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There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029058190 THEISM BY BORDEN P: BOWNE PROFESSOR OF PHIL030PHT IN BOSTON UNIVEBSITT COMPRISING THE DEEMS LECTURES FOE 1902 o»:o NEW YORK-:. CINCINNATI:. CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY COPYEIGHT, 1887,»Bf HAEPEE AND BEOTHEEB. COPTEI&HT, 1902, BY BOEDEN P. BOWNE. Entered at Stationebb' Hall, London. TUBISM. W P. I. PREFACE This work is a revision and extension of my previous work, " Philosophy of Theism." An invitation to deliver the Deems lectures before the New York University gave a welcome opportunity for revision. In the earlier work the argument was somewhat meagerly presented, and the arguments from epistemology and metaphysics were only hinted at. This shortcoming I have sought to remedy. The work has been largely rewritten, and about fifty per cent of new matter has been added. In all this, however, I have confined myself to my original plan of giving the essential argument, so that the reader might discern its true nature and be enabled to estimate its rational value. To do this is more important at present than to make collections of facts and illustrations, however bulky, which decide nothing, so long as the logical principles of the discussion are not cleared up and agreed upon. The point at issue among thinkers concerns the nature and value of theistic logic ; and this cannot be settled by elo- quence, or by question-begging illustrations. From this point of view the work might be called The Logic of Theism. Kant pointed out that the ontological argument prop- erly proves nothing, and that the cosmological and the iv PREFACE design argument depend on the ontological. The argu- ment, then, is not demonstrative, and rests finallj'^ on the assumed existence of a perfect being. In a different form I have maintained the same position ; but so far from concluding that theistic faith is baseless, I have sought to show that essentially the same postulate underlies our entire mental life. There is an element of faith and voli- tion latent in all our theorizing. Where we cannot prove, we believe. Where we cannot demonstrate, we choose sides. This element of faith cannot be escaped in any field of thought, and without it the mind is helpless and dumb. Oversight of this fact has led to boundless verbal haggling and barren logic chopping, in which it would be hard to say whether the affirmative or the negative be the more confused. Absurd demands for "proof" have been met with absurd "proofs." The argument has thus been transferred from the field of life and action, where it mainly belongs, to the arid wastes of formal logic, where it has fared scarcely better than the man who journeyed to Jericho from Jerusalem. In opposition to this error I have sought to show the practical and vital basis of belief, and have pointed out that logic has only a regulative function with respect to the great beliefs by which men and nations live. These beliefs are formulations and expressions of life, rather than syllogistic and academic inferences ; and they depend for their force on the energy of the life that produces them. The conclusion is that theism is the fundamental postulate of our total life. It cannot, indeed, be demonstrated without assumption, but it cannot be denied without wrecking all our interests. PREFACE V This' claim has been especially emphasized in considering the bearing of theism upon the problem of knowledge. I have sought to show that our cognitive and speculative interests, as well as our moral and religious interests, are so bound up with theism as to stand or fall with it. If we say, then, that theism is strictly proved by nothing, we must also admit that it is implicit in everything. Anti-theistic schemes are generally in the instinctive stage of thought, where knowledge constitutes no problem and is taken for granted. In this stage any theory whatever may be held, however self -destructive ; and when its sui- cidal implications are pointed out, the theorist falls back on unreasoned common sense, and repudiates, not his own theory, which is the real offender, but the critic. He sets up natural selection as the determining principle of belief, and then repudiates the great catholic convictions of the race. He shows how the survival of the fittest must bring thought and thing into accord, and then rejects the beliefs which survive. He defines mind as an adjustment of inner relations to outer relations, and forthwith drifts off into nescience. He presents the Unknown Cause as the source of all beliefs, and then rules out most of them as invalid, and, at times, declares them all worthless. And this compound of instinct and reflection, in which each element destroys the other, is mistaken by many for the last profundity in science and philosophy. But this kind of thing is fast passing away, as the insight becomes general that knowledge is one of the chief problems of speculation, and that every theory must be judged by its doctrine of knowledge. When this insight is reached. VI PREFACE atheism and all mechanical schemes of the necessitarian type appear as philosophically illiterate and belated. And as epistemology reveals the suicidal nature of atheistic thought, so metaphysical criticism shows the baselessness of its metaphysics. The crude realism of popular thought, when joined with the notion of me- chanical necessity, furnishes excellent soil for an atheistic growth. This realism in its popular form may be re- garded as finally set aside, and also the mechanical natu- ralism based upon it. Philosophy is coming to see the emptiness of all philosophizing on the mechanical and impersonal plane ; so that the choice for both science and philosophy is either a theistic foundation or none. Both the abstractions of mechanical theory and the impersonal categories of philosophical dogmatism are found to cancel themselves when taken apart from living and self-conscious intelligence, in which alone they have either existence or meaning. Upon the whole the theistic outlook is most encourag- ing. The atheistic gust of the last generation has about blown over. It was largely a misunderstanding due to the superficial philosophy of the time. But we have analyzed our problems and improved our criticism since then, and now understand ourselves and our problems much better. Science and philosophy, through a wise division of labor or just partition of territory, have come to dwell together in friendship; and conflicts of science and religion, which were at one time a standing order of the day, have almost entirely vanished. The triumphs and panics of that time were alike baseless, and closely PREFACE Vll resembled scuffles between blind men. The air has cleared. Fundamental problems are seen to remain about what they always were. A better epistemology has shown the suicidal nature of atheistic thought. A better meta- physics is curing the naturalistic obsession. A proper division of labor has secured to science and philosophy their appropriate fields and inalienable rights, while theism more and more appears as the supreme condition of both thought and life. BORDEN P. BOWNE. CONTENTS Introduction ... . . 1 Religion a Fact, 1. Origin of Religion, 2. Theories of Origin Ambiguous, 4. They are never Explanations of the Religious Fact, but Descriptions of its Temporal Develop- ment, 5. History of Religion, 10. Rational Basis of Re- ligion, 11. Logical Method, 15. Method of Rigor and Vigor, 16. Practical and Teleological Basis of Belief, 20. Function of Logic, 30. Logic Reg^ative, not Constitutive, 31. Theism and Atheism alike Hypotheses to be tested by their Positive Adequacy to the Facts, 41. CHAPTER I The Unity of the World-gkound . . 44 Kant's Criticism of the Theistic Arguments, 44. The Traditional Classification of the Arguments abandoned and a Starting Point found in the Fact of Interaction, 51. Verbal Explanations of Interaction, 54. Interaction be- tween Independent Things a Contradiction, 56. The Fundamental Reality must be One, 59. CHAPTER n The World-ground as Intelligent . . .64 Two Classes of Arguments, Inductive and Speculative, 65. Argument from Order, 67. Theism the only Explanation X CONTENTS PAGE of Order, 70. Source of the Plausibility of the Atheistic Explanation of Order, 70. The Argument from Teleology, 75. Points to be noted in studying the Argument, 77. Atheistic Objections, 89. Mechanical Explanation shown to be Empty, 89. Source of the Illusion, 93. Evolution, 103. Ambiguity of the Doctrine, 104. Evolution as Phe- nomenal, 107. The "As-H" Objection, 110. The Argu- ment which disproves Mind in Nature disproves Mind also in Man, 114. The Argument from Finite Intelligence, 119. The Argument from Epistemology, 123. Suicidal Charac- ter of All Mechanical Doctrines of Knowledge, 124. The Basal Certainties of Knowledge are not Things, but Persons and Experience, 127. Knowledge implies Identity of the Laws of Thought and the Laws of Things, 130. A Knowa- ble World necessarily a Thought World, 134. The Meta- physical Argument, 134. Idealistic Theism the only Solu- tion of the Problems of Thought, 145. CHAPTER III The World-ground as Personal . .... 150 Agnostic Objections, 151. Impersonal Intelligence, 155. Alleged Contradiction in Infinite Intelligence, 160. The Contradiction is Verbal, 163. Psychological Objections, 164. Complete Personality possible only to the Absolute, 167. The Truth in the Objections, 169. CHAPTER IV The Metaphysical Attributes of the World-gkound . 172 Unity, 173. Unity possible only on the Personal Plane, 174. Unchangeability, 177. The Self-identity and Self- equality of Intelligence the only Unchangeable, 179. Om- CONTENTS XI PAGK nipresence, 179. Impossible under the Space Form, 180. Eternity, 181. Relation of the World-ground to Time, 184. Omniscience, 186. Possibility of Foreknowledge, 188. Om- nipotence, 190. Relation of God to Truth, 191. The Divine Will and the Divine Existence, 197. CHAPTER V God and the World . . . . . 199 Pantheism, 199. Quantitative Pantheism Untenable, 200. Two Conceptions of the Finite, 203. Spirits created, 206. Untenability of All Forms of Pantheism, 209. Reality of the Finite Spirit, 214. Theistic Conception, 218. Creation Temporal or Eternal ? 220. Present Relation of the World to God, 226. God as Ruler of the World, 230. Man's Re- lation to Nature, 234. Naturalism and Supernaturalism, 244. God as Immanent and Transcendent, 246. CHAPTER VI The Wokld-ground as Ethical . . . 248 Distinction of Metaphysical and Moral Attributes, 249. The Empirical Argument, 250. Argument from the Moral Nature, 251. ALrgument from History and Social Structure, 254. Logic and Life, 258. Optimism and Pessimism, 263. Both Optimist and Pessimist fall a Prey to Abstractions, 264. Apriori Discussion Futile, 271. Unpermissible Anthropo- morphism, 275. Laws of the System Good, 277. Man's Worst Woes of his own Making, 278. Only a Practical Solution Possible, 282. Evil in the Animal World, 285. Ethics and the Absolute, 287. Can the Absolute be Ethical? 287. xil CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAOK Theism and Life . . 291 Practical Argument for Theism explained, 291. Atheism and Duties, 294. Atheism and the Moral Judgment, 295. Consistent Atheism cannot defend itseK against Ethical Skepticism, 298. Dependence of Ethics on our General Theory of the Universe and Lite, 299. Atheism and the Moral Ideal, 302. Atheism and Moral Inspiration, 304. Position of the Religious Nature in Modern Atheism, 312. Conclusion 315 THEISM INTRODUCTION Man is religious. However it came about, and whether we like it or not, man is religious. A de- scriptive inventory of our human life and tendencies that omitted religion would be lamentably imperfect. A history of humanity that overlooked its religious tendencies and activities would miss one of its most significant manifestations. The most irreligious statesman would admit that religion must be reckoned with as a fact, however baseless or patho- logical he might deem it. The most imbelieving his- torian must recognize, with whatever vexation, the tremendous part religion has played. And from the economical and financial standpoint, the religious budget appears as one of the great items in our total expense. For good or ill, the earth is full of religion ; and life and thought, art and literature, are moulded by it. As our earth moves under the influence of forces lying beyond itself, so our human life is mov- ing under the influence of ideas that have their roots in the invisible. There are powers, we think, beyond seeing and hearing, on whom we depend, to whom we owe various duties, and who take note of 1 2 INTRODUCTION our life and conduct ; and our relation to these powers is the deepest and highest and most solemn element in our existence. Religion may be a mistake, an illusion, a superstition, but as an historical fact it is undeniable; and no exorcism has yet been found potent enough permanently to exorcise the evil spirit. The fact being thus indisputable, three questions arise. These concern respectively the source of reli- gion, the history of religion, and the rational founda- tion or warrant of religion. Oeigin op Religion To the question concerning the source of religion various answers have been given. Some have been content to view rehgion as a device of state, and priestcraft; but this view has long been obsolete. The impossibility of long imposing purely adventi- tious and fictitious ideas upon the mind by external authority makes it necessary to look for the source of religion within the mind itself. Such source was found at a very early date in fear. Man, being timid and helpless, feigns gods partly to help himself and partly as projections of his fears. This view, which finds full expression by Lucretius, has been extended by Hume, who traces religious ideas to the personify- ing tendency of the mind. Man projects his own life into all his objects, and thus surrounds himself with a world of invisible beings-. Others have held that the idea of an invisible world first got afloat through dreams, trances, fits, etc., and once afloat, it took possession of the human mind in general, with the exception always of a few choice spirits of rare ORIGm OF RELIGION 3 insight; and from this unseemly origin the whole system of religious thought has been developed. Suggestions of this kind are numberless and unedi- fying. In the first place, the alleged facts are open to doubt. For a good while the anthropologists re- garded some animistic or ghostly origin of religion as finally established ; but further and deeper acquaintr ance with the religious phenomena and beliefs of the lower races has seriously shaken this confidence. Eela- tively high and pure conceptions are found cropping out among uncivilized peoples, and often antedating their more earthly and sensuous aberrations. Popular an- thropology has been very superficial and imsympathetic in its study of religious phenomena. A good deal of the work has been done under the influence of a speculative theory, or in the conviction that religion is a delusion or a disease. In the former case the facts have been selected that support the theory. In the latter, mechanical collections have been made of stories of religious and subreHgious crudities and horrors ; and these have often been put forth as the true essence and original of religion. As Mr. Lang says, " Anthropology has mainly kept her eyes fixed on . . . the lusts, the mummeries, conjurings, and frauds of priesthoods, while relatively, or altogether, neglecting what is honest and of good report." ^ Such methods are not likely to lead to impartial in- vestigation, or to any deep insight into the facts. These need a finer sympathy with humanity and a deeper sense of historical reality. The faith that finds a sufficient account of the great religious de- velopments of the civilized nations in the dreams and 1 " Making of Religion," p. 198. UNTKUJJUUilUJN fancies of savages is certainly beyond anything in Israel. But however this may be, the historical problem is seen to be not so simple as has been supposed; and no single and compendious formula seems possible. Moreover, apart from any question as to the facts, our popular anthropological accounts of the source of religion generally suffer from a thoroughgoing ambi- guity. It is not clear whether they are offered as explanations of religious phenomena, or only as descriptions of the order of their historical appear- ance, — two things widely different. As explanations these accounts are failures. They are mainly an extension of the sensational philosophy into the realm of religion. As that philosophy seeks to reduce the rational factors of intellect to sensation, and ethical elements to non-ethical, so also it seeks to reduce the religious nature to something non-religious. But in all of these attempts it succeeds only by tacitly begging the question. If we take a mind whose full nature is expressed in a certain quality A, it will be forever impossible to develop anything but A out of it. Or if we assume a mind which by its nature is limited to a certain plane A, again it will be impos- sible to transcend the A with which we start. In order to move at all the A must be more than A ; it must have some implicit potentiality in it which is the real ground of the movement. Thus a being whose nature is exhausted in sense objects can never tran- scend them. Everything must be to him what it seems. The stick must be a stick, not a fetish. The sun and moon must be lighted disks, not gods. To get such a being beyond the sense object to a religious ORIGIN OF RELIGION 5 object we must endow him with more than the A of sensation, or the B of animal fear. The cattle have both ; but only some very hopeful evolutionists have discovered any traces of religion among them ; and if it should turn out that these traces are not mislead- ing, it would not prove that simple sensations can become religious ideas, but that the animal mind is more and better than we have been accustomed to think. When thought is clear, these accounts of the origin and source of religion can never be more than descrip- tions of the order of religious ideas in their temporal development. They simply recite the crude concep- tions with which men began in religion and describe the long, slow process by which they passed from those raw beginnings to the more adequate conceptions of to-day. In such description all that the critic cares to insist on is that the facts shall have been as reported, and that no fashionable speculation or pre- conceived theory shall be allowed to improvise history. The fact in religion is the same as in science and social order. Men began with very crude notions, and by long experience and much reflection, and through a deal of error, only slowly found their way. The fact has equal theoretical significance in each case. There is no simple something, religion or sci- ence or government, of which the first forms were the essential reality, and which then developed themselves, yet in such a way as never to get beyond their primi- tive form. This notion, which underlies much of what the anthropologists have said about the origin of religion, is full-blown illusion. This fancy would make the essence of chemistry alchemy, or the essence THEISM 2 6 INTRODUCTION of astronomy astrology, just as certainly as it makes the essence of religion animism. The concrete, his- torical fact in all these cases is men trying to find their way, and gradually exchanging low and inadequate conceptions for higher and more adequate ones, as Hfe unfolds, and experience accumulates, and reflective thought deepens and clarifies itself. There is nothing in such a development at which thought should take ofEense; least of all is there anything in it which degrades the later conceptions by identifying them in essence with earlier and cruder ones. This is the naive misunderstanding of a blind sensationalism which has lost itself in verbal identities. Wherever there is real development, the meaning of the earlier is revealed only in the later. The true nature and potentialities of the acorn are seen only in the oak. The true nature of mind is seen only in its mature manifestation. If we would see what the mind is in respect to its cognitive powers, we must study the highest unfoldings of thought. In like manner, if we would know what the mind is in respect to religion, we must study the highest religious manifestations of humanity. This, which is plain upon inspection, is overlooked by the popular anthropologist, who can see nothing in religion but fetishes, and totems, etc., to the total neglect of the great religious leaders and teachers of the race. This is as shortsighted as it would be to find a complete account of science in a collection of stories about the crude notions of the earliest men, while entirely ignoring the masters and marvels of a later day. Anthropology, we said, is open to criticism for its imperfect induction of facts ; it is equally open to criticism on account of its failure ORIGIN OF RELIGION 7 to master its own logic. The logic would bid us look to the future for the highest and truest expression of things ; but the speculator, under the influence of certain illusions of uncritical thought, gropes among the raw beginnings of things for their true and essen- tial nature. It may be, then, that early religious conceptions were molded by dreams, trances, and various mysteri- ous phenomena ; but we must note two facts. First, these things are by no means the sum of religious phenomena; this sum includes the whole religious life of humanity. Secondly, we cannot get from these dreams, etc., to anything religious without posit- ing a religious factor in human nature itself; just as we cannot get from the fancies of childhood to the clearer thought of maturity without positing a rational nature of which the fancies were only the first manifestation, and not the final expression. A developing being can never be defined by its present ; account must also be taken of all which it is to become ; and these potentialities must be founded in the nature of the being. Another view of the origin of religious ideas is that they are the product of reflective thought. This view is disproved by experience. Man was religious before he became a philosopher. Speculative thought has had the function of criticising and clarifying religious ideas, but never of originating them ; and often they have been much more confidently held without its aid than with it. On this account many have viewed speculative thought in its religious efforts as a kind of inverted Jacob's ladder. On the other hand, it has been suggested that 8 INTRODUCTION religious ideas are innate. This could only mean that the human mind is such as to develop religious sentiments and ideas under the stimulus of our total experience. But experience shows such difference of religious thought that the contents of this religious intuition could hardly be more than a vague sense of an invisible and supernatural existence. Besides, the phrase, innate ideas, has so many misleading sugges- tions that we had better avoid it. In the same line it has been held that the soul has a special organ or faculty for the reception of religious truth ; and the state of this faculty has even been made a ground for important theological distinctions. Sometimes it has been called faith, sometimes feeling, and sometimes the "God-consciousness." But psy- chology long ago discovered that nothing is explained by reference to a faculty, since the faculty itself is always and only an abstraction from the facts for whose explanation it is invoked or invented. The faculty that explains language is the language faculty ; the faculty that explains vision is the visual faculty. We do not get the language or the vision from the faculty, but we affirm the faculty because of the lan- guage or the vision ; and the affirmation at bottom consists in saying that we must be able to speak or see because we do speak or see. There is probably no question more utterly arid and barren than the search for the faculty from which religion springs. Fortu- nately, the question is fast becoming antiquated. The conclusion as to the source of religion is this : no external action can develop into anything an empty mind, which has no law, nature, or direction. This would be to act upon the void. Psychology also ORIGIN OF EELIGION 9 shows that nothing can be imported into the mind from without in any case. All external things and influences of whatever sort only furnish the occasion for a manifestation of the soul's own nature. Hence it is hopeless to look for the source of religious ideas in external experience alone. We must assume that religion is founded in human nature as one of its essential needs and constitutional tendencies. At the same time it must be said that the religious impulse or instinct alone is not self-sufficient and does not move unerringly to its goal. Unless under the guidance of intellect and conscience, religion may take on grotesque or terrible forms. It always re- flects the stage of mental and moral development reached by the individual or the community, and varies with it. It is a function of the entire man. The stimulus to religious unfolding is no simple or single thing, but is as manifold as life itself. Schlei- ermacher found it in the sense of dependence. This is without doubt a potent factor in awakening men to a sense of religious need. It is easy to conceive a worldly life so comfortable and undisturbed that nothing more would be desired. An ancient writer, speaking of persons living such a life, said, " Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God " ; and Mr. Lowell has spoken of persons "who have had the idea of God fattened out of them." But this is only one factor of many. The needs of the intellect, the demands and forebodings of conscience, the crav- ings of the affections, the impulses of the aesthetic nature, and the ideals of the will, — all enter into the problem, apart from words of revelation, or any direct influence of God on the soul. 10 INTRODUCTION History of Religion So much on the origin of rehgion. Similar consid- erations apply to its history. It is referred to because there is a fancy that the truth of religion can be tested by studying its development, either ia the individual or in the history of the race. But a little reflection shows that the psychological and temporal emergence of an idea is not to be confounded with its philosophical worth and validity. When the latter question is up, the former is quite irrelevant, unless it be shown that philosophical value is compatible with only one form of psychological genesis and his- tory. This showing has never been made. Mean- while the rational worth of rehgion can be determined only by considering its contents and the reasons which may be offered for it. After this confusion of genesis and history with rational worth and validity has been warded off, no inquirer can have any interest in rejecting anything that sober investigation may reveal concerning the early forms of religious thought and practice. One's only interest is in having the history as it was, and not as some current speculation has decided it must have been. The attempt to stigmatize later concep- tions because of the crudities of earlier ones is due to those verbal identifications into which untrained and superficial thought is sure to fall. The illusion van- ishes when we remember that the objective fact is uot lower ideas evolving higher ideas, but living men thinking and gradually adjusting and enlarging their ideas as experience broadens and thought grows clear. RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 11 In one sense only does the history of religion have any bearing on the question of its truth. When we study the entire religious movement of humanity, noting not only the crude forms in which it began, but also the higher forms to which it grew, we may get a deeper sense of the universality and ineradica- bility of the religious element, and also a valuable hint of the direction in which its normal development lies. Such a historical fact would be a revelation of the nature of things, and would have the significance of any great cosmic manifestation and product. Such a fact would also be an argument. It would con- stitute a weighty presumption in favor of the objective truth of religion. To set it aside as sheer illusion would be an act of skeptical violence that would go far toward shattering reason itself. Rational Basis of Religion But our present concern is with neither the source nor the genesis and history of religion, but rather with its rational foundation, and more particularly with the rational foundation of the theistic idea, which is the central and basal element of religion. We set aside, therefore, aU inquiry iato the origin and development of religious ideas, and inquire rather whether they have any rational warrant, now that they are here. And we do this with all the more confidence because, on any theory of knowledge, our cognitive and critical insight is more trustworthy in its mature and developed forms, than in its crude and elementary stages. If experience be the source of knowledge, the longer and broader the experience, the 12 INTRODUCTION more certain its indications. If evolution and natural selection are developing faculty and insight, then our present faculties must be more trustworthy than those of previous generations. As no one would think of trusting the insight of the child against that of the man, so no one should think of going back to the childhood of the race for a standard of truth. As Bacon said, we are the true ancients ; that is, we have the longest experience, and we have been longest ex- posed to the drill of natural selection whose sifting action is supposed to bring about the survival of the fittest, in thought as well as elsewhere. It is plain that we have to use such faculties as we have in any case ; and now it is clear in logic that we may confidently begin with our present faculties and attainments, and seek to deter- mine their rational value, without much concerning ourselves as to what our earliest human or sub-human ancestors may have thought on religious matters. They were badly astray on most things ; and there is no good reason for making them authorities in religion. By continual trial and rejection men have slowly emerged from primitive confusion and error respecting material things, and we ought not to be surprised to find the same order in spiritual things. And as every one can see the absurdity of making primitive scientific conceptions the standard of scien- tific truth, so we may hope that gradually we may attain to the insight that primitive religious concep- tions have no better right to be the standard of rehgious truth. In both cases there is a human in- terest in knowing the history of the ideas, but their truth is to be determined in another way. We take, then, what may be called the theistic RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION 13 consciousness of the race as the text for a critical exe- gesis, with the aim of fixing its contents and philo- sophical worth. We do not aim at a philosophical deduction or speculative construction of religion ; we aim only to analyze and understand the essential data and implications of the religious consciousness. The outcome of this inquiry might conceivably be threefold. The theistic idea might be found to be absurd or contradictory. Or it might appear as an implication of the religious sentiment only, and with- out any significance for pure intellect. Or it might appear as a demand of our entire nature, intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and religious ; so that the true and the beautiful and the good alike would find in it their root and spring. In the first case theistic faith would have to be abandoned. In the second case it would be a fact of which no further account could be given than that the religious nature implies it, but it need not be rejected because of the lack of specula- tive reasons. In the last case theism would appear as the implication of all our faculties, and would have the warrant of the entire soul. How this may be, the course of our study must show. The function of the theistic idea in human thought as a whole is very complex. First, theism may be advanced as an hypothesis for the explanation of phe- nomena. As such it has no religious function at all, but solely a logical and metaphysical one. The ques- tion is considered under the law of the sufficient rea- son ; and the aim is to find an adequate explanation of phenomena, especially those of the external world. Most theistic argument has been carried on upon this basis. The facts of the outer world have been ap- 14 INTRODUCTION pealed to, especially those which show adaptation and adjustment to ends ; and the claim has been set up that only intelligence could account for them. These facts have been supplemented with various metaphysi- cal considerations concerning the absolute and the relative, the infinite and the finite, the necessary and the contingent, the self -moving and the moved ; and the work was done. How far this comes from satisfy- ing the religious nature is evident. Secondly, theism maybe held as the implication and satisfaction of our entire nature, intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, and religious. These elements reach out after God so naturally and, when developed, almost so necessarily, that they have always constituted the chief actual grounds of theistic belief. Accordingly the human mind has always adjusted its conception of God with reference less to external nature than to its own internal needs and aspirations. It has gathered its ideals of truth and beauty and goodness, and united them into the thought of the one Perfect Being, the ideal of ideals, God over all and blessed forever. A purely aetio- logical contemplation of the world and life with the sole aim of finding an adequate cause according to the law of the sufficient reason would give us an altogether different idea of God from that which we possess. Hence it has been frequently maintained, even among theologians, that arguments for theism are worthless. They may produce some assent, but no living conviction ; and when they are strictly logical they reach only barren results which are religiously worthless. These sterilities are transformed into LOGICAL METHOD 15 fruitfulness only by implicitly falling back on the liv- ing religious consciousness ; and this might as well be done openly and at the start. This contention is partly true and partly false. It is true that purely setiological arguments, like that from design, are inadequate, but they may be good as far as they go. It is also true that purely metaphys- ical arguments concerning the absolute, or uncondi- tioned, do not bring us in sight of living religious sentiment, but they have their value nevertheless. On the other hand, it is a grave oversight to suppose that such considerations alone can give the full religious conception of God. The actual grounds of theistic belief are manifold, being intellectual, emo- tional, aesthetic, and ethical ; and no one can under- stand the history of the belief without taking all of these into account. But here the very grave doubt meets us whether most of these elements are proper grounds of belief, and whether theistic argument does not confessedly proceed by a much looser logic than obtains in our mental procedure elsewhere. This compels us to take a short survey of mental method in general. A very large part of our difficulties arise from a false conception of method which leads to baseless expecta- tions with resulting failure and disappointment. Logical Method It is a traditional superstition of intellect that nothing is to be accepted which is not either self- evident or demonstrated. The corresponding con- ception of method is this : Let us first find some 16 INTRODUCTION invincible fact or principle, something which cannot be doubted or denied without absurdity, and from this let us deduce by cogent logic whatever it may warrant. When we reach the end of our logic let us stop. In other words, admit nothing that can be doubted. Make no assumptions, and take no step which is not compelled by rigorous logic. And, above all, let no feeling or sentiment or desire have any voice in determining belief. If we follow this rule, we shall never be confounded, and knowledge will progress. Opposed to this conception of method is another, as follows : Instead of doubting everything that can be doubted, let us rather doubt nothing except for reasons. Let us assume that everything is what it reports itself until some grounds for doubt appear. In society we get on better by assuming that men are truthful, and by doubting only for special reasons, than we should if we assumed that all men are liars, and believed them only when compelled. So in all investigation we make more progress if we assume the truthfulness of the universe and of our own nature than we should if we doubted both. Such are the two methods. The former assumes everything to be false imtil proved true; the latter takes things at their own report, or as they seem, until proved false. All fruitful work proceeds on the latter method; most speculative criticism and closet philosophy proceed on the former. Hence their perennial barrenness. The first method, which may be called the method of rigor and vigor, is always attractive to beginners. The developing intellect in the self-sufficiency of its LOGICAL METHOD 17 dawning majority is pretty sure to admire this mettiod for a time. And if there were any beings who had nothing to do but to syllogize and for whom belief had no practical bearing, they might safely adopt the method. But for us human beings rigor and vigor apply only to mathematics, which is a purely formal and subjective science. When we come to deal with reality, the method brings thought to a standstill. At the beginning of the modern era, Descartes pretended to doubt everything, and found only one unshakable fact — "I think ; therefore, I am." But from this he could deduce nothing. The bare fact, "I think," is philosophically insignificant. What I think, or how I think, whether rightly or wrongly, is the important matter. But from the bare "I think" Descartes could reach neither the world of things, nor the world of persons, nor the world of laws. The method was so rigorous as to leave thought without an object. And in general, if we should begin by doubting everything that can be doubted, and by settling all questions in advance, we should never get under way. There are questions in logical theory, in the theory of knowledge, and in metaphysics, which even yet are keenly debated. The skeptic and agnostic and idealist are still abroad. If, then, man were only an abstract speculator, this method of doubting everything which cannot be demonstrated would condemn the mind to a barren subjectivity. But man is not only, or chiefly, an abstract speculator, he is also a living being, with practical interests and necessities, to which he must adjust himself in order to live at all. It has been one of the perennial shortcomings of intellectualism 18 INTRODUCTION that man has been considered solely as an intellect or understanding ; whereas, he is a great deal more. Man is will, conscience, emotion, aspiration ; and these are far more powerful factors than the logical intellect. Hence, in its practical unfolding the mind makes a great variety of practical postulates and assumptions which are not logical deductions or speculative necessities, but a kind of modus vivendi with the universe. They represent the conditions of our fullest life ; and are at bottom expressions of om- practical and ideal interests or necessities. And these are reached as articulate principles, not by speculative construction, but by analysis of practical life. Life is richer and deeper than speculation, and contains implicitly the principles by which we live. The law the logician lays down is this : Nothing may be believed which is not proved. The law the mind actually follows is this : Whatever the mind demands for the satisfaction of its subjective inter- ests and tendencies may be assumed as real in default of positive disproof. We propose to trace this prin- ciple in the realm of cognition as being the realm which is commonly supposed to be free from all sub- jective elements. As cognitive beings we desire to know. But real- ity as it is given to us in immediate experience is not adapted to the needs of our intelligence, and we pro- ceed to work it over so as to make it amenable to our mental necessities. This working over constitutes what we call theoretical science. To do it we tacitly assume that the vast collection of things and events fall into fixed classes, are subject to fixed laws, and LOGICAL METHOD 19 are bound up into a rational system. We assume, further, the essential truthfulness of nature, so that the indications of all clearly determined facts can be trusted. We assume, once more, that nature is not only essentially comprehensible, but that it is com- prehensible by us ; so that what our nature calls for to make the facts intelligible to us is necessary to the facts themselves. For, after all, our explanation of facts always consists in saying that if we may assume certain facts we can understand the actual facts. Thus back of the real universe of experience we construct an ideal universe of the intellect, and we understand the former through the latter. In this way we reach two entirely different conceptions of things. One is furnished by the senses ; the other is reached by thought. The former represents reality as it reports itself ; the latter represents reality as made over by the mind. And this is not all. For soon the ideal imiverse passes for the real, while the real imiverse of experi- ence is degraded into a phenomenon or appearance. Nothing is allowed to be what it reports itself. All the senses are flouted. The reports of the unsophisti- cated consciousness are derided. Numberless worlds are invented ; a whole family of ethers is generated ; and the oddest things are said about everjrthing, as if our aim were to give the lie direct to every sponta- neous conviction of common-sense. The doctrines of astronomy, and the current theories of heat, light, sound, and matter, are examples. All of these things are, without exception, a series of ideal constructions by which we seek to interpret the reality of experience and make it amenable to our intelligence. 20 INTRODUCTION If now we ask for the source and warrant of this theoretic activity, we must finally find it in the living interests of our cognitive nature. The facts them- selves are indifferent alike to comprehension and non- comprehension. But we seek to comprehend as a matter of course, and take for granted that we have a right to comprehend, that the loniverse is comprehen- sible, and that we are able to comprehend it. The as- sumptions we make are so natural that they even seem necessary truths at times ; but in fact they are primarily but projections upon reality of our mental nature and our subjective interests. That conception of a crystal- line system of law is purely a subjective ideal and is not known to be an objective fact. The comprehensible universe is as pure an assumption as the religious and moral universe. Moreover, the actual universe, that is, the universe as given in experience, is not intelligible ; it is that other assumed ideal universe, which we have put behind the real universe, that is intelligible. From a strictly logical and critical standpoint the intelligible rmiverse is purely an idol of the human tribe; nevertheless we insist upon its reality because the admission of an essentially irrational and incogi- table world violates our cognitive instincts, throws the mind back upon itself without an object and without meaning, and leaves it a prey to skepticism and despair. The existence of this assumptive element may be further shown by adopting a suggestion of Arthur Balfour in his "Defence of Philosophic Doubt," and constructing a refutation of science on the model of the familiar refutation of religion. We need only demand that the scientist prove his postulates and LOGICAL METHOD 21 demonstrate his assumptions to put him in a sad plight. Let him settle with the philosophic skeptic. Let him rout the agnostic. Let him put the idealist to flight. Let him prove that a system of law exists in objective fact. Let him show that what he needs to comprehend the facts is necessary to the facts themselves. Let him clear up the difficulties in his own metaphysics. Action at a distance, the nature of the ether, and the relations of matter and force would be good points to begin with. Let him show that our desire to have the universe comprehensible proves that it is so, or that our unwillingness to admit an irrational reality is an argument against it. Let him remember that the scientific interest which is so strong in him is very limited indeed, so that it must seem like extreme arrogance on his part to seek to impose the tenets of his little sect upon the uni- verse of necessary laws of the same. "When all these demands have been met, there can be some talk about science, but not before. As long as the skeptic and agnostic are abroad, there is no security that science is not sheer fiction. As long as the idealist is not silenced, it is doubtful whether even the objects of science exist. If the system of law is not proved to exist, the deductions from it are worthless. Until we prove that what we need to understand the facts is necessary to the facts them- selves, om: theorizing may be only a projection upon the outer world of our mental nature, and in no way an apprehension of objective reality. As to the metaphysics of science, it is well known to contain difficulties equal to any in theology. So far from answering these questions the average scientist has THEISM — -3 22 INTRODUCTION never heard of them, and yet they seem to concern the life of science itself. The truth is, we meet here the opposition of method to which we referred at the start. The critic affects to doubt whatever cannot be proved, while the scientist takes for granted what every one admits. The way of rigor and vigor would be hard even for the mature speculator. He would find himself in the presence of insoluble problems, and would have either to abandon them, or seek some more excellent way. Of course the great majority of men must follow some other road. It would be overwhelmingly ludicrous to require the mass of men to think for themselves. In the nature of the case they must live by hearsay and imitation and intellectual contagion. The intellect of the community is the only safe stand- ard for them to follow; for however the community intellect may fall short of perfection, it is commonly far wiser than the intellect of the individual. The sum is this : The mind is not a disinterested logic-machine, but a living organism, with manifold interests and tendencies. These outline its develop- ment, and furnish the driving power. The implicit aim in mental development is to recognize these interests, and make room for them, so that each shall have its proper field and object. In this way a series of ideals arise in our mental life. As cognitive, we assume that the universe is rational. Many of its elements are opaque, and utterly unmanageable by us at present, but we assume spontaneously and un- consciously that at the center all is order, and that there all is crystalline and transparent to intelligence. Thus there arises in our thought the conception of LOGICAL METHOD 23 a system in which, all is light, a system whose founda- tions are laid in harmony, and whose structure is rational law, a system every part of which is produced and maintained and illumined by the majestic and eternal Reason. But this is only a cognitive ideal, to which experience yields little support; yet we hold fast the ideal and set aside the facts which make against it as something not yet comprehended. But we are moral beings also, and our moral interests must be recognized. Hence arises a moral ideal, which we join to the cognitive. The imiverse must be not only rational, but righteous at its root. Here, too, we set aside the facts that make against om" faith as something not yet understood. This is especially the case in dealing with the problem of evil. Here we are never content with finding a cause for the good and evil in experience ; we insist upon an explanation which shall save the assumed goodness at the heart of things. Finally, we are religious, and our entire natiu-e works together to construct the religious ideal. The intellect brings its ideal; and the conscience brings its ideal ; and the affections bring their ideal ; and these, together with whatever other thought of per- fection we may have, are united into the thought of the one Perfect Being, the ideal of ideals, the supreme and complete, to whom heart, will, conscience, and intellect alike may come and say, " Thy kingdom come ; thy will be done." Here, as in the previous cases, we do not ignore the facts which make against the view ; but we set them aside as things to be ex- plained, yet which must not in any way be allowed to weaken our faith. 24 INTRODUCTION All of these ideals are, primarily, alike subjective. They are produced, indeed, under the stress of experi- ence, but they are not transcripts of any possible ex- perience. That transparent universe of the reason is as purely a mental product as that righteous universe of the conscience, or as the supreme perfection of religion. In each of these cases the mind appears with its subjective ideals, and demands that reality shall recognize them ; and in all aUke reality recog- nizes them only imperfectly. * To some extent the universe is intelligible. To some extent the power not ourselves makes for righteousness. To some extent God is revealed. But in all these cases a purely logical and objective contemplation of the known facts would leave us in great uncertainty. The assured conviction we have rests upon no logical deduction from experience, but upon the optimistic assumption that the mind has a right to itself, and is at home in the universe. The mind will not consent to abandon its nature and resign itself to utter mental and moral confusion. This is, to be sure, an act of pure faith, but it is an act upon which our entire mental life depends. A purely speculative knowledge of reality, which shall be strictly deductive and free from assumption, is impossible. This result will not at once commend itself to the rationalizer, whether religious or irreligious. The religious rationalizer will see in it an attempt to found religion on something less and lower than reason, which he views as a degradation of rehgion. The irreligious rationalizer will see in it an attempt to palm off religion on an illogical basis of feeling, in- LOGICAL METHOD 25 stead of the sure foundation of reason ; and he may even be moved to write an essay on the crime of easy belief, in which he will deal most condignly with the iniquity of believing anything that is not proved. Neither party very clearly conceives what is meant by reason, but both tend to hmit it to formal ratiocination of the syllogistic type. For their sake, therefore, we put the matter already given in a dif- ferent form. The test of formal truth and error is the law of contradiction. Propositions of which the mind can conceive the contradiction are not founded in the nature of the logical understanding. The test of concrete truth and error is practical absurdity. Solipsism involves no contradiction and is easily conceivable, so far as logic goes. The irrationality and uninterpreta- bility and badness of nature are by no means difficult conceptions. The absurdity that emerges is practical, rather than speculative. Life is crippled. Thought has no object, action no aim. There is a practical contradiction of our nature and interests, but there is no formal contradiction of the laws of thought. The test is aesthetic, ethical, practical, teleological, not theoretical. The argument in such cases consists entirely in analyzing and setting forth the feelings and interests involved, and in pointing out the aesthetic and practical bearings of the question. Such argu- ment has cogency only for one who has the appropriate sentiments and interests. And when persons who do not understand this matter nevertheless attempt to deal with it, they are apt to estimate their own argu- ments very highly, calling them proofs and demon- strations, without ever suspecting that the reasoning 26 INTRODUCTION gets all its force from something deeper than itself. Meanwhile an opponent, with a different set of inter- ests, finds no force in it whatever, and rejects it as a begging of the question. We must, then, keep these two tests of truth distinct, if we would understand the procedure of the living mind. Of course if we sum up all the interests and intuitions of the soul in the term "reason," we may make reason cover the whole field of conviction and insight ; but reason as the faculty of inference through argument is second and not first ; for it presupposes premises. But is not this equivalent to saying that we believe things because we wish to, and can there be any greater logical iniquity than this ? In reply we may say that private prejudices, whims, and desires can never be any proper ground for belief, but the great catholic interests and tendencies of the race may well be a good ground for belief ; for these reveal the essential structure and needs of the mind, and have all the logical significance of any great cos- mic product. They are made for us rather than by us, and they cannot be discredited without involving our whole system of knowledge in disaster. Any evolutionary doctrine of knowledge must find deep significance in the great organized interests, emotions, and beliefs of humanity. They are a product for which the power not ourselves is far more responsible than we are. Of course in any theistic scheme their teleological nature is manifest . For we must remember that these feelings and beliefs are only to a slight extent the product of reflective logical processes ; they are rather expressions of life and history and all the complex interactions of men with nature and with LOGICAL METHOD 27 one another. They are growths rather than deduc- tions. They are lines of least resistance along which life moves ; and as thus viewed they belong to the nature of things as much as the law of gravitation itself. They are the principles by which men live and without which men cannot live their best life. There is no surer test of reality than this. We can object to it only as we assume that the sensuously presentable alone is real ; and this view is even in- telligible only because it is false. All hope of deduction and logical demonstration, then, must be given up ; all that thought, scientific or religious, can hope to do is to interpret experience. It seeks to explain or clarify or systematize the matter given in experience. But this matter itself has to be taken for granted. It is not to be deduced, but accepted. Without it the mind is a vacuum. All science that understands itself assumes the truth of experience, and then seeks to interpret it. So all religious thought that understands itself knows that its only function is not to demonstrate abstract the- orems, but to interpret man's religious experience. It has not to produce the experience but to under- stand it and trace its implications. And in both cases our final trust in the results reached rests on the mind's basal faith in the essential truthfulness of life and reality. Neither has any superiority in logic over the other. Thus we see that all our thinking rests on a teleo- logical foundation. The mind is not driven by any compulsion of objective facts, biit rather by the sub- jective necessity of self-realization and self-preserva- tion. We need to bear this fact in mind if we would 28 INTRODUCTION escape the illusions of rigor and vigor, and also that naive dogmatism of naturalistic thinking which crudely fancies that science has a speculative foundation apart from all subjective interests, and one quite superior to that of religion. Reflection, however, shows that the teleology of self-realization and self-preservation is immanent in our entire system of thought; and the history of thought shows the same fact. The fundamental interests of the mind have always, sooner or later, vindicated themselves and secured recognition. From the beginning, the philosophic skeptics have raged and have imagined many bright and more vain things ; but the burden of their cry has always been, " You cannot prove that you have a right to do what you are doing." But this barren doubt has been ignored, practically by common sense, and theoreti- cally by earnest thinkers, who, having once admitted that it is always abstractly possible, and having seen that it is eternally empty, imitate priest and Levite, and pass by on the other side. The mind is sure to conceive the universe so as to provide for its own interests. So long as any fundamental interest is overlooked or ignored, there can be no peace. Some- times the intellect has been too hasty, and has satis- fied itself with simple and compendious explanations, which left no place for heart and conscience, and ran off into dry and barren atheisms and materialisms. But before long the rising tides of life and feeling compelled it to try again. On the other hand, religion has often made the mistake of denying intellect and conscience their full rights ; and forthwith they began their crusade for recognition. Conscience alone has LOGICAL METHOD 29 proved a sturdy disturber in theological systems ; and one great source and spring of theological progress has been the need of finding a conception of God which the moral nature could accept. The necessity of moralizing theology has produced vast changes in that field ; and the end is not yet. And in all fields, as the inner life has grown more complex in manifestation and richer in content, the system of conceptions has progressed to correspond. It is by this contact with life and reality that thought grows, and not by a barren logic-chopping or verbal haggling about proof. Thus science, ethics, and religion grow ; and the mind, in its increasing sense of self-possession and of har- mony with the reality of things, becomes more and more indifferent to the objections of the skeptic, and works with ever growing faith to build up the temple of science, of conscience, and of God. 