THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION 
 OF THE WORLD 
 
THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION 
 OF THE WORLD 
 
 AN ESSAY IN CONSTRUCTIVE 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR KENYON ROGERS, PH.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN BUTLER COLLEGE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY," 
 
 "A STUDENTS' HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY" 
 
 Nefo gork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1907 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1907. 
 
 Noriuoot) 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
Bbs 
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE .... 6 
 
 THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 35 
 
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 79 
 
 THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 93 
 
 THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE . . .121 
 THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN . . . . 151 
 
 THE NATURE OF GOD 176 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 198 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 231 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY . . . .261 
 INDEX 285 
 
 v 
 
 155845 
 
THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION 
 OF THE WORLD 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I PROPOSE in the following pages to defend a view 
 of the world which is frankly religious and theistic, 
 in opposition to certain modern types of philo- 
 sophical thought which are now widely prevalent. 
 The results which I shall advocate do not therefore 
 depart very far from the presuppositions which 
 underlie the ordinary Christian consciousness, when 
 these are interpreted not in a dogmatic, but in a 
 broadly philosophical way. And by the phrase 
 "ordinary Christian consciousness" I mean to ex- 
 clude any sublimated and mystical creed, or any 
 reconstruction in terms of merely practical ideals, 
 and to refer substantially to such a manner of con- 
 ceiving the universe of reality in its large and essen- 
 tial character, as the general sound intelligence and 
 common sense of the religious community would be 
 able to take up in imagination with some measure 
 of concreteness and objectivity, and recognize as the 
 natural understanding of the historical Christian 
 
2 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 revelation. I am aware that by many this coinci- 
 dence with the common judgment will be considered 
 anything but a recommendation for a philosophical 
 theory ; I confess I think it, so far as it goes, in its 
 favor. I should indeed be sorry to appear to be 
 making in philosophy an appeal to the mob. There 
 are questions which cannot be solved by the doc- 
 trinaire method. Nevertheless, I am strongly of the 
 opinion that anything like esotericism in a philosophy 
 ! is prima facie proof of its final inadequacy. Philos- 
 ophy is not intended to contravene or supplantHhe 
 ^ everyday experience of mankind, but to explain it, 
 and by so doing to give it a heightened value. The 
 contrary view is a very old and a very persistent 
 one, but it is a heresy none the less. Plato's notion 
 that philosophy is for the favored few, and that it 
 dwells in a realm apart from the commoner expe- 
 riences of life, still finds wide acceptance. There is 
 an inveterate pride of intellect which tends to prize 
 a belief in proportion as it is shared only with a 
 limited number, and is unintelligible to the mass 
 of men. There is a certain prestige in having 
 shaken one's self loose from the company of the 
 multitude. And this is helped out by the subtle 
 delusion, dangerous because it is the perversion of a 
 truth, that the right attitude in philosophy is one of 
 detachment from all interests whatever, the attitude 
 of the rare spirit who stands forth as a God holding 
 no form of creed, but contemplating and criticising 
 all alike with equal unconcern. To adopt a high 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 attitude of disinterestedness, to make truth alone 
 our end and disclaim any preference for one conclu- 
 sion rather than another, is a characteristic note in 
 recent times, and it has a plausible sound. But in 
 my opinion the whole attitude is likely to be a mis- 
 taken one. /No man can philosophize rightly who 
 has no personal concern in the common hopes and 
 fears and ideals and beliefs of men, and the pro- 
 fession of this is either an affectation or a limitation. 
 If the philosopher stood apart from his race and 
 were thinking out a merely private scheme of life 
 for himself, it might be tolerated in him. But he is 
 doing nothing of the sort. It is the experience of 
 man on which he is building. And if he allows his 
 own individual obtuseness to certain aspects of 
 human experience, the failure of these to appeal to 
 him personally or as member of a little coterie, to 
 limit his range, he does so at his peril. The attitude j 
 of disinterested spectator simply cannot be assumed I 
 in philosophy, if indeed it can anywhere in life. 1 
 Of course one must always be ready to look every 
 fact in the face and take it for what it is worth. But 
 to assume a position outside the world's life and 
 make it simply a subject on which to exercise one's 
 skill in dialectic, careless what the issue may be, is to 
 take the wrong path at the start. It is not necessary 
 to cease to be a man in order to become a philosopher. 
 Philosophy, once more, is the interpretation of the 
 value of our common experience. And the man who 
 does not feel the value of that experience is by the 
 
4 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 very fact incapacitated for dealing with it, in any save 
 a minor and critical way. 
 
 And now since, individually, we all are certain to 
 be one-sided and to exalt minor aspects overmuch, 
 there is no way of testing ourselves that can dispense 
 with the necessity of coming back continually to the 
 wider experience of mankind not of philosophers 
 merely, but of the common man. For although 
 philosophers find it hard to realize the fact, thejife 
 of thought is a highly artificial one. It inevitably 
 tends to stunt certain sides of the normal life and 
 shift the balance of its estimates of worth. And in 
 mere logic there is no power to correct the fault. 
 i Logic is very useful in setting in order the things we 
 [are already inclined to accept. But it has little to 
 say as regards what we shall consider important in 
 the first place. Indeed, the more we depend upon 
 logic and logic alone, the more certain we are to find 
 'ourselves apart from the main stream of human 
 life, for the reason that the conscious premises 
 from which any of us start are very unlikely to repre- 
 / sent more than a small fraction of the truth ; and by 
 excluding the saving inconsistencies by which most 
 men temper the strictness of their logical deductions, 
 we fail of any corrective to our natural narrowness. 
 This is indeed one chief service that strict logical 
 consistency has to perform in the history of thought. 
 It leads the philosopher into paradox, and that 
 paradox makes other men, if not the philosopher 
 himself, go back upon his premises. The fact that a 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 conclusion which is repugnant to the natural sense 
 of mankind has a strict logical justification, instead 
 of proving the truth of this opinion, only serves to 
 call out the recognition that premises leading to such 
 a result must be one-sided, and so sends men back to 
 a wider experience to correct them. 
 
 These statements will need to be more fully ex- 
 plained and grounded, and to do this there will be 
 necessary a somewhat careful inquiry into the nature 
 of knowledge, belief, and truth. Before therefore 
 any attempt is made to deal directly with the main 
 issue of the present essay the validity of religion 
 and religious knowledge I shall turn to this pre- 
 liminary problem, in order to be able more justly to 
 compare religious knowledge with other objects of 
 human belief, and to decide what its claims to accept- 
 ance are. 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 IF then we go back to the presuppositions of all 
 knowledge, we shall find for the first and perhaps 
 for the last time a point on which thinkers of very 
 opposite schools are nowadays practically agreed. 
 There was a time when it was very generally thought 
 that men come into the world with a certain amount 
 of knowledge, ready-made, in their minds. This 
 went by the name of innate ideas, and had to do 
 more particularly with various rather lofty and ab- 
 stract metaphysical and religious truths, with perhaps 
 some moral maxims thrown in. There is a way in 
 which this old belief may be interpreted and still 
 represent an important truth; but as originally 
 meant it is now pretty generally discarded. Philoso- 
 phers are now with few exceptions~agreed that what- 
 ever knowledge man possesses comes to him directly 
 or indirectly on the basis of or in connection with that 
 plain, everyday form of experience which is called 
 sense experience. Apart from sensation, which 
 need not here be sharply distinguished from the 
 larger and more indefinite term "feeling," what 
 we call experience would be contentless and non- 
 existent ; and this applies to the most exalted^objects 
 that enter into thought as truly aTtVtKTmost lowly. 
 Let any one after some psychological training attempt 
 
 6 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 7 
 
 to exclude resolutely and entirely from any content 
 of his thought whatever can be traced back to this 
 source, and he can scarcely fail to realize very quickly 
 the force of such a claim. 
 
 Of course this assumption which we are taking as 
 a starting-point is a far simpler one than most per- 
 sons would consider we have a right to make. 
 People generally at the present day would regard as 
 equally certain with the existence of sense experi- 
 ences a number of further facts or theories about 
 them. For example, they would agree that sensa- 
 tions are all to be carried back to some particular 
 condition of what is called a body or nervous struc- 
 ture, and that at least some of them have as their 
 occasion a remoter physical cause which lies outside 
 the body and acts upon it. It is never safe, however, 
 to take too many things for granted at once, and it 
 will therefore be well to make our original assump- 
 tions as little complex as possible, and to proceed 
 from these by steps which are sufficiently cautious 
 and gradual to avoid any unnecessary risk of confu- 
 sion. And it should perhaps be pointed out that, in 
 calling the existence of sensation a primitive and in- 
 dubitable fact of knowledge, I do not mean to imply 
 that I think there was a time when the recognition of 
 such bare sense experiences represented all the knowl- 
 edge that we possessed, and that everything else we 
 now take for knowledge was later added on to this, and 
 has in consequence a secondary degree of certainty. 
 As a matter of fact the conscious recognition of sensa- 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
8 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 tion as such in its distinction from other things is 
 almost certainly a late achievement of human reason, 
 and involves a considerable effort of abstraction. 
 
 * And in speaking of a starting-point or presupposition 
 > it is not to be understood, either, that we are trying 
 to empty our minds of absolutely everything beside, 
 in order to let this one truth rest solely upon its own 
 bottom. It is indeed clearly an impossibility that 
 we should strip off all the later and hard-won accre- 
 tions of our rational experience, and come to any pre- 
 supposition in our original nakedness, accepting it in 
 entire independence of other and related assumptions. 
 What we do, what indeed we are compelled to do, is 
 
 .; > rather this : We approach our inquiry with the mental 
 * A structure and the general way of looking at things of 
 
 11 which we find ourselves naturally possessed as the 
 
 ij outcome of human evolution. This is all the mind 
 and all the knowledge we have and we must needs 
 make use of it if we are to get ahead at all. In the 
 light of this our large inheritance we then proceed to 
 analyze and examine more minutely the more detailed 
 features of our intellectual content. And if we find 
 any point which is clearly a fundamental assumption 
 in our world of knowledge, which is so intimately 
 worked into the accepted universe that it could not 
 be withdrawn without tumbling the whole structure 
 down upon our heads, we feel ourselves justified in 
 taking this as a datum. Such a datum we seem to 
 find in the bare fact, which scepticism has no ap- 
 parent interest hi disputing, that out of the depths 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 9 
 
 of the unconscious there do well up these jacts of 
 immediate feeling or sensing which are the basis and 
 the starting-point of all that we call the conscious life. 
 It is hard to see how one can refuse to accept this 
 without putting himself altogether outside our com- 
 mon system of knowledge and of human discourse. 
 There is now one aspect of such experiences, or 
 at least of some among them, which is also relatively 
 simple and immediate. And since this will be of 
 importance presently, it is well to speak of it here. 
 It is a peculiarity of what we learn to call sense per- 
 ception that it comes to us as in a very considerable 
 measure a thing inevitable, out from under our direct 
 control, independent and compulsive. In this it 
 differs from certain other forms of our mental life 
 which are or seem to be more within our own power. 
 Thus a thought or a memory can within certain very 
 considerable limitations be called up at any time or 
 dismissed from the mind again and forgotten. 
 Similarly, we may determine for ourselves with more 
 or less practical success whether an emotion is or 
 is not to dominate us. But there is a difference 
 which we naturally feel in the case of perception. 
 The eye cannot choose but see, whenever it is open 
 to gaze upon the object in its presence, while no effort 
 of will can produce the full experience of sensing 
 unless certain conditions which we cannot ourselves 
 directly create are favorable. For the present it is 
 enough to note this characteristic of sensations ; what 
 it implies may be left to be considered later. 
 
10 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 But now we never could by any chance have be- 
 come aware of the distinction that has just been 
 mentioned were it not for another and very funda- 
 mental aspect of experience. It would be possible 
 to conceive an experience which consisted practically 
 of nothing more than a confused and tumultuous 
 upheaval of evanescent waves of feeling, connected 
 by no principle of relatedness or law of order. But 
 such an experience, if it could exist, would be abso- 
 lutely blind and irrational, and quite unlike anything 
 we understand by the word. For there is of course 
 this second and obvious characteristic of experience 
 as we mean the term: that sensations show certain 
 regularities in their way of appearing, by means of 
 which we are able to anticipate the probable course 
 of events. 
 
 Tlu^regularitv^r order, or law of succession 
 among sensations is, as any one can easily see, an im- 
 mensely important aspect of knowledge. By making 
 experience calculable it lies at the foundation of the 
 entire rational life, the life which acts consciously 
 according to preconceived ends. But now there is 
 still another very significant feature of the situation 
 which comes to light as soon as we begin to examine 
 carefully this fact of order. If the question is asked 
 how we ever come to recognize the order which exists 
 among sensations, the first and most natural answer 
 perhaps would be that the order is there, and being 
 there is bound to make an impression on us and 
 compel its recognition. But it is not at all clear that 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE II 
 
 this would be a sufficient answer. The world in 
 which we live is inconceivably complex. It is far \ 
 from being true that the order in it stands out plain \ 
 and unmistakable to the passive and uninquisitive ; 
 gaze. A few sequences might force themselves 
 automatically on our notice. But the number of 
 these would at best be very small, and out of all 
 proportion to the enormous mass of irregularities 
 and failures of sequence which, to one who is not 
 already in possession of the clew, must make an im- 
 pression of the merest jumble. We are at the 
 present day so indoctrinated with the idea of law 
 and undeviating order in the world that we may 
 come to take it as self-evident and unimpeachable. 
 We fail to remember that the conception of law as 
 at all widespread or universal has come into exist- 
 ence by a process which we still can trace. Or, again, 
 we fail to notice how much of the idea to-day rests 
 upon the assertions of other men whose authority 
 we have been taught to respect, and how these as- 
 sertions in turn go back to a weight of evidence 
 the larger part of which they have themselves had to 
 take on trust. And even in the case of sequences 
 which we consider are sufficiently founded in our 
 own experience, we seldom realize in how large 
 measure they are the outcome of a pious faith, and 
 how constantly we should find them unrealized and 
 contradicted by the facts were we to stop with first 
 appearances, and the natural impressions which 
 these would produce if we approached them wholly 
 
12 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 without bias. We certainly never have examined 
 more than the minutest fraction of all the instances 
 that occur. And almost as certainly have we once 
 and again met with cases where the expected proced- 
 ure failed to come about. When this happens, we 
 are quick, it is true, to declare : Yes, but there was 
 some good reason for it; there were complicating 
 circumstances which entered in and turned aside 
 the natural course of things. But the point is that 
 this is possible only as we go behind the first ap- 
 pearances, and actively make an endeavor to in- 
 troduce order into the world whether we find it 
 there or not. Of course we shall have an ordered 
 world if we assume to start with that order is there, 
 and then when it fails to appear refuse to allow this 
 to affect our faith, but come forward at once with the 
 new assumption that the customary would have 
 happened as usual if some special hindrance had not 
 stepped in to prevent. And the fact that we have 
 to do this so constantly makes it evident that the 
 highly organized and orderly world of our experience 
 is not something merely forced upon us mechanically 
 by the facts. 
 
 The new element, therefore, which we have to 
 recognize as playing an essential part in the building 
 up of experience, is that constructive or selective 
 aspect of our mental processes of which recent 
 psychology takes so much account. The multitude 
 of impressions at every moment raining in upon the 
 human organism would be absolutely bewildering 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 13 
 
 and disconcerting were it not that we are so con- 
 structed as to be able to shdUhe_majority_of them, 
 refuse them our attention, while we pick out the 
 ones that are more directly related to our needs and 
 interests. A living creature is not a mere mass of clay 
 to take dents passively and indiscriminately wherever 
 it comes in contact with some external prod. It 
 is fundamentally active and selective, continually in 
 a state of tension, highly sensitive in certain special 
 directions and ready to respond the moment the right 
 stimulus makes its appearance, while ignoring what- 
 ever is irrelevant. 
 
 Now, if this is true even in connection with the 
 mere coming and going of sensations in our ex- 
 perience, it is perhaps clearer still as an account of 
 the way in which we learn to recognize the laws of 
 connection. The basis of our whole intellectual con- 
 struction of an organized world would thus~Fe> found 
 in the existence of tendencies and needs summed 
 up in the bodily structure, and the selection of such 
 material of knowledge as is suitable for satisfying 
 these needs. Even admitting that the order of events 
 is much more obvious than it really is, it is impos- 
 sible to get away from the psychological need of 
 some occasion for noticing facts of order in particu- 
 lar. A consciousness spread over the whole universe 
 would be a consciousness of nothing. If, now, we 
 consider the human organism as affected, for example, 
 by hunger, such an occasion is at hand. Cer- 
 tain connected sensations color, movement, noise, 
 
14 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 taste, and the like will flash out from the dim uni- 
 formity of the surrounding void, brought into a 
 passing partnership, and raised to the level of con- 
 sciousness, by their common relation to the absorbing 
 act of getting food. Nor does this recognition stop 
 with itself. The essence of order in the world is not 
 merely the discovery of a particular and present 
 sequence, but the taking of this asji_sec[uence that is 
 going to be repeated in the future and become a gen- 
 eral rule on which calculations can be based. Now, 
 when hunger has once been satisfied under the con- 
 ditions of an observed sequence, there is naturally 
 going to be a certain predilection for this sequence 
 when one is hungry a second time. Implicitly 
 he will assume that the same things are going to 
 happen again that happened before, for the very 
 good reason that he has a direct practical interest in 
 wanting them to happen. It may be that he will 
 be disappointed, and then after a few trials it is likely 
 that he will forget his earlier experience. But it is in 
 I the nature of things that whatever has once issued 
 successfully in the satisfaction of some need of life 
 will, more or less dimly perhaps, be anticipated and 
 looked for whenever the same need later demands 
 expression. 
 
 The world of our experience therefore becomes 
 organized fundamentally after the pattern marked 
 out by the needs of human nature which require 
 satisfaction. Its order is originally an assumption 
 made by us because it is practically worth our while 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 15 
 
 to make it. If we did not take for granted that things \\ 
 happen in certain regular ways long before we can \ 
 justify our belief on anything like approved logical 
 principles, we should never come to the recognition 
 of regularity at all. We should expiate our caution ' 
 by a speedy extermination in favor of other beings 
 of a less admirable and unbending logic. And there 
 seems no reason to hunt for any essentially different 
 explanation of the more generalized and intellectual 
 aspects of the belief in law and organization. Such 
 a belief evidently goes far beyond the bare facts of 
 experience. To demonstrate empirically the univer- r 
 sality of law, or even the universality of some par- ) 
 ticular law like the law of gravitation, is an entire ; 
 impossibility. It is only, once more , through assuming ' 
 this at the start, and then setting to work laboriously 
 to substantiate it by hunting out hidden connections 
 and explaining away apparent exceptions, that we 
 are enabled to make headway at all against the com- 
 plicated and inveterate disorder of the world as at 
 first it shows itself. And if we ask why the assump- 
 tion is made, again there seems no better reason to 
 give than that we are so constituted that we need 
 to make it. We could notjive m_a world in_which 
 we found no regularities of connection, and so the 
 will to live spurs us on to postulate the order we 
 recjuire on the chance of finding it actual, since only 
 by making active search for it could in any case the 
 chance come true. 
 Now, of course this assumption that the future will 
 
1 6 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 more or less resemble the past would be quite useless 
 were it not that it is in some degree borne out by 
 the facts. And accordingly we need to combine 
 with this tendency of ours the other point that has 
 been already noted, in order to get an account that 
 will be true to experience. The_ disco very of order 
 necessitates an active process of anticipation and 
 selection on our part. But this does come home 
 to us naturally as a process of discovery, and not of 
 outright creation. The other aspect of experience 
 also remains valid, according to which what actually 
 happens appears in the last resort to be inevitable 
 and out from under our control. Anticipation and 
 selection on our part are always subject to the final 
 test of fact, and for this we have to wait in a humble 
 and receptive spirit. We may in part choose the 
 conditions under which experience shall arise ; other- 
 wise there would be no value to anticipation. But 
 those conditions given, one sensation follows another 
 with the character of fate ; it pays not the slightest 
 heed to what we may happen to wish. The recog- 
 nition of order, then, rests upon free initiative and 
 selective will, but the quality of inevitableness still 
 remains in the result. The anticipation is declared 
 to be sound or unsound by the outcome, and this it 
 is not for us to decide ourselves. Do the best we 
 can, there comes a point when the issues are taken out 
 of our own hands. We have simply to trust ourselves 
 
 I to the stream of experience, which carries us whither 
 
 I it will. 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 17 
 
 So far there has nothing been directly involved in 
 the analysis of knowledge and its content which 
 could not be put for each one of us in terms of our 
 sense experiences and the connections which hold 
 between them. Coming home to us as these do in 
 an immediacy of feeling, they seem to lie beyond the 
 reach of a scepticism which is deserving of much 
 attention on the part of sane and reasonable beings. 
 And if we were content to keep knowledge within 
 these limits, we should have blocked out a certain 
 particular philosophy which would be not incapable 
 of a reasoned justification, and which would have 
 at least this advantage, that it would do away at one 
 blow with a multitude of puzzling questions with 
 which in the past philosophy has conceived itself 
 bound to grapple. 
 
 But this does not completely represent what we 
 believe naturally and spontaneously about the real 
 world. Quite apart from our sensuously based 
 experience and the sequences and harmonies which 
 obtain there, most men will unhesitatingly grant 
 that there is a great field of objects which we have 
 reason to believe exist, and about some of which we 
 possess a fund of more or less adequate information, 
 but which nevertheless have a being of their own 
 that is affected but little by our knowledge of them, 
 and which will still continue after our brief lives 
 some of them in all likelihood after all human lives 
 have come to an end. 
 
 Such a belief is, then, natural and practically uni- 
 
1 8 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 versal, but it may be granted that it goes a step 
 beyond anything that it has yet appeared necessary 
 to entertain. Hitherto everything has been capable 
 of being put in terms of immediate and person- 
 ally verifiable experience. But such objects as we 
 are now called upon to accept stand on a different 
 footing. By hypothesis they do not form a part of 
 our immediate experience as such, in the sense of 
 being bodily identified with it. In order to get to 
 them we have to take apparently a leap in the dark. 
 How are we able to do this? Why should we not 
 be content to stay within the narrow circle of light 
 where we come directly into contact with the real? 
 Or if we do try to get outside this immediacy, how 
 are we ever possibly to find our way ? How can we tell 
 when we hit our object and when we miss it ? how de- 
 termine what of our supposed knowledge is adequate 
 and what mistaken, since the reality stands out-there 
 in its isolation and never comes within experience to 
 be tested? 
 
 In connection with the difficulty in answering such 
 questions as these there has come into vogue a phil- 
 osophical attitude, more especially in recent times, 
 which will need to receive here some attention. 
 It certainly would be the easiest answer to these 
 problems if we were able simply to deny their rele- 
 vancy. And we could do this if we refused to admit 
 that conception out of which they all grow the 
 conception of an object outside of experience and 
 merely represented in our knowledge indirectly. 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 19 
 
 Why, so, roughly, the argument runs, should we think 
 it necessary to go outside the actually experienced 
 facts? Indeed, what possible meaning even could 
 reality have for us except as it is experienced reality? 
 And could it concern us, either, in any vital way ? 
 Take these supposed external things. Are we in- 
 terested in trees and houses, chairs and tables, as 
 mysterious metaphysical entities self-enclosed in 
 their own skins, or are we interested 'in the concrete 
 personal experiences in which, as facts of immediate 
 sensuous feeling, or in terms of thoughts or instru- 
 ments of ideal guidance and orientation, these objects 
 enter directly into our lives and stand to us for divers 
 satisfactions and realizations of desire ? If this last, 
 then why trouble ourselves to look farther and, it 
 would seem altogether likely, to fare worse ? These 
 concrete experiences are here undeniably, and noth- 
 ing can take away from their reality. Why should 
 we double their existence to no valuable end ? Why 
 not hold, as indeed science the science alike of 
 things and of the mind tends to suggest, that it 
 is human experience which creates, not reveals 
 simply, the world in which we live? Just as the 
 seemingly so substantial fabric of social customs and 
 institutions is in truth no original and independent 
 fact, but the gradual construct of human reactions, 
 built up bit by bit through accretions of experience, 
 so we may equally well interpret even the world of 
 nature. Did really the sun shine before there were 
 eyes to see it ? But for science light is a fact of ex- 
 
2O RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 perience, not possible till certain special organic con- 
 ditions were attained. The actual sun, in all our com- 
 mon acceptation of the word, in all that it means to 
 us for practical purposes, does actually change with 
 the new ways in which it appears to human eyes and 
 to the human mind. And so of the whole mass of 
 qualities, sensuous and intellectual, which enter into 
 the making up of what we call things. To be sure, 
 science may still wish to leave untouched a hypotheti- 
 cal world of atoms and ether, say which it 
 continues to put prior to all experience whatsoever 
 as furnishing its ground and possibility. But why 
 after all should we make an exception here? 
 Why not reduce this also to, not an actually existing 
 system of atomic bodies with all the enormous difficul- 
 ties involved in such a conception, but there has 
 been no better phrase suggested to a mere "per- 
 manent possibility of sensations"? For the really 
 ; important thing about the scientific world is that it 
 is a system of law. But law is simply the expression 
 of a sequence that is not beyond experience, but 
 within it. We get laws by noting the lines which 
 experience actually follows; and if it does not or 
 cannot be made to follow these lines, then the law 
 is stripped of all validity. Law is a fact in the world 
 of experience; why not keep it to this world? It 
 would represent, then, not an account of what is hap- 
 pening or has happened outside all human experi- 
 ence, but an insight into the hidden trend and ten- 
 dencies of conscious growth, whose validity lies in 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 21 
 
 the fact that, extricated from its immersion in the 
 immediate and the present, it enables us to predict 
 what is later going to arise in the way of further con- 
 scious content. From first to last its meaning is 
 confined to experienced and sensuous facts. All 
 this does not make truth any the less true, though it 
 changes the meaning of truth. For truth is no longer \ 
 the correspondence of our ideas to some objective 
 fact. The true idea is simply the one which is sue- I 
 cessful in leading to that sort of experience which j 
 j is characterized by the feeling of satisf actoriness. To i 
 issue into some more complete and harmonious' 
 sense of attained desire is not only the test of truth, 
 but the very meaning and content of the idea. 
 
 This is a very brief and sketchy statement, but it 
 will perhaps serve to indicate a line of thought which 
 is rather common at the present day. It seems to 
 be involved in the important and widespread ten- 
 dency in philosophy which has taken the name of 
 Pragnatism. The chief point once more with 
 which I am at present concerned is this: that what 
 we call an object of knowledge represents no dis- 
 tinct and independent reality, but is to be identified 
 rather with the act of knowing itself; that "things" 
 have_ their entire^ bejng^ in J:he developing human 
 experience. To meet this philosophy in detail 
 would require a much more involved argument 
 than would be in place here. I shall only take ac- 
 count of the simpler and broader aspects of the 
 situation. And I shall adopt the contrary position, 
 
22 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 which is also the position of our common-sense belief, 
 that there are a good many things beyond our ex- 
 perience which we can only know mediately, and that 
 between them and our knowledge of them there is a 
 gulf fixed which can never be bridged completely in 
 terms of immediate experiencing. 
 
 And I am ready to admit that there is no compelling 
 force of logic which drives us, whether we will or no, 
 to take the leap to such an independent object of 
 knowledge. If one is satisfied with a universe which 
 does not overstep the narrow bounds of direct ex- 
 perience, he will quite naturally have no reason for 
 adding further and, as it is bound to seem to him, 
 unnecessary postulates. First, then, it needs to be 
 asked whether the position really does satisfy all our 
 normal human demands. 
 
 And to begin with there is one fact, and a fact of 
 great significance, which will probably be accepted 
 by nearly every one without argument, and which 
 offers therefore a convenient starting-point. None 
 qfjas has any practical doubt^that othgr people^ exist. 
 It would be possible for a philosophy to insist with 
 much acumen upon the difficulty or the impossibility 
 of proving such a belief. But no such arguments 
 can practically affect our confidence. The chal- 
 lenge of the philosopher, if it cannot be met, is lightly 
 disregarded. Instead of proving fatal to the belief, 
 it strikes back instead upon the philosophical theory 
 which presses it; such a theory we say is lacking 
 in common sense, and if it is right in asserting that 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 23 
 
 we cannot show the reasonableness of the belief, 
 then the only attitude for us to take is to try a little 
 harder to discover its reasonableness, and not to 
 settle back upon a point of view which excludes it. 
 
 Now, the belief in other people's existence, what- 
 ever its source and whatever its justification, is at 
 least a belief in a reality beyond our immediate experi- 
 
 ^ ' V - - J J ^- r- . - - - r 
 
 ence. It is directed, that is, to an object which we 
 accept, which is referred to, postulated, known, in our 
 experience, and which yet never is and apparently f 
 never can be a part of the same experience that knows } 
 it. In relation to certain experiences of knowledge, 
 those which I call mine and concretely every act 
 of knowledge that we have any reason to believe in is 
 a part of the life of some "me " it is a reality exist- 
 ing separate and beyond. I say I have a knowledge 
 of certain thoughts or motives or emotions in my 
 neighbor's mind. I do not mean that I have ever 
 experienced these immediately. Confessedly that 
 is something I cannot do. I have had experiences of 
 my own that help me to realize what they must be 
 in themselves, but in themselves they are beyond the 
 reach of my direct testing. Nevertheless I accept 
 without hesitation their reality. They are actually 
 existing facts. Perhaps at the very moment when I 
 am thinking of them they have a being for this other 
 self; but between them and my knowing thought 
 there is a dividing chasm across which knowledge 
 can, it seems, take this leap of ideal transcendence, 
 but which is never actually done away so that the 
 
24 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 two selves or the two experiences connect and flow 
 into one. And no difficulties to be raised about this 
 situation really affect my acceptance of it. It will 
 be urged in vain that there is no possible way of 
 getting out of experience ; that, if an object lies be- 
 yond experience, there is no chance of testing the 
 truth of my belief in it, since a correspondence be- 
 tween two things which never come together to be 
 compared is an act of mere ungrounded faith or 
 credulity. The difficulties may puzzle me, but my 
 belief remains unshaken. And one reason for this, 
 if not the main reason, is that the belief has so 
 intimate and necessary a connection with the most 
 significant side of my life. The meaning of life 
 would largely evaporate did I not feel myself in com- 
 munication with these other selves, who are enjoying 
 lives of their own that are real and positive facts of 
 existence quite outside the representations of them 
 that enter into my experience and knowledge. If, 
 indeed, I were able to look upon persons simply as 
 things, whose whole value lay in the use I could make 
 of them, my reasons for maintaining their separate 
 existence might perhaps be sensibly weakened. If I 
 were to take ground entirely practical in the narrow 
 sense of the term, it probably would as a matter of fact 
 make very little difference to me whether what I call 
 "things" really had a separate reality or not. Re- 
 duce them to sequences within my experience, and 
 if these sequences actually remained the same, I 
 should on this count have suffered no essential loss. 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 25 
 
 If a perception to which I give the name "chair" v 
 invariably were followed by a sense of support which 
 I could count upon when I started to sit down, and 
 if this could happen without there being anything in 
 existence except the succession of sensations, visual, 
 muscular, and the like, then there would be no 
 practical gain for me in believing that the experience 
 was somehow duplicated in an externally existing 
 world. If the perception of a tree was accompanied 
 with sufficient regularity by certain visual sensations 
 that I identify with fruit, and these always had the 
 possibility, on the intervention of the appropriate 
 movements, of being succeeded by peculiar sensa- 
 tions of contact, and these by taste, and these again 
 by a gratified sense of bodily welfare and vigor, then 
 once more there would be no strong practical advan- 
 tage in having another series real tree and real fruit 
 running alongside the first. And if we consider 
 science as ultimately justified by the order into which 
 it gets our experience, and the gain which comes from 
 knowing what may be expected to follow after what, 
 then science in discovering the laws which govern 
 the sequences oL^sense experience would to that 
 extent readily get along without an independent 
 world. 
 
 But now the pragmatist may be criticised, in so 
 far as he denies the transcendence of experience, 
 because of just this point : that he rests too exclu- 
 sively upon the scientific motive, as if it exhausted 
 all the demands of life. It would, indeed, be quite 
 
26 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 possible to take towards men the same attitude that 
 we take towards things. If it were only important 
 to calculate their behavior in terms of its effects upon 
 our own action, and for the use that we could make 
 of them in furthering our ends, we might conceivably 
 put all that had to do with them in the form of laws 
 of sequence which should ignore as without interest 
 the inner personal facts of direct experiencing. This 
 is indeed the attitude which a great manipulator of 
 human lives is apt to adopt, and he can thus calculate 
 the lines of probable conduct, and attain to great 
 practical efficiency in dealing with men, without hav- 
 ing the smallest concern for the men whom he uses 
 as self-conscious and independent beings. But for 
 most people this attitude as a final one condemns 
 | itself. To regard human beings as means and not 
 I as ends is the most fundamental and most fatal per- 
 ! version of the moral life. It leaves out of account 
 those facts of love and fellowship which make for 
 the integrity of personality as such, and on which 
 everything of really social significance is based. 
 And for this there is needed a recognition of the real 
 existence of selves outside anything that is imme- 
 diate experience for me. For fellowship in its very 
 nature requires the give and take of two independent 
 beings, each of whom recognizes the other, without 
 however any merging of identity. 
 
 The first and most obvious objection that may be 
 
 brought against the pragmatist's position is then the 
 
 / existence of other selves demanded by the social 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 27 
 
 aspect of experience. But now in some sense this 
 undoubtedly will be allowed. Certainly every phi- 
 losopher is anxious to escape the taint of solipsism. 
 And the thing of which usually the pragmatist seems 
 most desirous of getting rid is the independent real- 
 ity of the physical world, and not of other selves. 
 Accordingly the statement of the theory will probably 
 be modified somewhat as follows : Reality is expe- 
 rience ; but in saying this, it is human experience in 
 the large which is meant, and not that of any private 
 individual. In the development of human knowledge, 
 then, what we call the material world is gradually 
 built up. It has no separate existence, though it 
 represents what is possessed in some measure by 
 all men alike. For the human mind has been slowly 
 shaped to certain ways of perception and interpre- 
 tation which we, as individuals, inherit from our 
 predecessors. And it is this common mental bias 
 which renders our experience so apparently steady 
 and well-knit, rather than an external something to 
 which it has to conform. 
 
 Accordingly it remains to justify the validity of 
 our belief in some reality corresponding to what we 
 call the external world, as well as our belief in other 
 persons. I shall state, therefore, briefly some of my 
 reasons for acquiescing in the common notion. And 
 first, it should be noticed that already, if we grant the 
 existence of other persons, in the sense which I have 
 claimed is alone consistent with any natural and 
 unbiassed view of things, the whole principle in 
 
28 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 dispute has been admitted. If such persons exist as 
 real and independent centres of experience, then it 
 must be true that knowledge has in some fashion or 
 other the ability to reach out beyond the experience 
 of which it is an immediate part, and to make us 
 cognizant of that which exists alongside of it without 
 ever actually joining on in the form of a continuous 
 stretch of conscious unity. But it is about the possi- 
 bility of just this that the main difficulties were raised. 
 If, therefore, we grant it here in the one case, the chief 
 obstacle in the way of going farther and of accept- 
 ing the existence of still other realities is already 
 removed. 
 
 There is a second way in which the existence of 
 a world of things would seem to be already presup- 
 posed in the existence of other persons. Speaking 
 generally, the conceptions which we form of other 
 conscious beings get their start in the strong natural 
 tendency which we all have to interpret things in 
 terms of our own thoughts and feelings and motives. 
 This tendency indeed goes naturally far beyond 
 what our more enlightened judgment comes to regard 
 as the truth. Primitive man lets his own desires 
 and emotions suffuse the entire world of external 
 objects. The tree, the stream, the whispering breeze, 
 are each alive and conscious much as he is conscious. 
 The very stocks and stones he endows with a life 
 patterned after what he knows of his own inner 
 workings. Later on, mere inanimate things tend to 
 lose the most of their anthropomorphic vestiture. 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 29 
 
 But it still seems natural to most people to think of 
 the minds of animals as essentially human in charac- 
 ter, and to attribute to our dogs and horses, and even 
 to ants and birds and reptiles, much the same pro- 
 cesses as those of which we are conscious in ourselves. 
 Here indeed modern science does not lead us to reject 
 the belief in so outright a fashion as where it con- 
 cerned the inorganic world. We may still continue 
 to suppose that something more or less vaguely 
 analogous to the conscious life which we know in 
 men exists also in the brute creation. But psy- 
 chology goes more and more to render it probable 
 that when we try to realize in detail just what under 
 given circumstances is going on in an animal's mind, 
 we have small reason to believe that our imaginings 
 are able with any approach to accuracy to repro- 
 duce the actual facts. Even the life of the higher 
 animals is probably far removed from our normal 
 waking consciousness, while of what goes on in the 
 lower forms of life it is almost useless for us to 
 attempt to form any conception. 
 
 There is left therefore only the inner lives of other 
 men to which our knowledge can be supposed with 
 any measure of adequateness to reach. And here 
 the basis of the possibility of valid knowledgejwould 
 apjmrenfl^be tHe close similarity that exists_be_tween 
 other human organisms" and the actiqns_jthrough 
 which they express themselves, and our own. Re- 
 cent psychology has pointed out that our knowledge 
 of the content of other minds is largely connected 
 
30 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 in its origin with the process of imitation. The re- 
 sult which I get when I perform a given act I then 
 assume is present also in the same act as performed 
 by some one else, and proceeding on this assumption, 
 experience has sufficiently justified my belief when 
 the similarity of the acts is close enough. As simi- 
 ) larity of structure decreases, so the certainty de- 
 i creases that the attendant consciousness is the same, 
 until at a certain remove we have to confess our 
 1 practical ignorance. But of the existence of states 
 of consciousness similar to our own in other men, 
 and of states of consciousness more or less analogous 
 in the higher animals at least, we hold ourselves 
 assured. 
 
 And now the point is this: the whole possibility 
 of the inference depends upon the prior assumption 
 of the existence of real bodies mine and my 
 neighbor's. Without the acceptance of so much 
 as this, at least, of an independently existing world, 
 the further assumption of other conscious states would 
 have no basis and no mediation. A view which 
 treated human bodies as simply elements within 
 immediate experience could have no possible reason 
 for making the leap outside experience to an inde- 
 pendent conscious life. If the body were simply 
 a part of psychological experience, why should we 
 select it out and make it the basis, in the form of 
 nervous changes, of that whole experience of which 
 it is an insignificant fraction, much less set up a 
 second experience in connection with another similar 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 31 
 
 part the .body of another man ? If I am to know 
 my neighbor's mind, then, it can only be through 
 recognizing that in connection with his body I come 
 into contact with a real object not identical with 
 my knowledge of it, and so thejreality^f other selves I 
 stands orjfalls with that_qf an^xternal universe. 
 
 The belief in other selves we refuse to give up, as 
 I have said, primarily because it would take away 
 too much from the worth of our experience. So far i 
 I have let the assumption pass that there is no similar 
 value attaching to the independent existence of the 
 outer world, no live significance which the belief has. 
 But now, further, the claim may be made that this is 
 not true, and that in denying a transcendent object 
 we lose something of importance out of life which 
 would really curtail its meaning. It is quite possible | 
 indeed that one should live within the narrow con- } 
 fines of experience and be content with his lot, with 
 no wish whatever to raise his eyes and gaze beyond. 
 But most certainly to another type of mind, which J 
 equally deserves consideration, the attempt would 
 prove intolerable. The straitened boundaries of the 
 universe would stifle him. To rule out the bracing 
 and self-expanding sense of a vast beyond, the mys- 
 tery of a great universe of being, the awe that comes 
 in the presence of unfathomable reaches of existence 
 and infinite possibilities of value and meaning, 
 would be a loss from life for which all the advantages 
 of a comfortable home-made world built close about 
 our daily needs, with nothing superfluous and nothing 
 
32 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 that we could not comprehend in practical terms, 
 would ill compensate. In religion, more especially, 
 we find that such a feeling gets widespread and un- 
 doubted expression. A large element of religion is 
 bound up with the world of nature, and this world 
 conceived as vastly transcending human experience. 
 It is the heavens that have always to the religious 
 mind declared the glory of God, and the firmament 
 which shows his handiwork. Certainly, to deprive 
 the idea of God himself of its objectivity and tran- 
 scendence would seem to the ordinary religious con- 
 sciousness a mockery. And whether one feels person- 
 ally the demand or not, he must at least recognize its 
 historical existence and importance. 
 
 But now it may be said that this argument is based 
 upon the validity of our emotional demands, and 
 is accordingly irrelevant. Presently I shall try to 
 justify such an appeal to feeling more systematically. 
 Meanwhile, it is enough to point out that these con- 
 siderations do actually influence our attitude. And 
 I have simply been attempting to throw doubt upon 
 the assumption which many recent writers have 
 brought to the question, that the acceptance, namely, 
 of an outer reality is purely arbitrary and unmean- 
 ing, and makes no significant appeal to us. If on 
 the other hand, as I have tried to indicate, it is a 
 live and emotion-stirring belief, this may not prove 
 its truth, but it will at least keep us from an off-hand 
 dismissal of it as not calling for much consideration. 
 But, now, there is a further reason for accepting the 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 33 
 
 belief which is not open to this objection. For it is 
 also, perhaps first of all, as a postulate of causal 
 explanation that the belief may be justified. This 
 too may perhaps need further explanation at a later 
 point. Mean while 'I shall simply refer again to one 
 of the obvious characteristics of experience which 
 was mentioned at the start. There is in our experi- / 
 ence, namely, a very large element of the arbitrary, \ 
 the unexpected and incalculable even, the persistent \ 
 and unescapable. And after we come to know the 
 inner psychological laws and ends of experience it- 
 self, we find ourselves totally incapable of reducing 
 this to such inner laws in any complete degree. Sen- 
 sations and perceptions cannot be fully explained in 
 terms of psychological function. There are some 
 things which break in upon experience to its total 
 ruin and disorganization. There are many others 
 which seem equally to thrust themselves in without 
 any preparation in terms of what precedes in the 
 organic life. Some of these may be utilized for ex- 
 perience, some cannot. But in each case alike their 
 appearance has no complete psychological explana- 
 tion. We could not possibly predict by taking account 
 merely of the laws of psychology at what point a new 
 sound or sight might break in upon us. So, again, 
 of that other class of cases where new perceptions 
 do seem to have some psychological preparation by 
 reason of the fact that we are anticipating them or 
 actively searching for them beforehand. The ex- 
 planation in terms of experience may be real, but 
 
34 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 it is still not complete. The object we are looking 
 for will turn up only under conditions which our 
 experience did not fully determine, or, again, it may 
 fail to turn up at all, or in a quite unexpected manner. 
 Now, for such elements hi experience, recalcitrant 
 to the inner teleological laws of experience itself, 
 we demand as rational beings some cause, and the 
 conception of a world of independent reality respon- 
 sible for the influence of constraint and limitation 
 which we recognize in experience is the natural and 
 almost the necessary direction in which we look 
 for this, constituted mentally as we are. If here 
 something arises for which there is no accounting in 
 terms that keep strictly to immediate experience, our 
 ) normal tendency to look for causes will lead us to 
 i postulate an unexperienced and therefore a trans- 
 \ cendcnt cause. Of course it is possible to refrain 
 from doing this. We may take the percept as a 
 given fact, an ultimate, about whose appearance 
 we refuse to ask further questions. But to refuse 
 to ask questions is not to explain. And unless it can 
 be shown that there is nothing that needs explanation, 
 that the apparent determination from the outside 
 under which experience rests is no legitimate ground 
 for curiosity, then it must be claimed that a belief 
 in some extra-experiential reality is a persistent 
 demand of our rational nature. It is a postulate 
 of the causal law. 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 IF it is true, therefore, as I shall hereafter assume, 
 that what I call experience implies an unexplored 
 and vast beyond, having laws and activities for which 
 the narrow section of reality that enters bodily into 
 the range of my conscious life, and of human life 
 as a whole, is totally incompetent to account, and 
 which on the. contrary it seems to be necessary to call 
 upon if I am to get even a tolerable explanation of 
 many of the facts which do enter into experience for 
 me, then the justification of our knowledge would 
 seem to have another and a difficult step to take. 
 If experience the sort of experience that issues 
 in my act and my belief were all that reality 
 meant to me, certain questions which philosophers 
 are accustomed to put would at once be emptied of 
 all their significance. There would be no reality 
 beyond our experience to which our knowledge 
 could correspond, and so the query whether or not 
 the correspondence is a real and exact one would 
 lose its point. In such a case the truth of any belief 
 would consist solely and exclusively in the success, 
 the satisf actoriness, of the human experience to which 
 it leads. I pass the judgment : These mushrooms 
 are edible. The whole meaning of the situation, so 
 
 35 
 
36 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 the pragmatist would say, lies in the fact that I wish 
 to eat, or to sell, or to make some other definite use of 
 them, and that the judgment is a necessary preliminary 
 to such an act of mine. It therefore is true in so far 
 as it has a successful continuance in this act for 
 which it serves as preparation, so far as it works out 
 to an issue that satisfies my anticipation. Such an 
 experience of active satisfaction is the entire meaning 
 that attaches to the idea of the truth of the judg- 
 ment. Or, I assert that there is a God. The state- 
 ment has meaning and is true if it issues in and 
 interprets itself as a religious experience harmonizing 
 my life and satisfying my aspirations; there is no 
 question of an actual being anywhere existing inde- 
 pendently of the spiritual consciousness of mankind. 
 But, now, if there be a real universe of things that lies 
 beyond the facts of immediate experiencing for me, 
 then I cannot well avoid some reference to the ques- 
 tion whether or not the nature of these realities is 
 capable of being discovered. What is the world like 
 in itself? Is my knowledge, which as knowledge is 
 a mere part of my experience, but which seems to 
 point beyond itself in the act of knowing, really com- 
 petent to tell me anything adequate to the facts 
 toward which it points ? 
 
 Can we know reality as it is ? Is the mind of man, 
 with its obvious limitations and imperfections, ca- 
 pable of getting down to the heart of things, or is it 
 not presumption in us to look for success in so vast 
 an undertaking? The question has been asked and 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 37 
 
 argued pretty much since the dawn of philosophy, 
 and it has very frequently been answered in the 
 negative. And such a negative answer in some more 
 or less absolute form is still very often to be met with 
 at the present day among those who are professed 
 philosophers. I shall not enter here upon any ex- 
 tended criticism of it in the abstract. The only way 
 to establish a more positive creed is to show that there 
 is such a creed which a reasonable human being 
 can accept. But a few preliminary statements will 
 perhaps help to clear the ground. 
 
