RECON AMERICAN THOUGHT FROM PURITANISM TO PRAGMATISM BY WOODBRIDGE RILEY, Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN VASSAR COLLEQB NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND CO:\n*ANY 1915 CopTRionT, 1915, BT HENRY nOLT AND COMPANY THE OUINN « BODEN CO. PRESS TO MY FIRST TEACHER IN PHILOSOPHY, GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD ^ FOREWORD We, as a country, have been told that we have no philosophy, that we do but reflect the speculations of other lands. This is not wholly true. We have had phi- losophers, original thinkers who, though their influence may not have reached abroad, were makers of history at home. So a study of the speculative movements in America leads to a clearer understanding of our national character, for these very movements are so closely allied to our history and our literature that they may be said to form a background for both. The colonial background I have presented in a pre- vious volume — American Philosophy: The Early Schools. This described the most important forms of thought as they crossed from the Old to the New World, developed during two centuries, and slowly prepared the way for the native philosophy of Emerson. The present work condenses the previous account and continues the de- velopment of national thought until it emerges tri- umphantly in pragmatism — a typical American phi- losophy. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. PUBITANISM 1 1. Philosophy and Politics, from Absolutism to Democracy 1 2. The New England Fathers .... 6 3. The Revolt Against Puritanism: Ethan Allen II. Early Idealism 1. Samuel Johnson, Disciple of Berkeley 2. Jonathan Edwards, Mystic . 3. Mysticism: From Quakerism to Christian Science III. Deism 1. The English Influences .... 2. The Colonial Colleges and Free-Thought 3. Philadelphia and Franklin . 4. Virginia and Jefferson .... 5. Thomas Paine, and Popular Deism IV. Materialism 1. The French Influences .... 2. Joseph Priestley, and the Homogeneity of Man 3. Benjamin Rush, and Mental Healing V. Realism 1. The Scottish Influences . 2. The Princeton School 3. The Lesser Realists .... VI. Transcendentalism 1. Emerson, Interpreter of Nature . 2. The Sources of Transcendentalism vu 12 19 19 28 37 54 ,54 57 68 77 8G 96 96 100 104 118 118 123 1.35 140 140 154 ii CONTENTS PAQB cnAPTEn VII. Evolutionism 172 1. The Forerunners of Evolutionism 172 2. The Antagonism of Agassiz . 184 3. The Reception of Darwinism 191 4. Cosmic Philosophy: John Fiske . . 211 6. Genetic Evolutionism: James Mark Baldwin 216 VIII. MoDEBN Idealism 229 1. The German Influences . . . .229 2. The St. Louis School: William T. Harris 240 3. Romantic Idealism: Josiah Royce . . 254 4. Idealism and Science: George Trumbull Ladd 265 IX. Peagmatism 279 1. Pragmatism: The Philosophy of Prac- ticality 279 2. Primitive Pragmatism: Charles Peirce . 284 3. The Chicago School: John Dewey . . 289 4. The Cambridge School: William James 308 5. The Sources of Pragmatism . . 320 6. The Critics of Pragmatism . . . 331 X. Notes on the New Realism 341 Select Biblioqbaphy 361 Index 369 AMERICAN THOUGHT CHAPTER I PURITANISM 1. Philosophy and Politics, from Absolutism to Democilvcy The influence of philosophy upon politics in America is easily seen in the evolution of such a familiar phrase as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This declaration of independence was derived indirectly, by way of reaction, from a declaration of dependence. The belief of the Puritans was a belief in passivity, determin- ism, and pessimism. They considered that man was a mere worm, a dull instrument in the hands of Deity; that his acts were predestined. Deity foreordaining whatsoever comes to pass ; that his life was a vain show, and nature a vale of tears. Over against these lugu- brious doctrines of the Puritans we may put those of their successors. It was the deists who believed in activity, freedom, and optimism. They held that man was a real agent ; that he was free to do what he chose ; that his goal was perfection itself, and they even went so far as to say that whatever is, is right. These beliefs slowly spread among the people and were gradually trans- lated into the plain language of the day. Instead of passivity the deists believed in activity,— that is, life; instead of determinism they believed in freedom, — that 2 ... .PURITANISM is, .liberty ;' instead* of ^pessimism they believed in opti- ,'iiUMh;^tliJ\tis;, -tlKJ f>Mrsuit of happiness. In short, be- tween the Boston Platform of 1680 and the Declaration of Independence of 1776 a marked change had come about. Tlic deistic sun had arisen, dispelling the winter of Puritan discontent. Humanity was considered per- fectible and this world the best of all possible worlds. A more striking instance of the influence of philosophy upon politics is seen in the problem of political sov- ereignty. Popular government in this country was gained only after a long struggle in which philosophical tenets played a large part./ Developing side by side, the one influencing the other, the philosophical and political movements passed through the same changes. In the seventeenth century we find men's interest chiefly cen- tered about God. In the eighteenth century that interest is twofold Tit concerns itself with nature, as well as with God. In the nineteenth century the interest has trans- ferred itself mainly to nature. The same transfer of thought takes place in politics. In the seventeenth century- the interest centers in the king; in the eight- eenth century in both king and people; in the nine- t_eenth century the people fill the foreground. We may go back and express this great movement in terms of metaphysics, and say that the conception of the absolute in America is, in the seventeenth century, monistic ; in the eighteenth century, dualistic ; in the nineteenth century, pantheistic. Under Puritanism there is a belief in one, supreme, self-sufficient being, the sole ruler and disposer of all things. Under deism there is a belief in a deity whose powers and functions are limited by a law outside himself, — the law of nature, inviolable and immutable. Under transcendentalism, the deity, becoming immanent, is submerged in nature, PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 3 can scarcely be distinguished from the cosmic proc- esses. We have here three philosophical conceptions. It is not hard to show that they were influenced in their growth by the current theories of government. At the time of Puritanism there is a belief in absoluie_ monarchy, when sovereignty is conceived to be give n by Gq^ ^o _ the king, who thus rules by divine right. Then, at the time of deism there is a belief in limited monarchy, when sovereignty is conceived to be shared between ruler and subject, under a dual control. Finally, along with transcendentalism there arises a true conception of representative democracy, when sovereignty is con- ceived as vested in the people through the inalienable right of the law of nature. Between these two move- ments there is a striking parallel. In philosophy, the predominant interests are first: deity; then deity and nature ; and lastly nature. In polities the kindred in- terests are: king, then king and people, and finally the people alone. That these sets of conceptions are really kindred is shown by the fact that one may be expressed in terms of tlie other. Under Puritanism the deity is V^ represented as a dread monarch and sovereign ruler. This is the Calvinistic description of the immortal GQd._ The same terms are used in reference to the temporal^ king. In the Articles of the Plymouth Church occurs the phrase: " The King's majesty we aeknoxyledge for" supreme governour," while the subscribers to the Ma^- /foii'er compact sign themselves " loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James." These^two conceptions sound so much alike because they are derived from common principles. Both English monarchy and New England theocracy are based upon""" the underlying tenet of transcendence and determinism. 4 PURITANISM In ivligion this meant, briefly, that God was far off from his world and that he foreordained all its events. In politics, as Tom Paine bluntly expresses it in his Common, k'^cnsc, this meant that the state of a king shuts him off from the world, yet the business of a king re- quires him to know it thoroughly. To carry out the parallel. The state advocates of divine right made the king high above his people and, at the same time, an auto- crat who decided the smallest affairs in the utmost bounds of his kingdom. The church advocates of divine sover- eignty were of the same temper and held that the Most High doth direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things from the greatest even to the least. Here are two sets of belief similar in sense and leading to similar results. Yet neither king nor Calvin was to reign forever. A reaction followed which, in the case of the state, led to political revolt, and in the affairs of the church to a philosophical revolt. The former is a commonplace of history, the latter has not been made sufficiently prominent. The Puritan divinity was too much like the Stuart dynasty to be long acceptable to Anglo-American Independents. Special providences exerted in behalf of the elect bore too striking a resem- blance to his Majesty's partiality to a favored few. And then, too, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God — absolute and unchallenged in will, power, and decree — led to the political equivalents coming under fire. Thus it was that William Livingston treated of the political correlatives and wrote picturesquely on " Passive Obe- dience and Non-Resistance ": " The tyrant used to club with the clergy and set them a-roaring for the divine rights of royal roguery. 'Twas a damnable sin to resist the cutting of throats and no virtue more Christian and refulgent than of a passive submission to butchery and PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 5 slaughter. To propagate such fustian in America argues a disposition prone to senility. And yet 'tis not above four years ago, that in this very province I heard a dapper young gentleman, attired in his canonicals, con- tend as strenuously for non-resistance as if he had been animated with the very soul of Sacheverell. " Writing such as this marks the change from the Cal- vinistic or Puritan to the deistic or rational point of view. "What has been said of this change in England holds true of the colonies. The theological conception of politics gave way before what may be termed the naturalistic. Instead of the constructive theory of the divine rights there was a transition to the theory of natural rights vested not only in the king but in the people. The latter, as propounded by Locke, was merely the former in disguise, for the doctrine oF^ivine rights not only was transformed by imperceptible degrees into the theory of natural rights, but left behind it a legacy, in the sense that, because it is natural, government in general is divine. This process was destined to be carried further. LTnder the constant appeals to an absolute law and absolute right, there was a tendency to substitute lex for legislator, the principle for the person, and thus to run from the dualistic to the pantheistic stage. Conse- quently, that law of nature which under Puritanism was a subordinate source of authority, and under deism a co-ordinate, under transcendentalism became in itself an ultimate source"6f authority — a veritable absolute. Or, put in terms of political history: That sovereignty which first appertained to the king by divine right, and was then shared by the people by natural right, was at last lodged inalienably in the democracy. "With this supersession of the vox dei by the vox populi, there 6 PURITANISM resulted a curious analogy between the pantheism of Emerson and the doctrine of popular sovereignty. With the belief that the universe governs itself, is sufficient to itself and is itself its own end, came the declaration that the federal government is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, 2. The New England Fathers Puritanism in America enjoyed a metaphysical mo- nopoly for almost two centuries. JFrom the landing of the Pilgrims to the appearance of Emerson the prevalent faith of the colonists and their descendants was Cal- vinism. This faith has been summed up in five points; it can be even more briefly put under two. These are transcendence and determinism, or the conception of a deity who lives apart from the world, and still guides and governs that world in the smallest details. This / belief in " one supreme self-sufficient Being, sole ruler and disposer of all " obtained along the Atlantic coast for even more miles than it did years. It was adhered to by the Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut, by the Dutch Reformed in New York and New Jersey, by the orthodox German sects in Pennsylvania, and in the South, on the seaboard by the Huguenots, and in the mountains by the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, the so-called Puritans of the South. Thus wide was the influence of Calvinism both as to duration of time and extent of space, for even the Church of England in America contained a large in- filtration of Genevan doctrine. With such a monopoly it is not surprising that Puri- tanism has been violently attacked, and that its history. has suffered at the hands of the expositor who delights THE NEW ENGLAND FATHERS 7 in presenting its sulphurous side. Thus a New England poem like the ' ' Day of Doom ' ' is taken as a fair example of the distressing illusions once inflicted upon them-_ selves in the name of religion by the best of men, and lis "author "^is declared to have attributed to the Divine Being the most execrable and loathsome character to be met with in any literature, Christian or pagan. This is said to be his narrow and ferocious creed : All men are totally depraved, all of them caught from the farthest eternity in the adamantine meshes of God's decrees; the most of them also being doomed in advance by those decrees to an endless existence of ineffable torment, and the whole world, when the Judge of all the earth appears, to an universal conflagration. In this sketch too black a pencil has been used. If there is a dark side of Puritanism there is also a bright one. Later we shall examine the mystical portrait of Jonathan Edwards with its sweetness and light. But now we may look at Calvinism as if it were a larger canvas painted in the grand manner. As such it in- eluded the belief in the divine Sovereignty which left meETfree from care. To the elect no final ill could fall because they were eared for by a Spirit, " infinite, eternal, and unchangeable." Theirs was a sublime trusty and theirs a sublime fatalism. But this was earried_to extremes. As the historian of colonial literature has described it: the belief in a present, watchful, and benign Providence turned to abject superstition, — the belief in a microscopic and picayune providence con- cerning every falling tower, capsized sail-boat, or lost cow. It is almost incredible that the sublime and the ridiculous could be drawn from the same source. But such is the fact. The tone of Puritanism is a matter of interpretation. At the