'What,then, of skepticism? Nothing. Specific doubt founded on specific reasons is always respectable, being but a case of rational criticism ; but any other kind of skepticism must be left to itself. So far as it is founded on the method of rigor and vigor, it results from an ignorance of human conditions ; so far as it rests on the abstract possibility of doubting without reasons, it is forever possible and forever irrational. It appeals from reason and life rather than to them ; and there is no court left in which the appeal can be tried. Such skepticism may do damage to individuals who are mentally debilitated, but in the develop- ment of the race it is of no importance. Skepticism of this type must not be flattered by being too much noticed, but should be left to the sobering influence of real experience. Finally, universal skepticism is 30 INTRODUCTION no skepticism ; for, being impartially distributed over all our faculties, it leaves everything where it was before ; and by discrediting everything it practically discredits nothing. Such skepticism has only academic or polemic existence; it is meaningless in practice. Academic doubt is always possible about the uni- formity of nature or the existence of our neighbors. Religious doubt based on similar principles ought not to have any more influence. It is, too, a strategic error for the theist to attempt to solve all the puzzles of epistemology and metaphysics. Owiag to the brevity of life, and for other equally good reasons, the theist may well begin with the faith in the trustworthiness of our faculties which is common to all investigators. It is manifest that all we can do in this or any other field which lies beyond the senses is to inquire how we must think in the case. And this can be decided only by analyzing and reflecting upon our experience. If in this way we come to some clear indications of reason, we shall have the only possible warrant for conviction. As just said, general doubts about the competency of reason and the validity of knowledge have no prac- tical influence, except with persons who are satisfied with pretexts. The only dangerous doubt is that arisiag from discrediting the higher nature in the interest of the lower ; but doubt in general, which is always formally possible, is harmless. Function of Logic To adjust ourselves to the universe, and the uni- verse to ourselves, so that each shall correspond to FUNCTION OF LOGIC 31 the other, we have said, is the implicit aim of mental development; and the law that the mind implicitly follows is this : Whatever our total natmre calls for may be assumed as real in default of positive dis- proof. This gives rise, we have seen, to a variety of practical postulates, which are born of life and not of speculation. What, now, is the function of logic with regard to these postulates ? Plainly not to prove them, but to bring them and their implications out into clear consciousness, and to keep them from losing then- way. The function is not constitutive but regulative. These postulates themselves are not primarily known as such, but exist rather as implicit tendencies than as clearly defined principles. In this state they readily miss their proper aim. Thus the scientific or cognitive consciousness is a comparatively recent de- velopment ; and its implications are very imperfectly understood. What is involved in the assumed possi- bility of objectively valid knowledge is a question rarely asked, and still more rarely answered. Hence, by the grace of ignorance, many a theory lives along in good and regular speculative standing which, if understood, would be seen to destroy knowledge altogether. The farce in such cases is as if one should regard himself as the only existence, and should insist on proving it to his neighbors. The ethical consciousness, in like manner, is rarely in full possession of itself, and consequently many ethical theories acquire currency, which, if developed into their consequences, would prove fatal to all ethics. The religious nature also is developed into self-posses- sion only by a long mental labor and experience 32 INTRODUCTION extending over centuries. Left to itself it may fail utterly of comprehending its own implications, and may even lose itself in irreligious assumptions. In every field of thought, then, there is need of a critical procedure which shall aim to secure consistency in the development of our postulates, and to adjust their mutual relations. The justification of life must come from life itself, but the formulation of life is a matter for logic. Hence, if we assume a rational and righteous universe, we must first know what we mean, and what is implied; and we must make no assumptions incompatible therewith. In particular, such a critical procedure is needed to restrain the insolence and fanaticism of the understanding itself. This faculty, unless chastened by criticism, tends to become hasty, impatient, and overbearing. It dislikes to leave questions open, and often gets through too soon. If it makes the motions of explanation, it ignores the fact that sometimes there is no real prog- ress. When the virtue of mental integrity is not strongly developed, it will even ignore or distort facts in order to have a theory. In this way rationalism has become a synonym for all that is most superficial and purblind in speculation. Here, then, is a field and most important function for logic ; and here logic has its inalienable rights. And in this process of inner development, adjustment, and rectification, logic is equally the servant of cognition, of ethics, and of religion; while all alike are fundamentally the out- growths and expressions of our subjective needs and tendencies as evoked by our total experience. In all alike humanity is realizing and expressing itself. It would, then, be a complete misimderstanding of FUNCTION OP LOGIC 33 our aim to suppose that we are engaging in a polemic against logic and metaphysics. That they are not. positively sufficient to give us the principles of prac- tical life is clear, but they do not forbid us to make practical postulates, provided we recognize them ia their practical character, and do not proclaim them as demonstrated. But nothing can warrant us in con- tradicting logic and metaphysics, and no such contra- diction can escape final destruction. The lack of proof may be atoned for by practical necessity, but disproof can never be ignored or set aside by any sen- timent. Such a difficulty arises in the field of the logical understanding, and there only can it be met. The failure to distinguish the lack of proof from dis- proof has led to many unwise utterances on the part of some religious teachers. They have proclaimed an independence of both logic and metaphysics, and a complete indifference to their conclusions. Sometimes they have even proclaimed a contradiction between speculation and religion, apparently to show the strength of their own faith. Such a view must lead either to complete speculative skepticism, or to a civil war among the faculties of the soul; and in either case the result would not be religiously desirable. To ward ofE this misunderstanding the following dis- tinction is useful. A mental inventory reveals several classes of propositions : some which we must believe, some which we must not believe, and some which we may believe or assume. The first two classes rest upon the essential structure of intelligence ; and what- ever conflicts with them will, sooner or later, be aban- doned. The third class belongs to the realm of practice and probability, where most of what is valuable in life 34 INTRODUCTION and conduct lies. It is only in this class that our interests or desires can have a vote, or that the " will to believe " has a permissible function. In most prac- tical matters a purely logical contemplation would leave us in uncertainty, and the will to believe, be- cause of the necessity of doing something, comes in to overturn the equilibrium and precipitate a conclu- sion. But such beliefs must never be spoken of as proved ; they are of the nature of choices. They rep- resent the man's assumptions, or postulates, or practi- cal platform, or the things for which he stands. Thus the belief becomes personal and moral. And logic never objects to beliefs of this sort, provided they are not set forth as demonstrations, and are seen in then- practical characters as personal decisions and moral ventures. Let us further admit, or rather afl&rm, that the necessity of passing over difficulties, and taking so much for granted, is not the final cognitive ideal. That ideal no doubt involves the speculative solution of all problems, so that our entire thought system may be perfectly transparent to intelligence. But this ideal is unattainable at present, owing to our limita- tions. In every department our knowledge is patch- work, and rests on assumption. And, since this is so, it is well to recognize it, in order that we may not delude ourselves with a false show of logical rigor, or do injustice to the demands of practical life. We have made this long digression on method, of set purpose, because many of our difficulties arise from a false method. Persons untrained in criticism never suspect that logic depends on experience for its prem- FUNCTION OF LOGIC 35 ises in concrete matter, that experience stands in its own right, and that the premises are often simply the vital instincts of the mind thrown into propositional form. Hence such persons have a pathetic faith in formal reasoning, and in rigor and vigor in general. And when this method is applied to religious matter, the absence of demonstration at once appears ; and this is supposed to prohibit faith. It was, therefore, not only worth while, but even pedagogically neces- sary, to point out the inapplicability of this method to any concrete matter. It is as fatal to science as to religion. Any method to be obUgatory must be one we can apply. In the concrete realm we can deduce noth- ing, we can only take our experience as a datum, at once indeducible and undeniable, and seek to interpret it for our own rational peace and satisfaction. From this point of view the problem has a new aspect. We have no longer to seek for an impossible demonstra- tion, but only for a rational interpretation. These facts in the natural history of belief must be borne in mind if we would understand our mental procedure and development. They explain how it is that we have many beliefs which are not held because we have proved them, but which we try to prove because we hold them, and which we insist on hold- ing whether we can prove them or not. Such a fact is a terrible scandal to the disciple of rigor and vigor, but it is a self-evident result of the form of human development and of the way in which beliefs grow. The same facts further explain the barrenness of purely logical criticism. Faiths that are rooted in life were not given by logic, and logic cannot take them away. Further, these facts throw light on the 36 INTRODUCTION peculiar variations of belief to which all are subject. Since the roots of belief often lie in the sublogical realm of emotion, sentiment, aspiration, our convic- tion will vary as the tides of life and feeling rise and fall. Since the belief expresses the life, it must vary with it. Finally, these facts explain the peculiar moral quality that attaches to certain beliefs. It would be quite absurd to hold one responsible for belief, if it were always the passionless conclusion of a syllogism. But some beliefs express the believer himself, what he loves, what he stands for, what he desires to be. Such beliefs have personal and moral quality. Further, it is plain that all thought of strict demonstration must be given up. Demonstration is necessarily confined to the subjective and logical relations of ideas, and can never attach to reality without some element of assumption. But this is as true for physical science as it is for religion. And, in any case, there is no such thing as an objective and self-sufl&cient demonstration. Truth, as such, is not dependent on demonstration, but exists eternally in its own right. Demonstration is only a makeshift for helping ignorance to insight. It is a stimulus to the mind of the learner to think in certain ways which shall lead him, at last, to see the truth pro- posed. But such demonstration is conditioned, not only by the nature of the stimulus, but also and especially by the development of the mind to which it is addressed. And when we come to an argument in which the whole nature is addressed, the argument must seem weak or strong according as the nature is feebly, or fully, developed. The moral argument for FUNCTION OF LOGIC 37 theism cannot seem strong to one without a con- science. The argument from cognitive interests will be empty when there is no cognitive iaterest. Inter- pretations of experience must seem empty or baseless when there is no experience. Little souls find very little that calls for explanation or that excites sur- prise; and they are satisfied with a correspondingly small view of life and existence. In such a case we cannot hope for universal agreement. We can only proclaim the faith that is in us, and the reasons for it, in the hope that reality may not utterly reject it, and that the faith in question may not be without some response in other minds and hearts. Faith and unfaith alike can do no more; and the survival of the fittest must decide between them. This renunciation of demonstration has been dis- tasteful to many, but needlessly so. In any case it has to be made. We cannot make an argument a demon- stration by calling it such ; and, besides, the force of an argument in no way depends on its name, but on its logic. But the chief ground of trouble seems to lie in a psychological oversight. If a proposition is not demonstrated, then it is at best only probable, and, if probable, then uncertain. Hence, to renounce demonstration is to hand the subject over to uncer- tainty, and who can live on uncertainties ? The next thing is to call God a " perhaps," and the shortcom- ings of natural theology stand revealed. This is rigor and vigor again. Such utterances tacitly as- sume that belief is always the product of logic. But life abounds in practical certainties for which no very cogent reasons can be given, but which are neverthe- less the foundation of daily life. Our practical trust 38 ISTTRODUCTION in the uniformity of nature, in one another, in the affection of friends, in the senses, etc., are examples. Numberless logical objections could be raised which reduce All of these to matters of probability ; but none of these things move us. The things which we hold, or rather which hold us, with deepest conviction are not the certainties of logic, but of life. Theistic discussion has been largely confined to the one question of the diviue intelligence. The narrow- ness of such a view and its sure failure to reach a properly religious conception are already apparent. This limitation of the argument has several grounds : First, the question of intelligence is basal, and everything else stands or falls with it. Hence, the question between theism and atheism has been gen- erally conceived as a question between intelligence and non-intelligence as the ground of the universe. Secondly, this question can be debated largely on the basis of objective facts. It seems, therefore, to involve fewer subjective elements, such as appeals to conscience and feeling, and hence it furnishes more common ground for the disputants than the other arguments. Thirdly, the argument has seemed religiously ade- quate, because the theist has generally had the Chris- tian conception of God in his mind ; and hence when some degree of skill and contrivance was shown in the world about us, this conception, together with the ideal tendency of the soul, at once came in to expand this poor result into the ideal religious form. Thus, it is no uncommon thing to find fervid theistic writers claiming that the eye of a fly proves the existence of TRADITIONAL ERRORS 39 God. Of course, all it would prove in any case would be the existence of a fly-maker ; and this certainly is not logically coincident with the idea of God. Such writers confound the illustration of a faith they already possess with its adequate demonstration. But, in spite of the previous strictures, most of our time will be devoted to discussing the question of intelligence versus non-intelligence. The idea of God may be treated from a double standpoint, meta- physical and religious. In the former, God appears as the principle of knowing and explanation. In the latter, he is the implication of the religious conscious- ness, or that without which that consciousness would fall into discord with itself. The former view does' not attain to any distinctly religious conception, but it furnishes elements which must enter into every religious conception. Hence, in any study of the subject, it can never be needless, though it may be incomplete. Opposing errors are traditional here. On the one hand, mere reasoning has been made all- sufficient, and a very dry and barren rationalism has been the result. On the other hand, feeling has been made supreme, and the just claims of intellect have been ignored. This has often gone to the extent of basing religion on speculative skepticism. But though the lion and the lamb have been induced to lie to- gether for a while, it has always ended in the lion's making way with the lamb. On a subject of such importance we cannot have too many allies. It does not weaken the argument from feeling and aspiration to show that the pure intellect also demands and implies God. Our preliminary work will deal chiefly with the intellectual aspects of the question, though 40 INTRODUCTION we reserve the right to appeal to the emotional nature upon occasion. From the side of pure intellect, also, the theistic question can take on two forms. We can seek to show that the order of the world cannot be understood without intelligence as its cause, and that reason itself falls into discord and despair without God. In the former case God appears as a necessary hypothesis for the understanding of the facts ; in the latter case God appears as a necessary implication of the rational life. Of course such an aim implies that the laws of thought are objectively valid ; that over against the subjective necessities of thought are corresponding objective necessities of being ; but this assumption underlies the whole system of objective knowledge, and is not peculiar to theism. The only rational aim must be to show that the mind being as it is, and experience being as it is, the belief in God is a neces- sary implication of both. If this aim should be attained, then every one would have to decide for himself whether to accept his nature with its implica- tions and indications, or to abandon it arbitrarily and capriciously. If, however, any one does choose the part of the irrationalist, his manifest duty is silence. No one has a right to be heard who has renounced the conventions of our common intelligence. Finally, a word of a pedagogical character must be allowed. Owing to certain instinctive prejudices of common sense, theism is often unfairly dealt with. In particular it is often tacitly assumed that matter and force, and with them atheism, have the field, and must be allowed to remain in possession until they are driven off. Thus theism is branded as an hypoth- TRADITIONAL ERRORS 41 esis, and is called upon to prove a negative ; while atheism is supposed to express the fact of experience, and to need no further proof. Hence the failure of theism to demonstrate its position is oddly enough regarded as establishing atheism. Every one ac- quainted with atheistic treatises will recognize that their chief force has been in picking flaws in the theistic argument. There has been comparatively little effort to show any positive sufficiency of atheism to give a rational account of the facts. Such a position is infantile in the extreme ; it properly belongs to the palseontological period of speculation. The nature of reality is a thought prob- lem ; and our thought of reality is the solution of that problem. Whether we think of it as one or many, material or immaterial, the theory is equally speculative in each case ; its value must be decided by its adequacy to the facts. If theism is an hypothe- sis, atheism is no less so. If theism is a theory or speculation, atheism is equally so. The candid mind must seek to judge between them. This can be done only as we put both views alongside of the facts and of each other, and choose the simpler and more rational. No theory can be judged by its ability to make grimaces at opposing views, but only by its own positive adequacy to the facts. The theistic theory, with all its difficulties, must be put alongside of the atheistic theory with all its difficulties. When this is done the theist will have little cause to blush for his credulity, or to be ashamed of his faith. Another common error must be noted. When we come to the deepest questions of thought we always come upon impenetrable mystery. We have to affirm 42 INTRODUCTION facts whose possibility we cannot construe. We have to make admissions which we cannot further deduce nor comprehend. In unclear and untaught minds this is often made a stumbling-block ; and the fancy gets abroad that theism is an especially difficult doctrine. In truth, all science and all thought are full of what has been called limit^notions ; that is, notions which the facts force upon us, and which are perfectly clear from the side of the facts, but which from the farther side are lost in difficulty and mystery. They express an ultimate affirmation along a given line of thought, and can never be grasped from the farther side. When we take them out of their relations, or when we seek to comprehend them without remembering the law of their formation, nothing is easier than to make them seem contradictory or absurd. But theism must not be held responsible for all the difficulties of metaphysics ; and in particular we must be careful in escaping one difficulty that we do not fall into a greater. The notion of an eternal person, an unbegun conscious- ness, is at least no more difficult than the alternative notion of eternal matter and unbegun motion. It is not the mark of a high grade of intelligence to take offense at the difficulties of a given view, and end by adopting another still more obnoxious to criticism. In these matters it is never a question of finding a line of no resistance for thought, but the line of least resistance. Only a very ignorant or very superficial person would dream of finding a line of no resistance. This long introduction seemed necessary to get the problem and the method of treatment clearly before us. Theistic speculation has sufEered greatly in the past TRADITIONAL ERRORS 43 from failiire to understand its own problem, and from having no just conception of philosophic method. In this way it has exposed itself to criticism, partly sound and partly quibbling, and has undertaken im- possible tasks. It is a step forward to see that the question is not one of syllogistic rationalizing alone, but also and more profoundly one of life and hu- manity and its history. We do not purpose then to prove the divine existence, but rather to propose a solution of the problem which the world and life force upon us, or to offer an interpretation of expe- rience in which the soul can rest. We have no expectation of clearing up aU the puzzles of meta- physics. We simply hope to show that without a theistic faith we must stand as dumb and helpless before the deeper questions of thought and life as a Papuan or a Patagonian before an eclipse. CHAPTER I THE UNITY OP THE WORLD-GROUND It cannot be the function of philosophy to produce, or deduce, the idea of God. This idea is slowly de- veloped in the unfolding life of the race. Moreover, men were religious before they became philosophers ; and when philosophy began, religion had the field. But philosophy has the important function of clarify- ing and rectifying the ideas that spring up thus spontaneously in the religious field, and of showing their rational foundation. In this way arise the vari- ous arguments for the existence of God. These have seldom been the source of theistic faith ; they are rather the justifications of a belief already existing. Kant has grouped the leading theistic arguments into three : ontological, cosmological, and physico- theological, and has made each the subject of a special criticism. In this, along with much that is incisive and final, there is also much that is arbitrary and verbal. His discussion, as a whole, is somewhat antiquated, and is conducted throughout on Kantian principles. The argument from design, he holds, fails to reach the full idea of God ; and the notion of a necessary and perfect being upon which the other arguments depend is a subjective ideal of the reason. His criticism rests on two pillars. The first is the traditional prejudice of intellectualism, that demon- 44 THE UNITY OP THE WOKLD-GROUND 45 stration is necessary to belief. In the realm of science, in tlie Kantian sense, as in mathematics, we must have demonstration or nothing. And as there is no apodictic demonstration of theism, it can have no properly scientific standing. At the same time it is an implication of reason and a demand of practical life; and on this account it may be held, not as a speculative, but as a practical truth. Atheism, on the other hand, has no standing whatever, either speculative or practical. The second pillar of Kant's criticism is his general principle that the forms and ideals of the reason have no objective significance. They are valid only in the field of experience, and do not apply to reality. Both of these Kantian claims have been outgrown. Few theists certainly would now expect mathematical strictness of demonstration in matters of theistic faith. Since technical probability is quite compatible with the highest practical certainty, they are not concerned at finding theistic faith, like scientific faith, a matter of probable, rather than of demon- strative, argument. As to the Kantian subjectivity, it has long been evident that Kant himself never thought the subject through. In some sense all knowledge is necessarily subjective and individual. In no way can any mind get outside of itself and be the thing, or grasp the thing, otherwise than through the conceptions which its nature allows it to form. In its psychological origin, then, knowledge is both subjective and indi- vidual. But this fact in no way decides whether the knowledge thus arising as a special experience of the individual may not have validity beyond himself for 46 THE UNITY OP THE WORLD-GROUND other individuals and for the system of objects. This question is purely one of fact, and can be answered only by consulting experience. A thorough- going subjectivity would shut us up in solipsistic individualism, and deny the world of persons and objects together, except as a set of individual fancies or dreams. To this extreme no one would venture to go. It follows that in spite of ourselves we are compelled to attribute objective validity or univer- sality to some of our thoughts, and that fruitful criti- cism must be restricted to inquiring which of our thoughts are thus valid. How must we think about reality when thought becomes critical and reflective ? This is the only question which thought can profit- ably raise, and this question can be answered only by thought itself. When we have found what the essential utterances of thought are, each one must decide for himself whether to accept them. Kant himself labored under the delusion that a system of extra-mental things in themselves exists to which our faculties are so related, or rather unrelated, that we can never grasp it in its true nature. This fiction later thought has successfully banished by the dis- covery that there are no things except those which thought affirms, and that there is no objectivity in things except their validity for thought itself, that is, for experience. How must we think about things ? Our present answer is that when thought is clear and self- conscious we must think theistically, but in discuss- ing this question regard must be had not merely to logical theory, but also to psychological conditions. Many arguments which may be logically good are not THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 47 adjusted to the pedagogical situation. And since our aim must be to produce conviction, it is important, first, to find some admitted fact or principle as a point of departure, and, secondly, not to attempt to do too much at once. Such a point is not fiurnished by either the ontological or the design argument. The ontological argument in its common form rests on the notion of the perfect being. The idea of the perfect necessarily includes the idea of existence, and would be a contradiction without it. Hence it has been concluded that the perfect exists. There is not a shadow of cogency in this reasoning. It only points out that the idea of the perfect must include the idea of existence; but there is nothing to show that the self-consistent idea represents an objective reality. Hence Descartes sought to supplement the argument by showing that only the perfect can be the source of the idea; but this did not much help the matter. In fact, the argument is nothing but the expression of the sesthetic and ethical con^'iction that the true, the beautiful, and the good, which alone have value in the universe, cannot be foreign to the universe. The mind will not consent to abandon its ideals. The ontological argument owes all its force to this immediate faith in the ideal. Its technical expression is due to the desire to give this faith a demonstrative logical form. The result is to weaken rather than strengthen it. This faith, when abstractly stated and logically tested, seems to be not only baseless but even non- existent. We accost it skeptically, and it vanishes like a fading gleam. It reveals itself in its work rather than in any conscious manifestation. But its 48 THE UNITY OF THE WORLD-GROUND work is everywhere manifest. When the cosmo- logical argument has convinced us that a first cause must be affirmed, it is the faith in the perfect ideal which transforms this non-religious, speculative ab- straction into the idea of God. When the design argument has affirmed a contriver of the adaptations revealed in experience, it is the same faith that passes from this not very great result to the idea of the infinite and perfect God. And as we have seen in the Introduction, this faith is the implicit major premise of the soul's life. While not demonstrated or demonstrable by anything, it is really implicit in everything. The teleological or design argument is based upon the purpose-like adaptations that are found, espe- cially in the organic world. This has always been a favorite with the Anglo-Saxon mind ; and Kant men- tions it with great respect. Whatever its logical faults and speculative shortcomings, it is better adapted to convince common sense than the more speculative arguments. Still, when taken strictly, it is open to so many critical objections, and the affirmed design in nature is so much in dispute, especially in these days of evolution, that, in the present state of thought, it does not offer the best starting point for the discussion. Thus the great mass of natural products look more like effects than purposes. In the complex disposition of natural agents, of land and water, of mountain and plain, etc., there may be purpose ; but to observation these things seem to be simple facts from which certain results follow. Again, in the relation of the organic and the inorganic, there may be purpose ; but the fact THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 49 of observation is that the latter is usable by the former, not that it was made for it. If the intel- ligence of the world-ground were otherwise and else- where demonstrated, there is much in the relation of these two worlds which would illustrate that intel- ligence ; but there is not much that can be used as original proof. It is in the organic world that we find unambiguous marks of adaptation ; yet even here, unfortunately, the most of the ends realized do not seem worth realizing. They have no manifest value or reason, but are just such meaningless things as we should expect if an irrational power were at work. Had not our idea of God been otherwise determined, these things would prove less a help than an em- barrassment. Again, allowing the existence of design in nature, this argument by no means justifies us in affirming a single cause of the world. A polytheistic conception remains possible; and, considering the antitheses of good and evil, of sense and nonsense, in nature, such a view would accord only too well with experience. Christianity has accustomed us to mon- otheism, but in strict logic the design argument, on the basis of experience, would have difficulty in mak- ing it out. The argument seems sufficient because, in its common use, it is not a deduction of the theistie idea, but only an illustration of the theistie faith that we already possess. Neither of these arguments furnishes a satisfactory starting point. The same is true of the cosmological argument in its traditional forms. It speaks a strange language which is not adapted to produce conviction, until translated into the speech of to-day. The aim in this argument is to pass from the cosmos as a con- 50 THE UNITY OF THE WORLD-GROUND tingent and conditioned existence to the affirmation of a necessary and unconditioned existence. The form of the argument has been various. Sometimes the argument has been from motion to an unmoved prime mover ; sometimes from secondary causes to an uncaused first cause; sometimes from contingent existence to necessary existence, or from dependent existence to independent existence. In its traditional forms the argument is open to many objections. It seems well, then, to abandon the traditional classification of arguments as unedifying in any case ; since the value of an argument depends on its matter and not on its name. Concrete problems may be so abstractly treated that no one exactly knows just what is going on. We purpose, therefore, to work our way into the problem from the standpoint of the thought of to-day ; and instead of seeking to estabhsh the full religious conception of God at once, we con- tent ourselves with the humbler aim of showing that the ground of all reality, or the fundamental reahty, or the world-ground, must be one and not many. In this claim we are in harmony with the great majority of thinkers, both of ancient and modem times. Even theistic and non-theistic thinkers have agreed in rejecting a fundamental pluralism in favor of a basal monism. The most pronounced non- theistic and atheistic schemes of our time label them- selves monism, although not always showing the clearest appreciation of what true monism means and requires. Even Kant, who will not allow any objective validity to knowledge, insists that monism is the deepest demand of the reason. For the en- couragement of timid souls, and because monism has INTERACTION 51 kept bad company at times, we point out that in this discussion it does not mean pantheism or materialism, but the substantial unity of the world-ground. But while there is agreement in the fact, there is much diversity in the modes of reaching it. And here it is that we need to find the best point of departure, and one which will command universal assent. This is found in the postulates of objective cognition. That things form a system, and that this system is one, is the deepest conviction of reflective intelli- gence and the supreme presupposition of organized knowledge. Within this system all things are deter- mined in mutual relations, so that each thing is where and as it is because of its relations to the whole. This system is not revealed in experience but is an implication of cognition. Primarily it is a reflection of the imitary nature of the reason, but analysis shows that it is implicit in any scheme of objective knowledge. The assumption of system clearly appears in such expressions as the world, the universe, the cosmos, the system of things. But while reason is unitary and systematic, sense experience is manifold and pluralistic. Hence arises a need for mediating between the rational demand for imity and the experienced fact of plurality. The current solution of this problem, both for science and common sense, consists in positing a dynamic inter- action among things whereby the many are united into one system, and their logical relations are set in real existence. Without raising any question at present as to the fact of interaction, we proceed to show that such an interacting system is impossible without a coordinat- 52 THE UNITY OF THE WORLD-GROUND ing one. Let our first question be, Wliat is involved in an interaction which will serve the purposes of cognition ? The first implication is that things mutually affect or determine one another. Without this assumption any event would be an absolute and unrelated beginning. The universe would fall asunder into unconnected and uncaused units, and the individual consciousness would be shut up within itself. Again, it implies that all things interact ; for if there were anything out of all relations of causation, it would be for us a figment of the imagination. But interaction at random would not meet the de- mands of cognition. For this we must next add the idea of law and uniformity, or that under the same circumstances the same thing occurs. And this im- plies further a universal adjustment of everything to every other, such that for a given state of one there can be only a given state of the rest fixed both in kind and degree. Without this assumption unlike causes might have like effects, and like causes might have unlike effects, and there could be no thought of theoretical cognition. There must be, then, interaction and law among things ; and these things cannot be and do what they choose, but all must be bound up in a common scheme; that is, there must be system. And in so far as there is sys- tem, everything must be related to every other in an exact and all-embracing adjustment. Reserving the right to interpret interaction among the many as really immanent action in the One, we may say that these postulates command universal assent as the basis of all objective cognition. They INTERACTION 53 are not doubted like the assumption of design, but are implied in the very structure of knowledge. The specific nature of the laws and the system is, indeed, a problem for solution ; but the existence of rational law and system is implicitly assumed. Our starting point, then, is the conception of things interacting according to law, and forming an intelli- gible system. The advantage, however, lies in its general acceptance, and not in its being speculatively demonstrated. Critically considered, the universe, or nature, as system is an ideal of the cognitive nature, as God is an ideal of the rehgious nature, while nei- ther admits of proper demonstration. But for one reason or another, cognitive ideals are more easily ac- cepted than religious ideals, and hence we start with the former, and proceed to develop their implications. Our first question concerned the implications of interaction ; the second concerns its possibility. How is a unitary system of interacting members possible ? This is the problem. Only through a unitary being which posits and maintains them in their mutual relations. This is the solution. We borrow from metaphysics an outline of the argument. Spontaneous thought posits all its objects as real, and finds no reason for not thinking them mutually independent. They all seem to exist together in space, and no one seems to imply any other. In this stage of thought it is easy to believe that things are mutually indifferent and independent, so that any one would continue to exist if all the rest should fall away. Then the attempt is made to bring these mutually indifferent things together by having them act upon one another. THEISM — 5 54 THE UNITY OF THE WOKLD-GROUND The attempts to explain interaction are manifold, but they all fail so long as the things are left inde- pendent. Most of the attempts, indeed, are only figures of speech or products of the imagination. For instance, a thing is said to transfer its state or condi- tion to the thing acted upon ; and this transference is the act. Here action is conceived as a thing which may be passed along from one thing to another. This fancy meets at once the fatal objection that states or conditions are adjectival in their nature and cannot exist apart from a subject. The facts which have led to this notion of transferred conditions are chiefly those of transmitted heat and motion ; but even here the phrase is only an inexact description of the fact, for what is really given is propagation rather than transmission. The necessarily adjectival nature of states, qualities, conditions, vacates all notions of transference. A similar verbal explanation is found in the notion of a passing influence which, by passing, afEects the object. This is open to the same objections as the preceding view. If by influence we mean only an effect, we have simply renamed the problem ; and if we mean anything more, we make the influence into a sort of thing, thus increasing our difficulties with- out gaining any insight. For now we must tell what this new thing which passes between things is, in what it differs from the other things, what the rela- tion of the passing thing is to the things between which it passes, where the acting thing gets the store of things it emits, and how the passing thing could do any more than the thing from which it comes. An attempt to answer those questions will convince INTERACTION 55 one of the purely verbal character of this explanation. Its origin in the imagination is manifest. Things are conceived as separated in space, and the imagina- tion plays between them and calls this interaction. Akin to this view is that current among physi- cists, according to which forces play between things and produce effects. But this view also is a device of the imagination, and solves nothing. Forces are only abstractions from the activities of things, and are nothing between things or apart from them. If they were things, all the questions asked about the influence would return. If they are not things, then we only rename the problem without solving it. The difficulty of these notions has led some to dispense with force and occult influences altogether, and explain all interaction as the result of impact, as if action at a distance were the great difiiculty. This view limits the problem to the physical field, and is a double failure even there. First, the theory of impact caimot be carried through in physical science ; and secondly, action by impact is no more intelligible between independent things than action at a distance. The separation in space does not make the difficulty, but only enables the imagination to grasp it. But if things be inde- pendent, that is, be what they are without reference to anything else, there is no reason why one thing should in any way be affected by any other. Such beings, if in space, would be as indifferent when in the same point as when separated by the infinite void. There is nothing in spatial contact to explain the results of impact, unless there be a deeper meta- physical relation between the bodies, which generates 56 THE UNITY OF THE WORLD-GROUND repulsion between them. For reason, the difficulty is not to act across empty space but to act across the separateness of mutually independent individuals ; and this difficulty would remain if there were no spatial world whatever, but only a society of personal spirits. Possibly some reader, unpracticed in speculation, may be weary and impatient by this time, and say that we know that there is interaction, whatever puzzles may be raised about it. In that case we should have to remind him, first, that interaction is really no fact of experience. The fact of observation is simply concomitant variation among things. When A changes, B, C, etc., change in definite order and de- gree. This order of reciprocal change exhausts the fact of observation and of science itself. To explaia this fact we posit forces, but this is an addition to the fact, not the fact itself. Moreover, the forces of djTiamical reasoning are purely equational relations, and have nothing causal in them. We should have next to remind the objector that the certainty that causality is in play by no means decides the form under which it is to be thought. Without doubt, the system of reciprocal changes among things demands a causal explanation, but this does not decide that the causality is to be parceled out among many mutually independent things. It may be that this view is essentially impossible, and that we shall have to replace it by another. And this is the case. A necessary interaction of mutually independent things is a contradiction. We have before pointed out the exact and detailed adjust- ment of every member of an interacting system so INTERACTION 57 far as interacting. Such things have not their prop- erties or powers absolutely and in themselves, but only in their relations or as members of the system. The causality of each is relative to the causality of all. The law for the activity of any one must be given in terms of the activities of all the rest. But this implies that the being of each is relative to the being of all, for the being itself is implicated in the activity. Hence, in addition to saying that things do what they do because other things do what they do, we must say that things are what they are because other things are what they are. Both the being and the activity are imphcated in the relation ; and it would be impossible to define the being except in terms of the relation. Such being is necessarily rela- tive. It does not contain the grounds of its deter- mination in itself alone, but also in others. And this must be the case with all things which are included in a scheme of necessary interaction. Each is a function of all and all are functions of each, as in an algebraic equation. Mutually independent quantities are equally absurd in both cases. Thus we see the contradiction in the notion of the necessary interaction of mutually independent things. The notion of interaction imphes that a thing is de- termined by others, and hence that it cannot be all that it is apart from all others. If all its activities and properties are conditioned, it implies that the thing cannot exist at all out of its relations. Its existence is involved in its relations, and would van- ish with them. The notion of independence, on the other hand, implies that the thing is not determined by others, but has the ground of all its determinations 58 THE UNITY OF THE WORLD-GROUND in itself. These two notions are distinct contradic- tions. No passage of influences or forces will avail to bridge the gulf as long as the things are regarded as iadependent. The farthest we could possibly go iu affirming their independence would be to maintain their mutual independence, while they all depend on a higher reality, which is the ground both of their existence and of their -harmonious coordination. This is the view of Leibnitz as expressed in his monadology and preestablished harmony ; and this view rejects both fundamental pluralism and the reality of inter- action. And, on the other hand, if we assume that things are really comprised in an order of interaction or reciprocal determination, we cannot allow that they are absolutely or mutually independent. The popular view, in which things exist in a hard and fast self- identity and self-sufficiency, must be given up. Such things exist only in relation to one another withia the system. They are relative and dependent exist- ences. What then is independent? A dependent which depends on nothing is a contradiction; and equally so is an independent made up of a sum of dependents. If A, B, C, D are severally depend- ent, then A + B + C+ D are likewise dependent. There is nothing in the sign of addition which can turn dependence into independence. A first thought would likely be that the system itself is independent. Though the members depend on each other within the system, the system itself de- pends on nothing. But this is only a logical illusion so long as A, B, C, D are supposed to be the only substantial existences. In that case the system would INTERACTION 59 be only a sum or conceptual product, and would be ontologically nothing. And such it would remain unless we reversed the order, and, instead of trying to construct the system from things as true units of being, rather constructed things from the system as their source and ground. In that case the system would be the true ontological fact, and things would be only its dependent products or implications. The self-centered, the true ontological fact would be the system ; and all else would depend upon it. But sys- tem is not a good term for this conception. The idea is that of a basal reality which only is truly self- existent, and in and through which all other things have their being. The reciprocal and concomitant changes in what we call things are the fact of experience. The explanation of these changes is a speculative problem whose solution is not immediately obvious. But one thing is clear. We cannot explain them by the things alone. In order to escape the contradiction involved in the necessary interaction of mutually independent things, and also that involved in reach- ing an independent beiag by summing up dependent things, we must transcend the realm of the relative and dependent, and affirm a fundamental reality which is absolute and independent, and in the unity of whose existence the possibility of what we call interaction finds its ultimate explanation. The inter- action of the many is possible only through the unity of an all-embracing One, which either coor- dinates and mediates their interaction, or of which they are in some sense phases or modifications. Thus the pluralism of spontaneous thought is 60 THE UNITY OF THE WORLD-GROUND replaced by a fundamental monism ; and the popular conception of interaction is transformed. The de- mand for a causal ground for the mutual changes of things is entirely justified, but the conception which finds that ground in interaction, or the transitive causality of independent things, is untenable. We replace the transitive causality playing between things by an immanent causality in an all-embracing, unitary being. Of the general relation of the many to the basal One, two conceptions are possible. We may think of the many as dependent on the One, which, however, is distinct from them, and coordinates them, and medi- ates their reciprocal relations or interaction. The real ground of their coordination is not anything which the many themselves do, but rather that which is done for them and with them by the coordinating One. They do not reciprocally determine, they are reciprocally determined. Or we may think of them, not as dependent on something outside of them, but on some one being in them, which is their proper reality, and of which they are in some sense but phases or modifications. Things in the common use of the term would be only hjrpostasized phenomena, and would have only such thinghood as belongs to grammatical substantives. The decision between these two views must be left for future study ; but both alike deny the self-sufficiency of things and affirm a unitary world-ground. This being, as the foundation of all existence, we call the basal or fundamental reality. As self-suffi- cient, or having the ground of its determinations in itself, we call it absolute and independent. As not INTERACTION 61 limited by anything beyond itself, we call it infinite. As the explanation of the world, we call it the world- ground. These terms are not to be taken in a dictionary sense, but. always with regard to the meaning they are chosen to express. The infinite is not the all, but the independent ground of the finite. The absolute does not exclude all relation, but only all restrictive relations. Relations which are restric- tions imposed from without contradict absoluteness, but relations freely posited and maintained by the absolute do not. The argument thus outlined is open to many scru- ples, but to no valid objection. The scruples are largely born of our general bondage to the senses. For one who supposes that the senses give immediate and final metaphysical insight, the argument will have no force. But philosophy is not the affair of such a person. In other and more hopeful cases, when we become familiar with the terms and their meaning, and also with the inner structure of reason, we shall see that the mind can rest in no other con- clusion. The idealist also may object that no true unity can be found in this way, that true unity is possible only in thought and through thought, and that these dynamic considerations as they stand do not lead us to unity. With this we largely agree. Metaphysics shows that ontological unity is possible only on the personal plane, and that no regressive thought according to the law of the sufficient reason will ever pass from plurality to unity. But while we admit this, we still maintain that our argument is good so far as it goes. We have shown the necessity of affirming unity, but we have not decided the form 62 THE UNITY OF THE WORLD-GROUND under which the imity must be thought. Our argu- ment has been doubly hypothetical. If there be things, and if there be interaction, we argued, we cannot think the thought through on a pluralistic basis. This we still maintain ; but we hope to make the modifications necessitated by a more idealistic type of thought when the time comes. Not everything can be said at once ; and there are pedagogical con- siderations that may not be ignored. We replace, then, the pluralism of spontaneous thought by a basal monism. Of course this view does not remove all difficulties, nor answer all ques- tions. On the contrary, it leaves the mystery of being as dark and opaque as ever. Its only value lies in giving expression to the mind's demand for ultimate unity, and ia removing the contradiction that lies in the assumption of interaction between independent things. But we cannot pretend to pic- ture to ourselves the relations of the infinite and the finite, nor to construe the possibility of the finite. We come here to a necessity that meets us every- where when we touch the frontiers of knowledge — namely, the necessity of admitting facts which, while they must be recognized and admitted, cannot be deduced or comprehended. Of the nature of the infinite as yet we know only that it is one, and metaphysics compels us to regard it also as active. But this is so far from being the complete idea of God that both atheism and panthe- ism might accept it. Still we have made some progress. We have reached a point to which the design argument alone could not bring us. It is plain that polytheism is untenable ; and that, if any INTERACTION 63 kind of theism is to be aflfirmed, it must be monothe- ism. We have also made some provision for the unity of nature, which has become an article of sci- entific and speculative faith without any very satis- factory exhibition of its speculative warrant. That warrant is found in the substantial unity of the ground of nature. We next attempt some fm-ther determinations of our thought of this fundamental being. We hope at least to be allowed, if not compelled, to identify the One of speculation with the God of religion. CHAPTER II THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT Many questions might fitly be raised at this point, but we postpone them for the central question of theism — the intelligence of the world-ground. Our present aim is to show that there can be no rational interpretation of experience except on a theistic basis. We promise, however, a pair of principles from meta- physics : — 1. This world-ground, by its independent position, is the source of the finite and of all its determina- tions. Whether we view it as bliud or seeing, ne- cessitated or free, none the less must we hold that no finite thing has any ground of existence in itself, but that it owes its existence, nature, and history entirely to the demands which the world-ground makes upon it. If not in the plan, then in the nature of this fundamental reality, we must seek the condition- ing ground of things. 2. This world-ground is not to be regarded as stuff or raw material, but as cause or agent. It is not something out of which the world is made, but the agent by which the world is produced. Metaphysics finds the essential meaning of substantiality not in an inert and resting being, but in active causality. Causality is the essence of substantiality. 64 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT 65 The arguments for intelligence in the world-ground fall into two great classes, inductive and speculative. The former infer intelligence from its indications in the order of the world, in the combinations of natural processes apparently for ends, and in the existence of the various forms of finite intelligence. The latter argue from the structure of reason itself, from the nature and implications of knowledge, and from the results of metaphysical criticism. We have, then, the inductive argument and the epistemological and metaphysical argument. We consider them separately. The inductive argument is the favorite with popular thought ; indeed, popular thought is inaccess- ible to any other. Arguments drawn from epistemol- ogy and metaphysics are highly abstract and demand some measure of training and reflective power for their comprehension. Hence, while they may be the most satisfactory of all from a logical standpoint, they will never be popular. The leading difficulties of popular thought lie ia the inductive field, and concern the interpretation of what is there found. In the conviction that these difiiculties are largely due to misunderstandiag, we begin with the induc- tive argument and reserve the more metaphysical considerations for later discussion. Pedagogically, this is more effective than a more abstract and specu- lative treatment. In popular thought the leading motive in theistic argument is the desire for explanation. The orderly movement of the world, the purpose-like products in nature, the existence of finite intelligence, present themselves as facts to be explained ; and the conclu- 66 THE WOKLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT sion is drawn that only intelligence in the world- ground will explain them. Or perhaps the opposite conclusion is drawn, that the mechanism and forces of nature serve to explain them, and that we need not go behind or beyond them. But in either case the thought moves within the sphere of explanation. And here we borrow from logic the insight that the human mind has only two principles of causal explanation, mechanism and intelligence. Verbal phrases can be constructed to represent other pria- ciples, but there is no corresponding thought. Later reflection may convince us that mechanism can never really explain anything; but for the present we accept the two types of explanation, that by neces- sary mechanical agency which is driven from behind, and that by intelligence which foresees the future and freely realizes its purposes. In the former case we explain the fact by exhibiting it as the necessary resultant of its antecedents ; in the latter we explain it by viewing it as the work of intelligence. The question then becomes. Which of these two principles offers the better ultimate explanation of the world and life, man being included ? The inductive argument appeals to certain prom- inent facts as the warrant for a theistic conclusion. These are the system of order, the purpose-like products that abound in nature, and the existence of finite intelligence. Each of these, it is held, necessitates the affirmation of intelligence in the world-ground as its only sufficient explanation. To- gether they constitute a cumulative argument which cannot be resisted. We pass to the exposition. THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER 67 The Aegtjment from Oeder This argument is drawn chiefly from the physical system, for it is there we find the most obvious and impressive illustrations of the changeless laws of the world. To many this argument is the supreme one. The facts of design are minute and limited to a rela- tively small field, and are by no means unambiguous even there, but the steadfast ordinances of the world abide unchanged from age to age. Order, then, is the great mark of intelligence, they hold, and the one fact from which its existence may be safely inferred. The fact itself deserves illustration. We shall see hereafter that the knowability of the world implies its orderly, rational, and systematic structure ; here we content ourselves with referring once more to the accurate and all-embracing adjust- ment of each thing to every other invf)lved in a sys- tem of interaction. We have seen that a real system, in order to be anything for us, must be a system of law, so that definite antecedents shall have the same definite consequents, and this in turn demands an exact adjustment or correspondence of each of the interacting members to all the rest. Otherwise any- thing might be followed by everything or by nothing. The numerical exactness of natural processes illus- trates the wonder of this adjustment. The heavens are crystallized mathematics. All the laws of force are numerical. The interchange of energy and chem- ical combination are equally so. Crystals are solid geometry. Many organic products show similar mathematical laws. Indeed, the claim is often made 68 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT that science never reaches its final form until it be- comes mathematical. But simple existence in space does not imply motion in mathematical relations, or existence in mathematical forms. Space is only the formless ground of form, and is quite compatible with the irregular and amorphous. It is equally compat- ible with the absence of numerical law. The truly mathematical is the work of the spirit. Hence the wonder that mathematical principles should be so pervasive, that so many forms and processes in the system represent definite mathematical conceptions, and that they should be so accurately weighed and measured by number. If the cosmos were a resting existence, we might possibly content ourselves by saying that things exist in such relations once for all, and that there is no going behind this fact. But even this is very doubt- ful. For similarity and equality are rational rela- tions which find no explanation apart from intelligence. Accordingly Clerk Maxwell, in his famous "Discourse on Molecules," finds in the equality of the molecules and their properties a proof that they are " manufac- tured articles " which cannot be accounted for by any natural processes. " Each molecule therefore bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the meter of the Archives at Paris or the double royal cubit of the temple of Karnac." But however this may be, the cosmos is no rigid and unchanging thing ; it is, rather, a process accord- ing to intelligible rules, and in this process the rational order is perpetually maintained or restored. The weighing and measuring continually go on. In each chemical change just so much of one element is THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER 69 combined with just so much of another. In each change of place the inten'sities of attraction and repulsion are instantaneously adjusted to correspond. Apart from any question of design, the simple fact of qualitative and quantitative adjustment of all things according to fixed law is a fact of the utmost signifi- cance. The world-ground works at a multitude of points, or in a multitude of things throughout the sys- tem, and works in each with exact reference to its activities in all the rest. The displacement of an atom by a hair's breadth demands a corresponding readjustment in every other within the grip of gravi- tation. But all are in constant movement, and hence readjustment is continuous and instantaneous. The single law of gravitation contains a problem of such dizzy vastness that our minds faint in the attempt to grasp it ; and when the other laws of force are added the complexity defies all understanding. In addition we might refer to the building processes in organic forms, whereby countless structures are constantly produced or maintained, and always with regard to the typical form in question. But there is no need to dwell upon this point. Here, then, is a problem which is a perennial won- der to the thoughtful. The power that fotmds the world, and from which the world perpetually proceeds, fainteth not, neither is weary ; therefore the faithful ordinances of the world stand fast. And for the solution of the problem we have only the two prin- ciples of intelligence and non-intelligence, of self- directing reason and blind necessity. The former is adequate, and is not far-fetched and violent. It as- similates the facts to our own experience, and offers 70 THE WORLD-GKOUND AS INTELLIGENT the only ground of order of which that experience furnishes any suggestion. If we adopt this view, all the facts become luminous and consequent. If we take the other view, then we have to assume a power which produces the intelligible and rational, without being itself intelligent and rational. It works in all thiugs, and in each with exact reference to all, yet without knowing anything of itself or of the rules it follows, or of the order it founds, or of the myriad products, compact of seeming purpose, which it incessantly produces and maintains. If we ask why it does this, we must answer. Because it must. If we ask how we know that it must, the answer must be. By hypothesis. But this reduces to saying that things are as they are because they must be. That is, the problem is abandoned altogether. The facts are referred to an opaque hypothetical necessity, and this turns out, upon inquiry, to be the problem itself in another form. There is no proper explanation except in theism. It IS something of a surprise to find the atheistic explanation of order so empty upon inspection. The reason is found in crude sense metaphysics and corre- sponding logic, which will be more fully discussed later on. Meanwhile we point out two causes which have served to conceal the weakness of the atheistic claim. First, we fancy that we see causes, and especially that we see matter to be a real cause. Spirit, on the other hand, is a purely hypothetical cause, and is assumed only to explain that which the undoubted cause, matter, cannot account for. Hence theism is presented as maintaining a h3rpothetical cause, God, THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER 71 against a real cause, matter ; and as matter is daily found to explain more and more, there is less and less need of God. Here, then, necessity and non-intelli- gence are manifestly united in most effective causa- tion ; and who can set bounds to their possibilities ? This thought was a leading factor in the atheistic renascence of the last generation. The answer must be that it is an echo of an obsolete theory of knowl- edge. We know directly nothing of causes. We experience certain effects, which we refer to causes ; and the nature of the causes is learned by inference from the effects. Matter is not seen to cause any- thing; nor is spirit seen to cause anything. The cause of cosmic phenomena is hidden from observa- tion ; and the only question possible is, How must we thiak of that cause ? Our answer is equally specula- tive and metaphysical in every case. The theist, observing the law and order among the phenomena, refers them ultimately to a power which knows itself and what it is doing. The atheist refers them to a power which knows nothing of itself or of what it is doing. The second cause that conceals the weakness of this position is found in the notion of law. The human mind is especially prone to hypostasize ab- stractions, and subject things to them. The reign of law is a phrase that has thus acquired a purely factitious significance. Law appears as something apart from things, which rules over them and deter- mines all their doings. Thus the law of gravity is conceived of as something separate from things, and to which things are subject; and the mystery of gravitation is removed by calling it a law. The mis- 72 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT take is palpable. Laws have no thing-like existence, but are simply general expressions either of fact, or of the rule according to which some agent proceeds. Things do not attract one another because the law of gravitation calls for it ; but they attract, and from a comparison of many cases we find that the intensity of this attraction varies according to a certain rule. But this rule does not found the fact ; it only expresses it. The same is true for all the other laws of nature. They neither found nor compel the facts, but simply express them. Yet, misled by our persist- ent tendency to mistake abstractions for things, we first give a kind of substantive character to the laws, and then we carry them behind the things as pre- existent necessities, which explain everything, but which themselves are in no more need of explanation than the self-sufficient and eternal truths of the rea- son. The untaught mind tends to think under the form of necessity ; and this necessity, which is but the mind's own shadow, forthwith passes for an ex- planation. Thus we reach the grotesque inversion of reason which makes the very fact of rational order a ground for denying a controlling reason. In truth, however, the laws form a large part of the problem. When we have said that the world- ground coordinates things by fixed rules of quantity and quahty, and with perfect adaptation and numer- ical adjustment, we have but stated the problem, not solved it. That the adjustment takes place with con- sciousness is not seen ; that it takes place by neces- sity is also not seen. Both the consciousness and the necessity are added to the observation. Change accordiQg to rule is all that is given. If we ask how THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER 73 this can be, we can only appeal either to intelligence or non-intelligence. Comte says that it is a mark of immaturity to raise this question ; but if we will raise it, theism is the only answer. The atheist he pro- nounces to be the most inconsequent of theologians, since he raises theological questions and rejects the only possible way of dealing with them. The passage from Comte is a striking one, and worthy of quotation. He says : — " If we insist upon penetrating the unattainable mys- tery of the essential Cause that produces phenomena, there is no hypothesis more satisfactory than that they proceed from Wills dwelling in them or outside them, — an hypothesis which assimilates them to the effect produced by the desires which exist within our- selves. Were it not for the pride induced by meta- physical and scientific studies, it would be inconceiv- able that any atheist, modern or ancient, should have beheved that his vague hypotheses on such a subject were preferable to this direct mode of explanation. And it was the only mode which really satisfied the reason, until men began to see the utter inanity and inutility of all search for absolute truth. The Order of Nature is doubtless very imperfect in every respect ; but its production is far more compatible with the hypothesis of an intelligent Will than with that of a blind mechanism. Persistent atheists therefore would seem to be the most illogical of theologists : because they occupy themselves with theological problems, and yet reject the only appropriate method of hand- ling them." ^ The only thing that could justify us in adopting ' " A Greneral View of Positivism," p. 50. 74 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT non-intelligence as the ground of the cosmic order, would be to show that the system and all its laws and members are rational necessities, or implications of the basal reality. The truths of mathematics are implications of our intuitions of space and number; and for these truths we ask no ground, they being able to stand alone. It is conceivable that in like manner the cosmos, in all its featm-es, should be shown to be an implication of the independent reality which underlies all. In that case teleology would be as needless in physics and biology as it is in mathematics. This was once a dream of speculation, and the attempt was made to realize it. Of course it failed. No reflection on the bare notion of iadependent being gives any insight into the actual order. The basal distinction of matter and spirit we discover, not deduce. The modes of cosmic activity are of the same kiud. Any of the cosmic laws, from gravita^ tion on, might conceivably have been lacking or alto- gether different. And, allowing the laws, their outcome might have been in all respects different. For the laws alone do not determine the result, but only when taken along with the conditions under which they work. Had the conditions been different, the same laws would have produced other results. The laws of physics and chemistry are ever the same, but their resultants vary with the circumstances of their application. But these circumstances are all contingent. No trace of necessity can be found in the cosmos or its laws. They are simply facts which we recognize without pretending to deduce. Meta- physics might also try to show that this notion of THE ARGUMENT FROM TELEOLOGY 75 necessity, when pushed to its results, would cancel the unity of the basal One, and, instead of landing us on the solid rock, would leave us in the abysses. But we rest the argument. Here is a power which works intelligibly and according to law, by which everything is adjusted to everything else with nicest balance and adaptation, and by which this balance is incessantly reproduced. The theist concludes that this power is intelligent, the atheist concludes that it is not. The theist holds that the rational and intelligible work points to reason and intelligence. The atheist con- cludes that the rational and intelligible work points to unreason and non-intelligence. Between these two views each must decide for himself. Underlying this atheistic reasoning as the source, not only of its plausibility, but also of its possibility, is the sense realism of uncritical thought. Accord- ingly there is not the least suspicion that this solid- looking world of matter, force, and law may itself be only a function of intelligence. This point will come up further on. It suffices here to show the emptiness of the argument on its own principles. The Akgument feom Teleology The argument from order is cosmic ; it concerns the structure of the universe in itself. But the laws of the system bear no certain marks of purpose. If we ask how they can be, we are referred to intelli- gence as their explanation. If we ask what they are for, the answer must be that we do not clearly see that they are for anything. Movement and com- bination according to rule are all we see. But this 76 THE WOKLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT uncertainty vanishes when we come to the organic world. Here we find not only activity according to rule, but activity with reference to future ends. In the inorganic world we deal mainly with antecedents of which the facts are resultants. In the organic world there is not only a backward but also a for- ward look. The cosmic activity from being orderly becomes also teleological. Here results are not merely products, they also seem to be purposes. Here there are adjustments that look like contriv- ance, and combinations apparently for ends. The backward look toward antecedents seems adequately to explain the rounded stone on the beach; but the egg implies a forward look as well. These facts are the data of the teleological or design argument, the second of the inductive arguments. These two arguments do not admit of sharp separa- tion ; and a perfect knowledge might well find them one. Certainly if there be a supreme intelligence we cannot suppose that the laws of nature and its ele- mentary factors were fixed without reference to the world of life, and that the organic world is an after- thought or mere appendix to the inorganic world, which is complete in itself. If there be any purpose, it must embrace both realms. A theist would be apt to find in the domestic animals, the cereal grains, the metallic ores, and the coal beds a provision for man and civilization. Kant attempted to distinguish between the teleology of the organism, and the mere usableness of the inorganic world ; but the distinction cannot be rigorously maintained for the reason just given. From the inductive standpoint, however, we find sufficient difference to warrant separate discus- THE ARGUMENT FROM TELEOLOGY 77 sion. We find the most striking marks of design and contrivance in the organic world ; and the reign of law, as such, does not imply purpose-like products. The reign of law is as absolute in the amorphous rock as in the crystal or in the living form. It is as absolute in the barren desert as in the fertile plain. But the results differ greatly in their power of suggesting intelligence. Finally, the argument from order has even been opposed to that from design, many fancying that the existence of fixed laws ex- cludes the possibility of specific and detailed purposes. We may, then, consider the argument separately. The design argument has had varying fortunes. Verbal inaccuracies of statement have made room for floods of verbal criticism ; and it has at times fallen into complete speculative disfavor. Nevertheless it will always be a great favorite with common sense. Kant speaks of it with respect; and Mr. J. S. Mill regards it as the only theistic argument of any force whatever. It has been over and under estimated. It does not give us the full idea of God ; but with the non-speculative mind it will always be the main argument for the intelligence of the First Cause. In studying this argument the following points are to be noted : — 1. The argument is not : Design proves a designer. Here is design. Hence these things have had a de- signer. This would, formally at least, beg the ques- tion; for the very point is to know whether the minor premise be true. No one ever doubted that design implies a designer ; but many have questioned whether the facts referred to design really justify this reference. The argument rather runs : Here are 78 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT facts which have such marks of design and contriv- ance that we cannot explain them without referring them to purpose. The point is to solve the problem contained in the purpose-like adaptations and combi- nations found in the system ; and the theist refers them to design or purpose as the only adequate solu- tion. And whatever the verbal failings of the expo- sition may have been, this has always been the real meaning of the argument. The aim is not to demon- strate a speculative theorem, but to solve a concrete problem ; and the value of the argument depends on the success of the proposed solution. 