, 
 whose cause and the law of its uniform action are to be discovered. 
 The method consists of three reflective processes, hypothesis, deduction 
 and verification. The result, if the hypothesis is verified, is the discov- 
 ery of the hitherto unknown cause and its uniform action, that is, the 
 cause and the law of its action. 
 
 2. The hypothetical method may be exemplified from the uses of it 
 familiar in common life. It is the method of nomads and savages in 
 their sagacious tracing of a trail ; one of the many stories of this is the 
 following. A camel driver looking for a lost camel asked an Arab 
 whom he met if he had seen it. The Arab asked, " was it lame in its 
 right fore leg, blind in its left eye, with a front tooth missing, and 
 loaded with honey ? " The camel driver said, " so you have seen it ; and 
 where is it?" The Arab protested he had not seen it, when the driver 
 charged him with stealing it, and was proceeding to take him before an 
 officer of justice. But the Arab explained that he knew it was lame, 
 because the imprint of one foot was uniformly slighter ; he inferred its 
 blindness from its cropping the herbage on but one side of the way ; he 
 knew that the animal had lost a front tooth because at every bite a por- 
 tion of the herbage remained uncropped ; and the gathering flies where 
 the honey had dripped made known the nature of the load. 
 
 This reasoning of the Arab is precisely in the hypothetical method. 
 He observes the marks along the way and attempts to ascertain their 
 cause ; he makes the hypothesis that the cause was a camel described as 
 above ; he makes a deduction w y hat sort of marks such a camel would 
 make in passing, although from his familiarity with camels this part of 
 the process would be so rapid he would hardly notice it ; then he veri- 
 fies his hypothesis by accurately observing the facts, and finds that they 
 are precisely those which a camel with these characteristics would 
 make. . 
 
 Just so an investigator observes the complicated processes and effects 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 67 
 
 of nature, makes an hypothesis what the cause is and how it acts, de- 
 duces from this what the effect of a cause so acting must be, and then 
 verifies the hypothesis by ascertaining whether the effects actually ob- 
 served are those deduced. 
 
 The same method is used in discovering an anagram ; as if one were 
 required to find an anagram of Terrible Poser and discovers it to be Sir 
 Robert PeeL It is noticeable that the one who is quick in disco vering an 
 anagram, is the one who sees it in the given letters ; that is, he creates 
 an hypothesis. On verifying the hypothesis he may find that it lacks 
 a letter, or has one too many, and tries again. But the one who takes 
 each letter in succession as the initial and tries to find all the possible 
 combinations, proceeds slowly and, oftener than not, fails. 
 
 The same method is used in deciphering an inscription hi an unknown 
 character. The study of natural science is a deciphering of the book of 
 nature. 
 
 3. The hypothesis is a creation of the imagination, and, in great dis- 
 coveries and inventions, it is this creation which reveals the " vision and 
 faculty divine of genius." If the marks of the camel had been confus- 
 edly intermingled with those of other animals along the same path, the 
 Arab's problem would have been more difficult. But in nature the 
 effects of many undetermined causes are thus intermingled. The ob- 
 server must create in imagination a definite system in which a part of 
 these heterogeneous facts shall be conceived as effects of a determinate 
 complex of causes acting in accordance with a determinate law. 
 
 4. In creating a correct hypothesis the student is aided by knowledge 
 already attained ; as the Arab's knowledge of the camel's foot gave him 
 a clew to the true hypothesis ; as the trilingual inscription on the Rosetta 
 stone gave to Champollion the clew for interpreting other hieroglyphics. 
 It is only they who have been close observers of nature who are likely 
 to make hypotheses worthy of examination. And they are aided to do 
 it not merely by their knowledge, but by their trained habits of obser- 
 vation. They are aided also by analogy. Things which resemble each 
 other hi some particulars are conjectured to be alike in others. Thus 
 Xewton conjectured that the diamond would be found to be a combusti- 
 ble from its resemblance to known combustibles in its high power of re- 
 fracting light, And Franklin conjectured, from the resemblance of 
 thunder and lightning to the phenomena of the discharge of a Leyden 
 jar, that they were effects of the same cause. 
 
 Hence scientific discovery and mechanical invention are not due mere- 
 ly to " the vision and faculty divine of genius," but also to painstaking 
 observation, intellectual discipline and large, acquisitions of knowledge. 
 Says Tyndall : " It is by a kind of inspiration that we rise from the wise 
 and sedulous contemplation of nature to the principles on which the 
 
68 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 facts depend. The mind is, as it were, a photographic plate, which is 
 gradually cleansed by the effort to think rightly, and which when 
 cleansed, and not before, receives impressions from the light of truth. 
 This passage from facts to principles is called induction, which in its 
 highest form is inspiration ; but to make it sure the inward light must 
 be shown to be in accord with the outward fact. To prove or disprove 
 the induction we must resort to deduction and experiment." * 
 
 5. For the verification of an hypothesis there are two requisites. Af- 
 ter deducing from the hypothesis all the results implied in its truth, all 
 the facts must be found by observation to correspond. Also, there must 
 be no other hypothesis with the deduced results of which the facts equal- 
 ly correspond. There were formerly two hypotheses as to electricity, 
 Franklin's and Dufay's. Neither of them sufficiently accounted for the 
 facts ; both are displaced by the present hypothesis. There were two 
 hypotheses of combustion, that of phlogiston and that of oxygen. Af- 
 ter long and sharp controversy among scientists, the latter has displaced 
 the former. When an hypothesis is verified in both of the ways indi- 
 cated it is considered to be scientifically established. 
 
 Verification is sometimes possible in a third way, by bringing the 
 hitherto unknown agent under actual observation. So the existence of 
 a planet beyond Uranus was inferred by the hypothetical method and 
 the planet was afterwards discovered. In most cases the object sought 
 cannot be brought under direct observation by any means which man 
 can command. Nor is this necessary to the scientific verification and 
 establishment of the hypothesis. The law that gravitation acts with a 
 force directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance is 
 suggested by mathematical principles and verified by the accordance 
 with it of the movements of the heavenly bodies, and is thus scientifi- 
 cally established beyond all doubt. But it is forever impossible by any 
 weighing or mechanical testing of forces to establish it by direct obser- 
 vation. It is equally impossible to establish the law of the conservation 
 and correlation of force by direct observation of the molecular action 
 into which the motion of masses is transformed, or of the transformations 
 of molecular action, as from electricity into heat. In like manner the 
 hypothesis of the aBther can never be verified by direct observation of 
 the aether. There is no ground for the assertion that inference by the 
 method of hypothesis is not established until the agent and sequence 
 sought are brought under direct observation ; and the demand for verifi- 
 cation in this third way is no more imperative in philosophy and theo- 
 logy than in empirical science. And yet it is continually being de- 
 manded as essential in the former by those who in physical science freely 
 
 * Fragments of Science, p. 60. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 69 
 
 accept hypotheses as established which do not 'admit of verification in 
 this third way. The value of the method is in carrying our knowledge 
 beyond the range of observation. 
 
 6. The hypothetical method rests on the intuitive principle that 
 every effect must have a cause adequate to produce it. 
 
 7. The hypothetical method is of fundamental importance in all 
 scientific investigation. It has been used in scientific discovery in all 
 
 and with success corresponding not merely to the genius of 
 the discoverer, but to the degree and exactness of knowledge and the 
 habits of accurate observation guiding him in creating his hypothesis. 
 Thus Archimedes hypothetically referred the conditions of equilibrium 
 on the lever to the conception of pressure, while Aristotle could see in 
 them only the strange results of the properties of the circle ; Pascal 
 adopted correctly the hypothesis of the weight of the air which his 
 predecessors had referred to nature's horror of a vacuum ; Vitellio and 
 Roger Bacon referred the magnifying power of a convex lens to the 
 refraction of the rays towards the perpendicular, while others con- 
 ceived it to result from the matter of the lens irrespective of its form. 
 In view of such facts Whewell says : " Facts cannot be observed as 
 facts except in virtue of the conceptions which the observer himself 
 unconsciously supplies ; and they are not facts of observation for any 
 purpose of discovery, except these familiar and unconscious acts of 
 thought be themselves of a just and precise kind. But supposing the 
 facts to be adequately observed, they can never be combined into any 
 new truth, except by means of some new conceptions, clear and appro- 
 priate."* To the same purport are the words of Comte: "No real 
 observation of any kind of phenomena is possible, except in so far as 
 
 it is first directed and finally interpreted by some theory 
 
 Scientifically speaking all isolated empirical observation is idle and 
 even radically uncertain ; science can use only those observations 
 
 which are connected at least hypothetically with some law 
 
 Facts which must form the basis of a positive theory could not be 
 collected to any purpose without some preliminary theory which should 
 guide the collection. Our understanding cannot act without some 
 doctrine, false or true, vague or precise, which may concentrate and 
 stimulate its efforts and afford ground enough for speculative con- 
 tinuity to sustain our mental action." f 
 
 8. The Newtonian method is now commonly called induction. The 
 simple induction recognized by Bacon is the only induction which, as 
 peculiar and distinct from all other processes of reasoning or of 
 
 * Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, Vol. ii. pp. 189, 206. 
 
 f Cours de Philosophic Positive, Tom. iv. pp. 418, 665, 667. Lemons 48, 51, Mar- 
 tineau's Translation, pp. 475 and 525. 
 
70 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 thought, is entitled to the name. It is this which until recently has 
 been called induction. 
 
 The application of this name to the Newtonian method increases 
 the confusion of thought which has existed on the subject, and mis- 
 leads by pushing the real induction into the background and giving its 
 name to a complex process each of whose three subordinate processes is 
 already known by its appropriate name, hypothesis, deduction, verifica- 
 tion. The first is a creative act of imagination, the second is deduction 
 and cannot at the same time be induction, and the third is observation 
 and a comparison of what we observe with what we have deduced. 
 Prof. Jevons regarding this process as induction, is driven to the con- 
 clusion, " If I have taken a correct view of logical method, there is 
 really no such thing as a distinct process of induction." * 
 
 The reaction against the Baconian induction in recent scientific 
 thought is worthy of attention. It is remarkable that it is against the 
 induction of Lord Bacon, so long glorified as the epoch-making thought 
 which rescued the human mind from the hypotheses and deductions of 
 scholasticism and metaphysics, and turned it in the direction of dis- 
 covery and of useful knowledge. It is remarkable that the reaction is 
 to the methods of hypothesis and deduction, once so much under 
 opprobrium as the methods of metaphysics that the appellation " induc- 
 tive," with the Baconian meaning, was given to the physical sciences 
 as marking their distinctive preeminence. Newton himself, with sin- 
 gular unconsciousness, felt obliged to utter the disclaimer, " hypotheses 
 non fingo ; " and later discoverers by the hypothetical method have 
 apologized for its use. Since the physical sciences have claimed and 
 do claim preeminent and even exclusive certainty and value as being 
 founded on observation, it .is remarkable that this reaction is away 
 from this recognition of the preeminence of observation and to a de- 
 preciation of it as " idle and even radically uncertain," and of no 
 scientific " use," except as " directed and interpreted by some theory." 
 And it is remarkable that after all this reactionary change, scientists 
 insist on applying the old name induction to the method of hypothesis, 
 deduction and verification, as if fearing that the physical sciences 
 would lose prestige if they were known to be preeminently sciences 
 of hypothesis, deduction and verification called by their proper names. 
 " Wide is the range of words this w T ay and that." f 
 
 9. Neither induction nor the hypothetical method is peculiar to in- 
 vestigations in physical science. Each is a method spontaneously used 
 by the human mind in investigations in sciences of every kind and in 
 
 * Princ. of Science, p. 579. 
 
 f 'ETTCWV 6e TroAi-f vo/zof IvQa nal ivda. Iliad xx. 249. 
 
THE ACTS AXD PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 71 
 
 the common affairs of life. Lord Bacon did not invent nor discover 
 the method of induction. It had always been in use. He guarded the 
 minds of men against false reasoning, turned them to the study of per- 
 sons and things rather than of notions and words, and to the study of 
 reality in its bearings on the conduct of life and the welfare of man. 
 Xewton did not discover nor first use the hypothetical n^ethod. Des- 
 cartes distinctly recognizes it in his " Dissertatio de Methodo ; " and it 
 was used in discoveries both by Lord Bacon's predecessors and suc- 
 cessors. Lange, after noticing these facts, makes the extraordinary 
 mistake of saving that " Newton reverted to Bacon." * The truth is 
 that, independently of air logical theories, this method and the simple 
 induction of Lord Bacon are the methods spontaneously used by the 
 human mind in investigating facts, whether in science or hi the prac- 
 tical affairs of life. 
 
 10. Correct hypotheses and the discoveries involved in them have 
 often been suggested by genius, long before the hypotheses have been 
 verified and the discoveries made. Very striking is Lord Bacon's anti- 
 cipation of the modern discovery that heat is motion. In explaining his 
 suggestion of this fact, he says emphatically ; " it must not be thought 
 that heat generates motion or motion heat (though in some respects this 
 be true) but that the very essence of heat, or the substantial self (quid 
 ipsuni) of heat is motion and nothing else."f Descartes anticipated the 
 vortex rings of Sir Win. Thompson.^ Aristotle anticipated Columbus. 
 He says that the earth must be spherical, and proves it from the ten- 
 dency of things in all places downwards and from the spherical form of 
 the earth shown in eclipses of the moon ; and he argues that it is com- 
 paratively small, because in traveling north or south the position of the 
 stars changes, and stars are seen in Greece or Cyprus, which are not seen 
 in countries further north ; and then says ; " Wherefore we may judge 
 that those persons who connect the region in the neighborhood of the 
 pillars of Hercules with that towards India and who assert that in this 
 way the sea is one, do not assert things very improbable." Anticipa- 
 tions of scientific discovery sometimes come from speculative philosophy. 
 Schelling suggested the identity of the forces of magnetism, electricity, 
 and chemical affinity; || Kant in his Naturyeschichte des Himmels anti- 
 cipated the nebular theory of Laplace. Sometimes these anticipations 
 
 * Geschichte des Materialismus, i. 239, 240. 
 t Xovum Organum, B. II. 20, Basil Montagu's Edition. 
 J Wurtz, Atomic Theory ; Cleminshaw's Trans, p. 329. 
 
 Aristotle de Coelo, Lib. 14, Ed. Casaub. p. 290, 291, quoted Whewell Hist, of 
 Inductive Sciences, Vol. I. p. 133. 
 || Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, B. V. Chap. II. 12. 
 
72 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 are made by poetical genius. Milton anticipated the extension of the 
 law of attraction to the solar system : 
 
 "What if the sun 
 
 Be centre to the world ; and other stars, 
 By his attractive virtue and their own 
 Incited, dance about him various rounds." 
 
 g 15. Relation of Reflective Thought to Intuition. 
 
 I. Reflection or thought gives no elemental object of knowledge. The 
 objects about which we can think are all first given in intuition. 
 
 1. This maxim is true only when intuition is understood to include 
 sense-perception, self-consciousness and rational intuition. The maxim 
 that all the elemental objects of thought are given in the primitive 
 knowledge is not disputed in any school. The difference is as to the 
 range of the primitive knowledge. If it is limited to sensible objects 
 then thought can concern itself with these alone. If man also has intui- 
 tive knowledge of himself in his various mental acts and states, then 
 these are legitimate objects of thought. If he has also intuitive know- 
 ledge of principles of reason asserting themselves in his consciousness 
 and regulating all his thinking, then he must take cognizance of reason, 
 and its fundamental realities, truth, law, perfection, worth, the absolute, 
 as " for us " * positively known as the fundamental reality, the supreme 
 and transcendent truth ; and must connote all particular realities in 
 their relations to these universal and all-regulative norms. 
 
 Pertinent here and profoundly significant is the seemingly playful 
 definition which Socrates gives of thought. It is "the conversation 
 which the soul holds with itself. The soul when thinking appears to me 
 to be just talking ; asking questions of itself and answering them." f To 
 the empiricist thought is inspecting, weighing and measuring that which 
 seems external to us. But in truth it is only under the regulation of 
 the principles and laws of reason that thought can conclude in knowledge 
 or comprehend the outward in science. Thought is " the large discourse 
 of reason," and is fruitful only because " mind is the measure of all 
 things." It is fruitless surveying which takes no note of the relation of 
 the surface to the chain by w r hich it is measured. 
 
 2. The maxim is true only of the primitive or elemental realities. 
 These realities can be defined or described only by referring to the per- 
 son's own intuitive knowledge of them ; as the odor of a rose or the 
 
 * " I am far from implying that a supra-sensible does not exist. I only affirm that 
 it does not exist for us as an object of positive knowledge, though forced upon us as a 
 negative conception." Lewes : Problems, &c., First series, Part II. Problem I. Chap. 
 III. 26. Vol. i. 229. Vol. ii. p. 9. 
 
 f Theaetetus, 190. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 73 
 
 taste of honey ; the person's own reason, free will and affections ; the 
 primitive principles which he necessarily believes, and which regulate 
 his thinking ; power which himself exerts ; bodies extended in and occu- 
 pying space known by resisting his own power. Thought can create 
 new combinations of the reality known in intuition ; but it cannot put 
 into the creation any new element of reality not intuitively known ; for 
 example, qualities of bodies which might be perceived by a sixth 
 sense. 
 
 II. Within these limitations knowledge is greatly enlarged by re- 
 flective thought. 
 
 Thought apprehends, differentiates and comprehends the nebulous 
 matter given in intuition, and thus makes knowledge definite, distinct 
 and systematic. 
 
 Thought stimulates and guides the use of our intuitive power in 
 observation, invents instruments to aid our senses, and thus leads to 
 the discovery of reality before unknown. 
 
 Thought gives us knowledge through general notions and language, 
 and gives us also the sciences of grammar, philology, logic and rhetoric, . 
 which treat of thought and language. 
 
 From the forms of space and number thought develops the whole of 
 mathematics, geometrical and arithmetical ; and applying its demon- 
 strations to nature in quantities of tune and space measures everything 
 from the action of molecules and the time of conveying sensations, to 
 the masses and motions of planets and suns. 
 
 Thought discovers properties, laws and bodies, of the same kind 
 with those already known, which have never been known by observa- 
 tion. From the knowledge of a property in a few bodies of a particu- 
 lar kind induction infers the existence of that property in all bodies of 
 the same kind. From effects we infer causes; as the spectroscope 
 reveals in the sun gold, hydrogen, and other varieties of matter well 
 known on earth ; as arrow-heads and other implements reveal the early 
 existence of man and subvert the previous fixed belief of mankind ; as 
 fossils and strata reveal the history of the globe through strange muta- 
 tions and innumerable ages before any man existed to observe them. 
 From causes and known laws we can deduce effects and sequences. 
 By resemblances, analogies, and a knowledge of many facts it is possible 
 to create in imagination hypotheses ; and the creations of man's imagi- 
 nation are found to be the same with the creations of God embodying 
 his own ideas in nature. 
 
 Thought discovers new simple bodies which have never been ob- 
 served before. Crooke observing a new line in the spectroscope 
 affirmed the existence in the sun of an unknown metal, which was 
 afterwards discovered on earth and named Thallium. Frankland and 
 
74 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Lockyer on similar evidence announced an unknown substance which 
 they proposed to call Helium. 
 
 Thought infers and recognizes as the basis of science the existence 
 of extra-sensible reality, of bodies so small and motions so rapid that 
 the senses cannot perceive them ; as molecules and aethers ; vibrations 
 of air so rapid that the ear cannot hear them, and of light so rapid 
 that the eye cannot see them. It also discovers the action of gravita- 
 tion, the law of which could never have been discovered by observa- 
 tion, which is seemingly a force exerted by a body where it is not 
 present, which is not obstructed by interposing bodies, which seems to 
 act instantaneously so that every body in the universe instantly takes 
 cognizance, so to speak, of the change of position of every other body 
 and moves accordingly, and which acting continuously is never ex- 
 pended, never fed, never reproduced. These and similar results are 
 entirely beyond the range of human senses and observation, and cannot 
 even be pictured in imagination. Some of them seem contradictory 
 and impossible. Yet after citing some of these inferences and calcula- 
 tions of science, Prof. Jevons says : " We see that mere difficulties of 
 conception must not discredit a theory which otherwise agrees with 
 facts." But certainly if thought can establish as science results like 
 these transcending all observation, then the hypothesis that there is a 
 spirit in man is a legitimate hypothesis and may be established as a 
 well-grounded basis of belief and action. 
 
 Thus thought reveals reality before unknown and enlarges know- 
 ledge. We may say that there is nothing in a woolen garment except 
 what was first in the wool. The process of carding which separates 
 the fibres and arranges them parallel to each other, the spinning that 
 twists the fibres into yarn, the weaving which unites the yarn into 
 cloth, the skill of the workman who cuts it into a garment have indeed 
 acted only on the material that was in the wool, and yet there is very 
 much in the garment which was not in the wool. So it is with thought. 
 A guest in a great house rich in furniture, paintings and bric-a-brac 
 will day after day discover previously unnoticed articles of interest 
 which have all the time been before his eyes in the rooms. So is man- 
 kind in the universe, from generation to generation, making new dis- 
 coveries of its richness. These scientific discoveries are mostly made 
 by thought. The larger part of every science consists of facts, gen- 
 eralizations, laws and inferences never discovered by observation or 
 even transcending the range of observation. Says Lewes : " We have 
 positive proof that the sensible world comprises only a portion and an 
 insignificant portion of existence . . . there is therefore an extra- 
 sensible existence revealed through various indications. . . . We 
 must ascertain how the vast outlying province of the invisible can be 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 75 
 
 accessible." * It is true that the heavens disclosed their glory to man 
 in his savage state and that all the great movements of planets and 
 stars went on before his eyes. But it would be foolish to say that all 
 that is contained in modern astronomy was given in the intuition of 
 savage man, or in the mere intuition of any man. Yet it is true that 
 every elemental reality about which we think in all sciences is given in 
 intuition. 
 
 III. The mind can project its thought into the unknown only by 
 retaining firm foothold in the known. 
 
 " Of God above or man below, 
 What can we reason but from what we know ? " 
 
 It is impossible to have positive thought of anything except as we 
 attribute to it something already known. This is exemplified by the 
 partial agnostics who admit the existence of absolute being, but affirm 
 that we can have no knowledge what it is. Prof. Tyndall says : " The 
 whole process of evolution is the manifestation of a power absolutely 
 inscrutable to the intellect of man." f With singular simplicity and 
 unconsciousness he affirms absolute inscrutableness, and yet defines the 
 inscrutable object as "a power" and declares that it is a manifested 
 power. H. Spencer says : " We are obliged to regard every pheno- 
 menon as a manifestation of some power ; phenomena being, so far as 
 we can, ascertain, unlimited, we are obliged to regard this power as 
 omnipresent ; and criticism teaches us that it is wholly incomprehensi- 
 ble." I Here again an object " wholly incomprehensible " is declared 
 to be a power, and a power that is manifested and omnipresent. These 
 men delude themselves with supposing that they can rest their thought 
 respecting the great problem of the universe in the partial agnosticism 
 which affirms the existence of the absolute ground of the universe but 
 denies all knowledge of what that absolute ground is. In the very 
 affirmation of their ignorance of what this absolute ground of the uni- 
 verse is they are obliged to use language attributing to this unknown, 
 properties already known. Thought can enlarge the area of know- 
 ledge ; but it is a law of thought that the unknown can be discovered 
 only in some unity of thought with the already known. 
 
 But Mr. Spencer further says : " Though the absolute cannot in any 
 manner or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find 
 its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness ; so long as 
 consciousness continues, we cannot for an instant rid ourselves of this 
 datum ; and thus the belief which this datum constitutes has a higher 
 
 * Problems of Life and Mind, Vol. i. pp. 238, 233. 
 t Address before British Association in Belfast, 1.S74. 
 I First Principles. Part I. Chap. v. 27, p. 99. 
 
76 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 warran^ than any other whatever." * But since Mr. Spencer himself 
 cannot retain the thought of this absolute being without attributing to 
 it known qualities, it follows, on his own principles, that the funda- 
 mental datum of consciousness, the best warranted of all beliefs, is the 
 belief in the existence of absolute being having one or more known 
 attributes. And if it is legitimate and necessary for Spencer and Tyn- 
 dall to affirm that the absolute being is a power, because it is the ulti- 
 mate ground of the power manifested in the universe, it is equally 
 legitimate and necessary to affirm that the absolute being is a rational 
 power, because it is the ultimate ground of the rational power mani- 
 fested in the universe. ' And while the partial agnosticism thus con- 
 tradicts and nullifies itself, the theist is entirely self-consistent. While 
 he holds with Spencer that the existence of the absolute is a necessary 
 datum of consciousness and, as thus given in intuition, a real object of 
 thought, he also holds that, since it is the original ground or cause of 
 the universe, it must contain in itself the original potencies which 
 account for all that is manifested in the universe ; therefore must con- 
 tain the potency of reason not less than of power. And this is a legi- 
 timate process of thinking, respecting an object already given in 
 intuition, by inferring the unknown from the. known. 
 
 IV. Reflective knowledge is always preceded by primitive or sponta- 
 neous knowledge. 
 
 Knowledge given in intuition and retained and represented in mem- 
 ory, may be called spontaneous, implicit or unelaborated knowledge ; 
 after its objects have been apprehended, discriminated and integrated 
 in thought, it may be called reflective, explicit or elaborate knowledge. 
 The spontaneous knowledge is sometimes called belief or faith. 
 
 That reflective knowledge must always be preceded by implicit or 
 spontaneous knowledge is a necessary inference from our discussion. 
 The principle may help us in deciding the old question whether faith 
 precedes intelligence. 
 
 1. If the spontaneous knowledge is called faith or belief and the 
 reflective knowledge is called intelligence, then the maxim is univer- 
 sally true that faith must precede knowledge (crede ut intelligas). 
 Many writers designate rational intuition as faith or belief; these 
 intuitions are frequently called primary beliefs. Others give the 
 name faith or belief to both rational and presentative intuition. 
 Among these are Clement of Alexandria, and in modern times, F. H. 
 Jacobi, J. G. Fichte and Rothe. .To these may be added Dr. Dorner, 
 who says : " Jacobi rightly says that even our certainty of the world 
 of sense is a faith" (ein Glauben).f So far as the w T ord faith is used to 
 
 * First Principles, p. 98, ? 27. 
 
 f Christliche Glaubenslehre, 1 ; 2. 4; 6. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 77 
 
 denote all primitive knowledge it is true that faith precedes intelli- 
 gence or reflective knowledge. But only in this sense is the maxim 
 admissible as true. 
 
 Thus understood, the maxim cannot be assumed to mean that 
 intuition, because it is called belief, is less really knowledge than the 
 intelligence elaborated by reflective thought. Since all the objects of 
 thought and all the principles which regulate thinking are given in 
 intuition and all inference is from the known to the previously 
 unknown, thought can never lift itself to a certainty and reality of 
 knowledge above that of intuition, but can reach only a greater clear- 
 ness, definiteness and comprehensiveness of systematic knowledge. 
 There can be no more stability in the superstructure, however high, 
 than in the foundation. Intuitive knowledge and reflective do not 
 differ as knowledge, but only in the fact that the former of the two is 
 self-evident knowledge, the latter is the result of a process of thought. 
 Whether the names faith or belief shall be given to the former instead 
 of or in addition to the names intuitive, or primitive or spontaneous 
 knowledge, is not a question of psychological fact, but of nomenclature. 
 One obvious objection is that, if the name knowledge is withheld from 
 intuition and memory and given only to reflective intelligence, the 
 impression must be made that the latter alone is knowledge and the 
 former is not. In fact this impression is widely spread. 
 
 But we cannot change a common use of language. Therefore in 
 this application of the terms faith and belief, they should be used 
 interchangeably with intuitive, self-evident, primitive knowledge and 
 similar designations ; thus showing that they mean nothing less than 
 knowledge and are applied alike to primitive knowledge in every 
 form, whether presentative or representative, whether the intuition 
 of the outward world, or of ourselves in our mental operations, or of 
 universal principles, or of the existence of absolute unconditioned 
 being. 
 
 It follows that the maxim that faith precedes intelligence has no 
 peculiar application to religious knowledge. This like all other 
 knowledge begins as primitive, implicit, spontaneous knowledge, and 
 is elaborated into clear, definite and systematic knowledge. This fact 
 does not disparage the reality of religious knowledge any more than 
 of all other knowledge ; for all knowledge begins in the same way. 
 Physical science begins in faith as really as theology. If we choose 
 to call the primitive, implicit religious knowledge faith, our giving it 
 that name does not change its character as knowledge, nor distinguish 
 it as different in this respect from other knowledge. 
 
 2. The recognition of a faith-faculty as the distinctive organ of 
 religious knowledge is inadmissible. 
 
78 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 The very conception of a " faculty " as false and misleading. The 
 mind no more has faculties than oxygen or electricity. The mind in 
 its indivisible oneness reveals itself in acts and processes which we can 
 note and classify. From this misconception of the mind as divided 
 into faculties the doctrine of a faith-faculty derives its chief signifi- 
 cance. It is usually urged by persons who already admit that God is 
 not properly an object of knowledge and who grasp at a faith-faculty 
 whereby to retain their hold of him in an indeterminate and uncertain 
 belief. 
 
 If, however, the advocate of a faith-faculty has divested himself of 
 these misconceptions and uses the word faculty merelyas a convenient 
 name for the mind as it manifests itself in a certain class of operations, 
 still there is no place for a faith-faculty. For intuition presentative 
 and rational, includes all primitive and self-evident knowledge ; and 
 if the knowledge of God is neither primitive nor reflective knowledge, 
 but a faith distinguished from both, then again it is excluded from 
 knowledge properly so called and stands by itself as a belief that is 
 not knowledge. Accordingly, this belief which arises from the faith- 
 faculty is often divorced from the intellect and avowedly grounded in 
 feeling alone. But beaten on by the fierce intellectual light of the 
 present time religious belief cannot live if avowedly it is cut off from 
 the intellect and has not its roots in reason. Such a belief concedes 
 every thing to the skeptic who admits that religious sentiments are 
 constitutional to man and that man may properly shape an object for 
 them in the imagination varying with the culture of each age ; but 
 who strenuously refuses it any place in the sphere of the intellect and 
 of knowledge. Thus the doctrine of the faith-faculty acknowledges an 
 unresolvable antithesis of reason and faith. On the contrary, the 
 demand of the age and the work imperative on theism is to demon- 
 strate the synthesis of faith and reason. This can be done only by 
 showing that faith in God is itself the act of reason in the highest 
 manifestation of its rational power. And it may also be shown that 
 human reason must have the knowledge of reason absolute and su- 
 preme in order to maintain its own rational power to know. 
 
 As man knows himself rational, so he knows himself religious. As 
 he knows himself in contact with the external world through sense, so 
 he knows himself in contact with God through his spiritual constitu- 
 tion. In the normal unfolding of his own constitution he finds himself 
 in the presence of absolute being. In the normal unfolding of his 
 consciousness of himself he finds in himself the consciousness of God. 
 The primitive knowledge of the Absolute is a part of his primitive 
 knowledge through intuition. All primitive knowledge is more or less 
 mixed with feeling ; there is, primitive knowledge in all feeling. But 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 79 
 
 this is not peculiar to religious knowledge; it is equally true of all 
 knowledge. 
 
 The denial of a special faith-faculty as the organ of religious belief, 
 and the identification of religious belief with primitive knowledge does 
 not deny the dependence of our knowledge of God on the awakening 
 of the spiritual life by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, or by any 
 influences which quicken and illuminate the human mind; nor does it 
 deny the knowledge of God in experience whereby we acquaint our- 
 selves with him and are at peace. However this knowledge is origi- 
 nated it must follow the law of all knowing ; it must begin as primitive, 
 implicit, unelaborated knowledge, merged in the religious experience 
 and not at first clearly apprehended in consciousness, nor discrimi- 
 nated, defined and integrated in a system. The defenders of Christian 
 theism, who admit that theism rests on a faith which is not knowledge, 
 are misled by a false theory of knowledge and surrender the very 
 citadel of their defences. The late Professor T. H. Green, of Oxford, 
 truly said : " Under different relations and in different modes of itself, 
 reason is the source alike of faith and knowledge." ..." Christianity 
 is cheaply honored when it is made exceptional ; God is not w T isely 
 trusted when declared unintelligible. 
 
 ' Such honor rooted in dishonor stands ; 
 Such faith unfaithful makes us falsely true.' 
 
 God is forever reason; and his communication, his revelation is of 
 Reason." The empirical knowledge of nature rests on faith in the 
 same sense in which theism rests on faith. 
 
 3. The word faith has been used with various meanings ; and this is 
 a reason why, so far as possible, we should avoid using it as a synonym 
 for intuition or primitive knowledge. It is used to denote trust which 
 is the condition of justification ; also to denote belief of testimony on 
 the authority of the witness ; also belief on the authority of the Church 
 or of divine revelation. The maxim " crede ut intelligas " has as many 
 different meanings, each of special application, and each irrelevant to 
 the general question which we are considering as to what precedes 
 reflective knowledge in general or reflective religious knowledge in 
 particular. Hence has arisen great confusion in the discussion of the 
 subject. Thus Hamilton confuses himself. After naming many philo- 
 sophers, ancient and modern, who have used the words belief or faith 
 to denote " The original warrants of cognition," that is, the principles 
 of rational intuition, he adds the following : " St. Augustine accurately 
 says, ' We know what rests on reason; we believe what rests on author- 
 ity.' But reason itself must rest at last on authority ; for the original 
 data of reason do not rest on reason, but are necessarily accepted by 
 reason on the authority of what is beyond itself. . . . Thus we must 
 
80 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 philosophically admit that belief is the primary condition of reason, 
 and not reason the ultimate ground of belief. We are compelled to 
 surrender the proud ' Intellige ut oredas ' of Abelard, to content our- 
 selves with the humble ' Crede ut intelligas ' of Anselm." * The quota- 
 tion is entirely irrelevant, for Augustine is speaking of the authority 
 of the Church. The same is true of Anselm and Abelard. The doc- 
 trine early appeared that the church had authority to declare the mind 
 of the Spirit and the meaning of the word of God. The " crede ut 
 intelligas" then meant, Believe implicitly what the church teaches 
 without personal investigation and conviction of its truth. The intelli- 
 gence of reflective thought following the belief was merely a reverent 
 ascertaining of what the church meant. Abelard asserted the right to 
 investigate the truth of the doctrine of the church before believing it. 
 It is curious to note the special pleading by which Hamilton endeavors 
 to apply this utterly irrelevant definition to " the original warrants of 
 cognition." 
 
 At the Reformation the Bible as the word of God, accredited and 
 illuminated by the testimony of the Spirit, was recognized, instead of 
 the church, as the authoritative rule of faith and practice. But the 
 testimony of the Spirit gradually receded in the Protestant theological 
 thinking until the letter of the scripture, supposed according to an 
 arid theory of verbal inspiration to be itself the testimony of the 
 Spirit, was recognized as the authoritative rule of faith and practice, 
 and thus became the formal principle of Protestantism. Belief in this 
 was demanded as pre-requisite to intelligent investigation of Christian 
 truth. 
 
 It is evident that these special applications and peculiar meanings 
 of the maxim are entirely irrelevant to questions concerning the rela- 
 tion of reflective knowledge to primitive, the true conception and 
 proper designation of primitive knowledge, and the reality of religious 
 knowledge and its legitimate place in the circle of human intelligence. 
 
 4. Knowledge through the belief of testimony is reflective know- 
 ledge because it is attained by the interpretation of symbols. It can 
 never be intuitive or primitive knowledge. It may be said, however, 
 that man is constituted susceptible of receiving knowledge by testi- 
 mony. A man cannot be defined from his individual personality 
 alone. He is a member of a race which is constantly in contact with 
 him and acting on him at many points ; and he is constituted suscep- 
 tible of receiving these influences. Only as this fact, complemental to 
 his personality, is recognized can man be understood. His suscepti- 
 bility of receiving knowledge through testimony is one of these points 
 of contact with the race. The child believes everything. We do not 
 
 * Reid's Works: Hamilton's Ed. Note A, page 760. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 81 
 
 learn to believe but to disbelieve. The consciousness of the race always 
 in contact \vith the individual seems to infuse itself into his indi- 
 vidual consciousness and enlarge it to a world-wide knowledge. In 
 this way the knowledge of past generations is communicated to the 
 living and knowledge is continually enlarged. Principles and laws 
 and science get incorporated into customs, institutions and civilizations 
 and are thus perpetuated. Were it not for this power of participating 
 in the consciousness of the race, men would remain through all time 
 at the lowest grade of savagery ; or rather man could not have con- 
 tinued to exist on the earth. Testimony, in its broadest sense as 
 denoting all communication of knowledge from man to man, is an 
 important medium through which knowledge already elaborated by 
 others is communicated to us and received in its elaborated form. 
 
 V. Reflection and experience become a sort of spontaneous knowledge 
 in common sense. The Philosophy of Reid is called the philosophy of 
 common sense. The phrase here means the sensus communis of man- 
 kind, and refers to the principles believed or at least acted on by all 
 mankind. Thus used " common sense " is essentially the same with in- 
 tuition. There is also a popular and homely use of the word in which 
 it has a different meaning. This Locke speaks of as " large roundabout 
 common sense." This is continually appealed to as a source of know- 
 ledge, especially in the practical direction of conduct. It is a know r - 
 ledge by which a man judges what action is wise, while unable to tell 
 why he believes it to be so. I suppose it to be the result of the experi- 
 ence and reflection of life, which has inwoven itself into the texture of 
 knowledge and acts with the quickness and insight of an intuition and 
 with the unconsciousness of an instinct. Customary action tends to be- 
 come automatic. What was learned with painstaking, as speaking a 
 language, tends to become spontaneous. What was once the slow result 
 of thought, may come, by long experience and hereditary transmission, 
 to act with unerring unconsciousness as an instinct. So common sense 
 may be the past experience half sunk already into an instinct and spon- 
 taneously indicating what it has always found to be wise. It is not an 
 intuition, since it is always possible even at the moment to think that 
 the contrary may be true. It is not unerring. But the continual ap- 
 peal to it is not unphilosophical ; and it should be noted as a source of 
 knowledge, which can only remotely be resolved into intuition, memory 
 and thought. 
 
 \ 16. Relation of Reflective Thought to the Universal 
 
 Reason. 
 
 The processes of reflective thought essentially imply that the universe 
 is grounded in and is the manifestation of Reason. They thus rest on 
 the assumption that a personal God exists. 
 6 
 
82 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 I. This assumption is the ultimate ground of the possibility of know- 
 ledge by inference. If the mathematics by which astronomers make 
 their calculations are not the mathematics of all space and time, all our 
 astronomy is worthless. If the law of causation, and the principle of 
 the uniformity of nature that the same complex of causes always pro- 
 duces the same effect, are not true of the whole universe, all our science 
 is invalidated. If the law of love is not the law of all rational beings 
 all ethical knowledge is annihilated. That the principles of reason are 
 everywhere and always the same is the basis of the possibility of rational 
 knowledge. But this is only saying that Keason supreme and universal, 
 everywhere and always one and the same, is energizing in the universe 
 and is the ultimate ground of its existence, constitution and develop- 
 ment. And this Energizing Reason is God. Science assumes that the 
 universe is a system or cosmos concatenated and ordered under princi- 
 ples and laws everywhere and always the same, and that by these it can 
 determine what the ongoing of the universe is in its farthest extent in 
 space and what it has been and will be in the remotest past and future. 
 This is possible only because these truths and laws are eternal in the 
 one absolute Reason who expresses them by his energizing in the con- 
 stitution and evolution of the universe. And the theist adds that the 
 evolution of the universe is the forever progressive expression and real- 
 ization, not only of truths and laws, but also of rational ideals and ends ; 
 ideals and ends of wisdom and love, which are eternal and archetypal 
 in the Absolute Reason, God. 
 
 Like this was the position of Descartes. He recognizes, at the basis 
 of all reflective intelligence, primitive beliefs on which the force of all 
 proofs depends and without which man is condemned to irremediable 
 doubt ; he sees that these fundamental principles thus necessarily be- 
 lieved must have their reality in God, and that if God does not exist, 
 our reason has no guaranty ; and he proclaims God, as the first and the 
 most certain of all truths. Thus the existence of God, the absolute 
 Reason, is the ultimate ground of the possibility of scientific knowledge. 
 This rests on the truth that the universe is ultimately grounded in 
 Reason, that it is constituted and goes on in accordance with rational 
 truths and laws, and for the realization of rational ideals and ends. It 
 implies also that we have knoAvledge of reason and of its truths, laws, 
 ideals and ends ; that the primitive intuitions of human reason are true ; 
 that the necessary and universal principles constituent of human ration- 
 ality are constituent principles of rationality which is universal and 
 supreme. Without this neither induction nor the Newtonian method 
 can conclude in real knowledge. " This includes the assumption with- 
 out which the principles, maxims and methods of the inductive philoso- 
 phy have no meaning and no foundation, viz. that the universe of mat- 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 83 
 
 ter and mind has its ground and explanation in an intelligent creator. 
 In other words, Induction rests on the assumption, as it demands for its 
 ground, that a personal Deity exists." * 
 
 II. It is only on this assumption that thought can complete its neces- 
 sary processes and solve its ultimate problem. 
 
 1. The necessary process of thought culminates in comprehending 
 the manifold in unity ; its ultimate problem is to comprehend all par- 
 ticular realities in unity ; that is, to comprehend the all in one. In its 
 necessary processes of apprehending, differentiating and comprehending, 
 it continually finds larger and larger unities, till it comes to its ulti- 
 mate problem to comprehend all the manifold in a unity of thought. 
 
 2. It cannot comprehend the all in a merely numerical unity, but 
 only in the unity of a rational system. A numerical unity would be 
 only a multitude of disintegrated individuals, excluding their real 
 relations, their causes, interaction and laws ; and so would not be the 
 unity of the All. 
 
 The objects of thought are the actual beings and realities of 'the 
 universe in their actual relations. They cannot be comprehended in 
 unity till we know their cause or ground, and their sufficient reason. 
 The mind must know the absolute ground of all that is and the ac- 
 cordance of all things with the truth, laws, ideals and ends of reason. 
 The ultimate problem of thought is to find the unity of the all in a 
 rational system. 
 
 3. This unity is possible only in the recognition of a personal 
 God. The mind cannot find the ground or cause of all^that begins 
 and changes in that which itself begins and changes, but only beyond in 
 the Absolute Being who never begins but is eternally the same. It 
 cannot find the sufficient reason or rationale of things in the facts of 
 experience but only in their accordance with principles, laws, ideals 
 and ends which are eternal in Reason absolute, perfect and supreme. 
 For if these are not eternal in the absolute ground of the universe 
 they are not in the universe at all, and the scientific and philosophical 
 knowledge of the universe as a rational system is forever impossible. 
 This absolute Reason which is the ground or cause of the universe is 
 what theism calls God. Theism, therefore, is the only possible solution 
 of the ultimate and ever-urgent problem of human intelligence. Theism 
 is not a creation of feeling and fancy excluded from the realm of 
 knowledge. If recognized as knowledge it is not a mere appendix to 
 completed science, which those may study who wish, while those who 
 do not concern themselves with it suffer no intellectual loss. On the 
 contrary it lies at the foundation of all science and philosophy, and 
 
 * The Human Intellect ; by President Porter, 497. 
 
84 THE PHILOSOPHIC AJ, BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 without it thought cannot complete itself as knowledge nor solve its 
 own necessary problems on any subject whatever. Theology is not 
 occupied with abstractions, but with the deepest realities both of nature 
 and of man. 
 
 Skeptics continually miss the theistic conception that the universe is 
 grounded in absolute Reason, and charge on theism the conception 
 that the universe is grounded in caprice, that is, in will unregulated 
 by reason. Even Prof. Jevons, from whom a more correct idea of 
 theism might be expected, in a passage already quoted, twice uses the 
 phrase " arbitrary change " as describing the action of God. 
 
 Krug calls attention to the fact that the relation of reason and con- 
 sequent is different from that of cause and effect.* Hamilton criticises 
 Leibnitz's " sufficient reason " because it includes both the reason why 
 things exist, and the reason why we think them to exist. But if 
 reason is the organ of principles or truths and not merely an organ 
 of contradictions revealing only its own impotence, then the law of 
 causality is at once a law of thought and a law of things ; and the 
 same is true of all the necessary principles of reason ; then in concrete 
 or realistic thought a logic of reason must be recognized as underlying 
 the formal logic ; then the fundamental basis alike of all being and of 
 all thought is absolute reason energizing with almighty power in 
 accordance with its own eternal laws, expressing its own eternal 
 truths, and realizing its own ideals and ends. And this is the theistic 
 conception of the universe. The study of the universe gives us science 
 because its* beginning and its ongoing express perfect and eternal 
 reason. 
 
 III. The primary motive of scientific investigation is in the consti- 
 tution of man as rational, impelling him to seek the knowledge of all 
 things in their reality, difference and relations, and to comprehend 
 them in the unity of a rational system. He is impelled by his consti- 
 tution as rational to seek the unity of all things in their cause or 
 ground and their rational principles, laws and ends. The three 
 questions of philosophy, according to Kant, are these : " What can 
 we know ? What shall we do ? What may we hope ?" The second 
 and third of these questions of course present motives to seek the 
 answer to the first. We seek knowledge to guide us in our action 
 and to disclose the ends that are worthy of our pursuit. In fact a 
 merely speculative interest in knowing is morbid and misleading. 
 The pursuit of knowledge is safest from error and most fruitful in 
 attaining truth when it is sought for its practical use in the right 
 conduct of human life and for the attainment of worthy ends. Never- 
 
 * Encyklopadisch-philosophischea Lexicon, article Ursache. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 85 
 
 theless there is in the human constitution a persistent impulse to seek 
 to know the realities within us and without, to account for them by 
 finding their causes, to interpret and vindicate them to the reason by 
 finding their accord with rational principles, laws and ends, and thus 
 to bring them into the unity of a rational system. 
 
 17. Probability. 
 
 In completing our survey of the acts and processes of knowing, we 
 find that reasoning is not always demonstrative; that after man's 
 utmost investigations in the legitimate use of his intellectual powers 
 a large part of his conclusions fall short of certainty. What must be 
 done with the mass of probability ? 
 
 I. In cases of evidence insufficient to give certainty it is natural and 
 legitimate to give assent to the conclusion as probable in degree pro- 
 portioned to the evidence. This is only saying that we assent so far as 
 we know. So far as there is evidence we know ; at the same time we 
 are conscious of a residuum of reality in the object of thought which 
 we do not know. Such assent is legitimate and necessary according to 
 the constitution of the mind ; it is as legitimate as the assent with 
 irresistible certainty to a mathematical demonstration or an immediate 
 act of consciousness. 
 
 II. When the improbability is very slight the mind disregards it 
 and the assent is not practically different from knowledge. " Several 
 philosophers have attempted to assign the limit of probabilities which 
 we regard as zero. Buffon named one in ten thousand, because it is 
 the probability, practically disregarded, that a man of fifty-six years of 
 age will die the next day." It is impracticable to delay on so slight 
 an improbability. If every slightest possibility of the contrary must 
 be removed before acting, all achievement would cease and the entire 
 action of life would resolve itself into doubting and asking questions. 
 
 III. Assent on probable evidence is reasonably and legitimately a 
 guide of conduct. We learn from Pascal* that certain Roman 
 Catholic writers taught that it is permitted to follow the less probable 
 of two opinions, although conscious of being less sure of it. Mr. Glad- 
 stone quotes a " Manuel des confesseurs " published for the use of the 
 French clergy of the present day, which teaches essentially the same 
 doctrine.f This doctrine is contrary to good morals, since within the 
 whole wide range of probability it allows a man arbitrarily to choose 
 the opinions by which he will regulate his own conduct and which he 
 will inculcate for the regulation of the conduct of others. It is con- 
 trary also to common sense and the natural action of the mind. 
 
 * Les Provinciales ; Lettre V. 
 
 | Gleanings of past years ; Miscellaneous ; p r 196. 
 
86 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 When conflicting opinions do not require immediate action it is 
 possible and wise to suspend judgment. But when immediate action 
 according to the one or the other is necessary, every one will act 
 according to the opinion that seems the more probable, unless he is 
 deficient in understanding, or is biased by some conflicting personal 
 interest or desire which might equally lead him to act in disregard of 
 what he knows is true. 
 
 Bishop Butler, in the Introduction to the Analogy, says, " Proba- 
 bility is the very guide of -life. . . . A greater presumption on one 
 side, though in the lowest degree greater, determines the question, 
 even in matters of speculation ; and, in matters of practice, will lay us 
 under an absolute and formal obligation to act on that presumption or 
 low probability, though it be so low as to leave the mind in very great 
 doubt which is the truth." The same thought is expressed by Vol- 
 taire : " Almost the whole of human life revolves on probabilities. . . . 
 Uncertainty being almost always the lot of man, we should rarely 
 come to any determination if we waited for demonstration. Yet it is 
 necessary to take a course of action and we must not take it at hap- 
 hazard. It is therefore necessary for our nature weak, blind and 
 always liable to error, to study probabilities with as much care as we 
 learn arithmetic and geometry." * 
 
 IV. These principles are applicable to religious belief, but with no 
 peculiar significance ; assent and action are regulated by probability 
 here precisely as in reference to other subjects. The law of assent to 
 probability has not been invented in the interest of religion, as many 
 seem to imagine ; it is simply a law common to every sphere of belief 
 and action. It is a common fallacy to demand an infallible certainty 
 in religion never required elsewhere; and to urge as valid against 
 religious belief objections, founded on some transcendental theory of 
 the necessity of a certainty outreaching all finite intelligence, which 
 are instantly rejected as unworthy of notice both in physical science 
 and practical life. Yet they are as forcible against assent and action 
 in both of those spheres of thought as in religion. Hence devout and 
 earnest inquirers are entangled in needless and distressing perplexity ; 
 worldly men, who every day prosecute enterprises and venture fortune 
 and life on probabilities, excuse themselves from religious action 
 because some questions remain unanswered and some doubts unre- 
 moved ; and skeptics, who in their- own life-time have held as science 
 successive and incompatible theories of geology, or light, or other 
 scientific matter, are loud in objecting against religious belief because 
 it does not give absolute certainty on all points. 
 
 *Essai sur les probabilites en fait de justice. Oeuvres; vol. 30, p. 419. 
 
THE ACTS AND PROCESSES OF KNOWING. 37 
 
 In a former chapter it was shown that, although the mind is fallible, 
 it is capable of knowledge, and that the larger part of our beliefs are 
 confirmed by the continuous experience of life. It often happens that 
 what at first was rejected as improbable, comes by experience to be 
 known as sustained by convincing evidence ; that an opinion, acted on 
 at first with hesitation, by its sufficiency as a guide to action vindicates 
 itself as truth and clarifies itself into knowledge. The same is true of 
 religious belief and of action upon it. Venturing on it at first with 
 hesitation, it proves itself sufficient for the intellect, the heart and the 
 conduct, it becomes interwoven with all the threads of life and into the 
 texture of the character, and thus comes to be believed with the 
 highest certainty and rested on with the most serene confidence. 
 " Then shaD. we know if we follow on to know the Lord." What the 
 Scripture here affirms as true of religious knowledge is an example of 
 what is true of all knowledge. In the experience of life man advances 
 from the doubtful to the certain, from the obscure to the clear, from 
 the known to the knowledge of what had been unknown ; and though 
 his mind is limited and fallible and though he cannot by any intellec- 
 tual gymnastics leap out of the limitations of his powers, yet by the 
 legitimate use of his powers he is capable of knowledge and of its 
 indefinite enlargement. But he must trustfully use his powers on 
 their legitimate objects: and trustfully act on the results, whether 
 probability or certainty. For if he spend his strength in trying to 
 unravel the limitations of his being, he will be entangled like a fly 
 in a spider's web and be thenceforth capable of no action but an 
 impotent buzzing of distress. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH PRESENT ATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE 
 
 INTUITION. 
 
 $18. What is Known through Sense-Perception. 
 
 IN sense-perception man has knowledge of the external world. He 
 has immediate perception of his own body and of bodies immediately 
 affecting him through the senses. 
 
 I assume this on the principles of Natural Realism. It is unneces- 
 sary to enter into any vindication of the reality of this knowledge 
 against phenomenalists and idealists. Comte attempted to rest phy- 
 sical science on phenomenalism. But the students of physical science 
 have generally abandoned his complete positivism and emphasize the 
 reality and certainty of our knowledge of the objects of sense. They 
 affirm the knowledge of bodies composed of infrangible atoms, and of 
 force with its conservation, correlation and transformations. 
 
 It is unnecessary, also, because Hume demonstrated that every theory 
 of phenomenalism or subjective idealism involves the denial of all 
 knowledge. It is idle to reopen a question then decisively settled, or 
 to plunge again into the discussion of insoluble puzzles which were 
 then remanded to the sphere of that transcendent skepticism which de- 
 nies all knowledge because a man cannot take himself up in his own 
 hands and examine himself, as he would an insect under a microscope. 
 
 So Mr. Mulford puts it : " Man by the senses has a direct perception 
 of the physical world and it is a waste of thought to carry the subject 
 through metaphysical speculation. But this does not demonstrate the 
 certainty of the physical world to one who denies it. . . . . There 
 is no demonstration of the being of the physical world." * Our know- 
 ledge of it is not by reasoning or any reflective thought, but is by 
 intuition. So Lord Bacon affirms that sense gives us knowledge of 
 " natural matters," " unless a man please to go mad." f 
 
 Sense-perception, however, does not decide between speculative theo- 
 ries of the constitution of matter. These are irrelevant to the question. 
 If matter consists of Boscovich's points of force, or of Dr. Hickock's 
 pencils of force in equilibrium, if it is a form of will-force, or a manifes- 
 
 * Republic of God, p. 96. Note. 
 
 f Distributio operis, prefixed to Novum Organum. 
 
 88 
 
PRESEXTATIVE OK PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 89 
 
 tation of thought, all its properties and powers and its objective reality 
 remain unchanged. 
 
 It must be added that in sense-perception there is always a rational in- 
 tuition, implicit or explicit hi the consciousness. In sensation I become 
 aware of the action within my consciousness of a power not my own. 
 At the same time I know hi the light of reason that this power not my 
 own must be exerted by some other being ; for it is a rational intuition 
 that every change must have a cause. Man cannot divest himself of his 
 reason in any act. Natural Realists recognize an implicit judgment in 
 every perception ; it is sometimes called a psychological, as distinguished 
 from a logical judgment. What is really present is the implicit, rational 
 intuition that the power exerted is the power of some being. In per- 
 ception, so far as the intellectual act is the knowledge of a particular 
 power present and acting here and now, we call it presentative or per- 
 ceptive intuition ; so far as it is the knowledge of a universal principle 
 of reason applicable in the particular case, it is rational intuition. 
 
 But the fact that a rational intuition is present in perception does not 
 invalidate the knowledge. Rational intuition gives knowledge as really 
 as perceptive. And the mind is not divided ; the act is one act hi 
 which the mind, constituted both perceptive and rational, knows by in- 
 tuition at once perceptive and rational. So far from invalidating the 
 knowledge, the union of the two is essential to it. Rational intuition 
 without the perceptive intuition of an object is empty of content ; per- 
 ceptive intuition, without rational intuition of the form hi which reason 
 sees it, is unintelligent and falls short of knowledge.* 
 
 As to the general objection that knowledge must be wholly subjective 
 and therefore not real knowledge, because a factor is contributed by the 
 intellect, it is sufficient to reply as follows. If external reality and a 
 man to know it exist, the knowledge is impossible except as the man 
 and the reality about him act and react on each other. In human 
 knowledge the outward reality acts on man through the senses and man 
 reacts in sense-perception. In voluntary exertion the man acts on the 
 outward reality and it reacts on him. In both ways he knows its ex- 
 istence. The objection implies that it is essential to the knowledge of 
 outward reality that no such action and reaction take place. It implies 
 that the mind must have knowledge of an object without coming into 
 any relation or connection with it, without acting or reacting on it. It 
 requires that there must be knowledge without knowing. 
 
 It is also objected that because knowledge is an intellectual act it can 
 have no resemblance to the outward object, and that therefore we can 
 have no knowledge of the outward object, but only of subjective im- 
 
 * " Begriffe ohne Anschauungen sind leer ; Anschauungen ohne Begriflfe sind blind." 
 Kant. 
 
90 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 pressions. This objection implies that knowledge in order to be real 
 must be like the outward object ; that in perceiving a tree there must 
 be some image, imprint or effigy of the tree in the mind. This notion 
 may have arisen from the analogy of outw r ard objects impressing the 
 sensorium, and especially of light entering the eye. But an image, or 
 imprint, or effigy of a tree cannot enter the mind any more than the 
 tree itself can. Nor can knowledge, which is an intellectual act, be an 
 image or imprint of a tree. The objection is just as valid against the 
 knowledge of impressions and phenomena as against the knowledge of 
 the tree itself. When an object is present to the senses it awakens sen- 
 sation in a way wholly mysterious to us ; the mind reacts on the object 
 in perceptive and rational intuition and knows it. The object per- 
 ceived does not imprint an image; it occasions an action of intellect 
 knowing the object. The perception has no resemblance to the object, 
 but is its intellectual equivalent ; is the conscious reacting of the mind 
 on the object and knowing it. The sensation itself is the response in 
 the feelings to the presence of the object. All objections of this kind 
 rest on the absurdity that knowledge of outward objects is possible only 
 if it cease to be knowledge and become identical with insensate bodies ; 
 that knowledge is possible only if divested of that which is its essence 
 as knowledge; that knowledge is impossible if there is a mind that 
 knows. 
 
 As to the mystery how material things can be apprehended by the 
 mind in an intellectual equivalent, we may say at least that the Uni- 
 verse is itself the expression of thought and therefore can be translated 
 back into thought. In the Absolute Reason the archetypal forms of all 
 that is in the universe are eternal. In the finite Reason there must be, 
 if not the archetypal forms of things, at least the capacity of construct- 
 ing the intellectual equivalents of those forms which constitute real 
 knowledge of them. In the absolute Reason the principles and laws 
 regulative of all rational thought and action are eternal ; these are the 
 constitution of the universe, eternal in the absolute Reason. In the 
 finite Reason there must be at least the capacity of knowing these con- 
 stitutive principles and laws, as occasion for their application arises in 
 experience in the continual action and reaction of the finite Reason and 
 the universe. The universe in its deepest significance and reality is the 
 expression of the archetypal thoughts of the Absolute Reason. In the 
 finite reason there must be at least the power to translate it back into 
 the thought which it expresses, to grasp its reality and significance in 
 intellectual equivalents in which and in which alone its true reality and 
 significance are known. That which is in its origin and essence the ex- 
 pression of thought can be apprehended in thought. We may reason- 
 ably suppose that if the universe were not originally the expression of 
 
PEESEXTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 91 
 
 thought, science and all other apprehension of it in thought would be 
 impossible. The universe and the things in it would have no intellectual 
 equivalents. 
 
 \ 19. What is Known through Self-Consciousness. 
 
 Self-consciousness is the knowledge which the mind has of itself in 
 its own operations. 
 
 I. The object known, the subject knowing and the knowledge are 
 known simultaneously in one and the same act. In every act of knowing 
 the knowledge of self as knowing is an essential element. This accords 
 with the first law of thought, that knowledge implies a subject know- 
 ing, an object known and the knowledge. In thought the knowledge 
 of the object is distinguishable from my knowledge of myself as know- 
 ing; but they are inseparable in fact. I perceive a stone. If iny 
 knowledge of myself perceiving is annulled the entire perception is 
 annulled. But my knowledge of myself is not given in a separate act. 
 All knowledge is a knowledge of two realities, the object known and 
 the subject knowing, in one indivisible intellectual act. The knowledge 
 of the object may be called direct intelligence, the knowledge of the 
 subject, inverse. The mind is like the sun, which in revealing external 
 objects necessarily reveals itself. 
 
 Sense-perception and self-consciousness are simultaneous in one act. 
 It is like the hand which can grasp objects only as it retains its vital 
 connection with the organism ; like the electro-magnetic circuit, one 
 force acting at two opposite poles ; or like the interaction between the 
 nervous centers and the outward object by the afferent and efferent 
 nerves. 
 
 The same two in one is noticeable when the object of thought is 
 itself mental. AVhen a mental state is continuous, as a sorrow, a pre- 
 ference or purpose, a belief or a doubt, the mind can observe it while 
 present, as it would observe a zoological specimen continuously present 
 before the senses ; the mind can also attend to its representations of 
 former mental states. In these cases also the knowledge is direct of 
 the object and inverse of the subject ; and the latter is essential to the 
 knowledge as really as in sense-perception. 
 
 This knowledge which we have of ourselves in every act of knowing 
 is sometimes called implicit or virtual consciousness. It is the intuitive 
 unreflective consciousness in which the mind knows all the elemental 
 material of thought respecting itself in its own operations. It is the 
 mind's primitive knowledge of itself not yet apprehended, discrimi- 
 nated and integrated in thought. It is present in all feeling and all 
 voluntary action as well as in all knowing and thinking. 
 
 The direct intelligence or knowledge of the object is expressed in the 
 
92 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 formula, "This is." The inverse intelligence or knowledge of the 
 subject is expressed in the formula, " I know that this is." The former 
 is the affirmation when the mind, intent on the object known, gives no 
 attention to itself as knowing, as one breathes the air without noticing 
 it. The latter is the affirmation when the mind takes notice of its 
 own knowledge and affirms it. It affirms both the subject knowing 
 and the knowledge ; both, " It is I who know," and " I know that 
 I know." 
 
 II. By self-consciousness we have knowledge of our own mental 
 actions and states. We thus know what thought and knowledge, 
 doubt, probability and certainty are ; what argument, inference, gen- 
 eralization and other intellectual processes are; what joy and sorrow, 
 hope and fear, desire and aversion, volition and choice are. 
 
 Comte objects that psychological knowledge founded on conscious- 
 ness is impossible ; because the mind in perception or thought is occu- 
 pied with the object and cannot at the same time attend to its own 
 action ; and consequently the mental operations can be examined only 
 as represented in memory. He says : " Nothing can be more absurd 
 than the supposition of a man seeing himself think." Similar views 
 are avowed by De Morgan, Dr. Maudsley and F. A. Lange. * Lange 
 says : " We have already seen that Materialism is prepared, in a way 
 forbidden to all other systems, to bring order and unity into the 
 sensible world and is justified in treating man and all his affairs as a 
 special case of the universal law of nature. But between man as object 
 of empirical investigation and man as the subject having immediate 
 knowledge of himself, an eternal gulf remains fixed. Hence the ex- 
 periment forever returns whether the view of the universe derived 
 from self-consciousness will not be more satisfactory ; and so strong is 
 the common attraction of man to this side that this experiment is a 
 hundred times regarded as successful, though all preceding experiments 
 of the kind are known to have failed. It will be one of the most 
 essential steps in the progress of philosophy when this experiment is 
 finally abandoned. But it never will be unless this impulse to find the 
 unity of things is satisfied in some other way." He proceeds to say 
 that a unity of the life and of the spirit may be created for the uni- 
 verse by poetry and imagination, though it must be excluded from the 
 sphere of knowledge. 
 
 Few now affirm, as explicitly as Comte, the impossibility of psycho- 
 logical knowledge derived from self-consciousness. But it underlies the 
 prevalent tendency to exclude from science all knowledge not derived 
 
 * Comte, Positive Philosophy, Martinoau's Translation, p. 383. De Morgan, Formal 
 Logic, chap. ii. pp. 26-28. Dr. Maudsley, Physiology and Pathology of Mind, chap. 
 i. p. 9, etc. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, Vol. i. pp. 68, 69. 
 
IVEBSITY 
 
 PRESENT-VTIVE OR PERCEPTIVE 
 
 from the senses and is implied in the familiar sneers at 
 rived from consciousness, as only a sham, worthless for science. I ap- 
 preciate the importance to psychology of knowing the physical and or- 
 ganic conditions of mental action and the value of the results of physio- 
 logical research. But the facts which psychology seeks to know are 
 precisely the facts known in consciousness and in no other way, which 
 cannot be identified with the molecular motions of brain and nerve, and 
 which from their very nature must forever elude the investigations of 
 physiology. 
 
 In the words of J. S. Mill in reference to this objection in his criticism 
 of Comte, " There is little need for the elaborate refutation of a fallacy 
 respecting which the wonder is that it should impose on any one." 
 And the wonder remains and grows, that it is still assumed in all the 
 thinking of the day which denies the reality of any knowledge except 
 what is derived from the senses. For it is evident that we do have 
 knowledge of our own thoughts, feelings and volitions ; that we do dis- 
 tinguish and describe generalization, deduction, induction and other in- 
 tellectual processes ; and that all physical science recognizes itself as 
 amenable to laws of thought accordance with which is essential to cor- 
 rect results. It is evident also that all this knowledge of mental pro- 
 cesses can not have been attained by attending to the representations of 
 them in memory ; for nothing can be remembered which has not been 
 previously known. It may be noticed also that, if the fact that self- 
 consciousness involves memory invalidates it as knowledge, then all sci- 
 ence is invalidated ; for in every experiment, observation and course of 
 reasoning the conclusion involves the memory of the beginning and of 
 all the steps in the process. Also, it is true that the mind can know 
 and attend to more than one object at a time. 
 
 Besides all these errors and inconsistencies involved in Comte's objec- 
 tion, the knowledge which it recognizes as real is both inconceivable and 
 unthinkable. It requires me to believe that I have knowledge of a sen- 
 sible object through perception without having any knowledge that I 
 know it, without having any knowledge of my perception or of myself 
 as perceiving. Such knowledge is as unthinkable as a circular square ; 
 and the affirmation that it exists is mere nonsense. 
 
 Misapplied analogies have helped to give currency to this fallacy. 
 It is said, " The eye cannot see itself." De Morgan compares self-con- 
 sciousness to the inspection of a watch as it runs, by a man who cannot 
 take it to pieces and is entirely ignorant of machinery ; and adds : " I 
 would not dissuade a student from metaphysical inquiry ; on the con- 
 trary I would rather promote the desire of entering on such subjects; 
 but I would warn him, when he tries to look down his own throat with 
 a candle in his hand, to take care that he does not set his own head on 
 
94 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 fire." * But the facts that an eye cannot see itself and that a man can- 
 not look down his own throat, do not disprove a man's consciousness of 
 his own thoughts, feelings and purposes. Nor is there any analogy be- 
 tween a man's looking at the movement of a machine external to him- 
 self, and his knowledge of his own thoughts, feelings and purposes. 
 
 III. By consciousness the mind has knowledge of itself in its own 
 operations. 
 
 1. It is an error held by many, that in consciousness man knows only 
 mental operations but not himself in those operations. The mind, it is 
 said, is conscious of certain impressions or actions from which it infers 
 its own existence. But this is impossible because it ascribes to thought 
 the transcendent power of knowing by inference an elemental reality 
 different in kind from every reality given in intuition. Or, it is said, 
 that the mind is conscious of certain impressions and by a reflective 
 process combines these consciousnesses into a unity which is the self. 
 But this is impossible because the idea of an indivisible one is originated 
 in the knowledge of self; and if not thus given in consciousness could 
 never be known by inference ; and because the unity attained would be 
 only a unity of impressions or states of consciousness, not an individual 
 being. In contradiction to this error, however defended, I affirm that 
 in every mental act the knowledge of self is immediate and intuitive. 
 In every impression or act the mind immediately and intuitively knows 
 itself as the subject of the impression or act. 
 
 This certainly is the decisive testimony of consciousness; the con- 
 sciousness that / think is always the consciousness, It is I icho think. 
 Even skeptics who deny the existence of a spirit or mind admit that 
 this is the testimony of consciousness. Ludwig Noire, for example, 
 remarks that though a man is one of the most complicated of beings, 
 he always thinks of himself as an individual and through all life iden- 
 tical. 
 
 The same is the decision of reason. Thought without a thinker is 
 as impossible to reason, as motion without a body which moves and a 
 force which moves it. Who is the I that is conscious of my thought 
 but not of myself the thinker ? And what does consciousness of my 
 thought mean but consciousness of myself as thinking? The knowledge 
 of self is implicit but essential in all knowledge. Knowledge without a 
 mind knowing is unthinkable ; and all words used to designate it are 
 words without meaning, nugatory symbols to express w r hat consciousness 
 never gives, what mind cannot think, and what reason knows to be im- 
 possible. 
 
 2. Another error is that we have a greater certainty of our mental 
 
 * Formal Logic, p. 27i 
 
PRESENTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 95 
 
 operations than of the existence of self. Mr. Huxley says : " Is our 
 knowledge of anything we know or feel more or less than a knowledge 
 of states of consciousness? And our whole life is made up of such 
 states. Some of these states we refer to a cause we call self; others to a 
 cause or causes which may be comprehended under the title not-self. 
 But neither of the existence of self nor of that of the not-self have we 
 nor can we by any possibility have any such unquestioned and imme- 
 diate certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we con- 
 sider to be their effects." They are " hypothetical assumptions which 
 cannot be proved or known with the highest degree of certainty which 
 is given by immediate consciousness." * But this also is contrary to 
 the clearest testimony of consciousness; I cannot be more certain of 
 my. thought than I am that it is I who think. It is also contrary to 
 reason ; for, since thought is impossible without a thinker, I cannot be 
 more certain of the former than of the latter. 
 
 3. There is a third error which belongs to the skepticism of Hume. 
 He conceives of man as simply recipient of impressions. These impres- 
 sions have no objective reality, for they are simply received in sense, 
 while no object is perceived. He argues that we cannot infer their ob- 
 jectivity from memory by the identity of the representation with a pre- 
 sented object ; for in memory we have merely impressions similar to 
 certain previous impressions ; my remembrance of a tree seen yesterday 
 is merely an impression similar to an impression received yesterday. 
 We cannot infer an objective reality by the principle of causation ; we 
 cannot infer that the shocks which we feel are caused by the outward 
 objects striking us ; for all that we know of cause and effect is antece- 
 dence and sequence in time. We are thus shut up in our own subjec- 
 tivity, and the content of the subjectivity is merely impressions of sense, 
 and phantoms of those impressions surviving in memory, and cohesion 
 of those impressions which has arisen from their repeated association. 
 Thought is merely transformed and cohering sensations. Knowledge 
 cannot break through the conglutinated encasement of subjective im- 
 pressions to any objective reality. On this theory it is impossible to 
 have knowledge not only of other persons, but also of outward objects 
 and even of ourselves. Hume says : " When I enter intimately into 
 what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or 
 other of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. 
 I never catch myself at any time without a sensation and never can ob- 
 serve anything but the sensation." Another " may, perhaps, perceive 
 something simple and continued which he calls himself, though I am 
 sure there is no such principle hi me. But setting aside some meta- 
 
 * Lay Sermons : Descartes, p. 359. 
 
96 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 physicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind 
 that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions 
 which succeed each other." * This position of Hume has found distin- 
 guished defenders at the present day. J. S. Mill says : " Mind is noth- 
 ing but a series of our sensations (to which must now be added our in- 
 ternal feelings), as they actually occur, with the addition of infinite 
 possibilities of feeling requiring for their actual realization conditions 
 which may or may not take place, but which as possibilities are always 
 in existence, and many of them present." f Prof. Clifford says in 
 plainer language : " The perceiving self is reduced to the whole aggre- 
 gate of feelings linked together and succeeding one another in a certain 
 manner." " The mind is to be regarded as a stream of feelings which 
 runs parallel to and simultaneously with a certain part of the action of 
 the body that is to say, that particular part of the action of the brain 
 in which the cerebrum and the sensory tract are excited." J So Her- 
 bert Spencer speaks of the mind as " being composed of feelings, and 
 the relations between feelings, and the aptitudes of feelings for entering 
 into relations varying with their kinds." 
 
 This error also, like the two preceding, is contrary both to conscious- 
 ness and to reason. No man is conscious of himself as a series of sensa- 
 tions. And it is contrary to reason, for it supposes sensations existing 
 without any subject, feelings with no one who feels ; it supposes these 
 sensations to be conscious of other sensations, these phenomena to ap- 
 pear with no one to whom they appear, and to be conscious of other 
 phenomena ; it supposes the sensations in a lifelong series to be severally 
 conscious of their unity with other sensations in the series and of the 
 continuity and identity of the series. H. Spencer speaks of feelings as 
 combining and decomposing, cohering, agglutinating and repelling. 
 This is an hypostasizing of sensations of a kind never surpassed by the 
 entities and quiddities of Mediaeval Scholasticism and strangely out of 
 place in this century and especially among its scientists. And while 
 hypostasizing sensations, it degrades the mind from its self-consciousness 
 and makes it an indefinite composite of its own sensations. 
 
 Each of the three errors logically issues in universal skepticism, 
 otherwise called complete Agnosticism. We see in them the contortions 
 of intelligence in its vain endeavors to swallow itself. 
 
 4. The mind is conscious of self only in its operations by which it re- 
 veals itself in its own consciousness, not "as an entity existing separate 
 from its own intelligence, sensibility and volitions. 
 
 * Treatise of Human Nature ; Book I. Part IV. Section VI. 
 f Examination of Hamilton ; Vol. I. p. 253. 
 J Clifford's Lectures and Essays, Vol. I p. 288 ; Vol. II. p. 57. 
 I Psychology, Vol. I. p. 193. 
 
PRESEXTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 97 
 
 IV. In self-consciousness man has knowledge of himself as an indi- 
 vidual and, in the remembrance of the past, of his own identity. By 
 individual I mean an indivisible being, incapable of being disparted 
 into two or more beings, and by virtue of its own indivisibility disparted 
 from all else and incapable of being blended into or lost in anything 
 else. 
 
 The mind conscious of itself in its own various and continuous opera- 
 tions is always conscious of itself as one and the same identical indi- 
 vidual. And in whatever complex wholes it finds itself united with 
 other beings it never loses itself in the complex whole, but is always 
 conscious of itself in its individuality and identity. 
 
 In sense-perception the mind is also conscious of itself as distinct 
 from the outward world, which it knows as other than itself. Thus in 
 thought the mind is capable of identifying itself as the subject of its 
 own operations, of differentiating itself from others, and then of com- 
 prehending itself in a complex whole in its relation to others. 
 
 Prof. Bowne suggests that the unity of the thinking subject is not 
 given in consciousness, but it is rather a condition of all conscious- 
 ness. * If he means that the knowledge of self is present implicitly or 
 explicitly in all knowledge, it is true. But it is not exactly accurate 
 to call it a condition of all consciousness, because it is itself an act of 
 consciousness. The professor's argument that " consciousness does not 
 tell us how we are made,'* is more witty than solid, since the question 
 is not " How am I made ? " but simply, do I know myself to be one 
 person and the same one to-day that I was yesterday and have been 
 during my life, or am I now or have I been during my life two or 
 three persons or no person at all ? Others explain our belief of our 
 own existence and individuality as a rational intuition ; but, since it is 
 the knowledge of a particular fact and not of a universal principle, it 
 does not accord with the definition of rational intuition. This know- 
 ledge is a primitive datum of consciousness, since, if it were taken 
 away, all knowledge and thought would cease. But it is nevertheless 
 a datum of consciousness, that. is, the knowledge of it is given in 
 consciousness. The only explanation of its origin, which is at once 
 reasonable and accordant with the decisive testimony of consciousness 
 itself, is that the 
 
 " Spirit that lives throughout, 
 " Vital in every part," 
 
 is in all its powers and acts conscious of itself as one identical Ego. It 
 is in this that the idea of individual being originates. Descartes (Medi- 
 tatio Tertia) says : " of the clear and distinct ideas of corporeal things, 
 
 * Studies in Theism, p. 387. 
 
98 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 some seem to be borrowed from the idea of myself, as substance, dura- 
 tion and number." M. Royer Collard says : " The Ego is the only 
 unity which is given us immediately by nature. We do not find it by 
 observation in anything else." * Lotze has made an extended exami- 
 nation of theories on this point, coming back to the conclusion that 
 the only sufficient conception is that of one indivisible soul, f 
 
 It must be noticed that we are concerned only with the question or 
 fact, whether I am conscious of myself always as one and the same. 
 No one pretends that man in self-consciousness knows intuitively the 
 answers to metaphysical questions by which men try to explain this 
 fact ; as, whether the soul is " a simple substance," or " a persistent 
 force," or " a monad," or " the ordered unity of many elements." It is 
 enough that I know myself as an individual being persisting in iden- 
 tity, the subject of various qualities and powers and of many successive 
 acts and conditions. 
 
 V. In self-consciousness man knows himself as a rational free-agent, 
 susceptible of rational motives and emotions, and thus knows himself 
 as a person. 
 
 The distinctive qualities of a personal being are reason, suscepti- 
 bility to rational motives and emotions, and free-will. In the exercise 
 of rational intuition man is conscious of himself as Reason. In his 
 interest in truth, in right, in virtue, in beauty, in worthy ends of 
 action and in God, he is conscious of himself as the subject of rational 
 motives and emotions. And in every free choice and volition he is 
 conscious of himself as free-will ; he knows his freedom of will in 
 knowing himself. Dr. Mansel says truly : " The freedom of the will is 
 so far from being, as it is generally considered, a controvertible ques- 
 tion in philosophy, that it is the fundamental postulate without which 
 all action and all speculation, philosophy in all its branches and human 
 consciousness itself would be impossible." J Thus man knows himself 
 as the subject of all the distinctive attributes of a person, and thereby 
 distinguishes himself from irrational and impersonal beings. Thus in 
 self-consciousness originates the idea ef personal being as distinguished 
 from the impersonal. We cannot have any idea of a personal being 
 except as we find the personal in our consciousness of ourselves as 
 rational and free beings. The elements of personality, without our 
 consciousness of them in ourselves, would be as inconceivable as colors 
 to a man born blind, or sounds to a man born deaf. 
 
 Our knowledge of personality is positive not negative. I do not 
 know it merely as distinguished from the not-me ; I know it positively 
 
 * Quoted Mansel Prolegomena Logica, p. 122. 
 
 f Mikrokosmus, B. ii. kap. 1. 
 
 J Metaphysics : Encyclopedia Brit. 8th Ed. Vol. xiv. p. 618. 
 
PRESENTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 99 
 
 as realized in myself. It is the impersonal which I define by the ex- 
 clusion of the personal, the not-me by the exclusion of the me. 
 
 When I have found personality in myself I can recognize it in 
 another. When I know myself as I, I can know another person as 
 Thou ; and I know him as TIwu, and not merely as not-me. 
 
 When man knows personality in himself then and only then is he 
 capable of knowing it in God. For without the knowledge of person- 
 ality in himself, the question whether a personal God exists would be 
 meaningless ; it not only could not be answered, it could not even be 
 asked ; man has no knowledge of personality except as he first has 
 known it in himself. 
 
 I have said that I have positive knowledge of personality ; I know 
 it not merely as distinguished from the not-me, but as realized in 
 myself. Therefore I cannot concur with Lotze when he says : " Com- 
 plete personality is to be found only in God ; while in all finite spirits 
 there exists only a weak imitation of personality."* Man's knowledge 
 of his own personality arises antecedent to his knowledge of person- 
 ality in God ; and he knows it in himself as a real personality. In the 
 " / am " of self-consciousness he declares his clear and certain know- 
 ledge of himself as a person conscious of reason, of susceptibility to 
 rational motives and emotions, and of free self-determination. Amid the 
 changes and evanescence of natural things he knows himself persisting 
 the same in the strength of his personality, 
 
 " One soul against the flesh of all mankind." 
 
 I 20, Kant's Distinction of the Ego and Cosmos as Pheno- 
 menon from the Noumenon or thing in itself. 
 
 Kant teaches that the real Ego is not the Ego known in self- 
 consciousness, but is the Ego existing as a Thing in itself, out of all 
 relation to our faculties and known only as a Noumenon or necessary 
 idea of Reason. He affirms that the Reason demands the existence of 
 the Ego as necessary to knowledge ; but he argues that because we are 
 conscious of ourselves only in our mental operations, all that we really 
 attain is a synthesis of those operations, which, by a paralogism or 
 necessary illusion of the Reason, we mistake for the Ego. The real 
 Ego must lie beneath all our mental operations and out of all relation 
 to our faculties as a thing in itself. This noumenal Ego I will call 
 the transcendental Ego. Kant's doctrine is the same respecting the 
 Cosmos. He says : " All our intuition is only the presentation ( Vors- 
 tettung) of phenomena ; and the things which we intuit are not in 
 themselves as our presentation of them ; " " The Ego is but the 
 
 * Mikrokosmus : Vol. iii. p. 576. 
 
100 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 consciousness of my thought ;" " We intuit ourselves only as we 
 are internally affected by ourselves, that is, we know the Self or 
 Ego only as phenomenon, not as it is in itself/' The unity or synthesis 
 of apperceptions which is mistaken for the Ego " is a Thought, not an 
 intuition." * 
 
 I propose to show that the transcendental Ego is not a noumenon 
 of the reason, but a fictitious creation for which there is no reasonable 
 ground, and the postulating of which as the only real Ego is incom- 
 patible with the reality of knowledge. The same is true of any sup- 
 posed " thing in itself" constituting the reality of material things ; but 
 for the sake of simplicity I confine the discussion to the Ego. 
 
 I. The fundamental error of Kant's system is its phenomenalism. 
 
 His " intuition of sense " which corresponds to both sense-perception 
 and self-consciousness, is not a true intuition, but only a susceptibility 
 of impressions ; all that is given in sense is impressions. Thus he 
 starts from the very position of Hume whose refutation was the object 
 which he was intending to accomplish. But these impressions are dis- 
 integrated and cannot by sense be comprehended in a unity. The 
 mind however is so constituted that it necessarily supplies the purely 
 subjective forms of space and time, by which the impressions are 
 brought into unity. But this unity is not sufficient for reflective 
 thought which expresses itself in general propositions. Then the mind, 
 which in this aspect he calls the understanding, is so constituted that 
 it necessarily supplies the purely subjective categories of substance and 
 quality, cause and dependence, and others ; and the categorical judg- 
 ments, such as mathematical axioms, the causal judgment, and others. 
 Thus the understanding attains to unities which transcend sense. Yet 
 the mind cannot stop with these ; knowing its impressions, not only in 
 the unities of space and time, but also in the unities of substance and 
 cause and other categories, it traces their relations and attains the 
 highest unities, The Ego, The World and God. The mind in this action 
 Kant calls Reason, and these three unities he calls the ideas of Reason. 
 
 In all this Kant differs from Hume, though starting with him in phe- 
 nomenalism. Hume recognizes no intellectual faculty beyond sense ; 
 man has no power to pierce the impressions of sense and to know any- 
 thing beyond. Kant departs from Hume and overthrows his skepticism 
 by demonstrating that the mind has supersensual powers, that these are 
 essential to the possibility of knowledge, and that what the mind con- 
 tributes in its own intelligence is as real as what is contributed by sense. 
 This is a great service which Kant has rendered to philosophy. 
 
 But because he has only impressions of sense with which to start, 
 
 * Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental ^Esthetic, $9. Transcendental Ana- 
 lytic, B. i. H 12-15, 20, 21. Transcendental Dialectic, B. ii. chap. 1. 
 
PRESENTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 1Q1 
 
 the mind in its intellectual processes has nothing but impressions to 
 bring into its unities of thought. Its highest attainments, the three 
 ideas of reason, are demanded indeed by reason and essential to solve 
 its problems and to complete the processes of thought, but remain 
 mere ideas void of content and without objective reality. Therefore 
 the utmost which Kant attains is that knowledge is valid for all men in 
 the sense that all men must think so ; and is objectively real so far, and 
 only so far as the experience of sense extends. Knowledge can never 
 pass beyond the subjective impressions; the Ego of consciousness is a 
 mere synthesis of apperceptions, and the real Ego is a thing in itself 
 out of all relation to our faculties. 
 
 If we correct the phenomenalism which vitiates his system at the 
 start, if we substitute a real intuition of self and of the outward object 
 instead of the mere susceptibility of impression which he calls sense, if, 
 instead of splitting the mind in three and setting up an unreal antithesis 
 of the regulative principles of thought among themselves, we recognize 
 the one indivisible mind as endowed with the power of rational intuition, 
 then Kant's system beginning with the knowledge of being, would go on 
 in the knowledge of being till it culminated in the knowledge of God, 
 the absolute being ; then it would demonstrate that the power of man, 
 according to the constituent elements of his reason, to know the univer- 
 sal principles and laws which regulate all thought and action is essential 
 to the possibility of knowledge ; then it would establish the fact that 
 particular reality is known as such by presentative intuition, and known 
 in its universal relations by rational intuition; then it would demon- 
 strate that every particular being, having relations to the universal 
 Reason, must have its ultimate ground and law in the universal and 
 absolute Reason. Corrected as I have suggested, the system of Kant 
 becomes a philosophical basis of Theism, demonstrating that not merely 
 the idea, but the existence of God is the necessary demand of Reason, 
 without which human Reason can never solve its necessary problems 
 and sinks either into vacuity or hopeless contradiction, and human 
 knowledge is unreal and impossible. 
 
 This correction Kant does not make. His system therefore stands as 
 another exemplification of the fact that, if primitive knowledge is as- 
 sumed to be of impressions only, the knowledge of being can never be 
 attained and complete agnosticism is the necessary and only issue. Phe- 
 nomenalism is a monster which gives birth to various theories of know- 
 ledge and devours them all as soon as they are born. 
 
 Kant differs from Hume in recognizing, not merely super-sensible 
 powers, but also the existence of the " thing in itself." We know that 
 this thing in itself is, though we do not know what it is. Thus we have 
 real knowledge ; the phenomena themselves are real as requiring in our 
 
102 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 intellectual apprehension of them the assumption of a thing in itself, 
 unlike the phenomena, and of which we can know only that it is. Thus 
 what is known in human knowledge shows itself as a small island in the 
 ocean of unknowable reality. 
 
 But on account of the phenomenalism which vitiates his system at the 
 root, this theory of the thing in itself does not redeem his theory from 
 agnosticism. 
 
 II. Tkis theory involves the error that it presents the noumenon or 
 the necessary idea of reason and the phenomenon as antithetic and reci- 
 procally exclusive ; all that is known through sense-perception, self-con- 
 sciousness, rational intuition or reflective thought is phenomenon, not 
 the true reality. Of the true reality we only know that it is, not what 
 it is. The reason is not here recognized as revealing the rational ground, 
 the rational principles, laws, ideals and ends of objects known in sense- 
 perception, self-consciousness- and reflective thought, and thus in har- 
 mony with and supplementing those faculties. The line of demarcation 
 separates all that is known by the human faculties, on the one hand, as 
 phenomenon, from the thing in itself out of all relation to our faculties, 
 on the other hand, as noumenon. The two spheres are antithetic and 
 reciprocally exclusive. Reason, therefore, giving only these noumena, 
 effects nothing towards lifting the phenomenalism of this theory into 
 real knowledge. So far as all that is known through human faculties is 
 concerned, the phenomenalism remains complete; and to this extent 
 the most thorough-going phenomenalism is involved in the doctrine of 
 the thing in itself. 
 
 On the other hand, the thing in itself, being out of all relation to our 
 faculties, is unknowable. Thus the final utterance of reason is that man 
 knows that he is incapable of knowledge. 
 
 In this theory the faculties of presentative intuition and reflective 
 thought on the one hand and of Reason on the other are set forth as 
 giving results antithetic and reciprocally exclusive, and no way is open 
 for bringing them into harmony as complementary and interdependent 
 powers. Hence Kant's philosophy has issued historically in two anti- 
 thetic systems of thought, each partial and erroneous. On the one 
 hand, it issued in those wonderful creations of transcendental and false 
 rationalism, which from it " rose like an exhalation," 
 
 " Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought 
 In shadowy thoroughfares of thought." 
 
 On the other hand it issued in systems of phenomenalism ; and at this 
 day Kant is habitually appealed to by skeptics as having demonstrated 
 beyond further controversy that the reason ultimately breaks down in 
 hopeless self-contradiction and proves itself incompetent, and that 
 therefore man's knowledge is limited to the phenomena of sense. 
 
PRESENT ATI VE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 103 
 
 Kant himself did not intend that his theory of knowledge should be 
 confounded with phenomenalism. It was the skepticism of Hume 
 which moved him to write the Criticism of the powers of the human 
 mind in order to ascertain the real conditions and scope of human 
 knowledge. In it he has established principles subversive of phe- 
 nomenalism. In the very paragraph from which one of the citations 
 at the beginning of this discussion was taken, he says : " My own ex- 
 istence is certainly not mere phenomenon, much less mere illusion." 
 And in another volume he says: "When I think, I am conscious that 
 my Ego thinks in me and not some other being. I conclude therefore 
 that this thinking in me does not inhere in another thing outside of me, 
 but in myself; consequently that I am a substance, that is, that I exist 
 by myself without being a predicate of another being." * And it is 
 evident that if, instead of regarding the presentative intuition as giving 
 only phenomena and the Reason as merely giving empty ideas of the 
 Ego, the Cosmos and God as noumena or things in themselves to which 
 consciousness can give no content, he had recognized the principles that 
 knowledge is the intellectual equivalent of reality, that essential reality 
 is known to us first in some particular concrete object, that reason is the 
 power of interpreting and vindicating particular realities in the light of 
 universal principles, laws, ideals and worth, he would have given the 
 world a system combining the profoundest philosophy with the purest 
 theism, and demonstrating the possibility of establishing theism on phil- 
 osophical grounds. 
 
 III. In regarding the Ego of consciousness as merely phenomenal 
 and on this ground postulating an Ego existing as a thing in itself as a 
 necessary idea of reason, Kant misinterprets and contradicts conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 As far back as memory extends I know myself as the one indivisible 
 and identical subject of various qualities and of a continuous succession 
 of actions. I do not know myself as a phenomenon transient always in 
 the succession of -time; on the contrary, it is only as I know myself as 
 persisting through all changes in my individuality and identity, that 
 I have knowledge of the succession of events ; I do not float in the 
 succession of events, but stand the one same subject of them. I do not 
 know myself as a thought or act but as the thinker or the actor ; not as 
 mere qualities but as the subject of many qualities. The consciousness 
 of self is knowledge of the agent in the action, of the substance in its 
 properties, of the being in its manifestations. It reaches quite to the 
 center of the idea of being and quite to its surface in its manifestations. 
 This power, knowing itself in consciousness as rational, sensitive, effi- 
 
 * Vorlesungen iiber die philos. Religionslehre ; Leipzig Ed. 1817: p. 80, quoted 
 Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christenthums, s. 58. 
 
104 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 cient, free, is the Ego. Consciousness affirms it and gives no hint of any 
 other. If consciousness is false in this testimony it is false in all ; if I 
 do not know my own existence I do not know anything. 
 
 Therefore Kant's conception of the Ego of consciousness as merely a 
 product of thought in the synthesis of many successive apperceptions in 
 the unity of a series is a misinterpretation and contradiction of the en- 
 tire testimony of consciousness. And it is only in this misinterpretation 
 that he finds any necessity for postulating the transcendental Ego. The 
 transcendental Ego is a fiction created to meet an imaginary necessity 
 founded on a mistake. So soon as we apprehend the Ego of conscious- 
 ness in its true significance, no necessity of reason requires the postula- 
 ting of any other ; on the contrary reason forbids it as involving the 
 cessation of intelligence. Take away from intelligence the Ego of con- 
 sciousness, and nothing is left; take from the "I think" or "I exist" 
 the J, and no thought and no consciousness of existence remains. 
 
 IV. The transcendental Ego is not a necessary idea of reason ; it is 
 not a noumenon in any true sense ; reason makes no demand for it. 
 
 1. The postulating of a transcendental Ego or thing in itself is really 
 identical with the puerile attempt to conceive of a substance or subject 
 without qualities, as if, to use Coleridge's illustration, the substance were 
 a pin-cushion and the qualities the pins ; and as if the qualities might 
 be pulled out like pins and the substance remain. But the power which 
 manifests itself in qualities and acts is of the essence of the subject or 
 substance manifested. A substance without qualities is unthinkable 
 and a theory which implies it is unreasonable and foolish. The know- 
 ledge of pure substance without qualities is impossible because no such 
 substance exists. 
 
 In apprehending the Ego in thought the mind must apprehend it in 
 its two real aspects, as subject and attribute, or substance and quality ; 
 " I think," " I exist." But we do not predicate a mere phenomenon 
 of an unthinkable substance ; for if so, the conscious being itself would 
 be a phenomenal non-being, and the subject which is postulated as its 
 reality would be a nugatory symbol, a zero, signifying only the cessa- 
 tion of intelligence. The category of substance or subject and quality 
 is only our way of apprehending the one known Ego in its two real 
 aspects, as the individual being persisting' in identity, as the subject of 
 varied qualities and successive actions. 
 
 2. It is contrary to reason to postulate as the real Ego that which is 
 unknown, and much more that which is known to be essentially dif- 
 ferent from the Ego of consciousness. Reason can postulate the 
 existence of a being beyond our observation only to account for 
 observed realities. The being postulated must possess all the poten- 
 cies which account for the observed phenomena. If I postulate a 
 
PRESENTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 1Q5 
 
 substance of qualities, it must be a substance having potencies ade- 
 quate to manifest itself in these qualities. If I postulate a cause 
 for an observed effect, the cause must be endowed with the very 
 energies which produce the effect. If I postulate a transcendental 
 Ego as the real being appearing in the Ego of consciousness, it 
 must be the continuously identical person in which are active the 
 potencies appearing in the Ego of consciousness, such as Reason, sensi- 
 bility, free-will. If so, this postulated Ego is known to be a rational, 
 conscious and free person ; and thus is identical with the Ego of con- 
 sciousness and there is no legitimate reason for postulating it. If, 
 on the contrary, I say that this Ego is wholly unknowable, then all 
 reason for postulating it ceases; for a being wholly unknowable can- 
 not, be the being that manifests or reveals itself in the Ego of con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Kant goes farther than merely to say the transcendental Ego is 
 unknown. He positively affirms that it is not the same with the Ego 
 of consciousness. Then we must affirm that the real Ego is not a 
 person endowed with reason and free-will and capable of intelligence ; 
 for these are precisely the endowments of the Ego of consciousness. 
 For the same reason we must affirm that it is not a being in any sense 
 which has any meaning to a human mind. 
 
 3. The doctrine of the transcendental Ego assumes that the mind 
 can create in thought an element of reality never given in intuition ; 
 this we have already seen to be impossible. The supposition is that 
 consciousness does not give the knowledge of real being, but only of 
 phenomena. How then is the idea of being obtained ? It cannot be 
 created by the mind in thought ; it cannot be given in rational intui- 
 tion. The existence of any such rational intuition Kant himself 
 denies. Rational intuition gives the knowledge of universal prin- 
 ciples, not of particular beings and facts. The truths which it gives 
 enables us to infer the existence and qualities of beings never ob- 
 served ; but no intelligent philosopher is so rash as to affirm a 
 transcendent power of rational intuition competent to originate the 
 knowledge or idea of being. Therefore this theory of the thing in 
 itself leaves no way of accounting for the existence in the mind of the 
 idea of real being, which it so freely postulates. 
 
 So then it is Kant's own private understanding which falls into 
 paralogisms and antinomies, and not the reason of mankind. 
 
 V. The postulating of the transcendental Ego discredits reason by 
 making its necessary ideas fictitious, that is, ideas of no reality. 
 
 Kant teaches that there are three necessary ideas of Reason, the Ego, 
 the Cosmos and God. These ideas the pure or speculative Reason must 
 have; they are indispensable to complete the necessary processes of 
 
106 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 human thought and to solve the necessary and ultimate problems of 
 Reason. But Kant also insists that Reason knows these, its own 
 necessary ideas, to be fictions corresponding to no known reality. 
 In the idea of the Ego reason necessarily falls into a paralogism or 
 illusion, mistaking the phenomenal and unreal Ego of consciousness 
 for the true and real Ego. In developing the idea of the Cosmos 
 reason necessarily falls into irreconcilable antinomies and contradic- 
 tions. And the idea of God is .an empty idea without content of 
 reality. Thus in every one of its necessary ideas, reason finds itself 
 false and untrustworthy. And all this results from the false anti- 
 thesis of presentative and rational intuition, of phenomenon and 
 noumenon in neither of which is real knowledge possible. 
 
 VI. The postulating of the transcendental Ego contradicts reason 
 and involves absurdity. 
 
 It involves the absurdity inherent in all skepticism which denies the 
 possibility of knowledge because it is relative to the faculties of the 
 subject knowing, the absurdity that knowledge is impossible because 
 there is a mind that knoAvs. The postulating of a thing in itself out of 
 relation to our faculties, as the only real being, always rests upon this 
 flagrant absurdity. 
 
 It further involves the absurdity of presupposing a knowledge of the 
 unknowable as the condition of knowing that knowledge through our 
 own faculties is unreal. It is impossible to criticise my own conscious 
 knowledge as not the knowledge of reality, unless I first have know- 
 ledge of the reality with which to compare my own knowledge. But 
 according to the theory under consideration, the thing in itself is utterly 
 unknowable. Besides, if we could know the thing in itself, this would 
 be conscious knowledge through our own faculties and therefore ac- 
 cording to the theory not a knowledge of reality. 
 
 The theory, also, involves the absurdity that a man possesses a faculty 
 above his own reason by which he criticises his own reason and pro- 
 nounces its necessary ideas unreal. A brute is irrational. For that 
 very reason it must be utterly unconscious and ignorant of its irration- 
 ality. It would be necessary for it to have reason in order to rise above 
 the powers which it now has and to know them as not reason. Reason 
 is the highest power in man. Because it is the highest it can criticise 
 the processes and results of presentative intuition, can correct the illu- 
 sions of sense, can infer the unknown from the known, can interpret 
 and vindicate to the reason all that is given in sense-perception and 
 self-consciousness. But it cannot transcend and criticise itself; it can- 
 not criticise its own necessary ideas by comparing them with the pos- 
 sible intelligence of an unknown and unknowable reason other than 
 itself; it cannot know itself to be irrational. And precisely on this 
 
PRESENTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 1Q7 
 
 absurdity the theory, that the thing in itself out of all relation to our 
 faculties is the true reality, must rest. If I am told that I cannot know 
 that two straight lines cannot inclose a space, or that every beginning 
 or change of existence must have a cause, because there may be an 
 intelligent being otherwise constituted who necessarily believes the 
 contrary, I should know, to be sure, that one of us is a fool or insane, 
 but I should know that that one is not I. 
 
 Human reason knows itself to be limited, but it cannot know itself 
 to be irrational. It may know reason other than itself; it may know 
 reason above itself, supreme and absolute. It must know this, because 
 it is of its essence to know principles that are universally true, and 
 regulative of all thought and energy. But that other reason is still 
 known as reason like itself; that supreme reason is still known as 
 reason in which the universal principles known to the reason of the 
 man and of which the universe is the exponent and expression, are 
 eternal. 
 
 When reason criticises itself, it can only criticise by its own princi- 
 ples. It can discover itself to be false only by discovering that its own 
 necessary principles are contradictory to each other. But if this dis- 
 covery were made it would not reveal a reason higher than our own or 
 a reality transcending our intelligence, but rather it would reveal the 
 fact that unreason is universal and knowledge impossible. For the 
 only idea we can have of reason, free-will or any attribute of personality 
 is that which we obtain from our knowledge of those attributes in our- 
 selves. And if what we know as reason is proved by its self-contradic- 
 tion to be unreason, then the very idea of reason perishes. It is a word 
 conveying no meaning to our minds ; it is utterly inconceivable and 
 unthinkable. 
 
 It is evident, now, that the theory that knowledge is impossible 
 because it is relative to our faculties involves the belief that the exist- 
 ence of an intelligent being is an absurdity ; it would be obliged to 
 know without any rational faculty of knowing. 
 
 VII. The theory of the thing in itself issues in complete agnosticism. 
 It begins with phenomenalism ; it discredits and contradicts conscious- 
 ness ; it gives as noumenon a fiction which is not a necessary idea of 
 reason and is not demanded by reason ; it discredits and contradicts 
 reason and involves absurdity. Professing to give the knowledge of 
 reality in its most profound significance it issues in universal skepticism 
 and denies the possibility of knowledge. 
 
 In reference to the question " whether everything is not, in the last 
 analysis, different from what we believe we know it to be," Prof. Lotze 
 says, " there is no scientific solution." This is true in the sense that we 
 cannot observe the thing in itself and, by comparison of what we believe 
 
108 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 that we know with it, answer the question by the empirical method. 
 For the same reason it is impossible for the skepticism expressed in the 
 question to be established by empirical science. Prof. Lotze adds : 
 " To this purposeless skepticism mankind -has continually turned its 
 back. The human reason has always had the living self-assurance that, 
 while it cannot attain to all truth, it yet possesses in that which is 
 necessary to its thought, not merely necessary belief, but truth likewise. 
 It has always believed in such a rationality of the world as that thought 
 and reality correspond to one another, and that the former enjoys a 
 limited and not misleading access to the latter." * The considerations 
 which I have adduced demonstrate that we may go farther than this. 
 It is true, not only that the human reason always has had this self- 
 assurance and that the skepticism expressed in the question can have 
 no scientific basis, but also that reason positively knows that this skep- 
 ticism contradicts reason, is absurd in itself and incompatible with the 
 possibility of knowledge. So Dr. Dorner says : " Were we to accept 
 Kant's doubt as to the reality of the Ego of consciousness, self-con- 
 sciousness itself would crumble to pieces and all certainty about self or 
 anything else would fall away." f 
 
 The agnostic issue of this theory of knowledge is humorously ex- 
 pressed by the elder Scaliger ; " We have no knowledge of substances 
 but only of their accidents. Who can define substance except in the 
 miserable words, something subsisting f Evidently our knowledge is but 
 a shadow in the sunshine. As when the stork played his practical joke 
 on the fox, the fox could only lick the outside of the bottle, but could 
 not touch the soup it contained, so we in perception know only the ex- 
 ternal properties, not the interior reality." | Thus in the irrepressible 
 desire of knowledge implanted in us by the creator which impels us to 
 seek it without rest, we find ourselves invited to a Barmecide feast at 
 which we sit at a table sumptuously spread with dishes and ceremoni- 
 ously go through all the courses of a stately repast, but get no food ; and 
 at which we gladly sit through the many courses in our eager pleasure 
 at seeing the covers successively removed, revealing the emptiness of the 
 dishes beneath them. This miserable abortion of philosophy is inevita- 
 ble so long as philosophy disregards the real being that we know, and 
 seeks for the reality of being in something deeper and more real than 
 being itself. It is like the folly of the man who is digging to find the 
 foundation of the earth and declares that the earth will never be stable 
 till he discovers the tortoise on which it stands. Says F. H. Jacobi : 
 " All our philosophizing is a striving to get behind the forms of the 
 
 * Philosophy in the last forty years; Contemporary Review, January, 1880. 
 
 f Christliche Glaubenslehre, g 7 : 2. 
 
 J De Subtilitate, Ex. CCCVIL I 21 ; quoted Hamilton's Metaphysics, Lect. 8. 
 
PRESENTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. 1Q9 
 
 thing to the thing in itself; but how can we do this, since we must then 
 get behind ourselves, behind the entire nature of things, behind their 
 origin." * The history of philosophy has demonstrated over and over 
 that every theory that knowledge begins as the knowledge of pheno- 
 mena only, must issue in agnosticism, and that knowledge can be real 
 only if it begins in the knowledge of being in the perceptive intuition 
 of self and of outward things. And that this knowledge in its begin- 
 ning is the knowledge of being we believe, not merely because it is 
 necessary to the reality of knowledge, although that is a sufficient 
 ground of belief, but because this belief is demanded and the contrary 
 invalidated alike by consciousness, common sense and reason. Aristotle 
 says : " The mind knows itself in the apprehension of the object known ; 
 for the mind becomes known to itself in perceiving and knowing." " It 
 is itself known as an object of knowledge." f Augustine says : " The 
 
 mind knows itself But nothing is rightly said to be while its 
 
 substance is not known. Therefore when the mind knows itself, it 
 knows its own substance." J Even Hegel, suggested the possibility that 
 if we could penetrate behind the scene which is open before us, we 
 should find nothing there. I would suggest as a more correct illustra- 
 tion, that if a person looking through a window mistakes the landscape 
 which he sees for a picture painted on the glass, if the window is opened 
 that he may see the reality, he will find, not " nothing," but just what 
 he was seeing before. By advancing the eye beyond the window a 
 wider view may be obtained, but including not obliterating the first seen 
 landscape. Of the philosophers who fall into agnosticism through this 
 delusion I may say, in the words of Leibnitz ; " They seek for that 
 which they know, and know not that which they seek." 
 
 I 21. The Relativity of Knowledge. 
 
 The knowledge of ourselves and our environment in presentative 
 intuition precludes all objection to the reality of knowledge on the 
 ground of its relativity. 
 
 I. In considering this objection it is necessary in the outset to fix the 
 meaning of the phrase " relativity of knowledge." It is continually 
 assumed by skeptics that all human knowledge is relative and there- 
 fore unreal ; but the phrase is used with little discrimination in different 
 meanings, and the same writer often fluctuates in seeming unconscious- 
 ness from one to another. 
 
 The objection may be presented in the form that knowledge is 
 
 * Ueber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus &c. Werke, Vol. III. pp. 176, 177. 
 f Metaph. XII. 7. De Anima III. 4. 
 I De Trinitate, Eook X. 16. 
 
HO THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 unreal because it is knowledge only of relations. Mr. Murphy in his 
 " Scientific Bases of Faith," * states it in this form. But in this form 
 it is meaningless, because a relation has no reality except as a relation 
 between one object and another. Knowledge of a relation must be 
 knowledge of the objects related. To speak of knoAving a relation only, 
 is to use w^ords without meaning. 
 
 The objection may be presented in the form that w r e have knowledge 
 only of beings in relation. But this affirms the knowledge of beings ; 
 and we know them in relation simply because they are in relation. 
 We know not only the beings but also their relations. The objection 
 would be like this : We know a husband only as related to his wife, and 
 a wife only as related to her husband ; therefore our knowledge of hus- 
 band and wife is unreal ; no real husband and wife exists ; nothing 
 exists but the subjective idea of the relation denoted by the word mar- 
 riage. But it is obvious that marriage is without meaning except as 
 we think of a man and a woman united in that relation. The man 
 does not cease to be a man when he becomes a husband, nor the w r oman 
 cease to be a woman when she becomes a wife. We know the two 
 beings and the relation which they sustain to each other. This exem- 
 plifies the impotence of the objection in this form. A being does not 
 cease to exist when it comes into relation with another being. 
 
 The objection reappears in a third form : Knowledge is relative to 
 the faculties of the individual knowing. The object appears so to him ; 
 but because the appearance is given him through his own faculties, he 
 has no guaranty that the object is in itself or appears to others the same 
 as it appears to him. Lord Bacon compares the human faculties to a 
 corrugated mirror in which objects are seen, not as they are, but dis- 
 torted. Others compare the mind to a vase which gives its own shape 
 to the water poured into it. Others say that we know through our 
 faculties as \ve see through a kaleidoscope, in which bits of colored glass 
 are seen as regular and beautiful figures in innumerable forms. That 
 light, heat, sound and the so-called 'secondary properties of matter are 
 not in our sensation what they are in the outward body has long been 
 familiar. Successive generations of children have puzzled themselves 
 over the teaching that there is no heat in fire. Prof. Helmholz, in his 
 Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, has discussed at length the 
 theory of vision, with the apparent conclusion that it points inevitably 
 to unlimited skepticism. J. S. Mill extends the argument to the pri- 
 mary properties of matter. The resistance of solid matter, its attraction 
 and repulsion are only an anthropomorphic transference to the outward 
 body of our own resistance, our own pull and push. Many insist that 
 
 *Chap. viii. p. 125. 
 
PRESEXTATIVE OR PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. HI 
 
 while rational intuitions are indeed regulative of our own thinking, it is 
 only by an illusion that we conceive of them as regulative of aught be- 
 yond our own minds. ^Noire announces the somewhat amusing propo- 
 sition that man's knowledge of himself in his own mental acts as a per- 
 sonal being is wholly anthropomorphic and illusive.* The same theory 
 of the illusiveness of knowledge on account of its relativity is the basis 
 of Kant's doctrine of the " thing in itself," by which, however, he does 
 not save the reality of knowledge. 
 
 II. To the objection in this third form I make the following an- 
 swers. 
 
 1. It has been already completely answered by showing that in pre- 
 sentative intuition man has knowledge of himself and of outward things, 
 and in the refutation of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. I will add 
 the following thoughts. 
 
 2. The statement of the objection always implies a knowledge of true 
 reality and a power of comparing it with our own impressions. 
 
 Even in the objector's comparisons the knowledge of the true reality 
 is implied. If the intellectual faculties are a kaleidoscope, what is it 
 that looks through it and by what power does this observer discriminate 
 between the illusions of the reflected light and the bits of glass which 
 are the true reality ? If these faculties are a mirror, what is it that sees 
 itself in the mirror and by what power does the seer know r that the mir- 
 ror is corrugated and untrustworthy ? So in our knowledge of the sensa- 
 tions of seeing and hearing, we discriminate the sensations from the out- 
 ward reality to which they correspond, we ascertain that the outward 
 reality which occasions sound consists of undulations of air and that 
 which occasions sight consists of vibrations of an aether ; we ascertain 
 that shrill sounds correspond to rapid vibrations and grave sounds to 
 slow vibrations ; that harmonious sounds represent undulations of defi- 
 nite order while discords represent clashing waves ; that colors represent 
 vibrations of different rapidity; that the rapidity of the vibrations is 
 estimated and expressed in numbers, and thus the eye presents differ- 
 ences in motion so minute that, though thinkable when expressed in 
 figures, they are inconceivable in imagination. We also ascertain that 
 the sensations are realities of consciousness; that they cannot be re- 
 solved into modes of motion nor explained by the correlation of forces ; 
 that though correspondent with the undulations and vibrations they 
 cannot be identified with them in thought but remain, distinct in kind, 
 realities of consciousness. Thus the science of vision and hearing im- 
 plies at every step knowledge of true reality and the power of comparing 
 it with our sensations. 
 
 * Die welt als Entwickelung des Geistes ; pp. 55, 61. 
 
112 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 The same is true of all phenomenalism. It is said, " We know only 
 phenomena." But what is it that knows the phenomenon and discrim- 
 inates it from the true reality ? Can one phenomenon know another, 
 and discriminate the other from itself and both from true reality? 
 Prof. John Fiske in his Cosmic Philosophy affirms that what we call 
 reality is the inevitable persistence of a fact of consciousness ; that when 
 the unknown objective order of things produces in us a subjective order 
 of conceptions which persists in spite of every effort to change it, the 
 subjective order is in every respect as real to us as the objective order 
 would be if we could know it. He thinks that this is all the assurance 
 which we need as a warrant for science and a rebutting of skepticism ; 
 and that we lose nothing in being unable to transcend the limits within 
 which alone knowledge is possible. But his whole argument assumes a 
 knowledge of the unknown objective order, of the fact that it produces 
 or at least always corresponds with the subjective order, that the human 
 mind has a power transcending the two orders, whereby it compares 
 them and concludes that it has true scientific knowledge, whereby also 
 it is able to judge that intellectual power transcending this would give 
 us no more real knowledge. 
 
 In attempting to maintain the general theory of the relativity of all 
 knowledge, the knowledge of true reality is assumed, and even the 
 knowledge of the Absolute is implied as the ultimate datum of the rea- 
 soning. This Mr. Spencer claihis to have proved in his " First Princi- 
 ples ; " he also says, " The existence of a non-relative is unavoidably 
 asserted in every chain of reasoning by which relativity is proved." * 
 
 3. The objection involves self-contradiction and absurdity. 
 
 It is the first law of thought that knowledge implies a subject know- 
 ing, an object known, and the knowledge as a relation between them. 
 The objection is that because this is so, the so-called knowledge is not 
 knowledge but an illusion. 
 
 In asserting that knowledge is unreal because it is relative to the 
 faculties of the mind knowing, the objection asserts the absurdity that 
 knowledge is impossible because there is a mind that knows. And it is 
 equally valid against any mind, since any mind which has knowledge 
 must have it through its own power of knowing. This is simply saying 
 that an intelligent being is unthinkable ; that the idea of an intelligent 
 being involves absurdity in its very essence. 
 
 On the other hand it implies that no reality exists which is knowable 
 or thinkable. Whatever can be conceived, or thought, or known by a 
 mind is thereby proved not to be reality. Whereas in fact reality can- 
 not be conceived or thought of, except as cognizable by some mind. 
 
 * Psychology, Vol. I., p. 209. 
 
PRESENT ATIVE OB PERCEPTIVE INTUITION. H3 
 
 The objector supposes that we think of reality which is unthinkable and 
 compare it with phenomena which are thinkable. 
 
 The objection further assumes that it is essential to the reality of a 
 person's knowledge that he prove that things appear to all other per- 
 sons, God, angels and men, precisely as they do to himself. But this 
 is impossible, for it requires that the person not only have knowledge 
 within his own consciousness, but also that he gather the consciousness 
 of all other beings into his own. Besides, should the consciousness of 
 others be revealed to this person, he could know it only through his 
 own faculties, and therefore would attain only illusion, not real know- 
 ledge ; nor would any communication with other men be possible. 
 
 4. It is evident, then, that this theory of the relativity of know- 
 ledge issues in complete agnosticism. There would be no knowledge of 
 the secondary properties of matter ; and equally there would be no 
 knowledge of its primary properties, nor of motion, nor of the correla- 
 tion of forces, nor of one's own existence, nor of any reality whatever. 
 
 "Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, 
 And universal darkness buries all." 
 
 All, then, that the objection can establish is, that our knowledge, 
 because our minds are finite, is limited, not that it is unreal. Other 
 beings no doubt know objects of which we at present have no concep- 
 tion ; and Voltaire's Micromegas from the planet Jupiter with his 
 multitudinous senses is still a possible conception ; and the existence of 
 such a being would be no objection against the reality of human know- 
 ledge. 
 
 I come back, therefore, to the principles established in Chapter II. 
 Knowledge is known in its own self-evidence. Its reality does not 
 depend on proof by argument and can never be invalidated by ob- 
 jections. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHAT IS KNOWN THEOUGH RATIONAL INTUITION 
 
 22. Universal Principles, not Particular Realities. 
 
 IN the intuition of reason we have immediate and self-evident know- 
 ledge of universal and necessary principles. Our consciousness is not 
 merely that they are true, but that they must be true. Thought cannot 
 transcend them but must be regulated by them. When apprehended 
 in reflection they present themselves as judgments and may be formu- 
 lated in propositions. The knowledge of particular realities is given in 
 sense-perception and self-consciousness. Rational intuition does not 
 give knowledge of these realities, but only of principles always and 
 everywhere true of these realities. It does not give the knowledge 
 of being, but only principles true of all beings ; for example, every 
 quality is the quality of some being. It does not give the knowledge 
 of power and cause, but it gives the principle that every beginning or 
 change of existence must be the effect of a causa. In the idea of abso- 
 lute being, rational intuition does not give the knowledge of being, for 
 that we know in knowing ourselves ; but it gives us the principle that 
 uncaused, absolute being must exist. It does not give the knowledge of 
 extension in its three dimensions, but it gives the axioms of geometry 
 and the metaphysical principles that place, considered abstractly 
 from the body occupying it, must be continuous, immovable and un- 
 limited. It does not give the knowledge of personal being, but gives 
 us principles true of all persons ; the principles of ethics, as that a 
 rational being ought to obey reason ; the principles of logic, as the 
 principle of non-contradiction, " The same thing cannot be and not be 
 at the same time," which Aristotle says is the most fundamental of all 
 first principles. * Thus all rational intuitions are intuitive judgments 
 which may be formulated in propositions. Lotze calls them Grund- 
 sdtze, fundamental maxims or principles, and thus distinguishes them 
 from Grundbegriffe, fundamental ideas. These principles are the un- 
 changing and universal forms in which Reason recognizes the particular 
 realities known in sense-perception and self-consciousness. Because it 
 
 * Metaphysics, III. 3. Haa&v 
 
 114 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. H5 
 
 is reason it cannot recognize them otherwise than in the unchanging 
 light of reason and as related to and illuminated by its own truths, 
 laws, ideals and ends. John Smith describes the rational intuition as 
 " a naked intuition of eternal truth which never rises nor sets, but 
 always stands still in its vertical and fills the whole horizon of the soul 
 with a mild and gentle light."* 
 
 $23. Rise and Development in Consciousness. 
 
 I. Man is so constituted that, as his reason is developed in experi- 
 ence he finds himself under the necessity of thinking according to 
 these principles and incapable of thinking the contrary. An apple-seed 
 has constituent elements which determine from within itself the line of 
 its development, so that, if it grows, it will grow into an apple-tree bear- 
 ing blossoms and apples. So in the mind of man these principles lie as 
 constituent elements which from within the mind itself determine its 
 development as a reason, and are in the developed reason the norms or 
 standards of all thought. Hence they have been fitly named by Dugald 
 Stewart, " constituent elements of reason," and by Hamilton, " primary 
 elements of reason." So Lotze says, they " are at bottom only the 
 peculiar constitution of the reason itself expressed in the form of funda- 
 mental laws which regulate its action." f They are not, therefore, ideas 
 and judgments of which we are conscious before all experience, but 
 simply constitutional norms of thought which are developed in experi- 
 ence into standards of rational judgment by which it is possible to 
 distinguish the true from the false and without which the very idea of 
 a rational being is impossible. The mind brings nothing with it but its 
 own constitution, but that is a constitution endowed with the elements 
 of rationality 
 
 II. A first principle of reason appears in consciousness only on 
 occasion of some experienca requiring its application. I must observe 
 motion or change before I inquire what is its cause. But, as Coleridge 
 says, " Though these principles are first revealed to us by experience, 
 they must yet have pre-existed in order to make experience itself pos- 
 sible, even as the eye must exist previously to any particular act of 
 seeing, though by sight alone can we know that we have eyes." It is 
 only in experience that we become aware of those principles of reason 
 which condition all experience. 
 
 III. These principles regulate thinking and action before they are 
 recognized or enunciated in reflective thought. A savage, if asked 
 whether two straight lines can inclose a space, or whether there can be 
 beginning or change of existence without a cause, may declare his total 
 
 * Select Discourses, 2d Ed. Cambridge, 1673, pp. 91, 92. 
 f Mikroskosmus, Vol. III. B. IX. chap. iv. pp. 547, 548. 
 
116 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ignorance on the subject. Yet the same savage will not attempt to in- 
 close a piece of ground for a hut with two straight poles, and if shot 
 with an arrow will know that some one shot it. In this respect rational 
 intuition is analogous to presentative intuition. Children and savages 
 smell, taste, hear, see and feel and are practically guided by their per- 
 ceptions before they attain in reflection the abstract idea of sensation 
 or attempt to define and formulate it. They know their own existence 
 before they attain the idea of the Ego. And always primitive unelab- 
 orated knowledge precedes knowledge elaborated in thought. Lotze 
 illustrates the rational intuition latent in the constitution by comparing 
 it to the spark in the flint. " As little as the spark shines as a spark in 
 the flint before the steel strikes it, so little are the first principles of 
 reason in the consciousness before all impressions in experience which 
 are the occasion of their arising .... They are born in us in no 
 other sense than that in the original constitution of the spirit is a trait 
 which obliges it, under the excitement of experience, to build up these 
 ways of knowing." * So Lichtenberg says : " The peasant employs all 
 the principles of abstract philosophy, only enveloped, latent ; the 
 philosopher exhibits the pure principle." f D' Alembert expresses the 
 opinion that metaphysics cannot teach anything that is new, but can 
 only bring into clearer consciousness and present in the order of a 
 system what every body knew before. Canon Kingsley says that what 
 is needed to confound people's skepticism in philosophy and theology 
 is " only to bring them to look their own reason in the face, and to tell 
 them boldly, you know these things at heart already, if you will only 
 look at what you know and clear from your own spirits the mists which 
 your mere brain has wrapped around them." J Even before they are 
 recognized and formulated they 
 
 " Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing." 
 
 Once recognized they are 
 
 " truths that wake 
 To perish never." 
 
 IV. The argument against "innate ideas" as presented by Locke 
 has no relevancy to the real doctrine of rational intuitions. Descartes 
 explains that the ideas are natural in the sense that they do not origi- 
 nate from without but in the faculty of intelligence itself ; and they are 
 naturally in the intellect, not in act but only potentially; as we say 
 that generosity is natural to some families, and certain diseases, to 
 
 *Mikrokosmus: B. ii. chap. 4, Vol. i., p. 247, 248. 
 fHinterlassene Schriften, Vol. ii., p. 67. 
 i Biography, p. 190. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. H7 
 
 others ; not that the children suffer from the hereditary disease at or 
 even before birth, " but only that they are born with the faculty or 
 predisposition to contract it." * Leibnitz in his " Critique " of Locke 
 explains that the mind is full of characters which the sense reveals but 
 does not imprint, and compares it to a sculptor finding in a block of 
 marble which he is chiseling veins tracing a Hercules. Prof. Sedge- 
 wick illustrates it by comparing the mind to a paper written with 
 invisible ink : " As for knowledge his soul is one unvaried blank ; yet 
 this blank has already been touched by a celestial hand, and when 
 plunged in the colors that surround it, takes not its tinge from accident 
 but design and comes forth colored with a glorious pattern." f Ra- 
 tional intuitions are innate only in the sense that they are constituent 
 elements of reason ; that, as man becomes conscious of himself in 
 experience, he finds himself a rational being endowed with norms and 
 in possession of principles of reason regulating all his thinking, and 
 constituting him able to discriminate between the true and the false, 
 and to infer the unknown from the known. And this, rationalistic 
 philosophers since Descartes, with more or less clearness, have appre- 
 hended and explained. Locke's argument against innate ideas was, 
 even in his day, a striking example of ignoratio elenchi, or philosophical 
 kicking at nothing ; yet it has held and still holds its place with 
 skeptics, as if the doctrine which it controverts were iieally believed by 
 somebody and its refutation would prove that there is no God. A 
 remarkable example is the chapter on " Innate Ideas " in Dr. Buchner's 
 "Kraft und Stoff." Among the inane objections which Descartes 
 ridicules J is this, that infants cannot have knowledge and ideas in the 
 fcetal condition before birth. Yet Dr. Biichner gravely urges this very 
 objection, as if this trumpery were believed. The principles and doc- 
 trines which Dr. Biichner controverts in this chapter are not to be 
 found in modern philosophy or theology 
 
 g 24. Significance as Regulative Principles. 
 
 I. Rational Intuitions are void of significance except as applied to 
 beings and their attributes, conditions and relations known in percep- 
 tive intuition. From mere a priori principles nothing can be deduced. 
 The principle that every beginning or change has a cause, is void of 
 content until I perceive some being in the exercise of power. Then 
 this principle extends the causal power back to the eternal. Principles 
 known in rational intuition may be compared to the sides, and realities 
 known in perceptive intuition to the rounds of a ladder. The sides 
 
 *Oeuvres de Descartes: Cousin's Ed., Vol. x., pp. 94, 98, 99. 
 fOn the Studies of the University, p. 54. 
 J Vol. x., p. 107. 
 
118 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 lying by themselves are useless for the purposes of a ladder, and so are 
 the rounds. But when the rounds are inserted in the sides we have a 
 ladder by which we can scale the heavens. If the reason is winged 
 with intuitions, empirical reality is the atmosphere without which it 
 cannot soar. Schopenhauer says, "In proportion as any cognition is 
 necessary, in proportion as it brings with it what we must think and 
 cannot think otherwise, it has less reality ; and in proportion as it in- 
 cludes empirical accidental varieties, it has more reality more of what 
 stands on its own basis and cannot be deduced from another." * This 
 is no invalidation of rational intuition ; for it is an obscure recognition 
 and an inadequate and misleading enunciation of the connection of 
 rational intuition with empirical reality which I am affirming. The 
 representation of rational intuition in Browning's Paracelsus is a 
 caricature of the doctrine, though some Mystics have held something 
 like it : 
 
 " There is an inmost center in us all 
 
 Where truth abides in fulness : and to know 
 
 Kather consists in opening out a way 
 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
 
 Than in effecting entrance for a light 
 
 Supposed to be without." 
 
 We have seen, on the contrary, that the rational intuitions exist 
 primarily, not as\ formulated truths, but as constitutional norms, that 
 they appear in consciousness only on occasion in experience and have 
 content and significance only as applied to empirically known reality. 
 While the impact of the outward is necessary to unlock " the im- 
 prisoned splendor," it is equally necessary that the unlocked splendor 
 go out upon the outward or be reflected on us from it, if it is to 
 enlighten us with knowledge. And as the splendor unlocked from its 
 prison in a lump of coal had its origin in the sun, human reason can 
 become luminous with intelligence only because it is itself the creature 
 and likeness of the reason supreme and absolute in God. 
 
 II. Kational intuition does not guarantee the correctness and com- 
 pleteness of our observation of facts and our reflective judgments 
 respecting them. Rational intuition gives the knowledge that two par- 
 allel straight lines can never meet ; but it gives no information on the 
 question whether two given lines are parallel and straight. Perhaps 
 the most common and effective objection against the validity of rational 
 intuitions is the fact that the Ancients regarded the existence of anti- 
 podes as absurd. But the ancients in this case applied the principle oi 
 causation correctly to what they, in their ignorance of gravitation and 
 the sphericity of the earth, supposed to be the facts. According to 
 
 *Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, i., 145. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. H9 
 
 their view of the facts the existence of people at the antipodes would be 
 impossible, because it would be an effect without a cause. The principle 
 remains true and the conclusion necessary from it is correct. The mis- 
 take is as to the facts. The objection derives all its force from the 
 misrepresentation that rational intuition gives a knowledge of the facts, 
 which no intelligent person affirms. Such a rational intuition would 
 approximate closely to omniscience. 
 
 Prof. Helmholz attempts to invalidate rational intuition by suppos- 
 ing intelligent beings living on a solid sphere, but capable of perceiving 
 only what is on its surface. They would know space only in two 
 dimensions. To them a line curving with the earth's surface would be 
 a straight line. Therefore the axioms that a straight line is the shortest 
 distance between two points, and that between two points only one 
 straight line can be drawn, would no longer be true. This sounds ex- 
 ceedingly learned and profound ; but it is merely the childish objection 
 that if some persons should mistake a curved line for a straight one, the 
 axioms of geometry would no longer be true. If we are to reason from 
 fancies like this it is as easy to prove one thing as another, and com- 
 plete agnosticism is the necessary result. It is idle to inquire how 
 things would appear to beings that would know themselves and all 
 bodies merely as mathematical surfaces, having length and breadth 
 without thickness. 
 
 III. These principles are regulative, that is they determine the pos- 
 sible and the impossible. I do not mean what is possible or impossible 
 to a particular finite being; for that would be determined by the 
 degree at which its power is limited. I mean what is possible or impos- 
 sible to any and all power. 
 
 1. These principles are regulative of intellectual power ; they deter- 
 mine w r hat is possible and w T hat impossible to thought. All thinking is 
 regulated by them ; for it is impossible to think the contrary of them 
 to be true ; all reasoning depends on them, and without them cannot 
 conclude in an inference. Attempting to pass beyond them the intel- 
 lect drops helpless in vacuity and fatuity. They are the primitive prin- 
 ciples and constituent elements of rationality itself; to reject them is to 
 strip rationality from the reason and to extinguish reason in unreason. 
 
 2. These principles determine what is possible to will-power. They 
 , are laws of things as well as of thought. The absurd cannot be real. 
 
 It is impossible to think that two contradictories coexist in the same 
 place and time. It is equally impossible for them to coexist. No will- 
 power can cause them to coexist. If we suppose will-power annulling 
 the law of causation and producing a change that is uncaused, the 
 thought nullifies itself in the attempt to think it ; for it is an attempt 
 to think of an effect which is not an effect. It is equally true of all 
 
120 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 other first principles of reason. No power of will can create, annul or 
 change a single principle of reason or give reality to what contradicts 
 it. Will cannot alter the sphere of reason. Power, even though 
 almighty, is powerless upon truth. Will, even though almighty, cannot 
 eliminate the Must be and the Ought to be from the universe. 
 
 3. These principles determine what is possible in nature. Physical 
 science is the discovery in nature of the principles and laws of Keason 
 pervading and regulating nature. If these principles had been in the 
 reason of man, but not in nature, man could never have put them into 
 nature, nor have caused nature to be regulated by them. If they had 
 been in nature and not in the reason of man, man never could have 
 discovered them nor formed any conception of them. And this is only 
 recognizing from a new point of view the synthesis of phenomenon and 
 noumenon, which, in contrast to Kant's antithesis of them, I have 
 already shown to be essential to all rational intelligence. An intelligible 
 object is impossible without an intelligent subject. The noumena or 
 necessary principles and ideas of Reason are the unchanging forms in 
 which reality is known by rational intelligence. If all that is known 
 by man is phenomenal and not the real being, because known in rela- 
 tion to his mind, and the noumenon or real being is out of this relation 
 and unknowable by man, then all that is known by any mind is phe- 
 nomenal and unreal because known in relation to that mind. Thus we 
 have the monstrous absurdity that noumena exist as pure objects out 
 of all relation to all and every intelligent mind, that is, pure objects 
 unintelligible to any mind and contrary to any and every principle of 
 reason. The existence of such an object is impossible. And this im- 
 possibility is affirmed in the proposition that the principles of reason 
 are laws of things as well as of thought ; that through the reason the 
 phenomenon is in synthesis with the noumenon. The absurd cannot be 
 real. A reality contradictory to reason would be equally contrary to 
 itself. Man's knowledge is limited. Realities may exist beyond the 
 range of human observation and transcending human reason. But in 
 the farthest range of possibility beyond the limits of human knowledge, 
 nothing can exist which contradicts human reason, and is thus in its 
 nature unintelligible and out of relation to any and all rational intelli- 
 gence. " Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit." * 
 
 When we say that the objects of sense-perception and self-conscious- 
 ness are known in the forms of the principles of Reason, in other words, 
 when \ve say that these principles are regulative of things as well as of 
 thought, we simply affirm that these realities are known as existing in a 
 system of things accordant with the universal truths of Reason. It is 
 
 * Juvenal, Sat. 14, 321. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 121 
 
 often objected that we have no real knowledge of the objects of presen- 
 tativc intuition because we know them only in relation to one another. 
 But they are known thus, because they exist thus. We find them in a 
 rational system because they exist in a rational system. The denial 
 that rational principles are regulative of these realities is the denial that 
 the realities exist in a rational system ; and this of course is the denial 
 of the possibility of natural science, for natural science is the knowledge 
 of nature as a system accordant with reason. Then it would follow that 
 the universe is not grounded in reason and its constitution and on- 
 going are not accordant with rational truths and laws. Then there 
 would be no difference between the reasonable and the absurd ; two and 
 two might make five ; two straight lines might inclose a space ; contra- 
 dictions might be necessary and universal truths; the supreme law 
 might be, " Thou shalt love thyself with all thy heart, and thyself only 
 shalt thou serve ; " and all these absurdities might be real to-day and 
 their contraries real to-morrow, and the past might become future, and 
 virtue be sold at a dollar a pound. And this is only saying that all 
 basis of intelligence would disappear, the description of the universe 
 would be nonsense and not science, and unreason would be supreme. 
 The human mind must peremptorily reject such nonsense or sink into 
 idiocy. It necessarily rejects it only because the rational intuitions are 
 the constituent elements of reason, and regulate all thought. And it is 
 only because the constitution of the universe is accordant with these 
 principles and its ongoing regulated by them, that the universe is a 
 Cosmos and not a chaos. They are the "flammantia moenia mundi"* 
 the flaming bulwarks of the universe, which no power not even though 
 almighty can break through or destroy, and within which the cosmos 
 lies in the light of rational truth, and moves in the harmony and order 
 of rational law to the realization of rational ideals and ends. Thus the 
 principles of reason, together with the truths inferred from them, and 
 the ideals and ends determined by them, are the archetypes of nature. 
 
 g 25. Validity of Rational Intuition. 
 
 The possibility of philosophy and theology rests on the validity of 
 rational intuition as a source of knowledge. Its vindication is, there- 
 fore, of prime importance. 
 
 I do not propose to prove these principles, each of which stands by 
 itself, if it stands at all, in its own self-evidence ; but only to vindicate 
 their validity against objections. 
 
 I. Rational intuition is immediate self-evident knowledge, known as 
 such in the act of knowing ; as such it sustains all the criteria of primi- 
 tive knowledge. It is no objection against the principles thus known 
 * Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, I. 73. 
 
122 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 that they rest only on self-evidence and cannot be proved ; for all 
 knowledge must originate in like manner as self-evident knowledge. 
 They, who reject them because they cannot prove them, remind us of 
 Martin Luther's words : " When at a window I have gazed on the stars 
 and the whole beauty of the vault of heaven, I have seen no pillars on 
 which the builder had set the vault ; yet the heavens fell not, and the 
 vault still stands firm. Now there are simple folk who look about 
 for such pillars and would fain feel and grasp them. But since they 
 cannot, they quake and tremble as if the heavens would certainly fall, 
 and for no other reason than because they cannot see and grasp the pil- 
 lars. If they could but grasp them, then, they think, the heavens would 
 stand firm enough." Truth rests on other than material supports 
 which the senses can grasp, yet firm as the intangible forces holding 
 fast the earth and the stars, which God hangeth on nothing. We may 
 well agree with Aristotle that they who forsake the nature of things 
 or self-evident principles will not find any surer basis on which to build. 
 Even those who deny their validity are compelled to rest their thinking 
 on them. Locke, in the very chapter in which he is arguing against 
 innate ideas, admits the validity of rational intuitions by saying : " He 
 would be thought void of common sense, who, asked on the one side or 
 the other side, went to give a reason why it is impossible for the same 
 thing to be and not to be. It carries its own light and evidence with 
 it and needs no other proof; he that understands the terms assents to it 
 for its own sake, or else nothing will ever be able to prevail on him to 
 do it."* The same may be said of all the first principles known in 
 rational intuition. They severally sustain all the tests or criteria of 
 primitive knowledge. They are self-evident. It is impossible to think 
 the contrary as true. They persist in the practical control of thought 
 and action in the face of all speculative objections and denials. They 
 are consistent with each other and with all knowledge. They are there- 
 fore knowledge. And because primitive or intuitive knowledge exists 
 independent of reflective thought, it cannot be uprooted by it. " What 
 has never been reasoned up can never be reasoned down." 
 
 II. These principles are indispensable in all reasoning. Without 
 them reasoning could never conclude in an inference. This has already 
 been shown. If man is capable of an inference from premises he must 
 have rational norms for his decision ; if he is capable of bringing any 
 investigation to a conclusion in knowledge, he must know universal 
 principles according to which the connection and unity of particular 
 realities known in presentative intuition can be determined. If he is 
 capable of exploring the Cosmos and bringing it within his science he 
 
 * Essay, B. I. chap. iii. 4. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 123 
 
 must have a final standard of all truth. And this is as true of induc- 
 tive reasoning, on which the physical sciences claim specially to rest, as 
 it is of any other. And scientists acknowledge this practically and 
 implicitly, if not theoretically. Some writers whose theory of know- 
 ledge leans to complete positivism use these principles while re- 
 cognizing no philosophical basis for them. Prof. Bain says of the 
 principle of the uniformity of nature which is at the basis of all induc- 
 tion, " Our only error is in proposing to give any reason or justification 
 of the postulate or to treat it as otherwise than begged at the very 
 outset." And Prof. Helmholz says of it: " In this case but one course 
 is available ; Trust it and use it." * Says Royer Collard : " Bid not 
 reasoning rest on principles anterior to reasoning, analysis would be 
 without end and synthesis without beginning." Says H. Spencer, criti- 
 cising " pure empiricism or experimentalism " : " Throughout its argu- 
 ment there runs the tacit assumption that there may be a philosophy 
 in which nothing is asserted but what is proved. . . . The conse- 
 quence of this refusal to recognize some fundamental unproved truth is 
 that its fabric of conclusions is left without a base. . . . Philo- 
 sophy, if it does not avowedly stand on some datum underlying reason " 
 (i. e. reasoning) " must acknowledge that it has nothing on which to 
 stand." f Elsewhere Mr. Spencer criticises "the metaphysicians" for 
 giving more weight to reasoning than to the simple deliverances of con- 
 sciousness ; and contrasts them in this respect both with the " mass of 
 men " and " men of science." He censures them for " a tacit assump- 
 tion that the mode of intellectual action distinguished as reasoning is 
 more trustworthy than any other mode of intellectual action." J 
 
 III. The rational intuitions are verified in experience. 
 
 It is impossible, of course, fully to verify them in this way because 
 experience is limited and cannot be co-ordinate with the universal. 
 But so far as human experience extends it verifies the principles of 
 rational intuition. 
 
 They are inherent in the common sense which regulates the action 
 of common life ; and our every-day thinking and action verify them. 
 
 They are continually verified in physical science. The principles 
 which regulate our thinking are found to be regulative of the constitu- 
 tion and course of nature. Natural science is the knowledge of 
 systemized nature. The fact-system in nature is found to be the 
 thought-system of reason. The discovery of this system in nature and 
 its enunciation constitute physical science. In registering the system 
 
 *" Hier gilt nur der eine Rath: vertraue und handle." 
 
 f Principles of Psychology, Vol. II. pp. 391, 392. 
 
 { Psychology, Part VII. chaps, ii.-iv., Vol. II. pp. 312, 317, 336. 
 
124 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of nature in science the mind registers in science its own trustworthi- 
 ness and verifies the principles and laws of its own rationality. 
 
 This is exemplified in mathematics, which is wholly a creation of the 
 mind. In geometry we deal only with imaginary lines and figures ; in 
 algebra we do not limit ourselves even by numbers, but use symbols 
 equally significant of all numbers. By complicated and intricate 
 processes we reach as the result empty forms of thought expressed in 
 mathematical signs. Yet we find that these are the forms in which the 
 universe is constituted and the formulas which express the laws of its 
 action. The law of gravitation could never have been discovered by 
 observation ; it is derived from an a priori mathematical principle. 
 Yet it is found to be the law which matter to the remotest star obeys. 
 So in induction, by the help of an intuitive and universal principle we 
 pass from the known to the unknown, from the particular to the 
 general, immeasurably beyond the range of observation and experi- 
 ment. And in hypotheses we create imaginary systems and then by 
 observation find that the same systems have been created in the actual 
 universe. Often, as I have elsewhere said, these anticipations of dis- 
 covery have been made by students of philosophy not engaged in the 
 scientific observation of nature, and not till years and perhaps genera- 
 tions afterwards has some observer, guided by the hypothesis, found it 
 real in nature. 
 
 To evade the force of this reasoning we have been told of late that 
 the law of gravitation is not exactly correct, though sufficiently so for 
 our purposes, and " that we have no reason for believing that the known 
 law r s of geometry and mechanics are exactly and absolutely true at 
 present, or that they have been approximately true for any period of 
 time further than we have direct evidence of." * But since the law of 
 gravitation enables astronomers to predict many phenomena of the 
 solar system to a second and since the perturbations are in other cases 
 so complicated as to present a mathematical problem which no human 
 mind is competent to solve, it is more probable that the calculator has 
 left out some element of the problem than that the law of gravitation 
 is not correct. 
 
 This verification of rational intuition by facts is continually going on 
 in the life of the individual and in the processes of human thought and 
 the progress of science. It is a never ending verification of the trust- 
 worthiness of human reason and the validity of its regulative principles. 
 Through the whole history of human thought man is always finding the 
 universal manifested in the particular, the necessary in the contingent, 
 the unchanging in the transitory, the rational in the natural. So the 
 
 *Prof. Clifford's Essays, i. 221, 222, 224. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 125 
 
 ocean swells up and manifests itself in the unending succession of its 
 w nves. 
 
 IV. Rational intuition is necessary to interpret sense-perception. 
 
 Sensation reports correctly the peculiar impression of outward agents 
 on each sense. But it is only by judgment in accordance with the prin- 
 ciples of reason that we apprehend the reality signified by the impres- 
 sion on the sensorium. The senses show us the sky as a blue dome, the 
 sun, moon and stars as moving in it, parallel rails converging as they 
 recede ; and always we resort to reason to interpret these presentations 
 of sense and ascertain what the reality is which they bring before us. 
 The ear gives us sound, the eye light and shade, the general sensorium 
 heat ; but it is thought, regulated by the principles of reason, which dis- 
 closes the undulations which impinge on the ear and cause sound, and 
 the molecular vibrations which cause light and heat. And it is thought, 
 guided by the principles of reason, which carries knowledge to distances 
 of space and time entirely beyond the observation of sense, and discovers 
 that the facts known by sense are in the unity of a rational system. 
 
 Those who doubt the validity of rational intuition are wont to point 
 in contrast with great satisfaction to the clearness and certainty of 
 knowledge by sense-perception. But it is evident that without the aid 
 of the rational intuition sense-perception could gain but a small part of 
 our knowledge of the physical universe. 
 
 Plume has demonstrated that subjective Idealism, founded on the be- 
 lief that in sense-perception we have knowledge only of impressions on 
 the sensorium, involves universal skepticism. On the other hand Kant 
 has demonstrated that Sense alone, without rational principles given by 
 the mind, is equally incompetent to give real knowledge. Together 
 they have demonstrated that both presentative intuition and rational 
 are essential to knowledge. The mind is not passively recipient of im- 
 pressions but active in knowing. The mind knows. And the postu- 
 lates or principles of rational intuition belong to the very nature of 
 knowledge. Liard, as reported by Janet, says, " As yet the Positive 
 school has not answered the learned demonstration of Kant on the neces- 
 sity of a priori principles, or rather has ignored it. It has made no ad- 
 dition to the old empiricism which the school of Leibnitz and Kant 
 refuted." Any system of Positivism like that of Comte, propounded as 
 a theory of knowledge without noticing the principles established by 
 Hume and Kant, is not entitled to the attention of scholars. Accord- 
 ingly Lange says, " The very attempt to construct a philosophical theory 
 of things exclusively on the physical sciences must in these days be de- 
 scribed as a philosophical one-sidedness of the worst kind." * 
 
 * Geschichte des Materialismus ; B. II. Sect. II. Chap. I. 
 
126 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that the power of rational intuition is essential 
 in the idea of Reason, as extension is in the idea of body. The know- 
 ledge of first principles of reason is essential to all knowledge which 
 rises above mere impressions or phenomena, and is inherent in the na- 
 ture of rational intelligence. The denial of them involves complete 
 agnosticism. This result Fitz-James Stephen exemplifies when he says, 
 " It is surely obvious that all physical science is only a probability, and, 
 what is more, one which we have no means whatever of measur- 
 ing. . . . The present is a mere film melting into the past." * We 
 accept, therefore, as the most fundamental postulate, the principle that 
 the self-evident and necessary intuitions of the mind are true. Of this 
 postulate H. Spencer says, " Not even a reason for doubting its validity 
 can be given without tacitly asserting its validity." f 
 
 V. It is objected that these principles are not universally believed. 
 It is said, If they are constitutional and self-evident, every one must be- 
 lieve them ; and this, it is said, is not the fact. 
 
 1. In sustaining this position it is usually urged that infants and 
 savages have no knowledge of them. As thus urged the objection is 
 founded on misapprehension of the doctrine. It is pertinent only 
 against innate ideas, the existence of which no one affirms, not against 
 rational intuitions existing as constitutional norms and elements of 
 rationality, and rising in consciousness as regulative of thought only on 
 occasion in experience. 
 
 The customary attempt to discredit the principles and laws of thought 
 because infants and savages are not conscious of them is unscientific. 
 It rests on the false assumption that nothing is constitutional in man 
 except what infants and savages are conscious of; human powers are to 
 be ascertained not by observing what they are in mature men but only 
 what they are in their nascent state in infancy and savagery. It is an 
 appeal from facts to fancies, from what we know to what we do not 
 know. This kind of reasoning would prove that it is not natural to 
 man to have a beard, or teeth, or parental affection ; or that it is not 
 natural to an apple to bear blossoms and apples because they are not 
 observed in the seed. We do not study the acorn to find out what 
 the oak is, but the oak to find out what the acorn is. 
 
 The objection rests on the further mistake, in respect to savages, that 
 a principle does not regulate thought and action until it is consciously 
 formulated. The doctrine is that men think and act under the regula- 
 tion of these principles even when they have never consciously formu- 
 lated them. The objection, therefore, is founded on a misapprehension 
 of the doctrine. The validity of rational intuition, in its true meaning 
 
 * Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, pp. 346, 347. 
 f Psychology, Vol. II. p. 491. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 127 
 
 is sustained by the common consciousness of mankind ; and in vindi- 
 cating it we avail ourselves of this ancient argument, which Hesiod 
 states at the end of his " Works and Days:" "The word proclaimed 
 by the concordant voice of mankind fails not; for it is a sort of di- 
 vinity." * 
 
 2. But we are told that these beliefs are not necessary even to culti- 
 vated persons. J. S. Mill says : " Any one accustomed to abstraction 
 and analysis, who will fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, 
 when his imagination has once learned to entertain the notion, find no 
 difficulty in conceiving that in some one of the many firmaments into 
 which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed 
 one another at random without any fixed law ; nor can anything in our 
 experience or in our mental nature constitute a sufficient, or indeed any 
 reason for believing that this is nowhere the case." f Mr. Mill held 
 that all necessary beliefs arise from association of ideas in the life-time 
 of an individual. He could consistently suppose that under new condi- 
 tions new associations could be formed. But here he supposes new con- 
 ditions which break up the old associations without forming new ones. 
 His supposition, therefore, is directly in contradiction to his own theory. 
 Mr. Mill does not say that he can conceive of such a world of unreason, 
 but only that he thinks one might learn to conceive of it. 
 