first there was about it the~^ 8 PURITANISM lingering luster of the Elizabethan age; at the last it became mean and petty in the narrow routine of provin- cial life. We turn now to the American system of high Calvin- ism as it was expressed in official standards, like the Boston Platform of 1680, and in the utterances of its expositors from the Mathers to Jonathan Edwards. Calvinism as a system stands four-square. It may be viewed from the philosophic standpoints of ontology, the theory of being; of cosmology, the theory of the world ; of epistemology, the theory of knowledge ; and finally of psychology, the theory of personality. First, as a theory of being, Calvinism teaches that the deity lives outside the framework of the universe ; that he interferes as he sees fit according to an absolute and arbitrary will ; that he works through inscrutable decrees ; that he foreordains whatever comes to pass. Second, as a theory of the cosmos, Calvinism teaches that the world is under the curse of the divine displeasure; that it conceals rather than displays its creator; that it is created from nothing and is destined to return to nothing; that the evil in it is a permissive act of God. Third, as a theory of knowing, Calvinism teaches that true knowledge comes more through revelation than through reason, being a gift of the divine pleasure rather than a result of human endeavor; that the decretive will of God is involved in deep mystery, which is for us little better than learned ignorance; that man has only a dim revelation of a hidden God communicated from without; that the human mind has no natural capacity for understanding the divine nature. Fourth, as a theory of personality, Calvinism teaches that God is alien in essence from man; that human progress comes through arbitrary grace, man being by nature corrupt ; that our liberty is THE NEW ENGLAND FATHERS 9 not self-determined, but works only within the limita- tions of our foreordained nature; that the last dictate _of_tlie understanding determines the will, — and yet, that within the will are included the inclinations. Such, in brief compass, was the system of official Calvinism. In its extreme form it obtained chiefly in Now England, for like an Arctic current of thought, it grew slowly warmer and was gradually dissipated as it flowed south into the more genial regions of Anglican belief. We have now to consider some of the general causes which, in the course of time, have modified this frigid system. The first rival of Calvin- ism was Arminianism, which has been defined as an appeal to consciousness against a system of abstract logic. Calvinism had emphasized the God-ward side of theology and turned the divine government into an inexorable fate. Arminianism, on the contrary, em- phasized the man-ward side of theology and regarded human activity as a necessary condition of moral re- sponsibility. This contrast was rather in the way of professional theological rivalry; it remained for ordi- nary human nature to exhibit the full psychological revulsion : the head might believe in determinism and depravity, but the heart revolted against such dreadful doctrines. The second rival of Calvinism was deism, — the com- ing system of free-thought. This questioned the arbi- trary fiat of the Creator, and succeeded in bringing back liberty of human action. Between an absolute creator and an abject creation there was brought in a third factor, the law of nature in whose benefits man par- ticipated. However, in emphasizing the importance of that law, in making its bounds more and more exten- sive, deism tended to push the creator entirely away 10 PURITANISM from his world. Hence by the time the law of nature was madt' universal, the deity was brought to a far remove, and while counted the maker, was no longer considered the ruler of the universe. Here was the abseutee landlord theory carried to extreme; for with this banishment of the master the servant grew boldly arrogant, Man, looking within himself, was becoming a law unto himself; hence that air of moral conceit and self-sufficiency assumed in increasing measure towards the end of the eighteenth century. We have anticipated and must therefore go back and study the more exact processes that brought about the disintegration of Calvinism. 'First, there was a gradual degradation or lowering of the doctrine of transcen- dence, through the belief in miraculous intervention ; here the deity is brought into the world, not by immanence, but by interference, and general providence is turned into special providences. In place of the noble defini- tion of ** the living and true God, infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible," there comes a conception of a being who manifests himself in " remarkable sea- deliverances, remarkables about thunder and lightning, remarkable judgments upon Quakers, drunkards, and enemies of the church." There followed also a gradual integration or hardening of the doctrine of determin- ism ; the freedom of the will which was verbally allowed in the Westminster standards being practically denied by the later consistent Calvinists. Instead of the pro- vision w'hereby " no violence is offered unto the will of the creature, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away," there comes Samuel Willard's avowal that there is in man a *' miserable impotency and malignity of will with respect to holy choices." THE NEW ENGLAND FATHERS 11 Nevertheless there was a gradual elimination or soften- ing of the doctrine of the necessary depravity of human nature; here the new world being perforce a better world than the corrupt society Calvin had in view, men began somewhat egotistically to plume themselves on their virtues. Thus, in place of the ancient saying that " all noisome lusts abound in the soul like snakes in an old hedge," we find Cotton Mather rejoicing that the Puritan by flying from the depravity of Europe to the American strand doth improve his manners. Finally, there came a more lenient conception of the character of the Absolute. There was no longer a sovereign will at an immeasurable distance from man, but a more kindly leader, commander, and ruler of nature. In place of the outpourings of the divine fury, there comes the infiltration of the quality of mercy due to the essen- tial benevolence of the deity. In tracing the processes at work in the amelioration of Calvinism we notice that the positive factors were more powerful than the negative, the best minds pre- ferring the progressive to the reactionary tenets. The process of elevation, in short, was stronger than degra- dation. It therefore came about that Calvinism found itself insensibly drifting into the deistic current, — away from the pessimistic towards the optimistic, away from the misanthropic towards the philanthropic. How strong that current was may be seen fully only after we have explored the contributing streams. These were three: The political, which reached from a state-supported church to perfect liberty of philosophizing; the natu- ralistic, which reached from the supernatural to the scientific; the rationalistic, which reached from revela- tion to reason. These three streams or tendencies were represented by three men : the political by Thomas Jef- 12 PURITANISM ferson; the scientific by Benjamin Franklin; the ra- tionalistic by Ethan Allen. 3. The Revolt Against Puritanism : Ethan Allen Ethan Allen of Vermont has been previously known for his military exploits, but quite ignored for his speculative ventures. In the preface to his Oracles of Reason, 1784, the captor of Ticonderoga confesses that he has been denominated a deist ; whether he is he does not know, but this he does know, that he is no Calvin- ist. In a pungent letter to one who inquired concern- ing his philosophy, he writes that he expects that the clergy, and their devotees, will proclaim war upon him in the name of the Lord, having put on the armor of faith, the sword of the Spirit, and the artillery of hell fire. " But," he concludes, "I am a hardy Moun- taineer and have been accustomed to the ravages and horrors of War and Captivity, nnd scorn to be intimi- dated by threats; if they fright me they must abso- lutely produce some of their tremendous fire, and give me a sensative scorching." For Allen's roughness of manners and coarseness of speech Jared Sparks gives as mitigating circumstances the rude and uncultivated society in which the author lived. It might be added that the " Green Mountain Boy " was one of those backwoods thinkers who claim to be largely independent of outside ideas. Some rival asserted that he stole his title from Blount's Oracles of Reason, but the author of this " Compenduous System of Natural Religion " throws no direct light on its sources. He maintained that the Bible and the diction- ary were his only authorities, but while he might have made a better use of both, it is hard to learn of what THE REVOLT AGAINST PURITANISM 13 other means of information he availed himself. He tells how in his youth, being educated in what were commonly called " Armenian " principles, he was much disposed to contemplation, and at his commencement in manhood, being in the habit of committing to manu- script such sentiments or arguments as appeared most consonant to reason, he practiced this method of scrib- bling for many years. So claiming to have something of a smattering of philosophy, he recounts that while in an English prison-ship in 1775 and meeting two clergy- men, — " We discoursed on several parts of moral phi- losophy and Christianity, and they seemed to be sur- prised that I should be acquainted with such topics, or that I should understand a syllogism or regular mode of argumentation." Whatever the impulses that affected Ethan Allen, whatever the value of his claims as a self-made thinker, his work furnishes a good example of the popular recoil from Puritanism on the part of one who wished to pur- sue the " natural road of ratiocination." This negative side of the Oracles is couched in a lively and aggressive style, for the writer is appealing to readers who despise the wearisome reasonings of philosophers and are pre- possessed with principles opposed to the religion of reason. In these parts of America, he explains, men are most generally taught that they are born into the world in a state of enmity to God and moral good and are under his wrath and curse ; that the way to heaven and future blessedness is out of their power to pursue, and that it is encumbered with mysteries which none but the priests can unfold ; that we must " be born again," have a special kind of faith, and be regenerated. Upon the priests and their so-called scheme of mys- teries, Allen now proceeds to make his onslaught. This 14 PURITANISM is the substance of his tirade: the spiritualists, who pretend to be as familiar with the supernatural world as witli their own home-lot, talk as if the creator and governor of the universe had erected a particular acad- emy of arts and sciences in which they, the tutors, were alone intellectually qualified to carry on the business of teaching. With their special revelations they talk as if they only were rational creatures, and the rest of mankind a pack of clodhoppers, as ignorant as a stable of horses ; but that is no revelation to me which is above my comprehension, or which from any natural sagacity I knew before. They may keep their alleged manuscript copy of God's eternal law, it is sufficient for me to possess the deistical Bible, reason, by which I judge that even the commandments of the Decalogue would not be binding upon any rational being unless they coincided with the law of nature. Allen next proceeds to attack the Calvinistical system with all the homely wit of which he is master. Against the cardinal belief in magical interferences in the course of nature he argues that such intervention would turn nature into a supernatural whirligig, an inconstant and erring piece of mechanism; would reduce all nature to the level of fanaticism ; would lead men to abandon the great discoveries of Newton for awful apprehensions of God's providence, whereby world would crash upon world, or the tail of the next comet would set this world on fire. But such apprehensions are unwarranted and lead to a logical fallacy; either the great architect of nature has so constructed its machinery that it never needs to be altered, or, admitting miracles, we must admit this syllogism : the laws of nature have been al- tered, the alteration has been for the better, therefore, the eternal establishment thereof was imperfect. In THE REVOLT AGAINST PURITANISM 15 fine, to demonstrate such a scarecrow belief, one need but quote the anecdote attributed to his Most Christian Majesty, the King of France: " By command of the King, God is forbidden to work any more miracles in this place." These are fair examples of Allen's anti-Calvinistic bias. Against other connected doctrines of the old systems he argues in a like short and easy manner, asserting, for example, that original sin had as little to do with the premised Adam as with the man in the moon; that the doctrine of imputation, or the transfer of the personal demerit of sin, is contradicted by the old proverb that every tub stands upon its own bottom ; and that instead of insisting upon the gloomy doctrine of predestination, the teachers of this doctrine should spend their salaries in good wine to make the heart glad. With this vigorous but coarse attack upon the five points of Calvinism, there is little wonder that Allen's miscalled theology should have been cordially detested by the orthodox, and that it should have been con- sidered an evidence of the workings of a watchful provi- dence that most of the edition was accidentally burned. Nevertheless the Vermont free-thinker had something else to do but startle the natives with his rustic wit. Besides the negative part of his work, in which he attempted to lop off the excrescences, there was the positive, in which he feels confident that he has struck the outlines of a consistent system. Briefly, in the place of the conception of a transcendent being, occa- sionally active in the affairs of the world, quite incom- prehensible within the mere limits of reason, he would substitute the conception of an immanent power, con- tinually active in the world, knowable in his nature from 16 PURITANISM a man's own rational nature. Here, as the matter has been previously summarized, the origin of the concep- tion of a superintending power is traced to the sense of dependence on the laws of nature; from studies of those laws reason discovers the perfections of that power; order implies an orderer, harmony a regulator, motion a mover, and benefits goodness; chaos would prove a creator, but order and beneficent design are necessary to prove providence. Allen has now taken the first forward step in his system, and that step is optimism. As he expressed the matter in a line obviously drawn from the Essay on Man: of all possible systems, infinite wisdom must have eternally discerned the best. This, it is explained, im- plies the essential benevolence of the deity and thereby we discover the prime requisite of moral perfection. But great difficulties arise in attempting to discover God's natural attributes, especially his eternity and infinity: Because of these difficulties the writer is now forced to postulate two absolutes: God, the efficient cause, eternal and infinite, and nature the eternal and infinite effect; eternal here being defined as without end or duration, infinite as without degree or measure ; hence, on the one side, is a cause uncaused and eternally self-existent who gave being and order to nature coeval with his own existence; on the other is nature coex- tensive and coexistent with the divine nature, eternal because of an eternal and immense fullness, infinite because infinitely complete and independent of any particular form. With two absolutes on his hands Allen is now in dire trouble. He sees the break between creator and creation and tries to mend it by expanding his previous notions of nature as being in a constant state of flux. THE REVOLT AGAINST PURITANISM 17 He explains that all forms are indebted to creation for their existence. The dissolution of forms animate or inanimate neither adds to nor diminishes from crea- tion; reduced to their original elements they are changed into new and diverse forms in never-ceasing rounds. The particles of matter vi^hich compose my body may have existed in more millions of different forms than I am able to enumerate, and be still liable to fluctuations equally numerous. This elementary fluxility of matter, which is mere creation, is as eternal as God, yet the particular productions, arising from natural causes, have a beginning and an end. "With this reference to the ancient doctrine of nature as a plastic principle one may leave the Oracles of Reason. This work the elder President D wight of Yale called the first formal publication in the United States openly directed against the Christian religion ; Presi- dent Jared Sparks of Harvard described it as a crude and worthless performance, in which truth and error, reason and sophistry, knowledge and ignorance, in- genuity and presumption are mingled together in a chaos which the author denominates a system. These academic strictures were perhaps deserved from the standpoint of the orthodox, yet the author received some praise, for as his friend George Washington said: " There is an original something about Allen that com- mands attention." The " original something" which Allen contributed was this: a clear recognition of tlie difficulties of dualism, the old theological separation between God and the world. Allen suggested but did not effect a compromise. He spoke of the immense creation that we denominate by the name nature, and of its being necessarily coextensive and coexistent with the divine 18 PURITANISM iijifiirc. l'>ut how to identify creator and creation, how to make the two one, that final step he never took. Nevertheless, in this very failure to identify the two conceptions, to make creator and creation the same One and All, permanent and infinite, the Vermont philoso- pher did but leave a speculative task to be undertaken by a greater mind in a neighboring State, for it was Emerson who, struggling with the apparent dualism between God and nature, had the boldness to announce that the Absolute is one with the ordering and creative power of the universe. CHAPTER II EARLY IDEALISM 1. Samuel Johnson : Disciple op Berkeley In Samuel Johnson of Connecticut wc meet a colonial idealist of an unusual type, not a mystic and recluse, but a publicist and traveler. After graduation at Yale Col- ege, Johnson voyaged across the Atlantic, met such nota- bles as Alexander Pope and the English Samuel John- son, and visited Oxford and Cambridge Universities, from which in due course he was to receive honorary degrees. Returning to the narrow bigotry of the British provinces, Johnson was not able to renew his larger interests until the visit of the Reverend George Berke- ley, the Irish idealist, who in 1729 took up his residence in Newport, Rhode Island. It was there that Johnson became a convert to the " New Principle," against which he had been warned in college, but which now seemed to him more apt than any other to be the true philosophical support of faith, to harmonize with our individual dependence on the Supreme Mind or Will, perpetually present and perpetually active. IMoreover, the new system offered a satisfactory substitute for cer- tain old notions of matter. In place of the scholastic notion of an occult substance, and of the Cartesian notion of a dead, inert somewhat, Berkeley substituted spiritual causality. In place of a phantom world lying behind the visible and tangible universe, and in place of masses of matter moved by mechanical forces he would 19 20 EARLY IDEALISM put as " proper, active, efficient causes none but Spirit; nor any action, strictly speaking, but where there is Will." Such is Berkeley's explanation of the universal im- materialism in reply to a question of his ardent American disciple. The latter 's first letter contained some doubts as to the propriety of denying the absolute existence of matter, though he strove to understand how that meant nothing more than a denial of an incon- ceivable substratum of sensible phenomena. From Johnson's letter of inquiry, which lay unpublished for over a century and three-quarters, we may now give these extracts: Rev.d Sr. The Kind Invitation you gave me in Reading those ex- cellent Books which you was pleased to order into my Hands, is all the Apology I shall offer for the Trouble I now presume to give you : But nothing could encourage me to expose to your views my low and mean way of Thinking & wi-iting, but my hopes of an Interest in that Candor and Tenderness which are so conspicuous both in your writings & Conversation. These Books, (for which I stand humbly obliged to you) contain Speculations the most surprisingly ingenious I have ever met with : & I must confess that the Reading of them has almost convinced me, That Matter as it has been commonly defined for an unknown Quiddity is but a meer non-Entity. That it is a strong presumption against the Existence of it, that there never could be conceived any manner of connection be- tween it & our Ideas: That the esse of Things is only their percipi: & that the Rescuing us from the Absurdities of Ab- stract Ideas & the Gross Notion of Matter that have so much obtained, deserves well of the Learned World, in that it clears away very many difficulties & Perplexities in the Sciences. . . . That all the Phenomena of Nature must ultimately be re- ferred to the Will of the Infinite Spirit, is what must be al- lowed ; But to suppose his immediate Energy in the production of every Effect, does not seem to impress so lively & great a SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 21 Sense of his Power & wisdom upon our Minds, as to Suppose a Subordination of Causes & Effects among the Arehtypes of our Ideas as he that should mak-^ a watch or clock of ever so beautiful an appearance & that should measure the Tkne ever so exactly, yet if he should be obliged to stand by it & influ- ence & direct all its motions, he would seem but very deficient in both his ability & skill, in comparison with him who should be able to make one that would regularly keep on its motion and measure the time for a considerable time, without the Intervention of any immediate force of its Author or any one else, impressed upon it. . . . It is after all that has been said on that Head, Still some- thing shocking to many to think that there should be nothmg but a meer show in all the art & contrivance appearing in the Structure, (for Instance) of a Human Body, particularly of the Organs of Sense : The Curious Structure of the Eye, what can it be more then meerly a fine show, if there be no con- nexion more than you Admit of, between that & vision? It Seems from the make of it to be designed for an Instrument or means of conveying the Images of External Things to the perceptive Faculty within ; & if it be not so if it be really of no use in conveying visible objects to our minds, & if our visible Ideas are immediately created in them by the Will of the Almighty, why should it be ma.'e to seem to be an Instru- ment or medium as much as if indeed it really were so? . . . To these and similar queries Berkeley wrote a series of letters, most of which are lost. But from those to be found in his published works we learn that the master went to great pains in forming the opinions of his pupil. How ably the latter expounded the doctrines of universal immaterialism and the divine visual lan- guage we shall see in the works of his maturity. Mean- while Johnson had visited Berkeley at Whitehall, the hitter's country place near Newport, and within another year Berkeley had finished his Alciphran; or, the Minute Philosopher, which formed a most pleasing set of ideal- istic dialogues, wherein, from their many allusions and 22 EARLY IDEALISM touches of local color, Berkeley may be said to stand for Euphranor, the philosophic farmer, and Johnson for his friend Crito. So it was about this time that the neophyte expressed his conversion to the ideal theory, since, as he himself acknowledges, he found the Dean's way of thinking and explaining things utterly precluded skepticism, and left no room for endless doubts and uncertainties. His denying matter at first seemed shocking ; but it was only for want of giving a thorough attention to his meaning. It was only the unintelligible scholastic notion of matter he disputed and not any- thing either sensible, imaginable, or intelligible; and it was attended with this vast advantage, that it not only gave new incontestable proofs of a deity, but moreover, the most striking apprehensions of his con- stant presence with us and inspection over us, and of our entire dependence upon him and infinite obli- gations to his most wise and almighty benevolence. On quitting the American strand, Berkeley has been most vividly described as leaving behind him a meta- physical double, another self, sharing his faith, speak- ing his language; viewing all things from the same angle; reasoning, discussing, concluding as he himself had done or would have done. In dedicating his prin- cipal work, from the deepest sense of gratitude, to George, Lord Bishop of Cloyne, Johnson admitted the truth of this description, for he confessed that he was in a particular manner beholden to that excellent phi- losopher for several thoughts that occur in the follow- ing tract. This was the Elementa Philosophica: Con- taining chiefly, Noetica, or Things Relating to the Mind or Understanding ; and Ethica, or Things Relating to the Moral Behavior. From the Elements we may take two passages. The SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 23 first of these, like the Irish idealism, emphasizes the vision of all things in God; the second, with a certain colonial independence, gives to the individual some share in the acquirement of knowledge: The notices which the mind has, derive originally from (or rather by means of) the two fountains of sense and conscious- ness. By means of the senses we receive simple ideas. These are sorted out mto a vast variety of fixed combinations or compound ideas distinct from each other, in which the simple ideas are always found to co-exist; of these compound ideas consist every individual body in nature, such as we call horse, tree, &c. These various distinct combinations, connected to- gether in such a manner as to constitute one most beautiful and harmonious whole, make up what we call universal nature or the entire sensible or natural world. In the perception of these ideas or objects of sense we find our minds are merely passive, it not being in our power (supposing our organs rightly disposed and situated) whether we will see light and colours, hear sounds, &e. We are not causes to ourselves of these perceptions nor can they be produced in our minds with- out a cause, or (which is the same thing) by any imagined, un- intelligent, inert or inactive cause. Hence they must be de- rived from an almighty, inteUigent, active cause, exhibiting them to us, impressing our minds with them, or produc- ing them in us. Consequently it must be by a perpetual intercourse of our minds with the deity, the great author of our beings, or by his perpetual influence or activity upon them, that they are possessed of all these objects of sense and the light by which we perceive them. No sooner does any object strike the senses or is received in our imagination, or appre- hended by our understanding, but we are immediately con- scious of a kind of intellectual light within us (if I may so call it), whereby we not only know that we perceive the object but directly apply ourselves to the consideration of it both in itself, its properties and powers and as it stands related to all other things, and we find that we are enabled by this intel- lectual light to perceive these objects and their relations in like manner as by sensible light we are enabled to perceive 24 EARLY IDEALISM the objects of sense and their various situations; so our minds are passive in this intellectual lijjht as they are sensible to light and can no more withstand the evidence of it than they can withstand the evidence of sense. Thus I am under the same necessity to assent to this — that I am or have a being and that I perceive and freely exert myself, as I am of assenting to this — that I see colours or hear sounds. I am perfectly sure that 2 + 2 = 4, or that the whole is equal to all its parts as that I feel heat or cold, or that I see the sun. I am intuitively certain of both. This intellectual light I conceive of, as if it were a medium of knowledge just as sensible light is of sight. In both these is the power of perceiving and the object perceived; and this is the medium by which I am enabled to know it. This light is also one, and common to all intelligent beings, a Chinese or Japanese, as well as an Euro- pean or American. By it, all at once see things to be true or right, in all places at the same time, and alike invariably at all time, past, present and to come. ... Interesting as were Johnson's philosophical writings they were not entirely original. There is, however, a chapter in the Elements which anticipated by many years the psychological study of the development of the child mind. At a time when another New England idealist could publicly assert that children were " like little vipers," and almost an half-century before the first hints of the kindergarten had reached the countiy, Johnson gave this delightful presentation of the early- stages of infancy: The first notices of the mind are doubtless those of sense, but directly joined with a consciousness of its perception. Warmth and hunger, and probably some pains, are, perhaps, all the sensations the infant hath before its birth; and when it comes into the light of this world, it is directly impressed with the sense of light and colours, as well as sounds, tastes, odours, and frequent uneasy and painful sensations, all of which still more and more awaken its consciousness; and SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 25 every fresh notice of sense and consciousness still goes on to excite its admiration and ensrage its attention. And being a perfect stranger to everything about it, it hath everything to learn ; to Avhicli it diligently applies itself, as its conscious- ness more and more