2. The design argument need assume nothing as to the way in which effects are produced. It claims only that adaptation in a complex product to an ideal end points to design somewhere. Intellect acts for the future ; hence its causality is final or teleological, that is, purposive. When, then, processes are found in nature which apparently look toward future re- sults, those results are viewed as ends, and the activ- ity is regarded as intellectual and purposive. This is all that is essential to the argument. When more is brought in, it is a piece of extraneous metaphysics or an echo of popular tradition. 3. Design is never causal. It is. only an ideal con- ception, and demands some efficient cause, or system of efiicient causes, for its realization. If the stomach is not to digest itself, there must be some provision for protecting it against the gastric fluid. If ice is not to sink and freeze out life, there must be some molecular structure which shall make its bulk greater than that of an equal weight of water. There are two quite distinct questions which may be raised THE ARGUMENT FROM TELEOLOGY 79 about every event. We may ask how it comes about in an order of law ; and we may ask what it means in a scheme of purpose. In the former case we seek to trace the event as the resultant of its antecedents according to the laws which govern them ; in the latter case we try to fix its teleological significance. These two points of view are entirely distinct and should never be confounded. When we are studying the order of production, we must not expect to find the design as an agent in the causal series ; and con- versely, when we are asking for the purpose of an event, it is quite irrelevant to tell us how it is brought about. All events come about in some way in accordance with an order of law ; and we may study this order without raising any other questions. And after we have found out all about the order and form of occurrence, it is still permitted to believe that the movement is informed with purpose. The fact that men die from diseases which have their estab- lished course does not forbid us to think that God's will is being done at the same time. The description, then, of the event as an occurrence in the spatial and temporal order is quite distinct from its teleological interpretation. The difficulty felt at this point is entirely due to the naive realism which erects nature into a rival of God. The distinction between the two points of view contains the answer to the objection often urged, that design is not a scientific hypothesis. This claim is quite true if we restrict science to the study of the uniformities of coexistence and sequence among phe- nomena. It is equally unimportant. For science in that case limits itself to a single aspect of experience, 80 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT and says nothing respecting other matters. It neither affirms nor denies design, but traces the general laws of phenomena in perfect neutrality, so far as this question is concerned. 4. Hence, the study of the order of production can never logically conflict with the belief in purpose. The former tells us how an effect has come about, and leaves us as free as ever to believe that there was pur- pose in the doing. This is self-evident in our human activities. The two points of view just discriminated are never confounded in the human sphere. Human inventions exist only as the design is realized in some physical combination which by its essential laws pro- duces the designed effect. In the working of an engine, design does not appear at all in the causal series, but only natm-al laws and the properties of the component parts. In a compensating pendulum the end is reached through the expansion and contraction of different metals, which are so arranged as to keep the pendulum at a constant length. Design is di- rectly responsible only for the combination ; but it nowhere appears among the working factors of the combination. In the order of causation everything is effect or product ; in the order of conception that which in the causal series appears as product pre- existed as the idea according to which the causal series was predetermined. In our human teleology, then, efficient and final causes are so far from being mutually exclusive that final causes imply efficient causes for their realization. And in cosmic teleology, if efficient causes were com- missioned to realize design, or, rather, if an ideal con- ception were impressed upon a system of efficient THE ARGUMENT FROM TELEOLOGY 81 causes, so that the latter should work in accordance with the former, and realize the former, we should expect to see the products resulting with necessity from the nature of the agents at work. In that case we should have mechanism itself working as the serv- ant of purpose, and in forms prescribed by pm-pose. If metaphysics suggests that there are no mechanical efficient causes, we reach the same result by remark- ing that the order of production is distinct from the teleological interpretation of the thing produced, and that the two are so far from incompatible that the latter presupposes the former. We might, then, allow that " the whole course of Nature, considered as a succession of phenomena, is conditioned solely by antecedent causes " without in any way afEecting the teleological conclusion. No one wiU find any diffi- culty in recognizing the double aspect of the facts, except those who have taken the crude metaphysics of mechanical thought for granted and have naively transformed the assumed mechanism into an eternal and self-sufficient necessity. But this is less a logical than a pathological procedure. 5. The teleological argument has often been con- ducted in a piecemeal way. This, that, and the other thing have been specially designed. The effect of this is to present design as a sporadic thing limited to small and unimportant matters. Conducted in this way, the argument can hardly fail to scandalize any one who wishes to look at the world as a whole, and who must therefore find intelligence everywhere or nowhere. The very words, design and contrivance, easUy lend themselves to petty and unworthy inter- pretation ; and when they are pilloried in quotation 82 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT marks they seem especially contemptible. But this also is no essential part of the argument, but only an accident of exposition, or of mental limitation, or a device of polemics. The essential thing is the for- ward look, the cooperant toil, whether seen in special organic details, or the whole biological system, or the great cosmic movement itself. Where these points are duly regarded, the argument from teleology or design is seen to be by no means the weak thing it is often proclaimed to be. And yet, historically, the study of efficient causes, or of the order of production in space and time, has often tended to weaken the belief in purpose or final causes. This fact has many grounds : anthropomorphic interpreta- tions of design, vtuclear notions of what mechanism can do, crude metaphysics concerning nature, and logical confusion in general. A few specifications will be in place : — The design argument has been supposed to teach an external making, and not an immanent guiding. Human designs are external to the material on which they are impressed ; but this externality is in no way essential to the design. If the human maker, instead of adapting his plan to given material, could create his material outright and impress his plan upon its very being, the design would be quite as real and quite as apparent as it is now. The essential thing, as just said, is the forward look, the " toil cooperant to an end " ; and this is quite independent of the ques- tion of immanent or external design. Under the influence of this anthropomorphic fancy, the design argument has been much belabored. It has been called the carpenter theory — a phrase which. THE AKGUMENT FROM TELEOLOGY 83 while missing the true nature of the argument, does most happily reveal the wooden character of the crit- icism. But the argument itself is quite compatible with immanent design, with design legislated into the constitution of things, so that in their fixed order of unfolding they shall realize a predetermined plan or purpose. When this fact is borne in mind one can listen without dismay, though not without weariness, to reflections on the carpenter theory. Of course such reflections are entirely in place when design is conceived in a carpenter fashion, or when some anthropomorphic accident is made the essence of the doctrine. But triumph over such superficiality or misunderstanding has no attraction for persons in earnest. They know, as Mr. Mill has said, that no doctrine is overthrown until it is overthrown in its best form. A similar anthropomorphic difficulty is found in our doubt respecting purpose when it is slowly real- ized. The forward look of purposive activity is es- pecially revealed in the convergence of various factors toward an end; and when the convergence is slow and the mental range is limited, the end is apt to be missed. In our human activities as soon as the pur- poses become at all complex or take on the character of plans, the aim can be discerned only from a com- prehensive survey of the whole. To one standing in the midst of the work, and especially in its chaotic beginnings, or to one studying the details singly and not in their relations, the end may easily be missed altogether. From the nature of the case we must be largely in this position with regard to the purpose in nature. Our own brevity makes it hard to believe in 84 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT purpose when it is slowly realized, as we fail in such cases to get any vivid impression of movement con- verging toward an end. The distress which many theists have felt at the doctrine of the slow develop- ment of cosmic forms is mainly due to this fact. In the same way, and with the same logic, an ephemeron would miss, and might deny, the purpose in the mass of hmnan activity, because its range of knowledge and rate of temporal change would not enable it to get any vivid impression of movement toward an end. Against this anthropomorphism we must be on our guard. Time and temporal rate have naught to do with the pure intellectual relation of finality ; but if we do bring them into connection, the purpose which moves steadily across ages toward its realization is more impressive than the purpose of a day. So much for anthropomorphic confusion. The result of the error about external design is a second, namely, the fancy that whatever can be ex- plained by physical laws and agents is thereby res- cued from the control of mind. Not even Kant is free from this confusion. In the " Critique of the Judgment " he suggests that the notion of purpose may have only a regulative value ; and that possibly everything may have a mechanical explanation. Here he falls into the confusion of making design an efficient cause among causes, and seems to think that we must not know how effects are produced if we are to believe them intended. Many have openly espoused this notion. The discovery that the stomach does not digest itself, because its walls secrete a var- nish impervious to the gastric fluid, would be held to remove all wonder from the fact. Purpose is not THE ARGUMENT FROM TELEOLOGY 85 supposed to be purpose when it works through an order of traceable law. This fancy, which recognizes purpose only where causation cannot be traced, had great influence in the revival of atheism in the generation just passed. Wherever natural laws could be traced, purpose was ruled out. This view first assumes that design is a cause, and then attributes to the elements and laws of nature a metaphysical self-sufficiency which excludes purpose. Both assumption and attribution are errors. As we have already seen, design is no factor in the productive series, but rather its predetermining norm. It cannot be sensuously presented in space and time, but must be intellectually perceived. And we have further seen in the previous chapter that the system of impersonal things represents no self- sufficient existence, but only the way in which the world-ground proceeds. Whether there be any purpose in the proceeding can be known only by studying the outcome. And if such study reveals a forward look in the cosmic processes, it is pure irrele- vance, to say the least, to object in the name of spa- tial and temporal laws. We must not expect to find purpose doing anything, but we may find things done according to purpose. The chief ground for distinguishing between the system of law and specific design lies in what appears as the contrivances of nature. Here we have combi- nations of laws for the production of effects, which the laws taken singly do not involve. In organic forms, especially, we have a union of natural processes which, taken singly, would destroy the organism, but which together work for the maintenance of the THEISM — 7 86 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT whole. This class of facts has led many to think of design as something interjected into, or superinduced upon, a system essentially unrelated to it. But this fancy is reached by unlawful abstraction. It is in- deed conceivable that there should be a system in which the elementary physical and chemical processes should go on without any purpose-like products ; but in the actual system they are not thus resultless. When, then, we make the law into an abstract rule and separate it from its actual working and product, we merely analyze the complex reality into several factors for the convenience of our understanding; we need not regard them as in any way representing the constituent factors from which the reality was produced. But this question goes too deeply into the question of the formal and the objective signifi- cation of logical method to be discussed to advantage here. These are specimens of the misunderstandings which underlie the current distrust of the design argmnent. But there is danger of losing sight of the argument itself through occupation with these detailed objections. It is well to return to the argu- ment again for a new departure. The positive argument for design begins by show- ing that many processes in nature are determined by ends. The aim of the eye is vision, that of the ear is hearing, that of the lungs is the oxygenation of the blood, that of the manifold generative mechanisms is the reproduction of life. In all of these cases there is concurrence of many factors in a common result ; and this result, toward which they all tend, is viewed as the final cause of their concurrence. Here, then. THE ARGUMENT FROM TELEOLOGY 87 is action for an end. But an end, as such, cannot act except as a conception in the consciousness of some agent which wills that end. The end, as result, is effect, not cause. Hence activity for ends demands a preconceiving intelligence as its necessary implication or condition. This argument is valid. There is first an inductive inquiry whether there be activity for ends in nature, and then the speculative question how such finality is to be explained, is answered by referring it to intelligence. There is no need to adduce instances of apparent finality. They may be found in endless profusion in the various works on the subject. Besides, all admit that in the organic realm the world-groimd proceeds as if it had plans and purposes. It is well known that the language of biology is prevailingly teleo- logical, even when the speculator denies teleology. Thus natm-e, when driven out with a fork, ever comes running back. The great mass of activities within the organism are teleological. The great mass of the activities of living individuals in their interaction with one another and with the environment, are hke- wise teleological. There is no possibility of under- standing them, or even of describing them, without resorting to teleology. Thus, as atheists, we have to avail ourselves of the language of fiction in order to express the truth. We condense a single passage from M. Janet's classical work on " Final Causes " in illustration of finality in natural processes in the building of the organism : — " In the mystery and night of incubation or gesta- tion by the collaboration of an incredible number of causes, a living machine is formed which is absolutely 88 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT separated from the outer world, yet accords with it, and of which all the parts respond to some physical conditions of that outer world. The outer world and the inner laboratory of the living being are separated from each other by impenetrable veils, and neverthe- less they are united by an incredible harmony. With- out is light, within, an optical machine adapted to it. Without is sound, within, an acoustic mechanism. Without is food, within are organs of assimilation. Without are earth, air, and water, within are motor organs adapted to them. Imagine a blind workman, confined in a cellar, who simply by moving his limbs should be found to have forged a key adapted to the most complex lock. That is what nature does in making the living being." Without some demurrer of extraordinary force, the conclusion is irresistible that here is activity which looks toward the futm-e, which foresees and prepares, and which therefore must be viewed as intelligent. Of course the standing answer to this argument is that the apparent aims are not real ones ; that they result from their antecedents by necessity, and were never intended. Byes were not made for seeing ; but we have eyes, and see in consequence. The propa- gation of life was never purposed; but reproductive processes and mechanisms exist, and life is prop- agated. This view, in this naked form, has always scandalized the unsophisticated mind as a pettifogg- ing affront to good sense. But when it is variously disguised by bad metaphysics and confused logic, it sometimes becomes acceptable. The theistic conclusion is disputed on the following grounds : — MECHANICAL EXPLANATION 89 1. The mechanism of nature explains the fact, and we need not go behind it. 2. The fact that the world-ground works as if it had plans does not prove that it has them. 3. There is no analogy between human activity and cosmic activity. We know that purpose rules in human action, but we have no experience of world- making, and can conclude nothing concerning cosmic action. The distance is too great, and knowledge is too scant to allow any inference. All atheistic objections fall under some one of these heads. We consider them in their order. Mechanical Explanation On this point we observe that the mechanism of nature is here assumed as an ontological fact about which there can be no question. There is no sus- picion that this mechanical ontology is open to the very gravest doubt ; and equally no suspicion that in any case this mechanism is no self-running system, but only the phenomenal product of an energy not its own. But we postpone these considerations for the present and point out that mechanism, and systems of necessity in general, can never explain teleological problems. These can find a real explanation only in a self -directing intelligence. All other explanations are either tautologies, or they implicitly abandon the problem. We have already pointed out that the gen- eral laws of the system explain no specific effect. Like the laws of motion, they apply to all cases, but account for none. The specific effect is always due to the peculiar circumstances under which the laws 90 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT work. Hence, in order to explain the effect, we must account for not only the general laws, but also the special circumstances which form the arbitrary con- stants of the equation. But these cannot be explained by any and every antecedent, but only by such as contain implicitly the effect. In that case we do not explain the peculiar nature of the effect, but only remove it one step further back. By the law of the sufficient reason, when we pass from effects to causes, we have to attribute them, not to any and every cause, but to causes that implicitly contain all the mystery and peculiarity of the effects. Thus the problem ever pre- cedes us. We refer a to -a, and -a is referred to -2a, and so on to -na. If -na is given, then in the course of time a will appear ; but at the farthest point, -na, we have a implicitly and necessarily given. In such a system we reach no resting-place and no true ex- planation. A given fact, a, is because -a was ; and -a was because -2a went before ; and so on in endless regress. But as all later orders and collocations were implicit in -na, it follows that we deduce the present fact, a, from its antecedents by constructing our thought of those antecedents so as to contain the fact to be deduced. Of course it does not follow that a was given as a, but only in those antecedents which must lead to it ; so that whoever could have read the system at any point in the past would have seen a as a necessary imphcation. In a system of necessity there can be no new departures, no interjection of new features, but only an unfolding of the necessary implications. If we make a cross-section of such a system at any point, we find everything given either actually or potentially, and when an apparently new MECHANICAL EXPLANATION 91 fact appears, it is not something chanced upon, but something that always must have been. Arrivals and non-arrivals, survivals and non-survivals, uni- formities and new departures, heredities and varia- tions — all are determined from everlasting. In such a scheme we do not come to the thought of a begin- ning, but of a self-centered system, or world-order, which rolls on forever, infolding and unfolding all. This view might involve us in sundry very grave metaphysical difficulties, but we pass them over. The point to be noticed here is that it does not solve, but only postpones, the teleological problem. If the facts themselves call for explanation, just as much do these hypothetical grounds demand it, for we have simply carried the facts in principle into them. But we conceal the fact from ourselves by casting the shadow of necessity over the whole, and this stifles further inquiry. Reference has already been made to the grotesque inversion of reason which finds in the rational order a ground for denying a basal reason ; the same thing meets us here. We con- struct our thought of the cosmic mechanism by an inverted teleology. The mechanism is simply tele- ology read backward. But the notion of necessity so blinds us that the cosmic mechanism, which is but an incarnation of all cosmic products, is made the ground for denying purpose therein. This utter barrenness attaches to every system of explanation of a mechanical or necessary character, and can never be escaped. In all inference from the present to the past we are bound to find the present in the past, or we cannot infer it. If we could exhaus- tively think the past without finding the future in it. 92 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT the future would be groundless and would not be ex- plained by the past. But if we find the future in the past, the past that explains the future is one that contains the future ; and there is no logical progress or insight. Likewise in all inference from effect to cause, we must determine the thought of the cause by the effect ; and we can infer neither more nor less than the cause of just that effect. If we infer more, we are guilty of ilHcit process ; if we infer less, the effect is unprovided for. The A which explains B must be so related to B that the exhaustive thought of A con- tains B. The explanation consists in conceiving events as potential in their causes ; and the deduction con- sists in conceiving these potentials as passing into realization. As we go backward, we potentialize the actual ; as we come forward, we actualize the potential. Of the inner nature of the process we have not the slightest conception or experience ; we have only words for counters. In a necessary system we can never escape this barren verbalism. This is the hopeless deadlock of all mechanical thinking. The necessary logical equivalence of cause and effect in such a scheme makes escape impossible. If we begin with the simple, we never reach the com- plex ; if we begin with the complex, we never reach the simple. Necessity contains no principle of progress or differentiation. Indeed, simple necessity is alto- gether motionless, unless we surreptitiously intro- duce change into it ; and then the notion breaks up into a plurality of necessities whose inner rela- tions are inscrutable. But not to press this point, it is plain that necessity, if it exist, can only unfold its eternal implications ; it can reach nothing new, nor MECHANICAL EXPLANATION 93 make any new departure. If anjrthing apparently new is reached, it has always been implied in the sys- tem. If any differentiation manifests itself, it has always been implicit. The present grows out of the past only on condition of being in the past. The high emerges from the low only as it is implicit in the low. The homogeneous that is to develop into the heterogeneous must itself be implicitly heterogeneous from the start. The heterogeneity that appears in the development is nothing essentially new, but has always been at least potential. In such thinking of course there is no progress, even if its fundamental conceptions were not other- wise obnoxious to criticism — which is far from being the case. But our eyes are holden in this matter because of certain easy oversights. The leading one is the mis- taking of verbal simplifications for simplifications of things. The complexity, plurality, and differences of things disappear in the simplicity and identity of the class term ; and then we fancy that the things them- selves have been simplified and imified. In this way we reach the abstractions of matter and force, from which all the peculiarities and differences of material things and their energies have disappeared. This gives us a species of unity and simplicity of concep- tion which is forthwith mistaken for a unity and sim- plicity of real existence. By this purely verbal process the last terms of logical abstraction are mistaken for the first and essential forms of real existence ; and the problem receives a fictitious sim- plification. Of course there are no such things as matter and force, simple and homogeneous, but if 94 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT there be any ontological reality in the case, the fact is an enormous multitude of individuals, each with its peculiar powers, laws, and relations, and each such and so related to every other that it must do its part in the tremendous whole. But the problem being fictitiously simplified through this fallacy of classifi- cation, we miss its wonder altogether. As the basal conceptions, matter and force, have no contents be- yond bare being and causality, there is nothing about them to start questions or awaken surprise. Indeed, they seem well fitted to get on by themselves ; and when we duly reflect on the indestructibility of mat- ter and energy, it becomes doubtful if they have not always got on by themselves. And as all physical facts, at least, are only specifications of matter and force, it is easy to mistake this logical subordination for ontological implication. The illusion is finally completed by our failure to recognize the shorthand character of language in gen- eral. We think in symbols, and fill out the thought only so far as may be necessary. Hence the causes to which we refer effects are thought only in a vague way, and thus we overlook the fact that in concrete and complete thinking, in distinction from shorthand and symbolic thinking, we can never escape from complex- ity into simplicity, or pass from simplicity into com- plexity, or reduce our problem to lower terms by logical manipulation, so long as we remain on the mechanical and necessary plane. The peren- nial attempts to deduce the world from some origi- nal state of simplicity and insignificance all rest at bottom on these oversights. The indefinite, inco- herent, undifferentiated homogeneity, matter or what MECHANICAL EXPLANATION 95 not, with which they begin, is a product of logical confusion. Yet under the influence of this confusion, we even claim to illustrate the process. We trace the outlines of our system to some state of apparent homogeneity, say a nebula ; and then conclude that any vague and formless matter must develop into fixed and definite purpose-like products. In our regress we forget the definite outcome, and thus we seem to reach the indefinite and meaningless. Then in our progress we remember the definite outcome again, and this passes for a deduction. Hence the nebular theory and that of natural selection have been often adduced as show- ing how, by a kind of mechanical necessity in a sys- tem of trial and rejection, purpose must result from non-purposive action. But here we fail entirely to be true to the principle of the sufficient reason, and mis- take indefiniteness for the senses for indefiniteness for the reason. Those homogeneities which looked all alike were very far from being all alike. The whole system of difference was implicit in them. And those vague and formless conditions were such only to sense and imagination. For the understanding the reign of law was as universal and exact then as at any later date. But atheistic thought has always been in curious oscillation between chance and neces- sity at this point. At times everything is absolutely determined ; but when the design question is up, an element of indeterminateness appears. Some chaos, which contained nothing worth mentioning, or some raw beginnings of existence, which were so low as to make no demand for an intelligent cause, begin to shuffle into the argument. Being so abject, it excites 96 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT no question or surprise. Being indeterminate, it does not seem to beg the question against teleology by implicitly assuming the problem ; and then, by a wave of the magic wand of necessity, together with a happy forgetfulness of the laws of mental procedm-e, the nothing is transformed into an all-explaining something. We find the same confusion underlying the argument from the " conditions of existence," and the earlier fancy that, as in infinite time all possible combinations must be exhausted, the actual order must be hit upon. The superficial character of these notions need not be dwelt upon, as the very nature of scientific method has rendered them obso- lete. They must be looked upon as survivals of a period when thought was groping blindly without any knowledge of its own aims and methods. In a nec- essary system there is no possible beyond the actual and its necessary implications. All else is the im- possible. There never was, then, a period of indefi- niteness out of which the present order emerged by a happy chance. Notions of this sort are finally and forever excluded by the exact determinism on which mechanical reasoning is based. As soon as we say mechanism, our original data imply all that can ever be. Time, however long, and natural selection and the survival of the fittest, can produce nothing which was not already fully predetermined in the earliest arrangement of things. These illusive simplifications of language and sym- bolic thinking are perpetually thrusting themselves be- tween us and the problem, veiling at once the unman- ageable complexity of the concrete problem and the verbal and empty nature of our explanation. We MECHANICAL EXPLANATION 97 refer things to matter and force in a general way, without troubling ourselves to think out the problem in its concrete nature. But if we should think the matter through, we should see not only the tautolo- gous and unprogressive character of our theorizing, but also that we are using terms for which there are no corresponding conceptions. When we think con- cretely, matter and force, if anything more than logi- cal counters, become only formal concepts, of which the reality is the multitudinous elements and their mul- titudinous activities, comprehended in an order of infi- nite complexity of relations. And these elements, without knowing anything of themselves or of one another or of any laws, must each incessantly respond to changes in every other in accordance with a com- plicated system of physical, chemical, structural, and organic laws, so as to produce and maintain the orderly system of things with all its wonderful variety and essential harmony. Now in addition to the strictly tautologous character of this performance, we have absolutely no means of representing to ourselves the mechanical possibility of all this ; and when we attempt it, we merely amuse or confuse ourselves with words and abstractions. This is shown as follows : In our mechanical system, considered as dynamic, we have two factors, — the system of spatial changes and combinations, and the dynamic system which causes them. The former ex- plains nothing ; it is rather the problem itself. The latter defies all representation and all concrete con- ception. If the elements are to combine organically, they must be the seat of organic forces with all the complexity of their possible combinations. As soon 98 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT as we renounce the fallacy of the universal and think concretely and completely, the problem is seen in its unmanageable complexity and insolubility. Spatial combination we can picture ; volitional and intellec- tual causality we experience ; but what that is which is more than the former and less than the latter, is past all or any finding out. We cannot see it in space, and we cannot find it in consciousness. But such a thing is a figment of abstraction and no possi- ble reality. We merely shuffle the abstract category of cause and ground, and fail to note that, while our thought is formally correct, it is really moving in a vacuum. We have the well-founded conviction that there must be a sufficient reason for the spatial group- ings and changes, and without further ado we locate it in the assumed elements, and leave it to find out for itself how to be sufficient. And all this is perfectly clear, because we tacitly assume that there is nothing in play but the elements in space ; and there is noth- ing mysterious about them. If we were planning the construction of a locomo- tive which should run without an engineer, yet should do all that a locomotive does under an engineer's con- trol — back up to the train, ring the bell for starting, whistle at crossings, put on the breaks on down grades, stop at scheduled stations, attend to signals, wait on sidings, make up for lost time — it would not be a sufficient solution to say that we only need to make the locomotive such, that all this would follow. Formally, indeed, that would suffice ; but concretely we" should have to inquire what kind of a "such" this would be, and whether we could form the slight- est notion of this mechanical such. The only such MECHANICAL EXPLANATION 99 that would meet this case would be an engineer. And if a locomotive were found thus running without visible direction, it would be no answer to the sugges- tion of an invisible engineer to say that the " nature " of the locomotive explained its running in this way ; for we should be equally at a loss to form any concep- tion of this " nature." We should have a word, but no idea. And what is true of this " such," this " nature," is equally true of the dynamism of the physical world, so far as any positive conception is concerned. It is purely verbal, having a certain formal correctness, but empty of concrete meaning. It must be Ufted to the plane of volitional causation, or dismissed altogether as fictitious. A reference to Kant will help to make the meaning clear. He claimed that the categories have no appli- cation beyond the field of experience, actual or possi- ble, and that when we apply them beyond this field we merely shuffle empty abstractions. In this respect they are like the grammatical forms of subject and predicate. These are the universal forms of speech, but of themselves they say nothing. The subject- matter must come from beyond them. When experi- ence is properly defined this claim is strictly true. Indeed, the meaning of the categories, as metaphysics shows, is revealed only in the living self-experience of intelligence ; and here their only concrete reality is found. This is especially the case with the dynamic category of causation. It is easy to talk about it ; and because the category is formally necessary it is easy to fancy we have some real conception in the case. But when we enter into ourselves, we find that the conception can be realized only under the voli- 100 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT tional form in which we experience it. Apart from this we have only the bare form of thought without con- tents and without the possibihty of contents. We may talk as we will of the " unpicturable notions of the understanding," it still remains true that these notions which cannot be pictured in spatial forms, nor realized in self-experience, are simply illusory phantoms and not proper notions at all. Cause and ground we must have, but metaphysics shows that only active intelli- gence can be a real cause or ground. The whole sys- tem of physical dynamics, except as a set of formal mathematical relations, is empty of any positive con- tent, and is pure illusion. As a consequence of this commonly unsuspected fact, we find physical specu- lators oscillating between the formal mathematical conception, and the abandonment of the whole sub- ject of physical causation as unknowable. In addition to these logical oversights in atheistic reasoning, we have the metaphysical assumption referred to in speaking of the argument from order. It is tacitly assumed that we directly and undeniably know the proximate causes of phenomena, and know them to be material and unintelligent. It is further assumed that, for the present at least, these causes run of themselves, and possibly always have done so. Hence as we know the proximate causes, and find them daily explaining more and more, when we come to any new manifestation, instead of going outside of them for a cause apart, we need only enlarge our notion of these causes themselves. Be it far from us to tell what matter can or cannot do. How can we learn what it can do except by observing what it does ? MECHANICAL EXPLANATION 101 The illusion here is double. "We assume, first, that we know causes ia immediate perception, and, sec- ondly, that their nature is at once mysterious and known. Mysterious, because we are going to de- termine it by studying what they do; and known, because the term "matter " carries with it certain im- plications which exclude intelligence. Thus, in great humility and self-renunciation, and with an air of extreme logical rigor, we build up a scheme of thought around a materialistic core, and fail to notice the trans- parent trick we are playing upon ourselves. This assumption that the causes of phenomena are immediately given we have seen to be false. Causes are not seen. Their nature is a matter of specula- tive inference. Again, we have seen that even if we should find the proximate cause in material elements, we cannot regard them as independent, but must view them as dependent for all their laws and prop- erties on an absolute world-ground. We cannot rest, then, in a system of things interacting according to mechanical laws, but must go behind the system to something which acts through it. The mechanical system is not ultimate and self-sufficient. It repre- sents only the way in which the world-ground acts or determines things to act. If we ask why it thus acts, either we must regard it as a self-directing in- tellect, and find the reason in purpose ; or we must affirm some opaque necessity in the world-ground itself, and say, It does what it does because it must. Of course we do not find the necessity when we look for it, but for all that we may assume it. And the assumed necessity will of course be adequate, because it is the necessity of the facts themselves. We de- THEISM — 8 102 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT duce nothing from necessity, but we call tlie facts necessary ; and then all is clear. Thus we have illustrated at length and somewhat repetitiously the barrenness and tautology of all me- chanical explanation of teleological problems. If one should say, given a multitude of elements of various powers and in complex relations, and in general such that they imply to the minutest detail all they will ever do, we can then explain whatever they do, no one would think it a very edifying or progressive performance. Similarly, it would not help to much insight to explain the order of the world by assuming an impersonal being of such a sort that by the inner necessity of its being, of which necessity, moreover, we could not form the slightest conception, it must do what it does. Yet this is the exact nature of all mechanical explanation which does not appeal to mind. The explanation consists in forming a mechanism to fit the effects, and then drawing out what we put in. But when the complexity is hidden by the simplicity of our terms, and the implicit implications of our first principles are overlooked through the deceit of the imiversal, and the vacuous nature of the whole performance is concealed by our uncritical dogmatism, then we advance with the ut- most ease from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to any desirable definite, coherent heterogeneity ac- cording to the familiar formula, — itself a nest of con- tradictions. It has long been apparent to the critical reader that, for the explanation of teleological problems, the alternative is intelligence or nothing ; and he might well have a feeling of impatience at a proposition to EVOLUTION 103 show that the current doctrine of evolution has not in the least affected this conclusion. Nevertheless, while this is true in logic, it is not the case in popu- lar thought; and a paragraph may be devoted to this matter. Here as elsewhere confusion has been the source of error. Evolution It is not surprising that evolution for a time dis- turbed theistic faith. Uncritical minds tend to con- fuse a doctrine with a particular mode of conceiving it; and when a new conception is found necessary, they think the doctrine itself gone. Time and further reflection are needed to disengage the essential doc- trine from the traditional conception, to see that a new conception may better express the doctrine than the old one, and to adjust oneself to the new way of thinking. All of this found illustration in the case of evolution. It necessitated a new conception of the way in which purpose is realized, and this seemed to be a denial of purpose. Again, as it indefinitely lengthened the time of natural processes, it seemed to many to can- cel the traditional proofs of purpose altogether : for, as we have already said, the inductive proofs of pur- pose consist largely in the convergence of many activities and agencies to a common end ; and when this convergence is slow and complex, we often fail to get any clear impression of purpose. But this is a result of the brevity of life and our short mental range. In fact, a purpose moving faithfully and steadily across ages is far more impressive than one which is realized in a day ; but uncritical thought only slowly appre- 104 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT ciates this fact, and hence much mental uncertainty and distress arose. In addition, the doctrine of evolu- tion, as popularly understood, involved a deal of bad logic and metaphysics, and vras often viewed by friend and foe alike as a new form of materialism and atheism. Fortunately the progress of reflective thought has changed all this, and has taken the doctrine out of the region of hysteria and misunderstanding. First of all, it is seen that evolution as a cosmic formula may have two distinct meanings. It may be a description of the genesis and history of the facts to which it is applied, and it may be such a description, plus a theory of their causes. In other words, it may be a description of the order of phenomenal origin and development, and it may be a theory of the meta- physical causes that underlie that development. The former is evolution in a scientific sense; the latter is a metaphysical doctrine. In the scientific sense evolution is neither a controlling law nor a producing cause, but simply a description of a phe- nomenal order, a statement of what, granting the theory, an observer might have seen if he had been able to inspect the cosmic movement from its simplest stages until now. It is a statement of method, and is silent about causation. And it is plain that there might be entire unanimity concerning evolution in this sense along with utter disharmony in its metaphysical interpretation. In such cases we have, at bottom, not a scientific difference but a battle of philosophies. The theorists agree on the facts, but interpret them by different schemes of metaphysics. This is the reason why some thinkers find in evolution a veritable aid to faith, while others see in it nothing but atheism. EVOLUTION 105 In cruder thought the chief source of confusion in this matter was the fallacy of the universal. This led to all those fanciful reductions of the complex to the simple and evolutions of the simple into the com- plex, which are so large a part of evolution literature. In the biological realm the fallacy wrought much picturesque confusion. Here attention was fixed on species altogether ; and as these were said to be trans- formed, there arose the fancy that earlier and lower species produced the later and higher ones. But because the higher were produced by the lower, they were really not higher after all, but were essentially identical with the lower. Hence though man came from the monkey by virtue of transformation or evolution, he was really a species of monkey because of his simian origin. In all this the verbal illusion is manifest. In reality a species is only a group of more or less simi- lar individuals, and is nothing apart from them. The transformation of a species could only mean the production of dissimilar individuals along lines of genetic descent, thus forming a new group. The sole and simple fact in such a case would be that the power which produces individuals produces them in such a way that they may be arranged on an ascend- ing scale of growing complexity and heterogeneity. But there would be nothing in such a fact to identify individuals, or higher and lower forms; it would rather suggest the relativity of our systems of classifi- cation. Apart from our logical manipulation, the fact is the individuals and the power which produces them, through the processes of generation, in such a way that they admit of being classed according to an 106 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT ascending scale. All else is the shadow of our own minds. Metaphysics locates the producing power in the world-ground itself ; and epistemology shows that our classifications produce nothing. They make no identi- ties and abolish no differences. To keep this steadily in view would reduce the doctrine in question to a subor- dinate significance, and would deprive it entirely of those fearful implications which it has for popular thought. The polemic against " special creation," which one often meets in this discussion, and which has become a standing feature of the debate, has its main root in the same fallacy of the universal. All concrete ex- istence is, and must be, special ; and all creation of the concrete must be as special as the product. Special facts can be produced only by correspondingly special acts. We may gather them up in a single class, but they remain separate and distinct as ever. This is the necessary antithesis of the individual and the uni- versal. But by overlooking it, vast confusion has been wrought and much barren polemic occasioned. The only thing which clear thought abhors is illogical chaos, things unrelated, or produced at random and without subordination to any plan for the whole. Only in the sense of the unrelated and unassimilable is thought opposed to " special creation." But when it comes to realizing the general plan in a multitude of concrete individuals, coexistent or successive, the work is possible only through a multitude of acts, each as specific and special as its product. In this sense all individuals are special creations. A little knowledge of the debate between nominalism and realism would have reduced the evolution discussion to very moderate dimensions. EVOLUTION 107 In further illustration of this aspect of the subject, consider the production of a piece of music, say a symphony. The later parts are neither made out of the earlier parts nor produced by them; but both earlier and later parts are subject to a common musi- cal conception and law, and root in a causality beyond themselves. If now we should ask respecting any particular note whether it be a special creation or not, the answer must be both yes and no, according to the standpoint. It is not a special creation in the sense of being unrelated and lawless, for each note is sub- ject to the plan of the whole. It is a special creation in the sense that, without a purpose and activity in- cluding the special note, it would not exist. Again, in such a production, nothing would be evolved out of anything, but a musical conception would be succes- sively realized. The antecedent notes would not imply the later as their dynamic resultants, but both antecedents and consequents would be produced by the composer and player in accordance with the idea. The continuity of the performance would be only in the idea and the will and purpose of the performer. The same conclusions hold for any conception of the universe as phenomenal. In that case its evolution is but the successive manifestation of the causality be- yond the series ; and the phases of the evolution have no dynamic connection among themselves, any more than the successive musical notes. Each, however, is, or is not, a special creation, according to the stand- point. As subject to the law of the whole, it is not special. As a specific and concrete fact, it is special. In the phenomenal system, nothing is really evolved, but an idea is successively manifested by the succes- 108 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT sive production of phenomena that have their con- tinuity and meaning only in the power that produces them. These considerations show how vague and uncer- tain popular thought is on this subject, and how am- biguous the alleged fact of evolution is. It was assumed as a matter of course that the cosmic causal- ity Hes within the cosmic series, so that the tem- poral antecedent dynamically determines and produces the temporal consequent. This view metaphysics definitely sets aside. The causality of the series lies beyond it ; and the relations of the members are logi- cal and teleological, not dynamic. In that case much evolution argument vanishes of itself. Survivals, reversions, atavisms, and that sort of thing become only figures of speech, which are never to be literally taken. In a phenomenal system these things can literally exist as little as they can in a piece of music ; for in such a system only laws and ideas abide. We may be puzzled by them when we attempt to classify things to our satisfaction ; but we are not permitted to talk nonsense to escape being puzzled. But not to press these scruples, the important point in the evolution discussion concerns the nature of the individuals and the power that produces them. Many difficulties vanish as soon as we recall the nominalism of the doctrine. Questions concerning the limits of evolution lose all significance when we remember that in any case evolution does nothing but is only a name for a form of procedure. To make it more is to hypostasize words and abstractions, or to mistake the order of doing for the agent itself. Returning now to the general question, it is mani- EVOLUTION 109 fest that theism has no interest in one method or order of production rather than another, provided always the facts are duly regarded. It is satisfied to maintain divine causality and leave experience to find the method of procedure. It is concerned, therefore, not with evolution in the scientific sense, but only with evolution as a theory of causality. In this sense evolution is simply a piece of bad metaphysics produced by bad logic. All that we have said about the barrenness of mechanism in general applies here. We can reach neither the one from the many nor the many from the one, neither the high from the low nor the low from the high, neither the indefinite from the definite nor the definite from the indefinite. If we seem to do so, we merely fall a prey to the fallacy of the universal, and mistake the simplifications of logical manipulation for the order of concrete fact. Free intelligence is the condition of any real progress ; and progress itself, if it be anything more than a meaningless stir of the world-substance, cannot be defined without reference to teleology. Apart from free intelligence as the source of the world-movement, we can only talk cloudily about potentialities, without any possibility of concretely representing our mean- ing. When thought is clear, it is plain that evolution, while modifying our conceptions of the method and history of creation, leaves the argument for purpose in nature just where and what it always has been. Least of all does it make it possible to equate time, however long, with intelligence. The complete deter- mination of every thing and event in a mechanical system, and the necessary logical equivalence of cause and effect in such a system, forbid this notion forever. 110 THE WORLD-GEOUND AS INTELLIGENT Intelligence is still the only explanation of the appar- ent teleology of the world. Of course that evolution of popular thought, religious and irreligious alike, according to which something, which was not much of anything, began to evolve through differentiation and integration, etc., is sheer confusion and illiteracy. It closely resembles rehance on " that blessed word Mesopotamia." The " As If " Objection The second general objection was, that the fact that the world-ground proceeds as if it had aims does not prove that it really has them. We have in this objection a relic of the ancient fancy that atheism is sufficiently established by disputing theism. Let us allow that the fact that the world-ground proceeds as if it had purposes does not prove that it really has them; it is still clear that this fact is even farther from proving that it does not have them. To the general objection a first reply must be that all objective knowledge is based on an " as if." Not to refer to the scruples of idealism concerning the ob- jects of perception, the whole of objective science is based on a certain assumed truth of appearances. We do not know that there is an ether, but only that optical phenomena look as if there were. We do not know that atoms exist, but only that material phe- nomena look as if they did. We do not know that the fire rocks were ever molten, but only that they look as if they had been. We do not know that the sedi- mentary rocks were ever deposited from water, but only that they look so. That the present land was THE "AS IF" OBJECTION 111 once under the sea is not known, but only a belief resting on certain appearances. But none of these conclusions could stand a minute if the principle of this objection were allowed. If the nature of things can produce the appearance of intelligence without its presence, it ought to be able to mimic igneous and aqueous action without the aid of either fire or water. If the hypothetical necessity of the system is compe- tent to bring organic matter into a living form, it could certainly produce a fossU imitation at first hand ; or, better, if the nature of things includes the produc- tion of living forms, it might also include the direct production of fossils. We cannot, then, conclude anything from fossil remains concerning the past history of our system ; for this would be to conclude from an " as if " ; and this is forbidden. If one should say, " Well, how did they get there, anyhow ? " the answer would be that they are there because they must be there, and that no more can be said. If the questioner persisted, we should say that it is the height of absurdity to insist that things can be explained in only one way. Possibilities are infinite ; and of these we can conceive only one ; but it must be viewed as infinitely improbable that our little way of accounting for things is the way of the imiverse itself. It is, then, unspeakably rash to infer anything beyond what we see. It is curious that this argument should seem so profound, so judicious, so indicative of mental integrity when applied to theistic problems, and so unsatisfactory elsewhere. Without waiting to solve this psychological and logical puzzle, we point out that the theistic " as if " is as good as the scientific " as if." We cannot reject the one and retain the other. 