 And one may at the start dismiss without a great 
 deal of ceremony one special form which the attitude 
 sometimes takes. Philosophers have occasionally 
 undertaken to show that it is possible to demonstrate 
 in a perfectly straightforward and decisive way our 
 necessary ignorance of reality in its own true nature. 
 There are, according to this view, two sorts of facts 
 -phenomenal or apparent facts, and absolute or 
 real facts. It is to the first of these that our knowl- 
 edge is confined. They are purely subjective and 
 wholly unlike the reality which lies back of them. 
 By the nature of our mental constitution we are 
 incapable of getting outside this unreal world. We 
 are dwellers in the cave, having commerce only 
 with shadows, and our eyes are forever held from 
 beholding the light of the outside sun. There is a 
 true, an absolute reality. But we are compelled to 
 recognize that this reality is quite unthinkable. For 
 our human knowledge we are left with an absolute 
 D 
 
38 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 which is, as Andrew Lang puts it, a "sort of a some- 
 thing," but which refuses any more definite charac- 
 terization. There is a flaw in the structure of our 
 minds which sets it forever out of our reach. 
 
 It is Herbert Spencer who has been chiefly respon- 
 sible in recent times for the currency of this particu- 
 lar form of the doctrine of the " relativity of knowl- 
 edge," and apart from his authority it is not likely 
 that it would any longer be regarded as needing 
 much refutation. It certainly has no advantage 
 over rival philosophies on the score of simplicity or 
 absence of speculative daring. It is only in appear- 
 ance that it seems to renounce metaphysical ambi- 
 tions. In reality it is itself a particular sort of 
 metaphysics which has to be defended by arguments 
 quite as subtle as those that any metaphysics uses. 
 It is a perfectly positive theory of reality, whose 
 main outcome is the special bit of knowledge that 
 we cannot know anything. And this contradiction 
 suggests the obvious weakness of the whole position. 
 The point of the objection is not difficult to see. It 
 calls upon the agnostic if we may use this rather 
 indefinite term to stand for the doctrine to take 
 one of two paths. If in very truth we know nothing 
 of absolute reality, then let us live up to our privi- 
 leges. Let us cease talking of a distinction between 
 absolute and relative knowledge; the very distinc- 
 tion is nonsense. If we are indeed shut up within 
 the cave, then perhaps some being with power to 
 observe both us and outer things might discover 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 39 
 
 our knowledge to be unreal. But we never could 
 make the discovery ourselves. If we do not know 
 the sun outside, it is absurd to talk as if we could com- 
 pare the shadows with the world beyond and detect 
 their inadequacy. Some positive knowledge is necesf 
 sary in order to give us ground for saying what a thing 
 is not. The very possibility of a theory or philoso- 
 phy of agnosticism is enough to show that agnosti- 
 cism is not completely true as a fact. We may be 
 ignorant ; but we cannot know our ignorance with- 
 out at the same time being aware of the existence 
 of that which the theory declares we cannot know 
 at all. We cannot say that we are ignorant of the 
 nature of a thing unless we know that at least the 
 thing exists. We are ignorant of the precise tem- 
 perature at the North Pole, but not of the present 
 weather conditions of Utopia. Unless somehow we\ 
 think it, a reality is absolutely non-existent for us. \ 
 And just to the extent we do think it, it becomes a 
 part of our knowledge, and therefore shares in all 
 the defects that may attach to knowledge. There is 
 a vast difference between not knowing that a thing 
 is, and knowing that a thing is not. And more than 
 a knowledge too of mere existence is needed if I am 
 to be able to say that reality is not like its appear- 
 ance. I must know something of its positive nature 
 and conditions. I cannot say that the temperature 
 at the North Pole, once more, is not a hundred degrees 
 in the shade, unless I have a definite fund of positive 
 and concrete information about it. 
 
40 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 Or, if we take the other horn of the dilemma and 
 admit that we know there is such a thing as absolute 
 reality which is unlike the phenomena of our expe- 
 rience, we at any rate are no longer complete agnos- 
 tics. Knowledge of existence, once more, is at least 
 some knowledge. Knowledge that this existing 
 fact is unlike certain other and merely phenomenal 
 facts is a little additional knowledge. And it is al- 
 most self-evident that some even though a very 
 little knowledge is not just the same thing as 
 no knowledge at all. Of course it is conceivable 
 that we should have just this little knowledge and 
 none beside. But for the present I am speaking 
 simply of the outright and a priori rejection of all 
 knowledge on the ground that there is an established 
 and entire incompatibility again note the con- 
 tradiction in terms between the character of real 
 existence and the texture of the human mind; and 
 such a theory has nothing to do with the question of 
 large or small. For the thoroughgoing and dog- 
 matic agnostic, even a little knowledge is a danger- 
 ous thing. His argument is directed against the 
 possibility of any knowledge whatever, and if it 
 breaks down in one point it breaks down in all. 
 
 I shall have occasion to consider again certain 
 features of the agnostic view of the world at a later 
 point; meanwhile I shall consider this general an- 
 swer sufficient for my immediate purpose and shall 
 turn to another more or less related way of reaching 
 the same outcome by a different road. After all, 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 4! 
 
 the dogmatic agnostic is met with rather infrequently, 
 whereas what we may call unsystematic scepticism is 
 one of the commonest of attitudes toward philosophy. 
 By scepticism in this last sense I mean simply that 
 tendency to a general distrust of philosophical rea- 
 sonings and the possibility of philosophical results, 
 based on no attempt at a demonstration of this im- 
 possibility, but merely on the general confusion that 
 reigns in the field of philosophy, the notorious difficul- 
 ties in the way of a satisfactory issue, and the absence 
 of such a basis of accepted doctrine as in other 
 spheres we look to to give steadiness and ballast to 
 our beliefs. After all the ages of laborious thought, 
 what have we but a wilderness of conflicting asser- 
 tions and ungrounded guesses? Who indeed can 
 feel any strong hope that man with his poor faculties, 
 that grope and stumble over the simplest problems, 
 can ever probe the profounder mysteries of the uni- 
 verse ? What do we know of the strange alchemy 
 and secret processes in the laboratory where the 
 world was fashioned, through which there rose this 
 which we call mind, with its thoughts and ideas of the 
 true and false? What reason should we have for 
 thinking that this late and evanescent product is 
 the measure of the deep from which it sprang? Are 
 there not problems all about us which 0n the face of 
 them are hopeless ? Space, the invisible net in whose 
 meshes all existing things are caught and without 
 which they would vanish in one another, and which 
 yet itself is nothing ; change, the subtle artificer of 
 
42 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 life, through whose magic things are made to live 
 by dying, which brings stability out of an eternal 
 flux, and is, only by ever coming to be ; force, a 
 mathematical formula which moves worlds and 
 explodes suns, and drives the wheels of the universe, 
 surely before such mysteries the mind must rec- 
 ognize its helplessness. If we are wise we will give 
 up the task, and turn to other and more profitable 
 matters. 
 
 It is of course not easy to meet by argument a 
 temper of mind which has decided beforehand that 
 argument is out of place. But a few things may 
 reasonably be said by way of bringing into view more 
 clearly the nature and limitations of such an attitude. 
 And it may be insisted, in the first place, that it is 
 bound to show a large measure of arbitrariness. 
 There are, no one will deny, a sufficient number of 
 difficulties in the way of reaching a satisfactory phi- 
 losophy of the universe. But then it is also no simple 
 matter to get a satisfactory political theory, or eco- 
 nomic law, or comprehensive chemical formula. 
 Indeed, difficulties can easily be raised about the 
 very simplest truths, which the wisest of men will find 
 it hard to meet conclusively. If, therefore, we are 
 merely basing our attitude on the existence of diffi- 
 culties, of fluctuations and uncertainties in belief, to 
 be a thoroughly consistent sceptic, a man would find 
 himself committed to the position that he has no right 
 to accept anything at all as true. But as a matter 
 of fact, in any reasonable being this could only be 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 43 
 
 the veriest pretence. We are, as Montaigne says, 
 natural believers. A man can no more help believ- 
 ing something if he is a thinking animal, than he can 
 help breathing and still remain alive. If, accordingly, 
 we once admit the right to believe, then unless we 
 have some special reasons for ruling out directly 
 certain classes of beliefs other than the characteristics 
 which in some measure all our knowledge shares, 
 we clearly have no business to stop arbitrarily at a 
 particular point and say that beyond this belief can- 
 not go. All I am justified in saying is that I cannot 
 at present come to any conclusion about the matter, 
 not that some one else may not have valid reasons for 
 belief, or that I myself may not in the future see my 
 way clearer. The fact that I am not as yet convinced 
 furnishes no decisive ground whatever for the con- 
 clusion that the truth cannot be known. It may 
 indeed induce me to give up the search as hopeless. 
 But this is just the theoretical weakness of scepticism. 
 Scepticism, in other words, stands primarily as a dis- 
 inclination to prosecute the search farther. It is a 
 personal confession that in the face of a certain prob- ( 
 lem or group of problems I feel myself baffled and 
 ready to quit. And it is significant that commonly 
 it is the attitude of the amateur, of the one who 
 approaches a problem with only a subsidiary in- 
 terest in it and who has not the time or the will to 
 push through to the end. No man is a sceptic 
 in every direction. Few men are sceptics in the 
 special field which they have made their own. 
 
44 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 Professor Huxley in our own day furnishes a good 
 illustration of this. Professor Huxley is perhaps the 
 most typical of modern sceptics in ultimate ques- 
 tions of philosophy. He has gone far enough 
 to see the difficulties of the problem, and his in- 
 terest is not sufficient to carry him through. In 
 precisely the same way and for the same reason 
 he professes himself a sceptic in another field also 
 the literary problem of the relationship of the first 
 three Gospels. Here too he is satisfied to stop the 
 inquiry in despair of any final settlement ; the prob- 
 lem, he says, is in all likelihood incapable of being 
 solved. And yet the one who has made a business 
 of it, the expert in this particular field, would be very 
 far from admitting that there is any valid ground for 
 the abandonment of the task. And the significant 
 thing is this, that Professor Huxley was himself the 
 very opposite of a sceptic in other directions. Noth- 
 ing can be finer than his robust faith in the future 
 of science, and in the possibility of an answer to the 
 most intricate questions which science has as yet 
 1 scarcely proposed to herself. Professor Huxley 
 ) would have been the first to decry a despair of science 
 ; as weak and wholly baseless. The difference is 
 i simply a difference of interest. One problem he 
 approaches as an avocation, the other as a business. 
 He is ready to give up the first because he does not 
 care for it sufficiently to carry it to its issue. The 
 other he is determined to solve, and so he finds it 
 solvable. 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 45 
 
 The point is then that scepticism means a personal 
 defeat and loss of interest. There may be nothing ( 
 that can compel the sceptic to believe that a solution 
 is possible. But, on the other hand, his attitude con- 
 tains absolutely no reason why the problem should 
 be given up, or why another man should feel the least 
 hesitation about grappling with it if he wants to do 
 so. It is wholly a matter whether or not the desire 
 for the solution exists. If it does exist, a mere appeal 
 to past failures will only act as a spur to endeavor. 
 And this is just as true of an ultimate philosophical 
 inquiry as it is of any minor problem of knowledge. 
 The line cannot be drawn at any particular point. 
 The sceptic has no more business to universalize i 
 his own attitude than a child would have to demand , 
 that everybody should stop playing because he him- ' 
 self is tired. 
 
 Granting, then, the fact that we do believe, and that 
 all our theorizing must proceed from this assump- 
 tion, we shall be justified in shutting out the sort of 
 knowledge with which we are specially concerned 
 only in case there is something about it which makes 
 it essentially different from other knowledge, and 
 such that the same tests will not apply to it. We need 
 to make it a little clearer perhaps that this is not so ; 
 and to do this it is evidently necessary to examine 
 somewhat more closely the grounds on which we 
 actually distinguish between those beliefs which we 
 regard as valid, and those which we have no real 
 business to retain. Of course we are as a matter of 
 
46 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 fact continually making choice between opposing 
 beliefs, and making it in a way which we feel can give 
 for itself good and sufficient reasons. And without 
 attempting any involved analysis, we can without 
 much difficulty discover what the general character 
 of the test is. We may take the case where two 
 opposite opinions about a given matter are held by 
 different men. Now, in such a case each man must 
 of course be for himself the final judge. But this 
 does not mean practically that a man has no guaran- 
 tee of the superiority of his own belief beyond the 
 mere fact that it is his. It is quite possible that he 
 should see a logical justification for this partiality 
 towards himself, so that his recognition of the other 
 man's equal confidence would have and ought to 
 have no tendency to disturb his own opinion. There 
 are two ways in which beliefs actually are held, 
 apart from the unthinking appeal to mere blind 
 prejudice. Some beliefs we hold as probable, and 
 yet when we come up against a strong difference of 
 opinion, it shakes our confidence a little. We find 
 ourselves hesitating and wavering, and if at last we 
 come to a decision and reassert our belief, we still 
 feel that we have no way of showing decisively either 
 to ourselves or others that our opponent may not 
 possibly be right. It remains to some extent just 
 a conflict of authority, and we decide for our own side 
 simply because we are ourselves, and no man cart 
 in the last resort go back of what seems true to him. 
 But there also are cases in which none of this hesita- 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 47 
 
 tion is felt. The fact that some one disagrees with 
 us does not in the least affect our confidence. In- 
 deed, it may even strengthen our conviction. We feel 
 that our final decision is dictated, not by the fact that 
 it is to us as individuals that the casting vote falls, 
 but by something in the situation giving us a logical 
 precedence which it denies to our adversary, and 
 enabling us to play the part of abstract and impartial 
 reason. 
 
 The practical ground for this distinction is of course 
 more or less obvious. Generally speaking, we have 
 a logical right, as opposed to a psychological disposi- 
 tion, to prefer our own assurance to that of another, 
 only when we are able to recognize the relative truth 
 of all for which our opponent contends, see it from 
 his point of view, and nevertheless can still find that 
 we are able to hold to our own standpoint as more 
 adequate and inclusive, as accounting for all the 
 facts that he recognizes, and for others beside. No 
 one is in a position definitely and finally to reject an 
 opposing opinion until he can put himself sympa- 
 thetically in the place of the one who holds it, and 
 understand why it seems to him true. Just so long 
 as we are simply in the polemical attitude, and find 
 the view that we are opposing wholly irrational and 
 absurd and false, so long as there is anything in it 
 which strikes us as entirely without ground and 
 motive, we may take this as equally a reflection upon 
 ourselves, and suspect that the grounds of our own 
 judgment are still incomplete and in need of partial 
 
48 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 reconstruction. When, however, it is possible for 
 one to say: I also should hold to my opponent's 
 opinion if I were limited to his data ; but these new 
 facts, or new aspects of the old facts, which he has 
 failed to recognize, compel a different answer 
 when one can say this, he feels himself on safe 
 ground. The new facts need not be part of the 
 immediate subject-matter of the problem in hand. 
 They may be obscure presuppositions that exist in 
 the background of our opponent's consciousness and 
 create prejudices which affect his attitude toward 
 concrete matters of opinion. Then we give what we 
 call in a special sense a psychological explanation of 
 his belief, and show how it springs naturally from 
 these limitations of his mental outlook, which make 
 it impossible for him to approach the evidence in a 
 way to see what it actually contains. But in either 
 case the general method is the same. We feel 
 ourselves logically justified in overriding another's 
 opinion, because we think that we have a point of 
 view which includes all that our opponent sees and 
 enables us to admit its relative justification, but 
 which also goes beyond this and presents a more 
 inclusive system of facts. 
 
 t What, therefore, we are trying to attain in that 
 conception of the world, or of any part of the world, 
 which we are to accept as true, is the bringing of all 
 the relevant facts together so that each one in par- 
 ticular, while standing out itself distinctly and suffer- 
 ing no obscuration, shall yet come in no sort of con- 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 49 
 
 flict with other facts, but shall be recognized rather as 
 entering into consistent and harmonious relations 
 with them. We are striving to get a comprehensive 
 picture of things in which each part throws into 
 relief and supplements the rest, a consistent plot in 
 which everything moves toward a single result, and 
 no element has to be ignored or thrust out because 
 it clashes with the fullest possible harmony. Of 
 this comprehensive result certain laws or generaliza- 
 tions must of course be valid. But we must beware 
 of resting too easily content with mere generaliza- 
 tions. A law must always be capable of being trans- 
 lated back into and of summing up the definite con- 
 crete realities of experience. The picture at which 
 we aim must ultimately be composed of these con- 
 crete data, of such a sort that we are able alike to 
 interpret them, as data, in immediate and intelli- 
 gible terms, and also and at the same time connect 
 them in intelligible relationships with other facts. 
 It is equally fatal to have nothing definite to relate, 
 and to be unable to relate that which we have. We 
 may say that the test of a true opinion is its clearness, 
 if we interpret the word not as the mere vividness, 
 intensity, emotional force of the belief, for this is 
 no guarantee of truth, but rather as the clearness of 
 an articulated system in which all distinctions stand 
 in sharp relief. 
 
 Now in this there is no fundamental difference to 
 be made between philosophical theories and those 
 of any other sort. Some of the plausibility that 
 
50 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 attaches to the denial that philosophy is possible 
 depends upon the assumption that it claims a right 
 to the use of methods differing essentially from those 
 of science and everyday reasoning. Your results, 
 the scientist is apt to say to the philosopher, are viti- 
 ated at the start for the modern thinker by reason of 
 the fact that you depend upon a method which the 
 whole history of thought has shown to be inadequate. 
 This is the method of a priori reasoning. Philos- 
 ophy is an attempt to construct the world outright 
 from the fine-spun threads of mere thought or logic 
 or transcendental intuition. It is like trying to lift 
 yourself by your own boot straps; there is nothing 
 solid to give you leverage. One who knows any- 
 thing of the history of thought does not need to have 
 it proved to him that any new attempt to apply this 
 method will be unfruitful. He feels himself justified 
 in ignoring it without further argument. The only 
 possible way in which to advance knowledge is to 
 come back frankly to facts, to experience, to the 
 realm where verification is possible. 
 
 Doubtless the philosopher has sometimes at- 
 tempted the thing of which the scientist accuses him. 
 But if so, he has always met his reward in the shape of 
 incredulity and failure. I have no desire to make for 
 philosophy any such claim, or to vindicate for it a 
 method of its own. If philosophy means high a 
 priori speculation, the product of some hypothetical 
 faculty of mind out of relation to experience, then the 
 objections to it are indeed invincible. But no such 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 51 
 
 claim has any need to be made. On the contrary, 
 the whole problem of thought is summed up once 
 more in the attempt to understand experience. Any 
 aspect of experience disregarded means necessarily 
 an imperfection in the result. The method of 
 thought is everywhere one and the same. It begins 
 with certain things assumed provisionally to be facts. 
 It finds for some reason or other that these facts, 
 these interpretations of reality, are in apparent 
 conflict, or in some way fail to satisfy us, so that their 
 right to be called facts is after all in doubt. And in 
 order to heal the quarrel it looks for some wider 
 point of view, still in terms of experience, which shall 
 resolve the contradiction, and complete and correct 
 our former partial and inadequate understanding. 
 j^ilosophy_differs from other thinking only in the_ 
 comprehensiveness of Jts__aims. It strives to get a 
 conception which shall find a place for every fact of 
 experience; it attempts a complete instead of a 
 partial harmony. This, of course, makes its task 
 difficult. But it does not commit it to any new or 
 questionable method. 
 
 This implies, it is true, that there is a sense in which 
 philosophy transcends experience. But in just the 
 same sense science also transcends experience. No 
 scientist contents himself with talking simply of the 
 collection of particular facts which he or his fellows 
 have experienced in the past. To explain these facts 
 he is constantly using hypotheses. These hypoth- 
 eses take him far beyond the range of the limited 
 
52 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 field which represents his past particular experience. 
 They stretch into the indefinite past, and into the 
 indefinite future. They enable him to assert what 
 must have happened before man appeared on the 
 globe, and to predict what will happen thousands 
 of years hence. Every hypothesis is recognized by 
 him as having, potentially at least, a universal value, 
 whereas his experience is strictly limited. Nor does 
 he distinguish in a hard and fast way between fact 
 and hypothesis, as if the former alone were truth, the 
 latter mere guesswork. Often his hypotheses, in the 
 form of what he calls the laws of nature, are for him 
 the most ultimate kind of truth. He even uses them 
 to test the truth of his apparent facts, which may, and 
 with justice, sometimes be rejected because of the 
 demands which they impose. In this same sense, 
 therefore, philosophy also uses hypotheses which go 
 beyond the bare facts of experience. The only thing 
 in both cases is to see to it that these hypotheses are 
 well grounded. They must not be arbitrary. They 
 must not introduce realities which are unknown to 
 our experience. They must be capable in some way 
 of being tested. They must really succeed in ex- 
 plaining the things they set out to explain. No 
 doubt philosophy has often erred in these respects. 
 But so too, sometimes, has science. About the right 
 to use hypotheses, however, there is really no ques- 
 tion. 
 
 ^ The outcome, then, is simply this : that for an a 
 priori scepticism in the face of attempts at an ulti- 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 53 
 
 mate interpretation of the world there is no justifica- 
 tion. What one has indeed an undeniable right to 
 do is to furnish such reasons in particular as he can to 
 show wherein a given solution is inadequate, where 
 it fails to be self -consistent, or fails to include all the 
 facts. But the offhand dismissal of the case as not 
 offering any matter for argument is as uncalled for 
 here as in any other subject of human knowledge. We 
 may go ahead with the endeavor, provided always we 
 feel it to be worth the while, undeterred save by such 
 criticism as can give a sober and rational account of 
 itself. 
 
 There is, however, one thing further that needs to 
 be said about the grounds of belief before we are 
 ready to take up directly the problem of religious 
 knowledge. There is still another actual and effec- 
 tive reason which does as a matter of fact determine 
 our beliefs, and that is our emotional desires. That 
 we all have a tendency to accept as truth what we 
 want to believe is true, is obviously the case, whether 
 or not we ought to allow ourselves thus to be affected. 
 For the most part the logician finds it necessary to 
 deprecate this tendency, and to warn us against 
 allowing our hopes and fears, our likes and our dis- 
 likes, to lead us aside from that cool and impartial 
 scrutiny of the facts in themselves which alone can 
 keep us in straight paths ; and his caution is without 
 doubt practically justified. But when we look fur- 
 ther into the matter jt seems impossible, nevertheless, 
 to deny to our desires and our emotional nature a 
 
54 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 very real and necessary share in the building up of 
 our conception even of the world of knowledge. 
 
 There has already been occasion to sketch briefly 
 a certain large view of the nature of the progress of 
 knowledge in its relation to human life. This bases 
 itself, to repeat, upon the principle of modern psy- 
 chology that all our mental processes are essentially 
 selective in character. Had we no guiding thread 
 to the labyrinth of the universe, we should be abso- 
 lutely helpless and overwhelmed amid the enormous 
 complexity of our surroundings. But as it is, we 
 are in possession of such a clew. We are not let loose 
 to try, unguided, one after another all the infinite pos- 
 sibilities of existence. The dice are loaded. With- 
 out at the start our knowing why or how, our feet 
 are led into certain pretty definite paths, without our 
 being left to flounder helplessly on the bare chance 
 of striking some hidden trail. In other words, we 
 are born with instincts. We come into the world 
 as beings with a more or less determinate nature. 
 Our life consists in realizing the interests which rest 
 upon this instinctive basis, in giving expression to 
 the possibilities of experience and action to which 
 we are by nature inclined. Except as it gets into 
 relation to these, nothing can by any chance mean 
 anything to us at all. 
 
 Now what is true in general is true of knowledge 
 in particular. For human beings knowledge is an 
 instrument one of the great instruments indeed 
 to the realization of a full and complete living. We 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 55 
 
 do not seek to know as a purely impartial exercise ; 
 of an independent and unattached mind. Back ' 
 of knowledge lies the motive force and directing 
 impulse of a rich and complex nature craving ex- 
 pression and a satisfaction for its active demands 1 
 upon life and the universe. In the large, and in the 
 long run, we are bound to find some account of 
 things which will make for human happiness. This 
 is why we think at all. It is not to know truth 
 merely, but to attain to satisfaction through knowl- 
 edge, even though this were to turn out in the end 
 to be no more than the naked satisfaction of knowing. 
 As a matter of fact, however, our demands are far 
 wider than the demand of satisfied knowledge. 
 We claim the right to find a universe in which, not ; 
 a thinking machine merely may live, but a man. j 
 These demands we bring with us to the task of think- 
 ing. They guide it. They alone explain its per- 
 sistency even in the face of discouragement and 
 apparent defeat. Nothing short of a truth that 
 satisfies will hold the field, simply because man 
 refuses to accept defeat, and will refuse so long as 
 the springs of action remain what they are. If 
 by any chance he could fully convince himself that 
 the facts of the world preclude such a final satisfac- 
 tion, even then a philosophy which asserted this 
 would not hold the ground, for man would cease 
 at the same time to think and to live. ^ 
 
 But now, within the realm of our knowledge there 
 are, if we are to be clear about the matter, two main 
 
56 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 aspects which it is convenient to distinguish. In the 
 first place there are the things which we call facts 
 in the narrow and special sense, and which represent 
 in general the subject-matter with which science has 
 to do. Now even in the realm of what to most men 
 seems the hardest and most stubborn sort of fact - 
 material fact what has just been said remains 
 true. The fundamental sense of reality as applying 
 to anything whatsoever lies in the relationship to 
 some need or demand. The^real" is that which 
 ^nables_us to satisfy ^ur_actiYe_ impulses. If we 
 could conceive the animal consciousness as starting 
 out with a purely disinterested attention to whatever 
 turned up, backed by no outgoing tendencies to serve, 
 such a consciousness, even if it were possible at all, 
 could hardly be called a consciousness of reality. 
 It would take the form at best of mere floating images, 
 unattached, empty, unpersisting. It is only when 
 we regard the animal as from the beginning active, 
 as groping blindly for satisfaction, that we see how 
 the sense stimulus that stands for the satisfaction of 
 this need has the possibility of quite another value. 
 In other words, what we call real things in the physi- 
 cal world are things which stand for the satisfaction 
 of the organic will. They are the means to the real- 
 ization of the bodily life, which have reality because 
 we require that they should be real. It is the insist- 
 ence of the need which lends reality to that which 
 will satisfy it. And when for any reason this insist- 
 ence fails, if, for example, a great grief deadens the 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 57 
 
 springs of action, we begin to lose our grip on the 
 actuality of things, and they become strange to us, 
 far away, and unsubstantial. So any philosophy 
 which, like that of the East, maintains as a tenet the 
 utter unreality of the world , grows out of and necessarily 
 depends upon a starving of the active nature ; and 
 it attains the goal of conviction'to the extent to which 
 it is successful in crushing out desires, and in culti- 
 vating a state of quiescence and indifference. In 
 general, conviction is apt to fluctuate with the strenu- 
 ousness of our mood and the pressure of active needs. 
 As Montaigne remarks, " After dinner a man believes 
 less, denies more ; verities have lost their charm." 
 This would appear to be the reason why as a final 
 criterion of the reality of a thing we appeal to the 
 sense of touch rather than of sight or hearing. It 
 is only in connection with active touch that the thing 
 comes to perform that active service for the bodily 
 needs which is the final basis of its reality. 
 
 But now there is another and equally important 
 side of knowledge. Over against what are commonly j 
 termed facts, there are also certain aspects of experi-1 
 ence which may be called values, ideals, distinctions j 
 of worth and importance.. Value is something that ' 
 has no place in the physical world as such. There 
 a fact is a fact, and it is equally a fact with anything 
 else that exists. The scientist is not concerned with 
 approving or condemning his atoms or forces. His 
 universe is devoid of all reference to such an attitude. 
 But when we come to the conscious life the matter 
 
58 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 is wholly changed. Here judgments of value are 
 interwoven with the whole fabric of our experience. 
 It may almost be said that facts are no longer impor- 
 tant^ but only the worth of facts. In the physical 
 world nothing is unimportant, nothing is more im- 
 portant than anything else. But in the conscious 
 world a thing may be a fact, and yet be profoundly 
 irrelevant and trivial. Thejwhole growth of human 
 experience has been in the direction of a progressive 
 discovery of what is really worth while* Art, re- 
 ligion, literature, social ideals, moral achievement - 
 these are the significant aspects of man's life in the 
 world. And these are every one not affairs of mere 
 fact, but of the value of facts. Man's full life does 
 not consist in the abundance of his knowledge of 
 those things which happen merely, and which can 
 be reduced to orderly sequences of events. By far 
 the most important part of his universe is constituted 
 by those subtler facts of the spirit which science 
 passes by. Admiration, hope and love, faith and 
 the inner insight, visions of beauty and of goodness 
 it is by these that we truly live, these are the 
 matters that really count. 
 
 Of course it is true that science recognizes the 
 existence of these things as facts of psychological 
 experience. But it often happens that this admis- 
 sion is itself made a reason for denying to them any 
 other and more ultimate reality and truth. Because 
 their adoption is the outcome of human preferences, 
 as undoubtedly it is, they are merely human, merely 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 59 
 
 subjective, to be given no weight in our estimate 
 of how the real universe is constituted. It is the 
 essence of the narrowly scientific attitude that for 
 it values have no objective existence, no place, that 
 is, in the universe beyond man. It is called upon to 
 concern itself simply with the question: What hap- 
 pens, and how does it happen ? The act which the 
 moral judgment pronounces bad is for physical 
 science precisely on a level with the act which we 
 call good. The ugly object is equally real with the 
 beautiful. The fact that the latter happens to affect 
 us in a certain way is wholly incidental for the un- 
 derstanding of its real nature. But while such an 
 attitude is of course entirely proper for certain limited 
 scientific purposes, if taken as a final philosophy it 
 would seem to be rather a prejudice than a rationally 
 justified conclusion. If it be so that man has inj 
 his nature inexhaustible springs of feeling, emotional' 
 demands that are deep-seated and permanent, and 
 that suffuse his whole thought of the requirements 
 which he makes on life, then to keep them from f 
 influencing his judgments upon the nature of thej 
 world will be not only an impossibility, but an incon- 
 sistency. For nothing that science postulates rests 
 in the last resort upon an essentially different founda- 
 tion. From centre to circumference reality, in so 
 far as it stands for anything beyond the bare facts 
 of immediate experiencing, is, once more, a postulate 
 of the will, or if one prefers, of life. The whole 
 content of knowledge is an assumption a well- 
 
60 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 grounded assumption it may be, but still an assump- 
 tion. Facts are themselves ^alues. They are facts 
 to us because they meet a need, because they are 
 worth something. The only difference between 
 facts, and values in the ordinary sense, is due to the 
 presence or absence of the emotional realization. 
 
 j Physical facts represent certain values for the bodily 
 life which have got themselves so well established 
 
 ( that they do not need the impetus that comes from 
 special conscious realization in feeling terms. In the 
 ultimate sense I cannot demonstrate, for example, 
 aesthetic truth. I take it as true because it appeals 
 to certain demands of my nature. But it is equally 
 impossible to demonstrate the simplest object of 
 sense or the most fundamental physical law. Of 
 course there is a sense in which physical beliefs 
 have a certain practical and historical advantage 
 over the spiritual. They are more absolutely essen- 
 tial to our existence, and consequently have become 
 more firmly organized. A man can disbelieve in 
 
 / beauty and goodness and still maintain an existence ; 
 
 ! he cannot disbelieve that food will nourish and that 
 fire will burn. This relation to the necessary con- 
 ditions of existence has brought about by the process 
 of selection a uniformity in some beliefs which is 
 lacking in others. Every man believes his senses, 
 but not every man believes his higher instincts. 
 But nevertheless at bottom the evidence is the same 
 
 ( in kind. We believe the evidence of the senses, 
 not because we can demonstrate it, but because 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 6 1 
 
 we have to accept it as true if life is to go on. 
 We accept the validity of the spiritual values of life 
 for the same reason because we find ourselves so 
 constituted that we demand their validity. It may 
 be said that there is an inevitableness about physical 
 beliefs which does not attach to the spiritual. This 
 may be so ; but again the difference is one of degree 
 and not of kind. Man does not arbitrarily create, 
 for example, the laws which rule the moral life. 
 He discovers them. And no man can persistently 
 set his private will against these laws without in the 
 long run having to realize that the universe is against 
 him, and that he is powerless in the face of realities 
 too fundamental for him to alter. 
 
 Logically, then, there seems to be no reason why 
 certain particular impulses in the nature of the self 
 should be selected out as alone having objective 
 validity. Moral distinctions, aesthetic taste, reli-t 
 gious reverence, social affections, are all facts off 
 experience, and facts of a stubborn nature. They 
 are as real as the things with which the physicist is 
 wont to deal, and they have as good a right to be 
 considered in the final estimate of the world. We 
 cannot brush them aside without giving up the most 
 precious fruits of human history and experience. 
 These take primarily the form of values. They are 
 values whose hold upon the human mind depends 
 on the belief that somehow they are grounded in 
 the nature of things. There is no man but acts 
 every day upon a tacit belief in the validity of values. 
 
62 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 Apart from this he would cease to act. They are the 
 atmosphere that encircles his life. The scientific 
 spirit itself is only the expression of one set of values 
 
 the worth set upon truth and the intellectual vir- 
 tues ; and it cannot be allowed to displace all others 
 offhand. Accordingly the attitude of a cold intel- 
 lectualism which is unwilling to allow to feeling any 
 rights whatever in the search for truth is narrow and 
 one-sided. This is too commonly the attitude of the 
 scientist. The whole business of thought, it is said, 
 is to free us from the enthralment of f eeling. It tries 
 to look upon the world with the eyes of cool unpreju- 
 diced reason, leaving behind all endeavor to find things 
 as we want to find them. We are learning to recog- 
 nize that the truth is not necessarily agreeable, that 
 the world is not built to meet our personal demands 
 upon it. And it is the part of the wise man to school 
 himself to discredit the demands of feeling, and to 
 expect but little from life. Now no doubt it is true 
 that emotions are often dangerous to thought. Cer- 
 tainly it is not to be recommended that when we sit 
 down to philosophize we should be in a highly 
 wrought emotional mood. But, on the whole, I do 
 not know that emotions are more likely to lead us 
 astray than a highly cultivated emotional indiffer- 
 ence. Such an indifference is as abnormal as it is 
 impossible of complete attainment. It is not well 
 for us to make too slight demands upon the universe 
 
 in knowledge any more than in action. We may 
 avoid certain risks of error; but the risks of over- 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 63 
 
 caution are no less real than those of a more positive 
 sort. Rationality ought to be inclusive of the feeling 
 side of life, not opposed to it. Otherwise we defeat 
 the ends of reason. Reason is a comprehensive^ 
 means of satisfying the demands of life ; and to make 
 it an exclusive end in itself is to deprive it of its nor- 1 
 mal place in experience, and of concrete content as t 
 well. 
 
 This relationship of feeling to rationality needs 
 perhaps a somewhat fuller statement. Such a state- 
 ment to be complete would require a more extended 
 examination of the psychology of emotion than can 
 very well be attempted here. The nature of emo- 
 tional feeling and its place in experience is indeed 
 still somewhat obscure, notwithstanding the large 
 amount of attention that has been given to it in recent 
 years, and probably any attempt at a final estimate 
 would be premature. It will be sufficient for my 
 present purpose to suggest briefly, and to distinguish, 
 two chief aspects of the relationship of feeling to 
 knowledge which stand on somewhat different planes, 
 but both of which give to the emotional impulses 
 a certain claim to be considered by the philosopher. 
 
 And, first, there is apparently a value which emo- 
 tion has in a purely functional way, not as supply- 
 ing primarily a content to knowledge, but as an in- 
 strument of conscious growth; and this connects 
 itself with just that feature of emotion which on the 
 surface seems least likely to serve the purposes of 
 knowledge. Emotion, that is, we are apt to think 
 
64 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 of first of all as tumultuous, disturbing, a hinderer of 
 normal and rationally effective thought and action. 
 As I shall indicate presently, I do not think that this 
 is true of all emotional feeling. But it is a note- 
 worthy aspect of emotion in its most striking form 
 -the form which most easily compels attention to 
 itself; and it is the feature which is responsible 
 chiefly for the ill repute that emotion has among 
 philosophers as a disturbing element in the process of 
 thought. In reality, however, this very tumultuous- 
 ness and apparent interference may be held to have 
 a real importance even for the growth of knowledge. 
 To put it roughly, it stands for an instrument of 
 discovery, a means of bringing to consciousness the 
 value of our native impulses or tendencies or powers, 
 to which, as I have maintained, the life of knowledge 
 goes back. 
 
 Of this aspect of emotion at any rate Professor 
 James's theory seems to be essentially true. It con- 
 sists, very largely at least, of bodily sensations con- 
 nected directly or indirectly with certain instinc- 
 tive reactions that grew up originally because they 
 were more or less useful in the particular emotional 
 situation. But now the peculiar intensity of the 
 emotional experience does not seem to belong to 
 the occasions when these useful reactions express 
 themselves freely, and are carried out to their appro- 
 priate issue. Action is indeed commonly recognized 
 as a relief to the emotions. It is rather when there 
 is a tendency to expression that falls short of the full 
 
\ 
 
 THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 65 
 
 and normal activity, when the outgoing current is 
 thrown back upon itself and overflows into a mass 
 of relatively unorganized bodily changes, that we 
 get the strongest organic sense of emotional disturb- 
 ance. Anger whose expression is checked while 
 I still continue to "feel mad" and have the tendency 
 to expression, is, other things being equal, charac- 
 terized by a stronger emotional feeling than the 
 more aggressive state which relieves itself by actually 
 hitting out and having it over. We can hardly feet 
 the emotion of fear so acutely when we are running 
 with all our might from the dreaded object, as when 
 we stand hesitating and trembling, alternately start- 
 ing and drawing back. And it is at this point that 
 the possible value of the emotional disturbance lies. 
 Such a feeling may be of the greatest importance if 
 it forces on our consciousness a realization of the 
 significance of these impulses which are checked, and 
 which might never have been valued justly had they 
 not been forced to struggle for expression. The great 
 problem of rational life is to adjust our originally 
 chaotic impulses. Asserting themselves too easily, 
 they pass and are forgotten, and when the day of 
 deliberation comes, of taking account of stock, they 
 fail of their right estimate. Or, blocked by^more 
 imperious needs, they simply subside, and do not get 
 expression at all. But pushing out blindly and ten- 
 tatively, and in their struggle to assert themselves 
 bringing about the upheaval of our whole nature in 
 an emotional crisis, they not only force us to attend 
 
66 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 to them, but at the same time they give a rough 
 measure of the real importance we should assign 
 them in the economy of life. Thus the emotional 
 feeling of grief, for example, is one of the surest reve- 
 lations of the worth that things really possess for 
 our lives. A great grief often results in overthrow- 
 ing our conventional estimates completely, and giving 
 us a new outlook upon experience. 
 
 Once more, then, the world which we accept is 
 the world which our self-expression demands 
 there is no other ground of acceptance. Growing 
 knowledge is thus the instrument of self-realization ; 
 it is the satisfaction of the will. But the process of 
 self-discovery, as a coordination of powers, is a long 
 and difficult one. And an essential step in the pro- 
 cess, and so in knowledge, is the emotional disturb- 
 bance to which the struggle for expression gives rise. 
 It is this originally vague feeling which gives our 
 first clew to the importance of the impulse. Of course 
 the claim is not final. It has to be scrutinized and 
 criticised. But an emotional claim which is per- 
 sistent, and which is a human claim rather than my 
 peculiar private experience, is prima facie justified 
 in being taken very seriously. Emotions have dan- 
 gers of their own. In the form that has been so far 
 considered they belong to periods of adjustment, 
 of coming to self-knowledge, rather than to that of 
 full fruition when we have entered on the heritage 
 of ourselves. The period of greatest emotional 
 intensity is thus the period of youth, when habits 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 67 
 
 and character are in the process of formation. The 
 same degree of emotional disturbance later on, when 
 our lives are supposedly set in definite channels, 
 would only be a hindrance to efficiency. And the 
 fact that thus they often are designed to bring to 
 light some value unrecognized or in danger of being 
 forgotten, makes it necessary that they should have 
 an imperiousness and one-sidedness which are likely 
 to result in overemphasis. And yet, if we did not 
 trust them, we should be at a loss to estimate the 
 relative weight of the various impulsive sides of our 
 nature, save perhaps as we could reduce these to 
 terms of their contribution to our barely physical 
 existence ; in other words, there would be no means 
 of attaining to a knowledge of our spiritual selves 
 and of the spiritual world. 
 
 But now let us suppose that the period of storm 
 and stress is past, and we have attained to some 
 measure of self-knowledge. Is feeling's occupation 
 gone? When it has helped to organized and har- 
 monious conduct, does it pass away, leaving just a 
 perfectly adjusted mechanism of action? Clearly 
 I should say this is not so ; at least, it should not be 
 so. For I think that without doubt there is a deeper 
 and steadier quality of emotional feeling which not 
 only is not prejudicial to effective action, but which 
 is an essential element in all our higher active ex- 
 perience, and which enters permanently into the 
 content of our rational understanding of the world. 
 Even Spinoza, with all his hostility to emotion, seems 
 
68 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 to admit the metaphysical validity of the emotion 
 of intellectual love, and this can hardly have any 
 meaning unless it presupposes some actual worthi- 
 ness in the universe which calls it forth. There is, 
 it is true, a constant tendency in human life for action 
 to become automatic and merely habitual, a tendency 
 for us to lose therefore the realization of its meaning. 
 % And by reason of this deadening effect of habit we 
 
 ) never wholly outgrow the need of what I have called 
 the emotional disturbance, to break through the 
 crust of indifference, and call us back to a conscious 
 realizing of ourselves and of what we are doing. 
 But just in so far as this benumbing influence of 
 custom gets the upper hand do we come short of 
 the truest and highest sort of experience. Experience 
 that is real and spiritual does not stop with mere 
 ; doing. Our true lives are lived only as action carries 
 i with it the full consciousness of its ends and relation- 
 i ships. And this is no purely intellectual conscious- 
 ness. It involves also and necessarily an emotional 
 attitude toward the objects which are represented 
 in our experience in terms of knowledge. What 
 would social life be worth which did not carry with 
 it the continued presence of those human feelings 
 that are evoked by our relationships to our fellows ? 
 How vastly less significant would be our dealings 
 with the world of nature were we to lose from our 
 experience the pervading sense of the beauty of this 
 world. Such feelings are not merely incidental, 
 merely preliminary. They do not involve any let-up 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 69 
 
 in the efficiency of action. They are rather insepa- 
 rable aspects of the spiritual or significant side of 
 active experience itself. 
 
 Accordingly the function of the emotional disturb- 
 ance in bringing values in experience to light pre- 
 supposes this other and deeper aspect of emotion, by 
 means of which certain distinctions of worth and 
 preference are interwoven through the fabric of real- 
 ity which experience constructs. And if these fun- 
 damental distinctions of value are a real requirement 
 of life, if our moral, social, and religious experience 
 is bound up with them, then the whole end of knowl- 
 edge lapses to the extent in which we fail to adjust 
 the more directly physical and logical values to them. 
 We have not attained the satisfaction at which knowl- 
 edge aims, and which is its sole final justification. 
 We might, it is true, rest content simply with calling 
 this aspect of experience human and subjective, and 
 refuse the task of trying to fit it into the larger econ- 
 omy of the universe. This is a common attitude, and 
 practically it is often defensible. We decline to 
 give up values for the guidance of our lives, though 
 we find ourselves unable to go beyond this personal 
 preference and perceive a foundation for it in the nat- 
 ural world. But however satisfactory an individual 
 may find this on personal grounds, at least it does 
 not represent the full ideal of reason. For it means 
 the baffling of the rational impulse. It leaves an 
 aspect of experience, which practically is of supreme 
 importance, outside reality in its most ultimate sense, 
 
70 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 with no intelligible points of connection. Nor on 
 the practical side is the situation one in which we 
 can rest with complete and final acquiescence. That 
 for which we really care we cannot well avoid, if 
 we trust our natural instinct, carrying back somehow 
 to the inner constitution of reality. Otherwise it 
 loses inevitably to some extent. To believe that 
 human morality, for example, is entirely incidental 
 and unpreferred in the view of that last court of ap- 
 peal, the ultimate background from which human 
 life stands forth, is of a surety to detract a little, if 
 we once thoroughly realize our meaning, from our 
 faith in morality merely as a human fact. The 
 only attitude which really goes with our premises 
 is either that of a brutal ethical naturalism and wor- 
 ship of force, or, at best, the light, half -apologetic 
 irony of a Renan. 
 
 What I am claiming therefore is this ; that in ad- 
 mitting the right of feeling in the search for truth, 
 we are not destroying reason, but fulfilling it. I do 
 not mean in any sense that a man has a right to be- 
 lieve what he wants to, undeterred by the claims 
 of logic. There does seem to be a sense in which, as 
 I have indicated, we may say with Hume that reason 
 is the slave of the passions. Reason is mediate. 
 It does not furnish us the matter of knowledge ; this 
 goes back to the assertion of fundamental needs. 
 But this is far from saying that reason has nothing 
 more to do than find for us the way in which we may 
 gratify our momentary desires. It is not a slave, but 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 71 
 
 a trusted servant, who oftentimes knows his lord's 
 will far better than does the master himself. For 
 the higher task of reason is to assist in self-knowl- 
 edge ; to teach the impulse, often blind and isolated, 
 to understand itself, by showing its relation to the 
 rest of life. Reason is the adjusting, the harmoniz- 
 ing, factor in life. It takes the data which the asser- 
 tion of the will supplies. But it transforms these 
 data essentially by removing them from their iso- 
 lation, and throwing on them the light of a larger 
 experience. 
 