 It is very common for skeptics who hold that our knowledge is 
 unreal because known through our own reason, to tell us of a world 
 possibly known to other minds in which right is wrong, and the angles 
 of a triangle may be equal to six right angles, or a hollow sphere with 
 continuous surface may be turned inside out without rupture. But 
 when we attend to it we see that it is a mere Shemhamphorash or 
 abracadabra, words to conjure with, which overawe the unthinking but 
 are seen by all thoughtful persons to be sounds without meaning. 
 Accordingly Comte and others who exclude the very ideas of cause, 
 force, and being from scientific thought and limit it to phenomena, yet 
 continually think and write under the regulation of the principles 
 which they reject. The existence of the real is unavoidably asserted 
 in every attempt to prove that knowledge is only relative; the ex- 
 istence of both subject and object is asserted in every proof that we 
 know no objective reality ; the knowledge what a true cause is as 
 distinguished from an invariable antecedent is asserted in every denial 
 of the possibility of having knowledge of a true cause ; the validity of 
 rational intuitions is appealed to in asserting that they cannot be valid ; 
 
 * $f]iirj d'bvrrore Train av OTrdAAvrru rjv nva TCQ/.?.OI 
 
 Aaoi $7]uiZ,ovGi' 06f vv riq earl KOI avrrj. 
 | Logic, B. III. Chap. 21, 1. 
 
128 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM, 
 
 the idea of God is recognized in denying the possibility of knowing 
 him. And whatever theory of knowledge or of agnosticism prevails, 
 men go on, alike in common life and in scientific investigation, prosecu- 
 ting work, constructing institutions, enlarging science, subduing and 
 civilizing the earth, and all in tacit accordance with the principles 
 regulative of all thinking. 
 
 VI. Another objection is that Reason breaks down at last in irrecon- 
 cilable contradictions. Though all must necessarily believe these prin- 
 ciples yet they are contradictory to each other. We necessarily believe 
 each of two contradictory propositions. 
 
 1. The second idea of the reason, according to Kant, is the Cosmos. 
 In developing the cosmological ideas, there arise certain "sophistical 
 propositions " which are necessary " in the very nature of reason," but 
 which are " contrary " to each other. These he calls " antinomies." 
 His four antinomies pertain solely to his second idea of Reason, the 
 Cosmos. In the first the thesis affirms as a necessary belief that the 
 world is limited in time and space ; the antithesis affirms as equally 
 necessary the belief that it is not thus limited but is infinite in time 
 and space. In the second the thesis is that the world consists of simple 
 parts ; the antithesis, that no simple substance exists. In the third the 
 thesis is that free-will exists; the antithesis, that free-will does not 
 exist, but every thing happens necessarily under the laws of nature. 
 In the fourth the thesis is that an Absolute Being exists; the anti- 
 thesis, that Absolute Being does not exist either in the world or out 
 of it. 
 
 The agnosticism and materialism of this day make frequent appeals to 
 Kant's antinomies. Prof. Clifford says that in this " famous doctrine of 
 the antinomies " Kant first set forth the opinion, " held by great numbers 
 of the philosophers who have lived in the brightening ages of Europe," 
 " that at the basis of the natural order there is something which we can' 
 know to be unreasonable" * From this doctrine of the antinomies Ham- 
 ilton derives his fundamental law that " thought is possible only in the 
 conditioned interval between unconditioned contradictory extremes or 
 poles, each of which is altogether inconceivable, but of which . . 
 the one or the other is necessarily true." Accordingly he regards the 
 causal judgment and the other first principles of reason as resulting, 
 not from a power of positive self-evident knowledge, but from an im- 
 potence of mind to think the inconceivable and to believe the contra- 
 dictory. Thus he interprets the antinomies as manifesting simply " the 
 common principle of a limitation of our faculties. Intelligence is 
 shown to be feeble, but not false ; our nature is thus not a lie nor the 
 
 * Lecture on the Aims and Instruments of Science delivered before the members of 
 the British Association at Brighton, Aug. 19, 1872. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 129 
 
 author of our nature a deceiver." * The truthfulness of our nature is 
 consistent with the antinomies rightly interpreted ; but it is impossible 
 to reach this result and thus to rescue the trustworthiness of reason 
 and the reality of knowledge, if with Hamilton we interpret the 
 antinomies as direct contradictories. 
 
 Mansel in his " Limits of Religious Thought " accepts the doctrine 
 that the antinomies are contradictories and uses it in defence of reli- 
 gious belief. He argues that if in developing religious ideas we find 
 ourselves necessarily involved in contradictions, the fact does not in- 
 validate our knowledge, because in philosophy and indeed in the 
 ultimate development of thought on any subject, reason necessarily 
 involves us in similar contradictions. It is surprising that this defence 
 of religious belief was welcomed with exulting applause by many 
 theologians. It is not surprising that it was also gladly welcomed by 
 skeptics, not as proving the reality of religious knowledge, but as dis- 
 proving philosophy, and ultimately the reality of all knowledge. 
 
 Through these and similar interpretations of Kant's antinomies it has 
 come to pass that skepticism, appealing to them, habitually assumes 
 that philosophy in the conclusions of its greatest masters has itself 
 acknowledged its own incompetence and demonstrated that reason, on 
 which it claims to rest, in its ultimate principles necessarily breaks 
 down in self-contradiction. 
 
 2. If it is a fact that reason necessarily issues in the necessary belief 
 of contradictories, the objection is fatal. Reason is no longer trust- 
 worthy, the laws which necessarily regulate all thinking are discredited, 
 the results of thought are disintegrated, and knowledge is volatilized 
 into empty impressions and disappears. 
 
 It is evident, also, that this objection is the only one by which it is 
 possible to disprove the trustworthiness of the reason or the truthful- 
 ness of its necessary intuitions. Reason cannot avail itself of any 
 faculty more rational than itself nor lift itself to any sphere of know- 
 ledge above and beyond its own, by comparison with which to disprove 
 its own intuitions. But if its own necessary intuitions contradict each 
 other it can know the fact, and then must also know that some of its 
 necessary intuitions are false and that it is itself discredited as an 
 organ of the knowledge of truth. There is no other way conceivable 
 by which reason can know itself untrustworthy. 
 
 And it must be noticed that even here it is the authority of reason 
 itself to which reason appeals in judging that two contradictories can- 
 not both be true. It is the first and most fundamental principle of 
 reason, the law of non-contradiction, the truth of which is acknowledged 
 
 * Philosophy of Common Sensp, p. 20 ; Philosophy of the Conditioned, pp. 500, 
 505, Wight's Ed. of Hamilton's Philosophy. 
 9 
 
130 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 in judging all other principles of reason unworthy of belief. Reason 
 therefore would necessarily trust itself in judging itself untrustworthy. 
 
 3. The antinomies rightly understood are not contradictories ; the 
 thesis and antithesis are true respectively of different realities, or they 
 are complemental truths of the same reality, opposite poles of bi-polar 
 truth. Reality is known under antinomies because it includes diverse 
 beings and exists under contrasted and complemental aspects. It is 
 easy to show in this way that Kant's antinomies are not contradictories. 
 In the first, the thesis is true of the material universe ; the antithesis is 
 true of space and time, since these can be bounded respectively only by 
 further space and time ; and it is also true of God. In the second, the 
 thesis expresses the consciousness of self persisting in individuality and 
 identity ; the antithesis expresses the consciousness of varied qualities 
 and acts in which self exists and is known. The same thesis and 
 antithesis are true of the factually infrangible atoms, if they exist. 
 Thought is always dual ; its first act is the apprehension of a being in 
 its qualities and acts. But the existence of a being in its qualities 
 involves no contradiction ; the antinomy is only the expression of com- 
 plemental truths ; the two sides or aspects of one reality. In respect 
 to the third, if we admit the existence of personal free-agents the con- 
 tradiction disappears ; for the thesis is true of free-agents, the antithesis, 
 of impersonal things ; or they express respecting man the complemental 
 truths that he is at once free and dependent. In the fourth, the thesis 
 is true of God. the antithesis of the finite universe. This antinomy is 
 more commonly expressed as Spencer gives it : " If we admit there is 
 something uncaused there is no reason to assume a cause for any 
 thing ; " * or conversely " Since every thing is caused, God, if he exists, 
 must have a cause." The seeming contradiction is removed when we 
 know that the thesis and antithesis pertain to different realities. The 
 causal judgment is not, " Every thing must have a cause," but, " Every 
 beginning or change of existence must have a cause ; " this is true of all 
 which begins and changes. Reason gives us, as the thesis, another 
 necessary truth, " An Absolute, Uncaused, and all-conditioning Being 
 must exist." These are not contradictory, but complemental truths. 
 
 In a similar manner other antinomies, urged by skeptics and 
 agnostics to prove that reason is contradictory to itself, may be demon- 
 strated to be no contradictions. They are commonly founded on assumed 
 contradictions between being and its qualities or modes of existence, or 
 between noumena and phenomena, or between the personal and the im- 
 personal, or between freedom and dependence, or between the absolute 
 and the finite, or betAveen the absoluteness of God and his personality. 
 
 * First Principles, p. 37. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 131 
 
 Kant's antinomies become contradictions because, on account of his 
 phenomenalism, his antithesis of phenomenon and noumenon is so 
 complete that they are reciprocally exclusive and therefore contradic- 
 tory ; they pertain to no common object, and the intellectual acts by 
 which they are brought before the mind have no common intelligence 
 as their root. The consequence is that the phenomenon is a mere 
 subjective impression and without objective reality, and, as out of all 
 relation to the noumenon, irrational and absurd ; and the noumenon as 
 out of all relation to the human faculties and to the phenomenon and 
 unlike to anything which we conceive the phenomenon to be, is as truly 
 as the phenomenon void of objective reality, and even as a subjective 
 reality is unthinkable except as a symbol of the truism that something 
 may exist transcending our power to know. It follows that the 
 propositions necessarily affirmed of the one are contradictory to those 
 necessarily affirmed of the other. 
 
 This contradiction is removed by the synthesis of the knowledge of 
 particular beings in presentative intuition, with the knowledge of prin- 
 ciples true of all beings in rational intuition. Then there is no longer 
 the phenomenon known in sense and the totally different noumenon 
 known in reason ; but being known at once by presentative intuition in 
 its particular reality and by rational intuition in its relation to univer- 
 sal truths and laws. The intuitions, whether presentative or rational, 
 pertain to a common object and have their root in a common intelli- 
 gence. The subjective and objective are no longer contradictory, but 
 intelligence is the intellectual equivalent of reality, the objective reality 
 accords with the subjective ideas of reason and the subjective ideas oF 
 reason are expressed in objective reality. 
 
 The antinomies are commonly explained as resulting from an 
 attempt of the understanding, under the forms of sense, to apprehend 
 and define the ideas of the higher reason. But this is only carrying 
 into psychology the same divisive antithesis, as if sense, understanding 
 and reason were shut completely apart from each other. The Kantian 
 classification of Sense, Understanding and Reason tends to create and 
 perpetuate this disintegration of the intellectual powers. The classifi- 
 cation of them as Intuition, presentative and rational, Representation, 
 and Reflection or Thought, takes up all the facts, while it emphasizes 
 the unity of the mind in all its processes and the unity of its intelli- 
 gence as having a common root and concerned with a common object. 
 
 It must be added, however, that notwithstanding Kant's sharp 
 division of Sense, Understanding and Reason, his Reason is not the 
 organ of rational intuitions, but only the understanding itself acting 
 in its higher range and on its ultimate problems. There is no differ- 
 ence of kind between the two. He finds the rational intuitions in the 
 
132 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 forms of sense and the categories of the understanding. It is the 
 deficiencies and inconsistencies of his system which have made it 
 legitimately the source of two completely incompatible systems of 
 thought, the one Idealistic and Pantheistic, the other phenomenalistic 
 and agnostic. At the same time the truths which he indicates, brought 
 into harmony by correcting his inconsistencies and errors, constitute a 
 true philosophy which is a firm foundation for Theism. His method 
 of deducing psychological facts and metaphysical principles from forms 
 of logic necessarily leads to error. 
 
 An antinomy, in its true meaning, may arise whenever the mind 
 cognizes the same object by different intellectual processes and thus 
 knows it in different aspects. The logical puzzles of Zeno are ex- 
 amples. In observing the motion of bodies by common sense or by 
 .physical science in the methods of concrete thought, no contradiction 
 appears. But when we think of motion solely in the forms of logic we 
 prove it to be impossible for a body at rest to begin to move ; because 
 it cannot begin to move while it is at rest, and cannot begin to move 
 after it is in motion ; therefore it can never begin to move. Another 
 illustration of antinomies resulting from attaining the same truth by 
 different methods may be found in solving geometrical problems by 
 algebraic methods. We may reach as a result the square root of minus 
 a which is impossible and yet has been demonstrated mathematic- 
 ally to be the correct result. Now if we solve the problem by 
 geometrical methods we find the real significance of the seeming con- 
 tradiction of the algebraic result to be that the line in question is 
 produced in the opposite direction. There may be, therefore, antino- 
 mies whenever we know an object by different intellectual processes ; 
 and the antinomy may be interpreted as a contradiction until we find 
 a synthesis of the aspect of reality known by one process with the 
 aspect of the same reality known by the other process. 
 
 Kant's own reconciliation of the thesis and antithesis is that the one 
 is true of the phenomenon or thing as it appears, and the other of the 
 noumenon, or thing as it is in itself. * 
 
 This method of reconciliation is correct in principle, but on account 
 of his separation of the phenomenon and the noumenon already indi- 
 cated it is practically unavailing in the Kantian system, and the thesis 
 and antithesis remain contradictory, and each alike fails to express real 
 knowledge. 
 
 4. Therefore the argument from the antinomies does not prove that 
 reason contradicts itself and is untrustworthy, but it is a demonstration 
 of the reality of our knowledge of being, of personal being in distinction 
 
 * Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to 2d Edition. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THEOUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 133 
 
 from impersonal, and of God. If no absolute being, that is, no God, 
 exists, then reason breaks down in contradiction and knowledge is im- 
 possible ; if God, the Absolute Being, exists, reason is in harmony with 
 itself and with all know r n reality. Therefore the idea of God is involved 
 in the very essence of rationality. Rationality cannot develop itself 
 legitimately without it, but breaks down in unreason. The same argu- 
 ment applies to our immediate knowledge of being and of personal 
 being. If this knowledge is not real, the reason breaks down in contra- 
 dictions and knowledge is impossible ; if this knowledge of being and 
 of personal being is real, then reason is in harmony with itself and 
 trustworthy hi all its utterances. Therefore the reality of being, of per- 
 sonal being and impersonal, and of absolute being, is involved in the 
 very essence of rationality. Rationality cannot legitimately develop 
 itself without recognizing their reality, but breaks down hi unreason. 
 
 Kant himself argues that his criticism of reason shows that its ideas 
 cannot be cognized in experience and that the laws of the finite (the 
 causal judgment, &c.) do not cover the whole ground. If they did 
 there could be no freedom and no God. l^ow, he argues, we establish 
 something beyond experience which is thinkable. And because that 
 something beyond experience must exist in order that experience may 
 exist, it is real. And thus the judgments as to what is cognized in 
 experience are in harmony with the judgments as to w T hat transcends 
 experience.* This demonstrates that Kant regarded his doctrine of 
 the antinomies as a defence of the belief in freedom and in the absolute 
 being, not as antagonistic to those doctrines. But the argument from 
 them for the existence of free will and of God, and for the real know- 
 ledge of being' and of the distinction of the personal and the imper- 
 sonal, and for the complete trustworthiness of reason, becomes clear and 
 decisive only when the antinomies are cleared from the contradictori- 
 ness and falsity brought into them by the disjunction of the phenomenon 
 and the noumenon. 
 
 5. It has been said that Herbert Spencer's agnosticism " began with 
 Kant." He himself avows that it is " carrying a step further the doc- 
 trine put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel." It is a legitimate out- 
 come of the errors in one side of Kant's philosophy, and may perhaps 
 be historically traced back to him through successive stages of thought 
 growing out of these errors. But it differs widely from Kant's philos- 
 ophy. Mr. Spencer regards as unknowable whatever is inconceivable, 
 whether in the sense of not picturable in the imagination or not sus- 
 ceptible of being included in a logical concept or general notion. He 
 says of it in the latter sense : " The first cause, the infinite, the absolute, 
 
 * Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to 2d Edition. 
 
134 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 to be known at all must be classed. To be positively thought of, it must 
 
 be thought of as such or such, as of this or that kind There 
 
 cannot be more than one first cause The unconditioned, as 
 
 classible neither with any form of the conditioned nor with any other 
 unconditioned, cannot be classed at all. And to admit that it cannot 
 be known as of such or such kind, is to admit that it is unknowable." * 
 In the antinomy here assumed the thesis is, We necessarily know 
 that absolute being exists. The antithesis is, It cannot be included in 
 a logical concept, therefore, as existent, " the absolute cannot in any 
 manner or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing " ; it is not 
 " even thinkable." f But the inconceivable is not the contradictory of the 
 knowable and thinkable ; the inconceivable in either of the two senses 
 may be knowable. This I have already proved. The logical concept 
 itself is inconceivable in the representations of imagination. And in 
 order to know the individual it is not necessary to know it in a logical 
 concept. The concrete individual is the unit of thought and must be 
 known as an individual before the logical concept can be formed. The 
 " such or such," must be known as qualities of an individual before 
 they can be known as characteristics of a " kind " or class. The fact 
 that there is and can be but one Absolute Being is, therefore, not in- 
 compatible with the knowledge of the Absolute Being. Mr. Spencer's 
 reasoning here is precisely of the type of erroneous reasoning commonly 
 charged with abundant ridicule on the mediaeval scholastics, and which 
 was the occasion of the " word-weariness," as Prof. Tyndall happily 
 calls it, which led to the return to scientific methods ; it assumes that 
 the knowledge of the particular being depends on and is derived from 
 the general notion or logical concept and can go no farther than its 
 analysis ; whereas in all scientific thinking it is assumed that the 
 logical concept depends on, and is derived from the knowledge of 
 the particular or individual being. It must be added that since, 
 as Spencer himself implies, the absolute is known as Being, and so, 
 according to the laws of thought, it must be known, if known at 
 all, this fact brings the absolute under the general notion or concept 
 of being ; we distinguish being as conditioned or finite, and uncon- 
 ditioned or absolute. And, besides, since the Absolute Being is the 
 supreme and absolute Reason, it is a personal being, and thus is in- 
 cluded under the general notion of the personal as distinguished from 
 the impersonal. The common objection that personality and uncon- 
 ditionateness are contradictories, that personality, if predicated of the 
 absolute, limits it and thus annuls its absoluteness, is an example of an 
 antinomy resolved by misapprehension into a contradiction. Precisely 
 
 * First Principles, p. 81. 
 f pp. 98, 46. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 135 
 
 the same objection is equally pertinent against the affirmation that the 
 absolute is a being. Hence if the objection is valid, the absolute is 
 left an adjective without a substantive, a quality without a being. 
 
 And here we find in Mr. Spencer's philosophy not a legitimate anti- 
 nomy but a positive contradiction. In the same sentence in which he 
 declares " the Absolute " unknowable, he says, " yet we find that its 
 positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness ; that so long as 
 consciousness continues, we cannot for an instant rid it of this datum ; 
 and that thus the belief which this datum constitutes, has a higher 
 warrant than any other whatever." This is positive contradiction. If 
 the existence of the Absolute is a necessary datum of consciousness and 
 the belief has a higher warrant than any other, how is the Absolute 
 unknown and unknowable ? And if it is unknowable, how do we know 
 that it exists, that is, is a being, and that its existence is the datum of all 
 consciousness ? And the contradiction becomes still more glaring when, 
 in the very next paragraph, he says of the Absolute that we know it 
 as an omnipresent power, and adds, " In this consciousness of an Incom- 
 prehensible Omnipresent Power, we have just that consciousness in 
 which religion dwells." How can that be unknowable which we know 
 to be absolute being, and to be an incomprehensible omnipresent 
 power, and the object of religious reverence ? 
 
 6. Kant himself admits that, if knowledge begins as the knowledge 
 of real being, it must by a necessary regress carry us to a knowledge of 
 the absolute or unconditioned being. " If the conditioned is given, a 
 regress hi the series of all its conditions is imperatively required." " If 
 the conditioned is given, the whole of the conditions, and consequently 
 the absolutely unconditioned, is also given, whereby alone the former 
 (the conditioned) was possible." * This he enunciates as a necessary 
 principle of reason. Thus if knowledge begins as the knowledge of 
 being, if the antagonism of phenomenon and noumenon be brought to 
 an end by their true synthesis in the knowledge of being, then Kant's 
 philosophy carries us irresistibly to the knowledge of the Absolute Being 
 and becomes the firm basis of rational theism. And this Kant himself 
 saw and acknowledged. 
 
 VII. Another objection is urged. However necessary these intuitive 
 beliefs may be, they do not originate as the constituent elements of rea- 
 son, but are the result of the association of ideas in the experience of 
 the individual. Says J. S. Mill, "The notion that truths external to 
 the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness independently of 
 observation and experience is .... in these times the great in- 
 tellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of 
 
 * Critique of Pure Reason, Antinomy ; Section I. & Section VII. 
 
136 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 this theory every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, the origin 
 of which is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation 
 of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient 
 voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised 
 for consecrating deep seated prejudices." * Accordingly in his Logic 
 he asserts that all the so called principles of reason are learned by in- 
 duction from repeated observations, and that the self-evidence and the 
 impossibility of thinking the contrary are a habit resulting from con- 
 tinual association of ideas. In immediate connection with the passage 
 quoted from the autobiography he tells us why, in this attempt to refute 
 the doctrine of rational intuitions, he directs his attention chiefly to 
 mathematics : " The chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, 
 politics and religion lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make 
 to the evidence of mathematics and the cognate branches of physical 
 science. To expel it from these is to drive it from its stronghold." 
 
 Diderot exemplifies the same type of thought. In reference to free- 
 will and the moral intuitions he says : " What deceives us is the prodi- 
 gious variety of our actions, joined to the habit which we catch at our birth 
 of confounding the voluntary \vith the free. We have so often been 
 praised and blamed and have so often praised and blamed others, that 
 we contract an inveterate prejudice of believing that we and they act 
 freely." 
 
 1. The first answer is that these principles are universal truths con- 
 ditioning all rational intelligence and regulating all thought, and the 
 knowledge of them cannot be accounted for as originating in individual 
 experience. 
 
 By experience the objector means presentative intuition. We know 
 by experience only what comes under our personal observation. But 
 presentative intuition gives us the knowledge only of particulars, never 
 of universals. The observation of all the particulars of a specified kind, 
 improperly called perfect induction, is possible only when the particu- 
 lars are few and accessible. It is impossible by personal observation to 
 know all the particulars included under a law of nature ; for example, 
 to know by observation that every motion of every body in the universe 
 accords with the law of gravitation. 
 
 It is equally impossible for any one by his own personal observation 
 of particular facts to attain the knowledge of any universal principles 
 by which he can infer the unknown from the know T n. It is impossible 
 by reasoning or any other act of thought to pass from particular known 
 objects to the knowledge of a particular unknown object without some 
 universal principle to bridge the passage. No thinking about the ob- 
 
 * Autobiography, pp. 225, 226. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 137 
 
 served fall of a single stone can give me any information about other 
 bodies never observed, if the mind has no knowledge of universal prin- 
 ciples regulating its thinking. 
 
 This was clearly shown by Descartes, who says : " What can be more 
 absurd than to pretend that .... by observing the motions of bodies 
 it is possible to form in the mind the general idea that things which 
 are equal to a third are equal to each other, or any similar one he pleases ; 
 for the motions of bodies are particular and the ideas are universal, 
 having no affinity nor likeness to the motions." * 
 
 2. If it were proved that these regulating principles of thought are 
 the result of individual experience and that the necessity of believing 
 them results merely from the association of ideas, they would no longer 
 be of any authority as regulative of thought and as principles 
 of reasoning ; but they would be merely inveterate prejudices of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 3. Mr. Mill claims that every belief must "justify itself by reason." 
 Accordingly he attempts to justify these principles by reason; yet all 
 that he accomplishes in the attempt is to demonstrate, as he imagines, 
 that these principles are merely inveterate prejudices acquired by asso- 
 ciation of ideas in the experience of the individual. Thus he logically 
 falls into the complete agnosticism inseparable from the old theory of 
 subjective idealism, and verifies anew the maxim that, if we must prove 
 everything, we cannot prove anything. 
 
 4. In fact, the theory of Mr. Mill has been found entirely inadequate 
 for the purposes of science and is now abandoned. 
 
 VIII. The objection now current assumes another form. The self- 
 evident first principles which regulate all thought are the result of the 
 experience of the human race transmitted by heredity in the course of 
 its evolution, and therefore are not intuitions or constituent elements of 
 reason. Says H. Spencer : " Those who contend that knowledge results 
 wholly from the experiences of the individual, ignoring as they do the 
 mental evolution which accompanies the autogenous development of the 
 nervous system, fall into an error as great as if they were to ascribe all 
 bodily growth and structure to exercise, forgetting the innate tendency 
 to assume the adult form." f Within the remembrance of many now 
 living two theories of knowledge have had currency, and have been 
 abandoned as entirely inadequate for the purposes of physical science ; 
 the Positivism of Comte and the associational theory of the two Mills 
 and of Bain. A third theory, founded on evolution, is now current, 
 which still holds that our knowledge of first principles originates in 
 experience, but substitutes for the experience of the individual the 
 
 * Oeuvres, Vol. X., p. 96. 
 
 f Psychology, Vol. I., p. 469, 208. 
 
138 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 experience of mankind transmitted by heredity through innumerable 
 generations. 
 
 1. This is an admission that principles regulative of all thought are 
 now constitutional in man, exist antecedent to every one's experience 
 and condition it, and thus are truly a priori to the individual. Spencer, 
 who claims to have originated this theory of the origin of first princi- 
 ples, says : " The antagonist schools of philosophy are both compelled to 
 recognize some ultimate law of intelligence Avhich from the beginning 
 dominates over all conclusions ; and which must be tacitly, if not 
 avowedly, recognized before any conclusion can be accepted rather than 
 some other. ... A certainty greater than that which any reasoning 
 can yield, has to be recognized at the outset of all reasoning. ... I 
 regard these data of intelligence as a priori for the individual, but 
 a posteriori for that entire series of individuals of which he forms the 
 last term."* 
 
 2. Here is also the admission that these primitive regulative princi- 
 ples are valid for all knowledge. They are generated by the impress 
 of the external world on man through innumerable generations, and 
 therefore must be true intellectual equivalents of the external world. 
 The mind of man thus resulting from innumerable strokes of reality 
 acting uniformly on him would be an imprint of the universe, a record 
 of its uniform sequences and laws. Man would have become a micro- 
 cosm, a copy in little of the universe ; his inborn instincts and intuitions 
 would be necessarily correlative with reality. It would be a sort of 
 scientific revival of Plato's suggestion that our intuitions are reminis- 
 cences of a previous existence. So Chauncey Wright calls the rational 
 intuition " a primordial memory." Murphy, in his " Scientific Bases 
 of Faith," explains the sense of beauty on this theory ; man's mind 
 being the imprint of nature, is pleased to recognize its own thoughts 
 and ideals in nature. Noire calls man a microcosm, because in the 
 course of his development he has taken up everything into himself; 
 thought is correlative with things because generated by contact with 
 them; he goes at length into details explaining it. He says, for 
 example, that " the primitive cells which moved in straight lines for 
 their food transmitted this quality to more highly organized animals ; 
 and thus a knoAvledge of the straight line is connatural to us." He 
 illustrates it by the instinct by which a tiger measures the length of his 
 spring, and the fish-hawk, notwithstanding the refraction of light in the 
 water, measures the line of its swoop, f As the law of the conservation 
 and correlation of force is a sort of rendering of the metaphysical law 
 of causation in the terms of physical science, so we have here a similar 
 
 * Psychology, ? 417, 430, 332. 
 
 | -Die Welt als Entwickelung des Geistes, pp. 176, 183. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 139 
 
 rendering of the metaphysical doctrine of rational intuition. To this 
 extent evolutionists have come to agreement with the rationalists. 
 
 3. If the existence and validity of the principles are conceded, the 
 question as to their origin is of minor importance. It is like an anti- 
 quarian discussion of the origin of a court whose authority no one 
 disputes. If evolution accounts for their origin and at the same time 
 proves that because thus originated they now have existence and 
 validity as the necessary a priori conditions of all individual experience 
 and knowledge, it is sufficient for my present purpose. The relation of 
 evolution to other questions will be considered hereafter. 
 
 4. Evolution, however, does not satisfactorily account for the exist- 
 ence and validity of these principles as the necessary condition of 
 knowledge. 
 
 In the first place, the impressions made by nature on man cannot 
 have been continuously uniform and correct, even in respect to those 
 realities which are recognized in the first principles. Take, for 
 example, the principle of causation. The primitive man, by the 
 supposition, is destitute of all principles that regulate thought. One 
 event or combination of events is just as probable to him as another. 
 Not having the idea of cause, when he saw a body moving, he would 
 not ask, what made it move. The majority of movements would pre- 
 sent no uniform sequence of antecedent and consequent. When by 
 the exertion of his own power he had acquired the empirical idea of 
 causation, still the majority of events would seem to him uncaused ; he 
 would have no knowledge of a cause why water runs, or winds blow, 
 or rain, thunder and lightning appear, or the sun and stars move. He 
 would also be the subject of many illusions. Under these conflicting 
 impressions it would be impossible that the law of causation should 
 become imprinted on his organism. The same is true of other first 
 principles. And this Spencer admits, when treating another topic and 
 apparently not thinking of its bearing on his theory of the origin of 
 these principles, he says : " If we contemplate primitive human life as a 
 whole we see that multiformity of sequence rather than uniformity of 
 sequence is the notion which it tends to generate." * 
 
 In the second place, the experience of the race cannot be universal ; 
 it can never be other than the experience of many particulars. It can 
 never give the universal principles by which we pass from what is 
 known in experience to the knowledge of what is not known in 
 experience. 
 
 In the third place, if in any particular nature has been continuously 
 uniform in its impressions on the organization and so a corresponding 
 
 * Psychology, ii. pp. 528, 529., 488. 
 
140 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 belief has become constitutionally a law of thought, it could not have 
 become so if the primitive man had not been endowed in his constitu- 
 tion with a capacity of being thus developed to rationality. All these 
 influences have fallen as continuously and as uniformly and for a much 
 longer time on the stones, the trees, the mollusks and the toads, without 
 developing them to know a priori universal principles. There must 
 therefore have been some factor at work in the man other than 
 what is in the stone and in the forces of nature which have acted alike 
 on him and on it. It is very difficult to think of the primitive man as 
 destitute of all the constituent elements of reason which have revealed 
 themselves in our consciousness as the universal principles which regu- 
 late all our thinking. Spencer, Carpenter and others, who ascribe the 
 origin of these principles to the experience of man in his evolution 
 through innumerable generations, always think anthropomorphically 
 of the primitive man ; they unconsciously ascribe to him the rational 
 powers possessed by man now. Spencer has much to say of the cohe- 
 sion of impressions or sensations. He unconsciously hypostasizes them 
 as entities or quiddities, after the manner of mediaeval scholasticism, 
 and thus blinds himself to the meaninglessness of some of his utterances 
 and the rationalistic implications of others. Whatever meaning or no- 
 meaning may be in the cohesion or agglutination of sensations or 
 impressions, it is still, according to his theory, sensations or impressions 
 without reason or constituent elements of reason which are ag- 
 glutinated; and the mere agglutination, whatever that may be, of 
 unreason cannot produce reason. The evolution of rationality, there- 
 fore, presupposes the existence of reason, at least in its constituent 
 elements, in the being that is evolved into reason. And this is equally 
 true whether the evolution is in the life-time of an individual or 
 through innumerable generations. If the action of nature on a prim- 
 itive man evolves rationality in him, a rational constitution must have 
 belonged to him as a capacity for such evolution. Otherwise some- 
 thing would come from nothing. There is no chemistry of thought 
 which can dissolve the stubborn maxim of Leibnitz, that intelligence 
 in its very essence contains a something which does not come from 
 without, namely, the intellect itself. The distinction of subject and 
 object goes down to the very origin of knowledge alike in the race and 
 in the individual. There must always be the subject knowing as well 
 as the object known, and the subject knowing must be a being consti- 
 tuted with the capacity of knowing. No theory of evolution can carry 
 us beyond and posit us antecedent to this law ; because it is of the 
 essence of thought and conditions the very thinking which constructs 
 the theory of evolution. 
 
 Scientists properly insist on verifying theory by observed facts. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 141 
 
 They write, however, as if unconsciously they supposed the mind could 
 in some way observe the thing in itself and compare its own know- 
 ledge with it. But in truth this verification is only the comparison of 
 our knowledge of the object through one sense w r ith our knowledge of 
 it through another or through inferences from what we know in any 
 way about it or other objects. Thus completely is the knowledge of an 
 object the act of an intelligent subject. What sort of reasoning is it 
 which concludes that something once existed utterly unknown now to 
 any being, and of which we of course can form no conception, except 
 only that it was not intelligent nor endowed with the properties and 
 powers which constitute intelligence, and that some part of this some- 
 thing, acting on another part of this something, (if indeed, being utterly 
 unknown, it could have parts or be a whole) created in the object on 
 which it acted a rational constitution and gradually developed it to in- 
 telligence ? 
 
 Therefore the evolutionist who holds with the rationalist that the 
 regulative principles of thought are valid and are a priori to the indi- 
 vidual, but that they originated in the influence of nature on man in 
 the evolution of the race, must also admit that they existed germinal 
 in the constitution of the primitive man and so conditioned the evolu- 
 tion itself. And here again he agrees with the rationalist, although he 
 recognizes the babyhood of the race instead of the individual, and 
 thus makes immeasurably longer the period within which the principles 
 reveal themselves in consciousness by occasion of experience and man 
 attains maturity. 
 
 If this reasoning is correct it is impossible to account for the origin of 
 man's higher rational or spiritual powers by mere evolution. And the 
 same impossibility appears from all other points of view from which we 
 study these higher powers of man. Hence eminent scientists who favor 
 evolution within certain limits are compelled to deny that it of itself 
 can account for the origin of these spiritual powers. 
 
 5. But it is urged that evolution reaches back of the primitive man 
 and that vital organisms were developed from inorganic matter. There 
 are two objections to this: one, that confessedly motion cannot be 
 identified with thought; the other, that confessedly all experiments 
 have failed to discover a single instance of such development of life. A 
 theory can hardly be called scientific which supposes an inconceivable 
 identification established by an utter absence of facts. But waiving this, 
 if reason is developed primarily from the inorganic, then a rational con- 
 stitution must have existed in the original matter. The necessity is the 
 same here as in the case of the primitive man, or in the case of develop- 
 ment by association of ideas within the experience of the individual. 
 
 6. The skeptic objects that the laws of thought are in a constant flux 
 
142 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 in the process of evolution, and however necessary it may be to think 
 according to them, they give no standard of truth. Noire,- in direct 
 contradiction to his own teachings already quoted, affirms this : " Our 
 reason thus developed is not the measure or standard of the past or 
 future, but only the transient measure of to-day." * But this cannot 
 be so unless nature itself changes and so makes diverse impressions on 
 different generations ; and the whole theory rests on the supposition that 
 the impressions of nature are continuously the same. And it cannot be 
 so, again, because if it is reason that is developed or evolved, then reason 
 must previously have existed at least in its constituent elements in the 
 primitive constitution of man, conditioning his development and deter- 
 mining its direction. Whatever is developed or evolved must have 
 existed previously to its development. It can hardly be said that 
 skeptics deny this. They rather ignore it, seeming to be utterly un- 
 aware that any question as to what the evolution of reason must pre- 
 suppose was ever asked or needed to be asked. Skepticism, however, 
 usually exists in the mind of the skeptic antecedent to any theory which 
 he uses as its vehicle. Whether his theory is positivism, or the associa- 
 tion of ideas in individuals, or evolution, each serves his purpose for 
 the time being, and each in its turn is defended with equal confidence. 
 The theory is not the cause but the symptom of the disease. 
 
 IX. The objection against the validity of rational intuitions recurs in 
 another form : Though men have these beliefs and necessarily think 
 under their regulation, and whatever be the account given of their 
 origin, they are, nevertheless, entirely subjective and illusive. They 
 may be necessary beliefs to me ; but to other minds the very contrary 
 may be equally necessary beliefs. To this the following answers are 
 pertinent and decisive : 
 
 1. This objection is merely a specific application of the theory of the 
 relativity of knowledge, already refuted. Thus the objector can give 
 no reasons for his belief, while there are the strongest possible reasons 
 against it. I might here dismiss the objection. But there are some 
 considerations pertinent to this special application of it which require 
 attention. 
 
 2. The objection is incompatible with the theory last considered, 
 which accounts for the rational intuitions as resulting from the expe- 
 rience of the race in which the impressions of nature through innumer- 
 able generations have registered themselves in the human organization, 
 and reveal themselves to the individual in constitutional a priori prin- 
 ciples intuitively known. This theory is incompatible with every form 
 of the relativity of knowledge. 
 
 * Pp. 182, 183. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIOXAM ItlttBjE R Si! T Y 
 
 3. If the necessary beliefs regulating a man's tm 
 beliefs or prejudices which have arisen from accidental 
 
 ideas in his own private experience, then his knowledge consists only of 
 impressions within his own subjectivity, while other persons, through 
 different associations, may with equal necessity think the contrary ; he 
 has no warrant even for impressions beyond what he has himself ob- 
 served ; and these impressions themselves can never be united in any 
 logical or rational unity. Real knowledge is thus impossible. This is 
 strikingly illustrated in Protagoras, who is said to have been the first 
 to develop philosophy, not from the object, external nature, but from 
 the subject, man. Man, however, he regarded as having knowledge 
 only through the senses, and his philosophy restecl on the individual 
 and particular, to the exclusion of the universal. His first principle 
 was, " Man is the measure of all things." He meant an individual 
 man, not the collective reason of mankind. His second principle ne- 
 cessarily followed, " Contradictory assertions are equally true." For 
 since every individual is the measure of all things, the same proposition 
 "may be at the same time true to one and its contradictory true to 
 another ; and since the individual is the subject only of changing sensa- 
 tions, a proposition may be true to him to-day and its contradictory 
 true of the same thing to-morrow T , according to the impression it makes 
 on him. The principles of Protagoras are carried to their logical result 
 by Moleschott, in the Kreislauf des Lebens, when he says, " Except in 
 relation to the eye into which it sends its rays, the tree has no exist- 
 ence. It is solely by this relation that the tree is in itself." Here is a 
 sort of sense-idealism ; the object exists only in the impression it makes 
 on the sensorium of an observer ; so soon as it ceases to be observed it 
 ceases to exist. We have then as many universes as there are observers, 
 and whenever a man dies or even goes to sleep, a universe is annihilated. 
 And the same is true of every brute ; for Moleschott in this connection 
 illustrates his meaning from the rotifer and the spider, and says, " The 
 observer may be an insect, a man, or, if there are such things, an 
 angel." We thus exemplify the necessity of the conclusion demonstrated 
 by Hume, that, if man's knoAvledge is limited to the impressions made 
 on him within his own individual experience, not only rational science 
 but all knowledge is impossible. 
 
 4. Reason is everywhere and always the same in kind. Otherwise 
 we must fall back into subjective idealism ; knowledge cannot escape 
 from the limits of the individual consciousness ; a proposition may be 
 necessarily true to one being and its contradictory necessarily true to 
 another ; and rational intelligence becomes impossible. Physical science 
 itself assumes this universal sameness of reason and, if true as science, 
 proves it. The laws which it enunciates are laws in the remotest nebula 
 
144 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 as really as on earth. The crowded skies may contain intelligent beings 
 widely different from us and susceptible perhaps of impressions widely 
 different from our own ; yet the laws of nature, if they have attained a 
 scientific knowledge of them, must be the same to them as to us, else all 
 our physical science is no better than a fairy tale ; and the principles of 
 reason must be the same to them as to us, else all our ratiocination is 
 mere babbling ; and the supreme reason must be the same to them as to 
 us, else reason is not supreme and the ultimate ground of the universe 
 is not reason. 
 
 Thus it is essential to the existence of rationality and to the possi- 
 bility of knowledge that the universal principles of rational intuition be 
 objectively real as the constituent elements of Keason everywhere and 
 always the same in kind. The objection that they are only subjective 
 and therefore illusive involves the impossibility of knowledge. 
 
 X. The validity of these principles as real knowledge involves the 
 existence of a supreme reason in which they are essential, eternal and 
 supreme. It is essential to the possibility of rational intelligence that 
 the principles and norms which are constituent and essential in the" 
 reason of man, be also constituent and essential in Reason that is eter- 
 nal, unchanging, supreme and universally regulative. 
 
 1. Truth has no significance except as some mind is its subject; for 
 truth is the intellectual equivalent of reality. There can be no truth or 
 law without a mind, as there can be no perception without a percipient 
 and no thought without a thinker. We only delude ourselves by 
 hypostasizing either perceptions, or thoughts, or truths, as if they were 
 substantial beings. Truths do not float loose about the universe, inde- 
 pendent of mind. But in the development of man's rational constitution 
 he finds himself having knowledge of truths which are universal and 
 regulative of all his thinking, which transcend his experience and condi- 
 tion all the reality which comes under his observation. There must be 
 a supreme Reason that is the subject and source of these truths, and in 
 that Reason they must be the eternal and archetypal principles of all 
 that begins to be. 
 
 The universe is not abstract but concrete. Knowledge is correlative 
 to being. Abstraction is a process of our own minds separating in 
 thought what is never separated in fact. It is possible in thought to 
 abstract an action from the agent, a thought from the thinker, a truth 
 or law from the personal reason, but they cannot be separated in 
 reality. If what we necessarily regard as universal truths and laws 
 regulating all thought and power and thus the basis of the possibility 
 of science, are not eternal in the Supreme Reason, then they are not 
 universal truths and laws, but are subjective and transitory impressions 
 in the sense-intelligence of a man, and knowledge is impossible. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 145 
 
 2. These principles cannot be peculiar to an individual. I know 
 that they are not mine ; I have not created them ; I cannot change 
 them nor set them aside. They must be principles of a reason above 
 and beyond me, a reason that is eternal, universal and supreme. Nor 
 can they have originated in the evolution of the human race. If they 
 were brought into human consciousness by the evolution of the 
 primitive man through many generations, yet even while lying 
 germinal and unconscious in his undeveloped constitution, they regu- 
 late man's development itself and direct it in its long progress to con- 
 scious rationality ; they also regulate the corresponding development of 
 nature in accordance with rational laws and to the realization of 
 rational principles and ends. They cannot, therefore, have originated 
 with man, either the individual or- the race, but must have existed 
 before the evolution began, in a reason that is universal and supreme. 
 
 3. These truths, therefore, have reality only as they are truths of 
 Reason absolute, all-ruling, and every where and always the same. 
 Since they are universal principles, having objective reality, originating 
 in no finite mind, they must be eternally real in a Reason that is 
 eternal, absolute and supreme. 
 
 4. Reason in man must be essentially the same in kind with the 
 Reason that is supreme. For we have seen that Reason, if it is Reason 
 at all, must be the same every where and always ; and so must be the 
 same in man and in God. The truths which regulate all thought and 
 are law to all action must be universally true or they are never true ; 
 they must be eternal in Reason that is absolute and supreme, otherwise 
 thought can never attain to truth nor action to righteousness. 
 
 This is a prerequisite to all communion with God. J. F. Ferrier 
 says, "This postulation is the foundation and essence of religion. 
 Destroy it and you destroy the possibility of religion." * For if intel- 
 ligence and moral law and moral perfection and worth are to God 
 different from what they are to man, there can be no communication 
 between man and God ; there can be no knowledge of God, no love to 
 him, no trust in him. 
 
 This postulation is equally necessary to the possibility of knowing 
 anything. For if there is no supreme and eternal reason essentially 
 the same with human reason, knowledge is disintegrated into the sub- 
 jective impressions of individuals, of which each individual necessarily 
 believes his own, but which have no common standard of truth and, in 
 different individuals, may be contradictory to one another. Therefore 
 what are fundamental realities and ideas of reason to man, are funda 1 
 mental ideas and realities to God ; these at least are so, whatever, not 
 
 * Lectures on Greek Philosophy, Edinburgh, 1866, page 13 ; quoted Brinton, 
 Religious Sentiment, page 97. 
 
 10 
 
146 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 contradicting them, God may know which we as yet do not know. 
 For let us make the supposition that what is universal truth to us may 
 be absurd to God, that what is right, perfect or beautiful, what is the 
 good that has true worth to us, is wrong, imperfect or ugly, evil or 
 unworthy to him, or vice versa; then the foundation is torn from 
 beneath the whole fabric of knowledge, and it topples down, not into 
 any ruin conceivable by us and still under the reign of law accordant 
 with which the fabric fell and may be rebuilt, but into a chaos in 
 which there is no distinction between the true and the absurd, the 
 right and the wrong, the perfect and the imperfect, the good and the 
 evil, a chaos in which rationality would no longer exist either in man 
 or God, and which is utterly unthinkable to every human mind. The 
 postulation that reason is everywhere the same in kind, and is the same 
 in man as in God, is the necessary basis of the possibility of religion, 
 of morals and of rational intelligence. 
 
 This postulation is also involved in the very fact that man is a per- 
 sonal being. If there is no personal being who is the absolute and 
 supreme Reason, then man himself is not a person. His knowledge of 
 himself as a rational person rises clear in his self-consciousness, ante- 
 cedent to his distinct apprehension of Reason above him and supreme. 
 But his existence as a rational person is dependent and conditioned on 
 the existence of the Absolute Reason. As his consciousness is de- 
 veloped and he apprehends it in thought, he finds in it the consciousness 
 of eternal and universal truths and laws which he himself did not 
 originate and in the knowledge of which he finds himself face to 
 face with Reason absolute and supreme. This consciousness of self, 
 as it is developed, reveals in its background the consciousness of 
 God. ' 
 
 Lotze says : " The finite works everywhere with powers which it has 
 not given to itself and according to laws which it has not established, 
 and thus by means of a spiritual power which is realized not in itself 
 alone. Hence in reflection on itself that being seems to perceive in 
 itself a dimly discerned substance, something which is in the Ego but 
 which is not the Ego itself, and on which as its foundation the personal 
 development rests." * 
 
 5. Christian theism explains and confirms this postulation by the 
 truth that man is in the image of God. This means that personality in 
 man is essentially the same with personality in God. If so, then in 
 knowing his own reason he knows the image of the supreme reason, 
 God ; and thus in knowing the primitive truths of rational intuition, he 
 knows truths eternal, unchangeable and universal in God the supreme 
 
 * Mikrokosmus, Vol. iii. p. 573. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH NATIONAL INTUITION. 147 
 
 Reason. Says Frances Power Cobbe, " Our intuition is God's tuition." * 
 Baden Powell says : " All science is but the partial reflection of the 
 reason of man in the great, all-pervading reason of the universe. And 
 thus the unity of science is the reflection of the unity of nature and of 
 that unity of the supreme reason and intelligence which pervades and 
 rules over all nature and whence our reason and science are derived." 
 
 6. Here arises the objection that in thinking that Reason in God is 
 essentially the same in kind with Reason in man, our belief is anthro- 
 pomorphic, and not real knowledge. In the face of this objection 
 teachers of religion fear to acknowledge that man is in the image of 
 God and that Reason is everywhere and always essentially the same, 
 lest they should fall into anthropomorphism ; to escape anthropomor- 
 phism they sometimes concede that we have no knowledge of God, but 
 only a faith founded not in reason but in feeling ; and at last find them- 
 selves forced upon the logical consequence that God is beyond the range 
 of human intelligence and to man must ever remain unknown. They 
 do not consider that the objection is equally fatal to all knowledge. If 
 the knowledge of God is anthropomorphic, all science is equally so. 
 What does the scientist find in nature but its conformity with the prin- 
 ciples and laws of human intelligence, and what is science but the 
 statement of this conformity? If man knows anything, his knowledge 
 must be human knowledge ; and knowledge that is human must be an-" 
 thropomorphic. The objection is nothing but the doctrine of the rela- 
 tivity of knowledge presented in a peculiar form ; it is the objection 
 that human knowledge is not real because it is knowledge through the 
 human faculties. This, as I have shown, is simply the absurdity that 
 knowledge is impossible because there is a mind that knows. It is 
 equally pertinent against knowledge by any mind, human, angelic or 
 divine. It implies that knowledge is possible only to a being which is 
 not endowed with reason and which knows without any power of 
 knowing. 
 
 There must be ultimate and universal truths. If the law of the 
 persistence of force is not true in the remotest nebula, it is not true 
 here ; if it will not be true ten or ten million years hence, it is not true 
 now. If the principles and laws which regulate human intelligence are 
 not true in Mars and Sirius, all our astronomy is invalidated. All 
 truth must rest immediately or remotely on truth that is eternal. The 
 capacity of knowing some truth that is eternal and universal, is a pre- 
 requisite for the capacity of rational intelligence. The fact that this 
 knowledge is anthropomorphic does not prove it false ; it only proves 
 that man's knowledge has the essential characteristic of true knowledge ; 
 
 * Intuitive Morals, p. 22. 
 
148 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 that man's reason acts in the light of truths which eternally enlighten 
 the Reason that is absolute and supreme. 
 
 We say, therefore, with F. H. Jacobi : " In creating man God theo- 
 morphized ; therefore necessarily man anthropomorphizes. What makes 
 man to be man, that is, the image of God, is Reason. This begins with 
 the ' I am.' Where this word resounds within, expressing the inmost 
 being, there is Reason, there is Personality, there is Freedom. . . . 
 Accordingly we confess to the conviction that man bears in him the 
 image of God inevitable anthropomorphism and we affirm that with- 
 out this anthropomorphism, hitherto called Theism, there is only either 
 atheism or fetichism." * 
 
 It would be a fatally misleading anthropomorphism to ascribe to 
 God the limitations of man, his bodily form and constitution, or the 
 qualities of his natural life. But it is sophistry to argue from this that 
 personality in its essence is not the same in man and in God ; and the 
 latter error is as deadly as the former. 
 
 7. To the doctrine that the principles which regulate man's thinking 
 originate in the intuition of reason and are valid for all thinking beings, 
 Lange objects : This " view, which is peculiar to the true original He- 
 gelianism, leads necessarily to Pantheism ; for it already presupposes 
 as an axiom the unity of the human spirit with the spirit of the uni- 
 verse and with all spirits." f This has been a common error of German 
 metaphysics. But Theism corrects it. The unity of spirits is not the 
 pantheistic identity of substance, but the unity of persons under the 
 universal truths and laws of one rational and moral system. 
 
 The universal reason is not submerged unconscious in nature, but 
 energizes in the personal God, and expresses its truths, laws and ideals 
 in the constitution of the universe. Man is constituted rational. As 
 in contact with external nature his reason is developed, he finds in him- 
 self the principles of universal reason ; he recognizes them as laws of 
 thought and action, constructs ideals in accordance with them, and by 
 them discriminates between good as worthy and evil as worthless. He 
 finds them also regulating nature. He recognizes the universe as con- 
 tinuously expressing the archetypal thoughts of the supreme reason. 
 Thus only can he comprehend the cosmos in the unity of a system and 
 describe it in science. Without the theistic recognition of the su- 
 premacy of reason all science disappears, either disintegrated into 
 individual impressions void of real knowledge, or attenuated into an 
 abstract and unreal universal ; 
 
 "Philosophy, that leaned on heaven before, 
 Sinks to her second cause and is no more." 
 
 * Gottlichen Dingen ; Werke, Vol. iii. pp. 418, 422, 423. 
 t Geschichte des Materialismus, B. ii., Sect. i. chap. ii. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 149 
 
 Thus knowing God, man by faith and love comes into a moral unity 
 with Him and with all rational beings. 
 
 XL The discussion proves that the intuitions of reason are real 
 knowledge and that . the only reasonable explanation of them is that 
 they are constituent elements of Reason and reveal Reason eternal, 
 absolute and supreme, and that Reason, everywhere and always, in God 
 and man, is essentially the same. 
 
 In the acknowledged failure of Comte's Positivism and of Mill's 
 theory of association, and in the evident inadequacy of the explana- 
 tion of the evolutionist, the resources of empiricism are exhausted and 
 we fall back on the Reason as the only and complete explanation. 
 The rational intuitions exist as norms in the rational constitution of 
 man ; as his constitution is developed, they reveal themselves in con- 
 sciousness on occasion in experience, as universal regulative principles ; 
 and in their revelation of man to himself as personal Reason, they re- 
 veal to him the supreme and absolute Reason as the personal God, 
 conditioning his own personal existence, and without whom his own 
 rational intelligence would be impossible. The discussion proves that 
 all who would not deny the reality of all knowledge must recognize 
 the rational intuitions as real knowledge, whatever theory of their 
 origin may be adopted. They are regulative not only of all thinking 
 but also in the constitution of nature. By them we are able to appre- 
 hend the Cosmos as a realm of ideas and laws, and to construct science 
 which is its intellectual equivalent. Says Prof. John Fiske : " So long 
 as individual experience is studied without reference to ancestral expe- 
 rience, the follower of Kant can always hold his ground against Locke 
 in ethics as well as in psychology." * This admits the reality of the 
 principles independent of the theory by which they are accounted for, 
 and the sufficiency of the rationalistic explanations aside from the 
 theory of ancestral experience. 
 
 The objective validity of something in the constitution of the human 
 mind corresponding to rational intuition Hume himself seems to admit : 
 " As nature has taught us the use of our limbs without giving us the 
 knowledge of the muscles and nerves by which they are actuated, so 
 she has implanted in us an instinct which carries forward the thought 
 in a correspondent course to that which she has established among 
 external objects, though we are ignorant of those powers and forces on 
 which this regular course and succession depends." f We must as ^, 
 Who is the Nature that teaches us ? And have we not here an uncon- 
 scious acknowledgment of the supremacy and ubiquity of Reason, which 
 our rational intuitions reveal ? 
 
 ^Outlines of Co>mic Philosophy, Vol. ii. p. 326. 
 
 f Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, sect. II., sub finem. 
 
150 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Mr. Frederick Harrison says man is "the being which is the real 
 discoverer and author of law. . . . Laws of nature are not so much 
 the expression of absolute realities in the nature of things (of this we 
 know nothing absolutely), but they are those relations which the human 
 intellect has perceived in co-ordinate phenomena of all kinds. . . . The 
 whole sphere of law is nothing but the outcome of the human intelli- 
 gence applied to the world of phenomena." * But " the great Human 
 Being," in whose " Human Providence " Mr. Harrison finds " both law 
 and author and minister of law," certainly did not of its own mind and 
 will arrange nature according to these laws ; on the contrary, it finds the 
 world arranged according to them. This, positivists like Mr. Harrison 
 would be obliged to admit. Then, we necessarily ask, how came the world 
 to be arranged according to these laws, and how came the Human Being 
 to know them? The Positivist arbitrarily rules this question out as 
 illegitimate. Yet it is a question which man has always asked ; and the 
 recognition of a cause beyond man is as necessary in " the great Human 
 Being," and has been historically as constant and universal, as the laws 
 which Mr. Harrison so freely recognizes. If the laws which man finds 
 in the world have no objective reality, then it must be equally true that 
 the world has no objective reality. Then human knowledge ceases, and 
 " the great Human Being," forever cheating itself with illusions, is not 
 the Being on whom man can rest in peace as the supreme object of 
 trust and worship. And again we see that if man has any real know- 
 ledge, the principles and law r s which are regulative alike of nature and 
 of his ow r n thought, must be principles and laws in an absolute Reason, 
 the ultimate ground alike of nature with its laws and of man with his 
 rational intelligence, and that Reason everywhere and always, in God 
 and man, is the same. 
 
 XII. The possibility of science, and indeed of any knowledge, more 
 than the sense of isolated impressions on a sensorium, rests on the fol- 
 lowing realities : 
 
 Through rational intuition man has real knowledge of universal, 
 regulative principles, and in knowing them has knowledge of himself as 
 Reason. 
 
 Supreme in the Universe is Reason essentially like our own, and, 
 however transcending, never contradicting the Reason of man ; and 
 Reason is everywhere and always the same. - 
 
 The principles of Reason are universally regulative of thought and 
 efficient power, in the sense that the absurd can never be made real. 
 
 These realities are the conditions of the possibility of science. Be- 
 cause man is Reason, and because the universe is accordant with 
 
 * The Creeds Old and New, Nineteenth Century, Nqvember, 1880. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 151 
 
 rational principles and laws and progressively realizes rational ideals 
 and good, and because it thus expresses the archetypal thoughts of the 
 supreme Reason, it can be apprehended and systemized in science by 
 the rational intelligence of man. 
 
 XIII. Atheism must rest on some theory which logically involves 
 the impossibility of knowledge. This is a necessary inference from the 
 positions already established. It is also verified by the history of all 
 atheism which attempts to vindicate itself to rational intelligence. If 
 it is impossible to know God, it is impossible to know anything scienti- 
 fically in the unity of a rational system. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 THE ULTIMATE KEALITIES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 826. Definition. 
 
 BY ultimate realities I mean the ultimate kinds or genera of reality 
 which are known in intuition and designated by a common name, and 
 are the objects of human thought. It is conceivable that all the ele- 
 mental realities known in intuition may be ascertained and named. If 
 this should be done we should have before us and know by name all 
 the ultimate genera or kinds of reality of which it is possible to have 
 knowledge. We may call them for short the ultimate or fundamental 
 realities, and our ideas of them the ultimate or fundamental ideas of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Aristotle attempted a classification of the ultimate genera of reality, 
 and called them Categories. Kant, however, has used this word to 
 denote the Root-notions (Stammbegriffe) of the understanding, the pure 
 forms of thought given by the mind itself. Since his day the word has 
 retained the meaning in which Kant used it. Some other word, there- 
 fore, must be used to denote the ultimate genera of reality. 
 
 27. Matter and Form. 
 
 Kant calls the particular reality known in perceptive intuition the 
 " matter " of thought or knowledge ; the rational truths and laws which 
 declare its relation to the universal, and which are known in rational 
 intuition, he called the " forms " of knowledge or thought. It has been 
 objected that the latter, as "forms of thought," can have no objective 
 reality ; and it has come to pass that any use of the terms matter and 
 forms of thought at once awakens the suspicion that the writer using 
 them denies the reality of knowledge. But in their true significance 
 they carry in them no suggestion of the unreality of knowledge. The 
 " matter " of knowledge is the particular realities known in presentative 
 intuition ; its " form " is the truth and laws which express their relation 
 to the universal. Sense-perception and self-consciousness know a par. 
 ticular being in its particular modes of existence. Reason knows the 
 same in its relations to the universal. The "matter" of my knowledge 
 of power is power as I know it in some particular exertion of it ; its 
 152 
 
THE ULTIMATE EEALITIES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 153 
 
 "form" is the rational principle that every beginning or change of ex- 
 istence must have a cause. The "matter" of my knowledge of space is 
 extension in its three dimensions ; its " form," in which Reason knows 
 it, is the metaphysical principle that space is continuous, immovable 
 within itself and unlimited, and the mathematical principles of geometry. 
 
 When this true conception has been attained, the controversy about 
 the "matter" and "form" of knowledge passes away, and with it the 
 doubt which it has thrown on the reality of knowledge. The necessary 
 forms of thought are also the forms of things. They are forms of 
 things because originally and eternally they are archetypal in the 
 supreme Reason. 
 
 Plato's " ideas " were at once conceptions of the mind and forms or 
 archetypes of things. When we grasp the fact that in intuition we 
 have positive knowledge of self and external being and of universal 
 principles of reason, we necessarily come to the Platonic position that 
 the necessary forms of thought are the forms of things ; we grasp in its 
 true significance the principle which has given to Platonism its peren- 
 nial life, that the truths of reason are at once the laws of thought and 
 the archetypal norms of all existence. 
 
 It is the error of Kant that space and time, which he calls forms of 
 sense, and reality, substance, cause, existence and other categories of the 
 understanding, are pure subjective forms of thought, which the mind 
 must necessarily put under phenomena in apprehending them. But we 
 now see that the necessary forms of thought are simply the universal 
 norms or principles of reason ; and that these must be the norms or 
 principles regulative not of thought only, but of all existence ; because, 
 if not so, reason is false in its constituent elements ; what we have taken 
 for reason, the organ of truth, is found to be unreason and an organ of 
 falsehood ; and rationality and knowledge are no more. 
 
 We return now to the true position. Perceptive intuition is the 
 knowledge of some particular being in some particular mode of exist- 
 ence. Rational intuition is the knowledge of the rational norms of all 
 existence. By reason we know the particular reality as related to truth 
 that is universal, necessary and unchanging, and through this to Reason 
 unconditioned and supreme. 
 
 I 28. Classification. 
 
 The Ultimate Realities are of two classes, distinguished by their 
 origin ; each of these classes must be subdivided into two : 
 
 Class I. Ultimate Realities primarily known in Presentative 
 Intuition : 
 
 1. Being. 
 
 2. Modes of the Existence of Being. 
 
154 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Class II. Ultimate Realities primarily known in Rational Intuition : 
 
 1. Norms or Standards of Reason: The True, The Right, The 
 Perfect and The Good ; or Truth, Law, Perfection and Good. 
 
 2. The Absolute. 
 
 I mean by " the good " that which Reason estimates by its standards 
 of Truth, Right and Perfection, as having worth, or as worthy of the 
 pursuit, possession and enjoyment of a rational being. 
 
 The Absolute is the unconditioned and all-conditioning Being, on 
 which finite beings in all the modes of their existence depend, and in 
 which the norms or standards of Reason are eternal. The intuition of 
 Reason that Absolute being must exist, is a truth. As such it belongs 
 with the True, and is, like every other necessary truth, a law of thought 
 and a norm or standard of judgment. But this intuition opens to us 
 the knowledge of the Absolute or Unconditioned. This properly stands 
 by itself in the classification as the last of all the ultimate realities. 
 
 Aristotle classifies the genera of reality in ten categories ; Being, 
 Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Position, Possession, Action, 
 Passion.* This is evidently incomplete ; and the same may be said of 
 all attempts to complete it. But it was begun on the right principle. 
 His categories are not logical predicates of general notions, but realities 
 of concrete being. The ultimate realities are not found by the methods 
 of abstract thought and formal logic, but by those of concrete or real- 
 istic thought attending to concrete beings. Kant, on the contrary, 
 develops his categories from the twelve logical functions of possible 
 judgments, and proceeds throughout to logical products rather than to 
 concrete realities. The result is a grand system of what thought must 
 be, empty of all content of known being. 
 
 I do not claim that the classification which I present is complete and 
 open to no objection. I present it only as a classification which I have 
 found helpful to use in attempting to set forth the reality, extent and 
 limitations of human knowledge. 
 
 It will be noticed that, according to this classification, knowledge 
 begins as knowledge of particular beings in their several modes of 
 existence, proceeds to the knowledge of them in their relations to the 
 universal principles of reason, and issues in the knowledge of absolute 
 being ; this is the order of knowing and thinking. On the other hand, 
 in the order of dependence, the Absolute Being is first, as the ultimate 
 ground of the existence of all particular beings and of the possibility 
 of their unity as a universe. In the Absolute Being all truth, law, 
 perfection and worth are archetypal and eternal, and of these the uni- 
 verse of finite things is the ever progressive expression and realization. 
 
 * 'Owt'a, Troaov, notdv, Trpof ri, TTOU, nore, KeiaOai, ^eiv } TTOI.ELV } nda^eiv. Topica I. 
 9. Organon I. Kar^opiai. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ULTIMATE REALITIES PRIMARILY KNOWN IN PERCEPTIVE 
 
 OR PRESENTATIVE INTUITION: BEING AND ITS 
 
 MODES OF EXISTENCE. 
 
 229. Being. 
 
 I. Being is known immediately in presentative intuition and can be 
 defined or described only by referring every man to his own conscious- 
 ness of it. 
 
 A man knows being in his consciousness of himself as existing. The 
 whole idea of being is given in that consciousness. To say / think, is the 
 same as to say, It is I who think. I think, I act, I feel, every affirma- 
 tion which a man can make of himself carries in it the affirmation, 1 
 am; and, without the / am, it is void of all significance and reality. 
 It is here that he has the knowledge of being. 
 
 We also have knowledge of being in sense-perception. In one and 
 the same act I know the outward object and myself. And of each 
 I have positive knowledge. I know myself not as a mere negation of 
 the outward object but as positively known being; in this positive 
 knowledge I affirm, I am. I know my own being in all its fullness of 
 life, intelligence and power. I know the outward object, not merely 
 negatively as not-me, but positively ; my own body posited in and occu- 
 pying space, and other bodies impinging on my organism or resisting 
 my energy. 
 
 Because being is known intuitively it cannot be defined, but can be 
 known only in one's own consciousness of it. We know that a thought, 
 an action, a feeling, a motion is not a being. It is impossible to think 
 these as beings. We refer the thought to^ a thinker, the action to an 
 agent, the feeling and the motion to a being that feels and moves. 
 But we cannot define what a beino- is : we know what it is in the con- 
 
 O " 
 
 sciousness of self and the perception of bodies. 
 
 Having attained in perceptive intuition the idea of being, we group 
 together all realities known as beings, whether persons or things, in one 
 class and call them beings. And this is the first of the ultimate reali-* 
 ties known in perceptive intuition. 
 
 155 
 
156 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 II. Being, as known in perceptive intuition, is a particular or deter- 
 minate being existing in particular properties or attributes. 
 
 Being ex-ists (ex-sisto) ; it stands out in view. It exists or stands out 
 to our knowledge in various qualities or powers ; also as one or many ; 
 as occupying space or persisting, in time: as under limitation; and as 
 in relation. These may be called attributes of being as known in per- 
 ceptive intuition ; and, since in these the being ex-ists, they may be 
 called modes of existence. 
 
 III. Being, known by perceptive intuition as existing in various 
 modes, is known by the Reason in rational intuition in the " forms " of 
 its universal principles and laws and in accordance with its unchanging 
 standards or norms. 
 
 We know by rational intuition that every quality, attribute or phe- 
 nomenon is a quality, attribute or phenomenon of a being. There can 
 be no thought without a thinker, no action without an agent, no motion 
 without something that moves, no beginning or change without a cause, 
 no phenomenon without a being that appears in it as well as a being 
 to whom it appears, no truth without a mind to know it. 
 
 Conversely, we know by rational intuition that every being exists in 
 some attributes or properties. And this is only saying that every being 
 ex-ists. There can be no being without attributes ; there can be no 
 being without power of some kind ; and this is only saying there cannot 
 be a being that does not exist. If we attempt to think of Being without 
 attributes, a substance stripped of all properties, we have nothing left. 
 Not only is nothing left, but our thought issues in the contradiction that 
 Being is the same with Nothing. A'nd this is the " Thing in itself" out 
 of all relation to our faculties. It is not an unknowable which we may 
 some time come to know; it is not Nothing, as the mere denial of 
 being ; it is the symbol of a hopeless contradiction at the root of all 
 knowledge. 
 
 Thus we know being in its deepest reality and significance. While 
 perceptive intuition gives us particular beings existing in particular 
 modes, rational intuition shows us that this being is real being as Reason 
 knows it in its relations to the universal. Thought cannot pass behind 
 this to think of anything more real. Beyond being, as presentative and 
 rational intuition know it, is nullity, into which thought cannot enter 
 nor intuition glance. 
 
 IV. Being, in its whole reality as substance and quality, agent and 
 action, is presented in presentative intuition. The reality presented in 
 intuition we apprehend in thought as substance and quality, agent and 
 action ; but the reality thus apprehended is given in the intuition. It 
 *s so apprehended in thought because it is so in reality. Rational intui- 
 tion adds that being, thus known, is real being, as reason in the light of 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 157 
 
 its universal principles knows it must be. Substance and quality, 
 therefore, is not, as Kant regards it, a form of pure thought wholly 
 subjectiv.e to the thinker, but it is objectively real in the being as known 
 in presentative intuition, and is so apprehended in thought both because 
 it is so in the particular being known, and because Reason sees that it 
 must be so in all beings. 
 
 This is accordant with the earlier Greek philosophy, which did not 
 use u-uxg'.>j.s';ov (substance), but duda, to denote Being ; as if we had 
 the abstract word Beingne*s. The same usage we find centuries later 
 in Augustine : " It is called Essence, as derived from Esse, and denoting 
 that which is ; and it is also called substance, as derived from subsisto, 
 with the same meaning." * Essence is the Latin etymologically corre- 
 sponding with the Greek oueia, and might legitimately be used with 
 the same meaning, were it not appropriated in logic to a different use 
 and with a different meaning. 
 
 The ancient Greeks debated whether everything is in constant flux 
 and transition, or whether under all changes something stands. In 
 self-consciousness I know myself as the subject of many qualities and 
 many successive acts, yet myself under all the changes persisting the 
 same. The same is known in every being ; under diverse qualities and 
 successive acts the being stands the same. To denote the being thus 
 standing the same under many qualities and successive changes, we call 
 it < lib-stance; that which subsists or stands the same under all diverse 
 qualities and changes. It might with equal propriety have been called 
 j)ersistence, as that which stands unchanged through all changes suc- 
 cessive in time. But as it stands out knowable in its attributes we 
 speak of its existence. 
 
 Here we have the synthesis of phenomenon and being. It is the 
 synthesis of subsistence or substance and ex-istence. The Being in one 
 aspect subsists, in another it exists. The phenomenon is simply the 
 existence of that which subsists and persists, revealing it to our know- 
 ledge. As revealed or appearing we call it phenomenon. But it is the 
 phenomenon or appearing of the being. The phenomenon is filled with 
 the being : it is the being ex-isting so as to be knowable ; and thus it is 
 the true and real manifestation of the being. 
 
 V. Being is the fundamental reality ; all other ultimate realities are 
 determinate of being and have no significance otherwise. Being is 
 presupposed in all the other ultimate realities. The other realities 
 primarily known in presentative intuition are modes of the existence of 
 being. The ultimate realities of Rational Intuition are realities only as 
 they pertain to Being ; they are the Truth, the Law, the Perfection, 
 
 * De Trinitate, Lib. VII., c. 4. 
 
158 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the Good of being ; and the Absolute is an empty idea except as it is 
 known as Absolute being. Being is a datum prerequisite in all gen- 
 eralizations and in all thought. Accordingly Aristotle called the 
 categories genera of being or of beings, yi^ TOO ovroq or rwv ovrajy. 
 He explicitly recognizes concrete, individual, determinate being (rode 
 rt) as the unit of knowledge, and primary being (-/>wr>? 01x7 in.) as 
 present in all reality, known in all knowledge, and supposed in all the 
 categories.* 
 
 Reality is a broader term than being. While the qualities of a being 
 cannot be thought of as existing separate from the being, we may direct 
 attention to a particular quality and thus abstract it in thought. Such 
 an abstract idea is a reality, but we cannot call it a being. Reality 
 includes being and all its modes of existence and the forms in which 
 reason knows it. A thought or feeling or action is a reality, but is not 
 a being. Modes of existence, however, have no reality, except as modes 
 of the existence of being. However abstract a general notion may be 
 it is real only as it is a subjective notion of the thinker, or is the notion 
 of -modes of existence in some being. A centaur is real as the fancy 
 of a mind. Solidity is real not only as the thought of a mind but also 
 as a property of a body. There is no reality apart from being. 
 
 SO. Modes of Existence. 
 
 I. POWER. This is the first mode of existence. 
 
 In knowing action, man know power to act. He knows his own 
 power in his own action and the power of outward objects in their 
 action on his organism. In action being ex-ists or comes out to view 
 as having pow r er to act. Power is the primary mode of existence ; it is 
 characteristic of all beings and is their primary manifestation, whereby 
 they are knowable. Power to act is known immediately in self-con- 
 sciousness and sense-perception ; it cannot be defined ; but is known only 
 in the presentative intuition of it. Pow r er may be distinguished as of 
 various kinds by the actions in which it reveals itself, as power of 
 knowing, thinking, determining, power of communicating and arresting 
 motion. 
 
 When a being is observed to exist in the continuous and unchanging 
 manifestation in itself of any power, we call the being a substance and 
 the power a quality. When the being is observed to manifest power 
 in any beginning or change of existence in itself or another we call the 
 being a cause, the power an energy and the beginning or change of 
 existence an effect. Substance and cause are different names of being 
 according as its powers are observed in continuous and unchanging 
 
 * To 6e TI Tifyu naO" endo-rjv /car?/} -opiav. Met. p. 1032a, 13-15. 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. J59 
 
 manifestation of itself, or in a beginning or change of existence in itself 
 or another. 
 
 The present tendency of scientific thought is to the conception of na- 
 ture as dynamic. Matter is no longer inert, but energetic ; all masses 
 are in motion ; the molecules are in motion among themselves ; an atom 
 itself is, as some suppose, a whirling vortex of matter. Rest is relative 
 only. Accordingly the so-called qualities of beings are called powers. 
 Hence it is not uncommon to designate a being as a power, although this 
 language is to be accepted only as a metonymy. Prof. Bowne says, 
 " Substance is individualized force or power." * But this is inadequate ; 
 for both power and individuality are modes of existence, and have no 
 significance, except as the power and individuality of a being. If being 
 is nothing without power, power is nothing without being. Nor does 
 any one in this way escape the recognition of being. Every attempt 
 to identify being with power must issue in hypostasizing the power ; 
 then we have the power hypostasized and the power appearing in quali- 
 ties and acts, and find ourselves again confronted with the old two in 
 one, substance and quality, agent and action, being and existence. No 
 thinker can throw his thought below being; nor can complete his 
 thought above it and without it. 
 
 Cause is not merely a form of pure thought without content ; its con- 
 tent is being exerting power in effecting a beginning or change of exist- 
 ence. Cause and effect are not mere antecedent and consequent ; the 
 change called the effect is effected by power in the cause. And what 
 power is, is known in experience by presentative intuition. James 
 Mill says that the idea of power in causation is " an item altogether 
 imaginary.''! But, if so, whence came the idea of power, which all 
 men have ? Mr. Mill's assertion implies that imagination has the trans- 
 cendent power of creating the image of an elemental reality never given 
 in intuition. And it contradicts the universal consciousness. Every 
 man distinguishes a cause as exerting power from a mere antecedent ; 
 and all language indicates the distinction. The fall of the mercury in 
 a barometer is the antecedent of a storm, but not its cause ; the opening 
 of the floodgates is an antecedent of the flow of water and the turning 
 of the water-wheel, but not their cause. "W. R. Grove says truly that 
 to cease to use the words cause and force with this meaning would 
 render the language unintelligible. J 
 
 A cause may be agent, or transitive, or reactive. An Agent cause 
 merely acts or exerts power without effect beyond the act itself; as, I 
 think, I choose, I determine. There is also no causative act interme- 
 
 * Studies in Theism, p. 234. 
 
 f Analysis of the Human Mind, Vol. II., p. 256. 
 
 J Correlation of Physical Forces. Youman's Ed., pp. 18, 21. 
 
160 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 diate between the agent and the action ; the being manifests itself in the 
 immediate forth-putting of power. The act must be referred to the 
 agent as its cause, and that which is caused is merely the act itself. A 
 cause is transitive when the power passes beyond the immediate action 
 and effects an additional change ; as when by volition I raise my hand, 
 and move the air in contact with it. In this case the cause produces 
 the effect by an act of power intermediate between the cause and the 
 effect. Physical science recognizes an actual transmission of energy. 
 A reactive cause produces an effect by power reacting against a power 
 acting on it ; as arresting motion. A personal being is a free cause. 
 He not only does his own actions, but in the exercise of his energy he 
 is autonomic, self-directive and self-exertive. 
 
 All finite beings are acted on by powers exerted on them by some 
 cause ; the being so acted on is object or recipient. This corresponds to 
 the Aristotelian category of passion. The effect of the action is a new 
 action in the recipient ; as the stroke of the bat communicates molar 
 motion to the ball or the blow of a hammer communicates molecular 
 motion to the anvil. Locke properly called this receptivity passive 
 power. 
 
 II. ONE and MANY. The second mode of existence. 
 
 1. Individuality and Identity. In knowing himself as the subject of 
 diverse qualities and of successive acts man knows himself as an indi- 
 vidual, as one and the same being in all the diversity of action which 
 he knows in immediate consciousness or in memory. It is not by 
 reflective thought that he combines these diversities into a unity ; but 
 in every act he is conscious of himself as one and the same self. He 
 cannot be said even to remember himself, since the knowledge of 
 himself as persisting the same, is presupposed in the knowledge of 
 succession and in the memory of past acts. Thus the knowledge of 
 individuality and identity originates in self-consciousness, as already 
 explained. 
 
 Individuality, however, does not imply simplicity. It is always a 
 unity of the diverse ; the human mind cannot think of an individual 
 that is perfectly simple. The unity of an individual is not of several 
 beings in one, but of several powers in one and the same being. A 
 man is many-sided ; but always knows himself as one and the same. 
 
 The individual is not indivisible in the sense that his various modes 
 of being cannot be distinguished in thought, but in the sense that the 
 unity of those modes is not a unity of thought merely, but a unity as 
 the modes of existence of one and the same being. 
 
 The individual is not indivisible in the sense that it is independent 
 and indestructible ; but in the sense that the being remains one and 
 the same in all modes of existence however diverse, and in all relations 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 161 
 
 to other beings however complicated. A person can never be blended 
 into another being or lost in any combination of beings. It is always 
 one and the same person. Nor can the person be divided into two 
 persons, for the division would be the extinction of the person. So 
 necessary and universal is this knowledge of self as an individual 
 being, that it has been the common and spontaneous belief of man- 
 kind ; and the belief has been so inwrought into their constitution that 
 they have believed that through even the change which takes place at 
 death the man persists, as he has persisted through all the changes of 
 life, and survives in another mode of existence, the same individual 
 being. The explanation of this world-wide belief as if it originated in 
 man's sight of his own shadow or his remembrance of his dreams is a 
 conjecture not verified by observed facts and as an hypothesis is entirely 
 inadequate. The only philosophical explanation is found in the fact 
 that man knows himself as persisting one and the same through all 
 changes, and that this knowledge of himself is presupposed in the unity 
 and continuity of all knowledge. This knowledge is included, at least 
 as virtual or implicit consciousness, in all knowledge whatever. 
 
 2. Individuality and otherness or alterity. We have been considering 
 difference of qualities or powers in the same being. There is also the 
 distinction of being from other beings, not merely by qualities or powers, 
 but also by being itself. 
 
 As the knowledge of individuality and identity originates in the 
 knowledge of self, the idea of otherness originates in our knowledge of 
 beings not ourselves. In perceiving an outward object I know it as a 
 being acting on me or on which I react. The perceptive intuition pre- 
 sents the " matter" or object of the knowledge, and the reason sees it in 
 its rational " form," as the power of a being that is not me ; it is another 
 being. When a man knows himself as / he may know another person 
 as Thou. 
 
 In logic an individual is a completely determinate being. It may 
 belong to a class, but it has peculiarities by which it is distinguished 
 from all other individuals of its own or any other class. In logic two 
 beings completely determinate and just alike would coincide and become 
 one ; because logic, in forming its general notions, recognizes nothing 
 but the attributes and attains nothing but an idea or notion. Hence 
 Leibnitz insisted that no two things can be exactly alike ; * confounding 
 the logical notion with the being, and imagining that the beings would 
 coincide and become one as the logical notions do. It is one of innu- 
 merable instances of philosophers running into profound errors by con- 
 founding logical abstractions with concrete beings. But, as we have 
 
 * Nouveaux Essais, Avant-Propos. 
 11 
 
162 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 seen, the objects of concrete thought are beings in their modes of exist- 
 ence. An individual is not only completely determinate, but is also a 
 completely determinate being. And if the attributes of two beings were 
 precisely alike, they would still be separate as two distinct beings 
 separate by the whole breadth of being. 
 
 The ultimate units of all thought are' of three classes: Finite per- 
 sons ; Material beings, whatever the ultimate units of matter may be ; 
 God the absolute and unconditioned One. 
 
 3. Number. The idea of number originates from the knowledge of 
 beings as individuals. They are thus known as one and another. Not 
 attending to their peculiar attributes, but simply to the individuals, we 
 know them as distinct beings, one and another and another. Man then 
 learns to distinguish one from two, two from three, as groups of different 
 numbers come before him ; and to these groups he gives names, one, 
 two, three and so on. When familiar with the names, he comes to 
 abstract the beings, and the empty forms of number remain ; which he 
 designates by symbols. He then invents some method of notation by 
 the multiples of some unit-number, by which he is able to designate 
 large numbers and to calculate arithmetically. 
 
 The knowledge of number is given in the virtual or implicit con- 
 sciousness so soon as a man knows himself as an individual and distin- 
 guishes himself from another. But the mind attains to the explicit 
 apprehension of the empty forms of number and learns to name them 
 only by a slow and difficult process. Children must have visible objects 
 to count for a long time before they can reckon by the abstract forms 
 and names. The capacity for arithmetic is comparatively late in its 
 development. And anthropologists tell us of savages who have attained 
 the idea of a divinity before they could count beyond the number of 
 their fingers. 
 
 Some philosophers have proposed the theory that the idea of number 
 originates from the idea of succession in time. This theory is not satis- 
 factory as an explanation of the idea, and is not supported by any 
 known facts. 
 
 III. EXTENSION IN SPACE. The third mode of existence. 
 
 In perceptive intuition we have knowledge of bodies extended in 
 space. We know our own bodies posited in space and moving in it. 
 Also by handling bodies I know them as extended. Also by moving 
 my body from place to place or extending my hand from one body to 
 another I have knowledge of distance and direction. Thus in perceptive 
 intuition I have immediate knowledge of extension in three dimensions, 
 of distance and of direction. 
 
 If now in thought I abstract the body from its place, void place is 
 left ; I cannot think it away. It is empty room for a body. In passing 
 
BEIXG AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 163 
 
 from place to place, I find extension, as room for body, continuous, and 
 since all place that I observe is continuous I may infer by the Baconian 
 induction that room for bodies extends continuous in the three dimen- 
 sions to the farthest stars. So far our knowledge by perceptive intuition 
 and our reflection on it extends. 
 
 Now by rational intuition we know that room for bodies is continuous, 
 immovable and illimitable. It is impossible to think it absent any- 
 where ; it is impossible to think that it moves on itself or is in any way 
 changed ; and it is impossible to think it limited, because it cannot be 
 bounded except by further room. We have also all the rational intui- 
 tions which are the basis of geometry. Thus we have the knowledge 
 of space as reason knows it in its " forms " of universal and necessary 
 truth. 
 
 Space as thus known is not a pure subjective form of thought, but is 
 a form of things. The particular reality which gives it content is the 
 extension of bodies in three dimensions, their distance and direction as 
 intuitively perceived and all that we learn of the same in thought. By 
 rational intuition this reality is known in its universal significance as 
 continuous, immovable, unchangeable and illimitable room for being. 
 Yet, as known in rational intuition, space has no significance except in 
 relation to bodies and cannot even be thought except as room for them. 
 The knowledge of body is first ; the knowledge of space is derived from 
 it. This is the clear idea of space as it lies unvexed by metaphysics in 
 the mind. And the result of metaphysical thought must still be that 
 space is continuous, unlimited room for bodies, and thus has reality only 
 as related to bodies or at least to the possibility of their existence. 
 
 The doctrine that space is merely a subjective form of sense is con- 
 trary to all consciousness. Our consciousness that our bodies exist in 
 space, not space in us, is as decisive as consciousness can be. The denial 
 of it is, as Spencer says, " as repugnant to common sense as any propo- 
 sition that can be framed." * The denial is not demanded by Reason 
 to meet any necessity of thought. On the contrary, the denial of the 
 external reality of space and the affirmation that it is a form of sense 
 within us involve complete egoistic idealism, according to which the 
 world and all in it are merely somebody's subjective impressions and 
 every man has a universe of his own in his own mind ; and to every 
 man every other man with his peculiar universe is but a subjective 
 idea. This theory of the subjectivity of space is a part of Kant's phe- 
 nomenalism ; if true, it necessitates phenomenalism and issues in com- 
 plete dogmatic agnosticism. If space and time have no objective 
 reality, all that we suppose to exist in space and time, whether subject 
 
 * The Last Postulate, Westminster Kev., October, 1853. 
 
164 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 or object, is also unreal. But space is a form of things ; as such, while 
 objectively real to us, it is a form of thought archetypal in the Absolute 
 Reason ; and equally are things themselves, with all their principles 
 and laws, archetypal in the Eternal Reason. 
 
 It has been supposed that the belief that space has but three dimen- 
 sions is an ultimate datum of consciousness. But among the strange 
 novelties of our day is a school of mathematicians, of whom the late 
 Prof. Clifford was one, who claim to have discovered a fourth dimension 
 of space. It is evident, however, that in thinking and writing of space 
 with four dimensions or with manifold dimensions, these mathematicians 
 are governed, like the rest of us, by the inevitable ideas and axioms of 
 space with three dimensions. They speak of radii of circles and other 
 straight lines, as if straight lines in the sense in which we use the ex- 
 pression, were known to exist in this inconceivable kind of space. They 
 use the principles true only of space with three dimensions in proving 
 that it has four or more. They speak of curved, spherical, non-homal- 
 oidal space as distinguished from space with three dimensions, which 
 they designate as homaloidal or flat ; as if space were itself a body con- 
 tained in space ; as if in fact space with four dimensions were a sphere 
 or curved body of some sort contained in space with three dimensions ; 
 for it is only in the latter that we have any knowledge of a curve or 
 sphere. Figure, position, distance, direction, so far as the words have 
 any meaning to us, are conditioned on space with three dimensions and 
 are contained in it. They have no meaning when predicated of space 
 itself. Space has no figure, position, distance or direction. 
 
 In solving geometrical problems by algebraic methods we sometimes 
 reach an unthinkable and impossible result, as the square root of minus 
 a; but solving the problem by the geometrical method, the significance 
 of the result is made plain, as that the line is produced in the oppo- 
 site direction. The hypothesis of a fourth dimension of space is pro- 
 posed to explain certain unthinkable and impossible conclusions of 
 mathematical demonstrations. The mathematical reasoning issuing in 
 the conclusion may be correct and the conclusion necessary from the 
 definitions assumed. If in the progress of knowledge we become able 
 to look at the problem from a new point of view or to solve it by a 
 new process, the conclusion may become intelligible and the contradic- 
 tion disappear. But the hypothesis of a fourth dimension of space to 
 explain it is not scientific ; it is the farthest possible from a vera causa, 
 such as is admissible in a scientific hypothesis ; and it explains nothing ; 
 for a fourth dimension of space is itself unthinkable, and the affirma- 
 tion that it exists is simply nonsense, words without meaning, like the 
 old scholastic question, " An chimsera bombitans in vacuo possit come- 
 dere secundas intentiones?" 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 165 
 
 IV. DURATION IN TIME. The fourth mode of existence. 
 
 In perceptive intuition we know ourselves as persisting in successive 
 acts ; thus we know the duration of existence and the succession of 
 events. If we think away the being that is persistent, there remains 
 the time in which he was existing. That cannot be thought away. 
 Having thus the idea of time, hi rational intuition we know that it 
 must be continuous, immovable and illimitable. There must always be 
 time for beings to act. The development of this idea is entirely ana- 
 logous to the development of the idea of space and needs not be further 
 considered. 
 
 It may be added, however, that the distinction is not properly 
 between time and eternity, but between time measured by successive 
 events of existence and time not thus measured. It is not time that 
 flows through successive events, but successive events which flow in 
 time. 
 
 " Sur les mondes de"truits dort le Temps immobile." 
 
 Time is commonly identified with life or history measured by events, 
 and thus conceived as distinct from eternity. There is an eternity 
 past and an eternity to come, and time, in which we live and act, is 
 conceived as lying between them like a strait between two oceans. 
 But the time of our lives might be better illustrated as a current in the 
 ocean, w r hich flows in its own particular course, while the ocean re- 
 mains the same ; and the current as it flows swells with the ceaseless 
 tides and heaves with the ceaseless billows of the unchanging ocean in 
 which it always is. 
 
 V. LIMITATION AND QUANTITY. The fifth mode of existence. 
 Quantity is predicable, not directly of beings, but of their duration, 
 
 extension and power. The idea arises in the perception of the limita- 
 tion of duration, extension or power, and of the different degrees of 
 limitation, as more or less. *In lifting weights I find my power limited, 
 and limited in different degrees. In moving my hand along lines or 
 surfaces I find them limited and hi different degrees. If I hold a weight 
 in each hand I perceive that they are equal or unequal. If I see two 
 straight rods side by side I perceive that they are equal or unequal in 
 length. Thus arises the idea of quantity and of equality or inequality. 
 We are then able to adopt some determinate quantity as a unit for 
 measuring other quantities. 
 
 VI. DIFFERENCE AND RELATION. The sixth Mode of Existence. 
 
 The foregoing are modes of the existence of beings in their individu- 
 ality. But beings do not exist isolated ; they are in unity with other 
 beings in a system. The peculiarity by which they are distinguished 
 we call difference, and the reality by which they are in unity we call 
 
166 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 relation. Difference and relation are observed modes of the existence 
 of beings. We know beings as distinct and different, and yet as in 
 relation, because they exist distinct and different, and yet in relation. 
 It is because beings exist thus that all thought must consist of appre- 
 hension, differentiation and integration. Difference and relation are 
 really two modes of existence ; but they are so constantly associated in 
 thought that it is convenient to consider them together. 
 
 Beings are distinguished and related in each of the modes of exist- 
 ence already noticed. In power uniformly manifested as quality, we 
 have likeness and unlikeness. In the power of knowing and thinking, 
 we have the relation of subject and object. In the energy of transitive 
 cause, we have the relation of interaction ; in space, relations of distance 
 and direction ; in time, relations of contemporaneousness, and of before 
 and after ; in quantity and number, relations of equality, of more or 
 less, of ratio and proportion. There are also distinctions and relations 
 in those forms of power manifested in organic life, as of parent and 
 offspring, and particularly in sensitivity. In personality we find dis- 
 tinctions and relations transcending all that have been mentioned, and 
 characterizing the rational and moral system, in which the interaction 
 is by moral influence and under moral law. The full significance of 
 these is dependent on the rational intuitions and the ultimate realities 
 known through them. 
 
 These differences and relations are primarily presented in intuition. 
 Thought does not originate them; it simply traces them out in the 
 unelaborated nebulous matter of intuition. I see at a glance the dif- 
 ference between white and black ; if not, no thinking could ever have 
 revealed it to me. In like manner I perceive resemblance. If two 
 silver dimes lie before me, they are both present to my vision and J 
 perceive their likeness. The resemblance is a reality presented in the 
 intuition, of which otherwise we could have no knowledge or conception. 
 It is objected that this process implies memory, comparison and judg- 
 ment. The objection has force against Keid's theory that we perceive 
 the minima visibilia in succession, but is futile against the psychological 
 fact, now generally admitted, that we both perceive and attend to several 
 objects at once. In like manner I perceive intuitively the marbles in 
 my hand as many and as all ; or the unequal height of a man and boy 
 who stand side by side. Nor can we discriminate by any kind of differ- 
 ence, or comprehend in any kind of relation which has not first been 
 known in intuition. In thought we trace out the differences and rela- 
 tions given in intuition and so discriminate the beings in their differences 
 and comprehend them in their relations. 
 
 The qualities and powers of a being are not properly said to be 
 themselves in relation to the being ; because they are of the peculiar 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 167 
 
 essence of the being as a completely determinate individual. In 
 thought we can abstract quality from substance ; and so, accordantly 
 with formal logic, it is common to speak of the relation of substance 
 and quality. But in concrete or realistic thought substance and quality 
 are inseparable. Substance is nothing without quality, and quality is 
 nothing without substance. Hence the qualities and powers of a being 
 are not really in relation to the being. In speaking of the differences 
 and relations of beings we assume the distinctness of beings as indi- 
 viduals and speak of their differences from and relations to one 
 another. Difference and relation have no reality except as the differ- 
 ence and relation of being. 
 
 A numerical total must be distinguished from a complex whole of 
 interacting beings, as a steam-engine, a solar system, a family, a nation. 
 These are unities by the relation of interacting powers ; not mere nu- 
 merical totals in which the units have no content and in the totality 
 simply count so many. Of a numerical total the maxim is always 
 true that the whole is equal to the sum of all the parts ; but this 
 is not true of complex wholes which consist of beings related in unity 
 by interaction of power. A steam-engine, a watch, a family, is far 
 other than the numerical sum of all the parts. We see here the fallacy 
 of those philosophers who accept the maxim as declaring the funda- 
 mental constitution of the universe and think they prove the Absolute 
 Being unknowable because they cannot construct it under this maxim . 
 or who propound the numerical triad, unity, plurality, totality, as the 
 basis of all the laws and the limitation of all the matter of thought : 
 or who deny the knowledge of the Absolute because it cannot be found 
 by counting or by the arithmetical rule of addition. These are ex- 
 amples of the evils brought on philosophy and theology by substituting 
 empty abstractions for beings as the objects thought. 
 
 By tracing out the differences and relations presented in intuition 
 and inferring others not perceived the mind distinguishes beings as 
 personal and impersonal and comprehends them all hi these two 
 classes. It knows all impersonal beings in the unity of a Cosmos or 
 system of Nature, all personal beings in the unity of a Moral System 
 and all finite beings in the unity of a universe in its relation to God. 
 
 I 31. Inferences. 
 
 I. Knowledge, at its beginning in perceptive intuition, is ontological ; 
 that is, it is knowledge of being. 
 
 Ontological knowledge arises at the beginning of knowledge, in per- 
 ceptive intuition, not in its advanced stages in the knowledge of Absolute 
 Being. This is the critical point in defending the reality of knowledge 
 against agnosticism. It is sometimes thought that the ontological ques- 
 
168 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 tion meets us only in the question whether the knowledge of absolute 
 being is possible. It is really the question whether the knowledge of any 
 being is possible. And this resolves itself into the question whether 
 knowledge begins as the knowledge of being. If it does not begin 
 thus, then the knowledge of being cannot come in afterwards. We 
 have already demonstrated that if knowledge begins as the knowledge 
 only of sensations and impressions it can never issue in the knowledge 
 of being. 
 
 But it has been shown that knowledge is ontological at its beginning ; 
 then it goes on continually as the knowledge of being and must issue in 
 the knowledge that Absolute Being exists ; it continues to be the know- 
 ledge of being in its regress through conditions and causes up to God. 
 Comte in his Positive Philosophy affirms that, if it is once admitted 
 that we have knowledge of cause or force as distinct from the phenomena 
 of motion, we must eventually admit that there is a God. 
 
 II. In man's perceptive intuition of himself and his environment his 
 knowledge begins as knowledge of personal and impersonal beings. The 
 two classes of persons and things are discriminated and comprehended 
 in thought. But the beings distinguished and their distinctive attri- 
 butes are perceived in the very beginning of knowledge, and equally in 
 all subsequent perceptions. They are presented, as has been shown, in 
 one and the same intuition. 
 
 Mr. Mansel objects that consciousness is an attribute of the Ego, and 
 in the consciousness of self the knowledge of being arises ; therefore a 
 body cannot be known as a being because, in denying that it is con- 
 scious, " I deny the only form in which unity and substance aro known 
 to me." * The objection would be valid if my knowledge that the out 
 ward object is a being were an inference from my knowledge of myself; 
 but it is the immediate perception of power acting on me, and the 
 rational intuition that all power is exerted by a being. The objection 
 would be valid if the outward object were only known negatively as a 
 not-me, as J. G. Fichte teaches ; but it is known positively in my know- 
 ledge of my own body and the power impinging on it. Moreover, if 
 every peculiarity of myself is an essential attribute of being, then 
 necessarily I am the only being in the universe. We may know beings 
 in different modes of existence or endowed with different attributes, just 
 as we know dogs of different characteristics. 
 
 Phenomenalism has been excluded by the fact that knowledge is 
 ontological in its beginning in perceptive intuition. Now Materialism 
 is excluded by the fact that knowledge in its beginning in perceptive 
 intuition is the knowledge of self, endowed with the attributes of a per- 
 
 * Prolegomena Logica, p. 125. 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 169 
 
 sonal being ; and Idealism is excluded by the fact that in the same act of 
 perceptive intuition man knows outward bodies occupying space and 
 moving in it, and endowed with the attributes of impersonal being. And 
 the knowledge of each is positive knowledge in one and the same mental 
 act, so that if the knowledge of either is unreal the knowledge of the 
 other is unreal also. 
 
 Kant recognizes the " I think," the Synthetic unity of all conscious- 
 ness, as going along with all knowledge, but only as a phenomenal unity 
 of apperceptions separated by an impassable gulf from the real being. 
 Therefore his Ego, Cosmos and God remain mere ideas, necessary indeed, 
 but void of content. To escape from this phenomenalism, J. G. Fichte 
 starts with the knowledge of self as real being. He teaches that things 
 are really and in themselves what they are necessarily thought to be 
 by rational beings, and that therefore, to every rational Ego of which a 
 finite mind can conceive, that is the truth of reality which is neces- 
 sarily true to thought. But he teaches that the matter of knowledge 
 is itself given by the same synthetic activity of the intellect which, 
 according to Kant, gives the forms of sense and the categories of the 
 understanding ; that the outward object is known only as a negation or 
 not-me, not as a power positively acting on the sensorium and revealing 
 a being that causes it. Thus, as Kant himself suggested, Fichte's 
 attempt to attain a knowledge of the world from self-consciousness 
 without empirically given matter, gave only a shadowy and ghostly 
 impression instead of real being. And in all his later modifications of 
 his philosophy he cannot transcend nor escape from his primitive ideal- 
 ism. His God is the moral order of the universe, his universal or 
 absolute Ego relapses into an idea coming to consciousness of itself in 
 individual form in man. 
 
 Hegel seems often close to the most fundamental comprehension of 
 the true reality. For instance, with him the antithesis between phenome- 
 non and essence, between what appears and what is, is only an anti- 
 thesis of two human modes of conception which are afterwards identified 
 hi a synthesis. This synthesis is the reality ; the phenomenon is pervaded 
 with the essence and is thus its entire and adequate manifestation. 
 Again, according to Hegel, there is one spiritual being to whom man is 
 related, not merely as a part of the world, but as participating some- 
 how in the self-consciousness of that being a mode of presentation 
 which involves Pantheism, though suggestive of the truth that man is 
 so constituted and so related to God that the normal development of 
 his own consciousness insures his consciousness of the presence of God. 
 Again he presents the great truth that the Absolute Reason reveals 
 or expresses itself in the natural worlds and in the rational and moral 
 systems of finite persons. But here again his method of presentation 
 
170 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM, 
 
 is pantheistic. The Absolute underlies the finite universe of matter 
 and mind, not dynamically and rationally, but as their Substance, 
 itself coming to consciousness in man. It exerts, or thrusts itself forth 
 ad extra in nature ; it " externalizes " itself, " becomes other than 
 itself." By means of a progressive development of nature from the 
 lowest to the highest stages the Absolute Reason returns from this 
 " otherness " or " self-estrangement " into itself in rational spirit. Na- 
 ture is striving " to recover its lost union with the idea ; " this union is 
 recovered in spirit, which is the goal and end of nature. A fourth 
 instance of near approach to the true statement, while yet missing it, is 
 found in his famous identification of things with thought. This ap- 
 proximates to the true synthesis of the two, which is that the universe 
 is the progressive expression of the archetypal thoughts of God ; that 
 the necessary principles which are forms and laws to thought are eter- 
 nal in the Absolute Reason and thus are forms and laws of things ; that 
 the absurd cannot be real ; and whatever exists is amenable to reason 
 and capable of rational explanation. Hegel's own statement of the 
 identity seems sometimes to convey this meaning, when he says that 
 the rational is real and that the real is rational. Here again by his 
 a priori method developing his own thought he seems to identify things 
 with the subjective process of thinking, and so to establish idealism. 
 We find another instance when he says that God, aside from what we 
 know of him through the finite universe of nature and spirit, is pure 
 Being, without determinate attributes, entirely void of content, and 
 therefore id ntical with Nothing. This is the truth that the idea of the 
 Absolute, aside from what we know of it as the ground of the universe 
 and accounting for it, is void of content, and every attempt at an a priori 
 development of what it is, is nugatory. The purely a priori develop- 
 ment of the Absolute is not legitimate to the human mind. This bold 
 attempt Hegel makes. Clearly seeing that the purely a priori absolute 
 is entirely indeterminate and equal to nothing, he fails to recognize this 
 zero as a symbol of the cessation of thought ; he founds his philosophy 
 on this zero and attempts to develop from it both the universe and the 
 content of the Absolute itself. He immediately asserts that the nothing is 
 a Becoming, and so, saltu mortali, violently springs back to the idea of 
 determinate Being. He conceives of the Absolute as externalizing 
 itself in nature ; his philosophy passes out with it into nature and re- 
 turns with it through nature to spirit and to the Absolute now known 
 as Absolute Reason. But from his starting point this passage to the 
 knowledge of God is impossible. He effects it only by taking up truths 
 belonging to a different system. Hence, after all, the ideality of the 
 finite is inseparable from his system and every true philosophy must be 
 an Idealism. The Absolute itself, even in the highest fullness of mean- 
 
\ 
 
 UNIVERSITY) 
 
 BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. O 3T 171L K . / 
 
 ing which he attains for it, is merely an Idea. Its 
 be primarily, as he himself avows, a mere logic or science of thought ; 
 and his curious identification of the processes of the world's develop- 
 ment with processes of logic is a legitimate and necessary result of his 
 in. Had he rightly understood his maxim, " Being=0," as a 
 symbol of the cessation of thought, warning him off from a wrong and 
 abortive method ; had he begun with the knowledge of beings, personal 
 and impersonal, as they exist and are known to us in the universe ; 
 had he passed beyond the entanglements of formal logic and used the 
 scientific methods of concrete thought, he would have established an 
 impregnable philosophy of real being. Then by the rational intuitions 
 which are regulative of all thought he would have reached the know- 
 ledge that Absolute Being exists not as a zero but as a Being, the 
 ultimate and fundamental Reality ; not as a Being of which we know 
 that it is, but know not what it is, but a being endowed with all the 
 attributes necessary as the Ground of the universe ; thus would he 
 have found the ultimate Ground 'and Unity of the All in Absolute 
 Reason, the personal God. Then he would have found the synthesis 
 of being and thought : thought eternal and archetypal in God, the 
 eternal Spirit the constitution of the universe in the truths, the laws, 
 the ideals, the worthy ends which are eternal in the Absolute Reason, 
 and of which the universe, with its personal and its impersonal beings, 
 is the always incomplete, but the always progressive expression. 
 
 The failure of these great systems demonstrates that we must know 
 being in ourselves and our environment, before we can know being or 
 even have any real idea of it in other finite persons or in God. 
 
 III. In perceptive intuition knowledge begins as knowledge of deter- 
 minate being. It is the knowledge of myself or of outward beings in 
 particular modes of existence. The concrete determinate being is the 
 unit of thought. It is determinate as an individual being, never lost 
 by being blended into another being. It is also determinate by its 
 peculiar modes of existence. 
 
 1. This excludes the error that being is in the genus, and phenomenon 
 alone in the individual; that the human race, for example, is the 
 reality, and the individual but an aspect or appearance of the universal 
 man ; that we must begin with the genus or the universal, and from 
 that descend to the individual. This error is contradicted by human 
 consciousness in every conscious act. Here it is objected that if we 
 proceed from the existence of finite beings to the existence of God, we 
 make God's existence dependent on the finite.. "A God proved by 
 us," says a brilliant writer, " would be a God made by us." This is the 
 fallacy, very common in agnostic and pantheistic philosophy, of identi- 
 fying the order of our own mental process with the real order of the 
 
172 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 dependence of beings. This objection consists in identifying God's 
 actual relation to the universe, with the mental processes by which we 
 come to the knowledge of Him. It is arguing that because our belief 
 in God is an inference from our knowledge of finite beings, therefore 
 God is dependent on finite beings. Whereas the true significance of 
 the thought is just the contrary ; because we know the finite to be 
 dependent we know that there must be an absolute being that is in- 
 dependent and underived. We have a converse example of this fallacy 
 in Hegel's assertion that God, considered as existing before the created 
 universe, is pure being and the same as nothing. It is the fallacy that 
 because a purely a priori conception of the Absolute, excluding all 
 knowledge of him through the created universe, is without content 
 and equal to nothing, therefore God himself is nothing, if independent 
 of the finite universe. Whereas when once we have attained the true 
 knowledge of God through the finite universe, w r e know that he must be 
 independent of it and that it is dependent on him. Therefore God 
 must be thought as the prius of the universe ; and is thought as pos- 
 sessing every power which, as accounting for the universe, we neces- 
 sarily attribute to him. 
 
 2. Being is not the Substantia una et unica of Spinoza and the Pan- 
 theists, the one only substance of which all particular beings are the 
 modes of existence. Spinoza defines substance : " By substance I mean 
 that which is in itself and is conceived by itself; in other words, it is 
 that the concept of which does not require any antecedent concept from 
 which it must be formed." * " Substance is not manifold or multiple, 
 but exists single and is ever of one and the same nature." f This defi- 
 nition of substance carries us at once to Hegel's pure being, void of all 
 content and equal to nothing. In defining substance from the relation 
 and order of our conception of it, he falls into the fallacy, already ex- 
 posed, of identifying the order of our mental processes in gaining a 
 knowledge of the universe and of God with the order of their actual 
 relations and dependence. He argues that if the conception of finite 
 beings precedes in our mental processes the conception of the absolute 
 substance, then the supposed substance would depend on the finite beings 
 and would not be the absolute substance ; therefore that only is absolute 
 substance which we conceive by an original conception springing imme- 
 diately from our consciousness without antecedent. Such a conception 
 is of course impossible, and can be represented only as zero. Thought 
 has ceased. 
 
 A moment's thought discloses the fallacy. In reality God is absolute 
 and eternal, preceded by nothing, dependent on nothing ; the universe 
 
 * Ethics: Def. III. f Letter 29, 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 173 
 
 is consequent and dependent. But in our knowing the universe, we 
 must first know the particular realities present to consciousness, and 
 thence proceed to the knowledge of God as their ultimate ground and 
 reason. While God is dependent on nothing antecedent to or outside 
 of Himself, our knowledge of Him is preceded by the knowledge of 
 finite beings and dependent on it. The human mind does indeed form 
 concepts not derived from or dependent on any antecedent concept ; but 
 these are the original concepts or notions of particular beings in par- 
 ticular modes of existence given in primitive, intuitive knowledge and 
 simply attended to and apprehended in thought. Spinozism is vitiated 
 both in its definitions and its development by identifying God and the 
 universe with the process and products of logic. Of this fallacy Spinoza 
 remained unconscious. 
 
 Also, in regarding the Self-existent and Absolute Being as the one 
 only substance of which all finite beings are modes, he falls into the illu- 
 sion of conceiving it as continuous, extended substance, heaving itself up 
 in the various modes of existence as the ocean heaves itself up in waves. 
 Hence also the illustration used by his disciples that a man is like a 
 bottle of the ocean's water in the ocean, temporarily distinguishable by 
 its limitation within the bottle, but lost again in the ocean so soon as the 
 fragile limits are broken. 
 
 But we have seen that real knowledge begins in the knowledge of 
 particular beings determinate both by their individuality as beings and 
 by their peculiar modes of existence. This excludes Spinozism. The 
 current scientific theory of atoms and molecules is entirely subversive 
 of Pantheism. On this theory the unity of the manifold can no longer 
 be found in continuous substance, but only dynamically and rationally 
 in power, thought, purpose and a rational system. In real knowledge, 
 Theism and it alone enables us to comprehend the multitude of indivi- 
 duals in a system in which w find at once the unity of thought and the 
 unity of being, and thus solve the ultimate and inevitable problem of 
 the Keason. It builds on the knowledge of determinate beings ; not on 
 
 " Intuitions, grasps of guess, 
 That pull the more into the less, 
 Making the finite comprehend 
 Infinity." 
 
 These lines express the common fallacy of identifying the relations and 
 order of the universe with the relations and order of our own mental 
 processes. Real knowledge does not " pull the more into the less," but 
 proceeds from the particular to the universal according to the necessary 
 laws of thought. Knowing determinate beings in their powers, differ- 
 ences and relations, reason, in the light of its universal principles, sees 
 
174 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the necessary existence of being absolute, unconditioned and all-condi- 
 tioning ; not an absolute identified with the universe, not a universe 
 identified with the absolute ; not an absolute formed by exscinding all 
 known positive powers of finite being and so identical with non-entity ; 
 not an absolute determined a priori, and so empty of all content, but 
 an absolute BEING, known as the ground and sufficient reason of all that 
 is in the universe, the unconditioned and all-conditioning being, having 
 in himself the powers which account for all things, the source of all 
 finite beings, of all power, of all truth, law, perfection and good, the 
 indivisible One, distinct from the universe which depends on him, the 
 absolute Reason, the all-perfect God, 
 
 3. Finite persons and things are real beings. This exposes the error 
 of those imposing systems which, seeking an idea of being more real 
 than being itself, declare that the only real being is the Absolute exist- 
 ing not only out of relation to our faculties, but out of all relations, the 
 One which is identical with the All ; and that all finite beings are 
 unreal and non-being, mere modes of the Attributes of the Absolute. 
 These theories necessarily issue in Agnosticism, since they resolve the 
 whole universe into the Absolute, and the Absolute itself into an ad- 
 jective without a noun, a quality without a substance, a thought without 
 either a thinker or an object thought. The maxim on which these 
 theories rest should be that direct contradiction of Descartes which 
 Feuerbach avowed as the basis of his own philosophy : " Cogitans nemo 
 sum; coyito, ergo omnes sum homines.'"* Of this type was the pan- 
 theistic philosophy of Germany, which developed the errors, but not the 
 truths, of Kant's system. Accordingly we find I. H. Fichte elaborately 
 proving the reality of finite things, though, like Lazarus, with the 
 graveclothes of the pantheistic philosophy still entangling his steps, f 
 Mr. Mulford, on the contrary, follows in the wake of the German Pan- 
 theism : " Being is of itself, in finite conditions, a vacant phase of 
 thought." " The empty notion of being as derived from finite exist- 
 ences." J But if the knowledge of being is not given in intuition it is 
 impossible for thought to create it. If we do not know real being either 
 in ourselves or the objects about us, we can never know the being of 
 God. A world of " vacant phases of thought," the thinker himself 
 being one of them, can never carry the thought to the being of God. 
 
 The word being has been often used in philosophy to denote any 
 object of thought of which it can be affirmed that it is. Being then 
 would denote thought, feeling, motion, distance, relations, conditions as 
 
 * Quoted, Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought, 289. 
 f Theistische Weltansicht, $$ 30, 31, pp. 108-114. 
 J Republic of God, pp. 2 and 34. 
 
BEIXG AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 175 
 
 well as persons and things. Thus including all persons and things, all 
 qualities, acts, conditions and relations, it has no distinctive and essen- 
 tial content by which it can be distinguished from anything else ; it is 
 completely indeterminate. It is in fact, as Hobbes called it, an hypos- 
 tasiziiig of the copula is, which denotes the connection of any predicate 
 with any subject. Logically the inference follows that being, since it is 
 entirely indeterminate, is the same as nothing. Many using the word 
 in this latitude, still attach to it, wittingly or unwittingly, its legitimate 
 and distinctive meaning, and conclude that being in every sense is a 
 non-entity. Mr. Mulford seems to have followed this track to his He- 
 gelian conclusion : " In the process of logic through finite conditions, 
 the notion of being is an empty phase of thought, and is resolved 
 through a logical necessity into mere nothingness ; but the notion of 
 being derived from finite conditions is not to be applied to the being of 
 God." * Like Hegel himself, he here identifies the world-process with 
 a subjective process of logic, and the world of mind and matter itself 
 and all which it contains with a subjective logical notion. And 
 throughout, Mr. Mulford identifies the necessary passing in human 
 thought from the finite to the infinite, with the objective dependence of 
 God's being on the finite and its subsequence to it. 
 
 Those who deny that finite persons and things are beings, argue from 
 the fact that they are derived and dependent. This assumes that eter- 
 nity and self-existence are essential to being. This is not true. So long 
 as I exist I know myself as being, whether my existence began lately 
 and will soon end or I exist forever. We must have the idea of being 
 before we can consider its origin and dependence, its finiteness or its 
 infinitude, its conditionateness or its unconditionateness. 
 
 IV. Being is not an attribute but the subject of attributes. It is 
 subject and attribute in synthesis; or since the being appears in its 
 attributes, we say that being is the real and the phenomenal in syn- 
 thesis. This is in contradiction of Kant's antithesis of the real and 
 phenomenal. 
 
 Much of the confusion in discussing being arises from regarding it 
 as an attribute. But I do not predicate being of myself as an at- 
 tribute ; the being is myself, the subject of all my attributes. When I 
 say, John is a being, I do not predicate being of him as an attribute, 
 but simply affirm that he is one of the class of beings ; just as when 
 I say John is a man, I do not affirm that man is an attribute of John. 
 
 Being is not a name of the sum total of all attributes. For if 
 so it is entirely indeterminate and equivalent to nonentity. 
 
 Hegel in the beginning of the logic says we cannot think less 
 
 * Page 212. 
 
176 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 about any thing than when we predicate of it being; that is, when we 
 say it is. Being he regards here as the noun corresponding to the 
 copula is, and denoting all possible predicates. Hence it is entirely 
 indeterminate. But being is not an attribute but the subject of at- 
 tributes. The affirmation respecting any object that it is being is not 
 a weak affirmation ; it affirms that it is the subject of attributes. 
 
 In this affirmation I also predicate of the object of thought, those 
 attributes which are common to all beings, whether persons or things, 
 whether finite beings or the Absolute being. These I suppose to be 
 power, unity and identity. When I say of any thing that it is a being, 
 I affirm that it is a subject of attributes, among which must always be 
 po\ver, unity and identity ; it is endowed with power and persists as one 
 and the same being. This does not preclude attributes peculiar to 
 itself, any more than the fact that a horse is an animal, precludes 
 qualities peculiar to the horse. Descartes held that there is nothing 
 common to matter and mind ; that communication between them is 
 possible only by the incessant interaction of God. But if the im- 
 passable separation is in the very nature of matter and mind having 
 nothing in common, how can God, who is Spirit, pass across to act be- 
 tween matter and mind without ceasing to be pure spirit ? 
 
 V. The determinateness of being does not involve limitation. 
 
 The scholastic maxim, " omnis determinatio negatio est" contradicts 
 this proposition and affirms that all determinateness is negation. To 
 this agnosticism appeals as to a self-evident axiom from which to 
 demonstrate that the Absolute Being cannot be a person and is un- 
 knowable. This also is the offspring of that prolific breeder of errors, 
 the identification of beings and their powers with the forms and pro- 
 cesses of logic. The maxim is true of mathematical totals ; the deter- 
 mination of the total sum is a limitation to that sum and a denial of 
 all not included in it. It is true of a logical general notion; the 
 predication of attributes essential to the general notion or concept 
 enlarges its content but limits its extent. The more attributes essential 
 to the concept the fewer the beings included under it. The more 
 determinate the concept the more beings excluded. 
 
 But the maxim has no application whatever to real concrete beings ; 
 and can be applied to them only as they are confounded either with a 
 mathematical total of parts or with a logical notion or concept. Being 
 is determinate in itself as a being. That which is a being is removed 
 from nothing by the whole breadth of being. To say that anything is 
 a being is not negation of reality but affirmation of reality ; it is not 
 the affirmation of limitation but of positive reality. To be is more 
 than not to be. 
 
 And the possession of powers by a being is not a limitation but a 
 
BEING AND ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 177 
 
 greatening of the being ; the more and the greater the powers, the 
 more and greater the reality, and the farther the remove from 
 nothing. And the affirmation of these powers in denning the being is 
 not a negation, it is not the assertion of defect but of reality. The 
 more determinate a being is in its attributes the higher it is in the 
 order of being. The notion dog has more essential attributes than the 
 notion animal; and thereby the extent of the notion is limited; there 
 are fewer dogs than animals ; but the dog is not limited but greatened 
 by the attributes which make it more determinate. Man is a being 
 still more determinate, because he has other and higher attributes ; but 
 he is not therefore less than a dog but greater. Reason compels us to 
 believe in the existence of absolute being, the Absolute Reason acting 
 in freedom, endowed with almighty power, perfect in wisdom and 
 love ; but these attributes do not limit, they greaten him ; the deter- 
 mmateness of his being in the possession of these attributes is not a 
 negation nor a limitation ; and the affirmation of it is not a negation 
 of reality but the affirmation of reality and perfection of being in 
 its highest thinkable richness. This principle Spinoza himself enun- 
 ciates in the ninth proposition in the first part of the Ethics : " The 
 more reality or essence (esse) anything has, the more attributes be- 
 long to it." 
 
 In like manner the complete determinateness of the being as an 
 individual is indeed a negation or limitation of the mathematical total 
 and of the logical general notion, but it is not a negation or limitation 
 of the concrete being. It is no limitation of a person that he is himself, 
 and not a stone, or a dog, or another person. This is inherent in the 
 essence of personality and is a perfection and not an imperfection, a 
 reality and not a limitation of the being. The loss of this individuality 
 would be the loss of being itself; the loss of it would involve negation. 
 Hence the affirmation of individuality is not a denial of reality but 
 an affirmation of it; but the denial of individuality would be a 
 negation of reality and of being. 
 
 It follows that God is not limited by his own unity and identity 
 whereby he is distinguished from stones, and dogs and men, and all 
 finite things. God is not the sum total of finite things ; he is not the 
 largest general notion of logic ; he is not the universal abstract idea of 
 pure being ; he is not the sum of all attributes ; he is the living God, 
 distinct in his divine oneness of being from all finite beings. That he 
 is the Absolute Reason and the Almighty Power, limits and conditions 
 all other beings as finite and dependent on him ; but it does not 
 extinguish the reality of their being ; and their being does not limit 
 him. In truth the universe, instead of limiting God by its existence, 
 is the ever-progressive expression and revelation of his infinite fullness 
 12 
 
178 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of being and his complete determinateness in all the attributes of God. 
 Mr. Mulford says, " In the realization of personality as it advances 
 in man toward the universal, this element of individuality tends to 
 recede and disappear. But the personality of God, in his own infinite 
 being, is not formed in the differences of a finite process, that the 
 element of individuality should attach to it." * 
 
 This belongs to those nebulous spheres of thought in which the sharp 
 distinctions of real being have faded away, and the progress of man 
 towards unity with God can be conceived only as a gradual loss of 
 his own individual being in his progress towards absorption into the 
 misty homogeneousness of the Absolute, f 
 
 VI. The distinction of science into physical science and metaphysi- 
 cal, has its origin and necessity at the beginning of human knowledge in 
 perceptive intuition. In this, as we have seen, the knowledge of being 
 in its modes of existence originates. We have seen that self-conscious- 
 ness and sense-perception, in one and the same act, reveal to man 
 himself and his environment. Here, therefore, in the very beginning 
 of human knowledge are the origin and necessity of this twofold dis- 
 tinction of science. 
 
 Accordingly we find that human thought from the beginning has 
 flowed in these two channels. In some ages men's thinking has been 
 chiefly occupied with the one ; in other ages with the other ; and from 
 time to time with controversies as to the legitimate relations of the two. 
 But always the human mind busies itself with both. Complete positiv- 
 ism, the theory that human knowledge is confined to sensible pheno- 
 mena, is incompetent for physical science as really as for metaphysical, 
 and the scientific mind has never been able to confine its investigations 
 within those narrow limits. Boole says : " The particular question of 
 the constitution of the intellect has attracted the efforts of 
 
 * Republic of God : p. 32. 
 
 f The maxim, " Omnis determinatio negatio est," is commonly attributed to Spi- 
 noza. I have not, however, noticed it formally stated in his writings. In letter 40 
 (to an unknown correspondent) he says : " If the nature of that being is determined 
 and conceived as determined, that nature is conceived as not existing beyond those 
 bounds (terminos) ; which is contrary to its definition " as infinite. Evidently he de- 
 ludes himself here with the conception of a body bounded in space, which necessarily 
 excludes all bodies beyond its bounds. In letter 41 he says that determination denotes 
 nothing positive but only the privation of existence, and therefore whatever exists 
 cannot be determinate ; which would imply that it cannot exist in any definite 
 mode. Elsewhere also his reasoning rests on the assumption that the maxim is true. 
 But he seems to be inconsistent with it when he ascribes attributes and modes of 
 existence to the one and only substance and so identifies it with the universe; and 
 when he determines it by his definition, "Natura naturans et natura naturata in 
 identitate est Deus." And Proposition IX. of the Ethics, already cited, seems to 
 enunciate a principle contradictory of the maxim. 
 
BEIXG AXD ITS MODES OF EXISTENCE. 179 
 
 speculative ingenuity in every age. For it not only addresses itself to 
 the desire of knowledge which the greatest masters of ancient 
 thought believed to be innate in our species, but it adds to the ordinary 
 strength of this motive the inducement of a human and personal in- 
 terest. A genuine devotion to truth is, indeed, seldom partial in its 
 aims, but while it prompts to expatiate over the fair fields of outward 
 observation, forbids to neglect the study of our own faculties. Even in 
 ages the most devoted to material interests, some portion of the current 
 of thought has been reflected inwards, and the desire to comprehend 
 that by which all else is comprehended, has only been baffled in order 
 to be renewed. It is probable that Jhis pertinacity of effort would not 
 have been maintained among sincere inquirers after truth, had the con- 
 viction been general that such inquiries are hopelessly barren." * 
 
 *Laws of Thought, p. 400. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE TRUE: THE FIRST ULTIMATE REALITY KNOWN 
 
 THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION: NORM OR 
 
 STANDARD OF THINKING AND KNOWING. 
 
 32. The five ultimate realities known through rational 
 
 Intuition. 
 
 IN rational intuition the mind comes in sight of reality of which 
 neither reflective thought nor presentative intuition can of themselves 
 give any knowledge. The ultimate genera of the realities thus given I 
 call the Ultimate Realities known through Rational Intuition, and our 
 ideas of them I call Ultimate Ideas of Reason. They are the Noumena 
 in the true sense of the word. This word has, however, been so ap- 
 propriated by false philosophy, that it is difficult to divest it of the 
 erroneous meaning thus attached to it and I do not attempt to re- 
 claim it. 
 
 The Ultimate Realities known in rational intuition, which I shall 
 consider, are five : 
 
 The True, the contrary of which is the Absurd ; 
 
 The Right, the contrary of which is the Wrong ; 
 
 The Perfect, the contrary of which is the Imperfect ; 
 
 The Good determined by the standard of Reason as having true 
 worth or as worthy of the pursuit and enjoyment of a rational being, 
 the contrary of which is the Unworthy, the Worthless, or the Evil. 
 
 The Absolute or Unconditioned, the contrary of which is the Finite 
 or Conditioned. 
 
 The four first are the Norms or Standards of Reason and are classed 
 together. They are the basis of Mathematics, of Logic, and of Specula- 
 tive, Ethical, ^Esthetic and Teleological Philosophy. The fifth as the 
 Unconditioned and All-conditioning One stands by itself and is the 
 basis of Theology. 
 
 The four first are norms or standards by which Reason estimates 
 and judges beings in all their modes and actions. The True is the 
 rational norm or standard of thinking and knowing ; the Right is the 
 norm of efficient action, personal or impersonal ; the Perfect, of the 
 creations of thought and their realization by action ; the Good, of all 
 180 
 
FIRST ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE TRUE. 181 
 
 that is acquired, possessed and enjoyed. The third of Kant's three 
 questions, "What can I know? "What shall I do? "What may I 
 hope ? " must be divided into two : " What may I become ?" " What 
 may I acquire and enjoy?" The four norms correspond to these four 
 questions ; the true is the rational norm or standard of what a man 
 may know, the Right, of what he may do, the Perfect, of what he may 
 becomo, and the Good, of what he may acquire and enjoy. 
 
 We also apply these standards to nature. In so doing we assume 
 that nature itself is the expression of Reason and therefore can be 
 judged by the standards of Reason: the True, the Right, the 
 Perfect, and the Good. If Nature is not the expression of rational 
 thought there is no propriety nor significance in judging it by the 
 standards of rational thought. When we judge of nature by these 
 norms or standards of Reason the questions are : Does it express or 
 reveal truth ? Is it ordered under law ? Does it realize or tend to realize 
 ideals of perfection ? Is it productive of good ? 
 
 The ancient classification, the True, the Beautiful and the Good, is 
 inadequate. I have substituted the Perfect instead of the Beautiful as 
 a more correct designation of that idea and comprehending all that 
 belongs under it, of which visible beauty is but a part. I have added 
 The Right. Plato, to whom this classification of the True, the Beau- 
 tiful and the Good is commonly ascribed, attempted to develop the idea 
 of right from the good, and sometimes seems to resolve virtue into ex- 
 pediency. The idea of the right, however, appears sometimes instead 
 of the true. Pythagoras is said to have discoursed of the just, (dtzdtaw) 
 the beautiful and the good ; and in Plato's Parmenides, Socrates and 
 Parmenides converse of the just or right, (ouaio<S) the beautiful and the 
 good. The idea of the right cannot be developed from the idea of the 
 good and is certainly entitled, if any thing is, to a place among the 
 fundamental realities known in rational intuition. 
 
 I call attention again to the fact that rational intuition does not give 
 the knowledge of being, but only of the unchanging forms in which, 
 because the universe is grounded in Reason, all beings exist, and in 
 which therefore Reason, when they are brought under its knowledge, 
 must know them as existing. When any object, thought as a being 
 existing thus or thus, is brought to the notice of Reason, Reason must 
 estimate it according to its unchanging rational forms, as true or absurd, 
 as right or wrong, as perfect or imperfect, as good or evil, and as finite 
 or absolute. The intuition that Absolute Being must exist presupposes 
 the knowledge of beings. Beings are already known to exist ; then 
 Reason sees that a Being that is absolute and unconditioned must 
 exist. And again I call attention to the error of abstract and scho- 
 lastic thought, that because our knowledge of finite beings precedes 
 
182 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 our knowledge of the Absolute Being, therefore finite beings must exist 
 before the Absolute Being exists, that the Absolute Being is dependent 
 on the finite, and man has created God. This error is possible only 
 when the methods of concrete and scientific thinking are abandoned, 
 and the notions and processeses of formal logic are mistaken for the 
 beings and actions of the real world. 
 
 g 33. The first Norm or Standard of reason : the true : 
 The Norm or Standard of thinking and knowing. 
 
 I. The True is the name of the ultimate genus which includes all the 
 universal truths or primitive principles known in rational intuition, the 
 contraries of which are absurd ; they are norms or standards regulative 
 of all thinking and knowing. These truths must be distinguished from 
 facts, which are enunciations of the knowledge of particular realities 
 (/acto). It must be remembered, however, that this distinction is not 
 carefully made in the common use of language, scientific or popular. 
 The enunciation of a thought which is the intellectual equivalent of 
 reality, particular or universal, is a truth. We therefore have frequent 
 occasion to distinguish them by a qualifying word or phrase, as univer- 
 sal truth or truth of reason as distinguished from a factual or empirical 
 truth. 
 
 The word truth is also used to denote both the subjective knowledge 
 and the objective reality of which the knowledge is the intellectual 
 equivalent. The truths of reason are not merely subjective beliefs, but 
 are objectively real in the sense that they regulate all thought and 
 energy. The principle of causation is not merely a belief of my mind, 
 it is a law of the universe. The correlation of truth and reality appears 
 in the interchange of the words, true and real, as true gold, true piety, 
 the true God. 
 
 The English word truth (trow, trowth), gives prominence to the sub- 
 jective belief. The Greek dtyftsta, the unconcealed, gives prominence 
 to the objective reality. 
 
 II. The truths of Reason have to us objective reality as principles and 
 laws of things, because they are, as already set forth, constituent 
 elements of rationality eternal in the absolute and supreme Reason. 
 
 This accords with the Platonic philosophy, modified as it necessarily 
 must be by Christian Theism. The ideas exist eternal and archetypal 
 in God the supreme reason. The rational ideas of the True, the Right, 
 the Perfect and the Good, and all forms and ideals compatible with 
 them are eternal in the mind of God as an ideal universe before it exists 
 as the universe which we perceive. By his power acting under the 
 guidance of wisdom and love he gives expression to his archetypal 
 
FIRST ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE TRUE. 183 
 
 thoughts in space and time, and under the other limitations of finite 
 things. He also gives existence to finite beings constituted rational like 
 himself who, as in their normal development they come to know them- 
 selves, know the rational image of God. Here arises a moral system, in 
 which God makes still higher and grander expression of his archetypal 
 thoughts. 
 
 Plato sometimes attains this conception. He recognizes the princi- 
 ples of reason as the remembrance of what the soul saw in some former 
 state of existence when in company with God, truths in which God is 
 and in the knowledge of which he is God.* The soul knows God in 
 these truths as the eye by a ray of light knows the Sun. Nor, argues 
 Plato, would this be possible if the eye were not the one of the senses 
 most like the sun.f This often quoted observation, that the eye's power 
 of seeing depends on its likeness to the sun, is not understood in its full 
 significance unless we remember that the ancients supposed that the eye 
 when turned towards the sun was, as it were, kindled by it and emitted 
 from itself the rays by which we see. So the rational spirit, because it 
 is itself reason, sees the light of reason in God. Cicero also says that 
 reason in man is " participata similitude Rationis seternse" and " vincu- 
 lum Dei et hominis." Augustine teaches the same. "Being thus 
 admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inward self, 
 Thou being my guide ; and I was able to do so because Thou wast my 
 helper. And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul, (such as it 
 was,) even above my soul, above my mind, the Light unchangeable. . 
 . . . He who knows the truth, knows what that Light is."J Says 
 Thomas Aquinas : " When we say that we see all things in God and 
 according to him judge of all things, we mean that we know and judge 
 all things by participation in his light. For the natural light of reason 
 is itself a certain participation of the divine light." The doctrine that 
 we see all things in God, whatever mistiness and error accompany it as 
 taught by Malebranche and other writers, has at least the significance 
 given to it by Thomas ; that man's reason sees the light of the universal 
 reason ; that what is the True, the Right, the Perfect, the Good that has 
 true worth, to the reason of man, is the True, the Right, the Perfect, 
 the Good which has true worth, to the universal reason of God ; that 
 we know truly even particular objects only as existing in a rational 
 system, and we know them jn a system as we know them ordered in 
 unity in accordance with rational truths, laws, ideals and ends. 
 
 This doctrine that man knows universal principles of reason which 
 
 * Phaedrus, 249. 
 
 t Republic, B. VI. 508. 
 
 J Confessions, B. VII. Chap. X. 16. 
 
 $ Sumrna Theologian, Part I. Qusest. XII. Art. XI. 
 
184 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 are eternal in God the Supreme Reason is not a flight of swarming 
 enthusiasm, but is accordant with common sense, is the conclusion of 
 the most profound thinkers in all ages, is the necessary inference from 
 the most sober investigation of the rise and processes of knowledge 
 and the laws of thought, and is itself the basis, whether recognized 
 or not, of the possibility of science. They are the flighty and heedless 
 thinkers who deny this. So in speaking of Anaxagoras, Aristotle said 
 that, " the men who first announced that Reason (you<-) was the cause 
 of the world and of all orderly arrangement in nature no less than in 
 living bodies, appeared like a man in his sober senses in comparison 
 with those who before had been speaking at random and in the 
 dark." * 
 
 * Quoted by Prof. E,obert Flint, History of the Philosophy of History in France 
 and Germany, p. 90. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE RIGHT OR LAW: THE SECOND ULTIMATE REALITY 
 
 KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION : THE NORM 
 
 OR STANDARD OF EFFICIENT ACTION. 
 
 . General Significance. 
 
 THE principles of reason and all necessary inferences from them 
 when known as regulative of power are called laws. They are laws to 
 power of every kind, intellectual, physical and voluntary. 
 
 I. They are laws to intellectual and physical power. 
 
 1. To intellectual and physical power they are laws in the sense 
 that they determine what it is possible or impossible for power to 
 effect. In these cases the relation of the truth to the power as its 
 law is expressed by the verbs, must, can, cannot, and by the nouns, 
 necessity, possibility, impossibility. In this sense these truths are laws of 
 thought. The conclusion of a demonstration in geometry is, " It must 
 be so " : it is impossible with the demonstration in mind to think the 
 contrary to be true. In the same sense they are laws to physical 
 power. When we see a stone moving we know that it must have had 
 a cause, it is impossible it should move without a cause. A builder 
 cannot make a structure stable, if it is not constructed according to 
 the principles of geometry and mechanics ; it must fall. A projectile 
 of a certain weight propelled by a certain force at a certain angle 
 of elevation and meeting a certain resistance from the air must de- 
 scribe a certain curve hi its flight. All instances are summed up in the 
 maxim, " The absurd cannot be real." No power can give reality to 
 that which contradicts reason. Whatever is real is capable of reason- 
 able explanation. 
 
 2. Conformity of the action of intellectual or physical power to the 
 truths of reason as law, is called right, non-conformity is called wrong. 
 A boy's solution of an algebraic problem is right ; a steam-engine 
 works right, that is, its action is what it must be if in all its parts it 
 is constructed according to the principles of mechanics. 
 
 3. The phrase '" law of nature " is commonly used to denote an 
 observed uniform sequence of antecedent and consequent. This, how- 
 ever, is not a regulative principle of reason, but merely a generalized 
 
 185 
 
186 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 fact. We do not say, " It must be so," but only that, so far as observed, 
 it uniformly is so. The word law is here used in a secondary sense ; it 
 does not denote a true law of reason, and we are not concerned with it 
 in the present discussion. It is important, however, to note the dis- 
 tinction ; because observed uniform sequence is not only dignified with 
 the name of law, but also deified as the cause which sufficiently accounts 
 for the existence and order of the universe. 
 
 4. Some laws of nature, which are usually regarded as merely uniform 
 sequences, do in reality rest on rational principles from w r hich they 
 derive all their significance as laws. The law of gravitation is com- 
 monly spoken of as expressing merely an observed uniform sequence, 
 but in truth this law is not known by experience but is deduced from 
 an a priori mathematical principle. The same is true of the law of the 
 dispersion of light. Also, when science carries an observed sequence 
 beyond the observed facts, the induction rests entirely on self-evident 
 intuition of reason. Also, the laws of mechanics rest partly on the 
 law of causation and partly on mathematical principles both of which 
 are first principles of reason. 
 
 II. The principles of reason and all necessary inferences from them 
 are also laws to the will. 
 
 1. To the will they are laws, in the sense that they declare what the 
 will in its free action ought to do, what is its duty or obligation. To 
 the will the law does not determine what it is possible or impossible for 
 it to effect, nor declare necessity or what the will must do. Every man 
 is conscious that in the exercise of free will he can disobey law and can 
 exert all his energies to accomplish ends contrary to reason ; yet. every 
 man is still conscious that the truth of reason is a law which he ought 
 to obey. 
 
 2. Conformity of the action of the will with law is right, its non- 
 conformity is wrong. 
 
 3. Truth known as law to a free will is moral law, and conformity of 
 a will to law is right in the distinctively moral or ethical meaning of 
 the word. 
 
 III. The law to intellectual power, the law to physical power, and 
 the law to free will have the common characteristic of law in that each 
 is a truth of reason known as a law to the action of power. They are 
 the three classes of rational laws or laws of reason. The third differs 
 from the first and second in that it is addressed to rational beings having 
 free will, it commands action and requires obedience, it imposes obliga- 
 tion or duty, and it may be obeyed or disobeyed ; but it brings with it 
 no necessity of action. It is moral law. On the contrary the first and 
 second are not laws to free will ; they utter no command, they impose 
 no obligation or duty, they can neither be obeyed nor disobeyed, they 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 187 
 
 carry with them simply necessity. They are not moral law. The word 
 right as applied in each case has the common meaning of the conformity 
 of action to law ; but right in its ethical sense denotes distinctively the 
 conformity of the action of a rational being with law by his own free 
 choice of ends and determination of actions. 
 
 Law and Right have moral or ethical significance only as applied to 
 rational beings determining by free will their own ends and actions. 
 
 Reason knows itself as regulative of all power. In respect to rational 
 free-agents reason knows itself as having authority to give law, to com- 
 mand obedience, to impose obligation. 
 
 g35. The Ethical Significance of Right and Law. 
 
 I.. The ethical idea of right and law arises in the rational intuition 
 that I ought to act reasonably, that is, in accordance with the truths of 
 reason ; or, more generally formulated, "A rational being ought to obey 
 reason," or, " what is true to the reason is a law to the will." In this 
 intuition the person comes to the knowledge of a new reality which is 
 expressed in the word ought and to which the nouns corresponding 
 are obligation, duty, law. This new reality is that he exists under 
 law ; that the universal principles and the necessary inferences from 
 them, which he knows as truths, are laws which he is under obliga- 
 tion to obey. Like other intuitions, this one is practically operative 
 on his action before he formulates it in reflective thought or even 
 recognizes it as a judgment. But as he reflects he finds that what 
 he knows as true to his reason he knows to be a law to action ; he 
 finds himself saying I ought, and learns the significance of obliga- 
 tion and duty ; he finds himself approving some actions because con- 
 formed to principles which he knows as true ; and this common 
 quality of these acts he calls right, and the contrary quality he calls 
 wrong. Thus the ideas of right and wrong rise directly from rational 
 intuition. Without rational intuition man could never have known 
 the difference of right and wrong or had any idea of law, duty and 
 obligation. 
 
 II. Significance of ethical terms. 
 
 1. Ought, obligation, duty. Like all words designating knowledge 
 given directly in intuition, these terms cannot be analytically defined. 
 They can be understood only by intuitively knowing them. It is a 
 sphere of reality entirely unique and no definition or explanation can 
 give any idea of it to a being who is incapable of rational intuition. 
 Ethical terms can be explained only by referring to the consciousness 
 of those who have ethical knowledge. 
 
 I have already explained the three words, as far as it is possible, in 
 indicating their origin. 
 
188 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 2. Right. Ought expresses the relation between a rational being 
 acting freely and the' truth of reason. Right, as an adjective, is 
 predicated of action or character which is conformed to the 
 truth of reason. The Right, as a noun, is the name of this common 
 and essential quality of such character or action ; it means the con- 
 formity of action or character to the truth of reason, known as law to 
 action. 
 
 Holiness and sin, virtue and vice, as denoting character and action, 
 are properly predicated of persons. The man is virtuous or vicious. 
 Right and wrong are more properly predicated immediately of cha- 
 racter and action ; as, virtue is right, vice is wrong. We sometimes 
 say, however, the man is right, meaning right in character or action ; 
 for right and wrong have no ethical significance except as related to 
 the action or character of a rational free agent. 
 
 Right is also used in a different application, as correlative with duty. 
 If I owe five dollars, it is my duty to pay it to my creditor and his 
 right to receive it. The rights of one are correlative to the duty of 
 another. No man has rights in respect to others any farther than 
 they owe duties to him. If all men did all their duties, all men 
 would have all their rights. Selfishness inflames a man to loud de- 
 claration of his own rights, while he thinks little of his own duties. 
 Christ puts it the opposite way. He requires universal love; he 
 would right human wrongs by teaching men to think first of their 
 own duties rather than of their own rights. 
 
 3. Law is truth considered as that to which rational beings are under 
 obligation to conform their characters and action. When I know 
 myself under obligation to conform my action to truth I know the 
 truth as a law to my action. Law is correlative to obligation. 
 
 4. Authority is the right to declare and enforce law. The right of an 
 individual to receive payment of a debt or any service due, is a right 
 derived from the law to which both parties are subject ; it is not the 
 right to declare and enforce law. This belongs only to a government 
 and is called authority. 
 
 The reason, as it reveals itself in the consciousness of an individual, 
 reveals itself as having authority to command. Hence Bishop Butler 
 recognizes authority as the distinctive characteristic of the con- 
 science. * But while the individual's conscience has authority to 
 command him, it does not command others, nor give the individual 
 the right to do so. He must indeed see that what is a universal 
 truth to reason is a law to all men; he may instruct others as to 
 their duty to obey it But he has no right to command or to en- 
 
 * Sermons on Human Nature, IL 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: 
 
 force obedience. That right is called authority. Thaf 
 only in a government. 
 
 5. Government, in its primary meaning, is the action of will in the 
 light and by the authority of reason, declaring the truth of reason as 
 law and enforcing obedience by the punishment of transgressors. 
 This is the most abstract definition of government possible. 
 
 Law which is the truth of reason, is distinguished from government 
 which involves the action of will. Law being of the reason, will can 
 neither create, change nor annul it. Law is above will ; will is always 
 subject to law. It is not the function even of government to create law, 
 but only to discover, declare and enforce the laws which are truths of 
 reason ; and in so doing government itself must obey the unchanging 
 laws of reason. The authority of government, or its right to govern 
 rests on the reason. The theory of popular government, as Judge 
 McLean expressed it in one of his opinions, is that law is supposed to 
 declare " the collective reason of the people." The authority of govern- 
 ment rests ultimately in God, the Supreme and Absolute Eeason. 
 
 We must distinguish law, considered as the eternal principles of 
 right, from statutes or enactments, in which government declares how 
 these principles are to be applied to particular cases. Government 
 must enact statutes to meet particular circumstances and change or 
 annul them as changing circumstances require. But even here it must 
 use its best wisdom to make enactments accordant with truth and 
 righteousness. 
 
 Ethics is the science of law both as unchanging principles and as regu- 
 lative of conduct in specific cases ; both as unchangeable principles in the 
 reason, and as declared and enforced by government. Jurisprudence 
 also discusses the principles of right and their application to conduct, 
 but is confined to the authority and enactments of civil government. 
 Thus Austin begins his " Jurisprudence " with a discussion of the 
 grounds of the authority of government and law and of the obligation 
 to obedience. It is one of the ablest vindications of the erroneous 
 theory of Utilitarianism. Jurisprudence is a branch of ethics. Austin 
 recognizes this; but uses the phrase "positive law" in the sense of 
 enactment or statute : " The science of ethics consists of two depart- 
 ments, one relating specially to positive law, the other relating specially 
 to positive morality. The department which relates to positive law is 
 commonly styled the science of legislation ; the department which relates 
 specially to positive morality is commonly called the science of morals." * 
 
 III. Ethical ideas and moral distinctions, being known by rational 
 intuition, are of the highest certainty. 
 
 * Jurisprudence, Vol. i. p. 116. 
 
190 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 The objection against the validity of our knowledge of moral dis- 
 tinctions is stated by Hume : " In every system of morality which I 
 have hitherto met with ... . the author proceeds for some time 
 in the ordinary way of reasoning ; . . . . when of a sudden I am 
 surprised to find that instead of the usual copula of propositions, is and 
 is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought 
 or an ought not. This change is imperceptible, but is, however, of the 
 last consequence. For as this ought or ought not expresses some new 
 relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and 
 explained ; and at the same time a reason should be given' for what 
 seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduc- 
 tion from others which are entirely different from it. But as authors 
 do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it 
 to readers ; and am persuaded that this small attention would subvert 
 all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see that the distinction 
 of vice and virtue is not founded on the relations of objects nor is per- 
 ceived by the reason." * This objection is already answered. It is true 
 that the idea expressed in the ought and the ought not is different from 
 that expressed in the is and is not; and it is a unique idea different 
 from all others. It is also true that it cannot be deduced from any 
 other idea, though it presupposes the knowledge of principles or truths 
 of reason. But it is not true that philosophers surreptitiously intro- 
 duce it without declaring its distinctive significance and its origin. It 
 originates in rational intuition. And I have already demonstrated that 
 rational intuitions are of the highest certainty, that on their validity 
 as knowledge all reasoning and all science depend, and that they are 
 constituent elements of all rational intelligence. In these our know- 
 ledge of moral distinctions is rooted deep in our constitution as rational 
 beings and ramified beneath the entire outgrowth of knowledge. 
 
 Besides it must be noticed that Hume's objection recoils on himself. 
 Since human thought cannot escape using the ought and the ought not, 
 and there is nothing in his philosophy which can account for this, the 
 true inference is that his philosophy is contrary to reason and false, not 
 that moral distinctions are unfounded. 
 
 $36. Moral Law Universal, Immutable, Imperative. 
 
 I. Law is universal, immutable and imperative because it is the uni- 
 versal and immutable truth of Reason known as law to action. 
 
 It is essential in the idea of law that it be universal and un- 
 changeable, the law for all times and all places. I refer to law in its 
 principles, not to the rules for applying those principles to determine 
 
 * Treatise of Human Nature, B. iii. Part i. Section 1. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 191 
 
 the right or wrong of outward acts under changing circumstances. 
 But in determining what is duty in these details there must be appeal 
 to universal and immutable principles or we can never determine the 
 right or wrong of particular actions, just as reasoning however rami- 
 fied must be regulated by universal principles, or it can never con- 
 clude in a true inference. 
 
 It is equally essential in the idea of law that it be imperative. It is 
 not advice or persuasion but command. It does not tell us what is 
 agreeable or profitable, but what is obligatory and right. It is the 
 supreme and final standard of right from which there is no appeal and 
 which excludes all right to question or disobey. If there is any dif- 
 ference between right and wrong there must be a law universally, 
 unchangeably, supremely right. 
 
 This universality, immutability and imperativeness are essential in 
 law because law is universal and immutable truth recognized as law 
 to action. It is either some primitive principle known in rational 
 intuition or some truth inferred from it. Private opinion does not con- 
 stitute the law of right. A particular fact does not. If I know that a 
 particular course of action leads me into the fire, that fact is not a law 
 forbidding me to go into the fire ; for it may be a martyr-fire. But 
 universal truth, whenever it bears on the will's determination, is a law 
 to the will ; and the law is as universal and as immutable as the truth. 
 It is also imperative ; for law is nothing else but truth recognized 
 as imperative to will. The it is of a fact can issue only in an unregu- 
 lated / will It is only the must be of universal truth which resolves 
 into I ought. 
 
