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 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
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 Cornell University Library 
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 Seekers after soul, by John O. Knott, Ph 
 
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 3 1924 029 012 958 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029012958 
 
SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 BY 
 JOHN O. KNOTT, Ph. D. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
 T 
 
Copyright, 1911 
 Shebman, Fkench & Company 
 
TO 
 
 THE TWO IN MY HOME 
 
 TO WHOSE SELF-SACRIFICE AND THOUGHTFULNESS 
 
 ARE LARGELY DUE 
 
 MV UNINTERRUPTED HOURS FOR STUDY 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR 
 
A PERSONAL WORD 
 
 The author of this volume deems it but justice 
 to himself and to the reading public as well, to 
 say: There was no intention of making a book 
 when the matter herein contained was first pre- 
 pared. The chapter on "The Persistence of 
 Ideas" is the essence of a Thesis presented a 
 few years ago to the Faculty of Washington and 
 Lee University for the degree of Doctor 
 of Philosophy. This, with the chapters on 
 Plato, Kant and Hegel have since been re- 
 written and cast into a more popular form: they 
 are now published for the first time. In the 
 meantime the chapters on Job and Browning had 
 been published in a somewhat different form from 
 that in which they now appear, in the "Metho- 
 dist Review," Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 It was not easy to find a title which would ade- 
 quately cover and describe the varied work of 
 this little volume. Without any specific inten- 
 tion on the author's part, he found that, while 
 stressing the salient doctrines of some of the men 
 who had, in his estimation, influenced most the 
 thought of the world, he had in every case se- 
 lected a champion of Soul as against Matter. 
 The men whose lives and labors are particularized 
 in this book have been earnest seekers after that 
 spiritual Something which lies back of mere mat- 
 ter, but which is manifested in and through mat- 
 ter. They have been among the great assertors 
 
A PERSONAL WORD 
 
 of the Soul in philosophy and poetry. The term 
 "Soul" is here used in the widest possible sense, 
 including the rational, spiritual and immortal in 
 man and in the universe. 
 
 The author has not concerned himself much 
 about what is ordinarily termed "originality." 
 What is said concerning Plato, Kant and Hegel 
 has been drawn, largely, from the standard His- 
 tories of Philosophy and from the published 
 Lives of these men. The brilliant sketch of the 
 History of Philosophy forming Ludwig Noire's 
 Introduction to Max Miiller's translation of 
 Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," has been 
 freely used, as it seemed to leave nothing want- 
 ing as a clear and adequate resume of the history 
 and trend of thought from the earliest times to 
 the days of Kant. To Prof. Simon N. Patten's 
 "Development of English Thought" is due a debt 
 for a working basis in seeking the origin and 
 cause of the particular development of Ideas. 
 
 If the author may be allowed to express what 
 he conceives to be the particular merit of his 
 work, he would say it consists mainly in "point of 
 view." This, in more of detail, in connection with 
 the treatment of the chapters on Job and Brown- 
 ing, and in calling attention to the Persistence 
 of Ideas in relation to the Soul of Things. The 
 point of view from which the book as a whole s 
 seen, is created by showing a great heart among 
 the Hebrews and another among the Greeks, 
 groping in the same age for light on the subject 
 
A PERSONAL WORD 
 
 of Immortality, followed by chapters on the evo- 
 lution and trend of thought bearing on this and 
 kindred subjects, till the poet-philosopher, 
 Browning, is reached, in our own day, whose 
 confident assertions concerning God and the 
 Soul serve as the best expression of the thought 
 of our age as well as of the fruit of the world's 
 thinking. 
 
 After what has just been said it is scarcely 
 necessary to add that the end at which the author 
 aims is to be suggestive rather than to speak 
 dogmatically on the great subjects touched upon 
 in this book. Henry Drummond was accustomed 
 to say that the books which helped him most 
 were the books with which he differed most. The 
 books that stir us either to meet their implied 
 teachings, or that create in us a desire to know 
 more of which the books themselves give us but a 
 glimpse, are apt to be ultimately of most help to 
 us. 
 
 Acknowledgment is hereby made to Rev. 
 Geo. B. Winton, D.D., of Ardmore, Okla., for 
 reading the proofs of this volume, and for many 
 suggestions, the most of which have been fol- 
 lowed. Other friends have made the author their 
 debtor, but their names, as in case of so many 
 of the world's most helpful spirits, do not appear 
 in the records. 
 
 Warrenton, Va. J. O. K. 
 
 April, 1911. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Job: The Soul's Pathfinder . 1 
 
 II. Plato: Intimations of Immortality 24 
 
 III. Kant: A Protest against Materialism 52 
 
 IV. Hegel: Theistic Evolution . 94 
 
 V. Persistence of Ideas: The Spirit 
 
 in the Trend of Thought . . 120 
 
 VI. RoberI" Browning: The Subtle As- 
 
 SERTOR of the Sohl . . . 182 
 
JOB : THE SOUL'S PATHFINDER 
 
 The Book of Job occupies a unique place in the 
 world's literature. There is nothing else just like 
 it in or out of the Bible. While the style is poeti- 
 cal, the form is not such as we can readily classify. 
 It is drama, but unlike any other great drama we 
 know. It is tragic, but has not the "fatal issue" 
 of conventional tragedy. Though the book stands 
 apart, it has had great influence upon both the 
 style and thought of writers in different ages ; 
 Goethe is indebted to it for the motif of his 
 "Faust." 
 
 The book as a whole makes perhaps the strong- 
 est appeal to the heart of any of the Old Testa- 
 ment writings. Carlyle said it was "all men's 
 book." It has been the trfeasure-house from which 
 lonely sufferers through the ages have drawn com- 
 fort and inspiration. What a pity such a piece of 
 literature has not been cast into better form than 
 we find in our Authorized Version! Perhaps the 
 most readable and understandable of the many 
 translations of Job, at least for the general reader, 
 is Genung's "Epic of the Inner Life." Hengsten- 
 berg's "Lecture on Job" in his commentary on 
 Ecclesiastes contains, in small compass, as sane an 
 interpretation of the book as one will find any 
 where. 
 
 What I propose in this chapter is not a learned 
 
 1 
 
2 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 essay on the age of the book, the profundity of the 
 themes discussed, or a criticism of how far the 
 text has suffered corruption. Experts have al- 
 ready done much of all this, and will continue to 
 handle such details of technical scholarship. What 
 is herein attempted will concern a viewpoint from 
 which to see the book as a whole as to its purpose 
 and unity. While slight reference must be made 
 to the age of the book and to the character of 
 its author, the more simple and more practical as 
 well as interesting questions are these: What in- 
 spired the production, and where should the em- 
 phasis fall.'' 
 
 We may safely assume that the Book of Job 
 was written much later than our forefathers sup- 
 posed. The subjects discussed, as well as the 
 knowledge displayed; the philosophizing tendency 
 seen throughout, and the nuggets of wisdom 
 dropped here and there indicating the crystalliza- 
 tion of thought ; the problem especially discussed — 
 the meaning of evil as experienced by the right- 
 eous ; and the incidental allusions to immortality 
 and such kindred themes — all tend to prove that 
 this book was written by a representative of a peo- 
 ple that had already a history and a literature. 
 Poetry is indeed among the first forms of the liter- 
 ature of a people, but not such poetry as we find 
 here. A nation may have its legends and epics, 
 celebrating the doings of its heroes, but the story 
 of Job does not belong to these. In Greek literature 
 we have first epic, then lyric poetry, and finally 
 
JOB 8 
 
 drama in its various forms, followed by philoso- 
 phy; but in the Book of Job we have the epic, 
 the drama, and philosophy, all represented, until 
 it is difficult to say which predominates. 
 
 Who was Job? Probably the writer himself was 
 the real Sufferer, while the traditional Job was a 
 convenient personality for the writer to use to 
 make known his experience as well as enforce the 
 principles he would enunciate. Not that the writer 
 of this book actually endured the peculiar tribula- 
 tions the traditional Job experienced ; but a man at 
 some point in later Jewish history, in the midst of 
 great national and personal afflictions, had his 
 heart turned to the story of the Job of tradition 
 and f otmd in him a character suited to his purpose 
 for such a book as he would write. That such a 
 man as Job might have lived and been known far 
 and wide as a person of imparaUeled afflictions, is 
 quite easy to believe. That his experience was pro- 
 verbially alluded to by the Jews is practically 
 demonstrated by Ezekiel's reference to him. But 
 the name, signifying "Sufferer," gives more 
 than a hint as to how we may regard this re- 
 markable personality. In the case of "Malachi," 
 we can regard the name as one borne by the pro- 
 phet, or take it as meaning "My Messenger" — ^the 
 more reasonable interpretation — and leave the 
 name of the prophet unknown; so in the case of 
 Job, the name and "Sufferer" may have meant one 
 and the same to the Jews. Or if some such history- 
 had grown up about this character as was, in its; 
 
4 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 way, associated with the mythical King Arthur, 
 how natural to use the name and history to teU a 
 story which the world has read with such response 
 as it could give only to a story true to human ex- 
 perience and inspired of the Spirit in its revela- 
 tions! Singular indeed that men should concern 
 themselves more about a literal Jonah, and espe- 
 cially about the particulars of his life in the 
 whale's belly, than about the principle the story 
 was given to enforce! Is it of any great moment 
 whether there was an historical "Samaritan" who 
 relieved the wounded man on the Jericho road? We 
 know the underlying truth has been often exem- 
 plified. So our belief or disbelief in the historicity 
 of the man Job is not the great concern in our in- 
 terpretation of the book, but how far we catch 
 the import of the grave questions which the book 
 discusses. Drop out mythical King Arthur, yet 
 we have in the "Idyls of the King" one of the most 
 powerful pronouncements on Sense and Soul that 
 any language contains. 
 
 The mention of Tennyson's "Idyls of the 
 King" leads to the suggestion that the Book of 
 Job bears a relationship to "In Memoriam," which 
 has been, so far as I know, overlooked. In making 
 a comparison of the two productions, we gain a 
 point of view from which I conceive the Book of 
 Job can be seen in its development. Not that the 
 English poet had in thought the Hebrew writer 
 when he gave us his evolution of sorrow as well as 
 its analysis ; but because affliction as experienced 
 
JOB 5 
 
 by different souls will take much the same form 
 and in its development will follow in any age much 
 the same course, we have this interesting parallel. 
 Tennyson's poem was born, as all know, of a 
 crushing sorrow. Arthur Hallam's death was the 
 occasion of its being written, but the moving cause 
 was to ease the poet's heart: 
 
 For the unquiet heart and brain, 
 A use in measured language lies; 
 
 and so to wrap himself in words, "as in coarsest 
 cloth against the cold," he sets about to write. 
 Whether men who write "under inspiration" know 
 at the time the full import of their attempts, and 
 the use the world will make of them, is doubtful. 
 It is no reflection upon the author of the Book of 
 Job, or upon Paul the apostle, to say that the 
 books written by both were afterwards used by the 
 world in ways far and beyond what their authors 
 dreamed. We can well understand how an ancient 
 Hebrew writer, convinced that he has found the 
 true secret of affliction, pours out his utterances in 
 "measured language," using different characters 
 to typify different phases of one and the same 
 error, while the hero. Job, moving in a much 
 higher realm, resists them, though he is unable to 
 find the whole truth till God appears, when aU is 
 made plain. We can understand how the author's 
 heart was eased in writing this book, and how with 
 confidence he committed it to the world — feeling 
 that it contained the truth, yet not realizing that 
 
6 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 he had written something which many capable of 
 judging declare is the noblest of all Old Testa- 
 ment books. 
 
 In the development of thought both in the Book 
 of Job and in the "In Memoriam," we meet at the 
 first conventional comforters. Tennyson says 
 friends came to him to say "loss was common;" 
 that "other friends remained" — and with such 
 well-worn phrases showed how far they were from 
 appreciating his grief, and how inadequate were 
 their attempts to comfort him. Their words rather 
 embittered than consoled, and certain parts of the 
 English poet's work sounds much Hke Job's chal- 
 lenge of the Almighty as to why such suflFering as 
 his was ever permitted. 
 
 Both poems have a decided turning point, and it 
 is where the consciousness comes to each man that 
 human help is vain, and that the problem must be 
 worked out by the sufferer alone, relying upon God 
 to aid him. Even further than this we can push 
 our parallel. We see in "In Memoriam" an inti- 
 mation of a better mind when the poet says : 
 
 I hold it true, whate'er befall ; 
 
 I feel it when I sorrow most; 
 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all. 
 
 With this intimation of coming light, we follow 
 the development of thought till the writer becomes 
 prophetic, suggesting Browning in his glad and 
 bright outlook : 
 
JOB 7 
 
 Oj yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill. 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will. 
 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void. 
 
 When God hath made the pile complete. 
 
 We feel sure that after this sentiment Tenny- 
 son will come into the full light; and he does. 
 He finally comes to find his loved Arthur "on the 
 rolling air" and "in the rising sun": he feels him 
 "in each star and fliower," as a power diffused, yet 
 as a personality loved not less but more. Then as 
 the light of morning breaks into the flood of day, 
 God's great purpose is seen, and firm belief in im- 
 mortality swallows up the poet's grief. The close 
 of the poem is one glad song of faith and praise. 
 
 In the Book of Job, long ere we find the patri- 
 arch boldly asserting his faith that God will ap- 
 pear to vindicate him, we see intimations of "turn" 
 in thought. We see the last cable cut that binds 
 him to human aid. We see him at first drifting, 
 till, strengthening himself to meet the cruel waves, 
 he surmounts all successfully, and a prophecy of 
 triumph makes us sure he will triumph, which he 
 finally does. This will be given in more detail 
 later. Suffice it now to say that while Arthur Hal- 
 lam's death brought, by regular development, the 
 pure but not over serious English poet to earnest 
 thought and finally to firm faith in immortality, 
 
8 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 so the afflictions of Job (call him the patriarch or 
 the author of the book) brought him by the same 
 hard but sure way to a faith in God and God's con- 
 trol of all things, till he could say with Paul in the 
 after years: "All things must work together for 
 good to them that love God." 
 
 With this parallel in mind, which by anticipa- 
 tion suggests the view point from which I would 
 interpret the Book of Job, the story of Job is in 
 order. 
 
 The scene opens with a simple but beautiful 
 picture of domestic bliss. The rich Job, with 
 every evidence of favor from fortune, is neverthe- 
 less pure and upright, and thus dear to God. Not 
 only is Satan envious at this, but professes to have 
 no belief in disinterested goodness. To all intelli- 
 gent readers of the Bible it is clear that in dealing 
 with the Satan of Job we are having to do with a 
 personage seen through the medium of the popular 
 belief of the day. As with the parable of the Rich 
 Man and Lazarus, the underlying truths are 
 taught by means of coloring suited to the times. 
 
 If the question be asked, Why did God give 
 heed to Satan and allow such sorrows to come upon 
 Job ? The reply might be made by asking. Why did 
 God permit Israel's choicest souls to endure such 
 afflictions as we find chronicled in the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews? On a grassy lawn at Lexington, 
 Mass., is a rude monument of stone that marks the 
 place where Captain Parker, commanding a little 
 band of Americans in 1776, determined to with- 
 
JOB 9 
 
 stand the oncoming British. His words are en- 
 graved on the simple monument : "If they mean to 
 have war, it might as well begin here." The con- 
 flict was irrepressible. So it would seem that 
 sooner or later some one must meet and success- 
 fully put to silence Satan's contention, if for 
 nothing else, for the sake of those who might be 
 misled by it, that men are righteous from desire 
 to retain or secure temporal good from God. To 
 demonstrate Satan's miscalculations, and incident- 
 ally to show God's guidance when everything ap- 
 pears to be under Satan's control, the powerful 
 forces of evil are permitted to be let loose upon 
 Job. 
 
 The time selected for the onslaught of Satan is 
 the happiest hour in the history of the family — 
 namely, when the children of Job are celebrating 
 the birthday of their oldest brother. There is no 
 premonition of impending danger. We have seen 
 at times a dark cloud from the west marching in 
 the sky, ominous and ugly, and pausing on its 
 way, due to contrary winds, suddenly drop near 
 the earth and hang over a quiet settlement of 
 happy homes in a mountain valley, while from the 
 bosom of the sky came crash after crash, as light- 
 nings were poured forth upon the earth, till it 
 would seem God himself had forgotten to protect 
 His children from nature's wrathful forces. So we 
 find the disasters in the case of Job coming not 
 singly. 
 
10 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 But as though they watched and waited. 
 Scanning one another's motions; 
 When the first descends, the others 
 Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise. 
 Till the air is dark with anguish. 
 
 The prosperous and God-fearing Job arises in a 
 few hours to find himself childless, bereft of prop- 
 erty, and stunned beyond expression at the pitiless 
 strokes of the God whom he has ever honored. 
 
 How long Satan waited to make the second at- 
 tack is not told. But still professing to believe 
 that if Job's body is tortured and his life despaired 
 of, he will forsake his faith in God, the Adversary 
 receives permission to let loose other afflictions. 
 It is now well understood that the peculiar bodily 
 malady of Job was a form of leprosy which 
 was a most revolting thing, and was especially, 
 in that day, taken as a sure sign of God's dis- 
 pleasure. He who saw that disease, must be 
 convinced thereby that God convicted the man so 
 cursed of unconfessed sin. Afflicted with this 
 loathsome curse, in spite of his having hitherto 
 kept his integrity, Job goes down into darkness 
 with even his wife advising him boldly to assert 
 that God had been unjust to him. 
 
 We come now to where the emphasis must fall in 
 reading the Book of Job. What has been said so 
 far is but the framework. The discourses that 
 consume most of the book occupy much the same 
 place here that the story of ^neas occupies in Vir- 
 gil's great epic, where we see a condition created 
 
JOB 11 
 
 with purpose to give the hero an opportunity to 
 tell the story of the taking of Troy. So this He- 
 brew genius, with an instinct for a "sympathetic" 
 situation, ingulfs a man in dire aflSictions and then 
 calls to the scene the wisdom and the theodicy of 
 the day, and allows it to do its best to solve the 
 problem as to the meaning of suffering like this. 
 Well may we imagine the peculiar satisfaction the 
 author of this great poem had in doing what 
 Dante afterwards did when the Italian poet placed 
 some Florentines in hell that he might show to 
 mankind how superficial, if not positively culpable, 
 was the spirit that assumed to judge men and mor- 
 als in that day ! Who can doubt that EUphaz, 
 Bildad, and Zophar were but convenient names to 
 impersonate certain doctors of the law and prod- 
 igies of wisdom in the author's day — men from 
 whom he had suffered much, but who, like incom- 
 petent physicians, aggravated rather than healed 
 his wounds.? What a stroke of art to place these 
 men thus in the piUory to be ever afterwards 
 gazed upon and laughed at for their pretensions as 
 well as for their incompetence ! Conventional com- 
 forters, they were! They professed to be able to 
 solve the mystery of the ages, as to why God per- 
 mits such suffering as we see man enduring. Job's 
 afflictions gave the coveted opportunity, and they 
 gladly availed themselves of it; and the deliver- 
 ances of these men, which consume the greater 
 part of the Book of Job, make an open show of 
 their inability to cope with the situation. 
 
12 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Notwithstanding the length of the discourses of 
 Job's friends, as well as the number of them, the 
 principles involved are few, and smaJl space only 
 need be taken to get an idea of their import. One 
 can hardly suppose these men, upon coming to 
 visit Job, were altogether ignorant of the charac- 
 ter of their friend's misfortunes. But the sight 
 which met their eyes — the utter wretchedness, and 
 worse, the manifest evidence of God's displeasure 
 as shown in the character of Job's disease — de- 
 prived them of speech for the time. The "seven 
 days" silence might have continued indefinitely 
 had not Job broken it. When he did, however, the 
 perplexity of his friends developed into amaze- 
 ment. His words sounded to them as blasphemous. 
 He who in happier days calmly philosophized with 
 them on the wisdom of God in ruling the world, 
 and, it may be, sympathized to an extent with their 
 notions of retribution, has now deserted the time- 
 worn and age-tried paths and is at variance with 
 the world's ripest wisdom. Genung has well said: 
 "The first feeling of a soul plunged thus into un- 
 deserved misery we can readily divine — ^the sense 
 of utter bewilderment." Doubtless the very si- 
 lence of the patriarch's friends had a significance 
 he was quick enough to perceive. He knew their 
 theories, and that they had their eyes and thoughts 
 on the telltale disease which had revealed Job's real 
 trouble. He saw they were not disposed to adjust 
 their theories to changed conditions. Something 
 in their unsympathetic looks occasioned an out- 
 
JOB 13 
 
 burst from him that is one of the most agonizing 
 cries ever wrung from mortal lips. His is the ex- 
 perience, he says, of one whose "way is hid" — 
 whose sighs and groans are poured out in vain. 
 He would blot out the day upon which he was 
 bom, and gladly be hid in the grave, even if it 
 meant annihilation. 
 
 Eliphaz, probably the oldest and the wisest of 
 the three friends, is first to speak. He says with 
 more consideration what the others afterwards say 
 in substance. We are impressed with the didac- 
 tic style of the Temanite, and see through all he 
 says that he conceives it to be his duty to "deal 
 with" Job, in order to bring him to a better mind. 
 The theory running through all that Job's 
 friends say might be summed up thus : If afiliction 
 comes, it is a sure sign of man's sin. If man wiU 
 acknowledge his sin, and bow submissively to God, 
 evil fortune acts as a corrective — as chastisement 
 — and the man will recover his former prosperous 
 state. But if a man rebels, or fails to acknowledge 
 that his affliction comes of his personal sin, he 
 thereby proves he is far gone from righteousness. 
 Eliphaz proceeds to reprove Job's unwillingness to 
 admit and submit. Nothing could be more poignant 
 than his concealed method of revealing his mind to 
 Job: 
 
 Bethink thee now: who that was guiltless hath per- 
 ished ? 
 And where have the upright been cut off? 
 As I have seen — they that plow iniquity 
 And that sow wickedness, reap the same. 
 
14 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 He will not say that Job has been guilty of sow- 
 ing wickedness, or plowing iniquity, but the cruel 
 "As I have seen" provides an ambush for the man 
 who would shoot such a dart. 
 
 The same spirit of insinuation is seen in his fur- 
 ther words concerning the course Job should pur- 
 sue. The speaker does not in a straightforward 
 manner tell Job to make his peace with God, but 
 says: 
 
 But I, I, would seek unto God, 
 
 And unto the Mightiest would I commit my cause. 
 
 The sum of the entire utterance is : "Your peculiar 
 afllictions demonstrate that God has found you out, 
 for nothing like this happens to perfectly right- 
 eous men. If I were in your place I would con- 
 fess my sin, make reparation, and then find that 
 the very stones of the field, as well as the beasts 
 thereof, will be at peace and in league with you: 
 you shall go to your grave like a sheaf garnered 
 in its season." Very good advice under some cir- 
 cumstances, and good for a "text" when conditions 
 justify; but wide of the mark in Job's case. 
 
 Bildad follows, after Job's reply, in words less 
 conciliatory, for Eliphaz's wisdom has not been 
 effective. The second friend indeed hesitates not 
 to say what the other no doubt felt — 
 
 If thy children have sinned against Him, 
 So hath he given them over into the hand of their 
 transgression ; 
 
JOB 15 
 
 which is to give utterance to about as cruel a sen- 
 timent as one can well conceive: "Your children 
 are in league with you in iniquity, and God has 
 first destroyed them to give you warning — your 
 time is coming next." Alas, that from the pulpit 
 we hear an occasional Bildad expressing himself 
 thus, to the confusion of some poor sorrowing 
 soul! 
 
 If Bildad is rude, Zophar is dogmatic. His 
 speeches are but two in number and both brief. 
 His contention is that Job's "babblings" should be 
 put to silence, and his assertion of guiltlessness 
 in God's sight develops something like frenzy in 
 this reverend gentleman. He would have God ap- 
 pear, and thus shame Job's pretentiousness. Zo- 
 phar spoke truly as did the other friends, save 
 that their truth rooted in untruth kept them falsely 
 true. The sequel shows that when God did ap- 
 pear. Job acted much as Zophar said he would, 
 yet Zophar's confusion was much more than Job's. 
 A nice distinction must be noted here. When Jesus 
 said, "The words I speak unto you, they are 
 spirit and they are Hfe," he indicated that much 
 concerning God's relation to man (and this in- 
 cludes doctrine) cannot be confined within the 
 boundaries of forms to be repeated from genera- 
 tion to generation. On the other hand, to use a 
 well-known and beautiful illustration, trust must 
 ever 
 
 Leave its low-vaulted past, 
 
 That each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 
16 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Shut it from heaven by a dome more vast, 
 
 Till it at length is full. 
 Leaving its outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 
 Holmes "Chambered Nautilus" 
 
 Job's friends belonged to that class of exas- 
 perating men who cannot see what the philosopher 
 Hegel contended for, namely, "Truth is made up 
 of contradictions." Had Paul been "consistent," 
 he would not have been the man for the great work 
 to which God called him. So when Zophar says, 
 
 O that God would speak, 
 And open his lips against thee, 
 
 he is at once giving the true solution to Job's 
 troubles, and at the same time giving expression to 
 what was false as well as heartlessly unapprecia- 
 tive of Job's attitude to God. We must believe 
 that the author of the great drama we are discuss- 
 ing meant to give the "friends" credit for much 
 sincerity. His particular aim was to show the in- 
 adequateness of the best the world had to give on 
 a subject so vital to mankind. Incidentally he 
 would show how cruel men become by being linked 
 to mere traditional opinions concerning God's at- 
 titude to man. Friends may under such circum- 
 stances become positive tormentors. God may be 
 caricatured by His very defenders. Well might a 
 prophet, probably living in the very age that pro- 
 duced the Book of Job, cry out, "Is there no balm 
 in Gilead; is there no physician there?" 
 
 Job's replies to his friends show how carefully 
 
JOB 17 
 
 the book was planned. Not till all have spoken 
 does the afflicted man see the utter barrenness of 
 their theories, and not till then does he detect that, 
 as physicians in their diagnosis, they have not un- 
 derstood his case. This revelation gives Job both 
 comfort and courage. In the twelfth chapter we 
 see the turning point, where the sufferer changes 
 his attitude to his professed comforters and says: 
 
 Of a truth, ye are the people. 
 
 And wisdom will die with you! 
 
 I also have understanding, as well as you ; 
 
 I am not inferior to you; 
 
 And who knoweth not things like these? 
 
 Later on he says : 
 
 Patchers-up of nothings are ye all. 
 Would that ye were silent altogether ! 
 
 How plain the real situation now! Conventional 
 wisdom, in phrases that are worn threadbare, is 
 repeating itself over and over in application to a 
 case where it does not apply ! Verily, the Book of 
 Job does not wholly belong to the list of "ancient" 
 volumes ! 
 
 Let us now turn to what is the very heart of the 
 book, if the interpretation I suggest is the proper 
 one. I have referred to a comparison between the 
 "In Memoriam" and the Book of Job. Tennyson's 
 liberty as well as incentive to think for himself 
 came with his consciousness that friends could not 
 help him. So we find Job in much the same situa- 
 tion. And as the intimation of a better mind and 
 
18 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 a more hopeful view of all things came to Tenny- 
 son ere he prophetically announced his conviction 
 that all would be well, so in Job we find two ex- 
 pressions related to each other as a streak of day 
 might be related to full dawn. If we translate 
 chapter xiv. 14 as in our Authorized Version, the 
 suggestion made here as to its being a pivotal ex- 
 pression still abides ; but if we translate as Genung 
 (whose version I am using in aU quotations), the 
 connection appears clearly, while the translation 
 itself is the most reasonable one I have seen sug- 
 gested : 
 
 If a man die — might he live again, 
 (Then) All the days of my service would I wait, 
 Until my renewal came; 
 Thou wouldst call, and I would answer ; 
 Thou wouldst yearn after the work of Thy 
 
 hands ! 
 For then wouldst Thou number my steps. 
 
 This entire passage is put provisionally, and hints 
 at what wiU follow in the development of Job's 
 thought. Bearing in mind that at the time this 
 book was written the doctrine of man's living 
 again was not what it was even when the Book of 
 Daniel was given to the world; and that, further- 
 more, the individual writer, on account of his affic- 
 tions, may have had to do as many men to-day 
 must do — explore for himself ground that he had 
 learned to believe in from what others had told 
 him; in any case, hope that God will yet make 
 plain what He had suifered to come upon this man. 
 
JOB 19 
 
 is beginning to appear and takes the form of a 
 provisional expression, which in its turn promises 
 something more decided. 
 
 When the nineteenth chapter is reached, Job has 
 touched the bottom of his despair and the author 
 has half completed his book. The well-known "re- 
 deemer" passage marks both Job's Gethsemane and 
 his Mount of Transfiguration. Is it fanciful to 
 suggest that the author of the Book of Job would 
 have us learn through the development of this re- 
 markable character that men grow prophetic when 
 the hours are darkest.? When flesh and heart fail, 
 and human aid has long since shown that its arms 
 are too short to be of avail ; when the world's best 
 wisdom cannot discern our real state, much less 
 guide our steps ; when, if there be a God, He must, 
 as He did in case of enslaved Israel, appear to 
 champion the cause of the oppressed, — is it too 
 much to say this Hebrew poet would here enforce 
 the well-known formula by a vivid illustration that 
 "man's extremity is God's opportunity".'' Job's 
 provisional and hesitating expression now gives 
 place to a firm conviction that God will appear to 
 vindicate him. We simply must believe that our 1611 
 translators have read into Job xix. 25 a meaning 
 that while at this day it is literally true, as a state- 
 ment of doctrine, and will ever be sacred to us in 
 its present form, is not a faithful rendering of 
 Job's words. Perhaps the text has been tampered 
 with, as many proofs indicate. Our Authorized 
 Version has inserted Italics to fill in the gaps, both 
 
20 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 to give any meaning at all to the passage and to 
 make it say what the translators wished it to say. 
 Witness the rendering of LXX. if one would see 
 how remote from what we take the words to mean 
 this translation puts us : "I know that he is eternal 
 who is about to deliver me, and to raise up upon the 
 earth my skin that endures these afflictions; for 
 these things have been accomplished to me of the 
 Lord, which I am conscious of in myself, which 
 mine eye hath seen, and not another, but all have 
 been fulfilled to me in my bosom." One can almost 
 safely say that only a biblical reader with a keen 
 eye would recognize in this translation the hallowed 
 words used in our Burial Service! And yet this 
 very translation — from the version used most by 
 the apostles of Christ — contains, though in awk- 
 ward phraseology, what Job really meant to say. 
 At least, we see here a key to an interpretation 
 which puts us in position to see the Book of Job in 
 its unity and development. 
 
 Surely the writer of the book knew where he 
 would carry his hero and through what way. The 
 final expression, "Now mine eye seeth Thee," 
 which he makes Job say in ecstasy at the close of 
 the book, was not an afterthought of the writer. 
 A glimpse of the truth, as seen in chapter xiv., is 
 followed by a firm conviction that God will come 
 to the rescue; and that conviction is so decided, 
 the sufferer would have his words inscribed by an 
 iron pen on a rock. The prophecy of God's com- 
 ing to vindicate eventuates in His actual manifesta- 
 
JOB 21 
 
 tion. Shall we then translate the "redeemer" pas- 
 sage as referring to Job's belief in the resurrec- 
 tion, or perhaps his conviction that somewhere 
 "out of his flesh" he would see God? He saw God 
 m his flesh. Why not so translate it? Granted 
 that in prophecy a man is speaking words whose 
 meaning is more or less obscure, but as we here 
 see the different steps in the development of Job's 
 confidence, we can easily believe that all these 
 steps had reference to the glorious consummation 
 of the book — ^the sight of God and Job's conse- 
 quent vindication. Samuel Wesley on his death- 
 bed put his hand on his son Charles and spoke 
 truly of a revival that would come to the Church 
 in England. Intuitions to serious and spiritual 
 people are of the nature of prophecy. The writer 
 of this Hebrew drama knew this, and makes Job 
 speak of coming events, whose shadows were even 
 at the time being cast before. 
 
 With translation upon translation before me 
 from different scholars, and after having studied 
 with experts the original, I would not pretend to 
 give another, but embodying several of them, give 
 a suggestion as to the probable meaning of this 
 famous passage that speaks of Job's coming deliv- 
 erance. And while what follows is rather a para- 
 phrase, it embodies ideas suggested particularly in 
 the LXX., the translations of Genung and David- 
 son, and especially the renderings suggested in 
 their notes on the text in question: "I know that 
 my Advocate — ^Avenger — ^liveth, and that sooner 
 
22 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 or later He will stand at my side ; and though this 
 disease has destroyed my very skin, yet in my 
 flesh I shall see God, whom mine eyes shall behold 
 — a stranger no more." 
 
 The unity of the Book of Job, then, is seen in 
 its plunging a man into such peculiar afflictions as 
 become vmfathomable to the theodicy of the 
 writer's day. A man thus cut off from human aid 
 and wisdom seeks a solution of the mystery as to 
 why God permits such things. The doctrine of 
 God's care for His children, and consequently an 
 assurance that if God cares, God will not destroy, 
 is developed till it asserts that He will appear to 
 viadicate His faithful ones, here or hereafter — ex- 
 pressed purposely by the author in obscure 
 phraseology. But God does actually appear in 
 the story, which makes us incline to the belief that 
 the author meant that we take Job's utterance as 
 referring to such a manifestation of the Advocate 
 while Job was in the flesh. Or, more to the point, 
 that whatever his "Job" was made to say, the 
 author of the book intended that his prophecy 
 should be fulfilled actually and literally while Job 
 was yet ahve. 
 
 I have purposely omitted to speak of Elihu; 
 yet, whatever is made of his place in the book, the 
 unity of the same is not affected — at least as far 
 as I have seen any characterization of the man and 
 his place. 
 
 A very suggestive fact yet remains to be noticed, 
 namely: the appearance of the Lord to Job does 
 
JOB 23 
 
 not carry with it any explanation of Job's calam- 
 ities. Does not the author of our book mean to 
 tell us that God does not explain His purpose in 
 His dealings with us? What He does we often 
 know not iww. Suffice it to say that God sees and 
 knows all. And most beautifully and faithfully is 
 the truth brought out in the humility and submis- 
 sion of Job ere God has healed his leprosy or re- 
 stored to him anything he has lost. Here is the 
 answer to Satan: Give a good man the vision of 
 God, and he is content to suffer and to wait. Per- 
 haps the gladdest day of Job's life up tiU then 
 was when God appeared, and while the loathsome 
 disease was still upon him, he yet could say: "I 
 know that Thou canst do everything, and that no 
 thought can be withholden from Thee." 
 
II 
 
 PLATO: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 Lake Geneva, to appearance, is the source of 
 the Rhone river. Further observation, however, 
 reveals that the Rhone enters the lake at its ex- 
 treme east and flows like a tide to the opposite end. 
 Other mountain torrents also, whose beginnings 
 must be sought far back in the snow-clad peaks 
 of western Switzerland, contribute their share 
 towards making the lake a huge reservoir, which 
 in turn receives these streams, unifies and purifies 
 their turbid waters — ^then sends them forth in a 
 river so clear and invigorating that the new Rhone 
 gushing out at the west of Lake Geneva has little 
 in common with the muddy torrent of the same 
 name which entered the lake at the east. 
 