 There is no essential contradiction, therefore, be- 
 tween rationality on the one hand, and will or feeling 
 on the other. Rationality is simply the impulse to 
 harmonize our experience. Even the claim of reason 
 is again at bottom practical. If a man does not 
 want to be rational, no power on earth can make 
 him admit the necessity of not contradicting himself. 
 But if our natures are in any sense unitary, this 
 impulse must be ultimately a necessary one. As 
 philosophers we cannot without self-stultification 
 deny its ideal claim. Still, practically we may be 
 perfectly justified on occasion in postponing its satis- 
 faction to some more imperious need. And theo- 
 retically its satisfaction may well be premature and 
 empty. For rationality is in itself an abstraction 
 There must first be something to rationalize, to har- 
 monize. A harmony may be won on too easy terms 
 by ignoring part of the data. And it is primarily 
 to our willing and our feeling selves that the content 
 
72 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 of thought goes back. Thought and feeling are 
 thus^alike necessary and interdependent. We must 
 harmonize all the facts, and we must have all the 
 facts to harmonize. It is perhaps unfortunate that 
 a defect of logic should come to stand so exclusively 
 to the philosopher as the unpardonable sin. Con- 
 sistency is in a way his special business. But, after 
 all, philosophy is more than mere logic or method- 
 ology. Whatever growth in knowledge may be, 
 growth in wisdom is most assuredly no mere record 
 of logical analysis. Great changes in belief, epochs\ 
 in our intellectual history, are seldom due primarily j 
 to mere argument, but rather to the half -unconscious 
 ripening of experience, the transforming and suffus- 
 ing with new meaning of the old facts, brought about 
 by processes lying back of anything we can put at 
 the time in syllogistic form. What Newman says 
 of his own development is true normally: "For 
 myself it was not logic that carried me on; as well 
 might one say that the quicksilver in a barometer 
 changes the weather. It is the concrete being that 
 moves ; paper logic is but the record of it." 
 
 Accordingly, as I have said, an emphasis on the 
 abstract need of logic may sometimes be a mistaken 
 one. The appeal to reason which the scientist for 
 example makes may often involve the assumption 
 that the sort of harmony which has already been 
 brought into a certain group of facts physical 
 facts is final, and a refusal to take the trouble to 
 go back of this ; and so whatever will not find a place 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 73 
 
 within this particular grouping is for that reason to 
 be rejected. In the face of such an attitude a man 
 has a right to say if he chooses : I am not able to see J 
 just where the reconciliation lies; but meanwhile ' 
 there are requirements of my nature which your par- 
 ticular interpretation does not satisfy, and I shall 
 continue in spite of argument to hold that these point 
 to reality and truth. Consistency is a jewel which 4 
 may be purchased at too dear a rate. If it is a ques- 
 tion of giving up a good share of the content of life 
 in the interests of a formal consistency, it may be the 
 part of wisdom to take the former. Better a fulness ! 
 of life which outstrips the logical insight, than an' 
 intellectual satisfaction won by reducing life to Pro-: 
 crustean limits. This ought to mean no disrespect 
 to logic or to reason. It ought not to deny the pos- 
 sibility of attaining to a harmonious insight, nor the 
 desirability of this. But it may well be the wiser 
 part to regard this provisionally as an unattained 
 ideal, and to^pref.er a temporary defeat of reason, if it: 
 leaves room for a richer harmony in the future, to a 
 present but barren victory. 
 
 Again I do not wish to give the impression that 
 it is right to shelter a weakness in logic under the 
 protection of a demand of feeling. The philosopher 
 cannot possibly abdicate the task of striving for con- 
 sistency. And in the long run a belief which per-j 
 sistently refuses to fall in line with the less emotional 
 aspects of truth scientific truth in particular ^ 
 will inevitably suffer. Sooner or later any remnant 
 
74 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 of blind feeling or aspiration, any mere setting of 
 the will, must be beaten in the contest with the lead- 
 ings of the rational insight. Present satisfactoriness 
 to feeling is no ultimate test. Man cannot get away 
 from the fact that he is a rational being, a searcher 
 for truth; and in Plato's words, "a measure of such 
 things which in any degree falls short of truth is not 
 fair measure." I only insist that feeling sets a real 
 problem for reason which is entitled to serious con- 
 sideration. Other things being equal, an intellec- 
 tual construction to which feeling can attach itself 
 -the feeling of mankind and not simply of the 
 individual has a commanding lead in the struggle 
 for survival. 
 
 The aim of reason then, as philosophy, is to intro- 
 duce a large consistency into experience taken in its 
 fullest possible extent; and this includes the pos- 
 tulates of feeling. To limit its exercise to facts as 
 distinguished from values, to confine its operations 
 to the mere sequence of events, is to subtract with- 
 out warrant from its dignity and function. But 
 now, on the other hand, this is not to lose sight of the 
 very real dangers and limitations which attach to 
 feeling as a method of knowledge. And perhaps 
 the largest limitation is this : that our feejings should 
 not be allowed_to dictate to us what the facts in the 
 ojdjnary_sense shall be. The wider interpretation 
 of the nature and bearings of these facts will indeed 
 be under some degree of guidance from feeling. But 
 such an interpretation must always presuppose cer- 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 75 
 
 tain definite particular sequences which we ought 
 to accept with entire impartiality, uninfluenced in 
 any manner by our hopes and desires. The ex- 
 perience with which science has to do goes back to a 
 source lying too deep in our natures to be displaced 
 or denied or ignored by any philosophical summing 
 up of reality that can approve itself. And so it is 
 that for a sound philosophical method _the first and 
 f mid^mentaLdatum js thejnaterial^wMdh without\ 
 prejudice and without favor it must take over from 
 science, as an _oj^ajiizeA_ac^mm^ofjhe facts of ex- 
 perience ; and the central difficulty of its problem I 
 lies in the adjustment of the more spiritual and sig- ! 
 nificant human ideals to this stubborn core. Of 
 course science may attempt to foibt upon philosophy 
 a mass of extra-scientific assumptions and interpreta- 
 tions ; these can be taken for what they are worth, 
 and rejected if they cannot stand the test. But so 
 long as it keeps within its rights, and contents itself 
 with a bare unvarnished account of what happens 
 and how it happens, science may fairly claim an 
 authority which no demand of feeling can overthrow, 
 and which philosophy therefore is bound to respect. 
 And the basis of this fundamental place which 
 science has in our modern constructions of reality 
 is in the end this : that its facts and its laws are sub- 
 ject to experiment and ^experimentaj^verification. It 
 is this the possibility of verification which we 
 have justly come to require nowadays in order to 
 fix a thing in our system of truth, and take it out of 
 
76 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 the realm of mere casual fancy and conjecture. And 
 it may be admitted that truths of value do not admit 
 of verification in just the same sense, with the same 
 directness and precision and lack of ambiguity, 
 as is often attainable in the realm of physical science. 
 But yet in a real way verification is possible even here, 
 and is demanded. If belief depends upon the needs 
 of life, then that in the end will be accepted which 
 actually works, which gives the possibility of free and 
 harmonious self-expression. And accordingly there 
 is continually in operation in the realm of our beliefs 
 this checking and selective force. We have not the 
 right to believe everything to which we may feel in- 
 clined. It is not enough that we should make the 
 demand; in addition reality must stand ready to 
 meet the demand, to honor our drafts upon it. To 
 the holding of a rational belief it is quite essential that 
 we should have done this active experimenting, and 
 should have been willing, moreover, to abide by the 
 result^ The recognition of this qualification will take 
 a good deal of the force from protests against the 
 general point of view, on the ground that it makes 
 no distinction between believing a thing true because 
 we wish it so, and because we actually find that it is 
 so. The former attitude we do condemn. But our 
 condemnation is not due to the fact that the belief 
 is a postulate, or even a postulate of feeling. We 
 condemn it because it stops with a mere passive 
 acquiescence in the first vague and half -formed desire 
 which may or may not be a real and permanent 
 
THE VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 77 
 
 demand without recognizing the need of a further 
 test; or because it persists stubbornly in its first 
 opinion in the face of new and conflicting results 
 of experience that ought to be taken into account. 
 Experiment then is essential to rationality, and along 
 with the demand there must go the willingness of 
 the universe to meet it. We do not have to take our I 
 spiritual beliefs wholly on trust, and we ought not j 
 to do so, any more than we take a scientific law 
 wholly on trust. As science puts all sorts of tests to 
 the universe in order to verify its law, so life makes 
 its experiments to verify its intuitions of meaning. 
 And until the experiments have somehow worked, we 
 cannot rest with any assurance that this particular 
 demand is justified. History is strewn with ideals, 
 as it is strewn with scientific theories, which further 
 experience has had in some measure to discard as 
 inadequate. In the large sense of the word, there- 
 fore, the consistency which truth demands is a prac- 
 tical rather than a merely theoretical one. It is the 
 consistency, not of facts merely, but of the concrete 
 flow of life, and this includes of necessity our emo- 
 tional needs. And just as we start out by assuming i 
 that events in the physical world will be orderly, \ 
 and find our confidence gradually justified by the < 
 way in which the world comes halfway to meet our < 
 requirements, so of our emotional demands. If 
 human life becomes slowly settled, harmonious, 
 and self -justifying, when we act upon the assumption 
 that the universe has a certain ideal constitution, then 
 
78 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 we have the same right, in kind if not in degree, to 
 accept this as a verification of our faith, as we have 
 to accept the progressive discovery of regularities 
 in perceptual experience as a verification of our 
 originally blind faith in order and reason. 
 
 The conception of the ultimate task of philosophy 
 i to which we have come is therefore this : that philos- 
 < ophy is the effort to attain to a way of thinking about 
 i the universe which shall satisfy us as complete 
 j human beings, in all the richness of our activities and 
 'i aspirations. It is no mere knowledge of facts and 
 laws as science is; it must find a place for wisdom 
 also, through which this knowledge gets its legating 
 upon life and the significance of life. For this 
 task all fundamental instincts that make up human 
 nature act as guides and clews, and they serve before- 
 hand as determining conditions which any finally 
 acceptable truth must meet. We 'can rest content 
 \ with no result which ignores the demands of feeling, 
 \ simply because our whole search is backed by such 
 \ motives ; and even if we elect to stop short of com- 
 plete satisfaction, there still lies behind this choice 
 our concrete and instinctive self, mightier than any 
 one-sided logical insistence, if not in us as individuals, 
 at any rate in the race. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 WE are ready therefore, after this brief survey of 
 the nature of knowledge in general, to come more 
 directly to the main point at issue the justification 
 of the special sort of knowledge which is involved in 
 a religious conception of the world. It will be ap- 
 parent that if we understand philosophy in the way 
 that has just been indicated, the relation which it has 
 to religion, as one of the great aspects of man's spir- 
 itual experience, will be a very close and natural one. 
 And the relation will appear still closer if we turn now 
 to religion, and ask briefly wherein the nature of this 
 also consists. And without stopping to justify the 
 definition in any careful way, since this would neces- 
 sitate a lengthy inquiry, I think it may appear that 
 there are perhaps three elements which go especially 
 to make up the religious attitude. 
 
 In the first place, religion involves a belief in some 
 reality which is regarded as having a certain status 
 of power^ if we may use the word without a necessary 
 reference to physical efficiency. This power or in- 
 fluence may be regarded as personally wielded ; this 
 it commonly is. It may take a form which has to 
 be put in terms of fat, or of law, or of logical neces- 
 sity like the God of Spinoza. It may be the com- 
 79 
 
8o RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 pelling dignity of a moral attribute. But in any case 
 the worshipper feels himself in the presence of that 
 which is somehow at the centre of things, at the helm, 
 and which is in a position to make itself felt for good 
 or for ill. 
 
 Furthermore, the reality which is thus endowed 
 carries with it a certain flavor of mysteriousness - 
 the basis of the religious awe. We may see power in 
 objects or in our fellow-men, but this does not make 
 our attitude toward it necessarily a religious one. If 
 we can grasp it wholly, see into and around it, under- 
 stand how it is exercised and what are its limits, 
 we cease to stand in the religious relationship to it. 
 The source of this opaqueness and mystery may be 
 varying. It may be due to sheer ignorance at the' 
 one extreme, or to an awed sense of perfect goodness 1 
 and holiness lying beyond our own powers of attain- 
 ment. It includes the mystery of magic and the 
 mystery of godliness. But it has to be present for 
 one reason or another. And this variety of causes 
 is one source of the difference in the objects to which 
 religion attaches itself. The power which appeals 
 to some men as mysterious is to others an open 
 page. The priest who is in the secret of the thau- 
 maturgy can scarcely be expected to have the reli- 
 gious feeling of him who worships from a distance. 
 The modern man of science will find it difficult to 
 put himself in the place of the uneducated devotee 
 of the supernatural. The frequenter of the court can 
 hardly have much temptation to yield to the sense of 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 8 1 
 
 that divinity which doth hedge a king, a feeling 
 indistinguishable at times from a genuinely religious 
 spirit. The deification of rulers is indeed a frequent 
 phenomenon of religion. 
 
 The third aspect of the religious consciousness is 
 already implied in the one first mentioned, and is 
 needed to complete it and make it intelligible. This 
 power would have no meaning for man except as it 
 stood in some practical relationship to him. I am 
 using "practical" in the widest sense. But in this 
 sense the statement is self-evident. We never should 
 take the trouble to recognize, much less to worship, 
 that which had no possible bearing upon the de- 
 mands of our own lives. If we try then to state what 
 this relation is, in the most generalized form I think 
 it might stand in some such way as this : God repre- * 
 sents that power in the world, not wholly interpret- , 
 able by us, and so striking us with some measure of v 
 awe, on which depends such part of the attainment < 
 of the valuable ends of life as we feel lies outside the ! 
 scope of our own unaided powers. God is the ulti- 
 mate demand we make upon the universe in the in- 
 terest of our own complete living. He is the final 
 conservator and guarantee of the values of life in so 
 far as they do not depend upon ourselves, or on those 
 beings with which we consider ourselves so famil- 
 iarly acquainted that we feel in a way master of 
 their behavior. 
 
 I think that such a definition will include the great 
 variety of expressions which the religious impulse 
 
82 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 has taken. For the chief occasion of this variety 
 lies in the great range which the values of life cover. 
 When man is simply on the plane of physical needs, 
 then God necessarily takes the form of an instru- 
 ment to be utilized in meeting the exigencies of the 
 natural life. He is a fetich, a helper or protector 
 to whom to appeal, a being whom prayer and sacri- 
 fice can mysteriously summon to the worshipper's 
 aid, and whose mysterious power may be expected 
 to work almost any needed miracle. Or, on the other 
 hand, he may arouse primarily the emotion of fear, 
 because the good of life calls also for the avoidance 
 of surrounding dangers ; and the more these dangers 
 press, the more man is conscious of the forces which 
 lie beyond his direct control, and of the need of ward- 
 ing off their power for harm. And since the demands 
 of the physical life are always with us, it is not strange 
 that throughout the history of religion the thought of 
 God as the dispenser of temporal blessings, or as 
 the possible source of evils, to be propitiated and his 
 wrath averted, should have maintained itself per- 
 sistently. 
 
 But as man rises out of the limitations of his more 
 primitive ends, other values more and more become 
 significant for determining the conception of God. 
 In particular do ethical and social values begin to 
 stand as the fundamental ones. These demands 
 again take many different forms, and are interpreted 
 in many different ways. For the one whose inter- 
 ests are in the realm of practical social good, and 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 83 
 
 who has no metaphysical turn of mind, humanity 
 may take the place of God and become a religion. 
 To the mystical temperament which is impressed 
 most profoundly with the impermanence of the finite 
 and the vanity of earthly things, God means the ne- 
 gation of all that is particular and that can be put 
 in terms of human thought, the guarantee of the eter- 
 nal peace of nothingness. Or again the aesthetic 
 value may rule, as in the poetic glorification of nature 
 and beauty which is essentially religious in its char- 
 acter. Or still again, as with Spinoza, an absolute 
 of logic may be the ground of all things, where zeal 
 for truth represents the great value of life. 
 
 In the end, therefore, the aim of religion appears to 
 be not essentially different from that of philosophy. 
 Religion js_simply the^ recognition that life has spirit- 
 ual values, and th^de^^^^t^^jvorld sbalLbe 
 
 so conceivecrjs_to give a basis and guarantee_lor 
 these values^ Philosophy substitutes the intellec- 
 tuaT attitude for the more directly practical and 
 emotional one of religion, and is concerned primarily 
 with the matter of rational consistency ; but none the 
 less is its final interest fundamentally the same. 
 
 But now this relationship of philosophy and re- 
 ligion has another side which particularly concerns 
 us here. It scarcely needs pointing out that on the 
 interpretation of reason which has been followed in 
 the preceding discussion, a religious philosophy ought 
 to presuppose and to recognize its dependence upon 
 the far greater and more central fact of the historical 
 
84 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 religious experience. And I wish to urge for a 
 moment the bearing of this upon the attitude which 
 we shall adopt as philosophers toward religious 
 beliefs. 
 
 There is a strong tendency in modern times to 
 consider that a philosophy is rather weakened than 
 otherwise by its coincidence with current religious 
 motives and constructions. The main reason for 
 this is perhaps the insight which historical criticism 
 has given us into the irrational way in which religious 
 beliefs have often grown up, their dependence upon 
 the undisciplined play of a highly wrought imagina- 
 tion, upon a narrow and selfish interpretation of 
 human needs, and upon conditions of a merely local 
 and temporary importance. And it is, of course, 
 true that much caution needs to be used in estimat- 
 ing the rational value of any religious formulation ; 
 we cannot accept it uncritically./ Nevertheless, it is 
 far from being clear that philosophy can safely cut 
 loose from religion in its historical form. For cer- 
 tainly religion is a human experience of very pro- 
 found significance, so much so that its value will 
 not here be considered a matter of dispute. It is 
 assumed that religion is solidly grounded in human 
 nature. The shallow rationalism which supposes 
 that by a few arguments it can dislodge so vital an 
 element of man's spiritual life, and which can proph- 
 esy its speedy extinction before a scientific or human- 
 istic secularism, no longer has the plausibility it once 
 possessed./ Any sympathetic reading of history must 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 85 
 
 result in the recognition, not of course that religion 
 will never cease to be the expression of human needs, 
 but that at least it is a tremendously vital instinct, in 
 the presence of which the attacks of the individual 
 or the band of philosophic iconoclasts seem rather 
 puny and powerless. And the existence of a large 
 element of the irrational in the beliefs which attach 
 to religion cannot be allowed to obscure this recog- 
 nition. The only really fatal attack upon religion 
 would be the proof that it serves no genuine human 
 interest. But if the interest is there, if it is deep- 
 seated in man's nature as a historical being, no grop- 
 ing or fumbling on the part of those who first try to 
 find an answer can discredit the essential demand. 
 A being the nature of whose make-up renders him 
 fundamentally inclined to get his experience into 
 some measure of organized and intelligible shape 
 cannot be persuaded, and rightly so, by abstract ar- 
 guments of philosophical scepticism, no matter how 
 plausible. And similarly, if there is in man a pro- 
 found impulse to believe in a world in which he shall 
 feel practically at home, and which shall satisfy his 
 deeper and permanent cravings, such an impulse is 
 bound to outlive the failure of this or that attempt 
 at intellectual satisfaction. That the earlier forms 
 to which the religious postulate gives rise are inade- 
 quate no more discredits it, than the vagaries of al- 
 chemy discredit the science of chemistry, and the 
 postulate of order and law in nature./ 
 
 But now this implies also that we should look to 
 
86 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 find religion, as the main way in which concrete 
 human experience has attempted to sum up its best 
 understanding of the nature and significance of the 
 world as a whole, becoming gradually more rational, 
 more consonant with philosophical standards of 
 truth, as experience grows settled and mature. /As 
 a revelation of the motives, certainly, which experi- 
 ence justifies, of the needs of human life which are 
 to be adjudged real and permanent, and therefore 
 to be taken into account by our rational theories, 
 philosophy cannot dispense with the guidance of 
 historical religious faiths. But, furthermore, it will 
 not refuse such guidance either in the interpretation 
 of these needs. It will suspect that in the higher 
 and more developed religions the intellectual form 
 is not separable in any thoroughgoing way from the 
 needs lying back of it; it will naturally expect to 
 find the development of religion more and more in 
 the direction of a substantial truth of doctrine./ (Un- 
 less, therefore, it feels prepared to substitute a ration- 
 alism of the eighteenth-century type for the normal 
 method of growth in wisdom through the accumu- 
 lations of a massive human experience, it will choose 
 to pay some respect to that less discursive, and more 
 immediate and emotional, mode of construing the 
 world which religion represents, rather than dis- 
 credit it too hastily in favor of a more logically 
 grounded belief.) /If the philosopher tries to show 
 that there is no ineptitude involved in such a frame- 
 work of reality as religion requires, in the form hi 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 87 
 
 which it has proved most adequate to human needs, 
 as a point of attachment for religious feeling, but that 
 rather this approves itself to the reason as the most 
 satisfactory conception we can get for the understand- 
 ing of the universe, he is only putting himself in line 
 with the natural and continuous development of 
 human belief ; and he has the right to a certain ad- 
 vantage of position which this gives. The defender 
 of a religious view of the world may fairly claim, in 
 other words, that he is not merely adding one specu- 
 lative fancy more to the heap of exploded systems, 
 that he is not setting himself single-handed to out- 
 face the solid and unshifting array of scientific and 
 positive fact, but that he too has a weighty backing 
 in the common religious experience of men, which 
 gives steadiness and ballast to his efforts, and pre- 
 vents them from wearing the appearance of an ar- 
 bitrary tour de force. / 
 
 Now of course, in attaching himself to any par- 
 ticular religious conception, no matter what its place 
 in the large historical process, the philosopher cannot 
 avoid a certain appeal to individual judgment. 
 The verdict of history is not absolute and unambigu- 
 ous. In choosing one he has to discard in part the 
 rest, and this introduces a certain element of the ar- 
 bitrary. But this is true whenever man attempts to 
 reason about anything. If a mere appeal to history 
 settled truth finally, we could never pass beyond the 
 dominant belief of the age. The situation is a much 
 more subtle one. We cannot indeed subject it to 
 
88 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 definition or formal rule, but it involves the interac- 
 tion of both sides in the living growth of knowledge 
 -the outcome of past experience, and the new 
 insight that comes from a personal reaction to the 
 problem./(l"he individual thinker must select and 
 estimate. But at the same time he is not freed from 
 allegiance to the past ; he gets a true basis for sound 
 judgment only as in some real sense, though this 
 cannot be mechanically denned, his judgment is 
 dictated by history itself. I shall assume, therefore, 
 that something of the weight that attaches to religion 
 as such belongs also to that special form of religion 
 Christianity which alone of the faiths of the 
 world may be regarded as having shown itself to 
 be in any considerable measure adequate to the 
 needs of human life at the present day, at any rate 
 in the western world. The time may come when 
 Christianity is definitively bankrupt. But so long 
 as it maintains its real vitality it may fairly lay claim 
 to possess at bottom some measure of insight which 
 experience itself is thus justifying, and which the 
 justification of experience gives a certain right to 
 be regarded as presumptively true. 
 
 Such a claim is of course in no sense absolute. 
 If it comes in apparent conflict with facts in some 
 other sphere of knowledge, the resulting difficulties 
 should be candidly recognized. That there are prob- 
 lems, and serious problems, which have thus arisen 
 is undeniable. Indeed were it not for these the 
 interposition of philosophy would not have been 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 89 
 
 re quired.^ The justification by philosophy of a reli- 
 gious view of the world will always centre about the 
 clearing away of objections raised ; apart from such 
 difficulties there never would any need have been 
 felt for evidence beyond the evidence that comes 
 from natural instincts met and satisfied. Accord- 
 ingly there is no real cause to complain if certain 
 things be taken at the start as having a presumption 
 in their favor, provided one is ready to meet fairly 
 all definite and positively grounded attacks upon 
 his position. One has the right within reason to 
 abridge the difficulties of his task by appeal to the 
 verdict of experience, if the experience to which he 
 appeals is vital, solid, an4 sufficiently universal/ 
 To build a philosophy outright from the ground up, 
 without using the concrete results of experience that 
 have got their test in human living, is indeed a sheer 
 impossibility, and involves an outgrown notion of the 
 independence of the mind or intellect. And further- 
 more, even in the case of a postulate of religion such 
 as is apparently contradicted outright by some 
 weighty evidence from another sphere of experience, 
 we should still remember that it is experience which 
 is contradicting itself, and that the coming to light 
 of contrary testimony does not forthwith take away 
 all significance from that to which it stands in opposi- 
 tion. A conception which should succeed in recon- 
 ciling the conflict would have, other things being 
 equal, a better claim on our acceptance ; to denounce 
 such an attempt at adjustment as mere apologetics, 
 
QO RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 provided it be not forced and artificial, is entirely 
 unreasonable./ 
 
 /And now, furthermore, it is of course to be under- 
 stood that the attitude which is here taken carries with 
 it no obligation to defend the Christian faith, or any 
 special form in which it may be held, in its historical 
 entirety. It is in any case only the essential and 
 fundamental character of it as an account of the 
 general nature of reality which concerns us; the 
 rich gloss of dogmatic formulation, and the varied 
 detail due to the play of imagination on the luxu- 
 riant content of the religious experience, it is in no 
 wise essential for a general philosophical theory 
 such as is here proposed to take into account, what- 
 ever the judgment as to the truth or religious value 
 that attaches to this. But now what is to be regarded 
 as essential in Christianity is of course itself also a 
 matter of interpretation; different men may hold 
 very different opinions about it. And as any in- 
 dividual thinker must in the end select the opinion 
 which appeals to him personally, there is intro- 
 duced here another element of what from the purely 
 historical standpoint we have to call the arbitrary. 
 But this is kept within limits, once more, to the extent 
 to which the interpretation is historically grounded ; 
 the defect, if defect we choose to call it, does not 
 necessarily cancel the presumptive title to our con- 
 fidence which religion derives from experience.) 
 
 'There is a phrase which has come in recent years 
 to stand pretty definitely as the accepted summing 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 91 
 
 up in undogmatic form of the peculiar message of 
 Christianity. The phrase is a well-worn one, but 
 that very fact makes it better fitted to serve the pur- 
 pose which is here required of it to represent what, 
 stripped of party differences, approaches nearest 
 to common ground in the interpretation of what is 
 most vital and central in the Christian religion as 
 its founder meant it. I shall assume, then, that the 
 meaning of Christianity is summed up, truly so far 
 as it goes, and with some measure at least of adequacy, 
 in this phrase : the fatherhood of God and the brother^ 
 hood of man. There is implied here as an intellec- 
 tual background (for we are not concerned at 
 present with its emotional significance) a certain 
 conception of reality/^nd this conception it is which 
 I shall endeavor to justify philosophically.^ , 
 
 (*The attitude which I am taking should again not 
 be misconstrued. I have no wish to claim for any 
 conception an uncritical acceptance simply because 
 it is backed, actually or in appearance, by a popular 
 religious belief. y Philosophy is bound to justify 
 its results in terms of reason. It has to show, not 
 merely that they are capable of being forced into 
 harmony with some preconceived opinion, but that 
 they are themselves the most satisfactory and the 
 most natural rendering of the facts. It must take 
 candid and full account of inner self-contradictions 
 and external difficulties, and not brush them aside 
 too lightly without a real reconciliation. But none 
 the less is it true that a system which is the outcome 
 
92 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 of a logical process merely is not on a level with one 
 which also finds points of contact with the expression 
 of some large and vital human experience. A view 
 of the world which is backed by widely felt religious 
 needs has a far greater weight of natural plausibility 
 than could possibly belong to the most closely rea- 
 soned and rigidly articulated system that should 
 voice no more than the logic of a lonely thinker^ 
 fOi the presuppositions which would seem to be 
 implied in the interpretation just referred to, there are 
 three which will serve as the main text of the subse- 
 quent discussion. ) For religion as thus formulated 
 it is evident, first, that the objective universe is inter- 
 preted in terms of meaning or value primarily, not 
 bare fact or bare sequence of fact. In the second 
 place, this meaning is connected fundamentally 
 with what we know as social relationships, and there- 
 fore the existence of persons is the most important 
 and significant thing that the world reveals. And, 
 finally, beyond and above the existence of human 
 persons there is the reality of God, whose nature 
 involves, however, in some true sense, no new kind 
 of reality, but the same essential fact of personality. 
 j I shall go on without further delay to consider these 
 points in detail, commencing for various reasons with 
 the first of them the right to interpret the world in 
 terms of meaning, or purpose, or ends. ) 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 
 
 THE argument from design has without doubt been 
 the most virile and the most convincing of all the 
 proofs of the existence of God that have been offered 
 for men's acceptance. It is not simply the ignorant 
 and the unthinking who have availed themselves 
 of it. Most men of solid intelligence who are en- 
 gaged in practical rather than in speculative pur- 
 suits would be likely to feel that it has at least some 
 measure of force, and among philosophers themselves 
 it has enjoyed a general repute, and has commonly 
 been regarded as a very respectable attempt at ar- 
 gument even when its cogency has been denied. 
 
 In its historical form the argument has usually 
 been concerned with pointing to a variety of particu- 
 lar facts in the outer world which seemed to require 
 for their understanding a directing intelligence. Any 
 fact that revealed order and harmony might be used 
 for the purpose the movements of the stars in 
 their courses, for example; for to the naive mind 
 order and intelligence seem one. As, however, the 
 conception of impersonal law came to familiarize 
 itself, the idea of order tended to be replaced by 
 that of adaptation. The stress was laid on that more 
 limited group of facts in the case of which some 
 
 93 
 
94 
 
 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 definite and intelligible end can be pointed out, for 
 the attainment of which there are found in nature 
 definite instruments that serve as means. Such facts 
 show themselves most clearly and convincingly in 
 the realm of animal organs and functions, and ac- 
 cordingly it is here the emphasis came finally to 
 be centred. 
 
 And so long as it was the general opinion among 
 scientists that animal species as they at present exist 
 are ultimate and irreducible, the opponent of teleology 
 had indeed in the evidence afforded by organic 
 structure a very strong presumption to overcome. 
 The chances against the haphazard origin at a single 
 blow of so complex a structure as the human body, 
 for example, are enormous, as any candid mind must 
 confess. But with the general acceptance of the 
 modem doctrine of evolution the situation has un- 
 doubtedly been changed to some extent. The theory^ 
 of evolution has beyond dispute altered very con- 
 siderably the emphasis in the older argument from 
 design. It is at least impossible any longer, in ac- 
 counting for the existence of an organ like the eye, 
 to accept the notion of a designer who stands apart 
 from his work and creates it outright by manufacture 
 after the analogy of a human workman. If things 
 come into being by a process of gradual growth, then 
 this point in the comparison, which historically was 
 a fundamental one, clearly breaks down. On the 
 other hand, that the weakening of some of its original 
 points of support is bound to result in the downfall 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 95 
 
 of the whole structure is by no means self-evident. 
 For the most part the defenders of teleology have 
 felt themselves called upon to shift their ground 
 rather than abandon it. More and more purpose 
 has taken the form of an immanent fact instead of 
 an external and arbitrary one ; the reality of growth 
 has been admitted, but the attempt has been made ' 
 to show that between growth and purpose there is * 
 no necessary contradiction. 
 
 The classical analogy that represents the force 
 which the older argument from design was supposed 
 to have is found in the comparison of an organ 
 such, for example, as the eye to a manufactured 
 article like a watch. The change of emphasis in 
 the new argument will appear if we consider what 
 sort of analogy it will be necessary under these new 
 conditions to substitute for the analogy of the watch. 
 If we look to any complicated series of movements 
 which human activity involves, the movements, 
 for example, of an artist painting a picture, these 
 might seem to us for a time as truly random and un- 
 purposive as the workings, looked at in any limited 
 cross section, of the material universe. But if we 
 were to follow the process closely, there would begin 
 to be revealed, in spite of apparent perplexities and 
 irrelevancies, certain lines of tendency, which would 
 lead us to suspect that more might be present than 
 we had at first imagined. And as the picture began 
 to grow in defmiteness and outline we should of course 
 conclude that here was no chance play of random 
 
96 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 movements, but that a pervading intelligence was 
 at work to give meaning to the whole act. The 
 main point of the comparison, it will be noticed, is 
 now shifted from the mere adaptation of the product 
 to the directed activity of the process, the continued 
 and developing series of changes moving toward an 
 end which is not for the artist's consciousness inde- 
 pendent of them, but which is present in them and 
 gives them meaning. Furthermore and this is 
 a point specially to be noticed the evidence for 
 purpose is not to be found primarily in some particu- 
 lar adaptation or group of adaptations, but in the 
 process as a whole. It is the order and meaning 
 gradually revealing itself in the whole continuous 
 act, and not any single fact out of relation to the 
 series of which it is a part. If one wishes to keep 
 closer to the historical analogy, the watchmaker's 
 activity again might serve as an example. But the 
 point of the comparison is changed all along the line. 
 For the older argument the watch represents a par- 
 ticular organism or organ ; the manufacture of the 
 watch, the way in which this is brought into existence. 
 And it is just this method of manufacture on which 
 the theory of evolution casts doubt. For the newer 
 point of view the making of the watch stands for the 
 whole process of evolution, and the watch itself for 
 that outcome of the process the present state of 
 things, namely in the light of which we are able 
 to look back and see meaning in the earlier stages. 
 Is there anything therefore in the world process as 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 97 
 
 a whole which tends to make it at all analogous to 
 the activities of human life, and to create the belief 
 that there is to be found in it a purpose and intelli- 
 gence at work that it has a meaning ? Now this 
 at least is hardly doubtful, that men have what is 
 naturally a very strong tendency to interpret the 
 universe in this way; and such a tendency is far 
 from being undermined by the results of modern , 
 science. Indeed the theory of evolution brings out | 
 for the first time in clear relief the essentially dra- 
 matic quality of creation. That something more than ; 
 blind and haphazard forces are at work, bearing in 
 themselves no relation of prevision to the results 
 which actually are accomplished, is the first and 
 natural presumption which the spectacle of the 
 world's history raises as it unrolls itself in the imag- 
 ination a presumption which it is not easy to 
 eradicate so long as the eyes are not kept too exclu- 
 sively on the details, and the whole massed effect is 
 allowed to exert its influence. When we call before 
 us the full sweep of the world's advance from the 
 time when it was a mere whirling and fiery mist, 
 and see how marvellously out of its seeming chaos 
 there grows order and intricate regularity, how the 
 wonders of plant and brute life come into being, how 
 finally man appears, the paragon of animals, with 
 eyes to see the beauty of the world and reason to 
 bring its forces into subjection, and, most of all, with 
 the power to create the ideal world of truth and honor, 
 righteousness and love; when we see these super- 
 
98 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 sensible ideals more and more ruling his life, till we 
 have the promise of a society wherein the poet's 
 dream and the prophet's forecasting shall be an 
 actual thing, when all this, I say, comes before us, 
 it is not easy to resign ourselves to say that all has 
 merely happened so. 
 
 A general objection may of course be brought 
 against the whole argument. It may be said that 
 we know in terms of our own experience the meaning 
 of artistic or of other human activities, and so are 
 in a position to discover the meaning in the outcome. 
 But the case of the cosmic process is a wholly differ- 
 ent one. Here there is no clew in our experience 
 to the purpose involved, even supposing that a pur- 
 pose exists; and so the issue tells us nothing about 
 design or absence of design. But this is surely not 
 completely true. For what is the outcome of the 
 process? At least one not unimportant aspect of ') 
 the outcome is man, and man's life as it reveals itself ' 
 in history and human society things which we | 
 know and of which we are a part. And it is this : 
 which is the real backbone of the whole argument. 
 Were we to leave out the reference to human life, 
 then doubtless the impression of purposi\ T eness would 
 be weakened. But we cannot omit such a reference, 
 for it is in human life that the process of development 
 has in a real sense culminated. There is nothing > 
 inherently absurd, therefore, in the supposition that , 
 a question about the meaning of things may in its j 
 larger and more general aspects be susceptible of ) 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 99 
 
 an answer. Why should we not hold that this mean- 
 ing is adumbrated in the meaning which actually is 
 found appearing in human life and human history? 
 That life has a meaning, and that this meaning is in 
 part actually open to us, is no far-fetched speculation, 
 but the veritable result of experience. It is the com- 
 mon assumption of mankind. Here and there, no 
 doubt, the thwarting of the ends with which he has 
 identified himself leads the individual to question 
 the accepted formulae, and to feel hopelessly that 
 the riddle of existence is still a mystery. But a mood 
 is not a philosophy, though too often it is taken to 
 be one. And there are various things that may be 
 said of this particular attitude. It is, to begin with, 
 the attitude of individuals ; and if to these the reali- 
 zation of life's meaning has been denied, at least we 
 should not forget that despair is not the character- 
 istic note of the human spirit. Others ha ve^ felt 
 that with life has come the insight into something 
 of its significance, and this positive fact should be 
 set alongside the negative. Furthermore, it may 
 well be doubted whether the one who protests his 
 inability to unravel the tangle of life really means 
 in most cases all that he may seem to say. That we i 
 cannot get at the whole meaning, that there are per- 
 plexities which weigh heavy on the spirit, that much 
 is blind and confused after all our weary searching, 
 - this without any doubt is true. And it is easy and i 
 natural oftentimes to put lack of finality in terms of 
 a complete ignorance. In particular, protest against 
 
IOO RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 the banalities of a too credulous and narrow inter- 
 pretation of life may often find it convenient to pose 
 as entire negation. But if one makes allowance for 
 this, and for a certain intellectual affectation which 
 is pretty apt to creep into at least the literary repre- 
 sentations of the tendency, it is very unlikely that 
 in many cases such protests are to be taken quite 
 literally. He surely is most unfortunate I am 
 inclined to think that he is as rare as he is unfor- 
 tunate who can honestly feel that neither in human 
 love, nor in social service, nor in art, or goodness, or 
 religion, has he caught one least glimpse of a real 
 and satisfying value that attests to him its foundation 
 in the structure of the universe. And finally, even 
 if the failure seems absolute, the very despair which 
 accompanies it is witness to how deep-seated the 
 demand is. It is only because we feel so profoundly 
 that there ought to be, that there must somewhere 
 ( be, a meaning, that the tragedy of failure is so com- 
 plete. 
 
 The point I am trying to make is, then, that it is 
 no mere speculative tour de force which finds a mean- 
 ing in human life, but instead the deep and perma- 
 nent experience of the race. From life we cannot 
 possibly eliminate for the natural sense the idea of 
 intelligence and reason. This is the essence of our 
 understanding of it. We therefore are justified in 
 saying that the teleological interpretation of the 
 process of evolution is not arbitrary. We are not 
 bringing to bear a mere analogy from another sphere. 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE IOI 
 
 The meaning is inherent in the process itself. For 
 human life is not something outside the process of 
 evolution, as one might suppose often from the words 
 of those who would rule it out as a source for the 
 interpretation of reality. It is an essential part of 
 evolution. It is in some sense, as I have said, the 
 outcome of the whole development. And therefore 
 to take it as throwing light upon the question of 
 meaning a very partial light indeed, but yet real 
 so far as it goes is not arbitrary, but only what the 
 conception of evolution itself gives us a right to do. 
 We are in a position to see the meaning because in 
 us the meaning has received a partial expression. 
 Not that we need to hold, once more, that the entire 
 universe in its onward march has had in view noth- 
 ing but the race of man. But the life of conscious- 
 ness and reason which reveals itself in man, though 
 it may have many another appearance beside 
 what reason can be given why this should not have 
 enough of dignity within itself to stand for the inner 
 meaning of the developing world? And man's life 
 itself will be a real and integral part of this meaning, 
 though it be only a part. This will not imply that 
 the whole significance of material things, for exam- 
 ple, is summed up in their practical utility to man. 
 But there is no absurdity in supposing that this is 
 a real aspect of their meaning. It is this too, though 
 it may be vastly more than this. We need not sup- 
 pose that cork trees were grown for the sole and ex- 
 press convenience of the bottlers. This is on the 
 
102 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 face of it absurd. And yet in point of fact corks 
 are made from the cork tree, and they fill a certain 
 place in life. And so they cannot be wholly foreign 
 to a reality which covers the entire field of existence. 
 In the displacement of the theological by the scientific 
 spirit we have passed to an entirely exaggerated dis- 
 paragement of the importance of the human element 
 in the universe. Science itself should have taught 
 us that it is never safe to rule a thing out from our 
 explanation just because to us it seems slight and 
 trivial. If corks are made, we must suppose that 
 even cork-making enters into the meaning of the 
 cork tree as an objectively valid fact, when the ob- 
 jectivity of a thing is taken, as it ought to be, to 
 include its social relations as well. The very pos- 
 sibility of extracting from a thing a value shows that 
 the possibility was in it, and therefore that it is a 
 veritable part of a universe which sums up all actual 
 relationships. In very truth 
 
 " the spacious North 
 Exists to draw our virtue forth," 
 
 if experience shows that virtue has thus the power 
 of being called to expression, provided we do not 
 commit ourselves to the theory that it exists for noth- 
 ing else. 
 
 There is a more abstract and general consideration 
 which may be used to strengthen this conclusion. 
 The scientist has been very apt to regard the world 
 primarily in terms of its component elements. These 
 are the only necessary presuppositions, the only 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 103 
 
 things truly real. Their changing relations to one 
 another and the varying combinations into which 
 they enter are incidental merely, and it is unnecessary 
 to take them into account in summing up the inner 
 character of reality. It may well be that there are 
 good practical reasons for this attitude ; philosophi- 
 cally, however, there are great difficulties in taking 
 it as ultimate. The reality of the world is the whole 
 and not the parts. Any other supposition would 
 result in rendering unintelligible the fact of inter- 
 connection or interaction. But then it follows that 
 any result that actually comes about is essential 
 to the nature of reality, and has a distinct ground in 
 the structure of the world, not an arbitrary and 
 chance connection with it. It is irrational to take 
 any collection of atomic parts at an arbitrarily 
 selected point of time, and hold that later develop- 
 ments are simply chance by-products of laws which 
 can be adequately understood in terms of the way 
 they then and there express themselves. Even at 
 the point of time we have selected there is another 
 element that needs to be considered. The existing 
 combination of elements a combination which had 
 it been different would have brought about different 
 results is another and vital part of the situation. 
 But furthermore it is quite impossible to take the 
 existing condition of the world at any point or sec- 
 tion of time as a complete statement of reality. The 
 world is a process and includes duration. What 
 is coming to be is in some sense equally real, equally 
 
IO4 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 a part of existence, with what is or what was. Ac- 
 cordingly we cannot hope to be in a position to sum 
 up reality except as we do take account of its de- 
 veloping self-expression. The process of evolution 
 must needs be defined, for philosophy, not by its be- 
 ginning, but by its completer unfolding. If we find 
 that certain characteristics appear as development pro- 
 ceeds, we have so much more data for our description ; 
 and should these elements fail to appear clearly at the 
 earlier stages, then we must take our first description 
 as imperfect. In a true sense and the principle is 
 one which will be more than once utilized in the sub- 
 sequent argument reality is most adequately to be 
 interpreted in terms, not of facts, but of ideals, if by 
 ideals we mean, not mere arbitrary imaginings, but 
 the hidden trend, the suggestion, not fully realized 
 as yet, of what nevertheless in the future will stand 
 revealed as the vital germ of things to come. To 
 emphasize mere brute present fact, what already has 
 been brought to the light of day, summed up and 
 made fully actual, is to miss the whole significance of 
 evolution. He does not show the truest or even the 
 most practical understanding of human nature who 
 prides himself on knowing men as they are, when 
 that knowledge takes account of nothing more than 
 the average everyday motives and weaknesses of 
 man reduced to his lowest terms, and who denies 
 all ideal possibilities that are not exemplified in the 
 habitual conduct of the ordinary citizen in his ordi- 
 nary mood. Rather he is wisest, in the long run at 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 105 
 
 least, who detects the rarer and more hidden capac- 
 ities which, though sporadic now, are destined to 
 flower and become regnant in man as he has the 
 power to be and shall be. And the same thing is 
 true as a general principle of interpretation. The 
 expectation that we can best understand a process 
 by looking back to its beginnings is only another 
 expression of the same outgrown standpoint which 
 led Rousseau to identify human happiness and virtue 
 with a primitive state of nature. A philosophy which 
 pretends to be empirical condemns itself by such a 
 procedure. It deliberately sets up a limited and 
 arbitrarily selected fraction of experience itself a 
 merely hypothetical experience even, and refuses 
 to allow any additional amount of experience to 
 modify this. Especially does the difficulty come 
 out when we have regard to one in particular of the 
 results of evolution the fact of human conscious- 
 ness and intelligence. That intelligence should 
 have sprung from a ground itself wholly unintelli- 
 gent is a consequence which one cannot be blamed 
 if he hesitates a long while before accepting. If, 
 as Mr. Balfour has pointed out, intelligence comes 
 from a universe in which there is no tendency what- 
 ever to produce truth rather than falsehood, it is at 
 least an awkward admission for a theory which 
 must base its whole belief in evolution on the testi- 
 mony of this same intelligence in favor of whose 
 veracity there is thus absolutely no presumption. 
 There is then, once more, a solid ground in expe- 
 
106 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 rience, which has speculative justification as well, 
 for regarding the meaning which is discoverable in 
 human life as a real light thrown upon the inner 
 constitution of the world. It is of course always 
 possible to stop with the value of life taken by itself 
 as a fact of experience, and refuse to consider its 
 connection with the profounder conditions out of 
 which man springs. Such an attitude is, I believe, 
 not a natural one. The will to explain would nor- 
 mally be led, unless constraint were put upon it, to 
 bring the two together and find a continuity between 
 them. We do not readily isolate the central fact of 
 man's nature from the process out of which it ap- 
 pears to issue, and deny to it the ability to throw 
 any light whatever on its source. Its place for reason 
 lies within the whole world development, and not as 
 a miraculous and inexplicable sport. However, it 
 is to be granted that if one feels no need to extend 
 hypothesis beyond the given fact that value can be 
 felt by man, there is no actual compulsion to be 
 brought to bear upon him. I only repeat, what has 
 been said before, that on one's interpretation of the 
 needs of life rather than on logic will depend the at- 
 titude he will here adopt. And for one who is not 
 satisfied to exclude some reference to things in them- 
 selves as a source of his own sense of realized values, 
 there is no way of barring such an extension of be- 
 lief as is involved in the teleological conception of 
 the whole world process. He recognizes this as an 
 hypothesis. But it is an hypothesis which fills out 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 1 07 
 
 in a significant way his own experience, and which 
 has behind it a sufficient weight of natural evidence 
 to make it seem plausible, provided no counter 
 arguments are to be brought up strong enough to 
 overcome its force. That there are such difficulties 
 in the way of the belief is of course to be admitted, 
 and it is to these that I wish now briefly to turn. 
 