awakens upon the repetition every mo- ment, of fresh impressions of sense, until by degrees, having a great number of feelings, tastes, odours, sounds and visible objects, frequently repeating their several impressions, its conscious memory still enlarging, it begins, by means of the intellectual light with which it finds its consciousness attended, gradually to collect and recollect the several relations and connections it observes to obtain among its various ideas. And at length, when it is in ease, it discovereth a wonderful curi- osity and delight in observing these connections, as well as being impressed with new ideas. Now it hath b^en made very evident, both by reasoning and experiment, that, as Bishop Berkeley shows in his Theory of Vision, the objects of sight and touch are entirely different and distinct things, and that there is no necessary connection between them. It must, there- fore, be a matter of great exercise of thought in an infant mind to learn this connection, and particularly, to leam the notion of the various distances and situations of things tan- gible, by its observations on the various degrees of strength and weakness, of vividness or faintness of the light reflected from them, in the things visible constantly connected with them. And at the same time that it hath these things to learn, which must be a laborious work, as being the same thing with learning a language, it is also learning the names of things, and the connection and use of words, which is another lan- guage. And, as if all these were not task enough, it hath all this while to be learning how to use its limbs, its hand in handling, its tongue, and other organs of speech, in making and imitating sounds, and its whole body in all its exertions, and particularly, at length, the poise of its centre of gravity and the use of its feet in walking. All these things require a great deal of application, and the exercise of much thought and exertion. So that it seems evident that these little crea- tures from the beginning, do consider, reflect and think a prodigious deal more than we are commonly apt to imagine. The reason why so many little, low, weak and childish 26 EARLY IDEALISM tliiiijjs appear in (hem, which we are apt to despise and think beneath our notice, is not lor want of good sense and capacity, but merely for want of experience and opportunity for in- tellectual improvement. Hence also it appears that we ought to think little children to be persons of much more importance than we usually apprehend them to be; and how indulgent we should be to their inquisitive curiosity, as being strangers; with how much candour, patience and care we ought to bear with them and instruct them; with how much decency, honour and integrity we ought to treat them; and how careful it con- cerns us to be, not to say or do anything to them or before them that savours of falsehood and deceit, or that is in any kind indecent or vicious. Pueris maxima debetur reverentia is a good trite old saying. This remarkable sketch of the progress of the mind concludes the Xoetica. This, together with the Ethica, made up the Elementa Philosophica, which was used in both King's College during Johnson's presidency and also in the philosophy school of the Academy of Phila- delphia. And yet the use of this idealistic text-book was without palpable effect upon either institution, and that because of an unfavorable environment ; in the one case there was such a spirit of commercialism as to stifle mere speculation, in the other such a tendency towards materialism that, as Franklin wrote to John- son, — " Those parts of the Elements of Philosophy that savor of what is called Berkeleism are not well under- stood here." But while Johnson was much disappointed that his work was not more generally appreciated, he received some crumbs of comfort. Benjamin Franklin gener- ously assumed the expense of printing the American edition of the Elements; William Smith, provost of the College of Philadelphia, wrote a laudatory introduc- tion to the London edition, and Cadwallader Colden, SAMUEL JOHNSON: DISCIPLE OF BERKELEY 27 lieutenant-governor of New York, was so stimulated by the perusal of the latter, that he renewed his amicable controversy with Johnson regarding the material uni- verse as a dynamic whole. Although there were these gratifying results for the Connecticut idealist in Penn- sylvania and New York, in other provinces there was a different condition of affairs. During Berkeley's so- journ in Rhode Island, Edwards was living in Massa- chusetts, yet here there were no sure signs of the Irish idealism to be found. Even the college at Cam- bridge was so satisfied with its own speculations, so wrapped up in its peculiar ecclesiasticism, that it paid no attention to the distinguished foreign visitor of another faith. The same result obtained in New Jersey, but for somewhat different causes. Harvard was ration- alistic to a degree, but Princeton was so imbued with the common sense philosophy that the Berkeleian ideal- ism, which had somehow stolen into that abode of orthodoxy, was denominated a mere philosophical day- dream. Besides these special causes there were general causes for the American indifference to Berkeleism. It has been declared the fault of circumstances that Johnson's book fell on a time when the New World was engaged in conquests in the material rather than in the spiritual sphere. A Gallic critic finds this a polite but shrewd way of saying that Anglo-Americans of the late eight- eenth century were unfit to receive or to develop a true idealism, for what was true in the British colonies was also true in the mother country. The indifference with which Johnson's work was received in England was owing to its appearance at a moment the most in- opportune ; the spiritualistic philosophy was then losing ground, a crass sensualism or a radical skepticism was 28 EARLY IDEALISM taking its place. If Johnson could have presented his immaterialism to an entirely new age, he might have arrested general attention. The most that can now be said of his endeavors was that he was the meta- physical double, the ideal image of the good Bishop of Cloyne, but withal unsuccessful in spreading, to any groat extent, that form of idealism for which the latter stood. 2. Jonathan Edwards, Mystic Tradition has marked Jonathan Edwards as the greatest of our Puritan divines, the relentless logician who left the print of his iron heel upon the New Eng- land conscience. It is true that Edwards delivered the dreadful Enfield sermon " Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and that he composed that rigid treatise, concerning the Freedom of the Will, which belied its title and doomed the bulk of mankind to the workings of an inexorable fate. But this is only one side of the picture. In public Edwards was the pitiless profes- sional theologian. In private he was poet, mystic, phi- losopher of the feelings. As a boy he reached the thought that ** this world exists nowhere but in the mind." As a young man he used frequently to " retire into a solitary place on the banks of the Hudson 's Kiver for contemplation on divine things." In maturity he wrote his treatise concerning Religious Affections in which he described the true believers' soul as receiving light from the sun of righteousness in such a manner that their nature is changed, that they become little suns partaking of the nature of the fountain of their light. This inward and intimate side of the " saint of New England " is that which makes him pre-eminently a JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 29 mystic and seeker after the interior or hidden life. At a very early age he built himself a hut in a swamp. There he communed with his God, became enamored of nature, and reached the conclusion that the one was but the expression of the other. As he put it in one of his later writings: "We have shown that the Son of God created the world for this very end — ^to communi- cate Himself an image of His own excellency. . . . When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of His glory and good- ness; and in the blue sky, of His mildness and gentle- ness. There are also many things wherein we may behold His awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, with the lowering thunder-clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains." We are then to count Edwards a mystic because of his wonderful sense of the immediateness of the divine presence and agency. But in addition to his youthful ecstasy he had a philosophical basis for his convictions. Shortly after entering Yale College at the age of twelve, he wrote a little essay which had this as its corollary, — " it follows from hence that those beings which have knowledge and Consciousness are the Only Proper and Keal And substantial beings, inasmuch as the being of other things is Only by these, from hence we may see the Gross mistake of those who think material things the most substantial beings and spirits more like a shadow, whereas spirits Only Are Properly Substance." This is the famous undergraduate paper entitled Of Being, which has been declared as precocious as the Thoughts of Pascal and also remarkable as the counter- part of Berkeley's theoiy of the divine visual language. As to its originality there are many reasons for thinking 30 EARLY IDEALISM that the young Puritan did not borrow from the Church of England divine. There is the negative reason that the given eoroUary follows from a supposition to the contrary. . . . Let us suppose for illustration this im- possibility that all the Spirits in the Universe to be for a time to be Deprived of their Consciousness, and Gods Consciousness at the same time to be intermitted. I say the Universe for that time would cease to be of it self and not only as we speak because the almighty Could not attend to Uphold the world but because God knew nothing of it. . . . There is also the positive reason that Edwards gives a definition of the divine language of signs which has been declared truly marvelous as emanating from a mere boy. . . . Indeed, reasons Edwards, the secret lies here : That, which truly is the Substance of all bodies^ is the infinitely exact, and precise, and perfectly stable Idea, in God's mind, together with His stable Will, that the same shall gradually be communicated to us, and to other minds, according to certain fixed and exact established Methods and Laws ; or in somewhat different language, the infinitely exact and precise Divine Idea, together with an answerable, perfectly exact, precise, and stable "Will, with respect to correspondent com- munications to Created Minds, and effects on their minds. The logical side of Edwards's mind is not that which we would dwell on. It is the poetical and the mystical which give a truer insight into his nature. The first hint of his quietistic experience is given in the phrase that " nothing " is " the same that the sleeping rocks dream of." The next is in his definition of inspiration as an absolute sense of certainty, a knowledge in a sense intuitive, wherein such bright ideas are raised, and such JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 31 a clear view of a perfect agreement with the excellencies of the Divine Nature, that it is known to be a communi- cation from II im ; all the Deity appears in the thing, and in everything pertaining to it. Edwards is convinced of the verity of mystical intui- tion. At the same time he is wise enough to state that while this may be immediate, it does not come all at once nor arise without painful preparation. There are three stages in the process: first, comes by great and violent inward struggles the gaining of a spirit to part with all things in the world; then, a kind of vision or certain fixed ideas and images of being alone in the mountains or some solitary wilderness far from all mankind; finally, a thought of being wrapt up in God in heaven, being, as it were, swallowed up in Ilim for- ever. In these few words Edwards has summed up the mystic progression presented in the ancient manuals, those three stages in the ladder of perfection, — first, the purgative, brought about by contrition and amend- ment ; then, the illuminative, produced by concentration of all the faculties upon God; lastly, the intuitive or unitive, wherein man beholds God face to face and is joined to Him in perfect union. In a passage of ex- quisite beauty, which may well be called a classic of the inner life, the saint of New England thus proceeds to unfold the record of his youthful ecstasy : — After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everj-thing was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wis- dom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds, and the blue sky; in the gi-ass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which 32 EARLY IDEALISM used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for continuance; and in the day, spent much time view- ing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce any thing, among all the works of nature was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly, nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder-storm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, so to speak, at the first appearance of a thunder-storm; and used to take the opportunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder which often- times was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet con- templations of my sweet and glorious God. While thus engaged, it always seemed natural to me to sing, or chant forth my meditations; or, to speak my thoughts in soliloquies with a singing voice. Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my con- templations on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene calm nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. In other words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant flowers; all pleasant, de- lightful, and undisturbed; enjoying a sweet calm, and the gently vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Chris- tian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low, and humble on the ground, opening its bosom, to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about ; all in like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun. There was no part of creature-holiness, that I had so great a sense of its loveliness as humility, broken- ness of heart, and poverty of spirit; and there was nothing that I so earnestly longed for. My heart panted after this, — to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be ALL. JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 33 In the concluding passage of this exquisite rhap- sody there appear what have been called the un- mistakable marks of the mystic in every age, — the desire to be united with the divine, the longing to be absorbed into the inmost essence of the Absolute. But in Edwards's full narrative there are also to be found the marks of mysticism from the modern point of view. Let us now submit the matter to the test of the psychology of religion. William James has given the proper marks of mysticism as four in number: Ineffability, — the sub- ject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words, — in this peculiarity mental states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. The noetic qual- ity, — although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be states of knowledge ; they are states of insight, illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all in- articulate though they remain. Transiency, — mystical states cannot be sustained for long, their quality can be but imperfectly reproduced in memory, yet this is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance. Passivity, — the oncom- ing of mystical states can be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness has once set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance. We may apply these tests to the records of Edwards's inner life in order to gain a further insight into his mental processes. The mark of transiency may be neg- lected. The brief duration, the constant intermittence, is an accident, not an essential of the mystic state. Ed- wards complained that his earlier affections were lively and easily moved, and that it was only after he had spent 34 EARLY IDEALISM most of his time, year after year, in meditation and solilo(iuy that liis sense of divine things seemed gradually to increase. Leaving aside, then, the mark of transiency, one reaches the more important mark of passivity. Here Edwards says in his early notes on the ]\Iind : Our perceptions or ideas that we passively receive through our bodies are communicated to us immediately by God. There never can be any idea, thought, or action of the mind unless the mind first received some ideas from sensation, or some other way equivalent, wherein the mind is wholly passive in receiving them. We should note, in passing, that there is here given a clew to Edwards's precocious idealism. The passive or quietistic state readily lends itself to a sense of the unreality of the external world. In Edwards's lan- guage this takes the form of a belief that corporeal things could exist no otherwise than mentall}^ and that other bodies have no existence of their own. In modern psychological terms the recognition of the unreal sense of things may be laid to a temporary absence of con- £Esthesia, a transient loss of the sense of the compact reality of the bodily organism. Furthermore, this in- direct phenomenalism, this extreme subjectivism, being carried to its logical extreme, might well lead to the conclusion embodied in Edwards's first fragment, the corollary of the essay on Being, which protested against the view that material things are the most substantial, and affirmed that spirits only are properly substances. Vivid, intense, personal impressions furnish in largest measure the substance of Edwards's idealism. But that idealism was only suppplementary, only an afterthought to his mysticism. We return therefore to that most positive mark of mysticism— the noetic quality. In his JONATHAN EDWARDS, MYSTIC 35 maturer essays on the Spiritual Light and the Religious Affections Edwards attempts to express the manner and means of his conviction of that " new sense of things " quite different from anything he ever expressed before. As a sign of the thoroughness of his thinking he takes pains to present the negative side. What is this divine and supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul by the Spirit of God? ... It does not consist in any impression made upon the imagination, as when one may be entertained by a romantic description of the pleasantness of fairy-land, or be affected by what one reads in a romance, or sees acted in a stage-play. No, rather as he that beholds objects on the face of the earth, when the light of the sun is cast upon them, is under greater advantage to discern them in their true forms and natural relations, than he that sees them in a dim twilight, so God, in letting light into the soul, deals with man according to his nature and makes use of his rational faculties. So far as Edwards was concerned, the objects of the mystical knowledge were as substantial realities as his Berkshire mountains, yet he felt obliged to bring home to others the proper rationality of that knowledge. Then, too, the treatise on the Religious Affections being called forth by the revival which had meanwhile swept over his parish, the Puritan divine was in a further dififi- cult position, for he stood midway between the skeptics of his age and those persons who were of abnormal emotional sensibility. On the one side, he explains, are many in these days who condemn the affections which are excited in a way that seems not to be the natural consequence of the faculties and principles of human nature; on the other side are those of a weak and vapory habit of body and of brain easily susceptive of 36 EARLY IDEALISM iinpn'ssions; as a person asleep has dreams of which he is not the voluntary author, so may such persons, in like manner, be the subjects of involuntary impressions, when they are awake. But the true saint belongs to neither of these. In him the divine spirit may co- operate in a silent, secret, and undiscernible way, with the use of means, and his own endeavors, and yet that is not all. Spiritual light may be let into the soul in one way, when it is not in another; in a dead carnal frame, it is as impossible that it should be kept alive in its clearness and strength as it is to keep the light in the room when the candle that gives it is put out, or to maintain the bright sunshine in the air when the sun is gone down. By this final figure of speech Edwards has expressed more than the inadequacy of reason to explain the mystery of the inner life. The figure is itself a reason which explains why Puritan mysticism failed to spread in the land. Edwards himself was the chief luminary in that system, and with his eclipse came irreparable loss. He was not only the chief of New England divines, but the chief native exponent of the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings. But those teachings of his had now a lessening audience. In the mid-year of the century he was forced by an unhappy estrangement from his pastorship at Northampton and driven from the haunts of scholarship to the edge of the Western wilderness and into actual peril from the inroads of the savages. And so his arduous missionary labors among the Indians at Stockbridge had much to do in preventing the elaboration of his mystical doctrine. MYSTICISM 37 3. Mysticism: From Quakerism to Christian Science The spreading of Edwards's mystical beliefs was thwarted by local conditions. But there were other and more general causes at work to prevent the ac- ceptance of such tenets. For one thing, orthodox Puritanism was opposed to the belief in a " divine and supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul." As Increase Mather declared : Here on earth we have but a dark and very imperfect knowledge of God ; only in heaven do the glorified saints have the beatific vision. The reason for this restriction is not hard to find. The notion of self-illumination was abhorrent to those be- lievers in historic revelations and oracles, who consid- ered that they already possessed sufficient sources of inspiration in the Bible, the church, and reason. Of these three the first was counted chiefest. " The word of God as contained in the Scriptures " was the final record of the divine message to men. So, as Edward Channing has said in the ease of Mistress Anne Hutch- inson, the conception that any man — much less any woman — should pretend to be inspired by the Almighty was not to be held for one instant. Orthodox Puritanism was therefore out of all sym- pathy with mysticism. Only contempt met the " famil- ist," who depended upon rare revelations and forsook the revealed word. This explains not only the neglect of Edwards as mystic, but the Puritan persecution of the Quakers in Massachusetts, and Puritan hatred of the colony of Rhode Island, where all quietistie brethren were welcome. This colony was to its neighbors " the drain or sink of opinionists." To Friends it was a " true port and quiet habitat." Nevertheless Roger Williams and his adherents were enabled to make but 38 EARLY IDEALISM little impression on the times, for the reason that New England was too narrow in its views. So it remained for the broader acres to the South to take in those who cared for the contemplative life. Foremost of these were William Penn and the Pennsylvania Quakers. The latter term, as is well known, is derisive not descriptive. Not Quakers, but Friends is the proper designation. As one of their own number has said : ' ' There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages has had different names; it is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion, nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows they become brethren." This is the statement of John Woolman, the humble tailor of New Jersey. It may be supplemented by that of the royal proprietary of Pennsylvania. William Penn had sent to his friends a Key opening the Way to every Capacity. The key is to be found in personal illumination; not the light of mere reason, but some- thing higher. This light, it is explained, is some- thing else than the bare understanding man hath as a rational creature; since, as such, man cannot be a light to himself. . . . For we can no more be a mental or intellectual light to ourselves, than we are an external corporeal light to ourselves. What Penn expressed negatively another of the primitive Friends expressed positively: That which God hath given us the experi- ence of, is the mystery, the hidden life, the inward spiritual appearance of our Lord. We have reached the second stage in the search for the sources of mystic illumination. As to divine truth, the Puritans had taught that the Bible gives, the church MYSTICISM 39 expounds, the reason accepts. The Quakers now pro- ceed to drop the second channel of communication. To them there is no need of other men as intermediaries, since it is Christ's light communicated to the soul that makes manifest the things that belong to the soul's peace. Such a sentiment as this makes a priesthood and even a ministry unnecessary. In their stead, then, arise the Friends' meeting-houses, — places for " silence and heavenly frames." Here the congregation awaits the moving of the Spirit, since it is held that resigna- tion and quietness are the safest way to attain the clear discerning of the motions of truth. The process of elimination did not stop even here. While the orthodox Friends appealed both to the Bible and reason, the unorthodox or Hicksite Friends ap- pealed to reason, so far as possible unfettered by Scrip- ture. They argued that if reason alone is competent to reach divine truth, revelation is superfluous. Thus Elias Hieks took the traditional Quaker inspiration for the union of self with a larger whole and tried to turn the feeling regarding " the universal divine principle " into a conclusion concerning the ' ' fullness of God in us and in every blade of grass." An opponent called this a wandering off into the dreary wastes of pantheism. We dissent from the description except in so far as there was a real tendency towards a philosophical monism. At this point we have apparently reached the conclu- sion of the whole matter. All three channels of mystical communication seem exhausted, yet the process of elimi- nation was carried even further. That inward fellow- . ship, received immediately from the divine fountain, was now sought by a group of mystics who cared less for the Bible, the church, and reason, than for reason transcended. It was the so-called Pennsylvania Pietists, 40 EARLY IDEALISM wlio sought 1)3' direct intuition to get at " tlie world behind this world." Their quest was for " the real above all reason, beyond all thought." Such was the actual aim of Conrad Beissel, head of the monastic com- munity at Ephrata near Philadelphia. Unfortunately these speculations in the " camp of the solitary " were hidden behind a veil of theosophic lore, — the esoteric doctrine of the Sophia or principle of wisdom. Penn- sylvania Pietists, like the European brotherhood of which they were a branch, sought to be tasters of su- preme experience, but their quest of the truly transcen- dental, of knowledge above knowledge, was only laughed at by their neighbors and contemporaries. As a writer of the day expressed it: " Cabbalists and Quietists all affect a mystical language, a dark kind of canting; they talk much of a light within them, instead of com- mon sense, — whoever shall reconcile all these must be an CEdipus indeed." Because of this essentially Anglo-Saxon way of re- garding mysticism and nonsense as convertible terms, it is not surprising that early mysticism in America rap- idly evaporated. One reason for its comparative failure has already been given : It opposed the standards set by church and by Scripture. But there were other reasons. Beside being unorthodox, it was inarticulate or without a vehicle of self-expression. There was, of course, Ed- wards's quietistie tractate on the Affections, but that was counteracted by the excesses of the religious re- vivals. Outside of this there was no native book which could serve as a mystic manual. John Woolman's Journal was only rescued from oblivion by the Quaker poet Whittier. William Penn's No Cross, No Crown, written in the Tower of London, went through several American editions, but it was too didactic to attract wide MYSTICISM 41 attention. " Think not thine own thoughts," " "Wait to feel something divine," — directions such as these lacked the poetic and imaginative touch necessary to mystic enthusiasm. So without living native sources the stream ran dry. Recourse was had to foreign parts. During the century of Quaker Quietism translations of Fenelon and even of Juan de Valdes were circulated among American Friends, but the imagery of France and of Spain was hardly in keeping with that of the New World. Besides being inarticulate, native mysticism was in- opportune. At the end of its century Quakerism should have borne the fruit of literary expression. But cir- cumstances were against that fruition. The Eevolu- tionary War arose and the results to mystical men of peace were disastrous, militarism being by nature op- posed to mysticism ; pomp, and outward show to the quiet concentration of all the inner forces of the soul upon supernatural objects. And this quest of a world beyond this world was hindered by another circum- stance, — the cessation of immigration from the home country. For the Society of Friends this meant that there was no one to take the place of such men as Robert Barclay, and for the Pennsylvania Pietists of such men as Conrad Beissel. While both English and German suffered from the lack of fresh blood, new rivals arose in the coming of the Scotch-Irish. In place of the men of feeling and sentiment came the men of cold intellect and plain common sense. With Philadelphia as their chief point of entry these dogmatists spread over the very regions, West and South, into which pietists and Quakers had made their timid advances. This matter is one of the psychology of race and the survival of the fittest. As regards number and influence the 42 EARLY IDEALISM soft-hcartod were supplanted by the hard-headed. And the latter wore also helped by their spiritual kin, the deists. It was a characteristic