 II. The law as universal, immutable and imperative implies the 
 existence of God, the Supreme and absolute Reason in whom the Law 
 is eternal. We have seen that this is implied in the idea of the True. 
 It is implied also and even more impressively in the idea of the Right; 
 for in this the voice of the Supreme lawgiver speaks in every man's 
 consciousness uttering a law transcending him and imperative on him. 
 As a universal truth of reason known as law to action, he knows it as 
 law, not to himself alone, but to all rational beings ; yet he is conscious 
 that he is not its author and has not authority to enforce obedience on 
 others. There must then be a lawgiver above all men and having 
 authority to command all. The truths and laws recognized by man's 
 reason are without significance and reality as universal truths and 
 laws except as they are truths and laws eternal in a Reason absolute 
 and supreme, and thus regulative of all thought and energy and domi- 
 nant throughout the universe. 
 
 The Absolute Being, however, is not a 'merely speculative Reason, 
 seeing in itself all truth, law, perfection and good, but an energizing 
 
192 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Reason realizing in finite creations the archetypes of all truth, right, 
 perfection and good which it sees eternal in itself. And these arche- 
 types expressed and realized are the constitution of the universe. 
 
 III. Hence all wrong-doing has falsehood and absurdity underlying 
 it as its intellectual basis. Selfishness, if justified, would imply that 
 the selfish person is supreme and that God and all creatures exist to 
 serve him, while he serves no one, an error more extravagant than the 
 old astronomy that the planets and sun and all the stars revolve daily 
 around the earth. Hence the Bible calls the transgressor indiscrimi- 
 nately a sinner or a foel. 
 
 IV. Hence law requires conformity to the fundamental realities in 
 the constitution of things. Off Nova Scotia, on the route of steamships 
 to England, is Sable Island. It is but a speck on the chart, but that 
 speck represents reality ; the navigator must shape his course to avoid 
 it or be dashed in pieces on it. So truth is correlative to reality ; law 
 declares the deepest realities of existence and bids us shape our course 
 in reference to them or be miserably wrecked. It is a command 
 requiring conformity to the fundamental truths of reason and the fun- 
 damental realities of the constitution of things. 
 
 V. Action in transgression of law must issue in failure and loss. 
 Man, in the exercise of his reason, may transgress moral law. Moral 
 law does not declare the certainty or necessity of an action, but only its 
 obligation. But if man transgresses moral law he is spending his 
 strength in trying to give reality to an absurdity. Selfishness, for 
 example, is a continuous endeavor to attain the highest good by selfish 
 getting and selfish indulgence. But the efforts of a life thus spent must 
 issue in failure. A man may spend his estate and his life in trying to 
 make a machine on the principle of a perpetual and self-perpetuating 
 motion. But he only wastes his estate and life in trying to realize the 
 absurd and impossible. So a man may spend his life in sinning, but it 
 can be only a wasted life. He " loses himself or is cast away." I have 
 called the truths of reason, which determine what is possible for power 
 to effect, the "flammantia moenia mundi." If a man flings himself 
 against these burning barriers he flings himself into the fire everlasting. 
 Truth is the fire of hell. 
 
 VI. Law as imperative implies that it is enforced by punishment 
 inflicted by the government for disobedience. This is of the essence of 
 law ; otherwise it ceases to be law and weakens into advice. This is 
 attested in the moral constitution of men in the consciousness of ill-desert 
 for sin. And it is no capricious or arbitrary infliction, but is necessary 
 in the constitution of the universe. Thou shall waits always terrible 
 behind I ought. 
 
 VII. We have now the answer to the common objection that intui- 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 193 
 
 tive ethics is empty of significance ; that its fundamental principle is an 
 identical proposition, " Right is right because it is right." The prin- 
 ciple is, " What is true to the reason is law to the will." It has for 
 content the truths of reason. It rests on the fact that man, being in the 
 image of God, is endowed with reason and free will, and that reason, 
 the same in kind everywhere and always, is supreme and absolute in 
 God. The fundamental principle of intuitive ethics has for content all 
 that is true to human reason, and all that is true to the divine reason, so 
 far as known to man, and all that is fundamental in the constitution of 
 the universe. Nor are we obliged to say truth is true because it is 
 true ; it is true because it is eternal in the absolute reason, because it is 
 the truth in which the universe is grounded and of which the universe 
 is the expression. Truth is concrete throughout to its primal essence, as 
 it is eternal and archetypal in the absolute Reason. 
 
 i 37. Intuitive Ethics distinguished from Erroneous 
 Theories. 
 
 I. It is unnecessary to delay on theories like those of Diderot and 
 Mandeville, which ascribe the origin of moral ideas to association of 
 ideas and to education ; for these deny the reality of moral obligation. 
 I have already shown that the association of ideas in the experience of 
 an individual cannot account for the necessary beliefs of reason. 
 
 II. The true Ethics is distinguished from theories which attempt to 
 derive the idea of right from that of happiness or the highest good. 
 
 The ideas of right and obligation have their origin in reason and have 
 a unique and distinctive meaning ; the ethical ideas cannot be derived 
 from nor identified with the idea of happiness or good. Every theory 
 which attempts to derive the ethical ideas frflm the idea of happiness or 
 good loses their essential distinctive significance, and resolves the right 
 into the agreeable or the expedient. Thus Locke resolves all moral 
 distinctions into the distinction of pleasure and pain : " We love, desire, 
 rejoice and hope only in respect of pleasure ; we hate, fear and grieve 
 only in respect of pain, ultimately." And he exemplifies what love is, 
 from the love of grapes : " When a man declares .... that he 
 loves grapes, it is no more but that the taste of grapes delights him."* 
 Theories of this kind annul all essential and distinctive significance of 
 obligation and duty, of right and wrong, of law and authority ; they 
 exclude the very ideas of right and obligation ; they lose the right in 
 the agreeable or at best in the prudential. 
 
 III. The true ethics, affirming that moral distinctions originate in 
 
 * Essay concerning Human Understanding, B. II., chap. 20, sect. 14, 4. See chap. 
 28, sect. 5-14, and chap. 21, sects. 55, 70, and B. I., chap. 3. 
 13 
 
194 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the reason, must be distinguished from theories that these distinctions 
 originate in the feelings ; that our moral ideas arise from the feelings 
 which as motives impel us to certain acts as right and deter from others 
 as wrong, and which react in emotions, as in remorse for wrong-doing 
 and satisfaction in right-doing. 
 
 This, however, would be false psychology. For a feeling presup- 
 poses some reality present to consciousness or contemplated in thought. 
 Sugar is not saccharine because it is agreeable to the taste ; it is agree- 
 able to the taste because it is saccharine. So virtue is not right be- 
 cause it gives satisfaction ; but it gives satisfaction because it is right. 
 Vice is not wrong because it occasions remorse ; it occasions remorse 
 because it is wrong. 
 
 Moral feelings, whether motives or emotions, presuppose the know- 
 ledge of moral distinctions. If I am conscious of any motive to do 
 right, I must first have an idea of right and some standard of judgment 
 by which to distinguish right from wrong. If I feel remorse for wrong 
 doing or complacency in right doing, these feelings presuppose know- 
 ledge of right and wrong. It is to be observed, however, that in the 
 primitive regulative action of intuition before it is formulated or dis- 
 tinctly recognized in thought, the feeling and the intuition coexist. In 
 this sense it is true that feeling is a kind of knowledge. 
 
 If the moral feelings arise before any knowledge of right and wrong, 
 then, on account of the absence of that knowledge, there is nothing to 
 distinguish them as moral; they are known merely as agreeable or 
 disagreeable feelings ; and the only generalization from them possible 
 would be that some conduct is agreeable and other conduct disagree- 
 able. And there would be no immutable distinction of right and 
 wrong, but it would fluctuate with the feelings. This theory logically 
 sinks back into the theory which derives the idea of right from happi- 
 ness and thus loses it in the agreeable. Built on the unstable fluctua- 
 tions of feeling, the theory can never attain a rational and immutable 
 distinction of right and wrong. 
 
 This Hume perceived. Alluding to a passage in his Treatise of 
 Human Nature (Book III. Part 1, Sect. 1,) in which he maintains that 
 moral ideas originate not in the reason but in the feelings, he wrote to 
 Hutcheson : " Is not this a little too strong ? . . . .1 wish from my 
 heart I could avoid concluding that since morality, according to your 
 opinion as well as mine, is determined merely by sentiment, it regards 
 only human nature and human life. ... If morality were deter- 
 mined by reason, that is the same to all rational beings ; but nothing 
 but experience can assure us that the sentiments are the same. What 
 experience have we in regard to superior beings ? How can we ascribe 
 to them any sentiments at all ? They have implanted these sentiments 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 195 
 
 in us for the conduct of life, like our bodily sensations, which they 
 possess not themselves."* 
 
 IV. Closely allied to the foregoing is Hutcheson's theory that moral 
 ideas originate in a special mental faculty called the Moral Sense. 
 This moral sense, however, when examined, is found to denote only the 
 susceptibility to moral motives and emotions. These Hutcheson con- 
 ceives of as analogous to the sensations of which we are conscious 
 through the five senses. Hence the susceptibility to these moral mo- 
 tives and emotions he regards as a sort of additional sense, and calls it 
 the Moral Sense. This theory is one of those which ascribe the origin 
 of moral ideas to the feelings. Its calling these feelings a special 
 faculty and naming it the Moral Sense, does not annul its identity 
 with those theories nor exempt it from the objections which demon- 
 strate their inadequacy. 
 
 I shall use the word conscience to denote the whole moral constitu- 
 tion, including both the capacity for rational intuition of right and 
 wrong and for moral motives and emotions. 
 
 V. True ethics is distinguished from the theory that the distinction 
 of right and wrong rests ultimately on the will of God. As eternal in 
 Reason, the distinction of right and wrong and the law requiring the 
 right are not originated by any fiat of will, human or divine. Law is 
 
 'eternal in God the supreme reason, and the will of God always acts in 
 conformity with the law eternal in the Reason of God. God's will is 
 his reason energizing. It is essential to all true and wholesome 
 theology as well as to all true and wholesome ethics to recognize the 
 absolute supremacy of reason, to recognize the universe as having its 
 ultimate ground in reason and not in will. If will is supreme, morality 
 and religion are no longer possible. The only basis for ethics would 
 be the maxim that might makes right ; the only object of worship 
 would be an almighty power unregulated by reason, unenlightened by 
 intelligence, and yet capricious because above all law, " Monstrum 
 horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum," the most terrific 
 being that the imagination of man can conceive. 
 
 Herbert Spencer says, " Religious creeds, established and dissenting, 
 all embody the belief that right and wrong are right and wrong simply 
 by divine enactment." Theologians "assert that in the absence of 
 belief in a deity there would be no moral guidance ; and this amounts 
 to asserting that moral truths have no other origin than the will of 
 God." f He here assumes that there is no way in which moral dis- 
 tinctions can depend on God except as they depend on a fiat of 'God's 
 
 * Life and Correspondence, by J. H. Burton, I. 119. 
 t Data of Ethics, p. 50, 15. 
 
196 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 will. It never occurs to him that the very reason- why theologians 
 affirm that the denial of God removes the foundation of moral dis- 
 tinctions, is that it is the denial of the supremacy of reason and the 
 affirmation that the ultimate ground of the universe is not reason. 
 Mr. Spencer however himself, as we have already seen, says that the 
 belief in the " positive existence " of the absolute " has a higher war- 
 rant than any other whatever," " though the Absolute cannot in any 
 manner or degree be known in the strict sense of knowing." Yet on 
 the next page he declares that this Absolute is " an Incomprehensible 
 Omnipresent power." Here then his own doctrine is analogous to that 
 which he falsely charges on all theology. The Absolute Being which 
 is the ultimate ground of the universe is known to be an omnipresent 
 power, but we may not predicate of it intelligence. On this basis 
 ethical distinctions must rest ultimately on irrational power, and the 
 ethical ideas lose all their distinctive significance and give place to the 
 ideas of the agreeable and profitable. And this substitute for Ethics 
 is all that Mr. Spencer gives us in his ethical writings. 
 
 The doctrine that Law is in the Reason and is not the creation of 
 will is as old in philosophy as Plato and Aristotle, who, however they 
 differed in other respects, agree in recognizing the supremacy of reason 
 and the dependence of moral distinctions on it. To the question, what 
 is the distinctive character of actions and habits which constitutes them 
 virtuous, Aristotle answers : " we can say at once that they must be 
 according to right reason." * " We define virtue to be a habit, in- 
 volving deliberate purpose, conforming to the relative mean, which is 
 determined by reason (^>? / ^) and as the man of good sense (6 ypuviij.oq'} 
 would determine it. On either side of this mean, in excess or defect, 
 lies vice." (B. II. chap. vi. 15, 16.) In defining what the chief good 
 is, he says, it cannot be happiness merely, because men derive happiness 
 from different and incompatible sources. He defines the chief good as 
 determined by the standard of reason ; " An active condition of the 
 soul guided by or not without reason " ; or more fully ; " An active 
 condition of the soul in accordance with its best and most perfect virtue 
 (a/jer^y) in a complete (or perfect) life (iv ftta TS^IW).^" Therefore, 
 though Aristotle teaches that virtue consists in attaining the highest 
 good, yet his ethics is a system of intuitive morals having little in com- 
 mon with utilitarianism, because he determines what ^e highest good 
 is by the standard of reason and declares the dependence of ethical 
 distinctions on that standard. In the Euthyphro Socrates says that a 
 quality or act " is loved by the gods because it is holy ; it is not holy 
 
 * Nicomachean Ethics, Book II. chap. ii. 2. 
 f B. I. chap. vii. 14, 16. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 197 
 
 because it is loved by the gods." (10.) And yet, though these philoso- 
 phers deny that the will even of the gods can originate moral dis- 
 tinctions, Mr. Spencer classes them with Hobbes as teaching that moral 
 distinctions are created by the enactment of the State. * This is the 
 more surprising because Aristotle explicitly distinguishes in political 
 ethics between that which is just by nature and therefore has every- 
 where the same force, and that which is enjoined by enactment ; and 
 notes with disapproval the opinion of some that the latter is the only 
 just and unjust.f And Plato repeatedly argues against this error as 
 held by Protagoras and others whom he mentions in different dia- 
 logues.J 
 
 Christianity, in its historical revelation of atonement for sin through 
 the humiliation and suffering of Christ, brings to the front the fact that 
 law is neither created, annulled or changed by will, not even by the 
 fiat of God's will ; but that God's action in the forgiveness of sin must 
 declare the immutability of law as really as in the punishment of trans- 
 gressors. The only philosophy consistent alike with reason, with theism 
 and with Christianity is that of Augustine, following Plato, which 
 recognizes truth and law as eternal in God, the supreme and absolute 
 reason. No fiat of God's will, no exertion of almighty power can make 
 love to God and man to be wrong, or selfishness and malignity right. 
 And this is no limitation of God ; for it simply declares that God is 
 perfect and absolute Reason, that his will is eternally in harmony with 
 Reason, and his action eternally in wisdom and love. For will-power 
 to change the moral law would be to subvert Reason and to annihilate 
 God. God is Reason, not active and powerless, but energizing freely. 
 God is will, not capricious, energizing in unreason, but a rational and 
 reasonable will. 
 
 Some theologians, however, have missed the true philosophy and 
 have taught that moral distinctions rest ultimately on the will of God. 
 Conspicuous representatives of this error are Duns Scotus and Ockham 
 in the Middle Ages, and Descartes in modern times. The error seems 
 to have arisen in part from failing to distinguish between God's law, 
 which in its principles is eternal in the reason, and God's government, 
 which, in declaring and enforcing the law, is the action of will. It 
 seems to have* arisen in part from jealousy of infringement of God's 
 
 *Data of Ethics, p. 51. 
 
 t Nicomacheau Ethics, B. V. chap. x. and B. I. chap. i. 
 
 JThaetetus 172, 177: Laws, B. x. 889, 890: Gorgias: Minos. Even the Autocrat 
 in the Politicus, and in Laws, B. iv. 710, rules because he is the wisest and best of 
 the people and in accordance with a science of government which regulates his entire 
 administration. 
 
 I Duns, Lib. I., Sentent. dist. 44; Ockham, Sentent. Lib. II., qu. 19; Descartes, 
 Responsio ad sextos objectiones, 6; Works, Cousin's ed., Vol. II., pp. 348-355. 
 
198 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 prerogative. It was argued that the dependence of moral distinctions 
 on the will of God is essential to the freedom of the divine will ; an 
 argument which confounds freedom with arbitrariness and supposes a 
 character unchanging in a right choice to be incompatible with free- 
 dom. It was argued by Descartes, " to him who considers the immen- 
 sity of God it is evident that there can be nothing at all which doth not 
 depend on him, not only nothing subsisting, but also no order, no law, 
 no reason of truth and goodness." But he does not consider that truth 
 and law, being eternal in God's reason, are as really dependent on God 
 as what is created by his will. Leibnitz even suggests that in advoca- 
 ting this error Descartes was not in earnest. Theologians who held this 
 error certainly did not intend to deny the universality, immutability 
 and supreme authority of God's law ; for the fiat of God's will which 
 made it law they recognized as eternal and unchangeable. Thus An- 
 selm said that the dictum that a thing is right because God wills it, is 
 not to be understood as if in the case of God's willing anything wrong, 
 as a lie, it would be right.* Duns Scotus, who accepted the logical 
 consequence of the principle and taught that the just would be unjust 
 if God willed it, yet admitted an unconditional necessity for the law of 
 love as well as for everything which logically follows from the same. 
 (Lib. III.) And Descartes held the inseparable identity of the will 
 and the thought of God. It seems therefore to have been not a denial 
 of the universality and immutability of the moral law in its practical 
 bearing, but rather an hypothesis deemed necessary in certain venture- 
 some speculations respecting the metaphysics of God's constitution, and 
 involving an unwarranted abstraction of the divine will from the divine 
 reason. Accordingly we find it used in later times as a philosophical 
 basis for the supralapsarian doctrine of predestination. 
 
 It is greatly to be lamented that this error has ever found foothold 
 in Christian theology, with which it is essentially in conflict. It cannot 
 be held, even as a speculative theory, without distorting and vitiating 
 both the theology and the practical teaching of Christianity. It has 
 led to bald and hard presentations of theology, incompatible with the 
 essential truth and spirit of Christianity and with the best thought and 
 the best piety of the ages ; and by the misrepresentations which it has 
 engendered it is a hindrance to the reception of Christ aad his gospel. 
 
 VI. True Ethics is distinguished from the theory that the principles 
 of truth are eternal and universally regulative, but are external to and 
 independent of God. 
 
 Some theists have been led into this error to avert the imputation of 
 the skeptic that according to theism the principles of truth and right 
 
 * Cur Deus Homo, I. 12. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 199 
 
 are created by a fiat of God's will. They concede to the skeptic that 
 there is no other way in which these principles can be dependent on 
 God ; they fail to see that they are eternal in the absolute reason, and 
 thus are dependent on God, although independent of his will, and law 
 to it in all its action ; and so they plunge into the abysmal error that 
 truth and right have no dependence on God, but are independent and 
 eternal in the constitution of things. 
 
 It is philosophically impossible that this theory should be true. The 
 universe consists of concrete reality, not of abstractions ; it is a uni- 
 verse of beings in their various modes of existence. All knowledge is 
 the knowledge of being. The existence of truth, right, law, perfection, 
 beauty or worth independent of any mind, is without meaning and im- 
 possible to thought. It is as meaningless and impossible as the exist- 
 ence of motion without a body moving and without force moving it. 
 The rational cannot exist without a Reason or Mind, any more than 
 the corporeal can exist without a body. 
 
 This theory nullifies the evidence of the existence of God. From 
 our knowledge of reason in ourselves and in the scientific constitution 
 of the material universe we infer that the universe is grounded in the 
 personal God in whom as the Absolute Reason all truth and law, all 
 ideals of perfection, and all norms or standards of good are eternal. 
 This theory nullifies this evidence by declaring that all rational princi- 
 ples and laws, all rational norms of perfection and good are indepen- 
 dent of any Reason or mind and are eternal in the constitution of 
 things. 
 
 Not only does the theory nullify the evidence of the existence of 
 God but it is itself the direct contradiction of theism ; for it affirms 
 that the universe is ultimately grounded in the impersonal, not in the 
 personal. It thus concedes all that is essential in the theory of " crea- 
 tion by law " ; for what is first and fundamental in the universe is law 
 but not God. It coincides with monistic theories, materialistic or 
 pantheistic, which explain the universe as the sum total of matter and 
 its forces acting eternally according to unconscious law. It coincides 
 with Spinozism which recognizes thought as one original attribute of 
 substance, but it is unconscious thought. It coincides with Hartmann's 
 " Philosophy of the Unconscious," which recognizes the revelation of 
 rational intelligence everywhere in the universe, but it is in unconscious 
 intelligence. It agrees with Hegel who puts thought before matter, 
 but it is unconscious thought. Hegel however is more philosophical 
 than this theory, for he starts with pure Being, while this theory starts 
 with that meaningless abstraction, the constitution of the universe. As 
 a theistic theory it is unphilosophical and inconsistent with itself. If 
 we try to think of truth or law independent of mind in the constitution 
 
200 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of things, the essence of truth and law escapes and nothing remains 
 but facts instead of truths and factual sequences instead of laws. It 
 might still be possible to speak of what appears to be, but no longer 
 possible to speak of what must and what ought to be ; for all principles 
 and laws of reason have subsided into phenomena ; there is no standard 
 of distinction between the true and the absurd, the right and the 
 wrong, the perfect and the imperfect, the worthy and the unworthy. 
 Thus the theory slumps into monism, materialistic or pantheistic, which 
 knows no supreme being except the universe itself. 
 
 In reply the theist, who has fallen into this error, claims that the 
 evidence of God's existence still remains, since there must be a being 
 who has caused the universe to exist, and that he must be wise and 
 good because he has caused it to exist in accordance with these princi- 
 ples and laws. Here, however, is evidence only of a power by which 
 the universe exists and acts ; and this power, for aught that ^appears, 
 may be in the universe itself. There is no evidence of wisdom and 
 goodness ; for according to the theory, these principles and laws are 
 eternal in the constitution of things, and if the universe exists at all it 
 must necessarily exist according to its own eternal constitution, which 
 is entirely independent of God. 
 
 Besides, the being who is thus supposed to bring the universe into 
 existence is himself conditioned, and cannot be God, the absolute and 
 unconditioned being. Rev. Dr. Fairchild says, "The principles of 
 morality rest on the same foundation with those of mathematics and all 
 
 necessary truths The moral law .... exists in the 
 
 nature of things .... Of the modification of this doctrine, that 
 obligation has its origin in the reason of God, it is only necessary to 
 remark that reason does not originate principles or truths, it only per- 
 ceives them already existing." * I may remark in passing that this 
 author entirely misapprehends the doctrine which he so summarily sets 
 aside. It is not the doctrine that principles or truths are originated 
 by the divine Reason, but that they are in it eternal and without be- 
 ginning. God knows them in himself as eternally " constituent elements 
 of reason." This misapprehension exemplifies what I said, that theists 
 are led into the error which I am controverting, by the impression that 
 if truth and law are dependent on God they must have been originated 
 or created by some definite divine act. But I return to the quotation. 
 
 The surprising doctrine here asserted is that the nature or constitu- 
 tion of things, that is, of the universe, exists eternal with no dependence 
 on God ; and that truth and law are eternal in it and independent of 
 God. God, therefore, is always conditioned by this eternal and inde- 
 
 * Moral Philosophy, pp. 116-120, 143. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 201 
 
 pendent constitution of the universe and by all the truths and laws 
 that are eternal in it. If he creates or effects anything, he acts under 
 necessity and can effect only that universe, the constitution of which 
 already exists independent of him. He is thus conditioned under 
 necessity in the exercise of his power. 
 
 He is also conditioned and limited in his knowledge. " Reason only 
 perceives" the constitution of things and the principles and laws eternal 
 in it " already existing." God acquires knowledge of the constitution 
 of things and the principles inherent therein by perception and ob- 
 servation of what is external to and independent of himself. God then 
 is conditioned and dependent both as to his power and his knowledge. 
 He is merely a Demiurge who studies the constitution of the universe 
 and its principles and laws and necessarily shapes the worlds in ac- 
 cordance therewith ; because the eternal constitution of things makes 
 it impossible to shape them otherwise. 
 
 Here also is abstraction carried to the utmost. I have criticised 
 Spencer because, like a medieval schoolman, he hypostasizes abstractions 
 of human thought and feeling and deals with them as distinct entities. 
 Here in like manner the nature or constitution of the universe is 
 abstracted from the universe and conceived as eternal ; the truth and 
 laws dominant in the universe are abstracted both from it and from 
 the supreme reason, which is God ; and these abstractions are hyposta- 
 sized as eternal, self-existent, independent entities, and presented as 
 alone the unconditioned and all-conditioning ground of all that is. It 
 is impossible to carry the hypostasizing of abstractions farther ; and so 
 long as theologians teach such theories of the universe we need not 
 wonder that skeptics stigmatize theology as a tissue of abstractions. 
 
 On the contrary true theology, from beginning to end, deals always 
 with concrete beings. The ultimate ground of the universe is the living 
 personal God, eternal, self-existent, unconditioned and all-conditioning. 
 In him as perfect reason all truth, all law, all ideals of perfection, all 
 rational norms determining the ends worthy of rational beings are 
 eternal. These are themselves " the nature of things " or the constitu- 
 tion of the universe, because they are the archetypes which, in his 
 wisdom and love, God is progressively expressing in finite things ; and 
 therefore the universe in all its physical and all its rational systems is the 
 continuous revelation of God. Whereas, according to 'the theory which 
 I am criticising if carried out to its necessary logical inference, the uni- 
 verse is not a revelation of God, but only of its own constitution, in 
 which all truths and laws are included, existing eternal and entirely 
 independent of God ; and the necessary inference is either Atheism or 
 Pantheism. 
 
 In support of the theory that truth exists in the nature of things 
 
202 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 independent of God it is urged that if God and all being were IK.H- 
 existent, space and time must nevertheless remain, and geometry and 
 arithmetic would still be true. This is put forward in the quotation 
 which I have been criticising and is the great argument in defence of 
 the theory. 
 
 If in the non-existence of being space and time should remain, that 
 does not prove that moral law is eternal independently of God. 
 
 But men deceive themselves by these violent suppositions of the non- 
 existence of being. We are rational beings and all our thinking is 
 under the rational laws of thought. By no intellectual somersets can 
 we leap out of ourselves and our own rationality. Therefore, if we 
 suppose ourselves to think away all being, we ourselves remain in the 
 void and think there according to the necessary principles of reason. 
 Then we infer that if no being existed, everything must be as we in the 
 exercise of our reason must th;nk it ; and so space and time, geometry 
 and arithmetic would survive. Whereas, if there were no being, there 
 would be no reason, no difference between the true and the absurd, or 
 the right and the wrong ; and the mathematically impossible and all 
 that reason sees to be absurd, would be just as possible as its con- 
 trary ; for nothing would be, and nothing would be possible. 
 
 Hence in the non-existence of being space would be emptiness, a 
 mere negation or non-entity ; just as darkness is the absence of light 
 and cold is the absence of heat. Knowledge and thought are impossi- 
 ble except as being is the object of the knowledge and the thought. 
 Nothing is real except being, its modes of existence, and the rational 
 truths, laws, ideals and ends which are regulative of it. It is impossible 
 to have a thought which transcends all being, or which is not, directly 
 or indirectly, a thought of being. In supposing that we know anything 
 as to what would remain if all being were non-existent, we deceive our- 
 selves. The very question is absurd, for it is the question, if there were 
 no being, what would be? The only answer to this question is the 
 entire cessation of intelligence. Space has no reality except as room 
 for being. Room for being has no reality except as the possibility of 
 being. The possibility of being is in God only. 
 
 Space and time are forms in which finite beings exist. They are not, 
 as Kant teaches, subjective forms of sense in finite minds. To finite 
 minds they are objectively real. But they are forms of finite reality 
 which are archetypal and eternal in the absolute and divine reason. 
 According to the constitution of the universe eternal in the divine rea- 
 son, finite beings cannot exist except in time, or in both space and time. 
 Subjective and objective are one in God in the sense that what is 
 objective to us is first subjective in the archetypal thought of God. 
 Schleiermacher says, " God's eternity is the absolutely timeless causality 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 203 
 
 of God, conditioning, with all that is temporal, time itself?' " God's 
 immensity is the absolutely spaceless causality of God conditioning, 
 with all that occupies space (cdlem raumlicheti), space itself." 
 
 There is, then, a real significance in Dr. Clarke's a priori argument 
 for the existence of God from time and space, but in a way different 
 from that in which he presented it. Space and time have no reality 
 except as forms or constituent elements eternal and archetypal in 
 the absolute Keason, and thus are forms of the existence of finite 
 things. 
 
 We conclude that this theory of truth and law eternal in a constitu- 
 tion of things independent of God, is fatal to theism. All personal 
 beings are autonomic. As man finds the law in himself in his own 
 reason and conscience, so all truth and law are eternal in God, the 
 absolute reason. Xo man can thrQw his thought behind God. God is 
 the resting-place of the intellect not less than of the heart. All lines 
 of thought converge towards God ; all meet and stop in him ; all 
 spring again from him, made certain as real knowledge and effective as 
 life-giving wisdom. When a thinker, audacious to soar beyond the 
 limits of thought to its ultimate ground, imagines that he is soaring 
 beyond God, suddenly, like Satan flying in chaos, he meets 
 
 / 
 
 " A vast vacuity ; all unawares, 
 Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops 
 Ten thousand fathoms deep.' 1 
 
 38. The Formal Principle of the Law and the Real 
 
 Principle. 
 
 I. The formal Principle of the Law declares the idea and significance 
 of law. It is the rational intuition hi which the idea of law arises, 
 namely, A rational being ought to obey reason ; or, what is truth to Rea- 
 son is law to will. This is the statement of the principle in philosophy, 
 where it appears in its most abstract form. In theology it would be, 
 Every rational being ought to obey God ; or, The truth eternal in God, 
 the supreme reason, is law to the action of all rational beings. 
 
 The principle is formal in the active sense, formative or constitutive. 
 When truth is known as related to the action of will, we know intui- 
 tively that we ought to obey reason. In this intuition reason sees the 
 truth in the form of law, as imposing on the will obligation to act 'in 
 conformity with the truth. This intuition of reason is the formal prin- 
 ciple of the law, the principle which gives the distinctive idea and sig- 
 nificance of law. 
 
 II. The real principle of the law declares what the law commands : 
 Thou shall love the Lord God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor 
 
204 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 as thyself. All which the law commands is comprehended in this 
 principle. 
 
 The formal principle declares the obligation to obey the law but not 
 what the law requires. It tells us that every one ought to obey reason, 
 or to obey God, but does not tell what reason or God requires. If by 
 this principle we attempt to include all the virtues in a unity or to 
 designate the one essential quality in all virtuous acts whereby they 
 are all virtuous, w r e get only this, that they are all acts of obedience to 
 law ; in answer to the question, What does the law command ? we have 
 only the empty assertion, The law requires obedience to itself. 
 
 The real principle of the law answers this question ; it declares that 
 the law requires love to God and our neighbor. This is the essential 
 quality of all virtues whereby they are virtuous ; it includes in one 
 principle all that the law requires. , Specific duties are required by the 
 law. But the specific commandments need not be considered here ; for 
 the law of love is the real principle which includes them all. 
 
 This distinction of the formal and the real principles of the law 
 forces itself on the notice in every thorough discussion of ethics, and 
 ethical writers have attempted to indicate it in various ways. President 
 Hopkins, for example, gives us " The Law of Love and Love as a 
 Law." The terms which I have appropriated to express it, seem to 
 me better fitted for the purpose than any others. 
 
 We may use the words to discriminate actions. An action may 
 be formally right but really wrong ; as Paul's action in opposing 
 Christianity was formally right because he acted with the recognition 
 of the law and believed himself to be obeying it ; it was really wrong 
 because it was contrary to the real requirement of the law. 
 
 III. As declaring the reality and significance of law, the formal 
 principle is indispensable to the law and to its practical efficiency. 
 
 1. It opens to us the range of thought peculiar to law, different from 
 the agreeable, the profitable and the prudential, and different from the 
 truth. It is like the opening of a new sense. It reveals a new world 
 of reality. Without it we should have no knowledge of duty, or virtue, 
 or authority or law. These words would be meaningless. It seems at 
 first an empty principle ; but it lies at the basis of all moral distinc- 
 tions. Max Miiller says : " There is no religion which does not say, 
 ' Do good, avoid evil.' There is none which does not contain what 
 Rabbi Hillel called the quintessence of all religions, 'Be good my 
 boy.' " * You laugh and say it means nothing. But it has a mo- 
 mentous meaning. It calls the boy away from passion and caprice to 
 reason as his guide ; it refers him to a law which declares an unchange- 
 
 * Science of Religion : Lecture IV. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 205 
 
 able distinction between good and evil and sets him to studying what 
 that law requires ; beneath that command to be a good boy and giving 
 it significance, is the law of God. Note the immense difference be- 
 tween an education which says " Be a good boy," and that which 
 should say, " Be rich, my boy " ; or, " Seek your own pleasure, my 
 boy " ; or " Xever mind whether you are good or bad, my boy." The 
 dawning of the knowledge of duty hi a child's mind is like the dawn- 
 ing of the day. 
 
 2. The formal principle declares the real principle to be law. It is 
 not mere advice to love God and your neighbor ; it is not merely the 
 didactic information that love is beautiful, agreeable or profitable. It 
 is law, Thou slialt; it is law, declared by the authority of God and en- 
 forced by penalty for disobedience. Without this strength and au- 
 thority of law, righteousness is displaced by the desire to please, virtue 
 liquefies into a gush of feeling, and love is dissolved into mere amiable- 
 ness and sentimentality. 
 
 3. It recognizes the important aspect of virtue as doing duty, as 
 obedience to law, as subjection to rightful authority, as loyalty to 
 government ; and, on the part of the administrators of government, 
 the enactment, maintenance and enforcement of just laws. Loyalty 
 etymologic-ally means fidelity to law. Loyalty to a person is a 
 secondary meaning of the word, and is inferior in dignity to loyalty to 
 principle and law. If the American people are loyal to the constitu- 
 tion and laws rather than to persons, it is because they have attained a 
 higher grade of civilization and political culture. If, however, in losing 
 loyalty to persons they have lost also loyalty to law and government, 
 reverence for rightful authority and the very consciousness of subjec- 
 tion to it, they have sunk rather than risen in the scale of civilization. 
 It is this sense of duty, this loyalty to law and authority which is as- 
 serted and emphasized in the formal principle of the law. 
 
 4. It also gives the important aspect of virtue as the harmony of the 
 will with the reason, and the consequent harmony of the man with 
 himself. 
 
 5. It gives also the important aspect of virtue as the harmony of 
 man with God, and so with the constitution of the universe. 
 
 IV. As declaring the requirement of the law, the Real Principle is 
 indispensable to the law and to its practical efficiency. 
 
 Without it the formal principle gives no information as to what the 
 law requires. 
 
 Without it duty, if it could be known, would be done without love. 
 Virtue would be mere obedience to a categorical imperative. But love 
 is the fulfilling of the law. I obey God because I love him. I serve 
 my neighbor because I love him. Christ recognizes love as the essence 
 
206 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of virtue. The sense of duty alone cannot rise to the sweetness, beauty, 
 freedom and dignity of right character. Sir Thomas Browne presents 
 a wholly inadequate conception of Christian duty when he says : " I 
 give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and 
 accomplish the will of God ; I draw not my purse for his sake that 
 demands it, but His that enjoined it ; I relieve no man upon the 
 rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating dispo- 
 sition ; for this is still but moral charity and an art that oweth more to 
 passion than to reason." * At this point, also, Kant's Ethics is defec- 
 tive, grand as it is in its presentation of duty. He attempts to construct 
 ethics from the formal principle of the law alone. The only motive 
 which he acknowledges as purely moral, is the sense of duty desiccated 
 from all feeling. 
 
 From the same error has arisen the belief that the greater the struggle 
 in doing right, the greater the virtue ; the more spontaneous, easy and 
 joyous the right action is, the less its virtue. Whereas, the contrary is 
 true ; the greater the love, the greater the spontaneity and joy of the 
 service, and the greater the virtue. Love in its perfection outstrips 
 the sense of obligation and anticipates the categoric imperative of 
 conscience. 
 
 And, in the issue, duty done merely in obedience to authority be- 
 comes debasing. Conformity merely to the formal principle of the law 
 would be a submission to law in ignorance of what the law requires. It 
 would be a blind submission to another's will, not an intelligent sub- 
 mission to Reason. It would be the obedience of a Turkish Janissary, 
 as ready to do wrong as right, if so commanded. 
 
 In the moral education of a child it is necessary from its very help- 
 lessness that it be first taught submission to authority. Thus it learns 
 that it does not live for itself alone ; thus it is trained to the conscious- 
 ness of duty, to obedience to authority, to the knowledge of the neces- 
 sity of rendering service to others, and through this to the spirit of self- 
 sacrificing love. It has been suggested by some profound thinkers that 
 God proceeds in the same manner in training the human race in its 
 infancy and childhood. Man is found first under a patriarchal govern- 
 ment, in which the ruler is obeyed as the father of the clan or tribe. 
 And thus, as the first step in moral development, man is taught the 
 ideas of authority, law and obedience. And this accords with the pro- 
 verbial maxim expressing the common sense of mankind, that no one 
 is fit to command till he has first learned to obey. 
 
 But history as decisively proves that a training merely to unques- 
 tioning submission to authority is debasing and crushing, rather than 
 
 * Religio Medici, Pjirt II., ii., pp. 116, 117. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 207 
 
 ennobling and developing. Anthropologists tell of the slave kissing the 
 hand flint strangles him ; of the savage, accused of a crime which he 
 did not commit, not attempting to save his life by denying it ; the con- 
 sciousness of personality and personal rights had been entirely crushed 
 out of them. And the child trained merely to unquestioning and un- 
 intelligent obedience is likely, at the first opportunity, to break away 
 from all authority alike of man and of God. 
 
 It must be added that the will cannot consent to the formal principle 
 of law otherwise than in the act of love to God and man which the real 
 principle of the law requires. Moral education must train first to the con- 
 sciousness of duty and obligation, and to obedience to law. But it must 
 also give the knowledge that the obedience is not rendered to superior 
 power, but to rightful authority ; not to the caprice of arbitrary will, 
 but to the behests of perfect reason ; that the law obeyed is the truth 
 of reason and the requirement of perfect wisdom and love ; that the 
 commandment is addressed to rational intelligence and the service 
 required is a reasonable service, the service of universal love. Hence 
 it is only in the act of love that the will consents to the formal principle 
 of the law. And this is the teaching of Christian ethics. God, the 
 Absolute Reason, sets forth the truths of Reason as the law to "Will ; in 
 Christ he comes at once as lawgiver and redeemer, setting forth under 
 human conditions his own obedience to the law in self-sacrificing love 
 to bring sinners back to obedience ; and in Christ he calls men to the 
 duty and the exalted privilege of loving all men as God in Christ has 
 loved them, and serving them as God in Christ, taking the form of a 
 servant, has served them. The conception of virtue as the harmony of 
 the will with Reason and with God is, as we have seen, important. But 
 the will can come into harmony with Reason and with God only as we 
 actually love God with all our hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves. 
 
 239. Evidence that the Law of Love is the real Principle 
 
 of the Law. 
 
 The question next to be considered is, how do we know that the law 
 of love is the real principle of the moral law ? How do we know that 
 the law requires universal love ? 
 
 What love is will be fully explained in a subsequent chapter. It is ne- 
 cessary, however, briefly to define it here, in order to give an intelligent 
 answer to the question before us. The command of the moral law is 
 addressed to man as rational free-will. The love w r hich it requires is 
 not natural affection ; it is not emotion, or desire, or passion ; it is the 
 free choice of the supreme object of service. The law forbids a man 
 to employ his energies supremely in serving himself; it requires him to 
 
208 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 choose God as the supreme object of service and his fellow-man to be 
 served as having rights equally with himself under the universal gov- 
 ernment of God. 
 
 I. As Christians we find this requirement of universal love in the 
 laws of Moses, sanctioned as the all-comprehensive principle of the law 
 by Jesus Christ. (Deut. vi. 5, Lev. xix. 18, Matt. xii. 37-39). At 
 present, however, I confine the inquiry to evidence aside from reve- 
 lation. 
 
 II. The rational ground of the belief that the law requires love is 
 the fact that every man is related to other rational beings in a moral 
 system. Man finds himself intimately related to other persons in 
 society ; his own welfare and his sphere of achievement depend on 
 their action, and theirs on his. 
 
 That man exists, not isolated but in a system, seems to be involved 
 in the very act of knowing. Knowledge is the relation between a 
 subject knowing and an object known. In the act of knowing I know 
 myself not only as distinct from other beings, but also in relation to 
 them ; I look out on the outward world and know myself as a center of 
 relations radiating in every direction and connecting me with other 
 individuals. And further, in the knowledge of myself as a person, 
 I know myself related to other persons in a rational system. And 
 this is inherent in the very possibility of knowledge. Thus in the 
 very act of knowing I know myself related to others in a rational 
 system ; and this relationship is the intellectual basis of the law of 
 love. 
 
 Still further, in knowing the truths of reason as law to will, man 
 knows himself in a moral system. He has intuitive knowledge of the 
 formal principle of the law that a rational being ought to obey reason. 
 In knowing himself rational man knows himself under the law of 
 reason. He knows this law as universal, unchangeable, imperative, 
 and of supreme authority, as the law of Reason supreme, absolute 
 and eternal. He recognizes himself and all men on the same level as 
 subjects of this common law, owing reciprocal duties to each other. 
 Thus he finds himself in a moral system, owing duties and service 
 to others under the law of reason equally binding on them all. 
 He knows that in all his action bearing on another rational being 
 he ought to consult the rights and interests of the other as really as 
 his own. 
 
 Therefore we are not in a moral system because we are required to 
 love one another; we are required to love one another because we 
 are in a moral system. Love is required by the constitutive law of the 
 system. 
 
 We have seen that moral law is distinctively law to free-agents in the 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 209 
 
 exercise of free-will. Now we find another quality distinctive of moral 
 law ; it is law to a free-agent in his action towards other free-agents. 
 Law is properly called moral only so far as it declares the duty of a 
 rational free-agent to a rational free-agent in a moral system. 
 
 It is evident that in such a system "no man liveth for himself;" a 
 selfish life has no legitimate place. For the selfish life translated into 
 thought would affirm the absurdity that the system and all the beings 
 in it exist only to serve this selfish man. The maxim on which he 
 selfishly acts, if made a universal law, would bring every man into 
 deadly conflict with every other ; human life would become impossible, 
 and the social system would be destroyed. 
 
 III. The knowledge of existence in a moral system being presup- 
 posed, the knowledge of the real principle of the law is immediate and 
 self-evident in rational intuition. 
 
 1. This intuition, that the law requires love to God and our neighbor, 
 arises, like all others, on some particular occasion in experience and is 
 practically operative before it is recognized and formulated in thought. 
 When a man finds his own action affecting the interests of another per- 
 son, and recognizes the fact that he and the other exist together in a 
 rational system, he knows intuitively that he ought to respect the rights 
 of the other equally with his own. The formal principle of the law, so 
 soon as we recognize other rational beings with us hi a rational system, 
 carries us on to the knowledge of a reciprocity of duties and rights 
 which involves obligation to reciprocity of love and service. This 
 intuition is germinal in the virtual consciousness before it is recognized 
 and formulated in thought. The law of love is not known in intuition 
 completely formulated as Christ proclaimed it. Rational intuitions act 
 in the concrete before they attract attention to themselves, and it is 
 only by reflection on particular cases -in which they have thus acted 
 that we get the principle and the idea and formulate them in words. 
 So it is with the law of love. It is known in intuition primarily in 
 particular cases when, in acting with reference to another, the obliga- 
 tion is felt to regard his rights and interests equally with our own. 
 From this equality the word equity is derived. 
 
 2. The application which any person makes of the law will vary with 
 his own conception of the moral system to which he belongs. 
 
 When man knew himself only as a member of a clan, he was aware 
 of obligations only to his clan. Having scarcely knowledge of the 
 existence of men beyond a few neighboring clans, whom he knew only 
 by their maraudings, it is not wonderful that he felt no obligations to 
 regard their rights and interests. Hence arose the ancient sentiment 
 which regarded a stranger as an enemy and treated him like a wolf. 
 Says Cicero : " One whom we nuw call a foreigner (peregrinum) was 
 14 
 
210 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 called by our ancestors an enemy (hostis)."* And Plautus says: "A 
 stranger is to a man, not a man, but a wolf."f Similar sentiments 
 were long dominant in ancient civilization. The Phenicians and the 
 Greeks conceived of the state as a city ruling the surrounding territory. 
 The same was the Roman conception. Even in the times of the empire 
 citizenship was theoretically citizenship of Rome. So long as man thus 
 conceived of himself as identified with a small community, he recog- 
 nized his obligations to that community and its members ; others he 
 regarded as natural enemies and conceived it right to conquer and 
 enslave them. J In like manner, so long as a man identified himself 
 with a caste or order, he recognized his obligations to those of his own 
 rank, but absolved himself from obligations to others. The solidarity 
 and fraternity of mankind, the obligation of every person to serve man- 
 kind, found slight recognition and never became a power in ancient 
 civilization. Yet as the smaller communities were merged in larger 
 states and men came more and more to know the countries and inhabit- 
 ants of the earth, these great ideas make their appearance and the obli- 
 gation of man to man as such is recognized. Max Miiller says the 
 word " mankind " never passed the lips of Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. 
 Yet at a later period the Stoics had the idea of a city of the world, a 
 commonwealth transcending all particular states. Cicero said : " For a 
 man to detract anything from another and to increase his own advan- 
 tage by the damage of another, is more against nature than death, 
 poverty, grief, than anything which can happen to a man in body or 
 estate. Nature prescribes that a man consult the interest of a man, 
 whoever he may be, for the reason that he is a man" \ \ Seneca says : 
 " We are members of a vast body. Nature made us kin when she pro- 
 duced us from the same things and to the same ends." " The world is 
 my country and the gods its rulers." ^[ M. Aurelius Antoninus says : 
 " My nature is rational and social ; my city and country, so far as I am 
 Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man it is the world. The 
 things which are useful to these are alone useful to me." ** 
 
 3. The Law requiring love to God as supreme and to our neighbor 
 as ourselves cannot be understood in all the significance of Christian 
 Theism without considerable advance both in intellectual and moral 
 culture. Its full significance presupposes the idea of the universe both 
 
 * De Officiis, B. I., c. 12. 
 
 f " Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quum qualis sit non novit : " Asinaria, Act 
 2, scene 4, line 88. 
 J Plato, Laws, B. I., 625, 626. 
 $ Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II., p. 5. 
 || De Officiis. Lib. III., cap. V., 21, and cap. VI., 27. 
 ^[ De Beneficiis. ** Thoughts, VI., 44. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 211 
 
 as a Cosmos or unity and order of all material worlds, and as a moral 
 system in which all rational beings exist. And, again, this presupposes 
 an idea which the human mind was slow to attain, the idea of a uni- 
 versal religion, of one God, in their common relation to whom men of 
 all nations and ages are brought into unity in a moral system. But 
 even this idea of one universal system has its germ in the rational 
 intuition that absolute being must exist ; and in the intuitive know- 
 ledge of obligation, and therein of a law transcending myself and 
 coming down from an authority above me, which is universal, unchang- 
 ing, imperative and supreme. In whatever form man, in different 
 stages of development, pictures to himself this authority, it is always 
 the supreme. 
 
 4. We see that sin, which is the essential evil, consists in self-isola- 
 tion. Buddhism regards the existence of finite beings as essential 
 evil, because they are individuated, and in their individuality distinct 
 from the infinite one ; from this evil the only redemption is reabsorp- 
 tion into the infinite. Christianity, on the contrary, emphasizes the 
 individuality, responsibility and dignity of personal beings, and sets 
 forth their unity in a moral system under the law of love. Sin and 
 evil arise when a person, by his own free choice, isolates himself from 
 the system by choosing himself as his supreme object of service, and so 
 puts himself into antagonism to both God and man and does what he 
 can to mar the order and beauty of the system and to resist and annul 
 its supreme law. 
 
 We see, therefore, that the law of love is essential in the rational 
 constitution of the universe. God is love. We see also' that man's 
 knowledge of the law of love is rooted in his constitution as a rational 
 being and asserts itself in its germinal and rudimentary form as an 
 intuition of reason. Man is so constituted that, as his reason normally 
 unfolds, he knows himself under law and knows that the law requires 
 universal love. 
 
 IV. That man is constituted for subjection to the law of love is indi- 
 cated in his emotional nature. 
 
 He is constituted susceptible of both egoistic and altruistic motives 
 and emotions. In babyhood the child yields almost exclusively to 
 impulses tending immediately to its own sustenance and comfort. 
 This is natural because in its helplessness it is dependent on others. 
 But as it becomes capable of acting, the altruistic feelings appear^ 
 Affinity for others, the desire for their society, sympathy with their 
 joys and sorrows, compassion for their distresses and the disposition 
 to help them in their needs are spontaneous impulses of the human 
 heart. 
 
 Both are essential to the well-being of the individual and of society. 
 
212 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Egoism alone disintegrates society and reacts in isolation and desola- 
 tion on the egoistic individual. Altruism alone by leading the indi- 
 vidual to neglect himself and his own business in order to help others, 
 deprives him of the means of helping others and of the knowledge and 
 power to help wisely and efficiently ; and thus is fatal to both parties. 
 Egoism and altruism are not contrary but complemental ; each is essen- 
 tial to complete love to God and man. 
 
 Christianity recognizes both. It has been censured as requiring an 
 exclusive altruism. The censure discloses a surprising ignorance. In 
 the command, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," Christianity 
 recognizes the love of self as the measure of love to the neighbor. In 
 approaching man with the remonstrance, " What shall it profit a man 
 to gain the whole world and lose his own soul," it begins with trying to 
 rouse him to a sense of his own highest and noblest interests and to induce 
 him to seek wiser ends. It declares the worth of the individual man. 
 It is Christianity which has revolutionized the ancient civilization, in 
 which the individual was lost in the state and was the subject of no 
 rights as tow r ard the state but only of duties, and has compelled that 
 recognition of the worth of the individual and the sacredness of his 
 rights which has vitalized modern civilization and progress. And by 
 making love the spring and principle of all duty, Christianity has made 
 the service of others spontaneous and joyous, has opened in that service 
 spheres of the noblest living, and made it possible in the most com- 
 mon-place life to realize the highest ideals and to participate in the 
 glory of heroic endeavor and the enthusiasm of a divine inspiration. 
 In Christian Ethics Egoism and Altruism are not reciprocally exclu- 
 sive but are complemental. As denoting respectively an exclusive 
 selfishness and an exclusive regard to others they cannot be names of 
 Christian virtues. Spencer regards them as essentially antagonistic 
 and incapable of reconciliation in the present stage of man's evolution. 
 Christianity reconciles love of self and love of our neighbor in the law 
 of love, in which both self and the neighbor are recognized in their 
 common relation to God the supreme lawgiver, and in the common 
 love and service which they owe to him, the Father of all. 
 
 We have seen that the law of love is founded in the very constitu- 
 tion of society and also in the rational constitution of man. We now 
 see that it has its roots in man's emotional constitution, in the natural 
 motives which impel him to regard the interests and rights both of 
 himself and of others, and the natural emotions by which he partici- 
 pates in the sorrows and the joys of his fellow-men. 
 
 V. That the law of love is supreme in the universe is verified by 
 experience. It is thus verified so far as experience, shows that the law 
 is accordant with the constitution of society and the rational and emo- 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF EEASON: THE RIGHT. 213 
 
 tional constitution of man r and that obedience to it is necessary to the 
 true well-being both of the individual and of the community. 
 
 1. The fact of the solidarity of mankind and the obligation of bro- 
 therhood involved in it are forced on the attention in all human 
 relations and pursuits. 
 
 We must rescue men from uncleanness, disease, ignorance and vice 
 or suffer therefrom ourselves. The uncleanness, vice and misery of 
 great cities send abroad the germs of disease, and infest the community 
 with robbers and murderers. The cholera on one of its desolating 
 courses through Europe and America originated in the squalor and 
 wretchedness of crowds of pilgrims in Mecca. Facts like these are 
 ghastly declarations from the outcasts of society, " We are brethren, 
 though you heed us not ; " they are revelations of the unity of man and 
 of that fundamental fact of human society that if one member suffer all 
 the members suffer with it. Society must remove ignorance, vice and 
 misery or be poisoned by it. The obligation to obey the law of love is 
 inherent in the constititution of society. 
 
 On the other hand the health, virtue, intelligence of any is conducive 
 to the welfare of all. If all Africa were filled with a civilized and 
 prosperous people it would stimulate the business and multiply the 
 gains of all mankind. The nations long acted on the false principle of 
 political economy that a nation advanced its own industrial interests by 
 crippling the industry and hindering the gams of others. Now they 
 are coming to understand that the prosperity of a nation is promoted 
 by the prosperity of all others. 
 
 This interdependence of men reveals itself in the relations of indi- 
 viduals. Man's thoughts and feelings are continually directed towards 
 others. The organic relations reveal themselves persistently ; in good 
 will and friendship it may be, if not in envy, jealousy and hate. Says 
 Teufelsdrockh, " In vain thou deniest it ; thou art my brother. Thy 
 very hatred, thy very envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy 
 splenetic humor, what is all this but an inverted sympathy. Were I a 
 steam-engine wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies about me ? Not 
 thou ! I should grind all unheeded whether badly or well."* 
 
 Thus the solidarity of man forces itself on the notice as a fact. It is 
 not a sentiment nor the creation of a sentiment ; it is the fundamental 
 fact of human existence. And as this great fact looms upon our notice, 
 the obligation of each to consult the rights and welfare of every other, 
 the obligation of each individual to consult the rights and welfare of 
 society, and the obligation of society to consult the rights and welfare 
 of each individual, become apparent. And this is the law of love ; not 
 
 * Carlyle, Sartor Resartus : B. III., Ch. 7. 
 
214 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 a sentiment, but an eternal truth ; not a truth in the thought of an indi- 
 vidual merely, but a truth which declares at once the fundamental con- 
 stitution of the individual and the fundamental constitution of society. 
 If a man puts himself in antagonism to this constitution of things, with 
 its law of love, in order to escape it, he is in every action confronted by 
 humanity and can escape it only by suicide. If he puts himself in 
 antagonism to it in order to promote his own interest, his action, if 
 effectual, would disorganize society and destroy his fellow-men, that 
 himself might be all ; and to this result selfish action always tends. 
 " Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." 
 
 And this is analogous to the material universe. The very idea of a 
 universe or cosmos implies in it an all-comprehending plan and contin- 
 uous action towards an end. In the lower spheres of life it works as 
 instinct ; in inanimate nature, as final cause. Nothing in it is good in 
 itself except as it imparts its energy and carries onward the plan of the 
 whole. So it is in the moral system. Every being has significance not 
 for himself alone, but also for others ; and these are inseparable. Says 
 I. H. Fichte : " The more a being fulfils its end in reference to the all, 
 the higher does it advance its own well-being. He most certainly over- 
 comes the world who rightly serves it. He obtains from it the highest 
 blessedness, who most faithfully imparts to it his own endowments."* 
 
 2. The fact that obedience to the law of love promotes the highest 
 good of the individual and of society has been verified by experience. 
 The common sense of mankind declares this conclusion in the maxim, 
 " Honesty is the best policy." Positivism declares the same conclusion 
 in the altruism of Comte. 
 
 From the observation of the course of the universe and of human 
 history the evolutionist also reaches the conclusion " that the real nature 
 of the universe is such that it warrants on our part unlimited love and 
 absolute trust .... that the highest moral nature is nearest in accord 
 with the truth of things." f Matthew Arnold, from the side of ration- 
 alistic skepticism, reaches the same conclusion : " If there is a lesson 
 which in our day has come to force itself upon everybody, in all quar- 
 ters and by all channels, it is the lesson of the solidarity of men. If 
 there was ever a notion tempting to common human nature, it was the 
 notion that the rule of ' every man for himself was the rule of happi- 
 ness. But at last it turns out as a matter of experience, and so plainly 
 that it is coming to be generally admitted, .... that the only real 
 happiness is in a kind of impersonal higher life, where the happiness of 
 others counts with a man as essential to his own. He that loves his 
 
 * Theistische Weltansicht, Abschnitt IV., $$ 61-64. 
 
 f Man's Moral Nature, by R. M. Bucke, M. D., pp. 199, 200. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 215 
 
 life does really turn out to lose it, and the new commandment proves 
 
 its own truth by experience Jesus Christ and his precepts are 
 
 found to hit the moral experience of mankind, to hit it in the critical 
 points, to hit it lastingly ; and when doubts are thrown upon their 
 really hitting it, then to come out stronger than ever. And we know 
 how Jesus Christ and his precepts won their way from the very first, 
 and became the religion of all that part of the world which counted 
 most, and are now the religion of all that part of the world which most 
 counts. This they certainly in great part owed, even from the first, to 
 that instinctive sense of their fitness for such a service, of their natural 
 truth and weight, which, amid all misapprehensions of them, they 
 inspired." * The same conclusion he expresses in his famous declara- 
 tion that he finds supreme in the universe " a stream of tendency, the 
 eternal, not ourselves, w r hich makes for righteousness." 
 
 3. The theory that man's blessedness must be sought in a life of 
 selfish acquisition and in the gratification of selfish desires, issues in 
 Pessimism. For the desires grow by what they feed on ; and the more 
 a man devotes himself to acquire the objects to which they impel him, 
 the hotter will the fever of desire rage and the more restless he will toss 
 under its dry and consuming heat. On this theory, Schopenhauer, 
 Hartmann and Leopardi are right in their conclusion that life is not 
 worth living and that the best boon to man is the extinction of his 
 being. Pessimism is a reductio ad absurdum of this theory of human 
 life. 
 
 VI. That the law of love is the universal and supreme standard of 
 morals is confirmed by the common consent of mankind. 
 
 1. The obligation to regard the rights and welfare of others is prac- 
 tically felt in the conscience common to mankind before it is recognized 
 and formulated. 
 
 This cannot be proved by the examination of every human being, 
 but is inferred from facts characteristic of humanity. 
 
 It is implied in the fact that everywhere and always man exists in 
 society organized under civil government. Man is in society; civil 
 government is necessary to declare and enforce the duties of man to his 
 fellow-men and to society, and to protect the rights and interests both 
 of the individual and of society. 
 
 It is also evident in the fact that man can communicate with man 
 everywhere on moral subjects. Wherever man travels he appeals to 
 the same moral sentiments and is understood. We understand the 
 moral teachings of the ancients. The self-sacrificing love of Christ is 
 admired wherever it is known. 
 
 * Last Essays on Religion, pp. 21, 23, 24. 
 
216 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Eloquence is impossible in behalf of injustice, oppression, hatred, as 
 such. If they are defended it must be under the guise of virtue. 
 Hence arises the maxim of some Rhetoricians, " Eloquence is a virtue/' 
 Theremin says, " Eloquence, in all its various forms, is nothing but the 
 development of the moral impulse itself." * 
 
 It is also evident in the fact that everyone feels it a protection to be 
 near human homes and in the presence of men pursuing their ordinary 
 business. It is in solitary places and the concealment of night that 
 one fears the assaults of revenge, cupidity or lust. 
 
 2. The law is recognized by thinkers of various classes whose funda- 
 mental principles it contradicts. Comte in his Ethics and Sociology 
 gives us the law of Altruism. In this, though the name altruism is 
 inadequate, he recognizes essentially the law of love to man. This is 
 the more remarkable because it is incompatible with his theory of 
 knowledge. In his sociology Comte regards the individual as a member 
 of society, as a single cell is part of an organism. From this concep- 
 tion he develops his ethics of altruism. And he so carries it to an 
 extreme that he revives the ancient heathenish conception that the 
 individual is so an organic part of society that he only owes to it duties 
 and has in respect to it no rights ; while society owes to the individual 
 no duties and has in respect to him only rights. The theory of know- 
 ledge on which Comte here rests his altruism is a sort of materialistic 
 realism ; man knows himself in the organic solidarity of the race. But 
 this is in direct contradiction to pure phenomenalism, the theory of 
 knowledge which he lays at the foundation of his Positive Philosophy. 
 This theory rests on sheer individualism ; the material of knowledge is 
 only the impressions made on the sensorium of an individual ; and the 
 utmost range of thought is to unite these impressions by resemblances 
 and to co-ordinate them in uniform sequences. Knowledge is thus shut 
 up within the subjective states of an individual. Comte unconsciously 
 bursts through the limits of his own theory of knowledge in construct- 
 ing his ethics of Altruism. In so doing he proves that man is so 
 constituted that some glimpse of the law of love must force itself on 
 every student of man and society, in spite of theories of knowledge 
 incompatible with it. On the other hand it proves the falsity of Comte's 
 theory of knowledge, since it is incompetent to give the law of love 
 which is grounded alike in the constitution of the individual and of 
 society. 
 
 Another example is found in the ethics of Evolution. The law of 
 the survival of the fittest is, according to this theory, a fundamental law 
 of all organic life. It is the law of all life that the strong crowd out 
 
 * Rhetoric, Book I. chap. iv. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 217 
 
 the weak ; every creature superior in any particular to another, uses its 
 superiority to wrest from the inferior its goods and to appropriate them 
 to itself. The only principle of ethics derivable from this theory is the 
 principle that might makes right. Yet evolutionists teach ethics 
 founded on the law of love. They even claim that in denying exist- 
 ence after death they set forth a purer and more disinterested love than 
 Christianity with its endless rewards of virtue can present. Mr. Spencer 
 regards the selfish aggressiveness of individuals and the marauding, 
 belligerent and subjugating spirit of the race as legitimate and neces- 
 sary results of evolution. But he teaches that the evolution is carrying 
 man beyond this into a social state of sympathy and co-operation, in 
 which ultimately man will find his own pleasure in promoting the 
 pleasure of others ; altruistic feelings will become so dominant that the 
 man will forget his own pleasure in the pleasure of serving others ; and 
 self-denial will be transfigured into self-gratification.* But if the 
 fundamental law of evolution in living beings, that the strong crowd 
 out the weak, by its own action transforms itself in man's development 
 into the law of self-sacrificing love, certainly some power above nature 
 reveals itself in man, and a rational and spiritual law comes into sight, 
 which is above nature's laws and directs them to its spiritual ends. 
 And this* law is the law of love. 
 
 Mr. Spencer says, " That these conclusions will meet with any con- 
 siderable acceptance is improbable. Neither with current ideas nor 
 with current sentiments are they sufficiently congruous." f In several 
 of the closing chapters of his Psychology he considers the relations and 
 the antagonism of Egoism and Altruism, and finds no clear and satis- 
 factory way of harmonizing them. But by looking into the New Test- 
 ament he could have found a broader and clearer statement of the law 
 of love, which sets forth the harmony of Egoism and Altruism in a way 
 clear from all his difficulties ; and would have found, predicted by 
 Hebrew^ prophets and by Christ and his apostles, the realization of that 
 reign of love which he anticipates as the destined happiness of mankind. 
 Yet he goes out of his way to assail Christianity with spiteful misrepre- 
 sentations, and in his whole volume of the Data of Ethics recognizes 
 the excellence of Christian morality no further than in this grudging 
 acknowledgment : " There are some, classed as antagonists to the cur- 
 rent creed, who may not think it absurd to believe that a rationalized 
 version of its ethical principles will eventually be acted on." J Here 
 the fact that evolutionists, in teaching ethics, are obliged to go right in 
 the teeth of a fundamental law of evolution, reveals at once the impos- 
 
 *Data of Ethics, Chap xiv. : Biology, Part VI. Chap. xiii. 
 
 | Data, p. 257. t Data of Ethics, g 98. 
 
218 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM 
 
 sibility of escaping the acknowledgment of the law of love and the inad- 
 equacy of evolution to explain man's rational and moral life. 
 
 Another example is found in the sophists of ancient Greece. They 
 grounded virtue in pleasure, and thus destroyed the very ideas of obli- 
 gation and law and all that is distinctive in the idea of virtue. And 
 yet they taught that virtue consists in promoting the welfare of the 
 state, in supporting and advancing the commonwealth. This idea ot 
 virtue may spring from Kant's principle of Ethics : " So act that the 
 maxims of thine own action may also be the principle of a universal 
 law." * It may spring from any principle which finds the ground of 
 ethics in man's rational constitution and in the constitution of society 
 as a rational or moral system. But it is entirely foreign from the 
 ethical principle of the sophists and could never have been developed 
 from it. Like the Positivists and the EvoJutionists, the Sophists found 
 the intuitions of their own reason and the necessity of regarding society 
 in its essential constitution as a moral system, stronger than their own 
 theories. 
 
 3. Men who doubt or deny the truth of Christianity and even of 
 Theism now admit that the law of love has been commonly acknow- 
 ledged in the theology, philosophy and literature of mankind. 
 
 Mr. Buckle says : " There is unquestionably nothing to be 'found in 
 the world which has undergone so little change as those great dogmas 
 of which moral systems are composed. To do good to others ; to sacri- 
 fice for their benefit your own wishes ; to love your neighbor as your- 
 self; to forgive your enemies ; to restrain your passions ; to honor your 
 parents ; to respect those who are set over you ; these and a few others 
 are the sole essentials of morals ; but they have been known for thou- 
 sands of years, and not one jot or tittle has been added to them by all 
 the sermons, homilies and text-books which moralists and theologians 
 have been able to produce. ... In reference to our moral conduct, 
 
 there is not a single principle now known to the most cultivated Eu- 
 ropeans which was not likeAvise known to the ancients. ..... That 
 
 the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no 
 maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the 
 most beautiful passages in the apostolic w r ritings are quotations from 
 pagan authors is well known to every scholar, and so far from supply- 
 ing, as some suppose, an objection against Christianity, it is a strong 
 recommendation of it, as intimating the intimate relation between the 
 doctrine of Christ and the moral sympathies of mankind." f The mis- 
 statement of facts in this passage must be " well known to every scho- 
 
 * Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Abschnitt II., p. 47. 
 f History of Civilization, Vol. I., 129, 130. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 219 
 
 lar ; " yet it is an acceptance of the Christian doctrine that there is for 
 mankind one and the same universal standard of morals. The New 
 Testament sets forth the law of love as declared in the Pentateuch and 
 reiterated by Christ, as a universal law for all mankind. Paul expli- 
 citly declares that this law is known by the heathen through the reason 
 or conscience common to all men, and is the ground of their guilt, 
 though they had not knowledge of the revelation of the law through 
 Moses and through Christ. * Christian theologians and moralists have 
 taught with Paul the existence of this common standard or law of 
 morals grounded in the very constitution of man and more or less 
 clearly known to all mankind. This position they have long been 
 obliged strenuously to defend against skeptical writers who have denied 
 it, and who have urged various arguments to prove that different na- 
 tions and ages have different standards of mpral action or else are 
 entirely destitute of moral ideas. Lately a great change has taken 
 place. The passage just quoted from Buckle, with the exception of his 
 candid admission at the close, represents the general drift of recent 
 thought on this subject on the part of opponents of Christianity.- 
 Christian thinkers welcome this as a concession of the position which 
 intelligent theologians and moralists have held and strenuously defended 
 as the true doctrine of Christianity. 
 
 The fact that the recognition of the law of love is not peculiar to the 
 teachings of Christ, has been urged as an objection against Christianity. 
 It has force, however, only against Christianity falsely conceived. At 
 times principles of a false rationalism have influenced theological think- 
 ing. This was eminently the case in the defence of Christianity against 
 the English deists in the last -century. The apologists seemed to regard 
 Christianity as a system of philosophy and ethics. So regarding it, 
 their " internal evidences " consisted mainly in proving that Christ 
 taught a system of ethics purer than any that had ever been taught 
 before. This evidence fails so soon as it is shown that the fundamental 
 principle of the law as taught by Christ is not peculiar to his teaching, 
 but is grounded in the constitution of man and has been generally 
 recognized by ethical thinkers in every age. How far skeptical writers 
 have been led to their new position by discovering this weak place in 
 those defences of Christianity and mistaking it for a weakness in 
 Christianity, and thus flattering themselves that they were giving 
 Christianity itself a deadly and final thrust, I cannot say. But in 
 reality they have conceded to Christianity a most important point. It 
 is not merely, as Buckle puts it, the concession that Christianity accords 
 with and is rooted hi the universal moral sympathies of mankind ; it 
 
 * Rom., chap. I. and II. 
 
 I 
 
220 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 also calls attention to what is the distinctive and essential characteristic 
 of Christianity. Christianity is not distinctively and essentially phil- 
 osophy, doctrine, law or ethics ; it is God's action in human history 
 redeeming man from condemnation and from the power of sinful char- 
 acter, renewing him to the life of love in which he comes again into 
 harmony with the law which he had broken. Redemption presupposes 
 the knowledge of law and the consciousness of sin. Christianity is not 
 a revelation of law but of God's spiritual power in Christ and the Holy 
 Spirit, acting in human history and making the law effectual to realize 
 in man that love which out of Christ the law had commanded only to be 
 disobeyed. According to this conception of Christianity, the fact that 
 the law of love has been the common standard of morals to mankind is 
 not an objection to it, but rather a confirmation of its truth. Christ- 
 ianity is not doctrine and ethics, but life and power. In the words of 
 Minucius Felix, " Non eloquimur magna, sed vivimus." It must be 
 added that caution is necessary in estimating the representations of this 
 subject now commonly made. The representations of the coincidence 
 of heathen ethics with Christian are exaggerated. Fine sentiments and 
 true principles scattered in isolation here and there are gathered from 
 all heathen literature and presented as one system ; from the knowledge 
 of Christianity a meaning is sometimes interpreted into them which 
 their authors did not apprehend ; the inconsistent and immoral teach- 
 ings and practices of the same writers are overlooked ; and no notice is 
 taken of the imperfect conception of the meaning of the law and of the 
 extent of its application in the ages when man had not yet grown up 
 to the conception of the solidarity of mankind in a moral system. And 
 these fragmentary fine sentiments winnowed from the chaff, are brought 
 together as heathen morality and compared with the morality of the 
 New Testament. It is also impossible to avoid noticing in many of 
 these writers, who of late have been eulogizing heathen morality, an 
 obtrusive partiality for heathenism; a delight in expatiating on the 
 beauty of its sentiments and unfolding it in its most favorable light ; 
 with a grudging and niggardly acknowledgment of the excellence of 
 Christianity, a surly disposition to depreciat 3 its worth, and frequently 
 either an amazing ignorance or a willful misrepresentation of its ethical 
 teachings. No system of morals ever taught in heathenism will com- 
 pare in comprehensiveness, simplicity, clearness and practical appli- 
 cability and power with that of Christianity. The best teachings of all 
 heathen literature combined, after all attendant errors have been 
 eliminated, do not constitute an ethical system equal in completeness, 
 simplicity, purity, clearness and power to the law of love as taught by 
 Christ ; as exemplified in the self-sacrificing love of Christ's humilia- 
 tion and his earthly life and death ; and as thus declared to be the 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 221 
 
 fundamental and constitutive law of the universe, at once the law of 
 God and the law of man. The principle which should guide us in this 
 comparison was well expressed by Lactantius : " No sect and no philo- 
 sopher has ever been so far astray as not to know something of the 
 truth. So that if there were any who should collect all the truth 
 scattered among individual philosophers and different sects and reduce 
 it into a system, he indeed would not differ from us. But this no one 
 can do unless he is learned and also skillful in discriminating truth." * 
 
 4. That the law of love has been recognized by the common consent 
 of mankind is confirmed by scholarly investigation of the religion, 
 philosophy and literature of the world. 
 
 I shall attempt no more than to notice a few examples. Buddha 
 says . " Religion is nothing but the faculty of love." f Buddhism re- 
 cognizes the law of universal self-sacrificing love in the life of Siddhar- 
 tha Gautama its founder; in its two foundation principles, self-conquest 
 and universal charity ; and in its principle that evil consists in todi- 
 vidualism. Through the last principle comes in the pessimism which 
 infects the whole system with deadly poison. Evil consists in indi- 
 viduation ; this is true. But the Buddhist inference is, Man is an 
 individual ; therefore his very constitution is evil ; he can escape evil 
 only by absorption into the all, losing his individuality and his con- 
 scious being at once in Nirvana. What a pitiful conclusion for a 
 system which has so much that is true and noble. How immeasurably 
 superior is Christianity. Christianity also teaches that individuation is 
 evil, meaning by individuation, isolation in selfish egoism. But 
 according to Christianity the evil does not inhere in the constitution of 
 the man. Man's dignity is in his personality whereby he is capable of 
 knowing and serving God and of loving all as God loves all. He is also 
 in his nature a member of a race, and in his personality a member of 
 a rational and moral community. In coming into harmony with God 
 and with both the natural and the rational systems through love, he 
 realizes, not the extinction, but the development, perfection and bless- 
 edness of his being. And in the self-sacrificing life of its founder and 
 its principles of self-conquest and universal love, Christianity is far 
 from being inferior to Buddhism. 
 
 Sir William Jones cites " the beautiful Arya couplet/' which was 
 " written at least three centuries before our era," and which pronounces 
 the duty of a good man, even in the moment of his destruction, to con- 
 sist "not only in forgiving, but even in a desire of benefiting his 
 destroyer, as the sandal-tree in the instant of its overthrow, sheds per- 
 
 *Inst. Div. Lib. VII. Cap. vii. 
 
 t Lillie's Buddha and Early Buddhism, p. 147. 
 
222 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 fume on the ax that fells it." He cites similar sentiments from Ma- 
 hometan poets of Persia ; " The verse of Saadi who represents a return 
 of good for good as a slight reciprocity, but says to the virtuous man, 
 " Confer benefits on him who has injured thee ; " also the fanciful com- 
 parisons in the verses of Hafiz, the poet of Shiraz : 
 
 "Learn from yon orient shell to love thy foe, 
 And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe. 
 Free like yon rock from base vindictive pride, 
 Emblaze with gems the wrist that rends thy side; 
 Mark where yon tree rewards the stony shower 
 With fruit nectareous or the balmy flower : 
 All nature cries aloud : shall man do less 
 Than heal the smitten and the railer bless ? " 
 
 In closing his remarks on this subject he says, " My principal motive 
 wastto give you a spcimen of \he ancient oriental morality which is 
 comprised in an infinite number of Persian, Arabic and Sanscrit com- 
 positions."* 
 
 The principle of the Golden Rule is expressed in various forms by 
 Herodotus, Thales, Pittacus, Lysias, Isocrates, Diogenes Laertius, (who 
 cites it as an expression of Aristotle), Seneca, Ovid, Terence, Epictetus 
 and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It has commonly been said that 
 Confucius gave it only in the negative form. But Prof. Ezra Abbot 
 has shown that he has given it both in the negative and the - positive 
 forms.f 
 
 It is to be noted that, while ancient writers set forth the Golden Rule, 
 they do not commonly set it forth as the action or expression of the 
 heart's love to man, nor recognize its essential connection with love 
 to God. This is not surprising, however, since it is only when man 
 comes to know the one only God, and thus attains the conception of a 
 universal religion, that he comes to know the solidarity of the human 
 race in one moral system, and thus is able to appreciate the deeper 
 grounds of his interest in man in their common relation to God as 
 their father. Herein we see the great superiority of the ethics of Jesus 
 Christ, who teaches that man's duty to man is inseparable from his duty 
 to God, and can neither be understood in its true significance nor prac- 
 tised in its true spirit apart from his duty to Him. 
 
 Plato, however, recognizes this relation and teaches that our duty is 
 determined by our membership in the moral system under the govern- 
 ment of God. " The ruler of the universe has ordered all things with 
 
 * Discourse XI. before the Asiatic Society. The Philosophy of the ancient East; 
 Works, Vol. III. pp. 243, 245. London, 1807. 
 | Journal of the Am. Oriental Soc. Vol. IX. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE EIGHT. 223 
 
 a view to the preservation and perfection of the whole, of which each 
 part has its fitting action and passion, and every minutest action and 
 passion of each part to the last fraction has its appointed supervision. 
 Of these parts one is thine, stubborn youth, which, however little, 
 always influences the whole. You forget that this, and everything that 
 comes into being, exists for the whole, that the whole may be blessed. 
 You exist for the whole, not the whole for you."* 
 
 To the same purport is the discourse of Epictetus. " If what philoso- 
 phers say of the kinship between God and men be true, what has any 
 one to do but, like Socrates, when he is asked what countryman he is, 
 never to say that he is a citizen of Athens or of Corinth, but of the 
 universe. For why, if you limit yourself to Athens, do you not farther 
 limit yourself to that mere corner of Athens where your body was 
 born ? .... He who understands the administration of the universe 
 and has learned that the principal and greatest and most comprehensive 
 of all things is this vast system extending from men to God ; and that 
 from him the seeds of being are descended, not only to one's father or 
 grandfather, but to all things that are produced and born on earth, and 
 especially to rational natures, as they alone are qualified to partake of a 
 communication with the Deity, being connected with him by reason ; 
 why may not such a one call himself a citizen of the universe ? why not 
 
 a son of God ?"t 
 
 So also Plutarch : " It is not so much noble to confer benefits on 
 those who love us as ignoble to refrain from doing so ; but to pass over 
 an occasion of revenge, to show meekness or forbearance to an enemy, 
 to pity him in distress, to bring help to him in need, to assist his sons 
 and family if they desire it, any one who will not love this man for his 
 compassion and commend him for his charity, must have a black heart 
 made of adamant or iron, as Pindar says." J 
 
 Cicero also recognizes the basis of law in reason and its origin in 
 God : " Right reason is the true law, congruent with nature, universally 
 diffused, unchanging, everlasting ; which imperatively commands to duty 
 and forbids fraud ; which, nevertheless, while it requires rectitude, 
 leaves me free to obey or to disobey. No authority exists to repeal 
 this law, or to detract anything from it, or to enact any law contrary 
 to it. Neither by the Senate nor the People can we be absolved from 
 our obligation to obey it. Nor is there any authoritative expounder of 
 the law other than itself. Nor will there be one law in Rome, another 
 in Athens, one law now, another hereafter ; but one everlasting and 
 
 * Laws, Book X., 903. 
 
 f Discourses, Book I., chap. 9, Higginson and Carter's Translation. 
 
 J On Receiving Profit from Enemies, 9. 
 
224 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 undying law will hold together all nations in all time, and will be the 
 one common master, as it were, and commander of all. It is God who 
 is the author, the judge and the enactor of this law. He who will not 
 obey it mus flee from himself and spurn the nature of man; and 
 herein he will suffer the severest punishments, even if he escape other 
 inflictions commonly regarded as penalties." * 
 
 Of the divine origin of law the Chorus in Sophocles' (Edipus Tyran- 
 nus says (864-873) : " Oh that the Fate may favor me in reverent 
 purity of word and deed, commanded by laws fixed on high, the off- 
 spring of the heavenly Aether, of which Olympus alone is the father, 
 which are not the offspring of the mortal nature of man, nor does for- 
 getfulness ever put them to sleep. The great God is in them and never 
 grows old. Lawless and violent caprice begets the tyrant." Of the 
 ancient Egyptian ethics M. Chabas says : " None of the Christian vir- 
 tues is forgotten in it ; piety, charity, gentleness, self-command in word 
 and action, the protection of the weak, benevolence towards the humble, 
 deference to superiors, respect for property, .... all is expressed 
 there." f 
 
 VII. It remains to consider some objections. 
 
 1. It is objected that there is no agreement in the moral sentiments 
 of mankind. Practices which are regarded as praiseworthy in some 
 ages or countries, are condemned as crimes in others. The answer is 
 that there is an agreement in the principle by which these conflicting 
 acts are justified. They who justify slave-holding argue that it is best 
 for the slave and best for freemen ; that it is essential in the best con- 
 stitution of society. Their arguments are appeals to the law of love, 
 just as really as are the arguments of those who condemn it. Hindoo 
 women cast their children into the Ganges. They justify it by saying 
 that we ought to give our most precious things to God, and that the 
 sacrifice insures the eternal felicity of the child and of the mother ; thus 
 they appeal to the law that we should love God with all our hearts and 
 our neighbor as ourselves. The rumseller justifies his business by rea- 
 soning that he must provide for his own family ; that alcoholic drink 
 is beneficial ; that its licensed sale causes less drunkenness than its pro- 
 hibition ; he appeals to the law of love. In these and all similar cases 
 the difference is not as to the supremacy and obligation of the law of 
 love, but as to questions of fact. 
 
 It must be further considered that the same outward act which in 
 some cases truly expresses regard for the rights and welfare of others, 
 may in other cases violate their rights and hinder their welfare. Pa- 
 
 *Fragmenta: De Republica, Lib. III.; Opera: Boston, 1817, Vol. XVII., pp. 
 185, 186. 
 f Quoted Renouf's Religion of Egypt, p. 74; see 74-80. 
 
SECOND ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE RIGHT. 225 
 
 rental love sends the child when healthy to school, but when sickly 
 keeps it at home. Our Saviour teaches that in a rude state of society a 
 custom may be left unopposed, because society must make further moral 
 progress before it can understand the evil and develop a wise and 
 effective opposition. * 
 
 2. It is also objected that savage races have been found entirely des- 
 titute of moral ideas and of knowledge of moral distinctions. 
 
 If so, they are but children of a larger growth. The objector over- 
 looks the facts that principles are constitutional norms, not inborn 
 ideas ; that they presuppose a certain development of the being and 
 some occasion in experience before they influence action : and that they 
 practically influence action before they are recognized or formulated in 
 reflective thought. The fact that a child or a savage denies all know- 
 ledge of the difference between right and wrong is entirely compatible 
 with the influence of moral motives and action under their influence, 
 which would reveal the moral nature to any intelligent observer. 
 
 No evidence sufficient to establish the fact alleged by the objector 
 has ever been adduced. Travelers are commonly untrained to scientific 
 observation and ignorant of the savages' language ; they found their 
 conclusions on a brief and superficial acquaintance. Their testimony 
 also is merely negative, to what they have not observed, not to any 
 facts positively incompatible with the existence of moral motives and 
 emotions. Even missionaries who have dwelt among savages may 
 deceive themselves by demanding a kind of evidence not necessary to 
 prove the fact and, in the circumstances, not to be expected. Thus 
 Mr. Moffat denied that the inferior tribes of South Africa had any 
 moral sentiments. Yet in the same volume he relates that one of these 
 natives came to him in great indignation because one of his tribe had 
 stolen his cattle, and dwelt on the aggravation of the offence by the fact 
 that the thief was one whom he had recently helped and befriended in 
 a time of distress. All this is palpable evidence of moral feeling, though 
 Mr. Moffat was not intelligent enough to perceive it.f We have also 
 the testimony of specialists of high authority in anthropology. Quatre- 
 fages says : " Confining ourselves rigorously to the region of facts and 
 carefully avoiding the territory of philosophy and theology, we may 
 state without hesitation that there is no human society or even associa- 
 tion in which the idea of good and evil is not represented by certain 
 acts regarded by the members of that society or association as morally 
 good or morally bad." J Tylor, the author of " Primitive Culture," 
 
 * Matt. xix. 7, 8. 
 
 f Moffat's Missionary Labors and Scenes in South Africa. 
 
 J Human Species, p. 459, Appleton's Ed., B. X., chap. 34. 
 
 15 
 
226 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 says : " Glancing down the moral scale among mankind at large, we 
 find no tribe standing at 6r near zero. The asserted existence of sav- 
 ages so low as to have no moral standard is too groundless to be dis- 
 cussed. Every human tribe has its general views as to what conduct is 
 right and what wrong, and each generation hands the standard onwards 
 to the next. Even in the details of those moral standards, wide as 
 their differences are, there is a yet wider agreement throughout the 
 human race."* 
 
 * Contemporary Review, April, 1873. See the same conclusion in Tylor's Primitive 
 Culture, Vol. I., pp. 219, 386 ; Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities, p. 17 ; Re- 
 iiouf s Religion of Ancient Egypt, pp. 130, 131. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PERFECT: THE THIRD ULTIMATE REALITY KNOWN 
 THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION : THE NORM OR 
 STANDARD OF THE CREATIONS OF 
 ' THOUGHT AND THEIR REAL- 
 IZATION BY ACTION. 
 
 4O. Origin and Significance of the Idea. 
 
 THE idea of the Perfect arises when we think of an object as consti- 
 tuted in accordance with the truths and laws of reason, and as thus 
 being in its constitution an expression of these truths and laws. I have 
 the idea of a circle as a portion of space inclosed by a line, all the 
 points of which are equally distant from a point within called the cen- 
 ter. If I think of a line actually drawn in exact accordance with this 
 idea, I think the figure thus described must be a perfect circle. If I 
 think of a steam-engine constructed in exact accordance with every law 
 regulative of such a structure, I must think of it as a perfect steam- 
 engine. 
 
 The idea of the perfect implies a rational standard within the mind, 
 accordance with which is perfection. Without such standard the idea 
 of perfect and imperfect could not arise ; the mind would have no idea 
 for the words to express. Objects might be compared as large or small, 
 agreeable or disagreeable, useful or noxious, but not as perfect or 
 imperfect. 
 
 This rational standard is possible only because we have knowledge 
 through rational intuition of the truths and laws of reason. The Per- 
 fect, therefore, denote^ a new reality, our knowledge of which depends 
 on rational intuitions. 
 
 This is the norm or standard of the creations of thought and their 
 realization by action, in nature and hi art, in growth and in construc- 
 tion, in character and institutions. By it we judge as perfect or imper- 
 fect a rose and a watch, a solar system and a steam-engine, the character 
 of an individual and the institutions of society. 
 
 Ideals. 
 
 I. When the mind imagines a perfect object, that creation of the 
 imagination is called an ideal. 
 
 227 
 
228 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 I have distinguished imagination and fancy. When the mind in its 
 creation proceeds in harmony with rational truth and law and thus 
 expresses the deepest reality and true perfection of the object, the 
 creative power is called the imagination and its product is an ideal. 
 When the mind creates capriciously, without regard to truth, law and 
 reality, the creative power is called the fancy and its product is a 
 conceit or fancy. 
 
 II. In creating its ideals the imagination uses only the material 
 given in perceptive intuition, but combines it in accordance with the 
 principles and laws of reason. Cicero says Zeuxis had five of the most 
 beautiful women of Crotona as models from which to make up his 
 ideal of 'perfect beauty.* 
 
 Ideals are not obtained by copying observed objects. The qualities 
 of observed objects are used as material ; the ideal is attained, not by 
 imitation but by creation. 
 
 The ideal thus created may be itself imperfect, that is, not the true 
 ideal. The error, however, as in ethical mistakes, is not in the princi- 
 ples but in the judgment that applies them. Taste is improved by 
 culture, as are the delicacy and correctness of moral judgments. The 
 liability to mistake is greater than in morals, because in aesthetics we 
 are one remove further from the principles w 7 hich we apply. 
 
 III. The ideal is usually nearer to perfection than the object of it 
 observed in experience or expressed by art. A great artist is above 
 nature and comes down upon it from his ideals. An imitator is be- 
 neath nature and tries in vain to lift himself up to it. Says Cicero : 
 " We can conceive of statues more perfect than those of Phidias. Nor 
 did the artist when he made the statue of Jupiter or Minerva con- 
 template any one individual from whom to take a likeness ; but there 
 was in his mind a form of beauty gazing on which he guided his hand 
 and skill in imitation of it." f Goethe says, " The Greek artists in 
 representing animals have not only equaled, but even far surpassed 
 nature. . . . They turned to nature with their own greatness. . . . 
 Our artists .... proceed to the imitation of nature with their own 
 personal weakness and artistic incapacity, and fancy they are doing 
 something. They stand below nature. But whoever will produce any- 
 thing great must so improve his culture that, like the Greeks, he will 
 be able to elevate the mere trivial actualities of nature to the level 
 of his own mind, and really carry out that which in natural pheno- 
 mena .... remains mere intention." J 
 
 But must not an artist be true to nature? Yes; and he is the 
 
 * De Inventione, II. 1. f Orator, c. 2 and 3. 
 
 J Conversations with Eckermann, pp. 341, 342. 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 229 
 
 more true to nature for approaching it from his ideal. A photograph 
 is an exact copy of the man ; but it is a copy of him when he is 
 brought to a full stop, when his attitude and face are least expressive, 
 and all his lineaments stiffen and shut him in, as an oyster shuts 
 itself in its shell. A portrait is idealized ; and for that very reason 
 it is more true to nature; for it presents the man in his best ex- 
 pression, which best reveals all that is worth knowing in him as a 
 man. So nature is the expression of ideals in the mind of God. In 
 getting the ideal we get the real significance and deepest truth of 
 nature. 
 
 IV. Ideals are possible only by virtue of the reason. Ideals are not 
 found by observation but are creations of imagination according to 
 the standard of reason. It is because man is rational that he is im- 
 pelled to seek and enabled to find a perfection which exists neither 
 in himself nor in the objects about him, but which is the standard 
 by which he judges both himself and outward things. And it is 
 because nature itself expresses the thoughts of the reason which is 
 supreme in the universe, that man finds suggestions of his own ideals 
 in nature and discovers all things arranged in a Cosmos progres- 
 sively revealing the Ideal which is perfect and eternal in the mind 
 of God. 
 
 V. The practical importance of ideals is the same with the practical 
 importance of the imagination. 
 
 Invention alike in the fine arts and the industrial, is primarily the 
 creation of an ideal. An attempt to realize anything in invention 
 without an ideal must fail. The attempt would be like that of a child 
 to arrange blocks while as yet it has not attained the ideal of a house 
 or of any geometrical figure ; it becomes a mere .hap-hazard juxtapo- 
 sition. 
 
 Ideals are important in discovery. The hypothesis, which is the first 
 step in the Newtonian method, is simply the creation of an ideal. 
 
 Without ideals criticism is impossible ; criticism is always the com- 
 parison of the actual with the ideal. One cannot say, It is a beautiful 
 morning, or, It is a shocking bad hat, or, It is a love of a bonnet, with- 
 out an ideal with which the object criticised is compared. 
 
 Without ideals we should have no knowledge of progress ; for without 
 them there would be no standard by which to determine whether any 
 movement is progressive or retrogressive. The expectation of the pro- 
 gress of man, which is so powerful in modern Christian civilization, 
 would have no significance if man could not in the light of reason pro- 
 ject his vision to an ideal to be realized in the future beyond all that 
 man has ever been or has ever attained in the past. What science tells 
 us of higher and lower orders of plants and animals is meaningless, 
 
230 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 except as man is able to form ideals with which to measure them as 
 lower and higher. The theory of evolution involves in its very essence 
 the doctrine of progress in the past and the expectation of progress in 
 the future. But the theory itself is meaningless, unless man is endowed 
 with reason that rises above all the trailing sequences of nature and 
 furnishes a standard by which evolutionary progress from lower to 
 higher becomes intelligible ; and its realization through the ages past is 
 incredible and impossible, if from the beginning no reason has had in 
 itself the ideal toward the realization of which it has advanced and 
 guided the progress. 
 
 Ideals are essential in the practical life of every day. The foresight 
 necessary to success in business involves an ideal construction of the 
 course of events affecting the business and the action demanded in rela- 
 tion to them. Teaching and receiving instruction involves the constant 
 exercise of imagination in grasping what is taught in its true unity and 
 significance. Controversy goes on endlessly because each disputant fails 
 to picture to himself the attitude of the other. Even in morals ideals 
 play an essential part. " Put yourself in his place ; " " Do as you would 
 be done by ; " these maxims require the exercise of imagination to pic- 
 ture to yourself the rights and interests of another. Kant's maxim, 
 " So act that you would be willing the principle of your action should 
 be a universal law," requires, whenever it is applied, an imaginary con- 
 struction of a moral system on the principle of that action and its com- 
 parison with the true ideal of a moral system accordant with reason. 
 
 g 42. Beauty as known by the Reason ; or Principles of 
 
 ^Esthetics. 
 
 It is only from the idea of perfection that the principles of a true 
 sesthetical philosophy can be unfolded. Some of these principles I will 
 set forth. 
 
 I. Beauty is ideal perfection revealed to the reason in some partic- 
 ular concrete object or combination of objects. 
 
 1. Beauty is perfection revealed, perfection lustrous and outshining. 
 I do not mean that the beauty exists only when observed. The flower 
 that blushes unseen loses none of its charms in its loneliness. But I 
 mean that the word beauty, as used, not only denotes the perfection of 
 the object, but also suggests that the perfection, if observed, would 
 charm the observer. It indicates the connection between the perfection 
 of the object and the admiring appreciation of the mind to whom the 
 perfection is revealed. 
 
 2. The perfection must also be revealed in some concrete object. The 
 ideal must appear in the actual. The law of gravitation mathematically 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 231 
 
 stated awakens no aesthetic emotion. But the conception in the con- 
 crete, of all bodies on the earth and of the solar and all stellar systems 
 moving harmoniously in conformity with this law and constituting the 
 cosmos, awakens aesthetic emotion. 
 
 There may be beauty in a master-stroke of military genius ; but it is 
 not in the abstract thought but in the concrete combination of move- 
 ments by which the commander transforms peril into victory. Beauty 
 can be predicated of perfection only as perfection is revealed or sug- 
 gested in pei-sons or things ; in action, or in some natural or artificial 
 product of action. 
 
 3. The perfection revealed in a beautiful object of nature or art is 
 that of a finite object which within its own limits and in the peculiarity 
 of its own being reveals a rational ideal of the perfect. It does not 
 reveal perfection of all kinds, but perfection in a particular object. It 
 may be a beautiful hand without symmetry of the entire body ; or a 
 symmetrical form without intellectual expression ; some feature or "line- 
 ament, some partial gleam of perfection. Hence the beautiful object 
 must be of a kind capable of expressing a rational ideal of perfection 
 and must reveal or suggest the perfection of its kind. A cottage may 
 be beautiful as a cottage, though it would be ridiculous as a cathedral. 
 Indeed the addition to anything of qualities belonging to things of 
 another kind would make it imperfect. A dog may be beautiful as a 
 dog ; if wings or fins were added it would cease to be beautiful and 
 become a monster. A picture of the human form with wings may be 
 called an angel, but is a monster. 
 
 4. Objects are beautiful in different degrees. The ideals themselves 
 are of higher or lower grades according as they express more or less of 
 the affluence of the reason and the spirit. The ideal beauty of a 
 rational being is of a higher order than that of a brute or inanimate 
 being. And there are different orders of beauty in rational beings. In 
 a European gallery a Madonna by Raphael and a Madonna by Mu- 
 rillo hang side by side. The ideal of the former was evidently that of 
 the happy mother. The ideal of the latter was that of the conscious 
 mother of the Christ, pondering in her heart the woe, the mystery and 
 the promise of the Messianic life. Each ideal is expressed with the 
 power of genius. The latter reveals greater riches of spiritual truth 
 and moves the soul to proportionally greater depths. Also beautiful 
 objects of the same kind approximate in different degrees to their ideals, 
 and so may be said to have different degrees of beauty. 
 
 II. Beauty is the outshining of truth. Beauty is the revelation of an 
 ideal. An ideal is an imaginative conception of an object as perfect. 
 Perfection is predicated of an object when it is in entire accordance with 
 the law of reason. Law is the truth of reason considered as a law 
 
232 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 to action. Beauty is therefore the revelation in an object of the truth 
 of reason. 
 
 " Beauty is the splendor of truth." This maxim is commonly at- 
 tributed to Plato. I have never found it expressed in just these 
 words in Plato's writings, but it is a legitimate inference from his phi- 
 losophy. This Veron denies. He says, "We might with some 
 difficulty establish a connection between such a phrase and the doc- 
 trine of Aristotle, which made imitation the aim and principle of art : 
 but not with that of Plato." * He has made the surprising mistake 
 of supposing the maxim to mean that beauty in art consists in the 
 exact imitation of objects of nature. In its true meaning it is emi- 
 nently Platonic and expresses the deepest reality of the beautiful. 
 Nature is the expression of the archetypal thoughts or truths of the 
 absolute Keason. An object is beautiful when it reveals the ideally 
 perfect, and thus expresses the truth or thought of reason. 
 
 Symmetry is founded on mathematical ratios and proportions. The 
 beauty of the Greek architecture depends on mathematical ratios, as 
 of the diameter of a column to its height. A Frenchman, after 
 measuring a column with its various parts, calculated by these ratios 
 the dimensions of the Parthenon and of all its parts ; then he measured 
 the building and found nowhere a variation of more than a fraction 
 of an inch. A gothic rose-window may be resolved into a skeleton of 
 mathematical lines. The relative positions of leaves on the branches 
 in different kinds of trees is expressed in a series of fractions va- 
 rying according to an exact law. The musical scale is mathematical. 
 The sweetness or harshness of the tone, its quality as inspiriting and 
 joyous, or sorrowful, as tender or defiant, and its harmony are de- 
 scribed in science mathematically by the length and rapidity and 
 relation of vibrations. The beauty is the outshining of exact mathe- 
 matical truth. 
 
 These are examples of what is true of all beauty. When we penetrate 
 to its deepest significance, we find that beauty is the splendor of truth. 
 This accords with the fact that ideals are not formed from beneath by 
 copying what is observed in experience, but created from above by the 
 reason combining the material given in experience according to rational 
 truth and law ; thus they are standards by which the combinations of 
 nature and those of art are judged as perfect or imperfect, beautiful or 
 ugly. By these standards we thus judge the physical universe itself as 
 a whole, and call it a Cosmos as ordered under law and progressively 
 realizing a rational ideal. 
 
 III. Beauty, while the same in essence, is distinguishable by the 
 
 * ^Esthetics ; by Eugene Veron, Armstrong's Translation, pp. 90, 97, 392. 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 233 
 
 attributes or modes of existence in which it is manifested. Symmetry 
 is beauty of form ; the rational ideal of perfection of form. Graceful- 
 ness is beauty manifested in motion. Motion on mathematical lines 
 straight or curved, describing geometrical figures and rhythmic in time, 
 or of uniform or uniformly accelerated or decreasing velocity, is more 
 pleasing than motion irregular in space and time. Military marching 
 and evolutions, and dancing are both regulated by music and awaken 
 aesthetic admiration. It may be presumed that all graceful motions, if 
 measured, could be described with mathematical exactness. Beautiful 
 motions are regulated motions, they conform to an ideal and reveal 
 mind; unregulated motions are ugly. The attempt to regulate his 
 movements by one not familiar with the law and not trained to control 
 his muscles in accordance with it, is ugly. Hence the ease and grace 
 of a well-bred person contrasted with the awkwardness of a boor in 
 society. A firm signature like that of John Hancock to the Declara- 
 tion of Independence as a regulated movement is pleasing ; while the 
 tremulous signature of Stephen Hopkins is displeasing. A curve may 
 be pre-eminently the line of beauty because, deviating at every point 
 of the motion from a straight line according to a law, it discloses at 
 every point the presence and control of a mind realizing an ideal. 
 Simple colors probably are merely agreeable to the eye. But in the 
 combination of colors the imagination can create ideals and the com- 
 bination may have beauty in the true sense. In this case the harmony 
 which appears in the ideal creation rests on the scientific fact of 
 complemental colors. Some writers, Lord Kames for example, limit 
 beauty to visible objects. But we speak of beautiful music as pro- 
 perly as of beautiful forms. Simple tones and the quality of a sound 
 may be merely agreeable or harsh to the ear ; but the combination or 
 harmony of sounds in music is beautiful. Titian's combinations of 
 color and Beethoven's symphonies are true creations of genius. Odors 
 and tastes and simple feeling like that of the smoothness of velvet, 
 give no opportunity for ideal combinations ; they are merely agreeable 
 or disagreeable sensations. But these, and simple color, in combination 
 with other elements of reality, may enhance the beauty of flowers, 
 fruit or other objects of sense-perception. Power is also an element of 
 beauty. The strength of a gnarled oak is an element of the ideal of 
 it. But it must be force that is regulated. One never ceases to admire 
 the moving piston-rod of a steam-engine, so regular, so calm, and yet so 
 mighty. Unregulated power causes no aesthetic emotion, but only -fear 
 or consternation. Even mass, though having no beauty in itself, may, 
 in combination with other elements, contribute to aesthetic emotion. 
 Also, hi any mechanical product, the adjustment and exact movement 
 of its parts revealing intellectual skill, constitute an element in the 
 
234 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 beauty. In a perfect steam-engine or watch, the beauty is not merely 
 the symmetry of form, the gracefulness and strength of the movement, 
 the harmony of color, but it is much more the accurate adjustment of 
 the parts, all acting according to law in subordination to the design of 
 the whole mechanism. The same is true of the action of man on men. 
 We rightly admire as beautiful a campaign manifesting the brilliant 
 combinations of military genius, or a stroke of political genius in the 
 effective combinations of a great, statesman. So also we admire the 
 beauty of literary productions ; not merely the rhythm and euphony 
 of the language, nor the scenes which by the word-pictures are brought 
 before our minds, but also the literary structure of the work as realizing 
 an ideal. For the same reason we properly speak of a beautiful argu- 
 ment. Some writers limit the beautiful to objects perceivable by the 
 senses. But these limitations have no philosophical basis. According 
 to the only rational and philosophical criterion, every object is beautiful 
 which is the concrete expression of an ideal of perfection. This being 
 so, we see beauty in man's spirit not less than in his body. We 
 admire the beauty of a character strong in righteousness and lovely in 
 benevolence and grace. We admire the beautiful combinations by 
 which a clear-headed man of powerful will overcomes difficulties and 
 achieves success. We admire fortitude, patience, heroism when revealed 
 in action. Seneca says of Cato, " Behold a spectacle w r orthy of God, 
 which Jupiter might turn to look at, a strong man in adversity, com- 
 posed and intent on his work." This beauty of the human spirit is the 
 same in kind with all beauty, a perfection revealed in a being or in 
 action and its products, an ideal revealed of something perfect in its 
 kind; and no consciousness can distinguish the admiration which it 
 awakens from genuine aesthetic emotion as different in kind. 
 IV. All beauty is spiritual beauty. 
 
 1. It is so because beauty is the revelation of ideals. It is essential 
 to beauty, as already shown, that the ideal be revealed in some concrete 
 form. The converse is equally true ; it is essential to beauty that the 
 concrete form be the revelation of an ideal. But an ideal is always the 
 creation of mind or spirit. Thus " beauty is the fusion of idea with 
 form." It is the revelation in the beautiful object of spirit to spirit ; 
 
 " Something whose truth convinced at sight we find, 
 That gives us back the image of our mind." 
 
 The emotion of beauty is the joy of the spirit in finding in outward 
 things the expression of ideals like its own. 
 
 2. The Cosmos and all beautiful things in it reveal the ideals of cre- 
 ative mind as really as the creations of human art do. We know that 
 the inventions of human genius, whether in the industrial or the fine 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 235 
 
 arts, express the ideals of the artist. The chronometer whose move- 
 ment is admired by the watchmaker expresses the ideal of its inventor. 
 St. Peter's church is the thought of Michael Angelo built up in stone, 
 the fresco of the Sistine Chapel is his thought expressed in painting. 
 
 The beautiful objects in nature are not the works of human hands 
 nor the inventions of human minds. Yet in them, just as hi works of 
 art, we find the revelation of ideals like the ideals of our own minds. In 
 these ideals we see the creations of another mind ; and our joy is not 
 merely in the beauty of the object, but also in discovering the mind 
 which reveals itself in it. Mind does not delight in matter but in mind. 
 
 The fitness of nature to be a medium for the expression of ideals is 
 recognized in the impulse of the human spirit to embody its thoughts 
 in outward forms. Man naturally builds his thought into structures 
 and organizations. He erects dwellings, invents tools and machinery, 
 organizes states and institutions. He tames and improves the wild 
 grains and fruits and beasts, almost creating them anew. He stamps 
 his thought on nature. When men advance from savagery to civiliza- 
 tion nature around them does the same. Before man emerges from the 
 stone age he begins to polish and decorate his implements. Tylor says : 
 " Among many figures (of animals) found in the French caves is a mam- 
 moth scratched on a piece of its own ivory, so as to touch off neatly the 
 shaggy hair and curved tusks which distinguish the mammoth from 
 other species of elephant. There has also been found a rude represen- 
 tation of a man grouped with two horses' heads and a snake or eel ; this 
 is interesting as being the most ancient human portrait known." * As 
 he advances in civilization the embodiment of his thought in forms is 
 more and more the creation of beauty. The rugged labor by which he 
 subdues and fertilizes the earth also beautifies it. Always as in the 
 ancient mythology the god of work is wedded to the goddess of beauty. 
 A being thus impelled by his nature to construct his thought in things, 
 must look on nature with all its adaptations as a product and expression 
 of thought and must see in its beauties the revelation of rational ideals. 
 
 Also the language of man everywhere discloses his consciousness 
 of the spiritual in the natural. Mental acts and states and all spiritual 
 realities are designated by words denoting natural things ; and con- 
 versely, we speak of the cheerful landscape, the fierce wind, the furious 
 torrent, " the cowslip wan, that hangs the pensive head," and sponta- 
 neously characterize natural things with spiritual epithets. The natural 
 corresponds to the spiritual as its symbol or shadow, as 
 
 " The swan on still St. Mary's lake 
 Floats double, swan and shadow." 
 
 * Anthropology, pp. 31, 32. 
 
236 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 This is the foundation for personification and of our delight in it ; as in 
 Schiller's " Prometheus Unbound : " 
 
 " I thought among the lawns together 
 We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn, 
 And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds 
 Went wandering in thick flocks along the mountains, 
 Shepherded by the slow unwilling wind." 
 
 3. The human body has a beauty the same in kind as that of other 
 natural objects, symmetry, harmony of color, gracefulness of contour 
 and the like. We speak of 
 
 " Rosebud lips, and eyes 
 
 Like harebells bathed in dew, 
 Of cheek that with carnation vies, 
 And veins of violet hue ; " 
 
 beauties identical with those of inanimate things. 
 
 This natural beauty of form, 'however, does not necessarily express the 
 spiritual excellence and beauty of the soul within it. There may be a 
 noble spirit in an ignoble form ; and a frivolous or perverse spirit in 
 a beautiful form. It is hard to believe that the traditional bust of 
 Socrates m its ugliness is the genuine image of the form which en- 
 shrined the great intellect and lofty spirit of that man whom all ages 
 since he died have honored. It is hard to believe that a man of noble 
 mien and countenance can do a foolish or a mean act. Yet the spirit of 
 man is free ; it may abuse the noblest form by acts of folly and crime ; 
 it may glorify a form ignoble as that of Socrates with the beauty of a 
 wise and noble life. But 
 
 " Though all things foul should wear the brow of grace, 
 Grace still must look so." 
 
 4. Above all beauty of the human form considered as we would a 
 work of art which expresses the ideal of the artist, is a higher type of 
 beauty, the immediate expression through the human form of the 
 spiritual power and virtue of the living human spirit within it. God, 
 says Lord Bacon, did " inspire the countenance of man with intel- 
 lectual light." In its mobile expressiveness, its speaking eye and 
 glowing or paling cheek, in gestures, in attitudes and motions the spirit 
 is continually looking out on us and revealing its changing thoughts, 
 feelings and determinations. As Dr. Donne said of an expressive face : 
 
 " The pure and eloquent blood 
 Spoke in her cheek and so distinctly wrought, 
 That one might almost say her body thought." 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 237 k 
 
 So Milton described Eve : 
 
 " Grace was in every step, heaven in her eye, 
 In every motion dignity and love." 
 
 A fair face without expression is as Tennyson describes Maud's: 
 "Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." 
 
 However beautiful the human form may be in itself, it is glorified 
 with a higher beauty when a noble soul expresses its true and lofty 
 sentiments through it; as when a musical instrument is silent we 
 admire its richness and finish ; but when a great player strikes 
 the keys, the beauty of the instrument is lost in the richness of the 
 music. And these expressions of character gradually fix their imprint 
 on the person. Every vice imprints its own peculiar hideousness on 
 the face and form, 
 
 " Unmolding reason's mintage 
 Charactered in the face." 
 
 Culture and virtue stamp themselves on the features, transfiguring 
 them with spiritual glory. Chrysostom says of Bishop Flavian : " The 
 countenance of the holy man is full of spiritual power ; " and it is 
 said of Stephen when arraigned before the Sanhedrin that all who sat 
 in the Council looking steadfastly on him, beheld his face as it had 
 been the face of an angel. The highest human beauty is that of a 
 form beautiful in itself and transfigured with the beauty of a noble 
 soul revealing its noblest thoughts and sentiments through it. The 
 head of Daniel Webster was a " dome of intellect ; " that of the elder 
 Edwards, revealing the profoundest speculative thought and the loftiest 
 spiritual love, is a model for painting the head of the apostle John. 
 
 5. I have said that the Cosmos itself and the beautiful objects of 
 nature reveal rational ideals as really as a work of human art reveals 
 the ideal of the artist. I may now venture further and affirm that a 
 spiritual presence reveals itself in nature in a way analogous to the 
 soul's revealing itself through the human body. God is ever living 
 and active in nature. The soul that is alive to the beautiful, looks on 
 nature as on a semi-transparent curtain on which, from the light be- 
 hind, the divine thought, love and energy in their ceaseless activity are 
 ever picturing themselves : 
 
 " The Being that is in the clouds and air, 
 That is in the green leaves among the groves." 
 
 " He is not far from every one of us ; for in him we live and move 
 and have our being." 
 
238 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 6. Evolutionists admit that man finds in nature the image and coun- 
 terpart of his own ideals. Mr. Murphy, in " The Scientific Bases of 
 Faith," teaches that man delights in the beauty of nature because he is 
 himself the product of nature's action on him through unnumbered 
 generations, and therefore he is pleased to find in nature what he has 
 found in himself. He is a microcosm and rejoices to find his own 
 likeness in the macrocosm. But the rational philosophy alone gives at 
 once the fact and its sufficient explanation. The supreme reason ex- 
 presses its archetypal thoughts and ideals in the universe. Man is 
 endowed with reason which though limited, is the same in kind with 
 the supreme reason. In his own mind so far as its limits permit he 
 sees the truths and laws of universal reason, and forms ideals, which 
 are the same with the ideals of the universal reason expressed in nature. 
 And when he finds them in nature he rejoices in their beauty and 
 rejoices also in communion with that all-pervading spiritual presence 
 which reveals itself through them. 
 
 V. Beauty has objective reality. This is obvious because beauty is 
 perfection revealing itself in some individual object. The question 
 whether beauty has objective reality or is only subjective has been much 
 debated. The aesthetic philosophy as I have presented it, makes ob- 
 vious both the answer and its true significance. 
 
 VI. Beauty can be manifested only to Reason. It is the manifesta- 
 tion of Reason to Reason. Beauty is appreciable only by a mind that 
 is capable of forming an ideal. An ideal of perfection can be per- 
 ceived in an object only when the mind is already capable of forming 
 the ideal, of discovering it in the object, and comparing the object 
 with it. 
 
 This is all the truth which there is in the assertion that beauty exists 
 only in the mind of the observer; and that it is the mind of the 
 observer which clothes the outward world with its own beauty. In 
 this sense we may accept the words of Coleridge : 
 
 " I may not hope from outward forms to win 
 The passion and the life whose fountains are within. 
 Oh, lady, we receive but what we give, 
 And in our life alone does nature live : 
 Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud. 
 
 And would you aught behold of higher worth, 
 Than that inanimate cold world allowed 
 To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd, 
 
 Ah, from th^ soul itself must issue forth 
 A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 
 
 Enveloping the earth. 
 And from the soul itself must there be sent 
 
 A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, 
 Of all sweet sounds the life and element." 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 239 
 The same thought is expressed by Bryant : 
 
 " There is no glory in star or blossom 
 Till looked upon by a loving eye : 
 There is no fragrance in April breezes 
 Till breathed with joy as they wander by. 
 
 " Come, Julia dear, for the sprouting willows, 
 The opening flowers, and gleaming brooks, 
 And hollow green in the sun are waiting 
 
 Their dower of beauty from thy glad looks.'' 
 
 VII. There is a universal and unchanging standard of beauty, by 
 which the taste of individuals is to be judged as correct or incorrect. 
 
 1. This has been the doctrine of the most profound thinkers on this 
 subject. I may select Goethe as their representative in modern times, 
 
 who says : 
 
 "As all nature's thousand changes 
 
 But one changeless God proclaim, 
 So in art's wide kingdom ranges 
 
 One sole meaning still the same. 
 This is Truth, eternal Reason, 
 
 Which from Beauty takes its dress, 
 And serene, through time and season, 
 Stands for aye in loveliness." 
 
 Plato is the representative of this type of thought in the philosophy 
 of ancient Greece. In the Banquet or Symposium, Diotima is repre- 
 sented as teaching that he who, having fallen in love, has begun to 
 admire the beauty of a young person, should be led to consider the 
 beauty of others and thus learn that the beauty in every form is one 
 and the same. Then he is to learn that the beauty of soul is superior 
 to that of outward form ; then he is to be led to see the beauty of cus- 
 toms, laws and science, and to understand that all beauty is of one 
 kindred and the beauty of the human form but a small part of it. Thus 
 not falling hi love with and wholly devoting himself to any one person, 
 he is guided towards the full sea of beauty. Then at last is revealed to 
 him the vision of universal beauty, which " exists forever, being neither 
 produced nor destroyed, and susceptible neither of growth nor decay. 
 It is not beautiful from this point of view and ugly from that, or beau- 
 tiful at one time or place or in one relation, and ugly at another, nor 
 beautiful to some persons and ugly to others. Nor is it the outward 
 appearance of face or hands or anything in which the body partici- 
 pates ; nor is it any form of speech or wisdom ; but it is beauty in itself 
 and by itself, simple, uniform and everlasting. And all other beautiful 
 things are beautiful by participation in this absolute beauty. And the 
 true procedure is to use the beauties of earth as steps by which the 
 
240 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 learner mounts to that higher beauty, going from one beautiful human 
 form to two, and from two to all beautiful forms, and from beautiful 
 forms to beautiful customs, and from beautiful customs to beautiful 
 ideas, and thence to the idea of that which is beautiful in itself, and 
 so at last he knows what beauty itself is." And Socrates adds that, 
 " in the attainment of this end, human nature will not find a better 
 helper than love." 
 
 This Platonic conception, including Plato's view of the development 
 of the idea of beauty in connection with love, is expressed by George 
 Eliot : " That adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom 
 he feels to be greater than himself, is hardly distinguishable from reli- 
 gious feeling. What deep and worthy love is not so, whether of wo- 
 man, or child, or art, or music ? Our caresses, our tender words, our 
 still raptures under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, 
 or calm, majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies, all bring with 
 them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an un- 
 fathomable ocean of love and beauty ; our emotion in its keenest mo- 
 ment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood 
 rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of the divine mys- 
 tery. . . . Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one 
 woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider mean- 
 ing than the thought that prompted them ; it is more than a woman's 
 love that moves us in a woman's eyes. It seems to be a far-off mighty 
 love that has come near to us and made a speech for itself there. The 
 noblest nature sees the most of this impersonal expression in beauty 
 it is needless to say there are gentlemen with whiskers, dyed and un- 
 dyed, who see none of it whatever." 
 
 2. In accordance with the principles of aesthetics already stated, there 
 must be a universal and unchanging standard ; because beauty is the 
 outshining of truth, and the expression to human reason of ideals arche- 
 typal in the mind of God and capable of being created by the human 
 mind, which is in the image of God. 
 
 This is only the recognition in aesthetics of a power of reason implied 
 in all science and philosophy. The possibility of scientific thinking 
 rests on the fact that the individual reason can come into acquaintance 
 and communication with the universal reason. All science assumes 
 this possibility. Comte, as w r e have seen, starts with the conception of 
 man in mere individualism according to the philosophy of Locke, and 
 therefore capable of knowing only the impressions on his own senso- 
 rium. But in his sociology he regards man as so vitally organized into 
 the system as scarcely to leave him his individuality. Evolutionists 
 also come to the conclusion that man is a microcosm recording in his 
 own organization the courses of nature for myriads of ages. All 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 241 
 
 physical science at every step recognizes the knowledge of the ra- 
 tional in the natural, of the universal in the particular and the 
 contingent. The philosophy which I set forth gives an explicit 
 enunciation and a reasonable explanation of this great truth and ap- 
 plies it in aesthetics. 
 
 Of this philosophy, the speculative, the ethical and the sesthetical arc 
 three branches. They all treat in different aspects the universal and 
 necessary truths of reason. 
 
 3. There are works of art admired in all ages which are recognized 
 as standards of beauty and models of art. 
 
 4. Against this sesthetic philosophy, the same objections are urged as 
 aorainst the rational intuition of the difference between the true and the 
 
 O 
 
 absurd, the right and the wrong. If men exist who have no knowledge 
 of the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, men like Tenny- 
 son's farmer, 
 
 " Troubled no more with fancies fine, 
 Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine," 
 
 they are simply children of a larger growth, whose constitutional capa- 
 city is not yet developed. If where the idea of the beautiful has arisen, 
 men's tastes vary, it reveals not a variation in the standard of beauty, 
 but in the degree and kind of culture. And since the beautiful pre- 
 supposes the knowledge of the true and the right, and is thus at the 
 second remove from the intuition of truth, aesthetic ideas and culture 
 must be later in their rise and development. 
 
 VIII. That which is revealed in beauty is perfection ; that which is 
 revealed or at least suggested in sublimity is also infinitude. An object, 
 the ideal of which the mind can complete, compass and define, is beautiful. 
 An object which, while revealing perfection in some trait, also swells 
 beyond our sight and our comprehension and suggests the infinite, is 
 sublime. It must suggest the infinite in addition to some trait of the per- 
 fect; for the disgusting and the hideous, however vast can never be 
 sublime. Thus the ocean reveals power and vastness immense; the 
 starry heavens, with beauty transcendent, reveal masses, distances and 
 forces immense, and combinations and interactions, systems within sys- 
 tems too great for imagination to conceive. In painting or description 
 the same impression of immensity may be produced by leaving some- 
 thing undefined. Ruskin remarks respecting one of Turner's pictures 
 that the strain on the fold of a dragon's body issuing from a cave 
 suggests the immensity of the part still hidden within. Milton's Satan 
 " lay floating many a rood ; " this indefiniteness makes an impression 
 of immensity ; while the more detailed description of Sin and Death 
 awakens only disgust and horror. Homer's Polyphemus, minutely 
 16 
 
242 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 delineated with the trunk of a pine for a cane, big but not great, 
 reveals not the sublime but the monstrous. 
 
 Sublimity is, therefore, essentially the same with beauty, with the 
 additional idea that it suggests immensity and infinitude. As we rise 
 from one order of beautiful things to another, continually ascending to 
 ideals grander and more majestic, we presently come in sight of power 
 and perfection transcending our power of measurement and too grand 
 to be defined and contained in our ideals. Then the soul is awed and 
 thrilled as in the presence of the Absolute and the Eternal. 
 
 IX. Ugliness is the contrary of beauty. An object is ugly when it 
 suggests a deviation from the ideal perfection. 
 
 The majority of human beings are neither beautiful nor ugly. The 
 same is true of brutes, plants and natural and artificial products. They 
 have a mediocrity which suggests neither perfection nor imperfection. It 
 is only a few men and women, a few dogs and horses, a few objects of 
 any kind that we distinguish from others of the same kind as beau- 
 tiful, and only a few that we distinguish as ugly. At the same time 
 we properly speak of a fine cabbage or handsome potatoes, com- 
 paring the best of the species with the inferior specimens ; while 
 compared with the rational standard of beauty the best attain only 
 to mediocrity. 
 
 Any deformity is ugly a wen, a hump, the paleness and emaciation 
 of disease, a monstrous birth ; for these are departures from the normal 
 condition of the being. The same is true of stupidity, awkwardness 
 and vice, r.evealed in the human face, action or character. 
 
 There are also species of creatures which are incapable of beauty, 
 such as the hippopotamus and the alligator ; the more completely the 
 individual accords with the type of the species, the more ugly it is. It 
 is far from the rational standard of symmetry of form or grace of 
 movement or animal beauty of any kind. There are grades of beauty 
 from lower to higher; but the grades begin below zero and we de- 
 scribe their ascent only as a diminishing ugliness. On this principle, in 
 the Spanish fable of the wart, the wen and the hump contending for 
 the prize of beauty, the prize was given to the wart because there was 
 least of it. Such objects cannot be beautiful, because however com- 
 plete in their kind, their kind is ugly. 
 
 Why such creatures exist is a question of theodicy, a part of the 
 broader question why evil exists, and its discussion is not in place 
 here. It may be said, however, that their existence may be justified 
 for other than aesthetic reasons; that as related to the Cosmos they 
 may even add to its completeness and beauty, as shadows add to the 
 beauty of a picture and an occasional discord to the effect of music, 
 and as many homely bricks are built into a beautiful house; and 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 243 
 
 that their existence may be, like other imperfections, incidental to 
 the progressive development of the universe. It may be added, 
 the common disgust at some animals results from a false association 
 of ideas, and scientists when they study them find in them positive 
 beauties. 
 
 There is also a certain technical beauty. A doctor collecting virus 
 from a child that he had vaccinated, exclaimed as he rolled up the 
 child's sleeve, " What a beautiful scab ! " Another, examining a ca- 
 taract, exclaimed, "It is a perfectly beautiful cataract." A third left 
 the house of a patient who had just died, and rubbing his hands with 
 glee, said to an inquirer, " The most correct case of apoplexy I ever 
 saw; all the symptoms perfect." It is a perversion of all philo- 
 sophy and common sense to call these deformities beautiful. And yet 
 these incidents illustrate and confirm our aesthetical philosophy. When 
 a man devotes his life to the study and cure of disease, it is natural 
 that he should admire a case in which the disease develops and cul- 
 minates according to its law and, contemplating it solely from that 
 point of view, call it beautiful. And yet, compared with the universal 
 standard of reason it is seen to be abnormal and ugly. 
 
 X. The apprehension of beauty or ideal perfection in any object is 
 primarily an act of intellect, to which the aesthetic emotion is conse- 
 quent. In this respect aesthetics is analogous to ethics. The aesthetic 
 idea precedes the aesthetic emotion just as the ethical idea precedes the 
 ethical emotion. All attempts to construct an aesthetical philosophy 
 from the feelings must be failures. In this also the case is the same 
 as in ethics. The principles involved are the same as in the discus- 
 sion of the relation of the moral feelings to the moral ideas in ethical 
 philosophy, and need not be repeated. 
 
 The capacity of aesthetic emotion is, therefore, distinctive of ration- 
 ality. The same is true of scientific and ethical emotion. They 
 presuppose respectively a knowledge of the True, the Eight and the 
 Perfect. To care for a flower because it is beautiful, to perform an act 
 because it is right, to solve a problem from interest in truth, are each 
 distinctive of a rational being. 
 
 \ 43. The ^Esthetic Emotions. 
 
 The emotion of beauty is the joy of the soul in discovering the 
 ideally perfect hi an object perceived or conceived. It is commonly 
 called admiration. 
 
 I. This emotion is distinguished from all other feelings by the fact 
 that its object is the ideally perfect revealed in concrete reality. Like 
 all other simple emotions it cannot be defined analytically, but only by 
 reference to the occasion on which it arises and the object which calls it 
 
244 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 forth in consciousness. What the emotion is can be known only by 
 experiencing it. 
 
 It is distinguished from all the natural sensibilities. When one is 
 admiring the beauty of a table richly spread for a banquet, he says, " It 
 is too beautiful to eat." When appetite comes in the beauty is forgot- 
 ten ; it all sinks into a heap of victuals which harpies are seizing and 
 carrying off. In looking at a beautiful human form, or a painting or 
 statue of it, so long as the beauty is admired every voluptuous desire is 
 far away. No lust from the sphere of sense may thrust its satyr-hoof 
 into the presence of beauty. 
 
 ^Esthetic emotions are also distinct from the other rational sensi- 
 bilities. In the sphere of thought reason shows us what is true ; in 
 the sphere of efficient action it shows us what is right ; in the sphere of 
 acquisition and enjoyment it shows us the good which has in itself true 
 worth. Distinct from each of these, in the sphere of aesthetics it shows 
 us what is perfect and in itself admirable. 
 
 The emotion of beauty is distinguished from the scientific emotions. 
 The desire to know the truth prompts to ascertain and vindicate it. 
 The emotion of beauty is not an interest in discovering, proving or pro- 
 pagating truth. It is simply joy in an ideal in which the truth reveals 
 itself already dressed. 
 
 It is distinguished from the moral sentiments impelling to duty, 
 rejoicing in self-approval, or suffering in remorse. It is simply joy in 
 the beauty of perfection already revealed. In art its immediate object 
 is to express an ideal, not to inculcate duty. A story or poem written 
 to teach a truth or inculcate a duty is usually inferior as a work of art, 
 because the author is occupied with preaching rather than creating. 
 His mind is not full of beautiful ideals which " come like free children 
 of God and cry, Here we are," * and whose beauty he is impelled to 
 depict. Esthetic emotion is not immoral, but it is non-moral, 
 
 "So, Lady Flora, take my lay, 
 
 And if you find no moral there, 
 Go, look in any glass and say 
 What moral is in being fair. 
 
 " Oh, to what uses shall we put 
 
 The wild wood flower that simply blows ? 
 And is there any moral shut 
 Within the bosom of the rose ? 
 
 " But any man that walks the mead, 
 
 In bud, or blade, or bloom may find, 
 According as his humors lead, 
 A moral fitted to his mind." 
 
 * Goethe in Conversations with Eckermann, p. 63. 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 245 
 
 ^Esthetic emotion is also distinguished from the prudential. It is 
 disinterested. It holds itself aloof from all desires and calculations of 
 gain. The beauties of the earth are not utilitarian conveniences. It 
 may be objected that the abundance of blessing may itself be an ele- 
 ment of beauty. This is not denied ; it may be an element of the ideal. 
 An example of it is in that beautiful description of the earth rejoicing 
 under the rain in Psalm 65 : 9-13. But while the poet was admiring 
 the beauty, joyful with the rejoicing earth, if a farmer were calculating 
 how much money the rain would put into his pocket, he must have 
 been insensible to the beauty. 
 
 II. The emotion of beauty prompts to share it with others. When 
 we see anything beautiful we are always impelled to point it out to 
 others. Beauty is but half enjoyed when enjoyed alone. It seems to 
 be arf instinctive recognition of the universal and unchanging in beauty ; 
 it is for all, not merely for one. 
 
 III. In observing the beautiful the mind is in the attitude of a 
 Seer ; it contemplates the expressiveness of things ; and only when the 
 mind is in this attitude can emotions of beauty arise. In the sphere of 
 empirical and philosophical science the mind is occupied with observing, 
 generalizing and classifying, with inventing and combining, with ana- 
 lyzing, synthesizing and inferring ; its whole aim is to discover truth. 
 The " Eureka ! " of Archimedes was an investigator's shout rejoicing in 
 discovery achieved. 
 
 In practical life the mind deals with the same subjects, but with an 
 end beyond the discovery of truth. It is applying knowledge to the 
 conduct of life. It is dealing with facts and truths as disclosing means 
 to ends, as motives to action, as guides to duty, as disclosing a good to 
 be attained and the means of attaining it, as related to God and his 
 service. 
 
 But in aesthetic emotion the mind is nd longer busied with investiga- 
 tion, speculative or practical. It simply opens to an object to receive 
 what it has to express, as a flower opens itself to the sun to receive its 
 light. It is in the attitude of a Seer. Hence the name aesthetic, that is, 
 perceiving, seeing. Beautiful things have an ideal to show us. When 
 we get acquainted with them and, as it were, get their confidence, they 
 tell us their secret ; they open their hearts to us. Thus in aesthetic per- 
 ception we come into friendly relations with nature, and see the very 
 heart of things. Science tears nature to pieces to find out how it is 
 made ; practical art seizes its forces and compels them into service. In 
 aesthetics we commune with nature lovingly and confidentially as a 
 friend ; and it discloses the great thoughts and ideals of reason intrusted 
 to its keeping ; it reveals the thoughts of God and makes us know that 
 " He is not far from every one of us." 
 
246 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 When Kepler was studying the heavens his mind was occupied with 
 his hypotheses, his calculations, his verifications, and there was DO place 
 for aesthetic emotion. Afterwards, as he looked on the planetary system 
 moving in accordance with the laws which he had discovered, he saw 
 the expressiveness of the system and exclaimed, " Oh, God, I read thy 
 thoughts after thee." 
 
 When Napoleon was planning and executing a campaign, he was 
 occupied with the practical combinations, and thought only of victory, 
 not of beauty. But as we look back on it depicted in the stillness of 
 the past, we admire the masterly combinations of genius and feel their 
 beauty. 
 
 . While an orator is speaking, his whole speech is an action convinc- 
 ing, persuading, inspiring, and both he and his hearers are occupied 
 with argument and appeal, and have no time to think of beauty. 1 But 
 as we look on the picture given in history of Paul on Mars Hill, of De- 
 mosthenes speaking against Philip, of Webster in the Senate, or Lincoln 
 at Gettysburg, we feel that it is sublime. 
 
 And this is the difference between eloquence and an actor's perform- 
 ance. The former is an action to convince, to persuade and inspire, 
 pressing so urgently on the hearers' intellect, conscience and heart as to 
 leave no room for aesthetic admiration. But the end and aim of an 
 actor's performance is aesthetic. The same is the difference between a 
 speech and a poem. When public speaking, as commonly in popular 
 lectures, addresses itself to aesthetic ends, it becomes a play with one 
 dramatis persona, and eloquence is impossible. The people demand the 
 impossible, for they demand eloquence as an amusement. 
 
 IV. JEsthetic emotions are frequently confounded with emotions not 
 properly aesthetic. 
 
 1. The emotion of beauty is not mere wonder or surprise which arises 
 on observing something new, unexpected or extraordinary, as a big 
 squash or beet at an agricultural fair. The emotion of beauty is com- 
 monly called admiration. This, however, denotes aesthetic approval of 
 the object and joy in it as expressing or indicating an ideal of perfec- 
 tion. It is true that the pleasure felt in seeing beauty is usually accom- 
 panied with wonder, because beauty is rare. But the wonder is no part 
 of the emotion of beauty. In heaven all things will be beautiful, so 
 that beautiful objects will cause no wonder or surprise. And yet the 
 intensity and freshness of the delight in beauty will not be less. 
 
 2. Some miscalled emotions of beauty are merely agreeable sensa- 
 tions ; as the feeling of velvet, simple colors, or the pleasant quality of 
 a voice. It is not always easy to decide where the ideal or rational 
 beauty begins. Prof. Miiller, in a course of lectures at Berlin, explained 
 the beauty of the curved line as merely an agreeable sensation resulting 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 247 
 
 from the fact that the muscles which move the eyeball are so situated 
 that the eye can trace a curved line with less fatigue than a straight 
 one. It admits also a rational explanation already given. 
 
 3. ^Esthetic emotion must be distinguished from the pleasure of mere 
 excitement. In tragedy, comedy or novels, in theatrical and other 
 exhibitions, there may be the enjoyment of beholding ideals. The plays 
 of children are a mimicry of a life higher than their own. In their 
 plays they are lifted out of the life of children into the life of men and 
 women ; by the " make-believes " which are the creations of a child's 
 imagination they surround themselves with ideals of the pursuits and 
 interests of mature life. Their pleasure in their plays is a sort of aes- 
 thetic enjoyment of the ideals of a life higher than their own. A drama 
 is fitly called a play. A good theatrical performance, like the plays of 
 children, lifts the spectators into a life higher than their own. The 
 same is true of reading a good tragedy, or comedy, or novel. We are 
 lifted out of our prosaic commonplace life into contact with heroism 
 and beauty, with sweetness and grace ; we see life in a higher intensity ; 
 we are admitted to the halls of nobility and the palaces of kings ; we 
 see men realizing the highest ideals in the lowest circumstances and 
 under the greatest difficulties ; we are compassed with the ideals of a 
 life higher than our own. So far our emotions are largely aesthetic, 
 and we are recreated, refreshed and healthily inspired and stimulated. 
 
 But the danger in these cases is of substituting the pleasure of mere 
 excitement for the aesthetic inspiration. Men enjoy being excited. 
 They like to be played on as a musical instrument by some master 
 mind who pulls out all the stops and brings out the feelings in their 
 utmost capacity and variety. It is mental exhilaration after the mono- 
 tony and labor of daily life. Hence men may come to seek excitement 
 in the drama, the theatre and the novel. Their minds become drunk 
 with them and at last the victims of a habit of mental intoxication. 
 They seek and must have the excitement ; and in the thirst for 
 excitement they lose their interest both in the beauty of the ideals of 
 genius and in the simplicity and reality of actual life. In coarsa 
 natures the desire of excitement can be satisfied only with the blood- 
 and-thunder stories of the sensational paper and the dime novel ; or 
 with bull-fights as in Spain, or the gladiatorial conflicts with men and 
 beasts in the Amphitheatre of ancient Rome. 
 
 V. The emotion awakened by sublimity is joy and admiration, like 
 that awakened by beauty, but it is a joy and admiration penetrated 
 and made solemn with awe. It takes on a tone of solemnity and awe 
 in the presence of what is above us. Great genius has a tone usually 
 even of sadness. 
 
 It is sometimes said that terror belongs to emotions of sublimity. 
 
248 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 On the contrary terror, being an emotion pertaining to personal in- 
 terest, is entirely excluded from the aesthetic emotions. The painter 
 Vernet in a storm at sea had himself lashed to the mast in order that 
 he might contemplate the grandeur of the scene. If he had been 
 frightened, the terror so far as it controlled him, would have excluded 
 the emotion of sublimity. 
 
 VI. The emotions awakened by ugliness are those of the ludicrous, 
 the ridiculous and the disgusting. An elephant " wallowing unwieldy, 
 enormous in his gait," is ludicrous, because he is clumsy, as if with all 
 his strength he could not use his own limbs. Drollery is ludicrous as 
 a man's acting beneath himself. A monkey is ludicrous probably from 
 suggesting the human form ; " Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, 
 nobis." A fall is ludicrous as a sudden departure from the normal atti- 
 tude. A combination of incongruous objects is ludicrous, exemplified in 
 a squib on George IV., 
 
 " The breakfast table spread with tea and toast, 
 Death-warrants and the Morning Post." 
 
 The ridiculous means more than the ludicrous as implying dis- 
 esteem and depreciation. We laugh with the person who is in a 
 ludicrous position, we laugh at one who is ridiculous. We get beyond 
 laughter in the emotion of disgust. The lower orders of living beings 
 are disgusting as revealing a low organization, an almost death in life ; 
 so is a heap of rubbish, or a mass of corruption as revealing disorder 
 and decay. 
 
 44. ^Esthetic Culture. 
 
 Even with high aesthetic culture the perception of beauty depends 
 on the mood of the spirit. The world is always full of beauty but we 
 do not always see it. A pebble does not commonly awaken aesthetic 
 emotion. But as I gaze on it and think that it has been floated and 
 washed and worn by Titanic forces through measureless geological 
 epochs, I feel the emotion of the sublime. So in the striking of a 
 clock may be heard the voices of eternity. In everything is a door 
 that opens into the infinite. To the eye of the Seer that door opens, 
 and his spirit is awed. In ordinary moods we do not see the grandeurs 
 and glories which nature, rightly contemplated, is always revealing. 
 
 "As one who looks on glass, 
 
 On it may rest his eye ; 
 Or let his vision through it pass 
 And then the heavens espy." 
 
 But in any mood the degree of this power of seeing the beautiful and 
 
THIRD 'ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 249 
 
 sublime depends on culture. The aesthetic mind sees a soul looking out 
 through all nature's forms. 
 
 " He sees them feel or links them with some feeling." 
 
 But nature little finds its way into the heart of the uncultured man. 
 
 The need of culture for aesthetic perception is analogous to the similar 
 need of it for the knowledge of the True and the Right already con- 
 sidered, and needs no further explanation. 
 
 ^Esthetic culture is promoted by intellectual culture in the knowledge 
 of the truth and ethical culture in the knowledge of the Right. For 
 the knowledge of the Perfect presupposes the knowledge of the True 
 and of the Right. All spiritual culture is helpful to aesthetic culture. 
 
 Direct ?esthetic culture is also needed. This is best effected by 
 the study of the great works of genius. But aesthetic culture does not 
 stop in itself; it reacts in prompting all spiritual culture. In studying 
 the works of art we are made partakers of " the vision and faculty 
 divine of genius ; " for we have revealed to us what seers in the light of 
 genius have seen in nature and in men. In reading a poem or in exam- 
 ining any work of art we are examining nature and life as genius has 
 seen and revealed their " open secret." We are waked to the conscious- 
 ness of the wonderful and .sublime realities in them. We are lifted 
 from the level to which conventionalism has smoothed us. We see the 
 ideals which make life noble, nature beautiful and the spirit of a man 
 of more worth than a world. 
 
 Of this kind of influence we have an historically renowned example 
 in the statue of Zeus by Phidias. It was itself suggested, it is said, J)y 
 Homer's famous lines : 
 
 " Then beneath his raven eyebrows 
 Zeus Kronion gave the nod, 
 And the locks ambrosial started 
 From the temples of the God ; 
 . Huge Olympus reeled beneath him, 
 
 Root and summit, rock and sod." 
 
 Its powerful effect on Greeks and Romans who saw it is described by 
 Winckelmann in his "History of Art." Goethe says of it in his 
 " Winckelmann : " 
 
 " If a work of art is once produced, and does it stand in enduring 
 reality before the world, then it produces an enduring effect the highest 
 possible. For inasmuch as it develops itself spiritually out of the col- 
 lective powers, it resumes into itself everything noble, or worthy of rev- 
 erence and love, and raises man above himself by embodying a soul in 
 a human form ; expands the sphere of his life and acts and divinizes 
 
250 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 him as far as concerns the Present ; in which, indeed, the Past and the^ 
 Future are included. With such emotions were those seized who looked 
 on the Olympian Jupiter, as we can well understand from the descrip- 
 tions, accounts and testimonies of the ancients. The god had become a 
 man in order to raise the man into a god. The eye beheld the highest 
 type of dignity and was inspired for the highest beauty. In this sense 
 we may admit that those of the ancients were right who declared with 
 full conviction that it was a misfortune to die without having seen this 
 work." * 
 
 8 45. ^Esthetics and Theism. 
 
 The idea of Beauty unfolded in its full significance discloses the idea 
 of God. 
 
 It has been shown that all thought rests ultimately on the knowledge 
 of the universal and unchanging. In the background of all conscious- 
 ness of the phenomenal, the transitory and the individual, is the know- 
 ledge of the abiding, the unchanging and the universal. So in every 
 individual form of beauty is a revelation of beauty abiding, unchanging 
 and universal. In affirming this I only affirm as underlying the idea 
 of the beautiful that universal and absolute reality which underlies 
 every idea of reason, and is the ultimate ground of the possibility of 
 rational thought. \Vhether we look at nature speculatively, ethically, 
 religiously or aesthetically, we see the spirit " ever weaving at the whizz- 
 ing loom of time the living clothing of the Deity " by which we see him. 
 
 That the True and the Eight involve the idea of God has been 
 established. But the perfection which beauty reveals is the conformity 
 of the being with the truth and the law of reason. In it truth and 
 right are revealed in unity. All beauty is spiritual beauty ; it is the 
 revelation of reason ; and, as it is the revelation of perfection in which 
 truth and law are expressed in unity, in it the absolute and perfect 
 Reason seems to look us directly in the face and to reveal itself imme- 
 diately to our spiritual vision. 
 
 It is also evident that there must be a universal ^nd unchanging 
 standard of the beautiful ; but such a standard is possible only if that 
 which is supreme and absolute in the universe is Reason. 
 
 Also there are orders of beauty, ascending with the orders of being. 
 A finite being, perfect in its kind, may on account of its limitations, be 
 destitute of perfections peculiar to another and higher kind. A beau- 
 tiful rose cannot have the spreading majesty of an oak, and an aged 
 dog cannot have the intellectual and spiritual beauty of an aged and 
 venerable man. Our ideals of perfection rise in an ascending series 
 till the mind rests in the all-perfect and all-glorious God. " The 
 
 * Sammtliche Werke, Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1855, Vol. V., pp. 211, 212. 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 251 
 
 ideal ! " exclaims Cousin, " behold the mysterious ladder which enables 
 the soul to mount from the finite to the Infinite." * 
 
 In the emotion of sublimity the soul is awed with the conscious 
 presence of a greatness which transcends it, and is moved to worship. 
 Similar, though less noticed, is the influence of the emotion of beauty 
 at the revelation of transcendent perfection. Hildebert, Bishop of 
 Rheims, early in the twelfth century, was filled with admiration of the 
 statues of the gods which then abounded in Rome ; and in uttering his 
 admiration he declared that these works of human genius lift us above all 
 heathen gods, and that by looking at them the heathen gods themselves 
 might learn what it is to be divine and might long to be like them : 
 
 " Hie superiira formas super! rairantur et ipsi, 
 Et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares. 
 Non potuit natura deos hoc ore creare, 
 Qua? miranda deum signa creavit homo. 
 Vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur 
 Artificum studio, quam deitate sua." f 
 
 I 46. Erroneous Theories of ^Esthetics. 
 
 I. A great variety of erroneous theories of aesthetics have been 
 published, characterized by superficial and confused thought, and some 
 of them puerile and laughable. Such is Burke's theory, in the " Essay 
 on the Sublime and Beautiful," that " beauty acts by relaxing the solids 
 of the whole system" and that "the genuine constituents of beauty 
 have each of them, separately taken, a natural tendency to relax the 
 fibres." J Hence he emphasizes smoothness as pre-eminently a quality 
 of beautiful objects ; he says, " I do not now recollect anything beautiful 
 that is not smooth ; " and explains it by its effect in relaxing the muscles. 
 An example which he gives us is, " A bed smoothly laid and soft " . . 
 . . . because it " is a great luxury disposing to a universal relaxation, 
 and inducing beyond anything else that species of it called sleep." 
 These theorizers err in a manner analogous to the error of a physician 
 who prescribes for symptoms without inquiring for the causes of the 
 disease. They construct their theories from some trait of a particular 
 object which pleases, without ascertaining the principle which declares 
 what beauty is. Of these theories I consider but two. 
 
 II. The first is the theory that objects are beautiful because they 
 have become associated with previous agreeable feelings. Mr. Jeffrey 
 states it thus : " Our sense of beauty depends entirely on our previous 
 
 * Du Vra ; , du Beau, et du Bien, Lect. IX. 
 
 t Quoted by Bunsen, with a translation which fails to give the chief point of 
 significance. God in History, Vol. II., p. 268, Winkworth's Translation. 
 J Part IV., Section 19. I Part III., Section 14, and IV., Section 20. 
 
252 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 experience of simpler pleasures and emotions, and consists in the sug- 
 gestion of agreeable or interesting sensations with which w r e had formerly 
 been made familiar by the direct and intelligible agency of our common 
 sensibilities; and that vast variety of objects to which we give the 
 common name of beautiful, becomes entitled to that appellation merely 
 because they all possess the power of recalling or reflecting those sensa- 
 tions of which they have been the accompaniments, or with which they 
 have been associated in our imagination by any other more casual bond 
 of connection." * 
 
 This is an application to aesthetics of the same theory of association 
 by which Mill and others have attempted to account for our necessary 
 beliefs of the first principles and the ethical ideas and laws of reason. 
 This theory is being superseded by the broader theory which accounts 
 for all the necessary beliefs, all the primitive truths of reason, all ethical 
 and aesthetic distinctions and emotions, as imprinted on the human 
 organization, by the continuous and uniform impression of nature, in its 
 gradual evolution through many generations. The theory needs be no 
 further considered. I will only add that the advocacy and application 
 of this theory by Erasmus Darwin seem to constitute a complete 
 redudio ad absurdum. In explaining by the association of ideas the 
 origin of the idea and emotions of beauty, he says : " Soon after it (a 
 babe) is born into this cold world it is applied to its mother's warm 
 bosom, .... which the infant embraces with its hands, presses with 
 its lips and watches with its eyes; and thus acquires accurate ideas 
 
 of the form Its pleasure at length becomes associated 
 
 with the form. And hence in our maturer years, when any object of 
 vision is presented to us, which by its waving or spiral lines bears any 
 similitude to this form whether it be found in a landscape with soft 
 gradations of rising and descending surface, or in the form of some 
 antique vases, or in the works of pencil or chisel we feel a generous 
 glow of delight." f In like manner he explains the natural signs and 
 our instinctive interpretation of them : " When the babe is satisfied the 
 sphincter of the mouth is relaxed and the antagonist muscles produce 
 the smile of pleasure. Hence the smile, during our lives, is associated 
 with gentle pleasure." 
 
 III. The second theory requiring notice is that of Prof. Alexander 
 Bain. The one distinctive characteristic of beauty is the agreeable 
 feeling which it produces. " Excepting the feeling itself, there is no one 
 thing common to all the objects of beauty." " The search after some 
 common property applicable to all things named beautiful is now aban- 
 
 * Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th Ed., Article Beauty, 
 f Zoonomia: Ed. N. York, 1796, Vol. I., pp. 104, 109. 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 253 
 
 doned. . . . The common attribute resides only in the emotion, and 
 even that may vary considerably without passing the limits of the 
 name." The agreeable feeling is distinguished from other agreeable 
 feelings in thisAhe beautiful objects "give us delight as their primary 
 end," that is, " they do not minister to our necessities ; " they " have no 
 disagreeable or revolting accompaniments, and their enjoyment cannot 
 be restricted to a single mind."* As another writer expresses it, " The 
 Beautiful is the objective side of the purely pleasurable," that is, any 
 object is beautiful which gives pleasure unmixed with anything disa- 
 greeable. He adds: "A cause of one's pleasure is not thought of as 
 beautiful until it is conceived as holding this common relation to other 
 minds besides our own." 
 