 And first, I will consider the form of the difficulty 
 which is most directly the outcome of the modern 
 doctrine of evolution. For while, when the problem 
 is stated in large terms, it may still be maintained with 
 good show of reason that the argument for purpose 
 in the universe is a strong one, the question may 
 certainly be asked whether if we turn attention to 
 the details of the process instead the result will still 
 remain the same. Will not the investigation of 
 the methods which evolution actually has followed 
 after all turn the scale the other way? For if we 
 find at each separate step a condition of affairs which 
 strongly suggests that only such forces are in play 
 as are out of all intended relation to the result that 
 actually comes about, will not the evidence for the 
 purposiveness of the process as a whole necessarily 
 be compromised? 
 
 Is there, then, to be found in the more detailed 
 aspects of the situation anything to suggest so strongly 
 the notion of a merely fortuitous and chance result 
 as to overcome the force of the general considerations 
 which have been brought forward? Of course it 
 is just this impression that Darwin's theory of nat- 
 
I08 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 ural selection has made upon many minds. If all 
 the facts are sufficiently accounted for as due to the 
 selection of minute variations which are all the time 
 taking place indefinitely in every direction, it may 
 easily seem superfluous to call in any directing agency 
 looking specially toward the results which as a matter 
 of fact come about. Rather, the circumstances seem 
 to render improbable any such directing influence. 
 For if the variations are really indeterminate, the 
 reason for looking for a determining cause seems to 
 be removed. It is not easy in the present state of 
 uncertainty among scientists as to the actual method 
 or methods of evolution to discuss the matter in a 
 satisfactory way, but a few general considerations 
 may not be misleading. This accordingly is the 
 question : Does natural selection compel us to accept 
 as probable the fortuitous character of the results 
 of evolution? 
 
 Now in the first place, we should not lose sight of 
 the fact that whatever his attitude toward a large and 
 inclusive end, the evolutionist does necessarily use 
 the concept of end in his explanation. The whole 
 doctrine of natural selection is based upon the 
 existence of organic ends. The very notion of an 
 organism involves the relation of means to end, and 
 not simply of antecedents to a succeeding result. 
 The organ is for the sake of the unitary life of the 
 organism. I shall not dwell upon this, however, for 
 the reason that its larger bearings are not altogether 
 easy to settle. Nevertheless it is worthy of con- 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 109 
 
 sideration by the thick-and-thin repudiator of 
 ends. 
 
 The second point has already been pretty directly 
 suggested in the discussion of a few pages back. The 
 question of beginnings is one which needs to be 
 handled with a good deal of caution in arguing about 
 evolution. There is, without doubt, danger in try- 
 ing to pick out a few points where we can appeal to 
 a miracle of intervention while allowing that else- 
 where the process has been continuous and natural. 
 On the other hand, there is also danger in letting our 
 conviction that the process must have been continuous, 
 and therefore that nothing must appear save what 
 can be discovered in that which goes before, lead to 
 a minimizing of real difficulties. 
 
 Now while in general, admitting the existence of 
 a given organ, there seems no specially difficult 
 problem involved in its indefinite variation in size and 
 efficiency, the case is not wholly the same when we 
 consider the origin of the organ itself. We are so 
 used to the fact that certain variations have taken 
 place, we are so familiar with the organs and func- 
 tions which actually have appeared, that their ap- 
 pearance causes us no surprise. But, after all, the 
 thing is not so simple or obvious. There is at least 
 some occasion for reflection in the fact that matter 
 has had in it the capacity for varying in these particu- 
 lar, and on the whole rather striking ways. That 
 such facts have had the power of issuing from the 
 universal womb of things as bone and skin, blood 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERS! 
 
 OF 
 
IIO RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 and muscular tissue, nerve cells with their remarkable 
 forms of specialized activity, and all the variations of 
 living matter each with its own peculiar properties, 
 is not the less surprising because of their familiarity. 
 One gets at times the same impression as in the fairy 
 tales, when the hero has but to feel the need and ex- 
 press the wish, and whatever he wants is at his elbow. 
 No doubt it will be an advantage to the organism to 
 have its surface tickled into sensitiveness by the sun's 
 rays so that sight is the result. But surely we might 
 stop to wonder a little when straightway we find the 
 thing is done. Of course, if one can assume at the 
 start a matter which is potentially anything and 
 everything, he will have no trouble in supposing that, 
 given time enough, anything may come out of it. 
 But this is not a scientific assumption. And when 
 we add the very considerable difficulty of explain- 
 ing scientifically, in utility terms, the survival of such 
 slight beginnings as the theory of chance variations 
 naturally demands, the meaning of the word "for- 
 tuitous" no longer seems so clear or its force so 
 self-evident. 
 
 The third suggestion I would bring up may start 
 with a question of fact suggested by the last para- 
 graph. Is it so that variations are apparently for- 
 tuitous and without recognizable direction? It is 
 too early perhaps to speak with certainty, but there 
 would appear to be a tendency among naturalists 
 away from such a conclusion. The further inves- 
 tigation is carried, the more reason there seems for 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE III 
 
 believing that variations have taken place along 
 what to some extent are determinate and definite 
 lines, and therefore that we are compelled to seek 
 for causes of such determinate variations lying back 
 of the action of natural selection. Unfortunately 
 there seems to be at present nothing like an agree- 
 ment about the nature of these supplementary fac- 
 tors in evolution. But to whatever conclusion we 
 come, one thing would apparently in any case have 
 to be true. In order to get the process going at 
 all, it will be necessary to call in a number of coop- 
 erating laws and tendencies. Even the doctrine of 
 natural selection implies more than mere chance 
 variations. These would mean nothing were it not 
 for the fact that animals reproduce, that certain 
 definite laws govern heredity, that there is a vast 
 number of offspring brought into the world, that 
 conditions of life make necessary a struggle for food, 
 and other things too numerous to mention. Indeed, 
 indirectly there is no aspect of the universe which is 
 not somehow involved. The same thing is even 
 more evident if we recognize supplementary factors 
 in evolution. So if, for example, we find that the 
 direct action of the environment is concerned in 
 producing variations, either immediately, or in such 
 a roundabout way as is involved in the doctrine 
 of organic selection. It seems a simple and natural 
 thing to appeal to the fact that a change of food affects 
 the body, or that a muscle grows by exercise. Never- 
 theless, we should not forget that we are calling these 
 
112 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 things to our assistance. Were it not for such useful 
 cooperative agencies being at hand when needed, we 
 should not be able to get our development started. 
 
 And the point I wish to make is this: while it 
 may seem natural to hold to the fortuitous character 
 of the result so long as we are looking only at one 
 separate aspect or factor of the problem, there is 
 distinctly less reason to do so if we keep the whole 
 set of cooperating conditions in view. And yet for 
 an adequate account we are bound to do this. The 
 fact is not variation, indefinite or otherwise, but 
 variation occurring in a world capable of utilizing 
 it for a constant growth. The concurrent conditions 
 and their cooperation are essential, and the coinci- 
 dence that they are there is not to be forgotten in 
 estimating the likelihood that chance should have 
 brought about the result. Of course, if we are per- 
 mitted to assume all of these as given, then possibly 
 chance may be allowed to do the little work that is 
 left. But to take them for granted is precisely what, 
 if we are trying to get at a comprehensive and final 
 statement of the world, we are not allowed to do. 
 
 It remains true that no considerations such as 
 these which I have just mentioned will do away 
 with a certain appearance of indirectness and ten- 
 tativeness in the course by which things have devel- 
 oped to their present state. Abstractly, however, the 
 presence of a considerable element of trial and ex- 
 periment would not be incompatible with purpose 
 or meaning. It might indeed modify somewhat 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 113 
 
 our notion of the power and wisdom that lay behind 
 the purpose. But it would not necessarily lead us 
 to deny the purpose itself. If we find this element 
 of indirectness actually characterizing the process, 
 the only thing for us to do is to accept it, and find 
 such reasons for it as we may. As a matter of fact 
 a reason is close at hand. It has been implied that 
 for our natural thought the meaning of evolution 
 lies in the sphere of consciousness, the life of intelli- 
 gent beings. But the process which is best fitted 
 for developing a conscious and intelligent being, as 
 we know intelligence, is a process of struggle, of trial, 
 of tentative experiment. Now of course the original 
 production of physical variations lies, in large part at 
 least, outside the control of consciousness. But, on 
 the other hand, it may be held with some show of rea- 
 son that the relative indefiniteness in the direction 
 of congenital variations has a direct relation to the 
 bringing out of the capacities implicit in the conscious 
 life. If the advance in evolution lay in the hands of 
 a force which simply pushed the organism ahead 
 inevitably from step to step without live alternatives, 
 consciousness as we know it apparently would never 
 have had any existence. Development would have 
 been, as habit now is, automatic, with conscious- 
 ness either absent or quiescent. It is the presence of 
 such conditions as the struggle for existence implies 
 that has been the necessary incentive to mental, and 
 later on to spiritual growth. Struggle and competi- 
 tion are required to call the dormant powers into 
 
114 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 exercise. And this means that the quality which is 
 preserved gets its advantage by a process which 
 involves the active putting forth of something like 
 effort and blind will, and therefore that it does not 
 occupy the field alone, but appears at first as only 
 one among a number of competing possibilities. 
 These less favorable variations pass away, seemingly 
 without result. But they may have in reality a 
 very important result, if they have been the occasion 
 for calling forth qualities in the realm of the con- 
 scious life which are to constitute ultimately the 
 significance of the whole evolutionary process. 
 
 If then conscious life and its meaning do represent 
 the goal of evolution, it is not surprising to find that 
 development has not moved mechanically and in- 
 evitably, driven by forces that can suffer no deviation 
 from a straight line. Something in the nature of 
 natural selection is what we might expect. Again 
 the analogy in human ends is instructive. A pro- 
 cess of mere manufacture does not indeed allow of 
 deviations without showing a lack either of wisdom or 
 of power. But when the idea of growth rules rather 
 than of manufacture, the case is different. Take 
 the instance, for example, of the teacher who deals 
 with human material. The end is just as real, of 
 course, as in the analogy of the watchmaker. But 
 because it is a higher end, it cannot be reached in so 
 direct a way. There is no true education unless 
 there is a chance offered to make mistakes. The 
 teacher might indeed do all the work for the pupils. 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 115 
 
 Then everything would move forward unhesitatingly 
 and without the need of apparently futile side issues 
 that seem to end only in failure. But the seeming 
 advantage would, of course, be a real disadvantage. 
 Not only does the apparent randomness of the pro- 
 cess mean no lack of wisdom ; no other method would 
 be compatible with the wisdom that is real and far- 
 seeing. 
 
 I have considered so far the particular objections 
 against teleology which are derived from Darwin's 
 theory of natural selection, as these are the ones that 
 have been most pressed in recent times. And I 
 have tried, of course, not to settle the scientific prob- 
 lem of the method of evolution, but simply to suggest 
 that the natural appearance of fortuitousness which 
 at first the theory makes becomes more doubtful when 
 we examine the entire situation, and therefore that 
 this ought not to be given too much weight as against 
 the positive reasons for believing that the develop- 
 ing process of the world reveals a meaning and a 
 purpose. There is, however, another side from which 
 the idea of purpose has been attacked, and this is 
 historically a much older, though it is still a widely 
 prevalent, form of the difficulty. No one has ever 
 put this with more rigor of logic and force of con- 
 viction than Spinoza. The objection has two main 
 roots. The more fundamental of these is the de- 
 mand on the part of science, and the quite legitimate 
 demand, that it be not interfered with in its attempts 
 at explanation by scientifically irrelevant and ar- 
 
Il6 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 bitrary motives. Science is trying to reduce the 
 sequences among facts to terms of natural law, and 
 it cannot view calmly the possible intrusion at any 
 moment into its orderly and well-articulated world 
 of a miraculous interruption and source of confu- 
 sion, incapable of being reduced to the formulae which 
 its ideal demands should be all-embracing. This 
 repugnance is, to repeat, justified, and if the conse- 
 quences which it deprecates were really bound up 
 with the teleological conception, it would constitute 
 an objection whose force it would be very hard indeed 
 to break. That it at all necessarily applies, however, 
 to the modem form of the belief, is very far from 
 being evident ; to this point I shall return presently. 
 
 But now, while the real force of the hostility to 
 purpose goes back thus to an objection which is 
 hypothetical merely, if purpose contradicts natural 
 law, it cannot be maintained, the form which the 
 opposition is apt to take on the surface has been 
 another and a much less convincing one. Roughly 
 the objection is founded upon the charge, in particu- 
 lar, that purpose is a purely human category, the out- 
 come of a bias which human needs and desires lend 
 to our thought, and that consequently it has no right 
 to be regarded as applying to the real, the extra- 
 human world. 
 
 But the force of this claim has already been met 
 by the position taken in a preceding chapter. For 
 the defect, if defect it be, that comes from having a 
 basis in a human need, is by no means confined to 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE II 7 
 
 the concept of teleology. It is equally true of the 
 more mechanical concepts that are included under 
 the head of natural law. The term "explanation'' 
 is in itself essentially teleological in meaning, and so 
 not only are we unable to dispense with teleology 
 in the world, but it must take its place as the very 
 most fundamental category. Mechanism is itself an 
 example of teleology. In other words, we always 
 have some end in view when we set out to explain 
 a thing. Why otherwise should we go to the trouble 
 of explaining? We must somehow be dissatisfied; 
 and there is no such thing as satisfaction or dissatis- 
 faction except as a need or an end is or is not being 
 met. It is the demands of our nature, our intellec- 
 tual demands at the very least, which underlie and 
 give effect to every advance in knowledge. We can- 
 not possibly get away from ourselves and our con- 
 stitution as human beings. There is a necessary 
 anthropomorphism in every least detail of the think- 
 ing experience. Man, as Emerson says, can paint 
 or make or think nothing but man. In scientific 
 materialism or agnosticism, quite as truly as in a 
 naive theology, we are imposing our own human 
 needs upon nature, rather than merely finding what 
 is there, independent of any reference to ourselves 
 and this nature of ours. It may indeed be that our 
 private and individual needs ought to be eliminated. 
 But to get away from such methods of interpretation 
 as are essentially and universally human is a sheer 
 impossibility. 
 
Il8 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 This accordingly, once more, is the real state of the 
 case: That order which later we come to know as 
 natural law is in no sense a given and undeniable 
 fact. We never should have recognized law had 
 not the need of law been insistently present in our 
 lives. And even now, if it were not for our robust 
 faith that law must everywhere rule the world, 
 a faith which goes far beyond empirical demon- 
 stration and has its root in the necessities of practical 
 self-preservation, the whole laborious edifice of 
 science would crumble to pieces. Accordingly the 
 appeal to a prejudice against merely human modes 
 of interpretation furnishes in itself no valid reason 
 why the teleological hypothesis should be rejected, 
 at the same time that the scientific is regarded as 
 true. We are thrown back therefore upon the other 
 and more fundamental objection : purpose is to be 
 denied, not because it is a human way of thinking, 
 but because it contradicts the more firmly estab- 
 lished and better-verified hypothesis of mechanism 
 and natural law. 
 
 It is not difficult to see in a general way that when 
 the old idea of purpose has been transformed, this con- 
 tradiction no longer exists as a necessity of thought. 
 When purpose is conceived as breaking in upon the 
 course of natural events from the outside to give it 
 a new and incalculable twist, the demands of science 
 are clearly sacrificed. But if intelligence directs the 
 process from start to finish, and is identified with the 
 development as a whole, then the case stands quite 
 
THE ARGUMENT FOR PURPOSE 119 
 
 otherwise. Teleology and mechanism are no 
 longer competing theories, but rather different 
 points of view, both equally valid, though one is 
 more ultimate than the other. They stand for the 
 difference between the meaning of a process, and 
 the steps by which this meaning is worked out. 
 And unless it is impossible that a purpose should 
 be accomplished in an orderly and systematic 
 way, a way which shows definite uniformities and 
 can be summed up and stated as a law, any in- 
 herent opposition between the two concepts does 
 not exist. 
 
 As an abstract solution of the difficulty this seems 
 fairly evident. But there are certain features of the 
 situation which need clearing up before we can con- 
 sider that we have a finished theory. And in the 
 first place, what more precisely are we to understand 
 is the relation in which intelligence stands to the pro- 
 cess of growth that constitutes the universe ? If we 
 use the term " God," what is the connection between 
 God and the changing world ? Does he exist beyond 
 its limits and have only an external relationship to 
 it? Or is intelligence somehow immanent in the 
 universe of matter itself? If the last alternative is 
 true, how are we to understand this "somehow"? 
 For the inherence of intelligence in a world of matter 
 needs some further explanation. And if we take 
 the other side, then the creation outright of a new 
 world of reality, or the handling of a foreign matter 
 that always has existed, equally calls for interpreta- 
 
120 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 tion. Accordingly the religious hypothesis will need 
 to receive a more exact formulation in connection 
 with an answer to this question : What is the relation 
 between God and the world of material things ? 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 
 
 THE traditional argument for theism starts from 
 an assumed separation between God and the world. 
 The world of matter exists, and exists essentially as 
 we know it. But beyond this there lies also a super- 
 sensible, an immaterial being. We have no imme- 
 diate knowledge of this being. We only infer his 
 existence from certain facts which admittedly are 
 known. We know directly the world of matter. 
 This exists palpably and beyond question. But 
 various considerations make it impossible to stop 
 with this as the only reality. First, there is the al- 
 leged impossibility that any true and ultimate cause 
 can be found in the physical world. The search for 
 a first cause leads us beyond matter to the creator, 
 absolute and infinite, on whom material facts must 
 depend. And then there is the further point which 
 already has come before us in the form of the argu- 
 ment from design: certain aspects of the material 
 world show too plainly their relation to an intelligent 
 purpose to be reduced to mere unmeaning law and 
 mechanism. Accordingly there must exist behind 
 the world of matter an intelligent creator and de- 
 signer, vastly powerful if not omnipotent, to whose 
 wisdom and power natural events are due at 
 
 121 
 
122 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 least those events which lie beyond the reach of 
 mechanism to explain. 
 
 I have already indicated that there is an interpre- 
 tation of this last argument at any rate which seems 
 to me still to have a great deal of force. Never- 
 theless I think it must be admitted that in its tra- 
 ditional form the whole theistic position starts out 
 with presuppositions which put it at a certain real 
 disadvantage, especially in so far as it confines itself 
 to the physical side of the universe. Here are cer- 
 tain facts to be accounted for. Now there is, it may 
 be said, one basis of explanation which is admitted 
 by all to be real so far as it goes. The world of mat- 
 ter exists. The laws of its workings are confessedly 
 equal to at least a part of the task in question. Let 
 us grant that there are flaws in the explanation. 
 Questions arise to which the answer that science can 
 at present give are not wholly satisfying. And yet 
 when we think how great is that leap into the un- 
 known which the argument for God requires, may 
 we not hesitate before leaving apparently solid ground 
 for what at best has only a speculative justification ? 
 Can we really be sure of the necessity for taking so 
 great a step when the facts with which we are dealing 
 are on so vast a scale ? Is it so certain after all that 
 matter, whose marvellous properties we are only be- 
 ginning to realize, may not be competent to perform 
 the task for which we have been demanding a God ? 
 God is an hypothesis, matter an actuality. God we 
 can at best only infer, matter we can directly know. 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 123 
 
 We have no right, then, to call in a new and un- 
 known cause unless the explanation that already lies 
 within our reach breaks down decisively. And then, 
 too, there are the positive difficulties which surround 
 any attempt to understand the relation of two 
 realities so totally different in kind as by definition 
 God and matter are, whether it be in terms of crea- 
 tion, or of interaction. 
 
 But now there is another path which lies open to 
 the theist, and which, were it to prove feasible, would 
 give him a certain advantage of position. Suppose 
 we were to deny the postulate which underlies the 
 objection that has just been made the self-evident 
 reality of matter and material things. We may agree 
 that experience reveals a reality to us the reality 
 which naive thought knows as the external world. 
 But in the place of attempting to prove God's exist- 
 ence as a separate being necessary to create and 
 order this given material world, we might adopt a 
 different course. Instead of passing from a sensible 
 reality to another and supersensible one, we might 
 go to work rather to criticise the notion of this very 
 reality which we already suppose ourselves to have. 
 The assumption, so the argument would run, that 
 in what is called matter we have a perfectly clear 
 and unambiguous conception is capable of being 
 doubted. On the contrary, the apparently self- 
 evident notion of matter begins to crumble under 
 scrutiny. Instead of our having an undoubted 
 reality to start upon, while the reality of God is de- 
 
124 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 rivative and inferential, we find that the idea of 
 matter is itself uncertain and disputable. A reality 
 there doubtless is. But when we call this reality 
 material, we are simply resting satisfied with our 
 first naive impressions. These impressions, however, 
 taken as ultimate truth will not stand criticism. The 
 more we examine them, the less capable do we find 
 the material categories of representing a final state- 
 ment of the real world. And in the end we might 
 discover that the only way hi which we can really 
 think this world, without involving ourselves in ob- 
 scurity and self-contradiction, is to interpret it in 
 terms of that other sort of reality which we know 
 as consciousness. The world of matter transforms 
 itself in our hands in the process of our attempt to 
 make it thinkable. The question is no longer 
 whether a given reality requires a separate and hy- 
 pothetical reality to explain it. It is rather the 
 question about the true understanding of the one 
 reality which alone we know, but which refuses to 
 admit of a final interpretation in the terms we first 
 apply to it. God is still an hypothesis, to be sure. 
 But he is not an hypothesis called in to explain that 
 for which we already have a partially sufficient cause 
 in matter. Matter itself and the laws of matter are 
 self -contradictory, until we have reconstructed them 
 in terms of conscious life. There would be nothing 
 arbitrary in this. It would be a perfectly justifiable 
 use of hypothesis. We have something which we 
 are trying to render consistent for thought, and in- 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 125 
 
 telligible. This is the world which experience re- 
 veals to us a world which materialist and theist 
 alike believe exists. If the attempt to think this as 
 material breaks down, we have a perfect right to call 
 in some other hypothesis. This is just what science 
 itself is constantly doing. Science never leaves the 
 world as naive experience finds it. It reconstructs 
 and transfigures until the reality is quite unrecog- 
 nizable to the lay mind. The only caution which 
 it is necessary to observe is this, that the logical re- 
 quirements of a good hypothesis should not be dis- 
 regarded. 
 
 There are thus two steps in the argument that has 
 just been sketched. It is necessary to show, in the 
 first place, that the concept of matter as a self -existent 
 reality is not ultimately intelligible, and so that the 
 ordinary conception of the external world must in 
 some way be transformed. And in the second place, 
 it must be shown that the religious hypothesis the 
 interpretation of the world, that is, as a conscious ex- 
 perience or personality is, all things considered, the 
 most reasonable one, and meets best the conditions of 
 the problem. Upon the first step it is not necessary to 
 dwell very long. The novice in philosophy no doubt 
 finds it very difficult at the start to get the point of view 
 from which the seemingly solid fabric of the outer 
 world as we know it through the senses loses its sub- 
 stantial existence. But to one who has any knowl- 
 edge of the results of philosophical thought, the Berke- 
 leyan denial of the reality of matter as something 
 
126 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 which exists, as we know it, independent of any con- 
 sciousness whatever, has long been a commonplace. 
 Such a result is not confined to the mere metaphy- 
 sician. It is accepted, not to say insisted upon, by 
 nearly every scientist of recent times who has any 
 pretensions to be called a philosopher. I shall there- 
 fore reproduce the argument here only very briefly. 
 
 When with the eyes of sober and unreflective com- 
 mon sense we look out on the world about us, it never 
 strikes us that there is any lurking mystery which the 
 senses may not penetrate. There stands the universe 
 of things, green and white and red, round and square, 
 rough and smooth, the living type of all that is real 
 and solid. We close our eyes and look again, and 
 there has been no change. We do not ask ourselves 
 why it should be standing thus ; why should it not ? 
 Long before the human race was thought of all these 
 things existed. If every creature that draws breath 
 suddenly were blotted out, the brooks still would 
 murmur as before, the sunlight glisten, the trees 
 put forth green leaves. 
 
 It will not be necessary to trace the process by 
 which our naive confidence that things exist just 
 as we sense them gradually becomes modified, until 
 at last in the common scientific atomism we have 
 the great mass of sense qualities rejected outright 
 as merely subjective, and only the merest remnant, 
 notably extension and impenetrability, still retained 
 as actually and objectively existing. The point 
 which I shall consider here is more general in its 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 127 
 
 application. It depends upon the self-evident fact 
 that all our knowledge of things is primarily our 
 knowledge, and is reducible ultimately to the data of 
 our sense experience. We say that out in space there 
 are objects existing, and that we see them and 
 know them. But this seeing, this knowing, is a 
 mental act, and by no possibility can there be any 
 perception or knowledge which is not a mental 
 act. Now matter by definition is something that 
 exists in a definite place outside us and distinct from 
 our private experiencing. It cannot therefore be 
 taken up from its solid base and transported into the 
 mind. We believe that it exists out there where we 
 seem to see it. But all the data for this belief are 
 nevertheless mental. The things exist perhaps. 
 But for us they exist not in themselves, but only as 
 they are reproduced or somehow issue in mental 
 terms. There is literally no quality which we attrib- 
 ute to matter color, form, hardness, elasticity 
 which is not based directly upon sensational experi- 
 ences, and which cannot, when looked at from an- 
 other standpoint, be put in terms of these. If, that 
 is to say, matter is regarded as something distinct 
 from consciousness, we yet have to admit that it is 
 only through the medium of consciousness that we 
 can describe it. Every quality which we ascribe to 
 matter is, it would seem, after all only the same 
 thing that we otherwise know as a sensation. So 
 that when we set aside this content nothing what- 
 ever is left. Consciousness is for us the ultimate. 
 
128 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 The force of this position is generally admitted 
 in the case of the secondary qualities of matter - 
 color, sound, heat, smell, and the like. These, it is 
 agreed, are really subjective affections of our own. 
 But it is difficult to see how we can stop with them ; 
 the same arguments seem to apply equally well 
 to the so-called primary qualities, which are popu- 
 larly supposed to belong to matter in itself. These 
 also certainly are made known to us through sense 
 perception. Why then should we suppose that they 
 have any existence except as they are sensibly per- 
 ceived, any more than the color or fragrance of the 
 rose exists when no one is there to enjoy it ? Indeed, 
 what possible conception can we form of a sense qual- 
 ity which has an existence when it is not perceived ? 
 If we hold to the fact that all our supposed knowledge 
 of the qualities of matter comes to us through sen- 
 sation, can we still retain the belief that these sense 
 qualities give us information about a material some- 
 thing beyond themselves, unless we admit the appar- 
 ent contradiction that a sensation may resemble that 
 of which an essential determination is that it differs 
 altogether from a sensation? "What, when we 
 consider it candidly," to quote Mr. Balfour, "can 
 we possibly make of a macrocosm furnished with 
 material objects whose qualities exactly resemble 
 impressions and ideas, with the embarrassing ex- 
 ception that they are neither transient nor mental?" 
 For matter is denned as that which is absolutely 
 out of all relation to consciousness, which is entirely 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE I2Q 
 
 unconscious. Now not one of the qualities of a sen- 
 sation can be separated from the fact of its being 
 thus a sensation, a form of consciousness. Conscious- 
 ness is implicated in every possible aspect of a con- 
 scious fact; it is conscious through and through. 
 And if this fundamental characteristic is denied, 
 everything whatsoever goes along with it. There is 
 no basis at all left on which to found a correspondence 
 or representation of any kind. Matter exists, then, 
 only in terms of conscious experience. The con- 
 scious threads woven into it are essential to its being. 
 And were we to attempt to withdraw them, the whole 
 world would vanish like a bubble. 
 
 The Berkeleyan form of the idealistic argument 
 is the one which has been most generally familiar. 
 There is, however, another way in which essentially 
 the same thing may be put, and which perhaps comes 
 closer to the actual scientific procedure. For in 
 spite of its historical connection with sensationalism, 
 modern science is in reality at almost the opposite 
 pole from a reduction of the world to sensations. 
 It might rather be claimed that science has no ap- 
 parent place left for sensations at all. The world of 
 science is an ideal world. Its atoms, its ether, are 
 things that no man's eye has seen or can see. They 
 are demands of logic, not complexes of sensations. 
 Even more obviously are the laws of science not things 
 of sense. Laws, say of mechanics or of chemistry, 
 with their complex mathematical formulae, are in 
 the highest possible degree abstract and ideal. 
 
130 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 Now these statements, if they are examined, really 
 involve the whole point at issue. The scientist's 
 conception of the world is confessed by him to be, not 
 in terms of matter, but in terms of thought a 
 conscious fact. Law is the goal of science ; and law 
 is the product of thought, of reason. The whole 
 procedure of science is an attempt to meet the de- 
 mands of thought and the laws of thinking. A 
 scientific hypothesis is primarily a device to satisfy 
 certain requirements ease, comprehensiveness, and 
 the like in the mental grasping and manipulation 
 of the data of experience, for the sake of better prac- 
 tical control. Typically it bases itself on mathe- 
 matics, and mathematics is fundamentally an intel- 
 lectual discipline. The consistent materialist who 
 makes mathematics the basis of his science is thus 
 compelled to hold that the very thing which is most 
 characteristic of the scientific attitude is unreal, 
 lacking in objective validity, the work merely of 
 the mind. Philosophical scientists are often nowa- 
 days ready to admit this, and to declare frankly that 
 scientific laws are no account of reality, but arbi- 
 trary devices for introducing order into the confusion 
 of our sense experience, with no validity beyond this 
 purely human and practical one. Whatever the 
 satisfactoriness of this position as a whole, the one 
 point with which we are here concerned is plain. 
 The concepts of science are not facts found ready- 
 made in nature. They are superimposed upon it. 
 And the grounds of their acceptance are the demands 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 131 
 
 of thinking. They are thoughts, not unconscious 
 matter. And if therefore they are regarded as belong- 
 ing to the real world, this world can no longer be put 
 ultimately in material terms. 
 
 Such then is the result to which philosophy and 
 science alike have very generally come. The stuff 
 of the material world, and that which at least furnishes 
 the starting-point of science, is revealed to us only in 
 sense perception, and therefore is reducible in its 
 statement ultimately to facts only of a sensational 
 order. The peculiar and more fundamental real- 
 ity of the scientist the reality of law is again a 
 product only statable in terms of the intellectual con- 
 sciousness ; it is clearly and confessedly the product 
 of thought. On this basis then we are ready for the 
 second step in the theistic argument. 
 V And the main point is a simple one. Here is a 
 reality which we have agreed exists. We might of 
 course go back on this assumption, and hold that 
 the world is entirely identical with the conscious 
 experience in which I suppose myself to know it. 
 I have already given my reasons for rejecting this 
 position, and I shall continue therefore to take for 
 granted that the reality to which we have reference 
 in what we term the outer world exists beyond my 
 private self, and beyond any human, psychological, 
 experience. But it turns out that this reality is 
 incapable of being thought ultimately in terms of 
 matter, if we define matter as something entirely un- 
 like mind and consciousness. So far as it makes any 
 
132 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 claim to be known it is known in conscious terms 
 terms of thought and sensation, or of conscious ex- 
 perience. But why not suppose, then, that the terms 
 in which reality is known really represent in some 
 true sense the nature of that which is known ? There 
 is one, and apparently only one, condition on which 
 this would be conceivable. Why not suppose that 
 knowledge is possible for us just because we are akin 
 to the world we know, and that the world can get 
 itself reproduced hi our consciousness because this 
 reproduction is in its essential being similar to that 
 for which it stands ? We are able to reproduce in our 
 knowledge with some degree of adequateness the 
 thoughts and feelings of our fellows for this reason, 
 that both the knowledge and the thing it knows have 
 as conscious facts a common nature. Why may not 
 the same be true of our knowledge of the outer world ? 
 If the world is intelligible and science assumes 
 this must we not hold that it is itself the expres- 
 sion of intelligence? "That which requires reason 
 and thought to understand must itself be thought 
 and reason." The fact that our knowledge is in the 
 form of consciousness makes it impossible to suppose 
 it truly represents outer reality so long as we hold to 
 the prejudice that this reality must of necessity be an 
 unconscious and unintelligent something. But in- 
 stead of saying : Knowledge is a fact of consciousness, 
 and therefore cannot truly stand for anything be- 
 yond our conscious experience ; why not rather say : 
 Knowledge is valid of reality, and therefore reality 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 133 
 
 must itself be such that knowledge can reproduce it ? 
 The qualities of things have been reduced to sen- 
 sational qualities, and sensations cannot exist ob- 
 jectively in a world of unthinking matter. But 
 sensations can be supposed to exist independently in 
 another experience objective to our own. Once more, 
 then, why may we not say that the great reality which 
 we know as the material universe, the reality on 
 which our whole being depends, from which flow 
 the issues of life and death, is like in essence to our- 
 selves who stand in this intimate relation to it, is a 
 reality of conscious spirit, in religious language is 
 God? How else again can we understand the re- 
 lationship of knowledge the relationship between 
 the perception and the object which we commonly 
 think that it represents unless the object also 
 forms part of some similar conscious experience? 
 Thus God would not be unknown. He does not lie 
 in a realm beyond that with which our experience 
 brings us in contact. This very world which we 
 suppose we know we cannot really understand, until 
 we have transformed it so that it becomes no longer 
 dead matter, but living spirit. 
 
 There is a somewhat different way in which the 
 argument might be put. We should not forget, 
 though it often is forgotten, that what we call the 
 external world is not the whole of reality. Any 
 final explanation, therefore, must not be prejudicial to 
 the outlying facts, but must find somewhere a place 
 for them. Now the reality which we know outside 
 
134 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 what we call the material universe is the reality of 
 conscious beings. In our own immediate conscious 
 lives we come into contact with a portion of the uni- 
 verse which is as certain to us as anything can possi- 
 bly be. The situation is accordingly this : We have a 
 part of the universe that is known, and we are trying 
 to get a satisfactory conception of that other portion 
 which lies beyond. Other things being equal, it is 
 easier to regard the universe as all of a piece, than to 
 think of it as split into two divisions, one essentially 
 different in nature from the other. If therefore the 
 nature of one section is known to us, there is nothing 
 arbitrary in the supposition that this will furnish 
 us the clew for understanding the whole. Or it can 
 be put in still another way. If consciousness exists 
 now, it may be argued that it must somehow always 
 have existed. It is difficult to think of an absolutely 
 new kind of reality as suddenly appearing. Even 
 prior to the existence of organic life there must have 
 been some positive grounds for the possibility of 
 consciousness. And since the derivation of con- 
 sciousness from that which is wholly unconscious 
 is not easy to distinguish from the appearance of 
 a new kind of reality, again the natural hypothesis 
 is to interpret in conscious terms existence as it was 
 originally, in order to account for these facts of exist- 
 ence which we know have come to be. 
 
 The somewhat startling nature of this result - 
 for it is likely to appear startling to the novice in 
 philosophy should not obscure the essentially sim- 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 135 
 
 pie character of the process by which it is reached. 
 If we are to make any effort at all to understand the 
 true nature of the external world, then it may be 
 maintained that from the standpoint of logic nothing 
 else meets as well the requirements of a general and 
 preliminary hypothesis. Our first naive explana- 
 tion of the world has proved insufficient, and we have 
 therefore on our hands a problem to be met. We 
 know that conscious beings really exist, and we 
 know, at least in a measure, what consciousness is. 
 There is no other reality that we know so well. 
 There is no other reality that we know at all, indeed, 
 if the reality of matter fails us. It affords there- 
 fore really the only type of hypothesis positive in its 
 nature that is available. It would, once more, be 
 quite possible at this stage to drop proceedings al- 
 together. One might well be deterred by the mag- 
 nitude of the problem, and be content to lay it aside 
 and turn to other more immediately practical mat- 
 ters ; and if he fails to find within himself the insist- 
 ent motive for demanding a solution, this is doubtless 
 what he will do. But to give things up is, of course, 
 to abandon the realm of philosophy altogether, and 
 to leave one's results the expression of simple preju- 
 dice or temperament. But now if, instead of saying 
 that he is unable to form any opinion at all about the 
 real nature of the world, one should declare that 
 nature in all likelihood to be quite definitely of an 
 unknown sort, such an one is still treading the paths 
 of speculation. He is making a choice between two 
 
136 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 alternatives, and may therefore fairly be called upon 
 to give reasons for his choice. And my only point 
 is that the hypothesis of the theist is logically superior, 
 taken simply by itself. To pass by the claims of 
 consciousness as a means of interpretation, so long as 
 the insufficiency of consciousness has not been shown, 
 is from the logical standpoint unjustified. It is an 
 appeal from the known to the unknown as a source 
 of explanation the very thing which science depre- 
 cates ; or else it is, once more, simply a faint-hearted 
 abandonment of the problem. Of course it is en- 
 tirely possible that the hypothesis may not work 
 out well, and if it cannot be justified this abstract 
 advantage will not be enough to save it. I am simply 
 concerned to maintain that there is no initial unlike- 
 lihood in the way of its acceptance as a sober and 
 perfectly natural hypothesis, but that on the contrary 
 it has the first claim upon our attention. We have 
 the logical right to demand, before the hypothesis 
 is rejected in favor of the unknown, a careful and 
 unprejudiced hearing for it, and a recognition that, 
 instead of its being arbitrary and far-fetched, there 
 is a general presumption in its favor. 
 
 I shall have accordingly, in what follows, to give 
 the hypothesis greater precision of statement, and 
 to indicate the answer which it enables us to make 
 to the more insistent problems which grow out of 
 the attempt at a final account of the world. Mean- 
 while it may be granted that I have already antici- 
 pated matters somewhat, and have, in the particular 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 137 
 
 turn which has been given to the conception, out- 
 stripped the necessary implications of the argument. 
 That the world of nature represents, however in- 
 adequately and tentatively, the content of a larger 
 life and conscious experience analogous to our own, 
 is the form of the theory which I have suggested. 
 Strictly, it may be said, all that at best the argument 
 would justify us in asserting is that in some entirely 
 indeterminate way outer reality may be interpreted 
 in terms of consciousness. And there are several pos- 
 sible constructions along the lines of such an indefi- 
 nite hypothesis, other than the particular one which 
 is here preferred. This undoubtedly is the case, 
 and I do not mean to ignore it. It will, however, 
 permit of a clearer and more straightforward ex- 
 position if I keep to the special point of view which 
 I am attempting to establish, and try primarily to 
 show in a positive way that this is a satisfactory ex- 
 planation of the facts of experience, instead of direct- 
 ing too much attention to the criticism of competing 
 theories. Incidentally I shall, of course, have occa- 
 sion to consider such points in connection with these 
 other hypotheses as seem to me most important. 
 And meanwhile there is the general and preliminary 
 justification to which I have already adverted : it 
 is not merely a private preference, but it also is the 
 one which is dictated most obviously by the historical 
 religious experience. It is not an interpretation 
 manufactured for purely theoretical purposes; it 
 connects itself with motives which are suggested by 
 
138 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 life before they are used by philosophy. Once again, 
 this does not dispense with the need of rational jus- 
 tification. But so far as i f KOCS it may be claimed 
 that it gives a certain initial advantage. 
 
 There is involved, too, another advantage for the 
 form of the hypothesis which is here selected that 
 also may be referred to once more before proceed- 
 ing. It enables us to maintain the essential ade- 
 quacy of our knowledge to the real facts. That men 
 have an instinctive prejudice in favor of believing 
 that their supposed knowledge of the natural history 
 of the world represents in some true sense what 
 really is there and what really has happened, can, 
 of course, not well be denied. And the prejudice is 
 a continuous one ; we fall back upon it automatically 
 the moment we forget our speculations and trust to 
 our natural bias. And at least for the religious mind, 
 which would be at a loss could it discover no trace 
 whatever of a true revelation of God in nature, the 
 demand for some measure of resemblance between 
 the truth for us and the truth for God must seem a 
 well-grounded one. Now on the supposition that 
 the world exists as content within a larger experience, 
 there is no need to deny to our knowledge such re- 
 semblance to the reality on which it stands in appar- 
 ent dependence as experience may seem to warrant. 
 Of course this does not mean that when we know the 
 physical world we know God in anything like the 
 completeness of his nature, any more than in know- 
 ing the sensations my neighbor is experiencing I 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 139 
 
 should know the man himself. Back of these there 
 lies his emotional life, his whole system of ideals and 
 ends, the unity of his concrete nature. But still, 
 in knowing these lesser facts my knowledge is good 
 so far as it goes. So it is possible to hold that nature 
 represents something which is real for God's ex- 
 perience, although it is not the whole truth. Things 
 are parts of this experience somewhat as the per- 
 ception of things enters into our own conscious life to 
 form its objective framework and material. They 
 constitute elements in it, as in the poet's dream the 
 various images form the stuff of his inspired vision. 
 The material for interpreting the meaning of this 
 life we shall have to get in the main, if at all, in the 
 experience we call ethical and social, in history rather 
 than the physical sciences. But the validity of such 
 an interpretation would be greatly compromised were 
 we to cut it loose wholly from its basis in the natural 
 world. For our knowledge the world is interknit 
 in bonds of too great intimacy to suffer easily the 
 outright rejection of any section of it; to give up 
 the truth of a part will inevitably tend to weaken and 
 confuse our hold upon the rest. 
 
 Once more it is to be kept in mind that we are not 
 attempting to demonstrate the existence of God. The 
 whole argument rests upon two postulates, or preju- 
 dices if one chooses so to call them ; and while these 
 can be made to seem reasonable in the light of a 
 developed experience, they can in the nature of the 
 case be submitted to no decisive test. The first is, 
 
140 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 that we are encircled by a reality larger than ourselves, 
 and larger than all merely human life. The second 
 is our inveterate bias toward supposing that growing 
 knowledge is actually in some degree advancing 
 toward truth, that there is a harmony between our 
 human knowing and reality. Whatever the broadest 
 experience brings home to us as valid, this we find 
 ourselves constrained also to import into the content 
 of that universe which is the basis of all validity. 
 What as philosophers we then go on to do is to clarify 
 our conceptions to the end that we may get rid of 
 contradictions, while at the same time we retain all 
 the outcome of experience that is of essential worth. 
 And if a certain conception enables us to retain alike 
 the truth of nature and the truth of our social and 
 spiritual experience, it has the strongest warrant that 
 any conception can possess. 
 
 In the hypothesis, therefore, that in the material ^ 
 universe we have a reality which takes the form when ( 
 reinterpreted as in some shape or other it needs I 
 must be reinterpreted of a conscious experience 
 akin to our own, and that law represents simply 
 those uniformities of sequence that are to be detected 
 within this conscious and intelligible whole, in itself 
 a reality of meaning and purpose, there is outlined 
 the foundation of a theoretical construction of the 
 world which will serve to satisfy the religious de- 
 mands and the facts of experience which give these J 
 demands their plausibility, while at the same time it 
 gets rid of the peculiar difficulties that surround the 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 141 
 
 relationship of the God of religion and the object of 
 science when these are supposed to represent two 
 distinct existences. Meanwhile, before passing to 
 the further problems which present themselves to 
 such a theory, I wish to point out briefly that there 
 is one question in particular which has in the past 
 caused a good deal of trouble to philosophers, to 
 which the conception that has just been outlined 
 offers directly a possible solution. More especially 
 since the days of Hume certain difficulties about the 
 notion of causality have played a prominent rdle in 
 nearly every philosophy. The particular difficulty 
 which Hume himself brought to the front was in con- 
 nection with the idea of the causal bond. Naturally, 
 almost inevitably indeed, when we think of two 
 things in the relation of cause and effect, we tend to 
 think that there is an actual influence of one upon the 
 other, that the first somehow brings the second about, 
 makes it to be. Hume, on the other hand, challenges 
 us to point out any distinct meaning that can be 
 assigned to this notion of power, force, causal in- 
 fluence of a bond that connects two events. This 
 challenge it has been found unexpectedly difficult 
 for the philosopher to meet. And in the absence of 
 any assignable meaning to the term Hume is con- 
 strained to reject outright the whole conception as 
 groundless, and to reduce causality to a mere sub- 
 jective expectation that things will happen as they 
 have been wont to happen in the past an expec- 
 tation based on habit, and of course incapable of 
 
142 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 being philosophically grounded. Cause represents 
 simply a sequence of events which has taken place so 
 often that we tend to look for it again. 
 
 In more recent times Hume's position has received 
 an apparent confirmation from the dominant ten- 
 dencies in science. For modern science has prac- 
 tically followed Hume in giving up the primitive 
 idea of force as a valuable scientific conception. It 
 has indeed added something to Hume's statement, 
 and by the doctrine of the equivalence of energy it 
 has discovered a way of distinguishing between ap- 
 parent and real causal sequences, the lack of which 
 constituted a difficulty for Hume. But this does not 
 mean any deviation from Hume's main point. The 
 equivalence of energy involved in two successive 
 stages of a process is an entirely empirical fact, and 
 represents no real connection thrown over from one 
 stage to another. It is not a bond or an efficient 
 productive power, and it does not pretend to furnish 
 any account of why the succession takes place. 
 
 But now this attitude on the part of science does 
 not settle the question until we have made it clear 
 that the scientific interest covers all the aspects of 
 the problem. Of course the right of science to reject 
 a particular concept as useless for its own special 
 purposes is undoubted. And it is not difficult to see 
 why in this case it has no interest in retaining in 
 the causal concept the notion of force or efficiency. 
 Science aims to explain the world by relating an 
 event in certain definite ways with other events. At 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 143 
 
 best the idea of force simply supplies us in a gen- 
 eral way with a bond between things ; it does not tell 
 us at all what particular effects go with particular 
 causes. And it is just this which it is the business 
 of science to discover. If we take such an event 
 as the fall of a stone to the earth, the popular ex- 
 planation probably would be that it is due to attrac- 
 tion between the earth and the stone. But this, even 
 if it represents a truth, merely states why anything 
 takes place at all. In reality we have an event of 
 a definite kind, and it is the exact nature of the event 
 in which we are practically interested. The state- 
 ment of the existence of a causal bond, be it ever so 
 true, stands for nothing peculiar to this particular 
 event, but is common to all similar events, and so it 
 can in any case just as well be taken for granted. 
 It does not help the scientist at all in his special 
 work. It is not simply two bodies that attract each 
 other, but two bodies with a definite mass, and a 
 definite distance apart. The effect is not simply 
 the fall of a stone, but the stone falls with a certain 
 velocity. Science aims to state these facts exactly, 
 to describe in exact terms the whole event in so far 
 as this is necessary in order to get the law which it 
 follows of course with an interest in it, not as a 
 particular event, but as a means of reaching a for- 
 mula that shall apply to other events as well. With 
 this aim the concept of force is superfluous. Science 
 does not attempt to state why, but how, bodies 
 move. All that it cares to know is the law which 
 
144 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 events follow, the definite relationships which they 
 disclose. 
 