of the rationalist to look at " enthusiasts " with a coldly critical eye. The fol- lowers of Penn were not openly derided because their commercial standing was secure and their social posi- tion assured. But the followers of Jacob Boehme were called fantastic, and Franklin, who printed some of the " Dutch " books, had only contempt for those Quietists who removed hither from Germany. We must now attempt to estimate the value and results of early American mysticism. It was unortho- dox, it was inarticulate, it was inopportune. Was it ineffective? There are some who hold that mysticism is by nature passive and theoretical, not active and practical. They claim that the mystical life is a life of contemplation, not of ethical energy ; that the individual, being lost in the excess of divine light, loses his sense of personality. To such critics we offer these facts: William Penn's treaty with the Indians, John Wool- man's protest against slavery, and the continued agita- tion of the Society of Friends against militarism, from the time of the Revolution to this year's Mohonk Con- ference. To those who would scornfully say that mys- ticism is by nature theoretical and never practical, we point not only to this list of emancipators, abolitionists, pacificists, but to the causes which underlay their ac- tivities. That cause has been suggested by Whittier. It was that they were men who sincerely applied their minds to true virtue and found an inward support from above. Nevertheless a compromise must be made be- tween critic and defender. Our early American mys- ticism was in a sense ineffective. Privately the practice of quietism engendered a state of tender sensibility and MYSTICISM 43 an appreciation of the higher morality. But publicly the movement did not spread because it was not a truly social movement. Quietists were in one sense separatists. Beside their matrimonial segregation they had their own meeting-houses and brotherhoods, and communities like that started by Count Zinzendorf, near Sharon, Con- necticut. Such segregation put them out of joint with the times. The country needed public participation by all in the era of political reconstruction, and the sub- sequent era of commercial expansion. But after the adoption of the Constitution, and after the winning of the West, there arose again a felt need for private con- templation. This need was supplied in part by the transcendentalists of New England. Emerson found in nature the " dial plate of the invisible "; Upham saw in Christianity a field for the cultivation of the interior or hidden life. But this second mystical movement, like the first, was disturbed by a similar set of events, — another war, another period of reconstruc- tion, another territorial expansion. So it was not until the present generation that there was either leisure or occasion for the cultivation of quietism. Some have called the present phase New Thought. It should rather be called the oldest of thought in a new set- ting. As will be shown subsequently it is in large measure a revival of pagan mysticism and of medieval magic. The magical side we shall take up in another chapter, in treating of mental healing as it degenerated into the American form of mesmerism. The mystical side it is almost impossible to portray, except as we study by the outward comparative methods the spread of such a symptomatic movement as that called Christian Science. The sources of this system are inextricably confused. I have elsewhere pointed out that it contains a portion 44 EARLY IDEALISM of the doctrine of the Yankee mesmeric " healer," Quimby of Maine; a portion of the doctrines of the Shaker prophetess, Mother Ann Lee of New Hampshire ; a portion of the orphic sayings of the transcendental rhapsodist, Bronson Alcott. But such dissection does not explain the vitality of the movement. For an ex- planation we must have recourse to the comparison of the statistics of the sect with conditions in various parts of the country. The statistics are to be found in the last federal census; the conditions are suggested by an interesting, but as yet unpublished map designating the absolute number of Christian Scientists in the land. A first glance at the map shows this threefold dis- tribution of the sect: the East, the Middle "West, the Far "West. By States this means Massachusetts and New York; Illinois and Missouri; Colorado and Cali- fornia. This confirms the official statement that the influence is strong over comparatively limited areas in the United States. In this threefold distribution the pathological factor is primarily in evidence, for the centers of influence are large cities, with their concomi- tant nervous disorders, and the health resorts of the mountains and coast, where it is natural that groups of invalids and semi-invalids should welcome any new therapeutic agency. But besides the physical there is a mental factor at work, besides " Health," there is " Science," and for the acceptance of the proffered metaphysics there are deeper and more subtle influences to be considered. The new gospel of mental medicine is also a system of philosophy. " Hopelessly original," as Mrs. Eddy calls it, the system appeals to those who are inclined to novelties. Tired of the dry doctrines of the churches, to most beginners in speculation, un- acquainted with the history of the schools, Christian MYSTICISM 45 Science has all the air of discovery. Now such persons, who have, at the least, the merit of thinking for them- selves, are found chiefly in cities, and the acknowledged preponderance of urban over rural adherents is ex- plained by a third factor, that of free-thinking or a liberal attitude toward the unconventional. In the little town it is notoriously difficult to break from the dogma of local churches ; it does not approve of changes in ecclesiastical caste. Free-thinking is, therefore, a second potent factor in the spread of Christian Science. The map of distribution by States discloses this. Con- necticut and New Jersey, with conservative colleges like Yale and Princeton, are far below the average of their more liberal neighbors. It is not so in Massachusetts, that hotbed of heresies ; nor in Illinois, with its mixture of foreign faiths ; nor in Colorado, early home of woman suffrage; nor lastly in California, pervaded with esoteric Buddhism and the doctrine of Maya, — of the world of sense as shadow and illusion. A third factor is financial. Christian Science has spread largely along the fortieth degree of latitude, — the richest pay-streak in our civilization. From their personal appearance and from the showiness of their churches the followers of " scientific mental thera- peutics " are manifestly prosperous. Yet with this very physical prosperity there goes a spiritual change. As in the case of those primitive Christian Scientists, the followers of Plotinus who centered in rich cities like Alexandria and Rome, so these modern Neo-Platonists tend to revolt against over-prosperity. "With a plethora of wealth thc}^ incline toward asceticism, and long for a breath of the upper airs of mysticism. In a word, too much of the material has brought a desire for the immaterial. 46 EARLY IDEALISM This introduces a fourth factor in the distribution of the sect, for Christian Science as immaterialism has had, as a prepared soil, the previous American idealisms. If a mental isothermal line could be drawn for such a phenomenon, it would begin in Massachusetts, stretch to that historic projection of New England — the West- ern Reserve — and continue on with the latter 's pro- longation into Illinois. This, it should likewise be noted, was the path of Puritanism; westward the course of Calvinism took its way, and on this same path, seeking his audiences among those of New England stock, Emerson brought to the winners of the West the message that ^' the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end." Still another form of transcendentalism, not native but foreign, came into this region. The St. Louis school of German idealism, brought in by the refugees of the revolution of '48, worked its way up the Missouri and Mississippi and found a congenial soil in such Teuton- ized towns as Cincinnati and Chicago. Consequently, if one were to compare our given map with a philosophic map designating the areas of the early speculative movements in the country, this comparison would show that the preparation for the spreading of Christian Science was both positive and negative. Thus, where immaterialism was rife, it has followed; where ma- terialism flourished, it has gained little ground. The former fact has already been pointed out. Christian Science has run along the old grooves of New England transcendentalism, just as the latter ran along those of the older English Puritanism. Now, that the North has been continuously idealistic we know; but we are not so familiar with the fact that the South has been the opposite in its speculative spirit. Indeed, in the MYSTICISM 47 generation before Emerson, there was a flourishing school of materialists down the Atlantic coast. Radiat- ing from the Philadelphia Medical School that influence spread chiefl}^ below Miison and Dixon's line. This would go to explain the peculiarity that Christian Science has found its line of least resistance north of that parallel and its line of greatest resistance south of it. How far there are deeper underlying causes for this complex result it would be hard to say. Lacking as yet an adequate map of the distribution of races in our land, we cannot state, with precision, to what extent idealism and materialism follow the paths of racial dis- tribution. But this, at least, is of significance, — that our Northern idealism has been Anglo-American, our Southern materialism Franco-American. In the North the philosophic succession has been through Emerson and Edwards back to the English Platonists like Cud- worth, Norris, and More. In the South that succession has been through Jefferson and Franklin back to the Gallic materialists like the authors of the System of Nature and Mail a Machine. That these four factors are valid may be corroborated in a specific way. Take the case of the founder of the " Church of Christ, Scientist." First, as to the patho- logical factor. Mary Baker Glover's prime search was for health ; after her first marriage in 1843 she tried in turn allopathy, homeopathy, hydropathy, electricity, spiritualism, and mesmerism. Next, free-thinking af- fected her; like the more prominent New England re- ligionists she revolted against current Calvinism; " the horrible decree of predestination," she saj's, was ap- proached only to be abhorred. The third factor applies in only an indirect way. The invalid was of necessity 48 EARLY IDEALISM forced into painful ascetic practices. But the fourth factor, the search for an immaterial first principle, was one which has worked with especial strength on the discoverer of ' ' divine science. ' ' The story of the inner life of Mary Baker is the story of a typical reaction to current philosophies. Negatively, there was a revolt against materialism; materia medica was rejected for " the higher attenuations of homeopathy " and these prepared the imagination for a sheer immaterialism, where mind was everything and matter nothing. Posi- tively, there was an acceptance of contemporary ideal- ism, for the terms, though not the exactitudes, of Emer- sonianism are to be found scattered through Eddy ism. The faithful will, of course, deny that the penumbra of Concord, Massachusetts, reached to Concord, New Hampshire, just as they have denied that Science and Health is an adumbration of the doctrines of the mag- netic healer Quimby. Nevertheless in both these cases the denial is not final. The author has pointed out elsewhere how the quarrel between Eddyites and Quimbyites can be settled by recourse to the solution of common sources, — the teachings of itinerant animal magnetizers who, like their master Mesmer, had inad- vertently hit on the principle of suggestive therapeutics. In like manner, the affiliations between Eddyism and transcendentalism tend to throw new light on the prob- lem of distribution. Although it is difficult to discover any personal contact between the frequenters of Brook Farm and Mrs. Eddy when at Lynn, except for a flying visit paid her by the visionary Bronson Alcott ; yet the appeal to both the academic transcendentalist and the New Hampshire seeress was the same. The earlier movement has been described by Frothingham as having its data secluded in the recesses of consciousness, out MYSTICISM 49 of tlie reach of scientific investigation, remote from tbe gaze of vulgar skepticism ; esoteric, having about them the charm of a sacred privacy, on which common sense and the critical understanding might not intrude. Its oracles proceeded from a shrine, and were delivered by a priest or priestess, who came forth from an interior holy of holies to utter them, and thus were invested with an air of authority which belongs to exclusive and privileged truths, that revealed themselves to minds of a contemplative cast. To the pure transcendentalist the soul, when awakened, utters oracles of wisdom, proph- esies, discourses grandly of God and divine things, per- forms wonders of healing on sick bodies and wandering minds. This form of transcendentalism was decried by Emerson as the Saturnalia or excess of faith, lacking the restraining grace of common sense. In the case of Mrs. Eddy this extreme mysticism took the following form. As she wrote to one of the directors of her church: " I possess a spiritual sense. ... I can dis- cern in the human mind, thoughts, motives, and pur- pose; and neither mental arguments nor psj'chic power can affect this spiritual insight. . . . This mind reading is first sight ; it is the gift of God. ... It has enabled me to heal in a marvelous manner, to be just in judg- ment, to learn the divine Mind." It would be interesting to hunt for the sources of these claims, for, if Eddyism be considered an after- clap of transcendentalism, a common ancestry can be traced through a series of intermediate links back to Neo-Platonism. At the least we can make a brief com- parison between the old and new ways of thinking. The old made the possibility of knowledge dependent on divine communications, the new claims that " science is an emanation of eternal mind, and is alone able to in- 50 EARLY IDEALISM terprct truth aright." The old denied sensible existence and strained for something behind reality; the new •' reverses the testimony of the physical senses and by this reversal mortals arrive at the fundamental facts of Being." The old had a contempt for reason and physical science ; the new ' ' eschews what is called phys- ical science, inasmuch as all true science proceeds from divine Intelligence." The old destroyed the distinction between sensible and intelligible, the new says, ' ' matter is but a subjective state of what is here termed mortal mind." This recrudescence of Neo-Platonism in the New World is not surprising. Like causes have produced like effects, materialism has been followed by imma- terialism, one mood being a natural recoil from the other. One outburst of mystic idealism occurred in New England a generation ago, for as Margaret Fuller explains of her