 This, in figure, illustrates to some degree the 
 place and influence of Plato in philosophy. He 
 seems at first to be the fountain-head of philoso- 
 phy. We soon discover, however, not only the 
 Socratic spirit which Hke a tide flows through all 
 Platonic writings, but we see furthermore that 
 Plato has become a receptacle as well as trans- 
 former of all the streams of philosophic thought 
 before him — even those whose beginnings are to 
 be traced to the far east. In him they meet, are 
 purified, and finally go forth from him as a majes- 
 tic river to enrich the world. 
 
 M 
 
PLATO 25 
 
 PLATO, THE MAN 
 
 Plato came of noble ancestors. On his father's 
 side he had the blood of Codrus in his veins ; on his 
 mother's, that of Solon. Such a man might ap- 
 propriately be the author of the Republic and the 
 Laws, as well as be regarded one of the most 
 kingly of men. 
 
 As far as dates and places can in his case be re- 
 lied upon, his birth year was 427 B. C, at Athens. 
 He died in his eighty-first year, having been an au- 
 thor for fifty years. 
 
 Plato was by inheritance an aristocrat and by 
 taste and tendency an artist and poet. If he was 
 austere, or as G. H. Lewes says, really melancholy, 
 this came of a richly sensuous nature chastened by 
 culture. His connection with Socrates began in his 
 twentieth year, and for eight or ten years Plato 
 was to Socrates what John the beloved disciple was 
 to Jesus. Indeed there is a fascinating parallel 
 just here, both in the temperaments of the two dis- 
 ciples and in their methods of giving to the world 
 the thoughts of their respective teachers. If John 
 was the eagle-eyed, no less was Plato. If one was 
 a mystic, so was the other. But when we read the 
 writings of the two men we are struck with the 
 fact common to both, viz., that they cared much 
 more for the spirit than for the letter of the teach- 
 ing of their masters. The world wiU never know 
 when Plato is quoting Socrates, and when he is. 
 putting Socrates' thought in Plato's own words ; 
 just as we do not know where to draw the line be- 
 
26 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 tween the direct utterances of Jesus and the spirit 
 of Jesus uttered forth in the words of John him- 
 self. 
 
 At the death of Socrates, whose tragic end would 
 have sobered a far less sensitive man, Plato seems 
 to have withdrawn to Magara, in order perhaps 
 to escape persecution and possibly to continue 
 his philosophic studies under Euclides. After a 
 short stay there, he is supposed to have journeyed 
 to Egypt and Cyrene. Upon returning to Athens 
 he engaged in teaching and writing to some extent, 
 and again set forth on one of his many journeys, 
 this time to Lower Italy and Sicily. 
 
 Many who have written "lives" of Plato or com- 
 mented at length on his works, have delighted to 
 discover how each visit made its particular impres- 
 sion on the philosopher, and some have pretended 
 to classify his works according to the schedule of 
 his travels. AU we can be sure of as to the influ- 
 ence of these various tours abroad is that Plato 
 was certainly broadened by them, and that they 
 did have a tendency to correct the philosopher in 
 regard to some of his extreme positions. Aristotle 
 is our authority for asserting that Plato from his 
 youth had been acquainted with Cratylus and the 
 opinions of Haraclitus ; but that his contact with 
 "Italic" philosophy (by which term Aristotle has 
 reference to the Pythagorean and Eleatic schools) 
 had considerably modified his views. 
 
 At the age of forty-five or thereabout Plato 
 took up his permanent residence in his native 
 
PLATO 27 
 
 city, and consecrated the now famous public 
 garden, the "Academia," to the study of philoso- 
 phy. Authorities diiFer as to whether the Acad- 
 emy represented hard thinking, or whether the 
 way of learning was made a flowery path. Ritter 
 says the school was the meeting place of "the 
 higher classes who had no other object than to 
 enhance the enjoyment of their privileges and 
 wealth." Others think the master's lectures de- 
 manded great power of abstraction and were really 
 severe exercises in dialectics. It is agreed that he 
 taught gratuitously and that even women in dis- 
 guise attended his lectures. Not all will agree with 
 Lewes in saying, "he had many admirers but 
 scarcely any friends." We had rather take the 
 view of ZeUer who pictures him as "an ideal intel- 
 lect, developed into moral beauty in harmonious 
 equipoise of all its powers, and elevated in Olym- 
 pian cheerfulness above change and decay." 
 
 PliATO's WRITINGS 
 
 The Platonic writings have come down to us 
 practically in their integrity. We may have 
 more than Plato wrote, but it is not probable that 
 anything of note which was his has been lost. His 
 writings are all in the form of dialogues, some 
 more dramatic than others. Jowett says that as 
 the metaphysical interest increases the dramatic 
 power diminishes. This would be natural. 
 
 It is possible that we have a hint in Phaedrus 
 with which to reply to the question, Why did Plato 
 
28 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 write in dialogue? He says there that writing is 
 like painting; if you ask either a question they 
 preserve silence ; if you interrogate they have only 
 their first answer to give. Plato had seen and felt 
 the immense influence of Socrates and had been con- 
 vinced of the superiority of conversation over 
 reading, both because the mind is more or less pas- 
 sive in reading, and because the listener in conver- 
 sation has a chance to have the truth put in other 
 forms by requesting it. In addition to this, Soc- 
 rates' method, which Plato strictly adheres to, was 
 that of leading his disciples out of the labyrinths 
 of confused mental states into the region of clear 
 thinking by question and definition. Plato, no 
 doubt, saw that the best substitute for this sort of 
 conversation was tiie dialogue, where the writer 
 could anticipate and answer the questions of the 
 reader. 
 
 Many attempts have been made to classify 
 Plato's writings, yet hardly any two agree upon 
 a basis upon which to work. For ordinary pur- 
 poses the reader of Plato receives more satisfac- 
 tion from knowing that of the most famous dia- 
 logues, the Republic discusses the ideal State with 
 reference especially to its realizing Justice; the 
 Symposium discusses philosophic Love; the Phae- 
 drus discusses true and false Rhetoric ; the Protag- 
 oras, the Socratic view of Virtue; the Timaeus, 
 the Origin of the world; the Theaetetus, the most 
 metaphysical of all the dialogues, discusses Theo- 
 ries of Knowledge ; Phaedo, the Immortality of the 
 Soul. 
 
PLATO 29 
 
 If one would select famous or beautiful passages 
 from Plato's works, or attempt to stress certain 
 dialogues as representing the Platonic doctrine in 
 its essence, quite a book would result. No one be- 
 gins to read the Apology or Phaedo without com- 
 pleting them — ^they are short and exceptionally 
 beautiful. Everybody who is at all familiar with 
 Plato knows the famous seventh chapter of the Re- 
 public, containing as it does the figure of the Men 
 in the Cave, and illustrating the author's peculiar 
 doctrines better than perhaps any one image he 
 uses. The Phaedrus contains the prayer of Soc- 
 rates to the god Pan, as well as the myth of the 
 Chariot of the Soul. Theaetetus gives us the oft- 
 quoted image of the Mid-wife, to which Socrates 
 likened himself, and also the figure of the Caged 
 Birds. In Timaeus we have the myth of The Cre- 
 ation of Man ; in Critias, that of The Island of At- 
 lantis, and in the tenth book of the Republic, The 
 Story of Er. 
 
 For his peculiar Doctrine of Ideas the reader 
 must take Plato as a whole, for this doctrine per- 
 meates aU he wrote, yet we might specify particu- 
 larly Phaedo, the Symposium, certain books of the 
 Republic and above all Phaedrus. Of all the dia- 
 logues perhaps the Republic is the most finished 
 and the most famous. 
 
 PLATO AND PEE-SOCBATIC PHILOSOPHY 
 
 In speaking of the influence of pre-Socratic 
 thought on Plato we take up the schools of phil- 
 
30 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 osophy not in their chronological order, but in the 
 order in which they affected Plato. It has been 
 already intimated at the opening of this chapter, 
 that Plato was a kind of reservoir for all the 
 streams of thought before him. Now it may be 
 asked: In what order did they flow into him? 
 
 We know that Cratylus was Plato's teacher be- 
 fore the latter came under the influence of Socra- 
 tes; and Cratylus was to an extent, at least, a 
 Heraclitan. Aristotle tells us that Plato was 
 familiar with Heraclitus from his youth. We know 
 he never fully freed himself from Heraclitan influ- 
 ence, as his dialogues testify. We have here there- 
 fore, it would seem, the first decided influence on 
 our philosopher. 
 
 Heraclitus, an Ephesian and contemporary with 
 Parmenides, belongs to that class of philosophers 
 known as Physicists. He flourished about the 
 close of the sixth century, B. C, and made a pro- 
 found impression on Greek thought. He regarded 
 the world of sense as a perpetual delusion; what 
 we perceive is simply phenomena. Man h«is no 
 certain knowledge, but God has ; but as human in- 
 telligence is but a portion of the Universal Intelli- 
 gence, it follows that it must ever be imperfect, yet 
 humanity as a whole approximates the truth more 
 nearly than does any individual man. Man is both 
 right and wrong in his affirmations — for truth is 
 known but in part. Hegel's doctrine, "Being and 
 Not-being is the same" is Heraclitan. Perhaps 
 the doctrine of Heraclitus is best known by the 
 
PLATO 31 
 
 phrase "perpetual flux." As the principle of all 
 things was conceived to be Fire — ^in the sense of 
 Warmth or Ether, — ^the visible things of creation 
 were in a perpetual change from this to some other 
 form of this underlying principle or element, and 
 then again to their original form. We never cross 
 the same river twice; nothing is abiding, but all 
 things may be characterized as Becoming. The 
 doctrine of Heraclitus stands in marked contrast 
 with that of the Eleatics, best represented by Par- 
 menides, who taught that our senses deceive us 
 when they represent everything as changing. The 
 Eleatics were apostles of Stability: Heraclitus and 
 his school, of Change. Plato knew of both these 
 schools, and was affected by both. 
 
 Passing for the moment the direct influence of 
 Socrates, which followed close upon Plato's study 
 under Cratylus, we note the philosophy of the 
 Eleatics as perhaps next in order affecting Plato. 
 
 The founder of this school was Xenophanes, 
 whose chief tenet was philosophical monotheism, 
 but a monotheism which was pantheism. He was 
 born about 620 B. C. He taught that God is 
 the one immutable and immovable Being, but not 
 personal; the One Existence has many modes, but 
 these modes are merely manifestations of the one 
 God. Carried out to its legitimate end, this doc- 
 trine, which contrasts sharply with that of Hera- 
 clitus, teaches that at least the central principle 
 of the universe is stable. Parmenides, the illus- 
 trious disciple of Xenophanes, and a man much 
 
32 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 revered by Plato, taught in contradistinction to 
 Heraclitus, that change is a delusion; that as 
 all things are but a manifestation of Being or 
 God, and as Being is unchangeable, the senses 
 deceive us when they lead us to believe in origin 
 and decay. Parmenides, who is well known to 
 readers of Plato because of the dialogue named 
 for him and because of his criticisms of Plato's 
 Doctrine of Ideas, opposed strongly the idea of 
 Non-being. He made distinctions btetween 
 thoughts derived from opinion or from things as 
 they seem, and thought derived from reason — ^the 
 latter as absolutely true, the former merely illu- 
 sory. As Being and Thought (reasoned thought) 
 are identical, Parmenides is in a sense the founder 
 of Idealism. Certainly we see how he re-appears 
 in Plato. 
 
 Concerning Zeno, pupil of Parmenides, and 
 Gorgias, pupil of Zeno, nothing need be said, save 
 that the first was the controversialist of the Ele- 
 atic school, and is introduced into the dialogue of 
 Parmenides as a sharp dialectician; while, as 
 Weber puts it, Gorgias' extravagance turned the 
 Eleatic doctrine to the Heraclitean principle: 
 Being is nothing. Becoming is everything. 
 
 One more influence is yet to be noted which per- 
 haps even more than any save that of Socrates 
 himself, affected Plato — that is the Pythagorean. 
 
 As this sketch is not a history of philosophy, I 
 give only in briefest form the salient doctrines of 
 those who are supposed to have been the intellec- 
 
PLATO 33 
 
 tual ancestors of Plato. Of the man Pythagoras 
 little is known. Zeller puts his birth at 580 
 B. C, and it is well known that he dwelt in 
 lower Italy and gave thus to his philosophy the 
 name "Italic." How far he was acquainted with 
 the mysteries and philosophical speculations of the 
 East we can not tell. There can be little doubt 
 that Pythagoras founded a sort of philosophic 
 brotherhood, and that the Pythagoreans had their 
 peculiar guilds long after the head of the organi- 
 zation died. 
 
 The attempt of the founder and his followers 
 was to shape human life in an orderly and har- 
 monious manner. Beginning in all probability 
 with the thought of harmony in tones, they were 
 led by this to the basis of Pythagorean philosophy, 
 viz., that number is the essence of things. Their 
 theory concerning odd and even numbers was car- 
 ried so far that in ethics and in the domain of rea- 
 son and intelligence, they did not hesitate to say : 
 "Things are the copies of number." 
 
 Pythagoras taught the eastern doctrine of 
 transmigration of souls, and consequently the 
 soul's pre-existence. We know how large a place 
 this has in Plato's theorizing. Pythagoras said 
 the soul was a nomad, a unit, but self -moved. As 
 far as it was moved it was imperfect, hence the 
 strife to regain its state of perfection. The dis- 
 tinction of the three powers of the soul, Reason, 
 Intelligence, Passion, may be traced to the Pytha- 
 gorean analysis. 
 
34 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 How far did Plato borrow from this Italian 
 philosophy? The doctrine of the relation of the 
 world of sense to ideas is substantially identical 
 with the Pythagorean doctrine of the relation of 
 phenomena to numbers. Plato says things "par- 
 ticipate in ideas"; Pythagoras says, "things imi- 
 tate numbers." 
 
 Prof. Ritchie calls attention to the fact that 
 when we turn to the dialogues of Plato in which 
 he seems to differ most radically from what we 
 know from Xenophon and Aristotle that Socrates 
 taught, these are decidedly Pythagorean in their 
 cast. For example, Meno contains a more fully de- 
 veloped theory of knowledge than Protagoras, but 
 it also contains the doctrine of "recollection" — 
 the notion of pre-existence. In Gorgias we find 
 justice explained in mathematical language ; 
 Phaedo and the Republic have the Pythagorean 
 cosmology as the background of their visions of 
 another life. Ritchie seems to think that the Py- 
 thagorean "way of life," to which Plato refers, 
 suggested a model upon which the latter con- 
 structed his ideal state. In Tvmaeus, the work in 
 which Plato elaborates his philosophy of nature, 
 the whole discourse is put in the mouth of a Py- 
 thagorean. 
 
 Perhaps the spirit of the Pythagoreans affected 
 Plato as much as any of the details of the system. 
 The doctrine was dreamy; gave full sway to the 
 imagination; taught immortality, and hinted at 
 retribution; was idealistic in that mathematical 
 
PLATO 35 
 
 abstractions became the basis of things. If the 
 ideal triangle or circle was the true one and not 
 the triangle or circle of the carpenter, then why 
 is not the ideal man, or tree, the true one, and not 
 what we perceive by means of our senses ? 
 
 When we come to speak of the influence of Soc- 
 rates upon Plato, we enter upon ground that is 
 not only debatable and debated, but also upon 
 what is both tantalizing and tempting. The 
 theologian sees in the debate as to how far the 
 Socrates of Xenophon was the Socrates of Plato 
 but another form of the controversy he has been 
 familiar with, which grew out of the conception 
 Paul seemed to have of Christianity as contrasted 
 with the conception which the evangelists, and 
 especially the synoptists, received from Jesus. 
 I have said elsewhere in this chapter that Plato 
 is like St. John, in catching the spirit of his 
 Master; he is also like Paul in that he develops 
 the thoughts of his Master to such propor- 
 tions that many are disposed to say both inter- 
 preters have misconceived or even contradicted 
 their respective originals. It has been already 
 shown that Plato was affected and perhaps greatly 
 influenced by other teachers than Socrates; but 
 it seems quite unnecessary to assume that because 
 Xenophon, a plain soldier, saw a much more sim- 
 ple man in Socrates than Plato makes him to be, 
 that Xenophon's characterization is the correct 
 one and that Plato has idealized Socrates beyond 
 
36 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 all recognition. We take the ground here which 
 we take in the bible controversy: there is really 
 no conflict between the two pictures drawn of the 
 two Teachers. If Mark makes Jesus very human, 
 while John, and especially Paul, show us the di- 
 vine almost exclusively, there is no conflict: Jesus 
 was both. And Socrates was a man so capacious 
 and rich as to have for Plato what Xenophon did 
 not perceive. 
 
 Aside from that impalpable thing we call 
 "spirit," which one man catches from another and 
 which can never be measured or defined, and which 
 in this instance must be given a very large place, 
 — we are sure that Plato seized and held all his 
 days to the Method of Socrates. And perhaps the 
 best thing the great Athenian gave to the world 
 was his Method. If Socrates seemed to attach 
 little value to the natural sciences, the probable 
 reason was that he was so interested in ethics as 
 to practically lose himself in that study. 
 
 As a basis for his ethical reforms Socrates took 
 the ground that no man is voluntarily bad; that 
 wrong-doing is due to ignorance; that in conse- 
 quence it is impossible to do right without knowl- 
 edge — hence he tried to reform life by true knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 The step is but a small one to identify Virtue 
 and Knowledge if knowledge is sure to make one 
 virtuous. But how is one to attain to knowledge? 
 " Know thyself" is the motto, but how realize it.-* 
 No man can affirm anything true about a subject 
 
PLATO 37 
 
 until he has a concept of it. He must tnow what 
 it is in its unalterable nature. Knowledge must 
 begin then in fixing concepts ; but this led to com- 
 parison of mind with mind by a common inquiry, 
 "in order to prove himself and the rest of world." 
 Hence the dialectic of Socrates. 
 
 Plato practically endorses and appropriates all 
 the Socratic method and belief. When we pass on 
 to the peculiar ideas of an ideal State, or when we 
 draw out fully the doctrine of Plato concerning 
 the immortality of the soul — how far we are Pla- 
 tonizing or Pythagorizing Socrates we shall 
 never know; but if we take the Apology and 
 Phaedo as genuine (and there is little to be said 
 against their being so) then we see in Socrates in 
 germ what was more fully developed by his dis- 
 ciple and mouth-piece. 
 
 We may assert then that Plato is dogmatic 
 when he is standing firm upon the Socratic method, 
 from which he did not depart; that when he is 
 teaching the highest morality he hesitates not, 
 because he believes he has seen the truth personi- 
 fied in his great teacher. When Plato leaves the 
 reader in doubt at the end of a dialogue, it is 
 because he has learned from his master to give 
 all sides of a subject; to love truth above rubies; 
 to make no dogmatic pronouncement where there 
 is room for difference of opinion. In all we see 
 Socrates living in and through Plato, and carry- 
 ing the Socratic spirit into a new generation. 
 
38 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Plato's theoky of knowledge. 
 
 What has been said up to this point has been 
 preparatory to a statement of the doctrines of 
 Plato; yet those doctrines have already been by 
 intimation anticipated. 
 
 Plato was to some extent a creature of his 
 age; every man must be that. When we speak 
 of the streams of influence which "made" him 
 and attempt to point them out as they are identi- 
 fied with men and systems, we do not ignore minor 
 influences which in their totality doubtless meant 
 very much to our philosopher. For example the 
 Sophists had not only much to do with whetting 
 his mind to exceptional sharpness, but Socrates 
 was a Sophist pretty much in the sense that Jesus 
 was a Pharisee; and Plato held much in common 
 with the Sophists, although he opposed them stren- 
 uously. To the age in which Plato lived and the 
 absence of formal logic we must credit his not dis- 
 tinguishing between "contraries" and "contradic- 
 tions," and his share in other confusions that in 
 after days read like puerilities. 
 
 We may still hold to our original figure of 
 the lake and say that Plato is the product of 
 Heraclitus, the Eleatic Parmenides, the Pytha- 
 gorean speculations, and his great teacher, So- 
 crates. The last is the predominant influence, and 
 characterizes the man as well as gives color to 
 his whole philosophy. 
 
 Plato held with Heraclitus that all things are 
 
PLATO 39 
 
 in a state of flux, and that "becoming" character- 
 izes the things of sense. But, said Plato, "flux" 
 applies to things of sense only. Parmenides said, 
 " only being is, non-being is not and cannot be 
 thought." Being cannot begin or cease to be. 
 Thought also is not distinct from being — ^that is, 
 thought which is identified with the truth. Per^ 
 ception does not show things as they are, and 
 opinion may be either true or false. The senses 
 deceive when they seem to show us all things in 
 process of flux. It is not difficult to see how Par- 
 menides who had elements of the Pythagorean doc- 
 trines in his speculations, would and did greatly 
 influence Plato. The suggestion of "permanence," 
 and of the power of reason to discern truth — 
 being; the identification of thought with being — 
 these at least reappear in Plato though he modifies 
 and selects at will. 
 
 From Socrates Plato imbibed the notion of an 
 " inner sense" by which we know the truth ; also 
 the theory that knowledge consists in forming con- 
 cepts or general notions. Here also we find what 
 is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of 
 Plato — ^his method. The famous dialectics, which 
 Plato practically identified with philosophy, came 
 of the Socratic method. 
 
 From the Pythagoreans he gets a hint and per- 
 haps more than a hint as to how geometry may 
 give to the philosopher a key with which to un- 
 lock the treasure-house of the universe. Triangles, 
 squares, circles are ideal and intelligible realities. 
 
40 SEEKERS APTER SOXJL 
 
 Yet they never find exact expression in the sensu- 
 ous world. The figures in the books may imitate 
 or in their measure participate in the perfect ori- 
 ginals which exist only in the mind, but they are 
 only imperfect copies. If this be true of geomet- 
 rical figures, why not true of every concept we 
 can form — of Man, the Beautiful, the Good.? The 
 hint then from mathematics carried to its con- 
 clusion, transfers conception from being a mere 
 general notion made by the mind, into the region 
 of reality, and then by one step further these con- 
 cepts become the only realities. 
 
 From Pythagoras Plato had learned (so it is 
 supposed) the doctrine of the pre-existence of 
 souls, and the kindred one of the transmigration 
 of the same. With this as a clue, Plato bridges 
 the gulf between the known and the unknown. Con- 
 cepts have become to him realities — eternal reali- 
 ties ; they constitute the abiding things as opposed 
 to the flux discerned by the senses. The " inner 
 sense" perceives these realities: but how? Simply 
 enough ; cognition is nothing but recognition. The 
 soul (or " inner sense" we might say) when objects 
 of a sensuous nature are presented to our minds 
 by means of the senses, is provoked to recollection, 
 and sees in the shadows thus presented that which 
 it dimly remembers to have seen in another and 
 higher Hfe. To the extent a man is a philosopher, 
 which means all we would mean by being " pure 
 in heart," can he see the eternal realities at the 
 suggestion of the copies or shadows of earth. 
 
PLATO 41 
 
 Myth and substantial teaching meet here in 
 Plato so that it is difficult to know how far the 
 philosopher would have us go in interpreting him 
 literally by his poetical utterances. Certainly 
 Wordsworth has missed the meaning of Plato in 
 his " Intimations of Immortality" and has thus 
 no doubt made popular an error. Plato does not 
 teach that " heaven lies about us in our infancy," 
 if by that we mean the child knows more of reality 
 than the youth or man. The Platonic teaching 
 is that the soul when it is first confined to the 
 body is irrational; but when the life of mere sen- 
 sation gives place to the life of thought, then, 
 under correct education, the soul becomes capable 
 of true knowledge. The "soul's awakening" comes 
 when men turn to philosophy and see behind the 
 "many" of a class the "one" or the concept. Plato's 
 theory of recollection might be illustrated by a 
 vivid dream of many details being called to mind 
 (after it had been quite forgotten) by some sound 
 or sight, so that the man who had the dream 
 sees indistinctly, slowly and even painfully at first, 
 the mere outlines of what was, when seen in the 
 dream, complete in all particulars. G. H. Lewes 
 uses the illustration of one reading a lecture after 
 having years before heard the lecture delivered, 
 and as the man now reads he recalls here and 
 there something of the tones of the speaker and 
 feels something of the thrill he experienced when 
 he sat under the speaker's masterful oratory. I 
 am inclined to believe that, while some authorities 
 
42 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 ignore the "recollection" theory of Plato and 
 regard the interpretation usually given to the 
 myths and poetical utterances on this subject from 
 Plato as merely figurative language, the philo- 
 sopher really accepted the theory of the pre-exist- 
 ence of the soul as the true solution to what was in 
 later days known as the presence in the mind of 
 " innate ideas." 
 
 The Doctrine of Ideas is the one by which Plato 
 is best known, and furnishes a key to his theory 
 of knowledge. The philosopher does not take 
 especial care to be consistent in the development 
 of his basic theory. We see evidence of growth 
 and change as we read his dialogues. For this 
 reason no two interpreters of Plato agree exactly 
 on aU points as to the Platonic teaching on Ideas. 
 I am impressed with an interesting parallel here 
 between the founder of the Academy and the 
 founder of Methodism: the one in his theory of 
 Ideas, and the other in his notions of Christian 
 Perfection. Both men to some degree modified 
 their first deliverances. In both instances we must 
 search through an extensive literature to get at the 
 exact meaning of the writers. In both instances 
 we find apparent inconsistencies and even contra- 
 dictions. Interpreters disagree as to what they 
 did teach, and what is remarkable the disputants 
 in each instance refer to the same deliverances 
 from their respective teachers to substantiate the 
 respective contentions of today. 
 
 What does Plato mean by the Idea? He be- 
 
PLATO 43 
 
 lieved that the essence of things was in their form ; 
 and by "form" he meant what approaches as near 
 to the Platonic "idea" as we can well get. Some 
 have suggested the term "type ;" Lewes would use 
 "noumenon," and Ritchie says the phrase "law of 
 nature" very well illustrates what he meant. 
 
 Plato's meaning is best compassed perhaps by 
 giving the process by which he arrived at his 
 terminology. Wherever a universal conception of 
 species or kind is found, there we find an Idea: 
 hence Ideas are limited only by the number of 
 general notions we can form. Even non-being is 
 an Idea according to Plato. 
 
 The concepts or general notions of Socrates 
 were so far objectified by Plato that conceptions 
 become perceptions; he projects what we would 
 call mere abstractions and they become images. He 
 does what the manipulator of the stereopticon does 
 who takes the picture in the machine and projects 
 it upon the canvas, only we must remember that in 
 case of the Idea it has no such existence as the 
 negative has which the stereopticon enlarges; the 
 illustration would be complete only if the manipu- 
 lator could project upon the canvas in sight of 
 spectators his general notion of Man — ^the typical 
 and perfect Man, and do it from out his own mind. 
 Plato was thus the founder of Realism as the word 
 was used in Scholastic days. 
 
 One of the most puzzling things in Plato is 
 what he meant by "Ideas participating in their 
 copies," or better, how the copies on earth par- 
 
44 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 ticipated in the Ideas. This relation of the 
 real to the phenomenal evidently vexed his 
 philosophic soul. The men in the Cave look at 
 shadows of the real men; the chained observers 
 never see the men. But how far does this figure 
 which we can easily understand, explain how the 
 shadows (earthly things) really participate in the 
 eternal and divine Ideas.? We understand how the 
 ideal circle is never copied on earth and yet we 
 can understand how we approximate it by use 
 of instruments and by exercising great care. But 
 we are dealing with "reality" as we say when we 
 make lines ; the copies of the heavenly things in 
 Plato's theory are at bottom non-being. When 
 we come to speak of his doctrine of Nature this 
 will again meet us, but enough is said to see the 
 difficulty in the way, viz. that of having any copies 
 at aU if they are nothing to begin with, and they 
 come of nothing and amount to nothing. Perhaps 
 this is too strong, but an Aristotle would thus 
 dispose of them. 
 
 I have thought that the theory of "participa- 
 tion" might be illustrated popularly by the 
 process by which what is called a "composite 
 photograph" is made. Hundreds of negatives 
 are selected and each in some way gives to the 
 picture the photographer would make, some 
 element: the result was supposed to be an ideal 
 face, finer than any of earth and indeed approach- 
 ing the face of Christ in purity. Supposing the 
 theory of the discoverers of this process to have 
 
PLATO 45 
 
 been all they claimed for it; that all the human 
 faces on earth could be combined and in a sense 
 reproduced in the ideal face of the Son of Man — 
 we should have an approach to the notion of Plato, 
 in that each individual participated in the ideal 
 face; and though the ideal face could not be re- 
 produced by any one, yet some individual faces 
 reflected it more perfectly than others. Many de- 
 tails of this illustration fail us, especially in that 
 the multitude which made up the ideal face really 
 exists separately, which Plato would not allow. 
 
 Another theory concerning the Ideas which 
 puzzles the interpreters of Plato is the attempt 
 on the philosopher's part to make a hierarchy out 
 of the Ideas. The relation existing between the 
 highest idea and the lower ones is similar to that 
 existing between the things of sense and ideas. 
 The Highest Idea, if we interpret Plato aright, is 
 identified with the Absolute, the Good, or God 
 Himself. Here we can only surmise whether Plato 
 really believed in One, Personal God, and wrote 
 other things in deference to the theological ideas of 
 his day; or whether he ever really raised the 
 question of the Highest Idea being one with a 
 Personal God. 
 
 Certainly we can not take the myth of the 
 " Chariot of the Soul" in Phaedrus to mean that 
 Plato thought there was a definite place, a "heaven" 
 for Ideas, where they had their abode. Ideas ac- 
 cording to Plato dwelt not in space, nor could 
 you say they had a dwelling outside of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
46 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 Plato's physics 
 
 Plato's Physics is largely Pythagorean and is 
 made up, to a great extent, of conjecture. This 
 department was not his forte. His great disciple 
 Aristotle we shall find emphasized what the "divine 
 Plato" did not feel much interest in. 
 
 To give in brief Plato's theory of Nature: He 
 called the formless something out of which came 
 what we call "matter," non-being, and identified 
 it with what we should denominate "space." The 
 world originated from the Creator after the model 
 of an immovable and perfect archetypal world. 
 The world-soul is the link between the formless 
 matter or non-being and the Deity. The world 
 is as perfect as stupid and untractable matter will 
 admit ; but matter is essentially evil. The stars are 
 heavenly intelligences and the earth immovable as 
 the center of the universe. 
 
 The soul may be considered under the head of 
 Physics according to Plato. The soul consists 
 of the soul proper, which is the divine principle 
 or reason; and the appetitive principle which is 
 perishable. Between the two as a "mediator" as 
 in case of the world, we have the "passion" ele- 
 ment of the soul, mediating between the divine 
 in man and the earthly. As to the immortality 
 of the soul, Plato insists upon this as true, but 
 his arguments are among the weakest, so the best 
 authorities think, of all he brings to bear upon 
 great questions. Perhaps this is because we have 
 
PLATO 47 
 
 now no sympathy with the doctrine of the pre- 
 existence of souls, and yet this as an argument 
 meant much to Plato, as we can well see. The 
 doctrines of Plato as to rewards and punishments 
 are Pythagorean to such an extent that we are 
 inclined to suppose he accepted the myths and 
 peculiar theories of this school of speculators al- 
 most in their entirety. 
 
 Plato's politics 
 
 Politics and ethics are closely allied in Plato. 
 The State is but an individual on a large scale. 
 Hence ethics for the individual will be one with 
 ethics for the state. Using the same analysis 
 for the state he did for the soul, we have the 
 governing class likened to the reason in man, and 
 this should consist of philosophers; the sensuous 
 element in the soul is likened to the laborers and 
 handicraftsmen ; the passionate element in the soul, 
 to the soldiers, who mediate between the govern- 
 ing and the laboring classes. Virtue in the first 
 class is wisdom; in the second, is temperance; and 
 in the third, courage. In Plato's earlier dialogues 
 he merges everything in the state so as to practi- 
 cally ignore the home. He modifies this in his 
 latest works. He also modified his views concern- 
 ing a "monarchy" which he at first advanced; he 
 afterwards suggested a mixed government. 
 
 His famous directions as to the education of 
 children are so well known that I do not feel it 
 necessary to give them. It is worthy of note 
 
48 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 that Plato's disappointment in his different mis- 
 sions to Dionysius (the younger and older), in- 
 fluenced him largely in his notions concern- 
 ing the State. His disgust and humiliation over 
 the conditions at Athens, Walter Pater thinks led 
 him to model his Ideal state after the simple 
 and hardy Spartan one. It would seem that 
 Plato was in earnest in his theories concern- 
 ing the State as his most finished dialogue, the 
 "Republic," is taken up with discussions which 
 center about it; yet we must remember that Plato 
 only uses the " larger individual" to illustrate and 
 exemplify his notions of Justice. So after all 
 we come back to the starting point that Plato 
 was at bottom an ethical teacher. He would use 
 everything to enforce what he considered the essen- 
 tial things of life — Justice, Temperance, Good- 
 ness, Beauty. 
 
 PliATO's ETHICS 
 
 The Platonic Ethics results from Socrates' ethi- 
 cal principles combined with Plato's metaphysics 
 and anthropology. Not to speak in the order of 
 the development of his theory but rather after 
 the logical order of the system as a whole, we see 
 the Highest Idea of Plato identified with the Good. 
 And as according to him the Highest Idea gives 
 something of its nature to all ideas beneath it, 
 and is of the nature of the Absolute, we see what 
 Weber has happily said that Plato's ontology is 
 " the monism of the good." The Scriptures say 
 
PLATO 49 
 
 God is Love; they say in substance He is Good- 
 ness. Plato by placing Goodness or the Good at 
 the apex of his gradation of Ideas gives an ethi- 
 cal turn to his whole philosophy. Yes, more than 
 a "turn." All things must partake somewhat of 
 the ethical, and have an ethical end in view. 
 
 According to the view that "matter" is essen- 
 tially evil and the soul belongs to the world above 
 the senses, from which it has by some mischance 
 come, the possession of the highest good or happi- 
 ness must result from the subordination of things 
 sensuous to the divine principle of the soul. This 
 makes Plato's ethics approach very near to the 
 christian. Our doctrine of the Incarnation and 
 the revelation that the body may be the temple 
 of the Holy Ghost, with other declarations of the 
 Scriptures, have enabled us to rise above what 
 would be natural for us to accept were we subject 
 to Plato's conditions. We experience the same 
 struggles he did, and have in view much the same 
 end he had; only we are not vexed as he was 
 with the notion that to escape from the world as 
 soon as possible, either by one means or other, 
 might be man's duty. We indeed do teach that 
 there is such an experience as "death" (crucifixion 
 with Christ) which might be likened to Plato's 
 "philosophic death ;" but He who brought life and 
 immortality to light, taught that the world is good 
 if used aright. 
 
 Plato says Virtue and Knowledge are identical 
 or practically so. He says Virtue can be taught, 
 
60 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 as it is a science. But Virtue in the Platonic 
 sense is not what we ordinarily mean when we 
 use the word. In his estimation Virtue is insight. 
 He pendulates between the declaration that virtue 
 is one and that there are many. Perhaps this can 
 be reconciled by saying virtue is essentially one, 
 but has many forms of development. His four- 
 fold division of virtue is: wisdom, courage, tem- 
 perance and justice. His theory that virtue is 
 one is illustrated in this very division, for he says 
 that while wisdom is virtue of the intellect, courage, 
 virtue of the passionate element of the soul, and 
 temperance, virtue of the sensuous nature — still 
 justice is the principle which pervades and regu- 
 lates the whole man. Thus Justice is the supreme, 
 unifying virtue, which, something like the Highest 
 Good, includes in itself aU the others beneath it 
 and thus really makes virtue one. 
 