 But it is another thing to say that the scientific 
 meaning of causality exhausts the full content of 
 the conception. It should be remembered that the 
 scientific use is a special and to some extent an arti- 
 ficial one. The idea of cause enters into our natural 
 view of the world long before we approach it scien- 
 tifically. And in this natural view it is not so simple 
 a matter to get rid of the element of "causal effi- 
 ciency,'' or of a connecting bond. When we look 
 at the world naturally, things do inevitably seem to 
 affect one another. And if the sceptic tries to prove 
 that all we possibly can know is a string of succes- 
 sive events, and that no scrutiny can reveal any bond 
 of influence between them, he has to meet the ob- 
 jection that at least we talk of efficiency, of one thing 
 acting on another; and when we attempt to ex- 
 plain this as a mere time succession, invariably we 
 find that we have not exhausted all that we supposed 
 ourselves to mean. The world of our common ex- 
 perience is a unity; and one of the main instruments 
 for effecting this unity is" the idea of cause. Pri- 
 marily the use of the causal concept is not theoret- 
 ical, but practical. We search for causes and effects 
 in order to bring the world of things into a workable 
 connection with our active purposes. The causal 
 relation is first recognized between the elements that 
 enter into our practical and teleological experience. 
 It is for the reason that objects as isolated or as 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 145 
 
 merely connected in space and time could have no 
 practical significance for us, that the conception of 
 "things, " in a world that is built up out of our practi- 
 cal experience with things, takes the causal form that 
 it does. A " thing," considered solely by itself, might 
 be looked at simply as a union of certain qualities be- 
 longing together in space. But in reality this is not 
 sufficient to make it a thing. It does not thus exist 
 by itself, but as a part of the world ; and an essential 
 element of thinghood is that it should play its part 
 in this world. A thing that did not make itself felt, 
 did not produce effects, would be a mere floating 
 product of imagination. A tool that did not change 
 the shape of the material it worked upon, a rope that 
 did not hold anything, a stool that did not support 
 any weight, could not enter at all into relations with 
 other things ; and a world made up of such isolated 
 sense pictures would be a mirage, an unreal vision. 
 Causality is essential. It is the connection between 
 things without which they would not be things in a 
 common world. 
 
 Now right here is to be found a suggestion and 
 so far as I see it is the only suggestion available 
 of that for which we are searching. The problem 
 has been to determine what can possibly be meant 
 by a bond between events how such a conception 
 can be understood. Naturally we consider that we 
 have in the causal connection not a mere time se- 
 quence of events, but something in. the antecedent 
 which reaches out and relates itself to the result, 
 
146 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 furnishes a reason why it appears rather than some- 
 thing else. And in the statement that the causal 
 idea comes to light in the experience in which 
 we enter into practical relationships of purpose to 
 the world of things, the suggestion is contained. 
 What can I mean when I say that one thing affects 
 another? Nothing, so far as I see, except as they 
 stand in relation to an end or purpose. Between 
 two events merely as events there is no discoverable 
 bond. But there is a bond between them, and an 
 intelligible one, when they both are looked at as mo- 
 ments or steps in a teleological process. For with 
 reference to the end one conditions, affects, the other. 
 We know what we mean when we say that the mis- 
 sile which we throw knocks the apple from the tree, 
 instead simply of being followed by the apple's 
 fall. The whole series of facts flying missile, 
 impact, falling body is brought together into a 
 unity by our conscious intention to bring about the 
 result; and it is with reference to this intention of 
 ours that the impact not only precedes] the fall, but 
 is the necessary presupposition of it. We think a 
 bond between the two because of the implicit rela- 
 tion of both, in a certain definite order, to the end 
 we are trying to reach ; this purpose of ours is the 
 unity which binds together the successive steps 
 that are required for its attainment. 
 
 The point of the conception will perhaps be clearer 
 if it is separated more explicitly from another inti- 
 mate aspect of the situation. If we consider again 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 147 
 
 the words "power" and "force," it seems possible 
 to distinguish in them two elements or implications. 
 One is the connecting link, the bond of relationship, 
 which serves to bring cause and effect into an intelli- 
 gible unity, and gives the basis for the influence of 
 rational determination which one exerts over the other. 
 This is what I have hitherto been considering. But 
 there is another aspect also of the idea that of 
 assertiveness, of force expended, of physical as 
 opposed to rational determination or compulsion. 
 Now this can be traced without much doubt to our 
 experience of putting forth effort. The feeling of 
 effort which we get when we exert ourselves in the 
 overcoming of obstacles is transferred to the object, 
 and becomes an important ingredient in the com- 
 plex causal idea. So that some philosophers have 
 thought that in this we get the real solution of Hume's 
 difficulty. But the mere feeling of effort clearly fails 
 to meet the requirements of the problem in that it is 
 quite incapable of supplying any intelligible bond. 
 Between the sense of effort and the subsequent result 
 there is no connection whatever that is transparent 
 to thought. Accordingly the subjective sense of 
 effort that accompanies our active endeavor may be 
 ruled out from the final interpretation of the causal 
 idea. And that leaves once more as the real basis 
 of interpretation the rational and intelligible connec- 
 tion present in a related series of facts or steps 
 united by their association with a common end. 
 Now of course the point I am trying to make is not 
 
148 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 that the bringing together of things in the world about 
 us by their relation to our human purposes repre- 
 sents a real and valid connection in the things them- 
 selves. I have only been trying to find a way any 
 way in which the fact of a connecting bond that 
 involves determination, a reason in the prior for the 
 sequent event, can be represented to thought ; and 
 the only way of representing this has been by refer- 
 ence to a teleological bond such as we have exem- 
 plified in our own purposive lives. A slightly differ- 
 ent illustration may make the application clearer. 
 Instead of bringing hi the ambiguous relation between 
 ourselves and outer objects, a process might be chosen 
 to serve as an example which confines itself to the 
 data of the psychological experience. We might 
 take, for instance, a process of connected thinking. 
 In active thought we have the end in view deter- 
 mining the appearance and connection of the differ- 
 ent ideas or thought elements. But each element 
 also, not in its own power, but by its relation to the 
 ruling idea which is manifesting itself in the process 
 as a whole, may be said to have its influence on that 
 which follows, to determine its place and appearance, 
 and so to be in a sense its cause. 
 
 And now the outcome of the whole discussion is 
 this : The idea of efficiency, of a connecting bond of i 
 rational determination, is an apparently ineradicable i 
 element of our natural view of causation. But it ) 
 is not easy to understand the nature of a connection 
 between events other than a temporal connection. 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND NATURE 149 
 
 It is indeed impossible so long as we keep to the 
 purely naturalistic plane. But in conscious experi- 
 ence we have the clew to a possible meaning. It is 
 the relation, namely, of means within a comprehen- 
 sive end, of steps in a purposive process. Two ele- 
 ments may have an intelligible bond between them 
 if both are elements in the working out of such an 
 end. One will condition the other, not indeed 
 through its own power as a separate thing, but as 
 one step in a process conditions the next step, 
 through the controlling influence of a purpose which 
 only can carry itself out by a series of steps mu- 
 tually implicating one another. But now this 
 enables us to retain, in its natural meaning, the idea 
 of connection in the outer world, only in case we 
 are ready to adopt the hypothesis that this world is 
 itself in its true nature a conscious experience, in 
 which alone purposes are embodied. With this in- 
 terpretation, we are able to justify the actual causal 
 connection between things in an intelligible sense. 
 For if we look on the world as representing the life 
 of God, and on natural things as elements in this 
 conscious life, then the same general conception will 
 hold good here also. On no other theory does it 
 seem possible to suggest any meaning whatever to 
 the notion of a connecting bond. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to repeat that if this 
 general view is justified, it by no means destroys 
 the value and validity of science and positive law, so 
 long as these do not set themselves up as a complete 
 
150 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 philosophy. The justification of science is in the 
 practical realm. It attempts to state, not what re- 
 ality is, but how it works ; and its business is to give 
 man control over his environment. If indeed we 
 could know completely the meaning of the world, we 
 might be in a position to deduce the details of the 
 world from this. But clearly we are in no such case. 
 We do not know, and we never can know, the pur- 
 poses of the universe in so definite a way that we can 
 deduce from them the mechanical laws of its action, 
 and so completely rationalize it. And therefore 
 it is wholly useless for the scientist to hunt for final 
 causes. Such a problem is indeed not an illegitimate 
 one. It means simply the effort to get at the mean- 
 ing of life ; and the philosopher is bound to attempt 
 it. But at best this will only be discoverable in 
 very general outline. It will never relate itself to 
 the particular physical events and laws with which 
 science deals. Science must necessarily work from 
 the other end. It is concerned, not with meaning, 
 but with method. In order to fulfil its practical 
 aim it is in duty bound to have nothing to do with 
 purpose or design, but only with the discovery of 
 uniformities of working. It may with justice object 
 when philosophy or religion or any other interest 
 tries to interfere with this task and to dictate its 
 results. But it also should remember that science 
 is not the whole of life, and be less ready to assert 
 that because for its particular purposes a given con- 
 cept is useless it therefore has no use at all. 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 
 
 So far the attempt has been to show that we have 
 a way of understanding what the nature of the ex- 
 ternal world may be, by interpreting it in terms of 
 another reality whose existence is clearly open to our 
 knowledge the reality of ourselves as conscious 
 beings. We are sure that in some real sense we 
 exist, and that there exist also, as elements within 
 our conscious experience, certain perceptions and 
 thoughts which make up what we call our knowledge 
 of things. The hypothesis is that the real things 
 the objects of our knowledge are made of the same 
 fundamental stuff as our perceptions of them. But 
 since for our natural understanding thoughts and 
 perceptions are not ultimate existences, but fall into 
 place as aspects of a more comprehensive reality, 
 ourselves, namely, so the hypothesis leads us to 
 interpret the world taken together as also a unity, 
 and a unity of the same sort as that on which the 
 entire hypothesis rests the unity of a personal 
 being. 
 
 But now there clearly are two further questions, 
 at least, that will need to be considered before 
 the hypothesis can appear well grounded. In the 
 first place, it will be necessary to ask more exactly 
 
152 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 in what the nature of our own experience consists. 
 Most of us are tolerably sure of our own existence ; 
 but it might puzzle us to give any coherent account 
 of what we mean by this. And even after we had 
 attained a definition there might be difficulties 
 presumably, indeed, there would be in transfer- 
 ring the conception to a being the conditions of whose 
 life are so different as those of God's life must 
 certainly be. Can we the question has repeatedly 
 been asked assign to a reality whose existence is 
 supposed to be infinite and eternal, any conception 
 derived from a being confessedly not infinite, but 
 definitely and painfully limited in its nature ? This 
 will need some special attention. And then also there 
 is this second problem which arises. It has been sim- 
 ply the natural world in its relation to our knowledge 
 which has thus far been the determining factor in the 
 hypothesis. But we certainly are not to forget that 
 besides external things there are other realities 
 which have to be fitted into the scheme of the 
 universe. We as human beings also exist, and our 
 relation accordingly to the underlying reality which 
 we have called God will need to be determined. It 
 is to this latter question that I shall turn first. 
 
 The problem in its most general form is this: 
 We are in search of some conception which will en- 
 able us to give an intelligible answer to the question 
 as to the nature of the unity that binds the whole 
 sum of existing things together. Now in so far as 
 it is a case of things, we have already an answer to 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 153 
 
 the question. Their unity is that which comes from 
 belonging to what we know empirically as a single 
 conscious whole. Such a conception may indeed 
 need further scrutiny. But nevertheless it represents 
 an undeniable fact of experience. Whatever may 
 be required for its adequate description, we are as- 
 sured that it is possible for a great variety of distinct 
 objects in consciousness to enter into what is at the 
 same time a conscious unity, because at any moment 
 this comes home to us as a fact of immediate experi- 
 encing. 
 
 Now it may perhaps seem that in this same con- 
 ception we also have the solution to the further prob- 
 lem the nature of the unity of God and of lesser 
 conscious beings. And indeed the solution has been, 
 and is, a fairly common one. That not only things, 
 but persons, are hi truth no more than elements in 
 the all-embracing unitary consciousness of God, is 
 one of the forms of that pantheistic -conception of 
 the world which has always shown itself one of the 
 most seducing of philosophical theories. It is a 
 conception which has more than a logical motive 
 back of it. The needs of religion may seem, on 
 the surface at least, to point in this direction. Cer- 
 tainly religion tends naturally to use words that may 
 easily suggest a pantheistic interpretation. That 
 God is all in all, that in him we live and move and 
 have our being such phrases fall naturally from 
 the lips of the religious man, and in their literal 
 acceptation would appear to point most naturally 
 
154 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 to a reduction of every reality without exception to a 
 portion of the divine consciousness. How else, one 
 may say, are we to save the absoluteness of God, 
 who ceases to be infinite if he is limited by beings 
 outside himself? And, on the other hand, our own 
 reality might seem to be endangered, the more we 
 insist upon our separation from that which we take 
 to be the source and essence of all reality alike. 
 
 Nevertheless there seem to be serious difficulties 
 in the way of accepting this solution. In the first 
 place, it may well be doubted to what extent it really 
 expresses the religious consciousness or the religious 
 need. It is always safe before we make much use of 
 a term to attempt to translate it back pretty directly 
 into concrete human experience. Now of the phrase 
 " identity with God" what meaning of practical 
 significance and value does it have ? We may grant 
 that it means something religiously significant; the 
 question is about its interpretation. When we make 
 that interpretation in the form of an actual absorp- 
 tion into God's being in the way of constituting an 
 identical part of his consciousness, as a sensation or 
 a thought enters into the complex of the conscious 
 unity which we call ours, does this represent a con- 
 ception of actual experimental worth? And if it 
 does, what form does that worth take? Thus I 
 may speak intelligibly of identifying myself with a 
 cause. But I mean, of course, simply this : that I 
 take up certain ends in my own consciousness and 
 use them to regulate my life. If God were to be 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 155 
 
 reduced simply to an ideal without objective reality, 
 tnen this might be the meaning we should assign to 
 identification with God; but such an interpretation 
 is obviously inadequate to a philosophy which makes 
 the relationship between God and man an actual 
 fact of existence. Or, once more, we may take what 
 would seem to be a more fruitful direction. The 
 modern world is coming more and more to feel that 
 if there is to be any real body and permanent satis- 
 faction to the spiritual life, it will have to be carried 
 back in large part to the sort of experience that we get 
 concretely and verifiably in our everyday human and 
 social relationships. If we cannot discover the clew 
 to its meaning in such terms, which more and more 
 are recognized as constituting the central core of value 
 in our lives, then we are likely in the end to find that 
 we have attenuated its worth and weakened its hold 
 upon man's allegiance. Now here also in the social 
 realm there is a verifiable and significant sense in 
 which we may talk of identifying ourselves with 
 others. But it distinctly is not to merge our con- 
 scious lives into a single and inseparable whole of 
 conscious content. Rather it is to work for common 
 interests and care for the same things, to feel a con- 
 cern each for the other's welfare, a respect for his 
 character, a regard for the essential individuality of 
 the other. Two things in this situation and these 
 two the most fundamental are wholly foreign to an 
 absolute merging and absorption. Love, as human 
 love, presupposes necessarily the self -identical and 
 
156 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 independent consciousness of the one toward whom 
 it is directed. And the moral life, about which some 
 of the deepest values cling, in its turn involves alike 
 a personal autonomy which absorption would de- 
 stroy, and an extra-personal, an outgoing and un- 
 selfish concern for others, for which no converging 
 of all reality to a single self-conscious centre could 
 find a place. 
 
 So much briefly for the difficulty that is raised by 
 certain of our spiritual interests. One might elabo- 
 rate also the more technical objection which has 
 already been suggested : that to thrust human selves 
 bodily into a larger consciousness would confuse 
 seriously the outlines of the world of our knowledge, 
 and leave us frankly without any comprehension of 
 the real nature of things concretely. But the point 
 on which I prefer to dwell is of a more distinctly 
 logical kind, and has the advantage that if it is valid 
 at all, it is decisively valid. And in a word it is this : 
 There are certain aspects of our actual human ex- 
 perience which I do not see how it is possible to make 
 consistent with an all-inclusive experience without 
 practically denying their existence outright. The 
 point is at bottom simple. I will take as an illus- 
 tration the fact of ignorance. I am, we will suppose, 
 at work upon a problem which baffles me and of 
 whose complete solution I am at present unaware. 
 This present state of consciousness of mine is a con- 
 crete fact which psychology may make an object of 
 study. Now can this concrete state of mind exist un- 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 157 
 
 changed in all its detail in an all-knowing conscious- 
 ness? I can only reply that to me the supposition 
 seems to involve a contradiction in terms. What 
 gives it plausibility is a fact of experience which in 
 reality when examined offers a basis for no such con- 
 clusion. It is perfectly true that my former igno- 
 rance may well be included, in a sense, in a later 
 experience which recalls the details of the former dif- 
 ficulty while yet it sees the way out. But in what 
 sense? Not that I can feel ignorant and feel that 
 I am not ignorant within the same pulse of conscious 
 realization, but that I can remember my former ig- 
 norance even now that I have passed beyond it; 
 and this is a very different thing. Surely not all the 
 aspects of the earlier experience would be present 
 unchanged in the later one, the actual feel of it, its 
 peculiar and intimate emotional atmosphere. Would 
 not that come pretty close to being an example of 
 the psychologist's fallacy? Take the feeling of 
 being baffled. Can I feel baffled and see the solution 
 in the same experience ? Can I feel baffled and feel 
 everything sun-clear all as a unitary fact of conscious- 
 ness ? I can remember that I was baffled in the past. 
 But this is not identically the same fact as the pre- 
 ceding fact. The very instant the truth begins to 
 dawn upon me my state of mind suffers a transfor- 
 mation, and the distinguishing tone of the instant 
 before has disappeared. It is very likely indeed that 
 there may be an emotional reverberation that per- 
 sists into the new conditions. My body is keyed to 
 
158 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 the prior situation, and it need not on the moment 
 lose the peculiar thrill of the nerves that belongs to 
 this. But that special state of mind which we call 
 as a whole the sense of ignorance is gone the moment 
 the light breaks in. The only way to recover it in 
 its original completeness would be to go back to the 
 earlier conditions and banish again for a time from 
 consciousness my more recent and completer knowl- 
 edge. Nor again is this new state of knowing itself 
 the same fact that it would have been had a pre- 
 vious experience not existed in which my whole con- 
 sciousness was tinged temporarily by the presence 
 of a problem unsolved. Had there not been a period 
 in which I did not see the solution, I could not now 
 know my ignorance ; and my sense of a knowledge 
 that has issued from ignorance is a different state of 
 mind from something that was eternally knowledge. 
 The point is, then, that the attempt to conceive 
 what we call human experience as an identical part 
 of a comprehensive and all-knowing experience in- 
 volves the confusion between the existence of a state 
 as a fact of immediate experiencing, and a subsequent 
 knowledge of that state separated from it empirically 
 by an interval of time. More particularly does the 
 problem press us when we are dealing with the emo- 
 tional and volitional aspects of our conscious life. 
 An intellectual or perceptual content may indeed 
 enter into various combinations without suffering 
 any change that forces itself upon our attention, and 
 it is through having an intellectual content chiefly 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 159 
 
 in mind that the difficulty has so often passed un- 
 heeded by the pantheist. But our feelings very 
 obviously are closely bound up with the very limita- 
 tions of our conscious life, and how these limitations 
 are to be overcome without altering the emotional 
 aroma is not to my mind at all apparent. For one 
 thing, it is a frequent quality of emotions that they 
 dominate consciousness as a whole, fill for the time 
 being every nook and cranny of the mind ; and their 
 quality would be distinctly different were this not so. 
 An emotion of joy, for example, which wholly pos- 
 sesses us, is not the same emotion as joy which leaves 
 room for some tincture of regret, or disillusionment, 
 or questioning about our perfect happiness. But 
 human emotions never can characterize God's con- 
 sciousness as a whole, and for that reason man's 
 emotions never can come home in terms of immediate 
 and identical feeling to an all-embracing experience. 
 Is my feeling of ignorance or despair identical with 
 anything that can exist for God's consciousness? 
 Suppose my despair is for the moment utter and com- 
 plete. Can God have an identical feeling without 
 himself being in complete despair? Is my feeling 
 different from God's? Does the human fact change 
 as it enters into the larger whole ? It is almost im- 
 possible to state the theory without using words which 
 imply that this is so; it is quite impossible in my 
 opinion to think it without recognizing that it must 
 be so. But if the human fact is changed, it is not the 
 same. There are, that is, two facts, only one of which 
 
l6o RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 comes directly within the absolute experience. My 
 actual feeling is something which God cannot feel 
 as I jeel it. Or consider once more the fact of limita- 
 tion itself. That our consciousness is limited there 
 can be no doubt. It is equally certain that we may 
 have a sense of this limitation. But how again could 
 a being have a sense of limitation for whom the limita- 
 tion did not exist at all ? It is not the fact of being 
 a part which causes the difficulty, but the quality of 
 consciousness which goes along with this. In par- 
 ticular, a distinction must be made between the con- 
 sciousness that a total experience has of one of its dis- 
 tinguishable parts, and the feeling which a smaller 
 totality may have of its own partial and limited 
 character. A sensation in my experience does not 
 feel itself a limited element of experience, though I, 
 the total consciousness, can know it to be such. But 
 I as a human self can feel my own restrictions, and this 
 means the addition of a novel element to the situa- 
 tion. The being a part de facto, and the recognition 
 by this part that it is a part, are two entirely different 
 things. And there is no fact of experience whatso- 
 ever that gives us a way of understanding the latter 
 case the inclusion of a self-conscious state in a 
 larger whole. The analogy is based upon the pres- 
 ence in consciousness of what we know to be a part, 
 such as, for example, a sensation, and not on a part 
 which is 5e//-conscious. 
 
 If, then, there is any force in the difficulty I have 
 raised, I see only two possibilities open. Either we 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN l6l 
 
 must deny that the apparent facts of human con- 
 sciousness the facts that psychology investigates 
 have as such any existence. Or we must admit 
 that there are facts which we know to exist, but which 
 cannot be conceived as lying within a single compre- 
 hensive experience. The human self, in other words, 
 cannot be brought bodily within a larger conscious- 
 ness existing at the same moment of reality and over- 
 lapping it. It must have a life in some real sense, as 
 a matter of immediate experiencing, unshared even 
 by God. The idea of an inclusion within a single 
 unitary consciousness cannot be the true solution of 
 the problem which we have on hand, and it will be 
 necessary to look for some other way of meeting the 
 demand that the world should have a unity. 
 
 Now there is another way in which we are accus- 
 tomed, as a matter of actual fact, and philosophy 
 is not called upon to invent its categories, but only 
 to discover them, to think a unity to the world of 
 spirit, and a way which is moreover for practical 
 thought far more vital and ultimate than mere in- 
 clusion within an empirical unity of consciousness. 
 This is through the notion of cooperation in common 
 purposes or ends. If I look to what I mean by a self, 
 it is always a self in active relationship with other 
 selves. The unity which includes them is not any- 
 thing that merges them into a single self. It is the 
 unity of end which, present ideally in the thought of 
 each, enables them to act together and contribute 
 mutually to one another's life. The connection is 
 
l62 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 one of active cooperation between beings who possess 
 each a life of his own, rather than of identity or in- 
 clusion within a single conscious whole. It is only 
 in the realm of knowledge that all the universe gets 
 actually brought together in the same mind, the same 
 unity of conscious content. But knowledge is only 
 representative and secondary ; the unity of the reality 
 which it represents the world of selves is of a 
 different sort. The ideal representation of the whole 
 in knowledge is only a means through which each 
 individual is enabled to play his part in the higher 
 unity the unity of social life and cooperation. 
 Men are united, not by literal identity, but through 
 their participation in common purposes which the 
 ideal transcendence involved in knowledge renders 
 possible a participation which is so far from deny- 
 ing their separate personal existence that it presup- 
 poses it. For it is on personal relationships that the 
 worth and meaning of the ends are based. 
 
 We have only, then, to extend this conception a 
 step farther, in order to pass from what is merely 
 an account of the social order to a philosophy of the 
 universe. The ultimate way for understanding the 
 universe is not self-consciousness, but a society of 
 selves. But in this community there is one member 
 who occupies a quite exceptional position. For God, 
 as the inner reality of what we call the world of 
 nature, stands clearly somehow in a special way at 
 the centre of things, as human selves do not. In him 
 there are summed up the conditions which are needed 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 163 
 
 to account fully for the lesser world of our own more 
 immediate social experience, since the lives of men 
 confessedly have their roots in nature. In him 
 therefore we may suppose the unity of the whole 
 is directly reflected, and there are gathered 
 the broken threads of the universal purpose as 
 it appears in our partial and limited human 
 experiences. But none the less, if we are to 
 follow the conception, is he still only one member 
 of the community, and not the whole sum of 
 existing things. He exists as one whose nature needs 
 the positing of other lives which do not come within 
 the same immediate conscious unity as his own. 
 He also is a social being as men are, and finds his 
 life in social cooperation, though the complete con- 
 ditions of his life may be eternally present to his con- 
 sciousness as they are not to ours. But while his 
 knowledge thus may cover all existence, the inclusion 
 will be one of knowledge simply. My conscious life 
 will still be mine alone, which no one else in the uni- 
 verse can directly share, not even God himself. No 
 one else feels my feelings or has my sensations. 
 
 Of course, it is not to be expected that the concep- 
 tion that has just been proposed should pass without 
 further scrutiny. It is indeed a simple and familiar 
 one, which is so much in its favor; and its signifi- 
 cance for human life requires no argument. There 
 are, however, questions which clearly need further 
 attention before it can be adopted finally, and diffi- 
 culties that will have to be considered. Meanwhile 
 
164 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 it is desirable to keep in view just what it is that the 
 conception involves, and not to exaggerate the diffi- 
 culties by refusing to keep the qualifying considera- 
 tions in their proper balance. The theory can be 
 taken to mean, for example, that each self has an 
 existence in its own right, is absolutely separate and 
 independent, and that the relations to others are 
 superinduced upon it ; whereas the very point of the 
 conception is that reality consists of selves in relation. 
 The relation to other selves, and more ultimately to 
 God, is absolutely indispensable to the life and 
 reality of these constituent parts of the whole society. 
 The recognition of ends reaching beyond the self- 
 contained matter of their immediate feelings is nec- 
 essary to give to their lives content and meaning. 
 What this signifies, again, is to be determined, not by 
 speculation, but by appealing to experience itself, 
 and to the clear fact that the concrete filling of our 
 lives as human beings does thus implicate the social 
 world to which we belong, and apart from this would 
 be indefinitely poorer and more abstract. But now 
 this applies to God also as well as to man. He too 
 does not stand out in hard and fast independence of 
 the realm of lesser selves. These are equally a part 
 of reality with God, and are implicated in his nature 
 as he in theirs. This latter aspect of the relation- 
 ship the dependence of man upon God is at 
 the bottom of what we commonly think of as crea- 
 tion. And there is a. sense in which we may speak 
 of man as created by God. When, that is, we take 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 165 
 
 the ordinary point of view of the world process as 
 one which goes on in time, man clearly makes his 
 appearance only at a certain point. His life cannot 
 be explained except by taking into account conditions 
 already present in the world of nature, and he has 
 no independence or freedom of action outside the 
 general laws which govern this world. 
 
 But if we use the word "creation," we should not be 
 misled by its common connotation. Strictly it should 
 mean no more than causal and rational dependence. 
 The other side of the relationship should equally 
 be borne in mind, according to which God also is in 
 a sense dependent upon man. Creation must not 
 be taken to imply, that is, that the created being has 
 no essential relationship except to the mere will and 
 power of God, and that its existence therefore is an 
 arbitrary matter. God is not first of all a being 
 sufficient to himself, who afterwards decides to create 
 other selves. He is social in his inmost nature. And 
 accordingly I am an essential and original constituent 
 of reality, in the sense that my life enters ideally into 
 the purpose which from all eternity is working itself 
 out in the life of the universe, and which we may 
 suppose is eternally present in the consciousness of 
 God. God would not be himself were it not for the 
 part which I play in his life. My life is not indeed 
 eternal in the sense that it has existed as an actual 
 psychological experience throughout all time. But 
 in the one truly permanent being, God, who is now, 
 and was, and ever shall be, this life of mine is eter- 
 
l66 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 nally implicated. The relationship to human lives 
 that are later to appear enters from the beginning 
 into the make-up and meaning of God's nature. So 
 when reality is taken in its full compass these human 
 selves, each with its own private store of feeling, and 
 with its special part to play in action, are ultimate 
 elements within it. 
 
 It may be brought against this as an objection that 
 we are distinguishing between God and absolute 
 reality, and are making God less than the whole, and 
 therefore finite. Of course in a sense this is true. 
 God's immediate life on such a showing is not co- 
 extensive with reality. He may be absolute in knowl- 
 edge, absolute in the completeness of his experience 
 which has no broken edges of this I shall speak 
 presently ; but he is in point of existence less than 
 the whole. The objection, however, usually is in- 
 tended to imply and this need not be true that 
 in saying this we are limiting God in point of value. 
 Which, however, represents the higher type of exist- 
 ence, I will ask, judging by the best standard we are 
 able to apply, a being shut up within the limits of 
 his own self-centred nature, or one who finds his life 
 by losing it in the common life which he shares with 
 others? And if the latter is our truest ideal, why 
 should we still claim that because God is such a God 
 rather than another his dignity is thereby lowered ? 
 It may be the very condition of his absoluteness in 
 the true sense that there should be beings beyond 
 him to increase the perfection of his own life. Spir- 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 167 
 
 itual being and spiritual completeness override the 
 restrictions of formal and mechanical thought. 
 "The more angels, the more room;" the greater the 
 number of those to whom I stand socially related, 
 the greater the possibility of harmony and self -com- 
 pleteness in my life. And if it be said that we do not 
 see how reality can give rise to such quasi-separate- 
 ness of existence, I do not understand why it is not 
 legitimate to fall back upon the answer that it is our 
 business to state what reality is, and not how it is 
 possible, or the way it was made. If such a concep- 
 tion can be thought free from self-contradiction, and 
 if it should happen to be a conception to which the 
 facts of life point, is not that enough ? It is sufficient 
 for us if we can see its meaning. And its meaning 
 is implicated in our whole social existence. 
 
 There are further questions which must be met 
 in order to render this hypothesis complete. Before 
 turning to them, however, a little more needs to be 
 said in order to clear up the nature of the relation- 
 ship between God and man in terms of the causal 
 idea. And this will give an opportunity to consider 
 one problem in particular which has played a some- 
 what important part in modern thought, and to 
 which the hypothesis enables us to suggest a more or 
 less satisfactory solution. To do this, certain dis- 
 tinctions in the meaning of causality will need to be 
 drawn, which I shall try to make as little involved 
 as the character of the subject-matter will allow. 
 
 In the first place, we may use the word "cause" in 
 
1 68 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 the wide and general sense of explanation or reason. 
 I have already had occasion to indicate what seems 
 to be our ultimate meaning when we say that we have 
 given an explanation of anything. There are, to be 
 sure, two common senses in which the term is used. 
 In a less ultimate sense we speak of explaining a fact 
 when we reduce it to a case of some simpler and more 
 familiar fact. But such a process evidently assumes 
 its final term, which is thus not explained, but simply 
 taken for granted. To stop thus with a mere " what " 
 or "how" is, however, not a final and completely sat- 
 isfactory attitude. The unsophisticated mind goes 
 on to demand in addition the reason why. And as 
 there has already been occasion to see, the reason for 
 a thing has no interpretable meaning except as it 
 brings in a reference to some end which is served. 
 When once a purpose can be assigned, we feel that 
 we have reached something in which we can rest; 
 the mere flow of facts is rounded into a whole, and 
 we have a system that is relatively independent and 
 self -explaining. 
 
 In this first and general sense, therefore, as mutu- 
 ally dependent elements within a system of common 
 ends, we should say at once that I myself and the 
 events which make up my life find in some degree 
 their cause and explanation in God, and therefore 
 in the world processes that are aspects of God's 
 experience. If reality is in truth a cooperative so- 
 cial whole, it is only in terms of this whole that the 
 meaning of my life can be at all understood. On 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 169 
 
 the other hand, I am with equal truth involved in the 
 explanation of events in the lives of these my fellow- 
 beings men and God alike. As an integral part 
 of the whole of things, what I do and what I am is 
 necessary for the complete understanding of the life 
 of other beings ; and in the same sense I may be said 
 to be a cause. Here, once more, cause stands simply 
 as a requirement for the rational interpretation of 
 meaning. 
 
 But now, in the second place, within this large con- 
 ception experience points to a distinction. There 
 is a sense in which I am the cause of my own acts 
 as I am not the cause of what any other being may 
 do. Indirectly I may be the source of some experi- 
 ence in another man's life ; but it is always indirectly. 
 I do not consider that I have done his deed he is 
 the one that has done it ; or that I am morally re- 
 sponsible for the act it is he again that is respon- 
 sible. I may have a responsibility of my own in 
 connection with it ; but it is after all only he, the doer, 
 who is the final source of every act that is a part of 
 his own experience or life. For all the elements of 
 what we call the experience of any individual being 
 enter into a special psychological connection with 
 the ends that rule his life ; they form a special system 
 into which all other facts that influence him have 
 to be translated before they become real for him. 
 It is this psychological connection which an act gets in 
 a particular system of ends, and which is empirically 
 different from the looser and less intimate connection 
 
1 70 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 it has with other parts of the universe, that affords 
 the basis for this second distinction in the idea of 
 causality ; for all this system of acts we consider that 
 the individual is alone the responsible agent. 
 
 But now this leads to the third point the point 
 about which the main difficulty centres ; but it also 
 suggests a way out of the difficulty. If we turn back 
 to the scientific view of the world, we find there are 
 some very strong reasons for asserting that there can 
 be no interaction, no causal relation at all in the 
 scientific sense, between ourselves and the world, or 
 the body which constitutes a part of this world. The 
 chief objection which science finds to the ordinary 
 conception of an action of mind upon body is this : 
 that it seems to interfere with the all-sufficiency of 
 physical law and physical explanation. Modern 
 science, from a complicated mixture of assumptions 
 and experimental evidence, has built up the doctrine 
 of the conservation of energy. According to this 
 doctrine the physical universe is in a sense a closed 
 system within which energy is neither lost nor gained. 
 Events consequently follow one upon another with 
 such a mathematically determinable connection that 
 the intrusion of any influence in their production 
 which is not represented by preceding physical events 
 is rendered highly improbable. But consciousness 
 is not a physical fact. And therefore it would seem 
 to lie wholly outside the chain of physical processes, 
 without causal influence upon them. The common 
 belief, accordingly, that our thoughts and desires in 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 1 71 
 
 any way influence our actions, would have to be set 
 aside as a delusion. It is true that our natural 
 belief is, without any manner of doubt, that these 
 thoughts and feelings do directly determine our con- 
 duct. To the average man this will appear so self- 
 evident that he will have difficulty in understanding 
 how any one can be foolish enough to deny it. Fur- 
 thermore, it is very hard to see how if consciousness 
 has no practical use or influence it ever could have 
 been preserved in the process of evolution. And 
 yet in spite of this the scientist probably will not be 
 satisfied. His whole temper of mind points him in 
 the direction of a strictly physical explanation for 
 all natural processes. And to give up such an ex- 
 planation in the case of the human body is only pos- 
 sible at the expense of an unpleasant wrench, and an 
 abiding sense of intellectual uneasiness. It is not 
 an easy thing for him to imagine molecular motion 
 suddenly stopping, without further physical effects, 
 to give place to a sensation or memory, or to imagine 
 a movement setting up in another part of the brain 
 inexplicable from any preceding physical cause. 
 And certainly if we could find a way of granting this 
 scientific demand, and still justify the claims of 
 common sense, we could hardly hesitate to choose it 
 in preference to the doctrine of interaction. 
 
 And this is what I think the conception of reality 
 at which we have arrived will enable us to do. The 
 point of the solution is the distinction between the 
 more general and ideal, and the stricter scientific, 
 
172 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 meaning of the term "cause." All that the scientific 
 demand amounts to is this : that the system of reality 
 which the physical world represents should reveal 
 certain sequences and conformities, should constitute 
 in reference to the relationships summed up in physical 
 law a closed system. If this is granted, it can make no 
 possible difference to science what other relationships 
 to reality outside may be claimed for it. Now, that 
 the physical world should show such a self-contained 
 nexus of relationships is not only conceivable, but 
 in terms of the preceding hypothesis it might even 
 be expected. It has already been maintained that 
 the life of each self constitutes in a sense a special 
 system; and this must be true as well therefore of 
 God, and of the world system which is the particular 
 expression of his life. Here, then, is the paradox, 
 the apparent contradiction. Science demands that 
 the bodily movements should have a purely physical 
 explanation, and that there should be no intrusion 
 from the outside to interfere with a statement in 
 terms of physical law. Philosophy and common 
 sense demand that consciousness be given some part 
 to play, some significance, in the concrete psycho- 
 physical life which includes our bodily movements. 
 And the solution, again, is to be found T >" making use 
 of the distinction between the k and mechanism 
 of the world, and the meaning of tne world. We may 
 grant to science that the brain is a mechanism, mean- 
 ing by this that, like the rest of the physical universe, 
 it works according to fixed laws which science con- 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 173 
 
 ceivably can discover; and that moreover in these 
 laws it follows the principle of the conservation of 
 energy. But why it should follow just these laws 
 and no others is capable of a more ultimate inter- 
 pretation. The law which the scientist discovers 
 is nothing final, but has its source in the meaning of 
 God's life. So if, in connection with the brain, a 
 quasi-independent fact of conscious human experi- 
 ence appears, if the deepest significance we can dis- 
 cover in the world connects itself with just these 
 finite selves, then they too as a part of the significance 
 of things would help to determine the laws of the 
 world, and in particular of that special part of the 
 world with which they stand in most immediate con- 
 tact. God is a self, a unity of conscious experience 
 akin in nature to the life which we live as in- 
 dividuals. And just as our life has meaning only 
 as it recognizes its place in a community of beings 
 working together for common ends, and yet having 
 each an existence that is separate and distinct, so 
 God's life is real to him only as it involves a social 
 order, a community of selves, whose experiences are 
 distinct from his while yet it is his relationship to 
 them by which the value of his own experience is 
 constituted. Accordingly as God's activity, ex- 
 pressed in the regular workings of the world of things, 
 includes in its meaning the interrelationships be- 
 tween itself and finite lives, my consciousness will be 
 a factor in determining what the laws of the world's 
 activity shall be. To use a human illustration, a 
 
174 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 plan of action which I as an individual form is no less 
 definite, straightforward, subject to accurate and 
 law-revealing description, because I have anticipated 
 other persons' actions and allowed for them in the 
 making of my plan originally. So God's purposes 
 are constituted by the relation in which his life stands 
 to other finite lives existing outside the limits 
 of the physical world which science studies. Since, 
 however, they do this eternally through the medium 
 of the unitary purpose which is the presupposition 
 of all law, rather than by coming in afterward to 
 change laws already established, science cannot 
 appeal to them. Above the system of quantitative 
 relationships which make up the universe of science, 
 lies the world of meaning, of conscious purpose, by 
 which the former is determined ; and of this world 
 of meaning finite lives are a part. As such they are 
 not to be explained by mechanism. It is on them 
 that the laws of mechanism themselves depend, not 
 again in their own power, but through the part they 
 play in the meaning of the whole. Consciousness 
 accordingly is nothing that breaks into the mechani- 
 cal workings of the brain from the outside to deflect 
 them from their course. Science needs none but 
 mechanical laws in the case of the human body as 
 well as of the stone. For mechanism only means 
 that reality acts with a certain mathematically 
 determinable regularity a regularity which it is 
 the special business of science to discover. But 
 as such it is an abstraction. It depends upon the 
 meaning of the experience as a concrete whole, 
 
THE RELATION OF GOD AND MAN 175 
 
 and, indirectly, on the part which each factor has 
 in this meaning. We cannot, however, appeal to 
 the meaning except as we are inquiring into the 
 "why," the final cause of the course of events. If 
 we want to get at the "how," the actual nature of 
 the uniformities, we must look away from the world 
 of meaning, and so from the conscious human self, 
 and have regard simply to what the course of events 
 is. If we find the uniformity there, the laws which 
 we detect will not be interfered with by final causes, 
 or by considerations that have to do with our own 
 conscious thoughts and purposes, because these are 
 just the things from which we have abstracted. Con- 
 sciousness does not influence the course of events by 
 breaking into an order already established, but by 
 helping determine in the first place what that order 
 shall be. We may call this preestablished harmony 
 if we will. Better, it is preexisting harmony. And 
 if we have not the right to appeal to the existence of 
 harmony in the world, surely as philosophers we 
 are in a bad case. 
 
 To repeat, then, if by cause we mean a source for 
 the understanding of things, I am the cause a part 
 of the cause, that is of events that happen in the 
 outer world . If by cause we mean inclusion within , or 
 intrusion into, the system of quantitative relationships 
 to which science limits its use of the word, then I am 
 not a cause in this special sense. But there is no 
 contradiction between the two conceptions ; rather 
 one is subordinate to and the expression of the other. 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 
 
 THERE is still one problem a religious- philosophy 
 needs to meet which has been in sight more than 
 once in the preceding discussion, but with which 
 we have not yet attempted to come to close quarters. 
 There is a certain group of attributes which almost 
 uniformly the religious consciousness, at least in 
 its higher development, has found it natural to assign 
 to the conception of God. God is infinite, eternal, 
 absolute, all-powerful and all-knowing. But while 
 natural, these attributes are clearly going to cause 
 difficulty when we start to inquire in a more definite 
 way about their possibility and their real meaning. 
 It has come, indeed, to be one of the notable charac- 
 teristics of modern thinking its unwillingness to 
 talk very much about the absolute and the infinite. 
 Nevertheless, if we are pretending to anything like 
 a complete philosophy, there are questions present 
 here which cannot be altogether ignored; and the 
 vitality which the ideas possess for religion would 
 suggest that there is back of them some real sig- 
 nificance and value. Accordingly we may turn as 
 briefly as we may to the problem which is thus raised, 
 in order to meet thereby, if possible, certain further 
 objections to the theory which has been proposed. 
 176 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 1 77 
 
 There are various difficulties which have been raised 
 by philosophers about the conception of the absolute. 
 Perhaps Mr. Spencer's 'have in recent times had the 
 most vogue. The burden of Mr. Spencer's objec- 
 tion is roughly this : We think, it is said, always and 
 necessarily irr terms of relations. Thinking is com- 
 bining. Apart from the possibility of comparison 
 with other objects, we could say nothing whatever 
 about a thing. Now if this is so, absolute reality 
 is shut out from knowledge. The absolute is pre- 
 cisely that which is not relative. It does not get its 
 content by relation to other reality. There is noth- 
 ing to which the absolute can be compared, and 
 therefore nothing at all which we can say or think 
 about it. The very thing which thinking presup- 
 poses is rendered impossible. 
 
 Before, however, we can hope to get much light 
 upon the matter, it is obviously desirable to come 
 to an understanding of what we are to mean by the 
 terms we are using. It does not need much scrutiny 
 to discover that a good deal of the arguing about the 
 matter fails to do this, and is satisfied to assume, 
 rather, certain popular and fluctuating meanings of 
 the terms without much criticism. It may be taken 
 for granted that the words "absolute" and " relative," 
 " infinite" and "finite," do mean something, that 
 they have arisen in answer to some real need of 
 thought. The supposition that "absolute," for 
 example, stands for no intelligible idea whatever, 
 that it is intellectually mere nonsense, rests upon bad 
 
 N 
 
178 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 psychology. Terms are not invented arbitrarily 
 without any reason for it. They always stand for 
 something in actual experience which is real, although 
 they may come to be badly misunderstood. 
 
 What service for our concrete thought, then, do 
 the ideas in question perform ? The answer is clearer 
 if we turn to the second members of the two pairs of 
 correlates. The terms "finite'* and "relative" evi- 
 dently stand for the recognition of a well-defined 
 feature of experience. This is the fact, namely, that 
 those things which we start out by taking as inde- 
 pendent wholes, complete and self-existent, we very 
 soon come to find out are nothing of the sort. Things 
 of the outer world do not stand still in eternal com- 
 posure and steadfastness. On the contrary the at- 
 tempt to think them in this isolated and finished 
 way speedily brings us to intellectual and practical 
 confusion. Things are all the time shifting and 
 changing. At one moment they are; at the next 
 they may have passed into something wholly differ- 
 ent in form. Even if we take a thing at the moment 
 when it seems to be persisting unchanged, we soon 
 find that a complete account of it cannot stop short 
 within the limits of its own apparent boundaries. 
 We have to bring in other things and compare them 
 with it in order to throw light upon the thing itself. 
 We have to find its causes and its effects, apart from 
 which our knowledge of it would confessedly be 
 very partial and inadequate. And the farther we 
 go in the process, the clearer it becomes that there 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 1 79 
 
 are no arbitrary limits which separate a thing off 
 absolutely from other things. The direction of 
 thought is always toward a unity more and more 
 inclusive. 
 
 Now this tendency to unify facts and bring them 
 within a single related system may naturally be taken 
 as the source of those other two terms, "infinite" and 
 "absolute," which we contrast with the terms 
 "finite" and "relative." In so far as they have a 
 legitimate value for thought, absolute and infinite 
 would seem to point primarily to the ideal of a 
 unity through which the particular finite facts shall 
 lose their incompleteness, and be grasped together 
 as parts of a self-contained and intelligible whole. 
 In such a whole, if it once were reached, there would 
 be no longer any need that we should seek for further 
 explanation. It would be self -explaining. The end- 
 less regress of thought would be checked by being 
 brought within the circle of some sufficient and en- 
 lightening principle. Such a whole would be statable 
 in terms of its own content, and would not need a 
 relation to anything outside. 
 