 This may be taken as the representative of a?sthetic theories which 
 begin with the feelings without recognition of the fundamental principle 
 of beauty in the reason. It is the latest product of the fruitless studies 
 to construct such a theory which have been going on through centuries, 
 and may be accepted as their highest and conclusive result. But as a 
 theory of aesthetics it is an entire failure. 
 
 In the first place, it fails to distinguish between the beautiful and the 
 ugly. It gives no criterion for making the distinction. It gives no 
 distinctive idea of beauty, and no rational principle determining what 
 beauty is. It thus breaks down and fails as an aesthetic theory and 
 forfeits all right to be so called. There can be no empirical science of 
 beauty unless some distinctive characteristic common to all beautiful 
 objects can be found. There can be no philosophical science of beauty 
 unless some rational principle can be found as a standard of discrimina- 
 tion between the beautiful and ugly. But this common characteristic 
 and common principle this theory cannot find and the search for them 
 it abandons in despair. It thus confesses its own incompetency and 
 failure. 
 
 And this failure is inherent in the method, which begins with the 
 aesthetic feeling and attempts from it to attain an aesthetic principle. 
 The only principle thus attainable is that things are beautiful because 
 they are agreeable. This is putting the effect for the cause. It is like 
 saying that sugar is sweet because it is agreeable and wormwood bitter 
 because it is disagreeable. Sugar is not sweet because it is agreeable ; 
 it is agreeable because it is sweet. Wormwood is not bitter because it 
 is disagreeable ; it is disagreeable because it is bitter. The sun is not 
 warm because it is agreeable nor polar darkness cold because it is disa- 
 greeable ; but the sun is agreeable because it is warm, and the polar 
 darkness disagreeable because it is cold ; and it is the business of science 
 
 * The Emotions and the Will, 213, 210, 211 ; Compendium of Psychology, p. 292. 
 
254 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 to point out the more or less rapid vibrations of the ether which pro- 
 duce these respective effects. So there is neither aesthetic science nor 
 philosophy in saying that the Apollo Belvedere is beautiful because it 
 is agreeable ; and yet this is all which this theory of beauty has to say. 
 
 We have already seen that according to the theory of knowledge 
 which develops it from sensation we cannot attain to real knowledge ; 
 and that according to the ethical theory which develops moral distinc- 
 tions from moral emotions, we cannot attain to moral ideas ; so this 
 theory, which tries to develop beauty from the aesthetic emotions, fails 
 to attain any distinct idea of beauty and sticks fast in the idea of the 
 agreeable or pleasing. It is a failure inseparable from the method. 
 
 And this is the only feasible method for those who recognize no 
 knowledge but what comes from sensation and our consciousness of sen- 
 sations, and who hold that man is nothing but his physical organization. 
 In ethics they have nothing but the pleasurable and the expedient, 
 which they substitute for moral ideas, and in aesthetics nothing but the 
 pleasurable, which they substitute for beauty. 
 
 While the theory gives no criterion for distinguishing the beautiful 
 from the ugly, it also fails to distinguish the agreeable emotions awak- 
 ened by beauty from other agreeable feelings. It is true that the emo- 
 tion of beauty is disinterested, but so are all altruistic feelings. It is 
 true also that we are prompted to share it with another ; but the same 
 is characteristic of wonder and of some other non-aesthetic emotions. 
 The aesthetic emotions can be distinguished from other agreeable feelings 
 only by the objects which awaken them. The very fact that all men 
 do distinguish certain emotions as aesthetic proves that there is some- 
 thing distinctive in the beautiful objects, but this theory denies that 
 there is any common distinctive quality in the objects and cannot in 
 this way distinguish aesthetic from other agreeable feelings. An easy- 
 chair produces agreeable feelings ; why then is it not beautiful ? Prof. 
 Bain says : " An easy-chair is too confined in its scope to be an aesthetic 
 object."* If then it were enlarged into a tete-a-tete, so that it could be 
 shared with another, it might become beautiful. But if it were a chair 
 elaborately carved of some rich wood, elegantly finished and symmetri- 
 cally shaped, it would be beautiful, however confined in its scope. A 
 rose does not cease to be beautiful when a lady plucks and w r ears it. 
 She has appropriated the rose, but not its beauty. Beauty cannot be 
 appropriated. 
 
 Prof. Bain says : " The search for the one common attribute of beau- 
 tiful objects has been an entire failure. Had there been such we should 
 have known it in the course of two thousand years." The multitude 
 
 * Emotions and Will, p. 212. 
 
THIRD ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE PERFECT. 255 
 
 of failures has been because the idea of the beautiful has been sought in 
 the feelings, not in the reason. The result has been the enumeration of 
 a multitude of pleasing objects and qualities, a mosaic of pretty things 
 with no unity of principle. But Prof. Bain is mistaken when he says 
 that the true idea has never been found. The aesthetic philosophy 
 which teaches that beauty is the expression of ideal perfection has long 
 been held by profound thinkers. It meets all the conditions of the 
 problem. It gives a principle which explains all beauty by the element 
 of perfection common to all beautiful objects, from a China cup to a 
 Corliss engine, from a painted flower to a Sistine Madonna or an Olym- 
 pian Jupiter, from a violet or rose to the starry heavens and the Cosmos 
 itself, from the innocence of a child's face to the character of Jesus and 
 the perfection of God. 
 
 B 
 
 ; 
 
 "UNIVERSITY 
 
 &/ 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE GOOD : THE FOURTH ULTIMATE REALITY KNOWN 
 THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION : THE NORM OR 
 STANDARD OF WHAT MAY BE AC- 
 QUIRED AND ENJOYED. 
 
 247. The Question Stated. 
 
 I. I USE the word happiness to denote agreeable feelings, joy or 
 pleasure, and unhappiness to denote disagreeable feelings, sorrow or 
 pain. The sum total of agreeable feelings constitutes the happiness of 
 a person's life. 
 
 Well-being is of broader significance, having reference to an ideal 
 standard of perfection ; perfect health is the well-being of the body. 
 It means more than enjoyment. There is enjoyment in the visions of 
 a hashish-eater, but not well-being. Welfare is of similar signi- 
 ficance. 
 
 The Good I use as synonymous with well-being. 
 
 II. The occasion in experience on which the idea of good and evil 
 arises is some feeling impelling to exertion for some end or reacting in 
 joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain. 
 
 Good can be predicated of non-sentient beings only as related to 
 sentient beings ; as grass is good for cattle ; wood and stone are good 
 for man to use. We cannot conceive of an inanimate being as in itself 
 a subject of good. It is not for the good of a block of marble that it 
 is chiseled into a statue. 
 
 If man were never impelled by any motive to action and were incapa- 
 ble of enjoyment or suffering, he could have no idea of good and evil. 
 If it were possible to conceive of a being as pure reason and nothing 
 else, we could not conceive of that being as a subject of good or evil ; 
 for the being would never experience the impulse of any motive nor be 
 affected by any feeling. 
 
 III. The idea of good or well-being having arisen, man must have 
 some criterion or standard by which to decide what his good or well- 
 being is. He finds himself impelled by various and often conflicting 
 motives, susceptible of happiness from various and often incompatible 
 sources, and thus is obliged to decide which is for his good. When he 
 
 256 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 257 
 
 has chosen and attained his object, he is often disappointed, and finds 
 that he chose what was not for his good. And when he has found 
 enjoyment in what he has sought and attained, he sometimes feels 
 ashamed that he has sought it and even that he is capable of deriving 
 his happiness from such a source. 
 
 IV. Two answers to the question, " What is the good and by what 
 criterion is it discerned," demand consideration. 
 
 1. The first answer is, The good is primarily and essentially happi- 
 ness, that is, enjoyment or pleasure. The criterion is that of quantity 
 only, measuring the intensity, continuity and duration of the enjoy- 
 ment. The good or well-being is the happiness which has the highest 
 degree of intensity, continuity and duration. Its maxim is well ex- 
 pressed by Lucretius : " Dux vita3 dia voluptas. " * 
 
 This theory of the good is called Hedonism, from the Greek ydovrj. 
 The name was originally given to the doctrine that the good consists in 
 the pleasures of sense, taught by Aristippus and the Cyrenaic school. 
 It is now more widely applied to denote the doctrine that the good 
 consists in enjoyment. This theory and the ethical theories founded on 
 it have also been denoted by the name Eudcemonism, from tuSatpoyia, 
 meaning happiness. 
 
 2. The second and true answer is : what good or well-being is must 
 be determined by a standard or criterion of reason. This standard or 
 criterion is found in the truths, laws and ideals of reason. The good is 
 whatever, in accordance with this standard, reason adjudges worthy of 
 pursuit by a rational being, or worthy to be the source of enjoyment to 
 a rational being. Or, it is whatever has worth as estimated by the 
 standard of reason. Here is a new reality, the knowledge of which is 
 dependent on rational intuition. It is the norm by which reason 
 estimates all objects of pursuit and acquisition, and all sources of en- 
 joyment. 
 
 V. The true good comprises both an empirical element, enjoyment, 
 which is known in experience ; and a rational element, worth or the 
 worthy, as estimated by the standard of reason. It is this last which 
 is distinctively the fundamental idea of reason in reference to the good, 
 and which is the subject of this chapter. The empirical element is, 
 however, inseparable from the rational in the true good, and must not 
 be overlooked in the discussion. Such an oversight would lead to one- 
 sided views which would involve fundamental error. 
 
 VI. In Hedonism there can be no question, as to pleasures and their 
 sources, which is the true good ; for all pleasures are held to be true 
 good, differing only in quantity. In Hedonism the first and only ques- 
 
 *II. 172. 
 17 
 
258 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ticn is, " What is the highest good, or summum bonwn f " But when 
 we recognize pleasures and their sources as themselves adjudged by 
 reason to be worthy or unworthy, to have worth or to be worthless, the 
 question necessarily arises as to them, " What is the true good ? " or, 
 more properly, " What is the good ? " Ethical philosophy has been 
 vitiated by beginning its investigations with the question, " What is the 
 summum bonum f " and pursuing its investigations as if the answer to 
 that question would give the fundamental principle and law of ethics. 
 But it is a false method, characteristic of Hedonism, and must issue in 
 falsity. Before we ask the question, " What is the highest good ? " we 
 must answer the question, " What is the good ? " We must ascertain 
 what the good is before we can measure its quantity and compare its 
 degrees. This we can ascertain only by going back of all questions of 
 pleasure, and judging of the worthiness of pleasures themselves and 
 their sources by the standard of the truths, laws and ideals of reason. 
 And when thus we know what the true good is, we know that it must 
 be also, to every rational being, the highest good. 
 
 48. Hedonism a False Theory. 
 
 Before discussing what the good truly is, it is necessary to expose the 
 inadequacy and falsity of Hedonism. And preliminary to this it should 
 be said that various theories of ethics have been founded on Hedonism 
 or have to some extent accepted it as true. These theories are worthy 
 of more or less disapproval according as they rest more or less entirely 
 on the Hedonistic error and apply it with more or less consistency. 
 These ethical theories are not to be considered here, but simply the 
 Hedonistic conception of what the Good is. 
 
 I. Hedonism is the legitimate and necessary outcome of sensational 
 theories of knowledge ; it is incompatible with the recognition of Reason 
 as a source of knowledge. It is thus partial and one-sided, not recog- 
 nizing all the facts in the constitution and life of man. It constructs a 
 science of man as if he were a creature of sense, feeling and impulse 
 only. It does not acknowledge the existence of reason in man or of any 
 standard of rational discrimination between his impulses. The only 
 intellectual act recognized is the notation in experience of the quantity 
 or degree of pleasure. It is consistent with positivism and with every 
 theory which restricts knowledge to the phenomena of sense. It is the 
 legitimate and necessary issue of such theories of knowledge, which, 
 excluding all knowledge of principles, laws and ideals originating in 
 the reason, have nothing left for the idea of good or well-being except 
 enjoyments, and no criterion for discrimination between them except 
 their quantity or degree. Accordingly the advocates of Hedonism have 
 commonly held to some form of the sensational philosophy, from Aris- 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 259 
 
 tippus and Epicurus, its representatives in ancient times, until now. 
 But it is in irreconcilable contradiction to the philosophy which recog- 
 nizes knowledge of truths, laws and ideals originating in the reason. 
 If we believe in God, we shall not begin with seeking enjoyment at 
 random wherever it may be found, with no thought but of the intensity 
 and duration of the enjoyment. On the contrary, we shall begin with 
 the thought that the universe is dependent on God ; that its constitu- 
 tion is nothing else but the truths, laws, ideals and ends eternal in God, 
 the absolute Reason, and expressed and realized in the universe ; and 
 that man is so constituted in the image of God that his reason attests 
 the supremacy of the same truths and laws. The good which is possible 
 in such a universe for such a being must be determined by rational 
 standards and can be found only in accordance with the eternal truth 
 and law of God ; it cannot be the mere quantity of enjoyment from 
 whatever source derived. Even if we say God requires us to seek the 
 good of all beings, yet the good which God requires us to seek must be 
 determined in accordance with the truths, laws, ideals and ends which 
 are eternal in God and expressed and realized in the constitution of the 
 universe. It is practical atheism to insist that the good is the aggregate 
 of enjoyment from all sources, measured only by quantity, with no 
 reference to the truth and law of God. In fact if a man try to measure 
 the good by the quantity of enjoyment, he may find 'himself incapable 
 of enjoyment in the service of God ; and the religious life, with its 
 humble trust in God, its self-renouncing and self-sacrificing love, may 
 seem only gloomy and repulsive to him. He may see enjoyment only 
 in self-sufficiency, self-will, self-seeking, self-indulgence, self-serving and 
 self-glorying. In this character and state of mind, if he estimates the 
 good only by the quantity of enjoyment, he will be led entirely away 
 from the good. He not only will not choose it, but he will not see it as 
 good. He must make a new supreme choice and form a new character 
 in order to appreciate the blessedness of a life of self-renouncing faith 
 and love. If our Lord should speak to him, he would say as to Nico- 
 demus, " Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God." If an old Hebrew prophet should speak to him, he would say, 
 " Wo unto them who call evil good, and good evil ; who put darkness 
 for light, and light for darkness ; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet 
 for bitter." 
 
 Some who acknowledge self-evident intuitions transcending sense, yet 
 remain so imperfectly cleared from Locke's sensationalism that they 
 fall into the Hedonistic error. But they can neither make it con- 
 sistent with their own principles nor purge it from the taint of its 
 origin in sensationalism and of its essential tendency to materialism 
 and atheism. They are like Milton's " tawny lion pawing to get free 
 
260 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 his hinder parts," or as an earlier writer, using the same allusion 
 to the fabled emergence of animals from the slime, more vigorously ex- 
 pressed it, " their hinder parts are yet plain mud." 
 
 Plato must not be classed with these. Although he does not treat 
 Duty or the Right as a primary idea, and attempts to derive it from the 
 idea of the good, yet it must be borne in mind that he regards the 
 Good as including in itself the unity of the True and the Beautiful, 
 and thus determines it by a rational standard. Hence with entire con- 
 sistency he argues, as in the Philebus and the Gorgias, that enjoyment 
 or pleasure does not constitute the Good. Plato's error is that he 
 attempts to develop the idea of the Right from that of the Good 
 instead of immediately recognizing truth as law to the will. This 
 error has made his ethics indefinite, confused and vacillating. 
 
 In any correct idea of the good or well-being of man two elements 
 must be recognized, enjoyment which we know by experience, and the 
 standard of truth, right and perfection, which we know in the light of 
 Reason. 
 
 II. The maxim of Hedonism that the one ultimate motive of all 
 human action is the desire of happiness is contrary to fact. This is 
 a sort of fundamental maxim with the advocates of this theory which 
 they set forth as self-evident ; " Happiness our being's end and aim." 
 Bentham in the Deontology says : " No man ever had, can or could 
 have a motive different from the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance 
 of pain." But this extravagant assertion is in direct contradiction 
 to the most common and obvious facts of human nature. 
 
 1. Every appetite, desire, affection or motive of whatever kind has 
 its own specific object, and is not resolvable into the desire of happi- 
 ness; this desire for the object is prerequisite to the possibility of 
 finding enjoyment in the object. Hunger, for example, is the appe- 
 tite for food, not the desire for happiness. When I have no appetite 
 for food I have no pleasure in eating. My desire of happiness is as 
 strong as ever. Why then do I not eat ? What has changed ? Not 
 my desire of happiness, but my appetite for food. The same is true of 
 all the sensibilities which are motives to action. Each has its own 
 peculiar object ; that peculiar object alone and no other can satisfy it ; 
 when a child is hungry its hunger cannot be appeased with a rattle. 
 
 2. Hence the motives to human action are many, not one alone. 
 They who believe that man's good or well-being consists only in enjoy- 
 ments distinguishable only in degree, reduce human nature to a dreary 
 monotony, moved always by one and the same impulse, the desire of 
 happiness. On the contrary the motives of human action are of many 
 kinds : appetites, desires, affections, affinities, antipathies, preferences, 
 instinctive and rational, constitutional and acquired, involuntary and 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 261 
 
 voluntary, and each kind including many particular motives, each 
 impelling to some peculiar object of its own. Herein consists the many- 
 sidedness of man, his susceptibility to a great variety of impressions 
 and influences, and his capacity for a complex and many-sided develop- 
 ment and a complex and many-sided civilization. 
 
 3. It should also be noticed that any one of these appetites, desires 
 or affections, by transient excitement or confirmed habit, may gain 
 ascendancy and lead to sacrifice the objects of every other desire. A 
 drunkard sacrifices health, property and reputation for drink. A 
 miser sacrifices every comfort of life that he may hoard. Louise 
 Michell, tried for participation in the crimes of the commune in Paris, 
 gloried before her judges in the atrocities which she had committed 
 and challenged them to put her to death. "What I ask of you," 
 she cried, " is a place on the field of Satory by the side of our dear 
 condemned brother. If you do not shoot me you are a pack of cow- 
 ards." " In delivering these words," we are told in a narrative of the 
 trial, " her whole figure shook with passion, her voice rang forth like a 
 trumpet, and she looked the very image of an inspired fury." Louise 
 Was an atheist ; she had no expectation of happiness after the fatal 
 shot; she was ready to sacrifice life and all possibilities of pleasure 
 in her fury against society. Her fury had wrapt her whole being in 
 its blaze, licking up with its tongues of fire every other passion and 
 interest as fuel. Similar are the stories of Charlotte Corday who 
 murdered Marat, and of the Russian Nihilists. And yet we are asked 
 to believe that all these devoted themselves to death in the commis- 
 sion of these crimes solely from the desire of happiness. 
 
 The desire of happiness is one among the many motives of human 
 action. No man can prefer pain to pleasure, if pain and pleasure are 
 the only objects compared. If he accepts pain in any case it is because 
 he yields to some other motive. It is contrary to the most obvious and 
 familiar facts of psychology to affirm that the desire of happiness is the 
 one only ultimate motive of human action. 
 
 4. This reduction of all human action to one motive is incompatible 
 with free-will. If man is constituted with susceptibility to only one 
 motive, he has no power of free choice. He must follow that one im- 
 pulse as necessarily as a brute' follows the strongest impulse of his 
 nature. Free choice is determination between different objects to which 
 we are impelled by different motives. 
 
 5. The Hedonistic maxim is also incompatible with the fact that hap- 
 piness has no fixed dependence on outward'objects, but is relative to and 
 dependent on the subjective state of the man himself. We do not desire 
 any object because it imparts happiness ; but the object imparts happi- 
 ness because we desire it. 
 
262 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 The Hedonist may reply to the arguments which I have been present- 
 ing that he does not mean that happiness is the only motive of human 
 action, but that it is the ultimate motive ; we admit, he may say, that 
 every feeling which moves man to action has its peculiar and specific 
 object, and that thus man is influenced by many motives ; but we 
 affirm that in all these the ultimate motive is the enjoyment which is to 
 result. The point which I now make is that the Hedonistic maxim as 
 thus explained is still in direct contradiction to obvious and fundamen- 
 tal facts hi the constitution and action of man. For the happiness does 
 not exist as an antecedent objective reality, but is itself the result of the 
 man's own desire or choice of the object. Happiness is the smile that 
 beams on the gratification of desire. As a man is not happy in order 
 to smile, but smiles because he is happy already, so a man does not 
 desire and choose an object in order to be happy ; but he is happy in 
 the object because he desires and chooses it. 
 
 Happiness is not bottled up in outward things, so much happiness in 
 a house and grounds, so much in horses and equipage, and whoever gets 
 the object gets the same definite amount of enjoyment. But whether a 
 person finds any enjoyment whatever in an object depends on the state 
 of his own heart towards it. 
 
 Hence every new affection opens a new source of enjoyment. Here 
 is a young man whose present enjoyment consists in spending his earn- 
 ings in clothing, horses and the like. By and by the love of wife and 
 children is in his heart, and that new love has opened to him new 
 motives of action, new objects of interest, new sources of enjoyment, 
 a new world in w r hich to expatiate. He is born again into a new 
 life. Or he travels and becomes interested in art; he studies 
 botany and becomes interested in plants, or geology and becomes 
 interested in the structure of the earth ; or he identifies himself with 
 some moral reform or some political party ; and each new motive 
 opens a new w T orld of joy, a spring of living water flowing out of 
 the man and clothing with verdure and fertility what to him had 
 been a desert. 
 
 And in many cases of this kind, what, after the new love has sprung 
 up, is a source of joy, had been before disgusting ; a boy who hates to 
 study may become afterwards a lover of learning ; a debauchee, to 
 whom a sober and religious life is repulsive, may come to love God, to 
 rejoice hi sobriety, purity, beneficence and devotion, while his former 
 debauchery in its turn becomes disgusting. As Paul describes his own 
 experience in his conversion,*what he had regarded as loss became gain, 
 and what he had regarded as gain became loss. 
 
 Evidently in these cases it is not the enjoyment which kindles the 
 desire or affection or choice, but the desire, affection or choice which 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 233 
 
 kindles the enjoyment. Happiness, therefore, cannot be the ultimate 
 motive of all action. * 
 
 III. The Hedonistic maxim that, all pleasures are of the same kind 
 and equal worth, and are distinguishable only by their degree of inten- 
 sity, continuity and duration, is contrary to the facts of human nature 
 and action. 
 
 1. Since happiness does not exist in objective reality, but is wholly 
 relative to and dependent on the subjective state of the person, enjoy- 
 ments must be discriminated from each other and cannot be grouped 
 together as of the same kind. 
 
 They must be distinguished by their subjective sources. The enjoy- 
 ments arising from gluttony, drunkenness and licentiousness are not the 
 same in kind with those arising from intellectual discovery, virtuous 
 character and the achievements of Christian beneficence. The joys of 
 sin are not like the joys of holiness. The joy of communing with a 
 harlot is not the same with the joy of communing with God. The joy 
 of miserliness is not the same with the joy of beneficence. It would be 
 impossible to convince a converted debauchee that the pleasures of his 
 debauchery, the remembrance of which fills him with shuddering and 
 disgust, were the same in kind with the pleasures of his present sobriety, 
 industry and piety. 
 
 Pleasures are also discriminated by their tendency. They are mo- 
 tives. The drunkard's enjoyments are a stimulus to new excesses. The 
 sinner's pleasure in sin impels him on in sinning. By his own prefer- 
 ence and choice he gravitates downward ; he finds his happiness in sin ; 
 he regards it as his good ; he thinks it impossible to enjoy a life of virtue 
 
 * Pres. Edwards says : " Some say that all love arises from self-love ; and that it is 
 impossible in the nature of things for any man to have any love to God or any other 
 being but that love to himself must be the foundation of it. But I humbly suppose 
 that it is for want of consideration that they say so. They argue that whoever loves 
 God and so desires his glory or the enjoyment of him, desires these things as his own 
 happiness. The glory of God and the beholding and enjoying his perfections are 
 considered as things agreeable to him, tending to make him happy. And so they say 
 it is through self-love or a desire of his own happiness that he desires God should be 
 glorified and desires to behold and enjoy his glorious perfections. There is no doubt 
 tlv.it "fter God's glory and beholding his perfections are become so agreeable to him, 
 he will desire them as his own happiness. But how came these things to be so agree- 
 able to him that he esteems it his highest happiness to glorify God? Is not this the 
 fruit of love ? Must not a man first love God and have his heart united to him, before 
 he will esteem God's good his own, and before he will desire the glorifying of God as 
 his own happiness? It is not strong arguing that, because after a man has his heart 
 united to God in love and, as a fruit of this, desires God's glory as his own happiness, 
 therefore a desire of his own happiness must needs be the cause and foundation of his 
 love ; unless it be strong reasoning that because a father begat a son, therefore his sou 
 certainly begat him." 
 
264 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 and godliness. He " cannot see the kingdom of heaven." With his 
 eager joy in sin he stoops downward as he runs and his " steps take hold 
 on hell." But the Christian's joy is an impulse to Christian service, an 
 inspiration for good, a strengthening of faith and love ; it gives wings 
 to bear him nearer to God. 
 
 2. Enjoyments are not essentially good, but may be evil. That a 
 person is happy is no proof of his well-being. 
 
 Because they are inseparable from the subjective state of the person, 
 enjoyments cannot of themselves alone constitute the good or well-being 
 of a man. The character of the person which makes the enjoyment 
 possible must be an element in the good. As Tennyson says, " Better 
 thirty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." When a man enjoys 
 to-day what disgusts him to-morrow, when one enjoys what disgusts 
 another, these joys cannot be alike and indiscriminately the good or 
 well-being of man. 
 
 Pleasure therefore may be evil and not good. The pleasure which 
 breathes from an evil character and which would give place to sorrow 
 if the character were good, cannot be good, but must itself be evil. The 
 pleasure which impels the sinner to more wickedness, which precludes 
 the capacity of joy in right living, which the sinner chooses as his good 
 and so brings on himself the woe pronounced on those who call evil 
 good and good evil, this pleasure is not good, but evil. The sinner 
 finding his enjoyment in this may fitly exclaim with Milton's Satan, 
 
 " All good to me is lost ; evil be thou my good." 
 
 The worst evil of sin is the joy which the sinner feels in it. 
 
 3. Enjoyments must also be distinguished as to their essential worth. 
 
 Man is a rational being. In the normal development of his consti- 
 tution he has the fundamental ideas of reason, Truth, Law and Per- 
 fection. Any theory of human life which ignores this great fact must 
 be fundamentally wrong. It is only by rigidly excluding all cognizance 
 of this fact that it is possible to regard all pleasure as of the same quality, 
 dignity and worth. 
 
 4. Accordingly the common sense of mankind rejects the doctrine. 
 It is impossible to attach the same quality, dignity and worth to the 
 pleasure of a pig with one foot in the trough, and the joy of Archi- 
 medes shouting Eureka, at a discovery of the method of ascertaining 
 specific gravity ; to the maudlin happiness of a drunken man and 
 the solemn ecstasy of Kepler, when he exclaimed, " Oh, God, I read 
 thy thoughts after thee ; " to the joy of a pinched and skinny miser 
 and the enthusiasm of a Raphael putting the creations of his genius 
 on the canvas ; to the devilish glee of Nero in his atrocities and the 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 265 
 
 joy of Paul suffering the loss of all things in his labor to save his 
 fellow-men and his rapture in his dungeon triumphant in the face of 
 a bloody death. The Hedonistic doctrine that all these joys are of 
 the same quality and distinguishable only in quantity is contrary to 
 reason and common sense. It does violence also to the deepest and 
 best sentiments of the human heart, which rise in indignation against 
 it. As John Locke said that the love of virtue is the same in kind 
 with the love of grapes, this theory degrades the loftiest of human joys 
 to the level of swinish enjoyment ; it pours them all into the same 
 barrel to be measured out by the pailful like swill. If this theory 
 were true, then, as Plato twice intimates, it would be wise for a man to 
 catch the itch for the pleasure of scratching.* And the pleasure of 
 Sidney Smith's cattle, rubbing their backs under the sloping pole 
 which he had contrived to accommodate them all from the smallest calf 
 to the tallest ox, would be the same in kind with the amused and 
 kindly gratification of their ow^ner in seeing the happy effects of his 
 contrivance. 
 
 In fact it is according to the common consent of mankind that pains 
 and sorrows may be of more dignity and worth than joys. Witness the 
 universal admiration of Rebekah hi Scott's Ivanhoe as she stood on the 
 summit of the tower ready to fling herself down ; of Leonidas and his 
 Spartans giving their lives for their country ; of John Howard visiting 
 the prisons of all Europe and finally sacrificing his life to reform their 
 discipline. Even J. S. Mill, though himself a Utilitarian, is obliged to 
 confess, " It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than to be a pig 
 satisfied ; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." f This 
 is the admission that other elements than happiness enter into the idea 
 of the good. Mr. Mulford truly and forcibly says, " There has been no 
 nation but in the beginnings of its history ther3 was a consciousness of 
 a relation to a world which it did not conquer with its swords and 
 whose fruits it did not gather in its barns nor exchange in its markets. 
 There has been none which, in the greater periods of its history, did 
 not recognize ends whose worth had no estimate in material values, and 
 in the crises of its history did not call for an effort for which its econo- 
 mists could find no rate of compensation in the wages of labor." J 
 
 IV. Hedonism gives no available test for discriminating the superior 
 from the inferior good, even according to its own principle that enjoy- 
 ments are to be compared only by quantity or degree of intensity, 
 continuity and duration. 
 
 It is impossible to determine by observation what will give the most 
 
 * Gorgias, 494. Philebus, 46. f Utilitarianism, p. 42. 
 
 J Republic of God, p. 99. 
 
266 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 happiness during the whole of existence. We cannot see into the 
 future ; and so complicated and far-reaching are the influences and 
 results of our actions that no one can deter mine empirically what the 
 aggregate effect on his happiness will be. 
 
 Another reason is the fact that happiness depends on a person's 
 desires and preferences ; what a person enjoys with his present cha- 
 racter, tastes and preferences, he may presently, through a change 
 in himself, become incapable of enjoying ; hence he may prefer what is 
 really evil to what is really good, and may find all the enjoyment of 
 which he is now capable in the evil and be incapable of enjoying the 
 good. 
 
 This theory gives no test for distinguishing the superior from the 
 inferior good, or for determining what course of action will insure the 
 highest good. Thus it fails in distinguishing enjoyments as to their 
 quantity as really as it fails to distinguish them as to quality, dignity 
 and worth. In either case the only criterion is in the principles, laws 
 and ideals of reason. Whatever accords with these is at once the true 
 and the highest good. This is a test always present and available. 
 
 V. Hedonism is incompatible with any fundamental and essential 
 distinction of right and wrong. It attempts to derive the idea of right 
 from that of happiness. But the idea of right cannot be developed from 
 the idea of happiness. Hedonism, starting with the idea of the good as 
 consisting in indiscriminate enjoyment, can never lift itself out of that 
 idea to the idea of right and law. It must stick inextricably in the 
 idea of the pleasurable and the expedient. This, however, is not the 
 place to consider the ethical bearing of this theory. 
 
 (j 49. The Good Estimated by the Standard of Reason. 
 
 I. The rational standard or criterion by which the good is ascertained 
 and distinguished from evil is the truths, laws and ideals of reason. I 
 cannot begin with the fact of enjoyment and say, " I enjoy this, there- 
 fore it is good." I must bring the objects, achievements and acquisi- 
 tions which are the sources of joy into the light of reason and in that 
 light approve or disapprove them and the happiness which they 
 occasion. 
 
 Thus the answer to the question, " What is the Good ? " is analogous 
 to the answers to the questions, " What is the True, the Eight, the 
 Perfect?" 
 
 It has been shown in respect to each of the three that the attempt to 
 develop them from the feelings fails to give any real distinction between 
 the true and the absurd, the right and the wrong, the perfect and the 
 imperfect, and even to attain the ideas of truth, law and perfection. 
 The same is true of the distinction of good and evil. It cannot be 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 267 
 
 determined from the feelings, but only from the reason. So Kant 
 affirms : " Heteronomy and a falsification of the moral principles is the 
 inevitable result if, without regard to the law, any object is chosen 
 under the name of good and allowed to determine the will, so that from 
 it the highest principle of practice is deduced." 
 
 II. The rational idea of the good determined by this standard is the 
 idea of dignity, worthiness or worth. This is an ultimate idea of the 
 reason of the same order with the True, the Right and the Perfect. In 
 it is opened a reality which, but for man's constitutional capacity 
 of rational intuition, would have remained utterly inconceivable and 
 unknown. 
 
 The good, rationally estimated, is more than enjoyment. It is any 
 object which can be acquired, possessed and used, any source of enjoy- 
 ment and the enjoyment resulting, which reason approves as worthy of 
 the pursuit of a rational being. Reason judges that the man acts 
 worthily of himself as rational in seeking the object and deriving enjoy- 
 ment from it ; it judges that the object has dignity and worth ; is 
 worthy to be an object of pursuit and a source of enjoyment to a 
 rational being. 
 
 Necessarily the good of any being must be in harmony with the con- 
 stitution of the being. It cannot be for the good of a fish to be taken 
 out of the water. Man is constituted rational. His good must be 
 accordant with his rational constitution. Among all objects which may 
 be desired, possessed and enjoyed, those only are good which reason 
 declares worthy to be desired, possessed and enjoyed by a rational 
 being. If a man gains the whole world at the expense of his own 
 spiritual integrity and perfection, the gain is not worth the expenditure ; 
 it is evil and not good. When Raphael expends life putting the crea- 
 tions of his genius on the canvas, or Newton or Kepler in exploring the 
 heavens, or Paul in building up Christian churches, reason approves of 
 the object as having dignity and worth, and sees, as the Creator saw his 
 own works in the beginning, that it is good. But if any man lives 
 selfishly in rapacity and prodigality, or in rapacity and miserliness, or 
 in fraud or violence using others for his own aggrandizement, or in 
 idleness and luxury, reason condemns his ends, his acquisitions, his 
 achievements and his joy therein, as unworthy of a rational being, and 
 pronounces it shameful that he should spend his powers and find his 
 enjoyments in such pursuits. A reasonable contempt for a life of selfish 
 enjoyment is uttered by Froude, in reference to a sentiment of some 
 political economists that an idle and luxurious class is a benefit to 
 society by stimulating the young to seek a similar success : " They are 
 like Olympian gods, condescending to show themselves in their empy- 
 rean and to say to their worshipers, ' Make money, money enough, and 
 
268 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ye shall be as we are, and shoot grouse and drink champagne all the 
 days of your lives.' "* And our approval and condemnation as worthy 
 or unworthy in such cases is immediate and decisive, and independent 
 of the greater or less amount of pleasure. 
 
 III. The rational idea of the Good, as that which, measured by the 
 standard of reason, has dignity and worth, presupposes the ideas of the 
 True, the Eight and the Perfect. Each of the four is distinct from the 
 others, but there is an order of precedence and dependence in their 
 origination. The idea of the True presupposes no rational idea. Law 
 or right presupposes the idea of Truth. What is true to reason is a law 
 to action. The Perfect presupposes the ideas of truth and law. The 
 Good presupposes, not only the knowledge in experience of joy and 
 sorrow, but also the ideas of the true, the right and the perfect as the 
 standard by which we discriminate among joys and their sources as 
 worthy or unworthy of the pursuit of a rational being, as having worth 
 or being worthless. 
 
 IV. The distinction between good and evil as determined by reason 
 is eternal and immutable, like the distinction between the true and the 
 absurd, the right and the wrong, the perfect and the imperfect. It must 
 be so because the standard by which it is measured is so. Hence the 
 principles, laws and ideals of Reason determine what good is possible 
 in the universe. The possibility of good contrary to these is excluded 
 by the eternal constitution of things ; that is, by the fact that Reason 
 is supreme and the universe is the expression of its eternal truths, laws 
 and ideals. It is impossible for any power, even though almighty, to 
 make any acquisition or any pleasure not accordant with reason to be 
 good. Almightiness can no more make evil to be good than it can 
 make the absurd true and real, the wrong right or the imperfect per. 
 feet. Hence the significance of the prophet's denunciation, " Wo unto 
 them that call evil good and good evil ; that put darkness for light and 
 light for darkness." (Isa. 5 : 20.) 
 
 V. The Good being distinct from the Right, any correct ethical 
 philosophy must recognize and treat them as distinct. The confounding 
 or identifying of the Bene and the Recte has been a common source of 
 error in systems of morals. The love which is the fulfilment of the law 
 must comprise both righteousness and benevolence, or, if both words had 
 the Latin form, Recte-volence and Bene-volence. 
 
 VI. The good thus rationally determined, is not merely a superior 
 good distinguished from the inferior good by quantity, but it is the true 
 or real good or well-being, distinguished by worth from all that is 
 falsely called good. As the true and real good it is of course the highest 
 
 * Inaugural Address at St. Andrew's, March 19, 1868. 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 269 
 
 good. Thus what the highest good is, is ascertained not empirically by 
 measuring quantity, but rationally by the standard of reason. 
 
 VII. Distinguish worth as estimated by reason from value in Political 
 Economy. The latter is measured by the demand for the article and 
 the labor of producing it. Whatever amount of labor the article has 
 cost, if there is no demand for it, it has no value in the market. On 
 the other hand, it makes no difference as to value in exchange whether 
 the demand for an article is wise or unwise, right or wrong. An article 
 that is positively injurious, like intoxicating liquors, may have great 
 value in the market. 
 
 On the other hand, worth as estimated by reason, is independent of the 
 demand for it. It is that which wisdom and love demand, but which 
 folly and sin may refuse. The greatest demand cannot impart worth to 
 what is unreasonable and wrong. Nor does it depend on the amount 
 of labor in producing it. What proportion is there between the 
 amount of labor in producing Homer's Iliad, or Shakespeare's Hamlet, 
 or Newton's or Kepler's discoveries, and their worth ? The works of 
 the great painters and sculptors have passed out of the market. They 
 are preserved by princes and nations. No money can buy them. So 
 wisdom is represented in the book of Job as having worth above all 
 price. " Man knoweth not the price thereof. It cannot be gotten for 
 gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be 
 valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx or the sapphire. 
 No mention shall be made of coral or pearls ; the price of wisdom is 
 above rubies." (Job 28: 1219.) The same is the priceless worth of 
 God's redeeming grace: "Ye were not redeemed with corruptible 
 things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ." (1 Pet. 
 1 : 18.) It reveals a low estimate of a man to say he is worth a million 
 of dollars, for it ranks him with marketable commodities. Christ says 
 the worth of a man is more than that of a world. So simple a virtue 
 as integrity we acknowledge to be of priceless worth, when we say of 
 the upright man that the world does not contain gold enough to buy 
 him. Says Kant : " Everything in the realm of ends has either a price 
 or a dignity. That in the place of which an equivalent may be put, has 
 a price ; that which is above all price and admits not substitution by an 
 equivalent, has a dignity (TFiirc/e)."* 
 
 It is true, however, that the idea of value arises and derives its signi- 
 ficance from the fact that man has the idea of worth as estimated by 
 reason. A brute cannot traffic. Hence political economy is an attempt 
 to find a rational principle for determining value in exchange. And 
 the principle that every legitimate transaction in business is an ex- 
 
 * Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, p. 64. 
 
270 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 change of equivalents or of equivalent services, rests on the rational 
 ideas of justice and of the reciprocal relations and obligations of men 
 in the community of a moral system. And language recognizes the 
 reference to human welfare in calling articles of exchange goods. 
 
 VIII. The Good is the rational end or object of acquisition, posses- 
 sion and enjoyment. In knowing what the good is, we know the end 
 or object approved by reason as worthy to be acquired, possessed and 
 enjoyed by a rational being. 
 
 The question " What is the Good?" is not the primary and funda- 
 mental question of ethics- All knowledge is the knowledge of being. 
 All action has being for its ultimate object. Moral character is pri- 
 marily the choice of a being or beings as the supreme object of service ; 
 it is not the choice of an object to be acquired, possessed and enjoyed, 
 but of a being or beings to be served. True ethics transcends the 
 question as to the summwn bonum or highest good, and passes over into 
 an entirely different sphere of thought. The fundamental question of 
 ethics is not, " What shall I get?" but it is, " Whom shall I serve?" 
 
 But when I have chosen the being or beings to whom I will devote 
 my energies in service, the question arises, " What service can I ren- 
 der ?" In answering this question we are obliged to ascertain what 
 the good is ; what object or end is worthy to be acquired, possessed and 
 enjoyed by a rational being, whether it is acquired for himself or for 
 another. What object to be acquired, possessed and enjoyed does 
 reason declare to have true worth ? 
 
 The good therefore is the rational end or object of acquisition, pos- 
 session and enjoyment. It presupposes the true, the right and the 
 perfect ; it is that in which they culminate. Here opens to our inves- 
 tigation the sphere of rational ends of action. In the sphere of the 
 good we find those rational ends of pursuit which satisfy our highest 
 aspirations and may be put forward as constituting a full and sufficient 
 reason for life itself. Here is the answer to the question, forced on this 
 generation by materialistic denials of the ultimate realities of Reason ; 
 " Is life worth living ? " Reason answers that in knowing the truth, 
 obeying it as law, and realizing perfection man attains the Good, which 
 has true and immutable worth and is worthy of the pursuit and enjoy- 
 ment of rational beings. I shall sometimes call it, for short, the rational 
 end or object, meaning, not the object of service, but the object ap- 
 proved by reason as worthy of being acquired, possessed and enjoyed. 
 It is the true and right object of all acquisitive action on the part of a 
 rational being. 
 
 It is this reality known by Reason which opens to knowledge the 
 whole sphere of teleology or final causes. Reason asks, what is the true 
 good of a rational being? and judges all things else in their relation to that. 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 271 
 
 It asks, what is it good for ? of what use is it ? What rational end 
 does it subserve ? 
 
 5O. In what the Good or Well-being of a Rational 
 Being consists. 
 
 Thus far my definition of the good has been analogous to my defini- 
 tion of the right by the formal principle of the law. I have said that 
 the good is that which is determined by a rational standard as having 
 worth. But I have not said \vhat it is which has this worth. This I 
 now proceed to define ; and the definition will be analogous to the 
 definition of right in the real principle of the law. What is it which 
 has .in itself worth as estimated by reason ; which is everywhere and 
 always worthy of human acquisition and possession, and everywhere 
 and always worthy to be the source of happiness to a rational being ? 
 
 I. The essential good of a person is the perfection of his being ; his 
 consequent harmony with himself, with God the Supreme Reason, and 
 with the constitution of the universe ; and the happiness necessarily 
 resulting. 
 
 1. The essential good is primarily the perfection of the being. 
 
 Man's acquisitions are not merely of external goods to be consumed 
 for his enjoyment or used as instruments in accomplishing his ends. 
 There are also excellences constituting the perfection of his being, 
 which are to be acquired by his ow r n action. This perfection is what 
 he must primarily seek to acquire as the true good. 
 
 This is a necessary inference from what has been already established. 
 The Good, which is the rational object of all acquisition, is itself the 
 realization of the truths, laws and ideals of reason. So far as a man 
 attains the perfection of his own being he attains the end which reason 
 declares to have true worth ; this is the end worthy of pursuit and 
 acquisition for ourselves and for all beings. 
 
 The attainment of perfection must begin in the acquisition of right 
 moral character. Character begins in choice. When a man chooses 
 whom he will serve, he acquires moral character ; the will is thence- 
 forward a charactered will and all action thereafter develops, confirms 
 or modifies the character. The moral law requires us to choose as the 
 object of service God as supreme and our neighbor equally with our- 
 selves. This choice is the essence and germ of the love to God and 
 man which is the fulfilment of the law. It is the essential germ of all 
 right character. 
 
 This right choice, constituting the germ of all right character, is 
 good in itself and cannot be perverted to evil or made a means of evil. 
 Knowledge, intellectual power, discipline and culture, vigor of body, 
 all outward conditions and possessions may be used for evil. The 
 
272 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 power of long foresight and of self-control may be used for evil ; the 
 cool-headed villain is the most dangerous villain. But the right choice 
 cannot be perverted to evil ; should it be overpowered and fail to carry 
 out all its purposes, it is still good in itself: 
 
 " A noble aim faithfully kept is as a noble deed." 
 
 Man in his power of choice can determine all his energies and posses- 
 sions to the service of God and man, and thus to the realization of the 
 universal good ; or to the service of self and thus to the realization of 
 evil. But the choice of God and man as the object of service is good 
 in itself, good without qualification, good which can never be perverted 
 to evil. So Kant says : " There is nothing in the world, and we cannot 
 conceive of anything out of the world, which can be held to be good 
 without qualification, except a good will. . . . This good will is good 
 not on account of its effects or its fitness to accomplish any given end, but 
 simply in itself, as a right choice or purpose. It is therefore to be 
 prized incomparably higher for its own sake, than anything which 
 comes to pass to gratify any desire or even all desires together. Even 
 if the good will is unable to carry its purpose into execution, still the 
 good will would remain, and it would have its worth in itself, like a 
 jewel which glitters with its own luster. Success or failure neither adds 
 to nor takes from this worth. These are like the setting of the gem, 
 convenient for handling and setting it forth to notice, but unheeded by 
 the lapidary in estimating its real worth." * 
 
 Besides right moral character, the Good consists in the perfection of 
 all the powers and susceptibilities of the being. It is physical, intellec- 
 tual, moral and spiritual perfection. All action in accordance with the 
 law of love tends to the development, discipline and culture of the man 
 in the realization of this perfection. 
 
 And it can be realized only by action in accordance with the law of 
 love. Should a person propose to himself his own perfection as the great 
 object of acquisition and should he seek it only for his own aggran- 
 dizement and enjoyment, he would be serving himself supremely, not 
 God and his neighbor ; he would miss the perfection which he proposed 
 to attain, and instead of its grandeur and blessedness would find him- 
 self shriveled in selfishness, and his whole sphere of interest and action, 
 the whole firmament and horizon of his life shrunk within the bounds 
 of what he can clasp within his own arms and hug to his own bosom. 
 And here is the significance of the Saviour's paradox, " He that findeth 
 his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall 
 find it." 
 
 *Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten ; Erster Abschnitt, pp. 11, 12, 13. 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 273 
 
 Goethe is a striking example of a man devoting his life to seeking 
 his own culture with all the energy of commanding genius. Great as 
 are the works of his genius, he missed that which is of highest worth, 
 and the light of his intellect reveals more clearly his moral deficiencies. 
 Intent on personal culture and enjoyment, he took little interest in the 
 great political movements of his time, which were changing the destiny 
 of Europe and America and affecting all the interests of humanity. In 
 Napoleon's invasion he fawned on the conqueror of his people unlike 
 Fichte, who, as the enemy approached, dismissed his class with the 
 inspiriting words : " We shall resume these lectures in a free country." 
 The track of his life was strewn with crushed and cast-off loves, like 
 orange-peels thrown away after he had sucked out all the sweetness. 
 Great and lustrous like an iceberg, floating deep and towering high, 
 moving majestic with the strength and swell of the ocean, effulgent in 
 the sunshine, a mountain of light, but also a mountain of ice. Plainly 
 he never attained the true good. And this estimate of himself he 
 himself pronounced, when in his old age he said : " I have ever been 
 esteemed one of fortune's favorites ; nor can I complain of the course 
 my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has been nothing but toil and 
 care ; and now in my seventy-fifth year I may say that I have never 
 had four weeks of genuine pleasure. The stone was ever to be rolled 
 anew. My annals will testify to the truth of what I now say." * Con- 
 trast this with Paul's review of his life of self-sacrificing love : " I am 
 now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand : I 
 have fought the good fight ; I have finished the course ; I have kept 
 the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 
 which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day." 
 
 There is no absolute perfection to a finite being, but only its perfec- 
 tion in its own kind and under its own necessary conditions. But 
 man, endowed with reason and free-will, is capable of progress. While 
 his moral character at a given point of time may be right, he is in cul- 
 ture and capacity capable of continual growth. His perfection, there- 
 fore, is not a" resting in any attainment as a finality. The very fact of 
 resting in knowledge or power acquired, or in good work done as a 
 finality and satisfying sufficiency, would involve the cessation of activity, 
 and the resting would be a rusting in routine, formalism and cant. The 
 perfection of man involves continual growth. It is the condition of the 
 growing tree, the tree of the Lord, which is full of sap, leafing, bloom- 
 ing, fruiting and growing from year to year, transforming the mold, the 
 air, the water into its own organic substance, and thus glorifying itself 
 with beauty and majesty ; not a bark-bound tree, standing fruitless and 
 
 * Eckermann Conversations, January 27, 1824. 
 18 
 
274 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 unblessed from year to year. It is the condition of immortal youth. 
 In becoming as a little child, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, 
 the Christian becomes not only simple-minded, teachable and trustful 
 as a child, but also acquires the perpetual youthfulness which we love 
 to think of in the immortals, losing nothing of its freshness and buoy- 
 ancy, its vigor and capacity of growth through the lapse of ages. 
 
 2. A person's Good consists in his harmony with himself, with God 
 the Supreme Reason, and with the constitution of the universe. His 
 will is in harmony with his Reason, and all his desires and passions 
 under the power of love are brought into harmony with one another. 
 He is in harmony with God. The universe, physical and spiritual, is 
 the progressive expression or revelation of the aichetypal thoughts of 
 God. As such it must be good. Man is not an isolated ego and can- 
 not work out his own good in independent individualism. He belongs 
 to the universal system, physical and spiritual, and his well-being con- 
 sists essentially in his harmony with the system of which he is a part, 
 and with the Wisdom and Love which evermore are embodying them- 
 selves in it. Its Cosmic forces, acting on him every moment for good 
 or evil, go on evermore above his reach and independent of his power. 
 But if he reads aright the truths of his own reason, he reads in them 
 also the truths of the supreme and universal reason. If he realizes the 
 perfection of his ow T n being, he knows that he is in harmony with the 
 constitution of the moral and physical system and with the thought 
 and design of the Supreme Reason energizing in it evermore for good. 
 While, then, his own perfection constitutes primarily his good or well- 
 being, it has this scope that it puts him in harmony with the constitu- 
 tion of the universe and with the wisdom and love and power ever 
 energizing in It ; and thus makes it sure that all the complicated and 
 immeasurable agencies of the worlds of nature and of spirit will bring 
 him blessing. "All things work together for good to them who 
 love God." 
 
 3. A third essential constituent of good or well-being is the happiness 
 flowing from the perfection of the person and from his. Harmony with 
 himself, with God and with the constitution of things. 
 
 It may be objected that since happiness may arise from evil and be a 
 motive to evil, it cannot belong of itself to the essential good. This is 
 true. On the other hand, sorrow that comes necessarily from evil, may 
 be a motive to forsake it. Such sorrows, for example, are remorse, the 
 misery of self-conflict, the dissatisfaction with worldly acquisitions. The 
 sorrow of repentance is good, although it could not have existed if the 
 penitent had never sinned. 
 
 But happiness has no existence of itself and is always inseparable 
 from its source in something else. The happiness which comes from 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 275 
 
 perfection is a constitutional and necessary issue of the perfection and 
 inseparable from it. It is good in its source, and in all its influence as 
 motive ; for joy which springs from right character and action can be 
 motive only to perpetuate and intensify them. Hence this joy, as 
 inseparable from right character, is good and cannot be perverted to 
 evil. It is inseparable from the perfection ; if the supposed perfection 
 issues in misery or even in insensibility, it is thus proved not to be 
 perfection. 
 
 Capacity for enjoyment is a part of man's constitution. As he makes 
 progress towards perfection this capacity cannot be diminished or 
 destroyed, but must be itself progressively perfected. Incapacity for 
 enjoyment is itself an imperfection. A man thus incapacitated would 
 be as far from perfection as from good. In the experience of enjoyment 
 the idea of good originates. The rational estimate in which the idea of 
 worth arises is itself an estimate of objects which, as desired or chosen, 
 are sources of enjoyment, and between w r hich the reason judges which 
 are worthy and which unworthy. Enjoyment, therefore, is an essential 
 constituent in good or well-being. The rational idea of worth and the 
 empirical element of enjoyment are inseparable in the idea of the good. 
 The good is that which is a source of enjoyment and at the same time 
 has worth ; that is, in the estimate of reason it is worthy to be the source 
 of a rational person's happiness. The good is the perfection and har- 
 mony of the rational being, and the happiness indissolubly united 
 with it. 
 
 Besides, since the sources of happiness depend on the subjective state 
 of the man, when the man is perfect, the enjoyment w T hich is peculiar to 
 his perfection must flow from it spontaneously and necessarily. As a 
 miser spontaneously and necessarily enjoys hoarding, one who loves his 
 neighbor as himself must enjoy beneficence, and one who loves truth 
 must enjoy discovering it. The same is true of all perfection ; the 
 happiness peculiar to it is as inseparable from it as brightness is from 
 sunshine. Joys from other sources may cease ; pain and sorrow from 
 other sources may be suffered ; but the joy peculiar to perfection flows 
 from it spontaneously and necessarily; no circumstances alter it, no 
 outward conditions check it ; it remains always unchanged. This may 
 be exemplified in the enjoyment of health, which is the perfect condi- 
 tion of the body. The healthy man may be poor, or despised, or 
 rich, or honored ; he may be ignorant or learned, malevolent or benevo- 
 lent ; but the freshness, the elasticity, the courage, the energy of perfect 
 health, and all the glow and joy incident to it remain the same. The 
 same is true of the joy of intellectual culture, of aesthetic taste, of moral 
 excellence, and of religious faith and love. The man may encounter 
 adversity in a thousand forms, but the joy peculiar to these high quali- 
 
276 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ties flows spontaneously and necessarily without stint. In fact the 
 privation of joys from other sources seems often to enhance these higher 
 joys. Paul awaiting death in the Mamertine or some other Roman 
 dungeon utters the grandest of all his expressions of Christian exulta- 
 tion. The man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is blessed 
 in the righteousness. This it is, his own righteousness, his own love to 
 God and man, which is " in him a well of water springing up unto 
 eternal life." This is the significance of our Saviour's words, 
 " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never 
 thirst." 
 
 4. These three essential constituents of the Good are distinguishable 
 in thought, but inseparable in fact. No one of the three exists without 
 the others ; the existence of one implies the existence of the others. In 
 the perfection of his being a person is necessarily in harmony with the 
 wisdom and love of God, and with the constitution of the universe, 
 spiritual and physical, which is the ever-progressive expression of that 
 wisdom and love. And this perfection and harmony spontaneously and 
 necessarily glow with their own peculiar joy, and thus constitute the 
 blessedness of the righteous. This is the Good ; it is one and not three ; 
 it is three in one. It is good in itself; good in the sources of its joy ; 
 good in all its outcome and tendencies. 
 
 This is exemplified in moral character. Moral perfection is perfect 
 love. In the life of love the moral perfection of the individual and the 
 harmony of his personal character with the universal moral system are 
 united. This love beams with its own inextinguishable joy joy which 
 is no more to be destroyed by sufferings inflicted by wicked men or any 
 evils of outward origin than the light of the stars is blown out by 
 earthly storms. So Jesus says : " And your joy no one taketh away 
 from you." 
 
 5. Hence any theory which, like that of the Stoics, excludes happi- 
 ness from the essence of well-being or the Good, excludes one of the 
 two elements essential to the distinctive significance of the idea- 
 Stoicism, excluding happiness, the element of the Good empirically 
 
 known, contradicts common sense and sets itself in antagonism to 
 human nature. It aims to extirpate man's nature, not to regulate it. 
 It sets forth virtue as a bald purpose to obey rational law, defecated 
 from all feeling. Hence has arisen the error that virtue is greater in 
 proportion to the reluctance of feeling which it overcomes ; that the 
 enjoyment of doing duty vitiates the virtue of doing it. This is exem- 
 plified in the lady who said to Herbert Spencer, concerning an acquaint- 
 ance, " I really think she does things becausa she likes to do them," 
 . . . . " the form of expression and the manner both implying the 
 belief not only that such behavior is wrong, but also that every one 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 277 
 
 must recognize it as wrong." * The same is ridiculed in Schiller's 
 Scruple of Conscience and its Answer : 
 
 " The friends whom I love I gladly would serve, 
 
 But to this inclination excites me : 
 And so I am forced from virtue to swerve, 
 Since my act, through affection, delights me. 
 
 " The friends whom thou lovest thou must first seek to scorn, 
 
 For to no other way can I guide thee : 
 'Tis alone with disgust thou canst rightly perform 
 The acts to which duty would lead thee." 
 
 And it is only against this type of philosophy that the strongest 
 arguments for Hedonism have force. Thus Bentham, in his coarse 
 style, says : " The summum bonum, the sovereign good what is it ? It 
 is this thing, it is that thing, and the other thing ; it is anything but 
 pleasure; it is the Irishman's apple-pie made of nothing but quinces." 
 " Another set cry out : ' The habit of virtue is the summum bonum.' . . . 
 Lie all your life long in bed, with the rheumatism in your loins, the 
 stone in your bladder, and the gout in your feet : have but the habit 
 of virtue and you have the summum bonum. Much good may it 
 do you." f 
 
 On the other hand, the Hedonists exclude from the good, worth or 
 worthiness, the other of the two elements essential to its distinctive sig- 
 nificance. The Stoic excludes happiness, the element given empirically 
 in experience, and proposes the impossible virtue of a passionless Rea- 
 son, doing duty in stern apathy. The Hedonist excludes worth or 
 worthiness, the rational element given by reason, and turns the man out 
 to seek pleasure of whatever kind, sending him into the fields to feed 
 with the swine. 
 
 Christian ethics recognizes both elements in their true relation and 
 unity ; it welcomes the man with joy as a son of God to the love and 
 purity and blessedness of his father's house. 
 
 II. Whatever circumstances, conditions or possessions contribute to 
 the essential good already defined, are relative good. Such are food, 
 raiment, houses, lands, machinery, tools, positions of honor and authority, 
 and the like. These are useful. But utility determines nothing as to 
 the good ; for things may be useful for evil as well as for good. They 
 are good relatively, that is, when they contribute to the essential good. 
 Our Lord recognizes them as relatively good : " Your heavenly Father 
 knoweth that ye have need of all these things." The common sin of 
 man is setting the heart on the relative good and forgetting the essen- 
 tial. But it is no good except as related to the essential good ; and so 
 
 * Data of Ethics, p. Ill, chap, vij., 43. t Deontology, chap. iii. 
 
278 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 many a worldling by sorrowful experience has found it. When these 
 things cease to subserve the higher end they cease to be good and may 
 be cheerfully given up. 
 
 III. The essential evil is the contrary of the good. It must be the 
 distemper, perversion and vitiation of the being ; the discord or conflict 
 of the man with himself, with God and with the rational constitution 
 of the universe ; and the unhappinesa resulting. As the perfection of 
 the being begins with right moral character, so the vitiation of the being 
 begins with wrong moral character. As right character is primarily 
 and essentially love to God and man, so the wrong character is prima- 
 rily and essentially selfishness, or the choice of self as the supreme object 
 of service. 
 
 Then we properly say that sin is the essential evil, evil without quali- 
 fication, evil which can under no circumstances be good or the means 
 of good. It is evil and only evil continually. As a man continues to 
 act in sin he corrupts and disorders his being, and comes into conflict 
 with himself, with God and with the constitution of things. 
 
 All outward conditions, circumstances and possessions, all powers, 
 knowledge, discipline and culture of the man, when used for evil ends 
 become relatively evil. Hence it is of the essence of sin to change 
 what otherwise would be good -into evil as related to the sinner, over- 
 coming good with evil ; so that the law and grace of God, being resisted 
 and abused, are transformed for the sinner from good to evil, from a 
 blessing to a curse. All things work for evil to him. And, further, 
 what is evil the sinner chooses as good. He chooses it as good because 
 it gratifies his evil desires ; but it is to him as a w r orm that never dies and 
 a fire that is not quenched. He loses himself and is cast away, missing 
 all the legitimate ends for which a rational being should exist. 
 
 The existence of sinners implies the existence of a society or kingdom 
 of wickedness, recognized in the Bible as the kingdom of Satan or the 
 power of darkness. This kingdom is in direct antagonism to the king- 
 dom of God, and the kingdom of God is in antagonism to it. It is the 
 antagonism of love and selfishness. This power of evil confronts and 
 opposes the man who in the life of love is trying to attain good for 
 himself and all mankind. From it come on him temptation to sin, 
 power of delusion and deceit, hindrance and often frustration of his 
 beneficent plans, and sometimes violence despoiling him of his posses- 
 sions and inflicting on him torture, imprisonment or death. This power 
 of evil does not belong to the constitution of things, except so far as the 
 existence of finite free agents belongs to the constitution of things. It 
 comes into being, not by the act of God, but by the action of free agents 
 sinning against God, by their own choice putting themselves in antago- 
 nism to the truth and law, the wisdom and love of God, and by their 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 279 
 
 selfish characters and action doing what in them lies to hinder the 
 universal good, to frustrate all efforts to promote it, and so to 
 multiply evil. 
 
 Right character does not bring man into harmony with these powers 
 of evil, but into antagonism to them. Their opposition may retard the 
 progress of truth, righteousness and good-will ; but it cannot diminish 
 the good realized by the man himself who faithfully serves God in the 
 face of all injury. His very fidelity strengthens his right character, 
 helps to develop his being to its perfection, and multiplies the blessings 
 which come on him from God's grace. 
 
 Apparently there is also evil which comes on man from the course 
 of nature. The miasma which moves undetected by any sense, " the 
 pestilence that walketh in darkness," tornadoes, drought and floods, 
 untimely heat and cold, cosmic influences of many kinds bring evil 
 which comes alike on the righteous and the wicked and which no skill 
 of man is at present able to avert. Certainly the kingdom of nature 
 does not yet seem to be in harmony with God's kingdom of grace. Here 
 again it is true that cosmic agencies, however irresistible, have no power 
 to harm the righteous man himself, but only help on his development, 
 discipline him to wisdom and strength, and so aid him in realizing the 
 true good. Yet we may reasonably expect that a more immediate har- 
 mony of cosmic agencies with beneficent spiritual influences will be 
 realized. Man is appointed to be the lord of nature, and by his pro- 
 gress in knowledge and power he is subduing and civilizing the savage 
 earth, learning the laws of cosmic forces, and acquiring skill to protect 
 himself from their pernicious effects and even to control them and 
 subject them to his service. And we know not to what extent this 
 civilization and subjection of nature may be carried or whether there 
 will be any limit to its progress. Nor do we know what cosmic changes 
 await the universe in the future. The Bible, however, clearly inti- 
 mates, in its glimpses of the new heaven and the new earth wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness, a future harmony between the kingdom of nature 
 and the kingdom of grace. 
 
 IV. A man's good is put in his own power. The essential good and 
 the essential evil are primarily within the man and dependent on his 
 own choice and action. And this determines whether the action of out- 
 ward agencies on him will be beneficent or hurtful. If his character is 
 right, then he will so meet all outward influences as to advance his dis- 
 cipline, culture and education, and the development of his being to its 
 perfection and the realization of good. If he persists in a wrong char- 
 acter and action, all outward agencies in like manner accelerate the 
 perversion of his being and the realization of evil. It is so in nature. 
 The sunshine, as it issues from the sun, is full of blessing. But whether 
 
280 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 it brings good or evil depends on the receptivity of that on which it 
 falls. When it falls on cultivated ground full of good seeds it quickens 
 it into fruitfulness and beauty ; when it falls on a malarial swamp it 
 quickens it to pestilence and death ; when it falls on the barren sands 
 of Sahara they only glow in their barrenness with a fiercer heat. God 
 is the eternal fullness of wisdom and love overflowing with good into 
 the universe, pouring through all his works of nature and providence, 
 of law and grace, and free to every one who comes into harmony with 
 the wisdom and the love and so becomes capable of receiving the ever- 
 flowing good. A man's own free choice is the key which opens the 
 flood-gates and lets the divine goodness pour through his life and flood 
 it with blessing. 
 
 God himself is eternally blessed in the perfection of his own being ; 
 and he expresses his wisdom and love in finite things. Man, by coming 
 into harmony with God and with the divine wisdom and love which are 
 expressed in the universe and are the constitution 01 things, becomes a 
 participator in the true good. He is blessed in himself and receives 
 blessing from God and from all that exists. He is not the creator or 
 originator of good, but the participator in the good that is eternal. He 
 has the peace of God which passeth all understanding ; blessedness in 
 himself, in God and all God's works, like the blessedness of God him- 
 self that blessedness which is peculiar to rational persons in the per- 
 fection of their being, in the rightness of all their doings, and their 
 harmony with eternal wisdom and love. Evil, on the contrary, is not 
 eternal ; it is created or originated by finite rational beings ; it is sub- 
 jective, personal and local ; it is contingent on the action of finite wills, 
 and so dependent for its existence on individual sinners ; and in the 
 entire moral system sporadic and exceptional. 
 
 Here is an additional evidence that happiness alone is not "our 
 being's end and aim." For if so, the end would have been more surely 
 attained if man had been left to the guidance of instinct only ; for this 
 guidance, so far as it reaches, is unerring. The fact that man is 
 endowed with reason and free-will is proof that he exists for some 
 higher end than pleasure. In the light of reason he must with careful 
 consideration compare the sources of enjoyment and estimate their 
 worth; and by rejecting this 'and choosing that, by resisting and regu- 
 lating his impulses, by substituting for the eyil which he desires the 
 good which reason estimates to have worth, by overcoming evil with 
 good, he is to cultivate and develop himself, and in his own perfection 
 attain his true good and at the same time accomplish his true work of 
 love to others. 
 
 A rational being is always to be served, never to be acquired, pos- 
 sessed and used. He is always an end, never an instrument or tool. 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 281 
 
 This is accordant with the dignity of a rational being ; by realizing his 
 own ideals he finds his true good, and finds it within himself. Hence 
 it is involved in his personality that he is an end and not a means, a 
 person to be served, not a thing to be used. Hence he is never to be 
 possessed and used by others for their ends, but to be helped by them 
 in a service of righteousness and benevolence in accomplishing his per- 
 fection and well-being. Even Society in its organic capacity may not 
 use him for its own ends, but, while commanding his free and intelli- 
 gent service, must itself seek his good in rendering to him the service 
 of righteousness and good-will. For government is " a minister of God 
 for good " to the governed ; and the well-being of society can be 
 advanced only in proportion as the individuals composing it attain 
 their own well-being in their own personal perfection. 
 
 This general conception of the good is presented with poetic beauty 
 in the first Psalm. The blessedness of man is found within himself; it 
 is the perfection of his being and the right doing of his work ; it is 
 what he is and does rather than what he gets. Such a man is like a 
 tree planted by the rivers of water. It is immaterial to the growth of a 
 tree whether it stand in the garden of a hut or a palace. Of all that is 
 put on the ground around it only that is of service which it can take up 
 into itself and organize into its own substance. x) all that is external 
 contributes to the good of a man only so far as it contributes to his 
 growth and fruitfulness ; only so far as he takes it up into himself and 
 makes it help his own development and give scope and efficiency to his 
 work of love. The Psalm represents the tree as in a garden, watered 
 by artificial canals. So man's blessedness does not grow wild ; it is the 
 result of painstaking culture, appropriating God's sufficient grace, the 
 ever full and" flowing river of water of life. 
 
 \ 51. Merit and Demerit. 
 
 I. When a man chooses and acts in accordance with the truths, laws 
 and ideals of reason, we know by an intuition of reason that he is 
 worthy to have the true good. In this course of action and in seeking 
 these ends reason judges him worthy of the approval of himself and of 
 all rational beings ; worthy of the favor of God ; worthy of all the good 
 which the universe can give him ; worthy to be " heir of all things." 
 And this is true of every rational being thus living ; for by virtue of 
 his personality he has his end and his good in himself; all beings are to 
 minister to him in securing that end and good ; and when through the 
 man Christ Jesus he is lifted from condemnation and sin and brought 
 to put himself by his own free determination into harmony with God 
 and the constitution of things, then in very deed he becomes with Christ 
 " heir of all things," " heir of God and joint heir with Christ ; " then he 
 
282 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 " reigns with Christ," who, by lifting him out of his sins into harmony 
 with God, has in very deed "put all things in subjection under his 
 feet," has made the " angels minister to him as heir of salvation " and 
 " all things work together for his good." Every rational being who is 
 in harmony with God, the supreme Reason, is entitled by the preroga- 
 tive of reason to use all irrational things and to receive the willing ser- 
 vice of all rational beings in attaining his own perfection and good. 
 
 If, on the contrary, a man is living in antagonism to the truths, laws 
 and ideals of reason, reason pronounces him unworthy of the good, 
 worthy only of the evil. 
 
 The worthiness of good, thus adjudged by reason, is called merit and 
 the unworthiness of good is called demerit. The word desert is common 
 to both ; as one deserves well or ill. Merit is sometimes used to denote 
 the desert of evil ; as we say, a criminal merits his punishment. The 
 noun merit, however, is commonly used to denote the desert of good. 
 
 II. We necessarily believe that whoever chooses and acts in accord- 
 ance with the truths, laws and ideals of reason will certainly attain the 
 true good ; he will not merely merit it, but will attain it. Every one 
 who seeks will find. 
 
 1. This is involved in the fact that reason is supreme in the universe. 
 Under the benign government of perfect reason ordering the universe 
 in wisdom and love, every one whose ends and acts are accordant with 
 reason must be blessed. If the universe is so constituted and governed 
 that character and action perfectly wise and right may issue- in evil, and 
 character and action altogether unwise and wrong may issue in good, it 
 would contradict our deepest moral convictions, subvert all moral law 
 and confound all moral distinctions ; the principles, laws and ideals of 
 reason would have no reality, and the universe would be founded in 
 unreason. If we trust reason at all, we must trust it as supreme. So 
 trusting, we must believe that he who seeks ends which reason estimates 
 as having true worth, will find the true and highest good. This is the 
 rational optimism. 
 
 But, further, action in harmony with reason realizes the true good, 
 because it insures perfection of the being and the harmony of the being 
 with the constitution of things, and because the happiness peculiar to 
 these issues spontaneously ; and these constitute the essential good. 
 
 And thus all external conditions are made into relative good. If a 
 man experiences pain, loss, disappointment, persecution, death, whatever 
 evils may assail a man from without, by meeting them in wisdom and 
 love he develops himself towards perfection, and so transforms the evil 
 into good. Scientific lecturers picture an immense cylinder of ice mov- 
 ing with great velocity into the sun, and tell us that it would instantly 
 be not only melted but burned, contributing to increase the heat and 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE GOOD. 283 
 
 
 
 brightness of the sun. So all evils make the man, whose life is 
 in harmony with reason, wiser, purer and stronger, and so promote 
 his good. 
 
 2. Thus, even in this life, every right act receives immediately and 
 invariably its reward in securing to the agent his good or true well- 
 being, and every wrong act its punishment by bringing on the 
 agent evil. 
 
 3. The objection that the world is not governed by a righteous God, 
 because good and evil are distributed with no regard to character, is 
 founded only on a false conception of what the good is. It is wealth, 
 and honor among men, and the like which are distributed without 
 regard to character. But God is poor indeed if he has no good higher 
 and more essentially good than these. 
 
 " Wealth on the vilest often is bestowed 
 To show its vileness in the sight of God." 
 
 God rewards his servants with the durable riches of righteousness. He 
 forms them into his own likeness ; quickens them to love and serve like 
 Christ, and thus makes them capable of godlike joys and the blessedness 
 of the kingdom of heaven. That kingdom he that is not born of God 
 into the life of love cannot enter, cannot enjoy, and, for so our Lord 
 says, cannot even see. 
 
 4. The true good as estimated by reason is the highest good. 
 Although it is impossible empirically to determine what course of 
 action will yield the greatest intensity, continuity and duration of 
 enjoyment, yet we can determine it by the rational standard. Who- 
 ever follows implicitly the guidance of reason and conscience knows 
 that he is insuring his own highest good, even when for the time being 
 his action subjects him to privation and suffering. This is evident from 
 the whole course of the foregoing discussion. 
 
 52. The Feelings Pertaining to the Idea of the Good. 
 
 I. The feelings pertaining to the rational idea of the Good presup- 
 pose the idea. I am not speaking of enjoyment, which belongs also 
 with the natural emotions ; but of feelings pertaining to the rational 
 idea distinctively. We do not derive the rational idea of worth from 
 our feelings, but the feelings presuppose the idea and are occasioned by 
 it. This is analogous to the relation of the feelings to the other rational 
 ideas, and needs only to be mentioned. 
 
 II. There are two subdivisions of this class of feelings. 
 
 First, the motives and emotions of self-respect, the sentiments of 
 worthiness and un worthiness, of the noble and the ignoble, of honor and 
 
284 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 
 
 shame, the feeling of conscious dignity. Such feelings appear in scorn 
 of all that is base and mean, in sensitiveness to honor, in aspiration for 
 all that is noble. Paul gloried in the reproach and cross of Christ, 
 esteeming it honorable to suffer for the truth. 
 
 A second subdivision consists of prudential motives and emotions. 
 Man is so constituted that he desires happiness rather than misery, well- 
 being rather than its contrary, these being the only objects compared. 
 When in the light of reason he sees what his welfare truly consists in, 
 his conviction that it is the true good will lead him to wish for it, even 
 though, taking all that interests and attracts him into the account, he 
 does not choose it. This prudence is a motive to which appeal may 
 always be made even in the most sinful man, inducing him to seek his 
 true good. 
 
 This class of feelings is often called self-love ; self-respect, the feeling 
 belonging to the first subdivision, is the man's interest in his own dig- 
 nity and honor and pertains to worth, the rational element of the good. 
 Prudence, which constitutes the second subdivision, is the interest which 
 a man takes in his own happiness in the whole of his being. It per- 
 tains to the empirical element of the good. The two are manifestations 
 of self-love. 
 
 \ 53. Practical Importance in the Conduct of Life. 
 
 A correct knowledge of the good is essential to the right education 
 and progress both of the individual and of society. Man may forego 
 the gratification of a present desire because it is at the moment over- 
 powered by a stronger. But if this is all, he is living the life of im- 
 pulse, which is the life of a brute. In early infancy little higher than 
 this appears ; and the same reign of impulse is a prominent character- 
 istic of savages. Manhood reveals itself and begins its true develop- 
 ment only when man begins to control his desires by reason ; only when 
 from the darkness and mystery of his being the man emerges in the 
 majesty of reason upon the dark and stormy waves of passion, like Jesus 
 walking on the sea, and commands obedience. Progress both of the 
 individual and of society begins in learning with intelligent forethought 
 to forego the gratification of present impulse for future welfare. But 
 if the forethought has regard only to degree of enjoyment, no real im- 
 provement is insured ; for the sources of enjoyment are determined by 
 the subjective state of the man. If the sources of his enjoyment are 
 earthly, sensual, devilish, his quest of greater pleasure will only 
 strengthen his existing preferences ; his discoveries and inventions w r ill 
 only give new skill and power in seeking the same sordid ends, will 
 develop skill and power, but not well-being ; and the civilization result- 
 
FOURTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON : THE GOOD. 285 
 
 ing, where "wealth accumulates and men decay," will intensify and 
 multiply evil and not good. The progress of the individual or of society 
 towards real well-being is possible only as men discriminate among 
 objects of pursuit and sources of enjoyment, according to their true 
 worth, and so learn to vali3 and seek better things. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE ABSOLUTE: THE FIFTH ULTIMATE REALITY KNOWN 
 THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 
 
 I 54. The Absolute. 
 
 THE fifth ultimate reality known through Rational Intuition is the 
 Absolute ; and this is accordingly the fifth ultimate idea of the reason. 
 
 I. The Absolute is that which exists independent of anything prere- 
 quisite to its existence ; or, it is that which exists out of all necessary 
 relations. The Absolute is the Unconditioned. 
 
 II. The belief that Absolute Being must exist is a rational intuition 
 necessarily arising in the effort to complete the processes of thought in 
 any line of investigation. For example, in knowing what is caused we 
 necessarily believe that uncaused being must exist. If we admit the 
 reality of force or energy in the course of nature and believe that every 
 beginning or change of existence has a cause,' then we necessarily know 
 that there is a power which is not an effect, which persists in all changes, 
 and is the unconditioned ground of the entire series. Otherwise power 
 or force disappears, the course of nature ravels out, and all that is left 
 is empty antecedence and sequence without real power or energy. So 
 Spencer says : " The axiomatic truths of physical science unavoidably 
 postulate Absolute Being as their common basis. The persistence of 
 the universe is the persistence of that Unknown Cause, Power or Force 
 which is manifested to us through all phenomena. Such is the founda- 
 tion of any possible system of positive knowledge. Deeper than demon- 
 stration deeper even than definite cognition deep as the very nature 
 of the mind, is the postulate at which we have arrived. Its authority 
 transcends all other whatever ; for not only is it given hi the constitu- 
 tion of our own consciousness, but it is impossible to imagine a con- 
 sciousness so constituted as not to give it .... Thus the belief 
 which this datum constitutes has a higher warrant than any other 
 whatever." * Thus we are not shut up to determine between the Abso- 
 lute Being and an infinite series of finite causes, but between the Abso- 
 lute Being and any cause or power whatever. A series of causes is 
 
 * First Principles, 74, 76, 77, pp. 256, 258, 98. 
 286 
 
FIFTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE ABSOLUTE. 287 
 
 unthinkable, except as ultimately resting on an Absolute Cause or 
 Power. 
 
 The same is true in the sphere of rationality. The possibility of con- 
 cluding reasoning in an inference which gives knowledge, rests on uni- 
 versal truths regulative of all thinking. The validity of these universal 
 truths involves the existence of Reason unconditioned, universal and 
 supreme, the same everywhere and always. Mathematics is a pure 
 creation of the human mind resting on self-evident principles of reason. 
 If our mathematics is not true in all the stars and planets, our astronomy 
 is worthless. The same is true of all the universal principles which are 
 laws of thought. If they are not true everywhere and always our 
 science and all our reasoning give no knowledge ; the human mind is 
 constituted untrustworthy. Reason, then, must be universal and abso- 
 lute, unconditioned by any change of finite things, the same everywhere 
 and always. The alternative is not between the Absolute Reason and 
 the human, but between the Absolute Reason and no Reason or 
 rational knowledge. 
 
 Also, in extension in space, duration in time, or limitation in quan- 
 tity, we find our thought carrying us to the infinite. Finite extension, 
 duration and quantity must be thought as embosomed in the immensity, 
 eternity and plenitude of the infinite. 
 
 In our endeavors to know the manifold in the unity of an all-compre- 
 hending unity, we find it only as the universe is the manifestation of the 
 Absolute and Unconditioned One. 
 
 Thus in every line of thought the knowledge rises self-evident before 
 us that there must be an Absolute and Unconditioned Being. We pro- 
 perly recognize it as a primitive and universal truth, known in rational 
 intuition. The idea of Absolute Being and the belief of its existence 
 are in the background of human consciousness and at the foundation of 
 all knowledge through human thought. " A consciousness which has 
 got rid of the thought of absolute being would become a prey to endless 
 atomicism and dissolution." * The existence of Absolute Being under- 
 lies the possibility of all finite being, power, reasoning and rational 
 knowledge. 
 
 In this rational intuition a new sphere of reality is opened to human 
 intelligence. 
 
 III. We cannot know a priori what the Absolute Being is ; but, so 
 far as this knowledge is possible, only a posteriori, in knowing that it 
 accounts for the universe, including both man and nature. In the 
 rational intuition that Absolute Being exists, it is known as the ground 
 of the universe. The knowledge of being has been attained, as already 
 
 * Dorner, Christlichen Glaubenslehre, 18, 2 B. 
 
288 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 explained. This .intuition gives us knowledge that a being exists that 
 is absolute and- unconditioned; and by thought we know further that, 
 as the ultimate ground of the universe, the absolute must have all the 
 powers necessary to account for its existence ; as manifested or revealed 
 in the universe, the Absolute must be endowed with the powers which 
 can account for the existence and ongoing of the universe and which 
 thus are revealed in it. Hence the Absolute is the All-conditioning as 
 well as the Unconditioned. By rational intuition man knows that 
 absolute being exists ; his knowledge of what it is, is progressive with 
 his progressive knowledge of man and nature in the universe. 
 
 Kant objects that, though the idea of God is necessary to the Reason, 
 it has no content in consciousness. The foregoing remarks show that 
 we do have knowledge what God is as he reveals himself in the uni- 
 verse. I may add that the idea has content in consciousness through 
 the five ultimate ideas of the Reason. Kant admits that it has content 
 in consciousness through the practical reason, in the knowledge of right 
 and wrong. God speaks in our hearts in his moral law. But we now 
 see that God, the Absolute Reason, equally reveals himself in our con- 
 sciousness in the rational ideas of the True, the Perfect and the Good or 
 Worthy. Also, God reveals himself in our consciousness in our reli- 
 gious experience; especially in the experience of a Christian man, the 
 purest, loftiest and most comprehensive experience of God's gracious 
 revelation of himself. Even in the religiousness of ruder men who 
 know not Christ, God has " not left himself without witness." God acts 
 on men and they react upon his influences ; and thus they find him in 
 their own consciousness. They know him and the spiritual sphere by 
 this action and reaction, in a manner analogous to that in which they 
 know the world of sense. No Christian man will say that the idea of 
 God is an empty idea void of content in his own consciousness. He will 
 say, " I know him whom I have believed ; " not the idea of him or pro- 
 positions about him, but HIM. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, recognizing the belief of the existence of Absolute 
 Power as a primitive datum of consciousness and a priori to the indi- 
 vidual, would account for the belief as the result of the experience of 
 the human race, registered through innumerable generations in the 
 human organism and transmitted by heredity. If so, men must have 
 experienced the action of God on them through all generations, until 
 religious belief and worship have become constitutional and the idea of 
 an Absolute Being and the belief of his existence have become primi- 
 tive data of consciousness. 
 
55. The 
 I. The true absolute must be distinguished from fa 
 
 FIFTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF KEASON : THE^ ABSOLUTE. 289 
 
 DIVERSITY 
 
 assumed in the current objections to theism. These appear in various 
 forms. 
 
 Some forms of the pseudo-absolute originate in the attempt to know 
 what the absolute is a priori ; that is, by simply developing the words, 
 absolute, unconditioned, infinite. Then the idea of the absolute neces- 
 sarily remains void of content and negative ; it is not conditioned by. 
 dependence on any cause ; it is not limited in time, space or quantity ; 
 and there is no reality of which we predicate the unconditionateness Aid 
 the illimitation. 
 
 Other forms of the pseudo-absolute arise from attempting to deter- 
 mine empirically what the absolute is. The necessary result is that 
 some conception of the finite is mistaken for the absolute. Of these I 
 may mention two which have played important parts in the objections 
 to theism. 
 
 One is the idea of the absolute as " the ALL," the mathematical sum 
 total of all that is, the " omnitudo realitatis." It is supposed that the 
 absolute is to be found by adding together all finite things, until we 
 reach " the All." But " the All " thus found must always be itself finite. 
 
 The other is the idea that the absolute is the largest general notion 
 or logical concept. The greater the extent of a general notion the less 
 its content. A general notion including all reality in its extent would 
 have no content. It would have no peculiar quality by which it could 
 be distinguished from anything else ; it would be entirely indeterminate. 
 If we say that this is the general notion of being, then we merely hypos- 
 tasize the copula ; to affirm that anything is a being is then the weakest 
 and least significant .of affirmations ; anything is a being which can be 
 connected by the copula is with any predicate. Being then is entirely 
 indeterminate ; it is equal to nothing. And precisely this is what some 
 eminent philosophers mean by the Absolute. So Hamilton says that 
 the idea of the absolute is attained "only by thinking away every char- 
 acter by which the finite was conceived." We must, then, think away 
 all that we know of concrete being and its properties and powers ; and 
 what is left is the Absolute. This is very like the famous metaphysical 
 process of ascertaining what a swallow's nest in a clay-bank is, by think- 
 ing away the bank and leaving the hole. The Absolute would be a 
 logical general notion and the world-process would be a process of logic. 
 
 II. Many of the current objections against theism are founded on a 
 false idea of the absolute and from it derive all their force. 
 
 1. It is said that the absolute is "pure being'," it is "the thing in 
 itself;" it is "out of all relations." These are results of attempting to 
 19 
 
290 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ascertain a priori what the absolute is. The Absolute, the uncondi- 
 tioned, the infinite are adjectives and negatives. It is impossible by 
 developing them a priori to pass from the adjective to the substantive, 
 from the negative to the positive. We get only pure being which is 
 equal to nothing. But it has already been shown that being is known, 
 not merely as an abstract general noti6n, but as concrete reality ; that 
 in the rational intuition of the Absolute we already know what a being 
 is ; the knowledge of being is not given in the rational intuition, but 
 .only the necessary truth that a being must exist absolute or uncondi- 
 tioned. But in knowing being as absolute or unconditioned we do not 
 cetse to know it as being, endowed with all the essential powers of being, 
 and with all the powers essential to it as the ground and cause of the 
 universe. And so in opposition to Hamilton, J. S. Mill says : " Any- 
 thing carried to the infinite must have all the properties of the same 
 thing as finite, except those which depend on its finiteness." * It enters 
 then into the true idea of the absolute, not that it must exist out of all 
 relations, but only out of all necessary relations. It may be in relation 
 to a universe ; it is known to us as the ground and cause of the uni- 
 verse, but it is not dependent on it. The existence of the universe is 
 conditioned on the existence of God ; but the existence of God is not 
 conditioned on the existence of the universe. 
 
 2. There is, also, a class of objections founded on a false idea of the 
 absolute as the sum total of the universe. 
 
 It is objected that if the existence of reason in the universe proves 
 that God is spirit, the existence of matter in the universe equally proves 
 that God is matter. This objection derives its force from the error that 
 the absolute is the sum total of the finite. But the relation of the abso- 
 lute to the finite is not the mathematical relation of a total to its parts, 
 but it is a dynamical and rational relation. The true Absolute is a 
 power competent to account for the existence of matter dynamically 
 and rationally. The conclusion of the objector is not an inference from 
 the true idea of the Absolute ; on the contrary, it is incompatible with 
 it and contradictory to it. 
 
 The objection that evil must exist in the Absolute is founded on the 
 same erroneous idea. Says Hegel : " What kind of an Absolute Being 
 is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil 
 included ? " This implies that the absolute is the sum total of all 
 things, and therefore must include evil. This conclusion, also, is not 
 only not an inference from the true idea of the absolute, but it is con- 
 tradictory to it. If God for wise reasons gives existence to finite rational 
 beings in a moral system, they in their free agency may do wrong. Their 
 
 * Examination of Hamilton, Vol. I., 129. 
 
FIFTH ULTIMATE IDEA OF REASON: THE ABSOLUTE. 291 
 
 free action accounts for the fact of sin ; to account for it, it is not neces- 
 sary to infer that God is sinful, but only that for wise reasons he has 
 brought into being a rational and moral system consisting of rational 
 beings free to do right or to do wrong. 
 
 Mausel objects that " the distinction between the possible and the 
 actual can have no existence as regards the absolutely infinite ; for an 
 unrealized possibility is necessarily a relation and a limit." * This rests 
 on a pseudo-absolute as existing out of all relations, and also on a 
 pseudo-absolute empirically developed as the sum of all that is already 
 actually existent. These objections do not show us reason breaking 
 down in contradiction ; but only false philosophy befooling itself in 
 declaring that the finite is itself the infinite, and the conditioned itself 
 the unconditioned. 
 
 3. The agnostics object that the Absolute cannot be a personal being 
 because to predicate of it personality, is to limit it ; if the absolute is 
 personal, it must exclude the impersonal. The objection is of equal 
 force against predicating of the absolute any attribute whatever ; we 
 therefore cannot say that it exists, for being exists only in its qualities 
 and powers ; we cannot even say that it is absolute or unconditioned, 
 for that would distinguish it from the finite and conditioned, and so 
 would limit it. This objection is valid only of some form of the pseudo- 
 absolute. If the Absolute is " pure being," or " the All," as a sum total 
 of finites, or the largest general notion, then to predicate of it personality 
 would be incompatible with the idea of the absolute and would involve 
 limitation. But it is not incompatible with the true idea of the abso- 
 lute, and if predicated of it involves no limitation. 
 
 This objection is founded on the maxim, " Omnis determinatio nega- 
 tio est," or, "All definition limits." I have already shown that, w T hile 
 this maxim is true of mathematical quantities and logical general 
 notions, it is not true of concrete beings ; that of these the contrary is 
 true ; the more determinate or specific a being is by the increase or 
 multiplication of its powers, the greater, and not the less or more 
 limited, is the being. 
 
 56. Personality of the Absolute. 
 
 I. The Absolute may be a person. Reason and free-will are essen- 
 tial elements of personality. Will is Reason energizing ; Reason is 
 Power rational. Reason is in its essence universal and unchanging, 
 the same in all places and all time, unconditioned and all-conditioning. 
 Reason energizing is autonomic, self-directive, self-exertive, free. 
 Reason realizing its ideals in action is the all-perfect. It is ade- 
 
 Limits of Religious Thought, p. 76. 
 
292 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 quate to account for the existence of the universe and of all that is 
 in it. 
 
 II. The Absolute Being must be a person. Energizing Reason and 
 it alone, adequately accounts for all that is. The vindication of this 
 proposition requires the presentation of the reasons why we believe that 
 the personal God exists, and does not come within the design of this 
 book. It is therefore relegated to Natural Theology. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 g 57. Definition of Science. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC knowledge is distinguished from unscientific. Every 
 one recognizes the distinction ; but the attempts to define it have not 
 been satisfactory. This is due in part to the fact that the word 
 science is variously defined and used with a variety of meanings. It is 
 idle to debate whether a particular branch of knowledge is science or 
 not, so long as the disputants are not agreed as to the meaning of the 
 word. It is due also to a certain relativity essential in the idea of 
 science. 
 
 Scientific knowledge is not distinguished from unscientific knowledge 
 by being true or real knowledge. The unscientific knowledge that 
 stones fall when unsupported and that grass grows is as true and real 
 knowledge as is the scientific knowledge of the same facts. 
 
 Knowledge is distinguished as scientific by the aim and method of 
 the intellectual process by which it is attained. Its aim in respect to 
 any reality investigated is to attain knowledge definite, well substan- 
 tiated, exactly enunciated, complete, and systemized ; its method is to 
 regard all the true laws of thought, to investigate all sources of know- 
 ledge, and to use all the instruments and means which ingenuity has 
 contrived to give greater exactness and wider scope to knowledge. 
 The knowledge acquired by such a process is called scientific know- 
 ledge. The collected results of such investigations respecting any 
 particular class of realities, enunciated in propositions, proved, and 
 systemized constitute a particular science, as the science of Astronomy 
 or Chemistry. 
 
 Hence a science will realize in a greater or less degree the ends 
 aimed at by scientific thought. It will present knowledge having as 
 close an approximation to definiteness as man with his present informa- 
 tion and means of investigation can attain ; substantiated by convincing 
 evidence ; enunciated in exact terms in some sciences, as in chemistry 
 and botany, in a nomenclature peculiar to itself; complete, as far as 
 men can yet make it ; and presenting the object treated in its relation 
 to other things and to the universal system. 
 
 293 
 
294 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 It is not essential to science that it be at any given time complete or 
 free from error. It is called science in reference to the aims and 
 methods of the intellectual process of which it is the result, not in 
 reference to its own absolute correctness and completeness. The Chal- 
 deans and Egyptians had a science of astronomy as really as we. The 
 Ptolemaic System of astronomy was science as really as is the Coper- 
 nican. Otherwise no science exists so long as it is possible to attain 
 any new knowledge on the subject or to correct any errors. 
 
 It is not essential to constitute knowledge scientific, that it be the 
 knowledge of a law of nature. Comte held that knowledge is science 
 only when it enables us to foresee and foretell events ; that is, that 
 science is distinctively and essentially the knowledge of the laws of 
 nature. But if so history, geography, philology, anatomy, descriptive 
 geology, and all descriptive sciences, so-called, are not sciences. This 
 is admitted and they are therefore excluded from the hierarchy of 
 sciences by Comte, the most consistent of thinkers in boldly accepting 
 the legitimate consequences of his own principles. Also all knowledge 
 of particular facts would be excluded from science, as the knowledge 
 of the diameter of the earth or of Mars, the time of their rotation on 
 their axis and of their revolution around the sun ; also all colligation 
 of facts, as that by which we know that Cuba is an island and that>the 
 orbit of Mars is a particular geometrical figure. 
 
 ^58. The Three Grades of Science Defined. 
 
 There are three grades of scientific knowledge, by which the mind 
 must ascend in attaining knowledge of all that may be known re- 
 specting any object whatever. They may be named respectively, 
 Empirical, nationalistic or Noetic, and Theological Science ; or Em- 
 piricism, Rationalism, and Theology. 
 
 I. The first grade of scientific knowledge is Empirical Science. 
 This is the knowledge of particular realities either by observation or by 
 inference, of their unity in coexisting relations, of their co-ordination 
 in the invariable sequences of causal connection, and thus of their unity 
 in a system. 
 
 The first step in empirical science is gaining knowledge of individual 
 realities ; as an astronomer observes a transit of Venus, a chemist learns 
 by experiment the properties of a quantity of oxygen, an entomologist 
 observes an insect. The second step is learning how the object is in 
 unity with other things in coexistent relations. Of this, classification 
 by resemblance is an example. The third step is co-ordination in 
 uniform sequences. Here we obtain those general facts which are 
 called laws of nature, such as the law of gravitation, or of the conser- 
 vation and correlation of force. Lastly, empirical science, by the 
 
THE THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 295 
 
 knowledge of the unity of particular realities in their static or co- 
 existing relations, and of their co-ordination in uniform sequences in 
 their dynamic relations, attains to the knowledge of their unity in a 
 system ; for example, the unity of the sun and planets in the solar 
 system. 
 
 Empirical Science answers the question, what is the fact ? 
 
 There are two divisions of empirical science: Physical Science, or 
 the science of nature, founded on sense-perception ; and Psychology, or 
 the science of mind, founded on self-consciousness and the observation 
 and history of men. 
 
 II. The second grade of scientific knowledge is Noetic or Rationalis- 
 tic Science. This is founded on the four norms or standards of reason. 
 It is the scientific knowledge of the truths, laws, ideals, and ends of 
 Reason; of all the truths necessarily involved in them or inferable 
 from them ; and of all empirically known reality in its relation thereto. 
 Empirical science starts with the particular realities presented in sense- 
 perception or self-consciousness; even the realities not immediately 
 perceived but only inferred, are realities which are in their nature 
 perceptible, as the attracting of iron by a magnet which I have not 
 actually seen. Rationalistic science starts with the universal principles 
 known in rational intuition ; but it has already been shown that the 
 first principles of reason in themselves have no content and give no 
 knowledge ; and they are known in consciousness only by some occa- 
 sion in experience. Hence this second branch of science must find 
 its content in the realities empirically known ; it is the scientific know- 
 ledge of empirically known reality in its relation to the truths, laws, 
 ideals, and ends of Reason. Empirical science is the knowledge of 
 particular facts ; rationalistic science is the knowledge of the universal 
 and necessary in its relation to the particular and contingent, and of 
 the particular and contingent in its relation to the universal and the 
 necessary. Empirical science recognizes reality as it is known in sense- 
 perception and self-consciousness ; rationalistic science recognizes it as 
 it is known by the intuitive Reason. The fact that man is constituted 
 capable both of perceptive intuition and rational, is the basis of the 
 distinction of empirical science and noetic. The distinction necessarily 
 results from the constitution of man. 
 
 There is no name which, as actually used, denotes precisely this 
 second grade of science. It is often called Metaphysics. But this 
 word is used to denote the science of mind, as the opposite of Physics 
 or the science of nature. The science of mind is empirical as well as 
 noetic ; while the science of nature is noetic or rationalistic as well as 
 empirical. On the other hand metaphysics, as used, never includes 
 mathematics, which is indisputably a noetic science as I have here de- 
 
296 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 fined it. The word Metaphysics, as used, includes a part of empirical 
 science and excludes a part of noetic science ; and if employed as the 
 name of the latter would inevitably mislead. In the lack of an ade- 
 quate name in actual use, I have chosen the words, rationalistic or 
 noetic, as indicating the distinctive relation of this branch of science to 
 the principles and ideas of reason. 
 
 There are three divisions of noetic science, Mathematics, Logic and 
 Philosophy. 
 
 1. Mathematics is the science deduced from certain definitions and 
 axioms of reason pertaining exclusively to the forms of space and 
 number. Pure mathematics has scarcely any content of empirically 
 known reality other than the geometrical figures and arithmetical 
 and algebraical symbols necessary to aid the mind in thinking. Space 
 and number themselves are but forms of things. Mathematics is ap- 
 plied to measure whatever has measurable quantity. 
 
 J. S. Mill has made the desperate attempt to explain mathematics 
 as an empirical science.* In his Autobiography he says that " the 
 chief strength of this false philosophy" (which recognizes the validity 
 of first principles or rational intuitions) " in morals, politics, and re- 
 ligion lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence 
 of mathematics and the cognate branches of physical science. To 
 expel it from these is to drive it from its stronghold," (pp. 225, 226.) 
 And to accomplish this, he tells us, he wrote the discussion of mathe- 
 matical evidence in his Logic. Mr. Mill here admits that mathematics 
 properly ranks with metaphysics, and is one division of this second 
 grade of scientific knowledge. Prof. W. K. Clifford, in his Lectures 
 and Essays, goes farther than Mr. Mill, and denies both the exactness 
 and the certainty of the axioms of mathematics and its demonstrated 
 conclusions. The animus of both writers seems to be to get rid of the 
 argument from mathematics in support of the validity of rational in- 
 tuitions and of metaphysical science. No arguments, however, are 
 likely to convince men that they have learned the principles and de- 
 monstrated the conclusions of mathematics by observation and experi- 
 ment. Till they are thus convinced they must acknowledge the validity 
 of knowledge through the intuitions of reason and, of the noetic or 
 rationalistic sciences founded upon them. 
 
 2. Logic is the science of the laws of thought, deduced from certain 
 axioms of Reason pertaining to reflective thought. This science per- 
 tains to the forms and laws of thought rather than to its matter or 
 content. 
 
 3. The third division of rationalistic science is Philosophy. This is 
 
 * Logic. Book II., Chaps, v. and vi. 
 
THE THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 297 
 
 the interpretation and vindication of empirically known reality to the 
 Reason. What any reality is and in what relations it exists and acts 
 being empirically known, philosophy ascertains whether in existing 
 and acting thus it expresses any truth or thought of reason, conforms 
 to any rational law, realizes any rational ideal, or accomplishes any 
 good approved by reason as worthy. It inquires whether and how it 
 can be a component part of a rational system. Philosophy gives the 
 rationale of things ; it shows their reasonableness by showing their 
 accordance with the truth, laws, ideals and ends of reason. Man is 
 greater than the material universe, for he brings it and all that it 
 contains before his own Reason for criticism and judgment by the 
 rational standards of Truth, Right, Perfection and Good. If he finds 
 any alleged discovery or fact to be contradictory to these standards, or 
 to facts already known, he cannot accept it as true but remands it for 
 further investigation. 
 
 Philosophy is the pre-eminent noetic science. Comte assumes that 
 Metaphysics consists in attempting to find the essence of things and in 
 referring phenomena to some Abstract entity, as substance, cause, nature. 
 So he easily ridiculed it as adding nothing to knowledge, as Pope had 
 done before him in making the great philosopher Martinus Scriblerus 
 affirm that the essence of a smoke-jack is its meat-roasting quality, 
 and as Mr. Huxley does in suggesting aquosity as explaining the proper- 
 ties of water. A celebrated argument is cited that the mind must be 
 always thinking even in sleep, because it is its essence to think. Mr. 
 Mill, in his Essay on Comte, mentions the use of the word in such 
 phrases as Essence of Peppermint as a curious survival in popular lan- 
 guage of the old philosophical idea. 
 
 So far as the history of thought justifies these assertions, this was not 
 true philosophy, but an abuse and misapprehension of it. Kant him- 
 self has given occasion for this misrepresentation by teaching that 
 reality is the thing in itself which beneath all phenomena transcends 
 and eludes finite intelligence. But true philosophy rejects at the 
 threshold this transcendental skepticism which denies the reality of 
 knowledge whenever it is relative to the powers of an intelligent being, 
 and thus lays down as the first law r of thought that knowledge is im- 
 possible when there is a mind that knows. Philosophy wastes no 
 effort in trying to penetrate the sphere which may lie beyond the sphere 
 of human intelligence ; but it recognizes the fact that man is intelligent 
 and rational ; and its proper work is to bring all empirically known 
 reality into the light of reason, to criticise and judge it by rational 
 standards or norms, and thus to interpret and vindicate it to the reason 
 as reasonable. 
 
 It has been said that empirical science is the knowledge of phenom- 
 
298 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ena, while philosophy treats of causes. Since the causal judgment is 
 a first principle of reason, philosophy inquires into the cause of things 
 and seeks to know the Cosmos in a unity of causal dependence. But 
 the causal judgment is not the only principle of reason ; and we have 
 not only truths of reason, but also the ideas of the right, the perfect, 
 and the good. Philosophy, therefore, cannot be limited to an inquiry 
 for causes, but is the knowledge of empirically known reality in its re- 
 lations to the truths, laws, ideals and ends of reason. 
 
 Writers who deny rational intuition sometimes recognize a distinc- 
 tion between philosophy and empirical science. Lewes, in the first 
 edition of the Biographical History of Philosophy, defines philosophy : 
 " It is the systemization of the conceptions furnished by science. As 
 science is the systemization of the various generalities reached through 
 particulars, so philosophy is the systemization of the generalities of 
 generalities." But he limits it within his definition of knowledge as 
 " the indisputable conclusions of experience." John Fiske, in' his " Out- 
 lines of Cosmic Philosophy," distinguishes philosophy from empirical 
 science, which he calls " science " withoiit any adjective : it embraces a 
 wider range of thought ; the relations which it formulates are more 
 general, abstract and remote ; it presents a larger and more complex 
 organization of general truths into a coherent system. What they 
 here recognize as philosophy is simply empirical science in its wider 
 range. Hence by it they never lift themselves above the physical. 
 Like the ancient giants who piled up mountains in order to reach the 
 heavens, they stand, after all, on masses of matter ; they never attain 
 the spiritual either in man or God. But men can plant their feet on 
 the heights of the spiritual and the divine only as in the inception 
 of knowledge they find the spiritual and rational within themselves 
 and thus come to the philosophy which recognizes the universe as a 
 rational system in which reason is omnipresent and supreme, and 
 thence to theology in which the spirit of man comes into the presence 
 of God. 
 
 We have seen that empirical science by inference extends far beyond 
 observed facts ; and that the validity of its inferences depends on the 
 principles of reason. It is also true that the students of physical 
 science are now engaged in discussing questions which are essentially 
 metaphysical. Therefore it is not easy to draw the exact line of de- 
 marcation between empirical and philosophical science. They differ, 
 however, both in their method and their matter. They differ in 
 method : philosophy is not occupied with acquiring the knowledge of 
 particular realities by observation and inference, but in comparing 
 these already known realities and their factual relations with the norms 
 of reason. They differ in their matter : for when empirical science 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 299 
 
 has attained the largest unity of things in their merely factual static 
 and dynamic relations, philosophy brings it all into the light of reason 
 and reveals it as the expression of the archetypal thoughts of reason, 
 as pervaded by moral government and law, as progressively realizing 
 rational ideals, as accomplishing ends which reason approves as good, 
 and thus as existing in the unity of a rational system. In empirical 
 science man is the observer, in philosophical science he is the inter- 
 preter of nature. 
 
 Every empirical science is subject to this scrutiny and judgment of 
 reason, and therefore we properly speak of the philosophy of any science. 
 The results of all the empirical sciences are compared under the scru- 
 tiny and judgment of the reason, and discovered to exist in the har- 
 mony of a rational system ; hence Krug properly calls philosophy 
 Urwissenschaft, the fundamental science, or the science of sciences. 
 
 Since philosophy has relation to the four first norms or fundamental 
 ideas of reason, it must have four subdivisions : 
 
 Speculative Philosophy, founded on the norm or idea of the True ; 
 
 Ethical Philosophy, founded on the norm or idea of the Eight or 
 of Law ; 
 
 ^Esthetic Philosophy, founded on the idea or norm of the Perfect ; 
 
 Teleological Philosophy, founded on the norm or idea of the Good. 
 This last subdivision is commonly treated under Ethics. It would 
 greatly subserve clearness of ethical x thought if it were better under- 
 stood that this is a distinct subject from the Right. This has been so lit- 
 tle recognized as a distinct branch of philosophy that it has received no 
 distinct name. As it treats the question, " What ends are approved by 
 reason as worthy and as such as good ? " I have suggested for it the name, 
 Teleological philosophy. It leads to the question of final causes ; it dis- 
 cusses sociology, statesmanship, civil polity, political economy and what- 
 ever pertains to the progress of society and the promotion of its welfare. 
 
 III. The third grade of scientific knowledge is Theology. This is 
 the knowledge of God and of all realities of empirical and rationalistic 
 science in their relations to him and thus in their deepest relations and 
 unity with each other as a universe. As rationalistic science is founded 
 on the four first noumena, the True, the Right, the Perfect, and the 
 Good, theology is founded on the fifth ultimate reality known through 
 rational intuition, the Absolute. This is the highest stage and culmi- 
 nation of knowledge. In this we know all things in their unity as the 
 universe of God and thus know the true significance of the universe as 
 grounded in Reason, expressing archetypal truth, accordant with rational 
 law, progressive towards ideal perfection, and realizing the true good. 
 
 IV. The mind must ascend by each of the three grades in order to 
 know all that may be known of any object whatever. The objects of 
 
300 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 human knowledge are properly classed in three great classes, Nature, 
 Man and God. But we are not here classifying the objects of know- 
 ledge but are distinguishing the necessary grades or stages of knowledge 
 respecting any object. In investigating any object in nature the student 
 must first learn empirically what it is and what are its factual static 
 and dynamic relations ; he must know it next noetically in its rational 
 or noetic relations to the truths, laws, ideals and ends of reason ; lastly, 
 he must know it theologically as a component part of the rational and 
 universal system which expresses the archetypal thoughts of the Supreme 
 Reason, that is, of God. The mind must ascend through the same 
 grades in attaining complete and true knowledge of man. Empirical 
 knowledge of God is of course impossible ; but a scientific knowledge 
 of God can be attained only by passing through the empirical and 
 rationalistic knowledge of the universe to the knowledge of God in 
 which alone the consummation and unity of all knowledge are attained. 
 Thus from a pebble up to God the mind can attain all that it is possible 
 for it to know of any object only by the three grades of knowledge, 
 the empirical, the noetic, and the theological. 
 
 V. Knowledge in each of the three grades is science, in the true 
 sense of the word, and the exclusive appropriation of the word to em- 
 pirical science is unjustifiable. I have already explained what I regard 
 as the true meaning of the word science. If this is the true meaning, 
 then it is indisputable that knowledge in each of the three grades is 
 science. The question is often asked whether theology is a science. 
 Certainly theology is not empirical science ; still less is it merely the 
 empirical science of nature. But in the true meaning of the word 
 theology is science. 
 
 Students of the physical sciences have accustomed themselves of late 
 to limit the word science exclusively to empirical science, and even, in 
 many cases, to the empirical grade of physical science. Thus Prof. 
 Simon Newcomb, in his address before the American Scientific Asso- 
 ciation in 1878, said: "Science concerns itself only with phenomena 
 and the relations which connect them, and does not take account of 
 any question which does not in some way admit of being brought to 
 the test of observation." This, he says, is " fundamental in the history 
 of modern science." Even so considerate and philosophical a writer 
 as Janet says : " Doubtless philosophical thought mingles always more 
 or less with science, especially in the sphere of organized being ; but 
 science rightly strives to disengage itself more and more from it, and 
 to reduce the problem to relations capable of being determined by 
 experience."* This is a legitimate characteristic and aim of empirical 
 
 * Final Causes : Translation, p. 117. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 3Q1 
 
 science, but it has no right to appropriate to itself exclusively the 
 name science and to distinguish itself as science from philosophy and 
 theology. This abuse of the word is, however, becoming common. 
 The three grades are habitually designated as science, philosophy, 
 and theology, implying that the two latter are not science. There 
 is a mighty power in words. And it is an unworthy artifice for the 
 students of physical science to appropriate to their own branch of study 
 the name science and to themselves the name scientists. They can 
 justify this only by reverting to the complete Positivism of Comte, and 
 avowing and maintaining that knowledge is limited to the observations 
 made by the senses. But if they do this, they must renounce the im- 
 portant part of their own sciences known by inferences depending for 
 their validity on rational intuitions, and must abandon as utterly un- 
 scientific the questions which now most occupy public attention in the 
 annual meetings both of the British and the American Scientific Asso- 
 ciations. They must also exclude from science mathematics and logic 
 as well as philosophy and theology. And in fact Prof. Newcomb's 
 definition does equally exclude them all. 
 
 g 59. Proof of the Doctrine. 
 
 I. The three grades of scientific knowledge are necessary from the 
 constitution of the human mind. 
 
 1. Since knowledge begins in presentative intuition and as such is 
 tta knowledge of particular realities, scientific knowledge must begin 
 as empirical science. Man cannot think till he has realities known as 
 facts to think about. The first step in science must be to attain pre- 
 cise knowledge of particular facts and their factual relations. This is 
 empirical science. In it the investigator aims merely to clear around 
 himself an area in which he can see every object distinctly and attain 
 a definite knowledge of it. While he depends on noetic principles for 
 the validity of the inferences by which he extends his knowledge to 
 facts beyond his immediate observation, yet the knowledge obtained 
 from whatever source is simply the knowledge of particular realities and 
 the factual relations in which they coexist or are co-ordinated in inva- 
 riable sequences. Empirical science no more takes cognizance of 
 God than a mechanic investigating a watch takes cognizance of the 
 man who made it. It asks no questions whether or not the observed 
 realities express rational truths, conform to rational law, realize ra- 
 tional ideas, or accomplish rational ends. The aim of the investi- 
 gator is to clear the area from all obscurity, to divest it of all coloring 
 of his own preconceived ideas, and clearly to apprehend all the reali- 
 ties factually in it and open to clear and definite knowledge, and 
 nothing else. This is the real and legitimate sphere of empirical 
 
302 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 science ; and it is perfectly legitimate for its students to affirm that it 
 takes no cognizance of any question of theology or philosophy. Their 
 error and offence lie in their claim that empirical science is the only 
 science, and in thus denying that the realities recognized in philosophy 
 and theology are objects of human knowledge. 
 
 2. Knowledge originates as at once sense-perception and self-con- 
 sciousness ; thus in its very inception it is knowledge of the phenomena 
 of nature and mind, and necessitates the investigation and certifies 
 the possibility of knowledge in both spheres. Accordingly empirical 
 science is the science both of nature and of mind. On the one hand 
 is the perception of outward objects, on the other the consciousness of 
 self; on the one hand the sphere of matter and force, on the other 
 the sphere of conscious rationality and of voluntary and free pow r er. 
 The distinction between these never has been and never can be ob- 
 literated; the facts remain forever the data of two distinct spheres 
 of thought. The distinction inheres in the very essence of human 
 knowledge and comes to light in its very inception. Once having en- 
 tered these two spheres of thought the mind must compare them and 
 find their unity and harmony. This comparison of the physical and 
 the mental leads necessarily to philosophy and ultimately to theology. 
 This can be prevented only by denying with Comte that self-conscious- 
 ness is a source of knowledge. For self-consciousness is a door opening 
 into rationalistic science, and so long as it stands open human thought 
 will push in to philosophy and to theology. 
 
 3. The fact that the mind is constituted with the power of rational 
 intuition makes these three grades of scientific knowledge inevitable. 
 This fact has already been fully established. Whoever admits it must 
 admit the reality of rationalistic and theological, as well as of empirical 
 science. The knowledge of the fundamental realities, the True, the 
 Right, the Perfect and the Good, is the basis of rationalistic science. 
 The knowledge of the fundamental reality, the Absolute, is the basis of 
 theological science. 
 
 II. A second proof of the reality of these three grades of scientific 
 knowledge is the common recognition of them in the history of human 
 thought. 
 
 They are recognized in common life. Every one, learned or un- 
 learned, talks metaphysics, usually, as M. Jourdain talked prose all his 
 life, without knowing it. Whewell says: "We often hear persons 
 declare that they have no esteem for metaphysics and intend to shun 
 all metaphysical reasoning ; and this is usually the prelude to some 
 very bad metaphysical reasoning." * 
 
 * History of Moral Philosophy. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 3Q3 
 
 Empiricists, who set out to exclude all knowledge except of phe- 
 nomena, find themselves obliged to use the principles of reason, and 
 continually slide into the discussion of both philosophical and theological 
 questions. When they speak of body, or matter, or force, they are as 
 metaphysical as the philosopher when he speaks of mind. Nature is 
 traversed by Keason, and therefore physics must use metaphysics. 
 
 The conflicts of these types of thought and the discussions of their 
 respective claims through all ages, show the persistent power which 
 each has over the human mind. 
 
 Any attempt to dispossess one of them of its place produces a sort of 
 convulsion in the world of thought and issues in agnosticism. Great 
 systems of Materialism or Sensationalism, on the one hand, and of 
 Idealism, on the other, have arisen ; but the avenger of the excluded 
 knowledge always comes in the shape of agnosticism or universal skep- 
 ticism, and destroys knowledge altogether. Over and over it has been 
 demonstrated that the attempt to hold one of these grades as the whole 
 of knowledge involves universal skepticism. Even the most pronounced 
 advocates of the theory that all knowledge is from the senses, find the 
 need of philosophy to supplement empiricism. Says Haeckel : " The 
 strong edifice of true monistic science, or, what is the same thing, the 
 science of nature, exists only by the closest interaction and the recip- 
 rocal penetration of philosophy and empirical knowledge. The lament- 
 able estrangement between science and philosophy, and the rude empi- 
 ricism which is nowadays unfortunately praised by most naturalists as 
 Natural Science, have given rise to those strange freaks of the under-' 
 standing, to those gross insults against elementary logic, and to that 
 incapacity of forming the simplest conclusions, which one may meet 
 with any day in all branches of science." * Although Prof. Haeckel's 
 theory of knowledge prevents him and others who hold the same from 
 attaining an adequate conception of what philosophy is, yet in their 
 recognition of it we have their testimony to the impossibility of com- 
 pleting scientific knowledge in mere empiricism and the necessity of a 
 noetic science that transcends it. 
 
 The threefold distinction has been recognized by profound thinkers in 
 all ages. Lord Bacon, for example, recognizes three grades of know- 
 ledge. Of these he says that to the devout " they are as the three acclama- 
 tions, Holy, Holy, Holy: holy in the description or dilatation of his 
 works, holy in the concatenation of them, and holy in the union of them 
 in a perpetual and .uniform law." His threefold division of knowledge 
 is not in form the same with that which has been here presented ; but 
 in his discussion of it in various places he explicitly recognizes as real 
 
 * History of Creation, Translation, Vol. II., pp. 349, 350. 
 
304 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 knowledge and legitimate spheres of investigation each of the three 
 grades of knowledge here set forth. Lord Bacon is constantly cited as 
 denying that final causes are within the scope of human knowledge. 
 But his famous remark that final causes are like vestal virgins, conse- 
 crated to religion and therefore barren, was made by him with exclusive 
 reference to physical science. It is continually quoted out of its con- 
 , nection, so as to misrepresent his meaning. Whoever will examine his 
 discussions of the scope and departments of human knowledge will see 
 that, while he denies that the study of final causes belongs in physical 
 science and affirms that the study of them as physical science has hin- 
 dered scientific progress, he also recognizes metaphysics as an additional 
 sphere of human knowledge and includes in it the knowledge of final 
 causes as real knowledge and the study of them as a legitimate branch 
 of inquiry. * > To those who misrepresent him, we commend his own 
 words : " Let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied 
 moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too 
 well studied in the book of God's word or the book of God's works, 
 divinity or philosophy, but rather let men endeavor an endless progress 
 or proficiency in both ; only let men beware that they apply both to 
 charity and not to swelling, and, again, that they do not unwisely mingle 
 or confound these learnings together."! 
 
 III. A third proof of the reality of the three grades of scientific 
 knowledge is in the fact that they are reciprocally dependent and that 
 each is necessary for the completion of the knowledge of any object. 
 
 \ 6O. The Harmony of Empirical, Rationalistic and 
 Theological Science. 
 
 Empirical, Rationalistic or Noetic, and Theological Science are recip- 
 rocally dependent and complemental, and therefore necessarily in 
 harmony. 
 
 I. Science in each lower grade assumes and depends on the princi- 
 ples of the higher. 
 
 1. Empirical science assumes and depends on the intuitions of reason 
 which are the first principles of rational science. It depends on them 
 for the certainty of its knowledge by observation and experiments, the 
 conclusiveness of its inductions, deductions and verifications, and for the 
 laws which regulate all thought. It cannot verify its own first princi- 
 ples ; it accepts them from a higher source of knowledge. Physical 
 science depends on Mathematics, which itself is purely a rationalistic 
 or noetic science. Physical science is ontological ; it has passed away 
 
 * Advancement of Learning, B. II. ; De Augmentis, B. III. 
 f Advancement of Learning, B. I. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 3Q5 
 
 from the Positivism of Comte, who recognized only phenomena and 
 motion and denied all knowledge of matter and force, and concerns 
 itself with matter and forces, with atoms, molecules, and ethers. It 
 assumes that the problem of ontology is solved and that ontological 
 knowledge, the knowledge of being and force as distinguished from the 
 knowledge of phenomena and motion, is actually attained. Thus at 
 every step it rests on the principles of rationalistic or noetic science. 
 If rational intuitions are not valid the whole fabric of empirical science 
 dissolves. 
 
 2, Noetic Science in recognizing the first principles of reason as 
 universal and necessary assumes the existence and supremacy of the 
 universal and absolute Reason, which is the first principle of theology. 
 Noetic science has its own principles of reason and attains from 
 them its own norms, the ultimate ideas of the true, the right, the 
 perfect and the good, and develops them in mathematics, logic and 
 philosophy. Yet it rests on the assumption that Reason is supreme, 
 universal, unconditioned and absolute, and thus itself derives the 
 deepest principles of human thought from beyond and above itself, 
 from the sphere of theology. 
 
 3. Theology contains its fundamental principle within itself. The 
 principle that reason is supreme, universal and absolute is the deepest 
 foundation of human thought, its truth is implied in the reality of 
 every kind of human knowledge, and knowledge, in whatever direction 
 it is pushed, must ultimately rest on this foundation. If reason is not 
 absolute and supreme, no knowledge, theological, noetic or empirical 
 exists. Here is the ultimate goal and rest of the human intelligence. 
 Every attempt to project thought behind the absolute Being issues in 
 mere negations, which are symbols of the cessation of thought. 
 
 II. Science in each higher grade rests on the lower for truths and 
 facts which give it content. 
 
 1. Noetic or rationalistic science depends on the empirical for its 
 content. If there were no empirically known facts and their factual 
 coexistent and co-ordinated relations, there would be nothing to which 
 to apply rational principles or about which to ask philosophical ques- 
 tions. Rational principles advance us in knowledge only as they are 
 applied to- ascertained facts. They are the wings of the soul ; but un- 
 availing for flight towards the source of light without the atmosphere 
 of empirically known reality. Empirical science itself, as we have 
 seen, passes beyond positivism or phenomenalism to ontological know- 
 ledge. 
 
 It must be added that by recognizing the dependence of philosophy 
 on empirically ascertained facts, the philosophical student obtains a 
 valuable and indispensable discipline in the spirit and methods of 
 20 
 
30G THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 empirical science, and learns carefulness and thoroughness in investi- 
 gation, steadfastness in adhering to facts, sobriety in speculation and 
 hypothesis, cautiousness in reasoning and in drawing conclusions. Phil- 
 osophy, then, must use the facts ascertained by empirical science ; be- 
 cause, otherwise, it is void of content and reality, and because discipline 
 in the empirical spirit and method is important to the safety and so- 
 briety of its reasonings. Without these in the study of philosophy, to 
 use the language of Milton, more vigorous than elegant, we are " de- 
 luded with ragged notions and brabblements and dragged to an asinine 
 feast of sow-thistles and brambles." 
 
 This is set forth by Lord Bacon in the simile of the spider, ant and 
 bee : " Those who have treated of the sciences have been either em- 
 pirical or dogmatical. The former, like ants, only heap and use their 
 store ; the latter, like spiders, spin out of themselves their web. The 
 bee, a mean between the two, extracts matter from the flowers of the 
 garden and the field, but elaborates and fashions it by her own efforts. 
 The true labor of philosophy resembles hers ; for it neither relies en- 
 tirely nor principally on powers of the mind, nor yet lays up in memory 
 the matter afforded by the experiments of natural history and me- 
 chanics in their raw state, but changes and elaborates them in the 
 understanding. We have good reason, therefore, to derive hope from 
 a closer and purer alliance of these faculties (the experimental and 
 the rational), than has yet been attempted."* 
 
 The error of the mediaeval philosophy was the neglect of this de- 
 pendence of philosophy on facts, and the attempt to educe knowledge 
 too exclusively from a priori principles and logical forms of thought. 
 The result was a jargon of universals and particulars, of essence and 
 accidents, of entities and quiddities, of Petreities and Johannities which 
 hindered philosophical science quite as much as empirical, and served 
 no useful purpose but to illustrate the infinite divisibility of thought 
 and to warn all succeeding scholars against the divorce of rational 
 from empirical science. Equally fruitless must be any attempt to de- 
 velop from a priori principles alone, any rational science, whether 
 psychology, cosmology, ethics, politics, or theology. It tends to sub- 
 stitute abstract notions for concrete realities, words for things; it 
 impairs the capacity to discriminate between the important and the 
 unimportant, the actual and the verbal, and. degenerates into the dis- 
 cussion of puerile questions and disputes about words. 
 
 The discussion of such questions became a common characteristic of 
 decaying literature in the decline of the Roman Empire. It was also 
 common in the Middle Ages and contributed to the " word- weariness " 
 
 * Novum Organum, B. I., 95. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 307 
 
 which prepared men to welcome the Renaissance and the Reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr. Mill, in his Essay on Comte says : " No one, unless entirely ig- 
 norant of the history of thought, will deny that the mistaking of ab- 
 stractions for realities pervaded speculation all through antiquity and 
 the Middle Ages."" Mr. Mill himself is the one whom this sweeping 
 and unwarranted assertion convicts of " ignorance of the history of 
 thought," His assertion is refuted by recent observations which have 
 demonstrated the surprising accuracy of Aristotle as a scientific ob- 
 server, and by the more careful investigation of the progress of em- 
 pirical science among the Greeks and the Egyptians, and by the re- 
 markable anticipations of modern discoveries made by their meta- 
 physical philosophers. It is, however, an example of unwarranted 
 assertions and hasty generalizations respecting the history of human 
 thought which are too common with those who are trying to exclude 
 noetic or metaphysical science and theology from the sphere of human 
 knowledge. Even in the Middle Ages there were vigorous thinkers in 
 empirical, rationalistic and theological science who rendered valuable 
 service in promoting intellectual progress and culture. If " word- 
 weariness " prepared for the Reformation, yet what had engendered the 
 " word-weariness " and given the impulse to the investigation of reality ? 
 what but the necessity of the three grades of knowledge and the labors 
 of vigorous thinkers in them during those dark ages ? It must be 
 remembered that the Renaissance and the Reformation were them- 
 selves the legitimate offspring of the intellectual and religious life 
 which preceded them, the products of the spiritual forces of the 
 Middle Ages themselves. It is very easy by hasty generalization to 
 give a sweeping description of the life of an age by one characteristic. 
 But it is as superficial as it is easy. In all ages of civilization the 
 human mind will be found exhibiting the same constitution and think- 
 ing under the same laws of thought. Men are always liable to mis- 
 takes; peculiar circumstances may give peculiar prominence to one 
 grade of scientific thought in one age and to another in another. 
 But it will be found in every civilized age or individual that the three 
 grades of scientific thought coexist, that they are not each exclusive 
 of the others, but each complemental to the others. Scientific know- 
 ledge is a seamless garment ; the threads are distinguishable but woven 
 together ; they can be separated only by a rent ; they can be completely 
 parted only by disintegrating the whole texture. 
 
 2. Theology depends on noetic and empirical science to give the 
 occasion on which the idea of Absolute Being arises, and to give con- 
 
 * As originally published in Westminster Review, April, 1865. 
 
308 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 tent to the idea. Without the facts and truths of empirical and 
 rationalistic science the human mind would never attain the idea of 
 the universe nor ask how it is to be accounted for. Without these, if 
 the idea of the Absolute should arise, it would remain an unknowable 
 something without content. Theology, then, must not be divorced 
 from empirical and noetic science ; it is in vain to attempt to develop 
 it immediately from the a priori idea of absolute being. The attempt 
 to do so has vitiated not a little of modern theological thought ; notably 
 the Pantheistic philosophies of Germany and the agnosticism of Ham- 
 ilton. We learn what God is, not by an immediate development of the 
 a priori idea of the absolute, but by ascertaining through empirical 
 and philosophical science, what the universe is, to account for which 
 the existence of God is necessary, and what the Absolute Being must 
 be who is adequate to account for it. 
 
 A criticism of the late Dr. Draper says : " In discussing human his- 
 tory and religion, he began with the tangible and physical facts, while 
 theology, which he disliked cordially, begins and proceeds very differ- 
 ently. But there is reason to believe that Dr. Draper's method, which 
 he intended to be severely inductive, will eventually control the whole 
 domain of ethics, theology and metaphysics." The critic utters a very 
 common misrepresentation of theology. Theology begins, as all science 
 must, with empirical knowledge of facts. But it is empirical know- 
 ledge of one's self as well as of the outward world, of thought, intel- 
 ligence, will, virtue known in self-consciousness, as well as of " tangible 
 and physical facts ; " and from this the mind proceeds to mathematics, 
 logic, philosophy and theology. The false method of procedure is that 
 commended by the critic, in which knowledge begins as empirical, but 
 is never able to pass beyond the empiricism, and remains shut up in 
 it and that an empiricism which willfully refuses to take notice of one 
 half of the facts given in perceptive intuition. 
 
 3. Empirical science depends for its content on no grade of scien- 
 tific knowledge below itself. It derives its content immediately from 
 sense-perception and self-consciousness. From these it receives the raw 
 material of knowledge and takes the first step in elaborating this raw 
 material into science. While noetic and theological science have a 
 certain independence as to their principles, but depend on empirical 
 science for their content of facts, empirical science has a certain inde- 
 pendence as to its content of facts but depends on rationalistic or noetic 
 and theological science for its principles. While in the constitution 
 of the mind empirical science has its root in the presentative intuition, 
 noetic and theological science have their root in the rational intuition. 
 
 III. Science in its lower grades raises questions which only science 
 in a higher grade can answer. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 399 
 
 1. Empirical Science ascertains particular realities and their factual 
 static and dynamic relations, but transmits its unanswered questions 
 to rationalistic science. Its area of reality it clears of obscurity and 
 presents definite and clear in the light of factual knowledge. But 
 in these empirical investigations a cloud of questions arise which em- 
 pirical science cannot answer ; they rise before the steps of the ex- 
 plorer like a flight of grasshoppers, only to settle a little further on. 
 Empirical science clears its area of mystery by putting away these 
 questions not by answering them. It does not issue in complete know- 
 ledge but in unsolved problems and unanswered questions. In the 
 study of empirical science all the questions of metaphysics thrust 
 themselves on the inquirer and crowd him up to a higher point of view 
 from which he can see the particular in its relation to the universal. 
 In these questions we are forced to see that the sphere of human intel- 
 ligence outreaches the sphere of empirical science and encompasses it ; 
 in them empirical science verifies the words of H. Spencer, that " there 
 must exist some principle which, as the basis of science, cannot be ex- 
 plained by science." That which is held in the cup cannot contain the 
 cup. In studying empirical science, the observer necessarily comes 
 in sight of a reality transcending and encompassing the observed phe- 
 nomena, the existence of which he must acknowledge, but which em- 
 pirical science cannot fathom nor comprehend a sphere of intelli- 
 gence encompassing empirical science as the sea encompasses the 
 land. Travel within the sphere of empirical science in whatever di- 
 rection you will, sooner or later you come in sight of that all compre- 
 hending ocean. 
 
 " So in a season of calm weather, 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our souls catch sight of the immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither; 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 
 
 2. Philosophy solves these unsolved problems and answers these un- 
 answered questions of empirical science ; it comprehends it, its facts 
 and its factual classes and laws, in their relations to the truths, laws, 
 ideals and ends of reason. This office of philosophy Lange recognizes : 
 " If the men of science voluntarily come back to philosophy without 
 departing from the strictness of scientific method, ... if philosophy, 
 instead of being an extreme, rather forms a link between the most 
 various sciences and effects a fruitful interchange of positive results, 
 then we will admit that she is capable once more of the great function 
 of holding up to the age the torch of criticism, of gathering the rays of 
 
310 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 knowledge into a focus, and of advancing and regulating the revolutions 
 in the historical progress of thought." * 
 
 But philosophy, while it answers the questions and solves the pro- 
 blems of empirical science, itself starts new problems and questions 
 which it cannot solve. For the solution of these problems and questions 
 philosophy must pass onwards to theology. Philosophy can interpret 
 empirical science and give the rationale of .its phenomena ; but, like 
 empirical science, it must rest on a principle which, as the basis of 
 philosophy, philosophy cannot explain. 
 
 That principle is the existence of the supreme and absolute Reason, 
 which, as ever energizing in the universe, we call God. Here the intel- 
 lect reaches the highest summit of thought and rests. Not that we have 
 cleared away all mystery. The mystery of God remains. We cannot 
 comprehend God because by the knowledge of him we comprehend all 
 else. But we have attained a position from which we can clearly see 
 all that lies beneath. And of God we know that the reality of his 
 being is assured, because without it science is meaningless, philosophy 
 is impossible and knowledge vanishes like a dream. His absolute 
 rationality, power and love are assured, because these are the positive 
 ideas of God by which we find the unity, the significance and the 
 reality of all that is. Our knowledge of -him is positive, though it is 
 limited. Thought cannot comprehend God, but by Him it comprehends 
 the universe. Without God the discoveries of physical science only 
 make the universe the more inexplicable ; they reveal its physical 
 greatness and complexity, but they reveal it expressing no rational 
 thought, accomplishing no rational end, existing only as the abode of 
 the dying and a mausoleum of the dead, or as an ocean of heaving 
 forces producing only bubbles that vanish as soon as they are formed. 
 But when we know God we see in the universe reason supreme and 
 universal; almighty power obedient to the supreme reason, ever 
 expressing the thoughts of perfect wisdom in acts of perfect love ; a 
 rational and moral system to which the system of nature is subordinate 
 and in which the ends of righteousness and benevolence are progress- 
 ively realized forever ; rationality ultimate, all-pervading, all-control- 
 ling, expressing itself in all created things. God is the greatest of 
 mysteries and the clearing of all other mysteries. The darkness and 
 clouds about his throne are gathered from the face of the universe, 
 leaving it in light. Deny God, and the darkness and clouds spread 
 again over the face of the universe. 
 
 Thus science in its lower grades goes to school to theology, carrying 
 the hard questions and unsolved problems which transcend its sphere 
 
 * Geschichte des Materialismus, B. II., sect. 2, chap. 1, note A. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 31 1 
 
 to theology to explain. Theology is the science of sciences, the philos- 
 ophy of philosophies. AJ Lord Bacon says : " Another error ... is 
 that after the distribution of the particular arts and sciences, men have 
 abandoned universality or prima philosophia. This cannot but .... 
 stop all progression. For no perfect discovery can be made on an exact 
 flat or level ; neither is it possible to discover the more remote or deeper 
 parts of any science, if you stand but on the level of the same science 
 and ascend not to a higher science." * 
 
 IV. The largest unity which science in a lower grade attains is 
 incomplete and finds its completion in a higher grade. In transforming 
 spontaneous knowledge into reflective, thought necessarily culminates 
 in knowing the manifold of reality in unity. In this, empirical science 
 culminates. The unities at first found are small and partial. But with 
 every advancement of knowledge they comprehend a wider range of 
 reality. Man comes to know the earth, the solar system, the sun and 
 stars themselves as a system. He knows general laws of wider and 
 wider comprehensiveness till he has come to the laws of gravitation and 
 of the conservation and correlation of forces. He gains the idea of the 
 Cosmos, or system of nature. How immense the labor of human 
 thought and the progress of human knowledge before even the idea of a 
 Cosmos was possible ! This is the largest unity attainable by physical 
 science ; and this unity it cannot attain except by the mathematical and 
 philosophical principles of noetic science ; nor is it an all-comprehending 
 unity, for it excludes all rational free agents. The mind then recog- 
 nizes itself as a rational, moral and free being, and others like itself; 
 it forms unities of the family, the tribe, the nation, the human race ; it 
 passes into philosophy and discovers speculative, ethical, aesthetic and 
 teleological systems. It extends its thought also in time and in various 
 ways brings into unity the succession of beings and energies through 
 immeasurable periods of the past and the future. As the mind pushes 
 on in this process it necessarily comes at last to the problem, what is the 
 unity which comprehends all reality ? What is the one system in which 
 all systems are included? How is the all one? Neither empirical nor 
 noetic science can answer this question. It can be answered by 
 theology alone, in the recognition of the Absolute Reason, whose 
 eternal and archetypal truths the universe expresses, and whose wise 
 and beneficent ends the universe in its ongoing is evermore realizing. 
 In the knowledge of God we comprehend the all in the unity of one 
 rational system. 
 
 This effort to find the unity of the manifold is not accidental or 
 optional; it is a necessity of human thought; for thought is nothing 
 
 * Advancement of Learning, B. I. 
 
312 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 else but apprehending a reality, distinguishing it from other reality, 
 and finding its unity with other reality in some relation. All thought 
 by its nature, and pre-eminently scientific thought, culminates in find- 
 ing the unity of the manifold. All thinking necessarily tends to seek 
 the unity of the All. Accordingly Comte, complete positivist as he 
 was, came upon this problem and suggested that it may be solved 
 sometime by the discovery of some one all-comprehending law, under 
 which all facts may be generalized in one formula, as a multitude of 
 facts are now generalized under the law of gravitation. In his 
 " Hierarchy of the Sciences," he was unconsciously trying in another 
 direction to solve the same problem. In every period of active investi- 
 gation in natural science, the investigators come face to face with the 
 problem and attempt some solution. They cannot avoid it; it is a 
 necessity of human thought. They cannot solve it empirically ; it can 
 be solved by theology alone. 
 
 V. Scientific thought legitimately developed necessarily culminates 
 in Theology, and in it alone finds the solution of its own ultimate prob- 
 lem and completes itself as science. 
 
 Human knowledge, of course, can never be complete as the know- 
 ledge of all that is. Remoteness of space and of time, the complexity 
 and reconditeness of what is accessible to observation must always hide 
 much from any finite mind. But to know all that is accessible to in- 
 vestigation respecting any object or class of objects, theology is essen- 
 tial. We have seen that science, in its three grades, aims at ascer- 
 taining what any particular reality is in its own factual and distinctive 
 properties, and what are its factual relations to other realities ; how 
 it is related to the truths, laws, ideals and ends of reason ; and how it 
 is related to all reality in the unity of one all-comprehending system. 
 The last of these three questions of science is the ultimate question of 
 reason. It is a question which scientific thought fully developed neces- 
 sarily asks and tries to answer. It is a question which thoughtful 
 men always do meet and try to answer. We have seen complete posi- 
 tivists like Comte, as well as more recent scientists, busying themselves 
 with it and trying to answer it by widening natural laws or constructing 
 cosmogonies. Others have offered as an answer Monism, whether 
 Materialistic or Pantheistic. Some have tried to comprehend all reality 
 in unity by the idea of substance ; others by the idea of cause. Others 
 have fallen into Dualism ; as in the Zendavesta, Ahriman is the eternal 
 principal of evil, symbolized by darkness, and Ormuzd is the eternal 
 principle of good, symbolized by light ; as in some forms of Gnosticism, 
 matter is eternal and the source of evil, and spirit eternal and the 
 source of good. Even the Deist verges on dualism, for to him the 
 universe is a machine and outside of it is a machinist who made it, but 
 

 LIB/?4 
 
 THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KXOWLEPGE. 313 
 
 Who aside from this is scarcely recognized as in unity with it in any 
 way. 
 
 All these are theological answers showing man busy through all 
 the history of human thought with this ultimate problem of human 
 reason. The only true and satisfactory solution is Theism, which finds 
 the unity of the all in the idea of the supreme Reason expressing its 
 truths and laws, realizing its ideals and ends in a rational system com- 
 prehending all that is. 
 
 And this gives us the rationale of science itself, which in every stage 
 has no other end than to discover the universal in the particular, the 
 necessary in the contingent, order and law in the accidental and un- 
 regulated, reasonableness in the complexity and confusion of phenomena, 
 in a word, to find Reason in all spheres and relations of the universe. 
 Theism is the doctrine that the universe is grounded in reason and 
 regulated by it, and that it constitutes, with the Supreme Reason ' 
 whose thoughts it expresses, whose laws it obeys, whose wise and bene- 
 ficent ends it realizes, one all-comprehending rational system. 
 
 All scientific thought naturally and legitimately issues in Theism. 
 Empirical science is compelled, consciously or unconsciously, but by 
 the inmost nature of thought, to become metaphysical, and metaphysi- 
 cal science to become theological. It is the legitimate and necessary 
 development of human thought. Thus the discoveries of science are 
 revelations of God ; they are the discoveries of the action of things 
 according to the law of their being, they are the recognition of ration- 
 ality underlying phenomena, of the ideas and principles and laws of 
 reason as the matrices in which all things are cast, the archetypes of 
 which all things are types. But if the universe is thus pervaded by 
 rationality, thus cast in the mold and stamped with the mintage of 
 reason, then we are brought into the presence of God the supreme 
 reason in the very discoveries of empirical and philosophical science. 
 On the other hand, the silence and the perplexities of both must be 
 carried over to theology for explanation. Alike their discoveries and 
 their perplexities are " steps up to God." 
 
 Comte insists that the efficient cause must be excluded from scientific 
 inquiry, because, if once admitted, the whole of theology must be ad- 
 mitted with it. We may go farther ; once admit the legitimacy, in 
 any particular, of that line of thought which I have designated as 
 philosophy, and you must admit theology. And this is only saying 
 that theology is inevitable, if it is legitimate to inquire for the rationale 
 or reasonableness of phenomena, to ask whence they are and for what 
 rational end they exist, to study them in the light of the principles by 
 which the true is distinguished from the absurd, in the light of the law 
 of right, the ideals of perfection and the rational distinction of good 
 
314 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 and evil. The three grades of science, therefore, are interdependent, 
 and, though distinguishable, are inseparable as the parts of one vital 
 organic growth. In investigating we begin with the seen and trace it 
 up to the unseen, into which the roots of all science strike deep and 
 wide. But in the order of dependence it is the invisible that reveals 
 itself in the visible, the spiritual in the natural. Far as the tree of 
 knowledge spreads its branches leafy and fruitful before our eyes, so far 
 it spreads its roots in the unseen. " For the invisible things of God 
 from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by 
 the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." (Rom. 
 1 : 20.) In the words of I. H. Fichte : " It is now time again to install 
 Theism, that inextinguishable and fundamental conviction of humanity, 
 as a science in its true significance ; but therewith equally to free it 
 from so many obstructions and veils which long enough have darkened 
 ' its true light. Theism is neither an hypothesis grubbed out by one- 
 sided speculation, as some represent it ; nor is it an invention of priest- 
 craft nor of superstitious fear, old ways of representing it which one 
 still unexpectedly meets. It is also not the mere confession of any ex- 
 clusive school or religion. But it is the ultimate solution of all the 
 world-problems, the unavoidable goal of all investigation, silently effec- 
 tive in that which externally denies it."* 
 
 VI. Science in each higher grade reacts to stimulate investigation in 
 the lower. Without this stimulus from the ranges of knowledge opened 
 by the higher Reason, man would stagnate in savagery. The undying 
 impulse to scientific investigation is not mere curiosity to know facts, 
 but it is the longing to know the origin, the ground, the law, the 
 rationale of facts. Man is moved to investigation not merely to answer 
 the question, What is it? but much more to answer the questions, 
 Whence ? How ? Why ? Wherefore ? It is not by accident or contin- 
 uous error, but by the necessities of human thought, that in all ages 
 the study of physical science has issued in Cosmogonies, and that to- 
 day questions of Cosmogony and Theology attract so much attention 
 in connection with scientific investigations. Prof. Tyndall says : "An 
 impulse inherent in primeval man turned his thoughts and questionings 
 betimes towards the sources of natural phenomena. The same impulse 
 inherited and intensified is the spur of scientific action to-day. Deter- 
 mined by it, by a process of abstraction from experience, we form 
 physical theories which lie beyond the pale of experience, but which 
 satisfy the desire of the mind to see every natural occurrence resting 
 on a cause. In forming their notion of the origin of things, our ear- 
 liest historic .... ancestors pursued as far as their intelligence per- 
 
 * Theistische Weltansicht ; Vorwort, S. ix. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 315 
 
 mitted the same course."* The same has been commonly exemplified 
 in the history of science. Says Lange : " With the exception of De- 
 mocritus, scarcely a single one of the great scientific inventors and 
 discoverers of Greece and Rome belongs to any school of Materialists ; 
 but we find a long series of men most worthy of honor, who belonged 
 to schools of the most opposite tendency possible, idealistic, formalistic, 
 or even enthusiastic. Mathematics is especially to be noticed. Plato, 
 the father of an enthusiasm sometimes beautiful and of deep meaning, 
 sometimes misleading and fanatical, is still the spiritual father of a 
 series of investigators who brought mathematics to the highest point 
 which it attained in ancient times." After adducing various historical 
 exemplifications of his position, Lange adds : " The small part which 
 materialism has had in stimulating scientific investigation is not acci- 
 dental, nor can it be ascribed to the contemplative quietism of Epicu- 
 rus ; but the fact is that, in those who achieved anything for the pro- 
 gress of (physical) science, the ideal element was a power in the closest 
 connection with their discoveries and inventions."f To the same pur- 
 port are the words of Humboldt : " In Plato's high appreciation of 
 mathematical development of thought and in Aristotle's morphological 
 views embracing all organisms, lay the germs of all later advances of 
 physical science."]; 
 
 This undying desire to find the spiritual in nature is exemplified in 
 Shelley. He was an atheist. He vauntingly wrote his name on the 
 rocks of the Alps, " Percy Bysshe Shelley, Atheist." Yet in his letters 
 he says that he loves to think of a fine intellectual spirit pervading the 
 universe. It is the pathetic cry of a refined and cultivated mind im- 
 prisoned in the negations of atheism, yet unable to repress its own 
 rational intuitions and yearning to commune in nature with a fine in- 
 tellectual spirit like its own. It is the delicate spirit Ariel, imprisoned 
 by a malignant witch in a cleft pine, and writhing to escape and soar 
 in its native empyrean. 
 
 VII. The claim that the empirical science of nature is the only and 
 exclusive science, contradicts the constitution of the human mind, the 
 essential nature of human thought, and its entire history. This is an 
 inference from the foregoing discussion. I have already alluded to 
 this claim. From the position which we have now attained, we also 
 see that empirical science, far from being justified in this claim, cannot 
 exist as science by itself exclusive of science in the higher grades ; but 
 that the three grades, distinguishable but inseparable, are all essential 
 to the completion of scientific thought on any object of investigation. 
 
 * Address before British Association, Belfast, 1S74 : Sub initio. 
 
 f Geschichte des Materialismus. Vol. I., pp. 92, 93. Book I., Section I., Chap. iv. 
 
 J Cosmos, Otte's Transl. Vol. II., p. 176. 
 
316 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Prof. Lotze says : " The world is certainly not so constituted that the 
 individual fundamental truths which we find dominating in it hang 
 together according to the poor pattern of a logical superordination, 
 co-ordination, and subordination. They form rather a texture so woven 
 that they are all at the same time present in every bit and fold of it. 
 You can, according to the need you feel, make every one of these 
 threads the chief subject of your consideration ; but you cannot do this 
 at all, or at least you cannot do it in a useful way, without taking 
 account at every instant of the other threads with which it is indis- 
 solubly united." * 
 
 The incompleteness and lack of significance of the empirical science 
 of nature when isolated from science in a higher grade may be illus- 
 trated by the study of a book. We would study Homer's Iliad. The 
 first step must be to learn the letters and the order of their grouping 
 in words. We accordingly proceed to examine them with scientific 
 accuracy; we arrange them in classes according to resemblances, and 
 observe various uniform sequences of them in words. This is the em- 
 pirical science of the phenomena presented in the book. But after all 
 this study we know only the phenomena of the book in their classes 
 and uniform sequences ; that is, the letters and the words. We do not 
 understand the book till we discover the thought which these letters 
 and words express, and comprehend the whole in its unity and design 
 as an epic poem. This part of our study is analogous to philosophy. 
 But when we read the Iliad we know that it expresses the thought of 
 
 -IT O 
 
 an intelligent being who was its author. This corresponds to theology. 
 The study of the letters and their arrangement in words is the first de- 
 partment of knowledge respecting the book, indispensable to any know- 
 ledge of it. But it would be preposterous to say that this is the com- 
 plete and only knowledge of the poem. So in the study of nature, the 
 observation, classification and co-ordination of phenomena, which we 
 call empirical science, is only the learning of the letters, classifying 
 them as in a case of type by resemblance, and co-ordinating them in 
 words. But this no more gives a real knowledge of nature than the 
 knowledge of the letters and of spelling gives a complete knowledge 
 of Homer's Iliad. So difficult is the task of learning to read that we 
 do not wonder that the attention of children is wholly occupied with 
 the letters and words, and that they at first read mechanically without 
 taking the sense. And so vast is the book of nature and so laborious 
 the process of learning to read it, it is not wonderful that its students 
 should stick for a time in the letter and read mechanically without 
 
 * Philosophy of the last forty years, by Prof. Lotze: Contemporary Review, Jan. 
 1880. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 317 
 
 taking the sense. But maturer knowledge and further intellectual 
 growth will take them beyond this childishness, and make them, not 
 merely observers, but also interpreters of nature. 
 