112 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT But we are not yet clear of the " as if." In general we know what a force is only by observing what it does. This is especially the case with mind, which is never seen in itself, but only in its effects. And this is true not only of the divine mind, but of the human mind as well. A mistake that flows directly from our general bondage to the senses leads us to fancy that we see our neighbors' minds ; and it has generally been argued against theism that we see mind in man, but none in nature. This claim the rudiments of psychology dispel. We know that our fellow-beings have minds only because they act as if they had ; that is, because their action shows order and purpose. In short, the argument for objective intelligence is the same whether for man, animals, or God. But no one will claim that the system of things shows less order and purpose than human action. If, then, we deny mind in nature because we have only an " as if " to reason from, we must deny it also in man; for an "as if" is all we have here. And yet we are wonderfully ready to find objective intelli- gence, if only it is not referred to God. The scantiest marks prove the presence of intellect in man and brute, or in human and brute action; but nothing proves intelligence back of nature. The ground of this queer logic must be sought in a profound study of the philosophy of prejudice and confusion. The point just dwelt upon deserves further notice. The belief in personal coexistence has never been questioned by the extremest idealists ; and we find it in full strength in our earliest years. To explain this fact some have called it an instinct, while others have preferred the more distinguished title of an THE "AS IF" OBJECTION 113 intuition. And there are the best of reasons why this belief should be made an absolute certainty in advance of all argument, and even against it. The certainty of personal coexistence constitutes the chief condition of a moral activity ; and if it were in any way weakened, the most hideous results might fol- low. Nevertheless, the logical ground of the belief consists entirely in the fact that our neighbors act as if they were intelligent. And upon reflection one must confess that the activities from which we infer intelligence are not very striking, but rather such as the organism might well execute of itself. Human movements look intelligent only because we have the key in ourselves. When considered in ab- straction from personality they seem almost grotesque in their insignificance. And in all of these cases, even in the use of speech, if we should study the effect, which is always some form of phj'sical move- ment, we should doubtless find a physical explana- tion. In the case of speech we should find no thought in the effect ; that would be an addition of our own. We have simply vibrating air, which can be traced to vibrating membranes, which in turn are set in motion by currents of air ; and these are forced along by the contraction of muscles producing a contraction of the thorax. If we care to pursue it further, we soon lose ourselves in the mystery of nervous cur- rents, and the subject escapes us. Nowhere in the series do we come in sight of a mind. We have, to be sure, an outcome which happens to be intelligible ; but the atheist has instructed us that intelligibility in the outcome is far enough from prov- ing an intelligent cause. Besides, the outcome, so 114 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT far as we can trace it, has a purely meclianical ex- planation, and need be referred to no mind. It would be a highly suspicious circumstance and a grave infraction of the law of continuity to conclude that a series which is physical so far as we can trace it, becomes something else where we cannot trace it ! It has been customary to say that we know that watches are designed, but not that eyes are designed. This is a mistake. In the case of a watchmaker we do not see the workman any more than in the case of the eye. We see only a physical organism in com- plex interaction with surrounding matter, and we see that the work goes on as if for an end ; but we see nothing more. The living, thinking workman is an inference from an " as if." But in nature, too, the work goes on as if for an end ; and the " as-ifness " is at least as marked as in the former case. If, then, watches point to an unseen workman who knows what he is doing, nature also points to an unseen workman who knows what he is doing. Any doubt of the one must extend to the other. But if we may be practically sure of our neighbors' intelligence, and that because they act intelligently, we may be sure that the world-ground is intelligent for the same reason. But we must go a step further. The last para- graph showed that the same argument which dis- credits mind in nature throws equal doubt upon mind in man. And further reflection shows that if there be no controlling mind in nature there can be no con- trolling mind in man. For if the basal power is blind and necessary, all that depends upon it is neces- sitated also. In that case all unfolding is driven from THE " AS IF " OBJECTION 115 behind, and nothing is led from before. Thought and feeling also come within this necessary unfolding. As such they are products, not causes. The basal necessity controls them in every respect, yet without being in any sense determined by them. Thought as thought counts for nothing. The line of power is through the mechanical antecedents that condition thought, and not through the thought itself. Hence any fancy of self-control we may have must be dis- missed as delusive. Human life and history, then, express no mind or purpose, but only the process of the all-embracing necessity. Thought and purpose may have been there as subjective states ; but they must be put outside of the dynamic sequence of events, and be made a kind of halo which, as a shadow, attends without affecting the cosmic move- ment. Indeed, so far from solving, thought rather complicates the problem. It offers no guidance, and is so much more to be accounted for. The basal necessity has not only to produce the physical move- ments and groupings which we mistakenly ascribe to intelligence, but it has also to produce the illusion of conscious thought and self-control. This extremely difficult and delicate task is escaped by denying the human mind outright ; and this is not difficult, as we affirm objective mind only from the conviction that its guidance is necessary. When this conviction is lacking, there is no ground for aflSrming objective thought. The claim, then, that we know watches are de- signed, but do not know that eyes are designed, appears to be doubly untenable. First, we have the same proof that eyes are designed that we have that 116 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT watches are designed; and second, if eyes are not designed, then watches are not designed. Both alike result from necessity, and if any thought attends the process, it does not affect it. The truth is, the design argument derives its force from the consciousness of our own free effort. We find that combinations for ends arise in our experience only as they first exist in conception, and are then made the norms of our action. And wherever we find combination apparently for ends, we at once supply the preexistent conception and the self-determination which experience has shown to be its invariable con- dition. We have already seen that in a system of necessity, teleological questions can never be answered ; it is further plain that in such a system they could never logically arise. Such questions imply that things might have been otherwise, and hence involve a denial of the complete determination of all exist- ence. When such determination is consciously af- firmed, to ask why anything is as it is, is like asking why a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Spinoza is the only leading necessitarian who has clearly seen the opposition between necessity and teleology. Most necessitarians have oscillated between this insight and attempts at mechanical ex- planation which should satisfy the teleological crav- ing. This inconsequence would seem to show that the cosmic necessity itself is somewhat illogical. In treating of the mechanical objection we found that it is barren at best and leads to no insight. We now see that the principles of this argument when carried out end in skepticism and denial of the human mind as well as of the divine mind. THE "AS IF" OBJECTION 117 This result shows once more the superficiality of the whole scheme of naturalistic thought on which atheism rests. When thought is shallow and criti- cism asleep, it is easy to take spatial and temporal phenomena as self-sufficient facts revealed by the senses and beyond all question. Then it is gravely announced that "Nature" knows nothing of mind and purpose, and goes its own mechanical way. It somewhat relieves our dismay to perceive that " Nature," in this sense, knows as little of man as it does of God — a fact which reduces the argument to harmlessness, except in cases where the naturalistic obsession has made critical thought impossible. Our relief is completed by the further discovery that this " Nature " itself is a fiction, an idol of the sense den. The third general objection, that the difference between human action and cosmic action is too great to allow any conclusion from one to the other, is only a verbal intimidation. All knowing presupposes some- thing universal in human intelligence, and the validity of the laws of our intelligence for all cosmic reality. But it is easy to overlook this fact and to seek to measure intellect by its physical attendants. Of course the human body and our earth itself are vanishing quantities compared with the great stellar masses, and the conclusion is drawn that the mind must abandon its rational nature in the face of physical vastness. Only passive minds will be affected by such considera- tions. The objection, such as it is, lies against the theory of knowledge, and only indirectly against theism. Bpistemology, when it understands itself, must assume the validity of thought for the entire THEISM 9 118 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT imiverse, and theism is only an implication of this assumption. Theism argues from intelligible effects to an intelligent cause. The rational and intelligible work is referred to reason and intelligence. Size has no bearing on the validity of this inference. Mere bigness in space or time has nothing in it to change the laws of logic. As well might we suppose that the laws of number are valid for small numbers but are overawed by large ones. The suggestion that we have a knowledge in objective human action which -we do not have in cosmic action is mistaken. The further demurrer that while intelligibility in human action points to intelligence, intelligibility in cosmic action does not point to intelligence, is an act of caprice, not of reason. If it be further suggested that there may be untold transcendental possibilities, any one of which might produce the effects, this is only to return to the unreason of abandoning reason in order to revel in inarticulate imaginings, none of which can be con- structed in thought. As a result of all these considerations, we hold that the design argument, when the unity of the world- ground is given, proves far more conclusively the existence of mind in nature than it does the existence of mind in man. The two stand or fall together. Whether the purpose-like combinations and proc- esses of nature constitute a problem for which we are justified in seeking a solution, every one must decide for himself. We claim only that if we are allowed to seek a solution we can find it only in intel- ligence. The appeal to chance is vacated by all the principles of rational thinking. The explanation by law and mechanism is tautological. The atheistic THE ARGUMENT FROM FINITE INTELLIGENCE 119 solution has no positive value whatever. It dis- appears into nothingness when critically examined, as bubbles when they are touched. The only possible question concerns the source of the illusion ; and this we have answered already. We erect matter into something self-sufficient. We next furnish it with various forces. In this way the being and causality of the universe are provided for. We next find a principle of order in the notion of law, and nothing more seems needed. By the help of the fallacy of the universal we reduce the system to very low and simple terms, so that we do not seem to be assuming the entire problem from the start ; and then, by turn- ing loose the terminology of evolution, we cause the system to evolve to order. Thus the reign of matter, force, and law, is set in antithesis to the reign of mind ; and the realm of the former is ever growing. Mind at best is only a provisional hjrpothesis to explain what the undoubted reality, matter and force, does not yet account for ; and as it daily accounts for more and more, mind is less and less necessary. The limit of this movement must be to make matter and force all sufficient, so that science will at last fulfill Comte's prediction and conduct God to the frontier and bow him out with thanks for his provisional services. This is the natural history of popular atheism. The Argument feom Finite Intelligence The third inductive argument for the intelligence of the world-ground is based on the existence of finite intelligence, or, more specifically, of human 120 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT intelligence. This forms an additional problem, and there is no solution except in cosmic intelligence. There has been a very general oversight of this problem by atheistic reasoners, or at least a failure to discern its deep significance. The speculator, in curious self-forgetfulness, fixes his thought on the physical system and forgets himself. He assumes a monopoly of intellect in the universe and forgets that this rare and lonely endowment must still have its roots in the universe. For man and mind are a part and outcome of the universe, and any explanation which left them out would miss one of its greatest wonders. The problem then arises how to deduce the conscious from the unconscious, the intelligent from the non-intelligent, the purposive from the non- purposive, and freedom from necessity. But psy- chology shows the hopelessness of such a task. There is absolutely no thoroughfare here except a verbal one, no analysis of unconscious things or processes reveals that, at a certain point or phase of complication, con- sciousness and thought must emerge. On the con- trary, the more clearly we conceive physical elements or processes, the more clearly we perceive the im- possibility of such a transition. This insight has led to the modern device of a double-faced substance. This view, while stopping short of afl&rming an independent creative intelligence, does still insist upon intelligence as one of the original factors of the world-ground. Both the metaphysics and logic of this view are somewhat open to suspicion, but it is correct in concluding that there is no way from non- intelligence to intelligence. Only verbal transits are possible. THE ARGUMENT FROM FINITE INTELLIGENCE 121 And this is only the beginning of the difficulty. If we should suppose the qualitative gulf between material mechanism and mentality transcended, we should still have to provide for knowledge and its complex processes. We should have to produce not merely mental states, but true thoughts ; that is, thoughts which rightly reproduce the physical environ- ment; and then, in addition, we should have the problem of error on our hands. So far as atheistic reasoners have considered this subject at all, they have generally been content with affirming some ground for sentiency in the physical system, and falling back on sensationalism for the rest. But this is worse than a broken reed ; for epistemology shows that sensationalism is inadequate to the work assigned it, and that it destroys the physical foundations of atheism altogether. For the present we forbear to press these difficulties. Apart from the impassable gulf between the assumed cause and the alleged effect which psychology reveals at this point, a peculiar logical difficulty emerges from the necessity in a mechanical system of assimilating either the effects to the cause or the cause to the effects ; and in either case the doctrine is in unstable equilibrium. For if everything is to be mechanically explained, then human life, thought, and action must be phases of the all-embracing ne- cessity. But man can form purposes and determine himself accordingly. Hence it follows that in the department of human life, at least, the cosmic mech- anism does form purposes and execute them. Here design actually appears as real and controlling. Hence, by the necessity of including man, we are 122 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT forced to admit that the cosmic mechanism is not incompatible with purpose. But if it act purposely in the human realm, there is no theoretical objection to admitting that it acts purposely in the physical realm if the facts call for it. The only escape from this conclusion is to deny our consciousness that pur- pose rules at all in our mental life. But as long as this is allowed, the so-called cosmic mechanism must be viewed as one which can form plans and determine itself for their execution ; that is, it must be what we mean by mind. The alternative, as we shall see, is to wreck knowledge in skepticism. The problem of order and the problem of teleology we found to be insoluble on atheistic principles. The problem of finite intelligence is now seen to be equally insoluble for atheism. Popular thought about theism, we have said, moves on the inductive plane, and with the general aim of explanation. That is, it aims to give some rational ac- count of things in which the mind can rest. Popular theism maintains that the facts of experience cannot be explained without affirming intelligence in the world- ground. Popular atheism, on the other hand, main- tains that the facts may well be explained otherwise. This latter claim is baseless. It rests upon verbal illusions and on ignorance both of logical principles and of the problems to be solved. When the questions are cleared up so as to be seen in their true natm-e, the atheistic argument vanishes into nothingness. In so far, then, as the discussion aims at reaching an ex- planation of the world, the decision must be in favor of theism. THE ARGUMENT FROM EPISTEMOLOGY 123 The Argument feom Epistemology The arguments previously outlined proceed on the basis of common-sense realism. Knowledge is taken for granted, and the substantial existence of a system of material things is assumed as a matter of course. There is no knowledge of the rational implications of epistemology, and no suspicion of the doubt which metaphysics throws upon the very existence of the things upon which atheism relies. Popular thought is inaccessible to considerations of this kind, and hence we have dealt thus far with the more familiar arguments. But from a logical standpoint the most effective theistic argument lies in this more abstract and speculative field. We proceed to its development. And first we call attention to a negative aspect of the question, the suicidal bearing of atheism on the problem of knowledge. It is to be shown that athe- ism and all systems of necessity destroy the trust- worthiness of reason, which is the presupposition of all speculation, and are hence self -condemned. We argue as follows : — Beliefs can be viewed in two ways : as produced by causes, or as deduced from grounds. That is, beliefs may be merely mental events due to certain psycho- logical antecedents, or they may be logical convic- tions which rest on logical grounds. The distinction of rational from irrational beliefs is that the former have grounds which justify them, while the latter are only effects in us, deposits of habit, prejudice, tradi- tion, caprice, etc. They have their sufficient psycho- logical causes, but have no justifying rational grounds. 124 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT Now every system of necessity cancels this distinction. It gives us causes, but removes the grounds, of behef. The proof is as follows : — In every mechanical doctrine of mind there are no mental acts, but only psychological occurrences. Even the drawing of a conclusion is not an act of the mind, but an occurrence in the mind. The conclusion is not justified by its antecedent reasons, but is coerced by its psychological antecedents. If we deny the substantiality of mind, the conclusion is only the men- tal sjrmbol of a certain state of the physical mechan- ism. If we allow the mind to be real, but subject to necessity, then the conclusion is but the resultant of the preceding mental states. In both cases we must replace the free, self-centered activity of reason by a physical or mental mechanism which determines all our ideas and their conjunctions. This determination takes on in consciousness the appearance of reflection, reasoning, concluding, etc., but these are only the illusive symbols in consciousness of a mechanical pro- cess below it. Nothing, then, depends on reason, but only on the physical or mental states ; and these, for all we know, might become anything whatever with the result of changing the conclusion to any other whatever. But this view is the extreme of skepticism. Beliefs sink into effects ; and one is as good as an- other while it lasts. The coming or going of a belief does not depend upon its rationality, but only on the relative strength of the corresponding antecedents. But this strength is a fact, not a truth. When a given element displaces another in a chemical com- pound, it is not truer than that other, but stronger. So when a psychical element displaces another in a men- THE ARGUMENT FROM EPISTEMOLOGY 125 tal combination, not truth, but strength, is in ques- tion. On the plane of cause and effect, truth and error are meaningless distinctions. Proper rationality is possible only to freedom ; and here truth and error first acquire significance. The rational mind must not be controlled by its states, but must control them. It must be able to stand apart from its ideas and test them. It must be able to resist the influ- ence of habit and association, and to undo the irra- tional conjunctions of custom. It must also be able to think twice, or to reserve its conclusion until the inner order of reason has been reached. Unless it can do this, all beliefs sink into effects, and the dis- tinction of rational and irrational, of truth and error, vanishes. We reach the same conclusion from another stand- point. No system of necessity has any standard of distinction between truth and error. If all beliefs are not true, and as contradictory they cannot be, it fol- lows that error is a fact. But how can error be admitted without canceling truth? On the one hand, we must admit that our faculties are made for truth, and that we cannot by volition change truth. On the other, we cannot allow that we are shut up by necessity to error, as then our faculties would be es- sentially untrustworthy. This difficulty can be resolved only in the notion of freedom. If we have faculties which are truthful, but which may be care- lessly used or willfully misused, we can explain error without compromising truth ; but not otherwise. If truth and error be alike necessary, there is no stand- ard of truth left. If we make the majority the standard, what shall assure us that the majority is 126 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT right ? And who knows that the majority will al- ways hold the same views ? Opinions have changed in the past, why not in the future ? There is no rational standard left, and no power to use it if there were. We cannot determine our thoughts; they come and go as the independent necessity determines. If there were any reason left, the only conclusion it could draw would be that knowledge is utterly impos- sible, and that its place must be swallowed up by an overwhelming skepticism. The bearing of this upon theism is plain. There can be no rationality, and hence no knowledge, upon any system of necessity. Atheism is such a system, and hence is suicidal. It must flout consciousness, discredit reason, and end by dragging the whole structure of thought and life down into hopeless ruin. Rationality demands freedom in the finite knower; and this, in turn, is incompatible with necessity in the world-ground. This freedom does not, indeed, imply the power on the part of the mind to coerce its conclusions, but only to rule itself according to pre- conceived standards. Pure arbitrariness and pure necessity are alike incompatible with reason. There must be a law of reason in the mind with which voli- tion cannot tamper ; and there must also be the power to determine ourselves accordingly. Neither can dis- pense with the other. The law of reason in us does not compel obedience, else error would be impossible. Rationality is reached only as the mind accepts the law and determines itself accordingly. Thus atheism appears as a mental outlaw. Instead of being, as it often fondly imagines, the last and highest result of reason and science, it is rather the THE ARGUMENT FROM EPISTEMOLOGY 127 renunciation and destruction of both. We pass now to the positive side of the argument from episte- mology. In the previous chapter we pointed out that all study of objective reality assumes the fact of law and system, or a universal adjustment of each to all in a common scheme of order. Here we next point out that all study assumes that this system is an in- telligible or rational one. A rational cosmos is the implicit assumption of objective cognition. The im- plications of this fact we have now to unfold. Common sense naturally begins with the supposi- tion that a world of material things exists in space and time, and apart from any intelligence whatever. Before criticism has taught us to discriminate, this view seems so self-evident that any question of it is an affront to good sense, and a mark of mental frivol- ity. And this view, when a stage of superficial reflection has been reached, readily lends itself to atheistic inferences. In this stage of thought the world, or nature, is always on the point of declaring its independence, especially when written with an ini- tial capital. This extra-mental world of things and forces, however, turns out upon inquiry to be an extremely questionable hypothesis, if not a down- right contradiction. When thought becomes critical, it appears that the basal certainties in knowledge are not the ontological existence of material and mechanical things, but rather the coexistence of persons, the community of intelligence and the system of common experience. And these are not given as speculative deductions, 128 THE WOKLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT but as unshakable practical certainties. We cannot live intellectually at all without recognizing other persons than ourselves, and without assuming that the laws of intelligence are valid for all alike, and that aU have the same general objects in experience. Solipsism is absurd to a pitch beyond insanity. The one law of intelligence for all is the supreme condi- tion of mutual understanding ; and the community of the world of experience is only less necessary for the mental life. These are the deepest facts and presup- positions, and they involve some profound mysteries ; but they cannot be questioned without immediate practical absurdity. And they never are questioned. The skeptic and the dogmatist, the idealist and the materialist, alike practically agree on these facts and postulates. What lies beyond them is a matter of speculation and no datum of experience. Thus, whether that system of common experience is to be explained by a system of material and mechanical bodies in space and time is a speculative problem, and must be handed over to speculation for solution. Hence, the undeniable certainties with which atheism begins must take their place among metaphysical hypotheses, and be tested accordingly. Reflection on this point will do much to remove that illusive ap- pearance of matter of fact which lends a certain plausibility to atheistic reasoning. It will also show the naive character of that naturalism which erects mathematical and mechanical abstractions into the supreme reality, and then in their name proceeds to deny all the realities of experience, allowing them, if at all, only as " epiphenomena " of the truly real. The history of speculative thought shows no more THE ARGUMENT FROM EPISTEMOLOGY 129 remarkable obsession. Relief is found by observing that experience is first and law-giving, and that theo- ries which make no place for it are thereby ruled out. Again, common sense begins by taking knowledge as well as things for granted. In the beginnings of mental development knowledge is not even a problem. Things are there, and are reflected by the mind as a matter of course. Of the complex and obscure processes and postulates of cognition, spontaneous thought has no suspicion. Atheism agrees with it in this respect, and thus escapes some of its own most grievous difficulties by being unconscious of them. But epistemology shows that the existence of things is by no means the same as our knowledge of them. It points out that if things existed precisely as they appear to us, the knowledge of them could arise only as the mind by its own action reproduces the contents of things for thought. Knowledge is noth- ing which can be imported ready-made into a passive mind, but the mind must actively construct knowledge within itself. In conversation no ideas pass from one mind into another, but each mind for itself constructs the other's thought, and only thus apprehends and comprehends it. The knowledge is indeed objectively conditioned, and yet each mind has to construct it for itself. Of course such personal communion pre- supposes that both minds are made on a common pat- tern, and are subject to the same laws. Only in a figurative sense does either get anything from the other ; but each works out of itself. This expresses the fact in all knowing. To know things is to think them ; that is, to form thoughts 130 THE WORLD-GKOUND AS INTELLIGENT which truly grasp the contents or meanmg of the things. The thoughts do not pass ready-made into the mind ; they do not pass into the mind at all ; but upon occasion of certain action upon the mind, the mind unfolds within itself the vision and knowledge of the world. And this it does, according to the physiologist's report, without pattern or copy, and in consequence of certain nervous changes, of which, moreover, it knows nothing directly, and commonly knows nothing whatever. This being the case, it is manifestly idle to think of knowledge as impressed on a passive mind, or as carried ready-made into the mind. The knowledge originates within; and the laws and forms of knowledge must primarily be laws and forms of thought itself. In a very real sense the mind in knowing things is simply manifesting itseK by putting its own laws and forms into and upon its experience. But if knowledge is to be valid, thought and things must have the same laws. Otherwise there would be a parallax between the thoughts built up by the mind and the things which are supposed to exist apart from it. Thought can only speak its own language, and things must be forever unknowable by us unless they also speak thought language ; that is, unless they are cast in the forms and molds of thought. In that case we have, from the human point of view, a dual- ism and a harmony implicit in knowledge for which atheism has no explanation. We are at a complete deadlock unless we assume that the thing world is essentially a thought world, or a world which roots in and expresses thought. The suggestion that things have produced thought in their own image calls for THE ARGUMENT FROM EPISTEMOLOGY 131 no consideration, as metaphysics shows that there is no thoroughfare in that direction. This conclusion must stand, even on the supposition that we simply apprehend or read off things in sense perception without modification. But most of our objective knowing is not reception but interpretation. The world as it is for sense is very different from the world as it is for thought. In looking at a picture, the colored surfaces and outlines are in the sense, the meaning is in thought. In reading a book, the printed page is in the sense ; the signification is in thought, and only in thought. One who does not know how to read would look in vain for meaning in a book, and in vain would he seek to help his failure by using eyeglasses. Language has no meaning except for one who furnishes the meaning out of himself. The same is true also for our knowledge of the world. That which is in sense is very different from that which is in thought. The sense world is flitting, fleeting, discontinuous. Epistemology shows that it is all an inarticulate, phantasmagoric flux or dissolving view until thought brings into it its rational principles, and fixes and interprets it. The sense world, so far as it is articulate, or anything we can talk about, is already a thought world. Its perma- nences and identities are products of thought. The complex system of relations, whereby it is defined and articulated, is a thought product which can in no way be given to sense. The far-reaching inferences of science, whereby our spontaneous thought of the world is so profoundly transformed, are something which exists for neither eye nor ear, but for thought only. The sense world is the same from age to age. 132 THE VVOKLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT but the thought world grows from more to more. The world of science differs from the world of sense as widely as the conceptions of the astronomer differ from the algebraic signs by which he expresses them. Thus again we see the complex thought activity involved in knowledge. If the thing world be com- plete in itself, then knowledge involves the building up of a thought world which shall be the double of the thing world and rightly reproduce it for us ; and this thought world must be unfolded within thought itself as an expression of the rational nature. The problem of human knowledge, then, involves (1) a knowable, that is a rational, universe ; (2) a know- ing human mind ; (3) the identity of the categories of hmnan thought with the principles of cosmic being ; (4) such an adjiistment of the outer to the inner that the miud, reacting according to its own nature against external stimulus, shall produce in itself thoughts which shall truly reproduce the objective fact, and (5) an identity of rational nature in human beings. If human reason were many, and not one, there would be an end to thought. These implications are so involved in. the very structure of knowledge that we take them for granted without thought of their sig- nificance ; whereas they are the perennial wonder of existence. And herein is a marvelous thing for any one, and especially for an atheistic speculator. Things which are to be known must exist in intelligible, that is, rational, order and relations. The world as we grasp it is a world of thought relations ; for thought can grasp nothing else. Now if the real world were an expression of thought, this would be quite intelligible. THE ARGUMENT FROM EPISTEMOLOGY 133 The world without exists through a mind analogous to the mind within. Thus the thing world and the thought world would be commensurable, both being founded in the natiu-e of reason.- But on the atheistic scheme the thing world has no thought whatever in it. It just exists in its own mechanical way, independent of all thought and the negation of all thought. But in that case there is no way to thought at all, and still less is there any provision for knowledge. A speech made up of inarticulate noises could never be understood, because there is in it no thought to understand. Just as little could the world be known, unless there were thought in it to be apprehended by the knower. The materialistic fancy that things, by being very small and very numerous, and moving very rapidly in some mysterious way, coiild generate knowledge and get themselves known, is set aside by the rudiments of psychology and metaphysics. Hence on the supposition that things exist in the most real- istic fashion, and we have only to read off what is there, we have to affirm an elaborate dualism and parallelism of human thought and cosmic thing which remain an insoluble mystery, except on the theistic doctrine which makes things expressions of thought. Both psychology and epistemology absolutely refuse to assimilate thoughts to things ; it only remains to assimilate things to thoughts by making them the products or expressions of thought. The matter becomes stUl more complicated when we remember how much of knowledge is interpreta- tion, not reception. As long as we confuse the sense fact with the thought fact, there is a kind of plausi- bility in the fancy that the sense fact may be passively THEISM 10 134 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT reflected by thought. But this notion disappears as soon as we note the incommensurabihty between what is in sense and what is in thought. To recur to the illustration of language, speech apart from meanings is mere noise ; and noise becomes speech only as it is informed with meanings. But the meanings are not in the sound objectively considered. The sound is the medium for conveying meanings which exist only for the minds at each end. Lan- guage must begin in thought if it is to end in thought. Any one can see the impossibility of understanding noise, and also the impossibility of noise generating understanding. The same is true of objective knowl- edge. The meaning is not found in the sense fact at all. The spatial and temporal fact in itself con- tains no meaning, but is simply a medium for express- ing a meaning. And as with language, so with the knowledge of nature. There is no interpreting*the process unless we have a thinker at both ends. Nature is speech, not existence. If nature expresses the thought of a thinker beyond it, it is quite credible that we should find thought in it. Otherwise all is opacity and darkness. We are trying to understand noises which mean nothing. The Argument feom Metaphysics We have had frequent occasion in this chapter to refer to the realistic notion of a world of things existing by themselves apart from all thought, as a prolific source of atheistic fancies. We have now to show that this notion is very questionable. Here metaphysics takes up and completes the argument from epistemology by showing that the self-existent mechanical world THE ARGUMENT FROM METAPHYSICS 135 on which atheism builds is a product of superficial sense thinking which understands neither itself nor its problem. If we allow space and time to be real existences of some sort, no intelligible world can exist in them without the work of thought. The intelligible world, as we have said, is a world of thought relations and related objects ; and as such implies intelligence as the condition of its possibility. As the world of sense qualities exists only in and for the sensibility, so the world of relations and related objects exists only in and for thought, and not in space and time alone. Or the iatelligible world is a world of mean- ings and thought contents, and these are impossible except with reference to intelligence. To the uninitiated this will have a somewhat ideal- istic sound, owing to a natural illusion. Popular thoifght is rightly convinced that knowledge has objective vaHdity, and it confuses this conviction with the lumpish existence of things in an extra- mental space and time, as it knows no other way of securing the reality of the things. But epistemology shows that the ultimate meaning of objectivity is the universality of the object in our common experience, or the vaHdity of our conceptions for common ex- perience. Such objects and conceptions are real or objective, in distinction from individual illusions which are private possessions, and hence errors. But this universality is primarily in experience, and on reflection it is plain that it cannot be anywhere else. It is not a question of the validity or truth of the experience, but rather of its con- tents and location. When these poiats are borne in 136 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT mind it will not seem so strange when we say that the intelligible world cannot exist in space and time. Illustrations abound. Thus, in the case of speech, all that can exist in space and time is noise, succes- sively propagating itself across spaces in time; but noise is not speech. Only meanings are speech, and meanings are not in space or time, and can neither be seen nor heard. Meanings exist only for mind and through mind. Again, where does a symphony exist ? Not in space or time, but only in mind. Apart from the qualitative transformation of vibration into sound by the sensibility, the symphony can exist as such only through the unifying and relating activity of conscious- ness. Apart from this activity, every phase of the sound would lie loose and unrelated, each one in its own space and time, and nowhere united in a common consciousness. The symphony would nowhere exist. All that can take place in the most realistic space and time is but the means for translating the symphony from idea to act, or from one mind to another ; but the symphony exists as anything apprehensible only 'in and through thought. The place of music is in the mind ; and music is an impossibility conceived as existing in space and time. So with the world of literature, of discourse, of government — none of these things can exist extra- mentally in space and time. The world of discourse is not a matter of ears only or mainly, but rather of thought. The volitional interaction of moral beings, which is the essence of government, can never be spatially exhibited ; and one would present a humor- ous spectacle who should set out to see the govern- ment with his physical eyes. Literature also does THE ARGUMENT PROM METAPHYSICS 137 not exist in libraries but only in and for minds. It is indeed conceivable that some person of posi- tivistic tendencies should decide that meanings are too airy and impalpable to be the subject of science, and should insist that letters and their groupings are the essence of literature. Under the influence of this notion he might make elaborate studies of the various forms of the letters and of their " coexistences and sequences," and also of the various kinds of paper and binding ; and this he might proclaim to be the scientific method of literary study. But literature is not a matter of letters or paper or binding after all. In like manner the intelligible world exists only for and through thought. All that takes place in space or time is at best only the movement for translating the world of ideas into act and making it accessible to finite minds ; but in itself, and apart from this teleological function, the spatial and temporal fact is nothing articulate or intelligible. Again, we may reach the same conclusion by another way. Epistemology shows that nothing can exist for the mind except through fixed and tuneless ideas. Everything as occurring passes away with its date and can by no possibility recur. The temporal flow is ceaseless and admits of infinite division. Hence every event breaks up into an indefinite number of events corresponding to the temporal division; and each infinitesimal increment vanishes irrevocably with its temporal instant. If this were all, thought and even existence would be impossible; and Kronos would devour both his offspring and himself. But the mind grasps and fixes the temporal flow by time- less ideas which give the abiding meaning of which 138 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT the temporal movement is the bearer or expression. On no other condition can we escape the Heraclitic flux and the complete overthrow of knowledge. But these timeless ideas, as such, are incapable of temporal existence. They represent the meaning, the rational contents, but they are a purely ideal world. And here again is a problem which demands solution. We might say that the ideas are arbitrary impositions of our own, and have no essential connection with reality ; but this would not long command assent. It would be like saying that we have ideas in connection with another's speech or writing, but we have no reason for thioking that he had ideas. It can hardly be that ideas are necessary for the expression and understand- ing of things to which they are essentially unrelated ; neither is it likely that things essentially unrelated to ideas can ever be comprehended through ideas. The only alternative to these impossible views is to say that the world in space and time is a movement according to ideas and for the setting forth of ideas behind the movement, or immanent in it. As such an incarnation of thought, it is intelligible and possi- ble ; but apart from thought, as a thing by itself, it is neither intelligible nor possible. Thus we see once more that the intelligible world is a thought world, and exists only in and through thought. It may be manifested under the form of space and time ; but it cannot exist in space and time as extra-mental realities, any more than the world of music, or of lit- erature, or of language. But we must go still further in the direction of idealism, and point out that space and time themselves are no proper existences apart from mind, but only THE ARGUMENT FROM METAPHYSICS 139 forms of experience. They are not real somewhats in which things exist or events run off, but are only general forms of experience. Metaphysics shows that when they are made more than this they become ab- surd, and make existence itself impossible. Thus the endless divisibility of space and the mutual external- ity of all its parts make it impossible that anything should exist as an ontological reality in space. Everything would break up into an indefinite plural- ity ; and all unity, and thus all reality, would disap- pear. The mutual externality of successive moments has the same effect in time. Nothing that really exists in succession can exist at all. Time itself cannot exist. For only the present can exist, and the present is simply the plane of division between past and future. Hence nothing can exist, if time be ontological. Metaphysics shows that considerations of this kind compel us to reduce space and time to forms of experience only. Things are not in space and time, but experience has the spatial and temporal form. The spatial and temporal laws are valid for experience, but they become absurd and impossible when they are abstracted from experience and made iato independent existences. Thus all that exists in space and time, together with space and time themselves, must be viewed as having only phenomenal existence, that is, as existiag only for and through intelligence. Real existence must be conceived either under the form of space and time, or under the form of con- scious intelligence. There is no third possibility. But on analysis all spatial and temporal being becomes phenomenal. As spatial it can have no unity; as 140 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT temporal it can have neither unity, identity, nor permanence. Such unity, identity, and permanence as it may seem to have, are entirely the work of the intelligence which produces or apprehends it. It has such unity as any spatial or temporal measure may have — a unity which' is purely formal, and is imposed by the mind. What is the unity of a minute, or a mile, or a degree of the circle ? Unless there be something non-spatial and non-temporal, nothing whatever can exist. And only intelligence meets this demand. Metaphysics shows that active intelligence alone fills out the true notion of being, unity, identity, and causality. On the impersonal and mechanical plane these categories all vanish or contradict themselves. The spatial and temporal disappear in the dissolving view, and impersonal causality loses itself in the infinite regress, and finally cancels itself. Moreover, causality in time must either sink to mere sequence in which the notion of causality dis- appears, or else fall back on the notion of potentiahty to keep past and present from falling asunder. If there be no dynamic connection between them, we fall into a groundless becoming and reason perishes. Logic also demands that the past which is to explain the present shall in some way contain the present. But we cannot carry the present bodily and actually into the past, for that would confound all distinctions. Hence the notion of potentiality; the present was potential in the past. But this notion also is empty of any real meaning on the impersonal plane. What a metaphysical potentiality, in distinction from a metaphysical actuality, might be, cannot be told. On the personal plane it refers to the possible determina- THE ARGUMENT FROM METAPHYSICS 141 tions of free intelligence, and here it means some- thing ; but on the impersonal plane it is simply the recognition of a problem to which it gives only a verbal solution. The real solution must be sought in free intelligence. Such are some of the puzzles which emerge when we think under temporal con- ditions. Thus the metaphysical apparatus of sense thought, on which atheism depends, disappears altogether. Its alleged foundations all turn out to imply mind as their presupposition, or to exist only under the form of living intelligence. Of course the categories which sense thought employs are all formally neces- sary ; the mistake lies in supposing that they can be realized in the sense form. The conviction that there must be reality, unity, identity, and causality is correct, but it does not of itself decide the form under which they are possible. Reflection shows that they are possible only under the form of intelligence or in relation to intelligence. When we conceive the world as having intelligible meaning we come down to a supreme intelligence, not only as its source, but as that without which it would be not merely impossible but absurd and meaningless. A world of meanings presupposes mind. A system of relations implies intelligence as its source and seat. When we con- ceive the world in its causality, we are brought down to active intelligence by which it exists and from which it forever proceeds. The world has its form and meaning in the divine thought, and its reality m the divine will. In a previous paragraph we have pointed out that the basal certainties of knowledge are not the onto- 142 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT logical existence of material and mechanical things, but rather the coexistence of persons, the community of intelligence, and the system of common experience. We are now better able to appreciate this fact. This system of experience which is there for all of us is itself a function of intelligence and no extra-mental fact. And it is this system of experience, and the coexistent minds which share in it, that philosophy has to interpret. And in both the experience and the interpretation, thought remains within the intel- lectual sphere. Thought can neither reach nor use things lying beyond thought and unrelated to thought ; and if we seem to reach such things it is only by mis- taking the common to all in experience for a fact un- related to intelligence, or by abstracting the categories from experience, in which alone they have meaning, and projecting them as extra-mental facts. As such they contradict themselves as soon as reflection begins ; and the perennial antinomies of realism emerge. If, on the other hand, we refer the world of intelligible experience and intelligent spirits to intelligence as their source, our thought system remains homogeneous with itself throughout, and we escape the chronic contra- dictions which haunt, in spite of all exorcisms, every realistic system of the impersonal and mechanical type. As soon as realism is seen to be, not experi- ence, but an interpretation of experience, its untena- bility becomes manifest. For the sake of warding off misunderstanding, so far as possible, we present the argument again in brief out- line. Of course it does not commend itself to the natural man nor even to the natural theist, because of sundry easy misconceptions. Both alike are sure that the THE ARGUMENT FROM METAPHYSICS 143 world of facts which they perceive is independent of their own intelligence, and of their neighbors' intelli- gence. This world did not begin when they first became aware of it, nor did it grow with their gi-ow- ing knowledge, nor will it vanish with their conscious- ness of it. This fact, which is admitted by aU except some lively person who takes pleasure in airing con- ceits and paradoxes, is supposed by the natural man to show that the universe which exists apart from owe intelligence exists apart from all intelhgence. The natural theist, of course, would insist that the universe began in intelligence, but he would also in- sist that it now exists external to all intelligence. The atheist would claim that the universe is now, and always has been, external to intelligence. Both alike would be sure that the meaning of this ex- ternality is sun-clear, and that its reality is self- evident. But there is a great difference between existing apart from our intelligence, and existing apart from aU intelligence. The world of sense qualities may exist apart from the sensibility of A or B, but it can- not exist apart from all sensibility. The world of literature also may exist apart from the intelligence of few or many, but it exists nevertheless only for and in intelligence. Now the universe as we know it is essen- tially a vast system of relations under the various cate- gories of the intellect ; and such a universe would have neither meaning nor existence apart from intelligence. It does not avail against this conclusion to say that, besides the relations, there are real things in rela- tions ; for these things themselves are defined and constituted by their relations, so that their existence 144 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT apart from a constitutive intelligence becomes an absurdity. If, with Locke, we declare that relations are the work of the mind, and then attempt to find some unrelated reality in the object which can exist apart from mind, our quest is soon seen to be bootless and hopeless. In that case we should have to admit that the real in itself is unknowable, and that the real as known exists only in and for intelligence. But as this intelligence in and for which the universe exists is not ours, there must be a cosmic intelligence as its abiding condition, and in reference to which alone the affirmation of a universe has any meaning. Since the time of Kant it has been clear to those who could estimate his work that we can never know anything outside of the thought sphere. Mind and the products of mind comprise the whole sphere of the knowable. This Kant made plain once for all. What- ever lies within the range of knowledge must be either mind or a mental product. But Kant had not com- pletely emancipated himself from the assumptions of uncritical reahsm, and admitted a reality beyond the thought sphere, which he rightly pronounced unknow- able. It was reserved for later philosophers to poiat out that this extra-mental reality is just as unaffirm- able as it is unknowable. The afiirmation itself was seen to be empty, so that it affirmed nothing. Thus all possible knowledge and affirmation fell back into the thought sphere again. Two points Kant felt compelled to secure : first, the constructive action of the mind in knowledge, so that knowledge is primarily an expression of the mental nature rather than of the object ; and secondly, the objective reality of something independent of us and THE ARGUMENT FKOM METAPHYSICS 145 our thinking. These two points Kant never succeeded in properly adjusting to each other. When he thought of the constructive mental activity involved in knowl- edge, Kant tended to make all objects only represen- tations in us ; that is, purely subjective and human, if not individualistic. When he thdught of the inde- pendent reality he maintained some sort of transcen- dental something which he refused to let us know or even to think, as it lay outside of the range of thought. In this way arose the continuous contradiction which runs through Kant's exposition. And we can escape the contradiction and save the truth of the system only by giving up the extra^mental things altogether, and making the thing world the expression of a thought world behind it or immanent in it ; which thought world, again, is the expression of a supreme intelligence which founds and coordinates both the thing world and the world of finite spirits. In this way things are at once independent of our thought and commensurate with thought. They are not illu- sions of the individual ; and yet, as the products and expressions of thought, they lie within the thought sphere. Thus we escape the impossibilities of crude realism, and also the intellectual scandal of the un- knowable things in themselves. And this is possible only on the plane of idealistic theism. The dualism of our human knowing is founded and transcended in a monism of the infinite, the source of both the finite spirit and the cosmic order. But this does not imply that the world is merely a conception without other reality. The world is not merely an idea, it is also a deed. The contents of the world are given in the idea, but the world becomes 146 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT real only as it passes into act. It is not merely a conception in the divine understanding, it is also a form of divine activity. Both factors are needed to express om' full conviction with regard to the world. It is not a lumpish existence out of all essential rela- tion to thought ; for it is simply thought made con- crete. Neither is it a passive conception in an inert mind ; it is rather a forthgoing of energy according to rational ideas. Thus it is at once real and rational, and being the work of intelligence, it is forever open to the comprehension of intelligence. Our thought of the world has two poles. When we approach the world from the standpoint of meaning, we come down to the divine idea. "When we approach it from the side of causahty, we come down to the divine wiU. To this result epistemology and metaphysics must come ; to this they are fast coming. Both of these sciences when they understand themselves must be theistic. The trustworthiness of reason and the validity of knowledge can be maintained only on a theistic basis. Any scheme of mechanical necessity makes shipwreck on the problem of error ; and no such scheme knows any way of deducing or evolving valid knowledge. Free intelligence in the world- ground and in the finite knower is the only solution of the problem which really solves it. And since the trustworthiness of reason and the validity of knowledge are the presupposition of all science and philosophy, we must say that God as free and intelli- gent is the postulate of both science and philosophy. If these are possible, it can be only on a theistic basis. In the beginning of this chapter we treated of the THE ARGUMENT FROM METAPHYSICS 147 inductive argument for affirming purpose. We now see that a theoretical and speculative argument of wider range is possible. We have seen the teleologi- cal character of our fundamental postulates as related to the self-realization and self-preservation of the mind itself. We have also seen the universality of the te- leological craving, and the impossibility of satisfying it by any impersonal mechanism. We have further seen that reason can reach no equilibrium in episte- mology and metaphysics until it rises to the conception of intelligent and purposive causality as the supreme category of reality. On the impersonal plane thought is in unstable equilibrium, and is sure to fall into con- tradiction with itself. The categories vanish or cancel themselves. But some intellectual range and flexibil- ity are needed for the appreciation of such an argu- ment ; although it is the best argument when understood. The inductive argument at best has the disadvantage of resting on picked facts ; while great masses of facts seem neutral, if not opposed to it. This gives the impression that purpose in any case applies to only a few things, and the surmise is not far away that it does not apply to anything. Such argument is effective rather as illustration than as proof. But the argument has a very different stand- ing when it is seen that purpose, as the essential form of intellectual action, enters into the very structure of reason and knowledge. Thus the necessity of tele- ology is theoretically established ; and experience has only the function of tracing and illustrating it. Of course this epistemological and metaphysical argument is highly abstract and can never find favor except in speculative circles. It is valuable as show- 148 THE WORLD-GROUND AS INTELLIGENT ing theism, or a cosmic intelligence to be a necessary implication of the essential structm-e of thought and knowledge. From this standpoint atheism would appear as the crude misunderstanding of a mind not yet in full possession of itself, but rather in hopeless bondage to the senses and their spontaneous preju- dices. It vanishes of itself as soon as it is brought into relation to the general problem of knowledge. Then its superficiahty and self-destructive character become apparent. Atheism is philosophic illiteracy. Thus the arguments from induction and from epis- temology and metaphysics agree in enforcing the claim of theism. If we suppose the world is founded in intelligence, we find the facts in. their great outlines agreeing thereto. There is a rational work according to rational methods, for intelligible ends. To be sure, our knowledge is limited, but, so far as we can under- stand, we find the marks of transcendent wisdom. In such a case it is not hard to believe that a larger knowledge would make this more and more apparent ; just as we believe that a deeper insight would reveal the reign of law in realms apparently lawless. If we next make the opposite assumption, that the world is founded in non-intelligence, we find nothing that we should expect. We find a non-rational power doing a rational work. An unconscious power produces consciousness. Non-iatelligence produces intelligence. Necessity produces freedom or at least the illusion of freedom. The non-purposive works apparently for purpose. The unexpected meets us at every turn. Such is the atheistic accoimt of things. The light that is in it is darkness. There is no need to pursue these considerations. THE ARGUMENT FROM METAPHYSICS 149 It seems plain that the belief in a free and intelligent ground of things is as well founded as any objective belief whatever, and that this belief is one which enters so intimately into our mental life that philoso- phy and science, and even rationality itself stand or fall with it. For these reasons we hold that the uni- verse is founded in intelligence. The conception of necessary mechanical agency as first and fundamental leads to no true insight, and ends ia hopeless mental collapse. Self -directing rational agency is the only principle that gives any light, or that can be made basal Avithout immediate self-stultification. On all these accounts the iutelligence of the world- ground is afiLrmed. THEISM — 11 CHAPTER III THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL The direct argument for the intelligence of the world-groimd is conclusive ; and unless counter-argu- ment can be found, the conclusion must be allowed to stand. But there is a very general agreement among speculators that such argument exists, and of such force vrithal as greatly to vreaken, if not to over- throw, the theistic conclusion. In particular the objection is made that personality, and hence intelli- gence, cannot be attributed to an absolute and infinite being ; as these notions are distinctly incompatible. While, then, we are shut up on the one side to the belief in an intelligent, and hence personal, world- ground, we are shut out on the other by the contra- dictory character of the conception. This might be called the antinomy of the theistic argument. Appeal, then, is taken from the judgment in favor of theism, and the case must be further argued. The arguments now to be considered are not rea- sons for atheism but rather objections to theism ; and their bearing is more agnostic than atheistic. That atheism has no rational standing is plain, but is theism, when closely considered, much better off ? It may be that its advantages are only superficial, and that over- whelming difficulties, which make theism also unten- 150 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 151 able, appear on profounder reflection. There is some warrant for these suggestions. Popular theistic thought is crude in conception and cruder still in expression ; and its anthropomorphism readily lends itself to criti- cism. The limitations of the finite are thoughtlessly transferred to the infinite. Hasty and over-confident interpretations of the divine purposes scandahze more careful thought. Such facts have produced a variety of objections of some plausibility and currency. These we proceed to consider. We have argued that there is no explaining the order of the world without intelligence, and the re- joinder is made that there is no explaining it with intelligence. The enormous complexity of the cosmic order is described, and we are asked if we can con- ceive that all this is carried on by intelligence. This objection, though urged by one who is said to be a great philosophical pillar, is simply an appeal to the weakness of our imagination. Of course we cannot pictuxe the process in detail, or represent to ourselves how the infinite mind can conduct the ceaseless and infinitely complex processes of nature without weari- ness or confusion. To do that we must ourselves be equal to the task. But if it be hard to see how intel- ligence could do it, it is at least equally hard to see how non-intelligence could do it. For us the alterna- tive must always lie between the two, with the ad- vantage ever in favor of the former. For when we ascribe to the world-ground omnipotence and omnis- cience, we make at least a formal provision for the case. We can see that such a being would be ade- quate to the task, and we are under no obligation to tell how he would get on with it. That is his 152 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL own affair. But with the assertion of the world- ground as non-intelligent, we fail to make even this formal provision, and the facts remain opaque and unintelligible. This, apart from the claim of episte- mology that the facts themselves are non-existent and impossible apart from intelligence. But the fiu-ther question may be raised whether all the objections to mechanical explanation as logically empty do not lie equally agaiast explanation by intel- ligence. Must we not carry all effects into the intel- ligent cause as well as into the mechanical cause; and is not the result equally tautological in either case ? This would indeed be true if intelligence were mechanically conceived and subjected to the imper- sonal principle of the suflBicient reason. On that view intelligence itself would become a part of the univer- sal mechanism, and thought would collapse. We should have to posit an inscrutable sub-conscious mechanism within intelligence, and the infinite regress would swallow us up. But in truth intelligence is intelhgence only as free; and explanation in any fundamental sense consists in exhibiting facts as the work of intelligence. We do not carry the facts into intelligence in any spatial or dynamic sense ; we refer them to intelligence as their source. And when we can thus refer them, or can find intelligence expressed in them, we regard them as explained and are satisfied. We have here a relation that can be expressed in no other terms, and that can be known only in experience. To attempt to trace the facts into intelligence in any other sense is unintelli- gible in the first place, and finally ends in the abyss of the infinite regress. Free intelhgence is the only THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 153 true explanation of anjrthing, and the explanation consists entirely in viewing the fact as the work of intelligence. But intelligence itself is never to be explained; it is rather the principle of all explana- tion. It explains other things, but it accepts itself. It knows itself not by deduction from something more ultimate, nor by reduction to something more ultimate, but by the living experience of itself. Here experience is the only test of both reality and possibility. The thing is possible because it is a fact. How mind can be and work there is no telling, and for the simple and sufficient reason that there is no how in the case. The ultimate fact, whatever it may be, simply is, and we only contradict ourselves when we seek to refer it to something else. But mind can be and work, and the intelligible order of things re- sults. Whether we are better satisfied, or have more insight into the nature and genesis of events, when we trace them to their origin in living intelligence, than when we leave them phases of a mechanical movement, is simply a question of fact which admits of little doubt. We have also said that the world-ground must be intelligent or non-intelligent. This also has been dis- puted on the ground that intelligence and non-intelli- gence do not form a complete disjunction, so that there may be a third something, higher than either and transcendental to both. Is it not possible, indeed, considering our littleness and brevity, is it not probable, that there may be something as much higher than intelligence as intelligence is higher than mechanism ? This claim has often been set forth as something 154 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL especially profound, and as vacating both theism and atheism. The true explanation of the cosmos is to be found in neither intelligence nor non-intelligence, but in the inscrutable transcendental. This doctrine has a swelling sound, but in its obvious sense it is empty of the slightest substance. The speculative fancy has been prolific in the production of words for its expression, but they are purely logical sound and fury, signifying nothing. For this transcendental somewhat is not a thought but a pluase. It exists solely by the grace of language, which has the unfortunate property of making it possible to talk without saying anji-hing. To appeal to it is not to explain, but to abandon explanation. Explanation must always be in intelligible terms ; and as in our thought the intelligent and the non-intelligent com- prise all existence, any true explanation must be in terms of one or the other. X Y Z may be a very profound truth in the realm of the inscrutable, but in the realm of intelligence it is only a meaning- less group of letters. As usual, however,with these objections, there is an ambiguity here which makes possible a permissible meaning, but one which reduces the objection to a commonplace. Our thought contains two elements : a certain rational content or insight, and a variety of processes by which this insight is reached. The former is the universal and objective element of thought, the latter may be formal and relative to us. Thus in geometry the universal element consists in the propositions, which may be true for all intelli- gence. The formal element consists in the forms of proof and ways of approaching the problems. This THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 155 element is relative to ourselves, and can lay no claim to universality. If now by intelligence we mean our methods of procedure, the devices of our discursive reason, the shifts of our imperfect insight, there may well be something higher than intelligence. The community and universality of intelligence or of reason do not consist in methods or processes, but in the rational contents. But this conception does not give us something above intelligence as the power of rational insight, but only above the human limita- tions of intelligence. And this claim is no novelty, for it has long been maintained by theism. The Supreme Person has generally been regarded as intuitive, in distinction from the discursiveness of the human reason. But admitting the intelligence of the world-ground, its personality, it is said, does not follow. Many have held that the world-ground is intelligent and rational but not personal. This view has found expression in many poetical, or rather imaginative utterances of pantheism. These have some attrac- tion for the fancy, but most of them offer nothing to the intellect. Their warrant, such as it is, lies partly in, popular anthropomorphism and partly in misunder- stood speculative principles. Some have proposed to conceive the world-ground as a double-faced substance ; on the one side exten- sion and form, and on the other side life and reason. These two sides constitute the reality of the outer and inner worlds respectively. Here the implicit aim is to escape the dualism of crude realistic thought by bringing the world of thought and the world of things together as modes of one substance. 