 It may be said that this is an ideal which never 
 is and never can be attained in human knowledge. 
 But it is an ideal at any rate which actually is at 
 work, and which is at least progressively approxi- 
 mated. It is only through the acceptance of this 
 ideal of unity that human knowledge advances. 
 And this explains the difficulty, the impossibility, 
 indeed, of rooting out the concept of the infinite 
 
l8o RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 and absolute from our consciousness. But the 
 point especially to be noticed at present is this : 
 Relative and absolute, finite and infinite, are not 
 separate and independent facts. They are neces- 
 sarily implicated each in the other. A thing is finite 
 only as it is partial, and so as it stands in possible 
 relation to a larger whole which completes it. It is 
 relative only in so far as it forms part of a system of 
 related terms. In all thinking there is the double 
 aspect multiplicity of particular facts on the one 
 hand, unity of system on the other. Apart from the 
 concrete details in terms of the finite and particular, 
 the unity would be a mere blank. Apart from the 
 unity of the system, the details would be wholly 
 separate and chaotic. They would not be relative, 
 or related, at all. Both are equally necessary aspects 
 of the work of thought, and neither has for pur- 
 poses of thought any existence apart from the other. 
 It is by attempting this unreal separation that some 
 at least of the difficulties about absolute knowl- 
 edge, for example those on which Mr. Spencer most 
 insists, are created. If we take the ideal of the unity 
 of knowledge wholly by itself, as just unity without 
 any multiplicity of particular facts which are unified, 
 as just absolute without regard to the group of re- 
 lated data which are made to form a consistent 
 whole, then no doubt such an absolute is unknowable. 
 But this is not due to any imperfection of the human 
 mind. The thing is incapable of being known in 
 concrete terms, because there is nothing to know. 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD l8l 
 
 We are dealing with an abstraction which cannot 
 exist by itself, and therefore it is no wonder we fail 
 to make a universe out of it which is satisfactory to 
 thought. What we want, and all that we are en- 
 titled to ask, is an absolute which does not exclude 
 from its limits finite things, but which rather includes 
 them as parts of a whole. To put the absolute on 
 one side, and the finite on another, as two distinct 
 realms which are mutually exclusive, is to commit 
 intellectual suicide. The whole purpose of thought 
 is, not to get bare unity in itself, but to unify, and so 
 explain, the particular finite facts from which we 
 start, and whose finiteness is just the reason we are 
 seeking for an explanation. A unity, or absolute, 
 which fails to do this, fails by that very fact to be 
 legitimate thinking or a true philosophy. It leaves 
 the whole mass of the data of knowledge hanging 
 in the void. At the same time it takes the ideal of 
 their unity, abstracted from its legitimate purpose, 
 and sets this up as alone truly real; and then it 
 complains that we cannot know anything more about 
 this reality. Of course we cannot. To say any- 
 thing more about it we should have to bring back 
 the particular facts which form its content, the 
 unified data which we have carefully removed. If 
 I were to abstract the quality of color from an object, 
 and say that it alone of all the qualities was real, I 
 could not afterwards complain if I found myself 
 unable to define the object except in terms of color. 
 So if from the work of thought I abstract the aspect 
 
1 82 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 of unity, and forget that this unity only appears in the 
 act of unifying a group of related facts, it of course 
 need not surprise me that the unity has no further 
 definable characteristics. I have deliberately chosen 
 to exclude all other characteristics, and I have my 
 reward. 
 
 The fact, then, that all our thinking is in terms of 
 relations, does not itself make it impossible that we 
 should know the real. An attempt to think the 
 absolute does not consist in ruling out relations. It 
 consists rather in finding a unity into which these 
 relations enter, but which is itself complete within 
 itself and not related to anything beyond. It is this 
 end toward which knowledge is ever striving. And 
 so it may fairly be claimed that the effort to attain 
 to an absolute is no unreasonable, arbitrary, unmean- 
 ing aim, that it involves no leaving behind of the con- 
 crete interests of human experience for an unreal and 
 transcendental object. It is but the completion of 
 the ideal of knowledge, the desire, natural at least, 
 even if it be not capable of satisfaction, to "see life 
 steadily and see it whole," with a wholeness that 
 shall not lead to an endless regress, or leave us 
 with insoluble riddles to puzzle and unsettle us. It 
 is the desire to feel at home in the universe, to have 
 something permanent and solid on which to rest 
 emotionally as well as intellectually, some relief from 
 the incessant change and instability which surrounds 
 us in the world of appearances, an escape from the 
 haunting suspicion that our knowledge is no true 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 183 
 
 knowledge after all, nor even a progress toward true 
 knowledge, but only a practically useful makeshift 
 likely at any moment to be reversed. Chimerical 
 again this end may be. But it is not unmeaning or 
 artificial so long as the impulse to know remains 
 a part of human nature. 
 
 The sort of unity into which all the multitudinous 
 facts of the universe can be thought as falling, I have 
 tried to show is best described as the teleological 
 unity of a social whole. Of course this is only a 
 schema, an outline. No one in his senses would 
 suppose that we know reality in detail with any 
 approach to completeness. Indeed, the practical 
 use which knowledge serves for us as human beings 
 as a guide to life would prevent its ever being 
 thus finally summed up and completed. But it is 
 conceivable that in such a general conception we 
 should have what in its large features adequately 
 expresses the nature of the real, so that further 
 experience would not reverse or falsify our knowl- 
 edge, but only fill and enrich with new content a 
 fairly constant framework. And I have argued that 
 this particular conception will, in point of fact, find 
 a place for the main facts of experience, and will 
 aid us in solving many problems. 
 
 But now so far we have failed to do anything 
 directly toward answering the question with which we 
 started, the question as to the possibility of applying 
 these terms "infinite" and "absolute" to God, 
 while still retaining at the same time some con- 
 
184 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 crete understanding of his nature. In the special 
 sense of being identical with the whole of reality, 
 it has indeed been granted that God is not absolute. 
 But nevertheless the definition at which we arrived 
 may prove of assistance. In fact, it seems in itself 
 to require to be carried farther before its full impli- 
 cations are satisfied. For the concept of a social 
 whole is primarily a unity for knowledge. It does 
 not necessarily mean that the reality has for itself 
 the realization of its own self -completeness. Indeed, 
 as a community of beings it cannot as a whole have 
 this realization. Nevertheless this suggests a mean- 
 ing that we can give to the " absoluteness " of God. 
 Even though he be not the whole, yet if his experi- 
 ence is for him self-complete, if he contains within 
 himself the eternal realization of all the conditions 
 that help to give his life its meaning, and so indirectly 
 sums up, at least as a matter of knowledge, the entire 
 universe within the limits of his consciousness, then 
 he can still be called absolute or infinite in an intel- 
 ligible sense. 
 
 And such an absolute would seem naturally to be 
 called for by the needs of religious feeling and of 
 theory alike. Both have an interest in defending 
 for the conception of God certain infinite, that is, 
 self-complete and perfect, characteristics. For re- 
 ligion God is the ideal of perfect felicity, of perfect 
 attainment ; he is the guarantee of ultimate harmony 
 and of our faith in the rationality and goodness of 
 things, because nothing in the end lies outside the 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 185 
 
 scope of his purpose and his knowledge. For if 
 there be a real unity to the world, then an idealistic 
 philosophy at least would have a strong motive for 
 finding this unity somewhere realized consciously. 
 If the whole universe were in terms of what we call 
 finite beings, if it were a patchwork merely of parts 
 here and parts there parts which never focus in 
 any comprehensive centre, then any intelligible 
 understanding of its unity seems hard of attainment. 
 If the whole truth of the world is at a given moment 
 true for no one, in what does its truth consist? If 
 the purpose which rules the universe exists nowhere 
 in its completeness, if in terms of conscious life it is 
 created outright, is a new and unforeseen result from 
 moment to moment, how understand its appearance 
 in this fresh development, or the nature of its prior 
 existence? A purpose whose unfolding comes as 
 a surprise to all sentient beings would appear to be 
 uninterpretable, unless we change in some unknown 
 way our very conception of what purpose is. All 
 this need the idea of God attempts to supply. 
 
 But now the question is about the concrete pos- 
 sibility of such a conception. Have we any way of 
 making it real and positive to our minds? For all 
 content we can assign to the notion comes from our 
 knowledge of ourselves, and we are undeniably 
 finite. Is not the very idea of personality infected 
 with limitation? How then can we hope to trans- 
 fer it to what by definition is absolute and infinite? 
 Our whole life is a gradual development in knowl- 
 
1 86 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 edge and in character ; if we do away with this, is 
 there really anything left ? 
 
 I have already considered the objection that be- 
 cause personality involves a social relationship to 
 others, it is thereby unfitted to stand for a description 
 of God. If this relationship enlarges rather than 
 restricts the meaning of experience, it would not seem 
 necessarily to lead to any such result. But to meet 
 the problem more adequately we shall need to turn 
 briefly to the conception of human experience, and 
 ask wherein the real nature of this consists, for only 
 thus shall we be able to judge whether it affords us 
 any help towards that of which we are in search 
 an understanding of the nature of God. 
 
 Now historically this question has taken form 
 largely in connection with a special fact. This is 
 the fact that there are three main aspects of experi- 
 ence whose relation is neither practically nor theoreti- 
 cally altogether obvious. Indeed, the intellectual, 
 the emotional, and the active or willing sides of life 
 are often in sharp competition. In what way then 
 so we may formulate this preliminary business 
 are we to think the connection of these various expres- 
 sions of man's nature so as most adequately to 
 sum it up in its completeness and with its proper 
 emphasis ? 
 
 In the past there has been for obvious reasons a 
 strong tendency among philosophers to define the 
 conscious life primarily in terms of thinking, or of 
 intellect. This does constitute the most character- 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 187 
 
 istic sort of experience for the philosopher himself, 
 and it is the side of lif e which it is easiest to examine 
 and describe. Recently, however, the supremacy 
 of thought has been disputed, and disputed more 
 particularly in the interests of what has usually 
 been called will. Will, as it is thus used, means 
 simply the empirical fact that we are beings who 
 are fundamentally active, striving, moving toward 
 ends. There has already been occasion to utilize 
 the fact that this is what is presupposed in the bio- 
 logical conception of the organism; and whatever 
 its limitations, the biological conception undoubtedly 
 has been very largely influential in determining our 
 understanding of the psychological life. And its 
 main result has been in leading us to see that both 
 thought and feeling can get an explanation, an in- 
 telligible setting, by being related to the fundamental 
 life activity. The explanation may not be final. 
 But at least it seems valid so far as it goes, and it has 
 apparently to be taken as a starting-point in any 
 final estimate. Thought, from the biological stand- 
 point, cannot possibly be regarded as an end in itself, 
 but only as a function of the whole life process. 
 This process is essentially one of activity, and origi- 
 nally it is activity in the most literal sense bodily 
 activity. For psychological theory the original da- 
 tum is the organism already struggling to maintain 
 and express itself. It is from this that the life of 
 conscious experience is slowly differentiated. It 
 comes into being through the heat of the conflict. 
 
1 88 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 If the activity of the organism were perfectly habitual, 
 it would go on forever with at best a minimum of 
 consciousness a vague, diffused feeling, perhaps, 
 containing in itself no sharp distinctions, no objec- 
 tive reference, no rational significance. But no such 
 unimpeded action, in our world at least, is possible. 
 And the process of conscious judgment is the bridge 
 which carries us over the obstructions our life ac- 
 tivity is constantly running up against, and which 
 adjusts it to new conditions. Thought, in a word, 
 is the means of overcoming obstacles hi the way 
 of the proper functioning of life. It is therefore 
 primarily practical in its nature. So feeling, again, 
 would seem to represent in some way the immediate 
 conscious realization of the success or failure which 
 is attending our efforts at active self-expression a 
 realization which serves apparently in some degree to 
 reenforce or inhibit the action of which it is the 
 accompaniment. 
 
 To this statement, however, it is necessary to add 
 at once an important qualification. In the biological 
 realm there is not simply a logical subordination of 
 feeling and thought to will, but there is a real subor- 
 dination as well. The essence of the thing for the 
 animal is just the action on the physical side. 
 Thought and feeling are merely means to this action, 
 and, except for the need of them as means, could 
 be dispensed with. So soon as their service is per- 
 formed they do tend to sink into the background. 
 The important thing for the animal is, for example, 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 189 
 
 to get and devour food, not to enjoy eating, nor to 
 perform the intellectual processes necessary to find 
 its prey. These last are merely incidental to the 
 main the purely physiological end. 
 
 But with man, to the extent to which he becomes 
 a spiritual being, all this is changed. Biological 
 activity becomes the activity of conscious and sig- 
 nificant experience. And the essence of the change 
 is this: that thought and feeling are no longer in- 
 cidental to mere brute action. They are funda- 
 mental and essential aspects of activity; all are 
 bound together into an indivisible unity. Action, 
 in other words, has changed to conduct. It is no 
 longer enough for man as a spiritual being to get 
 things done. They must be done with a conscious 
 appreciation of their meaning. Knowledge does not 
 lapse when the preliminary process of thought or 
 judgment ends, and action begins. An activity 
 which does not carry along with it insight into its 
 conditions and end is no longer rational action, but 
 mere habit or instinct, and as such it does not belong 
 to the truly spiritual part of man's experience. So 
 also the whole activity must be accompanied by 
 the feeling appreciation of its value as an essential 
 part of it, if it is to be in the highest sense human. 
 This is the solid basis for the insistent demand that 
 pleasure or happiness should be regarded as the end 
 of life. As a protest against any theory which tries 
 to make the feeling of satisfaction separable from 
 the idea of the good, the insistence is quite justified. 
 
1 90 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 We can conceive a result, indeed, an actual end, 
 which contains no reference to feeling. But we 
 cannot conceive a good end, an end which has value, 
 apart from the inner appreciation of value in feeling 
 terms. Will, feeling, knowing or insight, are all 
 essential to the conception of a spiritual or truly 
 human act. 
 
 Activity, therefore, which can serve as hi any sense 
 an ultimate conception for philosophy, will differ 
 from the biological conception of activity from which 
 we started. Both, indeed, are based upon the con- 
 cept of end. But for an idealistic philosophy physical 
 activity as such cannot be ultimate. It must itself 
 be translated into terms of conscious activity. Some 
 difficulty has, it is true, been found with this notion 
 of conscious activity. And indeed, were it not an 
 actual fact of experience, we might find it paradoxical 
 enough. But in the light of experience we may not 
 only claim that there are no fatal obstacles in the 
 way of its recognition ; it is hard to see how by any 
 possibility we could get ahead at all if we did not 
 presuppose it. It is the fundamental aspect of all 
 experience. For it simply represents the fact that 
 experience is teleological. We can be conscious 
 of an end, and conscious also that we are realizing 
 this end. We do not simply have one state of con- 
 sciousness following another. We have one state 
 of consciousness looking forward to another, its 
 meaning completed only as the other is attained; 
 and then we have this last state conscious that it is 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD IQI 
 
 the completion of what has gone before. There is 
 no question of a special force by which ideas operate. 
 Force is itself to be understood in terms of conscious 
 experience. All that we mean is a fundamental 
 quality of the process of conscious experience itself; 
 the binding together of this experience in a conscious 
 teleological relationship, the sense of the progressive 
 attainment of an end. And this aspect not only is 
 real ; it is, as I say, fundamental. 1 
 
 1 Perhaps a word more may be said about the metaphysical 
 relation between the activity of experience as an immediate con- 
 scious fact, and the physical activity of the body. The body is not 
 what we call ourselves in so far as we distinguish ourselves sharply 
 from other things in point of existence. The body is a part of the 
 material world. In the most direct and ultimate sense the self 
 is the conscious self, the unity of conscious experience. But since 
 as conscious our nature represents no absolutely independent real- 
 ity, but is implicated in the rest of the world, and since in a special 
 way the possibilities of conscious life and conscious cooperation are 
 centred in the part of reality which we call the body, we are jus- 
 tified in saying that the complete self is soul and body. And in part 
 we mean by this that every conscious activity involves also and 
 necessarily a cooperating activity in reality beyond, on account of 
 the organic connection which runs through the universe as a whole. 
 It cannot exist or be understood by itself. This is metaphysically 
 the ground of the fact, which we discover empirically to be true, 
 that no conscious change can take place which is not accompanied 
 by at least a brain change. An entirely independent consciousness 
 would lie outside the related system of selves which constitutes 
 reality. These bodily movements are what we call physical ac- 
 tivity. Interpreted, they are, of course, like everything else that is 
 physical, a part of God's life. They represent the aspects of this 
 ultimate experience which are most closely connected with our 
 own conscious existence. And this physical side to our existence 
 is demanded, once more, by the ultimate nature of the constitution 
 
1 92 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 For the merely physical and biological end with 
 which we started, therefore, we have to substitute 
 this activity of conscious experience. And it has 
 already been said that this does not reach its fullest 
 expression in the experience of thinking. The think- 
 ing process as such is incidental to the process of 
 active realization, and intended primarily to lead up 
 to it and make it possible. It is true, of course, that 
 thought also is a phase of active experience, and may 
 sometimes become an end in itself. But typically 
 it looks beyond itself. It issues in doing, or conduct 
 of a more overt sort. Conduct it is, not thinking, 
 which psychologically and ethically is ultimate. 
 
 of reality, according to which no self lives unto itself, but each has 
 its life in cooperation. Every conscious act whatsoever, then, 
 involves the reaction of at least God's experience. Stated empiri- 
 cally, even thought involves brain changes. 
 
 But it only is with God that we stand in this immediate con- 
 nection. With other selves the connection is indirect, through 
 God. We react through body on body, not directly mind upon 
 mind. And it is because the social relationships which constitute 
 our nature are also with these human selves, that the final state- 
 ment of life must be in terms not simply of physical activity, but of 
 overt physical action. By mere thought we might enter into rela- 
 tion to God. But it takes the outer movements of the body to co- 
 operate with our fellow-men. And since the true statement of life 
 is complete, not partial, cooperation, this is essential to the goal of 
 conduct. Even God cannot be truly known apart from the world 
 of men. A religion which is satisfied with mere inward aspiration 
 and devotion is no true religion. It must issue as well in conduct ; 
 and except as it does issue in conduct its own inner meaning and 
 content also are eviscerated. It is the necessary consequence of 
 the unity of the social world that we neither can know our fellow- 
 men truly apart from God, nor God apart from our fellow-men. 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 193 
 
 But now it is just the limitations which attend the 
 thinking process that are most typical of the defects 
 of human experience defects which the religious 
 consciousness hesitates to attribute to God. The 
 thinking activity as such is by its very nature the 
 mark of a limited experience. We think only to 
 overcome difficulties. And therefore to a self -com- 
 plete experience to which difficulties did not present 
 themselves, a being who summed up consciously 
 and eternally in his own life all existing conditions, 
 the necessity of having to think would never come. 
 Before, then, we deny our ability to conceive an ab- 
 solute experience by reason of the incompleteness 
 of our own, we should consider again that even for 
 us the processes of the intellect the special mark of 
 felt incompleteness are not final, but that normally 
 they lead to a type of experience less infected with 
 relativity and partial attainment, with a more in- 
 timate sense of organic wholeness, and a greater 
 immediacy of satisfaction. A large portion of our 
 lives is indeed lived in this realm of incompletion. 
 But continually also we are passing, even though it 
 be to dwell there only for a moment, into the higher 
 world where effort becomes fulfilment, intelligent 
 preparation issues in some measure of accomplish- 
 ment, discursive thought gives place to direct insight, 
 and the paler and thinner reality of the merely men- 
 tal life deepens to the full sense of living and of action. 
 Those occasional moments when we feel ourselves 
 under " inspiration," as opposed to a more plodding 
 
194 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 and laborious achievement, are the moments when 
 we reach our highest possibilities in this direction. 
 Such an experience is characterized by the sense of 
 being active, of doing something. But at the same 
 time it is saturated through and through with an 
 insight into meaning. For rationality to be present 
 we do not have to be engaged in thinking or reason- 
 ing. Without the need of setting end over against 
 means as something to be attained in a way not yet 
 altogether clear, and therefore to be discovered by 
 thought, an experience may in the very process of 
 attaining an end be perfectly conscious of all that 
 it means or involves, may feel the whole act by an 
 immediate intuition in each of its parts. And this 
 insight may involve not simply a perception of the 
 relations within the experience itself, but it may 
 involve knowledge, also, in the sense of a reference 
 to other realities which are presupposed in its mean- 
 ing. Social experience, again, would lose much 
 of its worth did it not suppose the real existence 
 of persons whose cooperation makes possible my 
 own inner appreciation of the social act ; and this 
 reference beyond the immediate experience itself 
 may also be separated from the thinking process in 
 its narrower sense the process of coming to know, 
 and may continue after this has fulfilled its pur- 
 pose. And, finally, our activity is felt to be worth 
 while in itself, and so is accompanied by the inner 
 realization of value. For purpose, in the sense of 
 realized meaning, need not carry with it the implica- 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 195 
 
 tion of something partial and incomplete, of some- 
 thing not yet attained but only aimed at. It may 
 be divorced from the notion of want and lack of 
 attainment, of mere aspiration and striving. To 
 free ourselves from the superstition that an end looks 
 always beyond the present act, that means and end 
 are separate and distinct, and to be able to find the 
 doing of things from moment to moment an end in 
 itself, carrying the sense of its own significance, is 
 indeed a large element in the wisdom of life, without 
 which life's whole satisfaction is continually put off 
 and sacrificed. 
 
 There is a familiar human experience which will 
 perhaps help us to realize a little more concretely 
 what the possibilities are of this sort of absolute- 
 ness which we are trying to grasp. In the aesthetic 
 experience we get some of the qualities that we are 
 looking for in a peculiarly direct and luminous 
 way. In such an experience meaning reaches us as 
 an immediate fact of feeling. We do not have to 
 reason out and argue to ourselves about the matter; 
 if we do this, the true aesthetic enjoyment is 
 necessarily postponed. The relationships which 
 constitute the significance of the work of art are 
 there, and on occasion we can describe them and 
 render them explicit. But while we are in the 
 mood of aesthetic appreciation, they come to us 
 simply as added sources of enjoyment in an organic 
 experience; they flash upon us as an immediate 
 whole whose understanding we do not need to ap- 
 
196 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 proach gradually, build up step by step through 
 discursive thought. And the experience is absolute, 
 too, in the sense that it is self -complete, independent 
 of all beside. To the extent, indeed, to which dis- 
 satisfaction and relativity enter in, the work of art 
 has failed of its ideal aim ; for the moment we are 
 sunk in what is a little world by itself, rounded, 
 harmonious, wholly satisfying. 
 
 I do not mean to suggest that in the experience of 
 aesthetic appreciation we shall find all we need for 
 the interpretation of the nature of God's life. Its 
 character is too essentially passive and contempla- 
 tive to serve completely such a purpose; its mean- 
 ing looks too wholly to the past. The more active 
 side of the aesthetic life, the ideal moment of artis- 
 tic creation, in which, along with insight, apprecia- 
 tion, the flashing of a significant whole upon the inner 
 eye, there is combined the sense that we are achiev- 
 ing also, and by our act are bringing this world of 
 beauty into existence such a moment might stand 
 more adequately for the felicity of the divine experi- 
 ence. In this, too, there is one notable lack. For 
 the work of art is self-centred, it involves directly 
 no social interplay. If now we can introduce this 
 last requirement, with the emotional sense of love or 
 fellowship which it involves, and can make the social 
 deed itself a work of art, a creation whose material 
 is not simply the representation of reality, but the 
 actual stuff of human intercourse, which is not 
 merely true of life, but is life, and this represents 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 1 97 
 
 for us a real possibility, we shall have an experience 
 which in a perfectly genuine sense, and a sense em- 
 pirically true and verifiable, we may call absolute. 
 Of course in our experience such an activity is 
 never wholly attained for any length of time together. 
 We have continually to be breaking in upon the course 
 of our work to direct attention to the details, by rea- 
 son of our ignorance of the conditions, and of the 
 means at our disposal. And if we do so master the 
 conditions as to be able to work without recourse 
 to the specifically intellectual process, our activity 
 tends at once to become automatic and mechanical, 
 and clear consciousness to lapse. But the hint of what 
 a perfect experience may be like is there neverthe- 
 less. And though, of course, we cannot realize with 
 any degree of completeness the content of God's 
 life, yet it does not seem out of the question thus to 
 conceive its general character and possibility. If 
 we suppose a being into whose conscious life there 
 enter all the conditions of which his action has to 
 take account, in whom all reality is represented im- 
 mediately so that he does not have to "stop and 
 think," suspend accomplishment until by a mental 
 process he has worked out the means, to such a being 
 the full realization of life which comes to us only in 
 occasional pulses would be an eternal possession. 
 Instead of a string of more or less disconnected acts 
 in the stream of time, his experience would be one 
 of complete actuality, fulfilled meaning, perfect and 
 eternal realization. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 
 
 THERE are two historic problems in particular 
 which are bound up closely with any attempt at a 
 religious philosophy, and with reference to which 
 a theory such as has been sketched in the preceding 
 pages will need to define itself. These are the prob- 
 lems of human freedom, and of the existence of evil. 
 In the case of both of them it is possible to distin- 
 guish two sides the practical, and what may be 
 called the metaphysical side. Thus, whether one 
 be a technical philosopher or not, and whatever his 
 particular system of philosophy may be, as a matter 
 of mere practical wisdom he must needs adopt in 
 his plan of life some more or less distinct position 
 with reference to the fact of evil; and his conduct 
 is bound to imply certain perhaps unconscious 
 assumptions as to his possession or lack of posses- 
 sion of freedom to act. He may, for example, be 
 a fatalist in his attitude ; or he may, on the contrary, 
 have the superb consciousness of power, of capacity 
 for bringing to pass whatever he may set himself 
 to do, which commonly has characterized the men 
 of great achievement in active life. Evil may to him 
 be a fact to be ignored and set in the background ; 
 it may tinge his whole life with sombreness and 
 198 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 1 99 
 
 bitterness, and make it a constant and strenuous 
 conflict with the powers of darkness ; or again it may 
 call to life the lust and joy of battle, and by afford- 
 ing a field for effort and victory may minister to the 
 sense of abounding life and reality. 
 
 Now this question of the practical attitude to be 
 adopted, which is without doubt a primary and all- 
 important one, has also come within recent times to 
 be very widely regarded as the only one possible. 
 Of course any one who holds that philosophy is 
 concerned simply with the adjusting of experience, 
 and that problems which concern the setting of this 
 experience in a wider universe of ultimate reality 
 have no meaning, is bound to take such a position. 
 For him, accordingly, the so-called metaphysics of 
 evil or of freedom, which has caused so great a stir 
 in the past history of thought, represents a mere waste 
 of ingenuity. In dealing with such problems the 
 philosopher has been as one beating the air. All 
 that a thinker who understands himself will attempt 
 to do is to criticise the part which these concepts 
 play in experience, and show what attitude toward 
 them is dictated by a sound practical wisdom. Un- 
 doubtedly this lessens the difficulty of the philoso- 
 pher's task materially. But if one is unable to 
 subscribe to such a limitation of the field of thought, 
 he cannot well avoid the further necessity of relating 
 this practical attitude which he adopts to his final 
 theory of reality, and then the need of metaphysics 
 will inevitably arise. It is true that the practical side 
 
200 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 is the more fundamental one. No ultimate theory 
 is of value which does not spring from an understand- 
 ing of the practical meaning of the problem, and serve 
 to supply this with a foundation. But nevertheless 
 the further and more ultimate inquiry cannot logi- 
 cally be avoided. 
 
 In the present chapter, therefore, I shall have to 
 consider the so-called freedom of the will. And the 
 first step will be to determine what the word "free- 
 dom" means, or ought to. mean. There are some 
 dangers at least which one is likely to avoid if he 
 can make quite sure what it is about which he is 
 talking. The failure to do this is undoubtedly 
 responsible for no small part of the difficulties which 
 have beset the question. And, in the first place, 
 freedom may mean simply the absence of external 
 constraint. If some one takes my hand and by 
 sheer brute force compels me to strike a bystander, 
 no one would pretend that this is a free act. Or if 
 I am confined in chains, there is an obvious sense in 
 which I am not free. There are certain things 
 which I should like to do, and I am forcibly pre- 
 vented from doing them by circumstances which 
 lie beyond my own power of control. 
 
 But this, if it stops here, is likely to be ambiguous. 
 Even in such situations as these there is an intelli- 
 gible sense in which I may still be called free. My 
 act is constrained. My bodily movements are fet- 
 tered. But in the citadel of my thoughts or of my 
 will I may still be a free man. Such was the free- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 2OI 
 
 dom of the Stoic sages the freedom of the strong 
 man undismayed by anything that nature or men 
 can do to him; and most certainly it has at least 
 a relative truth. If we follow, then, the suggestion 
 which it contains, it would seem possible to make a 
 distinction of some sort between the free act and the 
 morally free man. An act may be provisionally 
 defined as free, once more, when it represents our 
 own desire, and is not the product of constraint. 
 But in the conception of the free will, the free man, 
 there is something deeper involved which this de- 
 scription fails to cover. For a real and substantial 
 freedom the absence of constraint is indeed nor- 
 mally a necessary part or preparation. Unless I 
 have in general liberty to direct my own movements, 
 ethical freedom is distinctly hampered, if it is not put 
 out of the question altogether. But still I am not 
 in the ethical sense free just because my movements 
 are not directed from the outside. 
 
 What, then, is the nature of the morally free act, 
 the act of the morally free person, as distinguished 
 from the act that is only physically or psychologi- 
 cally free in the sense that it springs from impulses 
 that lie within ourselves and is not hampered from 
 the outside? We recognize that the distinction is 
 one which we actually draw. There is a sense in 
 which the animal when under the spur of hunger it 
 seizes its prey is free. Its nature prompts it to do 
 a certain thing, and in acting upon its nature it is 
 acting without external constraint. So the child 
 
202 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 who, remembering a former pleasant taste, grasps 
 for a lump of sugar, is free in his act. He is not 
 forced to it from the outside, and there is nothing 
 to restrain him. In the same way the man who in 
 a fit of anger strikes and kills his fellow, or the 
 drunkard who yields to the temptation to indulge 
 his diseased appetite, is acting freely. It is his 
 own nature which prompts him to the act, not an 
 external force driving him from without. 
 
 And yet there is another sense in which it would 
 be generally agreed that these acts are not what we 
 mean by moral freedom. As a matter of fact we 
 do use this conception of the morally free act to 
 make a distinction between acts which would be 
 equally free according to the preceding definition. 
 We say that a man is free in some sense in which 
 the animal is not, in some sense in which the child 
 is not. We say that one man is morally freer than 
 another, though each may be alike unconstrained, 
 and be doing what he himself chooses to do. What 
 is the meaning we intend to convey by such state- 
 ments as these? 
 
 If we approach the matter from the practical side, 
 we may easily distinguish a somewhat definite mean- 
 ing. The definition of freedom implied so far has 
 been in terms of the ability of a man to do what he 
 wants to do ; and so far as it goes, this would seem 
 to be on the right track. Freedom must be with 
 reference to the attainment of an end ; and not an 
 end only, but my end. And to live out that which 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 203 
 
 it is one's nature to be is merely another expression 
 of the end of being. But now, on the other hand, 
 moral slavery is also in the deepest sense just a 
 slavery to oneself. The ability to do what we please 
 not only does not guarantee freedom in the moral 
 sense; it may be the very condition of the lack of 
 moral freedom. Why is the child not morally free 
 as the man may be free? Not merely because its 
 actions are more circumscribed by limitations of 
 strength and by environment. Its limitations may 
 even be a means to freedom rather than a bar to it. 
 Morally that child is 'not most free who is most 
 unrestrained. It is not to hamper the child that the 
 parent surrounds it with certain safeguards, checks 
 tendencies in certain directions, but rather in the 
 interests of true liberty. Outer slavery may be con- 
 sistent with moral freedom. Slavery to oneself, to 
 one's own whims and impulses, is, morally speaking, 
 slavery complete and entire, within which no room 
 for real liberty exists. 
 
 Freedom, then, it seems, is the ability to live out 
 one's impulses ; slavery moral slavery the sub- 
 jection to one's impulses. The reconciliation of the 
 two statements is, of course, on the surface. It is 
 the difference between the satisfaction of temporary, 
 trivial interests, and those which are permanent and 
 comprehensive; between complete self-expression, 
 and such partial satisfaction as will in the end prove 
 a bar to the fulfilling of other sides of our nature 
 which are more weighty and enduring. Why are 
 
204 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 the animal and the child not completely free ? Be- 
 cause they are subject to the imperious, unreflecting 
 domination of individual and momentary impulses. 
 They can take no krge view of life. They cannot 
 look before and after, relating these desires to the more 
 permanent interests in which they play only a part, 
 and often a minor part. The act is subject to their 
 impulses, and not to themselves. For the true self 
 takes in our whole of life and our whole nature. It 
 is the system of impulses, many of which at any given 
 moment must needs be latent. And yet these latent 
 sides of our nature ought to be regarded. Other- 
 wise our hasty, partial self-expression may be, indeed 
 is like to be, prejudicial to our larger interests in 
 terms of the self which is more than any one impulse 
 or group of impulses. So the man who has not 
 learned self-control, the drunkard for example, is 
 a slave. He is a slave, not because the motive force 
 of his action lies outside himself. It is a part of his 
 own nature. But it is only a part, and a part rela- 
 tively unimportant, which yet has usurped despotic 
 power, and by so doing has disorganized the whole 
 system of life and its activities. And not only the 
 weak man, but the bad man, is a slave. He has 
 chosen to develop a part of himself which involves 
 the stunting of that in him which is most truly 
 and representatively human. 
 
 The definition of moral freedom, then, to put it 
 abstractly, would amount to this: it is the possi- 
 bility of attaining to a full and harmonious self- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 
 
 expression, of giving play to the complex system of 
 desires and impulses which constitute our nature 
 in such a way that each desire shall get the degree 
 of satisfaction, and only that degree, which is de- 
 manded by the whole truly human self of which it 
 forms a part. Whenever for any reason we fall 
 short of this possibility, we fall short of freedom. 
 The restraint may come from the outside, or it 
 may come from within. When any partial or tem- 
 porary side of our nature takes the bit in its teeth, 
 when it looks upon its own gratification as an ulti- 
 mate end, then we are enslaved, not to our real selves 
 indeed, but to a partial and blind craving whose very 
 condemnation is that it has got outside the limits 
 within which alone it truly represents" our self. Ac- 
 cordingly the very common notion of liberty as the 
 ability to do what we like is so far from the mark 
 that it may even mean the deepest perversion of 
 freedom. If what we like happens to be the unes- 
 sential, trivial, ephemeral part of ourselves, it is only 
 another expression for slavery. Far from its being 
 true that he is most completely free who is farthest 
 removed from the restraints of society and the state, 
 the opposite is the case. The responsibilities which 
 family ties, social demands, political duties, lay upon 
 us, instead of being in any normal society checks 
 upon freedom, are the necessary conditions of its 
 attainment. Only under these circumstances do 
 we find the material for self-expression, as well as 
 get the proper motives for a healthy subordination 
 
206 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 of ends. The savage is likely to be of all men the 
 farthest from freedom, because his life gives least 
 opportunity for the carrying on of those activities 
 in which man is most truly himself. To complain 
 of the aspect of necessity which is present in freedom 
 is as if the artist should complain because he is com- 
 pelled to shape his actions by the canons of aesthetic 
 beauty, instead of being allowed to wander at his 
 own sweet will and follow out every whim that sug- 
 gests itself. He may do the latter, but he ceases 
 thereby to be an artist. 
 
 Now that which makes possible such a harmon- 
 ized expression of the self is, as already has been 
 implied, the rational nature of man. It is the posses- 
 sion of reason which makes man a morally free crea- 
 ture as the animal is not and cannot be. Reason is 
 liberation from the dominance of the impulses and 
 passions, because it means the postponing of their 
 satisfaction until we have had a chance to see whether 
 they actually do represent our real selves or not; 
 whether we in the fulness of our nature really want 
 the thing that momentarily we think we want, or 
 whether this may not rather be obnoxious to our real 
 and permanent will. This supplanting of imme- 
 diate, unthinking action by a period of deliberation 
 is the essence of reason. The strong instinct to act 
 is checked. Straightway there begin to throng into 
 the mind the consequences our act may have. Some 
 of these consequences may not, probably will not, 
 prove altogether' attractive to us. Other things 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 207 
 
 we should like to do will occur to us with which the 
 act we are contemplating is likely to interfere. The 
 desires which these represent will also assert them- 
 selves and demand their rights. Accordingly, if 
 the deliberation is full and thorough, we shall end by 
 setting the proposed satisfaction in something like 
 its proper place in the system of our lives. We shall 
 discover our real desire, which may prove to be wholly 
 different from what at first we took to be our desire. 
 One thing more can thus be added to the definition 
 of moral freedom. The free act is always one 
 which proceeds from a rational insight, which is done 
 with a conscious recognition of what its results are 
 going to be. 
 
 But now it seems to be the natural consequence of 
 this conception of freedom that our acts are deter- 
 mined. They are determined, though not of course 
 by outer things. This last is the essence of fatalism 
 that things are bound to happen no matter what 
 we want and in spite of all that we can do. Such 
 fatalism, which denies to us as rational beings any 
 determining voice in the situation, is so obviously 
 out of harmony with the facts that it is hard to see 
 how any healthy-minded man can rest satisfied with 
 it. It is we who in large measure shape our acts. 
 But still our acts are shaped, are determined, by what 
 we are. That which we do is always the outcome 
 of our nature as it asserts itself at the given moment 
 under the particular circumstances of the situation. 
 Given the sort of man I am and the situation in 
 
208 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 which I find myself placed, and no other out- 
 come would have been conceivable. One who really 
 knew all the conditions could have foreseen with 
 entire inevitableness what the act would be. 
 
 Now here at last we come into conflict with an- 
 other notion of freedom ; we are in sight of the main 
 point around which the metaphysical controversy 
 about free will has raged. For it is often main- 
 tained that freedom consists just in the lack of any 
 determination whatever. The free act is therefore 
 the act which might equally have been done or 
 omitted. The contention for this so-called "liberty 
 of indifference" is identified with the thesis that when 
 we are at the psychological moment of choice be- 
 tween two opposing lines of conduct, there is a real 
 possibility of our choosing either. There is no in- 
 evitableness in the actual decision. It is necessary 
 to look more closely at what this implies. 
 
 And first as to the psychology of the matter. What 
 are we to say of the reason for any given choice? 
 Here are desires pulling us in the one direction and 
 the other. But by hypothesis, since both acts are 
 equally possible, the decision cannot be induced by 
 either of the contending forces or groups of forces. 
 Is then the decision simply due to chance ? Is there 
 an entire absence of causality, of rational connection, 
 in the result? Of course the advocate of indeter- 
 minism hardly likes to say this. No, he declares, 
 there is a cause, and that cause is just the free will. 
 It is the will which exists independent of our warring 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 2OQ 
 
 impulses, and which by its unconstrained fiat throws 
 the weight of its influence in the one scale or the other. 
 Now what one has to ask is this : Is such an idea of 
 will conceivable? Does it not actually land us in 
 the position already suggested, namely, that the 
 choice is absolutely a matter of chance with no 
 intelligible cause? 
 
 For how, it may be asked, does this supposed free 
 will act? In more definite terms, does it act under 
 the influence of motives or not ? And I understand 
 the word "motive" in terms of this tendency which 
 we have toward some particular course of action 
 representing the satisfaction of a concrete desire; 
 the bringing to consciousness of such an end con- 
 stitutes a motive. Now if the will is not determined 
 by motives, then not only is it able to take either 
 direction, but seemingly it is equally liable to take 
 either direction. There is absolutely nothing to 
 give any ground for supposing that it will take one 
 course in preference to another, even to one who is 
 perfectly aware of all the concrete conditions in the 
 case. The will is entirely irresponsible. In the 
 teeth of any possible reasons for or against, it may 
 fall back upon a decision entirely unreasoned, and 
 lying wholly in its own arbitrary nature. But in 
 point of fact is not this precisely the same as saying 
 that the choice is due to chance ? 
 
 No, the advocate of free will may answer, the will 
 does not act independently of motives. It takes 
 motives into account. But it is not their slave, and 
 p 
 
210 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 it decides in the end which motive is to be preferred. 
 But that is exactly the point. Just so far as it stands 
 for the power of choice between motives and that 
 is its whole function it is unmotived and arbitrary. 
 For what again is a motive ? A motive is based upon 
 a concrete desire or tendency of our nature in some 
 particular direction. Nothing could possibly be a 
 motive for us had we not already somewhere within 
 us a disposition to act or to do something. Food 
 is no motive to a man who is not hungry, money to 
 a man whose wants it will not satisfy, public opinion 
 to one who does not feel himself inclined to get his 
 neighbor's good will. 
 
 Now if the will simply decides between motives, it 
 is itself unmotived and unreasoned. Is it said that the 
 motive actually chosen is itself the reason ? It may be 
 a reason for the act. But unless we admit the 
 whole deterministic position it is not the reason 
 for the choice, for that swinging of the balance which 
 gives one motive the advantage over the other. It is 
 the whole point of the contention that it is not the 
 motive or impulse which is itself the conqueror, but 
 rather the will which tips the balance. The act of 
 will therefore, once more, is independent of the im- 
 pulse on which it acts. It may be that it only acts 
 when there is some concrete motive asserting itself. 
 But just that part of the action which belongs spe- 
 cifically to it the casting vote has no motived 
 reason. If there is a reason, not simply why I act, 
 but why I choose to prefer this act to another, this 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 211 
 
 reason must be in terms of some other motive or 
 tendency of my nature. And in that case the will 
 is determined by this, and is not free in the libertarian 
 sense. Once more, then, free will means the power 
 to choose without motives, and so leaves the decision 
 to what is quite indistinguishable from chance. 
 
 Surely such a position has little practically to 
 recommend it when once we see clearly what it 
 means. Against it there is, in the first place, the 
 universal assumption that for practical purposes ac- 
 tions are not incalculable, but follow clearly defined 
 laws. And the more sane action is, the more human, 
 the more truly moral, the more confidence we feel 
 that it can be predicted with approximate certainty. 
 Against it is the difficulty of interpreting an abstract 
 power of will, as distinct from the concrete springs 
 of action, in intelligible psychological terms. A 
 mere power to choose that is not based upon a defi- 
 nite bias in some particular direction is far from being 
 easy to conceive. Against it there is again the fact 
 that if it were allowed to be true, it would be preju- 
 dicial to the interests of the ethical life. A freedom 
 which is indistinguishable from chance, and which 
 would make the moral man, unless happily he lost 
 it in the course of his development, forever at the 
 mercy of an ineducable and arbitrary force that 
 might at any moment lead him away from the path 
 to which the whole bent of his character disposed him, 
 would be the last thing, it would seem, to which ethics 
 would want to commit itself. And if these last are 
 
212 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 not the true facts of the case, if as a man becomes 
 moral his character more and more influences his 
 acts and makes the outcome certain, we should 
 apparently have the paradox that the more moral a 
 man is the less his will is free. 
 
 But still the advocate of such a freedom will come 
 back to certain considerations which seem to him 
 unanswerable. In the first place, he appeals to the 
 supposed consciousness of freedom. As I stand 
 before a parting of the roads, he will say, I am con- 
 scious that it is equally possible for me to take either 
 turn, and no arguments can dispossess me of this 
 certainty. Or as I look back upon an act already 
 performed, it seems to me quite clear that I was not 
 forced to take the course I did. I might quite as well 
 have chosen differently. And then, in the second 
 place, it is urged that if this is not so, the whole ethical 
 life is meaningless. If I am forced to do that which 
 I do, if there is no possibility of my doing otherwise, 
 goodness and badness are mere terms, responsibility 
 is a delusion, and it can no more be said that I ought 
 to take this course than that the stone ought to fall 
 under the influence of the law of gravitation. It 
 does fall, and that is the end of the matter. 
 
 I will look at this last objection first. And of 
 course if it is true, it is a serious objection, and may 
 indeed be given weight even in the face of psycho- 
 logical and other difficulties. I have already sug- 
 gested, however, that it is by no means clear that the 
 ethical advantages are all on the side of indeter- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 213 
 
 minism. The matter may now be examined at closer 
 range. 
 
 And first, as to some of the consequences which do 
 not follow from determinism, or self-determinism, 
 as perhaps it might better be called. Determinism 
 does not mean, once more, that we are determined 
 by forces lying outside ourselves. Of course our 
 surroundings and these from the point of view of 
 our own intentions are in considerable degree the 
 result of chance have very much to say in regard 
 to the development of character. That is the asser- 
 tion, not of theory, but of everyday experience. And 
 yet it is never the mere external environment which 
 influences us. A certain situation may bring to 
 light sides of my nature which otherwise might never 
 have been disclosed. But still these elements were 
 really there. They were a part of myself, and ex- 
 cept for them the situation would not have influenced 
 me. The bad man who appeals to circumstances 
 to excuse his deed forgets that the deed never would 
 have come to pass had there not been an element of 
 weakness within himself to give the temptation a 
 purchase. Another man faces just the same situa- 
 tion and comes off unscathed and even strengthened, 
 because he is a different sort of man. So that the 
 determination again is always in some part at least 
 a determination from within, a self-determination. 
 
 In the second place, determinism does not say, 
 when truly interpreted, that choice is simply the 
 result of the conflict of impulses, the stronger impulse 
 
214 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 getting the upper hand. This may do well enough 
 as a rough and approximate statement, but it may 
 easily be misleading. The indeterminist is quite 
 right in maintaining that we are not simply the 
 theatre of conflict. It is we who do the work of 
 choosing as well. We may even lend our aid to 
 the weaker motive and give it a preponderating in- 
 fluence. Without doubt this represents a truth; 
 the only question is about its interpretation. And 
 understood rightly it does not compel us to alter our 
 previous point of view. It only suggests that there 
 is one aspect of the situation which has not been 
 explicitly enough brought forward. This is the fact, 
 namely, that we have not to do in any sense with a 
 lot of isolated impulses or motives, but with a sys- 
 tem of impulses. The self is this system. It is a 
 unitary organism in which the aspect of unity is 
 equally important with the variety of the ways in 
 which the self gets expression. Accordingly, while 
 it will do in a popular way of speaking to say that 
 one impulse, one motive, is engaged in contest with 
 another, such a statement does not represent the 
 full truth. The motive is a motive only as it is our 
 motive, as it is identified with ourselves. It is I 
 who am opposed to myself, not one separate impulse 
 to another. Unless I, the organic system of activ- 
 ities, were really engaged, there would indeed be 
 no conflict. It is just because the unitary I is di- 
 vided, is pulled in two directions, that the impulses 
 can stand in conscious opposition. The self is thus 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 215 
 
 more than any impulse, or any number of impulses 
 merely added together. On the other hand, it is no 
 new increment of force or will over and above all 
 the concrete tendencies to action. It is the inter- 
 relation of tendencies which, by the fact of their inter- 
 relation, are enabled to modify one another, and are 
 allowed to get expression only as they call in play 
 to some extent the whole organism to which they 
 belong. 
 