 As to pleasure, Plato says true virtue carries 
 with it its own reward; to do injustice is worse 
 than to suffer it; to go unpunished worse than 
 to be punished when guilty. Right for right's 
 sake is Platonic. He would not despise pleasure 
 as the cynics do ; nor make it the end of existence 
 as the hedonists do. He would take the middle 
 ground and it would seem the true one, that there 
 is something to be sought which identifies the 
 soul with that which is above, viz., what will put 
 us "in tune with the Infinite." Indeed Plato's 
 justice might be defined as the harmony of aU 
 the parts of the soul — ^because in communion with 
 the Highest Good. 
 
PLATO 51 
 
 In Ethics as in Politics, Physics, and every de- 
 partment of his philosophy, Plato intimates a 
 trinity of doctrines. In his doctrine of the soul 
 we have reason, passion, appetite. In ontology, 
 being, becoming, non-being. In Politics, rulers, 
 warriors, laborers. In cosmogony God, the soul 
 of the world, and matter. In Ethics — ^wisdom, 
 courage, temperance. 
 
 One of the most fruitful as well as fascinating 
 studies in connection with Plato is that of 
 "Platonism after Plato," including as it does, not 
 only the teaching inmiediately succeeding the death 
 of the founder of the Academy, but also the far- 
 reaching influence of this wonderful man. Here 
 we find those suggestions and anticipations in which 
 he was so rich and which make us think of him 
 as we do of a prophet. The well-known sentence 
 of our American poet-philosopher, Emerson, is 
 hardly an exaggeration: "Out of Plato come all 
 things that are still written and debated among 
 men of thought." 
 
Ill 
 
 KANT: A PROTEST AGAINST 
 MATERIALISM 
 
 " Between Socrates and Kant," say Schopen- 
 hauer, " there are many points of resemblance. 
 Both reject all dogmatism, both profess complete 
 ignorance as to things metaphysical, and the speci- 
 ality of both lies in their consciousness of this 
 ignorance. Both maintain, on the contrary, that 
 the practical question as to what men shotild do 
 or leave undone may be ascertained with certainty, 
 and this by themselves without further theoreti- 
 cal preparation. It was the fate of both to have 
 immediate successors and declared disciples, who 
 nevertheless departed from their principles in this 
 very particular, and, cultivating metaphysics, in- 
 troduced entirely dogmatic systems of their own; 
 further, that notwithstanding the great divergence 
 of their several systems, all professed themselves 
 to be derived respectively from the doctrine of 
 Socrates or of Kant." 
 
 Some will say that philosophy has attained to 
 nothing beyond Kant. In his "Historical Intro- 
 duction" to Max MiiUer's translation of Kant's 
 "Critique of Pure Reason," Ludwig Noire says: 
 "It is not too much to say that Kant is the greatest 
 philosophical genius that has ever dwelt upon 
 earth, and the ' Critique of Pure Reason' the 
 highest achievement of human reason." 
 52 
 
KANT 53 
 
 Whether we accept such an estimate of Kant, 
 or a more moderate one, we but echo the gen- 
 eral opinion of those who have a right to an 
 opinion on such a subject, when we affirm 
 that in Kant Modem Philosophy has found its 
 many-sided man, whose thought has been utilized 
 by idealists, empiricists, agnostics, atheists and 
 theists; all claiming that Kant either by direct 
 or implied teaching promulgated what their sev- 
 eral schools affirm. 
 
 Heine says playfully, " The history of Kant's 
 life is difficult to portray, for he had neither life 
 nor history" — ^to which we might add that almost 
 any great man's outward life is of small conse- 
 quence. Kant gives us nothing with which to 
 make a thrilling biography, unless "biography" 
 is interpreted to mean the history of one's mental 
 life ; in that case, we know that Kant lived much, 
 long and strenuously. 
 
 In the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
 a visitor to the little town of Konigsberg, on the 
 northeastern frontier of Germany, might have 
 seen, descending the steps of a plain house on 
 a retired street of the town, a small, hollow-chested, 
 serious-looking man, who wore a gray, close-fit- 
 ting overcoat, and carried a cane. Such was the 
 regularity with which this man took his after- 
 noon walk (promptly at half -past three) that the 
 townspeople could set their watches by his issu- 
 ing from his study for his walk. This was Imman- 
 uel Kant — ^philosopher, bachelor, professor, and 
 
54 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 ■withal the man who was to revolutionize the philo- 
 sophic world. 
 
 He came of very plain parents ; his father was 
 a saddler, and his mother, Anna Regine Reuter, 
 was remarkable for nothing more than her simple 
 religious faith which was developed under Pie- 
 tistic influences. The famous son of such parents 
 was bom 1724 and lived eighty years, practically 
 without getting out of sight of the smoke of his 
 native city. Like Whittier, he traveled little but 
 made up for this by reading with relish what others 
 had seen and described. In this way Kant kept 
 pace with the ongoing of the world. When we 
 remember that when he began his life work in 
 earnest (1770) the struggle for Independence in 
 America was on, and the French revolution was 
 brewing, we appreciate how interesting were the 
 times in which Kant's lot was cast. 
 
 Kant matriculated at Konigsberg University in 
 1740, and his mind seemed from the first to turn 
 towards the sciences. In 1746 he handed to the 
 dean of the philosophical department a disserta- 
 tion on " The True Evaluation of Dynamic 
 Forces," evincing a thorough acquaintance with 
 the issue between Descartes and Leibnitz regarding 
 the measuring of force ; this first attempt indicated, 
 too, his disposition to reconcile difi'erences between 
 men of opposite schools of thought by showing 
 how both were right in part. This spirit of re- 
 conciliation he retained all through life and it 
 characterizes his writings. Kant's mother had died 
 
KANT 55 
 
 in 1737, and his father, the year this first attempt 
 of his son at authorship made its appearance. I 
 mention these things to add that in Kant's diary 
 we find written concerning the death of his father: 
 "May God, who did not permit him to taste many 
 joys in life, grant to him in return to be a par- 
 taker of everlasting happiness." This expression, 
 in connection with the tender manner in which Kant 
 spoke of his mother and her religion, should be 
 sufficient reply to those who say that the great 
 philosopher was selfish, and was wanting in appre- 
 ciation of the worth of others. Poverty was Kant's 
 companion from his youth: if in after life when 
 he had a competence, he lived simply and at the 
 end made his sisters, who lived in obscurity in 
 Konigsberg, his heirs, we can not say that compe- 
 tence or fame ever "turned his head" or deflected 
 him from the path he had marked out in which 
 to walk, viz. to consecrate himself to an investiga- 
 tion of the Truth. 
 
 In 1755 Kant began his work as private lec- 
 turer. He made application for vacant professor- 
 ships at his Alma Mater for the next fifteen 
 years, but was not rewarded until 1770. Had 
 he consented to go from his loved Konigsberg, 
 he might have found both honor and appreciation, 
 but contrary to the principle that a prophet is 
 not without honor save in his own country, Kant 
 confesses he had an instinct which prevented him 
 from making any change, even when ofi'ered a 
 place at Jena, saying, " If I am to draw a little 
 
56 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 longer the threads which the Fates spin very thin 
 for men, I must abide where I am." Knowing 
 his bodily frailty and his dependence on habits 
 which had grown strong, he remained a mere tutor 
 longer than would otherwise have been necessary 
 in order that he might eventually be professor 
 where he felt his life work lay. But while he was 
 waiting he was not idle. During this time — usu- 
 ally called the Pre-Critical period in Kant's life 
 — he was busy investigating Nature and Mind. 
 He published his "Natural History of the 
 Heavens" as a result of his study and teaching 
 of Physical Geography, which study, by the 
 way, he was the first to introduce into the 
 University Courses. His treatment of the ori- 
 gin and structure of the world is characteristic, 
 in that it shows us the Kant of the future. 
 The work was Newtonian in principle, but left 
 out the direct interposition of God. He thought 
 rehgion had no interest in setting limits to 
 the mechanical explanation of natural phenomena. 
 He thought that explanations of nature by 
 suggestions of the purposes of God was the method 
 of " an easy philosophy that tries to hide its vain 
 uncertainty under pious airs." Here we see the 
 man doing what he afterwards fully carried out 
 in his Critical Philosophy — separating natural 
 science and religious faith. How far Kant is re- 
 sponsible for this wide-spread notion reaching to 
 us of today, I will not attempt to estimate. 
 Surely he had his part in it. 
 
KANT 57 
 
 Up to 1770 Kant had published, in addition to 
 the Essays already mentioned, "The False Sub- 
 tility of Syllogistic Figures," "The Only Possible 
 Basis of Proof of the Being of God," "The Intro- 
 duction of a Negative Quantity into Philosophy," 
 "The Evidence of the Principles of Natural The- 
 ology and Morals," and "Dreams of a Ghost- 
 Seer." These essays indicate the trend of Kant's 
 thought, especially his tendency to glide from Na- 
 ture to Mind. His celebrated "Dissertation" whicli 
 outlined his after work and marked the great 
 "divide" in his life, was published the year he was 
 made fuU professor, and was entitled "A Disserta- 
 tion on the Form and Principles of the Sensible 
 and Intelligible World." 
 
 The world saw, in 1781, the "Critique of 
 Pure Reason." and it was followed in 1783 by 
 a " Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysic" — 
 a most important work, and explanatory of his 
 "Critique of Pure Reason." The "Critique 
 of the Practical Reason" was issued in 1788, and 
 " The Critique of the Judgment" in 1790. Al- 
 though he wrote to the year of his death, 1804, 
 the works by which Kant will be known for time to 
 come axe his famous "Critiques," (especially that 
 of the Pure Reason, and his "Prolegomena." The 
 "Dissertation" of 1770 is valuable to those who 
 wish to study the growth of a theory in a man's 
 mind. 
 
 The last days of Kant were like those of Walter 
 Scott, tantalizing in that he attempted to write but 
 
58 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 could not — his powers having failed him. The 
 gentle old man, whose kindliness of heart and de- 
 votion to study, should have spared him the bitter 
 things which have been said of him, died 12th 
 of February, 1804, with the words on his lips, 
 in reply to some kindness offered, " It is good." 
 He was buried in the Cathedral of his native place, 
 and over his grave are his celebrated words, taken 
 from the " Critique of the Practical Reason ;" 
 
 " The starry heavens above me, 
 The moral law within me." 
 
 kant's mental history 
 
 If the poet who plucked a "flower from the cran- 
 nied wall" could say of it 
 
 " If I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all 
 I should know what God and man is, ' ' 
 
 we may say of Kant that could we know him 
 "all and all" — ^his mental history especially, dat- 
 ing back as it does into days of philosophy's be- 
 ginnings, we should know Philosophy. As the 
 wave that touches the highest point on the beach 
 is part of the illimitable ocean, which is back of 
 the wave giving it force, so a great man is after all 
 but part of that mysterious Unity which we call 
 Humanity. And as each movement of the tide that 
 carries individual waves high upon the beach, has 
 back of it an influence which we have discovered 
 to be due to the attraction of heavenly bodies; 
 
KANT 59 
 
 so there are peculiar "movements" in the world of 
 Thought which have hitherto baflBed our investiga- 
 tions, but which no doubt have their origin " in the 
 heavenlies," where the Spirit broods over our moral 
 and mental chaos and brings to pass in the fulness 
 of time those mighty upheavals which in their 
 totality represent the thing we call the develop- 
 ment of our Race. To search for a man's place 
 in this onward movement of the world — and espe- 
 cially the place of a man whose influence was such 
 as Kant's — is to search for the really undiscover- 
 able ; but even an approximation here to the truth 
 is not only of high value, but the search itself is 
 rewarded by rich returns. 
 
 Let a brief survey of the remote past suffice 
 to show the progress of thought to the time of 
 Kant's immediate predecessors. 
 
 Coleridge said, "a man is bom either a Platonist 
 or an Aristotelian :" but Kant's disposition to unite 
 in himself opposing schools of thought made him 
 both Platonist and Aristotelian. Without stop- 
 ping to note the happy guesses and wonderful 
 anticipations of Heraclitus, Democritus, Pytha- 
 goras, and Parmenides, the sum of ancient philo- 
 sophy might be put in few words, thus ; Socrates 
 by his " Know thyself" turned the attention of 
 man to Mind as the important field for investiga- 
 tion, if one would be a philosopher. Plato in 
 obedience to this injunction created a theory of 
 knowledge, and Aristotle completed it with the 
 addition of Logic. The character of "matter" 
 
60 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 became the burning question. What is the sub- 
 stantial, and how are reconciled deceptive appear- 
 ances with knowledge? How make the connection 
 between the knowing mind and inert matter? We 
 have seen how Plato bridged the gulf by his theory 
 of reminiscence, and how he disposed of matter by 
 his theory of non-being. We find that Aristotle is 
 "Kantian" in his love of Nature and in his dis- 
 position to investigate the same. But the vital 
 point of connection between the system of Kant 
 and Aristotle is to be foimd in their treatment of 
 " form and matter." Even the celebrated illustra- 
 tion used by Kant of the "hand" is Aristotelian, 
 for that great man of the ancients says : " But 
 the soul may be compared to the hand, for the 
 hand is the tool of tools, as the mind is the form 
 of forms." When we remember that Aristotle held 
 the theory that "form," or idea (which is the 
 chief element in perception) lays hold of matter, — 
 "potential stuff" — and makes the same "actual" — 
 we see that he was saying what Kant in the after 
 days put in more express terms. In his "Prolego- 
 mena," Kant resents the suggestion that his doc- 
 trines can be traced to what has been long ago 
 said: "General principles are not easily learned 
 from other men, who have had them obscurely 
 in their minds. We must hit on them first 
 by our reflection, then we find them elsewhere, 
 where we could not possibly have found them 
 at first, because the authors themselves did not 
 know that such an idea lay at the basis of 
 
KANT 61 
 
 their observations." These words from the Pre- 
 amble of his "Prolegomena" indicate that Kant 
 knew that his therories had been foreshadowed 
 by others, but he took the ground which many 
 have taken on such subjects, viz., that men in the 
 past were wiser than they knew. This is probably 
 true, but nevertheless, when Kant takes Aristotle's 
 "Categories" bodily, and uses even in his explana- 
 tion of his theory of " forms of mind" an illus- 
 tration which Aristotle used, we are bound to 
 think that he must have imbibed even more fully 
 than he was aware of, much of Ancient philosophy. 
 When we remember, too, that Kant was past fifty 
 when he wrote his masterpiece, we can understand 
 how what he had read had become so much a 
 part of himself that he failed to consider his in- 
 debtedness to the labors of other men. 
 
 Medieval Philosophy might be summed up, 
 as to its results, somewhat as follows : Its theory 
 of Absolute Intelligence satisfied the cravings of 
 reason for unity and spirituality. The Polythe- 
 ism of the populace, the Atoms of Democritus, 
 the Ideas of Plato, the Substances of Aris- 
 totle, — disappear, and God reigns alone. Meta- 
 physics becomes possible as something transcend- 
 ing the Objective. The material and spiritual 
 are separated. Concepts have taken the place of 
 Plato's objective Ideas. But the Absolute Intelli- 
 gence of the medievals threatened to absorb the 
 individual. The investigations of scientists caused 
 the objective world to reassert itself, and threatened 
 
62 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 a relapse into mere materialism. The times were 
 ripe for Descarles's "Cogito," which occasioned 
 philosophy for sometime to oscillate between Mind 
 and Matter. This brings us to the Modem Period 
 in Philosophy, opening with Descartes. 
 
 But before Descartes is taken up, and we pass 
 from him on to his successors which lead to Kant, 
 certain influences should be noted, without taking 
 account of which we can hardly appreciate Kant's 
 position as a thinker and philosopher. 
 
 The Renaissance may be dated from 1450; the 
 first Bible published by mfeans of movable types 
 was in 1456; America was discovered in 1492; 
 Luther posted his celebrated Theses in 1517; Co- 
 pernicus published his theory concerning the Solar 
 System in 1643 ; Descartes was bom 1596 ; Bruno 
 suffered martyrdom in Rome in 1600 ; Kant was 
 horn in 1724; American Independence was de- 
 clared in 1776 ; the French Revolution broke out in 
 1789. The dates given above that lead up to 
 Kant and cover his life, are the ones of many 
 that mark epochs, and that indicate the trend 
 of thought. The Renaissance meant the most 
 potent influence in the overthrow of Scholasticism. 
 The Reformation which followed the awakening of 
 independent thought, was aided by the discovery 
 of printing, and the thriU that civilized man 
 experienced at the discovery of what was practi- 
 cally a new world. The bold theory of Copernicus 
 and the inspiration his discovery gave to science, 
 as well as the perfect annihilation which Aristotle 
 
KANT 63 
 
 seemed to suffer therefrom, stirred men to 
 both doubt and investigation. That a scientist 
 and philosopher should suffer as a martyr as late 
 as 1600, where Savonarola had suffered a similar 
 death just one hundred years before, must have 
 produced a decided impression on thinking men. 
 The 17th century was marked by political up- 
 heavals, which indicated how determined the masses 
 of the people were to assert their rights. The 
 rise of Cromwell in England and the revolution 
 which resulted in the overthrow of the Stuarts 
 in 1688, were followed hard by the age of Enlight- 
 enment — ^the 18th century — which, with its oppo- 
 site religious tendency. Pietism, had much to do 
 with making Kant what he was. He appreciated 
 the struggle for independence which in America 
 took the form it did, compelling respect, and admi- 
 ration ; and the abnormal spirit of the French 
 which resulted in the French Revolution. In the 
 meantime Kant was what every man must to some 
 extent be, — a creature of his age. But the great 
 movements I have just referred to can not be 
 ignored if we would historically criticise the author 
 of the " Critique of Pure Reason." To what 
 has been said, we should add that a reaction from 
 Enlightenment ( which meant the enthronement of 
 Reason) had set in during Kant's life, which re- 
 action known as Romanticism, had Lessing, Rous- 
 seau, and later Goethe, as its most famous expo- 
 nents. Kant acknowledges he was much influenced 
 by this movement. In the name of Heart, it chal- 
 lenged Reason to be less imperious. 
 
64 SEEKERS AETER SOUL 
 
 To return to Descartes, as the starting-point 
 in Modem Philosophy and the exponent of pure 
 Dualism, his contributions to philosophy might 
 be summed up as follows: His greatest achieve- 
 ment was to start from the knowing subject 
 without assumptions. He thus called attention 
 to the correct view-point which afterwards greatly 
 aided all who pursued philosophic studies. Des- 
 cartes also moved in the direction of Kantianism 
 by conceding real existence only to the universal 
 principles of thought and matter, as advocated by 
 Plato and Aristotle, while he denied the separate 
 existence of objects derived from these, as well as 
 the title of such objects to be called "things in 
 themselves." Plato had made the "Idea" an 
 entity, and Aristotle had made the "form" an 
 entity, or its equivalent. Matter, according to 
 Descartes, is but a modification of extended 
 substance; and ideas are but modes of the 
 thinking substance. Descartes credits the soul 
 with what he called "innate ideas," which per- 
 haps was an unfortunate way of expressing 
 himself; but his suggestion had in it an ele- 
 ment of truth. In Kant this truth will come out 
 as a priori postulates of human knowledge. As 
 a mathematician, Descartes taught that everything 
 in the material world is accomplished in accordance 
 with mechanical laws. The mind cannot add 
 to or take from the quantity of matter or motion, 
 but it can give direction to movement by making 
 use of efficient causes. To this should be added the 
 
KANT 65 
 
 discovery of the relativity of motion, i.e. no change 
 takes place by itself, but only in relation to some- 
 thing else. This has its bearing on Kant who 
 stresses the relativity of human knowledge. 
 
 Descartes left for future development by philo- 
 sophy the following: The nature of "body" as 
 he defined it can scarcely be distinguished from 
 the space it occupies. Extension is its sole prop- 
 erty. To deal with the external world mathe- 
 matically we must have one quality, extension, 
 and Descartes gave it that. But extended sub- 
 stance, without other qualities, becomes what.'' 
 The assumption of specific differences in bodies 
 as created by God, and the unexplained daulism, 
 implied in the "extended substance" and the 
 "thinking substance," left philosophy hard prob- 
 lems to solve, while many minds recognized the con- 
 tradictions involved in all this. The use of the 
 word "substance" occasioned no little trouble, and 
 Kant will find fault with Descartes' implication 
 when the latter says, "I think, therefore I am," 
 remarking that Descartes mentally adds, "a think- 
 ing substance." 
 
 Descartes threw into the philosophic company 
 the apple of discord, but singular to say, the 
 apple seemed to break into two pieces, the Materi- 
 alists took one half saying it was the original, and 
 the Idealists took the other, claiming that it was 
 the original. From this time on, "the river which 
 went from Eden and parted and became into two 
 heads," can be distinctly followed. It is not 
 
66 SEEKEKS AFTER SOUL 
 
 necessary to follow into its details the revival of 
 the doctrine of Democritus with modifications, 
 which the English philosopher, Hobbs, affected, 
 and which was almost the inevitable conclusion if 
 there was but one substance and that Matter. Nor 
 need we explain in detail the place of the reaction- 
 ist, Berkley, who took the opposite extreme, and 
 said that the one substance was Mind. We shall 
 find later that Kant was very indignant at being 
 called an idealist after the Berkley stamp, a point 
 at which the difference between the Englishman 
 and his cousin can be distinctly noted. 
 
 Materialism slept untroubled by the presupposi- 
 tions of a sensitive and intelligent consciousness ; 
 and Idealism was little concerned about the club 
 which Dr. Johnson proposed to use with which 
 to convince it that an external world existed. The 
 attempt to restore unity where had been made 
 so great a division, was the work of the Jew, 
 Spinoza. Some say his theory of the Universe is 
 simply modified Buddhism. (It would be sugges- 
 tive to follow out the thought how far a Semite 
 would probably be oriental in his thought when 
 dealing with the fundamentals of philosophy.) 
 Spinoza's additions to philosophy, as interpreted 
 from the Kantian stand-point, are as follows : He 
 put an end to the unnatural separation between 
 thought and extension. Every sensible process 
 could be conceived according to Spinoza, as at the 
 same time a material modification of the organs of 
 sense and as a variety or mode of consciousness. 
 
KANT 67 
 
 Tyndall is thinking of this distinction when he calls 
 heat a "mode of motion." The notion of "sub- 
 stance" now must be shown to be a creation of rea- 
 son, and must justify its existence at the court of 
 Reason. Spinoza had a conception of absolute 
 and perfect knowledge, as contradistinguished 
 from the conditioned, and he thus led to Kant's 
 recognition of the limits of reason, which he 
 (Kant) credits to the aspirations of man in a 
 higher realm. Spinoza says: "In order to distin- 
 guish between true and false ideas, we must learn 
 to understand the peculiarities of the intellect." 
 Here is an intimation of the critical spirit of Kant, 
 especially with reference to the powers of the 
 mind. 
 
 Says Noire in his Introduction to Kant's Philo- 
 sophy: "The principal defect of Spinoza's system 
 lies naturally in his idea of substance, and the way 
 in which it is deduced; so that in the preliminary 
 conception, existence is tacitly imputed to the sub- 
 ject, and then analytically deduced from it, like 
 the conjurer's trick in which to the astonishment 
 of the public, an article is discovered where the 
 performer had secretly placed it beforehand. The 
 leap from the mere idea, or what is thought, into 
 the actual world, is the most violent and break- 
 neck salto mortale to be met with in any system 
 of Philosophy." 
 
 Descartes, the teacher of Spinoza, had taken 
 refuge in the transcendental idea of the Deity to 
 prove the reality of the material world and to 
 
68 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 make a junction for his two substances. Spinoza 
 went further and made the Deity immanent, 
 identified God and the world, and thus identified 
 Descartes' two substances. Spinoza's God-world, 
 or One Substance, however, swallows up individ- 
 uality, and his theory caused a reaction toward In- 
 dividualism as in Leibnitz. Spinoza's recognition 
 of causal dependence of spiritual phenomena in- 
 spired the attempt to inquire into human knowl- 
 edge in its relation to sensible perception; as we 
 shall see in Locke. His idea that the existence of 
 individuals is but partial and apparent ; his recog- 
 nition of greater and less degrees of reality pos- 
 sessed by beings — wiU in Leibnitz meet its counter- 
 thought of the higher liberty and the superiority 
 of man. 
 
 Spinoza's idea of God is not an advance, as 
 we interpret his teaching, but a retrogression. 
 Aristotle called God the " Form of Forms ;" Con- 
 fucius simply spoke of the " Command of 
 Heaven;" yet both speak of Him as personal — 
 not, as it were, by design, but inadvertently, and 
 they thus prove the promptings of intuition. The 
 same is even true of Spinoza; his impersonal God 
 is spoken of as a "thinking Being." 
 
 From Spinoza's Ethics we cull this anticipation 
 of Kant : " The way in which we are affected by 
 external things depends more upon the constitu- 
 tion of our body than on the nature of the external 
 things." 
 
 I can not but feel that Locke must stand as one 
 
KANT 69 
 
 of the most striking personages in the history 
 of philosophy. What he wrote was popularly 
 written, and clear. The reader always knows what 
 he means. Locke read little, but shows a cer- 
 tain freshness and much originality in his teach- 
 ing. His great work, " Essay on Human Under- 
 standing," was written when its author was fifty- 
 eight. His mind matured slowly but in strength. 
 No sketch of Kant is complete without an appre- 
 ciation of Locke, for Locke led to Hume. 
 
 Among the many additions to the sum of philo- 
 sophic knowledge for which we are indebted to 
 Locke, we might name : His fine work on the nature 
 of language. Dr. Horace Bushnell is but echoing 
 Locke in his famous phrase that words "only 
 suggest" to another what the speaker means. Men 
 may use the same words, but mean very different 
 things. The man who can make clear distinctions, 
 and who is an adept in the use of words, will help 
 to clear up much obscurity in philosophy as well 
 as theology. 
 
 Locke may be called the representative Empi- 
 ricist, of the serious sort. He was no scoffer, 
 but like Kant, was relentless in his disposition to 
 probe for the truth. He taught that while general 
 ideas are the true objects of reason; they origi- 
 nate naturally, and are perfected by abstrac- 
 tion; and that thought and language are so in- 
 timately associated that Max Miiller's theory is 
 practically anticipated. Locke boldly averred that 
 ideas were due to sensible impressions. The mind 
 
70 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 was, as it were, an unwritten-upon tablet that was 
 sensitive to impressions from without. " There 
 is nothing in the understanding which did not 
 come through the senses." This looks like materi- 
 alism pure and simple. Yet it is characteristic of 
 English philosophy, whether we note it in Hobbs, 
 Locke, Hume, Spencer, Mill, or others less famous. 
 
 Locke said substance was inaccessible to human 
 knowledge. He was the one modem philosopher 
 to bring out clearly the difference between primary 
 and secondary qualities of matter. This Kant wUl 
 use, and declare all qualities secondary. 
 
 The gaps which Locke left to be filled are, 
 among many, these: He shut up the individual 
 within himself. A man could not go beyond his 
 subjective standpoint. Locke was so concerned 
 with his theory of getting his ideas mto the mimd, 
 that he did not enter into the " dark room" of 
 the mind to investigate what went on there. Kant 
 will not only enter, but will spend most of his 
 time there. Locke naturally called attention to 
 the external world, for it was the source, accord- 
 ing to him, of our mental riches. Kant will show 
 that the mind not only adds something, but by 
 far the greater part. The mind is no mere mirror 
 held up to nature. 
 
 Locke's place in philosophy is thus expressed 
 by Schopenhauer : " He was the first to proclaim 
 the great doctrine that a philosopher who wishes 
 to prove or derive anything from ideas must first 
 investigate the origin of these ideas, as their con- 
 
KANT 71 
 
 tent and everything thence deducible must be de- 
 termined by their origin, as the source of all 
 the knowledge attainable through them." 
 
 We have nearly reached Kant when we come to 
 Leibnitz. The latter died in 1716, and the former 
 was bom in 1724. Locke's theory of knowl- 
 edge naturally discarded the notion of "innate 
 ideas," and Leibnitz saw the suggestion of 
 Locke but refused to surrender the truth that the 
 phrase "innate ideas" contained. Thus he said 
 the mind was not like a piece of blank paper, 
 but like a block of marble in which the veins 
 prefigure the form of the statue. The mind has 
 not innate ideas explicitly but possesses them po- 
 tentially and virtually, only, however, by its power 
 to produce them out of itself. He added wittily 
 the phrase to Locke's celebrated dictum that there 
 was nothing in the understanding which had not 
 come through the senses, " but the understanding 
 itself.'" 
 
 Leibnitz stands as the perfect contradiction to 
 Spinoza. The latter had swallowed up individ- 
 ualism in God: the former pulverized the universe 
 and gave to its monads an independent existence. 
 Not only so, but each monad was a sort of a God. 
 We are reminded of the "Ideas" of Plato and the 
 hierarchy he suggested, and the "Forms" of Aris- 
 totle leading to the "Form of Forms." The mo- 
 nads of Leibnitz are not atoms, for atoms are 
 qualitatively alike, whereas every monad differs 
 
72 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 from every other. Atoms are extended and divis- 
 ible, but monads are indivisible — metaphysical 
 points. Atoms are not representatives, but monads 
 are, for each monad reflects every other one. Every 
 monad then is a miniature universe, and, mark it 
 well, a living force. If the universe consists of inde- 
 pendent existences which have " no eyes" — that 
 work independent of each other, — ^how can there 
 be any possible harmony in movement? "Not," 
 Leibnitz, says, " by occasional harmony by means 
 of miraculous interposition," but by a sort of 
 standing miracle of " pre-established harmony." 
 This was especially illustrated in the way the soul, 
 a monad, operated in unison with the body, and 
 it was here that the illustration of the two clocks 
 was used — ^both running in harmony, but each sep- 
 arate. 
 
 The place of Leibnitz as a forerunner of Kant 
 does not especially appear in what has been said 
 above. I have given the two elements in Leibnitz's 
 philosophy for which he is best known. But when 
 we enter into the spirit of his work, we find that 
 while Locke had, by his theory of ideas, stressed 
 perception, though he had pointed out the con- 
 trast between that and conception, Leibnitz, true 
 to the German instinct, not only places the active 
 element in the foreground, as against the passive, 
 or merely receptive, but looked upon mere per- 
 ception of external things as indirect knowledge. 
 Kant says that while Locke attributed everything 
 to sensation, Leibnitz attributed everything to con- 
 
KANT 73 
 
 ceptions of the understanding: the Kantian posi- 
 tion was a reconciliation between the two, using ele- 
 ments of both. Conceptions, Kant said, were not 
 the true matter of thought, with sensible intui- 
 tions a less perfect and confused though similar 
 kind, nor are " things in themselves" to be com- 
 prehended by these conceptions, as Leibnitz sug- 
 gests. To quote Kant : " Leibnitz mtellectualized 
 phenomena, and just as Locke sensualized all con- 
 cepts of the understanding. Instead of represent- 
 ing the understanding and sensibility as two totally 
 different sources of representations, which however 
 can supply objectively valid judgments of things 
 only in conjunction with each other, each of these 
 great men (Locke and Leibnitz) recognized but 
 one of them, which in their opinion applied immedi- 
 ately to things by themselves, while the other did 
 nothing but to produce either disorder or order 
 in the representations of the former." 
 
 The key-note to Kant is found then, with ref- 
 erence to all other preceding philosophies, in this : 
 he, the sage of Konigsberg, eliminated substance 
 to which all others before him, after repeated 
 attempts to be free from it, had returned for a 
 foothold. 
 
 This brings us to Hume. Although his import- 
 ance to the Kantian philosophy is vital, his posi- 
 tion can be expressed in a few words, and so can 
 his relation to Kant. Hume is a continuation of 
 Locke. He is of course a member of that company 
 
74 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 who laid hold of Descartes' half of the Apple of 
 Discord and called it Materialism. Perhaps it 
 might better be said that he considered both the 
 retdistic and the idealistic standpoints in philoso- 
 phy as imassailable. He admitted the claims of 
 both as in harmony with rational thought, and 
 since they contradict each other, held that there is 
 nothing left but Doubt. 
 
 Hume attacked the citadel of Reason — ^the idea 
 of Causation. Schopenhauer says : " Before Hume 
 no one had doubted that the principle of the suffi- 
 cient reason, in other words, the law of causation, 
 stood first and foremost in earth and heaven. For 
 it was an eternal truth, subsisting independently, 
 superior to gods or destiny: everything else, the 
 understanding which apprehends the principle, as 
 well as the world at large and whatsoever there 
 may be which is the cause of the world, such as 
 atoms, motion, a creator, or the like, exists only 
 in conformity with and in virtue of this. Hume 
 was the first to whom it occurred to ask whence 
 this law of causality derived its authority, and to 
 demand its credentials." 
 
 Locke had gone so far as to deduce the causal 
 relation from experience, in that he said that the 
 resistance of bodies to our pressure originated the 
 idea of cause. Leibnitz, making distinction be- 
 tween necessary and accidental truths, had reduced 
 the former to identical propositions, while the 
 latter he referred to in endless series. Still, the 
 " sufficient reason," or idea of cause, he maintained 
 
KANT 75 
 
 strenuously. The opposition between contingent 
 and necessary truths Hume thought irreconcilable, 
 hence he inferred that causation and experience 
 are incompatible, consequently our assumption of 
 the existence of necessary truths is a delusion. 
 He said, " it was impossible for the reason to 
 construct a priori such a connection as involves 
 necessity; for it is impossible to see how because 
 one thing is, another thing should necessarily also 
 be, or how the conception of such a connection 
 should have been introduced a priori." He con- 
 cluded that the reason was entirely deceived as 
 to this idea, was in error in regarding it as its 
 own offspring, seeing it was really a bastard child 
 born of imagination and experience. 
 
 In reply to such an onslaught the Scottish philo- 
 sophers raised the cry of heresy and appealed to 
 " common sense." Kant is represented as having 
 his righteous indignation stirred not so much at 
 Hume's boldness as at the sort of reply his oppo- 
 nents made. He says they missed Hume's point 
 by taking for granted the very thing he called 
 in question, and demonstrating with much violence 
 what he had never called in question. The matter 
 at issue was not whether the conception of cause 
 was just, serviceable, and indispensable to natural 
 science, for this had not been disputed by Hume: 
 but the vital issue was, whether the idea of cause 
 could be conceived a priori by reason. 
 
 To answer this question Kant felt moved to 
 write, and the result was " The Critique of Pure 
 
76 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 Reason," in which book not only Hume, but other 
 philosophers and philosophies are dealt with, and 
 a reconciliation attempted between apparently di- 
 verse and even contradictory systems. By taking 
 an entirely new standpoint, in which he delighted 
 to compare himself with Copernicus, Kant pro- 
 duced a system which, whatever else may be said 
 of it, has probably had more influence on philoso- 
 phic thinking than any book of modem times. His 
 work as a philosopher bears some resemblance to 
 the work of Bishop Butler in the "Analogy." If 
 the author did not make out his own case to the 
 satisfaction of everybody he at least dealt a blow 
 at materiahsts and empiricists generally. Both 
 Butler and Kant can be said to have at least 
 stopped the mouths of skeptics. 
 
 HOW KANT CAME TO HIS FBOBI^M 
 
 The school represented by Leibnitz, whose doc- 
 trines were modified without being improved by 
 the unoriginal Wo(lif, was the Dogmatic wing of 
 Philosophy; and to it Kant belonged by associa- 
 tion and training. Hume, of course, represented 
 Skepticism, and Hume is the person who "aroused 
 Kant from his dogmatic slumber." The writer of 
 the "Critique of Pure Reason" elected to call his 
 system of philosophy Critical, as distinguished 
 from Dogmatism and Skepticism, and the word in- 
 dicates what Kant had in mind. From his early 
 manhood he had striven to reconcile opposing 
 schools of thought, and it is not to be wondered 
 
KANT 77 
 
 at that when the "Critique of Pure Reason" was 
 published all schools laid claim to it and all 
 schools denounced it. 
 