156 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL This conception finds expression in Spinoza and in many modern monistic systems, but it is equally a failure iu all. It is based upon the antiquated notion of substance as extended stuff, and upon the fictitious abstraction " Thought." No one has ever succeeded in forming any conception of what a double-faced sub- stance might mean. The imagiuation, indeed, masters the problem without difiiculty. A thiag is conceived with two sides, and one side is called thought; but this performance is not finally satisfactory. Again the relation of the two faces, the physical and the mental, is a problem that has not received its solu- tion. If the two go along in complete indepen- dence, there is nothing in the physical world, on the one hand, to suggest thought ; and there is noth- ing in thought, on the other hand, to suggest the physical world. An outright denial of the latter would be the immediate result. The relation of the two faces, thought and extension, to the thoughts and extended things subsumed under them is left equally obscure. There is no way of passing from thought and extension in general to particular thoughts and things, except by the fallacy of the universal. In short, this doctrine must retreat into the afi&rma- tion of a transcendental something above thought and extension; and this is only the well-known phrase to which there is no corresponding thought. It belongs to the picturings of the imagination rather than to the conceptions of the under- standing. Insight into the emptiness of the doctrine of a transcendental X, and into the impossibility of founding the system in simple material existence, has THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 157 led many to give another form to their non-theistic views. The world-ground has been called pure will, unconscious intelligence, impersonal reason, imper- sonal spirit, universal life, etc. But these too are empty phrases, obtained by unlawful abstraction. For Schopenhauer the world-ground is pure will without intellect or personality. But pure will is nothing. Will itself, except as a function of a con- scious and intelligent spirit, has no meaning. When the conscious perception of ends and the conscious determination of self according to those ends are dropped, there is nothing remaining that deserves to be called will. We may befog ourselves with words, but the conception of a blind and necessary force is all that remains. The sole advantage of the psycho- logical term is that, by force of association, it is easier to overlook the purely mechanical nature of the doctrine and to fancy we have transcended mechanism. Unconscious intelligence is an oft-recurring notion ta speculation. The anima mundi of the Platonic physics and the plastic principle of Cudworth are examples. This conception has often found a place in theistic systems from a desire, first, to recognize something higher than corpuscular mechanics in the world of life, and, secondly, to free God from the onerous duty of administering the details of the uni- verse. Cudworth' s plastic force has a "drowsy, unawakened, or astonished cogitation." " Whereas human artists are often to seek and at a loss, and therefore consult and deliberate, as also upon second thoughts mend their former work, natm-e, on the con- trary, is never to seek what to do, nor at a stand," 168 THE WOKLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL "it never consults nor deliberates, never repents nor goes about, as it were, on second thoughts, to alter and mend its former course." At the same time this nature is no rival to God, but simply a subordinate, commissioned to look after the execution of what God has decreed. Hartmann, in his " Philosophy of the Unconscious," has extended this notion of unconscious intelligence to the world-ground itself. Against atheism he af- firms its intelligence ; against theism he affirms its unconsciousness. The lack of consciousness is declared to be an advantage ; and many things are said about the " clairvoyance " of the absolute as it moves unerringly to its unconscious goal. But this is only rhetorical ambiguity. Consciousness has a social use which makes it the equivalent of embar- rassment. In habitual activities also we often say we are unconscious, when all that is meant is that we act without analytic reflection upon our work. Such reflection again would often be a hindrance. But all this is irrelevant to the psychological use of the term as the antithesis of non-consciousness. In this sense we must declare the phrase, unconscious intelligence, a contradiction. Only one clear thought can be joined to it, namely, that of blind forces which are not intelligent at all, but which, nevertheless, work to produce intelligible results. The same is true of the phrase, impersonal reason. Eeason itself is a pure abstraction which is realized only in conscious spirits ; and when we abstract from these all that constitutes them conscious persons there is nothing intelligible left. By impersonal reason also we could only mean a blind force which is not THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 159 reason, but which is adjusted to the production of rational results. In this sense any machine has impersonal reason. As with Schopenhauer's pure will, so with uncon- scious intelligence and impersonal reason, it is simply the use of psychological terms with their associations that leads us to fancy we have advanced beyond mechanical atheism. Instinct is the standing illustration of miconscious intelligence and impersonal reason, but it fails to illustrate. For in the first place no one knows what instinct is. It is no positive conception what- ever, but rather the union of two negations. It is not conscious intelligence, on the one hand, and it is not mere mechanism, on the other. If we ask what it is, we get no answer. If we ask for some proof that it exists at all, we still get no answer. The real problem is to explain the so-called instinctive acts of the lower animals, and there is no explanation in referring them to something we know not what. Here as elsewhere we have only the two principles of intelligence or mechanism by which to account for the facts. If, then, instinctive acts are not performed with purpose and consciousness, they are not outcomes of intelligence at all, but of a mechanical necessity which mimics intelligence. This necessity may lie in the constitution of the agent, or in its physical structure, or in the relations of both to surround- ings ; but in any case there is no intelligence in play, unless it be the intelligence of the Creator upon which the necessity itself depends. On this view the so-called instinctive acts would be simply the resultant of the highly complex adaptation of 160 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL the creature to its environment. Instinct itself would be nothing. To a mind which has not learned that all fruitful thinking must be in intelligible terms, this must seem very dogmatic. Who can fix the limits of the awful Possible ? The answer is that our affair is not with the awful Possible, but with the much humbler prob- lem of finding that conception of the world-ground which will make the universe most intelligible to us. And for this sane state of mind, intelligence and rea- son are such only as they are guided by ends ; and a guidance by ends means nothing except as those ends are present in consciousness as ideal aims. When this is not the case, we have neither reason nor intelli- gence, but only necessary agency which may mimic rational activity. The meaning of the previous doctrines may be summed up in the notion of an impersonal spirit, which is the ground of all existence, and which comes to consciousness only in finite spirits. But this, too, is more easily said than understood. In fact it is simply atheism under another name. What the athe- ist calls persistent force or the fundamental reality, is here called impersonal spirit ; but the meaning is in both cases the same. Both alike understand by the terms that blind and necessary reality which underlies all phenomena, and which, in its necessary on-goings, brings to life and death. But as the new phrase implies the old thing, we need not consider it further. We conclude that if the world-ground be intelligent and rational, it must also be conscious and personal. And this brings us to the alleged antinomy of THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 161 theistic thought. These theistic predicates of con- sciousness, intelligence, and personality, are appar- ently incompatible with the absoluteness and infinity of the world-ground on which speculation insists. The former involve finitude and otherness and can never be combined with the latter without mutual destruction. In such straits the first thing to do is to define our terms. Intelligence has been defined as an adjustment of inner relations to outer relations, thus making it a developing and finite thing. In this sense of course intelhgence could not be affirmed of an infinite and absolute being. But intelligence as the power to know, which is the real gist and essence of the matter, might well be thus affirmed. This power to know is not a limitation but a perfection. The inability to know would be the real limitation and imperfection. When, then, intelligence is denied of the world-ground on the score of the latter's abso- luteness, we assent if by intelligence we mean the partisan definition of a philosophical sect as the ad- justment of inner relations to outer relations ; but we demur if by intelligence be meant the simple power to know. In affirming personality also, we must distinguish it from corporeality and from form of any sort. Pop- ular religious thought always seeks to pictm-e its con- ceptions, and popular religious speech always falls back on spatial and corporeal elements as aids to expression. Hence there will always be a need of wise pedagogical counsel to restrain the undue anthro- pomorphism of uncritical thinking; and the critics themselves have not yet outgrown the need. For a 162 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL large part of their objections are directed against a crude anthropomorphism of speech without penetra- ting to the essential meaning. The confusion of per- sonality with corporeality underlies the traditional criticism, dating back to Xenophanes, that speculat- ing cattle would infer a God like themselves. Oxen, buffaloes, and even watches have been used to illus- trate this profound objection. Yet if a speculative watch should conclude, not to springs, levers, and escapements, but to intelligence in its maker, it would not seem to be very far astray. By personality, then, we mean only self-knowledge and self-control. Where these are present we have personal being ; where they are absent the being is impersonal. Selfhood, self- knowledge and self- direction are the essence of per- sonality; and these have no implication of corporeality or dependent limitation. In like manner the terms absolute and infinite need definition. Some of the most extraordinary verbal- isms in the history of philosophy are found in con- nection with these terms. Thus it has been maintained that the world-ground is no object of thought what- ever, and hence cannot be thought of as personal or impersonal, as intelligent or non-intelligent. The reason is found in the mutual contradictions alleged to exist between the necessary attributes of the fun- damental being. Thus we must regard it as self- centered, and hence absolute; as unlimited by anything beyond itself, and hence infinite ; and as world-ground, that is, as first cause. But while we are shut up by thought to these admissions, we are equally shut out from them by their mutual contradiction. For the first cause, as such, exists only in relation to the effect. THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 163 If it had no effect, it would not be cause. Hence the first cause is necessarily related to its effect; and hence it cannot be absolute ; for the absolute exists out of all relations. The absolute cannot be a cause, and the cause cannot be absolute. Nor can we help ourselves by the idea of time, as if the world-ground first existed as absolute, and then became a cause ; for the other notion of the infinite bars om- way. That which passes into new modes of existence either surpasses or sinks below itself, and in either case can- not be infinite, for the infinite must always comprise all possible modes of existence. Hence we have in these necessary attributes a disheartening, and even sickening, contradiction which shatters all our pre- tended knowledge. If this argument had not passed for important, we should refer to it only with expressions of ajjology. In itself it is mainly a play on words. Etymologi- cally the above meanings may be tortured out of the terms. The infinite may be taken as the quantitative all ; the absolute may be taken as the unrelated ; and then the conclusions follow. The infinite as quantitative all must, of course, be all-embracing. Out- side of the all there can be nothing ; and if the all must comprehend all possible modes of existence at all times, it cannot change; and the universe is brought to the rigid monotony of the Eleatics. It is equally easy to show that the absolute cannot be related when we define it as the unrelated. But all this wisdom disappears when we remember the philosophical meaning of the terms. Both absolute and infinite mean only the independent ground of things. Relative existence is that which exists only 164 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL in relation to other things. Both the ground and form of its existence are bound up in its relations. Such relations are restrictions, and imply dependence. But absoluteness denies this restriction and depend- ence. The absolute may exist in relations, provided those relations are freely posited by itself, and are not forced upon it from without. The infinite, again, is not the quantitative all. This " all " is purely a mental product which represents nothing apart from our thought. The world-ground is called iufinite, because it is believed to be the independent source of the finite and its limitations, yet without being bound by them except in the sense of logical consistency. But in this sense the notions of the absolute and infinite are so far from incompatible that they mutu- ally imply each other, or are but different aspects of the same thing. The infinite would not be infinite if it were not absolute ; and neither infinite nor abso- lute would be anything if it were not a cause. Here, then, we have an absolute and independent being, the source of all finite things, and of all power and knowledge. Now that the ability to know itself and what it is doing should be denied to this source of all power and knowledge is a denial so amazing as to require the best reasons to support it. It is really one of the most extraordinary inversions in specula- tion, and a striking example of the havoc which can be wrought by using words without attending to their meaning. And first it is said that all consciousness involves the distinction of subject and object, and hence is impossible to an isolated and single being. It is, then, incompatible with both the infinity of the THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 165 world-ground and with its singleness. As infinite it can have nothing beyond itself, and as only it can have no object. But this claim mistakes a mental form for an ontological distinction. The object in all consciousness is always only our presentations, and not somethiug ontologically diverse from the mind itseK. These presentations may stand for things, but consciousness extends only to the presentations. In self-consciousness this is manifestly the case. Here consciousness is a consciousness of our own states, thoughts, etc., as our own. The Infinite, then, need not have something other than himself as his object, but may find the object in his own activities, cosmic or otherwise. This fact contains the answer to another form of objection. The ego and non-ego are said to be two correlative notions, neither of which has any meaning apart from the other. Hence the conception of the self can arise only as the conception of the not-self arises with it; and hence, again, self-consciousness is possible only for finite beings who are limited by a not-self. It is only with effort that one can believe the first part of this claim to be seriously made. Two notions whose meaning consists in denying each other are pure negations without any positive content. Thus, A is not-i?, and B is not-^ ; and hence A is not-not- A, and B is not-not-5. We end where we began. To make any sense one of the notions must have a positive meaning independent of the other. And in the case of ego and the non-ego, it is plain which is the positive notion. The ego is the immediately experienced self, and the non-ego is originally only THEISM — 12 166 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL the sum of mental presentations, or that which the ego sets over against itself in consciousness as its object. Secondarily, the non-ego comes to mean whatever is excluded from the conscious self. Each person sets all his objects, whether persons or things, over against himself, and they constitute the non-ego for him. By overlooking this ambiguity, some spec- ulators have proved a rich variety of truths. Ideal- ism has been confounded by pointing out that consciousness demands an object as well as a subject, and thus the reality of matter has been solidly estab- lished. Consciousness demands a non-ego, and is not matter preeminently a non-ego ! The further claim that the conception of self can arise only as the conception of a not-self accompanies it is but a repetition of the preceding objection con- cerning the ego and non-ego. Consciousness does involve the coexistence of these conceptions as the form under which consciousness arises, but not as things ontologically diverse. The distinction of sub- ject and object, on which consciousness depends, is only a mental function, and not an ontological distinc- tion. The possibility of personality or self-conscious- ness in no way depends on the existence of a substantial not-self, but only on the ability of the subject to grasp its states, thoughts, etc., as its own. It is, indeed, true that our consciousness begins, and that it is conditioned by the activity of something not ourselves ; but it does not lie in the notion of con- sciousness that it must begin, or that it must be aroused from without. An eternal, unbegun self is as possible as an eternal, unbegun not^self. Eternal consciousness is no more difficult than eternal uncon- THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 167 sciousness ; and withal, if unconsciousness had ever been absolute there is no way of reaching conscious- ness. In addition, all the skeptical difficulties which attend that view crowd upon us. Hence to the ques- tion, What is the object of the Infinite's conscious- ness ? the answer is, The Infinite himself, his thoughts, states, etc. To the question. When did this con- sciousness begin? the answer is. Never. To the question, On what does this consciousness depend ? the answer is, On the Infinite's own power to know. On all these accounts we regard the objections to the personality of the world-ground as resting on a very superficial psychology. So far as they are not verbal, they arise from taking the limitations of human consciousness as essential to consciousness in general. In fact we must reverse the common specu- lative dogma on this point, and declare that proper personality is possible only to the Absolute. The very objections urged against the personality of the Absolute show the incompleteness of hmnan personal- ity. Thus it is said, truly enough, that we are condi- tioned by something not ourselves. The outer world is an important factor in our mental life. It controls us far more than we do it. But this is a limitation of our personality rather than its source. Our person- ality would be heightened rather than diminished, if we were self-determinant in this respect. Again, in our inner life we find similar limitations. We cannot always control our ideas. They often seem to be occurrences in us rather than our own doing. The past vanishes beyond recall ; and often in the present we are more passive than active. But these, also, are 168 THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL limitations of our personality. We should be much more truly persons if we were absolutely determinant of all our states. But we have seen that all finite things have the ground of their existence, not in themselves, but in the Infinite, and that they owe their peculiar nature to their mutual relations and to the plan of the whole. Hence, in the finite conscious- ness, there will always be a foreign element, an external compulsion, a passivity as well as activity, a dependence on something not ourselves, and a corre- sponding subjection. Hence in us personality will always be incomplete. The absolute knowledge and self-possession which are necessary to perfect personal- ity can be found only in the absolute and infinite being upon whom all things depend. In his pure self-determination and perfect self-possession only do we find the conditions of complete personality ; and of this our finite personality can never be more than the feeblest and faintest image. In addition to these psychological misimderstandings, a logical aberration is also latent in the attempts to trace the personal to the impersonal. The law of the sufficient reason, when uncritically handled, is al- ways tempting us to explain the explanation, thus committing us to the infinite regress. Under this illusion we try to get behind intelligence, or to exhibit it as something welling up from impersonal depths beneath it. This is fictitious. When we have reached intelligence the regress must end. Further inquiry must concern the purpose of intelli- gence. When we look for something beneath intelli- gence, we merely leave the supreme and self-sufficient THE WOKLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 169 category of personality for the lower mechanical cate- gories, which are possible only in and through intel- ligence. The law of the sufficient reason is a most excellent principle ; but of itself it does not tell us what can be a sufficient reason. Reflection shows that only living intelligence can be a sufficient reason ; and logic forbids us to ask a sufficient reason for a sufficient reason. Intelligence, as we have said, ex- plains other things as its own work, and accepts itself Furthermore, metaphysics shows the contradiction inherent in the notion of impersonal existence. Con- scious thought is seen to be the supreme condition of all existence. The reconciliation of change and iden- tity, without which both thought and being perish, is found only in conscious thought The rescue of reality from fatal dispersion through the infinite divisibility of space and time is possible only through conscious thought. On the impersonal plane all the categories either vanish or deny themselves. The universe of experience has no meaning or possibility apart from conscious intelligence as its abiding somrce or seat. Thus once more we are compelled to reverse the spec- ulative dogma that personality is second and not first, and say that living, personal intelligence is the only possible first. All this we may hold with firm conviction. At the same time we must recognize that a true feeling underlies many of these objections, and guard our- selves against a superficial anthropomorphism in our theistic doctrine. First of all we must beware of hasty and over-confident interpretations of the design in things. Epistemology compels us to affirm final- 170 THE WORLD-GEOUND AS PERSONAL ity as the essential form of cosmic causality, but this does not imply that we can always trace this finality. On the contrary, experience shows that we are largely unable to trace the purpose in cosmic arrangements and events. In such cases we must content ourselves with finding the laws of coexistence and sequence, and must wait for further insight. Again, in a complex system the essential purpose can be known only from a knowledge of the whole ; and in that case it is easy to mistake partial purposes for finalities, or to make some relative convenience of our own a standard of judgment. It is well known that not a little of the prejudice against final causes is due to the absurdities into which men have fallen in their interpretation. We are in this matter where the intelligent Christian is with reference to the behef in a divine guidance of our lives. It is something believed in, but also something which can be only very imperfectly traced. In both cases, also, too exact and extended specification is likely to lead to intellectual scandal. Further, we must bear in mind the distinction made m the last chapter between the purpose of things and the way in which they come about as events in space and time. Failure to regard this dis- tinction is the great source of the aversion of science to teleology. Thus two distinct inquiries, both neces- sary for our complete mental satisfaction, are confused, and needless hostility results. And finally we must beware of easy anthropo- morphism in our thought of the infinite mind. Of course we can think at all only as we assimilate that mind to our own ; but a little reflection warns us against transferring our finite peculiarities and limita- THE WORLD-GROUND AS PERSONAL 171 tions without careful inspection. A thought life so different from ours eludes any but the vaguest appre- hension on our part. Its unchanging fullness yet without monotony, the structure of the absolute rea- son also which determines the eternal contents of the divine thought, the timeless and absolute self-posses- sion — how mysterious all this is, how impenetrable to our profoundest reflection. We can see that these affirmations must be made, but we also see that in a sense they must always lie beyond us. Here we reach a poiut where the speculation of philosophy must give place to the worship and adoration of religion. CHAPTER IV THE METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE WORLD- GROUND Our speculative conception of the world-ground begins to approximate to the religious conception of God. A great variety of influences, iustinctive, speculative, and ethical, have led the human mind to build up the conception of a personal and iutelligent God ; and this view, when criticised, not only proves able to maintain itself, but also appears as a demand and implication of reason itself. The race, however, has not contented itself with this bare affirmation, but, by an intellectual labor extending over centuries, has sought to determine more closely the content of its theistic thought. These determinations fall into two classes, metaphysical and ethical. The former aim to tell what God is by virtue of his position as first cause, and the second relate to his character. Or the former refer to the divine nature, the latter to the divine will. Beyond this distinction, the various classifications of the divine attributes in which dog- matic theology abounds have no significance for either speculative or religious thought. We pass now to consider the leading metaphysical attributes as belong- ing to the world-ground. The result will be to show a still closer approximation of religious and specula- 172 UNITY 173 tive thought. We begin also to use the terms, God and world-ground, as interchangeable. Unity The unity of the world-ground is the first of these metaphysical attributes; and the necessity of its affirmation is found in a study of interaction But necessary as it is, its meaning is not always clearly grasped. We need, then, to inquire of metaphysics what is meant by the unity of being in general. In affirming unity of a thing the primal aim is to deny composition and divisibility. A compound is not a thing but an aggregate. The reality is the component factors. The thought of a compound is impossible without the assumption of units ; and if these are compounds, we must assume other units ; and so on until we come to ultimate and uncompounded units. These are the true realities. Hence, the divisible is never a proper thing, but a sum or a crowd. When, then, we say that a thing is a unit, we mean first of all that it is not compounded, and does not admit of division. Hence the doctrine of the unity of the world-ground is first of all a denial of composition and divisibility. There can be neither unity nor plurality in any scheme that admits of infinite divisibility ; for instance, in any scheme that affirms the substantial reality of space and time. Unity has sometimes been taken to mean simpli- city, or the opposite of complexity and variety. Herbart especially has identified them, and has de- clared that unity of the subject is incompatible with plurality of attributes. The same view has often 174 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES appeared in treating of the divine unity. This has been conceived as pure simplicity; and thus the divine being has been reduced to a rigid and lifeless stare. This view brings thought to a standstill ; for the one, conceived as pure simplicity, leads to nothing and explains nothing. It contains no ground of differentiation and progress. So, then, there is a very general agreement that the unity of the world- ground must contain some provision for manif oldness and complexity. The history of thought shows a curious uncertainty at this point. On the one hand, there has been a universal demand for unity with a very general failure to reach it. And on the other hand, if the unity has been reached, there has been quite as general an inability to make any use of it. This is a necessary result of thinking only under mechanical conditions. In such thinking, when we begin with a plurality, we never escape it, for mechanical necessity cannot differentiate itself. If we trace the plurality to some one being, we are forced to carry the plurality im- plicitly into the unity, as there is no way of mechani- cally deducing plurality from unity. But in that case, though we confidently talk about unity, we are quite unable to tell in what the unity of such a being con- sists. If, on the other hand, we assume the unity, we are unable to take one step toward plurality. The all-embracing unity refuses to differentiate or to move at all. This puzzle can be solved only by leaving the mechanical realm for that of free intellect. The free and conscious self is the only real unity of which we have any knowledge, and reflection shows that it UNITY 175 is the only thing which can be a true unity. All other unities are formal, and have only a mental existence. Space and time contain no unity ; and spatial and temporal existence disappears in infinite divisibility. But free intelligence by its originating activity can posit plurality distinct from its own unity, and by its self-consciousness can maintain its unity and identity over against the changing plurality. Here the one is manifold without being many. Here unity gives birth to plurality without destroying itself. Here the identical changes and yet abides. But this perennial wonder is possible only on the plane of free and self-conscious intelli- gence. For mechanical thinking the problem admits only of verbal solutions. We see, then, that while it is easy to talk of unity, it is by no means so easy to reach it. Abstract reflec- tion reveals the difficulty of the notion ; only personal experience of living intelligence presents any real unity and solves the problem. So much for the metaphysics of unity. Probably, however, the thought most generally connected with the divine unity is not so much that God is one as that God is only. Hence the doctrine has been always monotheism, and not henotheism. The his- toric influences which have led to this monotheistic faith are manifold ; and its speculative necessity is striugent. The thought of many gods, each of which should live in a world by himself, or rather, in a uni- verse of his own, is a pure fancy due to the abstract- ing and hypostasizing tendency of the mind. If they should meet and interact in a common universe, they would necessarily become finite and conditioned 176 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES beings in mutual interaction, and hence not independ- ent and self -existent. The discussion of the unity of the world-ground has shown that all things which are bound up in a scheme of interaction must have their existence in some one being on which they depend. This being founds the system, and all that is in the system flows from it. But we are able to form general notions, and then to conceive an indefinite number of members of the class. We do the same with the universe and the fundamental being. We form the notions, and then fancy that there may be other universes and other fundamental realities. But plainly such fancies are mental fictions. The actual universe, whereby we mean the total system of the finite, must be referred to the one world-ground. The imaginary systems need nothing for their expla- nation beyond the somewhat unclear mind that forms them and mistakes them for realities. If one should ask how we know that there may not be something entirely independent of our system and totally un- related to it, the answer would be that our business is with the actual universe, and does not include the disproof of chimeras. This only may be allowed. If by universe we mean the system of sense-perceptions in an idealistic sense, the one world-ground may maintain a series of such systems. In this sense a number of universes would be possible, but the unity and singleness of the fundamental reahty would still be necessary. This fact has often been disregarded in speculation. Not a few have been pleased to regard space, time, and God as mutually independent existences, or rather to make space and time into preexistent ne- UNCHANGEABILITY 177 cessities to wMch God himself must submit. How these independent and unrelated existences could be brought into mutual relations is a problem left un- solved. Such notions spring from a very superficial metaphysics. The unity of the world-ground means, then, not only that it is uncompounded, indivisible, and with- out distinction of parts, but also that there is but one such fundamental existence. Unchangeability A second attribute is that of unchangeability. This attribute has often been verbally interpreted with the result of reducing existence to a fixed rigid- ity from which all life and movement are excluded. The Bleatics made being one and changeless, and were then utterly unable to account for the world of plurality and change. A similar mistake often appears in speculative theology. It has sometimes so empha- sized the unchangeabUity as to lose the living personal God altogether. This misconception has its main root in the sense metaphysics of spontaneous thought. This assumes that substance in general is changeless, and that change falls among the activities and properties. But a little reflection shows that an absolutely rigid sub- stance cannot explain the changing activities of the thing. For every change in the activity or the mani- festation, we must affirm a corresponding change in the thing itself. Changes among things must depend upon changes in things. What is true of all agents is true of God or the world-ground. God, as a rigid 178 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES sameness of existence, would contain no explanation of the advancing cosmic movement, and would admit of no change in action and knowledge. In truth, as metaphysics shows, the changelessness of a being con- sists not in such an ontological rigidity of fixed mo- notony of being, but rather in the constancy and continuity of the law which rules its several states and changes. The unchangeability of God means only the constancy and continuity of the divine nature which exists through all the diviae acts as their law and source. Metaphysics further shows that if we insist upon having some abiding and identical pfin- ciple superior to change and constant in change, it can be found only in personality. And here it does not consist in any rigid core of being, but rather in the extraordinary power of self -consciousness, whereby the being distinguishes itself from its states, and con- stitutes itself identical and abiding. Where this is lacking, there may be a continuity of process, but nothing more. The unchangeability is purely formal, as when a given note is constantly produced ; and this formal unchangeability is possible only through the unchanging self. In the solution of this problem also we are thrown back again on experience. Thought must reach the changeless or perish. But on the impersonal plane and under the law of the sufficient reason, thought can never reach the changeless, but abides in the eternal flow and infinite regress. This law compels us to find the consequent in the antecedent. If change here, then change there. If plurality here, then plurality there. The problem can never be solved on the mechanical plane, but only on the OMjSTIPRESENCE 179 plane of free personality and in terms of living experience. The changelessness we need is not the rigidity of a logical category but the self-identity and self-equality of intelligence. Both change and changelessness in the concrete have to be interpreted with reference to self-consciotisness. Abstract defini- tions and temporal coordinates only distort the prob- lem or make it fictitious. So much for the metaphysics of unchangeability. But in truth many things are gathered up in this attribute. Religious thought, as distinct from theo- logical thought, has generally meant something dis- tinct from the metaphysical formula. One aim has been to affirm the independence and eternity of God in opposition to the dependence and brevity of man. Again, the predicate has often been made to mean the ethical constancy of the divine activity, and to exclude all arbitrariness and caprice from the divine purposes. In this last sense the attribute passes from the metaphysical into the ethical realm, and eludes any metaphysical deduction or justification. Omnipresence A third attribute is that of omnipresence. This concerns God's relation to space. By crude thought this is often understood as implying extension of the subject. Space is supposed to exist as infinite room, which is then filled out with a boundless bulk ; and this is onmipresence. This view is speculatively untenable, and is incompatible with the unity of the world-ground. Nothing that exists extended in space can be a unit ; for in every such being it will always 180 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES be possible to distinguish different parts which are either actually separate, or are held apart and together only by the forces in them. In the latter case the body disappears into an aggregate of different forces, and in both cases its unity disappears. No more can such a thing be omnipresent in space. It can only be present in space part for part, or volume for volume, and hence there is no proper omnipresence. Omnipresence is real only as the entire being is present at any and every point ; as the entire mind is present in each and all its thoughts. Speculatively, then, the doctrine of omnipresence must take another form, and one mainly negative. We are able to act directly upon only a few things. These are said to be present to us. In other cases we can act only through media. These are said to be absent. If the interaction were equally direct and immediate in all cases, there would be no ground for the distinction of present and absent. Thus space appears to us as a limitation, although space is really but the form under which our dynamic limitations appear. Omnipresence means a denial of these limi- tations. Immediate action means presence ; imme- diate action which extends to all things means omnipresence. God, or the world-ground, therefore, as immanent in all things, is omnipresent. If, then, he wills to act upon anything, he has not to cross any distance, long or short, to reach it, and he is not compelled to use media; but his activity is rather immediately and completely present. Conversely, if the finite wishes to act upon God, say by prayer, neither the prayer nor the person need go wandering about to reach and find God ; for we live and have ETERNITY 181 our being in him ; and he is an ever-present power in ns. Only in this sense, which denies that space is a limitation or barrier for God, is the doctrine of omnipresence tenable. This view is made all the more necessary from the claim of metaphysics that space is no ontological reality, and has only a mental existence. In estimating this result we must notice that our spatial judgments are double. Some refer to the pure space intuition, as in geometry, and others refer to our own organic relations and limitations. The former may be viewed as universal, and they imply no extension of the subject. The thought of space is not spatial in the sense of being extended, any more than the thought of the square has four corners to it. The other class of spatial judgments is purely relative to us, and might have no significance for changed organic and djniamic conditions. When we speak of " annihilating space " we are dealing with relations of this class. Space in this sense would not exist for a being on whom all things immediately depend. Eternity The attribute of eternity concerns God's relations to time. It has a variety of meanings. The first and lowest is that of unbegun and endless duration of existence. If time be an ontological fact, the world- ground must be eternal in this sense, for void time could never have produced anything. There is, too, a certain aesthetic value in the thought of endless duration which is not imworthy of the Infinite. But THEISM 13 182 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES in general, religious thinkers have been unwilling to identify the divine eternity with endless duration, but have rather sought to place it in opposition to all time, as denoting an existence above and beyond all temporal limits and conditions. This is an attempt to conceive the divine relation to time like the divine relation to space, as a superior and transcendental one. The common thought of the matter is that time exists as a boundless form, which God fills out with his duration, just as in the common thought he fills out space with his extension ; but this is metaphysi- cally as untenable in one case as in the other. Meta- physics shows that time itself is no independent reality which conditions change or in which change occurs. Such a view would violate the necessary unity of the world-ground and make all existence whatever impossible. Still this claim alone does not decide that the world-ground is superior to time ; for while time disappears as existence it may still remain as law, so that the temporal form is a necessity even of the basal reality. The shortest way out is to call the world-ground the unconditioned, and then to deduce from this attribute its superiority to all conditions, temporal or otherwise. But this notion of the unconditioned is a somewhat vague one, and cannot be used without scrutiny. Thought can positively affirm an uncondi- tioned being only in the sense of a being which does not depend on other beings ; but such a being might still have profound internal limitations. The world- ground is, indeed, unconditioned by anything beyond itself ; but it must be conditioned by its own nature ia any case, and the question arises whether this con- ETERNITY 183 ditioning involves temporal sequence ia the infinite life itself. To maintain the affirmative here would iavolve us in the gravest speculative diSiculties. We should have to hold that the world-ground is subject to a law of development and comes only gradually to itself, or rather that there is some constitutional necessity in the world-ground which forbids it always to be in full possession of itself. In fact we should have to limit to the extent of this necessity that free and self-centered cause which reason demands as the only adequate world-ground. Moreover, epistemology shows that there is a certain timeless element in all consciousness. To admit real succession into con- sciousness would make thought impossible. The knowledge of the changing must be changeless, and the knowledge of time must be timeless. Further- more, metaphysics shows that the temporal relation is essentially a relation in and to self-consciousness. It is not an unvarying and absolute quality of events, but is relative to the range of consciousness itself. Time cannot be measiued by or referred to any extra-men- tal fact whatever, but must be dealt with purely as a relation in consciousness. We do not have experience in time as something independent of mind, but expe- rience has the temporal form ; and this is largely an expression of our finitude and limitation. Indeed, the temporal judgment is so largely relative to our present conditions that we can easily conceive it indefinitely modified by changing them. Thus if the periodicities of day and night, summer and winter, rest and labor, youth and age were removed, not much would be left of our temporal measures and judgments. 184 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES Bearing these facts in mind, we may view the rela- tion of the world-ground to time as follows : First, there are certain features in our relation to time which cannot be affirmed of the world-ground. Thus we are subject to slow development ; we come gradu- ally to self-possession ; we grow old and pass away. This we express by saying that we are subject to temporal limits and conditions. In none of these respects can the unconditioned world-ground be sub- ject to time, but must rather be non-temporal. A being which is in full possession of itself, so that it does not come to itself successively, but forever is what it wills to be, is not in time so far as itself is concerned. Such a being would have a changeless knowledge and a changeless life. It would be with- out memory and expectation, yet in the absolute enjoyment of itself. For such a being the present alone would exist ; its now would be eternal, and its name, I Am. For us the unconditioned world-ground, or God, is such a being ; and he is not to be viewed as conditioned by time with regard to his own self- consciousness and self-possession. But only in the self-centered and self-equivalent personality can we transcend the conditions and the sphere of time. God in himself, then, is not only the eternal or ever- enduring ; he is also the non-temporal, or that which transcends temporal limits and conditions. This is easily admitted for God as the absolute person, but a difficulty arises when we consider him as the founder and conductor of the world-process. This fact seems to bring God into a new relation to time. This process is a developing, changiag one, and hence is essentially temporal. Hence the divine ETERNITY 185 activity therein is also essentially temporal. The divine knowledge of the system in its possibilities may be non-temporal, but the divine agency in and knowl- edge of the actual system must be temporal, because the system is temporal. There is succession in the process and there must be succession in the realizing will. A changeless knowledge of an ideal is possible ; but a changeless knowledge of a changing thing looks like a contradiction. Unchangeabihty and non-tem- porahty, then, would seem to apply to God only in his relation to himself. They apply to his knowledge only as related to himself or to the possible or to his purposes. This seems perfectly clear at first sight, but grows cloudy on reflection. If the world-process is to be in time in any sense it must be in time for some one. Its temporality has no meaning in itself or for itself, being essentially only a relation in consciousness. Epistemology refuses to allow us to subordinate con- sciousness to change or to carry any ontological change into consciousness. Consciousness itself is the fixed background on which change is projected and without which it is nothing. When from supposed real changes we reason backward by the law of the sufficient reason, thought perishes at once, either in the Heraclitic flux or in the infinite regress. To escape this result all change must be referred to the changeless, that is, to the non-temporal ; and all temporal measures and relations must be found, not in thought itself, but in the order of objects which thought constitutes. Of course, this is impossible on the impersonal plane. The problem of change and changelessness, of time and non-temporality, which is 186 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES one of thought's deepest problems, finds its solution only on the basis of free intelligence and theistic idealism. Abstract thought with its abstract cate- gories can do nothing; we must fall back on tran- scendental empiricism, and interpret our terms by the hviug experience of intelligeace. The self-identity or self-equality of intelligence is the only real changeless- ness of which we have experience ; and it is the only one which meets this case. All else is abstract fiction. The net result is this : We borrow from meta- physics the conviction that in any case time is no form of existence but only of experience ; and that it is essentially a relation in self-consciousness which varies with our finite conditions. There is a large element of relativity in our temporal judgments which may not be transferred to God, being valid only for ourselves. Further, the temporal relation must always be sought among the works of intelligence, and never within intelligence itself. Hence the abso- lute intelligence and will must lie beyond all tem- poral limits and conditions as their source, but never included ia them. Omniscience In iaterpreting omniscience, etymologizing has too often taken the place of philosophizing, and specula- tors have sought to determine the content of the idea by analyzing the word. But this process is delusive. No idea can be understood by studying the composi- tion of the word, but only by reflecting upon the way in which the idea is reached. In the largest sense of the word omniscience means a knowledge of all things OMNISCIENCE 187 and of all events, past, present, and future, necessary and free alike. But we cannot affirm that this is possible on the sole strength of etymology. We must rather inquire whether this stretching of omniscience is not as untenable as the similar stretching of omnip- otence, when it is made to affirm the possibility of the contradictory. All allow that the contradictory is impossible ; and hence we are not at liberty to in- clude contradiction in our conception of the divine attributes. As omnipotence must be limited to the doable, so omniscience must be limited to the know- able. If, then, there be anything essentially imknow- able, it must lie beyond even omniscience. In advance of reflection it is a possible supposition that uitelligence plays only a coordinate, if not second- ary, part in the world-ground. Our own knowledge reaches only a small part of what takes place within us, and the rest is shrouded in mystery. It is con- ceivable that, in like manner, there should be in the world-ground a double reahn, one part of which is hidden from the scrutiny and control of intelligence. This view results partly from an anthropomorphic transference of our limitations to the absolute being and partly from picture thinking. It is the double- faced somewhat over again. It is so destitute of pos- itive grounds as to be quite gratuitous. If extended to cosmic action it would deprive us of the control of free intellect, which we have found necessary for understanding the cosmic order. Moreover, reflection shows that this view would end in an impossible dual- ism. Absolute personality must be absolute self- knowledge and self-control. This only will meet the ideal of reason in the case, and in the lack of positive 188 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES objection reason will always affirm it. The sole per- missible inquiry is how far the notion of omniscience is self-consistent. A preliminary scruple exists concerning the divine knowledge of those forms of finite experience which cannot be ascribed to the Infinite. The totality of physical experiences seems to belong only to the finite ; how, then, can the Infinite comprehend them? The work of our understanding in these cases con- sists entirely in classifying and naming ; the thiag itself is realized only in immediate experience. To press this difficulty would make an impassable guK between the finite and the Infinite ; and to solve it is beyond us, except in a formal way. If we are not willing to ascribe these experiences, as of physical pains, to God, and are also unwilling to deny him knowledge of the same, we must allow that there are modes of the divine knowing which we cannot com- prehend. The contents of a sense that we do not possess are utterly unknowable to us, and yet by hypothesis the Infinite comprehends the finite experi- ence without participation thereiu. The mystery in- volved ia this assumption has led to many surmises in both theology and philosophy. A crude pantheism has thought to solve the problem by declaring that our experience is really God's ; but this only con- founds all distinctions. The psychology and episte- mology of the Infinite have their obscurities. But for popular thought the chief difficulty in omniscience concerns the foreknowledge of free choices. The past and present may be conceived to lie open to omniscience. The possible also may be fully known. The free creature can do nothing OMNISCIENCE 189 that was not foreseen as possible. Here, then, is a realm forever free from all enlargement and surprise. Here the parting of the ways begins. A free act by its nature is a new beginning, and hence is not repre- sented before its occurrence by anything that must lead to it. Hence a free act, until performed, is only a possibility, and not a fact. But knowledge must grasp the fact as it is, and hence, it is held, the act can be foreknown only as possible, and never as actual. Being only a possibility antecedently to its occurrence, it must be known as such. On the other side it is held that, though only a possibility in itself, it may yet be known as one which will surely be realized. The knowledge in this case does not com- pel the fact, but foresees it, and leaves the fact as free as if unforeseen. Upon the possibility of such foreknowledge opinions still differ. Some have asserted foreknowledge and denied freedom; others have asserted freedom and denied foreknowledge ; and still others have affirmed both. Both of the former classes agree in viewing freedom and foreknowledge as incompatible, and differ only as to which member of the antithesis they reject. The difficulty in the last view is this : By definition a free act is an absolute beginning, and as such is not represented by anything before its occurrence. We trace it to a specific volition, and beyond that it has neither existence nor representation. But knowledge of a future event always supposes present grounds of knowing ; and in the case of a free act there are no such grounds. Hence a foreknowledge of a free act is a knowledge without assignable grounds 190 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES of knowing. On the assumption of a real time it is hard to find a way out of this difficulty. Indeed, there would be no way out unless we assume that God has modes of knowing which are inscrutable to us. A foreknowledge of freedom caimot be proved to be a contradiction ; and on the other hand it cannot be construed in its possibility. All this on the supposition of a single, all-condi- tioning time. On our own view of the ideality and relativity of time the problem vanishes in its tradi- tional form, and nothing remains but the general mystery which shrouds for us the epistemology of the Infinite and the existence of the finite. Omnipotence This predicate implies what we have before assumed from metaphysics, that the world-ground is not a substance, but an agent ; not a stuff, but a cause ; and the general aim has been to affirm the absolute- ness or unconditionedness of the world-ground. Two tendencies appear in the common view of the matter. One is to view God as able to do the doable but as limited by some necessities, probably self- existent and eternal, which cannot be transcended. This view has not satisfied either religious feeling or speculative thought, as involving an untenable sub- ordination of God. The result has been to suggest the opposite view, according to which God is lifted above all limits and is able to do all things, the impossible as well as the possible. But if the former view seemed tame, the latter seems to be utter non- sense and the death of reason itself. OMNIPOTENCE 191 Probably no one who believes in God at all would find any difficulty with, his omnipotence in contingent matters. Accordingly, those who have affirmed limi- tation of power have commonly done so on the basis of some necessity of reason or eternal truth. These, it is assumed, can never be violated by any power whatever, and these impose limitations on all power, human or divine. The question of divine limitation, then, really concerns God's relation to these neces- sities of reason, or eternal truths. Is he conditioned by them or superior to them? We shall need to move warily and with great circumspection to escape falling a prey to the abstractions that swarm in this region. In speaking of the unity of the world-ground we pointed out that it is incompatible with any plurality of fundamental being. Hence it follows that truth and necessity themselves must in some way be founded in the world-ground. If we should assume a realm of truth to exist apart from being, it could have no effect in being unless we should further assume an interaction between it and being. But this would make truth a thing, and would compel the assumption of another being deeper than both truth and reality to mediate their interaction. At this point we fall an easy prey to our own abstractions. A law of nature is never the antecedent, but the consequence of reality. The real is first and only, and being what it is, its laws result as a consequence, or, rather, are but expressions of what the things are. Yet so easily do we mistake abstractions for things that, after we have gathered the laws from the things, we at once proceed to regard the things as the subjects, if not the prod- 192 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES ucts, of the laws they found. Then we speak of the reign of law ; and thus by a double abstraction law is made to appear as a real sovereign apart from and above things, and as the expression of some fathom- less necessity. Of course, when reality appears it has nothing to do but to fall into the forms which the sovereign laws prescribe. Thus the cause is made subject to its own effects, and reality is explained as the result of its own consequences. The inverted nature of the thought is manifest. Natural laws are the consequences of reality, and never its grounds or anything apart from it. The same is true for truth. Rational truth, as dis- tinct from truth of contingent fact, is never anything more than an expression of the necessary relations of ideas, or of the way in which reason universally pro- ceeds. As such, it is nothing apart from the mind or antecedent to it, but is simply an expression of the mental nature. But we overlook this and abstract a set of principles which we call eternal truths, and erect into a series of fathomless necessities to which being can do nothing but submit. The fictitious nature of this procedure is apparent. There is no realm of truth apart from the world-ground ; and we must look in this being for the foundation of truth itself, and of all those principles whereby the distinc- tions of true and false, consistent and contradictory, possible and impossible, themselves exist. In a sys-' tern in which these distinctions are already founded, they would be valid for all new events, not, however, as abstract necessities, but as actual laws of a real system. It is partly oversight of this distinction which leads 193 us to think that these principles precede reality. They do, indeed, precede specific events and condition them, and hence we fancy that they precede reality in gen- eral. A further fancy completes the illusion. When one speaks of truth as valid even in the void, he fails to see that his conception of the void is only a con- ception, and that he himself is present with all his ideas and laws of thought. And when along with his conception of the void he has other conceptions, and finds that the customary relations between them continue to exist, he fancies that he has truly con- ceived the void and has found that the laws of thought would be valid if all reality should vanish. But the illusion is patent. The whole art of finding what would be true in the void consists in asking what is now true for the thinking mind. The true void would be the undistinguishable nothing ; and the ideal distinctions of truth and error would have no meaning, to say nothing of application. Hence we conclude that truth is not independent of the world-ground, but is in some way founded therein and dependent thereon. The notion of an independ- ent realm of self-sufficient, all-conditioning truth may be set aside with all conviction. This dependence may be conceived in two ways. Truth may be viewed as founded in the nature of the world-ground, or as a creature of volition. The "latter view has often appeared in theology, but is inconsistent with itself. The statement that God is arbitrary with regard to truth, that he can make or unmake it, assumes that truth exists and has a mean- ing apart from the divine volition. For why should the product of the creative act be called truth rather 194 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES than error, unless it agree with certain fixed stand- ards of truth with which error disagrees ? Hence all such statements as that God can make the true false, or the possible impossible, imply that the standard of both exists independently of volition; and God is merely allowed to transfer objects back and forth across limits which are fixed in themselves. The inconsistency of the negative form of statement is equally manifest. In order that truth shall be unmade or broken, it must first exist as truth. If any proposition that is to be broken were not in itself true, there would be no truth to break. A proposition that is false cannot be made false, for it is false already. Hence, to make truth the creature of volition either denies truth altogether, or else it breaks down through its own self-contradiction. But the aim of those who have held this view has never been to deny truth, but rather to exalt the absolute and unconditioned independence of God. The spec- ulators who have argued in this way have commonly meant well, but have had no clear insight into the nature of the problem. So, then, we object to the statement either that God makes truth or that he recognizes it as something independent of himself. He is rather its source and foundation ; and it, in turn, is the fixed mode of his procedure. We may view rational principles as con- sequences or expressions of the divine nature, or as fundamental laws of the divine activity. Both phrases have the same meaning. Many have objected to ascribing a nature of any kind to God as the source of the divine manifesta- tion. They have found in such a notion a limitation, 195 and have held that God, as absolute, must give him- self his own nature. There must be nothing consti- tutional with God, but all that he is must be a product of his absolute will. In himself God has been styled "the abyss," "the silence," "the super-essential," and many other verbal vacuities. This is due partly to a misunderstanding of the term nature, and partly to an overstrained conception of absoluteness. We notice first the misunderstanding. We finite beings are subject to development, and view our nature as the mysterious source of the movement. Again, we inherit much, and we often sum up our inherited peculiarities as our nature. This nature, too, frequently appears as a limitation from which we would gladly escape. Thus a split arises in the soul. The free spirit has to struggle against a power which seems to be not of itself — an old man of the sea, or a body of death. In this sense a nature cannot be ascribed to an absolute being. Such a nature is essentially a hmitation, and can belong only to the conditioned and finite. But a nature in the sense of a fixed law of activity or mode of manifestation involves no such limitation. This is best seen in a concrete case. Thinking, we say, is governed by the laws of thought. But these laws are not anything either out of the mind or in the mind. We feel them neither as an external yoke nor as an internal limitation. The reason is that they are essentially only modes of thought activity, and are reached as formal laws by abstraction from the process of thinking. The basal fact is a thought activity, and reflexion shows that this has certain forms. These are next erected into laws and im- 196 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES posed on the mind; and then the fancy arises that they are limitations and hindrances to knowledge. In fact, however, they do not rule intellect, but only express what intellect is. Nor is the mind ever so conscious of itself as self-guiding and self- controlled as when conducting a clear process of thought. It would be a strange proposition to free the mind and enlarge knowledge by aimuUing the laws of thought. This brings us to the overstraining mentioned. To deny a nature to God in the sense just described would be to cancel his existence altogether. For whatever is must be something, must be an agent, and must have a definite law of action. Without this the thought van- ishes, and only a mental vacxmm remains. This may indeed be filled up with words, but it acquires no sub- stance thereby. To regard this definite law as a lim- itation is to make being itself a limitation. In that case we find true absoluteness only in pure indefinite- ness and emptiness, and then there is no way back to definite existence again. Once in such a void, thought would remain there. This overstraining of absolute- ness defeats itself. It cancels the absolute as a reality, and leads to the attempt to construct both the universe and the living God out of nothing. But when we say that the natm-e of a thing is a law, we must not think of the law as a thing in the thing, or even as ruling the thing. The thing itself is all ; and the law is only an expression of what the thing is, or of the way in which it proceeds. Here, as elsewhere, we must avoid abstractions and must fall back on experience for the concrete mean- ing of our terms. If we consult the dictionary only, 197 we may easily persuade ourselves that fixity and freedom are incompatible ; but if we consult experi- ence, we shall find that we cannot dispense with either. To give freedom any significance it must be based on uniformity or fixity ; and to give this fixity any value it must be allied with freedom. Pure necessity cancels reason. Pure arbitrariness cancels reason. It is only in the union of fixity and freedom that the rational life is possible ; or rather it is only as the rational life has these opposite aspects that it exists. They are not preexistent factors out of which the rational life is made ; they are only antithetical aspects of the rational life ; and this is the essential and only reality in the case. Has, then, the divine will nothing to do with the divine existence? Does God find himself given to himself as an object, or is he, rather, his own cause ? The answer must be both yes and no. The question really assumes that God as knowing and willing is subsequent to himself as existing. Of course there is no temporal sequence, but only a logical one. God does not exist and then act, but exists only in and through his act. And this act, though not arbitrary, is also not necessary ; or though necessary, it is also free. What this apparent contradiction means is this : Freedom and necessity are contradictory only as formal ideas, and are not mutually exclusive as determinations of being. Indeed, both ideas are at bottom abstractions from opposite sides of per- sonal existence. We find an element of uniformity and fixity in our life, and this gives us the only posi- tive idea of necessity that we possess. We find also a certain element of self-determination, and this THEISM — 14 198 METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES is our idea of freedom. Reality, then, shows these formally opposite ideas miited in actual existence, and reflection shows that both are necessary to rational existence. We have an illustration both of the meaning and of the possibility of this union in our own life. The laws of thought are inviolable in the nature of reason. Volition can do nothing with them in the way of overthrow. And yet, though absolute and secure from all reversal, they do not of themselves secure obedience. The human soul does not become a rational soul by virtue of the law of reason alone; there is needed, in addition, an act of corresponding self-determination by the free spirit. Hence, while there is a necessity in the soul, it becomes controlling only through freedom ; and we may say that every one must constitute himself a rational soul. How this can be is inconstruable, but none the less is it a fact. We come to our full existence only through our own act. What is true for ourselves in a limited degree, we may regard as absolutely true for God. At every point the absolute will must be present to give validity and reality to the otherwise powerless necessities of the divine being. In this sense we may say, with Spinoza, that God is the cause of him- self. He incessantly constitutes himself the rational and absolute spirit. God is absolute will or absolute agent, forever determining himself according to ra- tional and eternal principles. CHAPTER V GOD AND THE WOKLD Thus far we have considered mainly the attributes of God in himself ; we have now to consider his cos- mical relations. Of course it is not our aim to tell how God produces the world, or how the world depends on him, but only to find what general thought we must form of their mutual relations. By the world, here, we mean all finite existence. Two gen- eral classes of views exist : theistic and pantheistic. Pantheism makes the world either a part of God or a necessary consequence of the divine nature. Theism holds that the world is a free act and creation by God. We consider pantheism first. Pantheism The view that the world is a part of God is the common factor in all theories of emanation, ancient and modern. As the waves are a part of the ocean, or, better still, as each finite space or time is a part of the one infinite space or time, so each finite thing is a part or phase of the one infinite existence. In each of these views God is regarded as world-substance rather than first cause ; and this substance is con- ceived as a kind of plastic stuff or raw material which, like clay, can be variously fashioned, and 199 200 GOD AND THE WORLD which is at least partly exhausted in its products. Sometimes the view is less coarse, and God is con- ceived as the background of the world, something as space is the infinite background and possibility of the figures in it. Sometimes God is said to produce or emit the world from himself, or by a process of self- diremption to pass from his own imity into the plu- rality of cosmic existence. The finite, on the other hand, is a part, or mode, or emanation of the infinite, and shares in the infinite substance. Whether the world is eternal is not decided. Some will have it to be an eternal part and factor of God, while others think of it as made out of God. All views of this class are products of the imagina- tion, and result from the attempt to picture that which is essentially unpictiu'able. When we try to conceive the origin of the world, we are tempted to form the fancy of some back-lying plastic substance of which the world is made, and then the imagination is satisfied. Either we refer the world to some pre- existent stuff, or we regard it as preexisting itself in some potential form. Then its production becomes either the working over of a given stuff or a letting loose of potentialities. Our own relation to the cosmic reality confirms us in this tendency to solve the prob- lem by picturing rather than thinking. We are limited to the modification of given