 There is therefore a very intelligible sense in which 
 it is not the motive or impulse which conquers, but 
 ourselves. Back of this temporary gratification 
 there is our larger and completer self which has its 
 interest in the decision. The moment we stop to 
 deliberate, each impulse seeks to engage in its behalf 
 all the other tendencies which hitherto have been 
 in the background of consciousness or wholly un- 
 conscious. It is this appeal to our more compre- 
 hensive nature, to the latent but closely interrelated 
 springs of action that exist within us, which makes 
 it possible to distinguish the part that the self plays 
 from the action of the relatively isolated motives 
 from which the conflict takes its rise. And in the 
 end that course of action will inevitably be chosen 
 which most strongly appeals to this larger self, in 
 so far as it is able to assert its nature. The whole 
 process of deliberation is the process of determining 
 what it is we really want. When that is once settled, 
 the appropriate action follows. But it is quite con- 
 ceivable that this should reverse the relative position 
 
2l6 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 of the motives as they existed at the start. That 
 line of action which appeared to us more desirable 
 we may decide is not, in the light of all we find it to 
 imply, really worth what it seemed at first. Taken 
 in an isolated way, one motive is stronger than an- 
 other. If the results of the action went no farther 
 than the present satisfaction, we should unhesitat- 
 ingly prefer it to its less attractive competitor. But 
 this is just what we cannot do isolate motives in this 
 fashion. And when the weight of our wider inter- 
 ests is thrown into the scale, it may enable us to 
 decide against the so-called stronger motive - 
 stronger, that is, in its separate aspect, but not in its 
 real appeal to our total nature. This is what we 
 mean when we say that we have decided to do a cer- 
 tain thing although we really want to do another. 
 We should rather have this bit of pleasure than per- 
 form the act of self-denial involved in giving it up, 
 so long as the pleasure and the self-denial are alone 
 under comparison. But the fact is that the com- 
 parison is in reality not so limited. And when we 
 take all the consequences into account, we discover 
 that we do not want to sacrifice so much for a tem- 
 porary gratification, however eagerly desired. And 
 because we really want the more permanent rather 
 than the more immediate good, we decide as we do; 
 had we not at bottom preferred the self-denial with 
 all its results to the pleasure and all its results, we 
 should have decided differently. 
 And now, in the third place, indeterminism does 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 217 
 
 not deny the possibility of growth. What it asserts 
 is that, with a given degree of development, and a 
 given situation, a man's act is not indeterminate; 
 there really is only one course open to him at the 
 time. But this, so far from meaning that character 
 is fixed and unchanging, implies just the opposite. 
 It is precisely this act, which is the determined out- 
 come of my present stage of growth, which in its 
 results reveals me further to myself and conditions 
 the next step in advance. It will be well to look at 
 this a little further. 
 
 Life is a process of self -revelation. Each man 
 comes into the world with a certain equipment, a 
 host of potentialities which are as yet unrealized. 
 And the possibilities of attainment are of course 
 limited by this original endowment. It is but a 
 truism to say that if a man is to do a certain thing, 
 it must be in him to do it. No new powers are ever 
 imported into us bodily from the outside. The germ 
 must be there, to be called into life by the presence of 
 favorable opportunities, or no result can possibly 
 come about. Nor obviously do we have possession 
 of our powers at the start. All life is a process of 
 coming into the heritage of ourselves. We never 
 know ourselves fully. At any moment new cir- 
 cumstances may reveal sides of our nature which 
 neither we nor those who knew us had suspected. 
 "Six months ago," says Theron Ware in Mr. Fred- 
 eric's novel, after his moral collapse, "I was a good 
 man. I not only seemed to be good to myself and 
 
2l8 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 to others, but I was good." But in reality the ele- 
 ments of weakness were there all the time ; the de- 
 cisive test alone was lacking. And when it came, 
 it brought about the complete overthrow of all that 
 outward fabric of character for which the man had 
 stood to himself and to others. Character, then, is 
 something which in its very nature is not fixed, but 
 growing. Its possibilities are indeed limited. No 
 one can hope to gather grapes from thorns, or make 
 silk purses out of sows' ears. But practically there is 
 never ground for any certainty as to what these 
 boundaries are, nor for asserting dogmatically that 
 in any given stage of attainment the limit has been 
 reached. 
 
 Now the way this growth comes about is primarily 
 by the method of action. Of course other influences 
 that are not the immediate result of our own active 
 experimenting appeal to latent impulses within us, and 
 help form what we call character. Impressions that 
 come to us from the world of nature, and more particu- 
 larly those revelations of the meaning of life which 
 we get from the lives and the words of our fellows, call 
 out our dormant tendencies, and help give them a 
 place in the system of motives which lead to action. 
 But after all it is the supreme test that comes with 
 the need of action which puts the final stamp upon 
 us, and infallibly lets us know what manner of men 
 we are. "How can a man learn to know himself?'' 
 says Goethe. "By reflection never, only by action." 
 We may look ahead to some future possible emer- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 21 9 
 
 gency, and think that we should act in this way or in 
 that; and we may of course be right about it. But 
 such forecasting is readily mistaken. It is only when 
 the stress and strain of present need comes, bringing 
 to light our hidden weakness or our hidden strength, 
 that the impress of finality is put upon our decisions. 
 So long as it is merely an academic question, and not 
 an immediately practical one, we simply cannot 
 realize its full significance. Conduct is the normal 
 and ultimate field for growth. 
 
 And there are two phases of this relation of action 
 to development which may be emphasized in opposi- 
 tion to the objection of the indeterminist. If we 
 take the word " character" to mean the system of 
 tendencies and impulses as they have become defi- 
 nitely organized in past experience, then we may say 
 that in this sense character does not absolutely 
 determine action. For every act involves a situation 
 which is in greater or less degree novel. No man 
 can act wholly on the basis of past decisions, for the 
 present can never be wholly like the past. Of course 
 character, or organized habits of action, plays a 
 vastly important role in determining each new act. 
 And we are justified ordinarily in prophesying pretty 
 confidently on the basis of it, especially when the 
 novelty of the situation is relatively slight. But yet 
 character is not absolutely compulsive. For in the 
 situation there may be that which appeals to forces 
 within us not to be stated in terms of past attain- 
 ment. It is the new decision, in other words, which 
 
220 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 for the first time brings to light in its completeness 
 what our present character is at the time of making 
 it. Each choice is a definition of the growing char- 
 acter, not a mere product of past character To 
 be sure there is a wider sense of the term in which it 
 may be said that character wholly determines the 
 act. If, that is, we mean by character everything 
 that we are, potentially even, at the moment of the 
 choice, there is nothing in the result which is inde- 
 pendent of it. But for practical purposes character 
 means what I have taken it to mean. It is the or- 
 ganized result of past experience, defined in habits 
 of action, and capable of being known and summed 
 up by ourselves and others. And as such character 
 is only one of the determining influences to which the 
 act is due. 
 
 But now, furthermore, the result of our acts is 
 all the time more or less modifying our character 
 the self as it has actually come to self-expression. 
 The consequences of the act as we foresaw them have 
 not, when they come, just the flavor we anticipated. 
 Other consequences, too, disclose themselves which 
 we did not foresee at all, and which give a new com- 
 plexion to our choice. The result is a certain recon- 
 struction of our motives. The dominant impulses 
 on which we have been acting are either strengthened, 
 or they are weakened, by our fuller knowledge of 
 the direction in which they are leading us. Things 
 which hitherto have meant little or nothing to us 
 receive an impetus, and begin to take on a real value 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 221 
 
 for our lives. In short, character is in process of 
 formation. 
 
 Now if determinism is quite compatible with 
 growth, it cannot be held to offer any justification 
 for the attitude of passive acquiescence in whatever 
 chance may bring for the point of view, that is, of 
 fatalism. If I, as the observer of another's struggle, 
 am inclined to shirk responsibility by offering the 
 excuse that his act is already determined, the answer 
 is plain. Given all the outside influences that are 
 brought to bear upon him, and his act will depend 
 finally upon the way in which his nature is aroused 
 by the appeal which the situation makes. But I, as 
 an observer, am a part of this situation, and it there- 
 fore depends upon me whether certain possible in- 
 fluences shall be forthcoming or not. My act or word, 
 therefore, always has in it the possibility that it may 
 strike a responsive chord, and so make the result 
 different from what it otherwise would have been. 
 Upon the giving or the withholding of my help, the 
 whole issue may hang. 
 
 And while the point is rather more easily obscured, 
 essentially the same thing can be said to the one who 
 is inclined to interpret determinism in terms of fatal- 
 ism in his own life. What is the use of trying? the 
 fatalist says. If things are to happen in one particu- 
 lar way, and that way is already decided, I may as 
 well lean back and let events take their course. 
 Nothing I can do will make any difference in the 
 result. But this is precisely what is not true. To 
 
222 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 be sure, if I do not want a certain end, I shall never 
 choose that end. But if I do not want it, I have no 
 reason to complain that it is out of my reach. If, 
 however, the want is there, by that very fact I have 
 the motive force which is an earnest of its possible 
 satisfaction, if only I want it bad enough to adopt the 
 necessary means. And that involves action on my 
 part, not a mere drifting with events. In numerous 
 ways I can strengthen my desire by bringing to bear 
 upon myself in cold blood influences which will 
 coerce me in the heat of the crisis. I may dwell 
 upon the thought of it, bringing before myself its 
 attractions, and so increase both the probability 
 that it will be called to mind at need, and the force 
 with which it will appeal to me as a motive. I may 
 set in motion influences which will enlist my pride 
 or my interests, and so make it more difficult for me 
 to back down. We are all the time doing these things 
 naturally and spontaneously when our desires are 
 in question ; and we have only to recognize this fact, 
 and note the added motive force it brings to us, to 
 be able to adopt it as a conscious and habitual tool 
 for increasing the likelihood of attaining our desired 
 ends. 
 
 It may be said that this power to deliberate and 
 to fortify oneself against temptation is again a de- 
 termined fact of character which we are unable to 
 originate. Very true. But the only important thing, 
 practically, is the fact that we are beings who can 
 deliberate, to whom rational considerations may 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 223 
 
 be made to appeal ; and that therefore by thought 
 and resolve we may influence events and character. 
 Of course this assumes that we are creatures with 
 insistent wants, whose nature it is to exert ourselves 
 for ends which we desire. It may be that there are 
 individuals of whom this is not true. But if that 
 is so, the difficulty is not one of theory, but of tem- 
 perament. Primarily fatalism gets hold of a man 
 not so much because he has reasoned himself into 
 a belief that effort is useless, as because the springs 
 of action are themselves weakened. If he does not 
 really want things, it is of course useless to argue to 
 him that he could get them if he wanted them. 
 The remedy should be applied primarily to the will, 
 and not to the reason. But such a man is at least 
 a rare exception. In the typical man we can assume 
 the existence of desires and ambitions. 
 
 And now if we add to this once more the further 
 assumption that men are capable of being appealed 
 to by reason, and that accordingly the intellectual 
 recognition of the attainableness of things by effort 
 may have an influence in removing obstacles and 
 spurring on to endeavor, the basis of fatalism is 
 taken away. It is taken away simply by the appeal 
 to fact the fact that we can get things by working 
 for them. And since man, again as a matter of fact, 
 is a rational being, this recognition of the value of 
 resolve and endeavor itself is a motive force. It 
 helps set action free, and checks the tendency to a 
 fatalistic acquiescence and inertia. Of course it sup- 
 
224 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 plies no positive motive. It assumes that the want 
 is there, and it cannot work without this assump- 
 tion. But since action is likely to be hindered by 
 wrong thinking and helped by right, since the belief 
 that a thing is possible will inevitably add to the im- 
 petus of our struggle for it, and the belief that it is 
 out of our reach will react to cool our ardor, the true 
 understanding of the facts, and the intellectual ap- 
 preciation of where the fallacy of fatalism lies, are 
 not to be disparaged. 
 
 And at this point it is perhaps well to say a word 
 about the supposed feeling of freedom the second 
 thing to which the indeterminist appeals. Before we 
 choose we have, it is said, the consciousness of our 
 power to take either course ; and afterwards as we 
 look back upon our act we see that we really were 
 unconstrained, and that we might equally as well 
 have chosen differently. Now in part this belief 
 depends upon the fact that, for our consciousness, 
 the choice we are to take is actually in doubt. We 
 do not at the beginning know ourselves. The choice 
 first defines our real desire. And therefore, until 
 we have chosen, until we have made up our minds, 
 we regard ourselves as potentially able to take either 
 path. Of course if we did not do so, there would 
 be no occasion for our trying to choose. So again 
 physically either path is open to us, and we often tend 
 to confound this physical possibility with the moral 
 and psychological one. But apart from these two 
 qualifications, is not our assertion that we might 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 22$ 
 
 have chosen differently really a mistaken inter- 
 pretation of our consciousness? In the grip of 
 remorse I look back and say : I could have taken the 
 better course ; there was nothing to prevent me, and 
 the fault was all my own. Yes, I could have done 
 otherwise. But is there not always implicitly present 
 back of the assertion the qualifying clause: "if I 
 had been a better man, the man I now recognize I 
 should have been." Is not this the very essence of 
 my self-condemnation ? I blame and despise myself 
 because I was the sort of man from whom such 
 conduct was the necessary outcome. // I had seen 
 things differently, if I had had a little more persist- 
 ence and self-control, if I had only felt more con- 
 sideration for others, I should have acted in the way 
 that now I should prefer to have acted. But the 
 " if ' ' was there. I was not the sort of man I wish now 
 that I had been ; I was the sort of man whom I now 
 despise. Might I now put myself back in the past, 
 I would choose differently. But I was at the time 
 what my act shows me to have been ; and it could 
 not have been different unless / had been different. 1 
 
 1 Professor James would object to determinism on the ground 
 that it interferes with the zest of life. To feel that we are in a 
 cast-iron universe, within which there are no real alternatives, no 
 open chances, nothing left to unforced initiative, is intolerable to 
 the free spirit. This it appears to me is, for Professor James at 
 any rate as a pragmatist, an unjustified complaint. No theory 
 can prevent chances from seeming to be open, so long as we re- 
 main partially ignorant of the world and of ourselves, and therefore 
 are unable to predict our course of action or the possibilities 
 of the situation until our choice brings to light the determining 
 Q 
 
226 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 And the bearing of this upon the question of prac- 
 tical responsibility is perhaps sufficiently clear. If 
 my act was determined to be what it was, I am not 
 responsible, says the indeterminist. Certainly I 
 am responsible; who else? It is my nature which 
 determines the act. I myself am the source, not 
 something external to me. If it were not true that 
 my nature determined it, if there were an arbitrary 
 and incalculable something called free will asserting 
 itself independently of my definite wants and de- 
 sires, then indeed I, as a concrete person, could not 
 be held responsible. For a practical responsibility 
 two things, and only two, are needed. There must 
 be a person to whose own conscious choice an act 
 is due, not to blind force and external compulsion. 
 And such a person must be amenable to reason, 
 capable of being influenced by motives. To hold a 
 man responsible, in other words, is to attempt to 
 bring home to his consciousness the fact that the 
 results of his deed will be made to react upon him- 
 self, and so actually to influence him in his decision. 
 Responsibility is a weapon for exerting a practical 
 influence, and as such it is not prejudiced in the 
 least by any theory of self -determinism. 
 
 And yet perhaps the difficulty is not fully met after 
 all. Granted that for practical purposes a man may 
 be held responsible, he yet, the indeterminist may 
 
 human factor. Our practical attitude in this respect is therefore 
 indistinguishable from what it would be if the result were actually 
 undetermined. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 227 
 
 say, has no real choice in the last analysis. He 
 may be responsible for the act, but he is not respon- 
 sible for the nature which determines the act. He 
 did not create himself. He finds himself with cer- 
 tain possibilities; and these given possibilities limit 
 with absolute definiteness the field of his choice and 
 action. If we go to the bottom of the thing, therefore, 
 he is not responsible for his act because he is not 
 responsible for his nature. And he can retort upon 
 the power who claims the right to hold him to an 
 account : It is you who gave birth to me and all my 
 possibilities ; you must take the credit or the blame, 
 as it may be, for your workmanship. 
 
 The difficulty I believe is a more real one than is 
 usually recognized by the determinist, and the an- 
 swer not altogether easy. If there really is the pos- 
 sibility of shifting the ultimate responsibility upon 
 a power beyond ourselves, it will be pretty hard to 
 hold the protestant down to the mere practical as- 
 pects of the matter and forbid his appealing to ulti- 
 mate facts. Of course I may say to him: Your 
 business is with the man you are; no matter how 
 you came to be, you are yourself, and you cannot get 
 away from the fact, and so you are bound to make 
 what you can of yourself and cease from unavail- 
 ing pleas and excuses. This is very good practical 
 advice; but, after all, there is something rather 
 arbitrary in it as a final statement. If some being 
 not myself brought me into existence through no 
 choice of mine, and decided what nature I was to 
 
228 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 receive, it does seem as if I were not altogether 
 unjustified in pleading the fact as at least an extenu- 
 ating circumstance. 
 
 In attempting to indicate what I think is the solu- 
 tion of this final difficulty, it should be considered, 
 in the first place, that we are compelled to stop some- 
 where in the process of fixing responsibility. There 
 must be a point where the search for a further source 
 of responsibility becomes illegitimate. There is, for 
 example, no real meaning to the question: Who 
 is responsible for God's nature ? God is responsible 
 for his acts ; but it is meaningless to talk of responsi- 
 bility for that which is the original and eternal source 
 of acts. In other words, the question of responsibil- 
 ity only comes up in connection with an effect, not 
 with the ground from which this effect flows. Of 
 ultimate existence evidently we cannot ask: What 
 caused it? If it had a cause, it would not be ulti- 
 mate. The search for further responsibility is just 
 the search for a further cause ; and so unless we stop 
 somewhere, we are committed to the conception of 
 an infinite causal regress. Now hi terms of God's 
 nature this is comparatively plain. If it is said, 
 God is not responsible for his acts because he is not 
 responsible for his nature, we probably feel at once 
 that there is some fallacy present. The argument 
 is based, once more, upon the unmeaning concep- 
 tion of a cause of ultimate existence, of an ultimate 
 which is not ultimate. And if we see that this 
 is not legitimate, if we see that cause and respon- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 2 29 
 
 sibility are both to be predicated only of what is 
 derivative, of the act rather than the self or being who 
 is the ground of the act, the attempt to pass on 
 responsibility will of necessity have to be dropped. 
 What is needed, therefore, in order to do away 
 with such a shifting of responsibility in the case 
 of the human self, is to make this self equally ulti- 
 mate with God. And this is the position which has 
 already been argued for in a preceding chapter. In 
 other words, God does not create us by an arbitrary 
 choice of his, so that our nature as human selves is 
 merely secondary and derivative. This nature of 
 ours is an ultimate fact of reality. It is implicated 
 in the deepest constitution of the universe, in the 
 nature of God himself. Reality is a confederacy 
 of free beings; and no one of these is ultimately 
 responsible for the others, since each alike is essen- 
 tial to the whole with which reality is identified. 
 For a self in this respect does not stand on a level 
 with a thing. Or, since every fact of the universe 
 which is not a self can be reduced to the act of a self, 
 there is an essential difference between a self and 
 an act. There is a sense in which an act is also an 
 ultimate constituent of reality. But it is not in the 
 final sense in which this is true of a unitary and self- 
 conscious being. An act is always the act of a self. 
 It has to be referred to a definite whole of conscious 
 life of which it is an expression. But for that reason 
 it can never have even a quasi-independence of exist- 
 ence. It is only a personal unity of experience, 
 
230 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 exclusive of other unities, which can serve as a really 
 individual constituent of reality. Since therefore 
 each self, even God, must distinguish other selves 
 from its own nature, it must regard them as in a sense 
 equally sovereign with itself. It cannot stand to 
 them in the relation of responsible originator, since 
 they lie beyond its own life. It only is to the act 
 which is a part of its own being that it can stand in 
 such a relation. Other selves it simply recognizes, 
 not as its creation, but as furnishing the conditions 
 of its own life. The reality of these related selves 
 is in an ultimate sense not made or caused; it 
 simply is. 
 
 A self, then, is due to no more ultimate cause. And 
 since an act is always due to a self, it follows that it 
 is due to no more than a single self. There is noth- 
 ing back of ourselves, therefore, on which to cast the 
 blame. We are what we are, it is true. It is true 
 that we did not make ourselves. But neither did 
 any one make us, in an absolute and arbitrary 
 sense. There is no further court of appeal from 
 our own nature. That is; and questions about 
 its ultimate source are questions about how reality 
 is made. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 PERHAPS at no time does man get so clearly the 
 sense of his own limitations and shortness of vision 
 as when in some peculiarly searching way he is 
 brought face to face with the immense fact of evil. 
 What I shall say lays no claim to furnish a com- 
 pletely satisfying answer. There are moods indeed 
 which come to every man when all attempts at an 
 answer will inevitably seem weak and cold. Never- 
 theless, while any statement is bound to run this 
 risk, it is perhaps not impossible to point out the 
 direction in which a solution would seem to lie, 
 though it is well to bear constantly in mind, here 
 even more than elsewhere, that we are dealing only 
 with approximations. 
 
 If one were to exalt the first natural impression 
 that the facts of life make upon him into a specula- 
 tive theory, he would very probably divide the uni- 
 verse somehow between two principles, one of good 
 and the other of evil, both alike real and positive, 
 and each engaged in everlasting warfare with the 
 other. This is perhaps the most obvious way in 
 which to picture to our minds the reason for the 
 actual mixture which we find in the world. More- 
 over, it has a certain dramatic quality which makes 
 
 231 
 
232 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 it striking and impressive to the imagination. The 
 thought of the world as the theatre of a mighty con- 
 flict between hostile powers has therefore familiarized 
 itself to men, sometimes in religion, sometimes in 
 literature, and occasionally in philosophical thought. 
 And yet almost necessarily it has to be modified to 
 some extent in order to make its full appeal, and 
 this dramatic defect is indicative of its philosophical 
 weakness also. For taken in its strict form it baffles 
 the imagination finally by bringing things to a dead- 
 lock that allows of no issue. And so ultimately it 
 makes the whole world process not simply unmean- 
 ing, but wearisome as well ; there is nothing on which 
 the imagination can rest. Accordingly there has 
 to be introduced into the conception, before it can 
 get any wide human hold, the suggestion at least of 
 a final subordination. No matter how deadly the 
 issue now may be, how powerful the hosts of evil, 
 there lies in the background the reference to a day 
 of fate when the struggle shall find its consummation 
 and its meaning. Or, to put it in the language of 
 technical philosophy, it involves a dualism, and a 
 dualism which is ultimate can never be satisfactory 
 to reason any more than to imagination. We may 
 very conceivably have to admit that the opposition is 
 by us not capable of being resolved. But if so, at 
 least we cannot pretend that the outcome satisfies 
 us intellectually. If the whole meaning of reason 
 lies in the search for a unity and final harmony, such 
 a dualism can only mark its temporary defeat; it 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 233 
 
 cannot be a final satisfaction of the impulse to under- 
 stand. And accordingly we are justified in neglect- 
 ing the claims of dualism as a serious speculative 
 solution of the problem of evil. Whether or not a 
 real solution can be found, it must at any rate be 
 looked for in some other direction. 
 
 The same defect belongs to the less rigorous but 
 perhaps more common attitude which finds the 
 source of evil, not in an active principle, but rather 
 in some passive but stubborn obstruction to the 
 realization of the good, such as is usually identified 
 with matter. 
 
 " He does not forsake the world 
 But stands before it modelling in the clay 
 And moulding there His image. Age by age 
 The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard 
 For its old, heavy, dull and shapeless ease. 
 At times it crumbles and a nation falls; 
 Now moves awry and demon hordes are born." 
 
 In religion this has been a very common attitude 
 indeed, by reason of that fundamental conflict in 
 experience which naturally interprets itself as a 
 war between the flesh and the spirit, the lusts of the 
 flesh being then extended to matter as such in all its 
 forms. But this equally involves a fatal obstacle 
 to any real unity that we can give the world, and 
 means the final thwarting of the effort to understand. 
 If a dualism of good and evil principles does not 
 satisfy the demands of reason, so a too easy optimism 
 which tries to deny or ignore the existence of evil 
 
234 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 altogether does not satisfy the facts. Attempts to 
 settle the question in this way have been compara- 
 tively frequent, and they cover a tolerably wide range. 
 From popular optimism such as that of which Pope 
 is the mouthpiece, with its light-hearted appeals to 
 the universal order, to the complacent shutting of 
 the eyes to realities which marks such pseudo-phi- 
 losophies as Christian Science, all these solutions suf- 
 fer from the radical defect that they syncopate the 
 meaning of human experience. It must indeed be 
 in some sense true that if a harmony is attainable at 
 all, what seems to us evil has a part to play in a larger 
 good. But much depends upon the force and acute- 
 ness with which one has felt the pressure of the prob- 
 lem and the need of a solution. If the experience 
 back of the solution has been a meagre and shallow 
 one, if it has never come into close contact with those 
 hard and bitter facts of suffering and evil and de- 
 spair, then while much that it has to say may be in 
 its place excellent, it never will seem to be at close 
 grip with reality, and it will fail to appeal to any age 
 that has seen a little deeper into life. It will tend 
 to be the easy content of a comfortable Philistinism. 
 Few men probably have ever found much real com- 
 fort, except for the misfortunes of other people, hi 
 the well-worn maxim of optimism that a private evil 
 may prove to be a "universal good. To sink the 
 individual's good in that of the universe is just the 
 sign of a loose hold upon the reality of evil. The 
 conception of the general system of things is too 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 235 
 
 vague a notion, in the first place, to mean much in 
 itself to any save the mere theorizer about evil in 
 the abstract, And then it leaves xmt, too, what is 
 quite the most important part the question who 
 it is that is to reap this supposed advantage. Good 
 is not mere good in general. It is good for some one. 
 And it is not immaterial, at least to me who am the 
 sufferer, whether it shall turn to my good, or whether 
 it only subserves another's gain a quite indefinite 
 and general " other." To make the question purely 
 an impersonal one, as if it were a matter simply of 
 arithmetic, of balancing states of pleasant and pain- 
 ful feeling wherever they might happen to be found, is 
 to show clearly that the weight of the problem never 
 really has come home to us in terms of feeling. Un- 
 less the gain it brings is somehow made my gain, 
 then my suffering is in so far a sheer evil and blot 
 upon the universe, not to be offset completely by 
 any possible advantage that may be won by some 
 other life. To sacrifice the good of a single sentient 
 creature to a larger whole, call it humanity, or the 
 absolute, or what you will, so long as the realization 
 of the benefit lies beyond the experience of the being 
 who feels the pain, is to leave a fact of evil in the 
 universe which is absolute and uncompensated. So 
 the popular solution which evolution has to offer must 
 be as a final and fully satisfying solution always 
 more or less of a failure. Merely to look forward 
 to some possible future felicity does not justify the 
 woes of the present. 
 
 or 
 
236 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 " It had not much 
 
 Consoled the race of mastodons to know 
 Before they went to fossil that anon 
 Their place would quicken with the elephant. 
 They were not elephants, but mastodons. 
 And I, a man as men are now, and not 
 As men may he hereafter, feel with man 
 In the agonizing present." 
 
 Much of the optimism of the past has been of this 
 unsatisfying sort ; and it is not strange, therefore, that 
 it often should have been impatiently and scornfully 
 rejected as failing to compass the facts of life. The 
 pessimism of the last century, with all its exaggera- 
 tion, at least did a real service in forcing men to open 
 their eyes and look facts in the face. In so far as we 
 take pessimism, then, simply as an insistence that 
 evil is a part of experience which cannot be ignored, 
 it must have its place in any complete philosophy. 
 But if it is regarded as a final account of things, it is 
 at least equally one-sided with a blind optimism. 
 Indeed, except for that intellectual perversity which 
 delights in the exaggeration of a partial truth, es- 
 pecially in opposition to some well-worn common- 
 place, a thorough-going pessimism would hardly 
 be a possibility. It is therefore not altogether profit- 
 able to try to take it too seriously, or to expect 
 it to be fully open to argument. Back of it there 
 is always a peculiar emotional set, due largely to 
 temperament, or to an unfortunate combination of 
 experiences. In either case it is more a matter of 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 237 
 
 feeling than of reason, and often the physician can 
 meet it better than the philosopher. Still if the 
 pessimist does enter the arena of argument, and is 
 willing to view fairly the wider facts of experience, 
 uncolored by his own private bias from life, he can 
 hardly refuse to modify considerably the absolute- 
 ness of his claims. 
 
 For if it is impossible to merge the ills of life 
 unreservedly in the good, it is equally impossible to 
 deny the presence of a large intermixture of good 
 amid surrounding ills. All attempts to deny a 
 positive quality to the good in human life are 
 mere tamperings with the facts in the interests of 
 a prejudiced conclusion. There is not one of the 
 arguments advanced to prove the non-existence of 
 such a positive content of good in human life which 
 will at all bear scrutiny. It has been a favorite 
 theory, for example, that pleasure is nothing positive, 
 but in reality only the absence of pain, the relief 
 which we feel when pain is relaxed or removed. 
 Modern psychology may be said definitely to have 
 set aside such a contention, if indeed it needed refu- 
 tation in the face of its lack of correspondence with 
 the most obvious testimony of experience. Quite 
 as ineffective are appeals to the supposed trivialness 
 and lack of finality in life, its failure to meet certain 
 tests of worth, in proof of the assertion that it is 
 worth nothing at all. Schopenhauer is particularly 
 skilful in marshalling such considerations. He re- 
 minds us that life is a constant struggle for main- 
 
238 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 tenance, a ceaseless treadmill of work and duty 
 which seemingly leads nowhere, an attaining of 
 desire only to have new wants open up before us. 
 Now if the pessimist means no more than to assert, 
 "I don't see anything worth while in all this; it 
 only bores me," there is probably nothing to be said. 
 He is a pessimist largely because he is so easily bored. 
 But if he means that no one else takes any more in- 
 terest in it that he himself, he is contradicted by the 
 plainest facts. This very round of living with all 
 its petty details is a thing which many people find 
 vastly interesting. It may be true that desires at- 
 tained only open up new wants, and lead to no final 
 goal. But in the process of satisfying them there 
 is pleasure nevertheless. And it is the very con- 
 dition of future pleasure that with their satisfaction 
 all desire should not thereby come to an end. To 
 look at desire as primarily painful is untrue to the 
 facts. It is this only as its prospect of satisfaction 
 is too greatly hindered. So a very sad case indeed 
 may be made out for mankind chained down for- 
 ever to the grinding task of meeting over and over 
 again its insistent needs, if work is essentially pain- 
 ful and an evil. But this can be denied outright. 
 Some kinds of work are painful, it is true. But 
 work itself, work that occupies us and calls out our 
 real powers, is the necessary precondition of a pleas- 
 ant life, in spite of its frequent drawbacks. In a 
 word, the trouble is not with life itself, but with the 
 way in which we meet life. And however inconceiv- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 239 
 
 able it may seem to one who views it with jaundiced 
 eyes, it remains true that unsophisticated people do 
 succeed in getting a good deal of positive enjoyment 
 as they go along, and enjoyment too from precisely 
 the trivial details which the pessimist sees fraught 
 with such potencies of evil and disillusionment. 
 
 The outcome, then, is simply this : The possibility 
 of a life which is felt as good and worthy and satis- 
 fying is not only not excluded, but it is a solid fact 
 of experience. That man is indeed unfortunate 
 to whom there have not come moments which com- 
 pensate for many trials. And if we look at the life 
 of the common man, unsated by a superfluity of 
 sense enjoyments, and too busy and simple-minded 
 to be cynical, we shall often find an abundance of 
 the joy of living, even though to the outsider it might 
 seem that his circumstances had not very much in 
 them calling for felicitation. This is not to deny 
 the evil, pain, and ennui which make many lives a 
 burden, and which come in some measure to all, even 
 the most fortunate. But if evil is there, so also is 
 good. And no one who denies the good is in a 
 position to reason about life and sum it up truly. 
 Let the pessimist turn his eyes to the larger world 
 of men, and no matter how irrational it may appear 
 to him, how little real cause there may seem for it, 
 the fact of human satisfaction and enjoyment is 
 undeniable. The widespread prevalence of a dis- 
 position to question the worth of living belongs, 
 historically, either to an artificial and more or less 
 
240 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 corrupt state of society, in which the stream of life 
 has been diverted from its natural channels, or else 
 to exceptional intellectual conditions. As we look 
 back upon history, we find that a capacity for getting 
 enjoyment has been not infrequently a distinctive 
 mark of the age. Even if we in modern times have 
 come to be too wise to be happy, our ancestors were 
 more fortunate. The zest of life is characteristic 
 of the great periods of the past, wherever there were 
 stirring any tendencies that made for real signifi- 
 cance. It is this which constitutes for us the peren- 
 nial charm of certain epochs of the world's life. 
 
 Now it is quite true and this needs also to be 
 kept in mind that in such periods the perfect joy 
 of living is open to a comparatively few. Along 
 with the fair picture which the show side of the world 
 presents, there is the great submerged mass of man- 
 kind, the serf, the slave, the common worker, whose 
 life is often brutalized, narrow, and sordid to the last 
 degree. We tend perhaps to look away from this 
 too much. And a large part of the light-heartedness 
 and frank enjoyment of the time would have been 
 impossible, except as these more fortunate souls were 
 able to ignore the misery by which they were sur- 
 rounded, and to take their course undisturbed by 
 the suffering of their fellows. It is getting to be 
 impossible for us to do this any longer. The social 
 welfare, in which " social" is interpreted in terms 
 of every class and not my own class simply, has come 
 to be, or is fast becoming, an essential element in 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 241 
 
 the satisfaction of the individual. A man can no 
 longer go his way wholly regardless of how his less 
 successful brother is faring. His imagination has 
 been touched by the vision of the struggling under- 
 world, and the vision once caught will not leave him 
 in peace. This is indeed a great source of the 
 worthier pessimism of the present. In the past 
 the oppressive sense of the worthlessness of life has 
 commonly been due to satiety. To-day it bases 
 itself in some considerable degree upon the great 
 mass of suffering, human and animal, which does 
 not for the most part bear directly upon ourselves 
 except through the imagination and the sympathy. 
 But now this very fact, for any large view of the 
 course of human events, is enough to cast doubt upon 
 the judgment that life is ultimately worthless. The 
 possibility of a sane and cheerful, even a joyous, 
 view of life, as a general human attitude, lies already 
 in the experience of the race. Why should it not 
 be possible for this to come again without the draw- 
 backs attendant upon its limited range and its com- 
 parative blindness? There is nothing chimerical 
 in the hope except on the supposition that the incubus 
 of the suffering mass of humanity is an unalterable 
 and necessary fact. If it once were possible to ex- 
 tend to all men the opportunities for a natural and 
 harmonious life which now are possessed by the 
 few, that which is perhaps the most serious bar to 
 the modern man's enjoyment of life would be re- 
 moved. Such an issue is at least conceivable. The 
 
242 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 necessary precondition of it, the precondition whose 
 absence made it impossible in the past, is just the 
 recognition of the need, and of the desirability that 
 it should be met. Such a recognition is growing 
 every day. More and more it is dominating the 
 consciousness of the age. And with all the powers 
 of men consciously set to work to realize such a 
 consummation, there is no reason to despair of its 
 gradual attainment. 
 
 The considerations which have just been suggested 
 are intended primarily to call attention to the fact that 
 pessimism, as a declaration that no value in life is 
 discoverable by man, or that such value by the nature 
 of the case is necessarily excluded, is not by any 
 means justified. Men have found life to be good. 
 When certain conditions have been fulfilled, faith in 
 life has been deep and general. Pessimism, when 
 it has been at all widespread, has had historical 
 reasons. It is the result of an artificial attitude 
 toward life, or it has sprung from a pressing call upon 
 the sympathies due to human conditions which we 
 can easily conceive as remediable, or it is the out- 
 come of some other disturbing and unessential con- 
 dition. But this also gives an indication of the 
 direction in which to look for the object of our wider 
 search. Any practically valuable assertion of opti- 
 mism which looks facts in the face must avoid the 
 extremes either of despair, or of an ill-advised and 
 light-hearted confidence that affairs are sure any- 
 how to turn out all right. In other words, an opti- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 243 
 
 mism which understands itself will never say : Things 
 are as they should be; everything is for the best in 
 this best of all possible worlds. It will rather say: 
 Things can be made right ; and I have enough con- 
 fidence in the possibility to induce me to go to work 
 forthwith to bring it about. True optimism on the 
 practical side is not a statement of what is, but of 
 what ought to be and can be. It is a matter of faith 
 and will, rather than an account of what here and 
 now we find existing. It emphasizes the human 
 element, the presence within the situation of the man 
 who is pronouncing judgment, as the fundamental 
 factor on which it all hinges; and it has for him 
 the definitely practical value that it is the thing which 
 makes possible the actual realization of his faith and 
 desire. As a mere judgment of fact it not only lacks 
 this value, but it sets a positive hindrance in the way 
 of such a realization. To take the good as already 
 achieved once for all, to face apparent evils with 
 simple acquiescence, content with the pious hope that 
 somehow they are all for the best, is an attitude pro- 
 foundly immoral. Even pessimism is more attrac- 
 tive than this, for pessimism does at least show that 
 it has sympathies to be touched. It is optimism 
 of this sort which, even more than its flabby intellec- 
 tual grasp, condemns a popular movement such as 
 Christian Science in some of its forms, by render- 
 ing it, in its practical outcome, callous and self- 
 centred. 
 So much for the practical side of optimism. And 
 
244 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 the suggestion which this contains will determine 
 the direction of a more speculative attempt at the 
 solution of the problem of evil. Any complete 
 solution must indeed, I think, go beyond a mere 
 appeal to what ought to be in the future. It must 
 somehow be able to state that reality is at bottom 
 the triumph of the good, that there is an eternal 
 realization of right and nullifying of evil. But this 
 cannot in the least mean that now at any particular 
 moment the good is achieved. Such a conclusion 
 would involve the mixing of two radically distinct 
 points of view the temporal and the eternal. 
 Concretely, reality can only be stated by us in terms 
 of progressive accomplishment, and "now" implies 
 location within this stream of time. The justifi- 
 cation of evil therefore lies, for man, in the possi- 
 bility of making it significant for a process in which, 
 however, it is overcome, and compelled to serve 
 as a means to good. The most serious difficulties 
 about the question of evil come from neglecting this 
 essentially dynamic and developing character of 
 reality, and so the modern doctrine of evolution has 
 been of a good deal of help toward clearing up the 
 situation. In terms of evolution, moral evil at least 
 might perhaps be defined on its positive side as an 
 achievement which forgets that its whole right to 
 exist is dependent upon a willingness to sacrifice its 
 own finality in the interest of some new step in ad- 
 vance, and which thus by its determination to stay 
 just as it is blocks the way to future progress. On 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 245 
 
 such a showing, evil would be in its inception no ar- 
 bitrary or unintelligible thing. It would represent, 
 indeed, normally, and perhaps universally, something 
 which was, looked at merely in the light of past his- 
 tory, at some point of time a positive attainment of 
 good. It is a commonplace nowadays that those 
 human passions and practices which we brand as 
 vices are often a survival into changed social condi- 
 tions of what in more primitive and barbarous times 
 were esteemed as virtues, and which were in reality 
 quite essential to the well-being of the tribe or com- 
 munity. So the temper of mind which leads to 
 crimes of violence, to-day only a menace to society, 
 was often needed for the rougher work of an earlier 
 and more turbulent era ; and the hint of the former 
 value lies in the tribute of admiration, unwilling 
 oftentimes, which it still has the power to evoke. 
 Or one might cite the well-worn instance of slavery, 
 which in its origin was a clear step in advance over 
 the older and summary practice of slaughtering all 
 prisoners of war. It is possible to see the process 
 of transition going on at the present day, and the 
 gradual shifting of moral values which is its outcome. 
 The limitation in the range of patriotic feeling, 
 necessary in the beginnings of national development, 
 showing itself as a narrow and ill-tempered jingoism 
 now that a wider outlook is demanded in the inter- 
 ests even of national welfare; personal loyalty to 
 leaders becoming the blind and complacent bulwark 
 pf corruption and roguery in politics; the vision of 
 
246 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 religious truth crystallizing into dogmas and setting 
 itself to prevent any more truth from being seen, - 
 such things as these lead clearly to the recognition 
 that what we call evils represent no fixed group of 
 facts standing out in hard and fast isolation from 
 all other facts, but that any stage in human growth 
 may turn to evil if it fails to recognize the true con- 
 ditions that growth involves. If it means that growth 
 has stopped, if it takes a partial attainment not as 
 indeed partial and temporary and transitive, but as 
 a substitute for what is final, and therefore as a 
 hindrance to the better that is still to come, and for 
 which it should have been a preparation, then, no 
 matter how admirable it may once have been, and 
 how confidently we who represent it may class our- 
 selves among the saints and not among the sinners, 
 the root of the morally bad is in us. "The greatest 
 enemy of the best is the good." But now while 
 this enables us to avoid difficulties which would beset 
 us if we were compelled to regard evil as an ultimate 
 metaphysical existence or entity, it does not give 
 us the right to deny that evil is a very real fact in 
 the world. Rather it forbids such a denial. Evil 
 is a reality. It stands for what taken in itself is not 
 good, but evil something to be hated, and if pos- 
 sible ( crushed out and brought to nothing. It is 
 not so, that whatever is, is right. A thing may be 
 here and now which distinctly is not right. It must 
 be recognized clearly as existing, and as evil. To say 
 that reality is good is at least misleading. Reality is 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 247 
 
 good only as it is a process of becoming good, of 
 righting wrongs. But, on the other hand, while evil 
 is real, it is not the most real thing. It exists as evil 
 if we take it by itself ; but we have no right thus to 
 take it. It is not an independent existence, but part 
 of a larger reality. This reality is the process in 
 which evil is overcome, which process alone we have 
 the right to call good without limitation; and by 
 being thus overcome, it helps to a fuller consumma- 
 tion. A subordination of this sort must, it would 
 seem, indicate the only way to a solution of the prob- 
 lem : do we have the right to maintain that what it 
 requires is in fact a truth of experience ? 
 
 Let me point out once more the danger of pre- 
 tending to a completeness of insight which we do not 
 possess. Any possible answer we can give is bound 
 to come short of the finality which at times the feel- 
 ings demand. It is presumptuous on the one hand to 
 pretend that we can in all particular cases show how 
 good comes out of evil. Over and over again in 
 man's experience there come apparent catastrophes 
 which at least for the time seem wholly dispropor- 
 tionate to any useful result that they can serve. 
 We rebel against the frigid attempts at consolation 
 which bid us see the hand of Providence in so over- 
 whelming a calamity, and feel that they represent 
 the easy resignation of one who is himself out in the 
 sunlight. A philosophical justification of evil can 
 deal only in general statements, and so it cannot hope 
 to put in our hands the clew to every sorrow, or 
 
248 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 to be the solvent of each experience of evil in 
 particular. 
 
 Again, there is a further limitation to the power 
 of a reasoned explanation of evil which, though 
 practically of less importance, is perhaps for theory 
 rather more fundamental. If I may anticipate 
 a little, it is fairly evident that such a justification 
 will be likely to follow two general lines. Certain 
 apparent evils are, it may be argued, really beneficent, 
 because in the actually existing state of affairs they 
 serve as preventives of still greater ills. The sen- 
 sitiveness to pain which the eye possesses is, e.g., 
 a guard against more serious injuries. Or again, 
 evil may be justified because it contributes directly 
 to some positive good, in particular to certain de- 
 sirable traits of character which need the stress of 
 conflict before they can be matured. 
 
 Now such considerations, in so far as they repre- 
 sent real facts of experience, are worthy of all re- 
 spect. It is not to be forgotten, however, that both 
 of them rest upon the supposition that the world 
 is of a certain determinate nature. If things are 
 as they are, then it may perhaps be unavoidable that 
 evil should exist in order that the highest possible 
 good may be realized. But if any one should see 
 fit to ask, Why might not the world have been differ- 
 ent, so different as to attain the same results without 
 the stress and strain which is now required? I do 
 not see that there is any way of excluding the ad- 
 mission of this idea as a possibility. To be sure, it 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 249 
 
 cannot be proved that ours is not the best of possible 
 worlds. It cannot be shown with any measure of 
 precision that a certain amount of evil is not abso- 
 lutely necessary in order to get what on the whole 
 are the best results. The enormous complexity 
 of the data, and the completely unmanageable char- 
 acter of any hypothesis which professes to introduce 
 fundamental changes into the facts as we know them, 
 make it forever impossible that we should attain 
 to anything save the merest guesses. One can say 
 with the Griffin in Mr. Stockton's tale: "If some 
 things were different, other things would be other- 
 wise"; and that is about all he can say, unless 
 he recognizes frankly that he has left the realm 
 of reasoning for that of the unchecked imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 But for the same reason, it cannot be proved that a 
 mixed world of good and evil is the only possible one. 
 In point of fact, in so far as we can manage the data 
 at all, I cannot see that it is by any means inconceiv- 
 able that the world might have been a world without 
 pain or sin, while yet conserving all essential values 
 that actually exist. It surely is in the abstract 
 supposable that the physical world might have 
 been built with special reference to safeguarding the 
 physical well-being of man at every point. It is 
 conceivable, as Mr. Ingersoll put it, that health in- 
 stead of disease should have been made catching; 
 and taken solely in itself, such an arrangement 
 would appeal to us as an improvement. To be sure, 
 
2$0 RELIGIONS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 a world built on this plan would not develop those 
 traits of self-reliance, prudence, courage, which the 
 present one does. But this again is assuming that 
 our human nature is a given fact which could not 
 have been different from what it is. Suppose, how- 
 ever, we had been eternally that which we now be- 
 come only by a process of growth. Suppose we had 
 been born with achieved self-knowledge, with per- 
 fect poise of character, with developed love to man- 
 kind and a tempered unselfishness of action. Would 
 not a social order composed of such beings appeal 
 to us naturally as a more desirable world than the 
 one in which we live? If not, why are we all the 
 time working to bring such a world about? For 
 it is not the fact of having failed or sinned which 
 is desirable. It is the self-knowledge for which this 
 is the occasion, and the fact that thus we may be- 
 come stronger and wiser, more tolerant and sym- 
 pathetic. And if we could have been all this without 
 the pain and loss, is it not possible that we should 
 feel we were the gainers? 
 