 This calls for an important observation. The 
 " Critique of Pure Reason" is not only the book 
 most read of the three Critiques, but read out of 
 proportion to the others; not only so, judg- 
 ment as to Kant's teaching, is based too often 
 upon the first Critique. It is here that the 
 author of the Critical Philosophy had cause 
 for impatience — an impatience which he shows in 
 his "Prolegomena" — at the misreading of his 
 words because his books are not taken in their 
 entirety. I have no doubt that he had that pecu- 
 liarity of mind, such as one sees occasionally, of 
 looking at one phase of a subject for the time, to 
 the exclusion of every other, and of writing a 
 book in the spirit in which he would deliver a 
 lecture to an advanced class in philosophy. Cer- 
 tainly, when a man writes a special pamphlet to 
 explain how he came to write a book, and tells 
 in that pamphlet what he meamt, and what he did 
 Tiot mean, we should take his explanations not 
 as retractions: if he can consistently show how 
 his apparent contradictions can be reconciled, we 
 should allow him that privilege. Add to this 
 fact that Kant was not happy in expressing 
 himself as a writer, and we have perhaps the 
 secret of the great diversity of interpretations 
 of Kantian philosophy. Caird has well said that 
 "Kant is easily misinterpreted if we stop at any 
 
78 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 stage of his argument short of its final result." 
 There are men, among them was Heine, who hesi- 
 tate not to say that Kant found it necessary in 
 deference to public opinion, and "old Lampe" 
 particularly, to "make a God" after he had writ- 
 ten like an atheist or agnostic. So, too, the^re are 
 those who say that the Second Edition of the 
 "Critique of Pure Reason" had in it an element 
 of "back down" from fear, and does not represent 
 Kant as he really believed. Max Miiller takes 
 somewhat such a view. It would seem that, when 
 Kant's age is taken into consideration, his whole 
 plan being perhaps mapped out ere he wrote ; the 
 revolutionary character of his philosophy and its 
 subtlety; his philosophy appearing in three dis- 
 tinct Critiques, each apparently complete in itself, 
 yet not so — misunderstanding would be inevitable. 
 We have seen that it was Hume who aroused 
 Kant; that, in his estimation, Scottish philoso- 
 phers had not answered the skeptic ; and to this we 
 may add that Kant agreed with Hume in much. To 
 prove the limitation of a priori knowledge to ex- 
 perience, based upon an examination of the condi- 
 tions of the knowledge which is so limited, is to 
 yield to Locke and Hume their contentions, and 
 this Kant did : to claim that knowledge has another 
 origin besides experience, and that ideas thus ac- 
 quired are necessarily true — is to contradict Hume 
 and Locke and bring down on the head of Kant 
 the wrath of empiricists genierally, and G. H. 
 Lewes in particular. And as by a priori synthesis 
 
KANT 79 
 
 alone we can go beyond the region of experience, 
 naturally the problem of the "Critique of Pure 
 Reason" is this : "How are Synthetic Judgments a 
 priori possible?" Of course Kant had in mind the 
 attack Hume had made on Causation, If the idea 
 of causation can be found to be dependent on ex- 
 perience then all a priori ideas must be given up. 
 
 Here we strike the matter of Kant's peculiar ter- 
 minology. He must be read by taking words to 
 mean what he says he means by them. "Experi- 
 ence" is knowledge of things given to us in sense ; 
 hence, prior in time to the impressions of sense, 
 there is no such knowledge. But "experience" 
 must be, according to Kant, distinguished from 
 the knowledge of "certain general principles" 
 which connect the individual facts of experience. 
 These "general principles" cannot be derived from 
 impressions of sense, for sense gives knowledge of 
 particulars. If, however, we take the highest of 
 these general principles and follow them to their 
 limit we become entangled, as in the case of Casu- 
 aUty. Here we must either go back of experience 
 and then into a series of causes, ad infinititm, or 
 postulate a new conception — an uncaused Cause. 
 Hence the antinomy, — the instance of reason at 
 variance with itself. Our hope in this perplexity 
 is to find a higher law of reason, which will limit 
 the law of causality to the sphere of sense-experi- 
 ence, and at the same time use this "Umitimg prin- 
 ciple" to extend our knowledge into the region be- 
 yond the limit. This in brief, as I take it, is the 
 
80 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 real problem of the "Critique of Pure Reason," 
 and of the Critiques which follow. The principles 
 of Kantianism are really few; but in the applica- 
 tion of those principles and in the mental twists 
 and turns which Kant makes in the application of 
 them, he becomes difficult to understand. 
 
 KANTIAN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 As Kant's principle of classification is a psycho- 
 logical one, and the faculties of the soul may, ac- 
 cording to his philosophy, be reduced to knowing, 
 feeling, willing, we see here the bed-rock of the 
 three Critiques — Pure Reason, Practical Reason, 
 Judgment, (by the last Kant means the principle 
 which regulates feelings of pleasure and pain.) 
 
 If Experience does not furnish the whole of 
 knowledge, as we have above noted, then what of 
 the sort it does furnish? It is contingent and vari- 
 able. But the mind also furnishes an element — ^by 
 means of those "general principles," just referred 
 to — and the character of tMs knowledge is 
 universal and rwcessary. Kant does not say with 
 Descartes that we have "innate ideas", nor does he 
 say with Locke that there is nothing in the under- 
 standing which did not come through the senses: 
 he says that "experience" — ^the sense-world — fur- 
 nishes a part, and a necessary part, of knowledge, 
 and the mind furnishes a part, and just as neces- 
 sary a part. Without the sense element perceptions 
 would be empty ; without the element furnished by 
 the mind, conception would be blind. 
 
KANT 81 
 
 When the subjective world is face to face with 
 the objective, the two cooperate to produce knowl- 
 edge. As to the subject (with which we are con- 
 cerned), we call that Sensibility, which is affected 
 by objects, and it is entirely passive. It is the mir- 
 ror turned upon the world; but back of this sensi- 
 bility is the Understanding, an active faculty, 
 which receives the representations given by sensi- 
 bility and whose function it is to judge. By this 
 faculty perceptions are elevated to conceptions. 
 Sensibility gives us sensations only, but not knowl- 
 edge: many sensations are only many sensations, 
 but if linked by some connecting faculty, they be- 
 come uni'fied, and by means of imagination, mem- 
 ory and consciousness, become conceptions — knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 But the "raw material" gotten from the external 
 world, and passed on back to the Understanding, 
 has, ere this is done, undergone a transformation, 
 or taken on it "form". "Form" is a great word 
 with Kant as it was with Aristotle. This "form" 
 constitutes the invariable element in sensation, as 
 against the variable which belongs to the mere "raw 
 material." The two invariable elements are Space 
 and Time, for you can not divest external things 
 of the form of Space, nor internal things of the 
 form of Time. (Indeed, as we shall see later. Time 
 is a "form" of both external and internal things.) 
 We can imagine everything wi space annihilated, 
 but not space: so we can conceive Time going on, 
 though everything in time is thought of as annihil- 
 
82 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 ated. This is true of no other element in connec- 
 tion with sensation, and it is affirmed that these two 
 "forms" must constitute the invariable elements in 
 sensation — or as Kant prefers to say, the "forms 
 of the sensibility." As these elements are not given 
 by sensation, but are furnished by the sensibility, 
 of course we are not indebted to experience for a 
 knowledge of the same. They have no existence 
 outside of our sensibility. As the "moulds of the 
 mind" they not only give form to the diverse things 
 of sensation, but have no objective existence. Once 
 get this and once believe it, and Kantianism fol- 
 lows logically, for everything he says afterwards 
 is in a way but an exposition or re-application of 
 this thought of "forms" which the mind furnishes, 
 whether the Sensibility or Understanding or Rea- 
 son be under discussion. 
 
 Coming now to the Understanding, we see the 
 same principle of "form" and "matter" but a more 
 intricate application. We deal in the Understand- 
 ing with an active faculty, and a complicated one. 
 We have taken the case of the watch off, but now 
 we come to deal with the wheels. Here the "forms" 
 furnished to the materials which the sensibility has 
 sent on, are based on the sorts of judgments that 
 are possible. Taking the four possible judgments 
 of quantity, quality, relation and modality and 
 analyzing them much after the order of Aristotle, 
 we have the twelve Categories, as the pure forms 
 of Understanding, corresponding with the forms 
 of Space and Time as referred to in connection with 
 the sensibility. 
 
KANT 83 
 
 In the exposition of the Categories of the Under- 
 standing Kant professes to have answered the vital 
 element in the question, "How are synthetic judg- 
 ments a priori possible?" The synthetic judg- 
 ments of the Categories are all a priori, inasmuch 
 as they are not dependent upon experience, but be- 
 long to the mind as its original endowment. 
 
 But there is yet another department of the mind 
 — ^the crowning one — which Kant calls the faculty 
 of Reason, as distinct from the Understanding — 
 the Vemwnft as against the Verstand. Reason re- 
 duces the variety of conceptions to their unity. It 
 proceeds from generality to generality till the ulti- 
 mate or Absolute is reached. Here we naturally 
 think of Plato and Aristotle and see even in the 
 word that Kant uses his indebtedness to Plato, for 
 he calls the three pure forms of Reason, Ideas. 
 Now these pure forms of Reason are independent 
 of experience; they are above Sensibility, and 
 above understanding — yet Reason receives as "raw 
 material" the conceptions of the Understanding 
 just as the Understanding receives perceptions 
 from or through the Sensibility. Hence we have 
 the "rock of offense" in Kantian psychology and 
 philosophy — that Reason is powerless when em- 
 ployed on matters beyond the sphere of the Under- 
 standing. It can, according to Kant's theory, 
 draw nothing but false conclusions when exercised 
 out of its realm. 
 
 The three great unifying Ideas of the Reason 
 are those which concern things subjective — the 
 
84 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Soul; things cosmological — the World; the ulti- 
 mate and great unifying principle, binding every- 
 thing in one — God. 
 
 It may seem vain to attempt to illustrate Kant's 
 psychology, or at least his psychology so far as it 
 bears directly upon this theory of knowledge, but 
 a person not especially versed in philosophic 
 studies might get from the following imperfect 
 illustration, a fair idea of Kant's meaning: A 
 man stands before a convex mirror, which reflects, 
 but distorts the man's form; a photographer's 
 camera stands at such an angle from the mirror as 
 to catch the distorted reflection of the man, and in 
 turn reverses it and greatly reduces it in size. The 
 mirror is the Sensibility which receives the sensa- 
 tion from without and "impresses" on that which 
 it receives a "form" due to the peculiarity of the 
 mirror; the mirror in turn sends on this distorted 
 image and the camera, as the Understanding, re- 
 ceives the same, impresses its "form" on it, and 
 passes the twice changed image to a beholder who 
 stands behind the camera, and receives through his 
 eye, with corresponding changes and "forms," the 
 picture of the man who somewhere without, yet not 
 directly visible, stands before a mirror. I am as- 
 suming vision in the beholder to be the simple 
 thing the populace takes it to be, — and in that case 
 we get in a vague way Kant's notion of the "de- 
 partments" of the mind, and realize how the "thing 
 in itself," — ^the man standing before the mirror, is 
 not seen by the beholder; furthermore, the image 
 
KANT 85 
 
 of it which does reach him has been "impressed" by 
 "forms" and "forms," until he cannot say how far 
 they have distorted the original. The thing seen as 
 imprinted on the camera is only "phenomenon" — 
 the man that remains unseen is "noumenon," con- 
 cerning whom we can only infer certain things. 
 Kant would say the "raw material" (the man) ex- 
 ists; but he would utterly reject the assumption 
 that it would be logical to infer the image on the 
 glass was a cownterpart of the man standing before 
 the mirror. I have used the illustration of the 
 convex mirror to assist in getting at Kant's idea — 
 but assuming the glass to be a normal one, the 
 image reflected several times might still be true to 
 the original. This I believe to be the fact — ^but 
 this is not Kantian. 
 
 SOME INFERENCES EROM KANt's PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Strictly speaking Ontology as a science, accord- 
 ing to Kant, is impossible. We cannot know "the 
 thing in itself," but only such representations of 
 it as Sensibility, Understanding and Reason force 
 us, by their very nature to accept. 
 
 The existence of the external world is not di- 
 rectly known, yet necessarily postulated. What 
 you cannot demonstrate you may postulate, upon 
 the basis of certain universal and necessary ideas. 
 Our knowledge of the objective world cannot be 
 relied upon to be true as a subjective impression 
 of an objective fact — a mirror held up before the 
 world — yet that knowledge is true in that it is not 
 
86 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 a delusion. An objective world exists, and, what 
 is more important, the veracity of consciousness is 
 established. When the veracity of consciousness 
 is established we have certainty in morals. 
 
 The conciliating spirit of Kant is seen here in 
 that he agrees with Hume in saying that our 
 knowledge is relative, and that it begs with ex- 
 perience. He differs widely, and thinks he has an- 
 swered Hume by saying that in consciousness we 
 have elements which were not given by experience 
 and which are necessarily true — or to quote the 
 first words of the Critique of Pure Reason, "all 
 our knowledge begins with experience — ^but it by 
 no means follows that it all arises out of experi- 
 ence." In consciousness we find ideas of God, the 
 World, etc., and other ideas which can only belong 
 to what we call soul — Virtue, Duty, Justice. We 
 cannot demonstrate the existence of God. Rea- 
 son is limited to things within the realm of experi- 
 ence; but the practical reason afiirms what the 
 pure reason cannot demonstrate. As in the case 
 of the theoretical part of Kant's work, he pre- 
 supposed as existent the "thing in itself," though 
 such was not susceptible of being known — so in 
 the practical part we find the freedom of the teUl 
 as an abstract and indeterminate principle that 
 must realize itself in something, and that some- 
 thing is — action. 
 
 The same principle which we saw further back 
 in this chapter concerning sensibility, understand- 
 ing and reason — in each case "imposing" their re- 
 
KANT 87 
 
 spective "forms" on what they each receive from 
 without or from each other, holds good in the 
 region of the Practical Reason: in the realm of 
 conscience man finds himself obliged to impose cer- 
 tain rules upon his actions. These laws have there- 
 fore the character of universality and necessity. 
 Virtue, justice, etc., result not from experience, for 
 the ideal we hold up as a type exceeds what our ex- 
 perience gives of virtue and justice. The "cate- 
 gorical imperative" comes not of experience. 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF KANTIANISM 
 
 I shall try now to sum up what might be called 
 the essentials of the Kantian philosophy: In deal- 
 ing with the problem of knowledge Kant was con- 
 cerned with synthetic judgments a priori, for he 
 considered that such only called for solution. 
 Under the head of the Transcendental Aesthetic 
 Kant plunges at once into a discussion of pure 
 mathematics and shows at least to his satisfaction 
 (not to the satisfaction of G. H. Lewes) that we 
 have in this science a priori synthetic judgments. 
 He even goes further and says we have them in 
 Physics and Metaphysics. Now if the fundamen- 
 tals of mathematics are intuitions a priori, may we 
 not conclude that there may be also a priori con- 
 ceptions, out of which, in connection with these 
 pure intuitions a metaphysic could be formed? But 
 as the intuitions of space and time are but subjec- 
 tive forms, there is something subjective mingled 
 with all our perceptions, and we cannot know 
 
88 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 things save as they appear. The Transcendental 
 Aesthetic seeks to know only what is in the sensory 
 a priori. 
 
 When we reach the Transcendental Analytic we 
 face the problem of how to attain to the pure con- 
 ceptions of the understanding. Aristotle's catego- 
 ries, Kant said, were tabulated empirically; we 
 must derive them from a common principle, and 
 that principle is, the logical judgment. Get the 
 modes or forms of the judgment and we have the 
 principle we seek. The twelve categories of Kant, 
 he thinks, are conceptions a priori, and hence have 
 necessary and umversal validity ; though by them- 
 selves they are empty forms which have content 
 only through the intuitions which come through 
 the sensory. Hence, as the categories are thus 
 empty save as the sensory gives intuitions, the 
 categories have validity only in their application 
 to sensuous intuitions. 
 
 The question as to how sensible objects can be 
 subsumed under pure conceptions of the under- 
 standing, and fundamental principles formed from 
 them, calls forth the most intricate and perhaps 
 least satisfactory thing in Kantianism, — viz., his 
 doctrine of the schematism of the categories by the 
 pure intuition. Time. He uses time in this capac- 
 ity because he says it has both a pure a priori and 
 a sensible element about it, and thus becomes the 
 mediating "thing," or "thread for the beads of 
 events." This schema is a product of the general or 
 universal imagination. Quantity has for its uni- 
 
KANT 89 
 
 versal schema the series of time; quality has the 
 content of time; relation has the order of time; 
 modality has the whole of time. Thus with a priori 
 conceptions and a schema through which we can 
 apply these conceptions to objects, we are fur- 
 nished with a basis for forming fundamental meta- 
 physical principles. But Kant is never tired of tell- 
 ing us we have no right to use these conceptions 
 and principles save as to things as objects of pos- 
 sible experience. 
 
 In the Transcendental Dialectic we have the 
 work of "reason" as distinct from the understand- 
 ing, and its peculiar work is : to "find the uncondi- 
 tioned for the conditioned knowledge of the under- 
 standing, and to unify it." The reason has no 
 reference to objects but only to the imderstamdimg 
 and its judgments, hence its activity is an imma- 
 nent one. Exalt the highest unity of reason to an 
 actual object of knowledge, and we apply the con- 
 ceptions of the understanding to the unconditioned, 
 and consequently are decoyed beyond the limits of 
 reason. This is the "false use of the categories" 
 as Kant thinks, and a prolific source of error. 
 
 Kant would overthrow all rational psychology 
 as this has been previously apprehended. As we 
 cannot know "the thing in itself" we cannot know 
 it, even though that "thing" be our own soul. 
 Kant thus reasons : to treat the Ego as object and 
 be able to apply to it categories, it must be given 
 empirically, in an intuition, for he has already shut 
 us up to the belief that the categories are empty 
 
90 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 save as they receive matter from the sensibility, and 
 whether an "object" be something without or with- 
 m, the sensibility has already impressed its "form" 
 on the same ere it reaches the understanding, and 
 we are forbidden to postulate objective reality of 
 any such an intuition. I can separate my thinking 
 ideally from my body, but this does not imply that 
 I can exist really separate from my body. Psy- 
 chology then furnishes us with no additional knowl- 
 edge of self but is useful as discipline, to save us 
 from "throwing ourselves into soulless materialism 
 or into the delusion of groundless idealism." 
 
 The antinomies of reason growing out of an 
 attempt to establish determinations respecting the 
 world, are too well known to give them in any 
 detail. Kant thought much of his work here. 
 Others have not shared his estimate with him. 
 Hegel has done his best work in refuting this sec- 
 tion of Kant's Critique. 
 
 Under the head of the pure reason and the idea 
 of God, Kant discusses the ontological, the cosmo- 
 logical, the theological or physico-theological ar- 
 guments — and comes to the conclusion that the idea 
 of a Supreme Being is nothing other than a regu- 
 lative principle of the reason. We can act "as if" 
 there were a God, but the Critique of Pure 
 Reason goes no further. Kant has had in mind 
 all the while to chastise reason, in that it has been 
 presumptions : the age of Enlightment had made a 
 god of "Reason." The Practical Reason will give 
 to the intuitions of the soul what Romanticism was 
 
KANT 91 
 
 calling for and faith may affirm what reason must 
 remain an agnostic concerning. 
 
 The Practical Reason has to do with the deter- 
 mination of the will. It has nothing to do with the 
 cognizableness of objects. Freedom is an a priori 
 fact of inner experience. But free will works 
 through its acts upon the sensory, and there must 
 be a point of contact between the two. This is the 
 basis for the Critique of the Practical Reason. 
 
 In the Analytic Kant starts with freedom as 
 the simple "form" of our actions. But experience 
 or the empirical gives matter to the empty form — 
 in the desire for pleasure and the dread of pain. 
 The categorical imperative is the necessary law of 
 freedom binding upon all men, and regulates men 
 in regard to the variations which arise in their re- 
 lations to pleasure and pain. The highest principle 
 of morality is : so act that the maxims of thy will 
 can at the same time be valid as the principle of a 
 universal lawgiving. 
 
 The impulse impelling the will to act comform- 
 ably to the highest moral law is the moral law 
 itself apprehended and revered, and no mere im- 
 pulse to happiness. Kant's morality was most se- 
 vere: he said if we do that which is moral for the 
 sake of law we have legality and not morality. 
 Reverence for the moral law is the single feeling 
 befitting man. 
 
 In the Dialectic of the Practical Reason Kant 
 atones for what he has left undone in the Critique 
 of Pure Reason. When we ask, What is the high- 
 
92 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 est good? we find in reply that it is the highest 
 happiness joined to the highest virtue. But the 
 highest virtue cannot exist in this Uf e, both because 
 of the union of soul and body, and because of the 
 brevity of Hfe: hence we are bound to postulate 
 the immortality of the soul — it must have time into 
 which to develop in virtue. And the highest happi- 
 ness can never be experienced save from the as- 
 sumption of a God who knows our nature and the 
 demands of the same. Hence we are bound to pos- 
 tulate a God. What the Pure Reason therefore 
 could not prove the Practical Reason affirms. 
 
 The Critique of the Judgment discusses the aes- 
 thetical and theological sense, and is a kind of 
 bridge between the two other Critiques. He calls 
 this last Critique that of "Judgment," because in 
 the narrower sense it establishes a relation between 
 things which have nothing in common. "Beauty 
 does not inhere in objects ; it does not exist apart 
 from the aesthetic sense; it is the product of this 
 sense as time and space are products of the theo- 
 retical sense." 
 
 Here we find Kant with his principle with which 
 we started out in these characterizations of his 
 teaching subj ectively binding us ; and struggle as 
 we will, aspire as we will, (and Kant allows us 
 to do both) the mmd prescribes law and the mind 
 makes beautiful things beautiful. In an evil day 
 Kant said in his first edition of "The Critique of 
 Pure Reason" that the Ego and the "thing in 
 itself" might be one and the same thing. This 
 
KANT 93 
 
 hint t|;o plunge Fitchte and others into the extreme 
 of making the universe one substance — God. Thus 
 the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme. 
 For Hume, whom Kant feels called upon to refute, 
 assumed that the universe was one substance, and 
 that substance was matter. Kant vainly pro- 
 tested that the extreme Idealism of Fichte had no 
 right to claim Kantianism as its progenitor. Not- 
 withstanding the severe denunciations of Kant 
 against Fichte and his followers, the Idealism of 
 the latter will continue to have its place in the 
 History of Philosophy as a natural inference from 
 Kant's psychology. 
 
IV 
 HEGEL: THEISTIC EVOLUTION. 
 
 "A great man condemns the world to the task 
 of explaining him," is an oft-quoted saying of 
 Hegel's, and may well become the opening sentence 
 of an attempt to give an exposition of Hegelianism 
 in as simple a style and in as brief a compass as 
 may be possible. 
 
 Plato was a poet-philosopher; Aristotle was sci- 
 entific ; Kant was a bom metaphysician ; Hegel was 
 a theologian as well as philosopher. From one 
 standpoint all that Hegel said might be included 
 under a comprehensive dissertation on the text: 
 "He that loseth his life shall find it." His philoso- 
 phy reminds us of St. Paul's mystic utterances 
 concerning the Godhead in Christ, when He who 
 was equal with the Father "emptied Himself," but 
 only to return, as it were enriched, and take His 
 place at the right hand of the majesty on high. 
 Before Hegel is condemned for his paradoxes and 
 contradictions, it were well to ask if Paul has not 
 been guilty of similar offenses. Can a man deal 
 with the truth in its entirety, see unity in variety, 
 overreach the merely passing, including the prob- 
 lem of evil — and not seem to contradict himself? 
 Hegel is one of the philosophers who undertook to 
 present a philosophy to the world that would in- 
 clude everything in it, and in the universe. Aris- 
 totle took up separate sciences, or indeed made 
 
 94 
 
HEGEL 95 
 
 them ; he wrote on all subjects, and thus produced 
 a sort of encyclopedia. Hegel assumed to have 
 discovered a Method, — a key to knowledge, which 
 when applied, would, if not unlock all mysteries, 
 at least place everything in heaven and earth upon 
 what might be called a rational basis. 
 
 George Frederick Hegel was bom at Stuttgart, 
 the capital of Wiirtenburg, on 27th of August, 
 1770. This was the year in which Kant published 
 his famous "Dissertation" and was made full pro- 
 fessor at Konigsberg. Hegel was born eleven years 
 after Schiller and five years before Schelling. The 
 Swabians of Germany, to whom Hegel belonged, 
 have been called the "Scots of the Fatherland." 
 Their peculiarities are shrewdness and simplicity, 
 religious enthusiasm and speculative free-thinking. 
 
 As a boy Hegel was characterized as "thor- 
 oughly teachable," but not remarkable for bril- 
 liancy — save to take prizes because of his patient 
 application to study. He was early designed for 
 the Church by his parents, and was sent to the 
 seminary of Tubingen to prepare himself for the 
 ministry. Before this, however, he had been much 
 influenced by his reading of Greek poetry, and his 
 experience at Tubingen was colored in much by 
 this decided influence. Greek art came to be 
 regarded by Hegel as the vision of a realized har- 
 mony of existence, and occasioned the young stu- 
 dent many a rude shock, as he saw life and even 
 Christianity in Europe. 
 
 Kant was the rising star in philosophy when 
 
96 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 Hegel was a Tubingen student ; but it is said that 
 none of the professors at the institution understood 
 Kant sufficiently to teach him sympathetically. 
 Hegel was therefore forced to think his own way 
 through philosophy, and left the seminary with 
 the singular recommendation from one of his pro- 
 fessors, that "Hegel was a fine student, well versed 
 in literature generally, but deficient in philosophy." 
 
 In considering the making of Hegel, which 
 follows here in order, — for the next six years may 
 be said to have decided his course and line of 
 thought — it is well to note what might be called 
 his remote and proximate intellectual antecedents. 
 It is a maxim of Hegel's that nothing is to be con- 
 sidered by itself — apart from that to which it is 
 related. Surely a man cannot be so considered, 
 and especially a man living when Hegel did, and 
 the inheritor of all that was his. 
 
 Hegel is Platonic in temper, so far as that tem- 
 per gives itself to theory as against scientific inves- 
 tigation. He is like Plato an idealist, but certainly 
 not like him, a dualist. In reading Hegel one at 
 once thinks of Platonic "ideas," for we are told 
 that "nothing exists but for thought and as a man- 
 ifestation of thought; that spirit is the reason of 
 nature, and mind the kei/ to matter." 
 
 In the formulating of his theory of ideas Plato 
 appears again to be Hegel's forerunner. In the 
 dialogues "Parmenides" and the "Sophist" we have 
 almost Hegelian language in the subjects discussed, 
 viz.. Being, Not-being, Motion, Becoming. If 
 
HEGEL 97 
 
 Hegel sympathized with the Heraclitan element 
 in Plato, he was none the less Platonic for that. 
 
 With the consistent contradiction that we see 
 throughout Hegel he was not less Aristotelian than 
 Platonic. When we recall that Aristotle conceived 
 reality as matter becoming real by acquiring 
 "form" from mind, we have made a juncture be- 
 tween Hegel and Aristotle which is vital. It has 
 been well said: "Add Aristotle's conception of 
 movement to Plato's conception of ideas as consti- 
 tuting reality and you have something very much 
 like Hegel's Logic." 
 
 The Greeks left a dualism unreconciled, and Des- 
 cartes, in the opening of the period of Modern 
 Philosophy, emphasized it as the most notable fea- 
 ture in his scheme. Mind is the purely active sub- 
 stance and matter the purely passive — this is the 
 Cartesian platform. Out of this naturally, as by 
 reaction, sprang the teaching of Spinoza, whose 
 mind was intoxicated with the idea of unity. We 
 have according to Spinoza one substance, but it is 
 broken into two forms as we know it, thought and 
 extension. Hegel's terse way of defining his posi- 
 tion as against the monism of Spinoza is: "Not 
 substance but subject." Hegel believes in unity as 
 strongly as Spinoza does ; still while differences do 
 but suppose a unity as of substance, that unity, as 
 a subject, breaks up into differences which consti- 
 tute the main outlines of reality. 
 
 When we consider the proximate antecedents of 
 Hegel we approach what must be treated with more 
 
98 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 care and at greater length, for much that seems 
 mysterious in our philosopher will disappear when 
 he is shown in his environment — ^his agreements 
 and disagreements with those who immediately pre- 
 ceded him or were his early co-laborers. 
 
 During the six years that might be said to have 
 enabled Hegel to "find himself" he was a tutor first 
 at Berne, Switzerland, and then at Frankfort, Ger- 
 many. The influence of Greek poetry has been 
 already alluded to as being the greatest single in- 
 fluence upon Hegel in his university days. Bear- 
 ing in mind that he was educated for the Church 
 and had not in his six "wander years" ceased to 
 regard himself as a theologian rather than a phi- 
 losopher, it is not to be wondered at that Hegel di- 
 rected his attention at the first rather to the more 
 concrete and practical matters connected with 
 philosophy — such as the history of it and its bear- 
 ing on ethics — than to abstract metaphysics. 
 
 Two leading principles were from the first in 
 Hegel's mind, viz., the idea of freedom, or self-de- 
 termination; the other, the idea of man's life as 
 an organic unity, with its two phases, natural and 
 spiritual, which cannot be separated from each 
 other without losing all their meaning and value. 
 The first idea came of the Reformation, with its 
 emancipating influence, and might be said to be 
 part and parcel of the 18th century Enlighten- 
 ment. Its exponents, in part or in transformed 
 state, were Rousseau, Kant and Fichte. In Rous- 
 seau and Kant we find an attempt to develop this 
 
HEGEL 99 
 
 abstract principle of freedom into a social system 
 without altering its abstract or negative character. 
 Rousseau held to the doctrine of individualism, 
 with universal reason as merely a common element 
 in natures otherwise unlike, rather than a prin- 
 ciple binding together differences and thus mak- 
 ing organic unity. With Kant the "conscious- 
 ness of self" was the thing common to all men 
 and which makes community between them pos- 
 sible; and self-determination he considered the 
 basis of all morality. But between Kant's abstract 
 or general ideas and the desires and capacities 
 which determine the p|H;icular relations of men to 
 each other and to the world, there was no connec- 
 tion. His. morality, as Hegel saw it, was soulless. 
 
 With Schelling and Fichte, Hegel was in more 
 agreement. It is well known that the first was He- 
 gel's fellow-worker in philosophy for a time. To 
 the latter he acknowledges his indebtedness for the 
 hint concerning the celebrated "method" that was 
 to Hegel the key to a solution of his philosophical 
 difficulty. 
 
 Keeping our minds upon the end Hegel had in 
 view, viz., the reconciliation of the two principles 
 above referred to, and remembering that his early 
 study of Greek poetry and art had revealed to him 
 what seemed to be a reconciliation of heart and 
 reason, of the universal and the particular, and 
 that at this period of Hegel's life he regarded 
 Christianity as a failure, and said it was a "system 
 which can make men good only if they are good 
 
100 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 already" — we understand how he broke with his 
 friend Schelling and with Fichte. The first of 
 these would grant to a favored few, prophets and 
 poets, to rise to the point of seeing reconciliation ; 
 while the latter said that moral turpitude hindered 
 man's rising to true intellectual perception. Hegel 
 espouses the cause of man and mind and says : "I 
 hold it one of the best signs of the times that hu- 
 manity has been presented to its own eyes as worthy 
 of reverence. It is a proof that the nimbus is van- 
 ishing from the heads of the oppressors and gods 
 of the earth. Philosophers are now proving the 
 dignity of man, and the people will soon learn to 
 feel it, and not merely to ask humbly for those 
 rights of theirs which have been trampled in the 
 dust, but to resume and to appropriate them for 
 themselves." Further: "He who has so much to 
 say of the incomprehensible stupidity of mankind, 
 who elaborately demonstrates that it is the greatest 
 folly for a people to have such prejudices, who has 
 always on his tongue the watchwords of 'enlight- 
 enment,' 'knowledge of mankind,' 'progress and 
 perfectibility of the species' — is but a vain babbler 
 of the Aufklarung, and a vender of universal medi- 
 cines — one who feeds himself with empty words, 
 and ignores the holy and tender web of human 
 affections." 
 
 Dissatisfied with the Enlightment, dissatisfied 
 with the philosophers of the day, dissatisfied with 
 the Church as he saw it and understood it, Hegel 
 was, if we give him credit for sincerity, forging 
 
HEGEL 101 
 
 his way to what would be a philosophy and a re- 
 ligion which should do justice to the whole man, 
 heart and head, and appeal to the people by its 
 very reasonableness. Singular indeed that the man 
 who is regarded as the most obscure of all modem 
 philosophers, and who is supposed to be obscure 
 for obscurity's sake, should have had in mind such 
 aims as his words lead us to infer he cherished. 
 Has he been misunderstood, or was all this seem- 
 ing interest in humanity only in seeming? 
 
 During the last years of Hegel's residence at 
 Frankfort, his terminology changed and with it 
 his antagonism to Christianity seemed to vanish. 
 Hitherto Hegel had used the words "life" and 
 "love" to express the highest kind of social unity. 
 He now substitutes the word "spirit." From this 
 word he never afterwards departs. "Spirit" was 
 to Hegel what "love" was to Browning — ^the high- 
 est of all principles — the unification of the irrec- 
 oncilable. To Hegel the term "spirit" seemed to 
 convey "the idea of antagonism overcome, contra- 
 diction reconciled, unity reached through struggle 
 and conflict of elements, which, in the first aspect 
 of them, are opposed to each other." Further- 
 more, and very important to know, this unity can- 
 not be immediate, nor is it a natural process — it is 
 not ready-made from the first, nor a something 
 which does not at first resist our minds. It must be- 
 gin with a distinct consciousness of independence 
 to be renounced, and of opposition to be overcome. 
 Here is the germ thought that was hinted at in the 
 
102 SEEKERS AETER SOUL 
 
 beginning of this chapter — the idea of losing one's 
 life to find it, or as has been expressed in few words, 
 "dying to live." 
 
 Recurring now for a moment to Kant, we can 
 see the point of departure between him and Hegel. 
 Kant left philosophy struggling with dualism. 
 His world of "thing-in-itself" was the unknown 
 element as well as the mysterious unknown — it was 
 not the "self" and was really no part of it — ^though 
 the conscious self did impress certain "forms" upon 
 this mysterious "thing." Furthermore, Kant 
 hinted at a dualism again when he said that "man's 
 conduct was phenomenally determined but nomen- 
 cblly free." 
 
 In addition to this expressed or implied dualism, 
 Kant was agnostic, save that he brought in "faith" 
 or what might be called "intuition," which affirmed 
 what reason could not grapple with. To Hegel 
 this seemed equivalent to saying on Kant's part: 
 "There is a unity but I cannot find it — hence I 
 affirm what I cannot discover." Indeed Hegel for 
 a time took refuge in what Schelling never de- 
 parted from, — ^that "philosophy must end in re- 
 ligion, because philosophy is thought, and thought 
 always involves finitude and opposition — e. g., the 
 opposition of the subject and object, of the mind 
 that thinks to matter that does not think." His is 
 the doctrine of religious "intuition" or the feeling 
 of a unity which cannot be rationally discovered 
 nor expressed. 
 Hegel's final position was that it is not enough to 
 
HEGEL 103 
 
 say there are organisms in the world, but the whole 
 world must be conceived as an organism. All his- 
 tory and nature must be seen to have the "unity 
 of a poem." In such a theory optimism must be 
 reached not by exclusion of evil, but by overcoming 
 it. "All things must work together for good" — 
 not only "to those who love God," but for man 
 and the world — ^which is Browning's platform ex- 
 actly. 
 