material ; and this anthropomorphic limitation easily passes with the uncritical for a necessary law. Views of this class are as obnoxious to reason as they are dear to the irrational fancy. Metaphysics shows that reahty is never a stuff, but an agent. Nor does an agent have any substance in itself PANTHEISM 201 whereby it exists, but by virtue of its activity it is able to assert itself as a determiniiig factor in exist- ence, and thus only does it acquire any claim to be considered real. To explain the universe we need not a substance, but an agent; not substantiality, but causaHty. The latter expresses all the meaning of the former, and is free from misleading sense-implica- tions. Metaphysics further shows that every agent is a unit, uncompounded and indivisible. God, then, is not the infinite stuff or substance, but the infinite cause or agent, one and indivisible. From this point all the previous views of the relation of God to the world disappear of themselves. He has no parts and is not a sum. Hence the world is no part of God, nor an emanation from him, nor a sharer in the divine substance ; for all these views imply the divisibility of God and also his stuff-like nature. His necessary unity forbids all attempts to identify him with the world, either totally or partially. If the finite be anythiag real, or more than phenomenal, it must be viewed, not as produced from God, but as produced by God ; that is, as created. Only creation can rec- oncile the substantial reahty of the finite with the unity of the infinite. For the finite, if real, is an agent, and as such it cannot be made out of any- thing, but is posited by the infinite. Similar objections lie against all views which speak of the world as a mode of God. This phrase, in its common use, is allied to the imagination, and is based on the notion of a passive and extended substance. The thought commonly joined with it is that each thing is a particular and separate part of the infinite, as each wave is not a phase of the entire sea, but only 202 GOD AJfD THE WORLD of the part comprised in the wave itself. But meta- physics further sliows that the unity of being is com- patible with plurality of attributes only as each is an attribute of the whole thing. Any conception of diverse states which are states of only a part of the thing would destroy its unity. The entire being must be present in each state ; and this cannot be so long as the notion of quantity is applied to the prob- lem. The only way in which a being can be con- ceived as entire in every mode, is by dropping all quantitative and spatial conceptions and viewing the being as an agent, and the modes as forms of its activity. If, then, finite things are modes of the in- finite, this can only mean that they are acts of the infinite, or modes of agency. Another conception of this relation has been ven- tured, based on the relation of the universal to the particulars subsumed under it, and more especially on the relation of the imiversal reason to the individual mind. As reason is the same in all, and as no one can claim a monopoly of it, but only a participation in it, we may say that the universal reason is the reality, and that the finite mind exists only in and through it as one of its phases or manifestations. But this is only an echo of the scholastic reahsm. Class terms denote no possible existence, and have reality only in the specific existences from which they are abstracted. This relation of the world to God cannot be pic- tured ; it must be thought. The quantitative and spatial conceptions with which the imagination deals are ruled out, both by the unity of the basal reality and by the ideality of spatial relations. We cannot 203 trace the world into God ; we must be content with tracing it to him. The existence of the world in God means simply its continuous dependence on him. To find the world in God in any discriminable onto- logical form, such as Schelling's " dark nature-ground," would cancel his necessary unity. The experienced relation of active intelligence to its products is the only solution of this problem. As we have before said, the attempt to trace the works of intelligence into intelligence in any substantial sense is to make ship- wreck of reason. We refer them to intelligence as their cause. The possibility of such causation we experience. Beyond this, thought cannot go. Two conceptions of the finite are logically possible. First, we may regard it as only a mode of the divine activity and without any proper thinghood. Secondly, we may view it as a proper thing, not only as an act of God, but as a substantial product. The former conception is illustrated by the relation of thoughts to the mind. These are not modes of mind, but mental acts. They are not made out of anything, but the thinking mind gives them existence. At the same time, they are not things in the mind, but exist only in and through the act which creates them. The decision between these views can be reached only as we find, in the finite, things which can know themselves as things. At first sight, indeed, things and substances appear to be given in immediate per- ception ; but epistemology shows that the objects of perception are primarily never more than our own conceptions and representations which have been objectified under the forms of space and time, sub- stance and attribute, cause and effect, etc. They 204 GOD AND THE WORLD represent only the way in whicli the mind reacts against a series of incitements from without. Meta- physics further shows that the independent fact is totally unlike the appearance ; and when these con- siderations are followed out, we reach the insight that true substantial existence, in distinction from phe- nomenal existence, can be predicated only of persons. Only selfhood serves to mark ofi the finite from the infinite, and only the finite spirit attains to substan- tial otherness to the infinite. The impersonal finite has only such otherness as a thought or act has to its subject. This is the view of the physical system to which speculative thought is fast coming. Thought begins, indeed, with the conviction that all things are sub- stantially there ; but the more we study them, the more they vanish into law and process without any proper thinghood beyond continuity, uniformity, and universality. Nor does it avail anything against the conclusion to say that the world-ground may posit impersonal agents as well as personal ones ; for the notion of the impersonal finite vanishes upon analy- sis into phenomenality. Identity, unity, causality, substantiality are possible only under the personal form. On all these accounts the impersonal can only be viewed as dependent phenomenon, or process of an energy not its own. This view does not commend itself to spontaneous thought, and is questioned by many in the name of common sense. The objections commonly rest upon misapprehension. Our sense-experience puts us in connection with a system of things. Concerning this system, we may ask whether it depends on us, as the 205 illusions of the madman depend on his distempered mind, or whether it is independent of us and our per- ception. The common conception of idealism is that it affirms the former view. This is one of the chronic misconceptions for which, when once estab- lished, there seems to be no exorcism. No rational idealist, however, has ever held such a view. He believes, as much as any one, that the system of experience is no product of our own, and that it exists for all. He only raises the question what this system may be in its essential nature. The realist proposes the conception of a brute existence as ex- pressing its ultimate nature ; but the idealist has no difficulty in showing that such a conception is only the realist's theory, and not a fact of immediate experience, and that this theory, moreover, is quite unable to do the work assigned it. And the realist himself is compelled to relax his theory when he comes to consider the relation of God and the world. Of course the imagination has no difficulty in con- struing this relation as a spatial one — as one of mutual inclusion and exclusion — but not much reflection is needed to show the impossibility of such a view or the contradictions involved in it. The most striking advantages of the realistic view for the imagination become its chief embarrassments for reflective thought. In fact, that view is the unsus- pected source of most of the metaphysical difficulties under which theology labors. The real space with its real matter and force forever tends to make the mechanical and materialistic conception law-giving for all existence, and thus to make any other concep- tion impossible. Realism may not be atheism, but it 206 GOD AND THE WORLD is certainly one great source of atheism. Its things and forces are continually threatening to set up for themselves, and in unclear minds of irreligious turn they often do it. In any case the world of finite spirits must be viewed as created. It is not made out of preexistent stuff but caused to be. Creation means to posit some- thing in existence which, apart from the creative act, would not be. Concerning it two consistent questions may be asked : Who is the agent ? How is it possible? To the first question the answer is, God. To the second there is no rational answer in the sense of a rationale of the process. Besides these consistent questions, various incon- sistent ones are asked, as, for instance : What is the world made " out of " ? The common answer is, out of nothing. Both question and answer are worthy of each other. Both are haunted by the notion of a preexistent stuff, and, to complete the absurdity, the answer suggests nothing as that stuff; as if by some process God fashioned the nothing into some- thing. The old saw, from nothing nothing comes, is also played off against creation, but without effect. The truth therein is merely that nothing can ever pro- duce, or be formed into anything. But theism does not teach that nothing produces something, but rather that God, the all-powerful, has caused the world to exist. No more does theism hold that God took a mass of nothing and made something out of it, but rather that he caused a new existence to begin, and that, too, in such a way that he was no less after creation than before. God neither made the world 207 from nothing as a raw material, nor from himself. Both notions are absurd, but he caused that to be which apart from his activity had no existence. Recalling the ideality of time, we may say that creation means simply the dependence of things on the divine activity for such existence as they have, and their exclusion from any quantitative sharing ia the divine substance. Of course such a relation is mysterious ; but the alternative view is a con- tradiction of thought itself. Creation is the only conception which reconciles the unity of God with the existence of the finite. Perhaps, too, we need not be especially troubled at the mystery, as mystery is omnipresent; and besides, creation is not our affair. Some speculators have sought relief from the mystery of creation in the claim that the world was not made from nothing, but from the potentialities of the divine nature. The only intelligible meaning of this view is that the world existed as a conception in the divine thought before it became real. This conceptual existence constituted its potentiality, but this in no way shows how that which existed as conception was posited in reality. For the rest, the claim in question is only a form of words of learned sound but without meaning. The world, then, depends on God, but not as a mode or part of the divine substance. Such concep- tions are excluded by the divine unity and by the identification of substantiality with causality. The pantheism, then, that would make the world a part of God, or would construe the relation under the category of quantity, or of whole and part, is untenable. 208 GOD AND THE WORLD We now consider the pantheism that views the world as a necessary consequence of the divine nature. This view also admits of a double interpretation according to our thought of being in general. We may regard the world as a logical implication of the divine nature or as a djTaamic resultant. In one view God is the all-conditioning premise and the world is the implied conclusion. Here the relation is logical and static, and the view might be called static pan- theism. Or God might be viewed as the all-condi- tioning causahty necessarily manifesting itself in the world of things. Here the relation is dynamic, and the view might be called dynamic pantheism. In this view the infinite is forever energizing according to certain laws, and producing thereby a great variety of products. But these laws are throughout expres- sions of its nature and admit of no change. The world-order is the divine nature, and, conversely, the divine nature is the world-order. Hence pantheists of this order have always been the stoutest opponents of miracles, for miracles imply a will apart from and above nature. If the world-order were really the divine nature, then, of course, God could not depart from that order without denying himself. This con- viction is further strengthened by the natural tendency of the untaught mind to mistake the uniformities of experience for necessities of being ; and thus the world-order is finally established as necessarily invari- able, the mind not recognizing its own shadow. This is the view which underlies all schemes of philosophic evolution, and a large part of current scientific specu- lation, or rather speculation on the supposed basis of scientific facts and principles. While static pantheism 209 says, In the beginning was the eternal substance or the eternal reason coexisting changelessly with all its implications ; dynamic pantheism says, In the begin- ning was force, necessary and persistent, and by its inherent necessity forever generating law and system. When this view is combined with the impersonality and unconsciousness of the world-ground, it becomes identical with vulgar atheism. The world-ground is simply the unitary principle and basal reality of the cosmos, and is exhausted in its cosmic manifestation. There is immanence without transcendence ; and God and the world are but opposite aspects of the same thing. The world considered in its ground is God ; and God considered in his manifested nature is the world. Static pantheism is an untenable abstraction which, if allowed, would bring the universe to a standstill and load thought with illusion. It would give us a rigid and resting being from which all time and change would be excluded, and which could in no way be connected with our changing experience. If we should call that experience delusion, the delusion itself would be as unaccountable as the fact. On this rock Eleatic philosophy was wrecked, and here, too, Spinoza's system went to pieces. And this must be the case with any view which makes the relation of God to the world one of logical implication. For logic knows no time, and the conclusion must coexist with the premises. If then the world as existing were a logical implication of the divine being, it and all its factors would be eternal. There would be no room for change, but all things would rigidly coexist. In 210 GOD AND THE WORLD this view, also, finite minds with all their contents would be necessary and eternal ; and as error and evil are a manifest part of those contents, it follows that they likewise are necessary and eternal. Hence we should have to assume a factor of unreason and evil in God himself ; and by this time the collapse of thought would be complete. The truth, then, in pantheism, if there be any, lies in dynamic pantheism. But this view is also unten- able for the following reasons : — 1. It is unclear. The dynamic implication which is other than logical is quite unintelligible except as free volitional activity. Again, the view provides only for the world-order and does not recognize its details. But the world-order, as a system of general laws, accounts for no specific fact whatever. We must refer, then, not only the world-order to the divine nature, but also the cosmic details. And since these are incessantly shifting, the divine nature, which is their ground, must also be shifting, and hence a temporal thing. Thereby the infinite is degraded to a temporal existence and its absoluteness disappears ; for only the self-determining can be absolute. The very general oversight of this difficulty is due to the fallacy of the universal. It has been thought that the system of the world as a whole might result from the divine nature without taking account of its details; but this is impossible when we think con- cretely. Then we are compelled to carry all com- plexity and multiplicity into their ground, which thus becomes complex and multiform itself. The same fallacy has concealed the degradation of the divine 211 which is involved in pantheism. Few would care to carry bodily into God the great mass of opaque, in- significant, sinister details which bulk so large in ex- perience ; but we easily hide them behind the thought of the world-order or system of law. This system in turn seems to be an adequate and worthy expres- sion of the divine nature ; and the unseemly and embarrassing features of concrete experience drop from our thought altogether. This illusion the critic must not fail to point out. 2. Self-determination being denied, we must find some ground for the changing activity of the infinite ; and this must be found in some mechanism in the infinite whereby its states interact and determine the outcome. But of such metaphysical mechanism we can form no conception whatever j and the view, if carried out, would cancel the unity of the infinite altogether. We might continue to speak of unity, but we should be quite unable to find it, or to tell in what it consisted. We should remain in the midst of an interacting many with no possibility of reach- ing any basal one. As we have already pointed out, the free and conscious self is the only real unity of which we have any knowledge, and reflection shows that it is the only thing which can be a true unity. This type of pantheism would necessarily pass over into atheism. 3. We have seen that the alleged necessity of natural laws and products is purely hypothetical. No reflection upon necessary truth shows the present order to be a necessary implication in any respect. Metaphysical necessity is a purely negative idea to which no positive conception or experience corre- 212 GOD AND THE WORLD spends ; and so far as rational necessity is concerned, the world and all its details are contingent. 4. We have further seen that every system of necessity overturns reason itself. Freedom is a necessary implication of rationality. On all these grounds we hold that God is free in his relation to the world, and that the world, though conditioned by the divine nature, is no necessary product thereof, but rather rests upon the divine will. To carry the world into God is to carry time and evolution into God : and the notion of an evolv- ing, developing God does not commend itself to speculative thought. Again, to carry the actual world into God with all its antitheses of good and evil, and its boundless wastes of insignificance and imperfection, would be to degrade the theistic idea to about the level of the Platonic demiurge. Every- thing would be divine but God. And if one should ask. How much better off are we on the theistic view, seeing that these things must in some sense be referred to God ? the answer would be this. We are much better off in being able to maintain the divine absoluteness and perfection, which is impossible to pantheism. Moreover, the seeming evils and imperfections of the world being founded in purpose and freedom, and not in an in- tractable necessity, we are permitted to hope for their removal or transformation in the completion of the divine plan. This would not be possible in a system where all things happen by an opaque neces- sity, and where nothing is the outcome of proper prevision and purpose. If, then, we ask how the world comes to be, we 213 have to refer the conception of the world to the divine thought ; and any inquiry into the origin and possibility of this conception is futile. Such inquiry applies the principle of the sufficient reason to thought itself rather than to its products, and always begins and ends in confusion. If we next ask how this con- ception came to be realized, we refer it not to any necessity of the divine nature, but to the free will of the Creator. If we further ask why this conception was realized, we may assume some worthy purpose, some supreme good to be reached thereby. If, finally, we ask how this supreme good implies the actual world for its realization, we must be content to wait for an answer. In concluding that God is free in his relation to the world, we abandon all hope of a speculative deduction of creation. Such hope has often been entertained, and numberless attempts have been made to realize it. Inasmuch as we conclude from the world to God, it is said, we must be able to conclude from God to the world. Sometimes the matter has been made very easy by defining creation as essential to the divine nature; and then the conclusion has been drawn that God without the world would be a contradiction. In addition to being failures, these attempts spring from a speculative lust for understanding and construing, which fails to grasp the conditions of understanding. In this respect they are on a par with the infantile wisdom which asks. Who made God ? We must refer the concrete system to intelligence as its source, but we can never deduce it from intelligence as a neces- sary implication. This conclusion applies to the entire system of the THEISM — 15 214 GOD AND THE WORLD finite, whether physical or spiritual. It affirms the freedom and absoluteness of God in creation, but it is quite compatible with the complete dependence, and even phenomenality of the creature. In that case, however, creation produces no real otherness to God, and vanishes into a species of ambiguous meditation on the Creator's part. With this result we are all at sea again. The finite becomes an unaccountable illu- sion, which defies all understanding. We must, then, make an effort to secure some substantiality for the finite spirit. Having shown that God is free in his relation to the world, we must next show that the finite spirit has some reality over against God. The great difficulty here lies in the necessary de- pendence of the finite. In studying interaction, we have seen that all finite things are comprehended in an order of dependence, and it is very easy to use this fact for dissolving away our personality and responsibility unless we look well to our goings. A passage is borrowed from the author's " Metaphysics," in elucidation of the point : — "A more subtle source of error concerning this matter lies in the necessary dependence of the finite. The finite is dependent on the infinite, and is also a member of a system to which it is continually subject. The result is that the finite spirit has only a limited and relative existence at best. As compared with the in- finite, it has only a partial and incomplete existence. In the fullest sense of the word, only the infinite exists; all else is relatively phenomenal and non- existent. " By thinking along this line in an abstract way it is easy to come to this conclusion; and every reader 215 acquainted with the history of speculation will recall how often men have stumbled into pantheism at this point. Nor is it easy to escape this conclusion so long as we dwell on the abstract categories of finite and infinite, dependent and independent, phenomenal and real, existence and nonexistence. The truth is we have no insight into these categories that will enable us to decide what is concretely possible in this case. We have to fall back on experience, and in- terpret the categories by experience, instead of de- termining experience by the categories. Any other method is illusory and the prolific source of illusions. " Adopting this method, we discover that, while we cannot tell how the finite can be, it nevertheless is. The finite may not exist in the full sense of the infinite, but for all that, in a small way, it is able to act and is acted upon. In the sense of self- sufficiency there is but one substance, as Spinoza said ; but it does not follow that all other things are only powerless shadows, for there are a great many substances that can act and be acted upon. It matters little what we call these, provided we bear this fact in mind. They are not substances, if sub- stance means self-sufficiency. They are substances, if substance means the subject of action and passion. If, then, we bear our meaning carefully in mind, we may say that only the infinite exists or truly is, that the finite has only partial, relative, incomplete, non- existent existence ; and there would be a sort of truth in the saying. But these utterances are so easily mis- understood that they should be reserved for esoteric use, and frugality is to be recommended even there. In these operations we must proceed antiseptically, 216 GOD AND THE WORLD and sterilize our verbal instruments by careful defini- tion before we begin. " Now when we consider life at all reflectively, we come upon two facts. First, we have thoughts and feelings and volitions ; and these are our own. We also have a measure of self-control or the power of self-direction. Here, then, in experience we find a certain selfhood and a relative independence. This fact constitutes us real persons, or rather it is the meaning of our personality. The second fact is that we cannot regard this life as self-sufficient and inde- pendent. How the life is possible we do not know ; we only know that it is. How the two facts are put together is altogether beyond us. We only know that we cannot interpret life without admitting both, and that to deny either lands us in contradiction and nonsense. It is no doubt fine, and in some sense it is correct, to say that God is in all things ; but when it comes to saying that God is all things and that all forms of thought and feeling and conduct are his, then reason simply commits suicide. God thinks and feels in what we call our thinking and feeling ; and hence he blunders in our blundering and is stupid in our stupidity. He contradicts himself also with the utmost freedom ; for a deal of his thinking does not hang together from one person to another, or from one day to another in the same person. Error, folly, and sin are all made divine ; and reason and conscience as having authority vanish. The only thing that is not divine in this scheme is God ; and he vanishes into a congeries of contradictions and basenesses. "For note the purely logical difficulties in the notion, not to press the problem of evil and error 217 just referred to. Suppose the diflficulty overcome which is involved in the inalienability of personal experience, so that our thoughts and life might be ascribed to God as consciously his. What is God's relation as thinking our thoughts to God as thinking the absolute thought ? Does he become limited, con- fused, and blind in finite experience, and does he at the same time have absolute insight in his infinite life ? Does he lose himself in the finite so as not to know what and who he is ; or does he perhaps exhaust himself in the finite, so that the finite is all there is ? But if all the while he has perfect knowledge of himself as one and infinite, how does this illusion of the finite arise at all in that perfect unity and perfect light ? There is no answer to these questions, so long as the infinite is supposed to play both sides of the game. We have a series of unaccountable illusions and an infinite playing hide-and-seek with itself in a most grotesque metaphysical fuddlement. The notion of creation may be difficult, but it saves us from such dreary stuff as this. How the infinite can posit the finite, and thus make the possibility of a moral order, is certainly beyond us ; but the alter- native is a lapse into hopeless irrationality. We can make nothing of either God or the world on such a pantheistic basis. Accordingly, we find writers who incline to this way of thinking in uncertain vacilla- tion between some " Eternal Consciousness " and our human consciousness and without any definite and consistent thought concerning their mutual relation, but only vague and showy phrases." ^ We conclude, then, that pantheism in whatever ' " Metaphysics " (revised edition), p. 100 fi. 218 GOD AND THE WORLD form is untenable. Both its doctrine of God and its doctrine of man are equally obnoxious to criticism. It is equally fatal to reason to subject God to necessity, and to reduce man to a phantom of the infinite. Indeed this doctrine is less a matter of thought than of vague feeling. In a time of mechanical deism and religious anthropomorphism, pantheism naturally arises as a reaction. In a time of overdone mecha- nism and materialism it is welcomed as a relief. In a time when the Living God has retreated into a distant past and disappeared below the horizon, pantheism seems an advance. But this is a mistake. What is really needed is, not a God who blocks exist- ence by absorbing all things into himself, but the living and immanent God in whom we live and move and have our being, and whose tender mercies are over all his works ; a God also in whom revelation and mystery mingle, who comes near enough for love, and rises high enough for awe and voiceless adora- tion. It is only a mind subject to verbal illusions that can find any help or inspiration in pantheism proper. India and the Indian pantheon reveal the essential meaning of pantheism. We pass now to the theistic conception of the rela- tion of God to the world. In this view the world depends on the divine will. In estimating this result, care must be taken not to apply to the divine willing the limitations of the human. As in human consciousness there are many features that are not essential to consciousness, and that arise from our limitations, so in human willing there are many features that are not essential to 219 willing, and that result from our finiteness. Since we get our objects of volition gradually and by experi- ence, we tend to think of will as a momentary activity which comes into our life now and then, but which, for the most part, is quiescent. In this way we come to think of an act of will as having nothing to do with the maintenance of a fixed state, but only as producing a change; or if it should look to the preservation of a given state, it would only be as that state might be threatened by something external. And so, finally, it comes to pass that we think of willing as something necessarily temporal or beginning. When, then, we speak of the world as depending on the divine will, the imagination finds it difiicult to grasp this thought with- out assuming an empty time before its origination. But these features of human wilhng are not to be transferred to God without inspection. To begin with, willing does not necessarily imply beginning. In studying the divine omnipotence we saw that God's will in reference to himself must be eternal ; that is, it is as unbegun as God, being but that free self-determination whereby God is God. It is only in relation to the world that God's will can be temporal ; and here, too, there is an essential difference. We come only gradually to a knowledge of our aims ; but this cannot be affirmed of God. We have seen that ia his absolute seK-knowledge and self-possession God has neither past nor future. Hence the ideals of the divine will are also eternal in the divine thought. The will to create, however, is differently regarded. Some view it as an eternal predicate of God, and others view it as a temporal predicate. Still another distinction between our will and the 220 GOD AND THE WORLD creative will must be noticed. With us to will is not necessarily to fulfill ; and thus we come to think that ia addition to the will there must also be a special activity of realization. Some have carried this con- ception over to God, and have affirmed the will to create to be eternal, while the execution is temporal. But this view confounds intention with will, and for the rest is false. This feature of our willing is due altogether to our finiteness. Our willing, in fact, extends only to our mental states, and is not absolute even there. For the production of effects in the outer world we depend on something not ourselves ; and as this is not always subservient to us, we come to dis- tinguish between volition and realization. Again, we find that we cannot always control our thoughts, because they are partly due to external causes ; and in the struggle which thus arises we find additional ground for distinguishing the will and the realization. Finally, our control of the body is attended by many feelings of strain and effort, and these we carry into the idea of will itself, where it by no means belongs. These feelings are effects of muscular tension resulting from our will, but they are no part of the will itself. None of these elements can be transferred to God. He is unconditioned by anything beyond himself. He is absolutely self-determining, and with him wil- ling must be identical with realization. On the realistic doctrine of time two views are held of the will to create, some making it an eternal and others only a temporal predicate of God. We devote a word to these before passing to the idealistic conception. 221 Of the two views the one which makes creation only a temporal predicate is the more easily realized by the imagination. By its affirmation of an empty time before the creative act, that act is made to appear more like an act than an eternal doing would be, and at the same time the view marks off creation as an act of will more clearly from the opposite doctrine, which makes creation a necessary consequence of the divine nature. This, however, is only an aid to the imagination. If the Creator be free, he is eternally free. He did not first exist and then become free, but his freedom is coexistent with him- self ; and hence his free doing may coexist with him- self. There is nothing in the notion of eternal crea- tion which is incompatible with divine freedom or with the absolute dependence of the world on the divine will. The notion of a temporal creation has the disadvantage also of raising certain troublesome questions, such as. What was God doing in the eternity before creation ? or. Why did creation take place when it did, and not at some other time ? We cannot fill up this time with a divine self-evolution, as if God were gradually coming to himself and get- ing ready to create, for this would cancel his abso- luteness and reduce him to a temporal being. Some of the more naive speculators have thought to fill up the time before creation by a series of previous creations — a suggestion which shows more appreci- ation of the difficulty of the problem than of the required solution. It seems, then, that no reason for delay can be found in God, and certainly none can be found in time itself, since one moment of absolute time is like any other ; and hence, finally, it seems 222 GOD AND THE WORLD that a temporal creation must be an act of pure arbitrariness. On all these accounts many theolo- gians have declared for an eternal creation, and have further declared creation to mean not temporal origi- nation, but simply and only the dependence of the world on God. On the other hand, the claim is made that eternal creation is a contradiction. On the supposition of a real time this cannot be maintained. The claim is that the vforld must have had a beginning in time, while the arguments employed prove with equal cogency that time itself must have had a beginning. This is the case even with Kant, whose famous anti- nomy is no more efficient against the eternity of the world than it is against the eternity of time. But no one who admits an infinite past time can find any good reason for denying that something may always have been happening in it. Every believer in neces- sity must hold that something has always been going on ; and every theist must allow that something may always have been going on. There is no a priori reason in theism for denying that the cosmic process may be coeternal with God. The difficulties commonly urged depend on the contradiction said to inhere in the notion of an infinite elapsed time. But this arises from overlook- ing the sense in which past time is said to be infinite. This infinity means simply that past time cannot be exhausted by any finite regress. Past time is infi- nite just as space in any direction is infinite. In the former case no regress will find a beginning, just as in the latter case no progress will find an end. If, now, time were anything capable of real objective 223 existence, its past infinity, in the sense described, would offer no difficulty to thought ; indeed, it would rather seem to be a necessary affirmation. Such difficulty as might arise would be due to confounding thought and imagination. The imagination cannot represent either space or time as unlimited, but thought cannot conceive either as limited. But with infinite time and the eternal God as data, there seems to be no reason for denying the possibility of a cosmic process extending throughout the infinite time. Some further objections are offered, based on the nature of number. Number is necessarily finite, and hence anything to which number applies must be finite also. But number applies to time as its meas- ure, and hence time must be finite, and hence must have a beginning. Such argument, however, puzzles rather than convinces. To begin with, the necessary finiteness of number means only that any number whatever admits of increase. But it is entirely com- patible with this finitude that the number should not admit of exhaustion in any finite time. If we sup- pose time to be real and infinite, then in the past time a definite number of units have passed away; but that number does not admit of expression in finite terms. It is constantly growing, to be sure, because time is constantly passing. In no other sense need it be finite. If it be said that the very nature of a series demands a beginning, as there can be no second without a first, we need to consider whether such application of number to the boundless continuum of time is not as relative to ourselves as its similar appli- cation to space. For our apprehension we have to 224 GOD AND THE WORLD set up axes of reference in both cases; but we are not able to say that the fact itself depends upon those devices by which we conceive it. The celestial hori- zon and equator do not make the motions and posi- tions which they enable us to grasp and measure. The argument from number proves the finitude of space quite as cogently as that of time. For at any point whatever the adjacent mile in any direction is the last mile, the nth. mile, therefore, of the distance extending indefinitely in that direction. And as there can be no second without a first, it follows that dis- tance itself begins and that extension is finite ia all directions — which is more than a believer in infinite space cares to have proved. But if we allow that time is infinite, and claim only that the cosmic process in time must be finite, we fall iuto a curious antinomy. On the one hand, it seems clear that the Eternal God may always have been doing something ; but on the other hand, owing to the potency of number, God must wait for the past eternity to elapse before he can do anything. This certainly is a very bizarre result ; and it cannot be escaped by any reflections on the necessary fini- tude of a series, or the impossibility of making an infinite by the summation of finites. The real solution of this puzzle lies in the ideality of time. The denial of any ontological time compels us to limit temporal relations to the cosmic move- ment, without extending them to the Creator. In his absolute, self-related existence, God is timeless. Hence he did not create at a certain point of absolute time, but he created, and thus gave both the world and time their existence. If, then, we view the 225 world as begun, it is strictly absurd to ask when or at what moment of the eternal flow of time did God create. There is no such flow ; and hence creation did not take place at any moment. In the begin- ning God created, for creation was the beginning even of time itself. We need not concern ourselves, then, with what God was doing in the long eternity before creation; for there was no such eternity. There was simply the self-existent, self-possessing, timeless God, whose name is I Am, and whose being is without temporal ebb and flow. Temporal terms have meaning only within the cosmic process itself, and are altogether empty when applied to the abso- lute God. Our thought leads not to an absolute existence temporally before the world, but rather to an absolute existence independent of the world. The priority is logical, not temporal. And within the cosmic process itself temporal relations are but the form under which we represent the unpicturable dynamic relations among the things and phases of that process. Here we must recall what was said of the relativity of the temporal judgment. It is no absolute property of the cosmic movement so that it can be defined by itself without reference to self -consciousness. The present, which is the origin of all temporal judgments, is purely a relation in self-consciousness ; and its extent depends on the range of our powers. Hence we cannot be too careful in extending our time measures and estimates to God. The phenomenality of space and time does indeed vacate many of these questions about the relation of the world to space and time, but it may be urged 226 GOD AND THE WOKLD that after all it leaves the question as to the infini- tude of the world in space and time unanswered. For the world appears under the spatial and temporal form, and thus the question as to its extent is still in order. This is indeed the case, but the problem is greatly modified. With an ontological space and time, the mind is equally puzzled whether it regards them as finite or infinite. But this puzzle disappears from the idealistic view. On this theory the only infinitude is the fact that the laws of spatial and temporal synthesis admit of no exhaustion. They are, then, potentially infinite, like the numerical series. The infinitude of the latter makes us no trouble, and that of the former is equally harmless. When it comes to applying these laws to experience, we are in the same case with regard to all three infinitudes. We have no a priori ground for affirming a concrete infinitude of space or time or number; and we have no ground in experience for affirming a completed or final finitude. On this point experi- ence is the only source of knowledge. The mind, then, has not to maintain both sides of a contradic- tion, but is unable to reach a positive decision either way. And the need of reaching such decision vanishes when time and space are seen to be only phenomenal. Their assumed ontological character is the source of our antinomies and logical woes. In this matter, with Kant, we replace the " either, or " of dogmatic realism, by the " neither, nor " of criticism. The world was produced by the divine will, but this does not determine its present relation to that will. Concerning this there are two extreme views 227 and an indefinite number of intermediate ones. One extreme, deism, regards the world as needing only to be created, being able to exist thereafter entirely on its own account. The other extreme finds so little substantiality in the world as to regard its continued existence as a perpetual creation. Between these extremes lie the views which, against deism, maintain an activity of conservation distinct from that of creation, and which, on the other hand, refuse to identify creation and conservation. All of these views commonly assume the reality of time as a something during, or through, which things exist. The deistic view sets up nature as existing at pres- ent in its own right, while God appears as an absentee and without administrative occupation so far as nature is concerned. He created the world, and thereafter it got on by itself. He is needed, then, only as first cause or prime mover, and has no further function. The impossibility of this conception has already appeared. In treating of interaction we saw that all interaction of the many is really an immanent action in the One. In the physical system no finite thing or phenomenon has any metaphysical or other rights of its own, whereby it becomes an obstacle or barrier in any sense to God. Both laws and things exist or change solely because of the demands of the divine plan. If this calls for fixedness, they are fixed ; if it calls for change, they change. They have in them- selves no ground of existence so as to be a limit for God ; because they are nothing but the divine purpose flowing forth into reahzation. If natm"al agents en- dure, it is not because of an inherent right to existence, but because the creative will constantly upholds them. 228 GOD AND THE WORLD If in the cosmic movement the same forces constantly appear working according to the same laws, this is not because of some eternal persistence of force and law, but because it lies in the divine plan to work in fixed forms and methods for the production of effects. In a word, the continuity of natural processes upon which physical science is based may be admitted as a fact ; not, however, as a fact which accounts for itself or which rests upon some metaphysical necessity, but rather as a fact which depends at every moment upon the divine will, and which only expresses the consist- ency of the divine methods. As against deism, then, we hold that the world is no self-centered reality, inde- pendent of God, but is simply the form in which the divine purpose realizes itself. It has no laws of its own which oppose a bar to the divine purpose, but all its laws and ongoings are only the expression of that purpose. In our dealing with nature we have to accommodate ourselves to its laws, but with God the purpose is original, the laws are its consequence. Hence the system of law is itself absolutely sensitive to the divine purpose, so that what that purpose demands finds immediate expression and realization, not in spite of the system, but in and through the system. The view that identifies conservation with per- petual creation has no difficulty when applied to the physical system. Here form and law are the only fixed elements we can find ; and metaphysics makes it doubtful whether there can be others. In that case the physical order becomes simply a process which exists only in its perpetual ongoing. It has the iden- tity of a musical note, and, like such a note, it exists 229 only on condition of being incessantly and continu- ously reproduced. But we cannot apply this view to the world of spirits without losing ourselves in utterly unmanageable difficulties, at least on the realistic theory of time. The identity of the phenomenal pro- cess exists only for the beholder ; and to reduce the finite spirit to such process would cancel its selfhood altogether and make thought impossible. We seem, then, shut up to distinguish creation from preservation ; and the nature of this distinction eludes all apprehension. We affirm something whose nature and method are utterly opaque to our thought. The only relief, such as it is, lies in falling back on the ideality of time. We replace the notions of creation and conservation by the notion of dependence on the divine will. The mystery of this fact we have seen in treating of pantheism, and we have also seen that thought cannot move without affirming at once the dependence and the relative independence of the finite spirit. On the possibility of such a relation thought cannot pronounce ; it can only wait for ex- perience to reveal the fact. The puzzle about the identity of the dependent has the same solution. The identical spirit has not to maintain its identity across different times, but only to identify itself in experi- ence. This self-identification is the real and only meaning of concrete identity ; and it is to be judged or measured by nothing else. Experience is the only test of meaning and possibility in this matter. The abstract categories of time, continuity, and identity do not go before and make experience possible ; but experience is the basal fact from which these cate- gories get all their meaning and by which they are THEISM — 16 230 GOD AND THE WORLD to be tested. Apart from this experience they are self -canceling abstractions. If the physical system only were concerned, nothing more need be added about the relation of the world to God. He is its creator and conserver, and we should add nothing in calling him its ruler or gov- ernor. Even realism regards the world of things as receiving its law from God, and as unable in any way to depart from it. Such things need no government ; or, rather, government has no meaning when applied to them. We can speak of government only where there are beings which by a certain independence threaten to withdraw themselves from the general plan which the ruler aims to reahze. We find the proper subjects of a divine government only in finite spirits ; as only these have that relative independence over against God which the idea of government demands. The notion of a divine government, then, implies free spirits as its subjects. But freedom in itself is a means only and not an end. Apart from some good which can be realized only by freedom, a free world is no better than a necessary one. Hence the notion of a world-government acquires rational meaning only as some supreme good exists which is to be the out- come of creation, and which, therefore, gives the law for all personal activity. A world-government im- plies a world-goal which, in tvirn, implies a world- law. A cosmic movement without direction and aim could not be the outcome of a self-respecting intelli- gence. What, then, is that great end which all free beings 231 should serve ? Nature shows us numberless particu- lar ends, but none of these have supreme worth, and most of them have no assignable worth. So far as observation goes, the ends reahzed in nature are gen- erally so insignificant that they seem to add nothing to the perfection of the world, and in many cases they even appear as blemishes. Observation dis- covers no supreme end. The cosmos as a whole does not seem to set very definitely in any direction, and presents a drifting movement rather than a fixed com'se. Nor can we find the aim of the cosmic movement in any development of the world-ground, as that would reduce it to a temporal existence. But if we insist on having a world-goal, we can find a sufficient one only in the moral realm. A commu- nity of moral persons, obeying moral law and enjoy- ing moral blessedness, is the only end that could excuse creation or make it worth while. Hence the notion of a moral government leads at once to the ethical realm, and implies notions foreign to meta- physics. If one has not these notions there can be no question of such a government, and theistic phi- losophy closes with considering the causal relation of God to the world. The conception of creation as a free act and not as a necessary evolution of the divine nature, for- bids all attempts to identify the world with God, or to establish any equational relation between them. The relation of a mind to its thoughts, or of an agent to his deeds can be understood only in expe- rience ; it can never be expressed in quantitative and equational terms. But apart from this chronic illusion, speculative thought has been prolific of 232 GOD AND THE WORLD attempts to understand the manner and motive of creation. A superficial type of speculation has sought to explain the manner by a great variety of cosmogo- nies, some of which are still in fashion. None of these have either religious or speculative significance. They relate only to the transforming and combining of given material, and say nothing concerning its origination. For understanding the origin of the creative act, we have only the analogy of our own experience, according to which we first form concep- tions and then realize them. Hence the divine understanding has been distinguished from the divine will, and a kind of division of labor has been made between them. The understanding furnishes the con- ception of all possibilities, and from these the divine wisdom chooses the best for realization by the divine will. Many scruples have been raised concerning this distinction, on the ground that in God knowing and wUling must be identical; but this identity is secured only by defining each term so as to include the other. In both cases, however, we have to leave out those features of our knowing and wilHng which arise from our Umitations. In general the identifica- of knowing and willing in God confounds synchro- nism with identity. In knowing that looks towards doing there is no assignable reason why the doing should be postponed, and thus we are led to view them as contemporaneous. But knowing and will- ing as mental functions remain as distinct as ever. Besides, God's knowledge extends to the evil as well as the good ; does he therefore will the evil ? Concerning the motive of creation, pure speculation can say nothing positive. It can only point out that 233 if the divine absoluteness is to be maintained, this motive must not lie in any lack or imperfection of the Creator. For positive suggestion we must have recourse to our moral and religious nature; and this refuses to be satisfied with any lower motive than ethical love. This fact, together with the positive teachings of Christianity, has led to many attempts to deduce the system as an outcome of love; but the success has been very slight. We are so little able to tell a priori what that love implies that we cannot even adjust a large part of actual experience to the conception of any kind of love, ethical or otherwise. It only remains that we believe in love as the source of creation and the essence of the divine nature, with- out being in any way able to fix its implications. If only a world of things were concerned, as we have said, nothing more need be added concerning God's relation to it. Such a world would never go astray, as it would be incapable of any action or reac- tion on its own account. But the reference to a divine government of the world, with its implication of free subjects, raises some further questions. For the complete clearing up of our thought, we must consider the relation of these free subjects to the system of which they form a part. Or, since men are the only subjects of this kind of whom we have experience, we must study the relation of man to the system. Of course in the deepest sense man belongs to the system. He is not to be understood apart from the system, nor is the system to be understood apart from him. God's fundamental plan must include all things, coexistent and sequent alike, in one inter-related order. 234 GOD AND THE WORLD and cannot be viewed as a congeries of things thrown together without essential connection, or added on to some crude beginning as a series of afterthoughts. The popular view on this general subject is an incon- sistent compound of instinct and superficial reflection, but a study of it will help us to a better one. Spontaneous thought distinguishes man from na- ture, but for obvious reasons nature is conceived as physical nature, and this bulks so large as to threaten to absorb all existence. Of the existence of this nature and of its material and dynamic character there is no doubt whatever. With this unquestioned datum, as soon as reflection begins, the query arises where nature ends. Then it is discovered that man himself in his physical being certainly belongs to nature, and the surmise is soon reached that nature is all-explaining and all-embracing. This surmise is strengthened by extending the term nature to include the whole system of law, while the physical sense of the term is unwittingly retained, and soon it passes for established that nature is all. Further, the tem- poral order is supposed to be ontological, and the early phases of cosmic manifestation are assumed to be the true realities by which all later phases are produced, and in comparison with which the later phases are unsubstantial and transitory. Life and mind, as late products, were evolved from lower reah- ties more substantial than they. In this way mechan- ism, determinism, materialism, and atheism are born or extend their claims. This illusion springs up naturally on the plane of sense metaphysics. There is no suspicion of the phe- nomenality of all impersonal existence ; and the mate- 235 rial and mechanical scheme emerges as a matter of com'se. There is likewise no suspicion of the impossi- bility of mechanically evolving anything which is not implicit in the antecedents ; and thus it seems easy to get life and mind from the essentially lifeless and non-intelligent. There is equally no suspicion of the fact that an evolving thing can never be defined or expressed by that which it momentarily is, but only by all that which it is to become ; and hence the true realities are supposed to be the first and lowest, and all else is their passing product. But a profounder metaphysics dispels the illusion. This self-running nature is an idol of the sense den. The only defini- tion of physical nature that criticism can allow is the sum-total of spatial phenomena and their laws. This nature is throughout effect, and contains no causality and no necessity in it. The causality pro- duces the phenomena, but lies beyond them. And the only definition of nature in general, or of nature in its most extended sense, is the sum-total and sys- tem of all phenomena that are subject to law. And even this definition is largely relative to ourselves. For the existence of laws, except as formal and subjec- tive, may be questioned. There is not first a system of general laws into which effects are afterward in- terjected, but there is the actual system of reality, upheld and maintained by the immanent God. For our thought this system admits of being analyzed into universal laws on the one hand and particular effects on the other ; but in fact this is only a logical separation. The effects are no more consequences of the laws than the laws are consequences of the effects. The analyses and devices of discursive thought do not 236 GOD AND THE WORLD give US reality m its actual existence, but only a for- mal equivalent for purposes of our calculation. But from our human standpoint it is necessary to distin- guish the general order of law from the concrete facts. And here we must once more remind ourselves that in concrete matters experience has absolute right of way. Nature, science, categories, dogmatic intu- itions, and all the rest of the family of abstractions must submit to this test. The aim of thought is to interpret experience, and all schemes which conflict with experience are to be peremptorily set aside. Now the only nature which will meet this demand is one which fulfills two requirements. First, it must be a system of discernible order which can be depended on. Secondly, it must admit of some modification from human vohtion. Without the first feature we should have chaos rather than a world ; and our intelligence could never begin. Without the second feature the natural order would be closed against us ; and so far as action goes we should not be in the world at all. This is the nature found in experience, and the only nature found in experience. That other "Nature," whose final cause and highest law are to keep ^ M V^ a constant quantity, is a fiction born of a romantic devotion to abstractions, aided and abetted by an exhaustive ignorance of the elementary principles and results of philosophical criticism. That is the "Nature" which forbids us to think that thought and purpose and will have anything to do even with the direction of our own bodies, lest continuity or something else supremely important be interfered with. All superstitions tend to wreck intelligence. 237 Combining all these results we reach this conclusion. There is no self-running system of physical nature, but there is an order of phenomenal law which is independent of us. Moreover, there is an order of concomitant variation between that order and our- selves, so that each has significance for the other. We are able to act so as to produce changes and even permanent modifications in that order. It is perpetu- ally taking on new forms which are not results of the antecedent states of the physical system, but which have their source in human volition. A great many features of the physical world are not to be traced to the star dust, but to human will which has impressed itself upon its environment. Enormous changes in the flora and fauna of the earth, and even in climate and rainfall are to be thus traced, while natural forces are at work in human service in a most exemplary manner. This will, however, breaks no natural laws, but realizes itself through the laws. As soon as the volitional impulse is given, the effect enters into the great web of law and is carried out by the same. We can choose to will or not to will, but we cannot choose the effects of our willing. They depend on the power not ourselves which founds and maintains the natural order. The same relation exists in the case of those laws that enter iato our own constitution. Here also we find laws that we do not make and cannot abrogate. Here also our success depends on obedience ; and here also we can will the deed, but we cannot will away its consequences. Thus to a considerable extent we make ourselves; and to some extent we make our world. 238 GOD AND THE WORLD Thus the world becomes flexible, at once the abode of law and the servant of intelligence. It has the order which both reason and practical life demand, and also the pliability which is equally necessary, if we are to live in the world at all. The contiauity of this world does not consist in a rigid changelessness of existence ; for as phenomenal it has no continuity in itself whatever. Its continuity consists in the subordination of all phenomena to the same laws. Phenomena come and go; but all phenomena, new and old alike, are comprehended in the same scheme of law and relation. This fact constitutes the unity, uniformity, and continuity of the system. From the phenomenal standpoint, natiue has, and can have, no other uniformity and continuity. And this continuity in no way conflicts with the complete pliability of the system to free intelligence, which may be found in it, or be in interaction with it. The laws of the system are no independent necessities by which the action of God is bound; they are rather the rules according to which he proceeds. Neither are they anything that opposes a rigid bar to finite free- dom ; they are rather the conditions of any effective use of freedom. Nature itself is only a general term for the established order of procedure; and a natm-al event is one in which familiar processes can be traced, or which can be connected with other events according to general rules. But all events root in the divine activity, and are alike supernatural as to their causation. This result suggests a means of conceiving the method of the divine government. It is manifest that our mental and moral sanity demands an order 239 of law on which we can depend. On no other con- dition could reason or conscience be secure. But this order is not the rigid, self -executing thing which the deists supposed it to be. We must indeed work out our own salvation, but it is God who worketh in us nevertheless. We replace the absentee God of deism by the immanent God of enlightened theism. If, then, things go on in the familiar routine, it is simply because, in the divine plan, that routine is the best thing. Nothing is done because law demands it, but because the divine purpose demands it; and the divine will is as present and as active in the most familiar thing as it would be in any miracle. But this is entirely compatible with the maintenance of phenomenal law. For as human vohtion is contin- uously playing through natural law, and realizing its purposes thereby, so we may well believe that what is possible with man may be possible with God. God, then, may be present in human history, guiding the world, raising up leaders, giving direction to public thought, purifying the receptive and willing heart, answering prayer according to his wisdom, and scourging public and private wickedness ; yet with- out in any way breaking through the fixed phenom- enal order. It is in this way that we may conceive how the divine government may coexist with fixed laws. God's immanence in the law renders unnec- essary any interference from a realm beyond the law. Here some deistically-minded reader may demur that this result is valid only for a superficial view of the subject. Our lack of knowledge, he may say, permits us to surmise a purpose; but if we knew all, we should see that all events follow rigorously from 240 GOD AND THE WORLD their antecedents, and that therefore everything is nat- ural, and no purpose or government is needed in the case. This is another echo from a sense metaphysics which criticism has set aside. Without doubt, if we knew all the antecedents of an event, even of a mir- acle, we should find it explained; but this tells us httle unless we are also told what the "all" is that we need to know. There is here a tacit assumption that if we knew all the finite antecedents in space and time, we should need no other explanation, and along with this is the further assumption that these antecedents were not determined to the effect by any purpose whatever. But in fact, as metaphysics shows, we cannot trace, either phenomenally or metaphysi- cally, the antecedent into the consequent. We see an order of succession, but the inner connection eludes us. Nature is never so completely expressed in the spatial fact, that by simple deduction from that fact we could logically deduce all future phases. Such a deduction would break down over the simplest qualitative change, if it were quantitatively possible. In every system the dynamism is invisible; and the dynamic changes are perpetually producing departures from any purely kinematic deduction. Unless we unite the laws of the hidden dynamism with the kinematic deduction, the latter will show constant breaks of continuity. No system, then, can view nature as fully expressed in the visible spatial fact, but all alike must assmne a world of invisible power. But meta- physics further shows that this world of power is volitional and intelligent, so that the whole finite system must at last be referred to the supreme will 241 and purpose for all of its factors and changes. That purpose and that will are the " all " which we should need to know for the real and final understanding of anything. Without doubt, if we knew this "all " we should find all things explained. For no intelligent theist can suppose that even miracles are wrought at random, or that any effect is produced without refer- ence to the final cause of the whole. And if it be further objected that then science has no sure foundation, the answer must be that science can have no surer foundation than the divine will and purpose. Except as it begs the question, neces- sity is no foundation whatever ; for a necessity incom- patible with change would block the universe; and change once admitted into necessity, no one can tell how far it may go, or what becomes of the necessity itself. On the impersonal plane, under the law of the sufiicient reason, a necessity of change means a changing necessity ; and that means a multitude of necessities, which in turn leads to the endless disper- sion of thought, so that no unitary and abiding prin- ciple whatever can be found. Everything, necessity and all, is drawn into the universal flow. But on the theistic basis science remains possible as a sane inquiry into the orders of being and hap- pening revealed in experience, and as such it may have great practical value. This is the teleological conception of science, which more and more appears as the result of critical reflection. Science itself is not there for its own sake, but for the sake of what it can help us to. Of course on this view we must beware of making these discovered uniformities into fathomless necessities, or of giving them infinite 242 GOD AND THE WORLD validity in space and time. They are practical prin- ciples, not speculative ; and, like all such principles, they must be confined in our affirmation to a " reason- able degree of extension to adjacent cases." Moreover, this science always remains on the surface and does not go beyond phenomena. The question of causality and inner connection belongs to philosophy. Such practical science is possible and valuable. But when it becomes "Science" and begins to talk of the infinities and the eternities and the "iron chain of necessity," it is no longer science but dogmatic metaphysics which imderstands neither itself nor its problems. Due reflection on these points will go far to remove that artificial hostility between science and religion which has been such an infestation of popular thought. It will also do much to remove that false antithesis of the natural and supernatural which is an axiom with popular thought, both religious and irreligious. The false natural of mechanical thought will vanish, and along with it will go the equally false supernatural which finds God only in signs and wonders. Both alike root in a mechanical and onto- logical conception of nature and the fallacy of the universal. Because of the former, nature is perpetu- ally setting up as a rival of God, and each extension of the realm of law is an encroachment upon the realm of God. Because of the latter, God, if allowed at all, is supposed to have made only a system of things in general, and to be concerned only with the maintenance of general laws. Details and particulars are supposed to result from the laws in some unspeci- fied way, yet so as not to have been in the divine 243 thought and purpose. Then follow difficulties about special providences, answers to prayer, etc. All of this is an illusion resulting from the fallacy of the universal. There is no system of things in general, or of unrelated general laws. There is only the actual system of reality ; and the divine thought and activity which produce this actual system must be as manifold and special as the facts themselves. The simplicity of the class term does not remove the complexity and plurality of the individuals comprised under it; and for each of these special facts, there must be correspondingly special thoughts and acts. We may not be able to discern the purpose in details, and may reduce them to some familiar rule of experi- ence without further speculation ; but i£ there be pur- pose in anything, there is purpose in everything. We must not allow the fallacy of the universal with its verbal simplifications to hide the fact. At the same time we must be on our guard against dogmatic and confident interpretations of the purpose in events. We maintain the fact of a purpose in all things, but reserve the right to criticise any specific interpreta- tion. For the full expression of our thought in this matter we have to maintain a supernatural natural ; that is, a natural which roots in a divine causality beyond it ; and also a natural supernatural, that is, a divine causality which proceeds by orderly methods. In such a view, events are supernatural in their caus- ality and natural in the order of their happening ; and a so-called special providence would be simply an event in which the divine purpose and causality, which are in all things, could be more clearly traced than in familiar matters. 