 For such a speculation does not imply that we 
 are looking to a state where everything has been 
 won and nothing is left to do. There might still be 
 action, and action for worthy ends. But it would 
 be action from which there was struck out all weak- 
 ness of will, conflict of motive, imperfection of insight. 
 There is an attainment of ends which does not in- 
 volve evils to overcome or mistakes to outlive ; there 
 are normal activities which do not need the spur of 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 251 
 
 wretchedness and pain. Otherwise we should have 
 to consider the life which has reached conditions 
 of comparative moral stability as in itself less worth 
 while than one which is still in the stage of learning 
 by sin and failure. Or, in another sphere, surely 
 the artist the musician, for example does not 
 find his enjoyment of the artistic activity greatly 
 increased by the possibility of making mistakes and 
 discords. At any rate, if the partial yielding to evil 
 and the fight against odds in one's own moral nature 
 is essential to blessedness, we should have to deny 
 felicity to God. If now reality were so constituted 
 that we all were gods in miniature, with the quali- 
 ties that evolution has tended to develop in us 
 already safely secured beyond danger of fail, why 
 should we not have a world in which the essential 
 benefits that we attribute to evil would be conserved, 
 while also there would be none of the attending dis- 
 advantages? Once more, this world would only be 
 possible in case growth as we know it were absent 
 - growth, that is, in character and self-knowledge. 
 But this conceivably might be the case so far as we 
 are able to see. And at least the first impression 
 would appear to be that it would constitute a better 
 world. 
 
 But while we thus can fancy a world which, if 
 we had had the making of it, would have been a bet- 
 ter world than this, and so while the theoretical 
 possibility of condemning this world is left open, it 
 must be recognized, on the other hand, that such 
 
252 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 speculations are practically without value. The 
 amusement of world-building is a somewhat trivial 
 one. Reality is what we find it. We are beings 
 who in point of fact are imperfect, and who have 
 by a laborious process to win for ourselves whatever 
 of permanent good we are to possess. And of this 
 imperfection evil is apparently a necessary outcome. 
 It is the mark of an impractical and feeble mind to 
 rebel against necessity, and soothe itself by dreams 
 of what might be if things wholly out of our control 
 were only different. Any sane theory, either of 
 optimism or pessimism, is bound to give up wild 
 speculations, and confine itself to the facts of experi- 
 ence. It is not a question of abstract possibility, 
 but of common sense. And within this limitation, 
 the question which meets us is a definite one. 
 Do we, as a matter of fact, find that in any 
 large and general way evil has in it the seeds of 
 good? Does experience itself teach the lesson that 
 the ills of life are, given human nature as we know 
 it, of vital and necessary importance for the at- 
 tainment of the results which appeal to us as 
 highest ? 
 
 I believe that any wide experience that is reason- 
 ably normal must answer the question in the affirma- 
 tive. It is surely a truth which comes home again 
 and again in our lives, that the deepest sense of the 
 worth of life grows out of its sorrows and defeats. 
 It is thus we get that testing of our strength which 
 is the condition of strength itself. It is thus that we 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 253 
 
 come to measure the relative worth of what life 
 offers, to see and condemn the trivial and paltry, and 
 to appreciate the real meaning of the weightier ends 
 which approve themselves to our striving. It is to 
 this that are due the fruits of tenderness and pity, 
 sympathy and love, in the form in which they mark 
 the development of the ideal of character which we 
 call Christian. Once more, these results do not 
 flow of their own accord and mechanically. It is 
 the human reaction to them, not the brute fact of 
 evil itself, which is responsible for the issue. And 
 this reaction does not always come. The fruits of 
 suffering may for the individual be bitterness and 
 rebellion. But again, it is ourselves who are at 
 fault. There is no evil which does not have the 
 possibility of good within it, if we are only ready to 
 accept this possibility. This is a truth which the 
 experience of a multitude of men will bear out. 
 This very attitude toward life is itself one of the 
 finest and most significant products of evolution. 
 The spirit which does not exhaust itself in impotent 
 rebellion against the inevitable, but which accepts 
 limitations and drawbacks, in so far as they are un- 
 avoidable, in order to make out of the opportunities 
 which do offer the very best it can, is the spirit which 
 in a special measure is prophetic of good for the race. 
 And this spirit, whose possession is the guarantee 
 that suffering will be utilized and turned to good, 
 is itself the result of the education of suffering. 
 Fashioned in its beginnings by a more or lessmechani- 
 
254 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 cal and blind experience, it becomes at last the con- 
 scious tool for getting the complete kernel of good 
 which evil contains. 
 
 So that the complete justification of evil is not to 
 be looked for in those fruits of righteousness which 
 come to a partial and somewhat forced ripening in 
 an earlier experience, but rather to the final con- 
 summation of the process of experience, the possi- 
 bility of which exists in the earlier stages, but exists 
 only implicitly. For already in the highest attain- 
 ment of man there is at least the promise of that 
 ripened product of human character which, because 
 it so wills, can make its circumstances tributary to 
 good, no matter what their crude form may be. 
 And when once this attitude is reached, when man 
 has been schooled by events to a true practicalism 
 or realism which blinks no fact of experience ; which 
 accepts these facts freely as the raw material of its 
 action, without losing itself in dreams of what might 
 have been ; which refuses to live in a fool's paradise 
 where truth is subordinated to our wishes ; and which 
 yet in spite of all this sees in these same facts, ugly 
 and hard though at first they may appear, the mat- 
 ter for a complete remodelling; which finds in the 
 real the ideal present, not indeed as a finished result, 
 but as that which the human will is determined to 
 make out of the real, then we have the possibility 
 of the practical optimism of which I have been speak- 
 ing. And the justification of evil-lies in this: that 
 the spirit of practical optimism, arising itself out of 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 255 
 
 the process of experience, is the prophet of its own 
 success, and of the actual attainment of the good 
 objectively in the world. 
 
 This capacity for regarding good, not as an inde- 
 feasible possession of attained happiness, but as the 
 power of creating good even out of conditions that 
 appear adverse, is what constitutes one of the main 
 points of superiority of the modern spirit over the 
 ancient. It is here that one of the striking weak- 
 nesses is to be found in that which was the highest 
 civilization that the ancient world produced. The 
 Greek spirit and genius was one which bloomed in 
 sunshine. The Greeks never had any assured con- 
 viction of the power of man to conquer misfortunes, 
 much less to turn them to his gain. Even the Stoic 
 stopped short with the ability of the will to nullify 
 evil and pain and render it indifferent. For the com- 
 mon view, he alone is happy who has escaped the 
 bufferings of fortune. Since therefore his happiness 
 lies in that which is without him, he has never any 
 security against wretchedness, and no one can fairly 
 call him fortunate till death puts it out of the power 
 of chance to harm him. And so for the Greek mind 
 in the last analysis it is fate which is the final arbiter 
 of man's destiny. The popular doctrine of fate is at 
 bottom nothing but the shadow of man's immaturity, 
 and his failure to attain to the mastery of himself and 
 of his life through the ability to direct to his own 
 ends the chances that befall him. The root of the 
 Greek emphasis on fate lies not so much in any 
 
256 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 profundity of insight, as in that same temper which 
 makes, for example, the typical Greek hero so child- 
 ish at times, according to the modern standard, when 
 misfortunes and suffering are concerned. This 
 may be excusable ; but it is the attitude of the child, 
 and not the man. It marks an immaturity of char- 
 acter, and a conception of the world which flows 
 from it is not to be taken too seriously. From the 
 Greek point of view life is good only so long as it is 
 good automatically. Misfortune is an evil it is 
 nothing but an evil ; and so soon as it intrudes itself, 
 we have to alter our whole judgment. Fate, then, 
 rules the world, since the issues of life lie outside any 
 purposes of ours. And fate is in the end surer to 
 bring evil than good ; at any rate the chance of this 
 clouds all our life. At any moment there is likely 
 to arise that which will make a man curse the day 
 he came into the world. In spite therefore of all 
 the brightness of the Greek life, the doom of fate 
 hovers over it and fills it with a pervading sense of 
 melancholy even where we are least on the lookout 
 for it. Modern thought has tended to lose the sense 
 of fate because there is in the modern character 
 that which refuses to be daunted by evil. It takes 
 evil, not as a given fact, but as something which is 
 capable of being transformed, and made to be that 
 which we choose to have it be. It does not find 
 the world good or bad. It sets out to make the 
 world good, and it is able to do this because it has 
 the source of good within a self who can master 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 257 
 
 events. With the creation of the possibility of such 
 a character the philosophy of optimism is justified, 
 and the world in its essence shows itself to be that 
 which we demand of it. 
 
 There is, then, purely as a matter of experience, a 
 part which evil plays in the attaining of the good, 
 and a part which is necessary, apparently, in the ac- 
 tually existing structure of the world and of man's 
 nature. Let me return once more to this last limita- 
 tion. The admission has been made that it is not 
 impossible to imagine a world without intermixture 
 of evil. And the only reply to this seemed to be 
 that it is our business to try to understand reality 
 as we find it, rather than engage in dreams of what 
 might have been had reality been different. But 
 now there is one thing further that may be said. 
 The special sting of the admission, for religion, lies 
 in the implication that our world was created by a 
 being who might equally as well have made it quite 
 other than it is. Indeed, if he is an all-powerful 
 being, there is no limit to the possibilities which he 
 had before him, and therefore it is more than a mere 
 chance that evil might have been avoided; it is an 
 apparent certainty. Accordingly we are met by 
 the great historic problem of God's responsibility 
 for evil. If God could have created the world with- 
 out evil, how can we make this consistent with his 
 perfect goodness? 
 
 The answer which I should make to this particular 
 difficulty lies in the conception that has already been 
 
258 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 advanced. The difficulty seems to be due to the 
 initial mistake of regarding God, in his separate exist- 
 ence, as alone ultimately real, and the world as the 
 mere indeterminate product of his arbitrary will. 
 I have tried to argue that we as human selves are 
 metaphysically just as ultimate as God. Reality is 
 the whole system of selves. If we are conditioned 
 by God's life, so too we condition it in turn. It is 
 to the fact that our natures are what they are that 
 the necessity of evil is due natures that are un- 
 developed at the start, and that can only attain to 
 wisdom and stability of character by a gradual 
 process of growth. And our natures are not pro- 
 duced by an arbitrary fiat; they are ultimate con- 
 stituents of reality. There never was a time, then, 
 when God might possibly have chosen a wholly 
 different world but failed to do this. The world is, 
 and the question of responsibility has no meaning 
 in such a connection. Otherwise God might have 
 been different from what he is ; for if he had chosen 
 a different world, it could only have been because 
 he was a different God. A God with a determinate 
 nature can have no limitless number of possibilities 
 open before him, of some of which he fails to take 
 advantage. And since this is so, there is no neces- 
 sary contradiction between God's goodness, and the 
 presence of evil in the world. It is, once more, a 
 question simply of accepting reality as it reveals it- 
 self. And if we find that as a fact of experience evil 
 is only a vanishing stage in a developing process, we 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 259 
 
 have the right to maintain that the world is in its 
 essential nature good. 
 
 This is, of course, in one sense of the word to 
 deny the infinity of God. It denies infinity, that is, 
 in the sense in which this is synonymous with an 
 absolutely indeterminate range of possibilities. The 
 possible lies within a definite circle, and ultimately 
 is identical with the real. The real is determinate 
 in its nature. But for this very reason we are not 
 to conceive of God as setting certain other possi- 
 bilities before his imagination and then realizing 
 his impotence to attain these. That is what we are 
 likely to have in mind when we think of determinate- 
 ness of nature as somehow less excellent than an 
 infinity of opportunities unrealized, but possible. 
 But such an impotence we do not have to maintain. 
 There is no limitation in being shut out from doing 
 that which one has absolutely no desire to do or 
 thought of doing. The only sort of absolute ex- 
 perience which is worth while is one, not of an 
 absence of determination and definiteness, but of a 
 self-completeness and inner perfection which lacks 
 no possibility of satisfaction. I have attempted to 
 vindicate this for the conception of God. The 
 possibilities which are unreal for his experience are 
 absolutely unreal. There is no basis whatever for 
 them in his nature, and therefore in reality. The 
 ability so much as to conceive them implies a failure 
 in the completeness of experience which is excluded 
 by the nature of the conception, just as in human life 
 
260 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 we indulge in day dreams and construct airy fabrics 
 of what might possibly be, only as the business of 
 everyday reality fails for some reason in its normal 
 healthy power to absorb and satisfy us. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 THERE is, without doubt, at the present day a 
 strong inclination in many quarters to dispute the 
 importance of a belief in immortality both for the 
 practical conduct of life and for our intellectual 
 constructions about the nature of the world. I 
 think that the religious feeling of mankind is truer 
 here than the current tendencies. Instead of stand- 
 ing on the outskirts of the philosopher's task as at 
 best a work of supererogation, the question has, in 
 my opinion, a distinct relation to and importance for 
 general philosophical results. I shall therefore in 
 this concluding chapter try to point out the connec- 
 tion which the problem has with the conception of 
 the world that has been already outlined in the pre- 
 ceding pages. 
 
 And as a means of approach it will be useful first 
 to review briefly the general character of the histor- 
 ical proofs for the belief. It lies outside my purpose 
 to dwell here upon the specifically Christian proof 
 from revelation, except indeed as this is capable of 
 a philosophical statement. When Paul speaks of 
 life and immortality as brought to light through the 
 Gospel, in part I suppose he means that the Chris- 
 tian revelation has been a revelation of the divine- 
 
 261 
 
262 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 ness of human life, and that no one therefore to 
 whom this has once come home can doubt that life 
 is a permanent fact in God's universe. In so far 
 this will enter into what I shall have to say later on. 
 But certainly Paul also had in mind the historical 
 fact of Christ's resurrection as the basis of the Chris- 
 tian's hope. Of course in so far as the historical 
 evidence seems to warrant the acceptance of the facts, 
 it cannot fail to be highly important in influencing 
 belief. It must, however, always labor under a cer- 
 tain disadvantage which attaches to any particular 
 fact of history as such. For there always remains 
 x fte question whether after all our evidence is really 
 conclusive; and from the nature of the case, since 
 the supposed fact is now in the past and out from 
 under our control, there is no possibility of bringing 
 it to the test of fresh and personal experience. 
 
 I shall exclude also another argument which is 
 receiving a good deal of attention at the present 
 day. This is the argument from spiritualism. 
 Until comparatively a short time ago one might 
 safely neglect this without apology, but now the 
 tide, it would appear, has turned. The Society for 
 Psychical Research has undoubtedly called atten- 
 tion to a group of experiences which can hardly be 
 dismissed off-hand any longer; and when we find 
 men of high intellectual rank accepting the authen- 
 ticity of facts that cannot be brought under a in 
 the traditional sense natural explanation, it ought 
 perhaps to give us pause. Nevertheless I can hardly 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 263 
 
 think it likely we are destined to get any solid foot- 
 ing here, at any rate for a long time to come. Per- 
 haps we may secure evidence that will help give 
 added probability to a belief already entertained. 
 But that we should be able to found a proof of im- 
 mortality on such grounds is very seriously to be 
 doubted. Two features of the situation in particu- 
 lar interfere to prevent this. One of these is that 
 the facts, if facts they be, have to be sifted out from 
 the midst of an altogether stupefying and heart- 
 rending mass of detected blunders and impositions 
 of the grossest sort. No one pretends that any 
 save the merest fraction of these phenomena are bot 1 
 genuine and significant; and unluckily the cases 
 which have been exposed stand to outward appear- 
 ance quite on a level with the supposedly genuine 
 remnant. The same features for the most part 
 accompany both. How, then, in any particular in- 
 stance are we to avoid the lingering doubt whether 
 after all, in spite of all our tests, this may not be 
 just another of the cases of which we have met so 
 many, cases which offered at first view unimpeach- 
 able evidence, and which yet at some unforeseen point 
 have broken down under examination. I do not 
 mean to imply that for all we can at present say, a 
 continued investigation may not result in leaving 
 open the possibility that there is a saving remnant 
 of spiritualistic phenomena that is genuine. It is 
 conceivable that a certain number of cases will 
 succeed in meeting the most rigid tests. But I do 
 
264 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 think that the circumstances under which this is 
 brought about, if it is brought about, will effectually 
 prevent its ever serving as a satisfactory basis for 
 a great religious and practical article of faith. It 
 seems psychologically impossible that the mind should 
 feel the certitude it demands under these conditions. 
 When I know that so many similar facts have turned 
 out to be the result of mistake or of fraud, and when 
 I come more and more to find out how inconceivably 
 honeycombed with illusion and self-contradiction 
 human testimony is, how subtly and unavoidably 
 error creeps into the apparently plainest matters of 
 fact, it is inevitable that, after the most searching 
 scrutiny has failed to discredit the few cases which 
 are left, there should still for most of us remain a 
 lurking doubt which renders impossible any whole- 
 hearted credence. The bad company which they 
 keep must necessarily affect the reputation of such 
 facts, if not their character. And the further point 
 is this : that even if the facts are granted, there still 
 is a choice of explanations. The only admissible 
 evidence in such cases must rest upon the communi- 
 cation of objective information which it would have 
 been impossible to obtain through natural channels. 
 The mere seeing of visions is of course valueless, 
 since they are so readily to be explained as hallu- 
 cinations. But in the case of apparently super- 
 natural knowledge there is still an hypothesis - 
 telepathy, namely which is available. It is true that 
 if all the supposed facts are admitted, the hypothesis 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 265 
 
 has to be strained a good deal to fit them. But after 
 all, in a realm in which everything is surprising and 
 goes beyond what sober people are accustomed to 
 consider probable, a little added improbability is 
 not perhaps fatal. And until the alternative ex- 
 planation is excluded and it is difficult to see how 
 this ever could come about immortality has no 
 very secure ground. 
 
 Leaving this class of considerations, therefore, 
 I shall come to the more general philosophical ar- 
 guments. And without pretending to go into any 
 exact analysis, there are three aspects of the proof 
 for immortality which have in a way a historical 
 ground. The first is the purely metaphysical treat- 
 ment which belongs specially to the Middle Ages, 
 and to certain forms of rationalism which inherited 
 some of the features of the Scholastic philosophy. 
 Here the stress is upon the nature of the soul as a 
 metaphysical fact or entity. The type of thought 
 which this represents was broken down largely by 
 the growth of science and scientific methods, and it 
 does not at present play any large part in discussions 
 of the subject. But now science, in addition to this 
 indirect influence on the problem, has also been the 
 means of emphasizing one aspect of it in particular. 
 This came about through the increased attention 
 which it directed toward the physical side of life. 
 By pointing out in detail the way in which every phase 
 of the conscious or soul life depends upon, or at least 
 is intimately connected with, bodily processes of some 
 
266 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 sort, it naturally seemed to strengthen the presump- 
 tion that consciousness cannot exist at all without 
 its bodily accompaniment. This in turn has called 
 forth a special emphasis upon another set of consider- 
 ations which in a general way may be called the 
 moral argument; and this argument, though with 
 many variations, may be regarded as the central one 
 at the present time. I wish to take up these aspects 
 of the question separately, passing over the first 
 two somewhat lightly and dogmatically. 
 
 What has been called the metaphysical argument 
 goes back to the nature of the soul as a thing in itself. 
 From the properties which belong to this soul sub- 
 stance it is supposed that we can deduce something 
 of its destiny. In particular its indivisibility has 
 been thought to guarantee its integrity, since only 
 that which has parts can be decomposed and de- 
 stroyed. Perhaps it is enough to say that this con- 
 ception of the soul as a substantial entity, indivisible 
 and eternal, lying behind and separate from the 
 phenomena of consciousness and persisting change- 
 less through their eternal change, is a conception 
 which modern philosophy has not so much disproved 
 as discarded, because it has been discovered to be 
 meaningless and useless. We need, it is true, to find 
 a unity to the life of the self. But such a separable 
 entity unites nothing, explains nothing. It is a 
 mere abstraction, which has no content when we 
 try to grasp it, and which consequently has ceased 
 to play any large part in recent thought. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 267 
 
 Has then the metaphysical argument no validity? 
 From one point of view I should say absolutely none 
 at all. In so far as it embodies the attractive, but 
 essentially delusive, ideal of attaining a demon- 
 strative certainty by means of a process of logical 
 reasoning, it is and always is bound to be entirely 
 futile. Nevertheless it has a motive back of it which 
 is quite legitimate. It tries to fill the need of find- 
 ing some permanent fact to which to attach the con- 
 scious life, which shall not share the instability and 
 ephemeralness of this life, or of the bodily structure 
 which is its apparent foundation. Such a demand 
 will have apparently to be met if immortality is to 
 be established ; but it will be well to look for some 
 other and less debatable way of doing this. 
 
 And this leads to the materialistic argument whose 
 refutation has usually occupied a considerable share 
 of the energies of the defender of immortality. It 
 must be premised that any advantage which is gained 
 here by the upholder of the doctrine is purely nega- 
 tive. At best it only shows that the continuance 
 of the soul life after the death of the body involves 
 no contradiction or impossibility, and this by itself 
 furnishes, of course, no evidence whatever for the fact 
 of continuance. But with this limitation, the answer 
 to the materialistic assumption is plain. Indeed 
 when the question is made clearly one of possi- 
 bility, a sober science can hardly hesitate to admit 
 its lack of any right to speak with authority. Science 
 may say, and perhaps be perfectly right in saying, 
 
268 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 that from the standpoint of the scientific experience 
 she knows nothing of consciousness except in con- 
 nection with certain organic structures. It is indeed 
 an undeniable fact that there is a break in our lives 
 which our direct knowledge does not serve to bridge. 
 But what reason can be given in the nature of things 
 why life might not be continued under different, 
 though at present unknown, conditions? There is 
 no greater likelihood a priori that a unitary stream 
 of consciousness should be confined to one particular 
 body than for the opposite hypothesis. The mere 
 fact that conditions which attend life as we know it 
 do not persevere beyond a certain point is therefore 
 undecisive. There is no meaning to a merely gen- 
 eral improbability in such a case, except on the not 
 very likely assumption that our present knowledge 
 is fairly exhaustive of the universe. The argument 
 is therefore an argument from ignorance. Of course, 
 once again, it is not shown that there is such a con- 
 tinuance of life. But if we should have any reason 
 at all for believing that there is, the fact of our ig- 
 norance of its conditions furnishes no positive ground 
 for refusing to give ear to this evidence. We should 
 be constrained to this only in case we were to accept 
 a certain crude form of materialistic theory the 
 assumption that matter as we know it is the ultimate 
 reality, and that consciousness has its wholly suffi- 
 cient cause and explanation in the particular group 
 of atoms whose combination forms our body. Such 
 a materialism is at present discredited. As onposed, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 269 
 
 on the one hand, to its carrying back reality to inde- 
 pendent material particles, the unessential product 
 of whose combination all higher facts of the con- 
 scious life are, philosophy tends to lay stress on the 
 reality of the whole as the supreme fact, by reference 
 to which each minor fact has to be explained, and 
 with which it stands inherently and vitally connected. 
 As opposed, again, to the assignment of material 
 qualities to this reality as its innermost structure, 
 most modern thought is agreed either to find this 
 nature in that which is akin to consciousness and to 
 man, or else to hold that it is unknown to us, and that 
 what we call mind and matter are both illusory 
 appearances. But in either case the possibility of 
 immortality is secured. It lies, not in an individual 
 soul substance, but in the unitary world-ground on 
 which all things alike, material processes as well 
 as conscious, depend. That consciousness exists at 
 all is enough to show that it is not an arbitrary 
 product, but is somehow essentially related to reality. 
 The only question is whether the nature of reality 
 really calls for its continued existence; if so, it is 
 wholly gratuitous for us to find difficulties about the 
 possibility. At present consciousness exists in con- 
 nection with one particular expression of reality 
 which we call a body. But if the body is not an 
 independent whole, and so is not the sole efficient 
 agent in the production of consciousness, if the source 
 of this is rather in some real sense reality at large, 
 what is to hinder the relation of my consciousness to 
 
270 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 reality from being such that it should still go on, with 
 only its point of connection shifted ? There is the 
 whole wide universe to furnish such a point of con- 
 nection. Why should this particular relationship 
 which now holds necessarily be the only possible one, 
 so that its severance will annihilate one of the terms 
 related. Certainly if we are agnostics and hold 
 to an ultimate ignorance about things, our ignorance 
 will prevent our pronouncing dogmatically against 
 such a possibility. And if we accept a conscious 
 world -ground God there will be still less reason 
 to deny it. To the nature, then, of God, or of the 
 world-whole, on whom our lives in some sort depend, 
 we may look for the possibility of permanence which 
 immortality requires, instead of to a hypothetical soul 
 conceived as a separate and independent substance. 
 For since God is still necessary to uphold the soul, 
 we lose nothing by going back to him directly, and 
 we avoid the difficulty that comes from interpolating 
 a fact that is unthinkable. 
 
 But this, once more, is a purely negative result. 
 Suppose the possibility has been found ; are there any 
 positive grounds for supposing that it is more than a 
 possibility? Such evidence, if it is forthcoming, will 
 have to be looked for, I think, in what in one form 
 or another has been commonly known as the moral 
 argument, and to this therefore -we may now turn. 
 
 In the earlier discussions about immortality there 
 was a disposition to make the question settle about 
 the matter of rewards and punishments. Since men 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 271 
 
 do not get their deserts in this world, it is found nec- 
 essary to postulate another in which to even matters 
 up. This undoubtedly falls in with and appeals to 
 a certain natural instinct in us. The plain man is 
 apt to find a real force to the argument. But also 
 there is no doubt that we are disposed to insist less 
 upon this statement of it than we once were. It 
 has the disadvantage that whereas it is intended to 
 be the expression of an ethical need, it can too readily 
 be turned in a way which leaves the appearance of 
 superior ethical disinterestedness on the other side. 
 Is it necessary, we are asked, that men should re- 
 quire a bribe to do well? Is not that the worthier 
 attitude which says: I will do right because it is 
 right, and I will get a satisfaction from the doing 
 which is higher than any extraneous reward could 
 give? Is our love of goodness so flimsy that we 
 should throw it all aside if we were convinced that 
 certain future consequences were not to flow from 
 it? Is not that a doing of good just for the sake 
 of the reward? And if the good act is here and 
 now the worthier and more satisfying act, why insist 
 upon what would weaken if not destroy its moral 
 character, and make it simply a matter of expediency ? 
 So of evil. Evil loses here, and inevitably, the true 
 satisfaction of life, just because it is evil. To insist 
 that it should meet also with certain external con- 
 sequences which sometimes fail in this world may 
 not this be simply the spirit of personal vindictive- 
 ness and revenge? 
 
272 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 Undoubtedly there is an understanding of the 
 argument to which this is a real answer. But its 
 upholder will be apt to go farther and make some 
 such reply as this in turn: When I maintain the 
 necessity of a future evening-up process, I do not 
 mean that there is no value to goodness if it does 
 not bring with it material rewards of happiness. 
 And yet for all that, to constitute the perfect bloom 
 of virtue there is need of a triumphant belief in its 
 correspondence with the heart of things, a convic- 
 tion that righteousness rules the world, and that in 
 following it I am putting myself in line with the 
 deepest forces of the universe. Surely it is a short- 
 sighted tendency which supposes, for example with 
 Maeterlinck, that human morality can dissever 
 itself permanently from the background of reality, 
 and still retain its power in a universe which we are 
 convinced is fundamentally unmoral. But how 
 can this belief in the ultimateness of reality be main- 
 tained, unless I can convince myself that the world 
 is such a world that in it righteousness and well- 
 being in the widest sense are finally identical? 
 The inner testimony of my consciousness to the worth 
 of virtue is of value when confirmed by an outer 
 harmony in the world at large. But can this inner 
 testimony prevail if it comes in conflict with the outer 
 course of events? Will not the contradiction in- 
 evitably affect our belief in virtue, or at any rate our 
 joy in it ? For can virtue in the end stand justified 
 
 our minds except as it does find that external con- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 273 
 
 firmation for which immortality tries to find a place, 
 and which will enable us to think of it as bound up 
 in the innnermost constitution of the world? 
 
 But now again the query may be raised : Granted 
 that the ethical life must be vindicated in an objec- 
 tive way, just what is it that the ethical demand 
 requires? Does the validity of righteousness, that 
 is, really stand or fall with the stability of the indi- 
 vidual life? or may not that be irrelevant to the 
 existence of a thoroughly ethical world ? Righteous- 
 ness must conquer objectively if it is to be justified. 
 But is it not enough that my act should help on the 
 final victory, even if I do not live to see it and par- 
 ticipate in its rewards ? That good does not triumph 
 with any particular man, that I do not reap the 
 fruits of my virtue or my unjust deeds, does not, it 
 is said, mean that virtue is not a reality, provided 
 there is a gradual achievement of the right in the 
 larger course of the world. Is not this where we 
 should look for our proof? The world is a good 
 world, not because any individual's rewards are 
 exactly proportioned to his merits, but because in 
 the universe as a whole truth and righteousness are 
 progressively realized, iniquity is inevitably doomed. 
 In the light of this higher ideal the demand for a 
 personal immortality appears mean and selfish. 
 Such immortality is a matter of indifference. Let 
 us put ourselves at the standpoint of the whole, and 
 see it as a great process through which righteousness 
 works itself out to a glorious issue. What matter 
 
 T 
 
274 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 it, from the height of this vantage ground, whether 
 I live to see the triumph of the cause for which I have 
 toiled, if I am persuaded that the forces of the uni- 
 verse are on my side, and that my act is destined to 
 have its place in the final victory of right ? Is not 
 this the only immortality that is worthy the name 
 an immortality of influence, purged of the gross- 
 ness of individual longings and selfish desires? 
 And so too of the evil deed. What greater punish- 
 ment can it have than that it should stand eternally 
 annulled and condemned, that it should be futile, 
 worthless, impotent, and forever discredited in the 
 economy of the universe? 
 
 It is here, I think, that the critical point of the 
 question lies. In order to state it more clearly, let 
 me distinguish two separate aspects or steps of the 
 argument. In the first place, it implies that there is 
 something in life that makes it worth while, that 
 gives it a value which is more than fleeting, and so 
 leads us to justify this value by assigning to it a per- 
 manent, an enduring reality. This is not to any 
 great degree a thing that can be proved by argument. 
 It comes from life, not from logic; and unless to 
 any particular man life has brought a sense of its 
 own possible worth, there is no basis for an argument 
 that shall convince him. It is the vital contribution 
 of Christianity to the problem that it has been the 
 great instrument for bringing home to men this feel- 
 ing of the divineness of life. But now it is not the 
 this which is most characteristic of recent 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 275 
 
 discussions. On the contrary, there is a general dis- 
 position to admit, and even to emphasize, the ethical 
 ideal, and the attributes of worth which it involves. 
 The main point at issue is the further question : 
 Does the justification of this ethical worth require 
 the permanence of the individual life, or is it satis- 
 fied with the preservation and triumph of ethical 
 values in the large in the race or in the universe ? 
 Is it after all so clear that the ethical world is a real 
 possibility apart from just that continued participa- 
 tion in it of the connected individual life which the 
 critic of immortality sets aside as an unessential 
 detail ? 
 
 And first there is a preliminary misunderstanding 
 that may need to be removed. The injunction to 
 turn away from the question of a future life as pos- 
 sessing no real interest often gets a force which does 
 not rightly belong to it on its merits, as a reaction 
 against an exaggerated other-worldliness. It may 
 be said, as it is said very commonly at the present day, 
 that immortality has ceased to be a matter of real 
 concern to men. What should occupy us is not the 
 future life, but the present. Nothing will ever be 
 any more real than the present now is. To empty 
 it of value except as a preparation for the future is 
 to place the end of living in something that never 
 arrives. Now I have an entire sympathy with this 
 in so far as it is merely a protest against the religious 
 attitude which makes the future life somehow more 
 real than the present, and which turns the interest 
 
276 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 away from the present world and the present moment 
 to centre it upon a heavenly existence. By all 
 means let us live in the present, and recognize that 
 eternity lies round about us. Nevertheless we should 
 not make the obvious mistake of confounding such 
 an admission with the implication that on this very 
 present interest the future has no bearing. When 
 in educational ideals, for example, the child's enjoy- 
 ment of his immediate activity is sacrificed in favor 
 of a preparation for duties which are not yet arisen, 
 we are making a blunder. But it does not follow, 
 therefore, that the child should live simply from 
 moment to moment. In order to give consistency 
 and weight to present life, it is necessary that more 
 far-reaching interests should centre about it and be 
 served by it. Ideally it is quite possible so to relate 
 the future to the present as not to displace this, but 
 rather to enhance its value. And just as the future, 
 represented by our larger and more permanent ends 
 in this life, may be made to deepen the meaning of 
 the present, not destroy it, so it is conceivable that 
 the belief in a life to come should be brought to bear 
 upon our activities in this world, and be necessary 
 to the full realization of their present possibilities. 
 Making due allowance then for this relative truth, 
 we come back again to the main question. Is a 
 human life of value simply as it enters into and 
 helps work out a process, or law, or scheme of de- 
 velopment, which is impersonal, or at least uniper- 
 sonal ? Or, on the contrary, does the essence of the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 277 
 
 ethical world, and so of reality, lie in the relation- 
 ships of persons, distinct individuals, who can find 
 no meaning in terms of worth and value except as 
 this personal element is emphasized? Let me give 
 a suggestion of the answer which a defender of im- 
 mortality might make to this question. 
 
 We talk a great deal about progress and develop- 
 ment, such an one might say; but do we ever try 
 to realize what such a concept means, and what con- 
 tent it could have, apart from personal relationships 
 to individuals and the personal feelings which these 
 call forth ? Are we not in danger of making a fetich 
 of progress in a way that shall empty it of signifi- 
 cance? In the philosopher whose gaze is so fixed 
 upon the eternal Spirit realizing itself in the world 
 that this realization of the whole seems the only im- 
 portant thing; in the evolutionist for whom the 
 individual is a mere incident in the life of the race; 
 in the literary aestheticism which glorifies the Idea 
 regardless of its personal setting ; in the imperialism 
 which in its zeal for civilization can without com- 
 punction trample under foot individuals and nations ; 
 in the deification of the strong man, the Ubermensch, 
 we have tendencies of which we may fairly ask 
 whether they are not in danger of losing the very 
 essence of the worth of life. We may grant that they 
 emphasize certain very real sides of experience, and 
 that there is a sentimentalism against which they 
 represent a healthy reaction. But is not their em- 
 phasis dangerously misplaced? Is not our modern 
 
278 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 doctrine that God is progress likely to obscure the 
 more inclusive truth that God is love? For love 
 is a relationship which does not stop with those 
 universal qualities of a man that make him simply 
 an actor in the world history. It clings to the core 
 of individuality itself, and will be satisfied with just 
 this as a living and continuous person whose place 
 no one else can wholly take. It is this human feeling, 
 not the humanitarian, which gives value and validity 
 to life and conduct. It is the spirit which does not 
 make of men and women tools for working out a 
 principle or law or impersonal right; it loves man 
 because it loves men, and it never can make such 
 a personal relationship to this and that man in partic- 
 ular a secondary and unessential thing. Not that 
 the contrary attitude is without its own emotional 
 appeal. It may seem on the surface to have a cer- 
 tain touch of grandeur and sublimity which thrills 
 us for the moment. "Personality, individuality 
 the ghosts of a dream in a dream. Life infinite 
 only there is, and all that appears to be is but the 
 thrilling of it, sun, moon, and stars, earth, sky, and 
 sea, and mind and man, and space and time." But 
 when we examine our rhetoric soberly and coolly, 
 what content do we really find that justifies our 
 emotion, beyond a certain aesthetic pleasure in the 
 contemplation, itself not of the highest order because 
 it is so entirely abstract and formless. When we 
 try actually to realize concretely the nature of such 
 a supposed value apart from personality, from human 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 279 
 
 relationships and fellowships, we find in it as little 
 permanent power to satisfy us as we find in the 
 Oriental civilization which represents the same ideal 
 of a degradation of personality put into actual prac- 
 tice. The Western type of the same attitude is more 
 virile, no doubt. Nevertheless it is equally unsatis- 
 fying to one who is not content with loose rhetoric 
 and surface understanding, but who tries to pene- 
 trate to the real content of the thing, and bring it 
 home to himself in concrete and human terms. Such 
 is the modern worship of force with its underlying 
 materialism, of great movements, irresistible ten- 
 dencies, and manifest destinies, so long as they ac- 
 complish something, no matter whether the change 
 approves itself or not to the human sense of worth 
 and the human conscience. The novels of the late 
 Mr. Norris afford a good example of this attitude 
 in a crude but effective form, with their subordina- 
 tion of the ethical, and their deification of the brute 
 forces of nature as typified, for example, by the 
 Wheat. No doubt this appeals to something primi- 
 tive in us. But is the primitive and the savage finally 
 to interpret human life ? And when again we bring 
 to bear a really human interpretation, can what we 
 are called upon crudely to admire and rest upon bear 
 at all the test of rational criticism? There is some- 
 thing childish in the tendency to suppose that mere 
 change is admirable, no matter even if it leads to 
 nothing, and it is none the less childish because 
 the change happens to be on a vast scale. 
 
280 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 This briefly, then, is the query on which an argu- 
 ment may be based: First, can righteousness, or 
 progress, or whatever it may be termed, have any 
 real content save as it is grounded in the personal 
 relationship which on the side of feeling is love? 
 Apart from this, are we not resting on a survival of 
 the old deification of abstractions ? Activity, strenu- 
 ousness, combat, achievement these are good ; 
 but will they not fail in the end if divorced from 
 fellowship ? And, second, if this is so, can we accept 
 the severance of the personal relationship in which 
 the whole gist of the matter lies, and still be able to 
 justify the worth of life to ourselves, in feeling or in 
 calm reflection? The charge is made that the de- 
 mand for immortality is a selfish demand, and that 
 a true devotion would make us content to lose our- 
 selves in the good of the whole or of the race. But 
 this is not the deepest source of our demand, and it 
 does not truly represent the force of the argument, 
 unless love can be reduced to selfishness. That 
 which raises the most passionate protest against the 
 extinction of personality is not the wish that I may 
 continue. It is the thought that he, my friend, with 
 all his powers of mind and heart, should have come 
 to be only to cease again to be ; that he should have 
 passed forever beyond the possibility of that personal 
 contact and union which is the core of life. 
 
 Doubtless the question will come up once more: 
 Does not humanity, the race, the universe, still afford 
 a worthy field of endeavor even though the individual 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 281 
 
 man disappears ? I am not unaware of the danger 
 of meeting life too timidly, and of being too ready 
 to throw away what is still a substantial good be- 
 cause we cannot get all that we should like. It is 
 well to be brave in the face of whatever life may 
 bring. But there is some risk, too, that courage may 
 pass into hardness and callousness, and that is not 
 so well. Are we sure that resignation here does not 
 mean a loss too serious to accept? I have done all 
 I can hope if I have pointed out the issue involved. 
 Can the terms which stand for value to us avoid be- 
 coming an abstraction except as they go back to the 
 fact of personality? and can personality bear the 
 weight of this responsibility without permanence? 
 Do we try to find that permanence in humanity? 
 But the race itself is mortal. The day will come 
 when the world and all that it contains will pass 
 away; and how can that which comes to an end be 
 an eternal principle of justification? But even if 
 the race were immortal, that would not meet the de- 
 mands of love. It is not enough that an impersonal 
 influence should continue, or that other friends 
 should take the place of the one who is lost. It is 
 here, if anywhere, that we shall find a value that will 
 appeal to us as ultimate ; and if we get no solid foot- 
 ing here, how can we hope to in those larger and 
 abstracter terms humanity, and the progress of 
 the whole? And how can that be ultimate which 
 is ever being passed over from one embodiment 
 to another ? Can love thus be cut loose from its 
 
282 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 object ? The recognition of relativity and finiteness 
 in love, as inherent in and necessary to it, is bound 
 to destroy its divineness. To put our human re- 
 lationships on the plane of the Epicurean friendship, 
 something we are to utilize as a pleasant and im- 
 portant episode of life, but be ready to put aside with 
 quiet acquiescence when it has served its turn, 
 are we not right in feeling this to be less than the 
 final meaning? Is the great love, the love that goes 
 beyond the prudent needs of effective workmanship, 
 really a mistake, and should we be wiser if we were 
 to sink ourselves in our work, in an impersonal 
 activity or process of life, and look upon men and 
 women as just the temporary phases which this 
 world activity assumes? We are not always true 
 to such an insight, no doubt. We allow selfishness 
 to break the ties that have been closest, and time to 
 obliterate the strongest feelings. But in a question 
 such as this it should be, not our ordinary self, but 
 our best self, that forms the basis of our judgment ; 
 not what the average man practices, but what seems 
 to be the goal of the highest and most truly human 
 attainment. And do we not feel that this charge 
 of inconstancy and forgetfulness in our human fel- 
 lowships is a cause for shame, that it marks a failure 
 to be what at our best we should like to be? And 
 if this is true from the human side, it has an equal 
 force from the divine. It is true that in God we 
 should have what is eternal in existence, as opposed 
 to the ephemeral existence that belongs to the human 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 283 
 
 race. And the need we have ethically of falling 
 back on God shows how necessary to the justification 
 of value permanence is. Do away wholly with any 
 such eternal conservator of values, and how long could 
 they retain any touch or quality of the divine ? But 
 because God is eternal in existence he need not, for 
 all that, have a value that we should recognize as 
 eternal. If values do have their root in the relation- 
 ships of persons, there not only is the difficulty in 
 imagining how they could exist and be transferred 
 when their very source is gone. In relation to God 
 the same thing has another side. Could we really 
 respect a God who found his felicity in an end which 
 got its realization ultimately only in his own self- 
 centred consciousness ; for whom love or fellowship 
 meant merely a temporary or passing phase of his 
 experience, whose object was called into existence 
 only to be dismissed again from the scene ? We may 
 be willing to give up our private claims in the per- 
 manent good of existence, to be damned for the glory 
 of God ; but would a God who claimed the sacrifice 
 be worthy of it? Does not love in God imply a 
 personal relationship which, in its particularity, is 
 not an incident of his purposes, but fundamental in 
 them? 
 
 I have based the argument upon the demands of 
 feeling. The suggestion has been that the funda- 
 mental source of value, at any rate of social and 
 religious value, is to be looked for in personality, 
 as involving a relationship of individuals in self- 
 
284 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD 
 
 conscious and meaningful cooperation ; and that this 
 claims an eternal worth, not as tributary to an im- 
 personal process, but as that which itself lends to 
 the process validity. It is true that this demand that 
 the world should be such as to meet the requirements 
 of feeling is a postulate ; but so too is the claim that 
 the world should be a rational world; and I have 
 already tried to show that the one is as valid a pos- 
 tulate as the other. Both ideals we accept simply 
 because we never shall be satisfied so long as they 
 are unattained. But now if the main contention of 
 my whole argument is not mistaken, this same con- 
 ception of personality is the one best fitted to stand 
 in a purely intellectual formulation of reality as well. 
 The coincidence of the two lines of argument may 
 perhaps be held to give some added force to each. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolute, the, 37 ff.; 166 f.; 
 
 176 ff.; 259 f. 
 Activity, concept of, 187 S. 
 Agnosticism, 37 ff.; 180 ff. 
 
 Balfour, 105, 128. 
 Berkeley, 125. 
 
 Causation, 141 ff.; 167 ff. 
 Conservation of Energy, 170. 
 Creation, concept of, 164 f. ; 229 f. 
 
 Design, argument from, 93 ff. 
 Determinism, 207 ff. 
 
 Emotion, 53 ff.; 63 ff. 
 Evil, 198; 231 ff. 
 
 Fatalism, 207; 221 f. 
 
 Feeling, its relation to knowledge, 
 
 53 ff- 
 Freedom, 198 ff. 
 
 God, nature of, 162 ff.; 193 ff. 
 
 Hume, 70; 141. 
 Huxley, 44. 
 
 Ideals, 57 ff.; 104 f.; 282. 
 Imitation, 30. 
 Immaterialism, 124 ff. 
 Immortality, 261 ff. 
 Innate ideas, 6. 
 Interaction, 171. 
 
 James, William, 64, 225. 
 
 Knowledge, function of, 54 f.; 
 
 187 ff. 
 Knowledge, representative theory 
 
 of, 18 ff.; 132 f. 
 
 Knowledge, transcendence of, 1 7 ff . ; 
 31 ff.; 51 f.; 162; 194. 
 
 Law, conception of, 10 ff.; 117 f.; 
 130; 140 ff.; 173 ff. 
 
 Materialism, 268 f. 
 Natural selection, 94; 107 ff. 
 Objective world, belief in, 17 ff.; 
 
 27 ff-; 56 f. 
 
 Optimism, 233 ff.; 242 ff. 
 
 Pantheism, 153 ff. 
 
 Parallelism, 170 ff. 
 
 Personality, 276 ff. 
 
 Pessimism, 236 ff. 
 
 Philosophy, method of, 50 ff.; 75. 
 
 Philosophy, nature of, 74 f.; 78; 
 
 83- 
 
 Pragmatism, 21 ff.; 35 f.; 199. 
 Presuppositions, nature of, 8. 
 
 Reason, nature of, 70 ff . ; 206 f. 
 Religion, nature of, 79 ff. 
 Religion and history, 84 ff. 
 Relativity of knowledge, 38; 177 ff. 
 Responsibility, 236 ff.; 257 ff. 
 
 Scepticism, 41 ff. 
 
 Schopenhauer, 237. 
 
 Self, idea of, 161 f.; 186 ff. 
 
 Selves, belief in other, 22 ff. ; 28 ff. 
 
 Solipsism, 27. 
 
 Soul, the, 266; 270. 
 
 Spencer, 38; 177. 
 
 Spinoza, 79; 115. 
 
 Teleology, 93 ff.; 117; 146 ff.; 
 
 190 f. 
 
 Theism, arguments for, 121 ff. 
 Truth, nature of, 21; 35 ff. 
 Truth, tests of, 45 ff.; 75 ff. 
 
 Will, 187 ff.; 208 ff. 
 
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