 We are now in position to treat of Hegel's sys- 
 tem in something of detail. An outline of it might 
 be given thus : 
 
 His aim was to unfold the doctrine of the Abso- 
 lute. In doing so his method is that of "progres- 
 sive definitions." But his progress is that of a 
 spiral railway. 
 
 Reality is a system. By this is meant that real- 
 ity is conceived as a unity. This must not be con- 
 founded with Pantheism of the ordinary type. 
 This system regards unity as an objective fact and 
 differences as mere illusion. To Hegel existence is 
 necessarily revealed not simply as a unity but as 
 a unity of distinguished and related parts — a sys- 
 tem. His favorite illustration (and he was happy 
 in using illustrations) to indicate the unity of 
 the world, was the magnet which when broken into 
 two parts did not give the one the south and the 
 other the north pole — ^but each was both north and 
 south. One thinks of Paul's paragraph on the 
 "body" in his letter to the Corinthians as he reads 
 Hegel's plea for the universe, as a system, with its 
 
104. SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 parts, each, however seemingly small or unimport- 
 ant, necessary to the whole, yet nothing if sepa- 
 rated from the body. In his treatment of this world 
 of reality, Hegel begins with the world of thought 
 — ^his Logic : next he takes up the world of reality 
 in what we call Nature, seemingly estranged from 
 thought — ^his Philosophy of Nature: finally the 
 world of reality consciously penetrated by thought 
 — ^which is his Philosophy of Spirit — ^the culmina- 
 tion of his Philosophy as a whole. 
 
 Reality is a graded system. Here we meet 
 something like the hierarchy in Plato's Ideas. 
 Every part of the Hegelian system is important, 
 but not every part is equally so. The lower gives 
 place to the higher. The life-blood of the slain 
 passes into the conquerors. We have "lower" cate- 
 gories and "higher." The whole is a scheme in 
 which evolution is the distinguishing factor. It is 
 just here that Hegel is to some and perhaps to 
 most people contradictory, or at least unsatisfac- 
 tory. He is apt to say of a thing or a state or a 
 process — "true in part," "false in part." From 
 one standpoint that which is part of a graded sys- 
 tem may seem to be "cause," "effect," "end," — yet 
 from another simply a link in a chain or "nothing" 
 if entirely abstracted from its relations. 
 
 Reality is a system or union of opposites. This 
 is the heart of Hegelianism. Truth is the synthe- 
 sis of all possible half truths. It is reached when 
 we have been tossed from aspect to aspect until we 
 are thrown into the heart of things. Kant had said 
 
HEGEL 105 
 
 that where Time and Space were the ruling 
 "forms" of perception we should expect to encoun- 
 ter contradictions. Sometimes Hegel shows how 
 one phase of a truth passes into its contradictory ; 
 again he shows how the thing as it stands is self- 
 contradictory. First thoughts cannot be more 
 than a rough one-sided sketch of the reality of 
 things. The aspects of truth come to us in definite 
 sequence ; but finality is impossible unless in abso- 
 lute philosophy, or perhaps in the totality of the 
 process of the universe. Here again we think of 
 Browning, as one who while a believer in evolution 
 said the truth was to be reached not by judging 
 the oak by the acorn, but the acorn by the oak. 
 Get the whole process, see the entire development, 
 and then judge the part the seed played, or what 
 the earth, air, water must have given. Hegel will 
 not give a categorical reply to many questions 
 which it would seem should merit it: he is apt 
 to say "either" or "both, if you please," and this 
 is exasperating to men of the George H. Lewes 
 type. And yet, was not this something of the atti- 
 tude of Christ to many questions? The more men 
 think, the more they are forced to see that behind 
 much which the world regards as contradiction lies 
 a unity. Hegel thought he saw a unity that anni- 
 hilated all contradiction. It is easy to see in the 
 light of this attitude how Hegel would begin with 
 Logic — not the conventional logic of the schools, 
 but one made by Hegel himself, which disregarded 
 the established laws of "contradiction," "identity" 
 and the like. 
 
106 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 RedLity is a work of thought. This is the 
 crowning process, or last in the series. As I 
 have said, Hegel did not regard the unity 
 he was striving for as something which came to the 
 mind vmmediately or naturally. He had no notion 
 that a man's "first thoughts were his best 
 thoughts." It was on the other hand by severe 
 discipline, and by, in a sense, self-abnegation, that 
 a man came to see the world as it really is. One 
 must have such power of abstraction as to consider 
 himself apart from himself — to place himself in 
 with the world of men and of "things," and leave 
 himself there, while at the same time he stands 
 apart from all and observes the world's onward 
 movement. Kant had said the world of our knowl- 
 edge is a creation of thought. Hegel goes further 
 and states that reality is that which thought ap- 
 prehends, conceives or produces. 
 
 Thus far we have seen that Hegel was a child of 
 his time in a sense, as was inevitable. We have 
 seen that he was a German idealist, with elements 
 that connected him with the great Greek philoso- 
 phers. We see him dissatisfied with philosophy and 
 religion, as he saw them in his early days. We see 
 him proposing to apply a "method" which he as- 
 sumed would give unity to what had hitherto been 
 contradictory, and in so doing he came to the 
 problem by regarding reality as a system, and as a 
 graded system, with a union of opposites, and the 
 whole the work of thought — but thought as move- 
 ment and process. 
 
HEGEL 107 
 
 His work as a whole, said to be the most compre- 
 hensive ever undertaken by man, as well as the 
 most ambitious, begins naturally with his Logic, 
 and proceeds to his philosophy of Spieit. 
 
 Hegel's Logic: Hegel's logic is both logic and 
 metaphysics. As has been said already he begins 
 with logic because he unmakes the conventional 
 work on that subject which the world inherited from 
 Aristotle. The great pupil of Plato laid down the 
 "Law of Contradiction" as the highest law of 
 thought as opposed to the Heraclitan principle of 
 universal flux, and maintained that things are defi- 
 nitely what they are, in their isolation, and must 
 be kept in their definiteness, no matter how they 
 may be, in some instances, related. "A'' must not 
 be "not- A." No surprise then that the world 
 rubbed its eyes and wondered if it heard what was 
 really said when Hegel contradicted the law of 
 contradiction. And yet, if we sympathetically 
 look into his meaning, there is at least an element 
 of truth in even the famous saying that "being 
 and non-being are the same." 
 
 What Hegel contends for is that things in this 
 world are not absolutely differentiated. Kant had 
 said that thought made the world as we see it. 
 Hegel says that absolute difference is something 
 which cannot exist within the intelligible world. 
 We can embrace in our thought the widest antag- 
 onism consistent with the unity of thought itself, 
 but antagonism inconsistent with the unity of 
 thought is itself unthinkable. 
 
108 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Starting with the position that the world is an 
 organism, and that unity is at the bottom of all 
 differences, Hegel thinks there are no seeming an- 
 tagonisms which cannot be reconciled. If some 
 one says, "every finite thing is itself and no other," 
 Hegel replies, "this is true within limits," and then 
 goes on to show that because a thing is finite it is 
 by its very nature related to something else which 
 limits it, and thus it contains in itself the principle 
 of its own destruction. Its very existence is there- 
 fore contradictory, for it cannot be said to be any 
 more than it may be said not to be. This then is 
 the basis for saying that every definite thought or 
 thing includes its negative. Definiteness, finitude, 
 determination have their aflirmative or positive 
 meanings, but also involve their own negation. 
 The whole truth about a thing cannot be expressed 
 once for all in a proposition. Neither assertion 
 nor denial contains the complete truth. To say 
 then that "being and not-being are the same" is 
 to say that beneath differences and contradictions 
 there is a unity, and in the case of "being," Hegel 
 says the word implies both the most fundamental 
 and at the same time the poorest of all conceptions 
 — just because it is the most general and universal, 
 so the idea that contains least — in fact, isolated, it 
 contains nothing, or is nothing. 
 
 Being has no differentiations ; it is above set dif- 
 ferences ; all qualities are thought out of it. 
 
 In dealing with the categories, Hegel begins 
 with Being, as the most fundamental, and as the 
 
HEGEL 109 
 
 one which contains all the others, in the sense that 
 the others are but transformations of this funda- 
 mental idea. Yet, be it understood here, that, 
 while Hegel says there is an order to be observed, 
 which must be followed in considering the cate- 
 gories, — the mind must "abandon itself to its 
 spontaneous self-activity," — still, like the evolu- 
 tionist in science, the lower types serve to be as 
 stepping-stones to the higher, and when the idea of 
 self-consciousness is reached, we have that which 
 contains all the categories and the all-inclusive 
 truth. 
 
 If it is asked, how does being which is, in a 
 sense, nothing, become anything or everything, the 
 clue or solution is found in the idea of becoming 
 and in the very contradiction which in turn be- 
 comes a principle of force As has been said, Be- 
 ing isolated, or separated from all relations, re- 
 mains barren, fruitless, powerless. But Being as 
 the fundamental category, from which everything 
 is evolved, and in which everything is implied, by 
 means of the very contradiction which puzzles us is 
 resolved into the notion of "becoming" — similar to 
 the notion of Aristotle concerning the non-exist- 
 ence of matter made actual by means of "form." If 
 the solution of one difficulty simply creates another, 
 Hegel solves the second as he did the first — recon- 
 ciling contradictions by unity — all the while as- 
 suming nature to be "the self-development of 
 thought and thought as nature becoming conscious 
 of itself." 
 
110 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 If in all this one asks, "Where is consistency?" 
 Hegel replies that it does not exist. Syllogistic 
 logic is the logic of argument and its merit is to 
 secure self-consistency. This is the logic of the 
 prize-ring. Hegel will not for a moment say that 
 self -consistency is the main concern of logic. There 
 is no such fixity in healthy unpolemical human 
 thought. If logical premises were infallibly true, 
 then self -consistency would be a sufficient rule. But 
 logical premises are not given exhaustively, conse- 
 quently self-consistency has no meaning for 
 "thought as thought." Abstract (in the sense of 
 one-sided) thought is vicious, if it be anything 
 more than a passing stage towards a fuUy con- 
 scious grasp of the many-sided coherence of real- 
 ity. The true movement, then, is not from discord 
 to self-consistency, but from vagueness to defi- 
 NiTENESs. This last phrase perhaps as fully ex- 
 presses what Hegel means by his "method" or 
 process as any words that could be used. He illus- 
 trates this principle by reference to perception. 
 No perception is entirely new. Each is a fresh in- 
 stance of what our past intellectual life consisted 
 in. We have ever before us a vague, half-formed 
 picture of what the world is. Each new experi- 
 ence is but a new touch to the picture. 
 
 We see Hegel's trend, even if we can not agree 
 with him. We are also disposed to say of him what 
 he says continually of what men have considered 
 established truths : "True, in a sense." One must 
 wonder though what becomes of his own reason- 
 
HEGEL 111 
 
 ing when self-consistency is so summarily dealt 
 with. But this characterization is concerned with 
 presenting Hegel's views so as to make them in- 
 telligible rather than with a criticism of those 
 views. 
 
 The ■first division of logic according to Hegel 
 has to do with the categories in which relativity is 
 not EXPRESSED — such as Being, Quality, Quantity. 
 While these involve, they do not immediately ex- 
 press or even suggest any relation of the object to 
 which they are applied to any other object. 
 
 The second main division will have to do with 
 such categories as Essence and Existence, Force 
 and Expression, Substance and Accident, Cause 
 and Effect. These drive us to go beyond the ob- 
 ject with which we are dealing, and to connect it 
 with other objects. 
 
 The last main division will have to do with the 
 categories such as those of final cause and organic 
 unity, by which the object is characterized as re- 
 lated to intellect, or having in it the self-deter- 
 mined nature of which the intelligence is the high- 
 est type. 
 
 The general argument of the logic is: Reality, 
 which at first is presented to us as the Being of 
 things which are regarded as standing by themr 
 selves, determined in quality and quantity, having 
 no necessary relations to each other — comes in 
 the process of thought to be known as an endless 
 aggregate of essentially related and transitory ex- 
 istences, each of which exists only as it determines 
 
112 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 and is determined by the others, according to uni- 
 versal laws — and finally is discovered to lie in a 
 world of objects, each and all of which exist only 
 in so far as they exist for intelligence, and in so far 
 as intelligence is revealed or realized in them. 
 
 This movement of thought is demonstrated by 
 showing how the categories of Being when fully 
 understood and reasoned out lead to the categories 
 of Relations, and these in turn to the categories of 
 Ideal Unity, which corresponds with philosophy. 
 
 Hegel's Philosophy of Nature: Nature is to 
 Hegel the extreme of possible opposition to spirit, 
 but that in turn through which spirit fully real- 
 izes itself. In dealing with Hegel as with Kant, 
 when we have seen his "method" we have the key 
 to his treatment of all that follows. When the 
 Kantian doctrine of Space and Time has been fully 
 appreciated and understood, Kant is comparatively 
 easy : so if we appreciate the way Hegel looks upon 
 "unity and difference," "contradiction and iden- 
 tity" — if we see the place "development" plays in 
 his system, and what he means by it, we can at least 
 follow him, whether he is reasoning about things 
 mental or physical. 
 
 Nature, independent of intelligence, is a process 
 fixed in the form of an external hierarchy of ex- 
 istences, which in their relation exhibit successive 
 stages of development by which the object returns 
 to the subject. In the inorganic world the ideal 
 principle is present as an inner or hidden nature of 
 things, a law of relation between parts external 
 
HEGEL 113 
 
 to each other, yet this principle manifests itself 
 only as these parts in their changes continually 
 betray the secret of their essential relativity to 
 each other. In the living being, however, this 
 inner nature does not merely tmderlie the fixed dif- 
 ference of external parts, but is revealed in them 
 as a principle of organization. The ideality of 
 nature is to Hegel that in which the external 
 visibly contradicts and refutes its own exter- 
 nality. This idealization is imperfect, as it is 
 not conscious of itself; it is not present to the 
 living being, but only to us. Nature rises to 
 self-consciousness only in man, who in turn is not 
 only conscious of it but of himself in distinction 
 from and in relation to it. Man in his development 
 must overcome this antagonism between himself 
 and the world, and so realize his unity and the 
 unity of all things and beings with the absolute 
 Spirit, "in whom we live and move and have our 
 being," and in whom Nature has its being. 
 
 How can the Absolute transform itself into a 
 material manifold in Space and Time.'' Some one 
 has said that it is as hard for Hegel to think of 
 God without nature as to think of nature without 
 God. He says we must think that the finite is not 
 AN utterance of the infinite but the utterance. 
 What "Being" was as a category in logic. Space 
 becomes in Hegel's treatment of nature. It is the 
 something and the nothing. It is "reality" and it 
 is "unreality." So with Time. We are asked to 
 see in movement what we saw hitherto in contradic- 
 
114 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 tion — a force. The movement from thought to 
 material being is a double one, viz., from thought 
 to empty space and time, and then from the idea 
 of these back to matter. 
 
 All is the Idea struggling to manifest itself in 
 objectivity. In the lower forms of nature dumb 
 intelligence is striving to utter itself ; at last in the 
 higher forms it speaks. Every modification that 
 the Idea undergoes in the sphere of pure Thought 
 it endeavors to express in the sphere of Nature. 
 Thus we have evolution ; the secret of the seeming 
 contradiction; and the final realization of the 
 world in Reason. Nature is divine in principle but 
 not divine as it exists. The Pantheists say God is 
 one with nature and nature one with God. Hegel 
 would say that nature is God's exteriority — ^the 
 passing of the Idea through its imperfection to 
 consciousness or to self-consciousness. 
 
 In the process up to self-consciousness, nature 
 passes through three principle stages : 
 
 Mechanics: Here matter is found in its most 
 universal form. Yet here we see a tendency to life 
 or motion, and we call it "gravity." Gravity is 
 the desire of matter to come to itself, and thus in 
 this shows its first trace of subjectivity. This 
 "trace of subjectivity" rules in the solar system. 
 Hegel would say that the world of matter reveals 
 thought or idea sO far as a world could do it. 
 
 Physics: Here matter particularizes itself in 
 a body, in an individuality. Mere matter possesses 
 no individuality. In astronomy it is not the bodies, 
 
HEGEL 115 
 
 so Hegel says, which interest us, but their geomet- 
 rical relations. In astronomy, however, matter has 
 found its center; in Physics matter has found a 
 quality. To the province of Physics belongs inor- 
 ganic nature with its forms and reciprocal rela- 
 tions. 
 
 Organics: Inorganic nature destroys itself in 
 the chemical process. While the living body is 
 ever on the verge of passing over to the chemical 
 process, yet the living body resists that tendency. 
 Nature in Physics arises to individuality, nature 
 in organics rises to subjectivity. This is done as 
 follows : 
 
 1. The general image of life in the mmeral 
 Jcmgdom. But this kingdom is the result of a 
 process already past. The geological earth is a 
 giant corpse. The present life that produces itself 
 eternally new breaks forth as the first moving of 
 subjectivity in 
 
 2. The organism of plants. Each part of the 
 plant is the whole individual, each twig the whole 
 tree. Goethe's discovery concerning the relation of 
 the leaf to the tree was in line with the thought of 
 Hegel. 
 
 3. The anvmal kingdom reaches stiU higher, as 
 Idea is seeking expression and manifestation. In 
 its very highest form we find the Ego in man — 
 self-conscious. This is the self-ema/ncipation from 
 nature. 
 
 Just as in the Logic we began with Being and 
 worked our way up to self-consciousness, so here 
 
116 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 we come to the same. The philosophy then of 
 Hegel is a "method" — one which assumes to lead 
 to a particular end, no matter where you begin. 
 The world is an organism, a man a microcosm. 
 Take any road, you reach the Ego. 
 
 hegel's philosophy of mind 
 
 We now come to the last of the three main divi- 
 sions of Hegel's philosophy. He had in mind 
 thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. He began with 
 Thought; then went to Thought estranged; then 
 to Thought returned to itself. Logic represented 
 Thought ; Nature, Thought estranged from itself ; 
 Mind, Thought returned to itself. Simple enough, 
 as a system, in its main outlines, but complicated 
 in its details and unfoldings. 
 
 Hegel would say that Mind is the truth of Na- 
 ture. Here Being is removed from its estrange- 
 ment and becomes identical with itself. The formal 
 essence of Mind therefore is freedom — ^the power 
 to abstract itself from everything else; its ma- 
 terial essence is its capacity to manifest itself as 
 mind — as rationality. 
 
 But just as Nature had its lower forms and 
 through the lower proceeded to the higher, so mind 
 has its stages of development. In its process to 
 higher mind, it advances from that which is of the 
 "earth earthy," to individuality, then from mere 
 individuality to a point where it merges itself with 
 all else, yet at the same time has divested itself of 
 nature. This is the awaking of the Ego, which 
 accomplishes two ends, first, it creates the 
 
HEGEL IIT 
 
 objective world; and second, it awakens to con- 
 scious subjectivity only m the objective world, and 
 in distinction from it. Consciousness becomes self- 
 consciousness by passing through the stages of 
 sensuous consciousness, perception, and understand- 
 ing, and convincing itself in this its formative his- 
 tory, that it has only to do with itself, while it 
 believed it had to do with something objective. 
 
 Rising into the realm of the universal conscious- 
 ness by coming in contact with other self -conscious- 
 nesses, we have mind divested of naturalism and 
 mere subjectivity. 
 
 Mind is first theoretical, then practical. It is 
 theoretical in that it has to do with the rational as 
 something given; it is practical in the will. The 
 practical is the "truth of the theoretical," to use 
 Hegelian phraseology. By this Hegel means that 
 the theoretical mind passes on to the practical, 
 through the stages of intuition, representation and 
 thought. The Will, on the other hand, frees itself 
 into free will through impulse, desire, and inclina- 
 tion. Life is a warfare, therefore, and resistance 
 is not only the law of living and development, but 
 its very essence. 
 
 With free will come rights. The conflict be- 
 tween rights and rights and will and will results 
 in a compact, or common will. In this we see the 
 state in embryo. Under this head Hegel gives us 
 his theory of government. Crime is individual will 
 coming into conflict with the higher or common will, 
 and the punishment of a criminal is not so much 
 
118 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 warning or vengeance, but the man's higher will, — 
 his own better will which belongs to him by virtue 
 of his being a citizen, coming back on him and 
 destroying him. In ideal government the individ- 
 ual will can not come in conflict with the higher or 
 common wiU. 
 
 Removing the opposition between the universal 
 and particular will, you have the basis of Morality. 
 In morality self-determination is carried forward 
 tin duty and virtue emerge. Here we have Hegel's 
 Ethics as before we had his ideas of government. 
 
 The ethical mind is seen at first in the family; 
 this passes on to civil society and then to the state. 
 The philosophy of History, so famously written up 
 by Hegel, is but the following out of his theory of 
 peoples developing as individuals, and is part of 
 the Hegelian scheme. 
 
 In treating the Absolute Mind Hegel takes up 
 Aesthetics and says the Absolute is present to the 
 sensuous intuition as the Beautiful or as Art. The 
 Beautiful is the appearance of the idea actualized 
 in the form of a limited phenomenon. 
 
 Here we have evolution again. The beginning 
 of Art is seen in Architecture. This belongs to 
 the symbolic form of Art. Its material is stone, 
 fashioned according to the laws of gravity. 
 
 In Sculpture man advances from the inorganic 
 to the organic. Stone is given bodily form. The 
 stone in sculpture disappears, as it is cut to repre- 
 sent body, the building of the soul. Hence the 
 ideal character of sculpture. 
 
HEGEL 119 
 
 In Painting we make progress over sculpture 
 and represent the life of the soul — ^the look, the dis- 
 position, the heart. It is more ideal in that it has 
 not the dimensions of sculpture, but appeals to the 
 imagination and deals with illusions. 
 
 Music leaves off all relations. Its material is 
 sound. It works exclusively on sensation. Music 
 is the most subjective of the arts. 
 
 Poetry is the speaking art. In it all other arts 
 return again. In dramatic poetry we see the union 
 of all poetry, so in it we see the consummation of 
 all art. 
 
 Poetry forms the transition from art to religion. 
 All religions seek union of the divine and human. 
 This wa^ attempted in crude form in the natural 
 religions, and attained to something higher in the 
 religions of spirit; but attained its height in the 
 Christian religion. The doctrine of the Trinity 
 with its mystery and unfoldings, was Hegel's de- 
 light. Here we close as we began. The outgoing 
 of God in Christ and the "return" in the form of 
 the Trinity as now manifested to man, might well 
 represent Hegel's Method and Philosophy. 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS: THE SPIRIT IN 
 THE TREND OF THOUGHT 
 
 "The history and development of human ideas 
 is the most important, if not the only task, of 
 future philosophy," says Ludwig Noire. An in- 
 quiry into the persistence of ideas, the phase of 
 the subject I would treat, necessarily begins with 
 some investigation as to the origin of ideas. 
 
 Ideas result from the human mind seeking to 
 know and to interpret its environment. Through 
 our senses we receive sensuous impressions ; by some 
 mysterious power which has never been understood 
 and probably never wiU be, sensations are trans- 
 muted into, or are the occasion of, what we call 
 ideas. In attempting to find an explanation or 
 even a plausible hypothesis, that will satisfy the 
 reason of man as to the transmutation of a sense 
 impression into an idea, we have theories as far 
 apart as that of Kant, whose view has already 
 been given, and the other extreme that makes 
 the mind little more than a mirror reflecting the 
 objects of the world about us. Modern philosophy, 
 however, is inclined to stress the element in knowl- 
 edge which the mind contributes, even going so 
 far as to assert that mere matter, in its real nature, 
 is to us wholly unknown. In our contact with the 
 materifd world we know only sense impressions 
 which perhaps have no similarity to "things in 
 
 120 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 121 
 
 themselves." Still, whatever theory of knowledge 
 we may accept, the statement made above as to the 
 origin of ideas, is not materially affected. 
 
 Our sense impressions, then, occasioned by our 
 environment, give us one element in knowledge; 
 reactions, in consequence of these impressions 
 — i. e., the self struggling to interpret objective 
 things as well as to adjust itself to the world about 
 it — constitute another element. Of these two, it is 
 evident that the reactions of the self in consequence 
 of the stimuli from without, is the more important 
 element both in the formation of ideas and of char- 
 acter. It is not what a man sees, hears or feels 
 that makes him what he is ; but the reactions which 
 the phenomena excite in him. Music, in the most 
 perfect expression of it known to man, may fall 
 upon different ears, and, so far as we know, pro- 
 duce on different persons the same sensuous im- 
 pressions ; yet the reactions, due to inherited pecu- 
 liarities or to culture of taste, may so differ as to 
 be delight in the soul of one man and disgust in 
 that of another. Scenes and spoken words may 
 make the same sense impressions on the human 
 organism. But the different reactions will enable 
 a Galileo to see the pendulum in the swinging lamp 
 at Pisa ; Newton to see the law of gravity in a fall- 
 ing apple; and Morse to see a suggestion of the 
 telegraph in the words, "Their line is gone out 
 through all the earth." 
 
 Furthermore, we are so constituted that reac^ 
 tions tend to repeat themselves, so that a response 
 
122 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 to an exciting stimulus from without somehow adds 
 such an element to our ideas of that object, and so 
 distinguishes it from other things about it, that we 
 react with less effort a second time to such stimula- 
 tion, till finally reaction is without effort — at least 
 conscious effort. Not only so, but objects be- 
 come distinguished, classified and named in con- 
 sequence of the reactions of the self upon the outer 
 world, tiU they are grouped by the law of associ- 
 ation; and the presence of one object of the group 
 causes the whole class to spring up before the 
 mind, indicating the sensitiveness of the mind to 
 even a suggestion of the thing, which it has been 
 accustomed to respond to as an excitative. Obvi- 
 ously the greater the knowledge of the environment 
 and the more advanced the sensory powers, the 
 more extensive will be the series which, as groups, 
 will be aroused when one of the series is presented 
 to the senses, and the greater the probability that 
 one object so presented will arouse the whole 
 series. 
 
 Our reactions, it will be seen, thus develop our 
 powers to react. On the principle that the unused 
 becomes the atrophied, conscious or unconscious 
 lack of response to stimulation eventuates in prac- 
 tical inability to respond. A man's activities are de- 
 termined by those ideas for which reactions have 
 been provided. Where the powers to react are well 
 developed and no stimulus is given, we have the 
 "felt need" that becomes so interesting an element 
 in providing for the wants of people — in religious 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 123 
 
 and social life. He who removes from men that 
 which they have been accustomed to rely upon to 
 stimulate their activities — those powers having 
 been highly developed — and provides no substitute, 
 may expect disastrous results ; at least some out- 
 break of activity which will be abnormal. It is 
 said that John Wesley owed much of his success 
 in his Church work to his discerning this principle 
 in dealing with the common folk of England, whose 
 bent towards certain activities which the Church 
 had been forced to forbid, Itft the people without 
 stimulation, yet with fuUy developed motor activi- 
 ties that long years of indulgence had made second- 
 nature. He met that demand in his social meet- 
 ings, and many convivial Church gatherings, which 
 gave an outlet to expression, in word and deed, and 
 thus saved men and women to the Church who 
 might have sought sordid things in their almost 
 irresistible desire to relieve pent-up powers. 
 
 We see here more than a hint as to the source of 
 community and national ideas. We obviously in- 
 herit from our ancestors our powers to react against 
 certain stimuli. Otherwise we could not rationally 
 explain the exquisite taste and skill of the Greek 
 in dealing with marble ; the Italian in dealing with 
 pigments ; the German in music ; and the Hebrew 
 in the interpretation of the things of God. 
 
 The objects which stimulate our senses remain 
 the same; but the power to react and the disposi- 
 tion to react, vary in individuals and races due to 
 heredity and activity. Motor activities developed 
 
124 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 through years are transmitted potentially to 
 children — and what we call "tendencies" are so 
 marked that they soon become, under stimulation, 
 established forces. These motor powers which 
 constitute such an important element in what we 
 call character, and distinguish what we ordinarily 
 denominate race characteristics, must date from 
 the remote past. The English doubtless owe more 
 of their national characteristics to the lands from 
 which their ancestors came, than to their now 
 native land. The characteristics of men whose an- 
 cestors came to America from Germany, France 
 and Scotland, have probably been less affected 
 by the change of country and by years of absence 
 than by intermarriage with other nationalities. 
 Abraham lived a secluded, almost isolated life, dur- 
 ing the time he was being impressed by such ex- 
 ceptional revelations from God. As a consequence 
 he stamped his whole posterity with certain race 
 characteristics which that race bears to this day. 
 Years of residence in foreign countries, and life 
 under the most varied conditions, have not yet 
 obliterated these characteristics, nor have they 
 greatly modified the race ideas. If accurate Chi- 
 nese history could be secured, no doubt the pecu- 
 liar race characteristics and ideas of that people 
 would be to a considerable extent explained — at 
 least so far as the theory here advocated can ex- 
 plain them. 
 
 With this bare outline suggestive of the origin 
 of ideas, the matter of the persistence of the same, 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 125 
 
 the feature of the subject with which I would espe- 
 cially deal, forces itself upon our attention. 
 This subject was first brought to my attention 
 by noting how, in keeping a journal of sugges- 
 tions and plans for future work, and for recrea- 
 tions of a literary sort, — the purposes and ideas 
 of the past would persist after having been prac- 
 tically abandoned and even forgotten. Their pres- 
 ence in some instances I took for their first ap- 
 pearance to the mind; but found on investigation, 
 these were in many instances but suggestions or 
 plans long since considered, but again forcing 
 themselves on my attention somewhat more fully 
 developed. The natural question arose: Whence 
 these ideas, and why do they persist? 
 
 Goethe had implanted in his mind the "Faust" 
 idea early in life, and it teased him till he died 
 in old age. Warren Hastings early conceived the 
 idea of regaining his ancestral home, Daylesford, 
 and the purpose to obtain it never forsook him 
 during all his career in India. Dante and Milton 
 early in life decided each to write a great poem, 
 and they did not so much possess the idea as the 
 idea possessed them, till they had accomplished 
 their tasks. 
 
 The history of inventions and discoveries is 
 usually connected with some such persistence of 
 ideas. A Newton works on his theory of gravita- 
 tion, lays it aside, practically abandons it, finally 
 takes it again in hand and demonstrates that the 
 inspiration he first received was not a mere vagary. 
 
126 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 Philosophers have been pursued by certain sug- 
 gestions, and have interpreted as best they could 
 their visions to the world, till finally the idea, 
 struggling through ages to express itself, came 
 forth in its symmetry and self-convincing power, 
 to become a precious heritage for coming genera- 
 tions, and to take its place among the things we 
 call certain and valuable. 
 
 It may be asserted that nothing which is true is 
 altogether new. Few exercises yield richer returns 
 than that of tracing ideas to their supposed 
 sources — to mere suggestions or guesses in the re- 
 mote past, which suggestions, if we could press our 
 investigations further, would be found, in turn, to 
 have owed their utterance to hints still more 
 remote. But no less interesting than the genesis 
 of an idea is its persistence — ^the manner in which 
 it passes from mind to mind, and from generation 
 to generation. In this persistence ideas proceed 
 from the obscure to the weU-defined; from hints 
 a/nd suggestions to established conviction,s. 
 
 The entire field of literature is ready to contrib- 
 ute illustrations of this principle. The records of 
 the different sciences are, in this particular, 
 equally fruitful and must be, one and all intro- 
 duced, in our day, by "historical sketches," telling 
 how present day opinions bear upon opinions held, 
 and it may be formulated, years ago. I shall con- 
 fine myself more particularly to philosophic 
 thought, however, and even here but a few of the 
 many illustrations are cited — examples indicating 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 127 
 
 how the more remote past is connected with the 
 ideas of our day. 
 
 The Pythagoreans forestalled the ripest conclu- 
 sions of modem science when they made number 
 play a final and decisive part in all things. Pytha- 
 goras is credited with having given utterance to the 
 saying, "The wisest of all things is number, and 
 next to this is the name-giver." At the boundary 
 line of the chemist's numerical descriptions he 
 begins the use of words to describe his problems. 
 What shall we say of the genius which could, ages 
 ago see in the harmonies of music that which forms 
 a basis for nearly all of our science of to-day, viz., 
 the principle that elements mingle in certain pro- 
 portions ; calculations on squares of distances or 
 the like, yielding such results as Newton obtained ; 
 vibrations at definite and different rates, giving us 
 in turn music, light, electricity. X-rays, and we 
 know not what more.? And what of the insight 
 which saw the potency and magic of a "name," 
 that which should register for the time what could 
 not be calculated or might never be, yet would 
 enable men thereafter to stand on solid footing 
 while they made further investigations .'' We build 
 up towering structures on "atoms" — things which 
 exist, so far as actual experience goes, but in name. 
 
 It is asserted that but for the influence of 
 Aristotle, which for fifteen centuries held the world 
 from the truth, what is now known as the Coper- 
 nican theory of our planetery system would have 
 perhaps been given to mankind in the days before 
 
128 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Christ; for Pythagoras had discerned here the 
 truth as it was afterwards seen. 
 
 The Eleatic philosophers anticipated our latest 
 problems if not conclusions in philosophy. They 
 saw the opposition between perception and thought, 
 and contended that the former must be corrected 
 by the latter ; that what was perceived was merely 
 phenomena, and was vacillating and deceptive, 
 while the thing discerned by reason was the un- 
 changeable. "Being and Thought are one and 
 the same," said Parmenides in 600 B. C. 
 "Thought and thing are one and the same," said 
 Hegel in 1800 A. D. 
 
 When we contemplate Heraclitus in the light of 
 an appreciative and complete characterization of 
 him, we are inclined to think the statement of a 
 modern writer in philosophy concerning him not 
 an exaggeration: "The influence of this powerful 
 thinker," says Ludwig Noire, "was the more con- 
 siderable because all subsequent systems had either 
 to attach themselves to his doctrine or to deal with 
 it in the way of development or correction." Hera- 
 clitus, in opposition to the Eleatics, saw incessant 
 "flux" in all we perceive. In connection with this 
 constant onflowing he developed the idea of an un- 
 folding which has in it the germ of modem evolu- 
 tion. His theory that all things proceed from fire 
 ajid return finally to fire, sounds very modem in- 
 deed, when science tells us that the final form 
 which energy takes is heat, and that we can follow 
 it no further. What Heraclitus really means by 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 129 
 
 "fire" was what we would denominate "warmth," 
 or warm air. If he had suggested the term "fire- 
 mist" to begin with, in addition to what he said of 
 heat as the final form of energy, he might have 
 written an up-to-date book on the origin of the 
 universe from the view-point of some of our most 
 advanced scholars of the extreme evolutional type. 
 This from a man in A. D. 603 ! 
 
 He furthermore said that the soul attains to ra- 
 tional thought by receiving into itself the divine 
 Logos, which presides over the outer world. Here 
 is our doctrine of the Divine Immanence, or Uni- 
 versal Reason, — ^vaguely conceived, but enunciated 
 nevertheless. When Heraclitus says that in sleep 
 the soul loses connection with the outer world and 
 is united again on waking, because brought into 
 connection with the world by means of the senses — 
 we have the germ of the "two-soul" theory, an- 
 nounced by a recent writer on psychic phenomena. 
 