 I will give another illustration. Science teaches that all thinking, 
 volition and emotion involve molecular action of the brain. Suppose 
 some instrument invented by which you can look through the skull and 
 observe this molecular action. You find some Shakespeare composing 
 Macbeth, some Newton writing the Principia, some Paul glowing with 
 self-sacrificing love ; and in each case you make an exact chart of the 
 course or orbit of every moving molecule. You have an exact deline- 
 ation of the action of the brain ; but it bears not the remotest resem- 
 blance to the thoughts and feelings expressed by it, to the imaginative 
 creation of Macbeth, the mathematical demonstrations of the Principia, 
 the self-sacrificing love of Paul. You have observed the phenomena, 
 you have totally missed their significance. Suppose, now, an infini- 
 tesimal inhabitant of the brain, to whom the brain is the whole known 
 universe and to whom the motions of its molecules are relatively as great 
 as to us the motions of the planets. Suppose this infinitesimal being 
 provides himself with telescope and microscope and observes all these 
 motions of the molecules, classifies them by resemblance, and co- 
 ordinates them in their uniform sequences. Now he claims that he 
 has created a science of the universe this brain which he lives in 
 being to him the universe and yet he entirely misses the thought, the 
 volition, the emotions expressed in these movements, and has no know- 
 ledge of the intelligent being whose thought, volition and emotion the 
 action of the brain expresses. How plain it is that this infinitesimal 
 being deludes himself with the mere show of knowledge while he misses 
 its deepest reality. And yet it is no more a mere show without reality 
 than is the science of the natural universe which confines itself to the 
 resemblances and sequences of phenomena, with no apprehension of the 
 thought which the phenomena express, or of the supreme intelligence 
 in which they originate, or the rational system in which they exist. 
 
 Ludwig Xoire, speaking of Biichner's materialism, compares it to a 
 child's description of music, who describes it as the action of the player 
 putting his hand on the keys, moving them up and down, and crossing 
 his arms, but leaves out the music.* 
 
 VIII. Another inference from the foregoing discussion is that science 
 in the three grades must be in harmony with itself. These three grades 
 of scientific thought are but the different processes of intelligence, each 
 necessary to the other, all necessary to complete intelligence. When 
 they are rightly apprehended conflict is impossible. 
 
 Die Welt als Entwickelung des Geistes : as., 18, 19. 
 
318 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 We have, therefore, rational ground of certainty that the progress 
 of empirical and noetic science can never conflict with theology nor 
 invalidate it. And it is equally certain that the true scientific spirit is 
 never hostile to the truly religious spirit which rules all right theologi- 
 cal inquiry. Scientists continually insist on the "searching, open, 
 humble mind ; " and Jesus said : " Except ye become as little children, 
 ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The obscuration of 
 religious belief does not result from science, but from the incomplete- 
 ness or perversion of science. We have reasonable ground of assur- 
 ance that any such obscuration attendant on the scientific study of 
 nature must be temporary, and the ultimate and abiding issue of 
 scientific investigation and progress must be in the future, as it has 
 always been in the past, to confirm man's belief in God, and to purify, 
 illuminate and enlarge the knowledge of Him. Frau von Marenholz- 
 Biilow relates the following : " Froebel said, ' Let the empirics work in 
 their quarries ; they will bring treasures to light which are also neces- 
 sary/ ' It appears to me,' said I, ' that the investigators of nature, who 
 work in the dark mines of the material world by the light of their own 
 lanterns and imagine that there is nothing brighter, no sunlight, 
 must sometime or other break through the surface above, when they can 
 no longer deny the brighter light of the sun.' "* 
 
 Mr. Lewes, in the opening of the " Problems of Life and Mind," 
 says : " Some considerable thinkers .... argue that religion has 
 played its part in the evolution of humanity a noble part, yet only 
 that of a provisional o"rgan, which in the course of development must 
 be displaced by a final organ. Other thinkers, and I follow these, 
 consider that religion will continue to regulate the evolution ; but that 
 to do this in the coming ages, it must occupy a position similar to the 
 one it occupied in the past, and express the highest thought of the 
 time, as that thought widens with the ever-growing experience." I 
 accept this demand on theology as reasonable, though I differ from 
 Mr. Lewes as to what complete compliance with the demand implies. 
 However far empirical and rationalistic science may advance, true 
 theology must still be competent to maintain its position as the Science 
 of sciences and the Philosophy of philosophies. It must be competent 
 to take all the results of the highest thought and integrate, interpret 
 and vindicate them in a rational system. However far science may 
 advance, it can never transcend Theism, which recognizes perfect 
 Reason as the ultimate ground of the universe, and its truths, laws, 
 ideals and ends as the archetypes which the universe is progressively 
 expressing. Man cannot overleap reason any more than he can over- 
 
 * Reminiscences of Froebel, p. 267. 
 
THKEE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 319 
 
 leap the zenith of the firmament ; for reason is man's intellectual 
 firmament, the everlasting sunlight which lies about him ; and yet 
 he carries it with him, and is always beneath its zenith wherever he 
 goes. Science by no advancement can set aside the supremacy and 
 universality of reason ; for it would set aside the godlike power of man 
 which makes science possible, and annul its own essence and calling as 
 science ; for science consists essentially in finding the product and ex- 
 'ii of reason in all that is. Theism therefore gives the grand 
 reality by which theology is competent to integrate, interpret and ac- 
 count for all things under any possible progress of science. The pro- 
 f reason can never transcend reason. The progress of science 
 may purify, elucidate and enlarge theoretical knowledge, but it can 
 never annul the Theism of which true theology in its remotest ramifi- 
 cations of doctrine is the exposition. 
 
 I accept, therefore, the words of President Eliot of Harvard Univer- 
 sity, though perhaps giving a meaning different from his own to his 
 expressions : " Science has thus exalted the idea of God, the greatest 
 service which can be rendered to humanity. Each age must worship 
 its own thought of God, and each age may be judged by the worthiness 
 of that thought. In displaying the uniform continuous action of un- 
 repenting nature in its march from good to better, science has inevita- 
 bly directed the attention of men to the most glorious attributes of 
 that divine intelligence which acts through nature with the patience 
 of eternity and the fixity of all-foreseeing wisdom. A hundred life- 
 times ago a Hebrew Seer gave utterance to one of the grandest thoughts 
 that ever mind of man conceived. . . . This thought, tender and 
 consoling toward human weakness and insignificance as a mother's 
 embrace, but sublime also as the starry heights and majestic as the 
 outward sweep of the ages, science utters as the sum of all its teaching, 
 the sublime result of all its searching and its meditations, and ap- 
 plies alike to the whole universe and to its last atom : ' The eternal 
 God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.' " * 
 
 \ 61. The alleged Conflict of Natural Science and 
 Theology. 
 
 I. Conflict between natural science and theology can arise only from 
 error or incompleteness of knowledge on the one side or the other. A 
 true and complete science of nature can never be in conflict with true 
 and complete theology. Students of natural science do no violence to 
 science in remaining theists or Christians, as multitudes of them have 
 done. Religious unbelief does not spring from science but from ig- 
 
 * Report of Speech at the opening of the Am. Museum of Natural History. 
 
320 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 norance or error either in respect to science or theology. We do both 
 natural science and theology great injustice in using language which 
 implies that physical science is, of itself as science, in conflict with 
 theology, or that theology is in conflict with it, or that as theologians 
 we need to be afraid of its discoveries or in an attitude of opposition 
 to its progress. Empirical science declares the particular realities of 
 the universe and their factual relations and laws ; and it is impossible 
 that the true science of the facts and laws of the universe can be in 
 conflict with the true science of the God of the universe. 
 
 1. Conflict may arise from the incompleteness of knowledge inci- 
 dental to its progressiveness. Thought proceeds from apprehension 
 through differentiation to unification, from thesis through antithesis to 
 synthesis. Thought, therefore, at a certain stage of its progress is 
 necessarily occupied with differences, opposites and antitheses. If it 
 stops there it will mistake these for contraries or contradictories ; but 
 if it push on to its completeness it may see that they are merely comple- 
 mental aspects of the same reality, or different particulars related and 
 harmonious in a larger unity. This liability to mistake is incidental to 
 the progress of knowledge within the sphere of empirical science; 
 and we cannot escape the same liability in the transition from empi- 
 rical to philosophical and theological knowledge. But in fact these 
 seeming contradictions may be only the contrasts necessary to a com- 
 plete and full-orbed knowledge. 
 
 Incompleteness of knowledge is also incidental to the specialties to 
 which students are shut up by the vastness of the sphere of knowledge 
 and the limits of the human mind. Whe*n one devotes himself exclu- 
 sively to the empirical study of nature, the world of matter heaves 
 its hulk up between him and the spiritual light, as the earth on which 
 we dwell comes between us and the sun and shrouds us in night. And 
 such is now the extent of natural science that one must devote a life- 
 time to master a subdivision of a particular science. And this limita- 
 tion of the sphere of life-long studies unfits for comprehending the 
 larger unities of philosophy and theology. 
 
 Conflict may also arise from positive errors as to particular realities 
 on the one side or the other. These are errors of observation or infer- 
 ence which further investigation will correct ; and the correction of the 
 error ends the conflict. 
 
 2. Conflict may arise from an error of method ; from overlooking 
 the distinction of empirical, noetic and theological science. Empirical 
 science may intrude into the sphere of philosophy and attempt to decide 
 philosophical and theological questions by empirical methods. So La- 
 place argued that there is no God because he had never found him 
 with the telescope ; and as it has been argued that there is no spirit in 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 321 
 
 man, because the anatomist has never discovered it. On the other 
 hand, theology has intruded into the sphere of natural science and 
 attempted to settle questions of fact which can be determined only by 
 empirical observation and inference. 
 
 3. Conflict may arise from the claim of science in one grade to be the 
 whole of human science, to the exclusion of all other. 
 
 I am not aware that philosophy or theology ever made this claim ; 
 though they have often fallen into error by not sufficiently recognizing 
 their dependence on empirical science for their factual contents. But 
 the empirical science of nature has again and again asserted its claim 
 to the whole of human knowledge. And it is this claim, persistently 
 and widely made now, which is the source of the present antagonism of 
 some students of natural science against theology. 
 
 II. The reconciliation can be effected only by the advancement of 
 science in each grade to completeness by the progressive discovery of 
 truth and elimination of error. 
 
 1. The claim that empirical natural science includes all science, 
 involves complete atheism and is entirely irreconcilable with theology. 
 It denies that man is capable either of psychological, philosophical or 
 theological knowledge. If man is incapable of knowledge that trans- 
 cends the empirical, he is incapable of knowing God. With those who 
 make this claim there is no propriety in discussing the question of the 
 existence of God. Their false theory of knowledge shuts us out from 
 approaching that questicp. The question with them is as to the reality 
 of human knowledge. We demonstrate from the constitution and 
 history of man that he is capable of noetic and theological knowledge, 
 and that the denial of this involves equally the denial of all human 
 knowledge. All atheism rests on principles which necessarily involve 
 complete agnosticism. If man cannot know God, he cannot know 
 anything. 
 
 2. Students of physical science often assert that its method is 
 entirely different from the method of metaphysics and theology ; and 
 that therefore conflict is inevitable and irreconcilable. In seeking 
 reconciliation on this point we must inquire what the true method is 
 and wherein on either side there is a deviation from it. The true 
 method will accord with the law that knowledge must pass through the 
 three grades which I have elucidated. The difference of method has 
 originated in the fact that physical science has tried to limit itself 
 within pure empiricism, while philosophy and theology have sometimes 
 tried to proceed by a priori principles and abstract notions without 
 seeking their basis in observed facts of experience. So far as on either 
 side investigation has been thus partial, it must be corrected and broad- 
 ened. On each side we already see this process far advanced. Comte 
 
 21 
 
322 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 made the attempt rigorously to isolate science within empirical know- 
 ledge through the senses. But it has been found impossible to carry it 
 forwards in this isolation. We find that physical science is now carried 
 through the three grades of empirical, noetic and theological thought. 
 Admitting the reality of the self-evident, unproved knowledge given in 
 sense perception, scientists accept as real various metaphysical ideas, 
 such as matter, force, cause, atoms, ethers ; they acknowledge the first 
 principles of reason to be a priori to the individual and regulative of all 
 thought. The agnostics acknowledge the existence of the Absolute 
 Being, though unknowable, without which it is impossible to find the 
 unity of the cosmos or to believe the real existence of anything ; mate- 
 rialistic scientists hold a doctrine which implies that matter is the 
 Absolute Being ; and here they both pass over into theological thought. 
 On the other hand, the theist, starting with not only sensible, but also 
 mental and spiritual reality observed in experience, and reasoning 
 according to the same rational principles, attains the knowledge of the 
 Absolute, not merely as an unknowable, but as the absolute Reason. 
 So far then we already find agreement of method, and the old objection, 
 that philosophy and theology are empty speculations not founded on 
 observed facts, disappears. The difference now is simply that the theist 
 accepts all the facts of experience, while the agnostic takes cognizance 
 of only a part of them ; the method is essentially the same ; the differ- 
 ence is in the reality investigated, the agnostic disregarding one hemi- 
 sphere of man's being and all the spiritual ^iniverse which gives its 
 significance to the material universe and makes a scientific knowledge 
 of it possible. At present the conflict arises not so much from differ- 
 ence of method as from the endeavor to isolate knowledge within the 
 limits of the phenomena of sense. Here, however, is developed an 
 antagonism of physical science not merely to theology, but also to 
 philosophy, and to the study of language, literature, politics, history, 
 and all study of man other than physical and physiological. Learning, 
 erudition and researches in great libraries are stigmatized as idle 
 activities and contrasted with the solid and practical value of physical 
 and physiological studies. This isolation and superficiality in the 
 intellectual sphere extends to the moral. A tendency is already appa- 
 rent to paralyze the powerful motives of action in man's spiritual and 
 moral constitution, to dry up the deepest and richest springs of motive 
 and emotion and of interest in life, and to sneer at the treatment of 
 practical questions from the purely moral point of view as sentimen- 
 talism. If continued, it must be antagonistic to the richest and most 
 inspiring creations of the imagination in fiction, poetry and art. These 
 must come then from beneath nature, not from above it ; they must be 
 realistic and sensuous, holding man down beneath nature, not the 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 323 
 
 nion and ideals of reason lifting him above it. A merely 
 sensuous poetry and art must be the result, which Walt Whitman and 
 Swinburne in poetry and Gautier in fiction already foreshadow. 
 
 It is also the boast of physical science that it is intensely practical ; 
 that the knowledge which it imparts is especially useful to mankind. 
 Comte goes so far as to say that the stellar astronomy, such as the inves- 
 tigation of the binary stars, ought not to be studied because it is not 
 available for practical use. In this respect our modern illuminism is 
 -istent with itself; for it holds it to be necessary to a candid seek- 
 in.: of the truth, to disregard its bearing on the interests of life. 
 Christianity agrees with physical science in its estimate of the practical 
 value of knowledge. It is also consistent with itself and with ail sound 
 philosophy in teaching that knowledge, dissociated from its bearing on 
 the conduct of life and on the welfare of man, is even as knowledge 
 incomplete and misleading. It warns us against resting in a merely 
 speculative belief, as knowledge which puffeth up. It inculcates not 
 knowledge merely, but wisdom, which is knowledge warmed and vital- 
 ized with love, or love illumined with knowledge ; wisdom which seeks 
 the best ends by the best means. The practical ends of the skeptical 
 scientist are, like his knowledge, limited within the sensuous ; his highest 
 conception of the good is necessarily Hedonistic ; his useful knowledge 
 must be of the Gradgrind sort. But Christian theism aims through 
 knowledge to develop the spiritual life in its relation to God and the 
 whole moral and spiritual realm. It strikes the noblest and most pow- 
 ernil motives ; it opens the deepest and purest and inexhaustible foun- 
 tains of interest in life ; it illuminates the life of sense with the light of 
 the spirit, and dignifies material interests by showing their relation to 
 the divine. The natural sciences therefore have no exclusive or pre- 
 eminent claim to be useful knowledge, or to be the exclusive or even 
 the pre-eminent studies in a college. On the ground of utility alone I 
 claim the higher place for the study of man himself; not merely human 
 physiology, but those studies fitly called "the humanities:" the lan- 
 guages, literatures and religions of the world ; the great courses of 
 human thought ; the .questions which have occupied the human mind ; 
 the products of genius ; the progress and characteristics of civilization ; 
 the conditions and laws of individual action and of the constitution and 
 welfare of society ; and all that belongs to the history of man. Herbert 
 Spencer objects that the dead facts of history are useless. I reply that 
 all facts are dead and useless, except as their significance is seen through 
 their relation to some principle, law or end. This is no more true of 
 the facts of human than of natural history. A dead man is no more 
 dead than a dead dog. If we must compare the value of mere facts, 
 why is not the knowledge that Cresar crossed the Rubicon as useful as 
 
324 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the knowledge of the average weight of the human brain ? Why is not 
 the knowledge of the migrations of men and the founding of empires as 
 useful as the knowledge of the movements of glaciers in a distant geo- 
 logical epoch ? Why are we not as much benefited by knowing the 
 names of Aristides and Socrates as by learning to call a certain mollusk 
 no longer a clam, but a Mya Arenaria f Why is it more useful to men 
 to spend weeks in hatching crabs' eggs than to spend the time in study- 
 ing the philosophy of Plato or Aristotle ? I accept the test of utility. 
 I agree with Milton : 
 
 " That not to know at large of things remote " 
 From use, obscure and subtle ; but to know 
 That which before us lies in daily life, 
 Is the prime wisdom." 
 
 Yet even so the utility which consists in satisfying the animal wants 
 is subordinate to a higher utility in developing, cultivating and ennobling 
 the whole man, intellectually, morally, aesthetically and spiritually, as 
 well as physically. 
 
 The tendencies of which I have spoken are not inherent in physical 
 science nor in the scientific method which is essentially the same in 
 every sphere of knowledge, but are due to the unscientific exclusion of 
 the whole sphere of spiritual reality from scientific recognition an 
 exclusion which results entirely from materialistic theologizing. The 
 assertion that this exclusion belongs essentially to the scientific method 
 is entirely without reason. 
 
 3. When conflict between theology and natural science arises from 
 incomplete knowledge or from error respecting facts, reconciliation is 
 possible by further investigation. If we encounter a difficulty of this 
 sort which we cannot remove, the reasonable course which scientific 
 thought itself demands, is to hang it up, in the confidence that in the 
 progress of knowledge and of mental growth, the difficulty will be 
 removed and the harmony of natural science and theology in that 
 particular made plain. In conflicts thus arising and thus treated, 
 empirical, noetic and theological science reciprocally correct and com- 
 plete each other, the distinction of the three is more correctly appre- 
 ciated, and the demarcation of their respective limits more exactly 
 determined and more scrupulously observed. The reconciliation has 
 often been attained by discovering the errors of physical science. In 
 the classic Walpurgis night in the second part of Faust, Goethe has 
 introduced Thales and Anaxagoras apparently for no reason but to 
 give him opportunity to ridicule the Huttonian or Vulcanian Theory 
 of geology. When the Wernerian Theory was in vogue and marine 
 fossils were supposed to have been deposited from the flood, it was a 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 325 
 
 commoD objection that no fossil remains of man had ever been found 
 in Asia. I remember that when in college I heard a lecture from the 
 president elaborately answering this objection and expressing his 
 confidence that so soon as researches should be made in Asia, human 
 fossils would be found. In other cases the reconciliation has been 
 found by recognizing the error of some theological tenet. For though 
 no enlargement of science can set aside the essential elements of 
 theism, yet new discoveries in science may require a readjustment of 
 some of the tenets of theology in accordance with them. This has 
 often been exemplified. When Dr. Francesco Redi, over two hun- 
 dred years ago, announced that organic life does not originate by 
 spontaneous generation, Italian theologians cried out against it as con- 
 trary to the Scripture ; for did not the carcass of Samson's lion gene- 
 rate bees? In the eighth century, Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg, in 
 Bavaria, was threatened with excommunication for teaching the exist- 
 ence of antipodes. Zachary, the pope, wrote to Bishop Boniface re- 
 specting him : "As to the perverse and wicked doctrine which against 
 God and his own soul he has advanced, if it shall be ascertained 
 that he declares that there is another world and other inhabitants 
 beneath the earth, then call a council, deprive him of his sacerdotal 
 honor, and excommunicate him from the church." If theology in- 
 trudes into the sphere of empirical science, if it decides that the earth 
 stands on a tortoise, or is the centre around which the sun and stars 
 revolve daily, or that there are no antipodes, or that organic life is 
 produced by spontaneous generation, it must, with the progress of know- 
 ledge, retreat from its false position and accept facts as they are 
 empirically ascertained. Equally must empirical science retreat from 
 its usurped position when it attempts by empirical methods to construct 
 cosmogonies which leave no place for God. Says Dr. Carpenter: 
 "The science of modern times has taken a more special direction. 
 Fixing its attention exclusively on the order of nature, it has sepa- 
 rated itself wholly from theology, whose function is to seek its cause. 
 In this (physical) science is fully justified, alike by the entire inde- 
 pendence of its objects, and by the historical fact that it has been 
 continually hampered and impeded in its search after truth as it is 
 in nature, by the restraints which theologians have attempted to im- 
 pose on its inquiries. But when (physical) science, passing beyond its 
 own limits, assumes to take the place of theology, and sets up its own 
 conceptions of the order of nature as a sufficient account of its cause, 
 it is invading a province of thought to which it has no claim, and not 
 unreasonably provokes the hostility of those who ought to be its best 
 friends."* 
 
 * Address before British Association : 1872. 
 
326 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 On this point Lord Bacon says : " We do not by the contemplation 
 of nature presume to attain to the mysteries of God. ... If any man 
 thinks, by view and inquiry into these sensible and material things, 
 to attain that light whereby he may reveal unto himself the nature or 
 will of God, then indeed is he spoiled by vain philosophy ; for the con- 
 templation of God's creatures and works produceth (having regard to 
 the works and creatures themselves) knowledge ; but having regard to 
 God, no perfect knowledge, but wonder, which is broken knowledge. 
 And therefore it was most aptly said by one of Plato's school, ' the 
 sense of man carrieth a resemblance to the sun, which as we see openeth 
 and revealeth all the terrestrial globe; but then again it obscureth 
 and covereth the stars and the celestial worlds ; so doth the sense dis- 
 cover natural things, but it darkeneth and shutteth up the divine.' 
 And hence it hath come to pass that divers great learned men have 
 been heretical, while they have sought to fly up to the secrets of the 
 Deity by the waxen wings of the senses."* 
 
 Hence the reconciliation of any conflict of natural science and 
 theology must come from patient and earnest study of both, and the 
 progress of knowledge and the mental growth thus attained. So 
 Lord Bacon says : " Philosophia obiter libata abducit a Deo ; penitus 
 hausta reducit ad eundem." "As to the conceit that too much know- 
 ledge should incline a man to atheism .... it is an assured truth 
 and conclusion of experience that a little or superficial knowledge of 
 philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism, but a farther pro- 
 ceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion." f 
 
 III. The alleged historical antagonism of theology to the progress 
 of science is grossly exaggerated. 
 
 1. The majority of those who are memorable in the history of 
 physical science as having contributed to its advancement, have held 
 theological beliefs with no consciousness of their incompatibility with 
 physical science. Even in Greece and Rome the progress of physical 
 science owed little to materialism, but was chiefly indebted to meta- 
 physicians and believers in religion, some of whom, like Plato and Aris- 
 totle, had attained more or less clearly to Monotheism. Dr. Draper 
 eulogizes the scientific achievements of the Arabians in the Middle 
 Ages in contrast with those of the Christians. But the Arabians were 
 at the same time intense monotheists. Draper also forgets to account 
 for the fact that the Christian civilization developed the revival of 
 learning, while Mahometan civilization decayed. A considerable num- 
 ber of those distinguished in science have been ecclesiastics, among 
 
 * Advancement of Learning, B. I. 
 f Advancement of Learning, B. I. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 327 
 
 whom was Copernicus himself. He published the work announcing his 
 discoveries, as he himself says in his Preface, at the urgent advice of 
 friends, one of whom was a cardinal and another a bishop, and dedi- 
 cated it to Pope Paul III.* 
 
 In the recent centuries the greatest scientific minds have been devout. 
 Sir Humphrey Davy said : " I envy no quality of mind or intellect in 
 others, be it genius, power, wit or fancy ; but if I could choose what 
 would be most delightful and I believe most useful to me, I should 
 prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing ; for it makes life 
 a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes when all earthly hopes 
 vanish, throws over the decay, the destruction of existence the most 
 gorgeous of all light, awakens life in death, and from corruption and 
 decay calls up beauty and divinity." Hear Linnaeus, in his researches 
 among plants : " God, the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, I have seen 
 from behind as he passed by and have been awed." Sir Isaac Newton 
 records his testimony at the close of the Principia: "This beautiful 
 system of sun, planets and comets could have its origin in no other 
 way than the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful 
 being. He governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the 
 Lord of the universe. He is not only God, but Lord or Governor. We 
 know him only by his properties and attributes, by the wise and admi- 
 rable structure of things around us, and by their final causes; we 
 admire him on account of his perfections, we venerate and worship him 
 on account of his government." Listen again to the rapt devotion of 
 Kepler, with which he closes " The Harmonics of the Universe " : " Thou 
 who by the light of nature hast kindled in us the longing after the 
 light of thy grace, in order to raise us to the light of thy glory, I give 
 thanks to thee, Creator and Lord, that thou hast given me delight in 
 thy creation, and I have exulted in the works of thy hands. I have 
 completed the work which I proposed with such force of intellect as 
 thou hast given me. I have manifested the glory of thy works to the 
 men who will read these demonstrations, so far as my limited mind can 
 comprehend thine infinitude. If I, a worm and a sinner, have set forth 
 anything unworthy of thy counsels, inspire me to correct it and to set 
 forth what thou wouldst have men know. If by the admirable beauty 
 of thy works I have been hurried into any rashness, if I have sought 
 my own glory among men while prosecuting a work intended for thy 
 glory, wilt thou, gentle and compassionate, forgive. And deign pro- 
 pitiously to cause that these demonstrations may promote thy glory and 
 the welfare of men. Praise ye the Lord, ye heavenly harmonies ; and 
 ye that understand the new harmonies, praise ye the Lord. Praise God, 
 
 * De Revolutionibus : Prefatio. 
 
328 T1IE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 O my soul, as long as I live. From him, through him, and in him is 
 all, the material as well as the spiritual ; all that we know, and all 
 that we do not know as yet ; for there is much to do that is yet un- 
 done." * Hear, also, Lord Bacon in this choir of kingly worshippers : 
 " Thou, therefore, Father, who gavest the visible light as the first fruits 
 of the creation, and at the completion of thy works didst inspire the 
 countenance of man with intellectual light, guard and direct this work, 
 which proceeding from thy bounty, seeks in return thy glory." " If we 
 labor in thy works thou wilt make us partakers of thy vision and thy 
 sabbath. We pray that this mind may abide in us ; and that by our 
 hands and the hands of others to whom thou shalt impart the same 
 mind, thou wilt be pleased to endow with new gifts the family of man." 
 When the greatest minds in the history of natural science incorporate 
 such sentiments into their scientific treatises, it is evident that there is 
 no legitimate conflict between true science and the knowledge and wor- 
 ship of God. The depth and grandeur of their religious sentiments 
 accord with the depth of their thought and the grandeur of their in- 
 tellects, and contrast strangely with the flippancy, the rattling super- 
 ficiality, and sometimes the envenomed spite of atheistic scientists in 
 their treatment of religion. 
 
 2. The historical instances of direct antagonism on the part of the 
 clergy against scientific discoveries are comparatively few. The state- 
 ments made on this point make the impression that discoveries in science 
 have in all ages been usually opposed by the clergy ; that opposition 
 has been the rule, not the exception. This is a gross exaggeration, and 
 the impression which it makes is without foundation. The condemna- 
 tion of Galileo and of the doctrine of the antipodes are the facts always 
 alluded to ; and they have been so noised abroad that the impression 
 seems to exist that the Christian clergy in all ages and countries have 
 made it their business to oppose all scientific discoveries and to excom- 
 municate all who propagate them.f But actual instances of such 
 opposition have been comparatively few. When a scientific discovery 
 has been supposed to directly contradict the Bible or the existence of 
 God, such opposition has arisen. But the great multitude of scientific 
 discoveries have suggested no such contradiction and have encountered 
 no opposition or hindrance from the church. Any one familiar with 
 the history of science has only to recall the historical facts to see that 
 in the great majority of its lines of investigation, science has pursued 
 its course unvexed by opposition from the church or from theologians. 
 
 It is true that the Roman Catholic church holds principles incom- 
 
 * Harmonicas Mundi : p. 243. Sub finem. 
 
 f For an example of this exaggeration, see Prof. Tyndall on the Sabbath, Nine- 
 teenth Century, November, 1880. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 329 
 
 patible with freedom of thought. The Encyclical of Pope Pius IX. in 
 1864, throughout its eighty specifications of heresy, seemed to be a bull 
 against the civilization of the nineteenth century. It is apologized for 
 as aimed against only the revolutionary, anarchical, communistic and 
 atheistic outcome of modern thought. Yet it is truly an assertion of 
 the claim of the church to control the thought and conscience of men 
 so that, within whatever spheres liberty of investigation is unrestricted, 
 it is so only as a privilege allowed by the church and liable at any 
 time to be withdrawn. This is itself one of the false positions assumed 
 in times of spiritual darkness and declension, which need to be aban- 
 doned as religious thought adjusts itself to the progress of human 
 knowledge. The Protestant Reformation was the true development of 
 Christianity reasserting its primitive and essential spirit and truth, and 
 clearing itself from accretions of error. 
 
 But there is gross misapprehension of the opposition of the church to 
 science even hi the Dark Ages. Dr. Draper, in " The Conflict Between 
 Religion and Science," maintains that the Catholic church is responsible 
 for the condition of Europe from the fourth to the sixteenth century. 
 Certainly an author is destitute of the historical spirit and utterly 
 incompetent to write history who can make so amazing a generalization 
 and account for the course of events during those centuries by a single 
 cause. He overlooks the political influences attending the decline of 
 the Roman empire, the accompanying dissoluteness and degeneracy of 
 society, the influences of heathenism introducing the voluptuous reli- 
 gions of the East to supplement the decaying Roman worship, the irrup- 
 tion of the barbarians, and the dissolution of society and its institu- 
 tions as they had existed. 
 
 He also confounds the errors of the church with Christianity, and 
 thus includes, in his one cause of the decay, the very influence most 
 effective in resisting it and in bringing out of it at last the revival of 
 learning and the reformation of religion. Says Guizot : " The church 
 was the great connecting link the principle of civilization between 
 the Roman and the barbarian world. Her influence on modern civil- 
 ization has been more powerful than its most violent adversaries or its 
 most zealous defenders have supposed." The introduction of Christ- 
 ianity awakened intense intellectual activity. Questions of the great- 
 est importance were discussed ; books of undying value were written ; 
 and the universal mind aroused to intense action on subjects vital to 
 the welfare of man. One of the results, so long secured that we 
 forget its greatness, was the overthrow of polytheism and the establish- 
 ment of monotheism ; another was the elevation of the human mind to 
 appreciate the spirit and worth of man, the spiritual worship of God, 
 and all the sublime and renovating ideas connected with the recog- 
 
330 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 nition of God, and of man as in his image, subject to his law and re- 
 deemed by his love. 
 
 Christianity was introduced amid the corruption and enervation 
 attending the decline of the Roman empire, when the people had sunk 
 to the lowest point in luxury and effeminacy, in barrenness of lofty 
 principle, in the corruption of public morals and the prevalence of a 
 sensuous skepticism. Soon after began the irruption of the barbarians 
 which introduced idolatry, barbarism and anarchy. Christianity had 
 its work to begin anew ; it did begin it and with success ; the barbarians 
 abandoned their idols ; government and the supremacy of law reap- 
 peared ; and at last from the chaos issued a civilization purer, nobler, 
 more full of blessings than the world had ever seen. The wonder is, 
 not that the Christian church fell into error and that Christianity 
 effected so little, but that both the church and Christianity were not 
 swept out of being. Those who have closely studied this history know 
 that, during the darkest ages and the greatest corruption of the church, 
 the real principles of Christianity w r ere working in many directions 
 against the errors and abuses of the times and preparing the way for 
 that reformation of the church and that new civilization, the best ele- 
 ments of which are the development and realization of these Christian 
 principles. It were well for those who ascribe human progress to sci- 
 entific discoveries and mechanical inventions as its primary cause, to 
 remember that Wickliff had arisen, the morning star of the Reforma- 
 tion, and Huss had aroused his countrymen to intense activity of 
 thought and to religious reform, before printing was invented ; that 
 Luther had nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Witten- 
 berg before the telescope or microscope existed, before there was a post- 
 office system in England or a carriage on springs in Paris ; that Puri- 
 tanism was in England before the Nuremberg eggs, as they called 
 pocket watches, and had wrought the great revolutions of 1649 and 
 1688, which laid the foundations of English and American liberty 
 before Watt or Arkwright was born. Always spiritual truth in its 
 work of rousing the mind to action has gone in advance of scientific 
 discovery and mechanical invention. 
 
 If Dr. Draper had studied Comte's Positive Philosophy, he might 
 have attained a less superficial view of the causes which have advanced 
 civilization. Comte affirms that the influence of Christianity was 
 powerful in effecting the emancipation of serfs, giving dignity to labor 
 and introducing the industrial civilization which is displacing the 
 wars of conquest and the military civilization of heathen and Ma- 
 hometan nations. In connection with the elevation of labor, Comte 
 speaks of " the fine spectacle of the holy hands of monks extended to 
 labors before regarded as degrading." Of the influence of Chris- 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 331 
 
 tianity in the Middle Ages in promoting emancipation, he says ; " The 
 spiritual influence is obvious enough. The serfs had the same reli- 
 gion with their superiors and the same fundamental education which 
 was derived from it. And not only did religion afford them rights 
 by prescribing reciprocal duties, but it steadily proclaimed voluntary 
 emancipation to be a Christian duty, whenever the laboring classes 
 showed inclination and fitness for liberty. The famous Bull of 
 Alexander III. on the general abolition of slavery in Christendom, 
 was merely an official sanction of a custom which had been extend- 
 ing for some centuries. The influence thus wrought was not that of 
 moral doctrine alone. The morality was enforced by the persevering 
 action of a priesthood which was opposed to the institution of caste 
 and open to be recruited from every social class, and which relied for 
 the permanence of its organization on the laboring classes, whose rise it 
 therefore constantly favored." Of the new industrial civilization 
 Comte says : " This change constitutes the greatest temporal revolu- 
 tion ever experienced by mankind. If the Greek philosophers had 
 been told that slavery would be utterly abolished, and that the free 
 men of a great and powerful population would subject themselves to 
 labors then considered servile, the boldest and most generous thinkers 
 would have cried out against a Utopia so absurd and utterly base- 
 less."* 
 
 Similar influences in the earlier Christian centuries had given dig- 
 nity to labor, brought the Roman slavery to an end, and set aside the 
 common belief of Greeks and Romans that labor and earning one's 
 own living were unworthy of free citizenship. Plautus makes one of 
 his characters say it is not worth while to give food and drink to the 
 poor man, for it is so much lost to the giver and only prolongs the 
 misery of the receiver.f ^Vnd Plato teaches that a mechanic has no 
 leisure to be under a physician's treatment'; let him try some active 
 remedy and keep about his business. If he recovers he can keep on 
 with his work ; if he dies he is rid of his troubles. For if he cannot 
 attend to his business it is useless for him to live.J Aristotle says : 
 " We cannot dispense with farmers and mechanics ; but these have 
 nothing to do with public affairs and are not worthy of the name of 
 citizen. They are incapable of greatness of soul and cannot have any 
 manliness, because they work for wages and therefore must be of a 
 mercenary spirit. The difference between them and slaves is an ex- 
 ternal difference only. They ought to be slaves, and would if the State 
 were rich enough to buy them or strong enough to enslave them. 
 
 * Positive Philosophy, B. VI., Chap. xi. Martineau's Translation. 
 
 | Trinummus, Act 2, lines 339, 340. | Republic, B. III., Chap. xv. 
 
332 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Therefore our free youth ought not to learn any trade, for that would 
 degrade them from citizens to mechanics." * Three hundred years later 
 Cicero utters the same thought : " What more foolish than to respect 
 the mass of the people as anything, when you despise them individually 
 as laborers and barbarians? The citizen ought to abandon the merce- 
 nary occupations of commerce and industry to slaves and freedmen, be- 
 cause no one can be free who is dependent on a salary." He excepted 
 only the higher arts, medicine, architecture, the teaching of philosophy, 
 and commerce on a large scale. And even these are excepted only 
 with the qualification, " iis quorum ordini convemunt honestae ; " and as 
 to commerce his acknowledgment is only negative, and that with a 
 non admodum : " lion est adinodum vituperanda" f 
 
 Against these deep-seated errors of heathenism Christianity imme- 
 diately exerted an'influence. Christ came as a servant and in explicit 
 distinction from heathen^civilization proclaimed the Christian law of 
 service. (Matt. xx. 25-28.) Paul was a tent-maker and taught Chr's- 
 tians to do their own business and to work with their own hands ; for, 
 he said, if any man will not work neither let him eat. And similar 
 was the preaching of the fathers. ' Basil says, " Man is a great being ; " 
 and Ambrose, " Thou, oh man, art the great work of God." And 
 Chrysostom, " Do not imagine that an injury to a slave will be par- 
 doned as if of no consequence. Human laws recognize a difference 
 between the two classes, but God's law knows none."! And again : 
 " Let us not be ashamed of mechanical employment ; let us not despise 
 manual labor ; let us rather despise idleness and laziness. If work were 
 disgraceful, Paul would not have worked with his own hands ; he would 
 not have gloried in it nor forbidden those who will not work to eat." 
 And again : " You say that your father is a consul and your mother a 
 saint. No matter ; show me your own life ; it is only by this that I 
 judge of your nobility. I call the slave loaded with chains noble and 
 lord, if I see nobility in his life ; I call base and ignoble him who, 
 though in the midst of dignities, has a servile spirit." 
 
 This same movement, originating in Christianity and borne on 
 through the ages of Christian influences, has in our day completed the 
 emancipation of serfs, and is bringing negro slavery to an end. It has 
 exalted private business to the character of a public function in the 
 service of humanity, and given scope in beneficent industrial enterprise 
 to the ambition and energy once having no sphere but in politics 
 and wars of conquest. 
 
 * Prof. Schmidt : Essai Historique sur la Societe" civile dans le Monde Eomain : 
 pp. 68, 69, 74. 
 f De Officiis, B. I., Chap. 42. } Homily 22 in Ephes. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 333 
 
 
 In the light of facts like these, Dr. Draper's conception of the history 
 
 of civilization and his glorifying of the Mahometan and Saracenic 
 power as the vital source of modern progress appear sufficiently 
 ignorant and inane. 
 
 3. Scientific discoveries have met more opposition from the students 
 of natural science themselves than from theologians. Copernicus, in 
 the dedication to Pope Paul III. of his work " De Orbium Coelestium 
 Revolutionibus," in which he announced and defended his theory, says 
 that he had kept his book by him four times the nine years required by 
 Horace because he knew how absurd his doctrine would appear ; and 
 Whewell adds : " It will be observed that he speaks of the opposition 
 of the established school of astronomers, not of divines." The theory 
 encountered great opposition from astronomers, as Copernicus had 
 anticipated. It made its way slowly to acceptance by scientific men % 
 Lord Bacon persisted in rejecting it to the end of his life. Whewell 
 says: "Perhaps the works of the celebrated Bishop Wilkins" a 
 divine it will be noticed "tended more than any others to the diffu- 
 sion of the Copernicaii system in England." And Wilkins's books 
 were published in 1638 and 1640, nearly a hundred years after Coper- 
 nicus had published his system. * The great physicians and philoso- 
 phers of the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the 
 eighteenth, Huygens, Bernouilli, Cassini, Leibnitz, nearly all the disci- 
 ples of Descartes, opposed Newton's system of gravitation. " The New- 
 tonian opinions had scarcely any disciples in France, till Voltaire 
 asserted their claims on his return from England in 1728; until then, 
 as he himself says, there were not twenty Newtonians out of England." f 
 Of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, Aubrey, in his 
 " Lives of Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centu- 
 ries," says : " After his Book of the Circulation of the Blood came out 
 he fell mightily in his practice, and 'twas believed by the vulgar that 
 he was crack-brained ; and all the physicians were against his opinion 
 and envied him." And after his discovery was accepted in England, it 
 was still opposed abroad ; so that when, in later life, he was urged to 
 publish the results of his researches on generation, he declined, because 
 he was unwilling again to incur the "great troubles" and "to stir up 
 the tempests" which, he said, " my lucubrations formerly published 
 have raised." The controversies of the believers in phlogiston against 
 those w r ho recognized the discovery of oxygen were long and bitter. 
 Dr. Jenner's discovery of vaccination was opposed and denounced by 
 physicians. The Academy of Paris attempted to overthrow the micro- 
 
 * Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, Vol. I., pp. 267, 272, 275. 
 f Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, Vol. I., p. 429. 
 
334 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 scopic discoveries of Swammerdam and Leeuwenhoeck, a century after 
 they were made, with the sneer, " One can generally see with the micro- 
 scope whatever one imagines." The Edinburgh Review (January, 1879) 
 says : " The faculty of unconscious and involuntary movement caused 
 by the impact of mechanical impressions, which is now a well under- 
 stood and thoroughly accepted function of nerve organization, was 
 received as a dire heresy when it was first propounded by Dr. Marshall 
 Hall." When, in his second memoir on the subject before the Royal 
 Society, Dr. H. described the movements of a headless turtle, " a deri- 
 sive note was scrawled upon the paper by one of the pundits of the 
 Society, inquiring whether the turtle was alive after it was made into 
 soup. It is a part of the history of this discovery that, in 1 837, this 
 second memorial of Dr. Hall was rejected by the Council of the Royal 
 Society as unworthy of acceptance." 
 
 I will not multiply instances which the history of almost every new 
 discovery furnishes. But the clergyman may well say, as JEsop's wolf 
 did when he saw the shepherds eating a lamb, " If I had done this, 
 what an outcry would have been heard ! " 
 
 IV. Theologians should recognize the fact that the progress of 
 knowledge may. necessitate the correction of theological opinion in 
 order to adjust it to newly discovered facts, laws or truths. If a person 
 holds a theological doctrine which obliges him to object to vaccination 
 or to lightning rods as interfering with the providence of God, the 
 progress of science requires him to amend his theology. Theology, 
 like all human knowledge, is progressive, both in the way of correcting 
 mistakes and of receiving knowledge of new reality. And the theolo- 
 gian has no reason to fear the progress of natural science ; for truth 
 in one department of knowledge can never conflict with truth in 
 another. 
 
 At the same time the theologian should be in no haste to modify his 
 theology in order to adjust it to new scientific discoveries and theories. 
 For man's knowledge of natural science is also progressive. Every 
 generation corrects the mistakes and enlarges the knowledge of its pre- 
 decessors in every department of physical science. What is accepted 
 as science to-day may be rejected in the future. When, a few years 
 ago, geology recognized the theory of catastrophes, if a theologian had 
 attempted to reconcile his interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis 
 with geology, his reconciliation would have been of little worth since 
 Lyell's theory of uniformitarianism has been accepted. Already we 
 have geologists who are suggesting the necessity of at least combining 
 catastrophism with uniformitarianism in order to take up all geological 
 facts. It is idle, therefore, to be continually trembling lest theology 
 cannot- be harmonized with every shifting phase of physical science. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 335 
 
 The harmony is as likely to be attained by correcting an error or by an 
 advance of knowledge in natural science as in theology. We should do 
 our work as theologians, trying to make men wiser and better by the 
 knowledge of God, of his law and his love, calm in the confidence that 
 the legitimate tendency and ultimate issue of the progress of knowledge 
 in every department will be to confirm, clarify and enlarge our know- 
 ledge of God. 
 
 V. Theologians and others who have not themselves made scientific 
 investigations, must receive facts on the authority of. scientific investi- 
 gators, but are competent to reason on the facts and to judge of the 
 generalizations, inferences and theories of scientists respecting them. 
 When one who is not a professional scientist ventures to criticize a 
 scientific generalization, or inference, or hypothesis, or theory, it is very 
 common and also very easy to dismiss it with the sneer that the man is 
 not a scientist, and therefore is incompetent to discuss the subject. 
 Here is a confounding of widely different things. One who has not 
 himself made scientific investigation as to a fact, must receive the fact 
 on the authority of the scientist who has observed it. One who is not 
 a chemist must accept on the authority of chemists facts which they 
 have observed in their laboratories. One who is not an astronomer 
 must accept the facts which astronomers observe with their instru- 
 ments. But when the scientist proceeds to announce his own general- 
 ization of these facts, his inferences from them, the hypotheses and 
 theories which he constructs respecting them, any well-educated person 
 is competent to judge of the correctness of his processes and his con- 
 clusions ; or to take the facts and generalize them or reason from them 
 for himself. This distinction is recognized by Prof. Tyndall : " To judge 
 of the soundness of scientific data and to reason from data assumed to 
 be sound are two totally different things." H. Spencer, in a review of 
 Prof. Owen's theory of the vertebrate skeleton, recognizes the same 
 distinction : " We confess that nearly all we know of this department 
 of biology has been learned from his lectures and writings. We pre- 
 tend to no independent investigations, but merely to such knowledge 
 of phenomena as he has furnished us with. . . . Had Prof. Owen 
 simply enunciated his generalizations " (I should substitute facts for 
 generalizations), " we should have accepted them on his authority. But 
 he has brought forward evidence to prove them. By so doing he has 
 tacitly appealed to the judgment of his readers and hearers has prac- 
 tically said, ' Here are the facts ; do they not warrant these conclusions?' 
 And all.w r e propose to do is to consider whether the conclusions are 
 warranted by the facts brought forward." This is reasonable. The 
 claim of some loud-mouthed scientists that none but professional sci- 
 entists are competent to judge of their reasonings and conclusions is 
 
336 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 contrary to common sense, and is an attempt to suppress free thought 
 by dogmatic authority. 
 
 It must be added that theologians and other educated persons, who 
 are not professional students of natural science, are better qualified in 
 some respects to judge of the correctness of reasoning from scientific 
 facts than the professional students of nature themselves. However 
 important to all students the discipline of empirical methods may be, 
 equally important to the empirical student is instruction in logic and 
 the laws of thought and the discipline accordant therewith, the lack of 
 which is often so noticeable in the reasoning of scientists in support of 
 their theories. Haeckel pungently rebukes this defect, and himself 
 strikingly exemplifies it. Also, scientists are at a disadvantage in the 
 extreme specialism which is necessary from the minute subdivision of 
 modern sciences. This is especially apparent when their reasonings 
 pertain to the unity of large generalizations from many sciences. One 
 whose life has been spent in investigating the minute details of a single 
 corner of a great science must be less competent for the broadest gener- 
 alizations of human thought than a theologian whose life is spent in 
 studying the most comprehensive generalizations and laws of nature and 
 of man, and in contemplating all particular facts, and all scientific gener- 
 alizations and laws in the unity of an all-comprehending system of reason. 
 
 The charge of narrowness and bigotry against theologians has been 
 sufficiently frequent and bitter. And it is true that they have not 
 escaped the influences inseparable from every special pursuit. The 
 theologian may get lost in the mustiness of the past and mistake the 
 exploring of libraries for the investigation of truth ; he may need 
 Faust's admonition to his scholar : " Is parchment "the holy well a 
 drink from which allays thy thirst forever? Thou hast not gained 
 the cordial if it gushes not from thy own soul." But devotion to 
 science exposes to a like danger. Minerals and plants, chemical and 
 mechanical forces, may be as dry as the driest parchment and as power- 
 less for true culture. John Stuart Mill says: "This lowering effect 
 of the extreme division of labor tells most of all on those who are set 
 up as the lights and teachers of the rest. A man's mind is as fatally 
 narrowed and his feelings towards the great ends of humanity as mis- 
 erably stunted by giving ail his thoughts to the classification of a few 
 insects or the resolution of a few equations, as to sharpening the points 
 or putting on the heads of pins. The ' dispersive specialty ' of the pre- 
 sent race of scientific men, who, unlike their predecessors, have a posi- 
 tive aversion to enlarged views, and seldom either know or care for any 
 of the interests of mankind beyond the narrow limits of their pursuits, 
 is dwelt on by Comte as one of the great and growing evils of the time, 
 and the one which most retards moral and spiritual regeneration. To 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 337 
 
 contend against it is one of the main purposes towards which he thinks 
 the forces of society should be directed." 
 
 VI. It is legitimate for theologians to controvert atheism and agnos- 
 ticism when promulgated as natural science or as necessarily implied in 
 or inferred from it ; and they are falsely and unjustly stigmatized as 
 opposing natural science in so doing. 
 
 1. Because in promulgating atheism, agnosticism or irreligion the 
 student of natural science passes beyond the sphere of empirical sci- 
 ence and begins to dogmatize in the sphere of metaphysics and theology. 
 Empirical science within its own sphere and by its own methods is 
 entirely incompetent to attain the idea of God or to declare his exist- 
 ence. It is equally incompetent to deny his existence or the possibility 
 of knowing that he exists. Each of these denials assumes the validity 
 of metaphysical and theological methods and the reality of metaphysical 
 and theological knowledge, and announces a negative answer to the 
 most profound questions of metaphysics and theology. If man has no 
 faculty of metaphysical and theological knowledge, it is as impossible 
 for him to ascertain and declare that there is no God as to ascertain 
 and declare that there is one; as impossible for him to be conscious 
 that he is ignorant of God and to ascertain and declare his incompe- 
 tence to know him, as for a pig to be conscious of his ignorance of the 
 Calculus or of Logarithms and to ascertain and declare his incompe- 
 tence to know them. In affirming atheism or agnosticism, the student 
 of nature has left the sphere of empirical science ; in controverting his 
 atheism or agnosticism, the theologian is controverting his false theology 
 and metaphysics, not his empirical science. Prof. J. Lawrence Smith, 
 in his address as President of the American Scientific Association at the 
 session in Portland, said : " It is a very common attempt nowadays for 
 scientists to transcend the limits of their legitimate studies and run into 
 speculations the most unphilosophical and absurd; quitting the true 
 basis of inductive philosophy and building up the most curious theories 
 on little else than assertion; speculating upon the merest analogy; 
 striving to work out speculative results by the inductive method. This 
 is a perversion of Bacon's philosophy ; and we cannot wonder that one 
 adopting such views, whatever his claim to genius may be, soon cuts 
 loose from all physical reasoning and becomes involved in the most 
 transcendental and absurd opinions." Of this the famous Prof. Lorenzo 
 Oken, of Zurich, was a remarkable example. 
 
 2. Those students of natural science who thus transcend the limits 
 of empirical science and dogmatize in the sphere of theology and meta- 
 physics, reveal a dangerous tendency to establish a scientific priesthood, 
 which shall authoritatively prescribe to men their religious and philo- 
 sophical opinions. 
 
 22 
 
338 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 They are accustomed to have men accept on their authority the facts 
 which they have scientifically ascertained ; they unconsciously come to 
 regard themselves as equal authorities in whatever inferences they may 
 draw from the facts. And as popular lecturers and writers for popular 
 magazines, they gradually assume more and more of the priestly func- 
 tion and propound their own opinions as scientific facts. On the other 
 hand, the people are accustomed to regard them as authorities as to 
 facts in their specific departments of science, and failing to discriminate 
 between facts and opinions, come to accept their metaphysical and 
 theological speculations and their imaginative theories as indisputable 
 scientific facts. To this tendency, exemplified in favor of theology, 
 Prof. Tyndall alludes in his Belfast address : " When the human mind 
 has achieved greatness and given evidence of extraordinary power in 
 any domain, there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in all 
 other domains. Thus theologians have found comfort and assurance in 
 the thought that Newton dealt with the question of revelation, forgetful 
 of the fact that the very devotion of his powers, through all the best 
 years of his life, to a totally different class of ideas .... tended 
 to render him less instead of more competent to deal with theological 
 and historic questions." Prof. TyndalPs own notorious errors in his 
 notices of the history of philosophy in this very address exemplify this 
 remark, and doubtless by many readers are received as scientifically 
 accurate on the authority of a popularly known scientist. 
 
 Thus, both on the part of a considerable number of scientists, espe- 
 cially of those who spend a large part of their strength in popularizing 
 science, and on the part of the people, the tendency to establish and 
 recognize a hierarchy of scientists, authoritatively dogmatizing as to 
 what men must believe and disbelieve, is gaining strength. 
 
 It has even had explicit avowal. Comte, in his positive politics, 
 called in a well-known witticism Roman Catholicism with the religion 
 left out, provides in his imaginary political State a hierarchy of savans, 
 who are to declare what is scientifically true, and enforce its acceptance 
 by punishment of all who reject it. Kenan speculates whether " the 
 future will not bring back something analogous to the ecclesiastical 
 discipline which modern liberalism has so jealously suppressed." ^ Mr. 
 Lewes gives us the dictum: "Whatever is inaccessible to reason, should 
 be strictly interdicted by reason ; " respecting which the Duke of Argyll 
 remarks : " Here we have the true ring of the old sacerdotal interdicts. 
 Who is to define beforehand what is or what is not inaccessible to rea- 
 son?" A writer in the Westminster Keview (October, 1873, p. 398), 
 speaking of the modern man of science, says : " Above all things he is 
 
 * St. Paul, p. 392. 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 339 
 
 silent in the 'presence of truths (or falsehoods) which he has ascertained 
 to t>e beyond his reach ; and he commands equally in respect to these 
 silence on all others of mankind." Prof. Huxley says in the Fort- 
 nightly Review (November, 1871, pp. 532, 538) : " I do not see how 
 any limit whatever can be laid down as to tne extent to which, under 
 some circumstances, the action of government may be rightfully carried. 
 . . . . Are we not bound to admit with Locke that the State may 
 have right to interfere with popery and atheism, if it be really true 
 that the practical consequences of such belief can be proved to be 
 injurious to civil government?" And why not, then, equally a right 
 to interfere with theism and Christianity, if an atheistic government 
 believes them effete and a hindrance to the progress of society ? The 
 demand of Prof. Haeckel that an atheistic doctrine of evolution should 
 be required by the government to be taught in all German schools, and 
 the reply of Virchow opposing the demand, show how close at hand and 
 how practical this question is. The Spectator is among the most liberal 
 of English newspapers. It recently said : " Physical investigation has 
 often been arrogant and ignorant in its attacks on theology. ... At 
 all events, in the present day and among intellectually cultivated peo- 
 ple, it takes, we think, more courage to make a stand against the pre- 
 sumptuous modesty of the philosophy of nescience than against the 
 narrow bigotry of theological restriction." Now and then some scientist 
 proclaims with considerable heat the right of students of physical science 
 to investigate all questions. Certainly, in common with all men, they 
 have the undisputed right to investigate all questions and to publish 
 their conclusions. The objection is to their proclaiming their philo- 
 sophical and theological speculations and negations and their unverified 
 hypotheses as established facts and laws of empirical science, to be 
 received implicitly on their authority by all who are not specialists in 
 physical science. 
 
 3. Atheism and agnosticism have practical bearings adverse to the 
 virtue and well-being of man, and there is a legitimate moral interest in 
 opposition to them. An insidious error is industriously propagated 
 under the misnomer of love of truth, which requires us to suppress all 
 our moral intuitions and sentiments and to regard with indifference all 
 theories which ask a hearing, being always equally willing to receive 
 one as another, whatever be its moral tendencies. It is an error as 
 unphilosophical and unscientific as it is immoral. The moral aspect 
 of a doctrine is an important element of evidence in judging of its 
 truth ; its immoral tendency is a legitimate reason for rejecting and 
 opposing it. Moral indignation is the legitimate and healthy spirit in 
 which to meet doctrines hostile to good morals. 
 
 4. The opposition of theologians in this case is not opposition to 
 
340 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 natural science, but to atheism, agnosticism and immorality. There is' 
 no conflict between science and theology ; but theology is in controversy 
 with atheism even when it masks itself in the disguise of science. And 
 it is not the theologian, but the atheistic scientist, who is responsible for 
 the conflict. It is not theology assailing science, but it is scientists 
 teaching atheism who assail theology. The common form of expression 
 is the opposition of theology to science ; as if theology were the aggressor. 
 The truth of history is just the contrary ; scientists assail theology by 
 teaching atheism or agnosticism as science. Theology controverts the 
 atheism and the agnosticism. It has no conflict with natural science. 
 
 VII. There is no extraordinary reason at the present time to appre- 
 hend the overthrow of Christianity by the assaults of skepticism. 
 Matthew Arnold may perhaps be selected as the one who more than 
 any other has given voice to the fear by which many are well nigh 
 paralyzed. At the Grande Chartreuse, pondering on its past glories 
 and on the faith of its cowled monks still lingering within its walls, he 
 says: 
 
 " Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
 The other powerless to be born, 
 
 With nowhere yet. tp rest my head, 
 Like these on earth I wait forlorn. 
 
 Their faith, my tears the world deride; 
 
 I come to shed them at their side. 
 
 " But if you cannot give us ease, 
 
 Last of the race of them who grieve, 
 Here leave us to die out with these 
 
 Last of the people who believe ! 
 Silent while years engrave the brow : 
 Silent ; the best are silent now. 
 
 " Achilles ponders in his tent ; 
 
 The kings of modern thought are dumb ; 
 Silent they are, though not content, 
 
 And wait to see the future come. 
 They have the grief men had of yore, 
 But they contend and cry no more." 
 
 1. In reply to this spirit of despair I say, first, that in every period 
 of the history of Christianity, from the beginning until now, despair 
 of its progress and even of its perpetuity would be the just conclusion 
 from a comparison merely of the human forces working for and against 
 it, irrespective of the gracious energy of God working in it and for it. 
 Whoever studies the story of the struggle of Christianity during its first 
 three hundred years with heathenism backed by the intellectual and 
 physical forces of the Roman empire, and its ultimate triumph, must 
 see that through the entire period the comparison of the human forces 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 341 
 
 in the conflict could justify only the expectation that Christianity would 
 be overpowered and extinguished. The same is true of any period of 
 the Dark Ages. The same is true of the Protestant Reformation. The 
 progress of Christianity is a perpetual surprisal. So our Lord declared : 
 " He will show him greater works than these that ye may marvel." Its 
 perpetuation and progress through the ages has been a perpetual attest- 
 ation of the presence and power of God. We have as much reason to 
 expect its perpetuation and power now as ever in the past. Christianity 
 consists essentially of the presence and energy of God working in human 
 history to deliver men from sin and to establish the reign of righteous- 
 ness and of good-will. Despair of its progress rests on disbelief of that 
 gracious presence and energy. 
 
 2. Skepticism is not more prevalent and powerful than in some 
 former periods. Even in ancient Greece we discover similar fears of 
 atheism. Plato says : " It is commonly thought that they who addict 
 themselves to astronomy and similar studies are made atheists by it 
 they seeing as much as possible how things come to pass by physical 
 necessity, and therefore thinking them not to be ordered by reason and 
 will for the sake of good."* I will mention but one example in Christian 
 times : the decline of religion in Great Britain and America in the last 
 century. Bishop Butler, in the " Advertisement " which he prefixed to 
 the " Analogy," says : " It has come, I know not how, to be taken for 
 granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject 
 of inquiry ; but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And 
 accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed 
 point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to 
 set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule. ... On the 
 contrary, thus much at least will be here found, not taken for granted, 
 but proved, that any reasonable man, who will thoroughly consider the 
 matter, may be as much assured as he is of his own being, that it is not, 
 however, so clear a case that there is nothing in it." This growing 
 disbelief is also a theme in his Charge to the Clergy. Another witness 
 in respect to the same period is President Edwards, who says : " History 
 gives no account of any age wherein there was so great an infidel apos- 
 tasy of those who had been brought up under the light of the gospel ; 
 never was there such a disavowal of all revealed religion."! He is 
 speaking both of Great Britain and America. And yet the period fol- 
 lowing these testimonies of Butler and Edwards, so much like the 
 despairing remarks of the present day, was in both countries one of 
 remarkable and widespread revival of the Christian faith and life. One 
 who studies the history of Christianity in its wholeness and notes the 
 
 * Laws, B. XII., 967. f History of Redemption, Period III., Part V. 
 
342 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 recurring epochs of infidel assaults upon it, instead of despairing of its 
 progress, will rather admire the sublimity with which Christianity holds 
 on its way, like the sun emerging undimmed from the earthly mists 
 which temporarily obscure it. If we are living in an epoch of skepti- 
 cism, such epochs have occurred before and are always transient. 
 
 3. The recurrence of epochs of skepticism is incidental to the pro- 
 gress of Christianity. This is evident so soon as we rightly understand 
 the true idea, aim and methods of Christianity, and the facts pertain- 
 ing to humanity which condition its progress. 
 
 Its effects are not consummated by resistless almightiness, but by 
 God's gracious influence on men free to consent or to resist influences 
 of wisdom and love to enlighten them in the knowledge of the truth 
 and to draw them by their own willing consent to conform their char- 
 acter and lives to it. Hence Christianity presents itself anew for 
 acceptance or rejection to every generation and to every man. Hence 
 the conflict which marked the introduction of Christianity is renewed 
 in every age. In the nature of the case Christianity cannot become 
 a consummated effect, fixed unchangeably for all time. In its very 
 nature it is the offer of God's grace which every man in every genera- 
 tion must receive or reject ; it is the presence in human history of the 
 divine influences of truth and love to which every man in every gene- 
 ration must consent or refuse to conform his life. The conflict of divine 
 wisdom and love against human ignorance, error and sin must con- 
 tinue so long as man remains a rational free agent, the subject of ig- 
 norance, error and sin, and so long as God remains the perfect Reason, 
 the perfect Wisdom and Love energizing in human history to redeem 
 mon from error and sin and bring them into harmony with his own 
 wisdom and love. Hence the significance of the scriptural expression 
 that the Spirit of God " abides " among men, " striving " through all 
 the courses of human history to accomplish for men the wise and be- 
 nignant ends of his redeeming love. 
 
 A similar conclusion is necessary if we consider the progress of man 
 .in the knowledge of nature, in industrial inventions, in political insti- 
 tutions, in the adjustment of the various relations of men in society. 
 So far as progress involves the abandonment of error and the correc- 
 tion of mistakes, it presupposes skepticism in its better meaning. New 
 knowledge in any department of life makes it necessary to inquire how 
 that new knowledge and the modification of the conduct of life in har- 
 mony with it are to be adjusted to the unchanging truth and . grace of 
 God, and to the reign of the perfect reason and its perfect wisdom and 
 love. Skepticism in its better sense marks, not merely a transient, but 
 also a transitional state to a larger and wiser knowledge of the truth. 
 And it is not strange that, in such a period, many drop into the baser 
 
THREE GRADES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. 343 
 
 skepticism, into the abyss which Carlyle calls the Everlasting No, and 
 deny altogether the reign of Reason, the supremacy and continuous 
 presence and energy of absolute wisdom and love in the conduct of the 
 universe. 
 
 That the present epoch of skepticism is transitional to a larger, purer 
 and more efficient faith I cannot doubt. Precisely what the change 
 will be cannot yet be accurately foreseen. " We wait to see the future 
 come," not in fear or despair, but in faith in Christianity as the religion 
 of promise, always throwing forward into the com ing time the great 
 light of the Messianic promise, as old as Abraham, as divine as the 
 living Christ, as continuous as the presence of God's Spirit, that the 
 future shall be better than the past. But so much as this seems already 
 assured that human thought can never go back to the Deistic concep- 
 tion of God as a mechanician, which carried to its logical results gives 
 us the Epicurean divinity, shut out from all action in the universe ; nor 
 to the conception of Duns Scotus, which has vitiated theology so ex- 
 tensively, that God is supreme will or arbitrary power instead of being 
 supreme Reason energizing everywhere ; nor to the attempt to carry 
 theological speculations to the remotest and minutest ramifications of 
 possible inference and to set down precise answers to every conceivable 
 question. And we confidently expect that theology will turn more and 
 more to the living Christ and inspire that love to man and practical en- 
 deavor for human welfare which characterized the earthly life of Christ, 
 are set forth for the teaching of all nations in the incarnation, and 
 declared by him to be, at the final judgment, the test of character of 
 those to whom his gospel may come : " Inasmuch as ye have done it, 
 or done it not, to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done 
 it, or done it not, unto me." 
 
 Our Saviour himself teaches, not only that his kingdom grows, but 
 that it grows by epochs : " first the blade, then the ear, after that the 
 full corn in the ear." These are epochs in the growth of the grain ; 
 not that it grows only in these epochs, but that its continuous growth 
 naturally manifests itself in them. And our Lord teaches that the. 
 growth of his kingdom is accordant with the same law of growth. 
 
 4. It should also be noticed that Christian progress is a vital growth, 
 destructive only of the erroneous or effete, retentive of the truth. The 
 true ideas of Hebrew, Greek and Roman thought are still forces in 
 Christian civilization ; and so Christian truth must live and work in 
 the progress of man forever. 
 
 5. The common representations of the decay of Christian faith at 
 the present day are greatly exaggerated. Carlyle describes the age as 
 " destitute of faith and yet afraid of skepticism." The fact that the 
 age recoils with a shudder from the plunge into atheism, which it sees 
 
344 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 would be indeed, " shooting Niagara," is rather an evidence of faith. 
 Contrast the eagerness with which the French Revolutionists plunged 
 into Atheism and gloried in it. And it is far from being true that 
 this age is destitute of faith. I cannot here investigate the question. 
 But judging from the growth of the churches, compared with that of 
 the population, the activity of the churches in propagating Christianity 
 at home and abroad, the multiplicity of beneficent enterprizes, the 
 energy with which they are carried forwards, and the great sums of 
 money given to aid them, the amount of thought, reading and dis- 
 cussion of religious subjects, the publication of sermons in newspapers 
 and otherwise, the fact that the age is mainly occupied with questions 
 of Christian civilization, such as the political rights of man, the eman- 
 cipation and subsequent education of serfs and slaves, the condition 
 of the laboring classes, and the like social questions, the suppression 
 of drunkenness and other moral questions, I think it safe to say that 
 Christianity was never more widely, powerfully and beneficently effi- 
 cient in the world than it is to-day. 
 
 If religion has dropped from its outward manifestation something of 
 its sanctimoniousness, if its speech is no longer in the cant which used 
 sometimes to be called " the language of Canaan," if it turns a less 
 forbidding front to the joyousness of youth and is less in the habit of 
 identifying amusement with worldliness, it may not on that account be 
 less imbued with the self-sacrificing love which spends and is spent in 
 the service of man or with the courageous and overcoming faith which 
 waits always on God for inspiration, guidance and strength. So that 
 we may be beginning to realize in the present what Matthew Arnold 
 sadly sighed for as a bare possibility of the future : 
 
 " Years hence perhaps may dawn an age 
 
 More fortunate, alas, than we, 
 Which without hardness may be sage, 
 And gay without frivolity." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE SENSIBILITIES: THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN AS SUS- 
 CEPTIBLE OF MOTIVES AND EMOTIONS. 
 
 I 62. Definition and Classification. 
 
 THUS far I have been examining the intellectual constitution of man. 
 As the result of these investigations we have reached the conclusion 
 that man is capable of empirical, rationalistic or noetic, and theological 
 science; that these are grades of knowledge necessary in attaining 
 knowledge of all that may be known of anything ; that they are re- 
 ciprocally dependent and necessarily in harmony ; that in theology all 
 science finds its completeness, its unity and its consummation; and 
 that the denial of the reality of theological knowledge involves the 
 denial of the reality of all knowledge. I proceed now to consider the 
 constitution of man as susceptible of motives and emotions, that is, the 
 Feelings or Sensibilities. 
 
 I. The Sensibility is man's constitutional capacity of motives and 
 emotions. The motives and emotions themselves are called Sensibili- 
 ties or Feelings. The feelings which are impulses to action are called 
 motives. The emotions are simple joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain, 
 which do not impel to action. If I may use a figure derived from 
 mechanics, motives are dynamic, moving the man to action ; emotions 
 are static conditions in which the man simply enjoys or sorrows, feels 
 pleasure or pain. For example, hunger, which is the appetite for 
 food, is a motive to get food and eat it ; the pleasure of eating it and 
 of the satisfaction of the appetite is an emotion. The same distinction 
 pertains to all the sensibilities. 
 
 II. The sensibilities are of two classes, the Natural or Psychical, and 
 the Rational. 
 
 The Rational Sensibilities presuppose the exercise of the Intuitive 
 Reason. They pertain to the fundamental realities or ideas of Reason : 
 Truth, Right or Law, Ideal Perfection, the Good estimated by reason 
 as of true worth, and the Absolute Being or God. Motives and emotions 
 of this class are impossible in a being not endowed with the intuitive 
 Reason. 
 
 The Natural or Psychical Sensibilities do not imply the exercise of in- 
 
 845 
 
346 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM . 
 
 tuitive reason, but are possible to irrational sentient beings. They are 
 common to man and the brutes. All of them may probably be found 
 in the higher orders of brutes. 
 
 Both classes of sensibilities are constitutional in man, and arise spon- 
 taneously and involuntarily when the appropriate object and occasion 
 are present. 
 
 III. Among the natural sensibilities are the following : 
 
 1. The instincts, or impulses without intelligence to do what intel- 
 ligence, if it existed, would require. Such is the impulse of a new- 
 born lamb or babe to suck ; or of a young fish-hawk striking a fish, 
 doing what to intelligence would require the calculation of distance, of 
 refraction of light, and of the motion of the hawk and the fish. 
 
 2. The impulse to exertion with no object ulterior to the exertion of 
 the faculties and the counter impulse to rest. The impulse to exertion 
 impels children to skip and jump, and to constant intellectual activity. 
 It is the impulse to play. Play is exertion of the faculties w T ith no end 
 ulterior to the exertion itself; and the exertion gives pleasure because 
 it is the satisfaction of a natural impulse. Work, on the contrary, is 
 the exertion of the faculties for some end ulterior to the exertion, 
 whether the exertion itself is agreeable or not. Riddles, puzzles, co- 
 nundrums, chess, and similar games of skill are intellectual play. 
 
 This is sometimes called the Radical impulse. It is this in our con- 
 stitution which makes constant employment necessary, and afflicts us with 
 ennui when we have nothing to do. It is this which makes men dis- 
 satisfied with positions in which they cannot put all their faculties into 
 exercise and find full scope for all their energies. It is this which pre- 
 vents men from stopping business when they have accumulated wealth, 
 and impels them to new enterprises and new risks. When this impulse 
 is weak in a young man, w r e say he has no ambition, no enterprise. 
 Much that is commonly ascribed to covetousness, or selfish ambition, or 
 other sinister motives, may often be more truly ascribed to this radical 
 impulse. It becomes complicated with other motives, but it always 
 remains one of the deepest and most constant springs of human action. 
 
 3. Appetite and desires : as hunger and thirst, the desire of society, of 
 power, of esteem, of property, of knowledge, A desire always implies 
 uneasiness in a sense of want, and an impulse to exertion to get the ob- 
 ject desired. Joy in getting the object and sorrow in missing it, are con- 
 sequent on the desire of the object and would be impossible without it. 
 
 4. Natural affection ; altruistic natural sensibilities, terminating on 
 another and not on self. Desire is a sense of w r ant impelling the person 
 to get something for himself; affection is a sense of fullness impelling 
 him to impart something to another. 
 
 Natural affections are of two kinds : affections of affinity or sympa- 
 
THE SENSIBILITIES: MOTIVES AND EMOTIONS. 347 
 
 thetic affections, as parental, filial and conjugal love, compassion for the 
 distressed, love of country, and the like ; affections of antipathy or repel- 
 lent affections, as anger, revenge, fear, and antipathies of race. 
 
 All these are common to man and the higher orders of brutes. 
 
 IV. The Rational motives and emotions are the five following : 
 
 The Scientific, pertaining to the truth ; 
 
 The Moral, pertaining to the Right ; 
 
 The ^Esthetic, pertaining to the ideally perfect ; 
 
 The Teleological, pertaining to the Good which reason adjudges to be 
 worthy of the pursuit and enjoyment of rational beings ; 
 
 The Religious, pertaining to Absolute being or God. 
 
 These have been noticed sufficiently for my purpose in discussing the 
 fundamental ideas of Reason. 
 
 \ 63. The Desire of Happiness as a Motive. 
 
 According to this analysis, happiness or enjoyment is a static condi- 
 tion and is not a motive to action. When a man is happy, his happi- 
 ness does not of itself move him to seek something else ; on the contrary, 
 he is disposed to rest in his happiness. We have seen, however, that 
 the desire of happiness may be a motive to action ; when a man ab- 
 stracts enjoyment from its sources, conditions and consequences, and 
 compares simply enjoyment and suffering, he naturally desires the 
 former rather than the latter. This motive, however, involving such a 
 process of abstraction, cannot be a frequent motive of human action. 
 The common motives are the instincts, desires and affections, the physical 
 and rational impulses which terminate on specific objects. We see, 
 then, from a new point of view how exceedingly far from truth is the 
 assertion, already disproved, that the desire of happiness is the ultimate 
 motive of all moral action. 
 
 We may also notice here an important fact that so far as the desire of 
 enjoyment does supplant other motives and become the ruling motive 
 of action, it becomes morbid and hurtful. And this the whole history 
 of the world verifies. This is the very characteristic of a period of 
 luxury and effeminacy ; people make the most diligent study of ways to 
 enjoy themselves. They live for that end. And while debasing them- 
 selves, they miss the enjoyment. Apicius could not sleep because the 
 rose-leaves lay too thickly on him. From the same source come the 
 selfishness and sensitiveness of excessive refinement and delicacy. So 
 in aesthetics, when persons begin to seek enjoyment, they cease to ad- 
 mire the beauty and miss the enjoyment. One who walks abroad scene- 
 hunting, does not find nor enjoy the beauty of nature ; and great gal- 
 leries are a weariness to him who is seeking enjoyment instead of 
 sincerely admiring beauty. 
 
348 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 When enjoyment, which is legitimately the consequent of following 
 some motive, itself supplants the motive, it becomes a morbid and dan- 
 gerous desire of excitement. For example, one has an appetite for food 
 and he enjoys eating. Suppose now that his mind fixes on the pleasure 
 of eating and he desires that, instead of desiring food ; then he becomes 
 an epicure, a gourmand ; he devises ways to increase and prolong the 
 pleasure of eating, even to the disgusting device of the Romans 
 wmere post coenam. And thus he spoils his enjoyment. Similar is the 
 result of the use of alcoholic drinks. The drinker ceases to enjoy the 
 drink ; he seeks the excitement. Similar is the mental intoxication of 
 excessive novel- reading. Similar is the result in the religious life, when 
 one no longer seeks God and lives to serve men, but seeks the exhilara- 
 tion of religious enjoyment. And the result, in all these most diverse 
 and yet similar cases, is to deaden the sensibilities, to benumb the capa- 
 city of enjoyment and to create a necessity for more highly-spiced con- 
 diments, for more sensational stories and sermons and to destroy 
 the susceptibility to the joys of common life. 
 
 2 64. Feeling a Source of Knowledge. 
 
 The feelings are a source of knowledge in the following particulars : 
 
 Feeling is always conscious feeling. A pain or pleasure of which the 
 person is unconscious would not be a pain or pleasure ; it would not be 
 a feeling. In this sense feeling is a kind of knowing. 
 
 Man has knowledge of objects through feeling. In sensation man 
 perceives the outward object ; in sorrow man is conscious of himself as 
 sorrowing. So when God's Spirit works in the human spirit, in the 
 spiritual motives and emotions man may know God ; and thus that may 
 be "spiritually discerned" which is "foolishness-" to "the natural 
 man." 
 
 Feelings may be a source of knowledge by our inferring their cause 
 or object. An instinct indicates a corresponding reality. A young 
 bird's instinct to fly indicates the possibility of flying; a rabbit's 
 instinctive timidity indicates the reality of danger; a sinner's spon- 
 taneous fear of judgment indicates the reality of moral law and 
 government. 
 
 They are also motives interesting us in seeking knowledge. And on 
 the feelings, candor and impartiality in the investigation of facts and 
 truth depend. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 THE WILL. 
 
 \ 65. Definition. 
 
 I. THE will is the power of a person, in the light of reason and with 
 susceptibility to the influence of rational motives, to determine the ends 
 or objects to which he will direct his energy, and the exertion of his 
 energy with reference to the determined end or object. 
 
 II. The will is a person's power of self-determination. It is his 
 power of determining the exercise of his own causal efficiency or 
 energy. He can determine the object or end to which he will direct it ; 
 he can exert it or call it into action when he will ; he can refrain from 
 exerting it when he will. He has power of self-direction, self-exertion 
 and self-restraint. This power is the will. Its function is to deter- 
 mine the exercise of power. Its acts are determinations. We call 
 it the power of self-determination. 
 
 1. The determinations of the will are of two kinds Choice and 
 Volition. 
 
 In choice a person determines the object or end to which he will di- 
 rect his energies. 
 
 In volition a person exerts his energies or calls them into action ; or 
 he refuses to do so. Volition is a determination because a person ex- 
 erts his energies or refrains from exerting them at will. He determines 
 whether to exert them or not. The motor force of a stone, on the con- 
 trary, is not exerted by the stone, but is communicated to it. 
 
 Choice is self-direction. Volition is self-exertion or self-restraint. 
 Both are self-determinations. 
 
 2. The will must be distinguished from the causal efficiency or power 
 whose action the will determines. Every determination of will pre- 
 supposes that the person is constitutionally endowed with causal effi- 
 ciency or potency. The existence of power or efficiency is essential to 
 the very conception of a will. If there is no power to be exerted and 
 directed, there can be no will to exert and direct it. But causal effi- 
 ciency is not a distinctive peculiarity of will. Material objects have 
 causal efficiency. They, however, cannot direct it, nor exert or refrain 
 from exerting it of themselves. Electricity is a power. But it cannot 
 
 349 
 
350 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 determine the direction nor the exertion of its energy. The lightning 
 cannot select the tree which it will strike nor determine when it will 
 exert its energy and strike it. The distinctive peculiarity of will is 
 that it is a power capable of choosing the end or object to which it 
 will direct its energy and of exerting or refraining to exert its energy. 
 Man constitutionally has intellectual power ; he knows and thinks. 
 His will does not create this power of knowing and thinking; it 
 simply chooses the object of thought and exerts the intellectual power 
 upon it in fixed attention. Man by his constitution has physical power. 
 His will does not create this physical power ; it simply selects its ob- 
 ject and exerts the power in the direction determined. Both the in- 
 tellectual and the physical powers are trained and developed under 
 this exercise. But the will does not create this constitutional capacity 
 of growth ; it merely exerts and directs the powers so that the growth 
 is realized. 
 
 While, then, the will presupposes power or causal efficiency, it is not 
 merely that. The power becomes will only when of itself it can deter- 
 mine the end for which it will act, and can exert its energies or refrain 
 from exerting them for the chosen end. 
 
 3. The determinations of the will are distinguished from the sensi- 
 bilities. They are neither motives nor emotions ; they are distinct from 
 all instincts, desires, affections, from all the optative part of human 
 nature, from all the sensibilities, whether natural or rational. Hunger 
 is a motive to seek food and eat. But hunger is not the choice of fish 
 instead of meat for dinner, nor is it the determination to go fishing in 
 order to get it. 
 
 Man is the subject of many motives impelling him to many and often 
 incompatible objects or ends of action. Impelled by these motives, man 
 by his will determines among all these objects one to which he will 
 direct his action. The 'choice of the will stands forth entirely distinct 
 from the motives and the emotions, and determines the action. If the 
 man's end and course of action are determined by his feelings, he has 
 no free-will. He simply follows, as a brute, the impulse of nature 
 which at the moment is strongest. 
 
 4. The determinations of the will must be distinguished from the 
 determinations and conclusions of the intellect. A determination by 
 the intellect is simply a definition. It is noting in thought the limits 
 or boundaries of anything, as its form and position in space, or its date 
 and duration in time ; or it is noting the qualities of a particular con- 
 crete reality, or the contents of a logical concept or general notion. 
 Less properly the comparison of objects concluding in a judgment is 
 called an intellectual determination ; as one compares different courses 
 of action and judges one of them to be the right one, or the expedient, 
 
^T!B^ 
 
 V <>V THTC *f 
 
 :HE 
 
 /TiT -NT T i 
 
 THE WILL. 
 
 VAl. OT 
 
 or the agreeable ; or he compares different objects 
 
 the most beautiful or the most desirable. 
 
 This, however, is a determination merely of the thought, not of the 
 efficient energies ; it concludes merely in a judgment, not in a choice or 
 a volition. A man may be intellectually convinced that one of several 
 courses of action is right, and yet determine to take the contrary ; he 
 may be intellectually convinced that a certain character is perfect, or 
 that the possession of a certain object would be agreeable, and yet not 
 choose the character or object as the end to be attained by action. In 
 the determinations of the will is something other than the determina- 
 tions of the intellect. The will determines not thought, but the efficient 
 energies. In its choice of an object it directs the energies upon the 
 chosen object as the end of action ; in its volition it exerts them or calls 
 them into action ; it controls them whether in action or at rest, whether 
 potencies or energies. 
 
 III. Power is constituted will by being endowed with Reason. A 
 rational power is a will. Because man is rational he is able to compare 
 all ends and methods and motives of action and determine among them 
 the motive which he will follow, the ends for which he will act, and 
 when, where and how he will exert his energies for the end chosen. A 
 Power endowed with Reason is self-directive in choice and self-exertive 
 in volition ; in both it is self-determining. 
 
 Will is the name of the mind itself considered as self-determining ; 
 just as Reason is the mind itself considered as rational. The names 
 designate two aspects or powers of the person, yet but one indivisible 
 person. If you regard the person as Will, he is a rational Will. If 
 you regard him as Reason, he is an energizing and self-determining 
 Reason ; or, as Kant says, " The Will is nothing other than the Prac- 
 tical Reason." 
 
 That rationality is of the essence of will, that power is constituted 
 will by rationality, is a fact of fundamental importance, and is .a clew 
 that guides us through the maze of controversy on the subject. Had 
 this fact been appreciated, the confusion of tongues in discussing the 
 freedom of the will might not have been inflicted on us. Prof. Henry 
 P. Tappan, for example, and others define the will as mere power, and 
 thus, while advocating free-will, identify it with a necessary force 
 of nature. 
 
 I 66. Choice and Volition. 
 
 I. The distinction of choice and volition is a real one. It is not, 
 however, commonly formulated in the discussion of the will, and the 
 names choice and volition are not commonly recognized as designating 
 two kinds of determination, the determination of the object or end of 
 the action, and of the exertion of the powers in action for the end 
 
352 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 chosen. I regard the distinction as indispensable to a clear and 
 thorough knowledge of the will and of moral responsibility. 
 1. It is clearly recognized in consciousness. 
 
 If we reflect on our own determinations, it is plain that we are not 
 limited to determining to exert or not to exert our energies, but that we 
 also determine the object for which we exert them. It is also plain, on 
 the other hand, that the power bf determination is not limited to choos- 
 ing the object of action ; for man is conscious that he exerts his energies 
 and arrests their exertion by his own volition. Man is conscious of 
 will-power that is both self-directing and self-exerting. For example, a 
 man is invited to go to a picnic. He chooses between the value repre- 
 sented by the day's wages and the saving of the expense of the picnic, 
 on the one hand, and the pleasure of the excursion. Having chosen 
 the day's wages, he sets himself to work and saws wood all day to earn 
 it. He is conscious of the distinction between his choice of the wages 
 and his volitions exerting his strength in earning it. A young man 
 chooses between learning, wealth and political preferment as the object 
 of his life-work. This choice is obviously diiferent from the volitions 
 to exert his powers day after day and year after year in striving to win 
 his chosen object. 
 
 2. The distinction is essential to the reality of free-will and moral 
 responsibility. If will is merely the volitional power of calling the 
 energies into action, then we no longer determine by free-will the ends 
 or objects of action; and these are determined by the constitutional 
 impulses or motives which at the time are strongest. And thus all 
 freedom both of choice and volition disappears, since the man has no 
 power of self-direction and can exert his energies only in the direction 
 already determined for him by the unreasoning impulses of nature. 
 Hence Socrates, in the Gorgias, calls attention to the fact that men do 
 not merely will their action, but rather the object for which they act. 
 II. Choice may be further explained as follows : 
 1. The object or end determined by choice is always that to which 
 the energies are to be devoted in action. It is never a mere preference 
 of taste or feeling without reference to action ; as one relishes peaches 
 more than apples, or prefers Homer to Virgil as a matter bf taste. It 
 is always a determination of the object of action ; as one chooses peaches 
 in preference to other fruit for a dessert and goes and buys them ; or 
 chooses Homer for his evening's recreation and takes it down and reads 
 it. And this nullifies Prof. Calderwood's criticism of Edwards on this 
 point : " Will is a power of control over the faculties and capacities of 
 our nature, by means of which we are enabled to determine personal 
 activity. It is to be carefully observed that will is control of our own 
 powers, not of external things. Edwards has quite overlooked this in 
 
THE WILL. 353 
 
 his definition, ' Will is that which chooses anything." This he says 
 must be corrected ; it is " choosing forms of activity or action, not 
 things."* The truth is, on the contrary, that it is chcosing the 
 objects of action, not its forms merely ; but the object is chosen only 
 as an object of action. It is a singular error to suppose that choice 
 of an object implies an act- of control over " external things." It 
 is simply the choice of the object of action ; it determines the end 
 or object for which we will exert our powers. Hence the choice of 
 the object is in itself the determination of the direction of our activity. 
 
 2. The act cf choosing is as follows : 
 
 First, it presupposes in the intellect a comparison of objects in the 
 light, of reason and with susceptibility to the influence of rational mo- 
 tives. In a rational being the rational sensibilities stand always over 
 against the natural instincts, desires and affections ; and these open to 
 man two spheres of activity with their respective and contrasted objects 
 between which he can choose. A choice presupposes a comparison of 
 objects in the light of reason. The actual choice in a given case may 
 be between objects of the natural appetites, desires or affections ; as be- 
 tween two different articles of food. But even in this case choice in 
 the proper sense of the term is possible only because the man is en- 
 dowed with reason, and thus is able to compare objects in the light of 
 reason and under the influence of rational motives, and then to deter- 
 mine which shall be the object of his action. Otherwise he would 
 simply be driven by the strongest impulse without the possibility of a 
 choice. If he chooses that for which he has the keenest relish, the 
 choice is still a free determination of the will and not a helpless follow- 
 ing of appetite. 
 
 Secondly, after the comparison follows the choice, which is the 
 simple, indefinable determination of the will. Before the man, in the 
 clear light of reason, lie all the objects which he has been comparing 
 and all the motives, rational or natural, which impel him to these 
 various objects. Wide is his range of choice. He may choose that 
 which reason approves and to which rational motives impel, and be 
 in character like God ; or, disregarding reason, he may choose that to 
 which sensuous appetite impels, and be as a brute ; or that to which 
 malignity and hate impel, and be as a devil. He can choose, among 
 all these objects, one as the object of action ; can determine which of 
 the conflicting motives he will follow. And this is a determination by 
 his will, directing his energies to an object or end. The choice is a 
 simple indefinable determination, known only by the consciousness 
 of it in experience. 
 
 * Manual of Moral Philosophy, pp. 165, 178. 
 
 23 
 
354 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Mr. Hazard and Professor Bowen* deny that there is a determina- 
 tion of the will here, and recognize only the intellectual acts of com- 
 paring and judging. Mr. Bowen says, totally misconceiving the whole 
 action and leaving no place for free determination : " Determination 
 as a phenomenon of choice is a function of the understanding and takes 
 place in view of reasons miscalled motives, though as consciousness 
 attests, not under compulsion by them." But that choice is a deter- 
 mination of will and not merely an intellectual comparison, and that 
 it is a determination between objects to which man is impelled by 
 motive-sensibilities natural or rational, motives which are not mere 
 " reasons " intellectually apprehended, is evident from the notorious 
 fact that a person often chooses his object in accordance with appe- 
 tite, desire or passion, and in defiance of the mandates of reason and 
 the judgment in which the intellectual comparison concludes, and so 
 chooses what he knows is contrary both to his duty and his welfare. 
 
 Thirdly, after the determination, the signs or manifestations of the 
 choice are two : volitions to act in the direction of the choice, and 
 complacency or pleasure in the object preferred, so that the action is in 
 spontaneity and not from constraint or restraint. 
 
 3. A choice is an abiding determination of the will. It may abide 
 for an hour or day; it may be a life-long choice or preference. It 
 abides, however, as always a free choice, not as a disposition or affection 
 which is a necessity of nature. 
 
 4. Choices may be distinguished by their objects as supreme and sub- 
 ordinate. A subordinate choice is the choice of an object as sub- 
 ordinate to an ulterior end ; as when one chooses wealth as an object 
 of pursuit, but chooses it simply as a means of political preferment. 
 The supreme choice is the choice of the supreme end of action, to 
 which all other ends are subordinate and which itself is subordinate to 
 no ulterior end. 
 
 Because man is rational he must choose some supreme end ; for he 
 recognizes reason as supreme ; all his thinking culminates in finding 
 the unity of the manifold, and in the conduct of life reason requires 
 him to bring his whole activity into unity, in harmony with rational 
 truths, laws, ideals and ends, and in consecration to that end which 
 reason sets forth as supreme. The choice of a supreme object of action 
 and the unity of life and character in the subordination of all other 
 objects and of all activity to it, is essential in the moral life of a rational 
 being. 
 
 III. A volition, as I have defined it, is an executive or exertive act 
 
 * Hazard on Freedom of Mind in Willing : pp. 175, 184, 180, 189, 60. Bowen's 
 History of Philosophy, p. 300. 
 
THE WILL. 355 
 
 of will which immediately calls the energies into action : as the volition 
 to lift my hand, to throw a stone, or to examine a plant. An exertive 
 volition is in its nature ictic ; it ceases with the action which it calls 
 forth. 
 
 If we attend more closely to our. mental acts we perceive that we 
 also make determinations to act which are abiding. They are what we 
 call intentions, purposes, resolutions, and so distinguish them from 
 choices or elective preferences. As determinations to act and not choices 
 of objects, they are of the nature of volitions, and may be called immanent 
 volitions ; volitions would then be distinguished as exertive or executive, 
 and immanent. The man who to-day chooses to-morrow's wages in 
 preference to the pleasure of an excursion, in that very choice deter- 
 mines to work to-morrow and earn the wages. So soon as he has chosen 
 the wages, he says, I am determined to work to-morrow. A choice 
 always manifests itself in a purpose to act in accordance with the choice ; 
 and the action will begin immediately if the man sees that immediate 
 action is required to attain the end. In the case of the laborer, he 
 must wait till to-morrow before he can begin his work. But his deter- 
 mination to work remains. So when a man has chosen his profession, 
 his determination to educate himself for it abides through the years of 
 professional study, and his determination to practice it abides through 
 life. This determination does not of itself strike so deep into the 
 springs of action as a choice ; for it is only a determination to do certain 
 actions, while the choice is the preference or determination of the object 
 of the action. Such a determination or resolution has a proverbial 
 lack of tenacity ; men " resolve, and reresolve, and die the same," because 
 the resolution is only a determination to act.- If it is dissociated from 
 the choice which fixes the heart on the object, and if then appetite, 
 desire or passion stirs and tempts to the contrary, the resolution gives 
 way like a cotton thread in a flame. The choice, fixing the heart on the 
 object and making the exertion spontaneous and joyous, has a power to 
 resist and subdue the natural passions. 
 
 It may be objected that it is an over-refined analysis to distinguish 
 this abiding determination to act, from the choice. It is true that the 
 choice of the object of action ipso facto determines the direction of the 
 action to the object chosen ; and I do not wish to dispute about names. 
 The point of practical importance is, that a determination to act, how- 
 ever abiding, if dissociated from the choice of the object, is not a deter- 
 mination of the will in its full significance. The former without the 
 latter must be superficial and weak. Certainly the choice of God as 
 the supreme object of service must always be distinguished from the 
 various acts of service which I render to him and from my abiding 
 purpose to render them; the choice of my neighbor as the object of 
 
356 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 service equally with myself, must always be distinguishable from my 
 acts of service to him and from my purpose to do those acts. 
 
 It has been objected that the distinction implies that the supreme 
 choice of God and the immanent purpose to serve him may exist, while 
 yet the actual service is put off to a future time. This is a misrepre- 
 sentation. Choice spontaneously manifests itself in accordant volitional 
 action. In all choices the purpose to act accordantly is immediate and 
 continuous ; but in a subordinate choice the actual exertion may be put 
 off through lack of fit opportunity. In the supreme choice of God any 
 particular act of service may be put off for the same reason ; as a young 
 man purposing to go to China as a missionary puts off his actual going 
 till he gets through college and the professional school. But the actual 
 exertion of all the energies in the service of God never needs be put 
 off for such a reason, because a man is>required to serve God in what- 
 ever he does. There needs be no delay in breaking off one's sins by 
 righteousness ; and if the imagined choice of God does not immediately 
 manifest itself thus, it is proved to be not a real choice of God. I have 
 already shown that a choice is not a mere preference of one thing to 
 another, but it is the choice of an object to which the activity is 'to be 
 directed. It is, therefore, of the essence of choice that it spontaneously 
 expresses itself in an abiding determination to act in accordance with 
 the choice and in accordant actual exertion of energy whenever there is 
 fit opportunity. 
 
 IV. A volition is not a complete determination, but is the expression 
 of a choice. The choice of the object of action is the fundamental 
 determination, of which the volition is the manifestation and expression. 
 If man has only volitional power or power to exert his energies and has 
 no power of choosing the ends or objects of his action, then his only 
 freedom is freedom to do as he pleases ; but what he pleases is necessa- 
 rily determined by the unreasoning impulse of feeling which at the time 
 is the strongest. Much of the confusion, in the discussion of the will 
 has arisen from the error that a volition to do an action is the deepest 
 and only determination. 
 
 It may be asked whether a choice may not be made between two 
 actions or courses of action. Undoubtedly two proposed acts or courses 
 of action may be compared as objects of thought, and one of them may 
 be determined on by the will in preference to the other. But if we 
 consider further w r e shall see that the determination of the action has 
 been made in choosing an object of action. If I haye determined to go 
 to New York for the attainment of a chosen object, as the pleasure of 
 seeing a friend or the money to be gained by transacting a business, I 
 may then determine whether I will go on horseback, or by railroad, or 
 by steamboat. If I choose to go on horseback, it will be for the plea- 
 
THE WILL. 357 
 
 sure and health to be gained by it ; if by steamboat, it may be for the 
 coolness and pleasure of the sail, or, if in the night, for securing the 
 gains of a day's business ; if by rail, for the company of a friend or the 
 saving made by greater expedition. So that the determination to act is 
 still dependent on the choice of an object and is a manifestation or 
 expression of the choice. 
 
 67. Ethical Application. 
 
 This is not the place for the discussion of ethics ; but for the further 
 elucidation of the doctrine of the will I will briefly notice some of its 
 ethical applications. 
 
 I. The object of the supreme choice is always a person or persons to 
 be trusted and served, not any thing, quality, power or condition to be 
 acquired, possessed, used and enjoyed. 
 
 The objects or ends of action among which choice is possible lie in 
 these two spheres. There are persons to be trusted or served ; there are 
 things, qualities, powers and conditions to be acquired, possessed, used 
 and enjoyed. 
 
 In the sphere of objects to be acquired, that which ought to be chosen 
 as the ultimate and highest end is well-being, or the good estimated by 
 reason as having true worth ; and all things, qualities, powers and con- 
 ditions, which are the legitimate means or conditions of attaining the 
 true and highest good, are rightly chosen as relative good. 
 
 But the object of the supreme choice can never be in the sphere of 
 objects to be acquired, possessed, used and enjoyed. For the further 
 question arises: for whom is the object acquired, for myself or for 
 another? Thus beyond all objects that are acquired and used, there is 
 always and necessarily a higher and supreme object the person for 
 whom the objects, that may be possessed, used and enjoyed, are to be 
 acquired. Therefore the object of a supreme choice, whether morally 
 right or wrong, must always be a person or persons to be trusted or 
 served, not any thing, quality or condition to be acquired, possessed, 
 used and enjoyed. 
 
 This is evident, also, because a person is essentially by virtue of his 
 personality in himself an end of action, a being to be trusted and served, 
 never an object to be acquired, possessed and used. So our Lord 
 teaches that the sum total of all worldly values is not equal to the 
 worth of a man. He has a dignity beyond all price. A person by 
 virtue of his personality has rights. Something is due to him from 
 )ther persons ; they owe him duty. The object of the supreme choice 
 to which the whole activity is to be consecrated cannot be anything 
 which is a means to an end ; it must be that which is an end in itself 
 and unconditionally. A person only is thus an end. A person, there- 
 
358 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 fore, must be the object of the supreme choice, whether that choice be 
 morally right or wrong. 
 
 Hence the true good itself is not the object of a right supreme choice. 
 For the true good is nothing real except as the good of a person ; and 
 the choice of it is impossible except as it is chosen for some person. 
 
 II. The object of a right supreme choice is God in his relation to all 
 personal beings in the universal moral system. Or, it is God and all 
 rational beings in their real relations in the unity of the universal 
 rational and moral system. 
 
 Here it may be objected that the right supreme choice must be the 
 consent of the will to the reason ; the acceptance by the will of the 
 truths, laws, ideals and ends of Reason as regulative of the whole 
 activity ; and that the wrong supreme choice must be the refusal by the 
 will of this consent. This accords with Kant's ethics, that the right 
 moral character consists in reverence for law, in the doing of duty. It 
 is true that the right supreme choice carries in it the consent of the will 
 to the law ; that so far as action is distinctively moral it involves the 
 recognition of law, obligation and duty ; and that the right character 
 involves the fixed purpose of the will to do all duty. This, however, is 
 only a partial and incomplete description of a right moral character. 
 For, in the first place, it is only a resolution to perform actions. It 
 thus remains no more than an immanent volition. It has not in it that 
 which alone is the real determination, the choice of the object of action. 
 And, besides this, the will cannot consent to the formal principle of the 
 law otherwise than in the act of love to God and man which the real 
 principle of the law requires. And, further, the universe is not abstract, 
 but concrete ; it is a universe of being. All knowledge, thought and 
 causal energy are attributes of being and terminate on being as their 
 object. But the objection makes the supreme act of will which deter- 
 mines the whole course of action and the whole moral character and 
 destiny of the man, terminate in abstract ideas of law and duty. Vir- 
 tue thus defined lacks reality. 
 
 We must, then, look beyond this to the realm of personal beings to 
 find the object of the right supreme choice. The Absolute Reason is 
 God. In him all truth, law, ideals and good are eternal. The object 
 of the right supreme choice, which determines man's moral character in 
 the whole course of his activity, is God. He is chosen as the supreme 
 object of trust and service. 
 
 God, however, does not exist alone, but in relation to the universe in 
 which he is expressing the archetypal thoughts of eternal Reason and 
 progressively realizing the ideals and ends of his wisdom and love. The 
 natural universe exists in the unity of a Cosmos by its relation to God. 
 Personal beings exist in the unity of a moral system having common 
 
THE WILL. 359 
 
 relations to each other and to God. They have a common constitution 
 as rational and free. Knowledge, truth, rational and moral principles, 
 ideals of perfection, worth and well-being as estimated by reason, are 
 the same to them all under the one universal law of God. If, then, I 
 choose God as the supreme object of trust and service, I choose him in 
 his real relations to the universe ; I consent to the truths, laws, ideals 
 and ends of the supreme reason ; I devote my eaergies to realize as a 
 worker with God all the ends of his wisdom and love in the realm of 
 personality, and so to advance his kingdom of righteousness and peace. 
 In choosing God as the supreme object of trust and service, I choose all 
 rational beings within the sphere of my knowledge and influence as 
 equally with myself objects of trust and service in the moral system in 
 which we are all united. And in that choice my will consents to the 
 truths, laws, ideals and ends which are eternal in the divine Reason and 
 are the constitution of the system of things in which we all exist and 
 act. So Christ declares the object of human service to be God as 
 supreme and our neighbor (every one within our influence) as 
 ourselves. 
 
 In a wrong supreme choice, a man chooses himself alone, and thus 
 refuses God, his neighbor and himself in their relations in the moral 
 system, as the supreme object of trust and service. 
 
 I have spoken of trust and service. These constitute the entire 
 activity of man so far as persons are the object of it. Trust is the 
 activity expressing man's consciousness of dependence and accords with 
 the reality that man is finite and dependent. Service is the activity 
 expressing man's consciousness of freedom and power, and accords with 
 the reality that man is endowed with freedom and power, and so is a 
 sort of subcreative center of intelligence and energy. 
 
 III. The love which is required in the law of God is a free choice 
 of the will. 
 
 We are embarrassed by the fact that love in popular language is 
 used with different meanings. We use the word indiscriminately to 
 denote natural appetites or desires or affections, and the moral character 
 required in the law of God. We say indiscriminately a man loves an 
 apple, he loves intoxicating liquors, he loves money, he loves his chil- 
 dren, he loves his neighbor and he loves God. It is evident that the 
 love required in the law cannot be the same with love in all the different 
 meanings which it has in popular use. It is necessary to discriminate 
 and to ascertain what is the distinctive meaning of the love required in 
 the law. 
 
 Evidently, for the very reason that love is commanded by law, it 
 cannot be a natural appetite, desire or affection, nor even a rational 
 sensibility. For these are constitutional impulses and are only in- 
 
360 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 directly and remotely under our own control. A mother's love is in- 
 stinctive. At the birth of her child it rises in her heart as involun- 
 tarily as the milk in her breast. The law cannot command us, as our 
 primary and supreme duty, to feel, to melt in tender sensibility, to 
 equip ourselves with the instincts and impulses of nature. 
 
 If, then, the love commanded in the law must be under our im- 
 mediate control, it must be a determination of the will ; it can only be 
 the choice, as the supreme object of trust and service, of God and all 
 personal beings in their real relations in the unity of the universal 
 system. It is the free choice, after thoughtful comparison, of God 
 as the person to whom I consecrate all my energies in trust and service, 
 and of my neighbor equally with myself as the object of trust and 
 service in the universal moral system in which we all are in unity under 
 the common law and love of God. If, on the contrary, I love my- 
 self supremely, this selfishness is also the free choice of myself as the 
 supreme object of trust and service. 
 
 Here we attain a clear and complete psychological and philosophi- 
 cal distinction between the love which the law requires, and appetites, 
 desires, affections and sensibilities of every kind which in popular lan- 
 guage are called love. The affections of nature are involuntary im- 
 pulses ; the love which dominates in the moral and spiritual life is a 
 free and abiding choice of the will. 
 
 If this is not so, then the love to God und man which is the essence 
 of all virtue, and God's love wliich is the essence of his own moral 
 perfection, is not different in kind from a cat's love of her kittens or a 
 cow's love of her calf; and in man no psychological distinction exists 
 between the instinctive appetites, desires and affections of nature, and 
 the love which constitutes obedience to the law and is the essence of 
 right moral character both in man and God. And it is because the 
 love whicli is the perfection of moral character is man's free choice, 
 that we may describe the man who exercises it, in the quotation aptly 
 applied to him by Kant : 
 
 " Liber, pulcher, honoratus, Rex denique regum." 
 
 IV. Moral character consists primarily in the supreme choice, of 
 which subordinate choices and all volitional determinations and actions 
 are immediately or remotely manifestations. The state of the intellect 
 and of the sensibilities, and the habits of action have moral character 
 only so far as they have been formed or modified by acts of will. They 
 are moral character only in a secondary sense. This conception is a 
 psychological and ethical basis for the scriptural representation that 
 sin is an apostasy from God, that all men are morally in two classes, 
 
THE WILL. 361 
 
 those who trust and serve God and those who do not, and that the 
 change of a sinner to the new spiritual life is a critical change, of all- 
 determining moment, represented by a new birth, a resurrection from 
 the dead, and other equally startling analogies. These representations 
 require for their justification and significance a recognition of the 
 unity of moral and spiritual character under some one dominant and 
 all-characterizing determination or choice. 
 
 V. The existence of God and all rational creatures in one rational 
 system is the fundamental and dominant truth in theology, and equally 
 in all philosophy, speculative, ethical, aesthetic and teleological. In it 
 philosophy an;l theology, morality and religion, are at one. Persons 
 exist by and for persons, to trust and serve one another. God, in- 
 deed, is independent and supreme. But only through the universe of 
 nature and spirit can he reveal his perfections ; and when the uni- 
 verse exists he comes to men in Christ in the form of a servant and 
 advances his kingdom through the agency of redeemed men who are 
 workers together with God. All that is greatest in humanity reveals 
 the membership of man hi this rational system. We have seen that 
 the sense of beauty prompts to communicate it. So all that is noblest 
 in man arouses his consciousness of fellowship with man and quickens 
 the feeling that he lives not for himself alone. It arouses a sort of . 
 universal consciousness of all rational life mingling with his own in 
 the mightiest inspirations and the most ennobling ends of human 
 action. The illuminism which tries to construct an ethical philosophy 
 on the basis of mere individualism misses what is mightiest and most 
 profound in Christian ethics. The love of God and of our neighbor as 
 ourselves which Christ requires, is, in its essential significance, the choice 
 of God and his rational creatures in their real relations in the unity 
 of the universal moral system, as the supreme object of trust and 
 service. 
 
 \ 68. The Freedom of the Will. 
 
 I. The freedom of the will consists in the fact that the will is a power 
 which, in the light of reason and under the influence of rational mo- 
 tives, can determine the ends or objects to which it will direct its energy 
 and the exertion of its energy in reference to the determined end or 
 object. In other words, the freedom of the will consists in the fact 
 that the will is a will. The definition of will is hi itself the definition 
 of free will. 
 
 1. Freedom is inherent in rationality. The will is Reason energiz- 
 ing ; or, as Kant calls it, the Practical Reason. 
 
 If man were not endowed with reason, he would be susceptible only 
 of natural or instinctive motives and emotions, and would follow the 
 
332 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 strongest. Nature would have a clean sweep through him like water 
 through an unobstructed channel. He would have no freedom of will ; 
 that is, he would have no will. But because he is endowed with reason 
 he is susceptible of rational motives, motives from above nature. Thus 
 he is able to choose rational ends and to set himself in resistance to 
 nature and its impulses. In this he is free. If he is swept away 
 by nature rushing like a flood through his instinctive appetencies, it 
 is because he yields to the current and consents to being swept away. 
 By virtue of rationality man brings the objects of different impulses 
 or motives into the light of reason, compares them, and chooses which 
 shall be the object of his activity. He rises above "his impulses or 
 motives and determines his end. If he were destitute of reason, this 
 would be impossible. He would then be beneath his impulses or 
 motives, and necessarily driven by them. 
 
 Thus man's freedom arises from his being endowed with reason. He 
 is free because he is an energizing Reason, or a rational will. So 
 Milton says, True liberty 
 
 "Always with right reason dwells 
 Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being." 
 
 Says Thomas Aquinas : " The faculty of will and reason is called 
 free will. Beings who have reason direct themselves to an end when 
 they know the reason of the end." * John Smith says : " When we 
 converse with our own souls, we find the springs of all liberty to be 
 nothing else but reason ; and therefore no unreasonable creature can 
 partake of it." f Kant also recognizes freedom as inherent in ration- 
 ality : " The will is a sort of causal efficiency of living beings so far as 
 they are rational, and Freedom is the attribute of this causal efficiency 
 that it can act independent of foreign causes determining it. So the 
 attribute of the causal efficiency of all irrational beings is a natural 
 necessity of being determined to their activity by foreign causes." 
 " Since Reason is required for action under law, the Will is nothing 
 other than the 'Practical Reason." J He recognizes man, by virtue of 
 his rationality, as belonging to a rational system, " a realm of ends," 
 above nature, and as such capable of determining himself in opposi- 
 tion to natural propensities and influences, and of being determined 
 by laws which his own reason prescribes. He. thus lays the foundation 
 of a clear and self-consistent conception of the freedom of the will. 
 But here, again, the malign influence of his phenomenalism as con- 
 
 * Summa Theologise, Prima Secundse, Ques. I., Art. 1, 2, 7. 
 t Select Discourses, 1673, p. 128. 
 
 J Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Abschnitt III. sub initio, & Absch. II., 
 pp. 78 and 36. 
 
THE WILL. 363 
 
 trasted with the knowledge of the " thing in itself," reappears and pre- 
 vents the legitimate development of his conception. 
 
 2. Freedom does not imply the consent of the will to reason, but 
 only the capacity of choosing in the light of reason. Kant and others 
 who have found human freedom in the rationality of the will, have 
 fallen into the error that freedom exists only in a will consenting 
 and obedient to reason. Hence in the act of sin man loses his free- 
 dom. They have pushed the identification of reason and will to such 
 an extreme that they cease to recognize the two aspects of the human 
 spirit which render the two names significant and necessary; these 
 two aspects are, first, the power of knowing the True, the Right, the 
 Perfect, the Worthy or Good, and the Absolute, which justifies the 
 name, Reason ; and secondly, the power of determining in the light of 
 reason the ends of action and the exertion of energy, which justifies 
 the name, Will. They overlook the freedom of the will, which, as I 
 have defined it, constitutes a being a moral and responsible agent, and 
 substitute for it what has been called real freedom, which exists only 
 in the moral perfection of the being and the complete harmony of 
 the determinations of the will with the truths, laws, ideals and ends of 
 Reason. 
 
 3. The conception of freedom of the will as consisting in the rela- 
 tion of will and reason the energizing or practical reason, or the 
 rational will is a totally different conception from that of Edwards, 
 and lifts us out of the ambiguities and perplexities in which all attempts 
 to develop his conception are involved. According to his conception 
 freedom is discussed from the point of view of efficient causation, and 
 must be defined in terms of power only, as the power of contrary 
 choice. Also the distinction of natural and moral ability which, in 
 accordance with the universal use of language, is legitimately applied 
 to outward acts, is illegitimately applied to the will itself as an explana- 
 tion of its freedom ; with the result, again, that freedom must be de- 
 fined in terms of power only, overlooking all in which the freedom 
 actually consists. Hence there is left no resource but to distinguish 
 power from itself, as power to the contrary. In this type of thought 
 the will is regarded as merely a power of exertive volition, overlooking 
 its power to determine in choice the ends or objects of its action. In 
 fact the power of contrary choice is only another name for the power 
 of choice. Antecedent to a deter mination, man is free to choose be- 
 tween two or more. But as yet we cannot speak of a power of con- 
 trary choice because no choice has yet been made to which the coming 
 determination is the contrary. After the choice is made and the man 
 looks back on it, his freedom to choose between two comes before him 
 in the remembrance as consciousness that he might have chosen the con- 
 
364 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 trary of what he did choose. Thus the fact of free choice itself, under 
 the name which denotes the remembrance of it after it was made, is 
 given us as a rationale or philosophical explanation of the fact of free 
 choice. On the contrary, freedom of will, instead of being denned in 
 terms of power only, must be denned with reference to the three aspects 
 of the human mind, intellect, sensibility and will, and in terms recog- 
 nizing the three. Freedom is in the fact that man is a rational being 
 capable of determining in the light of reason and under the influence 
 of rational motives both the objects of his action and the exertion of 
 his power to act. This is a conception of freedom which stands clear, 
 unambiguous, self-consistent and reasonable, and is adequate to explain 
 the nature and ground of moral responsibility. At the same time it is 
 a philosophical basis for the doctrine that moral character, without 
 ceasing to carry in it personal responsibility and free choice, is yet deep 
 and continuous under all specific actions ; a doctrine which, in spite of 
 the philosophical errors and even absurdities which have historically 
 accompanied it, the deepest Christian consciousness has always held for 
 true, and for which a flippant illuminism has attempted to substitute 
 the conception of the limitation of moral responsibility and character 
 to single, ictic and consciously intentional acts. 
 
 II. The determinations of the will differ in kind from the strongest 
 impulse of the sensibilities. Those who deny free-will, hold that man's 
 determinations are simply the action of the strongest impulse under the 
 action of external nature on the nervous organization. Such is the will 
 recognized by Dr. Maudsley, Prof. Alexander Bain and others who ac- 
 knowledge no spirit in man. It is all the will that is left for them. This, 
 however, is not will ; it implies neither self-determination nor freedom. 
 An ox does not freely determine that he will eat grass rather than 
 flesh, nor a tiger that he will eat flesh and not grass. The line of their 
 action and the sources of their enjoyment are determined for them by 
 their own nature. So if man always follows the impulse of sensibility 
 which is at the moment the strongest, the objects which he seeks and 
 the sources of his enjoyments are determined for him in his nature ; he 
 has no power to determine his exertions nor the end of his exertion ; he 
 has no freedom of will, he is " like dumb, driven cattle." 
 
 "Torva leaena lupum sequitur; lupus ipse capellam, 
 Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella, 
 Te Corydon, O Alexi ; trahit sua quemque voluptas." 
 
 The hereditary appetite of an omomaniac is his will, according to this 
 definition. But it is this which enslaves him. His will is the power, so 
 much as is left to him, freely to consent to or to resist the diseased 
 
THE WILL. 365 
 
 appetite. In the consciousness of free-will a man says, with Shake- 
 speare : 
 
 " I'U never 
 
 Be such a gosling as to obey instinct, but stand, 
 
 As if a man were author of himself 
 
 And knew no other kin." 
 
 Kant has distributed the mental phenomena in three classes : Cogni- 
 tion, Feeling, and Appetency or the Conative Powers.* The phrase 
 " Bestrebungs Vermogen," faculties of effort or endeavor, is used in Ger- 
 man Philosophy as a genus including Will and Desire. Hamilton 
 adopted this classification, f Dr. McCosh also includes the desires or 
 the .optative part of man's nature with the will, and selects the name 
 " optative states of mind," as preferable to the name Will. J This is, it 
 is true, merely a matter of classification. And yet the separating of 
 desires or appetencies, which are motives of action, from the other feel- 
 ings and classing them with the will, necessarily obscures the distinction 
 between motives and determinations and tends to the fatal position that 
 the determination is simply the impulse of the sensibilities which is at 
 the time the strongest. But in a free agent, appetencies and desires, 
 however strong, remain always feelings. The determination is his own, 
 and is the distinctive act of will. The Will includes, it is true, the 
 causal efficiency of the soul, its spontaneous causal energy ; yet the will 
 is not well described as the conative faculty or faculty of endeavor, 
 because it is distinctively the faculty of determination, determining the 
 end to which it will direct its energies and calling its energies into 
 action when it will. It is to be regretted that writers who believe in 
 free-will should thus adopt a faulty classification which throws out of 
 sight the distinction between determination and motive and tends 
 directly to the denial of free-will. 
 
 III. Man's knowledge of his free-will is of the highest certainty. 
 
 1. I appeal to consciousness. Prof. Bain enters into an elaborate 
 refutation of this argument from consciousness. But he attempts to 
 establish only, what no one denies, that the testimony of consciousness 
 in any particular case is indisputable only as to the existence of the 
 mental state known in consciousness. A man's consciousness that he 
 believes in witches is indisputable as to the fact that he believes in 
 them, but of no authority to prove that witches exist. 
 
 Admitting this, I appeal to any and every man to say, Are you con- 
 scious of having the power of free choice ? Have you ever made a free 
 
 * Kritik des Urtheilskraft ; Einleitung. f Metaphysics, pp. 86 and 129. 
 
 J Divine Government, 274-279. 
 
 I The Emotions and the Will, pp. 511-519; The Will, chap, xi., $$ 9-12. 
 
366 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 choice? Prof. Bain objects that no one knows the consciousness of any 
 person except his own, and says not " any fellow-man can carry his 
 consciousness into mine." True ; but other persons can inform us as to 
 their own consciousness ; and the argument is an appeal to Prof. Bain 
 himself or to any other man to testify in answer to the questions. And 
 I doubt not that every one who answers honestly will answer that he is 
 conscious that he has the power of free choice and is responsible for his 
 actions. 
 
 It should be added that the consciousness of moral responsibility in- 
 volves the consciousness of freedom ; these two are inseparable ; whoever 
 is conscious that he is responsible for his actions, that he blames himself 
 for doing wrong or commends himself for doing right, is conscious of 
 free choice. No man can blame or praise himself or feel responsible 
 for any event which is in no way dependent on his own free-will. 
 
 That man is conscious of free-will and responsibility is admitted even 
 by those who deny free-will. Some, as Hume, Diderot, Mill, admit 
 that men believe themselves free and responsible, but account for their 
 self-delusion by education, habit or the association of ideas. Evolu- 
 tionists acknowledge that man feels himself responsible for his actions, 
 but account for the belief by the cumulative effects of evolution through 
 many generations. Prof. Bain says that " the sense of obligation has 
 no other universal property except the ideal and actual avoidance of 
 conduct prohibited by penalties." But this is a monstrous misrepre- 
 sentation of the sense of obligation or duty ; and, aside from that, the 
 very infliction of penalties is the recognition of the criminal's responsi- 
 bility for his actions. 
 
 Prof. Bain further objects that the notion of freedom is a " generali- 
 zation," and therefore " is not an intuition any more than the notion of 
 the double decomposition of salts." But we have seen that free will is 
 nothing different from will, that freedom is essential in the very idea of 
 choice. Consciousness of freedom is simply the consciousness of choos- 
 ing ; it is simply the consciousness in every act of choice of the power 
 of choosing either of two or any one of many objects which are com- 
 pared as ends of action ; and whenever the choice is remembered, it is 
 with the consciousness, " I might have chosen otherwise ; I was free to 
 choose any one of the objects compared ; the determination was my 
 own and w T ithin my own power." What I affirm is that every act of 
 choice and every remembrance of an act of choice is accompanied with 
 this consciousness. These are not generalizations ; they are simple acts 
 of consciousness and memory. And to whomsoever I might appeal, I 
 have no doubt he would testify, if he uttered his own spontaneous be- 
 lief, that every choice he ever made and every remembrance of a choice 
 has been accompanied with this consciousness. 
 
THE WILL. 367 
 
 2. This belief of one's personal freedom of choice sustains all the 
 tests of primitive knowledge. It is clear in its own self-evidence. 
 While the consciousness lasts it is impossible to think the contrary to 
 be true ; just as while I perceive a stone held in my hand it is impossi- 
 ble for me to think that I perceive nothing. The belief persists in the 
 face of speculative reasoning and conclusion to the contrary ; a number 
 of men now living and some in former times have declared their con- 
 viction that they are machines, but no one of them has ever practically 
 believed it, or divested himself of the consciousness of his own power 
 of free choice and his own responsibility for his actions. Also, the be- 
 lief is consistent with itself, with all its legitimate outcome, and with 
 all established facts, truths and laws of empirical, noetic and theological 
 science. My belief of my own free choice and of my responsibility for 
 my actions sustains these four tests or criteria of knowledge so far as I 
 have been able to apply them. Let the reader apply them for himself. 
 Accordingly the eminent physiologist, Dr. Carpenter, says : " If the 
 psychologist throws himself fearlessly into the deepest waters of specu- 
 lative inquiry, provided that he trusts to the inherent buoyancy of the 
 one fact of consciousness that we have within us a self-determining 
 power which we call will, he need not be afraid of being dragged 
 down into the 'coarse materialism' of the nature-philosophers of 
 Germany.' * 
 
 3. History proves that the belief that man has the power of free 
 choice and is himself the responsible determiner of his own ends and 
 actions, is inwrought into the consciousness of the human race. It is 
 recognized in government in all its forms ; in all laws and penalties ; 
 in all moral ideas ; in ail literature ; in all the bargains and con- 
 tracts of business ; and in the language and action of all human in- 
 tercourse in daily life. The denial of free will involves a revolution 
 of the most sweeping and fundamental character in all these respects. 
 It would " turn the world upside down." It would take out of the 
 life, history and institutions of man all that makes them human. 
 
 4. The free will of man is involved in the fact that he is constituted 
 rational, endowed with reason and rational sensibility. A being thus 
 constituted must be able to determine his own ends and actions. A 
 reason when it energizes must be able to call forth its energies into 
 action and to determine the end to which it will direct them. A will 
 since it determines only in the light of reason, must be a rational will 
 and therefore free. To admit that man is rational is to admit that he 
 is free ; to deny that man is free is to deny that he is rational. To 
 assert human reason and to deny the freedom of the human will are 
 
 * Mind and Will in Nature : Contemporary Rev. 1872. 
 
368 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 contradictory propositions. To deny human reason and to assert free- 
 will are in like manner contradictions. 
 
 5. The denial of free-will is the denial of all moral obligations, dis- 
 tinctions and responsibility ; obligation and duty, the distinction of right 
 and wrong, of merit and demerit, and the idea of responsibility for 
 action lose all meaning. If man's actions are irresistibly determined 
 from without himself, as the rising .and falling of the beam of a balance 
 is determined by weights (which is Diderot's comparison), then it is 
 impossible to think of him as under moral obligations, as doing right 
 or wrong, as deserving reward or punishment ; it is as impossible as to 
 think thus of the beam of a balance. Then a man can no more have 
 a virtuous or a vicious character than a tree can be virtuous because it 
 bears good fruit, or vicious for not bearing it. And so Mr. Bray boldly 
 avows : " If we love the rose and avoid assafoetida, it is not from any 
 free will in the rose to smell sweet and look beautiful, but because its 
 attributes affect us pleasurably. It is the same in the moral world. . . . 
 We put the human rose in our bosom and we avoid the ugly and dis- 
 agreeable person as we would assafoetida, and for the same reason."* 
 
 It is important to insist on this dependence of all moral ideas on the 
 recognition of free-will. A person may reason himself into the belief 
 that nature is only a mechanism, and that man is wholly included in its 
 machinery, and therefore has no free-will ; yet, if he saw clearly that 
 his conclusion involved the blotting out of the significance of all moral 
 ideas, he w r ould shrink from a conclusion so contrary to common sense 
 and so destructive to the interest of man and to the very idea of human- 
 ity. Through overlooking this dependence men, who deny free-will 
 and regard man and all his actions as necessary products of the forces 
 of nature, yet insist strenuously on the reality of moral distinctions, 
 and thus either contradict themselves by affirming moral ideas which, 
 as everybody knows, have significance only with reference to free-will, 
 or else fall into the sophistry of retaining the words which express the 
 moral ideas while using them with an entirely different meaning. 
 
 So also men deny that man is endowed with reason, and limit know- 
 ledge to the empirical science of nature, and yet affirm free-will. Thus 
 Prof. Clifford, with all his assaults on Christianity, still held to moral 
 distinctions, to conscience, and to free-will. He says in his Essays : 
 " That man is a free agent appears to me obvious, and that in the 
 natural sense of the words. We need ask for no better definition 
 than Kant's ; " and he cites Kant's definition which I have already 
 quoted. But it is evident in Prof. Clifford's system of thought 
 there is no place for either reason or free-will in the sense in 
 
 * Force, and its Mental and Moral Correlates : by Charles Bray ; p. 40. 
 
THE WILL. 369 
 
 \vhich Kant uses the words. And when Prof. Clifford goes on to 
 &ay : " I believe that I ani a free agent when my actions are indepen- 
 dent of the circumstances outside me," we read him with amazement. 
 He had quoted Kant as saying : " Necessity is that property of all ir- 
 rational beings which consists in their being determined to activity by 
 the influence of outside causes." And yet, if we read Prof. Clifford 
 aright, man in his being and all his actions is himself a product of 
 nature, and thus is characterized by the very attribute by which Kant 
 characterizes irrational beings. In what sense, then, can Prof. Clifford 
 regard his own act'ion as " independent of the circumstances outside 
 me " ? Evidently in the sense only of freedom from compulsion by ex- 
 ternal force interfering with the spontaneous but necessary development 
 of nature ; only in the sense in which a tree grows freely or " the river 
 windeth at its own sweet will." Wittingly or unwittingly, Prof. Clifford, 
 in accepting Kant's definition of will, is using words significant and 
 true in their place in Kant's philosophy, but meaningless in Prof. Clif- 
 ford's wholly different system of thought. 
 
 Prof. Huxley is another example of inconsistency on this subject. 
 He says : " I protest that if some great power would agree to make 
 me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of my 
 being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning, I should 
 instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about is the 
 freedom to do right ; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with 
 on the cheapest terms to any one that will take it off me."* It seems 
 not to have occurred to Mr. Huxley that he cannot be a clock and a 
 man both at once ; that if he were made into a clock he would cease 
 to be a man and would become a machine. All the dignity and worth 
 of man, all his power to do right or wrong, all the grave responsibili- 
 ties and sublime possibilities of his being, all grounds for the divine 
 command, " Honor all men," lie in the fact that man is a rational free 
 agent. To talk about being transformed into a clock and wound up 
 every morning and still doing right in obedience to moral law, is to 
 talk nonsense. 
 
 And is it not plain that the theory that nature is a mechanism and 
 man a mechanical product of it, makes all his actions the running of a 
 " sort of clock," all the movements of which are determined, like those 
 of any clock, by the forces of nature, and yet a clock which con- 
 tinually goes wrong, and which is conscious to itself of its own wrong 
 going. 
 
 6. It appears from the foregoing considerations that if we regard 
 it simply as an hypothesis that man is a rational free will, it fully ex- 
 
 * Lay Sermons : p. 373. 
 
 24 
 
370 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. - 
 
 plains and accounts for all the facts of the history of man's action in 
 the universe, and is continually verified by the consciousness and the 
 history of man ; whereas the contrary hypothesis, which denies free 
 agency and regards man's action as the necessary result of the mechan- 
 ical action of nature upon his organization, fails to account for a large 
 number of the most important facts in the life and history of man and 
 fails to recognize them as having real significance. 
 
 IV. The common objections to free-will are founded on a false 
 theory of knowledge and are for the most part a mere begging of the 
 question. They are usually founded on some theory which limits 
 knowledge to the phenomena of sense ; or which at most recognizes as 
 knowledge nothing beyond the empirical science of nature. 
 
 H. Spencer says : " That every one is at liberty to desire or not to 
 desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of free-will," 
 is contrary to consciousness. Every one who recognizes freedom as 
 grounded in reason expressly distinguishes the free determinations of 
 the will from the desires which arise spontaneously from the nature, 
 and affirms that by his free determinations man yields to, resists or 
 regulates natural desires, but denies as strenuously as Mr. Spencer him- 
 self, that man is free to desire or not to desire. It is a fallacy to deny 
 a conception of freedom which may be the only one possible from Mr. 
 Spencer's point of view, and then to argue that the denial disproves 
 freedom conceived of in a totally different meaning and from a different 
 view of man. 
 
 Mr. Spencer regards the ego as merely " the aggregate of feelings and 
 ideas, actual and nascent, which exists" at the moment. He talks of 
 " the cohesion of psychical states," as if they were entities or atoms, 
 and himself a mediaeval schoolman. With such a psychology, free- 
 dom is as impossible to man as it would be to a hot day at any particu- 
 lar moment. Mr. Spencer says for substance, that if the ego is not 
 present in consciousness, we have no knowledge of it; and if it is 
 present in consciousness, it is a constant quantity and therefore indis- 
 tinguishable from the consciousness. But if man is so constituted as a 
 rational being that in every perception of an outward object he neces- 
 sarily knows himself as percipient, if in every act and state of con- 
 sciousness he necessarily knows himself as subject of that state and 
 agent in that action, and if the knowledge of himself as knowing is 
 essential to the knowledge of the object, so that without it knowledge 
 itself vanishes away, then Mr. Spencer's speculations do not alter this 
 fundamental fact and primary law of the human mind. And if I 
 exist and I know, then also I can choose and choose freely. It is true, 
 as Mr. Spencer says,~that in every affirmation of free-will is the suppo- 
 sition of a conscious self as distinguishable from the psychical states. 
 
THE WILL. 371 
 
 The free-will is the I, the Ego, the person, determining his ends and 
 exertions amid the multiplicity of his ideas and impulses. In affirm- 
 ing my free-will I affirm that I exist ; in denying my free-will I deny 
 that I exist. My belief in free-will is as deeply rooted and as thor- 
 oughly warranted in the very constitution of my being as is my belief 
 in my own existence. 
 
 Mr. Spencer further says : " Psychical changes either conform to law 
 or they do not. If they do not, this work .... is sheer non- 
 sense ; no science of psychology is possible. If they do, there cannot 
 be any such thing as free-will." He means by law an invariable 
 sequence of natural phenomena. Substitute this phrase for " law " in 
 these sentences. "Psychical changes are either invariable sequences 
 of nature or they are not," etc. Evidently this is not an argument, 
 but a begging of the question. The question is whether choices and 
 volitions are included in the uniform sequences of nature or are deter- 
 minations of will. And he says that if they are not uniform sequences 
 of nature, no science of psychology is possible. This is not only a beg- 
 ging of the question, but also an arrogant assertion that if they are not 
 uniform sequences, but are determinations of will, they must be 
 excluded from all scientific investigation. The will is subject to law as 
 really as nature is ; but it is moral law, the law of love addressed to 
 rational free agents, who, in the exercise of their freedom, may obey or 
 disobey. The moral system is a realm of law as really as the natural. 
 
 He also says : " The freedom of the will, did it exist, would be at 
 variance with the beneficent necessity displayed hi the evolution of the 
 correspondence between the organism and its environment. . . . That 
 gradual molding of inner relations to outer relations, . . . that ever- 
 extending adaptation of the cohesions of psychical states to the con- 
 nections between the answering phenomena, which, we have seen, 
 results from the accumulation of experiences, would be hindered did 
 there exist anything which otherwise caused their cohesions." * But 
 here again, instead of argument, we have a begging of the question. 
 For the very question is whether, hi addition to the system of nature 
 and transcending it, is a system of reason and free-will. The existence 
 of such a system does not involve the non-existence of the system of 
 nature, nor annul its uniform sequences, nor add to nor substract from 
 the aggregate of its atoms and its forces. But it is a system of rational 
 beings and of free-will, fatis avolsa potestas. Nor does its existence 
 defeat the beneficent adaptations of nature ; on the contrary, it is itself 
 a realm of ends ; rational free agents do not exist to be tools and imple- 
 ments, but are themselves ends, for which nature itself exists. They 
 
 * Spencer's Psychology, g 219, Vol. I., pp. 500-503. 
 
372 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 belong to a rational system grander than the system of nature, with the 
 wise and beneficent and all-comprehending design of expressing the 
 archetypal thoughts of reason, extending the reign of moral law, real- 
 izing rational ideals of perfection and the ends which reason approves 
 as worthy, and so establishing, extending and perfecting the kingdom 
 of God in grander worlds and ages eternal. Rational beings act in and 
 upon the natural system ; but they do it no violence, and by their 
 agency advance it in its development to perfection. 
 
 As to Mr. Spencer's belief that if there were free-will there " would 
 be a retardation of that grand progress which is bearing humanity 
 onwards to a higher intelligence and a nobler character," it is a noto- 
 rious fact that man by his wickedness of every kind has effected a great 
 deal of that " retardation " of all good ; and that science must find a 
 place for this fact. Free-will fully explains it. But if all this wicked- 
 ness is the result solely of the necessary and normal action of nature, it 
 is incompatible with the " grand progress " effected by evolution, and it 
 becomes Mr. Spencer to speak with some less assurance of the " benefi- 
 cent adaptations " of nature ; especially as all the beneficent results 
 must be realized in man's natural life on earth, and there is no grand 
 outlook to higher results in the sphere of the spiritual and unseen. 
 Science gives us a grand conception of evolution in nature. Theism, 
 and especially Christianity, gives us a grander conception of a " new 
 heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," and of an 
 evolution in spiritual life and power immeasurable and eternal. 
 
 V. The theory that man's character and action are determined by 
 the forces of nature acting on him to the exclusion of free-will is con- 
 trary to the facts of human history. Diderot states this doctrine : 
 " Examine it narrowly and you will see that liberty is a word devoid 
 of meaning ; that free agents do not and cannot exist ; that we are 
 made what we are by the general course of nature, by our organiza- 
 tion, our education and the chain of events. We can no more conceive 
 of a being acting without a motive than we can conceive of one of the 
 arms of a balance moving without a weight. The motive is always 
 external and foreign, fastened on us by some cause distinct from our- 
 selves." Here again is a misrepresentation ; freedom does not imply 
 that a man acts without motives, but that among conflicting motives he 
 chooses his end in the light of reason and with susceptibility to the 
 influence of rational motives over against the natural or instinctive 
 impulses ; and the motives themselves are not all " external and 
 foreign." 
 
 In accordance with this denial of freedom, it is held that the diversity 
 of nations in character, institutions and civilization is the result solely 
 of the influence of climate, soil and other peculiar cosmic agencies. 
 
THE WILL. 373 
 
 Now I affirm that this theory is contradicted by the facts of human 
 history. 
 
 1. Different countries within the same isothermal lines and subject to 
 essentially the same cosmic influences, ought, according to the theory, 
 to develop the same civilization ; but it is notorious that they do not. 
 Mr. Buckle adduces in support of this theory the similar conditions of 
 climate and soil in India, Egypt and Mexico, as explaining the simi- 
 larity of their ancient civilization. But for similar reasons he acknow- 
 ledges that we should expect a similar civilization in South America, on 
 the East side of the continent, while in fact it was found only in Peru 
 on the West. Why did not these similar cosmic influences produce the 
 same civilization in Brazil? Mr. Buckle gives only an inadequate 
 answer. After a brilliant description of the luxuriance and opulence 
 of nature there, he says : " Amid this pomp and splendor of nature, no 
 place is left for man. He is reduced to insignificance by the majesty 
 with which he is surrounded." * 
 
 Dr. Draper has attempted to apply the same theory hi the writing 
 of history. In " The Intellectual Development of Europe" he accepts 
 the old generalization, made by the fancy and not by the judgment, 
 that " nations pursue their way physically and intellectually through 
 changes and developments answering to those of the individual, and 
 represented by Infancy, Childhood, Manhood, Old Age and Death 
 respectively." This fancy is contradicted by the facts of history. Be- 
 sides, how can the same influences of configuration of territory, near- 
 ness to the sea, soil, climate and other cosmic agencies, produce on the 
 same nation so contrary effects as first to cause it to grow, and then to 
 decline, and finally to cause its death ? And how is this fancy con- 
 sistent with the theory of evolution and with "the beneficent necessity" 
 involved in it, on which Mr. Spencer insists, that " the life must become 
 higher and the happiness greater?" 
 
 In his " Histoiy of the American Civil War," Dr. Draper applies 
 the theory of cosmic influences to explain that history ; or, as it seems 
 more probable, wrote the history to exemplify his theory. He says : 
 " Climate and place of abode, not only in a superficial, but in a pro- 
 found manner, can change the constitution and construction of man." 
 " The antagonism of habit and thought must be between the North and 
 the South ; there will be harmony between the East and the West." 
 When it is remembered that the territories known as the North and 
 the South are contiguous and the dividing line winds up and down 
 through four degrees of latitude, it is incredible that climate should 
 have caused the alleged differences. If the people of the two sections 
 
 * History of Civilization, Vol. I., chap. ii. 
 
374 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 were 'alike when they emigrated, as, according to Dr. Draper's theory, 
 being of the same race and emigrants from the same island, they should 
 have been and as his argument assumes they were, it is a marvellous 
 instance of the ra.pidity of evolution that such changes should be 
 effected by it in so brief a time ; if evolution is proceeding at this 
 rate, why has it effected so little in all the historical period? Dr. 
 Draper says that while the climate of the South favored slavery, 
 it " promoted a sentiment of independence in the person and of State 
 Rights in the community ; " while at the North climate " intensified 
 in the person a disposition to individualism and in the community to 
 Unionism." At the same time the physical geography of the two 
 sections aided this influence, and produced centralization in the North 
 and separation in the South ; " the one tended to diversity, the other 
 to unity." 
 
 These are certainly wonderful generalizations. They are also plainly 
 contrary to history, for the distinctive characteristics of the people of 
 the Northern and Southern colonies existed when they came from Eng- 
 land and can be traced in the colonies from the beginning. Does Dr. 
 Draper suppose that the difference of the two classes of English people 
 represented by the Puritans and the Cavaliers, was created by different 
 cosmic influences in the small territory of England? .And can he 
 explain the remarkable differences between the English and the Irish 
 of the present time by cosmic agencies ? Dr. Draper further says : 
 " Let it be proposed to ascertain what would be the character of a 
 European population placed on the Atlantic border," between the 
 isothermal lines which bound the Southern States ; " w r e shall have to 
 ascertain in what part of the old world the same isothermal zone 
 occurs ; then we shall have to learn from history the character and acts 
 of the nations who have inhabited that zone ;" and we may expect the 
 same characteristics to appear in the South. But if we follow this 
 isothermal zone along the Southern shores of the Mediterranean, 
 through Palestine, Central Persia, and onwards around the world, we 
 find no people bearing any peculiar resemblance to the people of the 
 Southern States ; certainly we do not find the doctrine of State Rights, 
 which, according to Dr. Draper, is a necessary result of this peculiar 
 climate. And we may further ask why this climate, which has acted 
 so powerfully on the whites, has had no perceptible effect on the 
 negroes? Dr. Draper is so confident that he even indulges in pro- 
 phecy ; speaking of the climate-zone of our Pacific coast as analogous 
 to that of Asia, he says : " Man also in these varied abodes will undergo 
 modification; and since, under like circumstances, human nature is 
 always the same, the habits and ideas of the old world will reappear in 
 the new. The arts of Eastern life, the picturesque orientalism of 
 
THE WILL. 375 
 
 Arabia will be reproduced in our interior sandy deserts, the love-songs 
 of Persia in the dells and glades of Sonora, and the religious aspirations 
 of Palestine in the similar scenery of New Mexico." * 
 
 I have dwelt the longer on this work, as exemplifying not only the 
 contrariety of this theory to facts, but also the trumpery which is some- 
 times imposed on the public in the name of science. It also exemplifies 
 the rash generalizations and inferences in the philosophy of history 
 which are so easy to any man who writes history in the interest of a 
 theory. One who writes history from a theory has no need of facts. 
 He develops it all from his own inner consciousness. 
 
 A recent writer ascribes the gloomy Calvinism of Scotland to its 
 bogs and fens and fogs. He forgets that Calvin himself lived in 
 Geneva, and Augustine, who taught essentially the same system, in the 
 north of Africa. 
 
 2. This theory is contrary to historical facts as to the civilization of 
 the same country in different ages. Egypt, with its early science and 
 civilization, Palestine, the mother of true religion, Greece, with its un- 
 rivaled culture, had the same cosmic influences in ancient times as 
 now. Why were the peoples of these countries so great in ancient 
 times, so mean and insignificant now? Why was Italy in ancient 
 times without distinction in painting and sculpture, and yet with 
 the same soil and climate and all cosmic influences, , why did Italy 
 take the lead in these and all aesthetic culture at the renaissance 
 and after? Such questions may be multiplied. And here again 
 the theory under consideration is directly contradicted by the facts of 
 history. 
 
 If cosmic influences in America have so powerfully affected the 
 Europeans and their descendants who inherit it, why have they not 
 produced in them the distinctive characteristics of the Aborigines? 
 Dr. Biichner appears to be the only scientist who has observed any fact 
 of this kind. When in this country he wrote to a periodical called the 
 Gartenlaube, a communication which was published, saying that he had 
 observed that American ladies in dancing have a gliding motion, like 
 the stealthily gliding step of an Indian ; proving, as he profoundly re- 
 marks, that with all their civilization they have not been able to resist 
 the climatic and other cosmic influences under which they live. The 
 gliding tread of the Indian may be observed by any one in Cooper's 
 novels. And why, again, were not the differences now characteristic 
 of the North and the South found among the Indians at the dis- 
 covery of America ? 
 
 * History of the American Civil War, Vol. I. ; Causes of the War and the events 
 preparatory to it, pp. 91, 93, 242, 255, 113, 103. 
 
376 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 3. I believe that human history is the progressive realization of an 
 all comprehensive plan : 
 
 " Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of man are widened with the process of the suns." 
 
 But it is a plan or purpose of wisdom and love; a plan in which 
 nature is not merely a blind concatenation of physical effects with no 
 law except the invariable succession of mechanical facts and trans- 
 formations of force, and with no power except a resistless efficiency 
 acting without intelligence or purpose ; but nature is itself a cosmos in 
 which the truth of absolute reason is expressed and the wise and bene- 
 ficent designs of reason progressively accomplished. It is a plan which 
 comprehends also a system of rational free agents under the moral 
 government of God ; a rational system to whose higher ends nature 
 itself is subordinate ; in which law is the truth of reason recognized 
 by rational free agents as law to the action of will ; in which the pro- 
 gress consists in quickening, disciplining and educating rational beings 
 to perfection and so bringing them into harmony with the supreme 
 reason and with each other in a kingdom of God, a commonwealth of 
 righteousness, good-will and true blessedness ; and in which the great 
 result is progressively accomplished, not merely by the action of cosmic 
 forces on physical organizations, but by the influences of God's gracious 
 and all-pervasive activity in the exercise of perfect wisdom and love, 
 and through the agency of human intelligence, human aspirations and 
 affections, and human choices and volitions, in all their free, rich and 
 complicated activities. 
 
 269. Free-Will and Man's Implication in Nature. 
 
 Though man exercises free-will, he is, nevertheless, implicated in 
 nature. Nature acts on him from without as well as within his phy- 
 sical organization. It is necessary to inquire what is the action of 
 man's free-will under the immediate influence of nature and the cosmic 
 forces. 
 
 I. Man is implicated in nature. 
 
 His physical organization is a part of nature as really as a tree is. 
 It grows from a seed, as the tree does. His body like all bodies, is 
 subject to gravitation, and to the action of the forces of cohesion, heat, 
 light, electricity and chemical affinity. 
 
 He is also implicated in nature through his natural sensibilities. 
 Hunger and thirst, the sensations of heat and cold, the natural in- 
 stincts, propensities, desires and affections, are only indirectly under 
 the control of his will. Through them man's implication in nature 
 reveals itself in his consciousness. In these respects man is the crea- 
 
THE WILL. 377 
 
 ture of circumstances. His feelings arise as he is acted on by what is 
 around him. 
 
 II. Man is also endowed with reason and susceptible of rational mo- 
 tives and emotions. The latter presuppose an exercise of the higher 
 reason and are always motives which man may follow hi opposition to 
 all impulses which come directly from his circumstances. He is not 
 left, therefore, helpless to the force of winds and waves, but has rudder 
 and sails and skill to manage them, by which he can compel an adverse 
 wind to propel him on his course ; or even has within himself motive 
 power to propel him on his chosen course independent of winds or 
 currents. 
 
 This endow r ment constitutes man capable of free choice; and this 
 constitutional capacity of free choice is inseparable from the man ; no 
 course of action, no acquired character, however vicious and degraded, 
 can destroy it. It cannot be annihilated except by annihilating the 
 man. Consequently, however ignorant, vicious and degraded a man 
 is, he is always capable of knowing the truth which reveals to him the 
 higher possibilities of his being, and of appreciating the rational mo- 
 tives to realize them. This is tacitly acknowledged in all efforts to 
 reform the vicious. 
 
 A child born in the slums of a great city is likely to grow up igno- 
 rant and vicious. It grows up not only under the adverse influence of 
 present circumstances, but also of a vitiated constitution transmitted by 
 heredity from vicious ancestors. Facts like this exemplify the powerful 
 influence of outward circumstances. Yet this child in all its degrada- 
 tion retains the capacity of moral culture and discipline and the sus- 
 ceptibility to influences to good. This is not only acknowledged in all 
 benevolent efforts to save such persons, but is verified in many instances 
 in which they have been reformed and saved. The history of Christ- 
 ianity abounds in instances of the effectual and permanent reformation 
 of wicked men. Facts of the former class which prove the power of 
 outward circumstances, must not be used to prove man's destitution of 
 free-will, with the suppression of facts of the latter class which prove 
 that the most degraded have power of will to resist the influences of 
 evil and to reform. 
 
 Dr. O. \V. Holmes says : " Do you want an image of the human will 
 or the self-determining principle as compared with its prearranged and 
 impassable restrictions ? A drop of water imprisoned in a crystal ; you 
 may see such a one in any mineralogical collection. One little fluid 
 particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe." The rhetoric 
 here is better than the logic. No one claims that man by his free-will 
 can lift himself out of the universe or prevent the action of its cosmic 
 ibrces on him. It is unfair to compare the effects wrought by the will 
 
378 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of a single man with the effects of the cosmic forces. But in the true 
 sphere of the will and the true relation of its action to nature the will 
 is entirely free, and whether it effects much or little upon the face of the 
 solid earth, it effects everything in the sphere of morals. 
 