244 GOD AND THE WORLD When, then, some ecclesiastical champion of the traditional type gets excited over what he calls " bald naturalism " and stigmatizes it as " an abyss of Satan," he should consider whether there is not a " bald supernaturalism " which is equally obnoxious to criticism. And when his fit companion piece, the noisy unbeliever by profession, announces a purely naturalistic interpretation of all religious phenomena, he should be required to show that there is any such nature as he assumes. This inquiry, if followed up, could hardly fail to prove illuminating to both of these Boanergistic champions. Without doubt there has been a deal of naturalism which was " bald " and even worse. Such is the naturalism which assumes that there is a blind mechanical system called Nature, which does a great variety of unintended things on its own account, so that they represent no divine thought or purpose, but are merely by-products of the mechanism. But when this fiction is eliminated, and the divine causality is discerned in all things, the natural becomes simply the familiar and orderly expression of a purposive causality beyond it. This insight enables us to dispense with both sorts of " baldness," that of the natural and that of the super- natural, and leaves us free to trace the order of ex- perience, so far as we may, in all events ; and that without any fear of seeing them set up for themselves in mechanical self-sufficiency. In leaving this subject of the relation of God to the world, a word must be devoted to a traditional verbalism. Is God, it may be asked, immanent or transcendent ? and we may even be instructed that thought can never transcend the universe. We IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 245 might reply by asking for a definition of the terms. It would be absurd to take them spatially, as if im- manent meant inside and transcendent outside — a fancy, however, which seems to underlie not a few utterances on this subject. The One cannot be con- ceived as the sum of the many, nor as the stuff out of which the many are made, neither does it depend on the many ; but, conversely, the many depend on it. In this sense the One is transcendent. Again, the many are not spatially outside of the One, nor a pendulous appendage of the One ; but the One is the ever-present power in and through which the many exist. In this sense the One is immanent. In any other sense the terms are words without any meaning. The alleged impossibility of transcending the uni- verse is another form of the same verbalism. In the sense defined we must transcend it ; in any other sense there is no need of transcending it. In modern thought substantiality has been replaced or defined by causality. A world-substance, as distinguished from a world-cause, is a product of the imagination and vanishes before criticism. For the explanation of the system we need a cause which shall not be this, that, or the other thing, but an omnipresent agent by which all things exist. This agent may be called anything, first cause, absolute, infinite, world- ground, or even universe, if only we keep the mean- ing in mind ; and the meaning is that power not ourselves, nor any other finite thing, by which all things exist. If we choose we may unite this agent and all its cosmic products into the one thought of the universe ; and we may then loudly proclaim the impossibility of transcending the universe ; but this THEISM — 17 246 GOD AND THE WORLD procedure will hardly tend to clearness, as the term universe is generally restricted to mean the system of finite things and manifestations. Still, if any one finds pleasure in teaching that thought is limited to the universe, when the universe is taken as the total- ity of being, it would be hard-hearted, indeed, to deny him this satisfaction. As commonly used, the conceptions of immanence and transcendence are products of picture thinking. There is a desire to bring God into intimate relations to the world, and immanence is the word which meets the demand. But this is so carelessly used as to look toward a pantheistic dissolution of all things in an indistinguishable haze. Or there is a desire to escape this result and vindicate some existence for the finite ; and then transcendence is the word. But this is apt to be interpreted as a spatial separation, and the result is to exclude God from the world alto- gether after getting it started. We escape this re- sult only by noting the true meaning of our terms and by carefully excluding all spatial and quantita- tive interpretation. We also need to bear in mind that this metaphysical immanence has no moral sig- nificance. It is simply the dependence of all finite things on God, and involves no spiritual likeness or nearness. We may all live and move and have our being in God, without any spiritual sympathy. It is no uncommon thing to find persons, whose heads have been a little heated by the new wine of specu- lation, using this metaphysical immanence as imply- ing moral and spiritual character. But within this universal dependence of all things on God lie all the distinctions of finite things and all the various grades IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 247 and antitheses of character. Moral sympathy and fellowship are quite another matter, and cannot be reached by speculation. There is another back-lying thought which may be hinted at by this antithesis of immanence and transcendence, although it is not expressed by it. This concerns the question whether God is dependent on the world for self-possession, and whether he be fully expressed and exhausted in the world, or whether, apart from the real world, there are infin- ite possibilities in the divine nature. The first part of the question must be answered in the negative. God's absoluteness excludes any thought of depend- ence on the world or of any implication with the world in a pantheistic sense. The rest of the ques- tion is of uncertain meaning. If the " real world " means the momentarily existing system, that world does not exist at all. If it means all that has been, is, and will be, reason can give no answer ; and prac- tical life needs none. The question becomes an aca- demic and barren abstraction. CHAPTER VI THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL The attributes thus far considered are purely meta- physical and concern only the understanding. They are such properties as the speculative intellect must affirm in dealing with the problem of the universe and its ground. If we should stop here, however, we should not attain to any properly religious conception, but only to the last term of metaphysical speculation. A good example of this is furnished by Aristotle, with whom the idea of God has a purely metaphysical function and significance. God appears as prime mover, as self-moved, as the primal reason, etc., but not as the object of love and trust and worship. But the human mind in general, not content with a metaphysical conception of God, has rather demanded a religious one. And the latter concep- tion has always been first and not second. The metaphysical thought instead of being the foun- dation upon which the religious thought was built, has rather been reached by later analysis as an im- plication of the rehgious conception. The race has been universally religious, but only moderately meta- physical. "We must note, then, as a matter of logic and as a fact of history, that we have not yet reached the God of religion. As a matter of logic, jslainly not ; for 248 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL 249 these metaphysical attributes of the world-ground are ethically barren. They furnish the possibility of an ethical nature, but they do not imply it as a ne- cessity. As a fact of history, also, systems have existed and still exist, that maintain a supreme reason and will in the world-ground but deny its moral quality. Sometimes moral indifference is aflirmed, as with the gods of Epicurus ; and some- times morality is viewed as a purely human product, a somewhat adventitious episode of biological evolu- tion. In that case, of course, morality has no sig- nificance for God, and is not to be extended beyond human relations. It is a psychological incident rather than a cosmic law. This view is not unknown in philosophy, ancient and modern, and finds an echo in not a little literature. These facts admonish us that much remains to be done before we can affirm the world-ground to be truly ethical. From the religious standpoint, then, in distinction from the metaphysical, the important attributes con- cern the divine character, or ethical nature. We have now to consider the ground of their affirma- tion. If we accept the mental ideal of a perfect being as the ground of the universe, the question is settled at once. Moral qualities are the highest. The true the beautiful and the good, love goodness and right- eousness — these are the only things that have abso- lute sacredness and unconditional worth. The thought of a perfect being in which these qualities should be lacking, or present in only an imperfect degree, would be an intellectual, sesthetic, and moral absurdity of the first magnitude. But this demand for faith in 250 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL the ideal when thus baldly made is apt to stagger us, and we prefer to reach the result in somewhat ob- scure manner. When we are told that the problem of knowledge demands the assumption of a universe transparent to our reason, so that what the laws of our thought demand the universe cannot fail to ful- fill, we are staggered and have many doubts and scruples. So large an assumption is not to be made without due wariness and circumspection. But we make the assumption piecemeal without a single critical qualm. In the actual study of nature, in dealing with specific problems, we assume the prin- ciple in question as a matter of course. It is only when stated in its abstract universality that it appalls us. It is so with the larger ideal of the perfect being. We assume it implicitly and upon occasion, but we do not like to have it brought out in sharp abstract statement. Here, then, is a psychological limitation of the average mind which must be re- garded. We shall find it interesting, however, to note the way in which the ideal determines our rea- soning. There is no way of speculative deduction ; for the metaphysical attributes of the world-ground, as we have said, are ethically barren. We must, then, either have immediate faith in our ideal of the per- fect being or else appeal to experience to prove that the world-ground proceeds according to ethical prin- ciples. Our actual procedure is a mixture of both. The empirical argument for the moral character of the world-ground is derived from our moral nature, the structure of society, and the course of history. The two first are held to point to a moral author, and the 251 last reveals a power not ourselves, making for right- eousness, and hence moral. Our moral nature may be considered in two ways, first, as an effect to be explained, and secondly, in its immediate implications. The first problem, then, is to account for the existence of our moral nature. The readiest solution is that this moral nature has a moral author. He that formed the eye, shall not he see? He that giveth man knowledge, shall not he know? So also. He that implanted in man an unalterable reverence for righteousness, shall not he himself be righteous ? This inference is so spontaneous and immediate that it is seldom questioned where the moral interest is strong and thought is clear. For of course there can be no question about the knowledge of moral dis- tinctions by the Creator. Such a doubt would imply that some knowledge is impossible or non-existent to the source of all knowledge. The question, then, can only concern God's recognition of these distinctions in his action. And here, if we allow the real validity of moral distinctions and the supreme value of the moral will, we cannot deny the moral will to God, without making him inferior to man in the highest things. Such a view would be so complete an inversion of our rational ideals, that it would tend strongly toward atheism. A great deal of ingenuity has been expended in trying to evade the conclusion from the moral effect to a moral cause. Much of this has been irrelevant, and all of it has been unsuccessful. As there is no . known way of deducing intelligence from non-intelli- gence, so there is no known way of deducing the 252 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL moral from the non-moral ; except of course, by the easy, but unsatisfactory, way of begging the question. The irrelevance mentioned consists in the fact that a large part of this discussion has concerned itself with the inquiry how we come to recognize moral distinctions. This belongs to the debate between the empirical and the intuitional school of morals, and does not necessarily touch the deeper question as to the reality of moral distinctions. The confusion is increased by the further fact that our concrete codes are functions of experience as well as of moral insight, and this easily leads to the claim that experience is their only source. But to become relevant to the subject in hand, the claim must be made that moral ideas are purely matters of opinion and prejudice, so that, in fact, there is neither right nor wrong, and that one thing is as good and praiseworthy as another. Of course in that case we should hardly expect God to concern himself about human conventions and prejudices. Even this view has been theoretically affirmed, but it could never be practically maintained, because of the sharp contradiction of life and con- science. The theorist himself could never maintain it outside of the closet. As soon as he came into contact vsdth others, he found himself compelled to affirm the difference between right and wrong, at least in others' treatment of himself. Thus the notion was seen to be a purely academic abstraction that would not be tolerated in practice. Hence spontaneous thought has generally regarded the moral nature in man as pointing to a moral character in God as its only sufficient ground. Speculation, too, knows of no better account to give. 253 The moral nature, we said, may also be considered in its immediate implications. The claim has been made by a great many that conscience itself immedi- ately testifies to a moral person over against us to whom it responds and to whom we are responsible. This claim can hardly be maintained in its literal form. In cases of high religious development and sensibility the feeling of obligation may take on this personal form. Right is the will of God ; sin is sin against God. This view is both strongly asserted and warmly disputed ; and, as is usual in such cases, there seems to be some truth on both sides. That conscience carries with it a direct assertion of God, the judge and the avenger, can hardly be pretended by any student of psychology ; but that the assertion of a supreme judge and avenger has its chief roots in the moral nature cannot well be denied. The sacred- ness of right, the sin of oppression and injustice, the intolerable nature of a universe in which justice is not regarded, and guilt and innocence come to a com- mon end — these considerations have led the race to posit a supreme justice and righteousness ia the heavens. To this all literature bears witness ; and practically these reflections are potent arguments. But in logic they are not arguments at all. To one who assumes nothing concerning the universe, one thing is no more surprising than another, and one thing is as allowable as another. If we do not assume that the universe is bound to be moral, we cannot be surprised at finding it non-moral. If we do not as- sume that our interests ought to be considered by the world-ground, we ought not to be astonished at find- ing them disregarded. The truth is that in argu- 254 THE WORLD-GKOUND AS ETHICAL ments of this sort we have an underlying assumption of a perfect being, and of the supremacy of human and moral interests ; and this gives the conclusion all its force. Suppose justice is not regarded, what does that prove, unless we have assumed that justice must be regarded ? Suppose the universe should turn out to be an ugly and shabby thing without moral or aesthetic value ; who knows that it is boimd to be the seat and manifestation of the true, the beautiful, and the good ? The true force of such considerations is not logical ; they serve rather and only to reveal to us the distressing and intolerable negations involved in certain views. Their rejection is not a logical inference, but an immediate refusal of the soul to abdicate its own nature and surrender to pessimism and despair. Hence whatever emiches the inner life strengthens the appropriate faith. A poem like " In Memoriam," a growing affection, a strong sense of justice, may do more for faith than acres of logic. But this insight into the true natm-e of the argument need not prevent us from yielding to it ; for we have abundantly seen that it is the real basis of our whole mental life. The second form of empirical argument is drawn from the structure of life and society and the course of history. These, it is said, reveal moral ideas and a moral aim. Life itself is so constructed as to furnish a constant stimulus in moral directions. Both nature and experience inculcate with the utmost strenuous- ness the virtues of industry, prudence, foresight, self- control, honesty, truth, and helpfulness. In spite of the revised version, the way of the transgressor con- 255 tinues hard. The tendency of virtue is to life, while the final wages of sin must be death. Of two com- munities, equal in other respects, there can be no question that the virtuous one will tend to survive and the vicious one will tend toward destruction. When all allowance has been made for failing cases, the nature of things is still manifestly on the side of righteousness. This is so much the case that one school of moralists has claimed that the virtues are simply the great utilities. The possibility of such a claim shows the ethical framework of life. And it is true that the virtues are great utilities ; ethical dis- pute could arise only over the claim that utilities are necessarily virtues ; and even then the debate would turn on the meaning of utility. If we define utility so as to include the satisfaction of the moral nature, there is no longer any ground of dispute. Society, again, in its organized form is a moral institution with moral ends. However selfish indi- viduals may be, they cannot live together without a social order that rests on moral ideas. And when these ideas are lacking, and injustice, oppression, and iniquity are enacted by law, social earthquakes and volcanoes begin to rock society to its foundations. The elements melt with fervent heat, and the heavens pass away with a great noise. Neither man nor so- ciety can escape the need of righteousness, truthful- ness, honesty, purity, etc. No cunning, no power, can forever avail against the truth. No strength can long support a lie. The wicked may have great power and spread himself like a green bay tree, but he passes away. The righteous are held in everlasting remem- brance, but the name of the wicked rots. When 256 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL wickedness is committed on a large scale by nations the result is even more marked. No lesson is more clearly taught by history than that righteousness ex- alteth a nation while sin is a reproach to any people. Nations rich in arts and sciences have perished, or been fearfully punished, because of evil-doing. Op- pression, injustice, sensuality, have dragged nation after nation down into the dust, and compelled them to drink the cup of a bitter and terrible retribution. The one truth, it is said, which can be verified con- cerning the world-ground is that it makes for right- eousness. Out of the clash of selfish interests a moral system emerges. Altruism is rooted deep in life itself, and glorifies even the animal impulses. Animalism and selfishness are made to contribute to moral progress, and thus, across the confusion of human development, we discern more and more clearly a moral factor immanent in the process. These empirical arguments, however, while they may serve to illustrate and confirm our faith, are plainly not its source. They all rest upon picked facts, and ignore some of the most prominent aspects of experience. This explains why it is that mere arguers come to such different conclusions in this matter. According to some the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord, while others see only rapine and venom and failure and death. This picking and choosing appears especially in the historical argument. Here a scanty stream of prog- ress is discovered ; and the swamps and marshes of hu- manity through which it finds its doubtful way are overlooked. The area of progress is limited, while the great mass of humanity seems to have no significance 257 for history or development, and to have no principle of movement above simple animal want. Here is no his- tory, no progress, no ideas, only physical cravings and brute instincts. But we get on with the utmost cheer- fulness by letting the "race" and "man" progress, and by ignoring individuals and men. Clearly, we need something beside these facts as the source of our faith. As in the world we find marks of wisdom but not of perfect wisdom ; so in the world we find marks of goodness but not of perfect goodness. In both cases we pass from the limited wisdom and goodness which we find to the perfect wisdom and goodness in which we believe, only by force of our faith in the perfect and complete ideal. Then, having thus gained the conceptions, we come back to the world of experience again for their illustration. And the facts which from a logical standpoint make a poor show as proof are very effective as illustration; and this passes for proof. It does indeed produce conviction ; but the true nature of the argument should not be overlooked. If any one had an interest in maintain- ing the opposite hypothesis of unwisdom and evil in the world-ground, much might be said for it. The great mass of apparent insignificance and all the facts of evil with which life is crowded would lend themselves only too readily to illustrate such a view. Of course a purely objective procediu-e would demand that we take all the facts into account and strike the average. Such a study of the facts would leave us in great uncertainty. Over against the good in nature we should put the evil ; and this would hinder the affirmation of goodness. But over against the evil we should put the good ; and this would not 258 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL allow US to affirm a fundamental malignity. Over against the wisdom in nature we should put the mean- ingless aspects of existence, the cosmic labor which seems to end in nothing ; and these would leave us in doubt whether we were not contemplating the work of some blind demiurge rather than of supreme wisdom. But over against these facts we should put the ever- growing rational wonder of the universe; and this would drive us into doubt again. The outcome would probably be the affirmation of a being either morally indifferent, or morally imperfect, or morally good, but limited by some insuperable necessity which for- bids anything better than our rather shabby universe. But the mind is not satisfied to take this road. It will not allow its ideals to collapse without some effort to save them. It prefers rather to maintaia its faith in the ideal, and to set aside the conflicting facts as something not yet understood, but which to perfect insight would fall into harmony. This assumption is made both in the cognitive and the moral realm ; and, so far as logic goes, it is as well founded in one realm as in the other. In both cases our procedure is not due to any logical compulsion ; it is rather an act of instinctive self-defense on the part of the mind, where- by it seeks to save its life from destruction. This implicit teleology of life leads with equal necessity to the affirmation of a Supreme Reason and a Supreme Righteousness. This abstract discussion shows that we are in the same position respecting moral ideas in the world as respecting rational ideas. In both cases the ideas in their absolute form transcend experience and rest upon the energy of life itself. In both cases, also, in 259 the application of these ideas to experience we are mihtant rather than triumphant. We find illustra- tions of our faith, but no proper demonstration. In the physical realm disorder and unintelligibility dis- pute the reign of law and intelligence. In the moral realm, also, we find clouds and darkness as well as the throne of justice and judgment. But in both realms the conviction of the universality of the intel- lectual and the moral order grows with the deepening life of the race. Of course we cannot force our faith upon an unwilling disputant, but we may be fully persuaded in our own minds. For the rest, life and the survival of the fittest must decide. Here we come again upon the fact dwelt upon in the Introduction, that the deepest things are not reached by formal syllogizing but by the experience of life itseK. There is a vast deal of informal and instinctive inference upon which life necessarily pro- ceeds, but which can never be formally stated without seemitig to weaken it. If one were called upon to formally justify his confidence in another, he would not succeed. The formal statements would seem cold and equivocal alongside of the confidence of friend- ship. And in all reasoning upon reality the same thing is true. There is an element of immediacy back of all inferential conviction which logic only very imperfectly reproduces. We may need the logi- cal form for its expression and impartation, but it is not reached in this way. It is intuition or instinct rather than ratiocination, a formulation of life rather than an inference of logic. And this is preeminently the case in dealing with the highest and deepest things. Here the whole man 260 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL enters into the argument, and not simply the under- standing as an isolated faculty. The understanding is only an instrument for manipulating the data fur- nished by experience; and when the experience is hmited or lacking, there is nothing to interpret and really no problem. No logical subtlety would enable a man to judge in the court of aesthetics, who was lack- ing in the aesthetic sense. Such an one would likely decide that there is no proof that the Hottentot Venus is any less fair than the Venus of Milo ; and he might even boast of the acumen and impartiality of his deci- sion. In hke manner no one with meager moral iu- terests can judge of the theistic argument from man's moral nature. To such an one it must seem weak or worthless, however it may appeal to others. Furthermore, this argument can never be rightly estimated in passive contemplation, but only in moral action. It is a curious fact that truths which bear on practice soon grow vague and uncertain when abstracted from practice. Thus the uniformity of nature as an abstract proposition admits of much academic doubt ; but in practice it rules us in spite of ourselves. Our deepest affections also may be quiescent, and even seem non-existent, in passive moments ; but the need of action reveals them, and reveals them in their otherwise unsuspected might. In the same way the force of the ethical demand for an ethical Creator can never be felt from mere reflec- tion upon psychological abstractions, but only from living participation in the moral effort and struggle of humanity. Thus and thus only do its meaning and profundity dawn upon us. To the one who meas- ures things by bulk, the starry heavens may be the 261 greatest of all things, and the only thing needing ex- planation. To the morally minded, the moral realm is more wonderful still. To him the historical drama of humanity wUl have far greater significance than all the revelations of astronomy. But unless moral prin- ciples live in the speculator's will, they will have little significance for his contemplation. Finally, in all arguments which root in life itself the matter is commonly so complex as to elude definite and adequate statement. There is an un- formulated activity of the mind in such cases which is the real gist of the reasoning, and which gives the formulas their meaning. This meaning, again, is not to be gathered from the dictionary, but from a study of the whole life of custom, rite, history, and litera- ture. If we would know what men really think on these points, we must not sit down to syllogize, but must go out into the open field of the world and study the entire movement and manifestation of humanity. Then we discern humanity's deathless faith in the divine righteousness so long as it remains theistic at all. Experience is held to testify not only to a cosmic reason but also to a cosmic righteousness. But it is plain that an argument of this sort can never be adequately tested by syllogistic rules. The underlying fact is a vital process, rather than a log- ical one. The alleged arguments so poorly set forth the living movement of conviction, that often they seem to be little more than pretexts, or excuses, for a foregone conclusion. At bottom we have competing tendencies in life, or conflicting theories of life ; and the living man has to judge between them. And how he judges will depend quite as much upon what THEISM — 18 262 THE WORLD-GKOUND AS ETHICAL he is, as upon his facility in the four syllogistic fig- ures. What syllogistic procedure would harmonize Isaiah with a prophet of modern pessimism ? The will and the man himself enter too deeply into the faith or unfaith to be entirely amenable to logic. But if we allow that the belief in the diviae goodness is not gained from an indiictive contemplation of ex- perience alone, we are still not out of the woods. For while experience might not be the source of the idea, it might well serve as its refutation. The a priori idea when compared with the facts of experience might be found in such discord with them that it must be given up. And the claim is made that such is the case. This question is greatly complicated by the prob- lem of the individual. In a general way a case can be inductively made out for a moral factor in the world-order. We can poiat out, as already suggested, the altruistic factor in life, the moral nature in man, the way in which even the selfishness and wickedness of men are made to contribute to moral development and progress, the valuable moral auxiliaries in oiu- sub-moral life, and the many and memorable retribu- tions which have come to wrong-doiag. And while we consider these generalities the case seems clear. But this is not enough in itself. The individual does not exist in a general way, but has his own concrete life and burdens. A righteousness and good- ness which are discernible only for society as a whole, or in the course of generations, may leave the lot of the individual as dark and puzzling as ever. A gen- eral optimism in such a case would be simply a claim 263 that things look well at a distance, while the fact would be ignored that things look wretched enough on closer inspection. It may be something to believe that righteousness in general is visible in dealing with men in general, but after all, the lot of the individual, and the concrete details of existence may be such as to throw us back into doubt again. This brings us to the question of optimism and pessimism, which is an essential factor in this problem of the divine goodness and righteousness. A righteousness which is not a fundamental goodness is a barren and worthless thing. After our previous discussion, it is clear that we have no hope of a decisive demonstration in this matter. But some exposition of the problem, is needed, as both parties have done not a little fight- ing in the dark. The only permissible question is not whether experience proves the goodness and righteousness of God, but whether it is compatible with faith therein. The optimist claims that we may hold fast our faith in the face of all the facts ; and the pessimist claims that our optimistic faith must surely perish when confronted with the dark realities of life and nature. Optimism and Pessimism There are two types of both optimism and pes- simism. One is based on the facts of experience, and the other is inferred from om- general world- view. The former might be called inductive or experiential, the latter inferential optimism and pessimism. The debate commonly begins with the former and ends with the latter. The theist seeks to show that life is good, but when pressed with the 264 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL dark and sinister aspects of existence is apt to fall back on faith in God and the future. Thus his optimism becomes inferential and long range. The pessimist, on the other hand, finds life a not unmixed evil ; in spite of himself cheerfulness will come creep- ing in ; and then he falls back on his general theory of things to show that life can have no permanent value. Thus his pessimism also becomes inferential and long range. For the sake of clearness we must keep the inductive and the inferential standpoints distinct. "We might remain optimists because of our theistic hope, or become pessimists from atheistic despair. But we must begin with experience. This discussion has commonly been vitiated by an abstract and academic treatment. The notions of per- fect power and perfect goodness have been abstractly shuffled, and the traditional antinomy between the divine power and the divine benevolence has been developed. We cannot maintain, it is said, that God is both almighty and perfectly good. Whichever attri- bute we choose, we must abandon the other. This is a contention which is perfectly clear only so long as we keep it abstract. As soon as we apply it to the actual world, either it becomes doubtful, or it is seen to be so vague as to say practically nothing. As an abstract thesis, however, the optimist has generally admitted it, and then has sought to rescue the divine goodness by saying that God could not help the evil that is in the world. This has been the current theodicy since the time of Leibnitz. A government by general laws necessarily implies indi- vidual hardship ; yet the system is not only good on the whole, it is also the best possible. The eternal 266 truths of reason and the invincible might of logical sequence forbid the system being other than it is. Of course particular features by themselves might be improved; but nothing exists by itself or for itself alone. Everything is bound up in infinite relations and implications ; and when these are considered, it appears that nothing could be changed except for the worse. If this could be proved, it would help matters, at least so far as the divine responsibility is concerned. If the non-existence of evil involved a contradiction of some eternal and necessary truth, we should have to put up with it. Unfortunately this claim is clearly applicable only to the problem of moral evil, con- sidered as an implied possibility of a free system. But that the non-existence of pain in its present degree, or even its utter absence, involves a con- tradiction or runs counter to some eternal truth is a proposition which is sadly in need of proof. So far as rational necessity, the only necessity of which we know anything, goes, the whole order of the world, for good or evil, is purely contingent. What- ever good purposes toothache and neuralgia and pestilence and fang and venom and parasites may serve, there is no proof that any eternal truth is to blame for their presence, or would be damaged by their absence. These facts have all the marks of contingency, not of necessity. The traditional optimist has made himself further confusion by his notion of the best possible system. It is argued, abstractly of course, that if God did less than the best, his goodness would be imperfect, which is not to be thought of. Hence the system 266 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL is the best possible. But this too is either a con- tradiction or a futile abstraction. Taken quantita- tively it is a contradiction, like the notion of a largest possible number. Of any finite system whatever the questions would be possible, why thus and not other- wise ? Why now and not then ? Why on this plane and not on some other ? Why so much and not more or less? If we take the notion qualitatively, we stUl cannot escape a quantitative reference ; otherwise we might hold that a universe with only a few beings in it would be as good as another abounding in life and happiness. Another unclearness in the notion of a best possible system lies in the fact that the goodness may be instrumental; in which case its goodness would lie in its fitness for its work. When an instrument corresponds to its end it is perfect. In this sense a very imperfect system, absolutely considered, may be perfectly adapted to the work assigned it. Even de- fects may be instrumental perfections ; as in the case of the eye, where the shortcomings of the normal eye as an optical instrument are positive advantages in it, considered as an eye. In like manner the order of things might be highly imperfect as an end in itself, and at the same time perfect as an instrument for the development of a race in character and intel- ligence. Thus we see that the phrase, best possible system, is essentially unclear, and in its obvious meaning is contradictory. The only question that can be raised to edification is whether the actual system be com- patible with creative goodness or not. The optimist has fallen a prey to abstractions in 267 this discussion ; this is still more the case with the pessimist. In addition to the abstract and academic antinomy, which is such a favorite with debating youths, he treats the problem of evil itself in an abstract and hysterical fashion. In particular he tends to forget that pain in the abstract is nothing, and that it has existence only as felt by sensitive beings. He heaps up all the misery of all beings, past, present, and future, and forthwith makes a sum so great as to hide all well-being from his vision. Thus he resembles the man who, from long dwelling in the hospital, should heap up in one thought all the sickness of the world, and should become so impressed thereby as to conclude that health and soundness nowhere exist. The illusion is continued by attribut- ing to other men the distress the pessimist would feel in their position and condition. He asks him- self how he would feel in the poverty, ignorance, and squalor which he sees, and concludes that those thus living must be in utter misery. Thus he commits what might be called the fallacy of the closet philan- thropist. The persons thus pitied are commonly having, from their own standpoint, a pretty good time ; and the great trouble with them is rather a lack of wants than a lack of supply. The pessimistic illusion is completed by attributing this sum of pains to the abstraction, man ; and then all the conditions for profound rhetorical woe are fully met. But if we are to get on with this question we must dismiss this integral of abstract pains and this abstract man who suffers them, and ask for living men to come forward and testify. The abstract man cannot be miserable, but only concrete, conscious men. The declaration 268 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL that the world is bad must mean, then, that its structure is such as necessarily to make life miserable and not worth living. Thus the question becomes simply one as to the worth of life. This question every one must decide for himself. The futility of argument is apparent. As well might one appeal to theory to know whether he enjoys his dinner. The optimist claims that the system is good, the pessimist that it is bad. But plainly no final judg- ment can be reached in this case unless we have a knowledge of the system as a whole, and especially a knowledge of its outcome. How far we are from this is plain upon inspection. Even in the case of the human world the lack of knowledge of the life after death leaves us without sufficient data for an assured judgment. On our Christian view it is plain that human history now lies mainly in the invisible world. The vast majority of the race are there. The inhabitants of the earth are but a handful to the myriads that have gone over to the majority. We barely begin and are gone ; and a new genera- tion takes our place. Our earth is little more than a cold frame for starting the plants, which are soon transplanted to other soil and skies. Or it is a uni- versity which has only undergraduates, and of whose alumni nothing is known. Hence the rudimentary and crude character of all things human. Hence, also, it is very doubtful if any finished condition of things will ever be reached upon the earth; for the generations begin in most respects at the beginning, and cannot get far in the time allotted to them. But however this may be, it is plain that no judg- 269 ment on the worth of human history is possible unless we know what is going on behind the veil, or what the alumni are doing. A careful logic, then, would dismiss the case on the ground of no jurisdiction. But as the litigants insist on being heard, we must follow the case a little fiuther. The present type of thought in the speculative world is somewhat favorable to optimism, largely owing to a reaction of cheerfulness, rather than to any better argument. The current notions of devel- opment, progress, and improvement enable the opti- mist to claim that everything shows a tendency to the better. The universe is not yet complete, but only in its raw beginnings Meanwhile we see, if not a finished optimism, at least a decided meliorism, and mehorism is optimism. He calls, therefore, upon the pessimist to master the significance of the great law of evolution, and pending this mastery to hold his peace. The pessimist wants to know why things were not made perfect at once ; but the current type of thought decUnes the question as a survival of an ob- solete mode of thought. If evolution is the law of life, of course the present must seem imperfect relative to the future,and the past imperfect relative to the present. So long as this way of thinking is in fashion, the argument will be accepted, but it does not meet the question why this progress might not have been accomplished at less cost of toil and struggle and pain. In truth, it is only another way of saying that the system is to be judged only in its outcome, and the outcome is assumed to be good. The fancy that evolution in any way diminishes the Creator's respon- sibility for evil is really somewhat infantile. It rests 270 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL on the assumption that there is some element of chance or self-determination iu the system whereby it is able to make new departures on its own account. But in a mechanical system there is no such element, and the founder is responsible for the outcome. Some very naive work has been done in evolution- ary theodicy. Some writers who would not hear of the world as the creation of a good God have found their difl&culties disappearing before an evolution phi- losophy. Just why the world is less a crime when slowly produced than when created by fiat does not at once appear, provided in both cases that the future is spanned by a bow of promise. Two reasons seem to underlie the notion. One is the fancy just referred to, that the system itself is responsible, and that it is doing its best. The other is the psychological fact that the evils which we think spring from an imper- sonal order do not seem so exasperating as those which are due to purpose and are a personal inflic- tion. The former may be hard to bear; the latter rouse our wrath, or at least compel attention and reflection. Hence the curious fact that many who have been pessimists from a theistic standpoint have been helped to become optimists by evolution. But cheerfulness is so desirable that one is glad to have it reached even by irregular logic. It is also worth while to note how completely the discussion of the goodness of the world rests upon the assumed supremacy of human interests. What is meant by a good or a bad universe ? Implicitly our interests furnish the standard. That universe is good which conserves owe interests, and that is bad which ignores them. But how do we know that the universe 271 exists for us ? May it not well have inscrutable ends which it perfectly realizes, and may not our complaints be like those of a nest of ants who should first assume that the universe is meant to be an ant-hill, and should then condemn it for its unhappy adjustment to formic interests and necessities ? Pessimism is the most striking illustration possible of the fact that the mind is bound to measure the universe by itself. Abstract and a priori discussions of this subject are manifestly futile. Reflections on the best possible universe, the infinite gradations of being, the neces- sary subordination of all finite things in the scale of boundless existence are both theoretically and practi- cally barren. The question so far as we can deal with it is one of experience rather than of argument. It concerns the value of life and the impression which our hving in the world makes upon us, or rather the impression which the experience of the race has made upon it respecting the goodness of God and the value of life. This is a matter to be solved not by logic, nor even by verbal testimony, but by the observation of life as it reveals itself in its great historical manifestations, social, political, ethical, and religious. Testimony alone in such a matter is not to be trusted, because thought itself is often too vague or elusive to find exact utterance, and also and more especially because esti- mates of values are revealed in deed rather than word. Deeds reveal men's thoughts better than words. Words, then, must be tested by comparison with the unsophis- ticated revelations of life in action and literature and institutions and religion and the whole sweep of human history. The only permissible question, we have said, is 272 THE WORLD-GKOUND AS ETHICAL whether the facts of experience are compatible with faith in God's goodness and righteousness, and this question admits of no theoretical solution. We may regard both the optimism and the pessimism of the eighteenth century as antiquated. The problems they raised are insoluble in the form in which they raised them. We must confine ourselves to the humbler task of interpreting experience, if possible, ui an opti- mistic sense, that is, in a sense which maiataias the worth and desirability of life. Questions why every- thing is not different or why anything is as it is, we pass by, as is most meet, in reverent silence. It will sufl&ce for our purpose if we can show a moral and beneficent framework in the system of experience. For the present we confine ourselves to the human world. From this standpoint something can be said in justification of our faith in the righteousness and goodness of God. We no longer seek to demonstrate but to illustrate. As theistic arguments in general are never the source of our theistic faith, but only reasons for a faith already possessed, so optimistic arguments are never the source of our optimistic faith, but only reasons for a faith already possessed. They serve mainly to remove difficulties in the way of instinctive conviction. It should further be re- membered that with the great body of theists our relation to God is a personal and rehgious one, and this fact profoundly modifies our mode of argument. In all personal relations, when we have general grounds of confidence, we trust where we do not understand, and wait for further knowledge. We judge men by their deeds, but we also judge deeds by their men. 273 The act of personal trust on which society depends, while not independent of induction, can by no means be reached by a simple eniuneration of particulars. There is something in it which is beyond inductive logic. This, which is a law in our relations with one another, applies equally in our relations to God. Our trust here is also not independent of induction, but it includes an element of personal confidence of which induction can give no account. Having, as we con- ceive, good grounds for confidence in the divine good- ness and righteousness, we trace them where we can, and trust God for the rest. The religious relation it- seK implies this trust, so that doubt or criticism seems irreverent. And when we consider the enormous complexity of the universe and also its illimitable extent, and remember our own brief life and scanty insight, there is almost an air of grotesqueness in the thought of our assuming to criticise the Creator at all; as if he should apologize to us for not having made the world more to our mind and liking, or more in accordance with good taste, and especially for not having explained himself more at length to his human critics. Plainly if we are to reach faith at all there must be some shorter and surer way than unaided induction by the individual. We have to deal with a great historical product of humanity, and not with an inference of syllogizing speculation. Having made all these provisos, we proceed to study experience. And it must be admitted that the world presents at first sight a grim and astounding spectacle. In advance of knowledge, our theistic premise of a God all-wise, almighty, and perfectly good would lead us to expect a world very different 274 THE WOKLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL from this. Passing over the strange features of the inorganic world, the apparent meaninglessness of so many of the lower orders of life, the fixed institutions of claws, fangs, and venom, and confining ourselves to the human world, we are filled with amazement and astonishment at what we find. Pain and death hold universal sway, and the cry of the mourner goes up unceasingly unto heaven. Besides these fixed factors of evil, famine and pestilence have always hung on the heels of the race for man's destruction ; while heredity and social solidarity have been ia age- long league for his overthrow. In addition, human history presents a fearful spectacle on its own account — the many races, their ceaseless wars and alienar tions, their mutual slaughter. How wave after wave of slaughter has rolled again and again over the earth. Confusion, blood, and the noise of conflict are ever about us as we trace the history of men. Note, too, the degradation of most races and the scanty attainments of the best. How men have wandered in error and darkness. How their minds have been blinded by ignorance and superstition. How they have been shut in by massive necessities which could not be escaped. In most cases there has been no history at all, but only an aimless and resultless drift. No ideas, no outlook, no progress, only animal wants and instincts, mostly unsatisfied — this sums up the history of the vast majority of human beings who have lived, or who live this day. Plainly, cos- mic ethics, if there be such a thing, differs sufficiently, both positively and negatively, from human ethics to give us pause in our speculation. Positively : for any human being who should imitate the cosmos in 275 its inflictions would be killed on the spot. Negatively : for any human being who should imitate the cosmos ia its apparent indifference to our pain and sorrow would be execrated as a monster. This is not an indictment, but a recital of admitted facts. Disagreement concerns only the interpreta- tion. In dealing with it we must form some con- ception of what the world is for in its relation to man. If the sole goods of life are pleasurable affections of the passive sensibility, and if the aim is to produce them, then the world is a hopeless failure. But if the chief and lasting goods are those of the active nature, conscious self-development, growing self-possession, progress, conquest, the successful putting forth of energy and the resulting sense of larger life, the matter takes on a different look. Still more is this the case if the aim of the human world is a moral development for which men themselves are to be largely responsible, working out their own salvation. In such a view the goodness of the world would be instrumental and not a finished perfection in itself. It would consist in its furnishing the conditions of a true human development, and in the possibility of being made indefinitely better. Moreover, a good part of our horror at the facts recited rests upon an unpermissible anthropomorphism. The different relation of the Creator to his work from that which obtains among men must forbid any par- alleling of cosmic ethics with human ethics, except in their most general principles. The simple fact that death is the law of life, and that the power of life and death is not in our hands, widely differentiates them in the concrete. A Lisbon earthquake or a Galveston 276 ■ THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL tidal wave, or a Mont Pel^e eruption, over which it is easy to wax hysterical, really has no more theoret- ical significance than the events of every day. The imagination is impressed and weak nerves are shaken by the former. This is the only difference. From this point of view the order of the world is not so utterly dark after all. The imperfection of the physical world in itself is its perfection, considered as an instrument for the upbuilding of men. A world that furnished no obstacle to man, but spontaneously supphed all his wants without forethought and effort on his part, would be both paralyzing and intolerable. It would make no demand upon the living energies of the will, and fiu'nish no field for self-realization. The great ordinance of work is obnoxious only to our native indolence. As men are, it is the supreme condition of human development. The only demand we can rightly make is that the system shall re- spond to labor with adequate returns. The physi- cal world in the main is a good servant ; but if through sloth or ignorance we allow it to become our master, we rightly find the way of the transgressor hard. Everywhere man is made responsible for himself. Neither in physical nature nor in human nature are we presented with things ready-made. The potentiali- ties are there, but we must evoke them. Harvests are waiting to grow, but in default of our industry and prudence and forethought, weeds and thorns will usurp their place. We are under laws which lead the willing and obedient, but drag the unwilling and dis- obedient. There is no law of life which is in itself evil. Whether the laws shall bring bane or blessing 2T7 depends on man himself. If he insists on lying down in indolence in the lap of nature, he is soon roughly shaken out ; but if he bestirs himself, he finds nature going his way. Even our general weakness and the limitations of our intellectual powers are wise provi- sions in a system where freedom is being disciplined into self-control. Conceive of a baby in character and intelligence, with the physical force of a man, or a body of savages possessing the physical energies of a civilized state. Even a few anarchists serve to reveal the danger of undisciplined power. The chief ills under which man suffers are the results of his own doing. Even our physical ills, the physicians say, are mostly the product of our artificial and improper modes of living. Few bodies are en- gines of torture until physiological law has been out- raged and violated either by the person himself or by his ancestors. The law of heredity, too, — that fruit- ful source of frightful ills, — is in its natural operation most beautiful and beneficent. With no law of the human order would we longer refuse to part if men were good and wise. Human sin it is which changes this law into a curse, and even as it is, the law works more good than harm. OtherAvise society could never improve. And so with the law of social unity and solidarity. Universal community of interest is a di- vine ideal, and there could be no worthy moral world without it. Absolute self-dependence would make the love-life impossible, and reduce society to an atomistic egoism. But the mutual interdependence which soli- darity implies makes it possible that it should be the prolific mother of woes. In a world of folly and un- reason and selfishness, heredity and solidarity league THEISM 19 278 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL together for human ruin ; but what would they be in a world of love and wisdom ? And other evils are often vindicated by their results. Man as he is can be made perfect only through struggle and suffering. Virtue acquires sturdiness only from resisted temptation, and power grows through obstacle and resistance. The higher manifestations of char- acter spring mainly from the soil of sorrow. If we should strike out from hmnan history the heroic and saintly characters which have been made perfect through suffering, all that is noble and reverend iu it would depart. If we should strike from literature all to which sorrow and loss have given birth, its inspiration would perish forever. Even the presence of death has brought a solemn tenderness and dignity into human affection which otherwise had been im- possible. So long as man is as he is, none of the general conditions of existence could be changed without disaster. The dark things also have their uses in the moral order. Not even the brevity and uncertainty of life could be dispensed with without moral loss to the individual ; while for the community the brevity of individual life is one great condition of progress. It would be instructive for the cosmic critic to see how many general improvements iu the order he could suggest that would not be disastrous to man's best development. It would then be seen that the order of things has more wisdom in it than at first glance appears. The order of the world is not ill-suited to its human inhabitants. How little the woes of life depend on the system, and how much upon hmnan sin and folly, will appear if we reflect on the changes that would result if men 279 at once began to love God and righteousness with all their hearts, and their neighbors as themselves. This one change would carry with it the immediate ame- lioration of all our woes, and the speedy removal of most of them. Wrong-doing with all its consequences would cease. All the social energies now expended in repressing wrong-doing would be free for the positive service of the community. All the wealth and effort now spent in ministering to the vices and follies of men would be free for helpful uses. With the vanish- ing of sin and folly, there would be an end of all the worst distresses of the soul. There would likewise be a vanishing of most diseases and an indefinite increase of productive efficiency. This, together with universal industry, would soon make the race rich enough to furnish the conditions of a human existence to all its members. Under these conditions knowledge would greatly flourish, and the treasures of knowledge would soon become a universal possession. Man's control over nature would be indefinitely extended ; and disease and pain would be correspondingly eliminated. Nature would be subordinated to human service ; and man, freed from breaking drudgery, would have time and leisure for development in the upper ranges of his nature. Art and the arts would flourish. The potentiahties of beauty with which the earth is filled would be summoned forth, and the earth would become a garden of the Lord. In the social realm the results would be still more blessed. With universal good-will there would be universal peace. If differences arose they could be easily adjusted by the Golden Rule. All envy, wrath, mahce, evil speaking, and evil thinking would pass 280 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL away. All vanity and contempt and superciliousness and assumption, prolific sources of sorrow, would also disappear. Inequalities of fortune or faculty would produce no heartburnings ; for the strong would delight to serve and bear the burdens of the weak. The ills that are inherent in our earthy lot would be lightened by sympathy, and, so far as possible, shared. Poverty, if it existed at all, would never be allowed to be crushing, as it would never be the outcome of vice and folly; and there would be no want unrelieved which human power could reach. And in the uni- versal atmosphere of sincerity and good will how would friendship flourish and all souls expand in joyous fellowship. All that stands in the way of this consummation is man himself. There is no inherent intractability in the nature of things which forbids it. The diffi- culty lies solely in human nature. Man being what he is, we can find good reasons for the general order of things in its relation to man. A moral beneficence and wisdom are apparent. Of course we can ask why man is as he is, why some other method was not adopted, but such questions we have long since learned to decline. All that we can hope for is to show moral and beneficent principles in the world as it actually is. This problem, we have said, can never be solved from the apriori standpoint, or by shufiling the abstract categories of infinite power and goodness. Except in a purely formal way, we cannot decide what is compatible with goodness, or even what goodness itself is. Only in life are life's values revealed ; and only in life can they be tested. In abstract contemplation 281 we might well fancy that any risk or strain or trial would be incompatible with infinite benevolence, which might as well make us happy at once and without effort on our part. And this seems to be the notion which haunts the academic discussion of this topic ; as if the only good in life were passive pleasure, and the only evil passive pain. To all this life itself is the answer. The chief and lasting goods of life do not lie in the passive sensibility, but in activity and the development of the upper ranges of our nature. The mere presence of pain has seldom shaken the faith of any one except the sleek and well-fed specula- tor. The couch of suffering is more often the scene of loving trust than are the pillows of luxury and the chief seats at feasts. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, but we would not forego the knowl- edge to escape the sorrow. Love, too, has its keen and insistent pains, but who would be loveless on that account ? Logic and a mechanical psychology can do nothing with facts like these ; only life can reveal them and remove their contradiction. For man as moral and active, as we have said, the goodness of the world consists in the possibility of making it in- definitely better, and in its furnishing the conditions of a truly human development. Persons thus minded and devoted to the betterment of the world are gen- erally of optimistic temper ; while others who have lost their grip, whose energy is low, who are living in the passive rather than the active voice, whose ideals are sub-moral, and who wish to escape respon- sibility and live on others, tend to become pessimists. In short, theoretical optimism and pessimism are academic abstractions which admit of no edifying dis- 282 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL cussion. Neither a finished optimism nor a final pes- simism is warranted by knowledge ; but experience shows the possibility of indefinite meliorism, and with this for the present we must be content. Practical optimism and pessimism belong to the will rather than to the understanding. The former means health, hope, energy ; and the latter means disease, despair, death. Thus the futility of theoretical discussion becomes still more apparent. The justification of the world miist be found in experience rather than in specula- tion, in life rather than in the closet. If we find life, with its furnishings of hopes and aspirations, worth living, that must be the end of all discussion. If we find the things we most rejoice in and would least for- get are the struggles, the conquests, the sacrifices we have made, there is no need for their further justifi- cation. We should never have chosen them for our- selves ; but on no account would we forego the deeper and more abundant life which has been reached through them. This, however, is not a matter for argument, but for experience. No conclusion can be reached which can be forced upon unwilling minds, but each one for himself may see that life is good. And here the patient must minister to himself. These general considerations, -^rhile casting much light on the system as a whole, by no means explain all the vicissitudes of the individual lot, and the darker phases of history. Here sight fails us, and we must fall back on faith and some sense that our lives are in the hands of him that made us, and that he can be trusted though we do not understand. This practical solution is all that is possible to us 283 now. It may even be all that we could at present comprehend. The child at school and under family discipline has no experience of life's values which would enable him to understand the reason of the repressions and compulsions which shut him in on every side. Only mature life can make it plain to him. Meanwhile he must be dealt with in ways that often seem hard and unloving to him. We also may not have the mental and moral development that would enable us to understand the explanation if it were given. Indeed, considering our overestimate of the goods of sense and our immatiirity and scanty insight in higher matters, this might well be the case. In the cognitive world many practical convictions are so important that they are not left to reasoning, but are fixed for us in the spontaneous working of our intelligence. In the moral world the same fact ap- pears. Apart from reasoning, life is optimistic in its structure and tendency. This especially appears in the ebbing of the pessimistic tide which is now so marked in the higher speculative circles. Cheerful- ness has returned; and professional pessimism is rapidly passing into the hands of rhetorical convul- sionists, who are no longer taken seriously, and who do not even take themselves seriously. God's great provision for maintaining that practi- cal optimism without which life could not go on, is found in the inextinguishable hopefulness of humanity. Anything can be borne, borne bravely, borne with a new increment of life, so long as hope remains. And life as a whole will always have an optimistic charac- ter, so long as the future is spanned by a bow of promise. This is practical optimism. But this also 284 THE WOKLD-GEOUND AS ETHICAL is not without its ebb and flow. Prophets and psalmists and many, many saints have known what it is to be assaulted by pessimistic misgivings concerning the moral goodness of God and the worth of life. The writer of the book of Job was no easy optimist, and the author of the Seventy-third Psalm was disturbed at the prosperity of the wicked. And what happened then happens still. Even practical optimism is still militant, and has its struggle for existence. But the faith that grows from more to more in the individual soul, and that strengthens itself from generation to generation in the community, is that we are in our Father's hands, and that, having brought us thus far on om- Godward way, he may well be trusted to finish the work he has begun. As long as this faith remains, men will go on singing hymns, praying prayers, and chanting Te Deums in the face of the grim and dis- quieting aspects of experience ; but if this faith should ever permanently perish, there would be an end of all optimism beyond the sluggish content of thoughtless- ness. Earth can be endured and justified if it have relations to heaven. If there be a promised land, and if man live forever, then it is right that he should wander in the wilderness until he has fitted himself to enter the promised land. But considered as a final- ity the visible life cannot be justified. Thus we see that while optimism must begin in and with experience, it cannot complete itself without ris- ing to a general world-view, and thus becoming theo- retical and inferential. This aspect of the case will be discussed in the next chapter. This does not mean, however, that theory will ever prove the goodness of the world, but only that without certain general views 285 of things our native optimism must fall into contra- diction with itself. So much for the human world. In the animal world the problem is simply one of pain. Here the pains of personality would seem to be entirely lacking. These spring from the power of looking before and after, from the backward look of memory and the forecasting of the future, from our affections and conscience and the implications of our moral nature. If these were away, our physical pains would be small, after deducting those which we bring on ourselves. Where these are away, as ta the case of the lower animals, the prob- lem is not so dark as zoological anthropomorphism would have us believe. The extent and nature of animal pain are unknown. A multitude of facts indicate that even the more highly organized animals are far less sensitive to pain than men are, while of the sensibility of the simple organic forms we have no knowledge whatever. It is plain, then, that this problem is entirely beyond us. Inhuman treatment of the animals is unpermissible, for our own sake as well as theirs. We may not interfere with them be- yond the point where our safety and convenience require it. But no practical interest demands a theo- retical explanation of the forms and laws of animal life as a whole. In our utter ignorance of its inner significance, we should first lose ourselves in zoologi- cal anthropomorphism, and probably end by express- ing wonder at the bad taste revealed in many phases of the animal creation. The net result of human experience is faith in the moral goodness of God. The problem is not abstract and academic, but concrete and historical. This faith. 286 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL with all that it implies, will remain until human na- ture changes, or experience enters into a contradictory phase. The facts, logically and abstractly considered, neither compel nor forbid this faith. They permit it, and to some extent illustrate it ; and the mind with that faith in the perfect which underlies all its opera- tions refuses to stop short of the highest. Speculative theology has produced elaborate schemes of the ethical attributes as well as of the metaphysical. Love, mercy, justice, righteousness, and holiness have been set up as separate attributes ; and a good deal of ingenuity has been shown in adjusting their relations. Into these questions we have no need to enter. The ethical nature of God is sufficiently determined for all religious, and, we may 'add, for all speculative purposes, as being holy love. These factors belong together. Love without holiness would be simply well-wishing without any ethical content; and holi- ness without love would be a hfeless negation. Love needs no definition ; but the notion of holi- ness is not so clear. Negatively, holiness implies the absence of all tendencies to evil and of all delight in evil. Positively, it involves the delight in and devo- tion to goodness. The knowledge of evil must exist in the divine thought, but perfect holiness implies that it finds no echo in the divine sensibility and no real- ization in the divine will. It further implies, posi- tively, that in God the ideal of moral perfection is realized; and this ideal involves love as one of its chief factors. In determining this ideal we can only fall back upon the immediate testimony of the moral nature. No 287 legislation can make anything an abiding part of this ideal unless it be commanded by conscience; and nothing can be allowed to enter into it which is for- bidden by conscience. It is this voice of conscience which distinguishes the non-moral good and evil of simple sensibility from the moral good and evil of the ethical life. In maintaining the absoluteness of God as a moral being a curious difficulty arises from the nature of the moral life itself. This life implies community and has no meaning for the absolutely single and only. Love without an object is nothing. Justice has no meaning except between persons. Benevolence is impossible without plurality and community. Hence, if we conceive God as single and alone, we must say that, as such, he is only potentially a moral being. To pass from potential to actual moral existence the Infinite must have an object, and to pass to adequate moral existence the Infinite must have an adequate object. Several ways out of this difficulty offer themselves. First, we may affirm that the absolute and essential God is metaphysical only and not moral. His mo- rality is but an incident of his cosmic activity, and not something pertaining to his own essential exis- tence. God's metaphysical existence is absolute, but his moral life is relative to creation and has no mean- ing or possibility apart from it. The immediate implication of this view is another, as follows : God is not absolute and self-sufficient in his ethical life, but needs the presence of the finite in order to realize his own ethical potentialities and attain to a truly moral existence. But this view 288 THE WORLD-GKOUND AS ETHICAL either makes God dependent on the world for his own complete self-realization, or it makes the cosmic activity the necessary means by which God comes into full self-possession. In either form the moral is made subordinate to the metaphysical, the proper absoluteness of God is denied, and a strong tendency to pantheism appears. When the view is made to affirm, as often happens, that God apart from the world is as impossible as the world apart from God, we have pronounced pantheism. The third view aims to escape these difficulties by providing for community of personal life in the divine unity itself. In this way the conditions of ethical life are found within the divine nature ; and the ethical absoluteness of God is assured. But how this community in unity is possible is one of the deepest mysteries of speculation. The only suggestion of solu- tion seems to lie in the notion of necessary creation. Such creation would be unbegun and endless, and would depend on the divine nature and not on the divine will. If now we suppose the divine nature to be such that the essential God must always and eternally produce other beings than himself, those other beings, though numerically distinct from him- self, would be essential implications of himself. There would be at once a numerical plurality and an organic unity. Hence pantheism, while viewing God and the world as numerically distinct, has always maintained that they are organically and essentially one. Such a conception can in no way be discredited by a verbal shuffling of formal ideas such as one and many, unity and plurality. Formally these ideas are opposed ; but reahty has ways of uniting our formal oppositions in 289 indivisible syntheses which, our formal thought can- not construe. But we have already seen that we cannot carry the actual world of finite things into God without specu- lative disaster and shipwreck. It only remains to abandon the notion of a necessary creation whereby God forever posits community for himself, or else to find its objects apart from the finite system as per- sons coeternal with God himself. If it be said that this is polytheism, the answer would be that poly- theism implies a plurality of mutually independent beings. If it be said that these dependent personal- ities are created, the answer would be that their ex- istence does not depend on the divine will, but on the divine nature. They therefore coexist with God; nor could God exist without them. If, then, in pan- theism we say that the world is God, what can we say of these but that they are God, at once numeri- cally distinct and organically one ? If creation seems to be an expression implying will, we may exchange it for the profoundly subtle terms of early theological speculation, and speak of an eternal generation and procession. These terms throw no light upon the matter, and only serve to mark ofE the eternal impli- cations of the divine nature from the free determina- tions of the divine will. We allow the last paragraph to stand as helping forward the thought, but it is plain that we have not yet reached its best expression. Both our conception of the absolute will and our rejection of ontological necessities forbid so sharp a separation of the divine will from the divine nature as our language has implied. The thought can be made consistent only 290 THE WORLD-GROUND AS ETHICAL by distinguishing a double willing in God, that by which God is God, and that by which the system of the world exists. The former is the absolute will, conditioned by the divine nature and coeternal with God. It is logically necessary if God is to be God. At the close of Chapter IV we pointed out that the absolute wUl must ever be present to give validity and reality to the otherwise powerless necessities of the divine being, so that the divine existence as any- thing realized forever roots in the divine will. The will does not make or alter the logic of the divine nature, but it realizes it. If now that logic implies that God in order to be the ethically absolute God must have his adequate Other and Companion, then the will by which God is God implies the eternal generation of that Other. This will would be quite distinct from the will by which the world exists. The latter would be no necessity for God's self- realization. The consideration of the ethical absoluteness of God has led us into speculations which suggest the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and which may explain why so many thinkers have insisted on hold- ing that doctrine in spite of the formal opposition of the ideas of unity and trinity. But into this question we have no call to enter. In any case speculation can only call attention to difficulties and suggest pos- sibilities without being able to say anything positive. CHAPTER VII THEISM AND LIFE The considerations thus far dwelt upon are chiefly such as address themselves to man as a contemplative being. But man is not merely nor mainly contempla- tion ; he is also will and action. He must, then, have something to work for, aims to realize, and ideas by which to live. In real life the center of gravity of theistic faith lies in its relation to these aims and ideals. God is seen to be that without which our ideals collapse or are made unattainable, and the springs of action are broken. Hence the existence of God is affirmed not on speculative or theoretical grounds, but because of the needs of practical life. This has often been called the moral argument for the divine existence ; a better name would be the practical argument. That this argument has no demonstrative value is evident. It is essentially a conclusion from what we think ought to be to what is, or from our subjective interests to objective fact; and such a conclusion is forever invalid in logic. It becomes valid only on the assumption, expressed or implicit, that what our nature calls for, reality must, in one form or another, supply. Hence Kant, who was one of the leading expounders of this conception, expressly denied its speculative cogency. On the contrary, he claimed to have shown 291 292 THEISM AND LIFE that, by way of speculation, neither proof nor disproof is possible ; and in this balance of the speculative rea- son practical interests may be allowed to turn the scale. All that can be done, then, is to show that theism is a demand of our moral nature, a necessity of practical life. Whether to accept this subjective necessity as the warrant for the objective fact every one must decide for himself. That our entire mental life rests upon such an acceptance we have already abundantly seen. The moral argument has often been mismanaged. Sometimes it is put forward as proof, and then it falls an easy prey to the hostile critic. For the argument is proof only ia the sense of showing that our human interests can be conserved, and our highest life main- tained, only on a theistic basis. Such argument is practically important as showing the practical bear- ings of the question, but it is not proof. Again, the discussion has often taken on a hedonistic turn and run off into gross selfishness, by the side of which even atheism itself might seem morally superior. We need, then, to consider the relation of theism and atheism to the practical life. Of course the inquiry concerns solely the implications of the theories and not the characters of the theorists. Neither theists nor atheists, but theism and atheism, are the subjects of discussion. We begin with atheism. In the Introduction we pointed out that a large part of atheistic discussion has been devoted to picking flaws in theistic argument, rather than to showing any positive adequacy of atheism itself to solve the prob- lems of the world and life. In treating of epistemology we further pointed out that atheism has picked up its 293 theory of knowledge ready-made on the plane of com- mon sense, with no suspicion of the complexity of the problem and especially without developing a doctrine of knowledge out of its own resources. The same naive procedure reappears here. Atheism has gener- ally borrowed from the common stock of moral and practical principles as a matter of course, and has given comparatively little attention to developing such prin- ciples for itself. But a theory must build on its own foundations. Atheism is quite successful in making grimaces at theism ; but it limps terribly in its own account of things. It talks fluently about science, but when it is compelled to frame a theory of knowledge, the result is not science, but hopeless ignorance. Simi- lar failure meets it when it is required to formulate a theory of life and morals. Its strength lies in its criticism of faith rather than in any positive recom- mendation of its own unfaith. This we now show. • A peremptory rejection of atheism as destructive of all moral theory might not be unwarranted, but it would fail to show the real points of difficulty. To do this we need to analyze the problem and consider it somewhat in detail. Any working system of ethics involves several dis- tinct factors — a set of formal moral judgments re- specting right and wrong, a set of aims or ideals to be realized, and a set of commands to be obeyed. In the first class we have only the moral form of con- duct ; in the second class we have the material con- tents of conduct ; and in the third class the contents of the two first are prescribed as duties. The perennial shortcoming of traditional ethics has been the failure to see the equal necessity of all of these factors. The THEISM 20 294 THEISM AND LIFE result has been many one-sided systems with resulting war and confusion. What, now, is the bearing of atheism upon these several factors — the system of judgments, the sys- tem of ideals, and the system of duties ? We con- sider the last first. Atheism and Duties In discussing this question we must consider the automatism involved in atheism. This imphcation, though not perhaps strictly necessary, can be escaped only by admissions fatal to all thinking, and hence atheism and automatism have generally been united. When we begin, then, to construct a system of duties, we are met at once by the question how an automaton can have duties. To this question there is no answer. The traditional evasion consists in saying that moral judgments, like aesthetic judgments, are independent of the question of freedom. In determining what is beautiful or ugly we take no account of freedom or necessity, and the same is true in determining what is right or wrong. If ethics were only a set of moral judgments, this claim would not be without some foundation. But ethics is also a set of precepts to be obeyed, and obedience is reckoned as merit, and dis- obedience as demerit ; and for these notions the con- ception of freedom is absolutely necessary. The same evasion sometimes takes on another form, as follows : We judge persons for what they are, no matter how they became so. A thing which is ugly by necessity is still ugly, and a person who is wicked by necessity is stm wicked. It is, then, a mistake to ATHEISM AND THE MORAL JUDGMENT 295 claim that our judgment of persons is in any way conditioned by belief in their freedom. To this the answer is that our judgments of per- sons are from a double standpoint, that of perfection and that of ability. On the former depend judgments of imperfection, on the latter depend judgments of guilt or innocence, merit or demerit. But however imperfect one may be, he cannot be responsible for anything that transcends his ability. So, then, ia any atheistic system the question must still remain, How can automata have duties ? This question is so important for the rationalizing of atheistic ethics, that it is much to be wished that the universal necessity, or some of its subordinate phases, might be brought to consider it. If this ques- tion were once answered, it would next be in order to inquire how an automaton could perform its duties if necessity set in another direction, or how it could help performing them if necessity set that way. Another interesting and important question would concern the ground- of the moral difference between the sev- eral automata. These questions, however, are not likely to receive a speedy answer, owing, of course, to the intractability and illogicality of the cosmic neces- sity in general ; and we shall do better to go on to con- sider the bearing of atheism upon ethics as a system of moral judgments. Atheism ast> the Mokal Jm>GMENT Our formal judgments of right and wrong have no direct dependence upon theistic faith. It is at this point that the moral argument has been most mis- managed. How can the obligation of justice, truth, 296 THEISM AND LIFE benevolence, gratitude, be made to depend even on the existence of God ? And with what face can we pretend that atheism would make these virtues less binding than they are ? These are absolute moral intuitions. If no one regarded them, they would still be valid. Certainly, if they depend at all on theism, it must be indirectly. In this respect our moral judgments are like our judgments of true and false. The rejection of theism would not make the unjust just any more than it would make the false true. This seems conclusive. The sturdiest theist would hardly be willing to admit that he should feel free to violate all the obligations of truth and honor, if by some stress of logic he found himself unable longer to maintain his theistic faith. But while this seems an end of all discussion, further reflection shows that in the case of both rational and moral judgments our nature falls into discord with itself, or is unable to defend itself against skepticism, until our thought reaches the conception of God as supreme reason and holy will. Then reason and conscience, from being psychological facts in us, become universal cosmic laws, and their supremacy is assured. But so long as they are limited to human and terrestrial mani- festation they are perpetually open to the skeptical surmise that after all they may only be our way of thinking, and hence matters of opinion. That this conclusion has been persistently drawn from atheistic premises, and often by atheists themselves, is a matter of history. This is further strengthened by the fact that right and wrong, if distinct, can have no appli- cation to actual life because of the universal automa- tism. On this account theorists of this school have ATHEISM AND THE MORAL JUDGMENT 297 generally tended to reduce the distinction to one of utility and inutility. This distinction plainly exists ; and by and by we remember that right and wrong are other names for the same thing. Forthwith we use them, and thus give variety to our terminology and save moral distinctions at the same time. It must, then, be a matter of sincere gratification to find atheists who are zealous for the absoluteness of moral obligation, but their name is not legion and their protestations show a good disposition rather than logical insight. They should consider the skepticism involved in any system of necessity, and remember that in such a scheme one view is as good as another, as long as it lasts, and that theism is a product of the same necessity that produces atheism. They should further consider the historical fact that atheis- tic premises have so often been offered in justification of ethical skepticism, and also the widespread tendency in pessimistic quarters to ethical agnosticism if not indifference. If logical reasoning be possible and obligatory, these facts should be studied, and some way of avoiding these results should be pointed out. Atheism must justify itself from its own premises and on its own principles, if it is to be a rational theory of life. Rebukes of selfishness sound humor- ous coming from a theory whose ethics is commonly based on selfishness. And denunciations of any belief or deed whatever seem strange when coming from a theory that views all belief and conduct as necessary. When we are told that all our beliefs are produced by the unknown cause, we cannot escape a feehng of confusion at hearing that theistic beliefs are false, although the unknown cause has produced them so 298 THEISM AND LIFE freely. Atheism, then, is under special obhgation, supposing logical reasoning possible, to set its own house in the true order of logic in this matter. Theism has its puzzles, no doubt ; but before abandon- ing it we must make sure that atheism is no worse. Unfortunately, as we have said, atheism has been so busy in berating theism that it has largely for- gotten this manifest duty of developing its own solution of the perennial problems of thought and Hfe. A consistent atheism, then, cannot defend itself against ethical skepticism any more than against spec- ulative skepticism in general. But there is no need to insist upon this point ; for if these formal princi- ples were set on high above all doubt, we should still not have all the conditions of a complete moral sys- tem. Such a system involves, not only these formal principles, but also a set of extra-ethical conceptions which condition their application. Of these the most important are our general world-view, our conception of life, its meaning and destiny, our conception of per- sonality also, and its essential sacredness. These ele- ments, however, express no immediate intuition of conscience, but are taken from our general theory of things. Yet any variation in these elements must lead to corresponding variations in practice, even while the formal principles remain the same. Illustrations abound. The law of benevolence may be absolute as a disposition, but its practical applica- tion is limited by a prudent self-regard on the one hand, and by our conception of the nature and signifi- cance of the object on the other. This appears in our treatment of the cattle. We owe them good will in ATHEISM AND THE MORAL JUDGMENT 299 general ; but it is conditioned by our conception of the meaning and value of animal life. Hence we feel free to subordinate the animals to our own safety or health or convenience. Only a high conception of humanity gives sacredness to human rights and incites to stren- uous effort in its behalf. The golden rule, also, must be conditioned by some conception of the true order and dignity of life ; otherwise it might be perfectly obeyed in a world of sots and gluttons. With Plato's conception of the relation of the individual to society, Plato's doctrine of infanticide seems correct enough. With Aristotle's theory of man and his destiny, Aris- totle's theory of slavery is altogether defensible. From the standpoint of the ancient ethnic conceptions, the accompanying ethnic morality was entirely allowable. Apart from some conception of the sacredness of per- sonality, it is far from sure that the redemption of society could not be more readily reached by killing off the idle and mischievous classes than by philan- thropic effort for their improvement. And we often hear it shrewdly surmised that Christian philanthropy is all astray in its care for the weak, the diseased, and the helpless ; and that it would be not only cheaper, a consideration by no means to be despised, but in the end better and more humane, to let the survival of the fittest have its beneficent way. Indeed, the surmise sometimes passes into affirmation. Christianity has been denounced as more injurious than any crime in its practical sympathy for the weak and defective. Its " slave morality " is declared to be a gigantic conspir- acy on the part of the ignoble and feeble classes to save themselves from being eliminated from the social fabric. And from the standpoint of abstract moral 300 THEISM AND LIFE principles, or abstract enthusiasm for humanity, it might be hard to show that the procedure suggested would not be justified in the case of both the criminal and the useless members of society. The objection does not lie in the abstract moral nature, but rather in the philosophy of man which we have learned from Christianity. And Christianity itself wrought its great moral revolution, not by introducing new moral prin- ciples, but by revealing new conceptions of God and man and their mutual relations. By making all men the children of a common Father, it did away with the earlier ethnic conceptions and the barbarous morality based upon them. By making every man the heir of eternal life, it gave to him a sacredness which he could never lose and which might never be ignored. By making the moral law the expression of a Holy Will, it brought that law out of its impersonal abstraction and assured its ultimate triumph. Moral principles may be what they were before, but moral practice is forever different. Even the earth itself has another look when it has a heaven above it. These illustrations show that the actual guidance of life involves, not only a knowledge of formal moral principles, but also a series of extra-moral conceptions which condition their application. They also show how impossible it is to construct a code of conduct which shall be independent of our general theory of things. We may be perfectly sure that any great modification of our conceptions concerning the mean- ing and outcome of human life would, sooner or later, reveal itself in corresponding changes in the ethical code. If we could really persuade ourselves that men are only functions of the viscera and will vanish with ATHEISM AND THE MORAL JUDGMENT 301 the viscera, there would be a tendency to adjust ethics to the visceral standpoint. The actual working code, then, as a rational matter, depends not only on moral intuitions, but also on our general theory of things. Oversight of this fact has been the perennial weakness of the intuitional ethics. It has dreaded to take the aim and outcome of con- duct into account lest it fall into utilitarianism. As a result it has had to fall back upon purely formal principles which, while good and even necessary as far as they go, furnish no positive guidance for practical life. We are told to be virtuous, to be conscientious, to act from right motives, and to act so that the maxims of our conduct shall be fit to be universal law. But this only concerns the form of conduct and overlooks the fact that conduct must have aims beyond itself, and that these aims must be in harmony with the nature of things. Besides, it is narrow. The moral task of the individual by no means consists solely in being conscientious or even virtuous, but rather and chiefly in an objective realization of the good. Mere conscientiousness is the narrowest pos- sible conception of virtue, and the lowest possible aim. A worthy moral aim can be found only in the thought of a kingdom of righteousness and blessedness realized in a community of moral persons. But no one can work with this aim without implicitly assuming a higher power which is the guarantee of the possi- bility of its realization. Without assuming the per- manence and final triumph of the moral universe, the continued existence of the moral subject, and the possibility of continuous approximation to the moral ideal, there is no way of rationalizing any moral code 302 THEISM AND LIFE which, goes beyond mere conscientiousness and the dictates of visible prudence. For morality which transcends these humble limits we must have recourse to religion. Atheism had insuperable difficulty in explaining how automata can have duties in any moral sense of the word. It has similar difficulty in developing and defending a satisfactory code out of its own principles. In a world produced and pervaded by Christian con- ceptions it may get on with borrowed capital ; but it is sorely cramped when confined to its own resources. A further difficulty emerges when treating of the moral ideal. For a working system of ethics must not only present rules for piecemeal and routine con- duct, but must also furnish some ideal for life as a whole which shall give unity and completeness to our moral system. This point we now consider. Atheism and the Moral Ideal What is the relation of atheism to the ideals of conduct, or what ideals can atheism consistently furnish ? This question is sufficiently answered by a moment's survey of life from the standpoint of atheistic theory. To begin with, we have a blind power, or set of powers, perpetually energizing without purpose or plan, without self-knowledge or objective knowledge, forever weaving and forever unweaving because of some inscrutable necessity. The outcome is, among innumerable other things, a serio-comic procession of " cunning casts in clay " in all forms from mollusk to man. No one of these forms means any more than any other, for nothing means anything in this theory. ATHEISM AND THE MORAL IDEAL 303 A procession of wax figures would not be more truly automatic than these forms are in all respects. When we come to the human forms we find a curious set of illusions. Most of them necessarily believe in a God, whereas there is no God. Most of them necessarily believe that they are free, whereas they are not free. Most of them necessarily believe themselves responsi- ble, whereas no one and nothing is responsible. Most of them necessarily believe in a distinction between right and wrong, whereas there is no distinction. Most of them necessarily believe in duty, whereas automata cannot have duties, or cannot perform them, or cannot help performing them, according as necessity determines. All of them, without exception, necessarily assume the possibility of logical thought and reasoning, whereas this assumption is totally unfounded. Further, the members of this procession are perpetually falling out, and that is the end of them as individuals. For a time the melancholy order is kept up by the fundamental unconsciousness through the incessant reproduction of new forms ; but there are signs that the process itself will yet come to an end, and leave no sign. Such is the history, meaning, and outcome of human life on atheistic theory. It seems needless to add anything about the moral ideals of atheism. If we speak of them at all, it is only by a fundamental inconsistency, which, however, is not to be reckoned to ourselves, but to the basal necessity, which is given to doing odd things. This leads to another matter which is implicit in what we have been saying. Ethics is not a matter of the closet only, but of life. It is of little impor- 304 THEISM AND LIFE tance that fine theories be spun, unless they be put into practice. Ethics, then, must not only dream about ideals, but must furnish the inspiration and driving force which will lead to their realization. We consider atheism from this standpoint also. Atheism and Moral Inspiration In this matter of inspiration we touch the point of chief practical difficulty with all ethical systems, reli- gious and non-religious alike. Long ago the discov- ery was made that it is easier to tell men what to do than to get them to do it. When we come to close quarters with living men and women, the problem takes on aspects unknown to the closet. The great practical trouble, apart from the evil will, is not a lack of light, but, in the lower ranges of life, a general insensibility and irresponsiveness to moral ideas, and, in the higher ranges, a general discouragement. In the lower ranges we come upon man the animal, lead- ing not so much an immoral as a submoral life, one swayed by appetite and impulse, and molded by low traditions and base environment, a life of prosaic and sordid externalism, and of surpassing mental and moral squalor. In the upper ranges we find a general discouragement arising from the disillusionizing con- tact with life, a doubt whether anything really worth while is attainable imder the conditions of our exist- ence. We can, indeed, live in peace and mutual help- fulness with our neighbors without looking beyond visible existence ; but when we are looking for some supreme aim which shall give meaning and dignity to life and make it worth while to live, forthwith we begin to grope. We can see with some clearness ATHEISM AND MORAL INSPIRATION 305 what ought to be, but we are not so sure that what ought to be is. Moral ideals are fair, no doubt, but it is not so clear that they are practicable. Life is short and rather tedious. The great cosmic order is not manifestly constructed for moral ends. It seems mostly indifferent to them, and at times even opposed. It only remains that we find the law of life within the sphere of visible existence. And here, too, ideals do not count for much. Virtue within the limits of pru- dence is wise, but an abandon of goodness is hardly worldly wise. Upon the whole, visible life seems not over favorable to ideals, unless it be the modest one of not being righteous overmuch. One could indeed wish it were otherwise, that virtue were at home in the universe, and that our ideals were only shadows of the glorious reality. But what avails it to wish ? It is not so, and we must make the best of it. And man himself in the concrete is a disheartening object of contemplation. To what a hopeless earthly lot the great majority of men are condemned. The coarse features, the shambling gait, the ascendant ani- mal, the brutalizing effect of physical drudgery when unbalanced by some mental life, are aU apparent. The inner life seems not to go beyond a dull and blurred mentality with some stimulus of passion and coarse sensation. And really not much can be done about it. Dead generations hold men in a fatal grip. The inertia to be overcome is too great ; and life hurries so swiftly to be gone. This is the concrete condition which moral theorists have to meet and provide for. They must furnish some inspiration which will make weight against the depressing sordidness of actual existence and the omnipresent irony of death, which 306 THEISM AND LIFE mocks at wisdom, strength, and beauty, and which so soon and so surely blights all earthly prospects and blasts all earthly hopes. To meet the depressing and disheartening influ- ences arising from such considerations, the race in its higher members has long and increasingly had recourse to the belief in God and the future life. The world cannot be made rational on any other basis. This visible life is the beginning and not the end. The true life is not that of the flesh, but that of the spirit. The true and abiding universe is the moral universe, and not this outward order of phenomenal change. Righteousness is at the heart of things. Hence we may believe in its final triumph and in some larger life we shall see it. The Christian theist would add, Love also is at the heart of things. The Creator, the great God, is our unchangeable and al- mighty Friend, and he is causing all things, however confused and untoward they may seem, to work to- gether for our highest good. Nothing, whether it be things present, or things to come, or life or death, can pluck us out of his hand or thwart his loving will. Such a message, if accepted, would certainly relieve matters very much. It would bring healing, comfort, inspiration. But what inspiration has atheism to offer ? To tell men that they are automata is surely a poor preliminary to moral exhortation. To assure them that their conduct, whatever it may be, is only a product of the viscera, might well puzzle them con- cerning the ethics of responsibility, but could hardly encourage to high endeavor. To hint that conscience itself is only a psychological fact of obscure animal origin does not tend to increase its authority. To ATHEISM AND MORAL INSPIRATION 307 teach men that death ends all for the individual, and by and by will end all for the race, is not particularly inspiring. The woes of life grow no less, nor less keen, when we learn that they spring from nothing and lead to nothing. To believe that even they work together for our good is often a trial of faith ; but they are no more easily borne when we learn that they are only the blind beating of a storm. It does not seem necessary to add anything con- cerning atheism as a source of moral inspiration. The difficulties of atheism in constructing a system of ethics may be summed up as follows : — First, ethics as a system of duties is absurd in a system of automatism. The attendant ideas of obli- gation and responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and innocence, are illusory in such a theory. Sec- ondly, ethics as a system of judgments concerning right and wrong is in unstable equilibrium in atheistic theory. For atheism has no way of escaping the skep- tical implications of all systems of necessity. The necessity of denying proper moral diiferences among persons empties our moral judgments of all applica- tion to practical life. Thirdly, atheism can hold out no good for the individual or for the race but anni- hilation. At each of these points Christian theism is adequate. By affirming a free Creator and free creatures it gives moral government a meaning. By making the moral nature of man the manifestation of an omnipotent and eternal righteousness which underlies the cosmos, it sets our moral convictions above all doubt and overthrow. Finally, it provides a conception of man and his destiny that gives man a worthy task and an inalienable sacredness. The 308 THEISM AND LIFE mere etiquette of conscientiousness is transformed into loyal devotion to the law and kingdom of God. We may, then, commit ourselves with confidence to the highest and best in us, in the conviction that it will not lead us astray. We set aside all the doubts and scruples and hesitations which spring out of the con- fusion of visible existence, in the faith that we are now the children of God, and are yet to be like him. The only elements in ethics that can claim to be absolute are purely formal, and furnish only a nega- tive guidance for life. All working theories of ethics must transcend these formal principles, and seek for the supreme moral aims and ideals in some general theory of life and the world. Either we must restrict our ideals to those attainable in our present life, or we must enlarge the life so as to make the larger ideals attainable and save them from collapse. The first duty of even a theory of morals is to be rational ; and it can never be rational to live for the impossible. Our conception of the nature and destiny of a being must determine our conception of the law the being ought to follow. Some have affected to find an unholy selfishness in this claim, and have even dreaded to admit a future life lest the purity of their devotion should be sullied. But this is not to be taken seriously ; it is one of the humors of polemics. The humor especially appears in the fact that these good people, when giving an account of the moral nature, generally find it markedly earthy and egoistic. In this respect the claim seems to be about on a par with the delicate feeling of the biblical critic who, with his mouth full of beef or mutton, professes to be shocked at the cruelty to ATHEISM AND MORAL INSPIRATION 309 animals involved ia the temple sacrifices. But, really, duty is none the less sacred for being rational. The denial of God and immortality lends no new sacred ness to life, no new tenderness to sorrow, no higher inspiration to duty, no special sanctity to death. The brothers on earth can suffer no serious damage from the recognition of the Father in heaven. The feeling that underlies the objection, so far as it is real and not polemic, rests upon an inability to distinguish between a demand that we be paid for our virtue, and the revolt of our nature against a system that treats good and bad alike, and throws the better half of our nature back upon itself as absurd and meaningless. Neither God nor the future life is needed to pay us for present virtue, but rather as the conditions without which our nature falls into discord with itself and passes on to pessimism and despair. We need them, not for our egoistic satisfac- tion, but to save the rationality of the system ; and we believe in them on that account. Having to ven- ture beyond knowledge and make vast and far-reach- ing postulates in the interest of the understanding, we do the same thing and with the same logical right in the interest of life and conscience. High and con- tinued effort is impossible without correspondingly high and abiding hopes. Moral theory which looks to form only and ignores ends reduces conduct to eti- quette. It may claim, indeed, to be sublime, but it misses sublimity by just one fatal step. The generation just passed made abundant experi- ment in this matter. At the beginning religion was so entangled with outgrown science that conflicts between religion and science were the standing order THEISM 21 310 THEISM AND LIFE of the day. Very naturally the more adventurous spirits felt relief at getting clear of the obsolete science, which they falsely supposed was a part of religion ; and for a time it was generally believed that no practical interest would suffer. We had* unloaded the superstitions, it was thought ; and now humanity would surely flourish. But this naive faith received a rude shock as the logic of the situation worked itself out. When the invisible interfered with the rights of the visible, it was a relief to be clear of it. But after it was gone it began to dawn upon us that, after all, the invisible had a place and function in human thought and life which had been overlooked. The visible alone did not seem adequate to human needs, and pessimism began to invade. As soon as the attraction of novelty was gone, the suspicion arose that the new faith was likely to bankrupt humanity, and that we were in danger of repeating Frankenstein's experience with his home- made monster. We were living, it was said, on " the perfume of an empty vase " ; and doubt was raised whether any ideal elements of human life could be re- tained without again having recourse to the vanished dreams. And when the prophets and apostles of the new views were required to show what they could do for the healing and help of humanity, the failure was more than pathetic. They could not long keep up their disciples' courage or even their own. Their house was left unto them desolate. Everything human, even virtue and altruism, seemed to become contemptible. The roll of the oblivious ages drowned all other sounds. Moral paralysis set in, and the affections themselves ATHEISM AND MORAL INSPIRATION 311 began to wither at though.t of their own brevity and bootlessness. The freedom of science had indeed been won, but science, too, mattered nothing if men are but " cunning casts in clay," and are cut loose from reli- gion ! This is that inferential pessimism mentioned in the last chapter. The current speculation made for despair, and despair quickly followed. It was a brief but instructive episode in the history of belief, and showed conclusively that our speculative theories are not without practical bearing. A more critical phi- losophy, in conjunction with the reaction of life itself, has overthrown the speculative doctrine and discharged the resulting pessimism. One has a sense of the humorous in noting the em- barrassment of the advanced thinkers of that time in making some provision for the religious nature. In the lack of God we were urged to worship the cos- mos ; and " cosmic emotion " was put forward as some- thing which might well take the place of religion — thus coming pretty close to reversion to nature wor- ship. Humanity, also, was set up as a supreme object of worship, and endowed with many extraordinary functions and attributes — an echo of ancestor wor- ship. The Unknowable, too, had its altar, and was worshiped with much emotion, mainly of the "cosmic" sort. Mutual buffetings were freely exchanged by the apostles and disciples. The Unknowable was scoffed at as " an ever-present conundrum to be everlastingly given up," or as "a gigantic soap-bubble, not burst, but blown thinner and thinner till it has become absolutely imperceptible." But the worshipers of "Humanity" fared quite as badly at the hands of the disciples of the Unknowable, who did not fail to 312 THEISM AND LIFE point out, with many clever sarcasms, how far short of an adequate and inspiring object of worship his- torical humanity falls. As death ends all for the in- dividual, much attention was devoted to proclaiming the selfishness of the desire for a future life ; but many could not see in what it is more selfish to desire to live hereafter than it is to desire to live to-morrow. To fill up the gap left by the vanishiag of the immortal hope, a somewhat blind enthusiasm for progress was invoked; but many again could find little meaning or value in a progress whose subjects are perpetually perishing. In his confession of atheism, "The Old Faith and the New," Strauss rebuked Hartmann for his pessimism, which he regarded as absurd and blas- phemous ; and demanded for the " universmn " the same reverence which the Christian demands for God. Unfortunately, in another passage, Strauss had de- scribed the helpless position of man in the face of the mechanism of natm-e, not certain that at any moment he might not be torn to pieces or ground to powder by it. This gave Hartmann a chance to reply, " It is a rather strong, or rather naive claim, that we should experience a sentiment of religious piety and depend- ence for a ' universum ' which is only an aggregate of all material substances, and which threatens every instant to crush us between the wheels and teeth of its pitiless mechanism." Thus the advanced religions worried and devoured one another in ways that combined amusement and instruction for the bystanders. The attitude of atheistic speculation toward religion has undergone a great change in recent years. On that theory, this means that the basal and uncon- scious necessity is reacting toward theism and super- ATHEISM AND MORAL INSPIRATION 313 stition. It would seem to have a most unseemly and unintelligible hankering after religion with all its absurdities. But at all events, the sturdy brutalities of the eighteenth century are out of date in intelli- gent circles. The ancient claim that religion is an adventitious accretion without any essential founda- tion in human nature is obsolete. The religious nature is recognized as a universal human fact, which cannot be ignored. The natural assumption in such a case would be that the objective implications of this fact should be recognized as real, at least until they are positively disproved. Failing to do this, we have an instinct without an object, an organ without a function, a demand with no supply. This is an im- possible view on any theory of knowledge, and espe- cially so on the evolution theory. We are instructed that mind itself is an adjustment of inner relations to outer relations, that uniformities of experience must produce vmiformities of thought, and that natural selection and the survival of the fittest must tend to bring thought into harmony with reality, and then, by some strange freak of logic, we are required to believe that in the religious thinking of men there has been little but progressive maladjustment and aliena- tion, and the survival of the unfittest and falsest. This is the position of the religious nature in mod- ern atheistic systems. They cannot get along with- out it, and they are utterly at a loss to get along with it. How to provide for religion without admit- ting its objective theistic foundation, is a problem of exceeding difficulty. And nothing has been done but to talk vaguely of cosmic emotion, altruism, and prog- ress. But emotion with no basis of ideas is barren 314 THEISM AND LIFE business. Altruism is paralyzed when life loses its value ; and progress is a doubtful thing when its sub- jects vanish into nothingness. From a purely induc- tive standpoint, the actual man is a poor affair at best, and it is doubtful if he will ever amount to much. We know more and appear better than past generations, but it is not clear that character is much superior. The aesthetics of life progress and material comfort increases ; but these things do not necessarily involve a corresponding moral progress. And any- how the notion of indefinite progress for humanity upon the earth is distinctly forbidden by the condi- tions of physical existence. Both progress and pos- terity bid fair to come to an end. And then for the race, as now for the individual, the whole meaning- less stir of existence will have sunk back into silence and left no trace or sign. And this is the end, this the outcome of the " high intuition," this the result of the " grand progress which is bearing Humanity onward to a higher intelligence and a nobler charac- ter." In such a view there is no healing and no in- spiration. It is in unstable equilibrium and must either return toward theism, or pass on to pessimism and despair. The contention of this chapter was not that God exists, but rather that theistic faith is such an impli- cation of our moral nature and practical life that atheism must tend to wreck both life and conscience. That contention has been established. That it wrecks knowledge and science, we have seen in previous chap- ters. As soon as atheism is required to develop a theory of life and thought and knowledge from its own resources, further argument is needless. CONCLUSION In the Introduction it was pointed out that thought demands some things, forbids some things, and per- mits some things. The first class must be accepted, for it consists of the laws and categories of reason and their implications. The second class must be rejected, as it violates the nature of reason. The third class belongs to the great realm of probability and practi- cal life. In this realm we reach conclusions, not by logical demonstration, but by a weighing of probabili- ties, or by a consideration of practical needs, or by a taking for granted in the interest of ideal tendencies. Our fundamental practical beliefs are not speculative deductions from formal premises, but formulations of life itself ; and they depend for their evidence mainly on the energy of the life they formulate. In this realm belief, or assent, involves an element of voli- tion. Abstract logic leaves us in uncertainty; and the living self with all its furniture of interest and instiuctive tendency and colicrete experience comes in to overturn the speculative equilibrium and precipitate the conclusion. We have abundantly seen that theistic faith has its root in all of these realms, and cannot dispense with any of them. Each contributes something of value. The speculative intellect necessarily stops short of the religious idea of God, but it gives us some fundamental elements of the conception. It is, too, of the highest service in outlining the general form which the theis- 315 316 CONCLUSION tic conception must take in order to be consistent with itself and the laws of thought. Here speculation per- forms the invaluable negative service of warding off a multitude of misconceptions, especially of a pantheis- tic type, which have been morally as pernicious in his- tory as they are speculatively absurd. But a mind with only cognitive interests would find no occasion to consider more than the metaphysical attributes of God. The demand to consider God as having ethical and aesthetic attributes arises not from the pure intel- lect, but from the moral and aesthetic nature. Here the understanding has only the negative function of maintaining consistency and preventing collision with the laws of thought. The positive content of these attributes cannot be learned from logic, and the faith in their objective reality must at last rest on our im- mediate conviction that the universe is no more the abode of the true than it is of the beautiful and the good. Indeed, the true itself, except as truth of fact, is a purely ideal element, and derives all its signifi- cance from its connection with the beautiful and the good. For truth of fact has only a utilitarian value, apart from the nature of the fact that is true. If the universe were only a set of facts, — such as. Water boils at 100° C, — it would have nothing in it to awaken wonder, enthusiasm, and reverence ; and " cos- mic emotion " would be quite as much out of place as religious sentiment. Such a universe would not be worth knowing, and scientific interest beyond its prac- tical bearing would soon vanish along with religion. Logically considered, our entire system of funda- mental belief rests upon a fallacy of the form known as the illicit process ; in other words, our conclusions 317 are too large for the premises. A set of ideals arise in the mind under the stimulus of experience, but not as transcripts of experience. These ideals implicitly determine our mental procedure, and thej do it all the more surely because we are generally unconscious of them. Our so-called proofs consist, not in deduc- ing them from experience, but in illustrating them by experience. The facts which make against the ideal are set aside as problems not yet understood. In this way we maintain our conception of a rational uni- verse, or of a God of perfect wisdom and goodness. We illustrate by picked facts, and this passes for proof. Of course it is not proof, but only an illustra- tion of preexisting conceptions. For one who has not the conceptions and the interests expressed in them, the argument is worthless. Logic, then, is in its full right in pointing out the non-demonstrative character of these arguments, but it is miserably narrow when it fails to see that these undemonstrated ideals are still the real foundation of our mental life. Without implicit faith in them no step can be taken in any field. The mind as a whole, then, is in its full right when, so long as these ideals are not positively disproved, it accepts them on its own warrant and works them out into the rich and ever-growing conquests of our modern life. By the side of this great faith and its great results the formal objections of formal logic sink into an almost despica- ble impertinence. Of all these ideals that rule our life theism is the sum and source. The cognitive ideal of the universe, as a manifestation of the Supreme Reason, leads to theism. The moral ideal of the universe, as a mani- 318 CONCLUSION festation of the Supreme Righteousness, leads to the- ism. The practical ideal of a " far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves " leads to theism. In short, while theism is demonstrated by nothing, it is implicit in everything. It cannot be proved without begging the question, or denied without ending in absurdity. But so far as logic goes atheism is no better off. Rigor and vigor methods, we have seen, are fatal to all concrete thinking. To assume the general truth and fairness of things may be a venture beyond knowledge, but to assume their essential untruth and unfairness is equally so. The assumption that sense knowledge is the only real knowledge, which has always been the mainstay of atheism, is not only not proved, but is demonstrably false in the sense in which it is commonly taken. The undeniable things, as we have seen, are not the mechanical factors of atheistic thinking, but the coexistence of persons, the common law of intelligence, and the common order of experience. And the task of phi- losophy is to interpret these facts, for the satisfaction of our total nature. As soon as this is seen, the impossibility of atheism becomes manifest. It makes a great many flourishes about " reason," " science," " progress," and the like, in melancholy ignorance of the fact that it has made all these impossible. On the one hand, there is a complete ignorance of all the implications of valid knowing, and on the other a ludicrous identification of itself with science. Its theory of knowledge is picked up ready-made among the crudities of spontaneous thought, and when the self-destructive implications of atheism are pointed 319 out, instead of justifjang itself from its own premises, it falls back on thoughtless common sense, which forthwith rejects the implications. Of course the question is not whether the implications be true or false, but whether they be implications. This point is happily ignored, and the defense is complete. Its crude realism is found to be equally obnoxious to criticism. Its mechanical realities, instead of being the substantial facts of existence, are found to be only hypostasized abstractions that have no existence apart from intelligence. Its interpretations furnish no insight. It must proclaim our entire nature mis- leading. The universe that has evolved the human mind as the " correspondence of inner relations to outer relations" has produced a strange non-corre- spondence here. The all-illuminating formula, It is because it must be, sheds only a feeble light. The conception of blind power working for apparent ends, of non-intelligence producing intelligence, of uncon- sciousness producing consciousness, of necessity pro- ducing ideas of freedom and duty, — this conception is not a transparent one. But all this the atheist stead- fastly believes, and professes to be supremely logical and rational meanwhile. Considering atheistic procedure as a whole, an ill- conditioned mind might lose patience with it ; but there is no occasion for warmth, for according to the theory itself, logical thought is not possible. Thoughts come and go, not according to any inherent rationality, but as produced by necessity. This probably contains the explanation of some of the extraordinary logic of atheistic treatises. Any hiatus between premises and conclusion is due to necessity. Any strange back- 320 CONCLUSION wardness in drawing a manifest conclusion has the same cause. All lapses into sentiment just when logic is called for are equally necessary. Even the mistakes of theism and the hardness and uncircumci- sion of the critical heart have an equally solid founda- tion. A great authority, speaking of the advanced thinker, says, " He, like every other man, may prop- erly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause ; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief." With this conclusion the limits of mental self-respect are transcended, and the theory breaks up in a melancholy farce. The theist may take some comfort, however, in remembering that his faith is no homemade fancy of his own, but a genuine product of the Unknown Cause, and he is thereby authorized to profess and act it out. No more need be said about atheism. As soon as its impHcations are understood, it disappears of itself. It is a kind of intellectual parasite and flourishes on the confusion and oversights of theism rather than through any force of its own. These superficialities and oversights of theism have been the chief source of atheistic doubt. This fact leads us to gather up some points which should be borne in mind in recom- mending theism. 1. Om- fundamental practical beliefs are formula- tions of life rather than speculative deductions ; and their evidence must be found mainly in the energy of the life that produces them, and in their har- mony with life and one another. The function of the understanding with regard to them is regulative 321 rather than constitutive. It formulates and system- atizes them ; it cannot demonstrate or deduce them. Deduction of the rigor and vigor type is impossible and absurd in our human conditions. Thus the problem of our deepest beliefs is seen to be one of life and experience and history, rather than of academic reflection alone. 2. We should note the complete emptiness of all mechanical or impersonal explanation. The necessary logical equivalence of cause and effect in such cases makes progress impossible and reduces explanation to tautology. The only explanation that escapes this futility consists in exhibiting the facts as the work of intelligence. Hence in explaining the world the alternative is theism or nothing. 3. A further specification of this fact is that all philosophizing on the impersonal plane must lose itself in tautology or the infinite regress, and in either case comes to naught. For by the law of the sufficient reason and the logical equivalence of cause and effect, we are shut up to endless repetition of the facts with which we start without any possibility of transcendiug them. Free intelligence is the only so- lution of this contradiction. 4. The previous difficulty was logical. Metaphys- ics further claims that there can be no philosophizing on the impersonal plane, because all the categories of the understanding, when impersonally taken, are only forms of thought without contents. They can be realized and made intelligible only when viewed as forms of living experience. As abstract principles they vanish. Hence in cosmic thinking, the alterna- tive is theism or positivism. Mechanical naturalism is a pure illusion. 322 CONCLUSION 5. Not every theory of things is compatible with the validity of knowledge. All necessitarian theories of whatever kind inevitably break down on the prob- lem of error, and establish the truth of opposing views as well as their own. The result is the overthrow of all knowledge and science. The alternative is free- dom in the world-ground and in the finite knower. This point is especially to be borne in mind, because it is so generally undreamed of. At present in the uninstructed goodness of our hearts, we show the largest hospitality toward all theories without ever dreaming of inquiring into their bearings upon the problem of knowledge. If any critic points out that a given theory destroys reason and thus violates the conditions of all thinking, such is our good nature that we conclude the consequences of the theory must be aberrations of the critic. The self -destructive theory is thus enabled to reserve all its strength for attack, and falls back on common sense to defend it from itself. This solemn folly will continue until it is rec- ognized that the problem of knowledge is a real one, and one which cannot be finally settled by the crude assumptions of spontaneous thought. 6. Any tenable theory of knowledge must bring the world of things within the sphere of thought; and this can be done only by rejecting the extra- mental things of crude realism and irreligious natural- ism altogether, and making the world the incarnation of the thought of a Supreme Intelligence immanent in it. But this Intelligence is not to be viewed as an abstract logical mechanism or function of categories, but as a Living WUl, a synthesis at once of knowledge and power. 323 7. We must regard tlie division of labor between science and speculation. The former traces the uni- formities of order in experience, the latter deals with their meaning and causation. Both inquiries are necessary to the full satisfaction of the mind and the complete mastery of experience ; and they cannot conflict except through confusion. Theism is con- tent to affirm a divine causality in the world, and leaves it to science to discover the modes of its opera- tion. When these points are duly regarded, atheism will appear in its crudity and baselessness ; and science and religion will be seen to have their common source and justification in theism. So much for theism as a doctrine. As argument goes the theist has no occasion to be ashamed of his faith. The changing of this assent of the intellect to a living practical conviction is a matter for life itself. The chief value of the theoretical argument is in removing the obstacles to belief that spring up in unclear thought. In gaining the living conviction the individual must minister to himself. Only by faithful living in the service of the highest and best things can this conviction be won. A great deal of theistic faith is in the stage of external assent. From the form of human development it must begin here ; and then the task of the individual is to pass from these assents and verbal hearsays to the living reali- zation of the truth. This transition takes time and is rarely perfectly made. In this respect theistic faith itself is an ideal rather than a fully realized possession.