 Empedocles anticipated the theology of the 
 afterdays in his suggestion that the inner side of 
 things in this world is controlled by Love and 
 Hate. In our last analysis we say, "God is Love" ; 
 on the other hand we cannot describe the spirit of 
 evil in one word that indicates better what we mean 
 than by saying "The devil is personified Hate." 
 We may differ as to the nature of the contention 
 of the two principles, and yet we assume that there 
 is such contention, and that the same comes of de- 
 sire to gain supremacy in the realm of spirit. 
 
 How far is Empedocles from Darwinism 
 
130 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 when he says, "that cases of adaptation abound 
 because in the nature of things it happens that 
 what serves its purpose is preserved, and what 
 fails to do so perishes at once?" If this is 
 not the doctrine of the "survival of the fittest" in 
 unmistakable terms, what is it? It is well known 
 that Democritus launched the theory of Atoms, 
 and while his theory was in some respects crude, 
 nevertheless it was the same in substance that is 
 now held as the basis of our physical sciences. 
 When Bacon began his tireless experiments at the 
 beginning of the modem age of scientific investiga- 
 tion, he could not do better than to call the atten- 
 tion of the world to the long-neglected name and 
 work of Democritus. 
 
 When we come to Plato we turn our attention 
 from naturalism to mind, and deal with pure 
 thought. We cannot forget, though, that in deal- 
 ing with Plato we study a double personality, for 
 Socrates and Plato are inseparably united: the 
 pupil is the embodiment of the spirit of his great 
 teacher. The world knows what Socrates was and 
 what he taught mainly through the Platonic Dia- 
 logues. 
 
 Plato was the creator of a theory of knowledge ; 
 the founder of Idealism ; the inspirer of the sciences 
 of psychology, moral philosophy and logic; the 
 clear enunciator of the soul's immortality ; the sug- 
 gestor of the many ideal republics and states from 
 the times of Aristotle to Edward Bellamy. His 
 philosophy combined so naturally and easily with 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 131 
 
 what is known as New Testament revelation as to 
 occasion little discord in the early Church, Of the 
 many secrets this wonderful man discovered, 
 not the least to be mentioned his philosophy of 
 right living. He was both in his teaching and in 
 his private life for a long time a standing puzzle 
 to Christians who held the theory, now happily 
 discarded, that nothing good could come out of 
 Paganism. 
 
 When we reach the name and works of that 
 other marvel of the ancients, Aristotle, we seem to 
 have discovered thought's complement, if we take 
 him in connection with Plato. These two men have 
 been called the electric poles which gave direction 
 to the current of thought for two thousand years. 
 While these men, as we shall see later, represent 
 types of thinkers, we find in Aristotle one of the 
 finest instances of what was more common in after 
 days, viz., a sifter and elaborator of opinions ex- 
 pressed by predecessors. Not that Aristotle was 
 wanting in originality; but his love for the truth 
 did not allow him to ignore what others before him 
 had discovered and perhaps but partially formu- 
 lated. He has thus done justice to his predecessors 
 while he has made all men of thought after him his 
 debtors, by the comprehensive sweep of his genius. 
 He has contributed more than any one man to sci- 
 entific education of the world. He wrote on practi- 
 cally everything, and the singular fact to observe 
 is that he may still be said to deserve the descrip- 
 tion Dante has given him, "the master of those 
 
132 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 that know." His logic remains as he gave it to 
 the world. His "politics" may still be studied with 
 profit by men who would discern the philosophy of 
 government. His "Rhetoric" is a marvel of in- 
 sight and practical knowledge. In "Ethics" he 
 satisfied the most pious of men in the days of the 
 Schoolmen. While in "Physics" he often says 
 absurd things, his anticipations of things after- 
 wards found to be true must not be forgotten. 
 Assuming the earth to be round, it was not a bad 
 guess, considering aU things, when Aristotle said 
 it was 38,000 miles in circumference. He said 
 further that, "we must not treat with incredulity 
 the opinion of those who say that the regions near 
 the Pillars of Hercules join onto India, and that 
 the ocean to the east of India and that to the west 
 of Europe are one and the same." Here Columbus 
 got his clue. 
 
 Aristotle wrote the first "History of Philoso- 
 phy," and in his "Metaphysics" gives us the terms 
 "form" and "matter" which play so important a 
 part in the philosophy of the afterdays, especially 
 in the works of Kant and those inspired by him. 
 
 Aristotle was the great word-coiner of the 
 ancient philosophers. In this particular, as in 
 others, what he did was to originate, to be later 
 developed more fully, such words as "maxim," 
 "matter," "form," "category," "motive," "en- 
 ergy," "mean," "extreme," "faculty," and a host 
 of other terms which we should not know how to do 
 without. 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 133 
 
 Perhaps the best evidence of the power of Aris- 
 totle to dominate the mind of mankind is seen in 
 the fact that when in the 12th century of our era, 
 his works, after having been practically lost to the 
 world, were again brought to the attention of the 
 thinkers of Europe through the Arabs, his 
 influence became a kind of dynasty of Aristotleian 
 ideas, continuing till about the middle of the 
 16th century. Thomas Aquinas, the great theolo- 
 gian, regarded Aristotle as his master no less than 
 did Dante the poet. The theologians of that time 
 regarded him as one of their own, and Aquinas 
 classes Aristotle's logic, physics and ethics, in his 
 great "summary," with Christian divinity; Dante 
 utilizes Aristotle's theory of the universes in some 
 of the most critical passages of the "Divine Com- 
 edy." Beatrice standing on the ninth heaven dis- 
 courses in Aristotleian terms concerning the "un- 
 moved Mover of all things." In fact, till the time 
 when Idealism dominated Modern Philosophy, 
 Aristotle was regarded as one inspired in much 
 the same sense we now think of the ancient proph- 
 ets — one of those few very choice spirits to whom 
 God communicates what He does at rare intervals 
 to rarest men. 
 
 I shall dwell no longer on the particular point 
 that I have used ancient philosophers to illustrate, 
 viz., that thought proceeds from obscure hints or 
 happy conjectures to established convictions. 
 After the death of Aristotle ancient philosophy de- 
 
134 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 teriorated. Nothing else prophetic or anticipatory, 
 worthy of special note, was uttered till in a much 
 later age. But it would take a vast volume to do 
 anything like justice to the debt the world owes to 
 those intellects from Thales to Aristotle^ Theirs 
 was the period in the world's history which might 
 well be compared to the season of the year when 
 the poUen flies, carried by the winds, to fertilize 
 the plant-world. 
 
 It is noteworthy that in their persistence, idea* 
 teem to proceed through Typical Thinkers. If the 
 figure of the piston rod of the engine be used a^ an 
 illustration, then we might say that thought 
 moves because of the propulsion given at the two 
 extremes. But rather let these typical men be 
 thought of as the complemental rails of the same 
 railway track — opposite but not necessarily an- 
 tagonistic ; essential to each other. If what is here 
 said seems to imply that the types are but two, 
 this is what is meant. 
 
 When Coleridge says that "every man is born 
 either a Platonist of an Aristotleian," he but dis- 
 cerned and put in convenient phaseology what the 
 painter Raphael had long before expressed in his 
 famous fresco in the Vatican, when he represented 
 the two philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, standing 
 side by side, the first pointing with his finger to the 
 heavens, while the latter, listening coldly, points 
 his finger towards the earth. 
 
 This line of cleavage is not fanciful, nor is the 
 two-fold division merely arbitrary. When it is 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 135 
 
 said that the early disciples and apostles were sent 
 forth two by two, and when we find the sort of men 
 that were coupled together, we see a recognition, 
 by the Divine Author of Christianity, of the fact 
 which we find bound up in our very nature. Peter 
 and John ; Paul and Barnabas ; — a mystic in each 
 instance joined with a practical man of affairs. 
 A Luther has his Melancthon, and a Wesley his 
 Whitefield. It is not at all remarkable to discover 
 that such men, whUe complementing each other, 
 had their sharp disagreements. Differences were 
 almost inevitable. Plato and Aristotle had theirs, 
 and their contentions have been exaggerated into 
 malicious opposition. But as the gospel was spread 
 through typical men working in couples side by 
 side, so Thought has ever progressed, and will pro- 
 gress. 
 
 Plato stands for that type of mind which sympa- 
 thizes readily with Parmenides, Heraclitus, Pyth- 
 agoras. He has his disciples in Hegel, Emerson 
 and Browning. He finds his counterpart in the 
 poets, the prophets, and men who trust their intui- 
 tions. Aristotle sympathizes naturally with Demo- 
 critus, and becomes the fountain-head of such 
 thinkers as Leibniz, Bacon, Locke, Darwin. The 
 men of Platonic type are impatient of the investi- 
 gation of individual things, and stress a priori 
 thought. They are the great theorizers of the 
 world. They are caught by the "Zeit-geist" which 
 they believe to be Universal Beason in its manifes- 
 tation to a certain age, and they dare to predict 
 
136 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 or anticipate what does not as yet appear. They 
 speak in parables, often, and have enriched the 
 world by suggestions which the ages afterward 
 acted upon and made thereby wonderful discov- 
 eries. They have been the first to see the sun on 
 the mountain-tops and have declared to mankind 
 the approach of a new day. These men have been 
 Idealists, Spiritualists, Mentalists or Personalists, 
 as we may choose to call them. 
 
 The Aristotlelian type of men have patiently 
 investigated; have reasoned from individuals to 
 generals ; have stressed reason and logic ; have 
 despised prophesying; have disliked mysticism; in 
 their extreme form have become Positivists, but 
 nearly always have been on the border-land of some 
 form of Materialism. They emphasize the senses ; 
 are anxious to be known as practical; in their zeal 
 they have often done violence to instinct and intui- 
 tion, just as men of the other type have often done 
 violence to reason and despised patient investiga- 
 tion of nature. 
 
 Whole epochs have been dominated by one or 
 the other of these types; and when this is so, we 
 have on the one hand a poetical and prophetic age ; 
 and on the other, a matter-of-fact, scientific age, 
 with materialism at our very doors. If we might 
 press this matter further and note its bearing on 
 national temperament, the statement could be made 
 as a general one, that the English mind is Aristo- 
 tleian, while the German mind is Platonic. This 
 may not seem just in the light of the patience of 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 137 
 
 the German student: but the Platonic tendencies 
 to some form of Idealism, and to a love for theoriz- 
 ing, are undoubtedly characteristic of the German. 
 Materialism has ever flourished in England, while 
 idealism, mysticism, and the like readily grow on 
 German soil. 
 
 Men in every age have consciously or uncon- 
 sciously leaned to one or the other of these types 
 of thinkers. Whether declared monists or dualists, 
 they find they cannot serve two masters: for if 
 dualists, they either subordinate matter to spirit 
 and become spiritualists; or subordinate spirit to 
 matter and become materialists. If monists, one 
 substance must absorb the other — matter absorb 
 spirit or spirit matter — and again the necessity 
 appears to "take sides." If a "Double-faced Some- 
 what" is back of everything, then again the ques- 
 tion asserts itself whether the "Somewhat" is es- 
 sentially Spirit or Matter. 
 
 If, however, ideas in their persistence, must needs 
 persist through their mediumship of mind, the 
 world has need of the two types of men referred to. 
 If these men of complemental natures know them- 
 selves and each other, there follows thankful rec- 
 ognition of what each can do for the other. 
 
 This matter becomes very practical when we see 
 a Walter Scott, as Lockhart describes him, with 
 head erect, a smile of triumph on his face, because 
 conscious of power and vocation, driving his pen 
 over paper at an almost incredible speed, when 
 writing his matchless works of fiction ; but when 
 
138 SEEKERS AETER SOUL 
 
 writing his "Life of Napoleon," his head was bowed 
 over his books, a pained expression was on his face, 
 his manner hesitating and doubtful — because he 
 was out of his element. The world to-day cares 
 little for Scott's "Napoleon," but it wiU continue 
 to the end of time to rejoice in his novels. What 
 was true of Scott is true of men in all the vocations 
 of life — ^they should seek to recognize their own 
 powers and those of others, and respect the gifts 
 of God. By failing to recognize worth in men 
 from whom they differed, such men as Lucretius, 
 Spinoza and Francis Bacon produced works that 
 wholly reject the theory of design, simply because 
 these authors were prejudiced against theology 
 and supposed "teleology" was inseparably con- 
 nected with theology. Had they been broad-minded 
 enough to see what even theologians have done for 
 the world, they might have saved themselves from 
 much error and added an important element to 
 their systems of thought. 
 
 It is noteworthy that ideas persist m the face of 
 apparently anmihilating arguments amd in spite of 
 constituted authority. 
 
 This has been seen particularly in the realms of 
 religion and philosophy. We see something in man 
 rising up and protesting against what appears to 
 be invincible logic. There is no apparent flaw in 
 the argument, but instinct or intuition says, "It 
 cannot be true." This sort of persistence calls for 
 explanation, and is not an unimportant phase of 
 the general trend of thought. 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 139 
 
 Take, in philosophy, the system of Kant. No 
 one will contend Kant is perfectly consistent ; but 
 it may be asserted that the grasp of the man is so 
 powerful, and his comprehension of mental phe- 
 nomena so complete, that most writers who under- 
 take to refute him seem like pygmies. Yet, with- 
 out having read what the strongest opponents of 
 Kantianism have said, the intelligent and inde- 
 pendent reader of Kant will usually after some 
 days of reflection come to some such conclusion as 
 this : "I cannot make a reply to this which would 
 be satisfactory either to myself or to others, still 
 I am not convinced of Kant's correctness — nay, I 
 even believe he is in error, in spite of much that is 
 true in his system." And this very disposition to 
 regulate, correct, modify, — by some standard the 
 nature of which we do not fuUy understand, — is 
 one of the curious things to be met with in the per- 
 sistence of ideas as related to the general trend of 
 thought. 
 
 Take the arguments for materialism, or agnos- 
 ticism — they have been strong, and some might 
 say, unanswerable; still, not wholly because of our 
 religious training, I aver, but because of something 
 within us which we have not fully comprehended, 
 thinking men have been impelled persistently to 
 reject the conclusions of the materialist and ag- 
 nostic. Their systems abide for the time, and yet 
 not because always replied to satisfactorily, but 
 because at war with the higher instincts of men, 
 the systems are rejected even before some one 
 
140 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 appears who satisfactorily refutes the same. Hume 
 had been rejected long before Kant showed how 
 very far the astute Scotchman was from the truth. 
 Granted the fact that those who attempted a reply 
 to Hume did not use temperate language and did 
 not meet the issues fairly: stiU they felt he was 
 wrong, and felt that they were right, even though 
 their arguments were in some cases flimsy. 
 
 It might be added here that whole systems of 
 theology have been logically consistent, and indeed 
 practically unanswerable, from the standpoint of 
 mere logic, and those who have attempted to refute 
 them have been involved in contradictions, if not 
 worse — but the human heart has ever been, in the 
 long run, wiser than the human head. Where God 
 has been misrepresented or caricatured by a system 
 of doctrine, the heart of humanity has eventually 
 rejected the harsher phases of doctrine — and the 
 result has justified the position for which the in- 
 stincts of man contended. This does not mean 
 that the voice of the populace of a given age is 
 more reliable than the voice of trained and special 
 workers : but where the instincts of man have per- 
 sistently from age to age resisted what scholars 
 have urged the world to accept, the result has 
 almost always justified the position taken by human 
 intuition. 
 
 There has been as much resistance to the doc- 
 trine of conscious eternal punishment as to any 
 doctrine we have heard proclaimed from the pul- 
 pit. This opposition is not peculiar to to-day; it 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 141 
 
 has been either expressed or has struggled for 
 expression through all the ages of the Church's 
 existence. And we cannot ignore the instincts of 
 intelligent and spiritual men and women, who have 
 lifted up heart if not head in protest against the 
 bald, literal, seemingly unsympathetic way in 
 which the whole subject is often presented. Their 
 natures cry out against the mistake that exists 
 somewhere, though they may not be able to say 
 where, nor be able to give a theory that will satisfy 
 what they think revelation really promulgates or 
 that win satisfy the demands of transgression 
 against God. But it is certainly worth while to 
 deal with that force, call it Reason, Spirit, In- 
 stinct, — ^whatever we will, which enables us to 
 postulate or affirm what we cannot formulate. 
 This disposition to affirm what pure reason would 
 exclude, was illustrated in Kant, who, finding him- 
 self forced into practical agnosticism by his own 
 arguments, acknowledged the truth of the things 
 his system held could not be proved, and came to 
 affirm that a higher reason, the "practical," en- 
 abled him to rise above the theoretical. Kant said 
 that in the higher realms he found the "categorical 
 imperative." 
 
 The persistence of ideas is but the more empha- 
 sized by the fact that in that persistence we note, 
 often, deviations and irregularities which call for 
 some explanation. The trend of thought is some- 
 thing like the course of a river, whose main direc- 
 tion is unmistakable, but whose windings, due to 
 
142 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 obstructions, present to the eye considerable irreg- 
 ularity. The persistence of the stream in a given 
 direction despite the irregularities in its flow is 
 strongly indicative of a cause why the river 
 should flow in one direction rather than in another. 
 So, in case of the direction thought takes, and in 
 the persistence of it despite obstructions and 
 irregularities, we have more than a hint as to the 
 reason for its particular trend. 
 
 This irregularity in the progress of an idea 
 has been called "pendulation," because of the ten- 
 dency to oscillate within certain limits. We note a 
 tendency in men to abandon a course of thinking 
 which has for ages held the world, and take a 
 position, seemingly antagonistic, only, however, 
 after the lapse of years to again assume the posi- 
 tion that had years before been abandoned. This 
 sort of " history repeating itself," in thought as^ 
 well as act, so that what once was again appears, 
 gives a deeper meaning to the biblical moralist's 
 words: "There is nothing new under the sun." 
 
 The course of thought has been so regular in its 
 very irregularity that its direction in a future age 
 has been pretty well anticipated by those who were 
 familiar with the drift, and who knew the forces 
 that were at work when making their predictions. 
 No doubt the observation of this interesting fact 
 led to the writing of books on the "Philosophy of 
 History," and in the case of a man like Hegel, 
 who was apt to be borne to extremes by a theory, 
 this sort of writing was carried to the border of 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 143 
 
 the fanciful. Yet, though men have gone to ex- 
 tremes in emphasizing the limitations and what 
 they called the necessary direction of thought, still 
 much truth is here — too much to ignore it because 
 enthusiasts have gone to extremes in dealing with 
 it. 
 
 Let a few instances suffice to illustrate what I 
 mean by this pendulation in thought. The early 
 Greek philosophers, as we have seen, were crudely 
 scientific and extreme in their naturalism. This 
 course was suddenly abandoned for the study of 
 mind to such an extent that Socrates cared no 
 more for a scene in nature than did Madam de 
 Stael. We might call Socrates' philosophy anthro- 
 pological rather than strictly mental, for he was 
 interested in man, and in mind as the most import- 
 ant thing in man: but Plato swung to the other 
 extreme in concerning himself with Mind, — Ideas 
 — almost to the total disregard of mdimdual man. 
 
 But a reaction came in the days of Aristotle. 
 Raphael's fresco does not exaggerate the situation : 
 the Stagarite seemed impatient of sky-study and 
 he pointed earthward. WhUe not abandoning the 
 study of mind, he, with a true empiricist's instinct, 
 took the lower forms of life as stepping-stones to 
 an appreciation of the higher. From individuals 
 to generals; from the plant to the man; with his 
 foot on earth, his upward reach was consid- 
 erable, but uncertain. Plato began with what was 
 in the heavenlies, and was uncertain as he de- 
 scended. 
 
144 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 After these two men had done their work — 
 there came an age of skepticism. Leaping over 
 the centuries for the time, and taking no account 
 of the introduction of Christianity into the world 
 as an entirely new element to deal with — we see in 
 what may be called modern philosophy pendula- 
 tion on the same curves. We see modern philoso- 
 phy just after the Renaissance first cosmological, 
 then anthropological, as it traversed Holland, Ger- 
 many and France, then on reaching England it de- 
 veloped a theory of knowledge, where it finally be- 
 came skeptical. But just as the skepticism of the 
 Sophists inspired the Socratic reform, so the skep- 
 ticism of Hume aroused Kant from his "dogmatic" 
 slumber," and German Idealism dominated the 
 world. 
 
 To take another view-point : Just as the study of 
 nature in the early days led to the study of mind, 
 and the study of mind led to skepticism — so in the 
 later days, when nature was unduly stressed, mind 
 cried out for a hearing; then, in great measure 
 due to the Renaissance and Reformation together. 
 Reason ascended the throne and was almost deified. 
 But the heart at last spoke, in what is known as 
 the movement of Romanticism, — Lessing, Rous- 
 seau, Goethe and SchiUer leading. Kant was much 
 influenced by this movement in the composition of 
 his "Critique of Pure Reason." Thought pendu- 
 lated from Reason's domination to a disposition 
 to subordinate reason to something higher, just as 
 when Christianity entered the world and men's in- 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 145 
 
 tuitions rather than their reason were trusted, 
 under the name of faith, reason in the meanwhile 
 was relegated to a much more limited sphere than 
 men had formerly granted it. 
 
 The history of the writings of one man is, in 
 concrete, an illustration of this oscillation of 
 thought. I refer to the estimate the world in vari- 
 ous ages has placed upon the works of Aristotle. 
 Soon after the death of the great philosopher 
 there was reaction against his ideas, and for some 
 centuries Stoicism and Epicureanism ruled in edu- 
 cated circles, giving place later to Neo-Platonism. 
 The pendulum swung to the extreme in the tenth 
 century, when Aristotle became practically un- 
 known to the Christian world, though greatly re- 
 vered about this time by the Arabs. Through 
 translations from Arabian literature European 
 scholars became in the eleventh century acquainted 
 with Aristotle, from which date he again got a 
 hold on the thinking world, such as perhaps he had 
 never before had. For four centuries he held un- 
 mistakable dominion — being authority, almost on 
 a par with inspiration, for the theologians of that 
 day, and, as expounded by Aquinas, becoming the 
 poet Dante's guide in cosmology and indeed every- 
 thing not strictly pertaining to dogma. 
 
 Later, in the sixteenth century, a reaction 
 against Aristotle set in, and a fate similar to 
 Hegel's in 1835, was experienced by the Staga- 
 rite. The theory of the heavens propounded by 
 Copernicus, struck at the heart of confidence in 
 
146 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 Aristotle. Men were not considerate enough to 
 see that the great philosopher, living in the remote 
 past, could not know everything, even to the true 
 center of the solar system; the pendulum, in con- 
 sequence, swung to an opposite extreme, and what 
 was before came again, in a measure — for Aris- 
 totle, while not lost sight of, was no longer an 
 authority. 
 
 With the rise of the strictly scientific age, the 
 influence of which we still feel, Aristotle again be- 
 came popular, his works were again sought, and 
 the truths in them emphasized. Probably the pres- 
 ent tendency to Idealism in philosophy means once 
 more the relegation of Aristotle to a subordinate 
 position. But not however without the world's 
 recognizing its debt to him for truths and rich 
 suggestions. 
 
 We may now appear to go to the borderland of 
 the fanciful in suggesting that there is something 
 like periodicity in thoughts' deviations or irregu- 
 larities. Ideas are not only like the famous Lost 
 River, disappearing only to emerge again, but 
 ideas are remarkable for the regularity of their re- 
 currence. 
 
 As has been before suggested, persons who 
 have kept diaries and journals through years 
 have been compelled to note how the mind, 
 without any reason that can be assigned, comes 
 back at stated times to think thoughts long be- 
 fore dwelt upon, and aU unconscious that in so 
 doing the mind is but moving in something like an 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 147 
 
 orbit — ^passing the same way it has formerly 
 passed, yet, with no necessity compelling it, as we 
 think. This periodicity in individual thinking can 
 be explained to a degree by the presence of like 
 conditions or environment at stated seasons. But 
 this does not appear to explain wholly the phenom- 
 enon. Those who have studied the individual mind 
 closely have seen in the peculiarities of its work- 
 ings the world of thought in miniature. Great 
 religious revivals come periodically. Commercial 
 disasters and commercial prosperity seem to fol- 
 low the same law. What secret or hidden forces 
 are at work, the discovery of which would make 
 all this plain? 
 
 The periodicity of an idea in its persistence finds 
 illustration in the regularity with which some per- 
 sons have dreams of the same character. In 
 one of Hawthorne's "English Note-Books" is to be 
 found for example the following entry: "For a 
 long while I have occasionally been visited by a 
 singular dream. It is that I am stiU at college and 
 there is a sense that I have been there unconscion- 
 ably long, and have failed to make such progress 
 as my contemporaries have done. This dream, 
 recurring all through twenty or thirty years, 
 must be one of the effects of that heavy seclusion 
 in which I shut myself up for twelve years after 
 leaving college, when everybody moved onward and 
 left me behind." 
 
 This dream of Hawthorne's has its counterpart 
 in many an experience, which I mention as some- 
 
148 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 thing difficult to explain or to be brought under 
 known laws. They recur at stated intervals, and 
 either follow or are followed by the same physical 
 disability. 
 
 Believers in human progress would expect to find 
 in the persistence of ideas that there is a decided 
 tendency to purification of thought as the ages 
 move on. 
 
 Conceding lapses from high and true thinking, 
 and singular instances of deterioration, where one 
 age of enlightenment has been followed by one of 
 stupid indifference ; and granting that thought has 
 moved apparently in circles and that at times the 
 "progress of the race" has been simply a mark- 
 ing time — still, despite this and more which 
 might be said, the movement of thought, as it is 
 identified with truth, is much like the double mo- 
 tion of the incoming tide — progress in spite of 
 fluctuations and recedings. 
 
 George H. Lewes wrote a brilliant and readable 
 "History of Philosophy," with intent to prove that 
 men have been moving in a circle during the whole 
 of their supposed philosophic progress: but in the 
 face of the fact that Mr. Lewes' position is not en- 
 dorsed by any considerable number of thoughtful 
 people, though his book was published over fifty 
 years ago, and that he wrote in the interests of 
 and in defence of Positivism, we need not be particu- 
 larly concerned with his opinion. That there has 
 been progress and that we are nearer the goal now 
 than men were who years ago labored to formu- 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 149 
 
 late a philosophy of nature and life, can scarcely 
 be seriously doubted by fair-minded people. 
 
 Still the question asserts itself, How do we cor- 
 rect the errors of men of the past who, when they 
 promulgated their theories, were in possession of 
 the same facts now at our disposal, and who, in 
 many instances, were men of such insight and rare 
 mental power as to be classed among the world's 
 great teachers? We can see how the invention of 
 the telescope and the discovery of the law of gravi- 
 tation would enable us to correct past theories con- 
 cerning heavenly bodies, and make such accurate 
 calculations as men of old could not make. But 
 when we deal with mind, we have now only what 
 others who first philosophized possessed. We un- 
 derstand the human body as they did not, and es- 
 pecially the human brain. We know more concern- 
 ing psychic phenomena than they did; but unless 
 we are content to rest in materialism, this sort of 
 knowledge no more explains the puzzling things 
 which are associated with the working of the hu- 
 man mind, or its mysterious instincts, than evolu- 
 tion explains how life began on this planet. As 
 evolution completes its task when it tells us of pro- 
 cess, so materialism accounts for none of the 
 higher problems of the soul, when it shows a cer- 
 tain dependence of mind on body. 
 
 Granting the beauty and utility of the theory 
 of evolution and gladly accepting it for the most 
 part for what it brings and gives, still where it is 
 bound up with materialism, and, in its extreme 
 
150 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 form, professes to account for the origin of the 
 soul, and indeed all else, upon the basis of the po- 
 tency of matter — we may confidently assert that 
 men have mistaken an account of a process for an 
 explanation of the vital truths back of the process. 
 The account may be correct, but to explain the ap- 
 parent distance of the sun from us in winter, and 
 its vertical rays in the summer; its eclipses and 
 its relations to the planets — ^by mechanical causes, 
 is not to account for the establishment of such an 
 order as we see, kept up through the ages, and ad- 
 justed so nicely to the wants and needs of men. 
 It is, therefore, not enough for one to say that the 
 theory of evolution or development will explain 
 how we correct the errors of the past with so 
 much assurance, especially in matters that are 
 purely philosophical. 
 
 Take instances already given: Socrates caught 
 from Anaxagoras the suggestion that "reason" 
 ruled the world. With this suggestion as a kind 
 of germ for development, he stressed "concepts," 
 assumed the spirit of man to be immortal, to be 
 rewarded and punished as it was virtuous or 
 vicious; made virtue equivalent to knowledge, and 
 finally laid the foundations for a theory of knowl- 
 edge. Plato took the wealth of suggestions and 
 theories his master left, added to them the riches 
 of the philosophers of the past and of his day; 
 assorted, combined, added to, and finally presented 
 to the world what may be known as the Platonic 
 system of truth — ^not systematized, but in great 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 151 
 
 part formulated in his famous Dialogues. Plato 
 hesitated not to differ from Socrates, to correct 
 and add to what he had said. Aristotle as the next 
 link in the chain, did for Plato much what Plato 
 did for Socrates. The thing worthy of note in aU 
 this is the assurance or complacency of each man 
 when he made an innovation upon the theories of 
 his predecessor. 
 
 Then came a luU — a lapse ; but when men began 
 to philosophize again in what is known as the 
 Modem period, they just as boldly corrected the 
 ancient philosophers as they gladly accepted much 
 they had said. The age from Kant to Hegel was 
 the golden age of German philosophical thinking, 
 but today we as mercilessly dissect Kant or Hegel 
 as they did those before them, and do it with as 
 much complacency as if we supposed wisdom would 
 die with us. The men who were regarded as hav- 
 ing spoken the last word on the subject of philoso- 
 phy are respected for their mental power and in- 
 sight, but are forced to take their places in that 
 ever lengthening line of plodders, as men, it may 
 be, of unusual or even epochal insight, but men 
 who "knew but in part"; in the meantime the 
 problems which consumed these men have become 
 the problems of our day, and if we have not yet 
 seen the truth in its entirety, we at least see where 
 these men were not wholly possessed of it. 
 
 Whether we accept or not the truth of such a 
 thing as a divine revelation, whose highest ex- 
 pression is found in the New Testament, it might 
 
162 SEEKERS AETER SOUL 
 
 be asked why we find so little disposition to correct 
 what Jesus or Paul have said? How is it we as- 
 sume nothing will be developed in thought antago- 
 nistic to their teachings? 
 
 While not attempting to correct what they said, 
 we do seek to expand the principles which they 
 enunciated and apply them to everyday life. Why 
 this difference in the treatment of the assumed 
 truths of speculative philosophy and the assumed 
 truths of the New Testament? Is it due to the 
 fact that no one has questioned the authenticity 
 and authority of the latter? Have they not been 
 the point of attack for two thousand years? 
 
 Those who accept the New Testament as the 
 most complete form of revelation of God to men 
 see in what is known as "Pentecost" the beginning 
 of a new condition, which starts the race upon a 
 new course. This event, and the experience it 
 brought with it, has elevated the race to where it 
 has insight such as was not possible before. It is 
 not fanciful to say that from that event on, the 
 spiritual in man took a decided upward turn, be- 
 gan a peculiar course in development such as 
 marks the close of one great cycle in the life of man 
 and begins another. Being possessed of a Spirit 
 that before was not his in the sense it now is, man 
 now, in union with the Spirit of Christ — which is 
 one with the Spirit of Truth — ^is as truly develop- 
 ing his spiritual nature as he was for ages devel- 
 oping his physical. And the intuitions of man are 
 now being cultivated, where men are obedient to 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 153 
 
 the truth, as never before; consequently, though 
 reason in man is as reason has ever been, intuition 
 or spiritual instinct will come to the aid of reason 
 as it did not in the days of the ancient philoso- 
 phers. Our hope that we shall reach philosophi- 
 cal truth, as well as what might be called higher 
 truth, is based on the fact that the same Spirit 
 that leads the race on will so purify us from pre- 
 judice and from the dross of worldliness as to en- 
 able us intuitively to detect error and just as intu- 
 itively feel the force of truth. Not more develop- 
 ment then, but development under an unerring 
 Guide, is our guarantee that thought wiU attain 
 to Truth. 
 
 The whole movement of thought may be illus- 
 trated by the track of a spiral railway in cross- 
 ing the Alps. The train winds round the 
 mountain, plunges into a tunnel, and seems to 
 traverse again the same track it passed over 
 a short while before. The confused traveler 
 looks out of the car window to see ahead of him 
 what he has formerly seen, and thinks the train 
 has lost its way in its own windings. But each cir- 
 cle round the mountain has carried him higher; 
 the track he is passing over and the tunnel he is 
 passing through, while on the same curve, are not 
 the same. In the meantime the strongest evidence 
 that he is making progress is his ability, ever and 
 anon, to get a glimpse of a new outlook. A snow- 
 capped crown appears that was not hitherto vis- 
 ible ; a beautiful valley for the first time is spread 
 
154 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 at his feet. At length the summit is reached, 
 where the panorama of the Alps is spread out be- 
 fore the beholder ! 
 
 So with the progress of thought. We have al- 
 ready advanced far enough to feel assured we are 
 not merely circling the mountain of Knowledge, 
 for we have glimpses of truths, now and then, 
 which truths, though lost to view for a time, re- 
 appear more fully and to abide. Shall we ever 
 reach the mountain-top? Never in this life; but 
 who can doubt the race is being carried onward 
 towards that point where "we shall know as we 
 are known".'' Who can doubt there is 
 
 " One far-off divine intent. 
 To which the whole creation moves ? " 
 
 What I have hitherto said has been somewhat 
 general in its character, bearing upon the persist- 
 ence of ideas as a principle without specifying any 
 which stand out as though race-wide. 
 
 The poet Goethe enunciated the doctrine, since 
 accepted universally by botanists, that all parts of 
 a plant are but variations of one type, viz., that 
 of the leaf. Later, the same poet-philosopher saw 
 in a section of the skull of a sheep the suggestion 
 that every single bone of an animal's skeleton is 
 some variation of the vertebra. Goethe's insight 
 led to a discovery of such unity in nature as had 
 not been more than dreamed of hitherto. The fact 
 that the doctrine of the metamorphosis of plants 
 had its parallel in the animal kingdom should not 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 156 
 
 have occasioned much surprise, though it estab- 
 Kshed a much more extensive unity than men had 
 before supposed existed. Now philosophers and sci- 
 entists go further and say boldly that man is a 
 miniature world — a microcosm — and they include 
 his mind in the generalization. If we object to 
 such an assumption, the reply is. What more natu- 
 ral than that this should be so ? In a higher sense 
 than the English poet supposed, we say "the 
 proper study of mankind is man" — individual man. 
 Just as the medical student at the dissecting table, 
 when studying anatomy, knows that he has before 
 him, subject to his scalpel, typical man — so he 
 who studies mind, has in the individual mind, the 
 general outlines of the mind of man as a whole. 
 Persistence of ideas, therefore, in the individual 
 man leads naturally to the thought of persistence 
 of ideas as seen in community life, in the province, 
 the nation, the various races, and finally the hu- 
 man race as a whole. 
 