contemporaries, it is *' because Ameri- cans are disgusted with the materialistic workings of rational religion that they become mystics ; they quarrel with all that is, because it is not spiritual enough, since they acknowledge in the nature of man an arbiter for his deeds, a standard transcending sense and time." At the present day, after the struggles of the Civil War and after the commercial expansion of the country, the same phenomenon is recurring under the form of the so-called New Thought. It would be going too far afield to at- tempt to explain the significance of the latter move- ment, — its occultism or love of the mysterious, its gnosticism or claim to peculiar knowledge, its affiliations with previous mystical systems, — but we can at least point out that Christian Science is but a single phase of a larger interest which ranges from the teachings of William James to the allegories of Maeterlinck. MYSTICISM 51 "We may here examine, in conclusion, a final factor in the spread of the sect, namely the type of mind to which it appeals. In general that type is practical and yet uncritical, non-academic and yet speculative. Although the great mass of Christian Scientists consists of women who stand for the unrest of the new feminism, yet that given type is well represented by imaginative business men without a college training, such as are to be found in large cities, and such as predominate in the present directorate of the church. To carry out the analysis of the individual : in the first place such a man is practical, he wants results. When he sees benefits conferred upon his immediate circle he is led to specu- late as to the cause. Here, he says to himself, is the movement, and here is the result, therefore the " demon- stration " or the " absent treatment " must be the con- necting link. Now, this is the non-academic way of thinking. It belongs to that class of persons who are capable of framing a syllogism, but not capable of dis- covering its fallacious forms. To the academic or college-bred type " demonstration," " absent treat- ment " are as much matters of dubiety as " mental telepathy " or " wireless mental messages." Now the veriest undergraduate is taught the distinction between mind and matter, and is taught to keep the two spheres apart. Not so the business man. To draw such dis- tinctions is not in his line. Consequently, although he is a " practical " man, he will occasionally take a "flier" in a scheme that savors of alchemy, where secret formula? are claimed to transmute metals, and, although a " self-made " man, he is often in fear of being overreached by some rival with more " magnet- ism," as if the latter possessed some sort of irresistible psychic effluence. 52 EARLY IDEALISM And thus arises the failure to perceive the funda- mental fallacy of Christian Science; that, while it dis- claims materialism, it still reeks with materialistic terms. Even a recent edition of Science and Health, in spite of its countless recensions from the original Eddyite edition, contains such rubrics as " Mental Offshoots " and '' Gravitation Godward." It also contains phrases of this sort: " Astronomical order imitates the action of Divine Principle " ; " Mind, God, sends forth the aroma of Spirit, the atmosphere of In- telligence "; "If the individuals have passed away, their aroma of thought is left which is mentally scented and described. Mind has senses sharper than the body ' ' ; " Mental chemicalization, which has brought conjugal infidelity to the surface, will assuredly throw off this evil, and marriage will become purer when the scum is gone." This fatal flaw, this failure to distinguish between mental and physical, is not recognized by the ordinary " Scientist," hence the ease with which strange doc- trines can be accepted. Christian Scientists deny the existence of the material, yet are reinforced in their beliefs by the latest physical discoveries. Just as Mes- merism was helped by " Franklinism," the theory of psychic emanations by the fluid theory of electricity, so " absent treatment " and silent " demonstration " are bolstered up by appeals to Hertzian waves. X-rays, and the like. In fine, Christian Science is liable to spread wherever fundamental distinctions fail to be made. Ignorant, then, of the real procedure of suggestive therapeutics, a procedure which has been confessedly neglected in our medical profession ; ignorant also of such historic ap- proaches to Science arid Health as have been made by MYSTICISM 53 the classic mystic manuals from those of the Neo- Platonists to those of the Quakers, it is no wonder that, in the present state of American culture, Chris- tian Science spreads where there is a " struggle for the recovery of invalids," and where there is a " yearning of the human race for spirituality. ' ' CHAPTER III DEISM 1. The English Influences In deism as a movement toward free-thought we have a typical example of English influence upon the Ameri- can mind. It was a case of make haste slowly, for it was only by gradual degrees that British subjects emerged from the apologetic to the constructive, and from the constructive to the destructive type of free-thinking. The term free-thinker, as it first appeared in English philosophical literature, meant simply one whose thought is freed from the trammels of authority, who sought a characteristic Anglo-Saxon compromise between the Bible and the church on one side, and reason on the other. This w^as reflected in such works as Christian- ity Not Mysterious and Christianity as Old as the Crea- tion. Such an attitude was too vague, too apologetic. So it was succeeded by one more positive, more constructive. This attitude was reflected in a search for a natural or universal religion, a platform of belief on which all good men could unite. Such were the so-called five points common to all religions, which began with the existence of a Supreme Being and ended with future rewards and punishments. But constructive deism was, in turn, suc- ceeded by destructive. This began when natural religion was made to supplant revealed, when prophecies were eliminated, when miracles were considered not as props 64 THE ENGLISH INFLUENCES 55 to belief but as mere myths. These three phases of English deism were exhibited in the colonies. The apologetic is represented by Cotton IMather in his Christian Philosopher, or A Collection of the Best Discoveries in Nature With Religious Improvements. The moderate is represented by Benjamin Franklin, . who, with judicious vagueness, offered as his creed those old points common to all religions. The destructive is represented by Thomas Paine, who, in his Age of Beason, argues boldly against mysterj^ and miracle. Deism, according to him, declares to intelligent man the existence of one Perfect God, Creator and Preserver of the Universe; that the laws by which he governs the world are like himself immutable ; and that violation of these laws, or miraculous interference in the movements of nature must be necessarily excluded from the grand system of universal existence. American deism began in a reaction against Puritan determinism. The belief in a deity separate from the world, an idle spectator, an absentee landlord, was a logical rebound from the belief in a deity constantly interfering with the world, a magical intervener, a local busybody. Thomas Paine 's Age of Reason, with its notion of a creator whose " arm wound up the vast machine " and then left it to run by itself, formed a kind of counterpoise to Cotton IMather's Magnalia Christi Americana, with its faithful record of many illustrious, wonderful providences, both of mercies and judgments, on divers persons in New England. In a way, also, these two books marked the transition between two different political points of view, one standing for class favoritism, the other for the natural rights of man. The Calvinistic doctrines of sovereign grace and an elect people savored too much of tlio claims of British 56 DEISM supremacy to be long acceptable. Hence the five points of Calvinism became so many points of irritation. Total depravity might apply to effete monarchies, but not to the New World ; absolute predestination to the land of passive obedience, but not to the land where men sought to be free. Calvinism as a doctrine of necessity was, then, the proximate cause of deism as a doctrine of freedom. The notion of a partial and arbitrary deity prepared for the religion of humanity; the system of inscrutable decrees for a religion of reason. The change was strik- ing. Talk about creatures infinitely sinful and abom- inable, wallowing like swine in the mire of their sins, brought about a reaction, and the next generation went from the extreme of Puritanic pessimism to the ex- treme of deistic optimism, the belief in the perfectibility of the human race. This change in sentiment is recorded in the attacks on the old divinity. When the consistent Calvinist merely filed smooth the rough edges of a cast- iron system, the forerunners of the Unitarian movement boldly threw the dead weight overboard. To speak in reproachful language of the moral virtues, comparing them to filthy rags, was held absurd ; while the Calvin- istic doctrine of the tendency of man's nature to sin, as implying his utter and eternal ruin and the tor- ments of hell fire, was declared shocking to the human mind and contradictory to all the natural notions both of justice and benevolence. These protests against determinism were character- istic of early American deism; but behind these acute personal reactions there were larger and quieter forces at work. In a word the dogmas of an unnatural re- ligion were giving way to the principles of natural religion, and rationalism had at last a chance to assert COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 57 itself. Here deism constituted the moving cause and the colonial college the vehicle in the transaction. 2. The Colonial Colleges and Free-Thought Deism, as a form of rationalism, had been hanging on the skirts of Puritanism during the last quarter of the seventeenth century, but it was not until the eighteenth that it took to an independent growth and hastened the intellectual emancipation of New England. The old Boston Platform had recognized the light of nature, but more in the way of a forlorn negation than a hopeful aflSrmation. It spoke of natural reason as greatly impaired, saying that man retained no more of the light of reason than would conduce to torment- ing reflections. From these timid limitations there arose the desire for a change from a gloomy theology to a cheering theodicy, from the doctrine of inscrutable decrees to the belief in rational purpose and benevolent design in the universe. This change is marked by two such representative works as ^Mather's Reasonable Religion and Chauncy's Benevolence of the Deity. Cotton Mather did not attain his rationalistic results without some mental perturbation. At first his attitude ■ was that of one opposed to the use of reason. Thus he uttered the warning: " Hearken ye of Har^'ard and Yale College to old Eubulus, exhorting you with his counsel. In most academies of this world nothing is acquired but worldly wisdom; the philosophy taught in them is nothing but foolosophy." After such strictures as these it is rather strange that Mather can avail him- self of rational arguments. But this he does in his Christian Philosophy, where he quotes with approval the statement of an English writer that the divine reason 58 DEISM runs like a golden thread through the whole leaden mine of brutal nature. Applying this principle to whatever he saw about him, he exclaims: How charniini? the proportion and pulchritude of the leaves, the flowers, the fruits. How peculiar the care which the great God of nature has taken for the safety of the seed and fruit! When the vegetable race comes abroad, what strange methods of nature are there to guard them from inconveniences. How nice the provision of nature for their support in standing and growing, that they may keep their heads above ground and administer to our intentions ; some stand by their ow'n strength, others are of an elastic nature, that they may dodge the violence of the winds: a visible argument that the plastic capacities of matter are governed by an all-wise infinite agent. Oh! the glorious goodness of our deity in all these things! There was a note in this little book that did not die. While its scientific arguments for design fell flat, its esthetic elements lived on ; it anticipated by a century the transcendentalist's love of nature for its own sake. I\Iather might have said with Emerson " Come into the azure and love the day." Belonging to the same school of apologetic deists as Mather but of far higher rank was Charles Chauncy. In his Benevolence of the Deity, in place of a being cruel, inscrutable, acting by particular providences, we find a being benevolent, ra- tional, acting in harmony with wise goodness and accu- rate justice. The deity does not communicate being or happiness to his creatures by an immediate act of power, but by concurring with an established course of nature. He makes them happy by the intervention of second causes, operating in a stated, regular, uniform manner. Chauncj-^'s work combines sound matter with a noble style; it marked a notable advance in the progress of COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 59 rationalism. To teach that man is free and not deter- mined ; active and not passive ; perfectible and not de- praved, was to sum up the three great tenets of deism gained by way of painful reaction against the harsher doctrines of Calvinism. The way in which this reaction came about may be traced more closely in the later writings of the Han-ard worthies, who possessed one notable means for the public expression of their views. This was the Dudleian lectureship founded for " the pro^^ng, explaining, and proper use and improvement of the principles of natural religion." The significance of this lectureship is that it furnishes an historical cross- section of the American mind. In it may be observed not only the rise and progress of deism, but also its destruction through a number of powerful solvents. The first of the Dudleian discourses furnishes an appropri- ate introduction to the whole course by giving an his- torical summary of the problems of dualism as con- nected with cosmology. Here President Edward Hol- yoke was the initial speaker: There were three opinions as to the existence of the world. One was that it was from Eternity, & Plato it seems, was the Father of it, and thoui^ht it flowed from God as Raies do from the Sun, where, by the way, we may note. That tho' they tho't the world to be eternal, yet that it proceeded from God; his Scholar also, Aristotle, propagated the same Notion & asserted that the world, was not generated so as to begin to be a world, which before was none. He supposes preexistent & eternal flatter as a Principle and thence argn'd the world to be eternal. . . . Another Opinion as to the Existence of the world, was that it came into this beautiful Form, by Chance, or a fortuitous concourse & jumble of Atoms, This is bj' all known to be the Pliilosophy of Epicurus, & his Notion was, that the LTniverse consisted of Atoms or Corpuscles of various