 III. The freedom of man from the necessary control of outward 
 circumstances is manifested as matter of fact in the following par- 
 ticulars : 
 
 1. Man in the exercise of free-will may resist the impulses of natural 
 sensibility or may concur with them. He can resist his appetites. Men 
 have had force of will to resist hunger and starve themselves to death. 
 So it is with every appetite, desire and affection. Every one may be 
 resisted. Under the full force of the motive, a man may choose 
 another object and direct his energies to that. Even the desire of life 
 is no exception. Martyrs deliberately sacrifice life to the sense of duty, 
 and men risk it every day for various ends and from various motives. 
 Man can determine to follow reason and do duty in direct resistance to 
 any or all natural impulses. 
 
 Man may also, at his option, concur with natural desire either with 
 or without the approval of reason. He may obey natural desire and 
 disobey reason ; or he may obey reason and resist natural desire ; or in 
 certain cases he may follow natural desire and reason both at once. 
 Even though in following a natural impulse the man has not been con- 
 scious of deliberating and consenting, yet this free consent must have 
 been given. Man cannot divest himself of his reason and his suscepti- 
 bility to rational emotions. If, like a beast, he thoughtlessly follows his 
 strongest impulse, yet is he unlike the beast in this, that he knows the 
 obligation which is on him to obey reason. Hence we properly say of 
 such a man that he has given himself up to his appetite, that he has 
 abandoned himself to his passion, that he has allowed himself to be 
 hurried away by his impulses. 
 
 As man is endowed both with natural sensibilities and rational, the 
 right conduct of life consists in regulating these contrasted impulses and 
 keeping the right course under the motive force of both. Plato com- 
 pares the two to the two horses of a chariot ; one nervous and frisky, 
 the other steady and grave, which the charioteer must make to work 
 together and persistently draw the chariot towards its destination.* 
 
 2. Under any circumstances a man may do right. We sometimes 
 hear of coercing the will. But physical force cannot act on the will 
 directly. The will cannot be coerced any more than an inference can 
 be drawn by horse-power. The man may be imprisoned or bound ; his 
 muscular action may be restrained ; but all the time the will remains 
 
 * Phsedrus, 246. 
 
THE WILL. 379 
 
 unchanged and free in its choice. Force can 
 becomes a motive to choice and volition. 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage : 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 This for a hermitage. 
 
 " If I have freedom in my love,' 
 
 And in my soul am free, 
 Angels alone that dwell above 
 Enjoy such liberty." 
 
 Because man is free he is under obligation to obey law ; and he is 
 able under all outward circumstances to do his duty. And here I may 
 properly cite Kant's apostrophe to duty : " Duty ! thou great, sublime 
 name ! Thou dost not insinuate thyself by offering the pleasing and 
 the popular, but thou commandest obedience. To move the will thou 
 dost not threaten and terrify, but simply settest forth a law, which 
 of itself finds entrance into the soul ; which even though disobeyed 
 wins approval and reverence, if not obedience ; before which the pas- 
 sions are silent even though they work secretly against it. What 
 origin is worthy of thee, and where is the root of thy noble pedigree, 
 which proudly disowns all relationship with the passions, and descent 
 from which is the indispensable condition of that worth which alone 
 man can of himself confer on himself? It can be nothing less than 
 that which lifts man above himself so far as he belongs to the world 
 of sense, and unites him to an order of things that subjects to itself 
 the entire world of sense, as well as the existence of man so far as it is 
 empirically determined in time. It is nothing less than personality; 
 that is, freedom from and independence of all the mechanism of na- 
 ture ; and this implies that man himself, considered as belonging to 
 the world of sense, is subjected to his own personality so far as he be- 
 longs to the rational system. No wonder then that man, belonging to 
 both worlds, must regard his OVXD. being, in . its connection with this 
 higher system, with reverence, and its laws with the highest vene- 
 ration." * 
 
 3. He may reverse the influence of motives. By continued resistance 
 of evil inclinations and following the worthier motive man may so 
 form his own character that eventually the motive occasioned by the 
 outward circumstances may become contrary to w r hat it has been. 
 One may form a character so pure that scenes of debauchery are dis- 
 gusting and repulsive ; another may form a character so impure that 
 
 * Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft : Theil I., B. I., S. 214. 
 
380 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM/ 
 
 the smell of the dram-shop and the ribaldry of the stews may seem to 
 him an irresistible attraction. And the latter may reform, and by 
 continued purity may come to be disgusted and repelled by what had 
 been so attractive. We create in a great degree our own susceptibility 
 to temptation. The fact that a person is powerfully tempted to evil 
 may be evidence of his blameworthiness rather than an extenuation of 
 it. How came it to be so powerful a temptation to him, when to his 
 next neighbor, perhaps, it is utterly repulsive ? Why is he not tempted 
 by powerful desires to a life of purity, industry and honesty? 
 
 The same is true of the direct enticements of evil men. Why do 
 not burglars invite an honest citizen to join them in breaking a 
 bank ? Why do not debauchees come to a pure, sober and industrious 
 man and entice him to join them in riot? Because they know that 
 his character makes him inaccessible to such temptations. But let 
 a young man once get drunk or once be detected in theft or fraud, 
 then the debauchees and the criminals hail him as one of their own 
 number, give him the right hand of fellowship and seek his partner- 
 ship in their misdeeds. 
 
 " So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, 
 That when a soul is found sincerely so, 
 A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
 Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt." 
 
 The pure character is like the angel guard. But by open act of vice 
 the man loses this protection, the angels strike their tents, and the 
 soul is left defenceless to the approach of the tempter. 
 
 4. It is in man's power, when his outward circumstances occasion 
 temptation, to escape the temptation by changing his circumstances. 
 If a reforming drunkard is tempted by a dram-shop on the way to his 
 place of business, he can go by another street. In this way he can aid . 
 himself in forming a character so pure and strong, that the dram-shop 
 will cease to be a temptation. 
 
 5. The man can lay hold of aid offered by others in resisting temp- 
 tation and forming a right character. We are born into society ; we 
 are members of a community. No man can live alone in independence 
 of his fellows. It is man's normal condition to depend on his fellow- 
 men. It is true of every person that a great number of persons are 
 engaged every day, knowingly or unknowingly, in serving him and 
 contributing to his welfare. It is no infringement of one's freedom to 
 depend on others and to receive their aid. And always in every state 
 of society there are many excellent and benevolent people who would 
 gladly aid any one who has fallen to return to a virtuous life. The 
 man most fully given up to the control of evil may seek this help, 
 
THE WILL. 381 
 
 may associate himself with the good rather than the evil, and thus 
 surround himself with healthful influences till he recovers moral 
 strength. 
 
 6. He can also seek the help of God who ever seeks to save the lost. 
 All right living must begin in faith, for we are all weak and depen- 
 dent, as well as sinful. Whatever be the moral impotence which makes 
 the vicious unable to cope with his disordered appetites and passions, 
 he at least is free to cry to God for help and to cast himself on that 
 divine grace which will be found sufficient for him. 
 
 7. The will has a limited power to control the effects of natural 
 agents on the body. The power of the mind over the body in 
 reference to disease is well known, and has been exhibited in a great 
 variety of well-attested facts. Dr. Carpenter cites striking examples.* 
 Dr. Brown Sequard says : " There is no doubt at all that if we could 
 give to patients the idea that they are to be cured, they would often be 
 cured, especially if we could name a time for it, which is a great 
 element of success. I have succeeded sometimes, and I may say that I 
 succeed more now than formerly, because I have myself the faith that 
 I can in giving faith obtain a cure. I wish that physicians who are 
 younger than myself and who will have more time to study this 
 question than I have, would take it up. . . . Indeed a cure may thus 
 be obtained in certain organic affections ; even in dropsy it may lead 
 to a cure." It has been regarded as an historical fact that Napoleon 
 in his Eastern expedition visited the plague-stricken in the hospitals in 
 order to prove that the man who could vanquish fear could vanquish 
 the plague. Prince Metternich doubts this as having no better author- 
 ity than the false bulletins which Bonaparte systematically published 
 in his campaigns. Goethe, however, accepting it as true, relates a 
 similar effect of his own will in protecting himself under exposure to 
 contagious and malignant disease, and adds: "It is incredible what 
 power the moral will has in such cases. It penetrates, as it were, the 
 body, and puts it into a state of activity which repels all hurtful in- 
 fluences. Fear, on the other hand, is a state of indolent weakness 
 and susceptibility, which makes it easy for every foe to take possession 
 of us."t Mr. Bray quotes from The Spectator: "Almost every physi- 
 ologist will admit the power which pure Will has over the nervous 
 system ; that it can prolong consciousness and even life itself for cer- 
 tain short spaces, by the mere exertion of vehement purpose." Mr. 
 Bray adds : "A pure volition is the correlate or equivalent of so much 
 physical force, and this change of vital or vegetative force to mental, 
 
 * Human Physiology, $$ 829-838. 
 
 f Eckel-mama's Conversations with Goethe : pp. 392, 393. 
 
382 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 and of mental back to vital, is seen to be one of the commonest acts in 
 nature, when once observed. There is always a sufficient mental force 
 in reserve, if the will be strong enough to bring it into action, to act 
 upon the vital, that is, the digestive and assimilative powers, and thus 
 to gain new force for a time from the world without."* But what is 
 this will which brings the vital force into action ? Advanced physiolo- 
 gists recognize no vital force, and, above all, no mental force. It is 
 all mechanical force variously transformed. On this theory there is 
 nothing which can lift itself out of the necessary and invariable se- 
 quences of mechanical action and bring one part of this decaying power 
 into action to quicken into intenser action another part of this decaying 
 power, and so to arrest the course of natural decay. There must be a 
 rational free will. 
 
 8. Man by his free will is able to direct and control the forces of 
 nature to the effecting of results which nature, left to itself, could never 
 have effected. He tames the brutes to do his work, compels the earth 
 to give up its savage growth and to bear his harvests, and develops the 
 rude vegetation of nature to bear food more nutritious and luscious to 
 the taste and flowers more beautiful to the eye ; he puts his water- 
 wheels into the streams and compels the power of gravitation to grind 
 his grain and weave his cloth ; he evokes the forces slumbering in 
 wood and coal and water, and compels them to serve him ; he lays his 
 hand on the ocean and compels it to bow its huge shoulders to trans- 
 port his merchandise. When the mind of man takes a step all nature 
 takes a step with him. As man becomes civilized he civilizes the savage 
 earth. The time will come when over all the earth man's selection will 
 have superseded nature's selection. " Instead of the thorn shall come 
 up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree. 
 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the 
 desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." Says Wallace : " From 
 the moment when the first skin was used as a covering . . . the first 
 seed sown or root planted, a grand revolution was begun in nature, a 
 revolution which in all the previous ages of the world had had no 
 parallel ; for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject 
 to change with the changing universe, a being who was in some degree 
 superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate 
 her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a 
 change of body but by an advance in mind. Here, then, we see the 
 true grandeur and dignity of man. On this view of his special attri- 
 butes we may admit that even those who claim for him a position and 
 an order, a class or a subordinate kingdom by himself, have some rea- 
 
 * Bray on Force : pp. 102, 103. 
 
THE WILL. 383 
 
 son on their side. He is indeed a being apart, since he is not influenced 
 by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings. 
 Nay, this victory which he has gained for himself gives him a directing 
 influence over other existences. Man has not only escaped natural 
 selection himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that 
 power which before his appearance was universally exercised. We can 
 anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants 
 and domestic animals; when man's selection shall have supplanted 
 natural selection ; and when the ocean will be the only domain in which 
 that power can be exerted which for countless cycles of ages ruled 
 supreme over the earth."* In discussing the influence of climate on 
 civilization, Dr. Draper meets the fact that cold climates do not produce 
 the full effect expected. This objection he ingeniously repels by the 
 fact that man, " as endowed with reason," creates artificial heat and 
 thus " can create an artificial climate."f This not only exemplifies the 
 special pleading already referred to, by which facts inconsistent with 
 the theory of civilization by cosmic agencies are evaded, but also ex- 
 emplifies the fact now under consideration that however man is impli- 
 cated in nature and whatever the effect of cosmic agencies on him, he 
 is able by his free will to modify the effect of these agencies and to 
 guide them to the accomplishment of his own ends. The civilization 
 of the earth itself goes on with the civilization of man. It is not 
 merely the outward world which modifies man, it is also man who modi- 
 fies the outward world. 
 
 In this sense man has dominion over nature and is rightly called the 
 lord of nature. In the heathen religions man is regarded as subject to 
 nature ; the gods which they present as objects of worship are powers 
 of nature. But in the Hebrew scriptures from the first chapter of 
 Genesis onwards, God is recognized as above nature and nature ever 
 dependent on him ; and man is recognized as in the image of God and 
 thus not submerged in nature but distinguished from it ; to him is 
 given dominion over nature ; he is to use it and all its resources, its 
 plants and its animals for his own service and for the accomplishment 
 of his own ends. The writer of the eighth Psalm, it may easily be 
 supposed, alludes to these representations in Genesis, when he describes 
 the greatness of man, as made " little less than divine " : " Thou settest 
 him over the work of thy hands, Thou hast put all things under his 
 feet." The Psalmist specifies all sheep, and oxen, and the beasts of the 
 field, perhaps as being in that day the most striking example of man's 
 dom nion over nature, at which the world was still expressing its won- 
 
 * Anthropological Journal : 1864. 
 
 f American Civil War. Vol. I., p. 104. 
 
384 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 der as we are now at the steam-engine and telegraph. To this latter 
 subjugation of forces a modern writer would be likely to allude as his 
 examples. But through the Old Testament the fact that man, the wor- 
 shiper of a God above nature, is himself appointed to possess and use 
 nature's resources and energies instead of worshiping them, continually 
 reveals the contrast between the Hebrew religion and the nature wor- 
 ship of the heathen. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews, alluding 
 to this psalm, says, we do not yet see all things put under man ; he has 
 not attained the consummation of his dominion over nature ; but, says 
 this writer, we see the man Christ Jesus, who for a little time was made 
 lower than the angels for the suffering of death, now crowned with 
 glory and honor, and in him we see the type of man's exaltation and 
 lordship in the image of God. And we also know, though the 
 thought is not expressed by the writer of the epistle, that through 
 Christ, the type at once of man's humiliation in weakness, suffering and 
 death, and his exaltation in the likeness of God, man is attaining in the 
 progress of Christ's kingdom and of Christian civilization the consum- 
 mation of his possession and use of the resources and powers of nature, 
 and thus of his dominion over it. 
 
 In reference to this power of man to subdue and civilize nature and 
 thus to have dominion over it, we may accept Jacobi's designation of 
 free-will as a miracle-working power (Wunderkraft) ; that is, it is not 
 determined by nature, but is itself able to direct the forces of nature, to 
 determine their effects, and so to cause them to effect what, left to them- 
 selves, they would never have accomplished. * 
 
 IV. Man's implication in nature itself indicates that he is above 
 nature. 
 
 Nature in some aspects seems to be a limit or boundary. But in 
 other aspects it seems to be no longer a boundary, but a sphere opened 
 to man's knowledge and energies, and immeasurably rich in resources 
 for his use. 
 
 By the senses the realm of nature is opened to man's perception. 
 This is not a limitation, but a breaking away of bounds. For the 
 universe of nature is the real universe in which man lives ; and by 
 the senses, as so many windows, this whole universe is opened to his 
 perception and admits him to expatiate amid its grandeurs. It has 
 been said that nature wakes to consciousness in man. It is true 
 at least that through the senses nature is imaged in man's conscious- 
 ness as in a mirror, in which nature, if it were intelligent, might see 
 itself. 
 
 Again, the perception of nature is the occasion in experience on 
 
 * Jacobi, Werke, Vol. II., p. 45. 
 
THE WILL. 385 
 
 which rational intuitions arise. In the impact of mind on nature the 
 principles of reason, which regulate all intellectual and physical power, 
 flash into sight and remain written in luminous letters on the mind, 
 guiding all investigation. By these man passes beneath and beyond 
 what the senses disclose, knows the hidden powers and agencies of na- 
 ture and its rational principles, laws and ends, and translates it into 
 'empirical and philosophical science. Thus in a more profound signifi- 
 cance nature is imaged in man's consciousness and he becomes a micro- 
 cosm. As from eternity the universe existed in the truths, laws, ideals 
 and ends, archetypal in the divine reason, and is but the type of those 
 archetypes, so man, who is the image of God, surveying the universe 
 from the hither side, reads the archetypes in the types, and again 
 idealizes the universe both in its sensible forms and its rational princi- 
 ples in his own mind, as God does in his eternal thought. Here again 
 nature is no boundary or limit, any more than a flint is a limit to the 
 steel which strikes fire on it. It is the occasion on which reason reveals 
 itself in man. It is the seeming obstacle, impact on which strikes out 
 all aglow the hitherto hidden spark of reason and kindles the divine 
 light within the man, which at once reveals his reason to himself, reveals 
 nature to his reason, and discloses, both in the natural and the moral 
 systems, the " steps up to God." Byron wished for " something 
 scraggy" to break his thought on. Nature is the "something scraggy," 
 the seeming obstacle and limit, on which the mind breaks itself and dis- 
 covers at once the vastness of its sphere and range and the grandeur 
 of its powers. 
 
 A similar train of thought is equally applicable to man's will and 
 causal efficiency. Here also nature seems to be a limit and boundary. 
 And certainly the savage with his toolless hands is shut in very closely 
 by the untilled ground bearing weeds and brambles, by the great forests 
 and rivers and by the ocean. But man in conflict with nature gradu- 
 ally subdues and civilizes it and gets possession of its resources and 
 powers. In so doing he civilizes and develops himself, and presently 
 finds himself not the prisoner but the lord of nature. Thus, again, in 
 the conflict with nature he gets possession of its riches and resources 
 and of his own ; he discovers at once the wide and rich sphere of his 
 action and the grandeur of the power with which he acts. And in like 
 manner, by struggle, conflict and suffering his distinctively spiritual 
 powers are disciplined and developed. 
 
 And here even death itself is a liberation rather than a limit. By 
 limiting the earthly life it compels the spirit to look beyond death to a 
 life immortal and to become acquainted with God and the spiritual 
 Dowers of the unseen and spiritual world. 
 
 It may be added that man is, so far as this earth is concerned, the 
 25 
 
386 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 highest end to which nature has attained and toward which it has 
 always been striving. He seems to be endowed with all the forces of 
 nature as well as with the powers of spirit. They are all taken up and 
 represented in him. It is also said that the human embryo before birth 
 passes through all the inferior zoological types. All this plainly indi- 
 cates that man is at the head of all creatures* on the earth, and to him 
 all nature is and always has been tributary. Before he appeared na- 
 ture was tending towards and preparing for him ; since his appearing 
 nature has been the sphere in which he has acted, the storehouse of his 
 resources and the occasion and means of his development and progress. 
 
 His implication in nature, therefore, however it may restrict him at 
 particular points, is in its whole effect on him a liberation and develop- 
 ment, not a restriction and a stunting. 
 
 I add a fancy which is not inconceivable. I have already spoken cf 
 the power of the mind over the body in preventing and removing dis- 
 ease, and of the increased attention of physicians to the subject. It 
 may be conjectured that if man had never sinned and the spirit had 
 always exerted its legitimate influence on the body, the latter might 
 have become greatly invigorated, and ultimately a " spiritual body " 
 might have been evolved within the coarser organization and at last 
 have taken its place ; and that instead of this change being effected 
 only by that which we call death, it might have been effected as 
 imperceptibly as is the complete renewal of the matter of the body 
 every few years, and the transition have been as gradual as that from 
 infancy to manhood. Then the old theological doctrine that man's 
 death was introduced by sin would become true. The existence of the 
 spirit after death in a spiritual body is the culmination of the spirit's 
 freedom from restriction in nature. It is conceivable that it may yet 
 be realized in a way more in accordance with the course of nature from 
 the beginning than has been commonly supposed. 
 
 \ 7O. Different Meanings of Freedom. 
 
 The word freedom has been used by writers on the will in four dif- 
 ferent meanings. These four kinds of freedom may be designated 
 respectively as moral, physical, real and formal freedom. The failure 
 to discriminate between these different uses of the word has been a 
 source of much confusion of thought. The first is moral freedom. This 
 is the freedom which is necessary to moral responsibility and moral 
 character. It is the freedom considered in the last section, and is the 
 freedom of the will or free agency in its proper sense. As the neces- 
 sary prerequisite to moral responsibility and character, it may be called 
 moral freedom. 
 
 In a second meaning, it is freedom from coercion, that is, from ex- 
 
THE WILL. 387 
 
 ternal constraint and restraint. This, for want of a better name, may 
 be called physical freedom. This is the sense in which Edwards uses 
 the word. " The plain and obvious meaning of the words freedom and 
 liberty is, The power, opportunity or advantage that any one has to do as 
 he pleases. . . . This is all that is meant by it ; without taking into 
 the meaning of the word anything of the cause of that choice, or at all 
 considering how the person came to have such a volition ; whether it 
 was caused by some external motive or internal habitual bias ; whether 
 it was determined by some antecedent volition or happened without a 
 cause ; whether it was necessarily connected with something foregoing 
 or not connected." And he explains that the only contraries of freedom 
 are constraint, by which a person is forced to act contrary to his choice, 
 or restraint, by which he is forcibly prevented from doing as he 
 pleases.* Freedom is here explicitly denied of the choice itself; all 
 distinction between choice, volition or determination and the necessary 
 impulses of nature is explicitly disclaimed ; and the freedom is expli- 
 citly restricted to the absence of coercion compelling or hindering the 
 person's action after the choice or impulse. Every dog which runs at 
 large has precisely the same liberty. 
 
 Freedom of this kind is not essential to moral agency. Paul in the 
 inner prison, with his feet fast in the stocks, had not liberty to do as he 
 pleased. But his will remained free ; he had not lost his moral respon- 
 sibility ; he could do his whole duty to God and man. 
 
 Freedom, used in a third meaning, has been called Real Freedom. 
 This exists when a man does as he chooses unimpeded by any abnormal 
 counter-influence from within himself. A drunkard resolves on total 
 abstinence. In acting according to his resolve he is hindered by his 
 morbid appetite. We say he is not free, but is a slave of appetite. 
 The freedom here spoken of is Real Freedom. 
 
 Freedom in this sense is not essential to moral agency. Whatever 
 sinful habits a man may form and however he may be enslaved in sin, 
 he does not lose his moral freedom nor his responsibility for his action ; 
 he does not cease to be a guilty sinner. He has lost real freedom, but 
 not freedom of will. 
 
 Real freedom exists only in the complete harmony of the rational 
 and natural motives with one another and with reason. It can exist 
 only in perfect holiness and the complete recovery from all the evil 
 effects of sin. 
 
 It may be objected that a person wholly sinful, as Satan is supposed 
 to be, would have real freedom by having attained complete harmony 
 of his being in sin. But this is impossible. Reason and conscience, 
 
 * Freedom of the Will, Part I., sect. v. 
 
388 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the regnant powers of the soul, are always opposed to sin. And in the 
 perverting life of selfishness the sensibilities themselves come into con- 
 flict with each other. The gratification of one desire is the denial of 
 another. Appetites, desires and passions, fevered by selfishness and 
 morbidly sensitive by indulgence, contend for the mastery. "The 
 wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast 
 up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." 
 
 It is of real freedom that Augustine says : " It is only a life in God 
 which is truly a life of freedom ; then only is man free when he gives 
 himself up, not only to the thought and idea of God, but to God him- 
 self as his creating and molding strength ; that God may be the all- 
 working and all-moving power within him. Give what thou com- 
 mandest and command what thou wilt." It is of this freedom only 
 that Fichte's words are true : " One must pass his life upon some idea ; 
 and that life only which is molded by the idea is truly a life of free- 
 dom." It is only of real freedom that the theological teaching is true 
 that man lost his freedom in the Fall. When in the writings of theo- 
 logians, modern as well as ancient, we read that by sin man has lost 
 freedom or free-will, we are not to understand them as teaching that he 
 has lost his free agency and moral responsibility, but only his Real 
 Freedom. It is to be lamented that the word freedom is often used in 
 this meaning without any intimation of its distinction from moral 
 freedom. And it must be admitted that in many cases the theologians 
 themselves had not discriminated between them in their own minds 
 and seem entirely unaware of the difference. In fact we look in vain 
 for any clear exposition of the freedom of the will as the basis of 
 moral responsibility and any exact and consistent setting forth of doc- 
 trines consequent on it, until the comparatively recent periods of 
 modern thought. The fact of free agency and moral responsibility 
 was assumed in the earlier theology ; but the lack of exact definition 
 and discrimination opened the way for affirmations of the loss of free- 
 dom by sin which, while true only of real freedom, seem to affirm the 
 loss of free agency itself. Dr. Dorner and some other theologians of 
 the present day have not cleared their thinking from this ambiguity. 
 
 The fourth kind of freedom is formal freedom. It denotes the state 
 of the will antecedent to its first choice and to the acquiring of any 
 moral character. It is the characterless will. Formal freedom must 
 necessarily be presupposed as existing before any moral action or char- 
 acter. The will must exist before it acts. And before it has acted at 
 all it must be entirely undetermined and characterless. This is the 
 liberty of indifference, which has no historical existence except in the 
 time when the will exists antecedent to any choice. With its first 
 choice the will determines itself and thenceforth has a character. 
 
THE WILL. 389 
 
 Formal freedom is not essential to moral agency and responsibility 
 any further than as necessarily presupposed antecedent to all choice. 
 The theory advanced by some that, liberty of indifference antecedent 
 to every voluntary act is essential to freedom in the act, is contrary 
 alike to consciousness and reason, to the observed action and history of 
 man, to sound ethics and to good morals. 
 
 No person remembers his first act of will so as to identify it. So far 
 as memory reaches, every man knows himself as having already deter- 
 mined, while always conscious of perfect freedom in the determination. 
 Formal freedom is recognized only as a presupposition necessary in 
 thought. It is the point d'appui on which our thought respecting moral 
 action and character necessarily rests. 
 
 \ 71. The Influence of Motives. 
 
 We must now consider what is the influence of motives on the de- 
 terminations of the will ; or, what is the nature of moral influence. 
 And here, as in other parts of the subject, the progress of psychology 
 gives clearness and precision of thought where in the old controversies 
 were only confusion and error, and carries us beyond some of the 
 questions which were long the themes of fruitless debate. It should be 
 noticed, also, that the fact of free-agency has already been established 
 and is not now under debate. In the present discussion the fact of 
 moral freedom is admitted on both sides. The question is, between 
 believers in free agency, as to the influence of motives on the free de- 
 terminations of the will. If I show that the answers to this question 
 by some Christian theologians logically involve the denial of moral 
 freedom, I must not be misunderstood as charging them with intending 
 to deny and disprove it. 
 
 I. The only motives to voluntary action are the natural and the 
 rational sensibilities or feelings. These are in the constitution of man 
 the only excitants or impellents to action. External circumstances 
 and agents are not motives. They can influence the will only through 
 the feelings which they occasion. Knowledge is presupposed in a de- 
 termination ; a determination is possible only in the light ' of intelli- 
 gence. But the knowledge can influence the will only through the 
 feelings which it occasions. It is often said that intellectual preaching 
 is dry and ineffective. The reason is that the preacher addresses the 
 intellect alone and awakens in his hearers no motives except their 
 interest in getting knowledge of the subject discussed. A sermon is 
 designed to quicken to right action and character, and in order to 
 be effective must quicken the motives which move men to duty and 
 deter them from unworthy and wrong action in the conduct of life. 
 On the contrary it is often said that an advocate by appealing to the 
 
390 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM, 
 
 feelings of the jury misleads them to a wrong verdict. The one object 
 of a jury is to give an intellectual decision according to the facts ; and 
 their interest in knowing the facts is the one motive which should move 
 them. Knowledge of the truth is essential to right action, but in itself 
 it cannot move a man to right action. That is possible only through the 
 feelings which, as man is constituted, incite or impel to right action. 
 
 II. The motive is not the efficient cause of the determinations of 
 the will. The will is the cause of its own determinations. And since 
 the will is only a name of the rational person considered as capable 
 of determining, the rational person or free agent is the cause of his own 
 determinations. 
 
 The will, however, is an agent-cause of its own determinations, not a 
 transitive cause. The will is the agent that acts. The determination 
 is not caused by a causative act intermediate between the will and the 
 determination ; the determination is the act of the will. This imme- 
 diacy is characteristic of personal acts. If then we distinguish between 
 an agent-cause and a transitive cause, the agent is the cause of its own 
 acts, but not by an intermediate causative act. 
 
 The younger Edwards says : "It is no more possible or conceivable 
 that we should cause all our own volitions than that all men should 
 beget themselves. . . . The most of our opponents hold that we are 
 the efficient causes of our own volitions, and that in this our liberty 
 consists."* The doctrine of the self-determining power of the will, 
 controverted by the two Edwardses, was the doctrine that the will is 
 the cause of its own determinations. President Edwards argued that 
 the will cannot cause its own determination, because it can cause it 
 only by an intermediate causal act which would itself be a determina- 
 tion ; and thus the supposition of self-determination would involve an 
 infinite series of antecedent determinations. He further argued that 
 the determination must be caused by something, otherwise it would be 
 an effect without a cause ; and since it cannot be caused by the will it 
 must be caused by the motive : " It is that motive, which as it stands 
 in the view of the mind is the strongest, that determines the will." 
 On the contrary, Dr. West saw no way to defend his doctrine of self- 
 determination except by contending that a determination of the will is 
 not an effect and has no cause. 
 
 If we recognize the distinction between an agent and a transitive 
 cause, and admit that a man is the doer of his own deeds, the question 
 at issue in this controversy no longer arises and the controversy itself 
 is left among the rubbish of the past w T ith only an historical interest. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton, accepting Kant's antinomies of reason, finds 
 
 * Works. Vol. I., pp. 324, 325. Liberty and Necessity : Chap. ii. 
 
THE WILL. 391 
 
 an antinomy between freedom and necessity. He says that free-will is 
 inconceivable because it would imply that a determination of free-will 
 is an event without a cause; and necessity is equally inconceivable 
 because, denying the possibility of a real agent that causes his own 
 action, it involves the assertion of an infinite series of causes ; every 
 event must be caused by a preceding causal act which is itself an 
 event, and'so on without limit. Here Hamilton argues in accordance 
 with the fundamental principles of his Philosophy of the Conditioned. 
 Both necessity and free-will are inconceivable ; they are contradicto- 
 ries ; one must be true. Then since consciousness testifies to free-will 
 we believe the testimony. We know that we are free, but it is incon- 
 ceivable how we are free.* So Prof. Jevons says : " It is in vain to at- 
 tempt to reconcile this doctrine (of free will) with that of an intuitive 
 belief in causation."f Other recent philosophers have held the same 
 view. This conception that a free choice is uncaused and therefore in- 
 conceivable rests on Kant's doctrine of the antinomies of [reason. I 
 have already shown that these are apparent and not real. And the 
 same is true of this alleged antinomy of necessity and freedom. If the 
 will is not the cause of its own determinations, in other words, if the 
 will is not the agent that determines, then the existence of a personal 
 being is impossible ; for free-will is of the essence of personality. Thus 
 these philosophers are logically required to deny free-will and moral 
 responsibility. Yet in spite of the logical demands of their principles 
 they still believe in free-will. Their reasoning rests logically on the 
 assumption that the existence of a free agent is inconceivable and 
 impossible as involving events without any cause. Once admit that 
 the existence of a free agent is conceivable and possible, and the anti- 
 nomy is dissolved and the objection disappears. And this existence 
 of a free-will is conceivable and possible and also known in conscious- 
 ness, if it is true that I am the agent in my own determinations and the 
 doer of my own deeds. 
 
 III. The motive does not determine the will to choose this rather 
 than that. It may be admitted that the person willing is the cause of 
 the choice or volition ; he is the agent that chooses and wills. And 
 yet it may be urged that a motive determines him to choose this rather 
 than that. But this is impossible, for the gist of a determination is 
 the determination of this rather than that as an object of action. 
 The determination by the will includes the whole action and leaves 
 no place for a determination by the motive. If the motive determines 
 the man to choose this rather than that, then the will does not deter- 
 
 * Hamilton's Edition of Reid's Works : p. 602, note, 
 f Principles of Science : p. 223. 
 
392 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 mine ; man necessarily follows his strongest impulse, and has no will 
 other than that of the brutes. And since feelings are called into 
 exercise largely by external things, man's action, to that extent, would 
 be the necessary effect of external forces acting on him. 
 
 IV. The action of motives on the will may be called influence ; by 
 this name the action of motives may be distinguished both from 
 causal efficiency and from determination. The motives do not cause 
 the will to determine this way rather than that ; they do not deter- 
 mine it to determine ; but they influence it by incitation to act, by 
 impulse towards this rather than that ; by appetites and desires, by 
 affections, affinities and repulsions, by scientific, moral, aesthetic, pru- 
 dential and religious feelings. These belong to the constitution. They 
 move man to action. They interest him in objects of pursuit. With- 
 out them man would be but as a log floating in the water, desiring 
 nothing, seeking nothing, interested in nothing, moved only by wind 
 and wave and current. Motives, therefore, are prerequisites to the 
 possibility of a determination ; for without them man would have noth- 
 ing to determine. But the motives do not cause the determination 
 nor decide what it shall be. They merely incite and impel. They 
 influence the man. The determination of object and action amid all 
 these motives is the act of the will a simple act, incapable of analytical 
 definition. What it is, we know only in our own consciousness of 
 choosing and willing. In the light of reason man rises above his 
 natural impulses and all his motives, surveys and compares them and 
 their objects, and determines. It is man's assertion in action of his 
 own personality and superiority to nature ; in the determination of the 
 will he takes command of himself: 
 
 " Unless above himself he can erect himself, 
 How poor a thing is man." 
 
 A person exerts moral influence on another only by arousing feel- 
 ings which incite and impel. This may be done by presenting truth 
 to the intellect ; but not me'rely by that, as some theorists suppose. 
 Feelings are communicated from one person to another by sympathy. 
 Laughter and tears, cheerfulness and gloom, calmness and agitation, 
 courage and fear pass from person to person by a sort of contagion. 
 The presence of a crowd of people multiplies the power of eloquence. 
 A loving heart adds persuasiveness to words. Moral influence goes 
 out from music, from a commanding presence, from a magnetic per- 
 sonality. Enthusiasm kindles enthusiasm. The power of inspiration 
 of a successful educator or speaker or leader is not merely the power 
 of imparting truth to the intellect, but of rousing the motives which 
 impel to the work in hand. 
 
THE WILL. 393 
 
 And this is as far in the way of moral influence as man can go. He 
 can come to the confines of another's being and throw in his persua- 
 sions; he can instruct the intellect and arouse the feelings. But he 
 cannot pass within those confines to determine and act. In the invio- 
 lable solitude of his own personality every man determines his ends and 
 actions for himself. 
 
 Influence differs from physical force both in the objects related and 
 in the nature of the relation. A bat and the ball which is struck by it 
 are different in kind from a motive and a will ; and the force imparted 
 to the ball by the stroke which puts it in motion is different from the 
 incitement or impulse of a motive. Persons sometimes speak of coercing 
 the will. But force cannot act directly on the will ; it can reach it 
 only as it excites. feeling. Force has no relevancy to the will. To speak 
 of coercing the will is to use words without meaning. And this is not 
 altered by the fact that molecular motion of the brain is coincident 
 with feeling and willing ; because motion cannot be identified with the 
 phenomena of consciousness, nor transformed info them. This will be 
 shown hereafter. 
 
 In the more intelligent brutes, appetites, desires and affections are 
 apparently the same in kind with the natural appetites, desires and 
 affections in man. The difference here is in the different constitution 
 of man. As endowed with reason he is the subject of rational sensi- 
 bilities inciting to action in spheres entirely closed to the brute ; and 
 he is able to compare all motives and their objects in the light of ra- 
 tional truths, and of moral law, and of ideals of perfection, and of good 
 estimated by reason as of true worth, and of his relations to God. Thus 
 he is able to rise above his nature and determine his ends and his ac- 
 tions. The motives incite, but they do not determine. The brute, on 
 the other hand, is determined by the impulses of nature ; it refrains 
 from following an impulse only when impelled otherwise by a stronger 
 impulse. A brute's ends and actions are determined for it in its nature ; 
 a man's ends and actions are determined by him in his free-will. The 
 strongest impulse is determinant in the brute ; it is not determinant in 
 the man. 
 
 If, as some insist, brutes have reason and will the same in kind with 
 man, that would not prove that man sinks to the brute, but only that 
 brutes are elevated to the man. Brutes would then be moral agents, 
 responsible for their actions and having personal rights as members 
 of society. The question of universal suffrage would at once acquire 
 a new significance. And a new reformatory movement would become 
 necessary against the buying, selling and enslaving of beings, who, 
 as endowed with reason and free-will, are persons in the image of 
 God. 
 
394 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 V. The determinations of the will are always made under the influ- 
 ence of motives. 
 
 This is a necessary inference from the positions already attained. The 
 action of the will presupposes causal powers to be exerted and directed, 
 and constitutional impulses of various kinds. Without these there can 
 be no determination, for there is nothing to be determined. There can- 
 not even be any action, for there is no incitement or motive to action. 
 
 And this accords with consciousness. Whenever we act we are con- 
 scious of some motive inciting to the action. It is only by presenting 
 motives that we try to influence others. We never expect a man to act 
 without a motive. 
 
 Some controversialists, opposing theories of the influence of motives 
 supposed to be incompatible with freedom, have gone to the extreme of 
 denying that motives have any influence on the determinations of the 
 will. Prof. Henry P. Tappan says : The will " is a conscious self-moving 
 power which may obey reason in opposition to passion, or passion in 
 opposition to reason, or both in their harmonious union ; lastly, which 
 may act in the indifference of all, that is, without reference to reason or 
 passion." " The will in its utmost simplicity is pure power." If we 
 ask why it determines this way rather than that, it " neither admits nor 
 requires any other explanation than this, that the will has power to do 
 one or the other." He also regards the indifference of the will as 
 essential to its freedom. The will " is a power indifferent to the agree- 
 ableness or disagreeableness of objects .... indifferent to the true 
 and the right, to the false and the wrong. . . . From our very defi- 
 nition of the will it cannot be otherwise than indifferent. When it 
 determines exclusively of both reason and sensitivity, it of course must 
 retain in the action the indifference which it possessed before the action ; 
 but this is no less true when it determines in the direction of the reason 
 or sensitivity. . . . The will considered in its entire simplicity knows 
 only the nisus of power.*" 
 
 Those who hold these doctrines imperil the defence of freedom. If 
 moral freedom is possible only if the will can act without any motive 
 and even contrary to all motives, and only if the will is in complete 
 indifference, the consciousness and common sense of men will teach 
 them that free will on these conditions does not exist. And in repre- 
 senting the will as power only, it is brought to the level of physical 
 force, which also is power only. Why does falling water move a 
 water-wheel, or the elastic steam drive an engine? Because it has 
 power to do so, power acting without motives and in entire indiffer- 
 ence. How, then, does will-power differ from water-power or steam- 
 
 * Review of Edwards on the Will : pp. 226, 227, 244, 245, 247, 248. 
 
THE WILL. 395 
 
 power ? On the contrary it is of the essence of will that it is rational 
 power or energizing reason which determines its own end and exer- 
 tions; and its choice is in its essence an elective preference and not 
 an action in indifference. In fact determination under the influence 
 of motives is characteristic of rationality. Action without motives or 
 contrary to all motives would be irrational action. Instead of being 
 free action it would be more like the convulsions of epilepsy. 
 
 VI. ' The common formulas or laws of the uniform influence of 
 motives on the determination of the will are ambiguous and worthless. 
 
 One formula supposed to enunciate the law of the uniform action 
 of motives is this : The determination of the will is always as the strongest 
 motive. If this means that the determination is always as the motive, 
 the object of which reason approves as of the highest worth, it is 
 notoriously untrue. All sin is determination contrary to the mandate 
 of reason. If it means that the determination is always accordant 
 with the motive which is in the consciousness strongest in intensity, it 
 is not true. A man who has been enslaved by an appetite for tobacco 
 or opium or alcoholic drink may resist it in obedience to reason and 
 conscience, and yet in his desperate struggle he is vividly conscious 
 that the appetite is strong and the impulse to duty weak. If it were 
 true that man always determines according to the motive which is in 
 this sense the strongest, he would be controlled as the brutes are by 
 nature and would have no free-will. If the formula implies that we 
 ascertain which the strongest motive was by observing to which the 
 will consented, the formula has no significance and is equivalent to 
 the identical proposition, "The will always determines as it does 
 determine." 
 
 A second form of stating the law is this : The determination of the 
 will is always as the greatest apparent good. This springs from the 
 Hedonistic ethics and assumes that happiness is the ultimate motive 
 of all action. And it involves just the same ambiguity as was found 
 in the first statement. If it means that men always choose that 
 which in the light of intelligence they estimate as the greatest good, 
 it is not true. If it means that they always choose that which seems to 
 insure the greatest present gratification, it is not true ; and if it were 
 true man would not be a free agent. And if we ascertain what 
 seemed the greatest good by observing the determination, the law has 
 no significance further than the identical proposition that a man 
 always determines as he does determine. 
 
 A third form of stating the law is this : The determination of the 
 will is always as the last dictate of the understanding. This leaves out 
 altogether the sensibilities which are the only real motives, and con- 
 nects the determinations immediately with the intellect. It is also 
 
396 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 untrue because men often determine contrary to the dictate of the 
 understanding and in accordance with the incitation of feeling. 
 
 VII. The uniformity of human action cannot be explained by any 
 law of the uniform influence of motives on the will. Another factor 
 is concerned hi this uniformity ; it is the character in the will. By its 
 choice the will forms in itself a character ; and by action in accordance 
 with the choice, it confirms and develops the character. This must be 
 recognized in explaining the uniformity of human action. The attempt 
 to explain it by some law of the uniform influence of motives assumes 
 that the will is always characterless. Writers on the will w r ho 
 attempt to explain the uniformity of human action in this way, 
 have much to say about the necessity of finding the laws of the will. 
 But in fact they are seeking for a law of the will which shall be only 
 a necessary uniform sequence of nature; should they succeed they 
 would only prove that the determinations of the will are a part of the 
 course of nature and subject to the dictum necessitatis. This would 
 prove that personal beings do not exist and that nature is all. The 
 real law to the determinations of the will is the moral law which 
 declares the ends to which rational beings ought to direct their ener- 
 gies and the principles which ought to guide them in their actions. 
 If personal beings exist they must at some point rise above the fixed 
 course and uniform sequences of nature and find themselves under 
 obligation to conform their free action to the truths, laws, ideals and 
 ends of reason. 
 
 \ 72. Character in the Will. 
 
 I. A choice being an abiding determination of the end or object 
 of action, constitutes character in the will. A will that has made a 
 choice therein has a character. As an abiding elective preference of 
 the end or object of action it is character. As choice it is always 
 active and free. It is not nature ; it is not sensibility stimulated in- 
 voluntarily from without. It is elective preference or choice. It may 
 not always be present in consciousness. But whenever it comes to 
 the person's attention he is conscious that it is his choice and con- 
 scious that in it he is free. 
 
 II. The determination of the will exerts an influence on subsequent 
 determinations. 
 
 A choice exerts an influence on subsequent choices. For example, 
 in choosing learning as an object of pursuit in life in preference to 
 wealth, that choice carries in it an influence on a multitude of sub- 
 ordinate choices. So Agassiz, when asked to turn aside to a lucra- 
 tive use of his knowledge in the service of a great business estab- 
 lishment, declined, saying that he had not time to get rich. 
 
THE WILL. 397 
 
 The resolutions or immanent volitions to act exert forwards a 
 similar but less powerful influence. A man plans his day's work; 
 resolves what he will do in each hour of the day. He may become a 
 slave to his plan, or be entangled and hindered by its too great minute- 
 ness or its imperfect adjustments to time and strength and unantici- 
 pated avocations. But by a resolution or plan he may determine his 
 course of action for the next day or for a series of days. 
 
 Even the executive or exertive volitions influence the subsequent 
 determinations. They confirm the choice. By persisting under all 
 temptations in honest action one confirms his honest character. And 
 the repetition of action forms habit which is a facility of action and a 
 proclivity to perform it. The acquired facility is exemplified in learn- 
 ing to handle tools or to play on an instrument. The acquired pro- 
 clivity is exemplified in the difficulty of breaking up a habit. The 
 action sometimes becomes secondarily automatic and is done uncon- 
 sciously. Hence it is said, at first a man carries his habits, afterwards 
 his habits carry him. 
 
 Choices and volitions also react on the sensibilities and either stimu- 
 late or deaden them. The appetite for alcoholic liquors or opium is 
 strengthened by gratifying and deadened by resisting it. Kuskin says 
 the highest happiness is found in seeing the corn grow. He means 
 that a man realizes the greatest happiness when he keeps himself 
 fresh to the enjoyment of simple pleasures. A passion for gambling, 
 for excitement of any kind, grows by gratification and necessitates 
 stronger and stronger stimulus, till the fevered soul becomes incapable 
 of the common joys of healthy life. Men can educate themselves 
 even to the ferocity of enjoying cock-fights, the prize-fights of pugilistic 
 bullies, bull-fights and gladiatorial shows. In like manner by right 
 action they can increase the delicacy of their moral discernment, 
 their sensitiveness to good impulses, and the power of all motives to 
 virtue. 
 
 In this reaction of the voluntary determinations on the sensibilities 
 a man indirectly modifies the motives under which he acts. Thus the 
 motives which influence a person of mature age are largely the product 
 of his own previous action. 
 
 III. Voluntary action is a continual formation or modification of 
 character. We have seen that volitional action is an expression of 
 character. We now see that it is also continuously a forming or modi- 
 fying of character. Every subordinate choice and volitional act con- 
 firms or in some way modifies the existing character. " Every man 
 hews his own statue; builds himself." Every act is a blow of the 
 mallet on the shaping chisel. Thus man's life is a unity. What he is 
 now is the outgrowth of what he has been. 
 
398 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 " The child is father of the man ; 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Linked each to each in natural piety." 
 
 IV. Since character is in the will and is primarily the supreme 
 choice, man is always free to change his character by a new and con- 
 trary supreme choice. If his supreme choice is of self he is free to 
 choose God and his neighbor as the supreme object of trust and ser- 
 vice. If he chooses thus, the new choice is the primary element of a 
 new character ; but it is not a new character fully developed and con- 
 firmed. There still remains in him all which he has builded into him- 
 self by his action in accordance with his former supreme choice : the 
 training and storing of his intellect well or ill ; the morbid excitability 
 or deadness of his sensibilities ; the motives that influence his determi- 
 nations now constituted as all his life long he has been forming and 
 modifying them by his own action ; and the habits, some of them 
 masterful habits, which he has himself created. Under the sway of his 
 new choice he must by continuous right action build himself up in a 
 character of Christian faith and love, and in so doing tear out all the 
 evil which he had built into the whole structure of his character in his 
 previous life. 
 
 It is evident, also, that, although while his former character re- 
 mained he was free to choose God, yet that character itself being the 
 dominant choice of his will and having with the influence of continuous 
 action formed the intellect and sensibilities into accord with itself, must 
 be a powerful hindrance to a fundamental change by a new and con- 
 trary choice, and gives small ground to expect that the man left to 
 himself will ever make the change. 
 
 V. After the will has acquired a character by choice, its determina- 
 tions are not transitions from complete indetermination or indifference, 
 but are more or less the expressions of character already formed and of 
 choices and determinations already made. A person who goes to his 
 business at a stated hour every morning does not make a new complete 
 determination every time, but acts according to choices and purposes of 
 long standing. Nor does he determine anew every day the manner in 
 which he does his business, whether honorably or dishonorably, cour- 
 teously or rudely, carefully or carelessly, energetically or lazily. In his 
 manner of acting he expresses a character already formed by previous 
 voluntary action. Some acts seem less closely connected with the pre- 
 vailing bent of the character than others. But it would be difficult to 
 find an act of any person after infancy, not influenced in some degree, 
 directly or indirectly, by previous determinations of will. 
 
 It is sometimes objected to free-will that a person often follows 
 impulse thoughtlessly. It is asked how in that case there can have 
 
THE WILL. 399 
 
 been comparison and choice. It is sufficient to answer that he is not 
 divested of his rationality at any moment, and, if he follows impulse 
 without deliberation, it is by the free determination of his will not to 
 deliberate. It is his free refusal to consider what reason would require. 
 The same is implied hi common language when it is said that the man 
 has given himself up to the control of appetite or passion. But there 
 is also another answer, that the spontaneous action without deliberation 
 is often simply the expression of a choice or purpose already made and 
 of a character already formed. 
 
 The theory that indifference is essential to freedom necessarily implies 
 that the will never acquires a character ; that voluntary action is atom- 
 istic, every act disintegrated from every other; and that character, if 
 acquired, would be incompatible with freedom, because it would be 
 essential to freedom that the will be always indifferent. A man may 
 have been scrupulously honest fifty years, and yet, if he is a free agent, 
 his will is in indifference, and the determination to cheat or steal is at 
 every moment just as easy as to deter mine to do right. Persistence of 
 choice and of character in the will is thus made incompatible with free- 
 dom ; and God who is eternally love cannot be free. And this conclu- 
 sion not a few advocates of this false theory of freedom have avowed 
 and defended. But in truth the persistence and strength of a choice has 
 nothing to do with the freedom of the will. The freedom lies in the 
 constitution of a personal being and the essential quality of determi- 
 nation, .whether the determination persist but for a moment or through 
 endless existence. A choice, however long it persists, is always a choice 
 of the will, not an involuntary excitement of the sensibilities; it is 
 always the free and active determination by the will of the end or ob- 
 ject of action. And under the influence of all sensibilities, however 
 modified by previous voluntary action, the will determines. 
 
 73. The Uniformity of Human Action, 
 
 I. There is a uniformity in human action and a consequent possi- 
 bility of foreseeing it, sufficient to be the basis of confidence and the 
 determination of action between man and man. Xo one expects that 
 a friend whom he has known for years will betray him to-morrow, or 
 that a person long known to be honest will all at once steal a watch or 
 defraud a widow of funds in his hands as her trustee. Foresight of 
 human action is the prerequisite of far-reaching statesmanship and wise 
 legislation. The uniformity of human action is the basis of the confi- 
 dence of man in man which makes the transaction of business and 
 indeed all domestic and social life possible. The homeliest and com- 
 monest transactions with men every day imply the confidence that they 
 will act hi the immediate future as they have been acting in the past. 
 
400 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Tables of statistics, also, are said to establish laws of averages re- 
 specting the most uncertain of human actions : a certain percentage of 
 letters put in the post-office will be misdirected ; suicides and murders 
 from year to year will bear the same ratio to the population. 
 
 II. These laws of averages are too indefinite to be the basis of any 
 science of the uniformity of human action. 
 
 At the most they determine nothing as to individual action. A cer- 
 tain number in a thousand misdirect -letters or commit murders in a 
 year. But this does not enable any one to foresee that a particular 
 person will misdirect a letter or commit a murder next year. It would 
 hardly be accepted as science to say that six per cent, of all unsup- 
 ported stones will fall, while it remains impossible to designate the in- 
 dividual stones which will fall. 
 
 The laws of averages do not determine anything even as to commu- 
 nities. The average that is true of a population of millions is not true 
 of the hundreds and the thousands ; nor is any line of demarkation 
 established defining how great the population in question must be. It 
 is asserted, for example, that in the United States the murders annually 
 will be a specified number in a thousand. But I know a township set- 
 tled more than a hundred years ago and now containing some five 
 thousand inhabitants, in which no murder w r as ever known to be com- 
 mitted. Of what scientific significance is an average true of masses of 
 millions, when there is no certainty that among the thousands in any 
 particular town or county there will be one murder in a century J Also, 
 the annual average of crimes in New York city is greater than the ave- 
 rage in an equal population in any contiguous rural counties in the 
 State. And the average percentage of crimes in the last decade may be 
 widely different from the percentage in the same territory in the first 
 decade of the century. Cosmic agencies do not change. Why then 
 does human action vary ? 
 
 And the same outward actions do not have the same significance as 
 revealing the springs and laws of human action. The law distin- 
 guishes various kinds of homicide. A murder incited by covetousness 
 is of widely different significance from a murder incited by lust or 
 revenge, and must be the result of widely different influences. The two 
 cannot be grouped together as of the same import or as proving that 
 man acts necessarily under external agencies. On similar grounds Mr. 
 R. A. Proctor has pointed out the insufficiency of the argument from 
 statistics supposed to prove that marriage is conducive to longevity. 
 
 Statistical averages have sometimes been set forth as disproving 
 free-will. They seem to prove just the contrary, that there are ele- 
 ments concerned in human action making it impossible to reduce it 
 under exact scientific laws of nature. 
 
THE WILL. 401 
 
 It may be added that in some cases we may question the correct- 
 ness of the statistics, or else the fairness of the grouping and inter- 
 preting of the facts. Que"telet, estimating the probability of the birth 
 of males or females, says that once in a certain number of times we shall 
 find the births of a given number of males happening successively. To 
 ascertain the relative frequency of such an event he does not consult the 
 registers of births, but resorts to a method which he says is " more expe- 
 ditious and quite as conclusive;" he puts forty black and forty white balls 
 in a bao- and notes the succession of colors as he draws them out. One 
 
 O 
 
 who is not an anthropologist may raise the question whether drawing 
 balls from a bag involves all the conditions which influence the birth 
 of children. It may be admitted that Mr. Buckle presents facts in 
 discussing, in the second volume of his history, the influence of Chris- 
 tianity and the Christian ministry in Scotland. But every one ac- 
 quainted with the history of that country knows that he has presented 
 but a part of the facts and grouped them so as to falsify the real his- 
 tory. It is as if one should collect from the daily papers the accounts 
 of all the crimes in New York city for a year and give these alone 
 with comments arguing that these fully represent the civilization of 
 that city. 
 
 III. The uniformity actually existing in human action is compatible 
 with freedom. 
 
 Character itself is primarily a choice. Yet it is a choice which per- 
 sists, which modifies the state of the sensibilities and the intellect, and 
 both directly and indirectly influences the subsequent determinations. 
 The choice itself is character and thus is the basis of uniformity of 
 action. This gives confidence in character. A man long known to be 
 honest, truthful, beneficent, high-minded, is trusted accordingly. He 
 is expected to continue to be what he has been. In public life or 
 private it is character which tells. The same is true of masses of men. 
 One could have predicted the contrasted action of the Puritans and 
 the Cavaliers in Great Britain in the seventeenth century, and of the 
 Dutch Protestants and the Spanish Catholics in the days of Philip II. 
 and the Duke of Alva. But the uniformity of action had its basis 
 chiefly in character. 
 
 Thus the free-will itself is a basis of the uniformity of human action. 
 The entire conformity of will with reason would involve uniform right 
 character and action. This uniformity and unchangeableness of right 
 character exists in the highest degree in God, who is eternal and never- 
 changing love. But the uniformity which is involved in right char- 
 acter is compatible with freedom, for it includes freedom in its essence. 
 
 Uniformity of action among men arises in part from their common 
 constitution. When Mungo Park came one evening weary and ill to 
 26 
 
402 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 an African village, some of the negro women ministered to him, chant- 
 ing a ditty the refrain of which as translated by him was : " Let us pity 
 the poor white man ; he has no mother to bring him milk ; no wife to 
 grind him corn." Men everywhere and in all ages have the common 
 characteristics of human nature. They think, and feel, and act as 
 
 men. 
 
 " Skins may differ, but affection 
 Dwells in white and black the same." 
 
 Uniformity of action among men arises, also, from the action of the 
 same outward agencies on their common human nature. If an Esqui- 
 maux goes to the torrid zone he will cease to wear furs and to eat 
 blubber. This is no argument against free-will ; free-will does not con- 
 trol the weather, nor, directly and immediately, its effect on the physical 
 system. Yet free-will does not therefore cease to act ; for if the Esqui- 
 maux did not leave off his furs under the heat he would show that he 
 was not a reasonable being. His arctic dog could not by an act of will 
 throw off his hair nor adjust himself to meet the exigencies of the cli- 
 mate. Free-will does not create man's physical organization and 
 strength, nor the action of cosmic forces on him. It exerts his physical 
 and intellectual power and directs it to chosen ends. It determines him 
 to exertion by which he subdues nature and makes it serve him ; and 
 while subduing nature he develops himself. 
 
 Therefore the uniformity of man's action as it actually exists is no 
 argument against free-will. 
 
 74. Sociology and Free-Will. 
 
 A science of Sociology consistent with free-will is possible. 
 
 I. An attempted sociology, founded on the denial of free-will, cannot 
 be science. It has no right to call itself an inductive or empirical sci- 
 ence ; for it begins by arbitrarily denying or ignoring the most funda- 
 mental, important and certain of all the facts pertaining to humanity : 
 free-will and personality, moral responsibility and character, and reli- 
 gion. It assumes some theory of knowledge which limits it to objects 
 of sense ; it assumes that man's action and character are caused by 
 the same chemical and mechanical forces which cause the combina- 
 tions and motions of bodies, and in accordance with the same chemical 
 and mechanical laws. A sociology, which .thus starts in dogmatic 
 assumption refusing to take note of facts patent to the universal con- 
 sciousness of man, must be vitiated with defect and error through- 
 out, and its propagation and reception must hinder human progress 
 and benumb the noblest powers of man. For example, an eminent 
 professor of Social Science says : " It is incontestably plain that a man 
 who accepts the dogmas about social living which are imposed by the 
 
THE WILL. 403 
 
 authority of any religion must regard the subject of right social living 
 as settled and closed, and he cannot enter on any investigation the first 
 groundwork of which would be doubt of the authority which he re- 
 cognizes as final The human race has never done anything 
 
 else but struggle with the problem of social welfare. That struggle 
 embraces all minor problems which occupy human attention here, 
 save those of religion, which reaches beyond this world and finds its 
 objects beyond this life." According to the latest conclusions of an- 
 thropology religion has existed among all races and tribes of men. It 
 is notorious, also, that instead of pertaining to the other world alone, 
 it claims to regulate life to the deepest springs of character, and has 
 been, one of the most powerful factors in human history. It is itself 
 a great sociological fact which all true sociology must recognize. As 
 to the intimation that a belief in any religion disqualifies the believer 
 for a candid investigation of sociology, we may ask, in view of the 
 almost universal existence of religion, Who are to be the candid soci- 
 ologists ? Must all sociologists be atheists ? And even an atheist, if 
 he has no religion, is certainly a metaphysician and a theologian ; and, as. 
 Comte has somewhere said, the most illogical of them all, because he 
 busies himself about an insolvable problem and gives its least plausi- 
 ble solution. And the objection against religion is equally pertinent 
 against morality. The law of universal love, the first principles of 
 truthfulness, justice and benevolence are settled beyond dispute. 
 
 " The primal duties shine aloft like stars." 
 
 Do right moral convictions and character disqualify a man for the 
 candid study of sociology ? This writer's assertion respecting religion 
 sweeps to the conclusion that fixed moral and religious convictions are 
 incompatible with candid investigation. If a man would suffer death 
 rather than do a dishonorable deed, that character would make him 
 incompetent for a candid investigation of what constitutes the welfare 
 of society and what are the most effective methods of promoting it. 
 The fact is that a virtuous man's ineradicable conviction that the law 
 of love is supreme is entirely consistent with continual progress in the 
 knowledge of the significance and applications of the law and of the 
 best methods of making its control in society effectual ; it is consistent 
 also with the correction and improvement of his own character, and 
 his advance in the delicacy of his own moral discernment as well as 
 in moral power. So the Christian's ineradicable faith in God is entirely 
 consistent with increasing knowledge of him and of all reality, and of 
 the applications of all known truth in promoting the welfare of man. 
 There is no more inconsistency here than there is between an astrono- 
 
404 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 mer's ineradicable belief in the law of gravitation and the revolution 
 of the earth around the sun, and his correction of old errors and ac- 
 quisition of new astronomical knowledge from year to year through his 
 whole life. 
 
 II. Sociology will never reduce human action to the exactness of 
 mechanical laws. This is impossible for the simple reason that man is 
 not a machine but a person. Free-will is a power above mechanism. 
 The law to personal free-agents is the moral law, the law of love ; not 
 the uniform sequences of mechanism and chemical affinity. And it is 
 inherent in the very essence of free-will that it can disobey law. Hence 
 the actions of particular persons or communities cannot be foretold 
 with unerring accuracy. The man w r ho was a blasphemer in the morn- 
 ing may be a penitent at night. The young man who till yesterday has 
 abstained from intoxicating drink may drink to drunkenness to-day. 
 A community quiet under despotism this year may be in armed revolu- 
 tion the next. In the Duke of Alva's time a Protestant fleeing from 
 an officer of the Inquisition crossed a frozen lake. His pursuer broke 
 through the ice and was Hkely to be drowned ; the fugitive, hearing his 
 cries, returned and rescued him from death. Then the officer seized 
 the unarmed and defenceless man and delivered him up to the Inquisi- 
 tion. No person, probably, would have predicted that a man would 
 make this return to one who had voluntarily come back to him and 
 saved him from death. In all calculations as to the probability of 
 human action, the moral character of a person or a community, ac- 
 quired by free choice, must be taken into account. The very same 
 agencies and influences which move one person or community to 
 righteous and benevolent action will move a person or community of 
 different moral character to unrighteous and selfish action. 
 
 III. There is a sphere for a sociology compatible with free-will in 
 the uniformity actually found in human action and arising not merely 
 from the common constitution and common outward conditions of 
 men, but also from free choice itself as it forms moral character, 
 determines the effect of outward agencies on the action, modifies the 
 constitutional powers and susceptibilities, and guides and directs their 
 development. 
 
 By the study of man as he is and has been, sociology may ascertain 
 what ends it is possible to attain for his welfare and what are im- 
 possible from the limitations of his being; what welfare can be realized 
 for him directly by his own free choice, and what can be realized only 
 by a gradual amelioration of his condition through a larger knowledge 
 and control of the resources of nature and a further training and de- 
 velopment of the man. It may open the way to wiser -legislation and 
 statesmanship by disclosing the immediate or proximate ends to be 
 
THE WILL. 405 
 
 aimed at In human progress, the principles which must guide and the 
 methods which are most effective in attaining those ends. 
 
 In a paper read before the American Social Science Association in 
 1869, General Garfield said : " Society is an organism whose elements 
 and forces conform to laws as constant and pervasive as those which 
 govern the material universe, and the study of these laws will enable 
 man to ameliorate his condition, to emancipate himself from the cruel 
 dominion of superstition and from countless evils which were once 
 thought beyond his control, and will make him the master, rather 
 than the slave of nature." This is true, with the explanation that 
 society is subject both to the laws of nature and to the moral law. As 
 implicated in nature man is subject to the laws and course of nature ; 
 in heredity and all physiological and physical processes nature acts 
 through his physical organization as really as through the trees. Here 
 is one sphere of sociology in studying the physical and physiological 
 laws of man's nature and applying them to improve his physical 
 condition, constitution and development. But as a rational free-agent 
 man is above the fixed course of nature ; he determines the direction 
 and exertion of his energies and so becomes, as Gen. Garfield says, 
 " the master rather than the slave of nature." As rational and free, 
 the law to which he is subject is the moral law of love. This does not, 
 like a law of nature, declare the uniform fact that he does conform to 
 the law, but only his obligation or duty, while he is free to obey or dis- 
 obey. Here is another and higher sphere of sociology, in investigating 
 the dependence of the prosperity and progress of society on the devel- 
 opment of man's moral and spiritual capacities and on his conformity 
 to the law of love to God and man, and in studying the motives and 
 the methods of presenting them most influential in inducing men to 
 live right and so to realize the highest possibilities of their being. 
 Here, in entire consistency with man's freedom, sociology may investi- 
 gate what the well-being of the individual and of society is and what 
 are the wise methods of promoting it. All questions of reform and 
 progress and of the methods of promoting them are within its sphere : 
 as, the legitimate sphere of legislation in promoting good morals ; the 
 penal legislation most effective to protect society from crime ; the legis- 
 lation which will present the most influential motives to stimulate in- 
 dustry and to insure the largest development of the resources of the 
 country. For instance, sociology may ascertain in respect to protection 
 or free-trade whether legislation should follow the principle that the 
 prosperity of a nation is promoted by the peaceful prosperity of other 
 nations, or the contrary principle that the prosperity of a nation is 
 hindered by the prosperity of other nations. Whichever principle is 
 found to be sustained by facts, sociology will proceed to ascertain what 
 methods are most effective in applying the principle. 
 
406 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 In such studies, however, the sociologist must not refuse to take notice 
 of the principles of morals and religion, nor dismiss with a sneer as 
 " sentimentalists " and " doctrinaires " those who are trying to advance so- 
 v ciety towards conformity with these principles as essential to its true wel- 
 fare. Recognizing morality and religion as great factors in human his- 
 tory, sociology must ascertain by what errors and misapplications they 
 have been perverted from their legitimate influence, and by what 
 methods they can be made most effective in eradicating vice and purify- 
 ing and elevating the moral and spiritual tone of society. The educa- 
 tion of the young, for example, is a topic for sociological investigation. 
 But the question of moral and religious instruction is inseparable 
 from the institution of public schools. The restriction of education in 
 the public schools to intellectual instruction, excluding the teaching 
 of morals as founded in reverence for God and consisting in love to 
 God and our neighbor as commanded by God's law, is a very simple 
 way of settling the question. It is as unscientific and superficial as it 
 is simple, and if ever generally carried strictly into practice, will prove 
 itself a fatal error." 
 
 It has been found in the progress of the Christian nations, which 
 for ages have been the only progressive ones, that the principles 
 which society has gradually come to apply in the development of its 
 civilization, are the same which are taught in the life and teaching of 
 Christ. The dignity and worth of a' man by virtue of his personality, 
 or, as we say, his manhood ; the consequent sacredness of his rights ; 
 the rights of the individual in society as against despotic govern- 
 ment, and the duties of society, however governed, to the individual ; 
 these and kindred truths have been powers in the political progress 
 of the three last centuries. Whatever speculative recognition of them 
 may be found here and there among the greatest heathen writers, it is 
 indisputably Christianity which has made them practical powers in 
 the creation of modern civilization. It was the revival of Christianity 
 in the Protestant Reformation, going back beyond accumulated tradi- 
 tions and corruptions to the primitive principles and power of Chris- 
 tianity, which initiated this great movement and has given it its 
 vitality. The principles" which are to solve the social problems now 
 urgent, lie waiting their application in the Christian law of service: 
 " Whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister ; 
 and whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant ; even as 
 the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
 give his life a ransom for many ; " Greatness for service ; Greatness by 
 service. And this principle our Lord announces explicitly as the 
 principle of a new and Christian civilization : " Ye know that the 
 rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise 
 authority over them. Not so shall it be among you.'* 
 
THE WILL. 407 
 
 Thus the progress of Christian civilization has been the slow but 
 brightening revelation of the gospel of Christ as " good tidings of great 
 joy, which shall be to all the people ; " " The poor have good tidings 
 preached to them." 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 And more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul according well, 
 May make one music as before, 
 But vaster." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 PEKSONALITY. 
 
 I 75. Definitions. 
 
 I. A PEKSON is a being conscious of self, subsisting in individuality 
 and identity, and endowed with intuitive reason, rational sensibility 
 and free-will. All beings constitutionally devoid of these characteris- 
 tics are impersonal. 
 
 God alone is self-existent and independent, unconditioned and all- 
 conditioning. Finite persons are always dependent on him ; but they 
 are in the image of God as endowed with reason and free-will, and are 
 also in some respects self-conditioning. 
 
 Hamilton remarks that while physical action is conditioned in space 
 and time, the action of the human mind is not conditioned in space, 
 but in consciousness and time. But because the mind is conscious of 
 itself in all its acts and its consciousness -is spontaneous and entirely 
 within itself, it may be said to be, in this respect, self-conditioning. 
 
 A personal being has also intuitive knowledge of rational principles. 
 Thus is opened to him those ultimate realities of reason, the True, the 
 Right, the Perfect and the Good. He is therefore autonomic ; the 
 truth that enlightens and the laws that regulate thought and action are 
 within himself. And the Good, which is the end to be acquired for 
 himself, since it consists primarily in his own perfection, is within him- 
 self. And to this extent he is self-conditioning. 
 
 He also has knowledge of outward things, not as phenomena merely 
 but as real beings, and of their real energies ; by his rational intelligence 
 he discovers the scientific principles and laws which regulate nature, 
 and the cosmos or orderly system which it constitutes. In the light of 
 reason he reads in nature tne archetypal thoughts w r hich it expresses 
 and the rational ends which it subserves. Thus nature does not so 
 much hem him in with limits as it opens a sphere to his thoughts and 
 reveals to him the grandeur of his own reason. 
 
 In his rational sensibilities his being lies open to influences that 
 
 come on him from the sphere of the spiritual ; he becomes conscious 
 
 of a presence and a power transcending sense and arousing him to 
 
 interest in truth and right, in perfection and beauty, and in good which 
 
 408 
 
PERSONALITY. 409 
 
 reason estimates as having worth and in comparison with which sensual 
 enjoyment is held of small account. 
 
 In his will he is self-directing, self-acting and free. Here also nature, 
 which seemed a restriction, is found to open a sphere of action in which 
 man conquers nature and compelling it to reveal and surrender to 
 him its powers and resources, develops himself and discovers and re- 
 veals his own powers. 
 
 In all these respects man is self-conditioning. And, as in the enlarge- 
 ment of his knowledge and the development of his powers he comes 
 upon the conditions and limitations of his being, he finds them not 
 ultimately in nature, but rather in his dependence on God and his sub- 
 jection, to his law. Thus the very limitations and conditions of his 
 being reveal his greatness, as subject ultimately only to the supreme 
 and absolute Reason, hedged about only with the truth and laws, the 
 ideas and ends eternal in the divine wisdom and love, and bound within 
 these flaming barriers to be a worker together with God in the univer- 
 sal moral system for the realization of its highest ends. 
 
 The component parts of this definition have already been considered 
 and need no further explanation. 
 
 II. A Moral Agent is a person considered as under obligation to 
 obey the moral law, with freedom to obey or disobey it, and thus re- 
 sponsible for his action and character as right or wrong. All moral 
 agents are persons. An impersonal being cannot be a moral agent. 
 A dog may neglect every duty required in the moral law ; but it cannot 
 be a transgressor of the law, for it is constituted incapable of knowing 
 the law and destitute of the qualities of a free and responsible person. 
 
 There may be, however, persons or moral beings who cannot with 
 strict propriety be called moral agents. A new-born infant is properly 
 called a person or moral being, because it has the constitution of a 
 person, though not yet developed into action. So the newly-born whelp 
 of a tiger is properly called a carnivorous animal, though a long time 
 may pass before it becomes capable of eating flesh. Yet this infant can 
 hardly be called with propriety a moral agent until it is capable of the 
 consciousness of moral obligation and of responsibility for its actions. 
 
 III. Nature is the whole of impersonal being considered as con- 
 ditioned in space and time and the subject of continuous transition in 
 the uniform and necessary sequences of cause and effect. Mature is 
 always " becoming ; " it is never for two successive moments in the 
 same condition ; everything in it acts only as it is acted on, and in 
 necessity not in freedom. 
 
 " It must go on creating, changing, 
 Through endless shapes forever ranging, 
 And rest we only seem to see." 
 
410 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 This continued transition in the necessary and uniform sequences of 
 cause and effect is called the course of nature. 
 
 All personal beings are supernatural. By virtue of their personal 
 attributes they are above the uniform course of nature, and act in free- 
 dom, not in necessity. 
 
 Man, however, is implicated in nature. He is, indeed, an agent- 
 cause. But so also is a molecule or atom if it is endowed with the 
 power of attraction and repulsion or any other inherent power. The 
 molecule reveals its po\ver only as it comes into relation to some other 
 molecule. So man, though endowed with personal attributes, reveals 
 them to himself and others only as he comes into relation to nature, 
 which is the occasion of his exerting his energies and becoming con- 
 scious of himself as rational and free. But this does not imply that 
 man's mind is a tabula rasa, a blank tablet passively receptive of what- 
 ever sensuous impressions may be imprinted on it from without ; nor 
 does it imply that the molecule and the human mind are the same in 
 kind. 
 
 What man is, is not determined by that which excites him to 
 action, but by the powers which he exercises and reveals when he acts. 
 Power is common both to personal and impersonal beings ; and contact 
 with objects in nature is the occasion on which the power both of man 
 and the impersonal thing are brought into action. But in the exercise of 
 their powers the one reveals its impersonality, the other its personality. 
 Man acts in the consciousness of himself as ever one and the same ; by 
 virtue of his rationality and his consequent susceptibility to rational mo- 
 tives he is able to direct his energies to any end which he has freely cho- 
 sen and to call them into action at will. Man's body is itself a part of 
 nature. Muscular contractility and other organic energies are forces 
 of nature. But the man exerts these forces and directs them to his 
 own ends, and through them hand guided by mind is able to use 
 other forces of nature and compel them to effect what he has willed 
 and what nature without his intervention would never have effected. 
 These powers in their very essence imply that man is distinct from 
 nature and above it. In the very act of knowing nature and acting 
 on it he distinguishes himself from nature, knows himself above it, and 
 finds in it both the sphere of his rational intelligence and free activity 
 and the resources and powers which he controls to his own service. 
 He is a supernatural being. Lotze says : " The complete survey 
 of the inward experience is the only way to ascertain with what 
 essential qualities the soul fills out its own indivisible unity, w : hich 
 holds the manifold of its inner life together and develops the many- 
 colored manifoldness of its characteristics. We have no other insight 
 into the essence of the soul except what the observed acts of our own 
 
P.RSOKAUTT. 
 
 consciousness guarantee ; we know what the soul i 
 to know, to feel and to do."* 
 
 The Duke of Argyll suggests that man cannot know the supernatural 
 till he has attained an exhaustive knowledge of the natural. If this is 
 so he can never know the supernatural. Conscious individuality and 
 identity, conscious reason and free-will are of the essence of personality. 
 If a man does not know these in his consciousness of himself he can 
 never know them. And personality in its essential significance is super- 
 natural. This very suggestion of searching throughout nature for the 
 supernatural presupposes knowledge of the supernatural. 
 
 It must be noted that the word nature is often used with other mean- 
 ings. It is used to denote the constitution of anything, or its essential 
 qualities ; we speak of the nature of an alkali or of electricity, the 
 nature of law, of a circle, of syllogistic reasoning, or of God. Super- 
 natural is also used to denote the miraculous, the exertion on nature of 
 a power not only supernatural but also superhuman. Nature is also 
 used to denote the finite universe, including man ; and the supernatural 
 is identified with the absolute and predicated only of it. Then the dif- 
 ference between the supernatural and the natural becomes precisely the 
 difference between the absolute and the finite. Then it becomes impos- 
 sible to have any positive knowledge of the supernatural, or of the 
 absolute as a supernatural being ; for if man does not know the super- 
 natural in knowing himself, he can never have any positive knowledge 
 of it, nor add anything positive to the idea of the absolute by affirm- 
 ing that it is supernatural. Imagination cannot create an idea the 
 elements of which were never given in intuition. The logical result 
 must be either agnosticism the absolute as the ground of the universe 
 is unknowable or monism the absolute is identical with the universe 
 itself; and, whether the monism be materialistic or pantheistic, in either 
 case the universe, identified with the absolute, contains nothing super- 
 natural. Logically no bridge is left by which thought can pass to the 
 knowledge of the absolute as the personal God. But if personality, 
 as including reason and free-will, is in its essence supernatural, then 
 we know the universe as including both a moral system of persons 
 under moral law and therein supernatural, and a system of impersonal 
 nature under natural law alone ; and we may know the absolute being 
 as the Supreme Reason governing the world in wisdom and love ; that 
 is, we may know him as the personal God in whose image as rational, 
 free and personal, man exists. The objection that this implies that 
 man would be exempt from the law of cause and effect rests on a mis- 
 apprehension. The law of cause and effect is a principle of reason and 
 
 * Mikrokosmws. Vol. I., pp. 182-184. 
 
412 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 law to all finite beings, and is not a mere uniform factual sequence 
 which we call a law of nature ; and the free person is not exempt from 
 it, for he is the cause of his own free acts, and himself as finite derives 
 his being from God and depends on him for his existence. But his 
 action is free and is not in the necessary sequences which constitute the 
 course of nature. 
 
 IV. A person, considered as distinguished from matter or as hyper- 
 material, is called Spirit. 
 
 Our knowledge of person as already defined is clear and positive. 
 All its elements are known within our own consciousness. But when 
 we designate a person as a spirit in distinction from matter, the propo- 
 sition is liable to be misunderstood. 
 
 On the one hand, theology does not deny of the finite spirit all re- 
 lations to space. The relations of body, of the finite spirit, and of God 
 to space, were respectively designated in the older theology by the 
 Latin adverbs, eircumscriptive, definitive and repletive* By these terms, 
 which Turretin already perceived to be inadequate, theology denied of 
 the finite spirit solidity and divisibility, which are characteristic of 
 bodies, and immensity or omnipresence which is predicable only of 
 God, and affirmed of it a definite form and position in space. So Ten- 
 nyson : * 
 
 " Eternal form shall still divide 
 The eternal soul from all beside." 
 
 It is not essential to spirit that it exist and act separate from 
 matter. All that is essential is that the properties and powers peculiar 
 to a person are not properties and powers of matter ; they transcend 
 matter and its forces and cannot be accounted for by them. It is there- 
 fore possible that spirit acts in and through a material organization ; 
 and if all finite persons thus act it does not prove that they are not 
 spirit. Even God expresses his thought and reveals his glory through 
 nature. Immanent in the universe his power, wisdom and love are 
 continuously revealed in it. In the loom of time he weaves the gar- 
 ment by which we see him. Spirit is the source of power and of the 
 wisdom and love which direct its energies. And it is not inconceiv- 
 able that the finite spirit, as a subcreative centre of reason and free 
 power, may w r eave for itself a material vesture, of ethereal texture and 
 from fitly elaborated matter, through which it acts and by which 
 it is revealed. Any power which acts can cause only effects, 
 which as effects are conditioned in space, or time, or consciousness, 
 or quantity, or dependence. Not otherwise can it reveal itself. 
 
 * Turretin : Institutio Theologies Elencticae ; Loc. III., Quasi, be. 
 
PERSONALITY. 413 
 
 Hence nature is always the symbol and revealer of spirit. As already 
 shown, nature is the sphere in which the human reason and will act, 
 and furnishes resources and agencies for their action. And in it God, 
 always immanent, acts revealing his glory. Matter is not contradic- 
 tory to spirit, but the object and sphere, the organ and the instrument 
 of its action. The impa&sable chasm between dead matter and spirit, 
 the irreconcilable antagonism between them, can no longer be found. 
 
 On the other hand the word matter does not have a fixed and definite 
 meaning. This is partly because the word is used indefinitely ; partly 
 because those who define it do not agree in their definitions ; and still 
 more because an exact and complete definition must determinately 
 answer questions, both empirical and metaphysical, which man has not 
 at present the means of deciding. 
 
 It is idle to use the arguments against materialism founded on 
 what Lange calls, " The old notion of matter as a dead, stark and pas- 
 sive substance." Matter is now regarded as dynamic rather than pas- 
 sive ; and the materialism of the present day is founded on the doctrine 
 of the persistence of force. Matter as conceived by the current material- 
 ism is that which occupies space and is contained in it and which thus 
 has the properties of solidity, extension, form and position; but it 
 is always in motion ; rest is relative only to the particular system to 
 which the apparently resting body belongs. Force is the cause of 
 motion ; or, if the phrase is preferred, it is that which is manifested 
 in motion ; all force is measurable by motion, the mass and velocity 
 being the factors. The quantity of force, potential and kinetic, is 
 always the same. By the impact of moving bodies force can be commu- 
 nicated and its manifestation transformed into a new mode of motion ; 
 but no force can be added to or subtracted from the existing amount. 
 The inertia of matter remains in the fact, as stated by Grove, " that a 
 force cannot originate otherwise than by devolution from some pre- 
 existing force or forces."* Such is matter objectively considered as the 
 current materialism conceives it. 
 
 Matter subjectively considered is that which is perceptible by man's 
 senses ; or is of such a nature as to be conceivably perceptible by 
 more acute and powerful senses of the same kind. The materialism 
 of the present day is the affirmation that matter and force as above 
 defined are all the reality of which it is possible for man to have know- 
 ledge ; that they constitute the universe and account for all its changes ; 
 that what we call mind and mental phenomena are no exception ; and 
 that there is a complete correlation and inter-convertibility of mental 
 phenomena and the physical processes going on in the brain. 
 
 * Correlation of Physical Forces : p. 19. 
 
414 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 In view of the current dynamic conception of physical phenomena, 
 this materialistic monism is evidently distinguishable from materialism 
 in some of its previous historical forms. But it is the same in its 
 practical issue. In contradiction to this materialistic monism I affirm 
 that the activities of personality, certainly known to us as facts, reveal 
 an agent or power other than and different from matter and the 
 energy which is manifested in motion and measured by it. A person, 
 considered as thus distinguished from matter and its motor-energy, is 
 called spirit. 
 
 I 76. Man is a Personal Being. 
 
 Man knows himself to be a person, endowed wifh rational free-will 
 and all the essential attributes of personality, and, as such, a subject 
 of moral obligation and capable of moral conduct and character. 
 Man knows this with the highest certainty ; on the knowledge of this 
 all other knowledge depends for its reality, its continuity, and its 
 unity. 
 
 The fact of man's personality has been established in the preced- 
 ing chapters, and needs no further discussion. 
 
 In his personality every man is individual and alone; others can 
 approach the barriers of this solitude and send in intelligence, in- 
 fluence, or sympathy ; but no man can scale the barriers into the per- 
 sonality of another to think, or feel, or determine, or act for him, to 
 take his responsibility, or to participate in his consciousness. There is 
 much in every one's consciousness which, even without any purpose 
 or effort to conceal it, is hidden from those most intimate with him. 
 
 " Yes ; in the sea of life enisled, 
 With echoing straits between us thrown, 
 Dotting the shoreless watery wild 
 We mortal millions live alone. 
 The islands feel the enclasping flow, 
 And then their endless bounds they know." 
 
 And to the same purport is the Hebrew proverb : " If thou be wise 
 thou shalt be wise for thyself; but if thou scornest thou alone shalt 
 bear it." 
 
 Whatever difficulties may be involved in the assertion that man is 
 spirit, the fact of his personality stands out in clear, definite and certain 
 knowledge. And because he is a person he is a moral agent and a 
 supernatural being. 
 
 \ 77. Man is Spirit. 
 
 Though man in his physical constitution is implicated in nature, yet 
 in his personality he is spirit, supernatural and hypermaterial. 
 
 If materialism is to stand it must account for and explain all the 
 
PERSONALITY. 415 
 
 facts, both of personality and of the physical universe, by matter and 
 its motor-force alone ; failing to do this it is discredited as a theory of 
 the universe. We must distinguish between accounting for and ex- 
 plaining by empirical science and by philosophy. A reality is ex- 
 plained and accounted for empirically when it is classified by resem- 
 blance and co-ordinated in a uniform sequence. Factual realities thus 
 cognized hi empirical science are accounted for and explained philo- 
 sophically when they are interpreted and vindicated to the Reason by 
 declaring the rational thought which they express, the rational law to 
 which they conform, and the rational ideals and ends which they tend 
 to realize. I propose to prove that the facts of personality and of the 
 physical universe cannot be accounted for or explained either empiri- 
 cally or philosophically by matter and its motor-force. 
 
 I. The existence of spirit is necessary to account for and explain 
 the facts of personality. Matter and motor-force cannot account for 
 and explain them. 
 
 1. The properties and powers of personal beings are different from 
 the properties and powers of matter ; therefore there must be a spiritual 
 agent or cause manifesting itself in personality, distinct and different 
 from matter and the force which manifests itself in motion. Intuitions 
 of self-consciousness and of reason, free choice, love, are not identical 
 with motion nor with any change of matter which is resolvable into 
 motion. Spirit is distinguished from matter by peculiar essential pro- 
 perties. We cannot distinguish substances by going behind the proper- 
 ties. Substance has no meaning divested of the properties in which it 
 is manifested. We know substance only as a being persistent in cer- 
 tain properties or powers. We have then the same kind of reason 
 for supposing the being or agent revealed in personal properties and 
 acts to be a kind of agent different and distinct from matter, which 
 reveals itself in force causing or arresting motion, as we have for sup- 
 posing that oxygen is a different kind of being or agent from hydrogen. 
 And the distinction and difference are more complete because the 
 activities of oxygen and hydrogen are ultimately brought into the same 
 
 as modes of motion, while the activities of personality cannot be 
 identified with motion, and the personal agent is thus distinct and dif- 
 ferent from all agents whose activities are solely modes of motion. 
 Hence,, as Dr. Carpenter says of spirit and matter, " the essential nature 
 of these two entities is such that no relation of identity can exist be- 
 tween them."* 
 
 2. The supposition of the existence of spirit as the cause or 
 agent manifested in the known facts of personality and necessary to 
 
 * Mind and Will in Nature : Contemporary Rev. 1872. 
 
416 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 account for them, is entirely accordant with the methods of physical 
 science. 
 
 Science recognizes at present sixty-four simple or elemental bodies. 
 It assumes that the atoms of each of these have certain peculiar 
 and unchangeable properties by which these elements are each dis- 
 tinguished from the others. " The diversity of matter results from 
 primordial differences perpetually existing in the very essence of these 
 atoms, and in the qualities which are the manifestation of them."* 
 When in the known facts of personality we discover properties and 
 activities differing from those of each of these elements and of all mat- 
 ter, especially in the fact that they are not modes of motion, we do but 
 adopt the legitimate and uniform method of physical science in ascrib- 
 ing them to an agent or cause distinct and different from matter and 
 its energy. There is nothing more difficult or unscientific in distin- 
 guishing the agent revealed in these phenomena from matter than in 
 distinguishing the substance revealed in the phenomena of potassium 
 from carbon or iron. We distinguish spirit as the agent in personality 
 from all bodies, because the qualities in which it manifests itself are 
 different from those of any and all bodies. 
 
 The scientific recognition of molecules, atoms, and. the ether shows 
 still more strikingly that our recognition of spirit as the agent mani- 
 festing itself in the phenomena of personality is accordant with the 
 legitimate and customary method of empirical science. In ascertain- 
 ing the essential reality of all that is presented to the senses, empiri- 
 cal science goes behind all which men commonly have in mind when 
 thinking of matter to reality entirely imperceptible by the senses. In 
 this it seems to find a sort of " thing in itself," the essential but hid- 
 den reality of all that is presented to sense. As the essential reality of 
 matter it finds molecules and atoms ; of sound, undulations of air ; of 
 heat, light and electricity, vibrations of an all-pervading ether. In 
 each case that which science finds as the essential reality of matter 
 and energy is that which is imperceptible by sense. The essential 
 reality of the tangible is the intangible ; of the audible is the inaudi- 
 ble ; of the visible is the invisible ; of the divisible is the indivisible ; 
 of the perceptible is the imperceptible. Thus underlying or within the 
 gross matter and its motions which we perceive, is a world of atomic, 
 molecular and ethereal matter which no human sense can grasp. 
 
 In this, science presents to our thought a reality of which we 
 can have no perception and scarcely even a conception as matter. 
 The atom itself, as some represent it, is no longer an infrangible mass 
 " in solid singleness," as Lucretius described it and as Newton con- 
 
 * Wurtz : The Atomic Theory : Cleminshaw's Translation, p. 308. 
 
PERSONALITY. 417 
 
 ceived it, but a ring like the smoke-rings which rise from a locomo- 
 tive or from the discharge of a cannon. This ring moves as a whole ; 
 at the same time its minute parts revolve at right angles around the 
 circular line constituting the nucleus of the ring and " are indissolubly 
 tied down to their circular paths, and can never quit them ; " " the 
 rings can move and change their form without the connection of the 
 constituent parts ever being broken."* Thus in every pebble, in every 
 visible bit of matter are millions of these indissoluble systems of vortex- 
 atoms as complicated as the solar system, in which each part revolves 
 in its orbit. And since the vortex-atom itself is inconceivably small, 
 what are its parts measuring their little years by revolving forever 
 within it, atoms of an atom, atoms to which the vortex-atom itself is as 
 a universe? It is evident that these things are beyond our power, 
 not of perception only, but also of conception, and issue in well nigh 
 obliterating the very idea of the relations to space and time, which 
 are the supposed essential characteristics of matter and motion. 
 
 The ether, also, must be noticed. It is " a medium which fills the 
 universe and penetrates all bodies." Science, does not profess to decide 
 whether it is homogeneous and continuous, or is formed of atoms of a 
 second order, which if immensely accumulated would be ponderable. 
 Whatever it may be, the attempt to conceive it confounds all our habit- 
 ual ideas of solid matter. 
 
 Physical science thus assumes a world utterly imperceptible and in- 
 conceivable as the essential reality of matter, as the real agent or cause 
 manifesting itself in matter and motion as w r e perceive them. It ac- 
 counts for masses of matter, which the senses perceive, by imperceptible 
 atoms and molecules. It accounts for the most energetic forces that 
 reveal themselves in their effects, as vibrations of ether which sense 
 cannot perceive. It supposes a primitive fluid beneath the atoms 
 themselves. "According to Thomson, though the primitive fluid is the 
 only true matter, yet that which we call matter is not the primitive 
 fluid itself, but a mode of motion of that primitive fluid. It is the 
 mode of motion which constitutes the vortex-rings, and which furnishes 
 us with examples of that permanence and continuity of existence which 
 we are accustomed to attribute to matter itself. The primitive fluid, 
 the only true matter, entirely eludes our perceptions when it is not 
 endued with the mode of motion which converts certain portions of it 
 into vortex-rings, and thus renders it molecular."f 
 
 It must also be observed that energy is the greatest at the farthest 
 remove from gross matter ; the more tenuous the matter the greater the 
 
 * Wurtz : The Atomic Theory, p. 327. 
 
 f Clerk-Maxwell : Encyc. Brit. 9th ed., Atom., Vol. III., p. 45. 
 
 27 
 
418 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 energy. I need only name heat, light and electricity. And if gravi- 
 tation is, like those forces, accounted for by means of stress in an in- 
 tervening medium, " the state of stress which we must suppose to exist 
 in the invisible medium is three thousand times greater than that which 
 the strongest steel could support."* 
 
 It is therefore in entire accord with the methods of empirical science 
 to suppose spirit to be the essential reality, the real agent or cause 
 manifesting itself in the facts of personality. We only add an agent 
 that no sense can perceive, still further removed from gross matter than 
 the atoms and the ether and with corresponding increase of active 
 power. And as scientists are beginning to assume the reality of gross 
 matter to be in a primitive fluid as the prius of the atoms themselves 
 and constituting the atomic vortex-rings by its motion, it will not be 
 surprising if it be found that all power and all material existence are 
 accounted for ultimately only as manifesting the power of spirit. 
 
 3. I must add that we have more evidence of the existence of spirit 
 than of atoms, molecules and ether. The assumed existence of the 
 latter is confessedly hypothesis only, a convenient working hypothesis 
 for scientific investigation ; but w T hile the hypothesis of the existence of 
 spirit accounts and alone accounts for all the facts of personality, we 
 have also knowledge of ourselves as persons in our own self-conscious- 
 ness. So Mr. Huxley says : " The materialistic position that there is 
 nothing in the world but matter, force and necessity is as utterly de- 
 void of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas."f 
 
 4. The supposition of a spirit manifested in the facts of personality 
 and accounting for them is in the direction of the tendency of modern 
 science to a dynamic conception of the universe. It has often been pointed 
 out that matter can be resolved into force, but that force cannot be 
 resolved into matter. Theories resolving matter in different ways into 
 force have been from time to time proposed. To this conception recent 
 science shows a marked tendency. Energy has become the prominent 
 topic of scientific discussion and investigation. Dynamids are pro- 
 posed instead of atoms. The absolute being, the Unknowable, the 
 Ultimate Keality in which mind and matter, subject and object are 
 united, is called by Spencer a Power. It is entirely in the line of this 
 tendency of science to suppose that it is spirit which manifests itself in 
 the facts of personality, and that Energizing Reason is the Absolute 
 Power revealed in the universe. 
 
 In following this dynamic tendency science finds itself in inextrica- 
 ble difficulties. It passes beneath perceptible matter to its essential 
 
 * Clerk-Maxwell : Encyc. Brit. 9th ed., Attraction, Vol. III., p. 64. 
 f Lay Sermons : p. 144. 
 
PERSONALITY. 419 
 
 reality which it supposes itself to find in the ether and various orders 
 of atoms. But ether discloses contradictory properties; it breaks 
 down, as skeptics say the reason does, in irreconcilable antinomies. It 
 is supposed to be exceedingly rare. Grove tells us that the particles of 
 water are estimated to be relatively to their size as far apart as a hun- 
 dred men would be if equally distributed over the surface of England. 
 AVhen the water is expanded into steam the distance is increased more 
 than forty times ; and by increasing the temperature the distance is 
 increased much more.* The relative distance of the particles of ether 
 must be immensely greater. But he says, no degree of rarefaction of 
 a gas, " by heat, or the air-pump, or both, makes the slightest change 
 in the apparent continuity of matter," under any experiment. Rare 
 as ether is we have seen that it sustains a stress or strain three thousand 
 times greater than the best steel can sustain ; as Young says, it " is not 
 only highly elastic, but absolutely solid ; " as Jevons says, " it is im- 
 mensely harder and more elastic than adamant." Sir John Herschel 
 estimated the amount of force exerted by the ether to be seventeen 
 trillions f of pounds to the square inch. Yet its resistance to the 
 motion of the planets is too minute to be appreciated ; J and we live 
 and move in it without perceiving it. It is also inconceivably energetic. 
 It has been calculated that in the red ray four hundred and seventy- 
 four trillions, in the middle green six hundred trillions, and in the violet 
 ray six hundred and ninety-nine trillions of vibrations of the ether 
 strike on the retina of the eye in a second. Such an ether is entirely 
 inconceivable. It is objected to the supposition of spirit that it is con- 
 trary to our experience. Certainly it is not more so than is the ether. 
 Mr. Spencer also notices the fact that a " rhythmically moving mole- 
 cule" is " mental in a threefold sense ;" that is, separated from observed 
 reality by a threefold remove ; " so that the unit out of which we build 
 our interpretation of material phenomena is triply ideal." || Thus 
 physical science, crowded by its own speculations to the utmost verge 
 of solid matter, clings to it with difficulty, and is half ready to let go 
 its hold and to rest only on energy potential and kinetic. This would 
 be a long step towards idealism. For, as Dr. Carpenter, the physiolo- 
 gist, says, " While between matter and mind it is utterly vain to estab- 
 lish a relation of identity or analogy, a very close relation may be 
 shown to exist between mind and force." It is impossible by any effort 
 for the human mind to think of energy exerted in causing motion or 
 other change, except as some being or agent exerts it. If there is 
 motion, there must be something that is moved and something that 
 
 * Correlation of Forces, V., Light, p. 128. f 17,000,000,000,000. 
 
 J Prof. Jevons : Principles of Science. Chap, xxiii., pp. 514, 516, 558. 
 $ 699,000,000,000,000. |j Psychology. Vol. I., p. 625. 
 
420 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 moves it. If matter itself is but the equilibrium of opposing forces 
 occupying a portion of space, if in its various changes these forces are 
 liberated and brought into equilibrium with other forces, then the dis- 
 embodied energy must either be exerted by a spirit, or it must itself be 
 hypostasized as an entity persisting in identity. But such an hypos, 
 tasized force involves all the difficulties supposed to be in the idea of 
 spirit. It would need only the addition of intelligence or the power of 
 self-direction, and it would be spirit. 
 
 The supposition of the real existence both of body and finite spirit, and 
 of absolute and eternal power as Energizing Keason, enables us to re- 
 tain both matter and spirit, both nature and the supernatural, both the 
 seen and the unseen world ; and we are extricated from the difficulties 
 inseparable from the hypothesis that all that exists is the manifestation 
 of matter and force alone. If now we be compelled to admit that 
 matter as perceived by human senses is phenomenon only and that its 
 essential reality is beyond the reach of sense, and if the idea of matter 
 even in its extra-sensible forms slips from us and the idea of energy 
 alone is left, the energy is no longer an action without an agent, but is 
 the activity of an energizing reason continually and progressively real- 
 izing its eternal ideals within the limitations and in the forms of space 
 and time. This is analogous to the conclusion of the Spencerian phil- 
 osophy, while free from difficulties inseparable from the latter, " that 
 the term matter does not stand for any real existence, but only for one 
 of the modes in which an Inscrutable Existence reveals itself to us 
 within the limits of our terrestrial experience."* 
 
 II. The existence of some cause other than matter and force is neces- 
 sary to account for and explain the physical universe itself; it cannot 
 be accounted for and explained as mechanism. No physical cause or 
 law as yet discovered by physical science is adequate to account for and 
 explain it. 
 
 The laws of mechanism declare what is the invariable action of 
 motor-force on matter; when fully known they may be formulated 
 mathematically. The theory that the universe is mechanism presup- 
 poses only matter and the force which is manifested in motion, molar 
 or molecular. All the activity in the universe consists in the rearrange- 
 ment or distribution of matter and force according to the laws of 
 mechanics. In its more common form it supposes the force to be in- 
 herent in matter and always present either as potential or energetic. 
 In its second and strictest form it supposes gravitation and all the forces 
 of nature to result from the impact of moving bodies. 
 
 The very ideas of matter and force suggest questions and difficulties 
 
 * J. Fiske : Cosmic Phil. Vol. II., p. 445. 
 
PERSONALITY. 421 
 
 which carry us beyond mechanism. As Du Bois-Reymond says : " In 
 the ideas of matter and force we see returning the same dualism which 
 expresses itself in God and the world, soul and body."* 
 
 The law of the Persistence of Force declares the unity and continuity 
 of force. The discovery of this law was supposed by many to establish 
 beyond all further question the theory that the universe is a machine 
 and all its phenomena explicable by the principles and laws of me- 
 chanism. But it is evident that this law and all theories of mechanism 
 resting on it, not only fail to explain and account for the facts of per- 
 sonality, but equally for the known action of physical force. 
 
 Gravitation itself cannot be accounted for by this law. It is a fact 
 that energy is communicated from the sun to the earth. A fiery 
 cyclone in the sun transmits energy to the earth which moves a mag- 
 netic needle. The energy of the sun sustains all organic life. But 
 the gravitation of the earth to the sun cannot be accounted for or ex- 
 plained by the law of the persistence of force. 
 
 We may first assume the common explanation that gravitation is 
 an inherent property of matter, that the energy is exerted by the 
 matter itself. 
 
 The first difficulty then is that we have action at a distance. This 
 is contrary to the common conviction that a body cannot act where it 
 is not ; it implies a disembodied force or motion passing through space ; 
 it involves every difficulty supposed to be implied in a disembodied 
 spirit, and the additional difficulty of supposing an energy to exist 
 where no being is present to exert it, or a motion where no being ia 
 present to move. 
 
 A second difficulty, if attraction is an essential property of matter, is 
 that the energy is continually exerted without being expended and 
 thus must continually increase the amount of energy in the universe. 
 A moving body transmits energy to the body against which it strikes, 
 and loses the energy which it transmits. But if attraction is an essen- 
 tial property of the sun, there is no transfer of energy from the sun 
 to the planets. The sun is continually emitting energy into an im- 
 measurable sphere, but it loses no energy ; its power of attraction is 
 not restored to it by impact from other bodies ; it is an ever full and 
 inexhaustible fountain from which the energy of attraction streams 
 continuously forever. This conception of gravitation is therefore en- 
 tirely incompatible with the law of the persistence of force. It implies 
 that the amount of energy in the universe is continually increased. 
 Every body in the universe by its power of attraction is continuously 
 and inexhaustibly giving out energy. 
 
 * Untersuchungen uber thierische Electricitat, S. 40. 
 
422 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Another difficulty is that the force seems to act instantaneously; 
 every body in the universe takes cognizance of the change of position 
 of every other body and moves accordingly. Another difficulty is 
 that the force is not obstructed by any intervening body, but all bodies 
 are transparent to it. 
 
 If to escape these difficulties we change our theory and assume 
 that gravitation is accounted for by molecular action and so is cor- 
 related with all energy, the difficulties remain. Hypotheses account- 
 ing for gravitation in this way are at present little more than fancies, 
 guesses or suggestions ; but as the best work of keen, scientific minds, 
 they strikingly exemplify the truth of my proposition. 
 
 If the ether is supposed to be continuous, filling all space, the old 
 question of the plenum and the vacuum returns. If matter is con- 
 tinuous, filling all space, how is motion possible ? And if possibility 
 of motion is still affirmed, have we not essentially changed the very 
 idea of matter as solid or occupying space ? 
 
 If, however, the ether is discontinuous, composed of atoms of a second 
 order finer than those of gross matter, we are no nearer a satisfactory 
 explanation. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that the energy of gravitation is transmitted 
 through space by the impact of the atoms of the ether ; we do not 
 escape the necessity of action at a distance ; for, as Clerk-Maxwell says, 
 " we have no evidence that real contact ever takes place between two 
 bodies .... and all that we have done is to substitute for a single 
 action at a great distance a series of actions at smaller distances be- 
 tween the parts of a medium ; so that we cannot even thus get rid of 
 action at a distance." Also, according to this second form of the theory 
 of the universe as mechanism, potential force could no longer be re- 
 cognized ; for force would exist, not as inherent in bodies, but only as 
 energizing in motion and communicated in the impact of bodies. 
 
 Nor do we escape the difficulties as to the expenditure and accumu- 
 lation of -force. Of the hypothesis accounting for gravitation by mole- 
 cular action, the one most completely worked out appears to be that 
 of Le Sage. He supposes corpuscles, so small that they very rarely 
 collide with one another, streaming in all directions into our universe 
 from beyond its limits. A body alone in free space would be so equally 
 bombarded on all sides by these corpuscles that it would not be moved. 
 But when two bodies confront each other, the confronting sides will 
 be partially screened from the bombardment, and the excess of 
 corpuscles impinging on the outer sides drive the bodies towards 
 each other. It has been calculated that the rate at which energy 
 would be thus spent in order to maintain the gravitating property of a 
 single pound, would be at least millions of millions of foot-pounds in a 
 
PERSONALITY. 423 
 
 second. A large part of this immense amount of energy which the 
 corpuscles bring with them they do not carry away. It is not transformed 
 into heat ; for " if any appreciable fraction of this energy is commu- 
 nicated to the body in the form of heat, the amount of heat so gene- 
 rated would in a few seconds raise it, and in like manner the whole 
 material universe, to a white heat." What becomes of it remains un- 
 accounted for. It must either be annihilated or its continuous influx 
 must increase the amount of energy in the universe. Clerk-Maxwell, 
 from whom I take the account of Le Sage's hypothesis, has examined 
 it and two other molecular theories of gravitation, and finds it im- 
 possible by any one of them to account for gravitation in accordance 
 with the law of the persistence of force. 
 
 Similar difficulties are involved in all attempts to explain, in ac- 
 cordance with this law, cohesive attraction and chemical affinity, 
 either as properties of matter or as results of molecular action, and also 
 all interaction of matter, molar or molecular. The changes in nature 
 are effected by complex causes, each modifying the other. They act 
 together like a swarm of bees building and filling their honey-comb, 
 or crowds of coral zoophytes working together through many genera- 
 tions, building a brain-coral or a Neptune's cup. The several bodies 
 are never in perfect contact. If the several molecules or other agents 
 each exerts its power continuously, acting on whatever comes within 
 its range, then there is continuous expenditure without resupply and 
 without exhaustion, and a continuous increase of the sum total of force. 
 If, on the other hand, the force sinks inactive into potentiality until 
 the other agent comes near, how is the presence of the other agent 
 signaled across the intervening space ? The energy exerted by a body 
 varies with its varying conditions. Chemical substances in their nascent 
 state exhibit powers which they exert at no other time. Some sub- 
 stances have no affinity at a low temperature, but readily combine 
 when heated to certain higher degrees. A force which thus depends 
 on conditions, and which comes and goes, cannot be an inherent pro- 
 perty of the body. We should have to say that the body had this 
 power down to a certain temperature, or within certain conditions, and 
 otherwise had it not ; as Galileo, when told that water cannot be raised 
 in a pump above thirty-two feet, replied that he supposed nature 
 abhorred a vacuum to the distance of thirty-two feet and beyond that 
 did not abhor it. Thus the mechanical theory in its second form 
 fails to explain the interaction of bodies, whether molar or molecular, 
 and their co-action in a complex of causes. It seems impossible that 
 an unconscious atom or mass of matter, whose force is inactive in 
 potentiality, should suddenly emit it at the approach of a body separated 
 whether far or near in space, and every moment adjust it instan- 
 
424 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 taneously and with mathematical exactness to the varying distances 
 and conditions of all the atoms or masses on which it acts the action 
 being adjusted not only to a single body and its conditions but to a 
 great number of bodies, molar or molecular, changing at every 
 moment. 
 
 As physical science pushes its researches farther and farther it is 
 noticeable that its explanations of facts solely by mechanism become 
 artificial, complicated, and sometimes inconceivable and seemingly 
 contradictory. This of itself creates a presumption that the mechan- 
 ical theory is inadequate and must give way to a scientific exposition 
 less affecting extreme simplicity as a theory and involving less intricacy, 
 artificiality and difficulty in its detailed explanation of facts. 
 
 III. Scientists themselves have recognized in various ways the neces- 
 sity of some power other than matter and force to account for and 
 explain the known facts of personality and .also of the physical or 
 material world. 
 
 This is involved in the conclusion to which Mr. Spencer comes : 
 " By the persistence of force we really mean the persistence of some 
 Power which transcends our knowledge and conception. . . . The 
 persistence of Force is but another mode of asserting an Uncon- 
 ditioned Reality, without beginning or end. . . . The axiomatic truths 
 of physical science unavoidably postulate Absolute Being as their 
 common basis."* Others, while denying the existence of supernatural 
 and hyper-material spirit, have found themselves compelled to recognize 
 spirit or some force analogous to it ; as in Hylozoism, or the doctrine 
 of the soul of the world, or the world a living organism ; as also by 
 Czolbe, who, in his " Limits and Origin of Human Knowledge," (1865), 
 supposes " a sort of world-soul which consists of sensations that are 
 immutably bound up with the vibrations of atoms, and that only con- 
 dense themselves in the human organism and are aggregated into 
 the sum of the life of the soul." The same necessity is exemplified 
 in the unconscious intelligence of Hartmann, in the unconscious will of 
 Schopenhauer, and in Noire's assumption of " a monadic Nature-essence, 
 endowed with the attributes of extension and feeling." Scientists also 
 find themselves compelled to recognize a directive force, as well as the 
 energy which is manifested in motion. In explaining certain phe- 
 nomena of the mixing of gases, Sir William Thomson and Clerk- 
 Maxwell suppose, as a concrete representation of this directive power, 
 molecular "demons," having intelligence enough to open a door to 
 particles approaching it with velocity above a certain rate on one side 
 or below that rate on the other. Paracelsus supposed an Archeus in 
 
 * First Principles, 74, pp. 255, 256. 
 
PERSONALITY. 425 
 
 the stomach that directed the process of digestion ; besides this, Van 
 Helmont supposed a Pylorus opening and shutting the pylorie orifice. 
 The fact that the most skilled investigators using the severest scien- 
 tific methods find a directive agency in nature which they can best 
 represent by recurring to the mediaeval supposition of an intelligent 
 agent, a molecular "demon" directing movements and opening and 
 shutting doors, is one of the many evidences that there is in matter 
 and energy a power other than matter and energy, without which 
 these observed facts cannot be explained. 
 
 It may be added that the universe is more closely analogous to a 
 living organism than to a machine. The latter is a completed struc- 
 ture into which no new part or function can be admitted without 
 spoiling the machine. In a living organism, on the contrary, all the 
 parts are subordinate to the whole and act concurrently and pro- 
 gressively in the realization of its plan or ideal ; and there is perpetual 
 transition, perpetual reception and emission of both matter and force 
 in the process. If then either of these forms of matter must be taken 
 as the matrix in which to mold our thought of the cosmos, it must be 
 the organism rather than the machine. And especially is this re- 
 quired* by the theory of evolution ; for it presents nature not as a rigid, 
 completed, unchangeable machine, but as material in the highest degree 
 plastic, never fixed in a completed arrangement, always in transition, 
 always receptive and outgoing; and in fact it usually describes the 
 physical process as a growth though it uses the names of development 
 or evolution. 
 
 IV. We are, then, forced to conclude that materialism cannot ac- 
 count for and explain the facts of matter and motor-force, and much 
 less the facts of personality. Du Bois-Reymond, in his lecture at 
 Leipzig " On the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature," reaches the 
 same conclusion : " We are not in a position to conceive the atoms ; 
 and we are unable from the atoms and their motion to explain the 
 slightest phenomenon of consciousness. We may turn and twist the 
 notion of matter as we like, we always come on an ultimate something 
 that is incomprehensible if not absolutely contradictory, as in the 
 hypothesis of forces which act at a distance through empty space- 
 There is no hope of ever solving this problem ; the hindrance is trans- 
 cendental."* 
 
 Materialism, then, must admit that it cannot explain the known 
 facts of the universe. Therein it acknowledges its own defeat. As 
 Lange truly says : " The whole cause of Materialism is lost by the ad- 
 mission of the inexplicableness of all natural occurrences. If mate- 
 
 * See Lange : History of Materialism ; translation by Thomas. Vol. II., 309. 
 
426 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 rialism quietly acquiesces in this inexplicableness, it ceases to be a 
 philosophical principle."* 
 
 V. The reasonable conclusion is that man as a personal being is 
 spirit, supernatural and hyper-material. He has knowledge of him- 
 self in his own self-consciousness as a person. Personality thus known 
 cannot be identified with matter and the energy which manifests itself 
 in motion. It is also legitimate, according to the common usage of 
 science, to assume a peculiar agent manifesting itself in the attributes 
 of personality and accounting for them. Matter and energy them- 
 selves require the assumption of some agent other than matter and 
 energy to account for them ; materialism can account for neither the 
 facts of personality nor the facts of matter and motor-force. Thus by 
 the severest scientific investigations the knowledge of self given in self- 
 consciousness is confirmed, and the result of reasoning is that in know- 
 ing myself a person I know myself as spirit supernatural and hyper- 
 material. And thus also the way is opened to the conclusion that the 
 transcendent Power which is the absolute ground of the universe is the 
 absolute Keason, the eternal Spirit, the personal God. And this know- 
 ledge fills me with reverence for myself as, by personality, in the image 
 of God and ennobled above matter and its energies, however Sublime 
 they may be in their manifestations in the universe, and however weak 
 and short-lived I may be in my physical connection with the material 
 world. Pascal says : " Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature, 
 but it is a reed that thinks. There is no need that the universe arm 
 itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. 
 But though the universe should crush him, man is more noble than that 
 which destroys him, for he knows that he dies ; but the universe, with 
 all the advantage which it has over him, the universe knows nothing 
 whatever about it."f And Kant says : " Two things fill my soul with 
 always new and increasing- wonder and awe, and often and persistently 
 my thought busies itself therewith : the starry heavens above me and 
 the moral law within me. Both I need not seek and merely conjecture 
 as concealed in darkness or in their greatness beyond my vision ; I see 
 them before me and knit them immediately with the consciousness of 
 existence. The first begins at the place which I occupy in the world 
 of sense and broadens into the immeasurable vast of space and time 
 my connection with worlds on worlds and systems on systems. The 
 second begins at my invisible self, my personality, and places me in a 
 universe which has true infinitude but is perceptible only to the in- 
 tellect, and with which I know myself connected, not, as in the other 
 
 * History of Materialism ; Thomas' Trans. Vol. II., p. 161. 
 
 t Pascal: PensSes, Chap, ii., X., p. 132, Louandre's Ed. Paris: 1858. 
 
PERSONALITY. 427 
 
 case, by - contingent, but by universal and necessary connections. 
 The first glance at an innumerable multitude of worlds annihilates my 
 importance as an animal creature that must give back the matter of 
 which it was made to the planet itself a mere point in the universe 
 after it has been for a short time, we know not how short, endowed 
 with vital force. The second, on the contrary, exalts my worth as an 
 intelligence infinitely, through my personality, in which the moral law 
 reveals to me a life independent of animal nature and even of the 
 whole universe of sense, at least so far as the end of my existence is 
 determined by this law which is not limited within the conditions and 
 bounds of this life, but goes on into infinitude."* 
 
 * Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft : Beschluss: Werke, 8, 312. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MATERTALTSTIC OBJECTIONS TO THE EXISTENCE OF 
 PERSONAL BEINGS. 
 
 ? 78. The First Materialistic Objection : from Sensation- 
 alism, or the Complete Positivism of Comte.. 
 
 As in the progress of investigation it becomes apparent that the facts 
 both of personality and of nature cannot be accounted for by matter 
 and force alone, and that the existence of some supernatural and 
 hyper-material power must be acknowledged to explain them, the 
 materialist is shut up to the alternative either to recognize some such 
 transcendent power or to return to the complete positivism of Comte, 
 and refuse all recognition of atoms, molecules, ether, cause and force. 
 We suppose that he resorts to the latter position. Against the doctrine 
 that personal beings are spirit he objects that man has knowledge 
 only of the phenomena of sense. This is materialism on its subjective 
 side. Thus Lange says : " Sensationalism is the subjective of which 
 materialism is the objective. " So I. H. Fichte : " Materialism and 
 sensationalism are the same ; the latter denned subjectively, as to our 
 sources of knowledge ; the former objectively, as to what is known."* 
 
 I have shown in previous discussions that every theory of sensation- 
 alism and phenomenalism is a false and inadequate theory of know- 
 ledge. To these discussions I may refer as an answer to the objection. 
 If the theory of knowledge is false, the objection founded on it is nulli- 
 fied. It is necessary to add only some considerations bearing directly 
 on the presentation of the theory as subjective materialism, and con- 
 stituting additional evidence that the theory is inconsistent and un- 
 tenable. 
 
 I. The first answer is that the sensational philosophy or the com- 
 plete Positivism of Comte is inconsistent with materialism. Material- 
 ism asserts the existence, indestructibility and eternity of matter and 
 force. It goes beneath phenomena and finds their essential reality 
 in matter and force. It asserts knowledge of self-existent, absolute 
 
 * Lange: Geschichte des Materialismus, I., 26. I. H. Fichte: Theistische Weltan- 
 sicht, S. 63. 
 428 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM SENSATIONALISM. 429 
 
 being, and the knowledge that that being is matter. Sensationalism 
 is contradicted by all of these assertions. 
 
 I have said that the doctrine that knowledge is limited to objects 
 of sense is the subjective side of materialism. It is evident that this 
 subjective side of materialism is in direct contradiction of objective 
 materialism, which asserts the eternity of matter. Whoever accepts 
 the complete positivism of Comte must renounce materialism or else 
 contradict himself. It is thus that Mr. Huxley disclaims materialism. 
 He says : "All that we know about motion is that it is a name for 
 certain changes in the relation of our visual, tactile and muscular 
 sensations ; and all that we know about matter is that it is the 
 hypothetical substance of physical phenomena, the assumption of the 
 existence of which is as pure a piece of metaphysical speculation as 
 that of the substance of mind. Our sensations, our pleasures, our 
 pains, and the relations of these make up the sum total of the elements 
 of positive, unquestionable knowledge. We call a large section of these 
 sensations and their relations matter an$ motion ; the rest we term 
 mind and thinking; and experience shows that there is a constant 
 order of succession between some of the former and some of the latter."* 
 He can disclaim being a materialist because he is a complete positivist 
 or sensationalist. And yet he admits that it is as impossible for a 
 scientist to think without using metaphysics as for a Brahmin to eat 
 and drink without destroying animal life. Metaphysical ideas are at 
 the basis of all scientific thought and knowledge. 
 
 Complete Positivism is equally inconsistent with the Spencerian 
 agnosticism, which declares that the belief that absolute being exists 
 is a primitive datum of consciousness, although it is impossible to know 
 what it is. 
 
 Both the materialist and the Spencerian agnostic build on those 
 primitive principles of intelligence which, as constituent elements 
 of reason, of themselves imply the existence of the mind and disclose 
 its rational constitution. 
 
 Materialism is, however, inconsistent with Spencer's agnosticism. 
 While the latter insists that it is impossible to know what the Absolute 
 is, the materialist explicitly affirms that it is matter and motor-force. 
 
 Here are three theories, each excluding the others. A materialist 
 cannot accept the position nor use the arguments of the sensationalist 
 nor those of the agnostic. And yet these three theories are continually 
 confounded and often grouped together under the name of material- 
 ism. And the denier of theism is found slipping back and forth from 
 one of these positions to another, using indiscriminately the objections 
 
 * Sensation and Sensiferous Organs; Nineteenth Century: 1879. 
 
430 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. ' 
 
 peculiar to each. It is important therefore that their distinction and 
 incompatibility be pointed out, in order to expose these subterfuges, 
 whether resorted to in ignorance or in sophistry. 
 
 II. Sensationalism, being a false theory of knowledge, is inconsistent 
 with physical science. 
 
 In the first place, whoever accepts it as the basis of denying the 
 existence of spirit, must give up the law of the Persistence of Force. 
 Comte rigorously excluded the ideas of cause and force, of atoms, 
 molecules and ether from science. He insisted that if the idea of 
 cause is once admitted, that of a first cause must be admitted with it 
 and theology would be inevitable and legitimate. But at the very 
 time when he was elaborately propounding this doctrine in his Positive 
 Philosophy, the investigations of Mayer and others were already going 
 on w f hich have established the law of the persistence of force 
 a sort of physical embodiment of the metaphysical principle of causa- 
 tion ; have set forth force, which Comte insisted on excluding, as an 
 essential reality of the physical universe and the central topic of 
 physical science ; have set up the hypotheses of atoms, molecules and 
 the ether ; and have saturated physical science itself with metaphysics 
 and theology. In consequence of this, whoever goes back to sensation- 
 alism as the theory of knowledge, finds himself left behind by scientific 
 thought in every direction. Physical science cannot be held in the 
 cerements of sensationalism in which Comte endeavored to embalm it. 
 It goes beneath the phenomena to their essential reality; it reveals 
 the "thing in itself" of gross matter and its perceptible motions, in 
 vortex-atoms and in ethers, in vibrations, undulations, impacts beyond 
 the range of perception and even of conception ; it declares the exist- 
 ence, persistence and indestructibility of matter and force. It goes 
 abroad through all space and backwards and forwards through all 
 time, and reveals the necessary activities and transformations of physi- 
 cal forces. It finds masses, distances, motions and energies measur- 
 able and their laws determinable, in accordance with that pure creation 
 of the human mind, mathematics, in which every conclusion is demon- 
 strated. Thus instead of saying that all knowledge is given in sense, 
 we find that the greater part of knowledge transcends sense ; instead 
 of saying that sense gives the only certainty, we may almost say, 
 " The farther from sense the greater the certainty." Accordingly Dr. 
 Youmans says of Physical Science that " its tendency is ever from the 
 material toward the abstract, the ideal, the spiritual."* 
 
 Mr. Lewes says : " The sensational hypothesis is acceptable if by sense 
 we understand sensibility and its laws of operation. This indeed .... 
 
 * Correlation and Conservation of Force, p. 11. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM SENSATIONALISM. 431 
 
 is an extension of the term, and obliterates the very distinction insisted 
 on by the other school ; but since it includes all psychical phenomena 
 under the rubric of sensibility, it enables psychological analysis to be 
 consistent and exhaustive ; " without this change, he admits, " The re- 
 duction of all knowledge to a sensuous origin is absurd."* That is, he 
 changes the meaning of Sense, so as to include in it all the primitive 
 data of intelligence and the principles regulative of all thought, and 
 then claims that all psychical powers are included in sense. 
 
 III. Sensationalism is self-contradictory, and involves difficulties 
 which only the recognition of personal spirit can remove. It starts as 
 a form of materialism. We have knowledge through the senses ; that 
 is, we have knowledge of objects of sense and of these alone. The 
 outward object is assumed to exist independent of sense, and sensation 
 itself arises as an impression on the sensorium. And it is affirmed that 
 the outward object existed ages before there was any living sensorium 
 susceptible of receiving impressions or sensations from it. Mind, then, 
 has no reality except as related to the outward or material object. It 
 becomes merely " the series of our sensations," " a thread of conscious- 
 ness." The Ego is lost in the non-ego. Even Mill, who transcended 
 the sensationalism of Comte by the recognition of consciousness as a 
 knowledge of internal feelings, is obliged to define mind only as rela- 
 tive to matter ; it is " nothing but the series of our sensations (to 
 which must now be added our internal feelings) as they actually occur, 
 with the addition of infinite possibilities of feeling requiring for their 
 actual realization conditions which may or may not take place, but 
 which as possibilities are always in existence, and many of them 
 present."f Mind, therefore, is a series of sensations, and as such, is 
 merely a phenomenon of matter. 
 
 But when sensationalism comes to define the outward or material 
 object, it can define it only as an object of sense. Matter exists only 
 as relative to sense. Its only reality is sensation. The reality of 
 matter is only its relation to mind. So Clifford : " This world which 
 I perceive is my perception and nothing more." J So Moleschott : " Ex- 
 cept in relation to the eye, into which it sends its rays, the tree has 
 no existence." So Mill : " Matter may be defined a Permanent Pos- 
 sibility of Sensation."| | And so Mr. Huxley, in the passage last quoted 
 from him, identifies matter with sensation. Here sensationalism issues 
 in Idealism ; the non-ego disappears in the Ego. But not the less, 
 after resolving the material world into sensations, do the sensation- 
 
 * Problems of Life and Mind. Vol. I., pp. 191, 192, 
 
 + Mill on Hamilton, L, 253. { Lectures and Essays. Vol. I., p. 288. 
 
 Lange : Hist. Materialism ; Thomas' Trans. Vol. I., pp. 41, 42. 
 
 || On Hamilton, I., 243. 
 
432 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 alists affirm its existence millions of ages before there was any mind to 
 perceive it. Thus they begin with affirming that mind is a function of 
 matter and end with affirming that matter is a phenomenon of mind. 
 When the sensationalist seeks to apprehend mind, he can apprehend it 
 only as sensations which presuppose the existence of matter and are 
 occasioned by its presence. When he seeks to apprehend matter, it is 
 merely an object of sense having reality only as related to the sensa- 
 tions which it is supposed to precede and occasion. We are told that 
 mind consists of sensations occasioned by the presence of bodies and 
 then we are told that bodies are merely abstractions of the sensations 
 which themselves occasion. If we attempt to stop this logical see-saw, 
 and insist on definitions of mind and matter which will not alternately 
 annul each other, the only reality left to either term is sensation, with- 
 out an object felt or a subject feeling. And this necessitates complete 
 agnosticism. This process was exemplified in the transition of English 
 philosophy from Locke through Berkeley to Hume ; from sensationalism 
 through idealism to universal skepticism or complete agnosticism. 
 
 Berkeley, however, saved himself from inconsistency by admitting 
 our knowledge of personal being and using the idealism thus developed 
 to refute sensationalism. He, therefore, could acknowledge that the 
 essence of matter is in its relativity to mind and still consistently hold 
 to its reality because mind is real. And he consistently argued that 
 since " sensible things . . . depend not on my thought and have an 
 existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other 
 mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the sensible world 
 really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent spirit who contains 
 and supports it."* But Mill and the sensationalists leave themselves 
 no resource by which to save either the Ego or the non-ego. 
 
 These speculations have a curious interest as exemplifying the inex- 
 tricable difficulties inseparable from denying the existence of spirit. 
 Prof. Huxley says : " The existence of a self and a not-self are hypotheses 
 by which we account for the facts of consciousness/'f But who makes 
 the hypothesis, and to whom do the facts of consciousness appear, and 
 to whom is it necessary to account for them ? In the definitions of 
 mind and matter just now cited we have for the outward world a possi- 
 bility without any power, a permanence with nothing that is permanent 
 except a powerless possibility, and the permanent possibility of a sensa- 
 tion without any entity or being other than the sensation. For the self 
 we have sensations in a series with no mind which is the subject of 
 them or takes cognizance of their serial order ; " infinite possibilities of 
 feeling " with no power or being within or without to make them pos- 
 
 * Berkeley's Three Dialogues. f Lay Sermons, p. 356. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM SENSATIONALISM. 433 
 
 sible ; these possibilities " requiring for their actual realization condi- 
 tions which may or may not take place," these conditions themselves 
 being possibilities of sensation ; though these possibilities of sensation 
 which are the conditions of the possibility of sensation may never take 
 place, yet " as possibilities they are always in existence and many of 
 them present." Did ever mediaeval scholastic bewilder himself and his 
 readers in a more confusing maze of words? 
 
 Mr. Spencer with his " transfigured realism" still finds himself in 
 similar difficulties. " We can think of matter only in terms of mind. 
 We can think of mind only in terms of matter. When we have pushed 
 our explorations of the first to the utmost limit, we are referred to the 
 second for a final answer ; and when we have got the final answer to 
 the second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it 
 We find the value of x in the terms of y; then we find the value of y 
 in the terms of x; and so on we may continue forever without coming 
 nearer to a solution."* 
 
 When it is shown that sensationalism is inconsistent with materialism, 
 the sensationalist may reply that he cares no more for materialism and 
 the agnostic's Unknowable, than for atheism, theism or metaphysics ; 
 they are alike beyond the sphere of human knowledge and have no 
 legitimate place in scientific thought. He may comfort himself with 
 thinking that at least he will escape all these puzzling questions and 
 have opportunity to pursue unvexed his investigations among phe- 
 nomena of which he can have certain knowledge. We now see that in 
 this expectation he is necessarily disappointed. Physical science leaves 
 him behind helplessly entangled in the difficulties and inconsistencies 
 of his own theory of knowledge. 
 
 IV. But if we acknowledge the existence in the personality of man 
 of a power supernatural and hyper-material, that is, of spirit, all these 
 difficulties vanish, and the reality of our knowledge both of nature and 
 the supernatural, of matter and the hyper-material is established on 
 an immovable basis. And the truth of this admission is confirmed by 
 the fact that it solves the otherwise unsolvable problem of the universe. 
 We are no longer obliged with Spencer to find the Ultimate Reality in 
 an Absolute Unknowable, in which subject and object, spirit and mat- 
 ter are united. We find that Ultimate and Absolute Reality in Ener- 
 gizing Reason. In this we find united and eternal the Reason and the 
 Power, which account for the existence both of matter and finite spirits 
 in the unity of one all-comprehending and rational system expressing 
 the truths, conformed to the laws, and progressively realizing the ideals 
 and ends of the Wisdom and Love of perfect and absolute Reason. 
 
 * Psychology : 272, Vol. I., p. 627. 
 28 
 
434 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 V. Aside from scientific thought the impression also prevails in 
 the popular mind that we have clear and certain knowledge only 
 through the senses. To this unscientific impression materialists appeal ; 
 they say a spirit is a " ghost," which no sensible person believes to 
 exist ; it is " nothing." And this impression is undoubtedly an im- 
 portant source of doubt or disbelief of the existence of spirit or the 
 supernatural. 
 
 But if people would give the subject a little thought they would 
 know that knowledge does not come from the senses alone. Even of 
 the outward world we know far more than we see or handle. We do 
 not so much see with our e.yes as through them ; not so much the visi- 
 ble as the invisible. On a printed page all which the eye sees is some 
 black marks on a white surface ; but through the marks I see the 
 thoughts of the w T riter, and the scenes and events which he describes. 
 In prospecting for ore one sees with the eye only the ground and the 
 rocks ; but through these he sees the ore which the visible formation 
 reveals. A babe sees on its mother's face certain configurations of the 
 surface; but through the smile, the frown, or the tears it sees the 
 mother's heart. We read nature like a book, seeing the unseen through 
 the seen. And the unseen includes the greater part of our knowledge 
 of nature. 
 
 Nor are the impressions of sense the only trustworthy knowledge. 
 A man has certain knowledge of his own thoughts and feelings, of his 
 own individuality and identity. But the knowledge of these realities 
 transcends sense. He has knowledge of mathematical* axioms and 
 demonstrations ; and though he may question the correctness of his ob- 
 servation of a sensible object, he cannot doubt the truth of a mathe- 
 matical demonstration. When the senses present to us the firmament 
 as a blue dome, through w 7 hich the sun and stars move from east to 
 west, or parallel rails as converging, we must resort to reason and 
 judgment to find the true significance of the sensible presentation. 
 Every hour of the day we thus interpret and correct the representations 
 of sense by the larger knowledge of reason transcending sense 
 
 \ 79. Second Materialistic Objection : from the Correlation 
 of Mental Phenomena with Motion. 
 
 I. A second objection to the existence of personal spirit is that all 
 mental phenomena are correlated with molecular motion of the brain 
 and nerves, and are transformable into it ; that thus they are fully 
 accounted for and explained by the law of the persistence of force ; 
 and therefore they are no evidence or manifestation of the existence of 
 spirit. This is the essential doctrine of the current materialism. Its 
 existence is staked on proving this doctrine; failing to establish it 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 435 
 
 materialism demonstrates that it has no explanation of mental phe- 
 nomena and has no further claims to consideration as a philosophical 
 system. 
 
 The materialism of the eighteenth century also rested on physiological 
 explanations of the facts of mind. Cabanis in his earlier writings 
 taught that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. 
 Condillac taught that all mental phenomena are simply transformed 
 sensations. Baron d'Holbach defined thought to be an agitation of the 
 nerves. Lamettrie and Helvetius broached a similar doctrine. Xoir6 
 - that the materialists of that century taught that a fume of the 
 stomach, if it had taken its way upward to the brain, might have be- 
 come a sublime thought.* 
 
 The physiological materialism of to-day, though connected with an 
 advanced knowledge of science, is scarcely less crude. Moleschott 
 teaches that " thought is a motion of matter." Karl Vogt holds, with 
 Cabanis, that " thought stands in the same relation to the brain as the 
 bile to the liver." Dr. Biichner, following Vogt, though objecting to 
 the coarseness and inexactness of his illustration, teaches that the soul 
 is a product of the development of the brain, just as muscular activity 
 is a product of muscular development, and secretion a product of 
 glandular development. " The same power which digests by means of 
 the stomach, thinks by means of the brain." " The brain is only the 
 carrier and the source, or rather the sole cause of the spirit or thought." 
 "Mental activity is a function of the cerebral substance."f Mr. 
 Charles Bray says : " Conscious cerebration or mind is transformed 
 force received into the body in the food, and is, like all force, persistent 
 or indestructible."! Prof. Haeckel says : " The human mind is a func- 
 tion of the central nervous system.'' Lewes says : " The neural 
 process and the feeling are one and the same process viewed under 
 different aspects. . . . Mind ... is a function of the organism; 
 and this both in the mathematical and the biological sense of the term."|| 
 Prof. Tyndall, though elsewhere explicitly denying that matter as ordi- 
 narily conceived can explain life and mind, yet " prolongs the vision 
 backward .... and discerns in matter . . . the promise and 
 potency of every form and quality of terrestrial life."^[ Prof. Huxley 
 says : " While it is impossible to demonstrate that any given phenomenon 
 is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is acquainted with the 
 history of science will admit that its progress has in all ages meant, 
 
 * Die Welt als Entwickelung des Geistes ; ss. 18, 19. 
 
 f Kraft und Stoff. Chaps xii., xiii. 
 
 J Force and its Mental and Moral Correlates : p. 98. 
 
 $ Evolution of Man. Vol. II., p. 454. Translation. 
 
 I Problems of Life and Mind. II., 411. [ Belfast Address. 
 
436 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what 
 we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment 
 from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spon- 
 taneity."* Lange says : " The peculiar kind of motion which we call 
 rational must be explained by the common laws of all motion, or there 
 is no explanation at all. The defect of all materialism is that it stops 
 with this explanation at the point where the highest problems of phil- 
 osophy begin. But whoever boggles with pretended principles of 
 reason, which admit of no concrete intelligent apprehension, in the ex- 
 planation of outward nature including the rational man, destroys 
 the whole basis of science, whether his name is Aristotle or Zeller."f 
 
 II. Before refuting this objection I make the following explana- 
 tions of the question at issue : 
 
 1. Admitting that mental action in man is accompanied by mole- 
 cular action of the brain and by waste of neural matter which must 
 be replaced by food, I propose to show that materialism cannot account 
 for the mental action. 
 
 If an observer with a microscope could see in the living brain the 
 molecular orbits of anger and the different molecular orbits of love, 
 that would no more prove a materializing of mind than the familiar fact 
 that without a microscope we see anger paling in the face and benignity 
 beaming upon it. The fact that the spirit in its action affects the 
 bodily organization does not disprove the existence of spirit any more 
 than the fact that piano-keys have different combinations of move- 
 ment to express different tunes proves that music is identical with the 
 motion, and that there is no musician. Moleschott's " No thought 
 without phosphorus," might be true of all living men, and yet not 
 prove materialism nor disprove the existence of spirit. Materialism 
 cannot account for or explain mental phenomena by the fact that they 
 are accompanied by molecular action of the brain. If not only cannot 
 account for them philosophically, but it also cannot account for them 
 empirically by co-ordinating the mental phenomena and the molecular 
 motions under the law of the persistence of force. And if it cannot 
 account for them, it proves itself false ; for it is the very essence of 
 materialism that it must account for all phenomena, physical and 
 mental, by matter and motor-force. 
 
 2. It is not essential to my argument to prove that the human spirit 
 or any finite spirit ever exists and acts separate from and independent 
 of matter. This connection is analogous to the connection between matter 
 and force as commonly presented in physical science. Matter and force 
 
 * Physical Basis of Life : p. 20. 
 
 f Geschichte des Materialismus. I., 20, 21. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 437 
 
 are not identified by science and they are not disparted ; they are dis- 
 tinct and yet together. The movements of bodies compel the belief 
 that there is something which is moved, which we call matter, and some 
 power that moves it which we call force. Science thus sharply dis- 
 tinguishes them, while it recoils from the belief that either exists with- 
 out the other. Just so philosophy concludes from the facts of per- 
 sonality and even from those of force itself, that there must exist 
 another power, distinct from both matter and force, which it calls spirit. 
 While spirit is thus distinct from matter and force and cannot be iden- 
 tified with them, it is not necessary to its existence that it be disparted 
 from them. And if it should be found that all finite spirit in the 
 universe is in some way connected with some form of matter, the fact 
 would not conflict with the fact of its existence as spirit, endowed with 
 attributes of personality, and distinct alike from matter and the energy 
 which causes motion. This is accordant with what we have already 
 seen, that matter is not the bound and prison of the spirit, but rather 
 gives occasion and excitement, instruments and resources, place and 
 scope for its action and development. 
 
 And this accords with the well-known teachings both of philosophy 
 and theology. In all our experience in this life we know the spirit of 
 man acting through brain and nerve. The spirit, " here in the body 
 pent," is often conceived of under some illustration like that of a man 
 in submarine armor, working encumbered and straitened for breath at 
 the bottom of the sea ; but he is to rise to the upper air, a sphere better 
 fitted for his life and action. Yet there he is disencumbered of his 
 armor only to put on a clothing more pliable to his movements, and is 
 liberated from his watery environment only to breathe the freer air. 
 So the Scriptures represent the spirit leaving the earthly body, " not 
 to be unclothed but clothed upon ; " acting in a " spiritual body " amid 
 celestial environments. As force passes from body to body revealing 
 itself in new forms and yet does not cease to be force, so spirit may 
 enswathe itself in new and ethereal matter and yet not cease to be 
 spirit. 
 
 Materialists compare the brain to a musical instrument, and the 
 mental phenomena to the music. It is true, they say, that the music of 
 a piano cannot be identified with the movements of the keys ; but 
 when the instrument is destroyed the music perishes. But in fact this 
 comparison signifies just the contrary. For the music is not in the 
 piano any more than the mental phenomena are in the brain. The 
 music is in the mind of the hearer, it came from the mind of the com- 
 poser, and expresses the mind of the pianist. If the piano is destroyed 
 the music survives in the musical mind which presently finds for it a 
 new instrument by which it can reveal itself again. Even when the 
 
438 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 musician's hand has lost its skill, the music survives in his mind inaudi- 
 ble, ready again to burst on the ear when a hand capable of musical 
 execution is provided. 
 
 , . * 
 
 "As a good harper stricken far in years, 
 
 Into whose cunning hand the gout doth fall, 
 All his old crotchets in his mind he bears, 
 But on his harp plays ill or not at all." 
 
 3. It is not necessary to my argument to deny that vitality is co- 
 ordinated with motion under the law of the persistence of force. 
 Scientists are by no means agreed in accepting this co-ordination as an 
 established fact.* But if it were so, it would not prove that person- 
 ality is thus co-ordinated ; for personality is much more than vitality. 
 What is true of vitality, which may exist in a vegetable, is not there- 
 fore true of personality. This would be like arguing that because some 
 physiological phenomena can be explained by chemical or mechanical 
 action, therefore man is not alive. It is equally futile to argue that 
 because life can be explained by the law of the persistence of force, 
 therefore man is not a person. 
 
 With these explanations I proceed to answer the objection under 
 consideration. 
 
 III. My first answer is that the correlation and reciprocal converti- 
 bility of mental phenomena with the molecular motion of the brain is 
 not sustained by physical science. 
 
 1. Mental phenomena are essentially unlike motion and cannot be 
 measured, as force is, by pound-feet. Force manifests its presence 
 in molecular motion and causes waste of brain. But the phenomena 
 to be explained are not motion and waste of brain, but conscious 
 thought, feeling and determination. All that matter and force can 
 account for is the motion and waste of brain. They cannot account 
 for the totally different phenomena of mind. We are as far as ever 
 from explaining them. This is clearly expressed by Dr. J. R. Mayer, 
 one of the scientists prominent in establishing the law of the Persistence 
 of Force : " It is a great error to identify these two activities (thought 
 and the molecular action of the brain), which proceed parallel to each 
 other. . . . We know there can be no telegraphic communication 
 without a concomitant chemical action. But what the telegraph says 
 could never be regarded as the function of the electro-chemical action. 
 This is still truer of the brain and thought. The brain is only the 
 machine, it is not the thought. Intelligence, which is not a part of 
 sensible things, cannot be submitted to the investigation of the physicist 
 
 * Prof. Balfour Stewart : Conservation of Energy, p. 173. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 439 
 
 and the anatomist ; what is true subjectively is also true objectively. 
 Without this harmony, eternally established by God, between the 
 subjective and the objective worlds, all our thinking would be 
 sterile."* 
 
 2. If force were transformed into thought, feeling or determination, 
 it would cease to be force and would disappear. The only manifesta- 
 tion of force is motion. But thought, emotion, and choice or volition 
 are not motion. But according to the supposition the force which was 
 first manifested in the motion of the brain, is next manifested in these 
 conscious mental acts. It is transformed into thought, feeling and 
 determination precisely as the molar motion of a hammer striking an 
 anvil is transformed into molecular motion. It is transformed into 
 something which is not motion and which cannot be measured. And 
 there is no evidence that it ever reappears as force. The doctrine, 
 then, can have no scientific basis till it can be proved that a meas- 
 ured quantity of force is transformed into a measured and equal 
 quantity of thought, feeling or determination, and this quantity of 
 thought, feeling or determination is transformed back into the original 
 quantity of force. This of course can never be done, for mental 
 qualities cannot be quantitatively measured. 
 
 3. All the force manifested in the molecular action is fully ac- 
 counted for by physical changes in the body. Prof. Simon Newcomb, 
 in a series of articles on the subject published in the Independent, 
 says : " All experiments tend to prove that all the force taken into 
 the body in the form of food is expended in the production of heat 
 and muscular action; and if this be so, there is nothing left to be 
 transformed into thought." He criticises Spencer for citing in support 
 of the co-ordination of thought and motion under the law of the per- 
 sistence of force, a fact which disproves it: " He cites the well-kno>Tn 
 fact that strong mental action is accompanied by motion in the blood, 
 evident by an examination of the face and proved physiologically in 
 an abundance of ways. But this only disproves the theory, because, 
 on the theory, thought ought to be accompanied not by an evolution, 
 but by a disappearance of other forms of force." " In every case we 
 have reason to believe that, at each moment the total amount of force 
 which has been put into the body from all external sources whatever, 
 is exactly represented by the chemical changes and molecular motions 
 going on among the molecules of the body." In accord with this 
 Prof. Fiske says of the resolving of mental phenomena into motion : 
 " Those who really comprehend the import of modern discoveries in 
 molecular physics are more thoroughly convinced than ever that any 
 
 * Discourse at the Scientific Reunion at Innsbruck, Sept., 1869. 
 
440 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 such reduction is utterly beyond the bounds of possibility. . . . The 
 dynamic circuit is absolutely complete without taking psychical mani- 
 festations into the account at all. No conceivable advance in physi- 
 cal discovery can get us outside of this closed circuit ; and into this 
 circuit psychical phenomena do not enter. Psychical phenomena 
 stand outside of this circuit, parallel with that brief segment of it 
 
 which is made up of molecular motions in nerve tissue One 
 
 grand result of the enormous progress achieved during the past forty 
 years in the analysis of both physical and psychical phenomena has 
 been the final and irretrievable overthrow of the materialistic hy- 
 pothesis."* Of the same purport are the words of Prof. David Fer- 
 rier : " We may succeed in determining the exact nature of the mole- 
 cular changes which occur in the brain-cells when a sensation is ex- 
 perienced, but this will not bring us one whit nearer the explanation 
 of what constitutes the ultimate nature of sensation. The one is sub- 
 jective and the other is objective, and neither can be expressed in 
 terms of the other."f Prof. Tyndall implies the same when he says> 
 in an article on " Virchow and Evolution," that " the physical pro- 
 cesses " (of the brain and nerve) " are complete in themselves, and 
 would go on just as they do if consciousness were not at all impli- 
 cated." So Lange, following Du Bois-Reymond, says : " We must 
 rise to the conclusion that the whole activity of man, individuals as 
 well as peoples, might go on as it actually does go on, without the 
 occurring in any single individual of anything resembling a thought 
 or a sensation. ... If we supposed two worlds occupied by men 
 and their doings, with the same course of history, with the same modes 
 of expression by gesture, the same sounds of voice for an observer who 
 could hear them .... the two worlds to be exactly alike, with only 
 this difference that in the one it is all machinery running down like 
 an automaton, without any consciousness, without any thought or feel- 
 ing, while the other is just our world ; then the scientific formula for 
 these two worlds would be entirely the same. To the eye of exact 
 scientific research they would be indistinguishable."! In further carry- 
 ing* out this supposition Du Bois-Reymond says : "A mind which should 
 know for a very small period of time the position and movements of all 
 the atoms in the universe might derive from these, in accordance with 
 the laws of mechanics, the whole past and future. It could, by an 
 appropriate treatment of its world-formula, tell us who was the Iron 
 Mask, and how the steamship 'President' was lost .... would 
 read in its equations the day when the Greek cross will glitter from 
 
 * Cosmic Philosophy. Vol. II., pp. 440 443. 
 
 f Function of the Brain, Chap. xi. 
 
 J Geschichte des Materialismus, B. II., Sect. 2, Chap. i. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 441 
 
 the mosque of St. Sophia, or when England will burn its last lump 
 of coal." 
 
 Thus physical science declares that the molecular action of the 
 brain is a closed circuit from which conscious feeling and thought 
 and all mental phenomena are excluded. The whole force is accounted 
 for by the physical effects which would be just the same if there were 
 no mental phenomena. 
 
 Evidently, then the mental phenomena, although they are observed 
 and undisputed facts, remain entirely unaccounted for. The mechanical 
 theory, in whatever form, fails to account for conscious life and much 
 more for conscious personality. In every organism mechanical processes 
 and structures are found which accord with mechanical laws like similar 
 arrangements in inorganic matter. Besides these are mental phenomena 
 which cannot be transformed into motion nor explained by mechanical 
 laws. Here in the living organism are two processes going on, one 
 mechanical, the other mental; they are coincident in time; but so 
 far as physical science can see, the latter is entirely distinct from the 
 former and entirely inexplicable by its mechanical laws. Mr. Huxley 
 speaks of " conscious automata," a phrase which explains nothing but 
 merely sets the two processes before us in their irreducible distinctness 
 and parallelism. 
 
 Obviously the proper course of the scientist here is to recognize these 
 phenomena .and the fact that his theory does not explain them, and to 
 bring his theory into conformity with the facts ; and if he finds that 
 physical science cannot explain them, he should acknowledge the reality 
 and necessity of mental science. Instead of this he pictures a world of 
 unconscious automata acting just as conscious beings do in this world 
 and insists that the formula of science is entirely exhausted in the 
 former, and science can discern no difference between them. When it 
 is conceded that mental phenomena admit of no mechanical explana- 
 tion, they are simply ignored and the mechanician goes on with his 
 explanations of the universe as if no such facts existed, and gravely 
 propounds his mechanical exposition as setting forth and explaining 
 everything in the universe which has any claim to scientific recognition. 
 But in reality if he is to ignore either it should be the facts of mechan- 
 ism rather than the facts of consciousness. Let us imagine the suppo- 
 sition just quoted to be realized. The world exists as now. The men 
 who people it are going on as now with their wars, their planting and 
 building and navigation, their great industrial inventions and enter- 
 prizes, they buy and sell and get gain, they have music and dancing, 
 they write, and print, and read books and periodicals, they have schools 
 and colleges, they have kings and parliaments, they discuss and carry 
 on great reforms, they laugh and Aveep, all the expressions of anger. 
 