 As we ascend we expect to find fewer ideas com- 
 mon to the class. Human instincts are the same — 
 though peculiar conditions may produce what 
 seem to be wide differences and varieties. The 
 wind sighing in the pine forest, or roaring in the 
 oak woodland, is the same air in motion ; the sound 
 varies because produced by different mediums. 
 Human nature is capable of almost infinite vari- 
 eties as we descend to minute details, but there are 
 certain great fundamentals upon which the world 
 of mankind is practically at one. Only within the 
 
156 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 last few years has this truth dawned upon the 
 more progressive races of mankind, as the result 
 of the close connection nation has had with nation 
 by means of commerce, by world congresses, but 
 particularly through the labors and investigations 
 of the tireless Christian missionaries. The Great 
 Book of the most enlightened nations has found a 
 response in the hearts of even the most degraded 
 of our kind. The Book thereby proves its divinity 
 on the one hand, and the unity of the human race 
 on the other. It also proves that in great and fun- 
 damental matters the world is one. 
 
 Perhaps what we call "provincialisms" in the 
 realm of community ideas find a parallel in what 
 is known as national or race peculiarities. The 
 same forces are at work everywhere, but because of 
 some variety in the medium, differences appear 
 which are not so pronounced as they at first seem 
 to be. We sometimes wonder at the persistence of 
 an error, such as the doctrine of the Transmigra- 
 tion of Souls, the horrible customs connected with 
 the Sacrifice of Human Life for supposed sin, as 
 seen in pagan countries. But a close study of 
 causes and aims often reveals more to be pitied 
 than blamed. 
 
 Take as an illustration of the persistence of an 
 error a doctrine which has always fascinated a 
 certain type of men, even to this good day, viz., 
 the doctrine of Ideas as enunciated by Plato. At 
 first we are astonished at the suggestion that a man 
 of Plato's mental astuteness and saneness, could 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 157 
 
 have believed that only the Ideal Man existed, and 
 that men, as seen in the world, were but as shadows, 
 reflecting however, each in his degree something of 
 the Eternal Typical Man. Plato taught that man 
 as seen on earth, partakes of the nature, or en- 
 ters into the nature, of the Ideal Man in various 
 degrees. Take this theory however, and compare 
 it with Christian revelation, especially as it is 
 worked out in Paul's epistles, and note the parallel. 
 Christ called Himself emphatically "The Son of 
 Man" — ^the typical Man, as well as the point of 
 union for the race. He is the Eternal Man, who 
 becomes the source of life eternal to all who par- 
 take of His life, and to all who become one with 
 Him so far as to reflect Him. Revelation has no 
 place for eternal life as set over against "death," 
 aside from union with Christ. The Christian 
 scheme preserves our identity and thereby meets 
 the instincts of the human soul: but there is more 
 than a suggestive parallel between the theory of 
 the Greek Philosopher and the mystical doctrine 
 of our union with Christ as now preached and un- 
 derstood. 
 
 We conclude therefore that the secret of the per- 
 sistence of much that is erroneous in the world, es- 
 pecially where men are sincere, is in the ele- 
 ment of truth which the error contains. 
 
 The Doctrine of Transmigration of Souls is but 
 another form of the doctrine of Purgatory — seek- 
 ing to explain and satisfy man's sense of unfitness 
 for the life he feels he is destined to enjoy here- 
 
158 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 after if he lives up to his privileges here. The hor- 
 rible sacrifice of human life on the part of pagan 
 peoples, especially at the death of some celebrity, 
 finds its cause in a desire to make some sort of an 
 atonement for calamity which the gods are sup- 
 posed to have brought upon a people, and to ap- 
 pease those spirits which, human or divine, might 
 do great harm if atonement is not made for the 
 wrongs they are supposed to have suffered. 
 
 There are at least two ideas which aU nations 
 and races seem to have in common, and which are 
 bound up with our very being. These two ideas 
 persist in the human race, as a whole, much as 
 certain other ideas persist for a time in community 
 or natural life. The Idea of God and the Idea of 
 the Soul's Indestructibility, — at least of its Life 
 after Death, — are the two ideas which may be 
 termed fundamental, and which have always been 
 present in some form in the minds of men, and 
 amidst much misconception and positive error, 
 have persisted, and we are sure will persist, while 
 man exists on this planet. 
 
 As to the Idea of God, no extended argument 
 and no extensive quotations from a varied and rich 
 literature on the subject, would seem necessary, 
 since the final conclusions to which the most 
 thoughtful of men have come may be summed up in 
 the words, "The being of God is a necessary and 
 ultimate principle of reason, involved in the con- 
 stitution of man as rational." In the discussion 
 of the persistence of the idea of God we may with 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 159 
 
 but a brief review of the expressions of discrimin- 
 ating thinkers on this subject, pass on to the con- 
 sideration of the kindred idea, of the Soul's Im- 
 mortality, and then to the more interesting work 
 of seeking the cause for this persistence in both 
 instances. 
 
 The Idea of God is one that will not down. 
 While God may be called Power, Absolute, World- 
 Ground, Something-not-ourselves which makes for 
 Righteousness, Force, Cause, Unknown, and many 
 other terms, the same Being is meant, and like 
 Paul, we take our stand and preach the God of 
 revelation to those who have erected altars to Un- 
 known Gods. 
 
 Herbert Spencer has said: "The persistence of 
 the universe is the persistence of that Unknown 
 Cause, Power or Force which is manifested to us 
 through all phenomena." Feuerbach says: "It is 
 a general truth that we feel a blank, a void, a want 
 in ourselves and consequently are unhappy and 
 unsatisfied, so long as we have not come to the last 
 degree of a power, to that, than which nothing 
 greater can be thought." Zeller says : "The spirit 
 of man cannot be satisfied till it finds in every 
 force the manifestation of an original force, and 
 in all beings the product of an original Being ; till 
 the checkered manifoldness of particular laws is 
 brought back to highest unity." Sir William 
 Hamilton says: "From Xenophanes to Leibnitz, 
 the infinite, the absolute, the unconditioned, formed 
 the highest principle of speculation." Agnostics, 
 
160 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Pantheists, Materialists, Deists, — all agree with 
 Theists in this : Absolute Being exists as the first 
 principle of reason. Even Comte was forced to 
 "make a God" after he had found no place for one 
 in his system. If Kant, in his "Critique of Pure 
 Reason" shut out God, on the ground that we are 
 incompetent to deal by means of reason with such a 
 subject, he showed the persistence of the idea of 
 God the more pointedly in his subsequent "Critique 
 of the Practical Reason," where he tells us the 
 practical reason affirms what the pure reason dare 
 not. Kant found it positively necessary to postu- 
 late God, not "to please his old servant Lampe," 
 as Heine sarcastically says, but because Kant had 
 a sane mind and saw too clearly the presence of 
 certain fundamental ideas of the race to ignore this 
 greatest of them all. 
 
 Perhaps the persistence of the Idea of God has 
 not been more satisfactorily or pertinently ex- 
 pressed than in Dr. Samuel Harris' "Self-revela- 
 tion of God": "(This idea) persists," he says, "in 
 the implicit consciousness, regulating thought, 
 even when theoretically disclaimed. It is evident 
 without the assumption, explicit or implicit, that 
 the absolute Being exists, the reason of man can 
 not solve its necessary problems, nor rest satisfied 
 with any intellectual attainment, nor hold stead- 
 fastly to the reality of knowledge, nor know the 
 continuity, the unity and the reality of the imi- 
 verse. The necessary conclusion is that the prin- 
 ciple that the absolute Being exists is a primitive 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 161 
 
 and necessary law of thought, a constituent of 
 reason, and a necessary postulate in all thinking 
 about being." 
 
 The idea of Immortality is bound up with the 
 Idea of God. There was deep philosophy in the 
 saying: "Because I live ye shall live also." Yet 
 just as we find no attempt to prove the existence of 
 God in the Old Testament, but find it everywhere 
 assumed; so we find only intimations and assump- 
 tions of immortality in the Bible till "life and im- 
 mortality are brought to light" in the revelation 
 made by Christ. 
 
 From a philosophical stand-point we see in the 
 nous of Anaxagoras, the hint which Socrates re- 
 ceived as an inspiration, and which he developed 
 into what became, from his time on, a more or less 
 clearly defined doctrine of a future life. It is 
 usually assumed by bibhcal expositors that by the 
 8th century, B. C, the Old Testament prophets 
 had formulated for the Hebrews a tolerably well- 
 defined doctrine of a future life. The growth of 
 this doctrine in the Old Testament, from vague 
 and nebulous beginnings, but makes the parallel 
 between the growth of the idea of immortality in 
 the pagan world and the growth of it in the Jewish 
 world, the more interesting. When we come later 
 to speak of causes back of these fundamental ideas, 
 this parallel will receive some attention. 
 
 When once the idea of immortality took hold of 
 man, it so fully fell in with his higher instincts — 
 was so much like a complicated key fitting a com- 
 
162 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 plicated lock — ^that, despite arguments to the con- 
 trary — some of them cogent and, for the time, ap- 
 parently unanswerable — ^the idea of an existence 
 for man which extended into the unknown beyond, 
 has persisted to this day. "Plato, thou reasonest 
 well," has been extorted from every fair-minded 
 man; while the majority of enlightened mankind 
 has quietly assumed a doctrine to be true which is 
 intertwined with the very existence and spirituality 
 of God. God, the absolute spirit, Man His crea- 
 ture, made in "His image," and having a strong 
 instinct for immortality, because he was made to 
 live with God — this prevails as against all 
 forms of atheism, materialism, and skepticism. 
 
 In the course of reasoning on the subject of the 
 persistence of ideas, and especially of certain fun- 
 damental ones which belong to the race as a whole, 
 we must sooner or later meet the question: What 
 is back of this persistence.'' To that part of the 
 subject I now turn. Why do fundamental ideas 
 persist in the race.'' 
 
 The first reason I give is the one which grows 
 out of the physical nature of man — ^his hereditary 
 tendencies. Some would tell us this is the only 
 cause for persistence of ideas. And, though we 
 reject this wholesale assumption, no harm can 
 come to truth by facing facts as we have them pre- 
 sented to us, even though those facts have been in- 
 terpreted by others differently from what, as it 
 may appear to us, they should have been. We can 
 not, for example, deny much that is true in evolu- 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 163 
 
 tion, or in radical biblical criticism, even though 
 we cannot go to the lengths some do in drawing in- 
 ferences from the facts as they are supposed to be 
 given. So in the matter of hereditary tendencies. 
 
 Those who have studied closely savage and civ- 
 ilized Ufe, or the development of a people from vir- 
 tual savagery to civilization, are struck with the 
 changes which take place in the practical disap- 
 pearance of certain powers once utilized, and the 
 development of others not before possessed to any 
 considerable degree. A people who live on roots 
 and simple grains, who dwell in huts or shelter 
 themselves under even more temporary lodges, who 
 fight with spears and arrows and hunt game or 
 raise a few cattle for meat — must develop their 
 motor powers rather than cultivate the fine sen- 
 sory distinctions which belong to more civilized 
 life. The keen sensory powers of the savage, plac- 
 ing him almost on a level with the highly devel- 
 oped senses of the lower animals, and associated 
 wholly with motor reactions, are not utilized for 
 any end in themselves. Hence, by the law that the 
 used becomes the developed, we find tendencies and 
 keenness of sensory perception in purely practical 
 affairs, and quickness of motor reactions in self- 
 defence, in contest for food, — all transmitted in 
 considerable degree from father to son. 
 
 On the other hand, a more general environment, 
 where food, clothing and shelter come from a great 
 variety of sources, and men meet men not to fight 
 but to trade ; where the avoidance of pain and the 
 
164 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 search for pleasure give color to all of man's 
 efforts, we naturally expect to find keenly devel- 
 oped sensory powers in relation to many things 
 which the savage, or the same people once in sav- 
 agery, had little ability to discern; furthermore, 
 certain motor reactions, because there is no call for 
 their use, almost disappear. As in the first in- 
 stance, where the sensory keenness in regard to the 
 few things, and the quick and sure motor reactions 
 as regard the essentials of life, were transmitted 
 to children; so we have a like transmission in the 
 case of more advanced civilization. 
 
 This then is the basis of certain ideas purely 
 from the standpoint of environment and heredity, 
 or from what might be called the physical side of 
 our nature. The ideas thus developed have refer- 
 ence more particularly to physical needs. But 
 they serve to give us a hint as to how ideas of a 
 more spiritual character are developed. 
 
 Add other elements to the one just given. 
 Change the nation and give it other environment; 
 transplant it and develop in it new powers because 
 of new demands. Take Israel from his tents, his 
 simple hfe in the wilderness, his isolation, and give 
 him a land of com and wine, spacious houses to 
 dwell in, and enemies to fight, and there has been 
 added what must sooner or later develop new pow- 
 ers ; while powers which served well in the wilder- 
 ness will now have become extinct for want of use. 
 
 Or go still further: Place people where there 
 will be general intermarriage with other nation- 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 165 
 
 alities; let German, Celt, and perchance Semite 
 mingle their blood in offspring, and let the in- 
 herited tendencies of different nations and even 
 races combine in children, and we have the pos- 
 sibility of hitherto unthought-of tendencies, both 
 temporal, and shall we not add, spiritual? 
 
 When we come to ideas concerning religion, the 
 philosophy that is boldly evolutional, or sordidly 
 materialistic, seeks their origin in the first place 
 in fear. This was the theory of Lucretius, after- 
 wards espoused by Hume. Man, being timid and 
 superstitious, projects his own life into aU ob- 
 jects, and either creates a man-god, which is 
 simply a giant man, capable of protecting him, or 
 lets his superstition lead him to create a monstros- 
 ity which he seeks to appease by every form of 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Others tell us that religious ideas come of 
 dreams, trances, and the like. Men have imagined 
 themselves, while asleep, in communication with 
 spirits which they could not approach while awake. 
 From this as a hint, it is an easy transition, some 
 think, to people the air with spirits, and even guar- 
 dian spirits. 
 
 Others would say that religion came of reflective 
 thought — as the result of philosophizing on Ufe. 
 The best reply to this is that men indicate their re- 
 Hgious tendencies long before they become philo- 
 sophical. Perhaps it were better to say that men 
 become philosophers because they have a religious 
 nature. 
 
166 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Now, while the above theories are rejected, it is 
 but justice to what is perhaps true to say that the 
 influence of fear, and even of dreams, on the savage 
 cannot be ignored. What has been taken by some 
 to be the origin of religious ideas, a saner philoso- 
 phy and theory will take to be the origin of error 
 in religion. By means of fear and superstition 
 and because of dreams ignorantly interpreted, men 
 have sadly deflected the rays of truth, which might 
 otherwise have indicated the source whence those 
 rays came. 
 
 Turning again to the ideas men get from their 
 practical contact with things about them, we find 
 that where there are no dormant powers there will 
 be no development. We know nothing of a keenly 
 developed eye-sight or hearing where there was no 
 organ and nerve, to begin with. As life comes of 
 life, so highly developed senses come of less highly 
 developed, or, it may be, very rudimentary ones. 
 
 So it is with our ideas concerning religion. Fear, 
 dreams, and other causes may be given as explana- 
 tions of the development of such ideas, but even 
 granting that they have a part in that develop- 
 ment, still we must see that without the presence 
 of such ideas in embryo, there would be no develop- 
 ment. Furthermore, the after development of these 
 ideas, — their purification and the ultimate reach 
 they attain, — aU go to show that, though afi'ected 
 by certain causes in primitive man, these ideas 
 finally find their rest in God, their element, and 
 prove thereby that they were originally inspired by 
 Him. 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 167 
 
 I have noted above that what is enduring in na- 
 tional or race character comes of motor reactions 
 inherited from past generations. The development 
 of the sensory powers to such an extent that certain 
 ideas stand out vividly, forms the basis of motor 
 activity, and motor activity gives a basis to per- 
 sistence of race ideas. Language aids as a kind of 
 footing, but nothing can take the place of the re- 
 sponse of the man himself. The tiny quail, just 
 hatched from the shell, will hide in the grass upon 
 seeing the face of man. The domestic fowl, 
 though originally wild, and just as ready in its 
 wild state to flee from man, shows now no fear. 
 This is an illustration of heredity in the lower 
 forms of life indicative of something in its higher 
 forms. The principle is the same. Motor reac- 
 tions, inherited from the generations persist when 
 vivid sensory excitement arouses the brain to 
 action. 
 
 We can make no exception of religious ideas 
 when we take a perfectly fair view of the whole 
 situation. Perhaps I had better say we must in- 
 clude in the part which heredity plays much of 
 the susceptibility of individuals and nations to 
 ideas concerning religion based on the response 
 which ancestors have given to what might be 
 termed the true and the false in religion. The 
 horror the Jew has, to this day, of idolatry in any 
 form, even to a mere painting which is supposed 
 to represent heavenly things, is to a great degree 
 an inheritance, intensified of course by early train- 
 
168 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 ing. And where the Jew is approached with an 
 appreciation of his past history, he is found even 
 now to have a spiritual susceptibility and discern- 
 ment in matters which concern revealed religion 
 that indicate only too clearly the result of genera- 
 tions of development in things of the spirit. Some 
 of our best Christian commentators have been men 
 of the Jewish race. 
 
 The trouble with non-theistic theorizers has been 
 that they have supposed they explained the origin 
 of religion when they indicated some of the ele- 
 ments which had to do with its development, albeit 
 those very elements, left to themselves, taking hold 
 on man's instincts for God, would have landed the 
 race in gross error. We must look for a Spirit of 
 Truth in the world, if we would find the true key 
 to unlock the difficulty which this phase of the 
 subject presents to us. 
 
 To sum up then : We find in the much talked-of 
 law of heredity, but another form of the biblical 
 promise that blessings will follow the children of 
 the good to the third and fourth generation, and 
 that spiritual imsusceptibility in children will be 
 one of the results of ignoring the claims of God 
 upon the soul of man. The question as to the origin 
 of, or the capacity for, religion is not even touched 
 by the law of heredity. To develop any power in 
 man we must first have that power in germinal 
 form to begin with. Man is a religious being, be- 
 cause God so made him. It is part of man's very 
 constitution. If that tendency or faculty in him is 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 169 
 
 awakened or developed by error, man will be 
 swayed by superstition, aU forms of idolatry, and 
 be plunged into misery by the very powers which 
 are the highest he possesses. To prevent this the 
 God who gave him a religious nature has given him 
 a revelation of Himself in what we call the Bible, 
 Not only so, when man has once caught sight of 
 the truth, nature falls in with the whole scheme of 
 revelation as seen in the Bible, and over all the 
 Spirit of Truth is seen to preside, "enlightening 
 every man that cometh into the world." God and 
 Immortality, as two fundamental ideas, are two 
 inseparable ones. They persist in the race be- 
 cause they belong to man's very nature. 
 
 Turning from heredity and other purely physi- 
 cal causes to something of a purely mental charac- 
 ter, I think we cannot ignore the fact that ideas 
 persist because Reason in its very nature must 
 seek rest for itself. We see this tendency in young 
 children taking the form of questions. 
 
 "The Reason Why" impels men, and in propor- 
 tion as they have power to appreciate the truth. 
 Probably if we but saw the world as God intended 
 we should, not a star twinkles, nor a flower nods in 
 the breeze, not a voice is heard in nature, nor a 
 calamity overtakes man, but is designed to make us 
 ask questions and get thereby such knowledge as 
 will be for the betterment of the race. 
 
 At the first of their philosophizing men found 
 rest for Reason in the idea that everything in the 
 world could be explained by water, fire, or air. 
 
170 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 When the suggestion of a nous or intellect was 
 made by Anaxagoras, mind became the subject- 
 matter of philosophy and everything else a puzzle. 
 Then the question arose, What must be done with 
 everything that is not mind? Again, How can 
 mind have any sort of dealing or communication 
 with matter? 
 
 To find rest for his reason, Plato in part laid 
 hold of, and in part created, the famous doctrine 
 of Reminiscence, which in the light of our present 
 knowledge of what heredity does for us, has in it 
 an element of truth. But Plato went the whole 
 length of believing that, as one has put it, "the cat 
 which played in his backyard was the same cat that 
 played there four thousand years before." The 
 type alone abides and is real: everything we per- 
 ceive is merely individual and not only perishes but 
 never had an existence save as a mere shadow. The 
 shadow, however, may serve to awaken in the mind 
 of man the recollection of what he saw in his pre- 
 vious and larger life, ere he was limited to this re- 
 gion of adumbrations. A man of earth may serve 
 to arouse in us the recollection of the ideal man we 
 knew in a former state, and thus with everything 
 we see. 
 
 This doctrine which Plato seemed to take se- 
 riously gave rest to his mind, and he lived and died 
 in the faith. Aristotle rejected much that was to 
 Plato part of his life ; but Aristotle in turn rested 
 in much that sounds to us strange and curious, 
 as, for instance, when he says : "there is a limit to 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 171 
 
 space." Yet all serious philosophers, such as 
 Leibnitz, Kant, Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel, Locke — no 
 matter how curious, to us, their theories, or how 
 far from the truth we now think they were — clung 
 tenaciously to their philosophy of the world, the 
 soul, and God, as essential to their living real lives 
 and doing real work in the world. In fact, man 
 must have a philosophy, and the more serious the 
 man, the more the necessity that reason find rest in 
 what a man can Hve by and die by. If faith be- 
 comes our support, even faith must not antagonize 
 reason. 
 
 There have been men who disregarded this im- 
 pelling motive to seek rest for the mind, and 
 professed to be of those who have sought in vain 
 to find it and have given up to be skeptics, either 
 by the name of agnostics or some other. Hume 
 was such a man. Whatever he really at length be- 
 lieved, he appears in the history of thought's prog- 
 ress as one who gave up the problem of finding in- 
 tellectual or spiritual rest, and left strong argu- 
 ments in defense of his course. 
 
 It is said that in the early life of Prof. A. B. 
 Bruce he read Strauss' "Life of Jesus," and the 
 book loosed him from his moorings, so far as 
 belief in the actual man Jesus was concerned. 
 About the same time the young "George Eliot" 
 read the same book, and with the same result. 
 Their after actions were quite different however. 
 George Eliot remained a skeptic all her life. Bruce 
 resolved to find rest for his mind and soul if pos- 
 
172 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 sible, and quietly but with infinite pains, examined 
 all the facts as he had access to them, became sat- 
 isfied that the position of Strauss was untenable, 
 and at length became the leading Apologist of his 
 country, and one of the first of his day among all 
 such writers. What Bruce did in this particular 
 of satisfying himself concerning the life of Jesus 
 is what reason urges us to do as to a philosophy 
 of Uf e. 
 
 The puzzle, however, is why men have been per- 
 mitted to rest so long and so complacently in gross 
 error. Some claim that we of to-day are no more 
 certain that what we regard as true is really so than 
 what Plato or Aristotle taught. 
 
 I freely grant the gravity of the question thus 
 confronting us. Yet we are not obliged to retreat 
 before it. In the first place it does not matter so 
 much whether we believe in the Copemican or Ptol- 
 emaic theory of the heavens ; whether we are Atom - 
 ists or believers in "four elements" ; whether we 
 think space limited or limitless; whether we are 
 evolutionists or believers in the most literal theory 
 of direct creation. It does matter, however, 
 whether we have been honest in our search for 
 the truth; whether we have loved it more than 
 ease, fame or money. One who knew much 
 philosophy and of strictly spiritual things said, 
 that at best "we know but in part." But he, 
 and even the pagan Socrates, would shame us 
 if we sought to take advantage of our limited 
 and limiting conditions, to give over the attempt 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 173 
 
 to discover truth concerning nature and mind, and 
 especially where that truth bears directly on con- 
 duct. Why the human mind in the past has rested 
 so complacently in error in its philosophy of na- 
 ture, and why reason has had its demands so com- 
 pletely satisfied in what was afterwards found to 
 have in it little of truth, we cannot fully under- 
 stand. It would seem that some higher instinct or 
 intuition would have broken in upon this sleep of 
 ignorance, but we cannot forget that where knowl- 
 edge was vitally connected with conduct a Some- 
 thing higher than reason has ever urged man to 
 seek to know the truth, concerning the true, the 
 beautiful and the good. 
 
 Modern biblical scholarship has done us rare 
 service here where the timid and ultra-conservative 
 saw only destruction. There is not more vagueness 
 to be found among the best of the ancient philoso- 
 phers in matters they gave their lives to fathom 
 than is to be found in the Old Testament Writers 
 concerning the great truths of which they are sup- 
 posed to have been the special custodians. Why 
 were these Old Testament men so imperfect and 
 unsatisfactory in their notions of the soul's immor- 
 tality, a future life, God's Fatherhood, and the 
 attitude of God to the world outside the Jewish 
 nation.'' I am aware that to present another diffi- 
 culty is not to answer the first. We are, however, 
 accustomed to see nothing remarkable in the colos- 
 sal ignorance of the ancient Hebrews concerning 
 the processes of nature ; neither are we shocked to 
 
174. SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 find that while they are regarded as the people 
 through whom God made special revelations to the 
 world, their knowledge was mixed with much that 
 was dross. In some very essential matters they 
 rested complacently in what was very far from 
 the truth. 
 
 But did they not aspire after mental or soul 
 rest and find it .'' Read the "Book of Psalms," that 
 volume which gives the heart-throbs of the nation, 
 and see if the cry of the soul was not "for God, 
 the living God." Note how the psalmist panted as 
 the hart for the water brooks, after knowledge that 
 was essential to conduct. Note, too, the beautiful 
 lives those men were able to live, in spite of their 
 partial and very imperfect knowledge. In all this 
 we have at least the suggestion of an answer why 
 the mind can rest in what is practical error: It 
 may do so if the few essential truths that make for 
 character have been discovered. 
 
 We see then, that while it is the nature of truth 
 to seek those who will accept it and give expression 
 to it in language — ^there are a few fundamental 
 truths or ideas that have persisted and will con- 
 stantly persist, during the existence of the race — 
 because they are the few ideas which are bound up 
 with true living, so that to do violence to them 
 means to do violence to life itself. And whether 
 that man's name be Confucius, Buddha, Socrates 
 or Paul — ^he who discovers these truths has come 
 to be, in a measure at least, "in tune with the In- 
 finite." 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 175 
 
 This leads naturally to the last reason I shall 
 give for the persistence of certain ideas, .viz., the 
 presence and power of intuitions. When a corre- 
 spondent of the poet Browning thanked the 
 author of "La Saisaiz" for invigorating her faith 
 by means of the suggestions the poem contained, 
 the poet replied that he had been aware of the com- 
 munication of something more subtle than a ratio- 
 cinative process when the convictions of "genius" 
 thrilled his soul to its depths. Hegel asks : "Who 
 is not acute enough to see a great deal in his sur- 
 roundings which is really far from being what it 
 ought to be.'"' But what of this "ought -to-be" 
 that persists in the best of the race.? Socrates has 
 made us familiar with the idea of a "demon" or 
 "divine voice" such as that which guided the great 
 Grecian teacher, — exercising now its restraining 
 influence, and at times manifesting itself so unmis- 
 takably that Socrates would not disobey it even to 
 save his life. 
 
 That men read with appreciation of such an ex- 
 perience on the part of the ancient philosopher 
 proves the universal character of the experience 
 which this good man in the earlier days felt so 
 keenly. When Matthew Arnold speaks of a "Some- 
 thing-not-ourselves which makes for righteousness," 
 which he discovered to be playing upon the soul of 
 man, he was but echoing in other terms the expe- 
 rience of Socrates. When Immanuel Kant, coldly 
 philosophical and hating mysticism, had closed up 
 the mind against God so far as reason was con- 
 
176 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 cemed, he found a "categorical imperative" — the 
 postulate of the "practical reason" — which pro- 
 vided a foothold for faith. Kant in this but put 
 in other terms what Socrates, Browning, Arnold 
 and others have expressed, each in his own way, 
 while referring to the same "spirit in man." 
 
 In speaking of the persistence of ideas we have 
 encountered something in "intuitions," as I have 
 called them, which is more than an "idea." Intui- 
 tions help us to understand why ideas of a certain 
 sort persist, but we must now use the term "ideal" 
 rather than idea, and remember that a principle 
 rather than a process is being dealt with when we 
 grapple with the mysetrious "something" which so 
 many men, and especially so many good and highly 
 gifted men, have experienced and have called by 
 names so various. 
 
 We are driven at once to see that an ideal or 
 principle which has had such influence upon the 
 teachers of the human race is not itself a mere 
 whim or empty notion, but must have, if we may 
 so express it, objective vaUdity — at least there 
 must be a "pattern on the mount" somewhere if we 
 elevate this variously interpreted and named 
 "sense of things" into a criterion. 
 
 This criterion that we thus are forced to make 
 more real than the ideas which we test by reference 
 to it, is especially prominent in the region of 
 morals. Henry Jones, in his volume on "Browning 
 as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher," says 
 suggestively: "The consciousness that the ideal 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 177 
 
 is the real explains the fact of contrition. To be- 
 come morally awakened is to become conscious of 
 the vanity and nothingness of the past life, as con- 
 fronted with the new ideal implied in it. The past 
 life is something to be cast aside as a false show, 
 just because the self which experienced it was not 
 realized in it. Thus man's true life lies in the 
 realization of his ideal, and his advancement 
 towards it is his coming to himself. It is a power 
 that irks, till it finds expression in moral habits 
 that accord with its nature, i.e., till the spirit has, 
 out of its environment, created a body adequate 
 for itself." 
 
 To say that such a criterion is in the very con- 
 stitution of man but inevitably leads us to ask: 
 How did it get there.'' We have seen that heredity 
 (and to this may be added all that is involved in 
 early training) explains in part the peculiar de- 
 velopment of certain ideas, even in the realm of 
 religion. Heredity also, as has been seen, with the 
 associated power of environment, is a prolific 
 source of error. The latent and universal tenden- 
 cies or ideas which fear, dreams, etc., can arouse 
 and develop, in no way explains the pres- 
 ence of these ideas in their possibility. And when 
 the principle or criterion, which corrects the false 
 in religion, even where the creeds or theories re- 
 main mixed with much dross, and which elevates 
 good men far above their creeds and times, is to be 
 explained, heredity and training are altogether in- 
 adequate. We are forced to postulate a Power, a 
 
178 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Person, a Spirit, back of such intuitions or guiding 
 principle. The idea of God and the idea of the 
 soul's immateriality and immortality are thus in- 
 separably bound up with the presence and power 
 of "a Spirit in man," which Spirit belongs to him 
 by right of his origin. This is particularly satis- 
 factory as a key to Hfe if we accept biblical reve- 
 lation, especially now that, since Pentecost, this 
 Spirit has become in a sense not before expe- 
 rienced, the "Spirit of Christ" — given to lead 
 those who obey Him "into all truth." 
 
 That which puzzled Socrates and which remains 
 a puzzle to all those who reject the doctrine of the 
 "inspiration of the prophets" of old, is intelligible 
 to the man who sees in Socrates, and, in fact, in 
 every good and wise man, ideals which are higher 
 than he or his people ; we see the "light which light- 
 eth every man which cometh into the world," espe- 
 cially manifesting its illuminating power where 
 men are willing to be guided by its beams. When 
 we read that Confucius, the Socrates of China, 
 taught men to "live as Heaven commands," we are 
 not told whether he meant by "heaven" a mechani- 
 cal power, or a personal God; but one who has 
 made a special study of this subject, himself a 
 gifted scholar from the Chinese nation, says Con- 
 fucius meant a personal God. If so, he but saw 
 dimly what we in more favorable conditions have 
 seen with more clearness — ^the presence of God 
 guiding the race, and especially those who would 
 submit themselves to His guidance. Socrates and 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 179 
 
 all good men of pagandom differed not so much in 
 kind as in degree from the prophets of old, who, as 
 God's chosen mediums to the world, were, in a 
 measure, far above their fellows, endowed with 
 spiritual insight and wisdom. These very men in 
 their prophecies spoke of a day when the spirit of 
 prophecy would be far more universal ; when a man 
 would not say to his neighbor, "know the Lord," 
 but when the law should be written in human hearts 
 instead of on tablets of stone. This had reference 
 to a day when the few especially and highly in- 
 spired should give place to something Uke universal 
 inspiration, though perhaps with none so pre-emi- 
 nently gifted in this particular as those "holy men 
 of old" who "spoke as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 Accepting as I do most thankfully and heartily 
 the doctrine of the presence in the world of a 
 Spirit, which Spirit is God in His fulness, — the 
 persistence of certain ideas becomes to me the most 
 natural thing which could happen. If a Spirit of 
 Trust exists, and is immament in men, the question 
 of a criterion is at once fixed and explained. The 
 yearnings, longings, the ghmpses of truth, and 
 other inexplicable intuitions of the race — all be- 
 come plain and even necessary. Such a Spirit 
 could not brood over human hearts and not find 
 here and there a response, so that men stirred to 
 the depths of their natures, and realizing an ideal 
 of the beautiful, the pure and good struggling 
 within them for utterance, must of necessity speak 
 
180 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 wiser than they know and give forth truth in the 
 form of hint or parable which the ages after would 
 understand better than the men who originally 
 gave forth those utterances. 
 
 Accepting this Spirit in the world, I can under- 
 stand how truth begins in obscure hints and prog- 
 resses to clearness and sharply defined outline. I 
 can see how truth under such a Spirit's leading will 
 be more and more purified, till practically all the 
 dross will be gone. Ideas under the Spirit's guide- 
 ance, struggling with, and even against, man's pre- 
 judices and actual resistance, will naturally take 
 what seems to those who study the trend of thought 
 in after ages, a zig-zag course. This could hardly 
 be otherwise. Men cling to their intellectual moor- 
 ings long after they have been convinced of the 
 error of their beliefs, and hesitating concerning 
 their course, they are finally moved as the pendu- 
 lum swings ; so we have "pendulation" in thought. 
 
 The Spirit's presence in the world and in man 
 makes clear the struggle to make actual in life the 
 ideals which the Spirit inspires. The Spirit be- 
 came personal in Christ. The presence in the world 
 of an Ideal Man both fulfilled a longing of the 
 human heart to know that such a man had existed, 
 and made it clear that all men must labor to realize 
 in their lives, if led by this same Spirit, that "per- 
 fection" which the Father in heaven possesses, and 
 which He bids us possess each in our measure. 
 Hence all real progress in this life in the Spirit 
 begins with contrition, which is the soul rejecting 
 
PERSISTENCE OF IDEAS 181 
 
 former ideals, or realizing at length the claim of 
 the ideal which all along was struggling to assert 
 its rights, but which was hitherto resisted. 
 
 Finally the presence of the Spirit in the man 
 makes clear why the fundamental ideas which are 
 inseparably connected with the actuality and pres- 
 ence of this Spirit in man — such as God, Immor- 
 tality, and Right Living — ^will not down, but, 
 though ignored, or suppressed in one age, or by 
 certain of the race, break forth in some form of 
 expression in another — sometimes much colored by 
 the imperfect character of the mediums of expres- 
 sion, but stiU quite discernible as the fundamental 
 ideas which belong to the race because the race had 
 its origin in God, and God has stamped Himself 
 on every member of it. These ideas will persist 
 as long as man lives on this planet, and their sig- 
 nificance will be fully seen when "man shall know 
 as he is known." 
 
VI. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING: THE SUBTLE 
 ASSERTOR OF THE SOUL 
 
 Harriet Martineau once said to Robert Brown- 
 ing: "There is no need for you to study German 
 metaphysics, you are German enough already." 
 In spite of striking differences, Browning must 
 suggest to the discriminating reader, Immanuel 
 Kant. The first was of Scottish-German descent; 
 the second German-Scottish. The great metaphy- 
 sician gave himself almost wholly to the study of 
 Mind ; the poet, to the study of Soul. They were 
 both in a sense agnostics. Kant insisted like 
 Browning on the limitations of human reason, but 
 assumed that there was what he called the "practi- 
 cal reason" which enabled man to postulate with as- 
 surance what mere reason could not affirm ; so that 
 the existence of the soul and God were by it guar- 
 anteed. Browning took much the same stand, but 
 used different terms. From the standpoint of mere 
 intellect the poet would have been a rank agnostic, 
 but he found within man what he elected to call 
 "heart," but which might be more exactly called 
 "intuition" : this the poet thought affirmed with 
 emphasis what the mere "head" was not compe- 
 tent to assert, namely, the reality of God and the 
 immortaUty of the soul. 
 