Forms & Weights, which having been dispei-s'd at Random thro' 60 DEISM the immense Space, fortuitously concur'd, into innumerable Systems or Worlds, which were thus formed, & afterward from time to time increased, changing & dissolving again without any certain. Cause or Design, without the Intervention of any Deity, or the intention of any Providence. And yet this Phi- losopher did not deny the Existence of a God, but on the Con- trary asserted it, but tho't it beneath the Majesty of the Deity to concern himself with humane affairs. . . . But the most prevailing Opinion . . . was. That the world had a beginning, & was form'd by some great and excellent Being whom they called God. And this indeed is a tho't that is perfectly agree- able to Reason. The first Dudleian lecturer granted that natural re- ligion was not unreasonable. A certain successor twenty years after argued for what he calls a coincidence of natural and revealed religion. He presents his argu- ments in a sort of imaginary conversation : Reason would say : " Surely this stupendous universe is the work of some invisible agent, beyond all comparison & con- ception superiour to man ; for such a grand complete System so infinitely complicate, & yet so exactly adjusted in all its parts, the most minute as well as the grandest, that all kinds of symmetry and perfection concur to complete the whole, could never be the effect of chance or the product of endless essays & mutations of matter. This Agent must have an un- limited mind, to comprehend these vast innumerable works in one perfect Idea, before they were made. His power also must be equal to his unlimited understanding. And he is evidently as good as he is wise and powerful; otherwise malignity against his creatures would appear in universal discords through nature, perpetually generating all manners of evil. ... In some such manner as this Reason in its perfect state might be supposed capable of arriving at the knowledge of the One True God, & deducing from thence a compleat system of natural religion. Yet it can hardly be conceived, according to our experience of the labour of searching out truth, that the human mind, in its utmost stx^ength, could by COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 61 one glance of thought discover all the essential characteristics of the Deity, or the proper acts of worship & obedience which he requires. We might as well affirm, that unimpaired reason must naturally, at the first view of the heavenly bodies, have a clear knowledge of their magnitudes, distances and revolu- tions: or by looking round on the earth, immediately be acquainted with the innumerable gradations of animal life, & vegetable productions & fossils of all forms & kinds. . . . Therefore it may be justly questioned whether it would not have cost the labour of Ages to demonstrate a true System of religion, as it has taken nearly six thousand years to search out the laws of the material system & bring natural philosophy to its present perfection." The arguments just presented were delivered in the year before the Declaration of Independence. It was not until after the second war with England that the Dudleian lectures show the weakening of the old con- servative scheme under the assaults of the destructive deists. But it remained for a lecturer of the year be- fore the publication of Emerson's Nature to recog- nize the drift of a priori arguments for natural religion as leading to the self-sufficiency of nature. Abstract arguments, reasons John Brazer in 1835, are objectionable because they virtually assume the point to be proved. Thus, the axiom that every effect has a cause avails little with those who deny that the universe is an effect; the axiom that whatever begins to exist must have had a cause of its existence, will have no pertinency with those who, like the ancient and modem Epicureans, assert that the universe is eternal and the creative power, whatever it be, only plastic. Again, the statement that every contrivance must have a contriver is no argument to him who denies that there is any proof of contrivance further than the particular instance in question is concerned, as did Hume. Finally, the prin- 62 DEISM ciple that nothing can be a cause of its own existence will conclude little against him who asserts that the world is an exception to this general rule, — it being self- existent, as Spinoza maintained. We have here at Harvard an hypothetical approach to pantheism. In this free-thought had achieved a vic- toiy over the old dualism. Instead of a creator and creation separated by a gap which could not be bridged, instead of the old doctrine of transcendence with which the apologetic deist had begun, we have now the doctrine of immanence, — the very affirmation of Emerson that nature, comprehending all existence, may be its own cause. The rise of deism in the second oldest of the New England colleges is much like that in the first. At Harvard deism as a movement of enlightenment de- veloped through opposition. Cotton Mather, w4th his eye upon the free-thinkers, had declared that " to ques- tion the being of God would be exalted folly." Similar academic attempts to stem the tide of rationalism were early made at Yale. In spite of them the freshening currents came stealing in. At New Haven, as at New Cambridge, the heads of the college could not escape the eclectic spirit of the times. Rector Thomas Clap avowed that the great design of founding this school was to educate ministers ' ' in our own way ' ' ; neverthe- less, he based his moral philosophy on the deistic Wollas- ton's Religion of Nature. But there was another head of the Connecticut college who more clearlj^ showed the pervasive influence of English thought combined with the mental independence of a young colonial. It was President Ezra Stiles, who nourished a hope that America might be a land of British liberty in the most complete sense. As student and tutor he had read COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 63 through some thirty-odd deistic works left to the col- lege library by Bishop Berkeley. These books did much to open the eyes of their reader ; at the same time they did not lead him into the most radical skepticism. He recounts how he read Clarke's Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, but did not find entire satisfaction; how he read Shaftesbury's Character- istics and admired them as sublime views of nature and of the moral government of the Most High. But he could not go beyond this the Deist's Bible and ac- cept the conclusions of the arch-skeptic Hume. Against the latter 's strictures upon the evidences of Christianity he exclaims, " Shall a King be able by a Seal and other infallible Signatures to evince his Proclamations to his Subjects so that they shall have no doubt of his Majesty's Will: and shall the Great Omnipotent King of the Universe be unable to evince & ascertain his "Will to such a handfull of Intelligences the small System of Man? " Having described the moral jaundice of the leader of skepticism in old England, Stiles as Anglus-Ameri- canus turns to the movement in New England and gives a vivid account of the agitations of local thought during the French and Indian War: ... As we are in the midst of the struggle of Infidelity I expect no ^eat Reformation until that [Revelation] is demonstratively established. . . . From the Conduct of the Officers of the Army you entertain an Expectation favorable to Virtue. Far from this I imagine the American Morals & Religion were never in so much danger as from our Concern with the Europeans in the present War. They put on indeed in their public Conduct the Mark of public Virtue — and the Officers endeavor to restrain the vices of the private Soldiery while on Duty. But I take it the Religion of the Army is Infidelity & Gratification of the appetites. . . . They propa- 64 DEISM gate in a jrenteel & insensible Manner the most corrupting and debauching Principles of Behavior. It is doubted by many Officers if in fact the Soul survives the Body — but if it does, they ridicule the notion of moral accountableness, Rewards & Punishments m another life. ... I look upon it that our Officers are in danger of being corrupted with vicious prin- ciples, & many of them I doubt not will in the End of the War come home mmute philosophers initiated in the polite Mysteries & vitiated morals of Deism, And this will have an unhappy Effect on a sudden to spread Deism or at least Scepti- cism thro' these Colonies. And I make no doubt, instead of the Controversies of Orthodoxy & Heresy, we shall soon be called to the defence of the Gospel itself. At Home the general grand Dispute is on the Evidences of Revelation — ■ some few of your small Folks indeed keep warming up the old Pye, & crying Calvinism, Orthodoxy &c — these are your Whitefields, Romaines, &c that make a pother: but the greater Geniuses among the Ministers are ranging the Evidences of Revelation to the public View, expunging the Augustine In- terpretations of Scripture with the other Corruptions of the Latin Chh, yet retained among protestants — and endeavoring a just & unexceptionable, rational Explication of the great Doctrines of the Gospel. The Bellamys &c of New England will stand no Chance with the Corruptions of Deism which, I take it, are spreading apace in this Connfx-y. i prophesy your Two Witnesses will avail more towards curing the Con- tagion than thousands of Volumes filled with cant orthodox phrases & the unintelligible Metaphysics of Scholastic Divinity, which is a Corruption of Christianity with arabian philosophy. Yet Stiles was no such reactionary as some of his correspondents thought. He did not hold that the overvaluing of reason tends to promote atheism. When he was informed that Kector Clap would not suffer a donation of certain books from the free-thinking colony of Rhode Island, he wrote to the rigid Rector and made a notable appeal for unrestrained thought: . . . Different men indeed object from different motives, some from the Love of Orthodoxy & some from the Hatred COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 65 of it, & some from the generous Sentiments of that generous & equal Liberty for which Protestants & Dissenters have made so noble a Stand. It is true with this Liberty Error may be introduced; but turn the Tables the propagation of Truth may be extinguished. Deism has got such Head in this Age of Licentious Liberty, that it would be in vain to try to stop it by hiding the Deistieal Writings: and the only Way left to conquer & demolish it, is to come forth into the open Field & Dispute this matter on even Footing — the Evidences of Revelation in my opinion are nearly as demonstrative as Newton's Prineipia, & these are the Weapons to be used. Deism propagates itself in America very fast, & on this Foundation, strange as it may seem, is the Chh of Engld built up in polite Life. A man may be an excellent Chhman & yet a profound Deist. While public pojiular Delusion is kept up by Deistieal Priests, sensible Laymen despise the whole, & yet, strange Contradiction! joyn it, and entice others to joyn it also. — and they say all priests are alike, we all try to deceive Mankind, there is no Ti'ust to be put in us. Truth & this alone being our Aim in fact, open, frank & generous we shall avoid the very appearance of Evil. The protest of Stiles was unavailing. Measures were now taken to stop the infiltration of any form of deism. By a vote of the president and fellows, students were to be established in the principles of religion according to the Assembly's Catechism, Dr. Ames's Medulla, and Cases of Conscience. Yale was now outwardly a strong- hold of orthodoxy ; how it came to be called a hotbed of infidelity is a matter of later times. It was not until after the Revolutionary War that the satirist could describe undergraduate skepticism, could tell how the clockwork gentleman was made " twixt the Tailor and the Player, and Hume, and Tristram and Voltaire." All this might have been expected. Action and re- action were equal. As at Harvard opposition had brought electicism, so at Yale the policy of sup- 66 DEISM pression brought an explosion of free-thinking upon the advent of the Franco-American deism of Citizen Paine and President Jefferson. Meanwhile it is in order to follow the fortunes of deism outside of New England, and to see how the other colonial colleges of the first rank were laid open to the advances of rationalism. The first head of King's College, New York, destined to become the future Columbia University, was that Samuel Johnson who had been forced out of Yale be- cause of his liberal tendencies, which were early shown even in the reputed land of the blue laws. The very title of his most juvenile work, Raphael, or the Genius of English America, was a protest against colonial con- servatism. But Johnson's actions spoke louder than his words. As an undergraduate he was warned against reading Descartes, Locke, and Newton ; becoming a tutor, he introduced these works into the college library. As a theological student he was cautioned against a certain new philosophy, that of Berkeley, which was attracting attention in England, being told that it would corrupt the pure religion of the country and bring in another system of divinity. The warning was ineffective, for Johnson became a clergyman in the Church of England and sought to spread that very philosophy against which he had been warned. What trials met the students in the provincial seats of learning is suggested in a recently recovered manuscript entitled: The Travails of the In- tellect in the Mycrocosm and Macrocosm. In this ju- venile work Johnson leaves the little world of Puritan thought and emerges into the larger world of construct- ive deism. His scheme has as its beginning benevolence, and as its end evidences of cosmic design. This scheme was conceived by the author at the age of eighteen, but, COLONIAL COLLEGES AND FREE-THOUGHT 67 being obliged to conceal his opinions with caution, it was not for half a generation and through an English magazine that the young American was enabled fully to express his views. To show how judicious was the rationalism of this Introduction to Philosophy we may explain that the purpose of this small tract, " by a gentleman educated at Yale College," was declared to be: the setting be- fore young gentlemen a general view of the whole sys- tem of learning in miniature, as geography exhibits a general map of the whole terraqueous globe. As in the natural so in the intellectual world, young students must have a prospect of the whole compass of their busi- ness and the general end pursued through the whole. We may here cite the case of another graduate of Yale, at King's College, whose effusions, though light like straws, showed how the wind was blowing in the deistic direction. William Livingston, in his Remarks upon Our Intended College, wished to have the rules free to all, offensive to no sect. Fighting the ett'orts of the Episcopalians to obtain control of the institution, he was charged with deism and atheism. He thereupon retorted upon his opponents with a travesty of the Thirty-Nine Articles, whose tenor may be judged by the following : I. I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- ments, without any forei.