442 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM 
 
 fear, joy, courage and other emotions, in face and attitude, are the same 
 as now ; they marry, have children, die and bury the dead ; but it is all 
 automatic, without knowledge, or consciousness, or feeling. It is evident 
 that the true reality and significance of the world would be gone ; it 
 would be all a mockery, were it not that in absence of all consciousness 
 the very mockery would be unreal. On the contrary if the same were 
 realized without matter in pure idealism in human consciousness, the 
 essential reality and significance of the whole would remain. If then 
 either of these parallel world-processes is ignored, what reason is there to 
 justify us in ignoring the conscious and recognizing only the automatic ? 
 4. This being the case, materialism is refuted. Materialism is essen- 
 tially the dogmatic assertion that all phenomena are the manifestations 
 of matter and force and are accounted for by them. Mental phenomena 
 are realities which materialists do not deny, but which they try to 
 account for as manifestations of matter and force. But they are proved 
 to be not the manifestations of matter and force and not accounted for 
 by them. Says Lange : " The gulf between (thought and the molecular 
 motions of the brain) is as great now as in the days of Democritus. . . . 
 It will be forever impossible for science to find a bridge between these 
 motions and the simplest subjective feeling of man."* In the Preface 
 to his Belfast Address, after speaking of the processes by which know- 
 ledge of the material w r orld is attained, Tyndall says : " When we en- 
 deavor to pass by a similar process from the physics of the brain to the 
 phenomena of consciousness, we meet a problem which transcends any 
 conceivable expansion of the powers we now possess. We may think 
 over the subject again and again ; it eludes all intellectual presentation ; 
 and we stand at length face to face with the incomprehensible." In 
 his address before the mathematical and physical section of the British 
 Association in 1868 he says : " The passage from the physics of the 
 brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. 
 Granted that a thought and a definite molecular action in the brain 
 occur simultaneously, we do not possess the organ nor apparently any 
 rudiment of an organ which would enable us to pass by a process of 
 reasoning from the one phenomenon to the other."f These are declara- 
 tions not only that the human mind has not yet succeeded in correlat- 
 ing mental phenomena with molecular motion, but that by no conceiv- 
 able expansion of its powers will it ever be able so to do. These repre- 
 sent the conclusion of physical science on the subject. And this con- 
 clusion implies that materialism as a philosophical theory of the universe 
 is an entire failure. 
 
 * Geschichte des Materialismus. Vol. I., S. 15, 16. 
 f Fragments of Science, p. 1 19. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 443 
 
 IV. My second answer is that the physical phenomena recognized by 
 science as concomitant with mental phenomena are themselves, as ex- 
 planations of the mental phenomena, inconceivable and involve insuper- 
 able difficulties. 
 
 1. Such difficulties inhere in the physiological explanation of memory 
 by the registration of sensations. Every sensation, emotion, and thought 
 registers itself by leaving an abiding imprint of itself on the brain, 
 through which it is recalled in memory. But the impassable chasm, 
 which we have found between the original sensation or thought and the 
 molecular action of the brain, remains impassable between the mental 
 act of memory and the supposed registration. The imprint registered 
 on the brain has no resemblance to the feeling or thought and cannot 
 be identified with it. Such an imprint can represent a thought only as 
 a symbol, like a word written or spoken, it cannot do it by a represen- 
 tation, like a picture or image. If we remember through a registered 
 imprint, there must be a mind reading and interpreting the registered 
 signs. So all the phenomena of 'memory remain unexplained ; they lie 
 outside of the register in the brain. 
 
 But if this registration explains memory, since it abides continuously 
 in the brain why is not the memory continuous in the consciousness ? 
 Why do past mental acts remain unremembered for years, and then 
 suddenly re-present themselves in the consciousness ? There must be 
 some agency or cause other than the registered imprint. And further, 
 when the past event reappears how do we know that it is the reappear- 
 ance of the past ? And finally, how is a registration possible, since the 
 molecules are incessantly in motion and soon pass away from the brain 
 entirely ? 
 
 2. Similar difficulties are involved in the explanation of tKe unity of 
 consciousness. The brain is composed of a multitude of atoms in per- 
 petual motion. But multiplicity is not unity, and gives no hint of ex- 
 planation how these multitudinous atoms can give the idea of personal 
 individuality. So Du Bois-Reymond : " It is absolutely and forever in- 
 conceivable that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen 
 atoms should be otherwise than indifferent to their positions and motions, 
 past, present or future. It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness 
 should result from their joint action."* Nor is it conceivable that 
 molecular motions and their registration should explain the conscious- 
 ness of personal identity ; for the atoms are perpetually passing away ; 
 the matter of the body changes entirely every few years. What con- 
 ceivable registration of impressions can in the slightest degree explain 
 or account for the fact that an old man knows himself to be the same 
 
 * The Limits of Natural Science ; Lecture before the German Scientific and Medical 
 Association, Leipzig, 1872. 
 
444 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 person that he was in childhood, when every material particle of his 
 body has been changed many times in the period intervening ? 
 
 3. The multitude of impressions registered on a minute surface is in- 
 conceivable as consistent with the essential space-relations of matter. 
 When I know a man there must be a particular arrangement of the 
 molecules of the brain in which he is as it were photographed on my 
 brain. There must be also another and separate arrangement of mole- 
 cules in which every other person whom I know is registered ; and this 
 must contain a distinct registry of all that is peculiar not only in the 
 form of the person, but also in his character and history, so far as I 
 know him ; and also of all my feelings and thoughts respecting him. 
 The same must be true of all horses, dogs, trees, buildings, and other 
 objects which I know. If I know half a dozen languages, there must 
 be an arrangement of molecules registering every word and every gram- 
 matical inflection and relation of the words, every idiom, and the con- 
 tents of every book that I have read. If I have traveled, the map of all 
 I have seen is registered in the brain. And while all generalizations 
 and general names which I have formed must be registered in the brain, 
 the registration is not abridged thereby, for every distinct sensation, 
 feeling, thought, determination, action and utterance must have its 
 separate registry. It is not merely the verb amo and its grammatical 
 forms, but all the separate acts of repetition by which I learned them 
 in childhood, all the slips of memory by which I mistook one form for 
 another, all the feelings pleasant or otherwise attendant on the task, and 
 all the separate notices of the word in reading and speaking. Consider 
 what an immense number of molecules are moving in any one mental act, 
 and then think of all these registered physically in some configuration of 
 them, which abides undisturbed while thousands of new and complica- 
 ted impressions are registered every hour without breaking up the com- 
 binations of molecules in which the innumerable previous impressions 
 are permanently and distinctly registered. This is utterly impossible 
 in consistency with the conception of matter and energy on which the 
 physical science of our day is founded. And the more because neither 
 the microscope nor any other means of scientific observation can detect 
 the slightest trace of this registration. It is fanciful speculation beyond 
 the sphere of observation and even of conceivability. 
 
 4. Closely analogous to this and presenting similar difficulties is 
 the physiological theory of heredity. Of two microscopic germs one 
 develops into a horse and another into an animal of a totally different 
 kind. The old explanation, which regarded the acorn as containing 
 a miniature oak, and that as containing a still smaller one and so on 
 through germs of whole generations of future trees, is rejected aa 
 crude. Yet physiology still teaches that all the innumerable quali- 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 445 
 
 ties of the animal and the peculiarities by which it is distinguished 
 from other animals are strictly present in the germ. If evolution is 
 true, this microscopic germ has also registered in its structure the 
 impressions made on its ancestors for innumerable generations ; and 
 also it contains gemmules or whatever these physical characters be 
 called, to be transmitted to innumerable subsequent generations. And 
 atavism implies the further difficulty that these gemmules may pass 
 latent through several generations and in a succeeding generation be- 
 come active and reproduce the ancestral trait. The whole variety of 
 properties and functions of the full-grown animal and its posterity 
 are supposed to exist in the peculiarities of structure of an infinitesi- 
 mal germ. A further difficulty is that the effect is immeasurably 
 greater than the cause ; one acorn produces millions of oak trees. 
 There must be something besides the structure of the germ and the 
 force which manifests itself in motion ; something which cannot be ex- 
 plained by matter and force as commonly apprehended in their essential 
 space-relations. 
 
 Some physiologists attempt to escape this difficulty by supposing a 
 " structureless germ." Analogous is Du Bois-Reymond's supposition 
 of " a primitive substance devoid of qualities ; " but a substance not 
 merely extra-sensible or beyond the reach of our senses, but devoid of 
 all qualities which in their nature are perceptible, is not matter, for it 
 does not occupy space and is not contained in it. It is a common 
 sophistry and a common self-deception to present as a generalization 
 what in fact is merely calling two totally unlike things by the same 
 name. The result is a mere bridge of words over the chasm which 
 separates the things. And thus predicating of a thing what is incom- 
 patible with its nature the words become meaningless ; " substance with- 
 out qualities" is as real nonsense as "yellow virtue" or "a pound of 
 joy." Scientists too often exemplify this sophistry or self-deception. 
 In not a few of the speculations connected with physical science, the 
 idea of material body is changed by ascribing to it attributes incom- 
 patible with its essential properties. 
 
 V. Since mental phenomena cannot be correlated and reciprocally 
 convertible with molecular motion under the law of the persistence 
 of force, there remains no explanation of them by matter and its 
 energy, and they are rightly acknowledged to be facts entirely beyond 
 the Sphere of physical science. They must either remain without 
 scientific explanation, or we must recognize, as legitimate and distinct 
 from physical science, the science of mind. 
 
 At this point dogmatic materialism, which affirms that nothing exists 
 but matter and motor-force, is refuted ; and evolution cannot save it ; 
 for since mentality is not convertible with motion, the mere evolution 
 
446 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of matter and motor-force cannot have originated it. Only two courses 
 remain open to those who deny the existence of spirit. One is to ac- 
 cept both the phenomena of mind and those of matter as ultimate facts ; 
 to regard them as two lines of action parallel in a pre-established har- 
 mony, having no identity, or similarity, or point of meeting, a parallel- 
 ism which we accept as a fact but cannot, either empirically or meta- 
 physically account for or explain. But it is impossible for the human 
 mind to rest in a final dualism like this. By the necessity of its con- 
 stitution it must continue its search till it can think of the all in the 
 unity of a rational system. Such a dualism is a case of unstable mental 
 equilibrium in which the mind cannot persist. 
 
 The other way of attempted escape is by assuming the existence of 
 some substance having the properties of both mind and matter. Its 
 crudest form is the doctrine that atoms may be endowed with sensa- 
 tion. But the atomic theory gives us matter in its strictest and most 
 distinctive sense ; to predicate both material and mental phenomena of 
 atoms is to predicate of them properties which are incompatible and 
 contradictory and so to change the significance of matter and to use 
 words without meaning. And, as Lange suggests, such a theory, could 
 it ever be carried out, might end in dropping the atoms and their 
 vibrations altogether, like a scaffolding when the building is completed. 
 Besides, Monism can attain its synthesis of the all in one only by start- 
 ing with the " substantia una et unica" If it starts with atoms it has 
 atoms of sixty-four different kinds, which, since substance is known 
 only by its properties, would be sixty-four different kinds of sub- 
 stances ; and in addition to these there is the ether. Atomism is in- 
 compatible with Monism. If, with Prof. Bain, we suppose the matter 
 which we perceive, the human body for example, to be " one substance 
 with two sets of properties, two sides, the physical and the mental a 
 double-faced unity"* we have the same difficulty ; since the body is 
 composed of atoms and we must also predicate of it contradictory 
 properties. Thus again the explanation is attempted by applying the 
 same name to things that differ and so using words without significance. 
 If escape from the dualism is attempted by the pantheistic supposition 
 of the " substantia una et unica " with its tw 7 o attributes of extension 
 and unconscious thought, no relief is gained. 
 
 There remains only the agnosticism of Spencer. The phenomena 
 both of mind and matter must be referred to an unknowable power 
 which transcends them both, and of which both mind and matter are 
 manifestations. Yet this is not an Unknowable, for Mr. Spencer desig- 
 nates it as a Power, spelled with a capital P ; he says it is omnipresent 
 
 * Mind and Body, p. 196. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 447 
 
 and underived, and therefore we necessarily infer that it must be 
 self-existent and eternal ; and it is " manifested " in the phenomena 
 of both matter and mind. This so-called unknowable he uses as a 
 symbol, like an algebraic x, by which he comes to the result that 
 thought is transformed motion a result which science rejects. He 
 says : " Those modes of the Unknowable which we call motion, heat, 
 light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformed into each other, 
 and into those modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish as 
 sensation, emotion, thought ; these, in their turn, being directly re- 
 transformable into their original shapes."* Thus the Philosophy of 
 the Unknowable withdraws into the covert of human ignorance and 
 professes to perform in that darkness a transformation impossible in 
 the light of knowledge. 
 
 Therefore it is evident that, while physical science is unable to cor- 
 relate thought, feeling and determination with motion as reciprocally 
 convertible under the law of the persistence of force, it is also unable 
 to account for and explain the phenomena in any other way. 
 
 VI. The existence of spirit accounts for and explains the mental 
 phenomena and avoids the difficulties of the materialistic assumption. 
 
 1. Natural science, as we have seen, finds impassable limits in two 
 directions ; it cannot account for and explain mental phenomena, and 
 especially the facts of personality ; and on the principles of mechanism 
 it cannot account for and explain the phenomena of matter and force. 
 We find two spheres of reality, the objective which is perceived in 
 sense, and the subjective which is the mind in its conscious operations 
 having knowledge of the objective. Physical science can explain and 
 account for neither of these spheres themselves nor their reciprocal 
 connection and action. It sees their parallelism but cannot find their 
 point of meeting and interaction. 
 
 2. The supposition of the existence of spirit enables us to explain 
 and account for these spheres, and to bring them both within our 
 knowledge in the unity of a system. If the limits of the empirical 
 science of nature are the limits of all human knowledge, then the 
 human mind can never transcend these bounds. It finds the horizon 
 of the knowable very^near the eye. But the foregoing chapters have 
 demonstrated that man's knowledge is not limited to sense-perception, 
 nor its objects to matter and motion, nor its reflective methods to the 
 empirical. Man has knowledge of himself endowed with the attri- 
 butes of personality ; and with this knowledge he can pass beyond the 
 limits of physical science and its empirical methods. If man is a 
 personal spirit acting through an organized body, the parallelism of 
 
 * First Principles : p. 280, 82. 
 
448 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 mental phenomena with molecular action of the brain is explained as 
 the manifestation of spirit through the organization with which it is 
 connected. The truth that the absolute and ultimate ground of the 
 universe is Energizing Reason gives us the conception of the universe 
 existing as an ideal eternal in the Reason, and realized by the energizing 
 of the Reason continuously and progressively expressing its ideals in 
 finite forms under the limitations of space and time. In the two words 
 Energizing Reason we have attained intelligibly the synthesis which 
 Spencer teaches must exist in the Unknowable Absolute in which is 
 the source alike of matter and of mind, and which Bain seeks to find 
 in his double-faced substance having the attributes of both matter and 
 mind. For here is Reason which in its essence is Subject, and which 
 eternally knows the object in its own archetypal ideals. And here is 
 Energizing Reason ; and this includes the Energy which reveals itself 
 continuously and progressively in the universe, and the Intelligence 
 which ever directs its multitudinous atoms in action co-ordinated and 
 converging on what we can think only as a prearranged result. And 
 here is a universe of matter and mind synthesized in the unity of a 
 system in which the effusion and direction of energy are continuously 
 and progressively realizing rational results ; and these results when in- 
 vestigated and described by the human mind are found to give astron- 
 omy, chemistry and other natural sciences, moral systems and laws, 
 aesthetic ideals and culture, great civilizations, and the lineaments of 
 God's kingdom of righteousness and good-will forming itself progress- 
 ively amid the changes and confusions of human life. These realities 
 are found in the universe. Matter and force cannot account for them ; 
 physical science with its empirical methods cannot explain them. But 
 the existence of Energizing Reason as the Absolute Ground of the 
 universe explains and accounts for all. It and it alone gives compre- 
 hensive science, in its three stages, Empirical, Noetic and Theological, 
 which alone is able to recognize, account for and explain all the facts 
 which we observe in the universe. 
 
 3. The existence of personal spirit is therefore necessarily assumed. 
 If the facts of personality and of the broader sphere of consciousness, 
 and their relation to physical phenomena could be explained by matter 
 and force, then we might doubt which of two equally sufficient causes 
 was the real one. But since confessedly these facts cannot be accounted 
 for by matter and are accounted for by spirit, the mind in accordance 
 with the constituent elements of its own rationality must believe that 
 spirit exists. So Spencer says : " When on decomposing certain of our 
 feelings we find them formed of minute shocks succeeding one another 
 with different rabidities and in different combinations ; and when we 
 conclude that all our feelings are probably formed of such units of con- 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 449 
 
 sciousness variously combined, we are still obliged to conceive this unit 
 of consciousness as a change wrought by some force in something. No 
 effort of imagination enables us to think of a shock, however minute, 
 except as undergone by an entity. We are compelled, therefore, to 
 postulate a substance of Mind which is affected, before we can think of 
 its affections/'* 
 
 Were it, then, only a case of hypothesis of a cause of observed phe- 
 nomena, as we postulate an ether to account for light, the hypothesis of 
 the existence of spirit would be fully sustained. So says Dr. J. R. 
 Mayer, in the Discourse already cited : " There are three categories of 
 existence, matter, force and the soul or the spiritual principle. When 
 once we have succeeded in realizing that there are not only material ob- 
 jects, but also forces .... as indestructible as the substances of the 
 chemist, we have but one step further to take, and that perfectly natural, 
 to recognize and admit spiritual existences." 
 
 4. In self-consciousness man has knowledge of himself as an indi- 
 vidual persisting in identity and endowed with the attributes of per- 
 sonality. Our knowledge of our own personality is not attained by 
 hypothetical reasoning, but is immediate in our own self-consciousness. 
 Not that self-consciousness answers all questions as to the constitution 
 of spirit, whether for example it is simple or complex, but it does give 
 the reality of the personal, individual, ever identical self. Thus the 
 knowledge of self is no hypothesis, nor theory, nor mere inference, 
 but is immediate knowledge of the highest certitude. It is knowledge 
 without which all other knowledge is disintegrated and disappears. 
 For if I do not know myself as persisting in identity I cannot know 
 anything that is past, nor apprehend any realities in a unity of 
 thought. The materialistic explanation of memory and of the unity 
 of consciousness fails in the total failure of materialism to explain any 
 mental phenomena. 
 
 "). An objection is urged that the existence of disembodied spirit 
 " lies wholly outside of the range of experience."f So far as the objec- 
 tion is that the existence of spirit disembodied is beyond the range of 
 our experience, it is not pertinent to the issue before us. This I have 
 already shown. On the one hand, if finite spirit never manifests it- 
 self except through some material medium, this does not invalidate 
 our position that a spiritual power must be postulated to account for 
 the known facts of personality, and also that we have immediate know- 
 ledge of such spiritual power in the consciousness of self. On the other 
 hand, to account for facts not otherwise accounted for, we may assume 
 that spirit, such as is thus known to us in the body, may exist, with all 
 
 * Psychology. Vol. II., p. 626, 272. f Prof. Fiske : Unseen World, p. 50. 
 
 29 
 
450 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 its essential personal attributes, disembodied. And this is a legitimate 
 scientific postulation, precisely like that of physical science when, to 
 account for facts of matter and motion perceived by the senses, it pos- 
 tulates atoms, molecules and ethers which are entirely imperceptible 
 and in that sense beyond experience. If now it is objected that dis- 
 embodied spirit is beyond experience and therefore cannot be postulated 
 in an hypothesis, it is true equally and in the same sense that atoms, 
 molecules and ethers are beyond the range of experience. But if we 
 look further we see that neither the one nor the other is beyond the 
 range of experience in such sense as makes the postulation illegitimate 
 or unscientific. For, in the latter hypothesis, the atoms, molecules 
 and ethers are supposed to retain the essential properties of matter as 
 already known in experience, although existing in forms and under 
 conditions of which we have not had experience. And, in the former, 
 the spirit retains the essential attributes of personality as already 
 known in experience, although existing under conditions of which we 
 have had no experience. 
 
 6. It is also objected that mental phenomena must be resolved 
 into molecular in order to be cognizable by science. The objec- 
 tion, in order to be pertinent, must deny that consciousness is a 
 source of knowledge. It must affirm that the existence of personal 
 or spiritual being is beyond the range of experience ; and in order to 
 make this assertion good, must deny that consciousness is any part of 
 our experience. 
 
 This seems to be the position taken, not by materialists alone, but by 
 some scientists who disclaim materialism. Matter and motion, or the 
 energy which manifests itself in motion, constitute the objective sphere 
 of knowledge. These alone are objects of science. The sphere of con- 
 sciousness is the subjective. This is either explicitly or implicitly ex- 
 cluded from science. It is an object of scientific knowledge only so far 
 as we can reduce it to terms of matter and motion through the molecu- 
 lar action of the brain. But, when it is seen that consciousness cannot 
 be identified with these, it is abandoned as beyond the limits of science 
 and not an object of legitimate scientific investigation. " Only when we 
 resolve our sensations by abstraction into those simplest elements of ex- 
 tension in space, of resistance, and of movement do we obtain a basis for 
 the operations of science." But so far as it is found impossible to iden- 
 tify self-consciousness with objective reality, it is excluded from science. 
 .If there is no such thing as self-consciousness in the objective sphere, it 
 is, strictly speaking nothing. " Subjective existence is not the true, 
 proper existence with which alone science is concerned." It is substan- 
 tially along this line that Du Bois-Reymond defines " the limits of natu- 
 ral science." And all who regard natural science as comprehending all 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 451 
 
 science must either resolve mental phenomena into molecular action or 
 else exclude them entirely from scientific knowledge. 
 
 The first answer to the objection presented in this form is that it falls 
 back upon the position of Comte, who affirms that consciousness is not a 
 source of scientific knowledge. This has been found too narrow a basis 
 for science, and when nakedly stated is commonly rejected by scientists. 
 These two spheres of knowledge are presented to the mind in one and 
 the same mental act. It is a wholly arbitrary and unreasonable pro- 
 ceeding to accept the one and reject the other, or to insist that mental 
 phenomena are not objects of science until they can be presented as 
 objective realities, as phenomena of matter and motion. It is an a priori 
 and unscientific declaration of what it is possible to know, instead of a 
 docile acceptance and investigation of facts actually presented to our 
 knowledge. So Lange : " The very undertaking to construct a philo- 
 sophical theory of things exclusively upon the physical sciences must in 
 these days be described as a philosophical one-sidedness of the worst 
 kind."* 
 
 A second answer to this form of the objection is that of the two, the 
 subjective knowledge is, if any distinction is to be made, the best war- 
 ranted knowledge. The remark has often been made and is obviously 
 true that if we must choose between materialism and idealism, between 
 the knowledge of matter and motion, and the knowledge of mind and 
 conscious thoughts and feelings, the latter has always the better war- 
 rant. A person or spirit may have its " objective " within himself in 
 his own thoughts, character or ideals, and thus can complete within 
 himself the circuit recognized in the first law of thought, that know- 
 ledge implies a subject knowing, an object known, and the know- 
 ledge. Sensation and consciousness are immediate, but the knowledge 
 of molecular movement is mediate through thought, "triply ideal," 
 as Spencer describes the molecule. Accordingly Mr. Spencer says: 
 " It may be as well to say here once for all, that were we compelled to 
 choose between the alternatives of translating mental phenomena into 
 physical phenomena, or of translating physical phenomena into mental 
 phenomena, the latter alternative would seem the more acceptable of 
 the two." So Prof. Fiske : " While the Inscrutable Power manifested 
 in the world of phenomena cannot possibly be regarded as quasi- 
 physical in its nature, it may nevertheless be possibly regarded as 
 quasi-psychical. . . . We may say that God is Spirit, though we may 
 not say, in the materialistic sense, that God is Force."f 
 
 A third answer is that the knowledge of the objective is itself sub- 
 
 *Hist. Materialism. Transl. II. 302. 
 
 f Cosmic Philosophy. Vol. II., pp. 448, 449. 
 
452 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 jective; and that the knowledge of the objective disappears if the 
 knowledge of the subjective is not real. This very word objective im- 
 plies as much, since matter and motion are called objective because 
 they are objects of perception and thought. What do we know of 
 atoms, if we take the materialistic explanation of thought, except as 
 the remains of faded sensations by which the mind has formed a con- 
 cept of them ? The last result of physical science in knowing the objec- 
 tive is in finding bulk, weight, distance, velocity and law of movement 
 mathematically expressed. But mathematical measurements are noth- 
 ing but pure forms of mind. The Mecanique Celeste of Laplace is 
 a description of the universe, and that description is in mathematical 
 forms created solely by the mind. Is it therefore an anthropomorphic 
 description of the universe, revealing only the subjective, and unscien- 
 tific ? Plainly if the subjective consciousness and personality are ex- 
 cluded from scientific knowledge, the phenomena of matter and motion 
 are excluded also. 
 
 We may find a further answer to the objection in the analogy of 
 matter and force. The phenomena of matter as existing in and occu- 
 pying space and the phenomena of motion manifesting force, are 
 inseparable ; yet like those of mind and matter they are parallel. We 
 find that force cannot be accounted for as caused by matter ; we have 
 seen the insuperable difficulties in the supposition that force is an in- 
 herent property of matter, that matter by attraction or repulsion is 
 continually effusing energy into the universe without expenditure or 
 resupply. But, on the other hand, the dynamic theory of matter is 
 conceivably true, and it is possible to account for matter by force. 
 
 Looking now at the parallelism of the relation of mind to matter 
 and force with the relation of force to matter, we find that mental phe- 
 nomena cannot be identified with or explained by matter and force, 
 but that matter and force may be explained by mind. For our idea of 
 motion and force is derived from the action of our own wills and the 
 motion caused by it. Attraction and repulsion are only our own pull 
 and push transferred to the movements of nature. And the tendency 
 to the dynamic explanation of the universe is a tendency to find its 
 explanation in mind, in an Energizing Reason, continuously the efficient 
 and the directive cause of the universe and its ongoing. 
 
 Spirit and its phenomena, therefore, are. not beyond the range of 
 experience, but are the deepest realities of experience, without which 
 the objective could never be an object of experience or knowledge. 
 
 VII. The theory of the correlation of the facts of personality with 
 molecular motion not only does not account for these facts but is entirely 
 incompatible with them in their essential significance. For if this 
 theory were true man would be merely a natural product and all his 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM PERSISTENCE OF FORCE. 453 
 
 acts would be necessitated in the fixed course of nature, like the falling 
 of stones, the flowing of water, and the consuming of fuel by fire. 
 Rational free-will would be impossible, and without free-will moral ob- 
 ligation and responsibility, moral law and government, all that belongs 
 to a rational and moral system, would also be impossible. We should 
 be driven to the conclusions reached by Mr. Atkinson and Miss Mar- 
 tineau in their " Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Develop- 
 ment" : " Instinct, passion, thought are effects of organized substances." 
 "All causes are material causes." " In material conditions I find the 
 origin of all religions, all philosophies, all opinions, all virtues and 
 spiritual conditions and influences, in the same manner that I find the 
 origin of all diseases and of all insanities in material conditions and 
 causes." " I am what I am, a creature of necessity ; I claim neither 
 merit nor demerit." " I am as completely the result of my nature and 
 impelled to do what I do, as the needle to point to the north or the 
 puppet to move according as the string is pulled." " I cannot alter my 
 will or be other than what I am, and I cannot deserve either reward or 
 punishment." 
 
 But the facts that I am a rational free-agent and the subject of 
 moral obligation and responsibility, and am under moral law and 
 government, are facts of the highest certitude. If any proposed 
 scientific theory is inconsistent with them, the inference is that the 
 theory is unscientific and false because it is not consistent with known 
 facts, not that the facts are unreal because they are inconsistent with 
 the theory. These incontrovertible facts demonstrate the existence 
 in man of a power other than matter and force. 
 
 In a cemetery near Stirling Castle, in Scotland, is a monument to 
 two girls who, in the time of persecution, were tied at low water mark 
 to be drowned by the rising tide if they did not renounce their relig- 
 ious convictions. For hours they watched the slowly rising waters, 
 knowing a word would save them, but that word conscience within 
 them forbade them to utter. Something within them above the body 
 and its movements freely left the body to die rather than be false to 
 principle, to duty, and to God. Many Christian martyrs have endured 
 imprisonment and repeated torture on the rack before they suffered 
 death. In the darkness, dampness and filth of a dungeon they have 
 looked forward to the torture, knowing they could, escape it if they 
 would recant. They have been tortured as long and as much as 
 their tormentors could inflict without killing them, and have then 
 been remanded to their dungeon ; and when sufficiently recovered 
 tortured again and then again, and last they have been burned at 
 the stake. All the preparatory imprisonments and tortures were 
 fitted to destroy the nervous ' energy, to prostrate the strength, and 
 
454 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 break down the resolution. Were there nothing concerned but mole- 
 cular motions of the brain they would have grown feeble and given 
 way. But there is a spirit in man which freely consigns the body to 
 suffering and death rather than turn from truth and right, and 
 which remains unweakened in its purpose to the last moment of con- 
 sciousness as all the bodily powers decay. 
 
 If it were possible for the phenomena of personality to be correlated 
 with motion under the law of the persistence of force, then the amount 
 of force liberated by thinking would be inconceivably great. Science 
 recognizes grades of force. A unit of electric or magnetic force is 
 equal to many units of the force of gravity. A common small magnet 
 lifts iron filings ; to enable it to do the same by gravitation-attraction, 
 its density would have to be increased till it weighed at least a billion 
 of pounds. Chemical affinity is supposed to be a force of a still higher 
 grade. Faraday calculated that the force expended in decomposing a 
 drop of water is more than that of the electricity which would charge 
 a thunder-cloud. The force expended in producing nine pounds of 
 water by the combination of oxygen and hydrogen is equal to that of 
 a ton weight falling 22,230 feet. Prof. Tyndall says : " I have seen 
 the wild stone avalanches of the Alps, which smoke and thunder down 
 the declivities with a vehemence almost sufficient to stun the observer. 
 I have also seen snow-flakes descending so softly as not to hurt the 
 fragile spangles of which they were composed. Yet to produce from 
 aqueous vapor a quantity of that tender material which a child could 
 carry, demands an exertion of energy competent to gather up the shat- 
 tered blocks of the largest stone avalanche I have ever seen and pitch 
 them to twice the height from which they fell." Vital force must be of 
 a still higher order ; for the action of chemical affinity is suspended 
 during life but asserts itself in the decomposition of the tissues so soon 
 as life ceases. . The force manifested in rational free-will would be 
 still higher. Every rational free act would therefore give forth into 
 the universe an immeasurable amount of force surpassing that of a 
 multitude of thunder-storms. And if the theory of the correlation of 
 personal action with molecular motion and its re-transformation into 
 motion were true, then the prayers of Christian people in their assem- 
 blies every Sunday all the world over would actually give out into 
 the universe an energy that would be immense. This sets in a 
 striking light the impossibility of the correlation of personal acts of 
 rational free-will with motion ; and at the same time shows that the 
 supposition, if true, would involve consequences never dreamed of by 
 the materialist. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 455 
 
 2 SO. Third Materialistic Objection : from the Theory of 
 
 Evolution. 
 
 
 
 A third materialistic objection to the existence of personal or spiritual 
 beings is, that all that exists has been evolved from primordial homo- 
 geneous stuff under the laws of matter, force and motion ; that thus 
 personality and spirit are excluded from the universe and have no 
 existence either in man or God. 
 
 I. We must first distinguish the materialistic theory of evolution 
 from the scientific. The objection assumes that this theory in its essence 
 includes materialism ; and this is the prevalent impression. This is not 
 surprising ; for some of its most widely known advocates are materialists 
 or agnostics, and present the theory as essentially materialistic. But so 
 far as it is a legitimate theory of empirical science it must declare only 
 how nature goes on, not how it originated and what is its ultimate 
 ground. And so its most judicious advocates present it. Thus pre- 
 sented it is the theory that the existing arrangement of the physical 
 universe is the result of a continuous and progressive evolution from 
 simpler and lower to more complicated and higher conditions and 
 forms; and it is an attempt to declare the laws in accordance with which 
 the evolution goes on. It results from the efforts of science to find out 
 how nature has been going on in the past and thus to extend knowledge 
 of physical processes and laws through time as the discovery of the law 
 of gravitation extended it through space. From ancient times in the 
 prosecution of such inquiries various suggestions in the direction of 
 evolution have at different periods been made. The present theory is 
 an attempt with a larger knowledge of nature to give a more complete 
 answer to these inquiries. The investigation is perfectly legitimate 
 within the sphere of empirical science. Neither philosophy nor theology 
 has anything to fear from any facts which it may discover or any in- 
 variable sequences or laws of nature which it may establish. A law of 
 evolution, legitimate within the sphere of empirical science, would be 
 consistent with personality, would extend our knowledge of law and 
 order in nature through time as the discovery of the law of gravitation 
 extended it through space, and would favor the teleological view of 
 nature by presenting to us the material universe as a whole in its entire 
 evolution progressively realizing a rational ideal and end. It would be 
 in general accord with the observed fact of the appearance of higher 
 and higher orders of organic beings in the successive geological periods ; 
 with the philosophical principle that the manifestation of the absolute 
 or infinite in the finite must be progressive and at any point of time in- 
 complete ; with the theological truth that the historical revelation of 
 God has been progressive according to the capacity of an age to receive 
 
456 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 it ; and with Christ's teaching that the advancement of his kingdom 
 must be progressive after the analogy of organic growth, first the blade, 
 then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. 
 
 Mr. Spencer's generalization is that the development and growth of MI 
 organic germ present the type and law of the evolution of the universe : 
 " this law of organic evolution is the law of all evolution."* In incubu- 
 tion the homogeneous yelk is first diversified into lines and parts and 
 then these are united in the organic unity of the chicken. This, then, 
 according to Spencer, is the type of the evolution of the universe : the 
 homogeneous passing into diversity and thence into a unity of the com- 
 plex. We have seen that thought consists of apprehension, differentia- 
 tion and integration. It may be that this is the necessary law of 
 thought because it is also the law of the constitution of things which 
 are the objects of thought. If this is the law according to which 
 the material universe has come to its present arrangement, still it 
 declares only the uniform factual sequence from homogeneousness 
 through diversity to a larger and complex unity, and so on through 
 multiplying diversities and unities forever. If this is the law of the 
 progress and development of the individual man, still it declares only 
 the uniform factual sequence from the simplicity of infancy through 
 the development of diverse powers and susceptibilities to the realiza- 
 tion of unity in the rational control and direction of all these diverse 
 energies in the free personality of the man. If this is the law of the 
 formation of moral character, still it declares only the factual sequence 
 from the simplicity and innocence of infancy through the development 
 of many impulses, desires, affections and energies, involving many 
 temptations and inward conflicts, to the unity of all the diversity in 
 the life of love. If this is the law of the development of civilization 
 and the progress of society, still it declares only the factual sequence 
 from the comparative simplicity of savagery through the development 
 of the many-sidedness of man as to power and capacity, as to Avauts 
 and the power of satisfying them, to the unity of a civilized commu- 
 nity living peacefully under law. If this is the law of the organiza- 
 tion of political society, still it only declares the uniform factual sequence 
 from the simplicity of the family and of patriarchal government through 
 many diversities and conflicts and disintegrations to the e pluribus unum 
 of the government of the United States in which the greatest complex- 
 ity and freedom are united in the firmest union. In all these cases 
 we simply affirm the fact as to how the world goes on ; we affirm 
 nothing as to how it began or how it is sustained and directed, or what 
 is the ultimate ground on which in all its changes it rests ; nothing 
 
 * First Principles, 43, p. 148. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 457 
 
 which denies the personality of man or the existence and immanent 
 action of God. And if the progress of man as an individual and of 
 society is always accordant with this law, the fact is no more incom- 
 patible with his free personality and the immanent presence of God 
 than are the facts that his motions are limited by the natural laws 
 of gravitation and his thinking regulated by the rational principle 
 that t _inning or change of existence must have a cause. The 
 
 point made by the theist is not that the law of gravitation, of the per- 
 sistence of force, of evolution, or any other law of nature fails to de- 
 clare a uniform factual sequence in nature, but that every one of them 
 brings the investigator face to face with facts which the law is incom- 
 : to account for or explain, and thus reveals in all the operations 
 of nature a power which transcends nature. And it is not merely 
 that there must be a power above nature to account for its origin, but 
 that in every iuteraction and process of nature according to its laws, 
 the necessity and reality of a power above nature are revealed. 
 
 I anticipate that the science of the physical universe is to be estab- 
 lished in the line of thought which the theory of evolution opens and 
 in accordance with its general idea. No interest of theology prejudices 
 me against it ; for I see no conflict between such a theory within the 
 legitimate limits of empirical science and theology ; on the contrary, 
 at various points I find it helpful in removing difficulties and elucidat- 
 ing and vindicating theological truth. The objections against theism 
 which it has occasioned are not from evolution as a scientific law of 
 nature, but from the materialism of which it has been made the 
 vehicle. 
 
 II. Although the theory of evolution has already been found to 
 accord with many facts and bring them into unity, and thus has 
 acquired probability, I cannot think that as yet it has been either 
 apprehended in its full significance or scientifically established. So 
 Prof. Le Conte says : " I do not agree with those who seem to think 
 that we already know all, or at least the most important factors of evolu- 
 tion. On the contrary, I am quite sure that the most fundamental 
 factors are still unknown; that there are more and greater factors 
 than are yet ' dreamed of in our philosophy.' But evolution of some 
 kind and according to some law which we yet imperfectly understand, 
 evolution affecting alike every realm of nature, a universal law of evo- 
 lution, is, I believe, a fact which is rapidly approaching uni 
 recognition."* 
 
 1. The law of evolution in some sense conditions all other la 
 nature. As declaring how nature has been going on through all time 
 
 * Princeton Review, 1881, p. 159. 
 
458 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 it in some sense conditions all the actions and processes of nature in 
 space. The forces of nature acting according to their laws in space 
 have been acting thus through all time ; and by these forces and in 
 accordance with these laws the evolution has been going on. The 
 theory of evolution must, therefore, take up into itself all these forces 
 and laws and declare to us in scientific form the law of all laws, in 
 accordance with which all the forces of nature acting according to 
 their subordinate laws in producing specific effects, have yet been act- 
 ing in concert through all time realizing an immense and most compli- 
 cated ideal in the slow but continuously progressive evolution of nebulous 
 matter into a Cosmos. It is not surprising that the human mind has not 
 scientifically established such a law as this, nor even clearly and defi- 
 nitely enunciated it. Even if the theory of evolution is a grand insight 
 of genius, it is not surprising, especially considering how recently it 
 was announced, that it remains neither adequately formulated nor 
 proved ; and that only fragments, which may ultimately find place in 
 a comprehensive theory, seem to be assuming the definiteness and cer- 
 tainty of scientific facts. 
 
 2. The theory of evolution includes four subordinate theories, each 
 of which must be scientifically established before the theory of evolu- 
 tion can be accepted in its entireness as a scientific law of nature. It 
 cannot be affirmed that all of them are thus established. They are the 
 following : a nebular hypothesis in some form ; the persistence of force ; 
 Abiogenesis or spontaneous generation ; the Darwinian theory of the 
 development of species. 
 
 The nebular hypothesis as commonly applied to our solar system 
 assumes that all the matter in it was in its beginning nebulous and 
 diffused through the space which the system now occupies. This 
 theory is now generally accepted by astronomers not merely as a con- 
 venient working hypothesis, but as in all probability the true history 
 of the formation of the solar system. But against this the weighty 
 objection is urged that the actual velocities of the rotations and 
 revolutions of the sun and its planets are vastly greater than those 
 necessarily deduced from the hypothesis, and that various other known 
 astronomical facts are incompatible with it. J. B. Stallo says : " The 
 cumulation of difficulties presented by the nebular hypothesis has be- 
 come so great and is beginning to be so extensively realized, as to de- 
 velop a tendency to modify or supplant it by another hypothesis, which 
 may be called the hypothesis of meteoric agglomeration."* 
 
 The nebular hypothesis of Laplace was limited to our solar system. 
 This of course is too narrow for a cosmical theory, which must extend 
 
 * The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics: pp. 277-286. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 459 
 
 to all suns and systems and derive all their nebulae from an all-com- 
 prehending homogeneous * tuff. The latter was the hypothesis of Kant 
 and is accepted by Spencer, Haeckel and other leading evolutionists. 
 Mr. Spencer says : " Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent 
 homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous dif- 
 ferentiations and integrations." He explains that in it the elemental 
 unchangeable units of various orders are "so unifcrmly dispersed 
 among each other that any portion of the mass shall be like any other 
 portion in its sensible properties."* This homogeneous stuff is limited 
 and definite in quantity, is in unstable equilibrium, and when change 
 begins the forces become multiform and multiply the changes. He 
 sometimes describes the evolution as " a redistribution of matter and 
 force," implying that the evolution is only a rearrangement of the 
 diversified elements and potencies which were originally blended in the 
 homogeneous. 
 
 The observed existence of nebulae gives support to some theory like 
 this, sufficient at least to justify the assumption of the nebulous matter 
 as what Newton calls a vera causa, and to justify the hypothesis as a 
 legitimate scientific hypothesis and not a mere vagary of the fancy. 
 But embracing as it does the universe in its entire history from the 
 beginning, it cannot admit of complete verification in the present stage 
 of astronomical knowledge, and inevitably confronts us with many 
 difficulties. For example, since the assumed nebulous matter, limited 
 and definite, comprises the whole physical universe, and is broken up 
 into suns and systems by cooling, the force dissipated in the cooling 
 passes out of the universe into absolutely empty space, And since the 
 nebulous matter of the universe is broken up into suns and worlds, 
 why is there no change in the ether, which seems more than anything 
 the very "thing in itself" of matter ?f And since this nebula is the 
 entire physical universe and is in equilibrium and therefore motionless, 
 no force within it can originate the motion and no finite force from 
 without can ever be incident upon it and cause any part of it to move. 
 An equilibrium of the whole universe cannot be unstable but must be 
 immovable forever. Of Abiogenesis Mr. Huxley says : "At the present 
 moment there is not a shadow of direct evidence that abiogenesis does 
 take place or has taken place within the period during which the exist- 
 ence of the globe is recorded.";); 
 
 Darwin's theory of the development of species, notwithstanding the 
 facts and arguments accumulated in its support, seems yet to lack 
 
 * First Principles, $ 57, pp. 216, 235, and Chaps, xii. and xiii. 
 f So Clifford says that in cooling down into one motionless mass the universe " would 
 send out waves of heat through a perfectly empty ether." Lectures, etc., I. 221. 
 J Encyc. Brit. 9th Ed., Art. Biology, p. 689. 
 
460 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 evidence at some points, and to be confronted with facts which it does 
 not take up and explain. Prof. Gray says : " The essential types of 
 our own actual flora are marked in the cretaceous period and have 
 come to us without notable changes through the tertiary formation of 
 our continent."* And Virchow, speaking of the evolution of man, 
 says : " The old troglodytes, pile- villagers, and bog-people prove to be 
 quite a respectable society. They have heads so large that many a 
 living people would be only too happy to possess them. . . . We 
 must really acknowledge that there is a complete absence of any fossil 
 type of a lower stage in the development of man. Nay, if we gather 
 together all the fossil men hitherto found and put them parallel with 
 those of the present time, we can decidedly pronounce that there are 
 among living men a much greater proportion of individuals who show 
 a relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils known up to 
 this time. . . . Every positive progress which we have made in the 
 region of prehistoric anthropology has removed us further from the 
 demonstration of this theory."f The variations produced by domes- 
 tication disclose a certain susceptibility to variation, but the variation 
 itself is the result of man's selection, not of natural selection. The 
 argument from embryology, however striking, is nevertheless merely 
 an argument from analogy. The question at . issue is a question of 
 Phylogeny, that is, of the evolution or origin of organic tribes or 
 species ; the facts observed are facts of Ontogeny, that is, of the evo- 
 lution of an individual organism from its germ. The argument is 
 merely by analogy that facts not observed in the evolution of species 
 must be analogous to facts observed in the development of a germ into 
 an individual animal. If we add the taxonomic series, the analogy 
 is exhausted, with this result : living organisms are not only classified 
 by resemblance, but also the classes or specieo arrange themselves in 
 a gradation from lower to higher ; the order of the appearance of the 
 species in time has a general correspondence with the order of their 
 gradation from lower to higher ; and the development of the human 
 embryo in its successive stages has a striking correspondence with the 
 same gradation. But this analogy is far from proving that living or- 
 ganisms have been developed through all gradations up to man solely 
 by the necessary action of matter and motor-force. 
 
 There are also facts which seem to contradict the theory, such as the 
 sterility of hybrids, degeneracy, atavism, the tendency of domesticated 
 varieties to return to the primitive type, the great geological breaks in 
 the course of past life and the abrupt appearance of multitudes of new 
 
 * Address before Am. Scientific Association, 1872. 
 
 f Freedom of Science in the Modern State: A Discourse before the German Asso- 
 ciation of Naturalists and Physicians ; Munich, 1878. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 461 
 
 species. Astronomers profess to prove from data drawn from the 
 nebular hypothesis that the time claimed as necessary for the evolu- 
 tion far exceeds any period during which it is possible that the earth 
 can have existed as a globe capable of sustaining any organic life. 
 Investigations in other spheres of knowledge seem to prove similar 
 overestimates in the later periods of development. Quatrefages says : 
 " Under the influence of Darwinian prejudices, men have begun to 
 handle time with a strange laxity, and it has been affirmed that mil- 
 lions of years separate us from the glacial times. The deposits of silt 
 in the lake of Geneva show that these times terminated less than 
 100.000 years ago."* The theory if true would be true of different 
 species as well as of different individuals ; the stronger species would 
 exterminate the weaker, and all organic beings be brought into one 
 species. The theory cannot account for the existence of sex, nor for 
 the formation of new organs of any kind. As Dr. Carpenter says, in 
 an article on "Mind and Will in Nature": "Natural selection or the 
 survival of the fittest can do nothing else than perpetuate, among 
 varietal forms already existing, those which best suit the external con- 
 ditions of their existence ; and the scientific question for the biologist 
 is, what is the cause of departure from the uniformity of type ordinarily 
 transmitted by heredity .... and under what conditions does that 
 cause operate ? " Before the first mammal was born there must have 
 been a mammary gland in the mother to provide its food, and the young 
 one must at birth have had the instinct to suck or it would perish. How 
 could natural selection in non-mammals develop either the organ in the 
 former or the instinct in the latter? An animal in the process of 
 transition from one type of organism to another, would seem to be in- 
 ferior to the perfect animals of either, and on the principle of the sur- 
 vival of the fittest, would perish. 
 
 In studying the writings of evolutionists one cannot easily avoid the 
 impression that the enthusiasm and in some cases the dogmatism with 
 which the doctrine is propounded as scientifically established, arise from 
 the satisfaction given to minds naturally seeking the largest unity, by 
 the wide generalization of facts which the theory offers, rather than from 
 the observation of facts and careful induction from them. Thus Prof. 
 Hreckel admits that no instance of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation 
 has ever been observed ; and yet he insists dogmatically that it must be 
 accepted as fact, because it is essential to the theory of evolution, which 
 he supposes to be established in other spheres of observation-^ What- 
 ever this conclusion may be, it is not physical science. As the authors 
 
 * The Human Species : Appleton's Translation, p. 141. 
 
 t History of Creation, Transl. Vol. I., pp. 339-349. See Generelle Morphologie 
 der Organismen, Vol. 1, p. 174. 
 
462 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of the Unseen University say, " It is against all true scientific experience 
 that life can appear without the intervention of a living antecedent."* 
 3. The laws of evolution do not have the exactness, definiteness, and 
 completeness of laws of nature scientifically expressed. For example, 
 the laws of the development of species, commonly insisted on are these 
 two : a tendency of a structure to vary indefinitely, and the tendency of 
 its environment by its action on it to confirm and accelerate the varia- 
 tion in a specific direction. Prof. Fiske brings these under the general 
 name of equilibration or adjustment, which he distinguishes as external^ 
 including adaptation and natural selection; and internal, including 
 heredity, correlation of growth, use and disuse. There is a great con- 
 trast between evolution and its laws as thus presented, and the law of 
 gravitation, or of chemical combination, or of mechanics. This lack of 
 scientific precision is exemplified in Prof. TyndalPs somewhat famous 
 description of the development of the eye : " The senses are nascent, the 
 basis of all of them being that simple tactual sense which the sage De- 
 mocritus recognized 2300 years ago as their common progenitor. The 
 action of light in the first instance appears to be a mere disturbance of 
 the chemical processes in the animal organism, similar to that which 
 occurs in the leaves of plants. By degrees the action becomes localized 
 in a few pigment cells, more sensitive to light than the surrounding 
 tissue. The eye is here incipient. At first it is merely capable of re- 
 vealing differences of light and shade produced by bodies near at hand. 
 Followed, as the interception of light is in almost all cases, by the con- 
 tact of the closely adjacent opaque body, sight in this condition becomes 
 a kind of ' anticipatory touch.' The adjustment continues : a slight 
 bulging out of the epidermis over the pigment granules supervenes. A 
 lens is incipient, and through the operation of infinite adjustments, at 
 length reaches the perfection that it displays in the hawk and eagle."f 
 This certainly is not science. " Infinite adjustments" is a fine phrase, 
 but it has slight resemblance to the law of gravitation with its mathema- 
 tical exactness. He strides with seven-leagued boots from step to step 
 in the process, giving us no glimpse of why or wherefore or how. No 
 such process was ever observed ; no fact sustains a single one of the 
 assumptions ; the whole conception and each particular in it is a figment 
 of fancy. Nor even as a theory does it account for or explain any thing. 
 Why does the sunlight develop an eye in one spot rather than another ? 
 Why does the epidermis " bulge out ?" HOW T does sunlight develop an 
 optic-nerve ? And how do vibrations of ether against an incipient eye 
 or a perfect eye give rise to the utterly dissimilar phenomena of visual 
 sensation ? A similar criticism must be made of the laws of the survival 
 
 * Page 139. f Belfast Address. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 463 
 
 of the fittest and of natural selection ; and of Mr. Spencer's laws of the 
 instability of the homogeneous and of the multiplication of a force in- 
 cident on it ; and of his law which he says " follows inevitably from a 
 certain primordial truth," that " the homogeneous must lapse into the 
 heterogeneous and the heterogeneous must become more heterogeneous.* 
 
 4. Evolutionists, while insisting that the universe is merely mechan- 
 ism, are obliged to resort to the different idea of organic growth in carry- 
 ing out the theory. 
 
 The theory of mechanical evolution presupposes only matter and the 
 force manifested in its motion, molar or molecular. The process consists 
 solely of the rearrangement or redistribution of matter and force accord- 
 ing to the laws of mechanics. This is the form in which the theory has 
 commonly been held. Even Mr. Spencer, who has explicitly declared 
 that the law of organic evolution is the law of all evolution, actually 
 expounds it as the law of mechanism ; he calls evolution the redistribu- 
 tion of matter and force. He drops the organic type till he comes to 
 sociology. There he treats society as an organism not as a machine. 
 
 But this mechanical conception is not in harmony with the concep- 
 tion of nature necessary in any form of evolution. A machine is a 
 finished product which admits no new part or function. Nature, as the 
 evolutionist conceives it and as it actually is, is never a finished product 
 but always receptive of new and higher forms of action, revealing higher 
 powers, and realizing new and higher ends ; it is always plastic, always 
 progressive. A machine does not manufacture itself by factors within 
 itself, but is manufactured by agents outside of itself. After it is made 
 it does not run itself by agents within itself, but is run by a power 
 without itself and for the accomplishment of an end external to itself. 
 But the mechanical evolution represents nature as a machine, yet 
 doing in these particulars just what it is impossible for a machine to 
 do ; for the factors in the evolution and all the products of their 
 action are within nature itself. In these respects the conception of 
 nature as a machine is foreign to the conception of evolution. Mechan- 
 ical evolution is simply the development of what already exists into new 
 forms. It precludes the addition of matter or force, not already in that 
 which is developed. It is like disentangling a tangle of silk and wind- 
 ing it on a spool. If this is the meaning of evolution then the primor- 
 dial matter must have contained every elemental substance, every 
 physical energy and every power of mind which has made its appear- 
 ance in the evolution, as well as the total quantity of matter, energy 
 and mind which exists, or will ever exist, in the universe. We rightly 
 argue that nothing could have been evolved from the primordial 
 
 * First Principles, p. 46, Chap, xv., 123. 
 
464 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 nebulous matter which did not originally exist in it. But if this is so 
 then the primordial matter is no longer homogeneous, but contains 
 matter and mind and all their various properties and powers. 
 
 But the theory of evolution now current does not imply that the pri- 
 mordial matter contains all that is evolved from it ; it implies progress 
 and growth ; it assumes the appearance of new and higher powers ; 
 wittingly or unwittingly the evolution is conceived in the type of an 
 organic growth. If the original nebulous matter is really homoge- 
 neous, then its evolution into all the heterogeneous bodies, and ener- 
 gies and minds of the existing universe, must be by the agency of a 
 power or powers other than itself, or else must be an effect without a 
 cause. And here it is that in the development and application of the 
 theory the idea of growth is substituted for that of evolution in its 
 primitive and etymological meaning. Evolutionists, in unfolding and 
 applying their theory, talk and write about mechanism, but think and 
 argue about the very different process of germination and growth. 
 
 The fact that evolutionists cannot carry through their theory on the 
 sole basis of mechanism demonstrates that, if evolution is a scientific 
 fact, the true science of the universe is impossible on the basis of 
 mechanism. The question whether nature is an organism or a mechan- 
 ism has been discussed from ancient times. Since Descartes the 
 mechanical theory has been very commonly accepted by scientists as at 
 least their working hypothesis in scientific investigation. But the sen- 
 sitivity of brutes and the conscious personality of man are facts in 
 the universe, and it is scientifically demonstrated that they cannot be 
 explained by mechanism as forms of motion. There are also various 
 particulars in which nature as a whole is of the type of an organism, 
 not of a machine : such as the subordination of all the parts to the 
 idea of the whole, the teleological character of the action in the pro- 
 gressive realization of an ideal, and the fact of the appearance of new 
 and higher powers analogous to vital growth. It is surprising that in 
 the face of insurmountable difficulties and at the expense of resorting 
 to subordinate hypotheses more complicated and inconceivable than that 
 of the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomy, scientists 
 adhere so pertinaciously to the one-sided explanation of the universe as 
 solely a mechanism. Nothing but an arbitrary and extravagant specu- 
 lative demand for unity and simplicity seems to account for it. After 
 more than two hundred years of more or less persistent and always un- 
 satisfactory efforts to explain nature mechanically, scientists may prop- 
 erly begin to suspect that something more is involved in it than matter 
 and motion. 
 
 The process of evolution, while not excluding mechanism, necessarily 
 transcends it, and is more satisfactorily conceived according to the type 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 465 
 
 of organic growth. But even as thus conceived it cannot of itself 
 account for either the origin or the evolution of the universe without 
 recognizing powers beyond and above it. A seed does not germinate of 
 itself according to the laws of its own being; but only as powers inde- 
 pendent of itself supply the favorable conditions, provide it with nour- 
 ishment and co-operate with it in its growth. Agents act on it and 
 new matter is added to it from without itself. Elemental, chemical and 
 other forces combine with the vital force of the seed to effect the result. 
 All cosmic agencies combine to build up the growing organism. An 
 acorn thus acted on and supplied with food does not transcend the law 
 of causation when it produces an oak and thence many generations of 
 oaks. But if the primordial homogeneous matter of the whole universe 
 is itself the germ, and if it grows into a Cosmos containing elemental 
 substances, diversified energies, matter, and mind, which were not in 
 the primordial matter, where is the universe around it which provides 
 its pabulum and exerts the cosmic agencies outside of the homo- 
 geneous matter which quicken and sustain its growth ? It is plainly 
 the supposition of an effect without a cause. It is the scientifically im- 
 possible result of mind evolved from matter, diverse elemental sub- 
 stances evolved from one simple elemental substance, diverse properties 
 and powers brought into being which had no existence in the primor- 
 dial matter. It implies, as I have already shown, an absolute begin- 
 ning of a process for which no cause exists, and continuous growth which 
 nothing feeds or sustains. 
 
 Scientific^speculations and investigations seem equally to demonstrate 
 that no agents yet known within nature, whether mechanical or organic, 
 are adequate to account for its evolution and its existence in its present 
 form. We are driven to the conclusion that to explain the evolution of 
 nature we must recognize the action of a power above and beyond nature. 
 
 III. Scientific evolution as distinguished from the materialistic forms 
 of the theory is entirely consistent with the personality of man and the 
 existence of a personal God. 
 
 1. It does not involve materialism. A theory of evolution which is 
 legitimate in empirical science simply enunciates an observed invariable 
 sequence ; it simply declares how nature goes on. Any one of the theo- 
 ries subordinate to it may be proved true while the others remain unsub- 
 stantiated by observed facts. The nebular hypothesis and the persist- 
 ence of force may be established while not an instance of spontaneous 
 generation has been observed. Darwinian evolution of species may be 
 established while the question of the origin of life remains unanswered ; 
 or it may be established as to inferior species and not as to man ; or if 
 the development of an anthropoid animal is ascertained, the personality 
 of man still remains a fact which evolution cannot account for, and the 
 30 
 
466 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 existence of God remains a truth beyond the range of empirical science. 
 We wait for discoveries in respect to evolution without solicitude and 
 with the same interest with which we await discoveries in astronomy 
 and chemistry. It is not evolution which demands materialism, but it 
 is they who were already materialists who thrust their materialism upon 
 it, just as they do on any other law of nature. 
 
 Evolution, as taught by Prof. Hseckel and some others, is material- 
 istic. But materialism is a speculation in the sphere of metaphysical 
 and theological thought ; it can have no place in the inductions of 
 empirical science. Prof. Huxley admits that the spiritualistic and the 
 materialistic theories of sensation and of mental phenomena are equally 
 conceivable, but he chooses the materialistic as his working hypothesis, 
 because, as he alleges, it is the more simple.* Mr. Spencer admits the 
 reality of fundamental data of consciousness, of constitutional principles 
 regulating all thinking, and of the unknowable Absolute ; yet he also 
 adopts the materialistic conception as his working hypothesis. It is not 
 'strange, therefore, that evolution is often regarded as essentially material- 
 istic, and that some theologians have felt that the disproof of it is the 
 only defence of Theism and of belief in the existence of spirit. 
 
 If, however, evolution essentially involves materialism, that would not 
 prove materialism but would disprove evolution. In the article just 
 quoted Mr. Huxley truly says that " we know more of mind than we do 
 of body; the immaterial world is a firmer reality than the material." 
 Our knowledge of mind, he says is " immediate ;" that of body is " me- 
 diate," " a belief as contra-distinguished from an intuition." In any 
 conflict, if either is broken down, it must be the latter not the former. 
 
 If, then, evolution is to stand as a scientific law of nature, it must 
 stand on scientific observation and induction, independent of the meta- 
 physical and theological speculations of materialism. It is thus held 
 by many scientists. As a law of nature it is simply the largest 
 generalization respecting the uniform order or sequence of physical 
 phenomena. 
 
 2. Scientific evolution is not inconsistent with the personality of man. 
 There is no ground for person or spirit in any physical process. Such 
 a being cannot be an effect of a physical evolution. Personality is 
 above nature. Its existence cannot be incompatible with evolution 
 which goes on below it in a different and inferior sphere. 
 
 That man is a personal being is known as a fact in consciousness and 
 disclosed in all human history and literature. The question is, " What 
 is man ? " not, " How did he become so ? " The former question is in- 
 dependent of the latter. If man is in fact a personal being, his origin 
 
 * Sensation and Sensiferous Organs; Nineteenth Century, 1879. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 467 
 
 must be consistent with the fact. Since in fact he is a person, how he 
 came to be so must be consistent with the fact that he is so. Whatever 
 the process by which he became a person, it does not annul the fact 
 that he is a person. It has already been shown that rational intelli- 
 gence, feeling and determination cannot be identified with motion nor 
 transformed into it, and cannot be accounted for by matter and force. 
 The mere lengthening of the period through which the transformations 
 of physical force and the changes of matter go on, brings us no nearer 
 to this identification and transformation. The primordial matter is 
 matter still, though in nebulous form ; and the science which describes 
 its evolutions can never transcend the limits of physical science. The 
 facts of personality must be attributed to some other cause than matter 
 and force. According to Wallace, by natural selection inferior animal 
 forms could have produced apes, and afterwards a being having almost 
 all the physical characters of man as he is now ; but natural selection 
 by itself is incapable of producing, from an anthropoid animal, a man 
 such as we find in the most savage tribes known to us. He adds that 
 near the beginning of the tertiary period an unknown cause began to 
 accelerate the development of intelligence in this anthropoid being. 
 The conclusion seems forced on us that to whatever extent the human 
 organization may have been the result of evolution, no molecular action 
 of brain and nerve can account for intelligence, and that the facts of 
 personality cannot have resulted merely from the evolution of matter 
 and force, but must be attributed to some spiritual cause. 
 
 3. Scientific evolution is not inconsistent with moral law and a moral 
 system. Law in the domain of spirit is not the invariable and neces- 
 sary sequence which is called the law of nature ; it is the truth of 
 reason known to a rational free-agent as law, which in the exercise of 
 free-will he is under obligation to obey. If rational free-agents exist, 
 the moral law exists transcending the laws of nature, and between 
 moral law and the laws of nature there can be no conflict. When it 
 is objected that free-will is impossible because it implies exemption from 
 law, the objector already denies that there is any law in the universe 
 other than the invariable sequences of nature ; his objection is thus 
 merely the assumption that materialism is true. 
 
 Man is implicated in nature through his body. His physical or- 
 ganization is subject to natural law. As a personal being he knows 
 himself subject to the law of reason. There is no incompatibility be- 
 tween the two ; nor does evolution disclose any incompatibility. The 
 law under which the germ was evolved into a completely articulated 
 body no more conflicts with the mature man's subjection to the moral 
 law, than do the laws of gravitation, cohesion, chemical affinity, heat 
 or electricity, to which the germ in its evolution was equally subjected. 
 
468 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 And if the human species as to its physical characteristics was evolved 
 from lower species, that no more conflicts with man's freedom and 
 moral obligation under rational law than the development of the indi- 
 vidual germ into an individual human body. Defenders of free-will 
 themselves, knowing that the action of will must be under law, have 
 sought for its law in the invariable sequences of nature instead of in 
 the law of reason to free-will which is moral law, and thus have un- 
 wittingly surrendered the whole ground to the materialist. 
 
 4. Scientific evolution is consistent with Theism. However far evo- 
 lution may extend our knowledge into the past it cannot reach or ex- 
 plain the origin and ground of things. That question remains as before 
 unanswered by physical science. And evolution gives no new reason 
 for affirming that matter is eternal and that in it alone are the origin 
 and ground of all things. That affirmation transcends evolution and 
 all physical science as really as theism does. We come here to a limit 
 of physical science forever fixed and impassable. 
 
 The theory of evolution simply declares the process by which the 
 universe has advanced from a nebulous condition (whether primordial 
 or derived) to its present condition. The assumption that evolution 
 accounts for everything and excludes God from the universe is founded 
 on the error that so soon as we learn by what process anything is made 
 we have no longer any need of believing that it had a maker. Just 
 this common assumption led to the saying of Comte, " that the heavens 
 no longer declare the glory of God, but only the glory of Hipparchus, 
 Kepler, Newton and the rest who have found out the laws of their 
 sequence." It is as if one should say, " He must have been a great 
 sculptor who made this bronze statue." Another replies, " No sculptor 
 ever touched it; I saw it made myself; a formless, molten mass flowed 
 from a furnace, disappeared in the sand, and presently came out this 
 statue. There was a tendency in the molten mass to vary indefinitely ; 
 and something in its environment in the sand which helped all varia- 
 tions in the direction of the statue and checked all others. The result 
 is this statue. It was evolved ; it had no maker."* 
 
 Evolution, therefore, does not exclude God nor involve materialism. 
 As Mr. James Sully says, " To provide a substantial support for the 
 thread of phenomenal events, it would seem as if we must fall back on 
 some ultimate philosophic assumption respecting the efficient principle 
 in the process." And evolution presents no reason for assuming that 
 principle to be eternal matter. Some principle other than matter and 
 force must be assumed to account for the universe and its evolution. 
 Materialism can never be established by any discoveries of physical 
 science. 
 
 * See Personality : Blackwood & Sons, 1879 ; p. 107. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 469 
 
 Evolution, also, lias no explanation of the facts of personality and 
 here again leaves the demand for theism as it was. Prof. Fiske, speak- 
 ing of the facts of consciousness, says : " The assertion of the evolutionist 
 is purely historical in its import and includes no hypothesis whatever as 
 to the ultimate origin of consciousness ; least of all is it intended to imply 
 that consciousness was evolved from matter. It is not only inconceiv- 
 able how mind should have been produced from matter, but it is incon- 
 ceivable that it should have been produced from matter ; unless matter 
 possessed already the attribute of mind in embryo an alternative which 
 it is difficult to invest with any real meaning. . . . The problem is 
 altogether too abstruse to be solved with our present resources. . . , 
 The only point on which we can be clear is that no mere collocation of 
 material atoms could ever have evolved the phenomena of consciousness."* 
 
 There is, then, nothing in evolution which conflicts with Theism. To 
 find a cause for the events and for their serial order and a substantial 
 support for the phenomena, thought must fall back on some ultimate 
 power or being as the ground or source and the continuous support of 
 the process. It cannot be matter and force, for these are inadequate. 
 It may be Energizing Reason, for energizing reason, evermore and pro- 
 gressively realizing its ideals in the forms and under the limitations of 
 space and time, is adequate to be the ultimate principle or cause of the 
 universe and of all its physical processes. Prof. Lotze regards the 
 world-process as a gradual unfolding of a creative spiritual principle, 
 and both he and Ulrici recognize in the evolution both a mechanical 
 and a teleological process, implying both an energizing and a directing 
 agency. And both processes are recognized in the Energizing Reason. 
 
 Mr. Spencer, on the contrary, thinks that evolution is irreconcilable 
 with the idea of pre-existing mind.f And yet in some of his positions 
 he is himself in close affinity with theistic thought. He teaches that the 
 existence of " the Absolute is a necessary datum of consciousness," and 
 that " the belief which this datum constitutes has a higher warrant 
 than any other whatever ;" that according to the laws of thought it is 
 impossible to rid ourselves of it ; that it is essential in every thought, 
 ' being the obverse of our self-consciousness ;" that the Absolute is a 
 " Power by which we are acted upon" of which " every phenomenon" is 
 " a manifestation ;" that it is " omnipresent," and " wholly incompre- 
 hensible." An enthusiastic, but not very discriminating admirer records 
 his conviction that " Herbert Spencer has made an atheistic philosophy 
 impossible." It is true that Spencer here departs from his doctrine of 
 the relativity of knowledge and takes sides with the theologian in re- 
 
 * J. Fiske; Darwinism and other Essays; pp. 67, 68. 
 f Reply to Martineau, Contemporary Rev. Vol. XX. 
 
470 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 cognizing primitive and constitutional data of consciousness, and know- 
 ledge of the existence of absolute omnipresent power acting on us and 
 manifesting itself in all phenomena. The theologian goes only a step 
 further in affirming that since the Absolute Power acts on us and mani- 
 fests itself in all phenomena, we know what it is, at least to this extent, 
 that it must be a cause endowed with powers adequate to account for 
 all phenomena both of matter and mind ; that therefore it can only 
 be Reason Energizing. With this also Mr. Spencer agrees so far as to 
 recognize the Unknowable as accounting for the phenomena both of 
 matter and mind; but after thus recognizing it and even partially 
 defining it accordantly, he falls into contradiction in saying that it is 
 unknowable. And sometimes he seems to think of it as the one sub- 
 stance of Spinoza, as when he says that the phenomena of mind and 
 matter are " modes of the Unknowable." 
 
 But Energizing Reason fully accounts for the phenomena, since it is 
 at once the Reason that orders and directs and the Efficiency that 
 energizes. The universe is thus accounted for dynamically as the 
 effect of a sufficient cause. It is the effect of the energizing of the 
 Absolute Reason progressively realizing its own eternal and archetypal 
 truths, laws, ideals and ends in a system of dependent beings, personal 
 and impersonal, under the limits of space, time and quantity. 
 
 It should be added that Spencer's Unknowable involves every diffi- 
 culty which is so loudly charged on the theistic doctrine of creation. 
 If the evolution of the unknowable absolute had a beginning, why 
 did the Absolute rest inactive from eternity, and at a certain time 
 wake up as it were and begin the evolution ? Did it create the homo- 
 geneous matter out of nothing, or emanate it from itself, or find it as 
 it had lain motionless from all eternity, and start it into action ? If 
 the evolution had no beginning but has gone on from eternity as now, 
 then the homogeneous, which is the foundation of the evolution, drops 
 out, the universe has always been in a condition of heterogeneity 
 resulting from some previous action of force, and we lose our supposed 
 evolution from the homogeneous. Theism, without defining how long 
 the universe has existed, affirms that so long as it has existed, it has 
 always depended on God for its existence, its arrangement and its 
 action. This meets all that is philosophically essential in the idea of 
 creation. 
 
 It must also be considered that while Spencer takes sides here with 
 theism as to its theory of knowledge in affirming that we have know- 
 ledge of Absolute Being, while thus he encounters all the difficulties of 
 theism, and yet finds his Unknowable inadequate to account for the 
 universe and its evolution, he is at the same time inconsistent with his 
 own theory of knowledge in the recognition of the Absolute. He 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 47 1 
 
 cannot consistently hold that all knowledge is relative and at the 
 same time affirm knowledge of the existence of unconditioned, abso- 
 lute, omnipresent power ; he cannot affirm that we know only the 
 finite and at the same time affirm that we know the existence of a 
 power that transcends the finite. If all knowledge is relative, the 
 knowledge that the Absolute exists even as unknowable, is impossible. 
 The thought of light could never originate in the mind of a man born 
 blind. A brute can never know its own irrationality. The very 
 assertion of the knowledge of the Absolute" as existing although incom- 
 prehensible is the assertion that knowledge is not wholly relative and 
 is not limited to finite things ; for it asserts knowledge of the absolute 
 as distinguished from the finite. In his biology, psychology and ethics, 
 Spencer's theory of the Absolute is not practically operative, but he 
 writes as if man's knowledge was limited to the phenomenal and the 
 finite. In his doctrine of the Unknowable he accepts for the moment 
 the theistic theory of knowledge. 
 
 The following thoughts of Spencer the theist heartily endorses.: 
 " He who contemplates the universe from the religious point of view, 
 must learn to see that this which we call science is one constituent of 
 the great whole ; and as such ought to be regarded with a sentiment 
 like that which the remainder excites. While he who contemplates 
 the universe from the scientific point of view, must learn to see that 
 this which we call religion is similarly a constituent of the great whole ; 
 and being such must be treated as a subject of science with no more 
 prejudice than any other reality. It behooves each party to try to 
 understand the other, with the conviction that the other has some- 
 thing worthy to be understood ; and with the conviction that when 
 mutually recognized this something will be the basis of a complete re- 
 conciliation."* 
 
 IV. Scientific evolution affords to materialism no relief from its 
 difficulties and contradictions, and is itself discredited if identified 
 with materialism or used as a vehicle for its dogmas. 
 
 1. Scientific evolution, which if true, is only a factual law of empi- 
 rical science, cannot be identified with materialism, which is a dog- 
 matic metaphysical assertion as to what is the nature of absolute and 
 eternal being. 
 
 Materialism rests on its own basis as a metaphysical theory of the 
 universe. It is a theory incompetent to account for the universe and 
 full of contradictions. When evolution is made fche vehicle for its 
 propagation, the incompetency and contradictions of materialism are 
 imputed to evolution and break it down. The reason why evolution 
 
 * First Principles, p. 21, 6. 
 
472 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 has been so strenuously opposed is that it has been dogmatically and 
 loudly proclaimed as essentially and necessarily a doctrine of mate- 
 rialism. 
 
 Physical science cannot account for the facts of the physical uni- 
 verse itself nor for the facts of personality. Evolution, when iden- 
 tified with materialism, is made responsible for accounting for both, and 
 it fails. 
 
 2. Evolution removes no contradictions and difficulties of material- 
 ism in accounting for the physical universe and its facts, but sometimes 
 proves them irremovable. 
 
 The law of the persistence of force fails to account for all the 
 known manifestations of force. Neither the mechanical nor the or- 
 ganic conception of the material universe accounts for its existence 
 and the facts observed in it. Whether it is mechanism or organism 
 it reveals a power outside of itself. Evolution does not relieve the 
 materialist from this difficulty, but at every step reveals it anew. 
 
 Evolution precludes the materialistic conception that the world had 
 no beginning. When the materialist says that matter is eternal, it 
 seems easy enough to believe and impossible to disprove it. But so 
 soon as we come to unfold it into its real significance its impossibility 
 is apparent. And this is precisely what evolution demonstrates. At 
 first the evolutionist tells us of original, primordial matter, and reasons 
 as if this nebulous stuff were really the ultimate ground of all things 
 and no question could arise from whence it came or how it came to be 
 constituted and arranged as it w r as. But this childlike faith cannot 
 continue. 
 
 Mr. Spencer tells us that " Matter, Motion and Force, as cognizable 
 by human intelligence, can neither come into existence nor cease to 
 exist."* But if motion is eternal, then the homogeneous never existed ; 
 for with the first motion it ceases to be homogeneous and equilibrated. 
 If the theory of evolution is true, motion is not eternal. 
 
 If now the materialist says that the homogeneous is eternal, then it 
 must have existed eternally without motion ; and at some time there 
 was a beginning of the motion. The motion could not have been 
 caused from within the homogeneous stuff, for that is in complete 
 equilibrium ; in it all the matter and force of the universe are motion- 
 less in equilibrium; and the entire universe being thus equilibrated 
 cannot start itself into motion. Mr. -Spencer says it is an unstable 
 equilibrium ; but these words Jiave no pertinence to an equilibrium of 
 the entire universe. Once in equilibrium, it must remain motionless 
 forever, unless the motion in which the evolution begins is either 
 
 * First Principles, p. 358, 109. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 473 
 
 without a cause, which is absurd, or else is caused by some power out- 
 side of the universe. 
 
 And every theory of evolution must assume some particular arrange- 
 ment of matter and force at the beginning, containing the possibility of 
 what is to be evolved and excluding the possibility of every different 
 evolution. Thus not merely the primordial stuff, but its primitive 
 constitution and laws are antecedent to the evolution and cannot be 
 accounted for by it. The evolution cannot go beyond itself and behind 
 that primordial arrangement to determine or cause them, and so to 
 cause its own beginning and its own determinate course. Any cos- 
 mogony which proposes to account for the- existence and constitution 
 of the. universe as a whole by the uniform sequences or laws of the in- 
 teraction of its parts is absurd. The assertion that evolution proves 
 materialism is just this absurdity. 
 
 The fact of a beginning is also demonstrated by evolution in another 
 way ; It gives scientific proof of the fact. Under the action of physi- 
 cal causes according to their known laws, the evolution must come to 
 an end in complete and stable equilibrium, and all life, and all motion, 
 molar and molecular, must cease. But if the evolution, according 
 to its own laws, must come to an end, then it must have had a be- 
 ginning. 
 
 If it is objected that the assumed homogeneous in which the present 
 evolution began was itself the equilibrated matter in which a previous 
 evolution had ended, and that thus a rhythmic alternation of differen- 
 tiation and integration may go on without beginning or end, the answer 
 is that the equilibrium in which a process of evolution issues cannot be 
 unstable, but must be a fixed and stable equilibrium in which every 
 force hi the universe is held still by an equal force and all matter is 
 motionless, and there is no power within the equilibrated universe to 
 renew motion in any of its parts. If now we suppose a force incident 
 on it, it must be a force from outside of the material universe, and 
 therefore hypermaterial. 
 
 Evolution at every step in its progress equally demonstrates in nature 
 a power above and beyond nature. This I shall show in another 
 section. 
 
 Therefore, if the theory of evolution is true, it demonstrates that the 
 materialistic assumption of the eternal and independent existence of 
 matter is false. 
 
 And reason finds no support for materialism in the immense periods 
 of time recognized in evolution. Evolution gives us a time-world 
 evolving in a continuity of successive causal action and interaction, as 
 gravitation gives us a space-world in coexistent unity of causal action 
 and interaction through space. Materialism must find in matter and 
 
474 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 force not merely the power which accounts for and explains the be- 
 ginning of the evolution, but that which continuously sustains and 
 directs it in every moment of time and in the interaction of bodies co- 
 existent in space. Whether we think of a rhythmic alternation of 
 differentiation and integration each lasting trillions of years, or of 
 rhythmic vibrations of an ether, trillions of which beat on the eye in 
 a second of time, or of a single antecedence and sequence of cause and 
 effect, whether we think of interaction between bodies in space through 
 millions of miles or through the immeasurably little distance of co- 
 hering atoms, we find an action which matter and motor-force alone 
 cannot explain and which reveals the presence of a power transcend- 
 ing these. Evolution does not help the materialist out of his diffi- 
 culty here. On the contrary, evolution, as being not merely the 
 development of powers previously existing in the primordial matter 
 but a progress or growth in which new powers come into action, at 
 every grade attained in the ascent reveals the presence of a liyper- 
 material power. The long periods of the evolution might dull the 
 belief of the existence of God in a deist who regards the deity only as 
 the maker of a machine which he sets to running without his interven- 
 tion. Even here, however, the objection would be addressed to the 
 imagination rather than to the reasoning power ; a First Cause re- 
 moved to so immense a distance in time, would make little impression ; 
 like a fixed star so far off that it has no parallax. And it is doubtless 
 the very length of this period of evolution which gives it an atheistic 
 influence on the popular mind, as if it crowded God off beyond the 
 confines of the universe. But tljis affects the imagination only ; there 
 is nothing in it to convince the understanding. And this influence acts 
 only against the mechanical conception of the deist. It has no force 
 against rational theism which finds God immanent in nature ; and 
 none against Christian Theism which reveals God as " Him in whom 
 we live and move and have our being." 
 
 3. Evolution gives no aid to materialism in resolving mind into a 
 function of matter and all mental acts into products of matter and 
 motor-force. 
 
 It is indeed used as an argument for this conclusion and as such 
 is widely regarded as unanswerable. But it is important to remember 
 that the question is as to what we are, not as to how we came to be 
 so. The question what an Egyptian pyramid is, is independent of the 
 question how it was built. Any theory how it was built must give 
 way, if it involves the denial that the pyramid is what we know it to 
 be. Of the same purport is Chauncey's Wright's remark in a review 
 of Spencer, that the critical question is not how we come to believe^ 
 but why we believe. In a previous chapter it has been demonstrated 
 
UiUVERSIT 
 
 MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUt&ON, 475 
 
 that we know ourselves as personal beings, and that if this is not real 
 knowledge no knowledge is possible. If the doctrine that mind is a 
 function of matter, that the Ego is but a series of sensations, is an 
 essential element in the theory of evolution, then it is the theory 
 itself which is proved false, not the personal Ego that is proved 
 non-existent. The theory that mind is a function of matter would 
 also involve a radical change in the accepted definition of matter. 
 
 But in fact evolution leads to the contrary conclusion. The law of 
 the persistence of force is essential to evolution. But it has been 
 found impossible to reduce the facts of mind under that law. The 
 mind-process and the motor-process go on parallel but independent. 
 As Prof. Clifford says, the mind-series " goes along by itself." The 
 human mind will not rest content with a series of phenomena refer- 
 able to no agent or cause. We shall not be likely to attempt to think 
 of the unity of the two by the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz. 
 Dogmatic materialists quietly assume against all evidence that the 
 mind-series is dependent on the motor-series and cooly reason as if this 
 were an established fact, or else ignore it as not an object of scientific 
 thought. But evidently the only legitimate scientific procedure is to 
 recognize the mind-series as the manifestation of a hypermaterial agent 
 or cause ; and especially in view of the fact that in self-consciousness 
 a man has knowledge of himself as one identical individual endowed 
 with reason, rational sensibility and free-will. 
 
 4. Scientific evolution affords to materialism no basis on which to 
 teach good morals. 
 
 First, there would be no data for constructing a theory of ethics. 
 Ethical ideas in their distinctive sense would have no legitimate place. 
 The idea of right and wrorfg does not arise in the sphere of the g 
 material. Even when we speak of the right or wrong action of me- 
 chanical or organic forces, the words mean merely its conformity or 
 nonconformity with a truth of reason which as regulative or directive 
 of the action is a law to it. To materialism the distinction of right 
 and wrong has nO meaning. Evolution, going on solely in the sphere 
 of the material, cannot originate the distinction nor give it any sig- 
 nificance. As a law of nature it is entirely compatible with the dis- 
 tinction when once it has originated in the reason ; but, because it is 
 merely a law of nature, it can give no aid to materialism in its unavail- 
 ing struggles to construct from materialistic data an idea of moral law 
 or of right and wrong which will meet and satisfy the moral conscious- 
 ness of mankind. 
 
 And on the materialistic supposition there would be no moral agents 
 capable of knowing and obeying moral law. Men would not be 
 rational free-agents, but merely material organisms in which physical 
 
476 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 force acts under cosmic action mechanically and necessarily. A man 
 then would be no more responsible for his actions, no more virtuous or 
 vicious than a river which " windeth at its own sweet will." And there 
 would be no place for the law of love ; for this has meaning only as 
 rational beings know themselves related to each other under the law of 
 universal reason and thus united in a rational and moral system. In 
 the sphere of matter and force the stronger necessarily prevails over the 
 weaker ; in the sphere of reason and personality the law requires the 
 stronger to protect and nelp the weaker. 
 
 In the absence of moral ideas, moral law and moral agents, nothing 
 remains to regulate the conduct of life but the desire of enjoyment. 
 Reflective thought can rise from this desire to a knowledge of the ex- 
 pedient ; and this is the highest attainment possible. For the regula- 
 tion of conduct there is no longer a rational and moral law declaring 
 what ought to be done. There is only an invariable sequence or law of 
 nature ; which is that every man necessarily follows his nature and 
 seeks whatever he thinks will most promote his own enjoyment. 
 
 Secondly, if now we cast about for some general principle or law de- 
 termining how a man shall seek his own interest, evolution brings in a 
 law which is positively immoral. It must bring in such a law and 
 cannot bring in any other. The law of the survival of the fittest is 
 only a specific instance of the law of all material force, that the stronger 
 must prevail over the weaker. This becomes the universal law accord- 
 ing to which all action in the universe necessarily goes on. That the 
 stronger always overpowers and crowds out the weaker is the law of 
 minerals, and plants, and brutes, and men. The idea of right is lost 
 in the idea of might. If now one attempts to find any principle for a 
 moral law regulating the whole universe* it could be only the principle 
 which is subversive of all morality, that " Might makes right.'" And 
 so Prof. Haeckel represents it : " None but the idealist scholar who 
 closes his eyes to the real truth, or the priest who tries to keep his 
 spiritual flock in ecclesiastical leading-strings, can any longer tell the 
 tale of 'the moral ordering of the world.' . . . The terrible and 
 ceaseless struggle for existence gives the real impulse to the blind 
 course of the world. A ' moral ordering ' and a ' purposive plan ' of the 
 world can only be visible, if the presence of an immoral rule of the 
 strongest and undesigned organization is ignored."* The theory, if 
 made a basis of ethics, would seem to justify the Spartans in destroying 
 feeble infants, which Prof. Haeckel, though not justifying it, compares 
 to a gardener's pulling the weeds from among the cultivated plants.f 
 
 * Evolution of Man : Appleton's Translation. Vol. I., pp. Ill, 112. 
 f History of Creation : Translation. Vol. I., pp. 172, 173. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 477 
 
 The same would justify savages in killing their old people. Mr. Dar- 
 win, though certainly not intending to justify it as a universal rule, 
 speaks of it as evincing " sound sense." ' Unconscious selection in the 
 strictest sense of the word, i. e., the saving of the more useful animals 
 and the neglect or slaughter of the less useful without 'any thought of 
 the future, must have gone on occasionally from the remotest periods 
 and among the most barbarous nations. . . . When the Fuegians are 
 hard pressed by want, they kill their old women for food rather than 
 their dogs ; for, as we were assured, ' old women no use dogs catch 
 otters.' The same sound seme would surely lead them to preserve 
 their most useful dogs when still harder pressed by famine. Mr. Old- 
 field, who has seen so much of the Aborigines of Australia, informs 
 me that they are all very glad to get an English Kangaroo-dog, and 
 several instances have been known of the father killing his own infant 
 that the mother might suckle the much-prized puppy."* I suppose 
 Mr. Darwin would call this also "sound sense;" and according to 
 materialistic evolution it would be. It would not be justifiable or right 
 any more than a stone's falling to the ground is justifiable or right, for 
 the idea of right would be wanting and the word would have no mean- 
 ing ; but it would be acting according to the law of nature, the only 
 law supposed to exist. Accordingly a professor lecturing recently 
 before the Academy of Useful Arts on " Evolution in the Arts," said, 
 according to the report of the newspapers : " It is contrary to the law 
 of nature to have any sympathy for paupers, crippled folk, or Indians." 
 Prof. Bowne cites Hellwald, an enthusiastic German evolutionist, as 
 insisting on the struggle for existence and the right of the stronger as 
 the only basis of morals ; and as claiming that the word morality should 
 be banished as void of meaning from scientific writings. He describes 
 all philanthropic efforts to raise men to ideal humanity as humanity- 
 hypocrisy (Humanitats-heuchelei.)f And Mr. Roebuck has said : " The 
 first business of a colonist is to clear the country of wild beasts, and the 
 most noxious of all the wild beasts is the wild man." 
 
 Thirdly, materialistic evolution gives no basis for the just rights of 
 the individual in relation to the State ; but if logically consistent must 
 declare it to be an invariable law of nature that the State as the stronger 
 hold the individual as the weaker in subjection to its own arbitrary and 
 despotic power. 
 
 Mr. Spencer says : " The life of the social organism must, as an end, 
 rank above the lives of its units." This accords with the " dulce et 
 decorum est pro patria mori " of all ethics. But Mr. Spencer teaches 
 
 * Variations under Domestication : Vol. II., Chap, xx., p. 260. Am. Ed. 
 
 f Culturgeschichte in ihrer natiirlichen Entwickelung : Studies in Theism, p. 423. 
 
478 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 that the interest of the State and that of its individual units conflict 
 and can be brought into harmony only in the remote future by natural 
 evolution.* As civilization slowly approaches this harmony the sub- 
 ordination, loyalty and allegiance of the individual to the State is pro- 
 portionately lessened. Ludwig Noire regards the State as an organism 
 which controls, appropriates and uses the individual for its own advan- 
 tage. " This consideration," he says, " clears away much hollow 
 philanthropy, which applies the standard of individual morality to the- 
 State, not considering that the State is a great organism of a peculiar 
 kind which is subject to far other laws than the individual. Hence 
 the State may demand of the individual to sacrifice his life and all the 
 highest ends of his life to the State."f Mr. Darwin, in answering the 
 objection that the sexless working bee could never have been evolved 
 under the law of the survival of the fittest, maintains that the swarin 
 must be considered as the unit ; the swarm which has the most working 
 bees would have the advantage in the struggle for life. Noire, Spencer 
 and other evolutionists conceive of a State as a unit in the same way. 
 Society is treated as itself actually and literally an organism of which 
 individuals are the component parts, and trades, guilds and other sub- 
 ordinate unities are organs. The individual is lost in the organization 
 and exists only for it. The conclusion would be that the more com- 
 plete the despotism of the State over the individual, the more prosper- 
 ous it will be. Here comes in a sort of law of altruistic self-sacrifice ; 
 but it is compulsory and not of love ; as a lamb exercises self-sacrifice 
 when devoured by a wolf. 
 
 Christianity teaches that we are members one of another, and are one 
 body in Christ. But it is the common membership of free-agents in a 
 rational and moral system ; and on this fact the law of love is founded. 
 Christianity in the very act of declaring the community of men in their 
 common relations to God in Christ has emphasized the worth of the 
 individual and the sacredness of his rights, and thus has laid the foun- 
 dation of political and personal liberty, of the dignity of labor, and of 
 the distinctive ideas of modern progress. Its command is, " Honor all 
 men." It has established the principle that government itself is subject 
 to God's law of love, is bound to enact and enforce just laws and to 
 protect the rights of the citizens, and exists for the good of the gov- 
 erned (Rom. xiii. 1-7). It recognizes the individual person and the 
 organized society as the two poles through which, according to the 
 Christian law, love must pass in order to complete its circuit and bring 
 the rights of the individual and the authority of the State into har- 
 
 * Data of Ethics, pp. 133, 134. Chap. viii. 
 
 | Die Welt als EuUvickelung des Geistes ; S. 112. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 479 
 
 mony. And this harmony, however imperfectly realized, is required 
 from the beginning and through all the conflicts of progressive civiliza- 
 tion as the unchanging and universal law of God. 
 
 Materialistic evolution breaks down in attempting to complete the 
 circuit ; it knows no rights either of the individual or of the State and 
 leaves their interests in conflict until some future period not affecting 
 the interests of the states and persons now existing, and therefore, 
 according to the materialistic theory, of no practical concern to them. 
 Materialistic evolution sweeps away the Christian conception founded 
 on the law of love, and carries us back to the old heathenish concep- 
 tion that the State owes no duties to the citizen and the citizen has no 
 rights as related to the State. This is the same theory of the State 
 which Comte reached from the starting-point of complete Positivism. 
 
 Mr. Spencer finds a conflict between Egoism and Altruism. He re- 
 cognizes the existence of altruistic instincts both in man and the brutes. 
 He also teaches that altruistic action secures a return of sympathy and 
 help, and thus conduces to the advantage and consequently to the 
 " survival " of the individual. "With great clearness and force he 
 demonstrates the reciprocal necessity of egoism and altruism to the 
 well-being both of the individual and of the species, and points out the 
 evils necessarily resulting from the action of either alone. He also 
 indicates a progress of altruistic enjoyment by the survival of the fit- 
 test till a man will find as much pleasure in serving and as much pain 
 in injuring another as in being served or being injured himself; and 
 so will come a millenium of universal love. 
 
 But altruism and egoism present themselves to him, nevertheless, as 
 contradictory principles, and he discusses at length their possible " con- 
 ciliation."* The difficulty is a serious one to him as an evolutionist, 
 because it implies two contradictory laws of nature, each fundamental 
 in the very constitution of the universe, the law of egoism that it is 
 essential to the survival of the fittest that the strong crowd out or crush 
 the weak, and the law of altruism that it is essential to the survival of 
 the fittest that the strong protect and help the weak. It is an ethical 
 contradiction in the very essence of evolution since, according to its 
 laws, that which increases the happiness of the stronger destroys the 
 happiness of the weaker. Christianity finds no such contradiction. It 
 recognizes the love of self and the love of others as factors in universal 
 love ; it commands to love God with all the heart and our neighbor as 
 o it >v* -elves. Christ presents the law of love not as a necessary ?nd uni- 
 form sequence of nature, but as a law of supreme reason declaring the 
 duty of rational free-agents in a rational and moral system. The par- 
 
 * Data of Ethics : Chaps, xi.-xiv. 
 
480 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 ticular service which in the exercise of his powers a man must render 
 from time to time to God, to particular individuals and communities of 
 men, and to himself, he must determine according to his best judgment 
 in view of their reciprocal relations in the system as well as of the 
 circumstances of each case. Substitute the Christian law of love 
 for the materialistic theory and all antagonism disappears. Egoism 
 and altruism are not the names of wrong and right character. The 
 Christian law of love requires a man to love himself equally with his 
 neighbor as on a level in their common relation to God and having 
 equal rights in the rational system of which God, the common Father 
 of all, is the head. All that part of " conduct " in which a man pro- 
 vides for himself and his own family may be as really a manifestation 
 of universal love as the conduct of a martyr dying in fidelity to prin- 
 ciple or of a wealthy man distributing his thousands to endow colleges 
 or to spread Christian civilization. Christianity recognizes, not less 
 than Mr. Spencer, that a person must exist before he can act and must 
 develop his own powers and resources in order to the more effective 
 service of others and of society as a whole. It admits that, in this 
 sense, egoism is necessary to promote the interests of the community, 
 and altruism or the service of others is necessary to promote the welfare 
 of the individual rendering the altruistic service. As already observed, 
 Christianity has taught the worth of the individual, the sacredness of 
 his rights, the equality and fraternity of men in their relations to God, 
 their common father, and has made these ideas powers in modern civil- 
 ization. It has also taught the altruistic and self-sacrificing aspect of 
 Christian love. It has taught it in the whole life and work -of Christ 
 and has made it a power in civilization wherever, in any approxima- 
 tion to its essential character, Christianity, has prevailed. It has made 
 Egoism and Altruism coefficients in human progress. It has taught 
 men self-respect and self-reliance and aspiration to realize their highest 
 ideal of human perfection even in the humblest sphere and surround- 
 ings ; and has taught them to live for humanity in self-consecrating 
 service. It has taught them these as the two aspects of universal love. 
 Evolution leaves the two in contradiction. And so, in the practical 
 application of the theory in morals, some, like Haeckel, teach the law 
 of supreme selfishness as the only ethical teaching of evolution, and 
 so, if consistent, must admit that it annihilates all moral distinctions ; 
 others teach a one-sided altruism, implying an almost mystical doctrine 
 of self-annihilation ; an element of thought which seems to crop out in 
 the writings of George Eliot. 
 
 It may be objected that Mr. Spencer's Ethics ought not to be called 
 materialistic. He believes in the existence of an Unknowable Abso- 
 lute, which is an omnipresent power, transcending both matter and 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 481 
 
 mind, but having the properties which account for both. This Un- 
 knowable is manifested to us in ail that we know. It manifests itself 
 therefore in the phenomena of mind as really as in the totally different 
 phenomena of matter. But Mr. Spencer, for no good reason which I 
 can see, and inconsistently with the requirements of his own agnos- 
 ticism, arbitrarily and positively excludes the existence of a spiritual 
 system and recognizes only the evolution of a system of mere matter 
 and force. In his Biology, his Psychology, his Data of Ethics, and his 
 Sociology, he attempts to explain all facts of life, mind, personality and 
 morality by the evolution of matter and force. In his Data of Ethics 
 is no recognition of will, no distinction between the voluntary and the 
 instinctive, no intimation that rationality and voluntariness are essen- 
 tial to moral character and responsibility, no distinction of " conduct " 
 in a man and in an insect, or even in a plant or stone ; and in his 
 account of the Will in the Psychology he explicitly denies its freedom 
 in any other sense than freedom from external hindrance to do what 
 one desires to do the freedom which every mouse has when not in a 
 trap ; so that moral " conduct " is as truly predicable of a mouse as of a 
 man. Hence he gives us, as he himself says, a " presentation of moral 
 conduct in physical terms ;" and speaks of "that redistribution of 
 matter and motion constituting evolution." In the First Principles he 
 avows agnosticism. In his other works he makes little use of it except 
 sometimes to attempt in the Unknowable an identification of matter 
 with mind, of motion with thought, which he acknowledges to be im- 
 possible in the knowable. He disclaims materialism. His disciples for 
 themselves and in his behalf disclaim materialism with some indignation 
 at the ignorance of those who impute it to them. But why should 
 they think the imputation of materialism unjust when their agnosticism 
 becomes dogmatic ; when it affirms that the evolution through w.hich 
 alone the Unknowable is manifested is merely " the redistribution of 
 matter and motion." Materialism can hardly be only " a working 
 hypothesis " when it thus dogmatizes. 
 
 Fourthly, materialistic evolution gives no motives practically effective 
 in deterring from what the common conscience of man forbids as wrong 
 or in inciting to what it commands as right ; or, as the materialist must 
 say, in deterring from what is hurtful to society and inciting to what is 
 useful. It presents no religious sanction, no moral law, no sense of 
 obligation, no beauty of holiness, no dignity of virtue, no consciousness 
 of freedom and responsibility, no sense of ill-desert. It appeals to no 
 motive other than those which incite the brutes ; it recognizes no human 
 virtue different from that of the brutes, and accustoms men to justify 
 their conduct by appealing to the actions of brutes. Mr. Spencer says : 
 " Consider the relation of a healthy mother to a healthy infant. . . . 
 
482 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 In yielding its natural food to the child the mother receives gratifica- 
 tion ; and to the child there conies the satisfaction of appetite 
 
 The act is jone that is to both exclusively pleasurable, while abstention 
 entails pain on both ; and it is consequently of the kind which we 
 here call absolutely right."* Evidently the action of a cat suckling 
 her kittens is in the same sense and for the same reasons " absolutely 
 right." Dr. Van Buren Denslqw, arguing that tne law, " Thou shalt 
 not steal," is simply a command enforced by the strong for their own 
 good on the weak, says : " Universal society might be pictured, for the 
 illustration of this feature of the moral code, as consisting of two sets 
 of swine, one of which is in the clover and the other out. The swine 
 that are in the clover grunt, ' Thou shalt not steal ; put up the bars.' 
 The swine that are out of the clover grunt, * Did you make the clover ? 
 let down the bars.' ' Thou shalt net steal ' is a maxim impressed by 
 property holders on non-property holders. . . . No one would say 
 that if a lion lay gorged with his excessive feast amidst the scattered 
 carcass of a deer, and a jaguar or a hyena stealthily bore away a 
 haunch thereof, the act of the hyena was less virtuous than that of the 
 lion. How does the case of two bushmen, between whom the same in- 
 cident occurs, differ from that of the two quadrupeds ? So far as the 
 irresistible promptings of nature may be said to constitute a divine law, 
 there are really two laws. The law to him who will be injured by 
 stealing is, ' Thou shalt not steal,' meaning thereby thou shalt not suffer 
 another to steal from you. The law of him who cannot survive with- 
 out stealing is simply, ' Thou shalt in stealing avoid being detected.' "f 
 And the desire of happiness is not a motive adequate to account for 
 all that the world admires as right action nor a criterion by which to 
 distinguish it. In a city smitten recently with yellow fever, when all 
 who- could were fleeing, a young salesman in a drug store said that he 
 was entrusted with the sale of drugs for the sick, and he would not 
 leave his post ; he remained and died. When General Griffin was in 
 command of the military sub-district of Texas, with head-quarters at 
 Galveston, the yellow fever became epidemic in that city. By the 
 removal of his superior he had already succeeded to the temporary 
 command of the whole district and was ordered to remove to head- 
 quarters at' New Orleans. But not a surgeon was left for duty at the 
 post at. Galveston; the superior officers were down with the fever; the 
 troops were dying as rapidly as the citizens. General Griffin tele- 
 graphed to Washington for permission to stay at Galveston as his post 
 of duty in that time of distress. He stayed and died. A person 
 
 * Data of Ethics, 102, pp. 261, 262. 
 
 | Denslow's Modern Thinkers, pp. 243, 244, 245. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 483 
 
 poisoned his next of kin who was heir to a great estate, was never 
 suspected, became heir to the estate, and lived to old age in wealth 
 and luxury, trusted and respected by all. All men abhor the last as 
 a criminal and honor the two first as heroes. Yet if the desire and 
 attainment of happiness are the essence of virtue, there is no ground 
 for this discrimination. And according to the theory of the absolute 
 virtue of a happy cat and kittens, the happy murderer was virtuous so 
 far as the murder attained for him a life of happiness and abstention 
 from the murder would have prevented it; and the suffering and 
 dying heroes were vicious and depraved because their action issued 
 speedily in the loss of their own lives with all the possible happiness 
 of many years, and therefore gave little help to those who were 
 suffering around them. 
 
 Xor does this theory give any motive for deeds which the world 
 admires as heroic virtue. It recognizes no motive but the desire of 
 happiness. How can that impel a man to self-denial, suffering and 
 death either to make other people happy, or to obey a delusive idea of 
 right, empty to him of all significance ? On the contrary the inference 
 seems to be logically inevitable that the self-sacrifice for others' welfare, 
 the patriotic offering of life for one's country, the martyrdom in fidelity 
 to principle, which the world has admired as the highest and most 
 heroic virtue, have been mistaken and foolish actions approved in this 
 practical age only by doctrinaires and sentimentalists ; that even the 
 sufferings and death of Jesus to save mankind from sin were the mani- 
 festation only of an inconsiderate enthusiasm. And opinions looking 
 towards, if not explicitly avowing this inference are already^promulgated. 
 
 It is said that, after ages of evolution, altruistic action will be enjoyed 
 by future men, more than egoistic. But of what concern, on this theory, 
 is the happiness of generations of Altruists, to be evolved ten thousand 
 years hence, to the Egoists who are living now. And how can that re- 
 mote happiness of unknown persons, with characters strange and incom- 
 prehensible to the Egoist, be a motive to induce him to sacrifice his own 
 happiness to contribute some infinitesimal amount to the development 
 of them and their enjoyment ? What barrier of motive does this theory 
 set up against any act deemed by the common conscience of man to be 
 a crime, if by it the Egoist thinks he can promote his own interest ? 
 
 Fifthly, the materialistic theory of evolution tends to break down 
 moral law and order and to give free course to the worst passions of 
 men. 
 
 If materialistic evolution becomes generally believed, it must under- 
 mine morality. The full effect would not be immediate, for the moral 
 and religious education of the present generation would still be influen- 
 tial ; but it would be inevitable in the near future. The principles of 
 
484 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 human brotherhood and the equal rights of man under the common 
 fatherhood of God, the humane virtues and the spirit of self-sacrificing 
 love and all the influences with which Christianity has quickened modern 
 civilization will pass away in its collapse. Enthusiasm for truth and 
 right and humanity w T ill give place to a cold and clammy expediency. 
 There will be no more place for the high appreciation of rectitude and 
 fidelity to principle above property, and pleasure, and life, which even 
 the heathen have had. Juvenal says : 
 
 " Esto bonus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem 
 Integer ; ambig-use si quando citabere testis 
 Incertaeque rei, Phalaris licet imperet ut sis 
 Falsus, et admoto dictet perjuria tauro, 
 Summum crede nefas animara prseferre pudori 
 Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas." (Sat. Viii. 79-84.) 
 
 The world admires these sentiments and esteems actions accordant 
 with them as the noblest heroism. But there is no place for them in 
 the materialistic ethics ; it must pronounce them foolish rather than 
 noble ; for according to that ethics the only " causa vivendi" is pleasure, 
 and there is no conceivable reason why a man should sacrifice his 
 pleasure for any idea of truth and right or for the promotion of the 
 pleasure of others. 
 
 Nor is it merely refined sentiments of honor and right which will dis- 
 appear. The sense of moral responsibility w r ill be extinguished ; man 
 will claim as his right what he gets by superior force or cunning ; success 
 will be the sufficient justification of action and will be more and more 
 worshiped as the supreme standard and ultimate criterion of praise and 
 blame. 
 
 It is a serious question how far the prevalence of this materialism is 
 responsible already for a decay of virtue. J. S. Mill said, " The chival- 
 rous spirit has now-a-days almost disappeared from our books of educa- 
 tion. For the first time in history the young of both sexes are growing 
 up unromantic." Mr. Sumner's anti-slavery principles are now spoken 
 of as " sentimental politics." " When the second Napoleon, after mount- 
 ing his uncle's throne by the unscrupulous use of force, rode in triumph 
 into London, a leading English journal derided the morality which pro- 
 tested against paying homage,to a success achieved by treachery, perjury 
 and massacre, as a morality of Sunday-schools. And the British ambas- 
 sador at Constantinople wrote respecting the butchery of the Bulgarians 
 that ' the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from 
 occurring in Turkey which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is 
 not affected by the question whether it was 10,000 or 20,000 who 
 perished.' " This is the same morality of force which is expressed in 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 485 
 
 the words of Napoleon, in reply to some remonstrance as to the number 
 of lives which his wars were costing, as reported by Prince Metternich, 
 " What is the destruction of a million lives to a man like me ?" 
 
 The full realization of the practical issues of this materialistic Hedon- 
 ism will not be visible in this generation trained in Christian civiliza- 
 tion ; certainly not in the scientists who proclaim it. These have been 
 highly educated in Christian schools ; they have no fear as to the means 
 of subsistence ; their honorable position in society is insured ; their in- 
 terest in science lifts them above the greed of gain and the baser sources 
 of enjoyment ; and for the most part they are not seeking to destroy the 
 ideas of moral law and right but, retaining them, to find a philosophical 
 basis for them in materialistic evolution. The legitimate results can be 
 realized only in a generation which knows only the new ethics as the 
 guide of conduct, and in its practical application to life by uncultured 
 men struggling for subsistence, greedy of gain and finding their 
 happiness in gratifying the baser desires and appetites of human nature. 
 There is no motive in this hedonism to hold such men back from reck- 
 lessness of all rights of the family, of property and of life which stand 
 in the way of their own pleasures. 
 
 Already we see men less imbued by education with Christian moral 
 sentiment, who have brightness, intelligence and power, applying the 
 principles of the new ethics to the subversion of all moral law, obliga- 
 tion and order, and of all distinction of right and wrong. Dr. Denslow 
 criticises Spencer as unphilosophical in his " dogmatical assumption that 
 there is a moral law philosophically deducible by argument from the 
 facts of nature." He argues correctly that on Mr. Spencer's principles 
 the very idea of moral law disappears. "An ethical system which boils 
 down into an exhortation to all men to promote their own interests has 
 no ethical quality left in it," He attributes Mr. Spencer's attempt to 
 retain these ethical terms and ideas to his having " been so far impressed 
 and molded in his thought by the theological atmosphere of modern 
 Christianity." I have already quoted Dr. Denslow's affirmations that 
 the moral laws protecting property are not moral, but merely class-laws 
 enforced by the superior power of the owners of property. He expresses 
 the same opinion respecting the moral law against unchastity and against 
 falsehood and deceit. And he comes to the conclusion that " all moral 
 rules are in the first instance impressed by the strong, the dominant, 
 the matured and the successful on the weak, the crouching, the infantile 
 and the servile, .... and are doctrines established by the strong for 
 the government of the weak."* Here we perceive the principles of 
 materialistic ethics already carried out to their legitimate practical con- 
 
 * Modern Thinkers, pages 240, 242, 245, 247, 249. 
 
4&6 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 sequences, the denial of the reality of moral law and obligation and of 
 the distinction of right and wrong. 
 
 The extreme practical application of these principles has made com- 
 paratively little progress in this country. On the continent of Europe 
 materialistic evolution is laid hold of as the support of atheistic theories 
 propounded as the basis of the immediate reorganization of society and 
 proposing radical and revolutionary schemes which if carried out can 
 issue only in anarchy. M. Gustave Flourens says : " Our enemy is God. 
 Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom. If men would make true 
 progress it must be on the basis of atheism." The same is the doctrine 
 of the Nihilists. Michael Bakunin, sometimes called the father of nihil- 
 ism, in a speech at Geneva in 1868 said: "The old world must be 
 destroyed and replaced by a new one. It is our mission to destroy the 
 lie. The beginning of all lies which have ground down this poor old 
 world is God. . . Tear out of your hearts the belief in the existence of 
 God ; for as long as an atom of that silly superstition remains in your 
 minds, you will never know what freedom is. ... The second lie is 
 Right. Might invented the fiction of Right in order to insure and 
 strengthen her reign. ... Might forms the sole groundwork of 
 society. . . . And when you have freed your minds from these. . . 
 then all the remaining chains which bind you, and which are called 
 science, civilization, property, marriage, morality and justice will snap 
 asunder. Let your own happiness be your only law. But in order to 
 get this law recognized and to bring about the proper relations which 
 should exist between the majority and the minority of mankind, you 
 must destroy every thing which now exists in, the shape of a State or 
 social organization." And the drift of all materialistic theories is in 
 this direction. 
 
 " 111 n'est point de vertus, ne de vices ; 
 Sois tigre, si tu peux. Pourvu que tu jouisses, 
 Vis, n'importe comment pour finir, n'importe oil." 
 
 Sixthly, whatever ethical theories are adopted, man's conscience and 
 moral intuitions and feelings remain. Ethics legitimately derived from 
 materialistic evolution is incompatible with this fact of man's constitu- 
 tion and cannot account for it. Whatever theories are adopted, the 
 consciousness of responsibility and obligation, and more or less clearly 
 of the law of love, will assert itself. This also materialists themselves 
 admit when they affirm that our moral convictions and impulses are 
 independent of Christianity, of Theism, or of Materialism ; and that 
 whether the soul exists after death or not, we are bound to live 
 righteously here and now. This is a real though it may be an un- 
 witting recognition of intuitive morals. To this moral consciousness 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 487 
 
 of mankind we appeal in judging of the moral tendency of material- 
 ism. The question is not whether man has a moral constitution, for 
 that is an incontrovertible fact. The question is, does materialistic 
 evolution explain or account for this fact ? Is it even compatible with 
 this fact ? If not, it is the materialistic evolution which is proved 
 untrue, not the moral constitution of man which is proved unreal. 
 And then, if materialistic evolution prevails, it carries with it the 
 denial of true morality, and is not merely a question of scientific 
 speculation but is a false speculation which is contrary to good morals. 
 Mr. Spencer explains this intuitive perception of right and wrong by 
 alleging that " the doctrine of innate powers of moral perception be- 
 comes congruous with the utilitarian doctrine, when it is seen that 
 preferences and aversions are rendered organic by inheritance of the 
 effects of pleasurable and painful experiences in progenitors."* But 
 this could explain only pain and pleasure, not that essentially different 
 reality, the intuition of moral obligation. And an organic " cohesion " 
 of pain with wrong doing would not result unless during the long suc- 
 cession of savage ancestors every act of robbery and of killing had 
 been attended with an overplus of pain. Whereas in fact savages 
 only exult in such deeds. The chief who killed and ate his rival and 
 made one of his marrow-bones into a trumpet with which to sound 
 his own triumph, was not organizing a coherence of pain with killing 
 and cannibalism. 
 
 Mr. Spencer's error is that he makes no distinction between a law 
 or invariable sequence of nature and the moral law. He holds that 
 the law of right conduct is grounded in the nature of things, that 
 is, in the constitution of the universe. In proof he argues that, while 
 in sensitive life from the beginning the strong crowd out the weak 
 that stand in their way, and man from his first appearance till now 
 has been necessarily egoistic, yet in the ages of the future he will more 
 and more learn that his own welfare is promoted by promoting the 
 welfare of society and will come to find his happiness in serving others 
 equally with himself; then human evolution will go on according to 
 the new law that the strong ought to protect and help the weak. But 
 this evolution alike in its egoistic and its altruistic stages is a pro- 
 cess of nature going on necessarily in invariable sequence of physical 
 cause and effect. It is no more moral action than the falling of stones 
 or the growth of grass. In the whole discussion Mr. Spencer recog- 
 nizes no moral law, but simply sets forth a necessary and invariable 
 sequence of nature as a substitute for moral law ; consequently in prov- 
 ing that the evolution must issue ages hence in a sort of equilibration 
 
 * Data of Ethics, p. 124. 
 
488 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of egoism and altruism, he presents no moral restraint of vice or in- 
 citement to virtue capable of exerting the slightest influence on the 
 still egoistic man. And this is the rock on which all materialistic 
 theories of ethics are wrecked, that they can deal only with laws of 
 nature and the happiness found in necessarily following the impulses 
 of nature ; and thus cannot attain a moral law nor even the idea of 
 right and wrong. 
 
 In one respect, however, the result of Mr. Spencer's investigations 
 is valuable. In a former chapter I showed that man knows by ex- 
 perience and observation that the law of love is supreme. Mr. Spen- 
 cer demonstrates that the law of love is the ultimate ground of the 
 law of nature and the reign of love its ultimate issue and end. He 
 already knows the unknowable to be Power. Here he demonstrates 
 that it is Love ; and therefore God ; for God is love. 
 
 5. Materialistic evolution not only fails to account for the facts of 
 personality, but is found to issue in the submergence of personality 
 in unconsciousness and of voluntary action in automatic. Mr. Spen- 
 cer says : " When actions which were once incoherent and voluntary 
 are very frequently repeated, they become coherent and involuntary. 
 Just as any set of psychical changes originally displaying Memory, 
 Reason and Feeling cease to be conscious, rational and emotional, as 
 fast as by repetition they grow closely organized ; so do they at the 
 same time pass beyond the range of volition. Memory, Reason, 
 Feeling and Will disappear in proportion as psychical changes become 
 automatic."* Mr. Lewes says : " In instinct there is not intelligence, 
 but what was once intelligence ; the specially intelligent character has 
 disappeared in the fixed tendency. The action which formerly was 
 tentative, discriminative, has now become automatic and irresistible." 
 He calls it " lapsed intelligence.'^ The doctrine of these and other 
 evolutionists is that the infant is born with a fund of experience, regis- 
 tered in the organism and transmitted by heredity, constituting in- 
 stinctive tendencies and manifested in automatic actions. " When the 
 adjustments of the organism to its environment begin to take in in- 
 volved and infrequent groups of outer relations .... then there 
 come to be hesitating automatic actions; then Memory and Reason 
 simultaneously become nascent."J But by continued repetition these 
 actions gradually become automatic, and reason, memory, will and 
 feeling lapse into instinct, and their action goes on in unconsciousness. 
 The evolution therefore seems to be the continual transition from 
 conscious intelligence, feeling and will to instinct ; from the rational, 
 
 * Psychology. Vol. I., g 218, p. 499. 
 
 f Problems of Self and Mind. First Series. Vol. I., pp. 120, 130. 
 
 j Spencer's Psychology. Vol. I., pp. 479, 480, 456. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 489 
 
 the free, the personal, the moral to the instinctive, the automatic, the 
 unconscious and the necessary. When "adjustment" becomes com- 
 plete all conscious rationality, intelligence, free-will and feeling dis- 
 appear and the highest result of evolution is the relapse of a person 
 conscious of rationality and free-will, of moral and religious character 
 and happiness, into a senseless automaton acting in unconsciousness 
 and necessity. 
 
 Accordingly personality and consciousness in any form . are merely 
 transitory conditions of human existence. Sooner or later, as the 
 evolution continues from generation to generation, the adjustment of 
 the organism to the environment must become complete. Then all 
 conscious intelligence, feeling and volition will have lapsed into in- 
 stinct, and thenceforward ' man is a mere automaton, moved in the 
 courses of nature as necessarily and as unconsciously as the planets in 
 their orbits or the atoms in an explosion of gunpowder. 
 
 This result of evolution in the sphere of consciousness is analogous 
 to its predicted result in the sphere of unconscious matter. In the 
 latter the evolution must issue in complete equilibrium, which means 
 the cessation of all motion whether molar or molecular. In the for- 
 mer it must issue in the complete adjustment of organism to environ- 
 ment, which means the cessation of all conscious intelligence, feeling 
 and volition. This appeal's to be a sort of reductio ad absurdum. The 
 evolution of mind by the redistribution of matter and motion reveals 
 itself as impossible by its necessary issue in the complete extinction of 
 mind and of all mental phenomena. Prof. Fiske, in behalf of Mr. 
 Spencer, indignantly disclaims the belief that mental phenomena are 
 correlated with motion and identical with it, so that motion is trans- 
 formed into thought and thought transformed back into motion ; 
 and disclaims the materialism involved in it. But Mr. Spencer, in 
 explaining intelligence, feeling and volition as always lapsing into in- 
 stinct and disappearing in unconscious registration, really accepts the 
 belief and must logically accept the materialism involved in it. Ac- 
 cordingly he says : "Any hesitation to admit that, between the physical 
 forces and the sensations there exists a correlation like that between 
 the physical forces themselves, must disappear on remembering how 
 the one relation like the other is not qualitative only, but quantita- 
 tive."* And what he here says of sensation he assumes, in his sub- 
 sequent works, to be true of all phenomena of mind and person- 
 ality. But by what metrical scale he measures the quantity of thought, 
 feeling or volition is not apparent. 
 
 The facts on which this theory of lapsed intelligence rests are well 
 
 * First Principles, 82, p. 275. 
 
490 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 known. By continual repetition a muscular action becomes second- 
 arily automatic ; and in proportion as it becomes so, the consciousness 
 of thought and volition is less. For instance, the art of walking is 
 learned slowly and with many falls ; but when one who has learned it 
 starts to walk, the walking goes on with scarcely any consciousness of 
 exertion or direction; but when the walker becomes tired this con- 
 sciousness returns. And the more completely the mechanism of the 
 body is by repetition made to act mechanically, the more exact and un- 
 erring is the movement ; for mechanism cannot forget, nor mistake, 
 nor hesitate, and within its sphere is more accurate than the conscious 
 action of a man. A person walking in sleep will walk safely where he 
 could not if awake. And one cannot play an instrument well till the 
 fingers seem to move of themselves on the keys. 
 
 But these secondarily automatic courses of action are started by 
 the mind and carried on under its general direction ; as we see the 
 instantaneous action of thought and will in the instant of a difficulty 
 or interruption. And the secondarily automatic action of the muscles, 
 instead of suppressing intelligence and voluntary action, leaves the mind 
 at leisure for other activities. Walking is favorable for thinking. 
 
 In fact instead of intelligence lapsing, this lapse of the action of the 
 organism into the automatic indicates in a striking way the difference 
 between the mechanism of the body'and the higher activities of the 
 spirit. When the spirit is in its highest activities of thought, feeling 
 or determination, the body with its movements and conditions lapses 
 from consciousness, but the spirit, instead of being submerged in the 
 organic, seems to be rapt away from it and rises to its utmost intensity 
 of action. This is exemplified in love ;. as a mother forgets her own 
 weariness and pain in the care of a sick child ; and as Paul counted 
 all things but loss for Christ. It is recognized in ethics that the cate- 
 goric imperative of conscience may be outstripped by love. A being 
 in whom love to God and man is perfect will act from love before he 
 thinks of duty ; following inclination he will do right, for his inclina- 
 tion is love. But the love is not unconscious automatic action, but is 
 the intensest energy of the spirit, suffusing it with blessedness. The 
 same is exemplified in intellectual action. Sir Isaac Newton, intent on 
 his great problems, was oblivious of all else, even of his needed food. 
 But this was not a lapse into automatic action, nor into unconscious- 
 ness. It was the highest and most intense intellectual action in the 
 concentration of all his energies on his work. That it was accompanied 
 by consciousness is evident because he remembered his work and its 
 results. It was the highest exaltation of spiritual power, holding in 
 subjection and abeyance for the time all bodily appetites and all out- 
 ward influences. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 491 
 
 6. Thus it appears that materialistic evolution is entirely incompati- 
 ble with* the fundamental facts of personality and is thereby demon- 
 strated to be unscientific and false. It also appears that materialism 
 is not an essential element in the theory of evolution. The theory, 
 held simply as declaring a law of nature within the limits of physical 
 science, is consistent with the personality of man and of God, and 
 strengthens rather than destroys the evidence in nature of the directive 
 action of mind. 
 
 In Sir Isaac Xewton's day the fear that the law of gravitation would 
 lead to atheism was as real as is "the fear of the theory of evolution 
 now. Even so late as Newton's time, the celebrated Puritan divine, 
 Dr. John Owen, says of the Copernican astronomy: "The late hypo- 
 thesis, fixing the sun as the centre of the world, was built on fallible 
 phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary presumptions against 
 evident testimonies of Scripture and reason as probable as any that 
 are produced in its confirmation."* " Mr. Home, Bishop of Norwich^ 
 was always convinced that Sir Isaac Xewton and Dr. Clarke had, by 
 introducing speculations of their own, formed a design to undermine 
 and overthrow the theology of the Scriptures and to bring in the Stoical 
 aniina inundi in the place of the true God ; that heathenism was about 
 to arise in the world out of their speculations in natural philosophy. 
 This suspicion took early possession of the bishop's mind and was not 
 changed or shaken through life."f This exemplifies the perverse pro- 
 pensity of men when they know how anything in nature is done, to 
 think that there is no longer any need of a God for the doing of it. 
 The fears respecting gravitation were groundless, and the knowledge 
 of that law enlarged our evidence of the reign of mind in nature. The 
 same will doubtless be true of evolution, if it shall be scientifically es- 
 tablished as a law of nature. 
 
 V. Scientific evolution at every stage in its progress reveals the 
 presence and energy of a supernatural and hypermaterial power. 
 
 1. This is implied in the meaning of evolution as set forth in the 
 teachings of scientists. 
 
 If we admit that the physical organization of man is the result of 
 evolution, that admission is consistent with the personality of man. It 
 is not good reasoning that there is nothing in a mature man which was 
 not in the ovum at its impregnation. If the physical organization of 
 man was evolved from an ascidian, and the ascidian itself from in- 
 organic matter, it is not good reasoning that there is nothing in the 
 mature man which was not in the ascidian and in the inorganic matter 
 
 I 
 
 * Owen's Works. Vol. XIX., p. 310. 
 
 f Home's Life, quoted in Anna Se ward's Letters, Vol. VI., pp. 267, 268 ; Letter 47. 
 
492 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 from which the ascidian was evolved. For if this reasoning is con- 
 clusive, w T herein does man differ from the ascidian and what significance 
 is there in evolution ? What man is, we know by consciousness and ob- 
 servation. If evolution is to account for him, it must account for him 
 as he is and is known to be. We must not strip him of his highest 
 powers and reduce him to the level of inorganic matter in order to 
 accommodate him to the insufficiency of a materialistic evolution. On 
 the contrary, the appearance in man of powers transcending all which 
 nature reveals is entirely accordant with scientific evolution. Evolu- 
 tion as actually held by scientists is not merely a disentanglement and 
 rearrangement of matter and force, but in its essential significance 
 it is, at every successive stage, the revelation, in effects impossible in the 
 stuff before the evolution, of powers higher than ever before manifested. 
 This revelation of a higher power in the successive stages of evolu- 
 tion, and especially of personal powers at the appearance of man, is 
 incompatible with every materialistic theory of evolution; unless, as 
 Prof. Tyndall intimates in his melancholy meditations on the Matter- 
 horn, we give an entirely new meaning to the word matter ; or, as Prof. 
 Fiske more accurately expresses it, use words " which it is difficult to 
 invest with any real meaning." In this case we go back to the idea of 
 evolution as the mere disentanglement of matter and force as it already 
 existed. But the theory of evolution, as true science must present it 
 and actually does present it, requires, in its essential significance, the 
 admission that new powers are revealed in the successive stages of evo- 
 
 i. O 
 
 lution, and that in man, when he appears, powers are revealed which 
 were never manifested in the species of animals from which he was 
 evolved. Evolution is thus compatible with the powers of personality 
 in man ; and it is also incompetent to deny that these powers, never 
 manifested in nature until man appeared, are spiritual powers, trans- 
 cending all that we know as forces of matter. " The idea that the 
 human species at its origin abuts on something both higher and lower, 
 seems almost a necessity of reason on the matrices of a lower life in 
 its selected forms on the natural side, and on the paternal side on 
 nothing less than the brooding Spirit of God. . . . Every new type of 
 life draws up into itself the next lower one, and something more. . . . 
 And that something more comes from above nature, unless the stream 
 can mount higher than its source, and unless all our talk about the 
 nexus of cause and effect is without meaning."* 
 
 The incompetence of evolution to justify the denial of the spiritual 
 or supernatural in man is evident from the contradictions in which the 
 denier is involved. He holds that there is nothing in nature corres- 
 
 * Dr. Sears : Fourth Gospel : p. 227. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 493 
 
 ponding to the human mind, and yet. that man is a product of nature. 
 He knows that mental phenomena cannot be identified with the motion 
 of matter, and yet insists that there is nothing in man but matter and 
 motor-force. He insists that man is one with everything in nature that 
 is inferior to his higher powers, and that there is nothing in nature that 
 is one with man's higher powers ; and then disregards those higher 
 human powers as entitled to no scientific recognition. The denial 
 carries contradiction into the very idea of science and into the lan- 
 guage in which evolution is described. The very possibility of science 
 consists in the possibility of reducing all physical phenomena to purely 
 mental conceptions. Evolution itself is a mental conception and its 
 progressiveness is conceivable and thinkable only as measured by men- 
 tal standards. Says Tyndall: "The continued effort of animated 
 nature is to improve its condition and raise itself to a loftier level ; " 
 but lower and loftier levels in biology have no meaning in terms of 
 matter and force. Says Spencer : " Life is the continuous adjustment 
 of internal relations to external relations." Adjustment is an intel- 
 lectual act. Scientists habitually speak of potential energy, the recog- 
 nition of which is at the basis of modern science ; but it is an entirely 
 anthropomorphic expression, derived from our own consciousness of 
 power which we do not exert ; of exerting energy or refraining from 
 its exertion at will. 
 
 2. If mind is to act through matter, it is reasonable to suppose that 
 matter must be specially prepared to be its organ. Not matter in every 
 condition can be the organ of mind, but only matter which has been 
 fitted by special refinement and elaboration. And if so, then it is im- 
 possible to say a priori through what processes matter must pass in 
 order to be thus fitted, nor how long the process may continue. In 
 the period of a few months a germ is evolved into the body of a human 
 infant capable so long as it lives of being the organ of mind and re- 
 vealing the powers of personality. If we suppose that, preparatory to 
 the origination of the human species, matter must have been in a 
 process of elaboration and refinement through periods not of months 
 but of ages and through successive higher and higher species of living 
 organisms, in order to fit it to become the germ of a human being and 
 to unfold into an organ through which the powers of personality should 
 be manifested, this origin of the species is no more incompatible with 
 the personality of man than is the development of the individual from 
 a germ in generation. We are told in Genesis that "the Lord God 
 formed man of the dust of the ground." There is no significance in 
 this, except as it recognizes a process by which the inferior material 
 was fitted and formed into an organization capable of manifesting the 
 life of a human spirit. And, far as the thought may have been from 
 
494 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the writer of Genesis, ages may have passed in the process of elaborat- 
 ing the dust of the earth into the body of a man. The fact that it 
 was a process which occupied time however long, and proceeded accord- 
 ing to the laws and by means of the energies of an already existing 
 nature, does not make it the less a work of God. 
 
 3. If the human species was evolved from inferior species, the mani- 
 festation of mind through a material organization would accord with a 
 universal law, that matter already manifesting certain powers must 
 pass through a process of elaboration or development in order to be- 
 come susceptible of manifesting a higher power. 
 
 Uncrystallized matter, when brought into a certain condition, crys- 
 tallizes. Here is revealed a force of a new and higher order, domi- 
 nating cohesion and arranging the atoms in a crystalline structure. 
 But there must have been a process preparing the matter before the 
 crystallizing force could reveal itself. A vegetable cannot be nour- 
 ished by elemental substances. If furnished with oxygen, carbon and 
 all the elemental constituents of its organization, it cannot appropriate 
 them. They must be united in compounds before they can be con- 
 verted by the plant into its own substance and thus become the medium 
 of manifesting the power of vegetable life. An animal cannot be 
 nourished by inorganic matter, simple or compound. It can live only 
 on organized matter, either vegetable or animal. Matter must be 
 already elaborated to this very high degree before it can be incorpo- 
 rated into an animal organization and become capable of manifesting 
 the force of animal vitality. 
 
 The evolution or progress of nature discloses something like this as a 
 universal law. Matter must be elaborated into finer contexture and 
 more complicated adjustments before it can be the medium of revealing 
 the presence and action of power of a higher order, previously un- 
 manifested. Inorganic matter was elaborated in the laboratory of 
 nature for myriads of centuries before any portion of it was brought 
 into a state in which it was possible that the power of organic life 
 could reveal itself in action. And organic matter Avas elaborated 
 through long periods before it was capable of being the medium through 
 which animal life could appear. And again it was evolving for long 
 periods and appearing in successive and higher forms of animal [organi- 
 zation before the higher personal and spiritual power could reveal 
 itself in action through it. 
 
 If so, the elaboration is not yet completed, but may go on till higher 
 orders of mind, angels and archangels rising in endless gradations of 
 power and glory, may manifest their presence, and an unseen and 
 spiritual universe come to view, which as yet eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, nor the heart of man conceived. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 495 
 
 The existence of the soul after death would still be credible and in 
 fact more easily conceived. Once admit that matter is perpetually 
 passing through a process of evolution making it susceptible of being 
 the medium of manifesting higher and higher powers, and the Scrip- 
 .tural doctrine of existence after death, and of the spiritual body, is 
 accordant with this line of thought. To what extent the evolution may 
 be carried and what higher powers it may become capable of revealing 
 no one can predict. The spiritual body, as described in the Bible, is a 
 conceivable result. 
 
 4. Accordingly we find in nature a series of planes or grades one 
 above another, each revealing a power never manifested in a grade 
 below. And if the theory of evolution is true, the appearance of each 
 of these powers constituted an epoch in the evolution. 
 
 Mr. Spencer postulates a homogeneous stuff antecedent to the evolu- 
 tion. The " homogeneous " is a metaphysical idea ; so also is Mr. 
 Thomson's primitive fluid. Each is an intellectual postulation of being 
 in a mode of existence transcending all human experience and incon- 
 ceivable by man. The theistic conception of the universe as eternally 
 ideal and archetypal in God the Absolute Keason is scarcely farther 
 removed from matter as we know it ; and is conceivable as an object of 
 positive knowledge through our knowledge of personality. The theistic 
 conception, however, does not preclude the postulation of a homoge- 
 neous stuff or primitive fluid as the first mode of the existence of 
 matter. The being of physical agents must always, in the order of 
 thought, be antecedent to their action. 
 
 In the homogeneous stuff mechanical force is revealed in motion, 
 both in its beginning and its continuance, and whether molar or mole- 
 cular. It appears as attraction and repulsion, tension and pressure, 
 and as momentum. This is the first epoch in the evolution ; in it 
 matter is known, in the lowest grade in which it is perceptible, as mani- 
 festing mechanical force, in the motions both of masses and of mole- 
 cules. In the latter, mechanical force seems to reach its highest form, 
 as in heat, light and electricity. 
 
 A higher grade reveals the elemental or chemical forces. The 
 elemental substances by their combinations reveal new and higher 
 powers with more complicated activities and relations. Oxygen and 
 hydrogen each has powers peculiar to itself, but revealed only in com- 
 bining with other substances ; water, which is the result of their com- 
 bination with each other, reveals new and peculiar powers, unlike those 
 of its component elements. 
 
 A grade higher than these is that of living organic matter. And 
 above this is the grade of sentient organisms. Highest of all is the 
 human organization in which is revealed a person conscious of self 
 
496 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 persisting in unity and identity and endowed with reason, free-will and 
 susceptibility of rational emotions and motives. 
 
 These planes or grades are distinct ; superimposed, as it were, with an 
 interval between. And, if evolved, the revelation of the higher power 
 must have been sudden, constituting an epoch. However continuous 
 the process by which matter was elaborated to a capacity of being a 
 medium through which the power could act, the actual appearance of 
 the power must have been sudden. A chemist takes time to prepare 
 a certain solution ; but when it is prepared he has only to thrust a 
 substance into it and the crystallization ensues, revealing the causal 
 energy by whatever name it may be called. Whatever may have 
 been the process of elaborating the organic matter and however feeble 
 the first manifestation of sentient life, there must have been a moment 
 when it began. 
 
 It is important, also, to notice that the higher power acts immedi- 
 ately on that next below it, and not on the still lower grades. Animal 
 life can raise vegetable organisms up to its own plane, but not in- 
 organic matter. The living power of vegetables can raise up to its 
 own plane inorganic chemical compounds, but not the elements, nor 
 matter of the primitive grade. It is the elemental or chemical force 
 alone that raises the primitive matter into its many compounds. If 
 God made man from the dust in accordance with natural processes* 
 the primitive matter must have been mechanically brought into posi- 
 tion in fit proportions, elemental forces must have brought it into the 
 fitting compounds, plants must have organized it into their own living 
 organization, before it was possible to transform it into the muscle, 
 nerve, bone and blood of men. 
 
 5. The force manifested in a lower grade does not originate or create 
 the force manifested in the higher, but only elaborates and prepares 
 the matter till it is capable of being a medium for the manifestation of 
 the higher. 
 
 This follows from the essential nature of evolution. Evolution as 
 a theory and as, if real, it actually goes on, is analogous, not to a de- 
 velopment or disentangling of what already is in the homogeneous 
 matter, but to a growth or progress perpetually evolving something 
 more and something higher. But the less cannot evolve itself into 
 the greater ; this evolution necessarily implies a cause not contained 
 in that which is evolved. 
 
 There is nothing in homogeneous matter which accounts for the be- 
 ginning of motion. For so soon as motion begins the homogeneous is 
 already heterogeneous. The same is true, if for Spencer's homogeneous 
 we substitute Thomson's idea of the primitive fluid. As Prof. Max- 
 well describes it, " the primitive fluid .... entirely eludes our per- 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 497 
 
 ceptions when it is not endued with the mode of motion which converts 
 certain portions of it into vortex-rings. ... The primitive fluid is 
 the only true matter, yet that which we call matter is not the primi- 
 tive fluid itself, but a mode of motion of that fluid." * Matter, then, 
 lies entirely beyond the range of human perception until it is endued 
 with molecular motion. It is impossible that this homogeneous primi- 
 tive motionless fluid should itself originate the motion. It is equally 
 impossible that there should have been an antecedent process in the 
 fluid preparing it to be the receptacle of energy and momentum ; for 
 a process would destroy its homogeneousness. There must have been, 
 therefore, a beginning of motion caused by some power acting on the 
 primitive homogeneous matter from beyond it. When Mr. Spencer 
 assumes " the ultimate truth that Matter, Motion and Force, as cog- 
 nizable by human intelligence, can neither come into existence nor 
 cease to exist," he assumes as an ultimate truth a proposition con- 
 tradicting his assumption of the existence of a primitive " homoge- 
 neous." 
 
 In fact every interaction either of masses or molecules is a begin- 
 ning of motion or at least a change of motion, which reveals a power 
 transcending mechanical force. Bodies are supposed never to be in 
 absolute contact ; all interaction therefore must imply action at a dis- 
 tance. But mechanical forces and laws cannot explain how the 
 approach of one body can be indicated through space to another so as 
 to call forth an amount of energy exactly proportioned to the mass 
 and distance of the approaching body. For the supposition of force 
 inherent in bodies always and inexhaustibly radiating energy in all 
 directions through space, is contrary to the fundamental law of the 
 persistence of force. And the supposition of potential force becoming 
 kinetic energy implies an exertion of the force- and therefore a begin- 
 ning of the kinetic action. 
 
 There must also have been a beginning of the elemental or chemi- 
 cal force. If there are elements they must be of different kinds. But 
 these could not have existed in the primitive homogeneous matter 
 but must have been evolved from it. Or, if they are not elements, and 
 the chemist may some day succeed in discovering that they are them- 
 selves compounds and " yield more than one kind of matter," then 
 these simple substances must have been evolved into the elements as 
 known to us. In either case the elemental or chemical force mani- 
 fested in the elements as we know them, and the wondrous properties 
 and powers which their various combinations reveal, must have had a 
 beginning. And this force could not have been originated by the 
 
 * Encyc. Brit. 9th Ed., Vol. III., p. 45. 
 
 32 
 
498 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 primitive homogeneous matter itself, but must have come upon it from 
 without, as a hyperinaterial force, either acting immediately, or by 
 transformation of mechanical force. Thus evolution necessarily im- 
 plies that the atoms are, as Herschel and Maxwell have said, " manu- 
 factured articles." They exist only as they are moved. They are 
 endued with peculiar elemental powers only as they have been 
 evolved. 
 
 There has been, also, a beginning of life. In its lower grades matter 
 is elaborated and prepared to be the receptacle of life and the medium 
 through which it acts ; but it is incompetent to originate or cause life. 
 Spencer says : " It may be argued that on the hypothesis of evolution 
 life necessarily comes before organization. . . . Vital activity must 
 have existed while there was yet no structure. That function takes 
 precedence of structure seems also implied in the definition of life."* 
 There is in life a certain directive power. There is no visible distinc- 
 tion between the germs of a zoophyte, an oak, or a man, yet each germ 
 develops always and only its own kind. That directive agency, which 
 orders and guides all the innumerable particles taken up into the 
 organization to the position, character and action which shall subserve 
 the growth of the specific plant or animal, is in the seed not in in its 
 environment. For in every environment in which the seed can germi- 
 nate, it grows into its own kind. Of the germs of various species 
 Prof. Newcomb says : " In everything which constitutes a material 
 quality they are identical. Yet they differ as widely as a clam, an 
 oak tree, or a philosopher. Since this difference does not consist 
 in the arrangement of their molecules, we may properly call it hyper- 
 material" 
 
 The hypermaterial origin of life is the more evident since, in the 
 whole material universe throughout all space and time as known to 
 us, the begining of life in any organization is conditioned on the pre- 
 vious existence of living matter from which it proceeds. Life, then, 
 is the cause of organization, not its product. Whatever the previous 
 elaboration of matter needful in its lower grades, it is the power of 
 life which organizes matter and in and through the organization 
 reveals itself. Science has never been able to reduce it to a lower 
 level or to identify it with chemical or mechanical energy. As " aquosity " 
 reveals the chemical or elemental energy which produces water, vitality 
 reveals the power of life which produces organisms. 
 
 As the evolution proceeds organic matter is elaborated till it becomes 
 capable of being a medium of manifesting sensitivity. And again 
 matter is elaborated in higher and higher forms of animal life till it 
 
 * Biology, 61, 55. Vol. I., pp. 153, 167. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 499 
 
 becomes a fit medium for the manifestation of reason, free-will and 
 rational motives and emotions. Thus that the power manifested in 
 the facts of personality is an immaterial and spiritual power is entirely 
 in harmony with evolution and analogous to the revelation of new 
 powers in all its stages. 
 
 The force of the argument is enhanced by the fact that the power 
 revealed at each grade is not only new but higher. As a greater power 
 having a wider and more complicated reach, it cannot have been 
 caused by the inferior power. This superiority is seen in the facts 
 that the lower power is held in abeyance by the higher, and that the 
 higher reacts with dominant energy on matter in all its lower planes. 
 Electricity and magnetism in lifting light bodies overpower gravita- 
 tion All mechanical forces, molar or molecular, are held in abeyance 
 in the presence of the elemental force. This is illustrated in Fara- 
 day's representation that the chemical force in a drop of water is 
 equivalent to the electric force in an ordinary thunder-shower. The 
 elemental force is held in abeyance in the presence of life. So long as 
 life continues, the composite substances in the tissues of the body, 
 notwithstanding continual waste and supply, retain their organic in- 
 tegrity, and the food is digested into the living tissues in spite of chem- 
 ical affinity. But the moment life ceases, the elemental force resumes 
 its sway and decomposes the body into its inorganic constituents. Life 
 also reacts with resistless power on inferior nature. The delicate germ 
 of an acorn forces itself up through the oppressing mould, transforms 
 the earth, air and water into its own organic substance, and overpower- 
 ing the gravitating force of the whole earth, lifts the immense and 
 growing mass into the air and in defiance of all storms holds it there 
 for centuries. But when death comes, the chemical and mechanical 
 forces begin to tear it down. 
 
 And this power of life, whenever and however it first appeared, 
 though it were only in a single cell, immediately began to react on 
 nature in its lifeless and inorganic forms, and to modify, elevate and 
 adorn it. Then, when the organic matter is so elaborated as to be 
 capable of higher manifestation, sensitivity appears. Here anew we 
 have a power reacting on the plants and on inorganic matter, pushing 
 and spreading itself everywhere, till the waters, the air and the land 
 are filled with living creatures, visible or microscopic, which continually 
 lift the lifeless matter into living organisms, and unfold living organism 
 to the capacity of manifesting higher and higher powers of life. Iir 
 the view of the first appearance of sensitivity Noire breaks into apos- 
 trophe : " Thou almighty, despotic, inorganic world, avert in an instant 
 the warfare which threatens thee, crush out of being this weak, power- 
 less little point of sensitivity. It does it not ; it cannot do it ; it is 
 
500 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the unconscious, stiff, bound-up world ; and therein lies the great super- 
 iority, the future victory of this little point of life over the giant 
 forces of the universe."* 
 
 As the tissues of the animal are elaborated, they become in the 
 human organization the medium for manifesting reason, free-will and 
 rational sensibility. In the germination and growth of plants and 
 animals life acting in unconsciousness is a directive energy, ordering 
 and guiding all the particles, as they are taken in, to realize the plan 
 of a complicated organization. But when reason appears a power is 
 revealed which in conscious intelligence and freedom orders and con- 
 trols the energies and resources of nature to express the truths and 
 ideals of reason and to accomplish the chosen ends of free-will. It is 
 a power which discovers nature's secrets, declares its laws and uses its 
 resources and powers for its own ends. As man advances in civiliza- 
 tion, he civilizes nature ; man's selection displaces natural selection ; 
 man's thoughts become imprinted on the surface of the whole earth. 
 Man is a lord of nature ; as it is written in Genesis : " God created 
 man in his own image, and gave him dominion over the fish of the sea, 
 and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the 
 earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." 
 Here again we see that evolution, if true as a law of nature, is consis- 
 tent with the fact that there is a spirit in man. 
 
 6. Matter in the higher grades does not create or orginate the 
 higher power, but only reveals it. It reveals it as an effect reveals its 
 cause. It is not the sphericity of a rain-drop which causes the attrac- 
 tion, but the attraction which causes the sphericity and is revealed in 
 it. It is not the crystalline structure which originates the symmetrizing 
 energy, but the symmetrizing energy which causes the crystallization 
 and is revealed in it. It is not the " aquosity " of water which causes 
 the chemical affinity ; but the chemical affinity combining the oxygen 
 and hydrogen causes the " aquosity/' and is revealed in it. And it is 
 in analogy with all these when we say that it is not organization which 
 causes life, but life which causes the organization and is revealed in it. 
 In complete analogy with all these conclusions of science, when sensi- 
 tivity appears, we refer it to some hypermaterial power revealing itself 
 in the animal organization ; and when personality appears we refer it 
 to a hypermaterial power revealing itself in the human body. And 
 this necessity is the more apparent from the facts that physical science 
 Cannot identify either sensitivity or personality with chemical or me- 
 (jhanical force, and that with its most powerful instruments of obser- 
 vation it cannot detect any difference between the germinal matter of 
 plants, the lower animals and man. 
 
 * Die welt als Eutwickelung des Geistes; ss. 362, 363. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 501 
 
 7. The evolution of the material universe through these successive 
 grades is a continual revelation of hypermaterial power ; of a power 
 not resident in but revealed through the matter. The evolution of the 
 visible universe is perpetually revealing a universe that is invisible. 
 Lotze says : " The ancient atomists regarded the atoms as the ultimate 
 elements of all reality, the unconditional and true being (Seiende), 
 which, existing before all things, was the necessary and independent 
 ground of every possible creation." To the moderns, he says, they 
 have a very different significance; and thus the ancient atomism 
 necessarily involved materialism but the modern does not.* Accord- 
 ingly he regards the world-process as the evolving of " a creative spirit- 
 ual principle." Mr. Spencer says : " By the persistence of Force we 
 really mean persistence of some Power which -transcends our knowledge 
 and conception. The manifestations, as occurring either in ourselves or 
 outside of us, do not persist ; but that which persists is the Unknown 
 Cause of these manifestations. In other words, assenting the persis- 
 tence of Force, is but another mode of asserting an Unconditioned 
 Reality, without beginning or end."f So the Duke of Argyll says that 
 the cause of crystallization is not referrible to " the old arrangement 
 w r hich is broken up or to the new arrangement which is substituted in its 
 stead. Both structures have been built up out of elementary materials by 
 some constructive agency which is the master and not the servant, the 
 cause and not the consequence of the movements which are effected 
 and of the arrangement which is the result. And if this is true of 
 crystalline forms in the mineral kingdom, much more is it true of 
 organic forms in the animal kingdom."! These three writers, repre- 
 senting widely different schools of thought, find themselves agreeing in 
 the same conclusion, that the evolution of the material universe reveals 
 a hypermaterial power. To the same conclusion our own reasoning 
 forces us. When a globe reaches the condition in which life is possible 
 life appears. When organized matter reaches the condition in which 
 sensitivity is possible, sensitivity appears. When animal organization 
 reaches a condition in which personality is possible, personality appears. 
 At each grade of the evolution a power of the unseen universe is 
 revealed in the seen, a hypermaterial power is revealed in the 
 material. 
 
 Prof. Fiske gives the following definition : "A materialist is one who 
 regards the story of the universe as completely and satisfactorily told, 
 when it is wholly told in terms of matter and motion without reference 
 to any ultimate underlying existence of which matter and motion are 
 
 Microcosmus. Vol. I., pp. 34, 35. f First Principles, p. 255, 74. 
 
 The Unity of Nature, Contemporary Rev., Sept., 1880. 
 
502 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 only the phenomenal manifestations." * If we accept this definition, 
 the facts which evolution, if true, must account for, are incompatible 
 with materialism, and materialistic evolution is unscientific and ir- 
 rational. 
 
 8. In man at last a being appears in nature who also rises above 
 nature, and in his personality is autonomic and autokinetic, self-direct- 
 ing and self-exerting, and thus free from the necessary sequences of 
 nature. Thus he differs from all inferior beings, which, though above 
 all which had preceded them in the evolution, yet are merely powers in 
 nature capable of acting only as acted on in its invariable and neces- 
 sary sequences. 
 
 In the evolution in its lower stages we see the revelation of a hyper- 
 material power, positing in nature a new energy which never rises above 
 it. In the evolution of the human organization we see the revelation 
 of the same hypermaterial power, but now bringing into nature a per- 
 sonal being, rational, free and above nature, yet acting in and through 
 nature, capable of manifesting his own thoughts and realizing his own 
 ideals and ends in nature, and of effecting what nature of itself could 
 never have effected ; above nature in his personality and thus in some 
 sense a being independent of it ; and yet dependent on the hyper- 
 material power which by his existence he reveals ; and revealing that 
 power itself, not as a power or cause only, but as the Energizing Rea- 
 son, the personal God. 
 