 Thus both Browning and Kant, the latter by 
 prosaic metaphysics, and the former through the 
 
 182 
 
BROWNING 188 
 
 medium of poetry and a poetic temperament, 
 reached beyond agnosticism to positive belief ; and 
 while both have been misunderstood and misinter- 
 preted, they have become to men of thought bul- 
 warks to faith in Grod and the Soul. 
 
 Browning was, by preeminence, the poet of the 
 human soul. In his own comments on the char- 
 acter of "Sordello," he tells us that the poem 
 is "a study of the development of a soul," and 
 then adds: "Nothing else is of any consequence." 
 Other poets have at times given their strength 
 to soul-analysis, and have produced results which 
 may rank with Browning's best in this par- 
 ticular; but no poet has ever given himself so ex- 
 clusively to such analysis. Writing for fifty years, 
 and producing work of the most varied character, 
 and from every conceivable view-point. Browning 
 seems to have had no pleasure in any subject in 
 which he could not discover the workings of pas- 
 sion, the processes of casuistry, the daring asser- 
 tions of the soul's intuitions, and the all-conquer- 
 ing power of love. If he describes natural scen- 
 ery, which he rarely does, he subordinates such 
 description to his main theme, namely, the myste- 
 rious workings of the spirit of man. This fact is 
 the more remarkable in view of what Browning 
 could do when he made the attempt. He was sus- 
 ceptible to the beauties of nature, as indeed to 
 every form of beauty, and could revel in mere 
 description, as a sample selection will illustrate. 
 No man could have written the following lines 
 
184! SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 who failed to take delight in expressing — ^if for 
 nothing else than for mere expression's sake — ^his 
 impressions of natural scenery: 
 
 Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
 Soars up and up, shivery for joy; 
 Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gidls 
 FUt where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 Of nestled Hmpets ; savage creatures seek 
 Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews 
 His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all. 
 From hfe's minute beginnings, up at last 
 To man — the consummation of this scheme 
 Of being, the completion of this sphere of hfe. 
 
 This selection from "Paracelsus" reminds the 
 reader of Shelley, Wordsworth, and our own Bry- 
 ant. Wordsworth would hardly have said, in 
 speaking of the lark, that it "shivered" for joy, 
 but Shelley might have so described it. Shelley 
 would not, on the other hand, have given the turn 
 to the close of this extract that Browning has, but 
 Wordsworth would, to the extent of his ability. 
 Browning, it seems, could have written of nature in 
 a way that might have rivaled the poets who have 
 been looked upon as nature's very high priests : we 
 find him, however, as seen in the quotation just 
 given, being drawn as by irresistible attraction to 
 the polestar of his thought— Man. 
 
 Comparing Browning with Shelley and Words- 
 worth, we can say with a discriminating writer: 
 "Shelley turned from man; Wordsworth paid him 
 rare visits; Browning dwelt with him." Shelley, 
 
BROWNING 185 
 
 susceptible to every form of beauty, but espe- 
 cially to beauty in nature, was at the same time 
 overwhelmed by the presence and problem of evil. 
 Wordsworth lived amidst mountains, rivulets, deUs 
 — ^brooding, moralizing, composing lines addressed 
 mainly to nature or descriptive of nature, and in- 
 cidentally about men and women. Browning saw 
 in the soul of man, despite its muddy vesture, that 
 which fascinated him: he would have reversed the 
 Byronic line and said: "I love not nature less, but 
 man the more." Browning's very manner in social 
 life indicated his genuine interest in men. Long- 
 fellow, who has been much praised for his democ- 
 racy in this respect, received visitors with an air 
 of resignation; Browning, with a cordiality that 
 spoke his living interest in everybody. 
 
 There are at least three names which are sug- 
 gested when we assert that Browning is preeminent 
 among those who stress the soul in song. Those 
 names are Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. Can 
 Browning's claim be made good against these.'' 
 
 Dante stands apart. In some particulars he is 
 easily supreme ; but not as poet of the soul, — ^if by 
 that is meant one capable of laying bare the inner 
 man. Dante teaches in picture. He has peopled for 
 us the spirit world, — ^heU, purgatory, and heaven 
 — ^with characters that instruct by their place 
 rather than by their self-revealing words. His- 
 devil is not a talking one like that of Milton or 
 Goethe; but his situation and surroundings sug- 
 gest that place may speak as loud as words. Only 
 
186 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 now and then do Dante's characters speak, but 
 even then they do not reveal their characters so 
 much by their words as by their looks, acts, or sit- 
 uations. We judge more by the smile of Beatrice 
 what she is and feels than by her philosophizing. 
 Dante is an allegorizer, and as such is simply un- 
 approachable. When he has located men and 
 women in some section of hell or some circle in pur- 
 gatory, or placed them in some one of his numer- 
 ous heavens, he means that a description of the 
 locality and its general significance must suffice 
 for the reader, who is left to particularize as he 
 pleases. Dante thus gives food and suggestion to 
 other poets who delight in making the Italian 
 poet's characters tell what they know. Dante's 
 "Sordello" of few words becomes the basis of 
 Browning's most exclusive soul-study. 
 
 In making a comparison of Browning and 
 Shakespeare in the matter of emphasizing Soul in 
 poetry, I think it is much a question of degree 
 rather than kind. Such characters as Macbeth, 
 Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, and others that one 
 ordinarily familiar with the great English drama- 
 tist will at once think of, represent the passions 
 of the human soul, as given in the main in drama, 
 in such a way as to gain for Shakespeare the ver- 
 dict of "prince" among men who have essayed to 
 portray the human heart. The process and prog- 
 ress of temptation have never been better given in 
 prose or poetry than in Macbeth. The inception 
 and development of jealousy is portrayed by a 
 
BROWNING 187 
 
 master-hand in Othello. The evils of irresolution 
 and the destruction of the man as a consequence 
 are seen at their best in Hamlet. The gnawings 
 of grief in consequence of filial ingratitude reach 
 their supreme presentation in King Lear. What 
 more, it may be asked, could Shakespeare have 
 done to gain the place of the poet, by preeminence, 
 of the himian soul.'' The answer is not so difficult 
 as it would seem to be. 
 
 Shakespeare dealt in soul-analysis as a feature 
 of his work ; Browning gave his force to it. What 
 Shakespeare could have done, had he taken 
 Browning's course instead of the one he did take, 
 cannot be definitely stated. But as matters stand 
 the creation of character rather than the analysis 
 of character was the work of Shakespeare. His 
 supremacy here is shown by the way he has dis- 
 associated himself from the characters which he 
 has created. No one else has succeeded in this as 
 he has. Characters seem to come full-fledged from 
 his brain, with their definite traits, and yet with so 
 little of the poet's personality about them as to 
 astound us even to this day. 
 
 When we come nearer to the Shakespearean 
 characters we find that his men and women talk 
 oftener to one another than to themselves. People 
 who talk to others, unless under very rare circum- 
 stances, hide rather than reveal their inner thoughts 
 and nature. Now when Shakespeare gives us soli- 
 loquy or monologue, we have his characters reveal- 
 ing themselves to the extent of the poet's power of 
 
188 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 expression, or so far as such revelation serves the 
 poet's purpose. When the King in Hamlet says, 
 
 O, my offense is rank and smells to heaven, 
 It has the primal eldest curse upon't, 
 A brother's murder j 
 
 or when Richard III. says, 
 
 With God, her conscience, and these bars against me, 
 And I no friends to back my suit withal, 
 But the plain devil and dissembling looks. 
 And yet win her — 
 
 we have men speaking for the moment their inner- 
 most thoughts, and thus portraying their wicked- 
 ness and wretchedness: but all this is done in 
 Shakespeare as it were incidentally, and in short 
 speeches. He gives us glimpses now and then of 
 the inner chambers of the hearts of his characters, 
 but this is exceptional. The brief soliloquy, to suit 
 dramatical purposes, is indulged in, and the char- 
 acters are again plunged into life to dissemble as 
 before. 
 
 How is it in Browning's characteristic poems? 
 The dramatic is imcidental and the monologue is 
 supreme. His characters are created to tell all 
 they Jcnow of themselves. They are talking rather 
 than acting characters. It is noteworthy that 
 while we have in some instances the poet's men 
 and women talking to others rather than to them- 
 selves, yet their very auditors illustrate the fact I 
 am contending for, namely, that Browning means 
 that his characters shall tell the truth and the 
 
BROWNING 189 
 
 whole truth as they feel it or know it. In no in- 
 stance has he more definitely determined that a cre- 
 ation of his should reveal herself completely than 
 in case of Pompilia. But PompiUa, while not de- 
 picted as speaking to herself as does the Pope, is 
 on her deathbed, and with but a few hours to live. 
 That very fact gives her the chance to open her 
 soul to the world. Caponsacchi tells his story to 
 the Court; but he is so thoroughly carried out of 
 himself by his love for Pompilia that we at once 
 have no fear but that he wiU tell the whole truth 
 concerning her and himself. His story to the 
 Court has all the characteristics of a monologue. 
 When Louis Napoleon is represented as speaking 
 the truth of his life, he has a congenial young 
 lady as his sole auditor, but she becomes an audi- 
 tor only to give him the opportunity to pour forth 
 all he thinks of himself both good and bad. Thus 
 it is all through Browning's poetry. If his char- 
 acters speak to others rather than to themselves, 
 they speak to auditors who have become inspira- 
 tions to them to teU the truth, rather than hin- 
 drances to it. The auditors are those to whom the 
 Browning characters confess rather than talk, as 
 in the case of the wife of Andrea del Sarto, or 
 Bishop Blougram's dinner companion. 
 
 Shakespeare, then, creates that his characters 
 may play their part on the stage, and reveal so 
 much of their real selves as suits his purpose. 
 Browning either brings in upon the stage a char- 
 acter already known, or one he has created, that 
 
190 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 he may have the man reveal himself with reference 
 to that single thing which the poet regarded as 
 the only end worth while in the study of man — 
 the development or dwarfing of the soul. Shake- 
 speare as best suited to tragedy gives oftenest men 
 and women going to the bad: Browning delights 
 in the soul's aspirations, and seldom fails to con- 
 nect even his weaker creations with 'the immanent 
 God. It is Soul in his characters, not characters 
 as such, that Browning stresses. 
 
 In the matter of stressing the soul, Goethe is 
 perhaps the poet who makes a nearer approach to 
 Browning than any other. The most casual reader 
 of "Paracelsus" must think of "Faust," and 
 "Paracelsus" is representative of as much Brown- 
 ingism as any of the poet's productions, with per- 
 haps, the exception of "The Ring and the Book." 
 We find our minds turning to Goethe's "Iphigenia" 
 when we strike Browning's "Balaustion." We 
 think of Goethe's lyrics when we read Browning's, 
 and note how both poets made Love their principal 
 theme, and possess the power of leaving a definite 
 and living idea with the reader by means of a 
 short poem. Both poets are principally concerned 
 with men and women, subordinating to character- 
 study everything else. 
 
 The similarity that I have indicated between 
 these two writers is due in part to the age in which 
 they lived. They were heirs of the same psychol- 
 ogy. They were alike idealists in philosophy. 
 Goethe was a follower of Romanticism with which 
 
BROWNING 191 
 
 Kant sympathized so much. Browning was just 
 as firm a believer in "heart" as against "head." 
 There was a pantheism, of an allowable kind, that 
 was common to both. 
 
 But I believe something more than the age in 
 which these men lived, and the philosophers with 
 whom they sympathized, combined to make their 
 poetry similar. They temperamentally sympa- 
 thized with much the same things. While far 
 apart in some respects, they are near enough to- 
 gether constantly to remind the reader the one of 
 the other. 
 
 And yet, with all Goethe's greatness, — such as 
 to gain for him the name of being one among the 
 three greatest poets that have ever lived, — ^the 
 contention is still good, I think, that Browning 
 surpasses him as a poet of the soul. 
 
 Coming at once to the masterpieces of both, 
 compare "Faust" with "The Ring and the Book." 
 They agree in that the soul plays the most impor- 
 tant part in the two poems. They agree in making 
 evil serve as a kind of handmaid of good. The 
 bold ground is taken In "Faust" that the Devil 
 may so far overreach himself as to convert a man 
 who becomes disgusted with evil, even where the 
 man has made a compact with evil. The Mar- 
 garet of "Faust" calls forth quite as much sym- 
 pathy as the Pompiha of "The Ring and the 
 Book," — ^but what a difference in the two women! 
 Both are uneducated — at least unlettered — and 
 both women of keen intuitions: but FompiUa is a 
 
192 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 spirit, while Margaret is a beautiful, pious, loving, 
 but erring girl, who lays all on the altar of human 
 love. I hesitate not to afBrm that Goethe was not 
 capable of creating such a character as Pompilia 
 — so free from a sense of the earthly. It is prob- 
 able that Mrs. Browning sat for the picture in all 
 that is highest and best in Pompilia; but no mat- 
 ter, here is Browning at his best in the production 
 of woman as the embodiment of a great soul — and 
 nothing in Goethe's poetry can equal the creation. 
 In the character of Goethe's hero we have the 
 one human being that the poet follows through 
 two poems — the first and second parts of "Faust." 
 He is to these books what Job is to the Old Testa- 
 ment drama of that name. Everything is made 
 subordinate to the one man. Here is soul-study 
 and soul-analysis to the ability of the great Ger- 
 man poet to give the same. It is no secret that 
 Goethe later in life decided to "save" Faust rather 
 than let the traditional story of Dr. Faustus be his 
 guide. It must be evident to a discriminating 
 reader that the writer of "Faust" is embarrassed 
 at times in regard to the course he had best pur- 
 sue with his hero. Finally he shows him as having 
 so far changed from being entirely selfish and self- 
 seeking as to have a scheme for the betterment of 
 the poor of the land, where they may have homes 
 and lands. Faust has so far seen what it is to 
 live — ^to live for others and not for self — as to take 
 a joy in it beyond what he ever felt in the ways of 
 sin: at that moment he dies, and, while claimed by 
 
BROWNING 193 
 
 the Devil according to the compact, is saved so as 
 by fire on the general principle of "fitness." 
 
 How much of the inner man do we see in 
 Goethe's hero? A glimpse here and there, and 
 then a plunge into all sorts of fantastic revels and 
 weird carnivals. A soliloquy now and then, repre- 
 senting a sad, aspiring, but disappointed man: 
 then the world with its hubbub, and Faust taking 
 part in it all. It is soul-development, of a sort, 
 but we cannot fail to see that Goethe is taking 
 strange interest in scenes which have little in them 
 to recommend them save that the poet likes to fol- 
 low his fancies. The suggestion is strong that, 
 while showing the development of a soul amidst 
 aU sorts of worldliness, the poet is taking quite 
 as much interest in the worldliness as in the soul. 
 
 "Faust" is nothing like as earnest as "The 
 Ring and the Book." Goethe has given us a devil, 
 Mephistopheles, who is so good-natured, withal, as 
 to suggest that he never meant to do great harm 
 to Faust. If evil is what serious men think it is, 
 then Mephistopheles is a mock devil — a mere crea- 
 tion, in something of an apologetic mood for so 
 much slandering of the Devil, who is represented 
 by Goethe as after all not so bad as he has been 
 made out to be. "The Ring and the Book" on 
 the other hand, is in dead earnest. Guido, while a 
 man, is a devil, — suggestive of the Spirit of Evil 
 as revelation represents him. Singular indeed that 
 a representation of the devil incarnate in Goethe 
 should be far outmatched by the man, Guido, who 
 
194 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 has simply been diabolized by sin. As a soul-study, 
 Guido far exceeds Mephistopheles — if for no other 
 reason than that the world feels Browning's crea- 
 tion to be both a true and an earnest one. 
 
 What in Faust can compare with the priest, 
 Caponsacchi.? Here, too, is soul-awakening and 
 soul-development; but, as in the case of Pompilia, 
 the spirit in the man becomes at the last so promi- 
 nent as to make the reader forget all else. We are 
 studying a soul, not a man. 
 
 I know it may be said that Goethe's characters 
 in "Faust" have no such opportunity to reveal 
 themselves as have those in "The Ring and the 
 Book," as aU in the latter poem are either on the 
 witness stand or seen in the secret chambers of 
 their homes, and have the secrets of their souls re- 
 vealed because the conditions of the poem require 
 this to be done. This is notably so in the case of 
 the Pope, who reveals as much of Browning's 
 real philosophy, as even Rabbi Ben Ezra. But, 
 the choice of a theme, as well as the treatment of 
 it, indicates the trend of a poet's mind. When 
 Goethe would give us a soul-study he takes a man 
 of the world, plunges him into the revels of the 
 world, and incidentally shows him deteriorating or 
 spiritually improving under it all. Goethe wanted 
 as much of the "world" in his poem as he could 
 get, for he loved to study man as he saw him, not 
 necessarily deeply, but as a passing force. "Faust" 
 is thus full of suggestive touches, but has few care- 
 ful analyses. 
 
BROWNING 196 
 
 Browning indicates his trend by seizing on the 
 idea of an old murder case in Italy to make a study 
 of character, under such conditions as will best 
 serve to bring to light the innermost plans and 
 purposes of men and women. We have the souls 
 laid bare — ^because Browning wanted a theme that 
 would admit of such treatment. When we lay 
 aside "The Ring and the Book" after reading it 
 carefully, we feel that we have had insight into 
 souls — ^we feel we know the men and women who 
 have acted their parts in the play. We think lit- 
 tle of the world, and little of mere externals: we 
 have been concerned almost exclusively with men 
 and women shut in from earth and in such ex- 
 tremes of life as to show us what human hearts are 
 capable of under these extremes. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that Goethe in his 
 treatment of love is much more concerned with 
 the conventional and merely human passion, based 
 on "elective affinities," than Browning. Hermann 
 and Dorothea are happily married just as a mod- 
 ern novel might marry them, and this seems to be 
 all Goethe had in view in the writing of this beau- 
 tiful poem. Browning might not have made the 
 course of love run so smoothly, but he would out 
 of the loves of the two interesting people have 
 brought forth a passion which had far less of earth 
 about it. Browning's Norbert in "In a Balcony" 
 says, when about to face death with his loved Con- 
 stance, 
 
 Men have died 
 Trying to find this place, which we have found. 
 
196 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Browning's people in love more often miss than 
 find their prize; but only to find something in hu- 
 man love higher than the mere earthly possession 
 of it. It is usually connected with that eternal 
 i principle of love that makes this life seem unsatis- 
 ifactory. Witness this well-known passage, which 
 iprobably gives Browning's own idea of what love 
 ought to be in its higher manifestations. The 
 dying Pompilia, in her testimony, turns to the 
 man, in her thought, whom she loves with all her 
 soul, and says: 
 
 Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, 
 Mere imitation of the inimitable: 
 In heaven we have the real and true and sure. 
 'Tis there they neither marry nor are given 
 In marriage, but are as the angels: right, 
 Oh, how right that is, how Uke Jesus Christ 
 To say that! 
 
 Speaking of Caponsacchi's soul, and her attitude 
 to it, she says : 
 
 He is stiU here, not outside with the world; 
 Here, here, I have him in his rightful place ! 
 
 And doubtless Browning intended this to be read 
 under the supposition that Pompilia pointed to her 
 heart. 
 
 Perhaps nothing by way of quotation would 
 better reveal the attitude of Goethe to love, the 
 earth, and experience, than his introducion to 
 Faust, where, as a man advanced in years, he calls 
 on the "dim forms" that pressed about him, when 
 
BROWNING 197 
 
 a young man, to resume their reign, and, as they 
 do, the poet says: 
 
 Shades fondly loved appear, their train attending, 
 And visions fair of many a blissful day; 
 
 First-love and friendship their fond accents blending. 
 Like to some ancient, half -expiring lay : 
 
 Sorrow revives, her wail of accent sending 
 Back o'er hfe's devious, labyrinthine way. 
 
 The dear ones naming who, in life's fair morn. 
 
 By Fate beguiled, from my embrace were torn. 
 
 Taking into consideration that this is but a trans- 
 lation, which cannot adequately produce the orig- 
 inal, still the thought is there, and reveals the cry 
 of the man over lost youth, lost power, lost friends, 
 and unfriendly "Fate." There is little more in this 
 than making capital of a man's bitter experiences. 
 This is the conventional way of treating such a 
 theme as that which Goethe is handling. 
 
 In Browning's "La Saisiaz," written under the 
 shadow of a great sorrow and calling to mind a 
 greater one, the poet asserts his "belief in Soul" 
 and is "very sure of God," while his personal sor- 
 rows, which the German poet would bring to the 
 front, are repressed, and the soul of Browning, 
 chastened by them, is seen in its faith: 
 
 I have hved all o'er again 
 That last pregnant hour: I saved it, just as I could 
 
 save a root. 
 Disinterred for reinterment when the time best helps 
 
 to shoot. 
 Life is stocked with germs of torpid life; but may I 
 
 never wake 
 
198 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Those of mine whose resurrection could not be with- 
 out earthquake. 
 
 Rest such^ unraised forever! Be this, sad yet sweet, 
 the sole 
 
 Memory evoked from slumber! 
 
 After this brief and superficial survey of the 
 three poets, who, while suggesting Browning in 
 some things, yet are not, though as great as the 
 greatest, his equal in the one particular of which 
 we are writing — it may be a more direct way of 
 dealing with the matter to take up some of Brown- 
 ing's more prominent poems, and instead of mak- 
 ing elaborate quotations, which would extend over 
 pages, show the ruling ideas of these poems. 
 
 Browning's earliest production, "PauUne," is in 
 the form of a confession, and tells of the soul's 
 awakening — a revelation of high ideals and low 
 aims. His next poem, "Paracelsus," is a study of 
 a soul whose passion was the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge — this poem being almost exclusively a study 
 of soul-development, though in the face of the 
 baffling effect of the mind's limitations. When we 
 come to "Sordello" we hit upon a poem that is by 
 preeminence a study of the soul — known and 
 asserted to be such. The study, however, is soul- 
 development as against baffling environment. In 
 "Pippa Passes" we have much beside soul- 
 study, but we have the unmistakable Browning 
 idea — a pure, ingenuous spirit affecting others 
 for good, and that unconsciously. In "Christmas 
 Eve," " "Easter Day," and "La Saisiaz," to 
 
BROWNING 199 
 
 which might be added such poems as "A Pillar at 
 Sebzevar" and "A Bean Stripe," Browning is 
 wrestling with questions that concern the soul's 
 immortality and also the problem of evil. "In an 
 Album," "Fifine at the Fair," "Red Cotton Night- 
 cap Country," deal with kindred themes — all bear- 
 ing on the soul as especially affected by the evil of 
 unchastity. These are soul-studies as truly as any- 
 thing Browning wrote. "Saul" and "A Death in 
 the Desert" are two poems which are perhaps the 
 best known to the general public, and both are so 
 obviously connected with the spirit of man — ^the 
 first in its prophetic power, and the second in its 
 intuitional — that all we need do is to call attention 
 to the fact. ".Ral^biBen Ezr a" is soul-philo sophy. 
 "The Ring and the Book" simply marks the climax 
 in soul-study— For (M centers there. .It is" note- 
 wogfehy-tJMit;^fter readuig^rojmins. we are little 
 concerned with the mere intellect of his. charac-i 
 ~lers. Some discriminating writer has said of 
 Christ that he is so portrayed in the New Testa- 
 ment that we never think of His mere thought- 
 power — for the moral is so overpoweringly 
 ascendant. This is in its measure true of 
 Browning's best characters. Goethe's Mephisto- 
 pheles is smart, and Faust is learned; but Guido is 
 bad, and Caponsacchi is good. 
 
 When we come to some of the shorter poems of 
 Browning, such as "Andrea del Sarto," "Abt 
 Vogler," "Francis Furini" — we see soullessness, 
 soulfulness, and the relation between body and 
 
200 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 soul; and they are all powerfully depicted. In 
 "James Lee's Wife," "Bad Dreams," "Any Wife 
 to Any Husband," and a number of such, we see 
 soul-studies under the shadow of alienation between 
 man and wife. In the poems which might be 
 termed Poems of Casuistry, such as "Bishop 
 Blougram," "Mr. Sludge," "Aristophanes' 
 Apology," "Prince Hohensteil-Schwangau," "Fi- 
 fine at the Fair," and a host of such, we see the 
 moral man made prominent. We have apparent 
 
 I ■!■ I III 
 
 ^^ilure,_claiming success as-jQod sees^^success ; or_ 
 (. succe ss as^mga.,,^fcit.j.cly3£!wledg to^be faUure 
 - aJajSI the man excusing himself ; or downright fail- 
 ure, as that of a cheat, known to men and acknowl- 
 edged by the person^ himself , yet the person per- 
 mitted to say the best for himself that can be said. 
 It may be surely affirmed that no poet but 
 Browning has written so much, and for so many 
 years, and yet by means of the single thread, 
 "Soul," has enabled us to string together all he 
 wrote. 
 
 Although I have given myself but little room to 
 speak of Browning's subtlety, this is the feature of 
 his soul-analysis which is the most interesting. He 
 is like a photographer whose genius lies in posing 
 his subjects. The great Camberwell poet loves a 
 striking "situation," and having caught one, he 
 seems to say to his character: "Stand here till I 
 take you as you are." No poet furnishes such 
 stories as does Browning. Even young people in 
 school enjoy and understand "Stories from 
 
BROWNING 201 
 
 Browning." The reason for this lies in the fact 
 that Browning — in spite of his obscure style, 
 his interminable digressions, his almost madden- 
 ing assumption that you know everything he 
 knows — always has a good story to tell. The 
 best feature of the story usually is that he leaves 
 his readers to guess what the poet does not 
 utter. He is constantly delighting the sympa- 
 thetic reader by leading him to think he has 
 seen more in Browning than the poet himself saw 
 in what he wrote, — and herein is one feature of his 
 subtlety. The obscure and enigmatical "Childe 
 Roland to the Dark Tower Came" has been inter- 
 preted in all conceivable ways. One who for the 
 first time carefully studies it, and who has some 
 imagination, will join the great procession and 
 confidently offer a "solution" — only to find out 
 usually that he has been already anticipated. It 
 is said that an enthusiastic reader of Browning 
 once asked the poet whether Childe Roland was not 
 meant to teach a lesson on "Aspiration," such as 
 "Excelsior" taught: the reply was, "O yes, some- 
 thing of that sort." This is about all the curious 
 questioner could learn from the only man who 
 could say what was meant. 
 
 In "Pippa Passes" subtlety runs through the 
 whole poem. The touch of the innocent girl, by 
 means of song, enforced by the Spirit of God,, 
 plays upon conscience at critical moments so as ta 
 turn men and women from criminal purposes to 
 courageous action, — yet the singer is all uncon- 
 
202 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 scious of what she is doing. She, like the Baptist, 
 is but a "voice" in the wilderness of sinful con- 
 spiracies and self-indulgence. Some of the touches 
 in this poem are simply inimitable. 
 
 Of the great religious poems of Browning, 
 "Saul" and "A Death in the Desert" are best 
 known. We feel the thrill almost of prophecy 
 itself as we glide with David in his song from mere 
 descriptions of natural scenes to deeds of heroic 
 men, then on to love, and to the beauty and sig- 
 nificance of sacrifice as illustrated in the priestly 
 functions of the former days — ^till finally the songs 
 selected by the singer have done their work, and 
 the king has come to himself; but a spirit David 
 himself did not anticipate has caught him, and his 
 voice and harp are no longer his own, but utter the 
 hitherto unuttered and tell in a prophetic outburst 
 of the incarnation of Christ. 
 
 In "A Death in the Desert," where a rude Bac- 
 trian makes pretense to graze a goat, yet is really 
 keeping watch at the cave's mouth to give the 
 alarm in case of surprise, we find at the close of the 
 poem these words, which, taking in their connec- 
 tion, have sent cold chills over me as though from 
 a shower bath — all from sheer delight at the poet's 
 subtlety. Speaking of those who were present 
 when the author of the Fourth Gospel died (as the 
 situation portrays), Browning says: 
 
 Valens is lost, I know not of his trace ; 
 The Bactrian was but a wild childish man, 
 And could not write nor speak, but only loved. 
 
BROWNING 203 
 
 If the reader who follows the story to this point 
 does not perceive the master-touch in the last line 
 of the above quotation, his case is hopeless, so far 
 as any appreciation of Browning goes. 
 
 In "Christmas Eve," "Easter Day," and "La 
 Saisiaz," the thought is as subtle as it is high and 
 purely religious. No mere quotations can do jus- 
 tice to these poems. 
 
 In such short but significant poems as "My Last 
 Duchess" and "The Last Ride Together," we see 
 depths which remind one of looking into the bosom 
 of a Swiss lake — so deep yet so clear. When in 
 the former poem the nobleman tells one, who is 
 looking with him at his dead wife's portrait, that 
 because the Duchess was wont to smile on everybody 
 who did her a kindness, he (the Duke) "gave com- 
 mands," and "then all smile ceased" — Browning 
 does not say that the woman died of a broken 
 heart, but leaves the sympathetic reader to fill that 
 out. 
 
 In "The Last Ride Together" the humorous and 
 pathetic combine, yet an impression is left that is 
 most pleasing. A rejected lover is riding for the 
 last time with the lady who prefers another, but 
 has granted to the unfortunate one this favor. 
 Instead of brooding over his fate, the rejected 
 man revels in the thought of his present bliss, even 
 to the suggestion that the world might come to an 
 end before the ride is over and he will be found 
 with the woman of his heart. 
 
 In "Abt Vogler" and "Andrea del Sarto," 
 
204 SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 Browning touches the pathetic in human expe- 
 rience, as it has rarely been touched. In the first 
 poem, where the organist has, while extemporizing 
 on his instrument, been caught up into the "third 
 heaven," he wonders if what he has produced can 
 ever be repeated, the moralizing thereon is as thril- 
 ling as it is subtle : 
 
 AU we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall 
 exist ; 
 Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, 
 nor power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for 
 the melodist. 
 When eternity affirms the conception of the hour. 
 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth 
 too hard. 
 The passion that left the groimd to lose itself in 
 the sky, 
 \re music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 
 Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it 
 hy and by. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto is a powerful presentation of 
 a highly gifted man, an artist, deteriorating under 
 the influence of a woman who is not worthy of his 
 love, and whom he loves unworthily. His paint- 
 ings are lacking in "soul," and he knows it and be- 
 moans it, yet hints that had he loved as he should 
 have loved, and had his wife been what she might 
 have been, Raphael himself would not have been 
 the now "soulless" painter's match. 
 
 I close with some mention of the masterpiece 
 
BROWNING 205 
 
 of the poet, "The Ring and the Book." Here 
 nothing less than the whole story of the murder, 
 the scenes painted so vividly, and the charac- 
 ters brought out so sympathetically, could do jus- 
 tice to the poem. But a scene or two at certain 
 critical points in the great poem must suffice. 
 
 A priest, Caponsacchi, has been induced to do 
 the unusual and unheard-of thing — ^namely, to 
 steal away from a town in Italy the ill-treated wife 
 of a certain nobleman, Guido, and carry her for 
 safety to Rome, in a closed carriage. The two are 
 overtaken on the way, and the infuriated husband 
 thinks murder too good for the guilty parties. 
 The whole story hangs on the testimony given by 
 the parties concerned, in the court. The priest, 
 evidently as honest as he is pure, belongs to that 
 class so often selected as Browning's heroes and 
 heroines — ^the uncalculating people. He has 
 simply acted, out of a good heart, where a case of 
 pressing need came to his attention. But, in carry- 
 ing out the plan, he has had revelations of hmnan 
 nature such as he never dreamed of: he has expe- 
 rienced the soul's awakening. In telUng his ex- 
 perience to the court, whose incredulity can be felt, 
 so vivid is the scene portrayed — his honesty and 
 his love for the woman, Pompilia, are not more 
 plain than the priest's awkward attempt to hide 
 the love he feels. He thinks the delight he had 
 while sitting by her side in the carriage, as they 
 rode all through the night together, must have 
 been similar to what two saints might experience 
 
206 SEEKERS APTER SOUL 
 
 who side by side, as martyrs, await the signal for 
 the first resurrection. Perhaps something in the 
 looks of the men before him led the priest to add: 
 
 You know this is not love. Sirs — - it is faith 
 The feeling that there's God, he reigns and rules 
 Out of this low world: that is all; no harm! 
 
 Then with unapproachable pathos and humor 
 combined (humor excited at the ill-concealed feel- 
 ings of the priest), the brave fellow is made to 
 
 At times she drew a soft sigh — music seemed 
 Always to hover just above her lips, 
 Nor settle, — break a silence music too. 
 
 The man had a bad "case," as all know who have 
 experienced the symptoms. In fact, the entire 
 story of Caponsacchi is entrancing, in its hints, 
 half -confessions, glimpses into depths of character, 
 unconscious unveiling of innermost thoughts — ^till 
 the reader is led to ask if ever the human heart 
 were so dissected. 
 
 If Caponsacchi's testimony to the court is fasci- 
 nating, the confession of the dying Pompilia is 
 thrilling. She does not hesitate to acknowledge 
 that in a pure and unearthly sense she loves Capon- 
 sacchi. Her account of the memorable ride to 
 Rome has the unmistakable woman's touch about 
 it, and Browning has thrown into Pompilia's story 
 all that his great genius and his knowledge of a 
 woman's way of looking at things gave him ability 
 to put into language. If what I am writing inter- 
 
BROWNING 207 
 
 ests at all the reader who has not read "The Ring 
 and the Book," he will take up Pompilia's story 
 and see for himself its significance: for those who 
 have read the whole sympathetically, there is no 
 need that I give more than one quotation: 
 
 Ohj to have Caponsacchi for my guide ! 
 Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand 
 Holding my hand across the world, — a sense 
 That reads, as only such can read, the mark 
 God sets on woman, signifying so 
 She should — shall peradventure — be divine ; 
 
 Yet 'ware, the while, how weakness mars the print 
 And makes confusion, leaves the thing men see — 
 Not this man sees — who from his soul rewrites 
 The obliterated charter, — h ge and strfi ngthi 
 Jtfending^_whatjs_marred. 
 
 Here an unlettered girl, with keenest intu itions, 
 bom of a pure soul, and those intuitions aroused 
 to their highest by their possessor being on the 
 border land of the spirit-world, pours forth words 
 that partake of philosophy and prophecy, and 
 voice the yearnings of many an aspiring soul, that 
 would give some expression to the difference be- 
 tween what we are and what we would be. Here, 
 too, we see the joy such souls take in those choice 
 spirits who like Christ see in "Simon, son of Jo- 
 nas," the Peter (Rock) of the future. Pompilia 
 delights in the rare insight that can see "the mark 
 God sets on woman" ; but Caponsacchi does more — 
 he "rewrites the obliterated," and sees the perfect 
 in the now imperfect. Doubtless Elizabeth Bar- 
 
ms SEEKERS AFTER SOUL 
 
 rett is here depicted; no matter — ^not in this one 
 extract only, but in Pompilia's whole story, we find 
 such turns in thought, such unexpected and thril- 
 ling touches as to lead us to affirm that no man has 
 yet ever excelled Browning in the subtlety and 
 power which he asserted the claims and the reality 
 of the human soul.