 9. I therefore conclude that, if evolution be found true even to the 
 extent that the living organized body of man was originally evolved 
 from an inferior species of animals, the evolution would still be com- 
 patible with the personality of man and would constitute no valid ob- 
 jection against it. 
 
 The human mind cannot escape the dualism expressed in the words 
 matter and force, body and spirit, nature and the supernatural, the 
 finite and the infinite, the universe and God. All investigation brings 
 us to it as a fundamental reality. Every system of thought which 
 excludes the one or the other is necessarily one-sided and false. The 
 two cannot be identified. They can be brought into a unity of thought 
 only by their relation to each other. 
 
 VI. Scientific evolution, if true, demands the existence of the per- 
 sonal God, the absolute Reason energizing in all that is; but may 
 modify some common opinions respecting Him and His relation to the 
 universe. 
 
 Evolution leaves unchanged the common teleological argument from 
 particular arrangements and adaptations. But in its essence as evolu- 
 
 * Darwinism and other Essays, p. 50. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 5Q3 
 
 tion it sets forth and emphasizes the teleological character of nature 
 in its entireness as being progressively evolved from lower to higher 
 in the continuous realization of an ideal or plan. This argument 
 belongs to Natural Theology and will not be further considered here. 
 I have already shown that evolution is compatible with theism. I 
 propose now to show that scientific evolution demands the recognition 
 of God as necessary to the ongoing of the evolution. 
 
 1. Evolution presupposes a higher power previously unknown, which 
 lifts matter from the lower to a higher stage, revealing itself therein. 
 It is of the essence of evolution that the higher comes down to the 
 lower, evolves it to a higher condition, and reveals itself in so doing. 
 And this is evolution as explained by scientists. Accordingly Prof. 
 Le Conte says : " Evidently in the universe as a whole, evolution of 
 one part must be at the expense of some other part. The evolution 
 or development of the whole Cosmos, of the whole universe of matter, 
 as a unit by forces within itself according to the doctrine of the con- 
 servation of force, is inconceivable. If there be any such evolution at 
 all comparable with any known form of evolution, it can only take 
 place by a constant increase of the whole sum of energy, i. e., by a 
 constant influx of divine energy ; for the^same quantity of matter in a 
 higher condition must embody a greater amount of energy." * We are 
 shut up to the alternative either of admitting that all powers, alike of 
 mind and matter, existed potentially in the primitive homogeneous 
 stuff; and if so, the stuff was not homogeneous; or else of admitting 
 a power above the homogeneous stuff, causing the evolution and 
 revealing itself in higher and higher forms in its successive stages. 
 
 I suppose intelligent evolutionists would shrink from positively 
 accepting the former position, at least if they had thought far enough 
 to see the contradictions and insuperable difficulties involved in it. 
 But it is remarkable that evolutionists attempt to explain all the higher 
 powers manifested in the universe as identical with the lowest and as 
 manifestations or transformations of it. All force, chemical, vital, 
 rational, they attempt to explain as identical with mechanical force, 
 which is force in its lowest form ; and that force they still for the most 
 part explain as a property inherent in matter itself. They conceive of 
 the universe as the lowest developing itself into all that is. Topsy's 
 words, " I 'specks I growed," are exalted into a cosmogony and be- 
 come the first principle of science. But development, thus understood, 
 can develop only that which already is in the thing developed. " If 
 man is in this sense developed from the brute, he is only a brute de- 
 
 * Prof. Balfour Stewart : Conservation of Energy : Appendix by Prof. Le Conte 
 pp. 199, 200. 
 
504 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 veloped. If the universe is the development of matter there is nothing 
 in it above matter. The development of the lower is only the eleva- 
 tion and expansion of the lower, not a change of its inferior nature 
 nor an origination of anything higher in kind. . It is the low r est, with 
 its necessity, its unintelligence, its soggy materialism, pulsating higher 
 and higher, circling wider and wider, till it fills and characterizes all. 
 It is the Titans piling up the mountains to scale the heavens and de- 
 throne the gods ; but however high they climb and wide they rule, 
 they are still only Titans, earth-born giants."* 
 
 Theism presents the contrary conception : " In the beginning God." 
 In these first words of Genesis, at one vault the thought reaches the 
 Highest. The action of the universe is no longer the lower lifting and 
 expanding itself with all its imperfection and its blind necessity, 
 but always the higher descending to the lower to lift it up. Thus the 
 action of God in Christ, descending to man and working in human 
 conditions and limitations to lift man up, sets forth the constituent 
 principle of the universe. The movement is not of the lower widening 
 its sphere and increasing its power ; but always of the higher going 
 down to the lower to impart to it new gifts, endow it with new perfec- 
 tions, and thus to extend the reign and diversify the manifestations of 
 its own superior and richer potencies. 
 
 Evolution in its true significance is accordant with this principle of 
 Christian theism. It requires the presupposition of a higher power 
 acting on matter in its lower condition, evolving it to a higher, and 
 therein revealing itself. Men talk of effects produced by law, or by the 
 order of nature, and thus in a cloud of words hide this essential necessity 
 of evolution from view. But, as Lotze says : "As little as we regard 
 the idea of disorder as a factual and moving principle in an unregu- 
 lated succession of changes, so little can we regard the idea of order as 
 the efficient and sustaining original cause of an orderly series of 
 events."t It is a higher efficient power, and not merely a law or 
 order which is presupposed in evolution and revealed at every stage. 
 Within the limits of empirical science the facts of evolution are noted 
 in their relations of coexistence and succession as they present them- 
 selves to our observation. When beyond those limits we seek for 
 the rationale or philosophy of the facts, as evolutionists in their 
 speculations are wont to do, we must recognize power of a higher 
 order revealing itself at each stage of the evolution and accounting 
 for it. 
 
 2. In this hypermaterial power, as the ultimate and continuous 
 
 * The Kingdom of Christ on Earth, by Prof. Samuel Harris, pp. 130, 131. 
 f Mikrokosmus. Vol. I., p. 69. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 5Q5 
 
 source of the evolution, all the powers successively revealed in the 
 evolution must exist potentially without limit or condition. 
 
 This is the Power, the existence of which Spencer postulates as " a 
 necessary datum of consciousness ;" and of which he says: "Deeper 
 than demonstration, deeper even than definite cognition, deep as the very 
 nature of the mind, is the postulate at which we have arrived. Its 
 authority transcends all other whatever ; for not only is it given in the 
 constitution of our own consciousness, but it is impossible to imagine 
 a consciousness so constituted as not to give it."* This Power is what 
 we call the Absolute. It is of this Power and of this alone that the meta- 
 physical axiom or principle, on which modern physical science rests, is 
 true ; the principle that the sum of energy, potential and actual, is 
 always the same. \Ve know that it cannot be true of this finite uni- 
 verse in which we live and of which we have knowledge ; for in this 
 universe matter is known to be continually evolving into higher con- 
 ditions and revealing higher energies ; at the same time from this 
 universe as a whole, force is continually in a process of dissipation with- 
 out known return. Physical science itself thus gives decisive evidence 
 that it is not true of the universe known to us that the sum of force in 
 it is always the same. 
 
 It is also evident that this axiom cannot be true of any finite uni- 
 verse. The materialist conceives of the universe as a definite quantity 
 of matter and force, conceivably susceptible of being measured and 
 expressed in a row of figures. It is bounded in space. It is a closed 
 sphere having within itself all the forces by which it is sustained in 
 being and by which one part acts on another. It is a machine ; all 
 its action is mechanical ; its forces are so adjusted that every expendi- 
 ture in one part is exactly restored from another ; it repairs its own 
 waste, mends its own breakage, sustains itself in being, while supplv- 
 ing the force by w r hich all its parts act and react on each ether ; and 
 it has sustained itself in thus acting from all eternity and will sustain 
 itself without end. Such a machine involves the absurdity of a per- 
 petual motion ; an absurdity the same in principle whether the machine 
 be small or large, simple or complicated ; the forces must sooner or 
 later come into equilibrium and all motion must cease. In the case 
 of a finite universe there is the additional difficulty that the machine 
 must sustain itself in existence. 
 
 If now we suppose the universe to be a continuous manifestation of 
 absolute Power, whether with Spencer we call it the Unknowable or 
 with the Theist call it God, then evidently the universe which is the 
 manifestation of the Absolute Power does not contain the unchange- 
 
 * First Principles, pp. 98, 258; 27, 76. 
 
506 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 able sum total of all power, for its existence is relative to and depen- 
 dent on the Absolute power ; the evolution of the universe is simply 
 the manifestation of that power as it progressively reveals itself in 
 finite things. 
 
 But of the Absolute Being the axiom is true. Should the universe 
 known to us be exhausted of all its energy and vanish away, all the 
 power which had sustained it and acted in it would still exist, either 
 active in some other universe or potential in the Absolute Being. And 
 at any given time the power exerted in creating and sustaining all 
 finite worlds has caused no diminution or exhaustion of the infinite 
 power. 
 
 3. The Absolute Being is a rational or personal being. It is the ab- 
 solute Reason. 
 
 What the Absolute Being is cannot be ascertained a priori. We 
 know what it is so far as it is revealed in the universe. It must have 
 all the powers necessary to account for the universe. These powers 
 must be in it, eternal, unlimited and unconditioned. There is Reason 
 in the Universe; therefore there must be Reason in the Absolute 
 Being revealed in the universe. 
 
 In nature we find both efficient and directive power. No one but 
 the complete positivist disputes the existence of efficient power. The 
 directive is scarcely less common and obvious. We find it in the in- 
 stinct which guides myriads of animalcules like the coral zoophytes, 
 and swarms of insects, like bees and ants, to work together to build 
 a structure according to a plan. We find it in germs developing each 
 into its own kind ; in the growth of living organisms in which the 
 different tissues and organs are elaborated, each in its own kind and 
 place, and the action of every part continuously directed to the realiza- 
 tion of the plan of the whole ; in the evolution of species, tending to 
 the improvement of the species from generation to generation, and to 
 the evolution of new species of a higher and higher order ; and in the 
 evolution of the Cosmos itself, expressing truth, conformed to law, 
 realizing systems, evolving higher and higher orders of beings, and 
 realizing results the apprehension of which constitutes science and reveals 
 all nature constructed according to the truths and laws of reason.* Thus 
 we have in nature itself manifestations not only of efficient power, but 
 of that directive agency which belongs only to Reason. 
 
 We also find Reason in the Universe in ourselves and our fellow- 
 
 * Sir Isaac Newton, in the General Scholium to his Optics, says: " The instinct of 
 brutes and insects can be nothing less than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever- 
 living Agent, who, being in all places, is more able by his will to move all bodies and 
 thereby to form and reform the parts of the universe, than we are by our will to move 
 the parts of our bodies." 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 5Q7 
 
 men. Evolution, ever revealing higher and higher powers, mechani- 
 cal, elemental, vital forces, ultimately reveals Reason in personal beings. 
 Therefore, since the evolution is the progressive revelation of the 
 Absolute, the Absolute is revealed as Reason, not less than as the source 
 of the efficient powers which cause motion, and chemical combination, 
 and life. 
 
 Therefore the ultimate source and ground of all that exists is the 
 Absolute Reason or Spirit, in which all the powers revealed in the 
 evolution of the Universe exist eternal, unlimited and unconditioned, 
 and by their continuous energizing progressively express in finite 
 realities all rational truths, laws, ideals and good, and evolve the uni- 
 verse in the order and beauty of a rational and moral system. 
 
 4. Finite beings have real existence distinct from the Absolute, 
 and are endowed with peculiar properties and powers by which they 
 act and react on each other according to the constitution and law 
 of their being and are brought into unity in various relations. 
 
 Pantheistic philosophy loses the finite in the infinite. The finite has 
 no real being ; all reality is in the absolute or infinite. The finite re- 
 turns to the absolute in the absorption and extinction of itself. 
 
 Agnosticism, in like_ manner, recognizes reality only in the thing 
 in itself, out of all relation to our faculties and utterly unknowable 
 by us. 
 
 Theism accepts neither of these philosophies but regards the finite 
 as having its own distinctive reality, always dependent on God. That 
 I exist in my own individual personality, that the outward world exists 
 distinct from me, are ultimate data of consciousness underlying all 
 human thought and all human knowledge. If, losing myself in Pan- 
 theistic or Agnostic speculation, I deny the reality of the finite and set 
 it aside as an illusive appearance, my denial involves the impossibility 
 of knowledge. Even the knowledge of the absolute is lost, for I have 
 knowledge of the absolute only as necessary to account for the finite ; 
 and if the finite is unreal the absolute must be unreal also. 
 
 On the other hand the existence of absolute power is a primitive 
 datum of consciousness equally essential to all thought and all know- 
 ledge. If I say that the universe itself is the All, then I deny this 
 primitive datum, and the All becomes a mere aggregate of littlenesses, 
 a mere sum of finites having no eternal and unconditioned cause or 
 ground. And on this supposition evolution loses its significance or 
 destroys itself in contradictions. 
 
 The finite universe, physical and rational, has reality of its own as 
 the reality in which God reveals his power, his wisdom and his love ; 
 the garment woven in the loom of time by which we see him. Aside 
 from its relation to and dependence on God it cannot exist. 
 
508 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 While personal beings and impersonal both exist in dependence on 
 God, yet distinct from him, they are also distinguished by essential 
 differences from each other. We do not perceive the impersonal in its 
 individuality but only infer its individuality in thought. We know 
 the impersonal as real, yet only as we grasp it in our own intelligence ; 
 only as acting necessarily as it is acted on in the fixed course of nature ; 
 only as expressing the thought and realizing the ideal and end of the 
 absolute reason energizing in and through nature. A person on the 
 contrary has immediate knowledge of himself in his own conscious- 
 ness, and of his individuality and identity ; from this knowledge the 
 idea of being arises. He has received so much of the divine that he 
 stands out (exists) in his own personality, distinguishing himself both 
 from nature and from God ; he knows himself as an energizing Rea- 
 son, capable of creating and realizing ideals of his own, and of ex- 
 pressing his own thoughts and realizing his own ends in nature by 
 the efficient and self-directing energy of his own rational free-will. 
 
 5. The finite universe is created by God in the sense that it depends 
 on him for its existence. 
 
 Evolution presents no peculiar objection to creation. Since it con- 
 cerns not the beginning or ultimate ground, but only the ongoing of 
 the finite universe, the doctrine of creation is as compatible with it as 
 with any other physical theory. 
 
 We may also affirm that evolution requires a doctrine of creation. 
 The theory always assumes a beginning ; and a beginning is also ne- 
 cessarily implied in the fact that the evolution must come to an end. 
 There must then be a cause antecedent to this beginning. Evolution 
 also always assumes a definite condition and arrangement at the begin- 
 ning and thus requires an antecedent cause of the arrangement. But 
 matter cannot have been the cause of this beginning and pre-existent 
 arrangement ; for the evolution itself includes the entire activity of 
 matter. If matter by its own action arranged itself and started the 
 evolution, then evolution, even as a theory merely of the ongoing of 
 nature, breaks down ; since the most important action of matter was 
 antecedent to the evolution and originated it. Also, since matter is 
 unintelligent and void of freedom, it could not have passed from pre- 
 vious inaction by exerting itself, calling its powers forth from their 
 potentiality to active energy, nor could it have been aware of any 
 reason for so doing. Only a Reason energizing in freedom could do 
 this. But if Energizing Reason is the ultimate ground of the exist- 
 ence of matter and all its forces, then the beginning of the evolution 
 can be accounted for. Evolution, therefore, demands a doctrine of 
 creation in the sense explained. 
 
 And we need not go back to the beginning to prove this. Matter in 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 509 
 
 every condition in which it is known by man presupposes its previous 
 existence in a different condition. Matter perceptible by us presup- 
 poses atoms and molecules which transcend our perception. Molecules 
 presuppose elemental atoms of diverse powers, combining in definite 
 mathematical proportions and revealing elemental forces; and are 
 thus known to be themselves " manufactured articles." Gross matter 
 compels the assumption of ethereal, matter. The ether compels the 
 assumption of secondary, tertiary and still finer orders of atoms, and 
 of the atom itself as a revolving vortex. Matter in motion leads to 
 the supposition of motionless matter entirely imperceptible by any 
 senses like those of man. If we drop the conception of gross matter 
 with its atoms and molecules, and substitute for it the dynamical 
 conception, then the matter becomes but a phenomenon of which the 
 force occupying the space is the thing in itself, a force distinct from 
 matter as we know it, and antecedent to it. Matter exists in a contin- 
 uous process of transition, or, as the followers of Heraclitus would say, 
 of flux, and thus exists not of itself but of a power acting on it and 
 evolving it. Therefore matter in whatever condition known or con- 
 ceived by us implies a pre-existing cause. 
 
 Here, again, the matter which is evolved through these successive 
 conditions cannot be itself the ever pre-existing and eternal cause 
 of the evolution. For matter in its continuous evolution is limited in 
 space, time and quantity, and thus in its essence is finite ; and the 
 finite cannot evolve itself into the eternal, the infinite, the uncondi- 
 tioned. If matter is the eternal cause of the evolution, then at every 
 point of time in the evolution the matter evolved is self-existent and 
 self-sustaining, and contains potentially all the energies revealed in 
 the endless evolution, without limit or condition. This predicates of 
 matter all the attributes of absolute being ; it is the old absurdity 
 of identifying the finite with the infinite and predicating of the finite 
 all the attributes of the infinite and absolute tyeing. The contradic- 
 .tions already noted as inseparable from this error necessarily follow. 
 At whatever point in the evolution we conceive of the finite universe, 
 we know by an invincible necessity of thought that it rests on some 
 power beyond itself, which is self-existent, is unlimited in space and 
 time, and contains potentially all the powers w r hich the universe 're- 
 veals. Thus at every point of its progress the evolution demands a 
 creator on w r hich the ever-evolving matter depends for its existence 
 as well as for its evolution. 
 
 This ultimate cause or ground of the universe can only be the abso- 
 lute Reason in whom all power is eternal and potential. This abso- 
 lute Reason is God, capable of being at once subje'ct and object of his 
 own action, eternally knowing the universe archetypal within his own 
 
510 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 thought, and eternally existing independent and unconditioned. If he 
 creates he is able to do so in the free exertion of his power ; and whether 
 he creates or refrains from creating there is always reason for his action 
 in his own perfect wisdom and love. 
 
 Mr. James Sully maintains that evolution is incompatible with crea- 
 tion ; and this is a common opinion both of evolutionists and others. 
 This incompatibility exists if creation is an instantaneous act in w^hich 
 the universe with all its afrangements is finished. This was Augus- 
 tine's conception. From it comes Deism ; for if the universe was thus 
 finished at the creation, it might be left by God to go of itself. But 
 according to Christian theism this is not the idea of creation. The 
 universe is not a rigid, finished machine, manufacturing itself and its 
 own driving power and running itself. Nature is not a finished pro- 
 duct. It is a continuous progress, a growth evolving higher and higher 
 powers and revealing more and more the thought, the wisdom, the 
 love and power of the Creator. And in nature God is ever active : 
 " He is not far from each one of us." With this view of God's action 
 in nature evolution is consistent. Then the essential significance of 
 the doctrine of creation is simply this : The universe at every point of 
 time is distinct from God but dependent on him for its existence. At 
 whatever point the universe is thought of, it must be thought of as 
 dependent for its being, as well as for its potential powers and its laws, 
 on the absolute Being distinct from itself. At every point of time God 
 is the prius of the universe, and is its cause. The doctrine of creation, 
 therefore, is compatible with evolution, as it is with any other law of 
 the ongoing of nature. 
 
 How God creates and sustains the universe, how the infinite reveals 
 itself in the finite, are unanswerable questions. It is the part of 
 wisdom to make no attempt to penetrate this impenetrable mystery. 
 It is enough that at every point of time we have, " In the beginning 
 God." 
 
 6. God is immanently active in the universe, sustaining, evolving 
 and directing its energies. 
 
 Some skeptical scientists sneer at theism as " the carpenter theory 
 of the universe." Those who teach that there is no force in nature but 
 the mechanical, are the ones who hold to the carpenter theory of the 
 universe ; for according to them it is a machine ; all chemical, vital 
 and spiritual powers are merely mechanical forces, and all beings, 
 animate and inanimate, are merely parts of the machine. Theism, 
 recognizing the universe as the continuous manifestation of the supreme 
 and ever-energizing_ Reason, is at the farthest remove from any mechan. 
 ical theory. This mechanical conception of the universe was charac- 
 teristic of the English Deists. It must be admitted that theists have 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 51 1 
 
 sometimes conceived of the universe as a machine and of God as the 
 mechanician, who made it ages ago and set it running. God's imma- 
 nent action has been ridiculed as disclosing the imperfection of the 
 machine ; as if a clock-maker were obliged to stand by the clock always 
 and to move its wheels and hands with his own finger. According to 
 this conception any direct action of God in the affairs of the universe 
 would be an arbitrary interference with it and interruption of the 
 course and law of nature, and contrary to the very constitution of the 
 machine. 
 
 Theism, on the contrary, must recognize God distinct from the uni- 
 verse, yet immanently active within it. So Paul represents it : " He is 
 not far from each one of us ; for in him we live and move and have 
 our being."* So Goethe pictures it : 
 
 " What were a God who but with force external 
 Has set the All about his finger circling ! 
 He from within must keep the world in motion, 
 Nature in him, himself in nature cherish ; 
 So that what in him lives, and moves, and is, 
 Doth ne'er his power nor e'er his spirit miss."f 
 
 * Acts xvii. 27, 28. 
 
 f " Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 
 
 Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse ! 
 
 Him ziemt's die welt in Innern zu bewegen, 
 
 Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen ; 
 
 So dass, was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, 
 
 Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vermisst." 
 
 (SpriJwhe in Reimen ; Werke; Stuttgard Ed. Vol. I. p. 167.) 
 
 These lines must have been suggested by those of Virgil : 
 
 " Principio coelum ac terras, camposque liquentes, 
 Lucentemque globum lunse, Titaniaque astra 
 Spiritus intus alit ; totamque infusa per artus 
 Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet." 
 
 (jEneid VI., 724^727.) 
 
 Similar are Pope's lines : 
 
 "All are but parts of one stupendous whole 
 Whose body nature is and God the soul ; 
 That changed through all and yet in all the same, 
 Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame, 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees, 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent." 
 
 Essay on Man, Ep, /, 
 
512 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 In representing God as immanent in nature there is danger of iden- 
 tifying him with nature or submerging him in it, and so sinking into 
 Heathenism, Pantheism or Materialism. Dr. Caird, in his recent work 
 on the Philosophy of Religion, has, wittingly or unwittingly, taken 
 positions which logically involve Pantheism. Theism recognizes God 
 as always supernatural, above nature, not submerged in it ; as always 
 distinct from and above the universe while immanently active in it. 
 We may have an intelligent idea of this immanence at least in the fol- 
 lowing particulars. 
 
 First, the universe is always dependent on God for its existence. 
 Matter dynamically considered is no more than points of force occupy- 
 ing space. The existence of the material universe depends on the con- 
 tinued action of these forces. Should it cease for an instant the uni- 
 verse would vanish. But force, independent of being, is unthinkable. 
 Its existence necessarily carries our minds to a Being transcending 
 matter, that is, to God. God is immanent in nature because it depends 
 on God for its existence and for all its powers. No analogy of the 
 action of finite beings on one another is adequate to explain the action 
 of the infinite on and through the finite. Sir Isaac Newton compares 
 God's immanence in nature to the immanence of the spirit in the body, 
 sustaining and directing its energies ; Edwards to the action of light 
 on a portrait, sustaining it in existence. It may be compared to the 
 action of a mind sustaining a process of thought. But however inad- 
 equate our conceptions of the mode of God's action on the finite, the 
 fact is intelligible that finite beings continuously depend on him for 
 their existence. 
 
 Secondly, God is immanent in nature by his directive agency. A 
 directive agency is as evident in nature as the efficient energy. God is 
 continually guiding the energies of nature as they work on harmo- 
 niously to realize a gradually evolving result. 
 
 Thirdly, God is immanent in nature developing or evolving it into 
 new and higher forms. It has been shown that the process of evolu- 
 tion is a progressive elaboration of matter to higher forms and the 
 revelation of energies of higher orders. These energies are eternal 
 and unconditioned in God. They reveal themselves in the evolution 
 of the finite universe. So Prof. Le Conte says : " The forces of nature 
 I regard as an effluence from the Divine Person an ever-present and 
 all-pervading divine energy. The laws of nature are but the regular 
 modes of operation of that energy ; universal because he is omni- 
 present, invariable because he is unchanging."* And as God effuses 
 of his infinite energy into the finire, the evolution not only goes on 
 
 * Man's Place in Nature : Princeton Rev., Nov., 1878, p. 794. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 513 
 
 continuously in time and space, but reveals higher and higher powers 
 in higher and higher orders of being. 
 
 Thus, as we look on nature, it seems like a transparency, on which the 
 motions of an invisible actor are revealed in the shadows thrown on it 
 from the light behind. So nature is the veil before the most holy 
 place, on which God, acting in the ineffable light of the spiritual world, 
 is perpetually revealing himself in action. 
 
 Lastly, in the moral system God reveals himself in human history 
 by his action in moral government and redemption ; and is present in 
 the Holy Spirit, in a manner analogous to the continuous effluence of 
 his energy into nature, and working with influences adapted to 
 rational moral agents to lift them to higher planes of being, to 
 bring them to new and spiritual births into the higher and divine 
 life. 
 
 7. God's action in creating, sustaining and evolving the universe 
 is individuating. 
 
 We must not forget that any analogy from the action of finite 
 beings on each other must be an inadequate representation of the 
 action of the Absolute Being in creating, sustaining and evolving the 
 finite. But by the clew put into our hands in the knowledge of the 
 finite we may feel our way to some real though inadequate knowledge 
 on this subject. 
 
 The Absolute, according to the agnostics, is that which exists out of 
 all relations. Then it must be out of all relation to the finite. Then 
 it cannot be the absolute Power in which all the known powers of the 
 universe originate, as Spencer regards it. Then it follows that we acre 
 as incapable of knowing that it is, as of knowing what it is. We are 
 driven to complete Positivism. There is no half-way house of Spen- 
 cerian Agnosticism, between complete Positivism which involves com- 
 plete Agnosticism, and Theism. 
 
 According to theism the Absolute is not that which exists out of all 
 relations and therefore cannot be in any relation to anything ; but it is 
 that which exists out of all necessary relations. It is capable of exist- 
 ing out of relation to anything ; it contains all potencies in itself; if 
 other beings come into existence it is only as dependent on it. It is in- 
 dependent of them. 
 
 Our knowledge of the finite universe is the occasion on which the 
 rational intuition arises that the absolute being exists as the ultimate 
 ground and cause of the universe. Thus in the necessary datum of con- 
 sciousness by which we know that the absolute exists, we know that it is 
 independent of the finite universe, and yet related to it as its ultimate 
 ground and cause. We know, therefore, that it is endowed with all 
 powers adequate to originate and account for all the finite universe. 
 33 
 
514 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 Carrying with us, therefore, this knowledge, we can think of the pos- 
 sibility of the absolute's existing alone without the finite universe. 
 When we attempt to push our thought beyond the universe by which 
 we know the absolute, and to apprehend the Absolute Being as existing 
 alone, we can think of it as the Absolute Reason w r hich is God, at once the 
 subject and the object of his own eternal intelligence and power, of his own 
 eternal wisdom and love and might. The eternal plenitude of all the 
 power manifested in the universe exists in him potentially. Those 
 powers which we know revealed in the universe as his, we carry back 
 beyond their manifestation and refer them to him in his eternal and in- 
 dependent being as existing in him potentially without limit of time, 
 space, quantity, or condition. 
 
 Then even space and time would have no more than a potential ex- 
 istence in the absolute being. Space and time as we now know them 
 derive all their content from our knowledge of finite beings existing and 
 acting in them. But when passing in thought beyond the finite universe 
 to the absolute existing independent and alone, we find no content for 
 the idea of space and time. Nothing is left of them but the unlimited 
 possibility of finite beings existing and acting in time and space. But 
 a possibility, if real, presupposes a power ; and unlimited possibility 
 supposes an unlimited power; and unlimited power presupposes an 
 absolute, unconditioned being. Thus the ultimate metaphysical idea of 
 space and time is the idea of an unlimited possibility of the existence of 
 finite beings. And this possibility arises from the unlimited power of 
 God. The existence of space and time, therefore, is a possibility de- 
 pendent on the power that is eternally potential in God. If there were 
 no God there would be no possibility of the existence of finite beings ; 
 therefore there would be no time and space. These are eternal and 
 archetypal in the Absolute Reason ; God is not conditioned by them as 
 existing independent of himself. They are objectively real to finite 
 beings, conditioning their existence. 
 
 The idea of potency as distinguished from active power, in other words, 
 of a power that is potential as distinguished from actual, is derived from 
 our consciousness of our own reserved and unused powers. When 
 voluntarily directing our energies to a particular end we are conscious 
 of power to arrest the action and to direct the energies otherwise. This 
 power we are conscious of having when we do not exercise it. It is in 
 us potentially, though not actually in exercise. This distinction is ap- 
 plied in science to physical forces ; but the application is wholly anthro- 
 pomorphic, and as so applied it is often difficult to see the significance 
 of it, and the distinction is often misleading. But it has real significance 
 as applied to the reserved force of a free agent which he can call into 
 action at will. Since God is a personal being we predicate potential 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 515 
 
 energy of him in its primitive and legitimate significance. And think- 
 ing of him as self-existent and independent, we say, with the full meaning 
 of the words, that all powers manifested in the universe are potentially 
 in him without limit or condition. 
 
 From this idea of God existing eternal and everywhere in the pleni- 
 tude of power, and in the order of thought always the antecedent and 
 cause of the universe which is ever dependent on him, we proceed to 
 inquire how he reveals himself in finite things. I answer that the 
 potential becomes the actual. The powers eternally competent to 
 create, sustain and evolve the universe, act in creating, sustaining and 
 evolving it. And this action is conceivable by us only as an individua- 
 tion. The powers which had existed potentially as an eternal, unbroken, 
 unchanging and undivided plenitude, now act in points of time and 
 place, circumscribe themselves, as it were, within limits, and thus be- 
 come individuated. Thenceforward as individuals having their own 
 properties and powers, they have a reality of their own and act recipro- 
 cally in time and space on each other. And as the plenitude of power 
 more and more infuses itself into time and space, the manifestation of 
 the divine power is not only widened in space and prolonged in time, 
 but the power in its individuation is intensified, and beings of higher 
 and higher powers appear. Thus the universe which from eternity had 
 existed potentially in God, is perpetually becoming actual in space and 
 time by the individuating action of God, and is thus progressively re- 
 vealing what God is. " The heavens declare the glory of God and the 
 firmament shows the work of his hand." 
 
 Creation, therefore, is not originating something out of nothing. On 
 the contrary in creating, the Absolute Being calls into action power 
 eternally potential in his infinite plenitude : and this power, energizing 
 under the limits of space and time and thus individuating and revealing 
 itself, becomes cognizable as a finite reality or being. When the power 
 is individuated in and occupies space, it is a body and capable of acting 
 in space and time on other bodies as it is acted on. When the power is 
 individuated as rational free will acting consciously in time and space 
 and persisting in unity and identity, it is a person energizing upon 
 nature from above it. 
 
 Hence the difference between the finite and the infinite or absolute is 
 not the difference of the phenomenal and the real, as the Pantheists and 
 the Agnostics teach. And some theists run into the same error in 
 attempting to escape from the mechanical idea of the universe and to 
 conceive of God as immanent in nature. Christianity teaches that in 
 redeeming man from sin God becomes human in Christ ; he subjects 
 himself to human limitations and conditions to lift man to the divine 
 likeness and to communion with God. In this humiliation of the Son 
 
516 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 of God we have set forth the principle of the moral law and the moral 
 system, the law of love ; the strong must help the weak ; the higher 
 must go down to the lower to lift them up. Evolution discloses an 
 analogous law dominant in nature, the higher going down to the lower 
 to lift it up. 
 
 This humiliation of the Son of God and his limiting himself within 
 the conditions of humanity is also the most complete revelation of God. 
 As he veils and confines himself in human nature we see most clearly 
 and fully what he is as God, and learn that God is love. To this also 
 his creative action is analogous. When he would reveal himself in 
 creation it is only by confining and individuating his wisdom, love and 
 power within the limits of space and time and the finiteness of nature 
 and of man. Thus the humiliation of the Son of God, in which God 
 becomes human to make man divine, is not merely central in the moral 
 system and in redemption, but seems also to set forth the dominant 
 principle in the constitution of the universe : The higher goes down to 
 the lower to lift it up ; the great energizes within the limits of the little 
 to make it great, and to express and reveal its own greatness. 
 
 Buddhism teaches that evil consists in individuation ; the existence 
 of finite beings as individuated and distinguished from the Absolute is 
 essential evil, and redemption is possible only by reabsorption into the 
 Absolute. This is a pantheistic and pessimistic conception entirely 
 foreign from theism. According to theism the existence of finite beings 
 however limited is a good, as participating in and revealing the divine. 
 In its lowest forms it is participant in the divine power and reveals it ; 
 in its highest forms it is participant of the divine reason and reveals it, 
 and is capable of participating in the divine wisdom and love, and of 
 acting and effecting results in accordance therewith. And the finite 
 universe is progressively receptive and expressive of more and more of 
 the divine perfections forever. Evil begins in the acts of free agents 
 voluntarily isolating themselves from God and the universal system, in 
 living supremely for themselves. 
 
 8. God's action in the universe is a continuous realization and ex- 
 pression in the finite of a plan or ideal eternal and archetypal in the 
 absolute Reason. 
 
 In the absolute being are infinite possibilities. All power is in him 
 potentially. These possibilities are not indeterminate, as if one thing 
 were as possible as another. What is possible and what impossible is 
 determined by Reason. The eternal truths and laws of Reason are, as 
 I have said, the flammantia mcenia mundi which no power can set aside 
 or overpass. That which is absurd to Reason cannot be made real by 
 power. This is no limitation of the Absolute, but only the affirmation 
 that the absolute is endowed with all perfection ; is Reason and not 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 517 
 
 unreason. The universe is grounded in Reason. Science is continually 
 demonstrating that the universe is the expression of thought, accordant 
 with law, and realizing a plan. But if there is thought there must be a 
 thinker; if the universe reveals a rationalplan there must be a Reason 
 which plans it. 
 
 The universe with all its possibilities and its actualities exists eternal 
 as an Ideal or Mundus InteUigibilis in the divine Reason. God sees it 
 as the expression of the eternal truth of Reason, conformed to its eternal 
 law, realizing its ideal perfection and the good which Reason judges 
 worthy. God's action is the progressive realization of this ideal in finite 
 things. It is action which, in the finite universe, continuously and pro- 
 gressively expresses the truths of Reason, conforms to its eternal law, 
 realizes its ideals of perfection, and so realizes what reason approves as 
 the true and highest good. God's action in the finite is the continuous 
 expression and realization of the thoughts of wisdom in acts of love. 
 
 That which is nearest to creation in human action is the action of the 
 rational mind creating ideals and expressing them. The poet creates 
 an Iliad and expresses it in rhythmic words ; the artist creates an ideal 
 and expresses it on canvas or in a statue ; the architect creates an ideal 
 and builds his thought up in stone ; the inventor creates an ideal and 
 expresses it in a steam-engine or a telephone. This action is the expres- 
 sion of truth in accordance with law and thus realizes an ideal and 
 multiplies good ; and so far it is like the divine action. 
 
 In this there is more than an analogy. Reason is the same in kind 
 in man and in God. As^when we travel to strange lands, all earthly 
 scenes are changed but the sun and stars are the same, so through limit- 
 less space and time, the truths and laws and ideals of reason so far as 
 known are the same to all rational beings. Otherwise science is delu- 
 sive and knowledge impossible. The universe is the expression of the 
 thought and the realization of the plan of perfect and absolute reason. 
 Nature can be apprehended in human thought because itself was origi- 
 nally God's archetypal thought and in its finite reality is the progressive 
 expression of the divine thought. The mode in which a finite reason 
 acts, by observation and processes of thought discovering facts and 
 advancing its knowledge, is unlike the eternal knowledge of the abso- 
 lute Being, who sees the end from the beginning. But the unchanging 
 and universal truths and laws which guide the action, the unchanging 
 ideals of beauty and the imperishable worth of the true good are every- 
 where and always the same. 
 
 Thinkers at various times and by various processes have reached the 
 conclusion that the ultimate reality of the universe is thought. The 
 truth in this conclusion is that the ultimate reality is absolute Reason, 
 and that the universe is the continuously evolving expression of its 
 
518 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 eternal truths and laws, and realization of its eternal ideals and of 
 all that reason sees to have true worth. There is no grander con- 
 ception than the Biblical conception of the creation : " He spake and it 
 was done ; " " God said, Let 'light be and light was." The universe is 
 the word which expresses the thought of God. 
 
 9. God's action, creative, immanent, individuating and expressing 
 the eternal ideal of Reason in finite things, is also a progressive realiza- 
 tion of his archetypal thought. 
 
 As the expression, in the limitations of time, space and quantity, 
 of the unconditioned and unlimited powers existing potentially in 
 him, it must be progressive. Power energizing and realizing results 
 within the limitations of time and space, cannot fill all time and space 
 in an instant. Also, the infinite can never be fully expressed in the 
 finite. We think of the ideal or plan of the universe eternal in the 
 divine mind, as a unity or whole expressing all rational truth and 
 law and realizing all rational perfection and good. But the realiza- 
 tion of this ideal in the finite forms of time and space must be for- 
 ever progressive. We speak of the universe as created by one eternal 
 act. But an eternal act of creation can disclose itself in time only as 
 the continuously progressive manifestation of God's wisdom and power 
 in finite things always dependent for their existence on him. At 
 every point of time and at every limit of space the manifestation of 
 the absolute in the universe is incomplete and the universe is seen to be 
 not finished and perfected, but tending onward to larger and higher 
 manifestations of God. 
 
 The universe must be progressive, also, because finite beings exist 
 distinct from God, each having its own constitution and its own pecu- 
 liar properties and powers. Moreover, these beings are not isolated, 
 in each of w T hich God expresses thought capriciously; but each is part 
 of the rational system which as subject to the truths and laws of Rea- 
 son has a unity, significance, law and end of its own to which all the 
 parts are related. The progressive realization of God's archetypal 
 thought is not by sweeping away the existing universe and beginning 
 anew, but is in and through the finite universe which already exists in 
 some stage of its development, in which each being has its own consti- 
 tution and its own relations to the whole, and which as a whole is the 
 realization up to a certain point of a system destined to be continuously 
 realized in higher degrees. Accordingly the results which God effects 
 on a finite being must be limited by its capacity. No power can con- 
 vince a stone by argument or persuade it by appeals to compassion. A 
 free-will cannot be moved by a lever or pulley, and its determinations 
 cannot be efficiently caused by any physical force ; for if this were 
 possible it would be a machine and not a free-will. And the reception 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 519 
 
 of truth by the intellect is limited by its capacity ; a child cannot be 
 taught Newton's Principia or Laplace's Mecanique Celeste. So God's 
 revelation of himself to man must be limited by the capacity of man. 
 If he would reveal himself more fully he must educate and develop 
 man to a capacity for receiving it. Accordingly we find that the reve- 
 lation recorded in the Bible was made progressively. It is also true 
 that the results effected through the agency of finite beings must be 
 limited by the finiteness of the agency. The momentum of a body 
 moving at a certain velocity is limited by its mass. It is of the essence 
 of a moral system that results be effected through the agency of finite 
 free-agents ; therefore the results must be limited by the powers of the 
 agent effecting them. They may also be modified by the action of 
 free-agents in wilful opposition to truth and right and in disobedience 
 to the law of love. The realization, therefore, must be progressive. 
 But the progressiveness and the limitation which it involves are in 
 God only as the impassable barriers of perfect reason are in him and 
 his action is regulated by perfect wisdom and love ; beyond that the 
 progressiveness is only in the finite universe, in which the thought of 
 his reason and the perfection of his wisdom and love are continuously 
 being expressed. 
 
 I have said that the universe is the word which expresses God's 
 thought. The word written or spoken which expresses a man's thought 
 is distinct from the man. It thenceforth has an existence of its awn 
 expressing to everyone who reads or hears or remembers it the thought 
 of the man. The word once spoken cannot be recalled. But the word 
 has no power to propagate or vindicate itself. On the contrary the 
 finite realities in which God expresses his thought have their own pro- 
 perties and powers, the very power of the absolute circumscribing and, 
 as it were, hypostasizing itself in them. Could the orator utter " words 
 that breathe and thoughts that burn" not in the rhetorical sense alone, 
 words conscious of their own meaning and glowing with energy to 
 realize it in life, could the artist people his canvas with living beings 
 and paint into it motion and sound, and could it be that the mind 
 of the orator thus vitalized his words and the mind of the artist thus 
 energized in his picture, the resemblance would be more complete. 
 Accordingly Lotze says of the divine thoughts expressed in the uni- 
 verse : " The Ideas may well, in the beginning of the universe, have 
 been the determining ground for the first systemization (verknupfung) 
 of things , in its continued preservation and action, on the contrary, 
 it is the efficiency of the particular things or parts which realizes the 
 contents of the ideas."* Finite things, thus having distinct existence, 
 
 * Mikrokosmus. Vol. I., p. 70. 
 
520 .THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 limit one another, impinging and conflicting; and thus the realiza- 
 tion of the universal plan is progressive on account of the finiteness 
 of the things in which it is to be realized. J. S. Mill and others have 
 suggested that it is necessary to theism to admit the eternity of matter, 
 which by its intractableness might account for the fact that the uni- 
 verse does not at once realize every ideal of perfection. But the fact 
 that the powers potential in God become actual in space and time and 
 thus reveal themselves in finite creations, is the complete explanation 
 of the fact that God's revelation of himself in the universe is progres- 
 sive, and consequently that the universe at any point of time is ob- 
 viously incomplete. For that the finite cannot be infinite and can 
 exist only under limitation, is an eternal truth of reason which con- 
 stitutes a limitation of all action and which no power can annul or 
 transcend. 
 
 On the other hand, this fact of progressiveness opens to us the 
 universe as always evolving to larger and higher revelations of God's 
 glory and to a more complete realization of all that is true, and right, 
 and perfect, and good, as contemplated in the plan of the eternal 
 Keason. 
 
 It is continuously evolving in time. Existing manifestations of the 
 divine wisdom and power are prolonged from age to age, and new de- 
 velopments thereof appear from cycle to cycle. 
 
 It may be continuously enlarging outward into boundless space, and 
 that forever. This is impossible to materialism ; becauses it supposes 
 the sum of matter and its forces to be a fixed quantity and therefore 
 finite. Any increase of matter in space would therefore be an addition 
 to that definite amount ; any evolution must come to an end ; and while 
 it goes on must imply the evolution of new and higher powers without 
 any cause. It is not impossible to the theist, since material worlds are 
 manifestations of absolute and infinite wisdom and power, which the 
 creation of a new world reveals but does not increase, and which, if 
 a world is destroyed, are not diminished but only manifested in another 
 form, or withdrawn from finite observation into the infinite. 
 
 God's manifestation of himself in the universe is progressive, also, 
 in the evolution of higher and higher orders of beings and powers. 
 This has been already set forth. I add a few words on the spirit of 
 man, the highest terrestrial product of the creative energy hitherto 
 known. All finite beings inferior to man are completely included in 
 nature. Endowed each with its own properties and powers they act 
 and react on each other, but always in the fixed course of nature, 
 acting as they are acted on. In the process of evolution beings of 
 higher and higher orders appear ; but even the brutes with their sen- 
 sitive life and power of locomotion do not rise above the course of 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTIO?^ *. igjF vj\K 
 
 nature ; they act only as they are acted on, and in their instincts 
 driven by a power and directed by an intelligence not their own. At 
 last organization attains an individuation and development such that 
 it is capable of being the medium for the action of finite spirit ; God, 
 infusing into every finite thing whatever energy it is capable of mani- 
 festing, breathes into this organism spiritual energies like his own ; 
 and man appears in the image of God, conscious of himself as a 
 person endowed with reason, free-will and susceptibility to rational 
 motives and emotions. Here is a being who as to his body is still 
 rooted in nature, but as to his spirit is lifted above nature. This being, 
 thus endowed, assumes the direction of his own energies; he deter- 
 mines the end to which he will direct them, and when and how he will 
 exert them for the chosen end. He reacts also upon nature, takes pos- 
 session of its resources and powers and directs them to the accom- 
 plishment of his own ends. But for the very reason that he is above 
 nature and self-directing, he is no longer guided unerringly through 
 instinct by nature. He investigates, deliberates and determines; he 
 hesitates and doubts ; he errs and sins. Being, as w r e may suppose, 
 spirit in its lowest type and in its infantile condition, it is not strange 
 if the separation from the mother-forces of nature by his birth into the 
 personal life should involve a temporary inferiority to the instinctive 
 life and a consequent liability to a missing of the right way, a moral 
 straying from the eternal Spirit who is the Father of his spirit as 
 Nature was its cherishing mother. But if he strays, it is in his power, 
 through the influences of the divine Spirit quickening his moral being, 
 to correct his errors, to retrieve his faults, to return by his own free- 
 will to union with God in faith and love, to form a character fixed in 
 all wisdom, righteousness and good-will, and thus in the fixedness and 
 the glory of his perfection, surpass the brightest and most glorious 
 of natural objects. " They shall shine as the stars forever and ever." 
 "The righteous shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their 
 Father." Their differences are described as " one glory of the sun, and 
 another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars."* This 
 evolution is in complete contrast with that of materialistic monism, 
 which supposes that senseless matter evolves till it awakes to conscious- 
 ness in man. Theistic evolution supposes God immanently active in 
 nature, individuating and incorporating of his energies in space and 
 time, evolving finite creations with higher powers, till at last he can 
 emit into a material organization a spark of his own spiritual life, a 
 finite spirit endowed with reason and free-will like his own. Accord- 
 ing to materialistic monism, the man as he wakes to consciousness is 
 
 Dan. xii. 3 ; Matt. xiii. 43 ; 1 Cor. xv. 41. 
 
522 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 only a product of nature ; the individual exists only as the medium 
 for perpetuating the race. " The individual perishes, the All endures ; " 
 and Riickert's touching lament of the withering flower becomes the 
 universal dirge : 
 
 " Ewig ist das Ganze griin, 
 Nur das Einzle welkt geschwind." 
 
 According to theistic evolution, on the contrary, beginning with the 
 highest and not with the lowest, the spirit of man, being above nature, 
 is not dependent on nature and its processes for its existence, but has 
 in itself the elements of immortality. And when the body dies the 
 spirit lives, forming for itself it may be by its own plastic power a 
 more ethereal medium through which it may act. 
 
 The existence of the spirit has sometimes been so taught and de- 
 fended by theists as to imply that every living creature is animated by 
 a soul. The doctrine is then open to the objection that, since a single 
 cell has life, every living cell must have a soul. But according to 
 theism rightly understood, the divine power raises matter to various 
 orders of being, without lifting it out of the fixed course of nature. It 
 is in man alone of terrestrial beings that rational, personal spirit appears. 
 This is the necessary result if the evolution starts with the highest in 
 God. The other conception of a soul in every living thing comes from 
 thinking which has not entirely cleared itself of the materialistic con- 
 ception that the evolution begins with the lowest. 
 
 What the spirit of man may become in the course of endless evolution 
 the human mind cannot conceive. What new and higher orders of 
 being may be brought into existence, what new heavens and new earth 
 may appear, in what new and more ethereal forms matter may be 
 conditioned, there is no limit to our conjectures. There is nothing 
 unreasonable in the fancy of Prof. Le Conte that material forces may be 
 gradually exhausted and be replaced by spiritual ; nor in the fancy of 
 the authors of the " Unseen Universe" that the available energy of the 
 visible universe will ultimately be appropriated by the invisible, and 
 the universe of gross matter will disappear. We have at least certainty 
 that the manifestation of the Absolute in the finite is forever progressive. 
 It only remains to notice a common error in discussing evolution ; I 
 mean the assumption that the evolution of our own system is the all- 
 comprehending evolution of the universe. When it is traced from its 
 beginning in the homogeneous to its end in lifeless and motionless equi- 
 librium, it is treated as if it were the entire history of the universe. As 
 men formerly constructed theories of theology and cosmogony as if the 
 earth was all, now with equal simplicity they construct theologies and 
 cosmogonies, as if the evolution of our own system was all. But an 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 523 
 
 evolution like that of our solar system has gone on, we may suppose, in 
 the formation of every star. Nebulae are observed, supposed to be now 
 in the process of evolution into worlds ; and the matter already evolved 
 into our solar system or into any other, may be supposed previously to 
 have passed through many evolutions. There may be what Spencer 
 calls a " rhythmic movement," not only within a single system in evol- 
 ving, but in the progress of the universe as a whole through myriads of 
 evolutions. So that, as formerly in our theologies and cosmogonies we 
 thought and discoursed of planets and suns, now we must think and dis- 
 course of evolutions, and of systems in various stages of their evolution. 
 The universe as known to us is probably but an infinitesimal part of the 
 universe as it is, and as it has been. The removal of this single misap- 
 prehension silences the anti-theistic arguments founded on evolution. 
 
 10. The action of God in creating, sustaining, and evolving the finite 
 universe is uniform and continuous according to law. 
 
 The common objections to theism are, that the supposition of supreme 
 will introduces an element of arbitrariness or caprice into the universe 
 incompatible with the uniformity of nature and the universal reign of 
 law ; and that the evolution of finite free wills is an increase of the force 
 in the universe, and so incompatible with the order of nature. But it 
 is now obvious that these objections rest on a gross misunderstanding of 
 theism. 
 
 In the first place, when it is argued that order and law in nature 
 prove the absence of will and thus disprove theism, the objector regards 
 God simply as an almighty will unregulated by law, that is, an almighty 
 caprice or oftptq, which Sophocles says is the parent of tyranny. God 
 is not capricious will, but absolute Reason; his will is eternally in 
 harmony with Reason, and all his action regulated in wisdom and love. 
 Thus through all time he is progressively realizing the archetypal plan 
 of his wisdom and love which is itself the constitution of the universe. 
 
 In the second place, God works on and through the world as already 
 existing. When, as in the beginning of life, a new power appears, its 
 appearance is not arbitrary or irregular, but it appears then and there 
 because the matter in its evolution had reached a condition in which it 
 was receptive of the divine energy and capable of revealing the new 
 power. And this new power at its appearance becomes itself a part of 
 the world through which God acts, revealing still higher agencies. 
 Accordingly material things being definite powers fixed in the limits of 
 time and space, must always act according to the constitution of their 
 own being. Or if they are regarded as vehicles or media for conveying 
 force, that also must be accordant with their constitution. This is the 
 common axiom of physical science, that everything must act according 
 to the law of its own being. 
 
524 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 In the next place, the evolution of new powers, even of free moral 
 agents, adds nothing to the sum total of energy ; just as the appearance 
 of a new physical force is supposed to add nothing to the sum total of 
 force in the material world. So here the appearance of the new power 
 only reveals, power always potential in the Absolute Being. Giving 
 does not impoverish the Absolute One. The objection that the exist- 
 ence of finite free-agents implies an increase of force in the universe, 
 arises either from the error that the absolute is merely the sum total of 
 finite things, or from the materialistic monism that nothing exists but 
 a definite quantity of matter and force. Into some error of this sort 
 Dr. Caird falls when he tells us that if we think of all power as poten- 
 tial in God and not revealed in the universe, we must think of God as 
 being less than he is now.* The same reasoning would prove that the 
 continuous evolution of the universe would make God continuously 
 greater than he had been. When man appeared, for example, God 
 would be greater than before. The theistic conception of God excludes 
 this objection, as I have already shown. It has also been replied that 
 a finite free-will is merely a directive power. It is a principle of 
 mechanics that a force acting at right angles to the line of a moving 
 body does no work, adds no new energy ; it merely deflects an energy 
 already in action. So it is said a finite free-will merely directs ener- 
 gies already existing from one line of action to another. This may 
 be so. But it is unnecessary to the theist's position to maintain that 
 it is so. 
 
 The objection is further urged that free-agents by their free action 
 may interrupt the course of nature. Milton represents the good and 
 bad angels as hurling the mountains on each other in their warfare ; and 
 why may not mighty evil spirits push the earth from its orbit, or hurl 
 satellites and asteroids against each other as an angry mob hurl stones ? 
 I answer, first, that science has made us familiar with the idea of the 
 collision and destruction of worlds ; and it is not theists but astrono- 
 mers who at the appearance of every comet revive the old terror in a 
 new form by predicting its collision with the earth. With the views of 
 Prof. Clifford as to the inexactness of physical movements and the 
 common denial that final causes and any rational end or plan can be 
 discovered in the universe, we seem to be approaching to a scientific 
 revival of the idea that all things happen by chance, which as un- 
 regulated force is in its ultimate significance not distinguishable from 
 necessity or fate. Theism, in common with physical science, teaches 
 that as this earth had a beginning in its present form, so also it will 
 come to an end. It also teaches in common with science that this end 
 
 * Philosophy of Religion, p. 254. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 525 
 
 will come only in accordance with natural law and not by unregulated 
 force whether called fate, necessity or caprice. According to theism 
 the constitution of the universe rests on truths, laws, ideals and ends 
 eternal in the divine Reason, and no power, not even the Almighty, 
 can annul or change them, or effect results in contradiction to them ; 
 the laws of nature, which to us appear only as uniform sequences, are 
 seen by God to be founded in these eternal and unchangeable truths ; 
 and the archetypal plan of the universe eternal in the mind of God is 
 the plan of perfect wisdom and love expressing the same. All will- 
 power is invincibly circumscribed within these bulwarks of Reason and 
 cannot destroy nor alter nor overleap them. The order and law of the 
 universe are also guaranteed by God's love. While materialistic science 
 denies all final causes and all plan for the realizing of moral and 
 rational ends in nature, theism teaches that God subordinates the 
 physical world to the realization of moral and spiritual ends in a plan 
 determined in absolute wisdom and love. That plan he guards with 
 all the energy of almighty power and all the interest of perfect love, 
 and suffers no finite agent to frustrate or mar it. If wicked beings 
 attempt it, they waste their strength in contending against the very 
 constitution of the universe and meet a power above them which frus- 
 trates their plans, restrains their power, and with unerring justice brings 
 on them inevitable retribution. He endows beings with reason and 
 free-will that they may know him, may be objects of his love, and con- 
 stitute under his government and grace a moral system in which may 
 be realized the highest rational ends and the good which reason 
 approves as worthy of God and of all rational beings. He gives them 
 the scope for action necessary that they may have opportunity to choose 
 between right and wrong, good and evil, and form by their own free 
 action characters which shall make them like God, capable of entering 
 into his plans, working with him in their realization, and attaining and 
 enjoying the good which has worth that is above all price and endures 
 in the life everlasting. He comes to them with all the influences which 
 infinite wisdom and love can suggest, in nature and providence, in law 
 and gospel, in righteous government and redeeming grace, to deter 
 them from sin or to recall them from it to repentance. If they 
 resist these influences and persist in sin, if they prove themselves im- 
 pervious to God's love and incorrigible under all his saving agencies, 
 then God will not prevent the evil which they bring on themselves ; 
 for under the constitution of the universe sin is itself the essential evil ; 
 a life of selfishness cannot bring blessedness to the sinner, but evil and 
 only evil continually. And in ways known to himself God will restrain 
 their power to do evil and frustrate their plans. Whatever their efforts 
 the powers of wickedness can never unsettle the courses of nature fixed 
 
526 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 in his eternal reason, nor stop the efflux of his love into the finite, nor 
 becloud the light of his wisdom, nor hinder the progress of the reign 
 of righteousness and good-will to which all the system of nature is sub- 
 ordinate. God meets their wrong-doing with his right-doing ; and how- 
 ever the action of the wicked may modify the temporary course of 
 events within their limited sphere, God's action on occasion of those 
 events will reveal new aspects of his perfection and new resources in 
 the riches of his grace for the advancement of his rational and spiritual 
 plan. 
 
 Thus we see that all God's action is continuous according to law. 
 There is nothing arbitrary in the divine will. It is eternally in har- 
 mony with the divine reason. Dr. Caird says : " The existence of a 
 finite world or of finite spiritual beings cannot be ascribed to a mere 
 arbitrary creative will, but springs out of something in the very nature 
 of God ; the idea of God contains in itself, as a necessary element of 
 it, the existence of finite spirits."* This is certainly groping in dark- 
 ness when there is light enough to see. God is not "nature" at 
 all; he is spirit. It only confuses us to attempt to explain the 
 uniformity of his action as a uniformity of nature, as we explain 
 the uniform action of a material thing. The absence of arbitrariness 
 and caprice in God and the complete uniformity of his action arises 
 not from his " nature," but from the eternal harmony of his will 
 with his reason. This is the fundamental basis of uniformity or 
 continuity of action in accordance with law. It is the perfection of 
 God's character ; the perfection of his wisdom and love. The action 
 of his will continuously expresses the eternal truths, and accords with 
 the eternal laws of Reason, and thus realizes all rational perfection 
 and all rational good. This is the meaning of the words of Scripture 
 " God is love." The accordance of his action with reason is not the 
 deliberating, hesitating, varying action of a man not knowing always 
 what is wise and right and not doing it always when he knows ; but it 
 is the continuous action of an eternally charactered will, analogous 
 at an infinite remove to the uniformity with which an honest man 
 pays his debts, or a saint in heaven does right. The uniformity of the 
 course of nature is fixed in the absolute, never changing wisdom and 
 love of God. 
 
 11. The existence of finite persons inhabiting the physical cosmos 
 under the moral government of God, the Supreme Reason, constitutes 
 a moral system. This opens a sphere of endless progress realizing 
 spiritual perfection and the good which is approved by reason as worthy 
 of God. The materialistic evolution of any conceivable system must 
 
 * Philosophy of Religion, pp. 251, 252. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 527 
 
 have a beginning and an end in time and definite limits in space. Its 
 enenry is dissipated or equilibrated, till the whole movement stops in 
 inaction ; and the mass remains lifeless and motionless unless power 
 from without itself is communicated and resolves it back to its original 
 condition. Materialism precludes such a power. But even if we sup- 
 pose, with the materialist, an endless rhythm of the development, 
 equilibration and disintegration of matter, it presents no object worthy 
 the eternal action of the energies of God. It does not reveal the wis- 
 dom and love of the All-perfect and absolute One. But when we con- 
 ceive of each system in every successive one of its ages-long rhythmic 
 movements evolving innumerable personal beings capable of knowing 
 God and acting like him in wisdom and love forever, when we con- 
 ceive of these multitudes guiding to beneficent results the forces of the 
 worlds hi which they live, bringing the resources of those worlds into 
 use and enriching and adorning them with fruitfulness and beauty, 
 when we conceive of these personal beings developing a higher organi- 
 zation and passing into higher and ever higher conditions of being, and 
 followed by trooping millions continually succeeding and following 
 them in their path of development, when we conceive of the physical 
 systems themselves in successive evolutions brought to higher conditions, 
 as the Scriptures shadow forth in the new heavens and the earth, and 
 inhabited by powerful, and wise and living spirits with spiritual bodies, 
 when we conceive of the spiritual civilizations, educations and common- 
 wealths which will exist in peace and blessedness, and when we con- 
 ceive of the innumerable systems in various stages of this development 
 simultaneous in space, and innumerable systems thus developing suc- 
 cessively through endless time, we see an eternally progressive result 
 worthy of God; we get in imagination some glimpse of " what is the 
 breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God which 
 passeth knowledge ; " we get some grasp of the significance of the 
 words, " God is Love." The material universe, with all its grandeurs, 
 but gives the ground on which rational and moral systems are to stand, 
 the place in which they are to be evolved, the media through which 
 moral and spiritual energies are to be revealed, and the material and 
 instruments which moral beings are to use for the accomplishment of 
 the highest moral and rational ends. 
 
 And it is only thus that God can truly reveal himself as Supreme 
 Reason or Absolute Spirit. If God were an impersonal being he might ade- 
 quately reveal himself in an impersonal or material universe. Or rather 
 God would not reveal himself at all, for the impersonal finite universe 
 would be the all, with no absolute and infinite being to be revealed, 
 and no finite mind to receive the revelation. Because God is Reason 
 or Spirit, he can reveal what he is as spirit only in finite beings who 
 
528 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 are reason or spirit like himself. Man is a personal being. In him- 
 self and in personal beings like himself he knows what reason and 
 free-will and rational motives and ends are ; he knows in a word what 
 a person or spirit is. Thus God reveals to him what he himself is as 
 person or spirit. Through man and all personal beings, God also 
 reveals his love, his righteousness, his benevolence, his moral perfec- 
 tion ; for if no personal beings existed, there would be no beings who 
 could be the objects of his love or subjects of his moral law and gov- 
 ernment. Man, as a personal being, is the organ for the deepest and 
 truest revelations of God. 
 
 Man, as individuated, has being distinct from God. Like the physi- 
 cal creation, man is always dependent on God for his existence. But 
 man is related to God, also, by the moral law. He is under God's 
 moral government. In this relation he can put himself in direct 
 antagonism to God by disobeying the moral law which is the law of 
 reason. He comes into oneness with God only as, trusting God, he 
 consents to the law and so participates in God's universal love. God 
 who is immanently active in nature, is also immanently active in the 
 moral system by the Holy Spirit, sustaining, enjoining and commend- 
 ing the law of love, and in all action compatible with free agency in- 
 fluencing all his rational creatures to obey it. The deepest unity of 
 the universe is not of substance, nor of efficient cause, but the unity of 
 a rational and moral system in love. 
 
 12. Mr. Spencer objects that conceptions like the foregoing imply in 
 " the Originating Mind " a series of states of consciousness and a dis- 
 tinct volition to effect every motion in nature. " Even to a small set of 
 these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot think as antecedent a 
 series of states of consciousness ; cannot, for instance, think of it as caus- 
 ing the hundreds of thousands of breakers that are at this instant 
 curling over the shores of England."* Another asks whether a tiger 
 devouring a deer is a thought of God devouring another thought of God. 
 It is also asked whether God by his direct volitions combines and moves 
 those physical agencies which rack the human frame with torture, 
 which spread pestilence and famine, or which desolate human homes in 
 tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and fire. 
 
 Some theistic explanations of God's action in nature give occasion for 
 these and similar questions and objections. Dr. Samuel Clarko says : 
 "All these things which we commonly say are the effects of the natural 
 powers of matter and laws of motion, of gravitation, attraction, or the 
 like, are indeed, if we speak strictly and properly, the "effect of God's 
 acting upon matter continually and every moment, either immediately 
 
 * Review of Martineau. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 529 
 
 by himself or mediately by some created intelligent being. Consequently 
 there is no such thing as what we commonly call the course of nature 
 or the power of nature. The course of nature is nothing else but the 
 will of God producing certain effects in a continued, regular, constant 
 and uniform manner ; which course of acting, being in every moment 
 perfectly arbitrary, is as easy to be altered at any time as to be pre- 
 served." Dr. Caird and Mr. Mulford have attempted to found Christian 
 Theism on the Hegelian philosophy. But they have not succeeded in 
 eliminating the pantheistic virus, and they, as well as Dr. Clarke, leave 
 their statement of theism open to objections like those mentioned. 
 Christian theism, however, in shunning the mechanical theory which, 
 with Robert Boyle, likens the universe to a clock wound up and left to 
 itself, does not substitute for it another clock whose machinery the 
 maker must continually move with his finger. In getting rid of the 
 artificer it does not bring in the unskilled laborer painfully effecting 
 every movement by hand. Theism recognizes the real being and 
 efficiency of second causes. And because the plan and purpose of God's 
 eternal wisdom and love must be realized in and through finite beings, 
 the realization is progressive and at every point of time incomplete. 
 
 To this Dr. Cnird objects -that the absolute being is himself the creator 
 of the finite universe and therefore is himself responsible for the untract- 
 ableness of the material on and through which he works.* This objec- 
 tion supposes mere Almightiness to be supreme in the universe, and that 
 in its most terrific form of arbitrary will unregulated by law ; that is an 
 Almighty Caprice. Dr. Clarke explicitly avows this conception : " action 
 in every moment perfectly arbitrary," " as easy to be altered at anytime 
 as to be preserved." This has been a not uncommon misapprehension 
 of God and has given opportunity to objections. But this is not theism ; 
 least of all is it Christian Theism. Christian Theism recognizes Reason 
 as supreme in the universe ; and all its energizing is the energizing of 
 reason ; all its power is in harmony with the truths and laws and ideals 
 and ends of reason truths, laws, ideals and worth eternal and unchange- 
 able. This is the exclusion of all caprice, the subjection of Almighty 
 power itself, as Will, in its own free and eternal choice, to Reason and 
 its truth and law. God's thought is the archetypal, unchanging and 
 all-comprehending thought of Absolute Reason, and his purpose the all- 
 comprehending purpose of Almighty will in harmony with reason ; it is 
 the purpose of perfect wisdom and love. But the realization of that 
 plan and purpose in finite creations is slow and progressive, and the 
 hindrances to its immediate and complete realization are not of God's 
 own making. For, first, God's almightiness is hemmed in by the truths 
 
 * Philosophy of Religion, p. 144. 
 
 34 
 
530 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 and laws, eternal in himself N the Absolute Reason, which no power 
 can annul and so make the absurd and the contradictory to be real. 
 Secondly, his will is eternally in harmony with reason and his action is 
 limited within the lines of absolute wisdom and love. In the third 
 place, the distinction between the infinite and the finite is not created 
 by any fiat of God's will but is eternal in absolute reason ; and if God 
 is to have creatures whom he can bless and a w r orld in which they can 
 live and be blessed by him, he must create them by his own power as 
 finite creatures, limited by dependence on the power that made them, 
 and limited in time, place and quantity. And, lastly, when they are 
 made, he must respect their rights, and act on them according to what 
 they are, whether free or not free, whether personal or impersonal. He 
 can cause in them and through them, only effects commensurate with 
 their capacity. He emits of his fulness in the inexhaustibleness of his 
 power, wisdom and love ; but the .creatures can receive of his fulness 
 only what they have capacity for. If he would make higher manifesta- 
 tions of his plenitude in and through them, he must first develop them 
 to a greater receptivity and power. 
 
 Thus all objections founded on the limitation of good and the liability 
 to evil which are inseparable from finiteness have no force. If a star- 
 fish were conscious of its inferiority and should complain that it is not a 
 squirrel, the squirrel might complain that it is not a horse, the horse 
 that it is not a man, the man that he is not an angel, the angel that he 
 is not an archangel, the archangel that he is not God. If a man com- 
 plains that life is so short, he might equally complain if life were a 
 thousand years ; and, when knowing his immortality, he might equally 
 complain that he had not been brought into being millions of years be- 
 fore. Equally groundless and for the same reason are all objections 
 founded on liability to suffering, for this also is inherent in the finite- 
 ness of living creatures. A physical organism susceptible of sensible 
 pleasure must be susceptible of pain ; the demand for a world exempt 
 from liability to pain would be a demand for an insensate world. And 
 the evil to which beings are liable as well as the good which they may 
 enjoy increases with the increase of endowments ; the responsibility and 
 the moral risks are proportioned to the powers. A stone cannot die, a 
 tree cannot suffer, a brute cannot sin. All objections of this sort in their 
 ultimate significance are demands that the finite should be infinite, that 
 the creature should be God ; they mean that it is not right for God to 
 create unless he create God. We see, therefore, that God does not cre- 
 ate the necessity of the distinction between the infinite and the finite, 
 nor the necessity, if he creates, that the universe as created be finite ; 
 and we see that he is not responsible for the limitations of the finite. 
 The necessity of this distinction is eternal in the absolute reason and 
 
MATEKIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 531 
 
 the annulling of it is absurd and to all power impossible. And even 
 with our short sight we can see reasons enough why God should create 
 the universe with its natural and moral systems, even though with the 
 limitation of good and the liability to suffering which are inseparable 
 from finiteness. And this is the lesson of the narrative of the Canaan- 
 itish woman who said, " Yea, Lord ; for even the dogs eat of the crumbs 
 which fall from their master's table ;" we are not to murmur against 
 God for the limitations of constitution and condition which in wisdom 
 and love he has appointed ; but thankfully to accept the positive good 
 which he gives, and diligently to use our powers and opportunities to 
 realize the highest possibilities and true perfection of our being. 
 
 With all these necessary conceptions the scientific theory of evolution 
 corresponds. It presents the progressive evolution of the universe, 
 just as true philosophy and Christian theism teach that it must be in 
 order to explain the slow but progressive growth of God's kingdom of 
 righteousness and blessedness among men. The law of the kingdom, 
 as Christ declared it, is the law of growth, " first the blade, then the 
 ear, then the full corn in the ear." The same is the all-comprehend- 
 ing law of the evolution of the universe under the government of God. 
 Mr. Spencer's theory that the mind is only a series of states of con- 
 sciousness is not true of the human mind ; much less of the Absolute 
 Keason. Through all successive thoughts and volitions the human 
 mind remains one and the same. It may have a comprehensive plan 
 and purpose ^which can be realized only in the successive acts of a life- 
 time. So God remains through all the creations of time the same 
 absolute Reason. His thought and purpose are one and eternal, 
 comprehending all. It does not follow, because finite things which are 
 the expression or manifestation of his thought and purpose are depen- 
 dent for their existence on him, that he himself is dependent. It does 
 not follow because the manifestation of God's thought and the reali- 
 zation of his purpose must be in finite beings and under the limita- 
 tion of space, time and quantity, that God himself is a finite being 
 limited in time, space and quantity, and that his thought and pur- 
 pose are successive in his own eternal being. There is nothing in 
 God's infinitude which prevents the manifestation of his thought and 
 purpose in finite beings under these limitations. If it were so, that 
 very prevention would imply that God is excluded from time and 
 space and thus limited by them ; that he is shut up within his own 
 being, incapable of bringing into existence any objects for his love, 
 or any rational or moral system as the sphere for his wise and be- 
 nevolent action, or any universe giving place and time for rational 
 beings to live and act and develop into greatness, excellence and 
 bliss. Any rigid idea of God's infinitude and unchangeableness, which 
 
532 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 involves the impossibility of his acting in time and space and ex- 
 pressing and realizing his eternal thought and purpose in finite beings,, 
 implies limitation of the infinite and is. necessarily self-contradictory 
 and false. And since finite beings exist and their existence is the 
 occasion of our knowledge of Absolute Being, this rigid idea if ac- 
 cepted necessarily leads to materialistic or pantheistic monism. 
 
 The thoughts which have been presented are of value also in answer- 
 ing the general objection founded on the existence of sin. This is 
 not the place for our theodicy in respect to that objection. But a 
 single line of thought, germane to our present discussion, may be 
 presented. 
 
 Sin is the essential, and the only essential evil. It is evil in itself 
 and in all its necessary outcome. This evil is actually in the universe ; 
 it forces its reality on our notice every day and in all the history of 
 mankind. It came into the universe by the action of finite free- 
 agents transgressing the law of love. It is continued in the world in 
 the same manner. It is essential in the idea of God's moral govern- 
 ment over finite free-agents that they be on probation. This is im- 
 plied in the very fact that they are under God's law of love ; that is, 
 they must determine by their own free-will whether or not they will 
 obey the law. In this probation some sin. Their sin is not of neces- 
 sity but in freedom. They alone are the responsible authors of sin. 
 God is not its author. It is worthy of God to give existence to a 
 moral system in which he is disciplining and educating his rational 
 creatures under the law of love and training their whole characters 
 into conformity with it, so that they shall be in his moral likeness and 
 shall be love as God is love, although under this moral probation and 
 discipline some have sinned. Every act of God is fit for the prevention 
 of sin and for the reclaiming to the life of love those who have sinned. 
 This is the design of the command and the penalty of his law, of all 
 his revelation of his perfections in nature and providence, and in re- 
 demption by the humiliation, life, death and heavenly reign of Christ 
 and by the presence of his Holy Spirit among men. In Christ is re- 
 vealed to us the heart of God seeking sinful men to reclaim them to 
 repentance and the life of faith and love. If it is asked why he does 
 not do more or otherwise than he does to prevent sin, the answer is 
 that he does all that infinite wisdom and love permit or require to 
 prevent his creatures from sinning and to save sinners from their 
 sin. We may also observe that if a person never sins, or if a sinner 
 repents and persists in the life of love, then the whole discipline and 
 education of God's moral government develop and confirm him in the 
 life of love. Then even suffering helps him to realize his perfection 
 and his highest good, and thus becomes itself a relative good. The 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 533 
 
 Bible intimates that some by persisting in sin will miss all good and 
 live always in evil. But it is not so much that they are shut out 
 of heaven, as that heaven is by their own action shut out of them. 
 The separation of the wicked from the righteous is not first by the 
 command of God, " Depart," but is first by their own choice departing 
 from God and refusing and resisting all redeeming influences and 
 agencies by which he seeks to draw them back. God's word, " Depart," 
 is last and not first ; it announces the continuance of that departure 
 from him which they themselves have chosen and have been widening 
 all their lives. This universe is the expression of God's thought ; it 
 is grounded in the law of love and constituted according to it. There 
 is no, place or time in the universe in which the person who persists in 
 disobedience to that law can realize his well-being. All good men are 
 laborers together with God to prevent sin and to bring sinners back to 
 the life of love. And the power of love must more and more prevail 
 over selfishness. Because sin, which is the only essential evil, originates 
 in the finite, it is itself finite ; it cannot have the prevailing power of 
 truth, right, perfection and good, which are of God. God's action is 
 always resisting sin and evil by all agencies consistent with human 
 freedom and prompted by and consistent with his own perfect wisdom 
 and love ; but only the action of finite creatures upholds sin and evil. 
 The latter, w T hich has its origin and support only in the finite, cannot 
 prevail over the former, which has its origin and support in God. 
 With this conception evolution is in harmony. The power of God in- 
 fused into the universe is elevating it in successive stages to higher and 
 higher forms. Prof. Moses Stuart used to say he did not believe the 
 time ever was when God reigned over nothing on earth but bull-frogs. 
 But the reign over bull-frogs has already been followed by the reign 
 over men. And the progress will go on. Always truth, right, per- 
 fection, which are originated and sustained by God, must more and 
 more prevail over sin and evil originated and sustained by finite 
 beings. 
 
 According to the Christian conception that which is most fundamen- 
 tal in human history is God's continuous action in it redeeming men 
 from sin and developing the kingdom of God in the world. This re- 
 demptive action implies in its very essence that the future is always to 
 be better than the past. This promise and hope have been in all ages 
 the heritage of the righteous. It is set forth in the opening of Genesis 
 in God's going after the man and woman, who had sinned and wiio were 
 fleeing from him, and bringing them back into communion with himself; 
 that is the revelation in the beginning of God redeeming men from sin. 
 The same hope is in the promise to Abraham, renewed to Isaac and to 
 Jacob, that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed ; 
 
534 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 and the same was set forth with ever increasing clearness by the prophets, 
 illuminating with it the whole history of Israel and awakening those 
 glowing expectations of a better future which have sometimes been 
 called the Hebrew Utopia. This promise and hope were in the glad 
 tidings of great joy brought to all people in the humiliation, the earthly 
 life, sufferings and death of Jesus the Christ, and in his ascension and 
 reign in heaven, and in the descent of the Holy Spirit to abide with us 
 forever. This ancient promise is the heritage of all Christians, of which 
 Paul said, " we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." 
 And now physical science, in its theory of evolution, proclaims that a 
 law of progress is in the constitution of the material universe ; that in 
 the sphere of unintelligent matter and force, in which of necessity the 
 stronger force must always overpower the weaker, it is necessary that 
 there be continuous evolution from lower to higher and that the future 
 must always be better than the past. Materialism, it is true, injects 
 itself into this theory, annuls the promise and transforms it into a pro- 
 phecy of despair. It forces the conclusion that the evolution in w y hich 
 the universe has hitherto been progressive, with no power beyond itself 
 to replenish its force, will presently be exhausted of its finite store of 
 force ; that it will gradually retrograde into a lifeless, silent, motionless 
 mass and so remain forever. But this annulling of the promise is due 
 to the materialism alone, not to the evolution. Evolution under the 
 theistic conception is to be, with whatever rhythmic movements, a per- 
 petual progress to the higher and the better ; nature itself is to be 
 gradually redeemed from its ills and its imperfections ; there will be 
 new births of worlds and systems not less than of souls. In its evolu- 
 tion nature has already become fitted for the abode of personal beings 
 knowing God and serving him, has brought forth from its bosom under 
 the power of God a system of rational and moral beings, whose center 
 is not a sun but God, whose unity is not by gravitation and the per- 
 sistence of force, but by love, and whose law is not that of mere force 
 that the stronger must overpower the weaker, but the contrary law that 
 the stronger must help and serve the weaker, or conversely, that they 
 who in love serve the weak become great and strong : " Whosoever will 
 be great among you, let him be your minister ; and whosoever will be 
 chief among you, let him be your servant ;" which is the two-sided law 
 of the moral system, Greatness for service ; greatness by service. And 
 this opens to us endless progress both in the natural system and in the 
 moral. 
 
 On the other hand we must put away an error which often misleads 
 thinkers on this subject that at some time not very remote in the future 
 the universe is to be perfected and finished, and everything in it to come 
 to its final and unalterable state. Whereas we know certainly that the 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM EVOLUTION. 535 
 
 universe can never be completed and finished, because the infinite can 
 never be fully and exhaustively revealed in the finite. It must be an 
 everlasting becoming. Therefore while we may expect that the higher 
 conditions attained by progress will never be lost, that the universe both 
 nature and spirit will be ever progressive, and that the principles of 
 wisdom and love on which God has acted in the past are those on which 
 he will always act ; yet because the universe is progressive it will always 
 be imperfect and incomplete ; and doubtless worlds and systems in 
 various stages of progress will always be in it. And in ministering to 
 these in their spiritual education and development, the spirits of just 
 men made perfect may be forever workers together with God ; as we 
 are told that the angels now are ministering spirits and rejoice over a 
 sinner who repents. 
 
 In this progress it is impossible for philosophy to foresee in what pre- 
 cise way sin and sinners will be disposed of. It is the thought of some 
 that in the lapse of ages and by agencies and influences to us unknown, 
 all men will eventually be reclaimed to the life of love. Their thought is : 
 
 " O, yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill, 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. 
 
 " Behold we know not any thing. 
 
 We can but hope that good shall fall 
 At last, far off, at last to all, 
 And every winter change to spring." 
 
 In the larger view of the universe which science opens, the same line 
 of thought would lead to the expectation that all races of rational 
 beings, that may come into existence in other worlds, will pass through 
 their moral education and development and eventually attain to the life 
 of love and blessedness. This supposition is most accordant with our 
 natural compassion and the good-will which is an essential element of 
 all love, and with the idea of moral progress analogous to the evolution 
 of nature. On the other hand, when we consider the immutable law of 
 truth and righteousness eternal in God, the freedom of the will, and the 
 absurdity and impossibility of any power, other than the will itself, de- 
 termining a man's ends and forming his character, and the persistence of 
 character as it becomes confirmed by action, we see philosophical reasons 
 for expecting that some will persist in sin forever. When this line of 
 thought is presented, as it often is, as implying that sin is a process neces- 
 sary in the moral development of every rational creature, it involves the 
 denial of free moral agency. For if a course of sinning is necessary to 
 
536 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 man's moral development and strength, then it is no longer evil but the 
 necessary means of good ; it is no longer a free action but a process of 
 nature, like the necessity of a child's having the measles in order to rid 
 itself of liability to the disease. Then the freedom of the man and his 
 capacity for moral character disappear ; and in what we call sin the man 
 is no longer a sinner and no longer guilty of having caused that which 
 is the essential and the only essential evil in the universe under the 
 righteous and beneficent government of God. 
 
 It is the thought of others that the triumph of righteousness will be 
 secured by the annihilation of the incorrigibly wicked. Evolution 
 would teach, under the law of the survival of the fittest, that incorrigi- 
 ble sinners will be crowded out of being. But this law of physical 
 force has no relevancy to the rational system, the progress in which goes 
 on by moral influences and agencies under the law of love. In the 
 evolution of nature the weak are crowded out of existence by the 
 strong. It is more consonant with the moral system, in w T hich the strong 
 help and serve the weak, that they who persist in the isolation of selfish- 
 ness against all these influences and agencies of love, bring on them- 
 selves, not the extinction of being, but a moral perversion and corrup- 
 tion and a moral impotence for good which, as the extinction of all 
 that is noblest and best in character, may fitly be called a spiritual 
 death or death in sin. 
 
 The Christian Scriptures teach in the strongest terms the ultimate 
 triumph of the kingdom of God : " Wherefore God highly exalted him 
 and gave unto him the name which is above every name ; that in the 
 name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things 
 on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should 
 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." 
 With equal distinctness they seem to teach that the triumph is to be 
 accompanied by a separation of the wicked from the righteous, and a 
 restraint of their power to harm ; while they will have as their heritage 
 the evil which they have chosen as their good ; " they shall eat of the 
 fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices." 
 
 In what precise way the prevalence of right over wrong, of love over 
 selfishness is ultimately to be effected we cannot determine from the 
 analogy of nature or the speculations of philosophy. The Christian 
 will submit the decision to the teachings of Christ and his apostles ; will 
 trust and obey him in the assurance that all who do thus shall go from 
 strength to strength and shall be more than conquerors over all opposing 
 evil ; and will wait for the day when the hidden things will be revealed. 
 Then, whatever be his method of insuring the triumph of truth and 
 right and love, all will see God justified as having done all things in 
 his dealings with men in perfect wisdom and love. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MENTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 537 
 
 ? 81. Fourth Materialistic Objection to Personality : from 
 the Attributes of Brutes. 
 
 A fourth objection to the personality of man is the assertion that 
 man has no attribute differing in kind from those of the brutes ; that 
 the difference is only in degree. From this the objector infers that 
 man has no more claim than the brutes to be distinguished from nature 
 as a person, a supernatural being or a spirit. On the one hand it is 
 inferred that, if brutes are impersonal beings, man, having no attri- 
 butes differing in kind from those of the brutes, must like them be 
 impersonal. On the other hand, it is inferred that if men are persons 
 or spirits, the brutes must be so likewise. 
 
 This objection I proceed to answer. It is incumbent, however, on 
 both the objector and the respondent to remember that, because we can- 
 not enter into the consciousness of brutes, there must be some uncer- 
 tainty in our interpretation of their mental action, and some diffidence 
 and caution are needful in our affirmations as to its nature and signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 I. So far as we can judge, all the mental qualities and powers 
 manifested in brutes are also manifested in man, and in both are the 
 same in kind. This is admitted in the outset. It excludes much 
 false reasoning founded on the assumption that if brutes have any 
 mental qualities in common with man they are proved to be personal 
 beings like man. 
 
 II. In addition to these man has the qualities and powers distinctive 
 of personality, which brutes have not. 
 
 1. These distinctive qualities of man are clearly and decisively marked 
 in each department of mind : in the intellect, the sensibilities and the will. 
 
 In the sphere of intelligence brutes have capacities in common with 
 mam, such as sense, memory and probably thought in some of its sim- 
 pler forms. In addition to these man is endowed with intuitive reason : 
 he knows self-evident and universal principles ; attains the rational 
 ideas of the True, the Right, the Perfect, the Good rationally estimated 
 as having worth, and the Absolute ; and is capable of empirical, philo- 
 sophical and theological science. Even in the sphere of perceptive 
 intuition man has power which the brute has not. In all his mental 
 activity man is conscious of himself as persisting in unity and identity, 
 one and the same subject of all mental acts. In sense-perception man's 
 mind reacts on the objects of sensation as an active percipient, while 
 sense in the brute, as we suppose, is merely receptive of impressions. 
 Man's knowledge is ontological in its beginning. Man, also, has a 
 power of generalization and reflective thought which exists in brutes 
 only in its simplest forms, if at all. 
 
538 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 In the sphere of the sensibilities brutes are susceptible of motives 
 and emotions the same as are found in man, such as the appetites, the 
 desire of society, emulation, compassion, parental affection, and other 
 natural affections and desires. In addition to these man is susceptible 
 of rational motives and emotions, scientific, moral, aesthetic, religious, 
 and of all motives and emotions arising from the idea of worth as 
 estimated by reason. 
 
 In the spheres of will, brutes, like men, have the power of locomo- 
 tion and power to follow their instincts and desires, to " do as they 
 please." But their action simply follows the impulse which at the 
 time is the strongest. Man has also free-will, the power of determining 
 in the light of reason the ends to which he will direct his energy and 
 of exerting his energy or calling it into action at will. 
 
 That man is thus endowed has been proved at length in preced- 
 ing chapters. 
 
 2. Brutes lack these distinctive qualities and powers of personality. 
 
 I cannot go into a full investigation of this question. I only indicate 
 some points which, so far as I have studied the subject, seem to be true 
 and decisive. 
 
 First, many facts alleged to prove that the mental powers of brutes 
 are the same with those of men, pertain to those lower powers which 
 are admitted to be common to brutes with man. In the discussion 
 of the subject the real line of dernarkation between the personal 
 and the impersonal is often overlooked. We are concerned only with 
 facts purporting to reveal in brutes the attributes distinctive of per- 
 sonality. 
 
 Secondly, the facts adduced to prove that the distinctive qualities 
 and powers of personality exist in brutes, fail to prove it. To justify 
 this conclusion would require a critical examination of a multitude of 
 alleged facts, impossible within the limits of this discussion. I merely 
 mention a few to exemplify my meaning, all taken from published 
 papers professing to be scientific. A dog which accompanied its master 
 several days in succession across a pasture always broke away and ran 
 wildly around a large stump near the path ; and this is cited as an 
 example of fetich worship in the dog. Darwin mentions a dog whose 
 behaviour in presence of a newspaper moved by the wind seemed to 
 indicate a " sense of the supernatural." A little dog accustomed to 
 play with a rubber ball, being left alone, was found, when some one 
 entered, erect on a table holding out its forepaws to the ball lying on 
 the mantel beyond the dog's reach. It was claimed that the dog was 
 praying to the ball to come down. It is needless to say that the relig- 
 iousness indicated in facts like these exists only in the fancy of the 
 observer. Many facts urged as decisive evidence of morality or even of 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FEOM MENTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 539 
 
 religion in brutes indicate merely natural or instinctive affections. The 
 sympathy and compassion of brutes is claimed as " the divinest thing in 
 man." But sympathy and pity are affections of nature arising involun- 
 tarily in the presence of suffering and do not constitute moral character 
 in its primary and distinctive meaning. It is claimed that a dog lying 
 persistently on its master's grave till it dies reveals self-sacrificing love, 
 which is the highest virtue. On the contrary, it reveals simply an un- 
 controlled and irrational natural affection, not a rational love enduring 
 suffering for the good of another or in the intelligent doing of duty. 
 It certainly does not indicate reason. If a human being should do so, 
 we should think the action unreasonable and even a sign of insanity. 
 For a person to die of grief is not evidence of moral self-control, nor 
 of the supremacy in the life of self-sacrificing love to God and man. 
 "We are told of " the ant and the bee, who have risen, if not to the 
 virtue of all-embracing charity, at least to the virtues of self-sacrifice 
 and of patriotism ;"..." the fact that the great majority of workers 
 among the social insects are barren females or nuns, devoting themselves 
 to the care of other individuals' offspring by an act of sacrifice, and 
 that by means of that self-sacrifice these communities grow large and 
 prosperous." I cannot think that this writer or any other sensible per- 
 son, after reflecting on this assertion, can suppose that the working 
 bees have the slightest consciousness that there is any condition of life, 
 better than their own, which they are deprived of, or of any act or 
 purpose of their own renouncing that happier lifo and consecrating 
 themselves .to the service of the community. They act from pure in- 
 stinct ; they do what their nature impels them to do, without conscious- 
 ness of any other possibility. It cannot be supposed that these creatures 
 have deliberately chosen to set aside all which is most pleasant to bees 
 and which themselves are conscious they should enjoy, and to devote 
 themselves to a life of labor and privation in order to promote the pros- 
 perity of the community. It is not supposable that they ever had the 
 idea of the community and its prosperity, any more than the coral 
 zoophytes have of the Neptune's cup which they are all building in 
 unison. Moral character lies primarily in the intelligent choice of the 
 end of action, and the determination of the energies to do it, resisting 
 and controlling all contrary impulses of nature in subordination to the 
 chosen end ; it does not lie in instinctive impulses. A lamb is gentle, a 
 tiger ferocious by nature ; the ferocity of the one and the amiableness 
 of the other have no more moral character than the offensiveness of the 
 hyoscyamus and the sweetness of the rose. 
 
 Many facts are adduced as proving moral ideas and character in 
 brutes which prove only subjection to superior skill and power, and fear 
 of inflicted pain. A horse exerting itself till it falls exhausted is said 
 
540 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 " to show an honest and self-sacrificing devotion to its notion of duty." 
 Once when I was with a distinguished sportsman in the vicinity of 
 Moosehead lake a dog joined us and came at once to heel. The sports- 
 man remarked, " That dog has had many a beating." He knew that 
 it is thus a dog is educated and trained. The same is exemplified in 
 the methods of training wild elephants. An obedience thus springing 
 from subjection to superior power and the dread of inflicted suffering is 
 no proof that brutes have any idea of moral law, or of the distinction 
 between right and wrong, or of the sense of duty or obligation. Alleged 
 facts supposed to indicate remorse, if ascertained to be facts and not 
 mere unauthenticated " dog-stories," may be explained in the same way. 
 An anonymous writer in the London Spectator relates that a young 
 fox-terrier, which had often been punished for taking a handsomely 
 carved brush from the table and playing with it, after having been left 
 alone in the room, was asked by its master on his return, " Have you 
 been a got>d little dog ?" whereupon the dog put its tail between its legs 
 and slunk off and brought the brush from where it had hidden it. On 
 another occasion when asked the same question, it walked off slowly, 
 with the same look of shame, and lay down with its nose pointing to a 
 letter bitten and torn into shreds. The writer says : " I was much 
 struck with what appeared to me a remarkable instance of a dog pos- 
 sessing conscience." But it proves nothing more than a sense of having 
 displeased its master and a dread of punishment. Lamettrie evades 
 the difficulty by suggesting that morality in man is at bottom nothing 
 but fear of punishment. He thus reduces man to the level of the beast 
 instead of lifting the beast to the level of man. 
 
 It is claimed that birds and beasts appreciate beauty of form, color 
 and song, and that this is an important factor in natural selection. But 
 this is all fancy. The song-bird that " warbles its native wood-notes 
 wild" does not please itself and its mate any more than the Guinea-fowl 
 does by its incessant creaking note, or the cat by its caterwauling. The 
 spreading of the wing and other acts and cries fancied to be a display 
 of beauty to the sesthetic eye of the mate are better explained as merely 
 the expression of animal excitement, like the singing of Chaucer's 
 "January." 
 
 It is also claimed that some brutes show in their actions that they 
 possess the higher or intuitive reason; particularly that their action 
 accords with mathematical truths and the laws of mechanics. It has 
 been said that " the brain of the ant is the most wonderful little morsel 
 of matter in existence." The honey-making ants of Texas and New 
 Mexico are said to build their ant-heaps in an exact square four to five 
 feet on a side, the four sides fronting exactly North, East, South and 
 West. Bees are said to conform their cells to a geometrical figure and 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MENTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 541 
 
 thus obtain the maximum of room with the minimum of material. The 
 fish-hawk soaring high in the air in order not to frighten the fish before 
 he pounces on it, acts in striking it as if he had measured its distance 
 and direction, and ascertained the refraction of light passing at different 
 angles from the air into the water. A little fish, the Chcetodon rostratus, 
 shoots a drop of water through its prolonged snout at an insect flying 
 near the water and brings it down within its reach, as unerringly as if 
 it had calculated exactly how far from the apparent place of the insect 
 it must aim, on account of refraction, in order to hit it. But if facts 
 like these are urged to prove the higher reason in brutes, they prove 
 too much. If they prove anything in that direction, it is that the fish, 
 the bird and the bee, before every act of the kind, must solve a com- 
 plicated problem of the higher mathematics. And since in the case of 
 the fish and the hawk the conditions of the problem vary in every act, 
 not only must the problem be solved, but the distances and the angles 
 of incidence, and the degree of refraction must previously be measured. 
 This is not supposable. We can only attribute the action to instinct. 
 Accordingly we find that these animals do not depend on education. 
 The young one is as skillful as the old. Nature acts in them as uner- 
 ringly as in the 'planets. But man, endowed with reason and free-will, 
 begins with less skill than the brutes ; he learns, he makes mistakes, he 
 educates himself, he surpasses himself every year. In the brute nature 
 rules and the will is no more than the impulse of nature. In man 
 reason guides, the will chooses and determines, and man within the 
 sphere of his determination, controls nature. It must be added that a 
 brute is no more capable of the simplest mathematical calculation than 
 of the most complex. A cat misses one of her five kittens which has 
 been taken away, not through the arithmetical reasoning, 5-1=4, but 
 by sense ; as one at a glance without counting misses an article of bric- 
 a-brac removed from a familiar shelf. Brutes may perhaps be capable 
 of reasoning in some of its simplest forms. A man gave half an orange 
 to his orang-utan and hid the other half on the top of a high press. He 
 then lay down and pretended to go to sleep. The creature presently 
 approached him cautiously and being apparently convinced that he was 
 asleep climbed up and ate the remainder of the orange and hid the peel 
 among some shavings in the grate. He then examined the pretending 
 sleeper again, and lay down on his own bed.* This seems to imply 
 reasoning ; and it may be argued that it involves a recognition of in- 
 tuitive principles of reason which are laws of thought. But since 
 animals of the lower orders, even so low as the coral zoophytes, do 
 what, if done by man, would imply reasoning and solving complicated 
 
 *Tylor: Anthropology; p. 50. 
 
542 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 mathematical problems and the concerted action of multitudes in accord- 
 ance with a complex and far reaching plan, and since these acts must 
 be referred to instinct, there is room for a s.imilar explanation of acts 
 like that of the orang-utan, in which if there was reasoning it was far 
 simpler. Such acts may probably be explained by the association of 
 one remembered perception with another, or some simple process of 
 thought not implying the knowledge of universal principles like those 
 on which mathematical and other scientific reasoning rests. The female 
 larva of the stag-beetle, about to become a chrysalis, makes a hole of 
 just its own size. The male makes double his own length because he 
 will have horns as long as his body. Perfect insects in laying their 
 eggs make provision for the food of the larva which is to be hatched. 
 No one can suppose this is done by reasoning founded on the insect's re- 
 membrance of its own needs in the larva state and foresight of the needs 
 of the coming larva. Why then may not simpler processes be explained 
 by instinct? 
 
 A third point to be noticed is, that the argument to prove that man 
 has no powers differing in kind from the brutes, rests on anthropo- 
 morphic conceptions of brute life. It attributes to brutes thoughts 
 and feelings the same as man would have in the same circumstances. 
 It interprets into the life of the brute what exists only in the con- 
 sciousness of man. This fault is conspicuous in Darwin's discussion of 
 natural selection. 
 
 The objection against personality that man has no powers differ- 
 ing in kind from those of brutes is grounded, as we see from the fore- 
 going discussion, on errors of two kinds. On the one hand, the 
 objector fails to distinguish the attributes of personality peculiar to 
 man from conscious feeling, volition and intelligence of a lower order, 
 common to man with the brutes. Because all the mental powers of 
 brutes are found also in man, the objector jumps to the inference that 
 all the mental powers of man are found also in the brutes. Besides 
 this, though not definitely apprehending what the attributes of person- 
 ality are, the objector urges as indicating morality, religion, aesthetic 
 emotion or reason in brutes, actions which manifest only mental powers 
 of a lower grade ; for example, that a dog fawning on its master 
 manifests religion. A story was told many years ago of two dilettanti 
 of Boston seeing Fanny Elsler dance, that the man enraptured turned 
 and exclaimed, "Margaret, this is poetry!" But she replied, "No, 
 Paul, this is religion!" It only needs an exact and correct definition 
 of religion, or of the other attributes of personality to demonstrate the 
 inappositeness of many of the facts cited in support of the objection 
 and the inconclusiveness of the reasoning from them. 
 
 On the other hand, the objection is grounded in biological anthro- 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MENTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 543 
 
 pomorphism, which interprets into the acts of brutes, thoughts, motives, 
 emotions and determinations which exist only in the man who observes 
 them. 
 
 3. The higher attainments of men are impossible to brutes. 
 
 The first of these attainments is language. Brutes are capable of 
 expressing a present feeling or impulse by gestures, attitudes, cries and 
 other natural signs. In this way they hold communication with one 
 another. But this is not language. Language, in its proper signifi- 
 cance, is the expression of general notions by symbols. It presupposes 
 the power of abstraction and generalization. The symbols may be 
 words spoken or written or, as with deaf mutes, signs made with the 
 fino-ers or other bodily organs. But in each case the utterance trans- 
 cends the natural signs by which feeling is spontaneously expressed, and 
 is made by symbols fixed by thought and expressive of general notions 
 formed by thought Some brutes can articulate words ; they have 
 voice but not langi^ige. No brute has ever been known to attain to 
 the utterance of a single word of language in its full and proper mean- 
 ing. This implies incapacity to abstract and generalize. All feeling 
 carries in it a certain indefinite element of intelligence. The intelli- 
 gence of brutes remains mostly swaddled in the sensations and feelings. 
 Says Lewes : " Between the extremes of human intelligence say a 
 Tasmanian and a Shakespeare there are infinitesimal gradations, 
 enabling us to follow the development of the one into the other without 
 the introduction of any essentially new factor. But between animal 
 and human intelligence there is a gap which can only be bridged over 
 by an addition from without. That bridge is the language of symbols, 
 at once the cause and the effect of civilization. The absurdity of 
 supposing that any ape could under any normal circumstances con- 
 struct a scientific theory, analyze a fact into its component factors, 
 frame to himself a picture of the life led by his ancestors, or con- 
 sciously regulate his conduct with a view to the welfare of remote de- 
 scendants, is so glaring, that we need not w r onder at profoundly medi- 
 tative minds having been led to reject with scorn the hypothesis which 
 seeks for an explanation of human intelligence in the functions of the 
 bodily organism common to man and animals, and having had 
 recourse to the hypothesis of a spiritual agent superadded to the 
 organism."* 
 
 A brute does not change his voice. An ass's colt suckled by a mare 
 and brought up among horses never loses its bray, nor learns to neigh 
 like a horse. A child of whatever race speaks the language of those 
 among whom it is brought up. 
 
 * Problems of Life and Mind. First Series. Vol. I., 144, g 52, 53. 
 
544 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 A second attainment, impossible to brutes, is the use of tools. 
 Wherever an implement is found, if only a stone ever so roughly 
 chipped, we infer at once that it was made and used by man. This is 
 not because the brutes do not have hands ; for apes, which have hands, 
 do not use tools. If it is a fact that an apa, untaught by man, ever 
 uses a stone to crack a nut, yet it is still a fact that an ape never ' 
 shapes a stone or a stick, nor ties a stone to a stick to fit it for use as 
 a tool. 
 
 A third attainment never made by brutes is the use of fire. They 
 enjoy the warmth of the fire kindled by man but they cannot preserve 
 much less kindle it. Mr. Lubbock says that some races of men have 
 been found who knew nothing about fire.* This may be doubted. 
 Traces of fire are found in the earliest pile-dwellings and in the Danish 
 shell-mounds. In the caves where the remains of the earliest men 
 have been found, charcoal and burnt bones have been discovered 
 with the bones of the mammoth and the cave-btar. At Aurignac, in 
 the Pyrenees, not only coal and ashes were found, but also fragments of 
 fissile sandstone reddened by heat which must have formed a hearth, f 
 In the earliest periods " the rude cave-men made fires to cook their 
 food and warm themselves by." Mr. Tylor says : " No savage tribe 
 seems really to have been found so low as to be without fire."J If 
 man ever existed without fire, he had discovered it at the earliest 
 period to which his existence can be traced, has preserved it ever since 
 and made the most Avonderful applications of it in supplying his 
 wants and advancing his civilization. The contrast with the utter 
 helplessness of the most intelligent brutes in this respect is very 
 striking. 
 
 Man also is capable of progress both as an individual and in society. 
 Brutes improve only by natural selection or by man's agency in do- 
 mestication. They are incapable of progress by self-education and the 
 transmission of their discoveries and inventions to posterity. 
 
 The difference between the lowest savage and the highest brute is 
 immeasurably greater than that between the lowest savage and the 
 most highly endowed of civilized men. Laura Bridgman, blind, deaf 
 and dumb from infancy, and with scarcely any sense of taste and smell, 
 can now write a good letter, maintain an intelligent conversation by 
 signs, and do various kinds of work ; she has also high moral and 
 religious culture. No teaching and training of the most intelligent 
 brute can approximate to such education and culture, or even make 
 the least beginning of them. Lamettrie became deeply interested in 
 
 * Prehistoric Times, p. 453. 
 
 f Lyell : Antiquity of Man, pp. 181-193. J Anthropology, p. 260. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MENTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 545 
 
 a then recently invented method of educating the deaf and dumb. He 
 compared apes to deaf mutes, and expressed a desire for a large and 
 clever ape to educate by the new method. Had he tried the experi- 
 ment it would have been instructive to contrast his failure with the 
 education of Laura Bridgman. Dr. Maudsley says : " However low a 
 human being may fall, he never reverts to the type of an animal; the 
 fallen majesty of mankind being manifest in the worst wrecks. Cer- 
 tainly there may be sometimes a general resemblance to one of the 
 lower animals, but the resemblance is never anything more than a 
 general and superficial one ; all the special differences in mental mani- 
 festations are still more or less apparent, just as the special differences in 
 anatomical structure still remain. The idiot with hairy back may go 
 on his knees and 'baa' like a sheep, as did one of which Pinel tells, 
 but as he does not get the wool and conformation of the sheep, so he 
 does not get its psychical characters ; he is not adapted for the relations 
 of the sheep, and if placed in them would surely perish ; and he does 
 exhibit unconscious traces of his adaptation to his relations as a human 
 being which the best developed animal never would. So also with 
 regard to man's next of kin, the monkeys ; no possible arrest of devel- 
 opment, no degradation of human nature through generations, will 
 bring him to the special type of the monkey."* 
 
 Man has also the capacity of falling by sin, which the brute has not. 
 By the minding of the flesh instead of the minding of the spirit, he 
 perverts, abases and corrupts himself, and fails of all the true ends of 
 his being. No brute is capable of this. Prof. Tayler Lewis published 
 an article maintaining that the highest power in man, by which he is 
 completely distinguished from the brute, is his power to " fall " from 
 his normal condition by his own action. The Duke of Argyll, in his 
 essays on " The Unity of Nature," advances the same thought. There 
 seems to be much force in the argument. In brutes we do not dis- 
 cover a common disposition to actions contrary to their constitution 
 and tending to weaken and destroy not only the individual but the 
 race. In them the evolution passes through all its stages with perfect 
 accuracy to the end, the propensities developed in it are in harmony 
 with their powers, and these in their functions are in harmony with 
 the constitution of things. This must be so, according to the theory 
 of evolution, because the theory assumes that the need of a function 
 leads to the evolution of its organ, and the organ acts to supply the 
 need. In man alone we find a persistent tendency to action vhich 
 leads to the vitiation and even the destruction instead of the peifec- 
 tion of his being and his race; action in disharmony with himself 
 
 * Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, p. 290. 
 
 35 
 
546 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 and with his highest functions in the world, and with his own con- 
 sciousness of duty to obey what he knows is the supreme law of his 
 being. A very large part of mankind, embracing nearly all savage 
 tribes and multitudes of civilized men, exhibit dispositions, habits and 
 actions which, as tending to corrupt, weaken and destroy the race, 
 are unnatural and monstrous. They enslave and maltreat their females, 
 murder their children, kill and eat one another. So that, as the 
 Duke of Argyll intimates, there is a certain literal truth in the com- 
 parison of man with the dragons : 
 
 " Dragons of the prime, 
 That tear each other in their slime, 
 Were mellow music matched with him." 
 
 The most horrible and loathsome brutes show no tendency to ac- 
 tion contrary to their own nature and destructive of their own spe- 
 cies. Here, then, is something exceptional in man, inconsistent with 
 the unity of nature ; something which can be explained by free-will, 
 but not by natural evolution and the dominance of the forces of 
 nature through instinct. If man is in his entire being the product 
 of evolution, or of nature-forces only in whatever way acting, then in 
 his lowest stage and onward through all his history he must show the 
 simplicity of brute life and its harmony with itself. His conscious 
 sin and wrong-doing reveal him as a free agent, above nature, trans- 
 scending its fixed course, using his own free-will in violation of the 
 law of his being, and thus different from the brutes which exist and 
 act only in the fixed and necessary course of nature. 
 
 III. If it should be made evident that certain brutes possess the 
 distinctive characteristics of personality, this would prove only that 
 these particular Animals are personal beings, having reason, rational 
 sensibility and free-will, subject to the law of God and capable of 
 knowing and serving him. It would not prove that other species of 
 animals were persons. It would not disprove the personality of man. 
 It would enlarge the number of personal beings. The distinction 
 between the personal and the impersonal would remain as sharply 
 defined as ever. It would be pleasanter, certainly, to enlarge the area 
 of personality by finding some animals qualified to be in it, than with 
 Comte to obliterate it altogether and insist that man must give up his 
 claim to be the lowest of the angels and content himself with being 
 the highest of the brutes. If any animals have these distinctive 
 attributes, we cordially welcome them to the fraternity of personal 
 and immortal beings ; concurring with the " untutored mind " of " the 
 
 poor Indian," 
 
 " Who thinks admitted to that equal sky, 
 His faithful dog shall bear him company." 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MENTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 547 
 
 IV. By virtue of these distinctive characteristics, man, though im- 
 plicated in nature through his bodily organization, is in his person- 
 ality supernatural ; the brute is wholly submerged in nature. Man in 
 the use of reason can lift himself above the plane of his own nature, 
 can survey and measure it, and determine his course ; he can put 
 himself in opposition to his natural impulses and regulate, develop or 
 subdue them. He is in nature like a ship in the sea, in it, yet above 
 it, guiding his course by observing the heavens even against wind 
 and current. A brute has no such power ; it is in nature like a balloon 
 wholly immersed in the air and driven by its currents with no power 
 of steering. 
 
 1. To this it may be objected that the sensitivity of the brute cannot be 
 correlated and identified with motion any more than the personality of 
 man can be ; that, therefore, if brutes are not supernatural man cannot 
 be ; but if man is supernatural then brutes must be so. 
 
 The fact alleged in the objection is admitted, but the inference is not 
 justified. The fact that conscious sensitivity cannot be identified with 
 motion does not prove personality either in men or beasts. It simply 
 proves that animated life is more than a mode of motion and cannot 
 be explained by mechanism. It proves the same of personality. But 
 the existence of personal beings is proved by the evidence of the facts 
 of personality known to man in his consciousness of .himself and his 
 acquaintance with other men. The line of demarkation between the 
 supernatural and nature does not lie between the living organism 
 and the inorganic, nor between the animate and the inanimate vital 
 organisms, but between the personal and the impersonal. Brutes 
 may have organic life and sensitivity, and yet remain submerged in 
 nature. It is not life and sensitivity which lift men above nature, but 
 it is the distinctive characteristics of personality. 
 
 The objection, therefore, avails nothing either in identifying per- 
 sonality with animate life or in identifying either these or inanimate 
 organic life with motion and mechanism. 
 
 There are three reasons why it is unscientific to affirm that life 
 is merely a mode of motion. One is that no fact of abiogenesis or the 
 origination of organic life has ever been discovered. The second is, 
 it is impossible to identify consciousness or sensitivity with motion, and, 
 it seems to be proved that it is never transformed into motion, nor 
 motion into it. The third is that it involves the incredible doctrine 
 that brutes and inc-n are mere machines or automata. It rests on the 
 materialistic assertion that the universe is a machine and all the pro- 
 cesses and powers in it are mechanical. Brutes and men therefore are 
 merely machines. The materialistic scientists of the present day do 
 not avow the old doctrine that brutes are automata, and that a dog's 
 
548 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 howling is only the noise of the running machinery. But in affirming 
 that no force exists except the lowest, which is mechanical or motor- 
 force, they leave themselves no explanation of the action of brutes 
 except the mechanical; and mechanical action is the action of a 
 machine. They speak of organic molecules. Inorganic changes they 
 explain by a greater complexity of the molecule ; but an organic mole- 
 cule can be nothing else but a more complex molecule, because they 
 have left themselves nothing but the differing number and relative 
 position of atoms and molecules by which to distinguish the organic 
 molecule from the inorganic. Mr. Huxley, in his lecture on " The 
 Hypothesis that Animals are Automata," calls them conscious automata. 
 But a conscious automaton or machine is a self-contradictory phrase. 
 Consciousness is not essential to a machine. A machine is complete 
 without it. If consciousness is added to a machine it is something 
 which is not mechanical. If it is a reality it must be accounted for by 
 some power not mechanical. But by the supposition there is no power 
 except the mechanical force in the universe. Nothing then is accom- 
 plished by Mr. Huxley except to affix biological terms to mechanical 
 processes and energies. But to call the parts and processes of a ma- 
 chine by biological names does not annul their character as mechan- 
 ism, it only disguises it. It has become common in discussing sociology 
 to treat society as a living organism. But according to crude material- 
 ism, this social organization itself would be only an automaton called 
 by a biological name. 
 
 I have already pointed out some of the difficulties involved in the 
 materialism which begins with the lowest instead of the highest and 
 attempts to explain the universe as the evolution of matter and motor- 
 force. And here, again, the exceedingly complicated and fanciful con- 
 trivances resorted to in order to explain observed facts in accordance 
 with this theory remind us of the Ptolemaic astronomers who 
 
 " Gird the sphere 
 
 With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, 
 Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb ;" 
 
 and when a new discovery was made, were obliged to feign a few more 
 " eccentrics and epicycles, and such engines of orbs," as Lord Bacon 
 calls them, in the already intricate diagram of the heavens. But when 
 the true conception was attained all these complex figures gave place 
 to simplicity. The very fancifulness and complexity of the motions 
 supposed to account for observed facts on the theory that every energy 
 is transformed motion, is a presumption against the truth of the 
 theory and will some day give place to some theory more simple and 
 reasonable 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MENTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 549 
 
 3. All is explained by the true evolution : absolute being evermore 
 individuating and revealing its inexhaustible potential powers and 
 resources in the limitations and conditions of space and time ; and 
 i imminently active in the universe by which it is revealed. In whatever 
 form matter is known to us, whether as the gross matter which we see 
 and handle, or the finer stuff which by inference we dimly apprehend, 
 we cannot suppose it to be in its primitive form, but only to have come 
 into that state through we know not what changes. So the evolution 
 always on, in the progress of time revealing higher and more 
 varied powers and perfections, and it may be in remote space revealing 
 new worlds and systems, of which already science notes intimations 
 in tiie dissipation into depths of space beyond our system, we know not 
 whither, of never returning energy. Thus the creative process which 
 in the Absolute is the continuous limitation and indiviauation of its 
 power, in the finite is its continuous enlargement and evolution. And 
 far beyond this earth, beyond this solar system, beyond this Milky- Way 
 of stars, the world-spirit works, revealing God. 
 
 " In the tides of life, in the storms of motion, 
 
 I toss up and down, 
 
 I weave hither and thither, 
 
 Birth and the grave, 
 
 An eternal ocean, 
 
 A waving and flowing, 
 
 A life all-glowing, 
 
 Thus work I at the whizzing loom of time, 
 And weave a living garment for the Deity." 
 
 And in view of spheres beyond our imaginings supernatural intelligences 
 may sing, 
 
 "And swift and swift beyond conceiving 
 
 The splendor of the world goes round, 
 Day's Eden brightness still relieving 
 
 The awful night's intense profound ; 
 The ocean's tides in foam are breaking 
 
 Against the rock's deep bases hurled, 
 And both, the spheric race partaking, 
 
 Eternal, swift, are onwards whirled." 
 
 There is nothing unreasonable or unscientific in the supposition that 
 in animated organisms there is the manifestation of mechanical force 
 and something more; and yet that the "something more" does not 
 attain to the self-conscious rational freedom distinctive of personality. 
 I have classed as mechanical force, or force in its lowest plane as mani- 
 fested to us, attraction, repulsion, momentum and the forces known to 
 us as light, heat and electricity. Some scientists hold that attraction 
 
550 ' THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 causes motion, others that the momentum of moving corpuscles causes 
 attraction. Each supposition involves apparently insuperable diffi- 
 culties. It is sufficient to know that these forces seem always to act in 
 connection with matter as perceptible by us, and may be classed to- 
 gether as mechanical. Thence in successive stages the absolute being 
 reveals higher powers as matter is brought into receptivity for them, 
 till personality appears in man ; and probably what we call death is 
 the revelation of that same personality in a medium of action and con- 
 ditions of existence transcending our senses. It is, then, reasonable to 
 suppose that the life of a brute, though its organization has become 
 adequate to be a medium of sensitivity, is not yet capable of revealing 
 personality, and the life remains completely immerged in nature. But 
 when man appears the individuation has reached a point in w r hich he 
 rises above nature though still in it, distinguishes himself from nature, 
 and knows himself as self-directing, self-conditioning, self-exerting and 
 free. Thus in the whole evolution God is the Alpha and the Omega ; 
 it comes from God, it reveals God, and at last brings forth beings who 
 rising out of unreasoning nature know God and, distinct from him in 
 being, reunite themselves to him by faith and love in the unity of a 
 moral system. 
 
 Physical science, confining itself within its own sphere, rightly notes 
 only facts observed or inferred, and their classification by resemblance 
 and their co-ordination in uniform sequence. But it has no right to 
 declare as a fact of physical science that the universe consists only of 
 matter and mechanical force. It has no concern with the first cause 
 and absolute ground of all that exists. It therefore properly confines 
 itself to what it observes, it treats the forces which come under its ob- 
 servation as resident in or inseparable from nature, without asking how 
 they came to be there and what sustains them in action. Brought at 
 every turn of investigation to confront the fact that there is a power 
 immanently active in the universe transcending all which by its 
 empirical methods it can weigh, or measure, or define, it may assume 
 one supreme, inexhaustible force, everywhere acting, the source of all 
 change, revealing itself in many forms, incapable of absolute increase 
 or diminution. And because this force transcends its empirical 
 methods, it may call it unknowable. But it has no right to say 
 that this unknowable is only mechanical force ; it has no right to say 
 that nothing exists but matter and mechanical force, and that the 
 universe is merely a machine. Because in so doing it sets aside facts 
 empirically known, that other forces, chemical, vital, personal, exist ; 
 and in trying to identify these with mechanism it is driven to such 
 violent theorizing that thought well nigh strangles itself in its own 
 contortions ; because, also, if the universal force is mechanical it is no 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MEXTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 551 
 
 longer unknown, but science by empirical methods has found and 
 exactly ascertained and denned the first cause and absolute ground of 
 all things ; and, finally, because it arbitrarily shuts out all philosophical 
 and theological inquiry, and not only affirms that all knowledge is 
 limited to the empirical, but proceeds to declare dogmatically that 
 physical science within its empirical limits includes knowledge of every 
 thing that exists, or ever has existed. 
 
 V. Man is spirit ; the brute is not. A. personal being considered 
 abstractly from all connection with matter or nature is called spirit. 
 It may exist in and act through a bodily organization. 
 
 The reasons for belief in the existence of spirit have been already 
 set -forth. The objection now arises that if man is spirit we must attri- 
 bute a spirit or soul to every brute ; not to the more intelligent only, 
 but to the lowest, to the infusoria, to every organic cell or mass of 
 tissue which has sensitivity in the slightest degree. And in fact the 
 argument to prove that there is a spirit in man has often been presented 
 so as to make this a necessary inference. 
 
 On this question it is impossible to dogmatize. But from the posi- 
 tions already secured it is evident that the assumption of individuated 
 brute souls is unnecessary. The phenomena of animated life are 
 adequately accounted for by the integral and absolute power imma- 
 nently active in nature, evolving matter into more complex and more 
 highly elaborated forms, and revealing itself through energies of higher 
 and higher orders as matter becomes capable of being a medium for 
 their manifestation. It is no more necessary to refer the vitality of 
 every brute to an individuated soul than it is to refer the vitality of 
 every plant, or the chemical force in water, or the mechanical force of 
 a machine to an individuated soul. We have seen that the absolute 
 power reveals itself by limiting and conditioning and thus individuat- 
 ing its inexhaustible energy. Conditioning its energy in time and 
 space, matter appears ; conditioning its energy in space, time and mat- 
 ter, mechanical force and mechanical structures appear ; conditioning 
 its energy in space, time, matter and mechanical force, elemental force 
 and chemical compounds appear ; conditioning its energy in all these, 
 organic but inanimate life appears ; and continuing to exert its energy 
 individuated under all these conditions, animated life appears. But in 
 none of these is the, as it were, imprisoned energy so individuated that 
 at any point out of the fixed course of nature, or distinguishes 
 itself from the conditions which determine it from without. But as 
 the divine energy continues active under these conditions it pushes 
 forth into man, and in him is so far individuated that the man knows 
 himself as an individual persisting through all changes in unchanging 
 identity, endowed with reason, rational sensibility and free-will, dis- 
 
552 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 tinguisliing himself from nature, and endowed with a directive and 
 determining power by which he directs his own energies and reacts on 
 nature to direct its energies to accomplish his own chosen ends. He is 
 conditioned not merely in space and time but also in self- consciousness. 
 Thus rising above nature he is self-conditioning, self-regulating and 
 directing, self-determining and self-exerting. For this reason it is ne- 
 cessary to recognize him as a spirit, and thus distinct from and above 
 nature. This recognition is scientific, because it is necessary to explain 
 the facts certainly known in self-consciousness. As proving that man 
 is spirit, Kant emphasizes the practical reason, the imperative of con- 
 science. It is by no means the only evidence, but it is sufficient. The 
 consciousness of duty is as immediate as any intuition of sense ; duty 
 implies free-will ; free-will implies that man is spirit ; the consciousness 
 of duty gives contents in consciousness to the idea of God. The imper- 
 ative of the practical reason commands the surrender of life itself to 
 duty ; this would be the extinction of the individual himself, if the 
 individual is only in the course of nature ; thus it is decisive evidence 
 that, however implicated in nature, man is also spirit ; he belongs to a 
 realm transcending nature. 
 
 For similar reasons it is unnecessary to adopt the threefold classifica- 
 tion of man as body, soul and spirit. Thus Aristotle (De Anima) dis- 
 tinguishes in man a lower soul not separable from the body, from the 
 higher soul which is separable from it. The former he calls the 
 IvreXfysta of the body, that by which it is actually a living organiza- 
 tion, the formative power which like an impression on wax gives form 
 to the wax but has no existence separate from the wax. This is the 
 subject of sensations and passions. But the higher soul, the vous or 
 Osatfrqrtzrj duvajMs, has transcendent powers, and therefore is " separable 
 from the body, as that which is eternal and immortal from that which 
 is corruptible."* This is well said, as disclaiming the doctrine of the 
 Pythagoreans and Platonists that all souls, alike of animals and men, 
 are immortal. But it is unnecessary to assume that this formative 
 actuality of animated life, inseparable from the living body, is a soul. 
 It is sufficient to say that man is a spirit acting in and through a living 
 animal organization. 
 
 Mr. Lewes objects that the spiritual hypothesis is untenable, because 
 it is unscientific. It is an imaginary hypothesis incapable of verifica- 
 tion. It also attempts to account for phenomena by introducing an 
 unknowable; "the spirit is proposed as an agent, yet of its nature and 
 agency we know absolutely nothing." This objection is founded on 
 the assumption that consciousness is not a source of knowledge ; that 
 
 * Lib. L, Cap. I., and Lib, II., Cap. I. 
 
MATERIALISTIC OBJECTION FROM MEXTAL POWER OF BRUTES. 553 
 
 man has no knowledge of himself and his own powers ; that the ob- 
 jective alone can be known. The falsity of this position has already 
 been exposed. 
 
 Mr. Lewes further objects that, if the existence of spirit is granted, 
 it does not account for the facts. Man, he argues, possessing this spirit, 
 but isolated from society, would remain without language, without the 
 moral ideas of duty to others, without the " capitalized experience" of 
 the race, and " could no more manifest the activities classed under 
 Intellect and Morality than the animal could." The reasoning would 
 be equally valid if he had argued that if there were no external world, 
 material or mental, this man possessing spirit but existing alone, 
 would have no knowledge of an external world or of other 
 rational beings. The existence of spirit in man is not, as the objection 
 assumes it is, incompatible with existence in society. If a spirit does 
 not exist in society, it can have no knowledge of society and social 
 relations ; but if it does exist in society, it will have that knowledge. 
 I cannot conceive of anything in this fact which could have presented 
 itself as an objection in the mind of Mr. Lewes or of any other intel- 
 ligent person. Mr. Spencer speaks of " the prevalent anxiety to estab- 
 lish some absolute distinction between animal intelligence and human 
 intelligence;" the objections sometimes urged cannot but suggest a 
 " prevalent anxiety " to subvert this common belief. 
 
 Mr. Lewes further objects that " the spiritualist hypothesis of an 
 imaginary agent " is unnecessary, because all the facts " can be per- 
 fectly explained by a real agent the Social Organism." When Spencer 
 and Lewes say that society is an organism and attempt to construct a 
 sociology on that principle, they overlook the difference between a 
 race or species and an individual organism Moreover, they overlook 
 the fact that the institutions, civilization and unity of human society 
 can be explained only as those of a rational and moral system, not as 
 those of a race of brutes. Thus they leave out the most essential and 
 distinctive facts of human society. It is amusing to find Mr. Lewes 
 speaking of this intellectual fiction, "the Social Organism," as a "real 
 agent," and quietly setting aside as an " imaginary agent" the rational, 
 free personality which every man knows in his own self-consciousness, 
 and the reality of which is an essential factor in all knowledge.* 
 
 Mr. Spencer objects that a babe at birth manifests no more rational- 
 ity than a dog ; that its development to rationality is by infinitesimal 
 gradations ; and that " there is a series of infinitesimal gradations 
 through which brute rationality may pass into human rationality." 
 May pass but there is no proof that it does pass a very common 
 
 Problems of Life and Mind. First Series. Vol. II., pp. 144-146, 54. 
 
554 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 inconsequence in the arguments of skeptical evolutionists. Here also 
 is the false reasoning which I have exposed in a former chapter, that 
 powers belonging to the human mind must be measured by the 
 powers of infants. The objection is set aside by two indisputable 
 facts: the one that man has the attributes of personality, reason, 
 free-will, rational sensibility, consciousness of self, which so far as we 
 have evidence, brutes have not ; .the other, that every babe normally 
 developed manifests these distinctive powers, and no brute however 
 developed and trained, ever manifests anyone of them. Mr. Spencer 
 further objects that savages are gradually developed to the civilized 
 man. To which it is sufficient to answer that, according to the in- 
 vestigations and conclusions of Tylor, Quatrefages, Tiele, Peschei 
 and other anthropologists, all savage tribes, however low, so far as 
 known, have religiousness and the sense of moral obligation and 
 distinctions, and otherwise manifest attributes of personality. Thus, 
 as has been before shown, the difference between the highest brute and 
 the lowest animal, being a difference of kind, is greater than between 
 the lowest savage and the greatest intellect of civilized nations, the 
 difference in this case being only of degree.* 
 
 * Spencer's Psychology, Vol. I., pp. 460-462 g 206. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE TWO SYSTEMS OF NATURE AND OF PERSONALITY. 
 
 I 82. A Person's Knowledge of other Personal Beings. 
 
 I. . WHAT a person or spirit is, man finds in his knowledge of him- 
 self and in this only. Man finds the entire contents of the idea of 
 personality in his consciousness of himself in his own mental operations. 
 
 It is a principle already established that in the entire contents of 
 human knowledge there is no element which has not been first given 
 in intuition, perceptive or rational. Every element of the idea of 
 person or spirit is given in man's consciousness of himself as an indi- 
 vidual persisting in identity and endowed with reason, free-will and 
 rational sensibility. No other element can enter into his conception of 
 a person or spirit, any more than a blind man can have a conception of 
 color. This is all the truth there is in the common assertion that all 
 that man knows is derived from experience. The elements of all 
 objects of thought must have been known through preservative or 
 rational intuition before they became objects of thought. And every 
 essential element in my idea of a person or spirit I must first have 
 found in my consciousness of myself in my own mental operations. 
 
 This sets aside much empty speculation as to the origin of the idea 
 of the spirit in primeval man. Such, for example, are the fancies 
 that man obtained his idea of spirit from seeing his own shadow, or 
 from his own dreams, or from the wind which cannot be seen, or the 
 stars which cannot be touched, or the sky which cannot be measured, 
 or from the " great silence " of the forest. This kind of speculation 
 has no support from observed facts. And why should we look so far 
 for what is always obvious within ? For in fact man has the spiritual 
 always before him in his own consciousness of rational thought and 
 sensibility and free determination. What, he asks, is swifter than 
 thought ? Every hour he is conscious of exercising energies which are 
 invisible and of receiving pain and pleasure from invisible sources. 
 And no outward thing could suggest the idea of spirit unless it had 
 first arisen in the man's own conscious thinking, feeling and willing. 
 It is often assumed that the idea of spirit is attained with difficulty and 
 is late in making its appearance. It is not so. The idea appears in 
 
 555 
 
556 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the most savage tribes; it exists spontaneously without conscious 
 reasoning. When it is once originated in man's self-consciousness he 
 carries it beyond himself; he believes in invisible spirits superior to 
 himself and attributes a soul or spirit even to inanimate things. Thus 
 a savage thinks that a watch is alive, or that a letter which he is carry- 
 ino- knows what he does and tells of it. And when one dies the sur- 
 
 5 
 
 vivors supply him with food and weapons, believing that phantom food 
 and weapons will follow the soul of the dead into the land of spirits. 
 Tylor says : " When Democritus propounded the great problem of 
 metaphysics, ' How do we perceive external things ? ' . . . he ex- 
 plained the fact of perception by declaring that things are always 
 throwing oif images etda>Aa) of themselves, which images, assimilating 
 to themselves the surrounding air, enter a recipient soul and are thus 
 perceived." . . . This is " really the savage doctrine of object-souls, 
 turned to a new purpose as a method of explaining the phenomena of 
 thought."* Man's idea of spirit arises spontaneously in his own con- 
 scious mentality. What he slowly learns is that the things active 
 around him do not always contain a conscious agent invisible like his 
 own thoughts. 
 
 Fetichism exemplifies the same fact ; for the fetichist believes that 
 any material object may be a shrine for the divinity. And this is in 
 fact a spontaneous and unconsciously intuitive turning of the mind in 
 the direction of a fundamental reality; for fetichism is a blind 
 animism, recognizing in nature a spiritual and invisible power. Berke- 
 ley cites Toricelli as likening matter to an ' enchanted vase of Circe 
 serving as a receptacle of force, and declaring that power and impulse 
 are such subtle abstracts and refined quintessences that they cannot 
 be enclosed in any other vessels but the inmost materiality of natural 
 solids ; he also cites Leibnitz as comparing active primitive power to 
 souls or substantial form.f To this day physical science does not 
 profess to remove the mystery ; it does not say what force is nor how it 
 is related to matter ; it only recognizes their observed concomitance. 
 The most profound and satisfactory view is that which recognizes the 
 absolute being as individuating its power in it, and in and through it 
 progressively revealing itself in higher and higher forms. 
 
 Belief in spirit arises from man's knowledge of his own invisible 
 energies, and is not of difficult attainment and late development; it 
 appears to be spontaneous, constitutional, universal, and so tenacious as 
 to be scarcely ever eradicated. It is worthy of note that when from 
 any cause religious unbelief prevails among the learned, the belief in 
 
 * Tylor: Primitive Culture. Vol. I., p. 449. 
 
 f Berkeley: Concerning Motion ; Works. Vol. II., p. 86. 
 
THE TWO SYSTEMS OF NATURE AND OF PERSONALITY. 557 
 
 spirits often breaks out in gross superstition and strange fanaticism 
 among the people; as witness now the pilgrimages to Lourdes and 
 elsewhere in France, and the belief in spirit-rappings. 
 
 II. A man has knowledge of personal beings other than himself. 
 
 1. The objection that man in his self-consciousness is shut up 
 within his own subjectivity and unable to know other beings as 
 personal, involves agnosticism. It is, however, a common objection, 
 urged by persons who are not agnostics. For example, Prof. Xewcomb 
 says : " Should we see in visible masses of matter the same kind of 
 motion which we know must take place among the molecules of matter 
 as they arrange themselves into the complex attitudes necessary to 
 form the leaf of a plant, we should at once conclude that they were 
 under the direction of a living being who was superintending the 
 execution of these arrangements. But our knowledge of will as an 
 agent is so absolutely limited to the study of our own wills that we cannot 
 pronounce any generalization respecting it." If a man has knowledge 
 of personality in himself, he of course can recognize the characteristics 
 of personality when they appear in another. The objection, therefore, 
 must assume that man has no knowledge of himself as a person. It 
 necessarily issues in the universal skepticism of Hume. 
 
 2. The philosophy of Kant gives a basis for knowledge of personal 
 Ix-mirs so far as it allows knowledge of anything. Kant's intuition of 
 sense is not intuition in its proper significance. Like Hume's, it is a 
 mere receptivity of impressions. But he insists that the mind is also 
 something more than that, and is so constituted as to give further 
 knowledge. The impressions of sense cannot be grasped in the unity 
 of intuition except as the mind gives the forms of time and space, 
 and thus makes it possible to unite them. The mind also proceeds 
 from individuals to generals. Knowledge is expressed in general 
 propositions ; and the mere reception of impressions cannot give such 
 knowledge. Therefore again in order to knowledge, elements must 
 be supplied from the mind itself ; these are the categories of quantity, 
 quality, relation and modality. We cannot stop with disconnected 
 and unrelated impressions. We do not know merely disconnected 
 impressions, but we know them also as defined in time and space, 
 and also existing as substance and quality, cause and effect, in unity, 
 plurality, totality and other categories. Knowledge implies also an 
 element of necessity or universality, as in the axioms of mathematics 
 and the judgments of causality and identity. Thus it contains elements 
 which are not impressions of sense and cannot be resolved into those 
 impressions. And thus Hume's theory of knowledge is refuted as 
 inadequate. Consequently Hume's inference that knowledge is limited 
 within the subjectivity of the subject of the sensations is no more valid ; 
 
558 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 the objective validity of knowledge is demonstrated in the sense in 
 which Kant uses the phrase, namely, the equal validity of the facts 
 to all men as well as to myself. It follows that my knowledge of an 
 object is not an impression limited within my own subjectivity, but is 
 the knowledge of an object which is equally real to all men. But if 
 knowledge is thus common to all men, then through this community 
 of intelligence men are capable of knowing one another as intelligent 
 beings. 
 
 Thus Kant demonstrated that, even if knowledge begins in a recep- 
 tion of impressions, it must transcend those impressions and the sub- 
 jectivity which as mere impressions they imply ; that in all knowledge 
 are elements of intellect transcending sense ; and that men, transcend- 
 ing each his own subjectivity, come into communion with one another 
 and know one another as rational beings. 
 
 3. The recognition of sense as perceptfve intuition involving at 
 once the intuition of the object perceived and of the self perceiving, 
 implies without further argument the possibility of knowing rational 
 beings other than ourselves. Kant by his false conception of sense as 
 a mere receptivity of impression is obliged, in order to show the ob- 
 jective validity of knowledge, to resort to the roundabout process 
 which I have indicated. He refutes Hume from his own premises and 
 establishes the reality and validity of the mind's own action in all 
 knowledge. But to one who recognizes perceptive and rational intui- 
 tion, Kant's roundabout reasoning is unnecessary. Such an one, in 
 accordance with our constant consciousness, ascribes to intuition the 
 knowledge which Kant laboriously proves. 
 
 Perceptive intuition gives the knowledge of the Me, as distinguished 
 from the not-me ; equally it must give the knowledge of the Me as dis- 
 tinguished from the Thou. Says Krug : " Over against the Me always 
 stands also the thou ; that is, a not-me, in which the Me finds itself 
 again, or recognizes a being like itself."* 
 
 4. The acts of our fellow-men reveal them to us as persons or 
 rational free-agents. Intercommunication by language and by other 
 signs, co-operation for common ends, reciprocal confidence, love, gov- 
 ernment, religious fellowship, the existence of society and its institu- 
 tions, rest on the facts that men know one another as rational beings, 
 and that the qualities of personality are common to them all. When 
 one knows in self-consciousness what the characteristics of personality 
 are, he can recognize them when manifested in another. 
 
 5. That man imagines that he finds the characteristics of personality 
 in an impersonal thing and so mistakes the impersonal for the personal, 
 
 * Article Ich : Vol. II., p. 427. Encyklopadiseh-philosophisches Lexicon. 
 
THE TWO SYSTEMS OF NATURE AND OF PERSONALITY. 559 
 
 is no argument against the reality of his knowledge of personal beings; 
 for just so scientists sometimes mistake the action of one natural object 
 for that of another. The savage does not mistake his fellow-men for 
 brutes or stones. But on account of his limited knowledge the horizon 
 which divides himself and his tribesmen from the supernatural is very 
 near ; and he thinks he sees the supernatural in what he afterwards 
 discovers to belong to nature only. The horizon widens and widens 
 till in his higher development he conies to know the one Supreme God. 
 But this does not prove that the spiritual and supernatural are unreal. 
 It reveals the fact that, in every stage of his development, man finds 
 the supernatural and spiritual in himself, and expects to find the same 
 in other beings ; and, however high he rises in development, he always 
 finds the supernatural and spiritual, not only with him in his fellow-men, 
 but beyond and above him in a God. 
 
 0. It is objected that man's conception of God and of all supernatural 
 and spiritual beings is anthropomorphic and therefore false. This, 
 however, is only a pictorial way of representing to the imagination the 
 objection already considered in its abstract form, that all knowledge is 
 unreal, because relative to our faculties ; or. knowledge is impossible 
 because there is a mind that knows. If any being is endowed with 
 intelligence and rationality, intelligence and rationality in every being 
 must be essentially the same ; otherwise the so-called intelligence in one, 
 being contradictory to the intelligence of another, would not be real 
 knowledge; and the so-called rationality, being contradictory to another 
 rationality, would be irrational. If, then, man is endowed with reason, 
 all knowledge which is in accordance with reason is in accordance with 
 the reason of man ; and in this sense all real knowledge must be anthro- 
 pomorphic, for if it were not it would be contrary to reason. There is 
 as much anthropomorphism in physical science as there is hi theology. 
 Prof. FLske admits that belief in spirit is scarcely more anthropomorphic 
 than belief in power.* The affirmation that the sun attracts the earth 
 is as really anthropomorphic as the affirmation that " nature abhors a 
 vacuum." Since the principles and laws of science discovered by the 
 human mind are found to be true of stars in the remotest space within 
 the range of the telescope, and in the remotest discoverable distances of 
 past time, and in the utmost sphere of microscopic vision, it is reason- 
 able to conclude that man's reason and intelligence accord with the 
 reason and intelligence which are universal and eternal. 
 
 * Cosmic Philosophy. Vol. II., pp. 449, 450. 
 
560 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 \ 83. The Two Systems. 
 
 We have scientific knowledge of two grand systems in the universe, 
 the natural and the rational. Impersonal beings exist in the unity of 
 the system of nature ; personal beings exist in the unity of the system 
 of reason, free moral agency, and moral government. 
 
 Man has knowledge of himself as connected with both of these sys- 
 tems. In the impressions of sense, in his locomotion in space, in the 
 weight of his body, and in all his action through it on his environment 
 and its action on him, he knows his own organism as a part of the sys- 
 tem of nature. He knows the outward world as the sphere in which 
 and on which he acts, and as containing the forces which he uses and 
 the resources of which he avails himself in accomplishing his own ends. 
 In a similar manner man in his knowledge of himself and other men 
 as persons, knows himself existing with other personal beings in the 
 unity of a rational and moral system. He knows this world of per- 
 sonality also as the sphere in which and on which he acts and as con- 
 taining the spiritual agencies and influences by which he accomplishes 
 his ends. We believe in a spiritual world as the sphere and environ- 
 ment of our spiritual energies just as we believe in the natural world as 
 the sphere and environment of our physical energies. 
 
 Thus man knowing himself as nature and spirit, knows himself con- 
 nected with both spheres and finds the powers of both these grand 
 systems of the universe meeting in and sweeping through his being. 
 
 \ 84. The Existence of a Personal God a Necessary 
 Datum of Scientific Knowledge. 
 
 The existence of the personal God or the Supreme Reason energizing 
 in the universe is a necessary datum of scientific knowledge. So far 
 from its being true that God is contradictory to Reason or is Unknow- 
 able, his existence is a necessary presupposition in all knowledge which 
 has scientific accuracy and comprehensiveness ; that is, in all accurate 
 and ascertained knowledge of the particular realities of the universe 
 and their comprehensive unity and harmony in a system of things. 
 The existence of God is the keystone of the arch of human knowledge, 
 without which the whole fabric breaks down and crumbles to pieces. 
 
 I. The existence of God is necessary to the trustworthiness of the 
 human reason as an organ of necessary and universal principles. If 
 man has self-evident knowledge of any principle which is a universal 
 law of thought ; in other words, if he has knowledge of any principle 
 the contradictory of which is absurd, then Reason is supreme and 
 absolute in the universe, and the principles and laws which reveal 
 
THE TWO SYSTEMS OF NATURE AND OF PERSONALITY. 561 
 
 themselves in human reason as regulative of all thought and energy, 
 exist eternal in that supreme and absolute Reason. Then the universe 
 is grounded in Reason, and Reason is everywhere and always the same ; 
 Reason in God is the same in kind with Reason in man, who is in the 
 image of God. This datum or presupposition is indispensable to the 
 trustworthiness of human Reason. 
 
 Hence the demand that the trustworthiness of Reason be established 
 by proof or argument is inadmissible. Reason can demonstrate itself 
 only by its own rationality as the sun can reveal itself only by shining. 
 Some writers say that the trustworthiness of Reason can be sustained 
 only by an appeal to morals. God, it is said, could not do so wrong an 
 act - as to give man a constitution which would always deceive him. As 
 Mr. Chubb put it, " God would not be so mean as to do it." But this 
 appeal to the moral implies the presupposition of a righteous God. It 
 is an appeal to the practical reason for verification of the speculative 
 reason. The only solid basis of scientific knowledge is the recognition 
 of Reason as absolute and supreme, and of the human mind as Reason^ 
 and therefore so constituted that its knowledge is illumined and its 
 thought regulated by principles that are eternal and regulative in the 
 Absolute Reason. The existence of God the Absolute Reason, is a 
 necessary prerequisite to the possibility of scientific human knowledge. 
 
 II. The existence of God is necessarily prerequisite to the community 
 of human knowledge. Community of knowledge implies the participa- 
 tion of men in a common knowledge of facts and truths, a common 
 recognition of the same laws of thought, the same moral ideas and law, 
 the same standard of perfection and of good. Necessary to this is the 
 supremacy over all men of one and the same absolute and unchanging 
 Reason. And this Reason energizing is the personal God. 
 
 III. The existence of God is necessarily prerequisite to the complete- 
 ness of human thought in the knowledge of all particulars in the unity 
 of an all-comprehending system. Human thought consists in appre- 
 hending and distinguishing particulars, and in finding their relations in 
 the unity of a whole. The ultimate and necessary problem of the Rea- 
 son is to find the unity of the All, or to know the All in One. The 
 existence of God is a presupposition necessary to the solving of this 
 ultimate problem ; and this presupposition is either explicit or implicit 
 in all scientific knowledge of the many in one. 
 
 It is only as we recognize God that we can know natural things in 
 the unity of a system of nature. We have seen that the archetypal 
 thought or plan of the universe is eternal in the absolute Reason. This 
 excludes caprice, chance, fate, and all disorder. God's almightiness is 
 controlled by Reason ; it cannot give reality to what Reason knows to 
 be absurd, and it acts only in accordance with perfect wisdom and love 
 36 
 
562 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 which regulate all God's action. But since it is an eternal truth of 
 Keason that the infinite can never be completely expressed in the finite, 
 the realization of the archetypal thought must be under limits of space, 
 time, and quantity, and therefore must be always progressive, and at 
 every point of time and boundary of space and limit of quantity must 
 be incomplete, awaiting further development. But since nature as it 
 exists at any point of time is so far a realization of the thought of God, 
 the divine Reason energizing on and through it produces results com- 
 mensurate with its existing limitations ; yet as continuing the realization 
 of the same plan of perfect reason, all further evolution must be in 
 harmony with the preceding, to whatever extent it may transcend it. 
 Thus we have all natural things and forces through all time and space 
 in the unity of a rational system. But without a God nature expresses 
 no rational thought, conforms to no rational law, realizes no rational 
 end and has not the unity and harmony of a system. 
 
 When rational beings appear, they also exist in the unity of a rational 
 system in their common relations to God and under the same universal 
 law of love. They are in unity, not by a physical force like attrac- 
 tion, but by common truth, law and ends influencing them as rational 
 free agents under God, the Father of spirits. Without God there could 
 be no system of rational free agents under the universal law of love ; 
 and in fact rational free agents could not be conceived as existing. 
 
 And the two systems are in the unity of a universe through their 
 common relations to God. But there is no antagonism between nature 
 and spirit, between the natural and the moral systems, for both are in 
 unison as realizing the archetypal thought of absolute reason. The 
 finite spirit itself is evolved only when nature is prepared for its presence 
 and action. A finite spirit is a person considered abstractly from matter 
 and physical nature, and may conceivably exist separate from any ma- 
 terial organism. But since personality makes its appearance in the 
 evolution of nature and is known to us in a human body, there is no 
 antagonism between the two, and finite spirits may always exist and act 
 in some organic medium, though we know not what ethereal refinement 
 the future body may attain. The antagonism of nature and spirit is 
 abnormal and arises from sin by which the spirit has perverted itself in 
 the wrong action of free-will. 
 
 And nature is in harmony with spirit as the sphere in which spiritual 
 creatures live and act under the limits of time and space, and as subor- 
 dinate to all the ends of the spiritual system. Thus the two systems 
 become one as realizing the archetypal thought of God. 
 
 In this system sin is the only essential evil. All other privation or 
 suffering is incidental to the limitations inseparable from the finite. 
 Borne in fortitude or removed by energy, and in either case triumphed 
 
THE TWO SYSTEMS OF NATURE AND OF PERSONALITY. 563 
 
 over by faith and love, they become occasions of discipline and de- 
 velopment, and of spiritual enrichment in the true good. Sin is possible 
 to finite free agents through the individuation inseparable from finite- 
 ness. The law of love, grounded in the constitution of the universe, 
 calls men beyond their individuation to recognize their unity in their 
 common relation to God and their unity one with another in the rational 
 system, in which they are to be workers together with God in the pro- 
 gressive realization of His perfect wisdom and love. Every thing and 
 every person in the universe is included in this all-embracing dual sys- 
 tem of nature and spirit. Nothing exists in isolation ; nothing exists 
 for itself; " no man liveth for himself." Blessedness is possible to man 
 only as he lives for others as well as for himself in obedience to the law 
 of universal love, and thus in harmony with the supreme and absolute 
 Reason. 
 
 In this system the conflict is hot between spirit and matter ; matter 
 is the instrument of spirit. The conflict is between God and all wise 
 and righteous beings against the unreasonable and sinful. It is the 
 conflict of love against selfishness, of the spiritual against the earthly 
 and the sensual. In this conflict the good must progressively prevail 
 over the evil. In expectation of that triumph in the redemption of the 
 human race, " according to His promise, we look for new heavens and 
 a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." As man unites in himself 
 both nature and spirit, and the powers of both the natural and the 
 rational system meet in him, Jesus the Christ, " the word made flesh," 
 unites in Himself both the human and the divine ; He is the ideal of 
 man receiving the assaults of evil and standing against them in love, 
 overcoming evil with good, and by humiliation and suffering, the cross 
 and the grave exalted to the heavenly glory ; and at the same time 
 in him God is most completely revealed as the God of love, the Most 
 High coming down to the lowly to lift it up. And as through ages 
 upon ages God continues in the universe action of which this is the 
 type, he will not only offer himself as the redeemer of rational beings 
 from their lowliness and sin, but will redeem nature itself more and 
 more from its restrictions, imperfections and pains. " The creation 
 itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the 
 liberty of the glory of the children of God." No imagination can con- 
 ceive what the world-births are to be with which already, as Paul says, 
 " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together ; " nor 
 what the heavenly cities, the fields of light, the paradises of God may 
 be which may take the place of these worlds of gross matter ; nor what 
 the purer light may be in that abode where there is no more need of 
 the sun, " for the glory of God lightens it and the Lamb is the light 
 thereof." And as to the saints of God peopling these heavenly abodes 
 
564 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 no imagination can conceive what may be their transcendent beatfty, 
 swiftness and power, the vast range and keen penetration of their intui- 
 tion like a keen, far-reaching eye-sight, the immensity of their know- 
 ledge, the majesty, grace, and energy of their love, and the immediacy 
 and fullness of the vision of God, of which in their progress they may 
 have become susceptible. 
 
 To the Christian theist these scriptural anticipations, reasonable in 
 themselves, are made more conceivable by the scientific theory of evolu- 
 tion. Any theory of evolution excluding the presupposition, explicit or 
 implicit, of Absolute Reason as the ultimate ground of the universe 
 and energizing in its evolution, must be inconsistent with itself, incom- 
 patible with the necessary laws of thought, and contradictory to human 
 reason. 
 
' 
 
 Books not return 6 n third day rdU B 00 ks noTin 
 
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 NOV 
 APR 26 1918 
 
 DEC 8 
 
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 APR 4 1965 
 
YC 30491 
 
 
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