l^quf a%5 bg t?tm to tl|0 ICItbrarg of prinrrton StjMlogtral S^^mtnarg .0-7:^" BASAL COjSTCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY AN INQUIRY INTO BEING, NON-BEING, AND BECOMING ALEXANDER T. ORMOND, Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1894 Copyright, 1894, by CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS TROW DIRECTORY PniNTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK PREFACE The motive of this volume is a desire to restore tlie primacy of certain conceptions which are in danger of disappearing from our modern thinking, and to reform others which, as I think, have been wrongly or inadequately conceived. Reflection has led me to dissent from monistic pantheism on the one hand, and from agnosticism on the other, two of the leading tendencies in the thought of our cen- tury, and to seek a metaphysical basis for philos- ophy that may adequately ground a rational theory of knowledge and being. With this end in view, I have sought to reconstruct philosophy upon the trinal categories of being, non-being, and becoming, and also to reform the current methods of meta- physics by showing that a completely rational idea of being can be achieved only when we represent it under our highest and most concrete categories and translate it into self-conscious personal spirit. The result is a siDiritualistic metaphysic which leads us to ground the world of reality in an Absolute pos- sessed of supreme intelligence, goodness, and love. The order in which the basal concepts emerged in my own thinking, is substantially as follows : Hav- ing, by historic study and reflection, become con- Vl PREFACE vincecl of the identity of the logos with the principle of conscious personality, I began to see its value as a means of j)enetrating the opaque absolute of the agnostic creed, and obtaining an intelligible concep- tion of its inner nature and connection with the rela- tive. The application of the logos-category led di- rectly to the i^ersonal construction of being and to the idea of the Absolute as personal, self-conscious spint. It was at this point that the dualistic light came to me in an intuition of the immanent move- ment or dialectic of si3irit. For it became clear that the activity of a self-conscious spirit must be first of all intellectual, and that its primal intellection would be dual in its nature, including a positive intuition of being's self or the logos, and a negative intuition of its not-self or the a-logos. And reflection made it clear also that the logos and, a-logos are primal and mutually exclusive opi^osites, and that while spirit- ual being is to be conceived as exercising internally the activity which intuites the i^ositive and negative terms, yet the object of the negative intuition, the a-logos, must be excluded from being as its oppo- site ; that is, as non-being. The exclusion of non-being from being as its op- posite, never to be identified with it, laid the foun- dations of a dualistic creed, and through it of a reform of spiritual dialectic in the direction of a non-pantheistic theory of creation and the connection of the Absolute with the sphere of relativity. For it became clear that the primal intuition of non-being would motive an outgo of volitional energy into the PREFACE Vll negative sphere for its suppression and annulment and that the nature generated out of it would not be pure being but becoming, a creature including in its constitution opposite moments of being and non-be- ing. Thus, through the conception of the negative datum, I began to see that an answer might be forth- coming to the hitherto unresolved problem, why the creative energy of the Absolute falls short of an ab- solute result and only produces the finite and imper- fect. The book itself must answer the question how far the solution is to be regarded as satisfactory. For the last, but not least important, insight I have to thank the great master of thinking, Aristotle. The identification of his category of self - activity with the nature of absolute and self-existent being, was the "holding turn" that reduced all the ele- ments to final unity and coherence. In the unfolding of these basal concepts a certain use of symbolism has become necessary. But the discerning reader will penetrate the shell to the kernel that it conceals. In conclusion, I wish to dis- claim any purpose to add another to existing sys- tems of philosophy, of which the world is already over-full. My ambition is rather, through the em- phasising of certain fundamental ideas, to impart a new spiritual vitalitj^ to the body philosophic. It is possible for philosophy to be spiritually dead Avhile it is intellectually alive. But it is only through its spiritual energy that it is able to become an impor- tant organ of truth and to minister to the highest needs of humanity. Vm PREFACE I wish to acknowledge the great debt I owe to my honored teacher, the venerable McCosh, to the spirit of whose realistic philosophy I hope my own work will be found to be loyal. My acknowledgments are due to Mr. A. L. Frothingham, Sr., of Princeton, for imioortant suggestions regarding the principle of dualism and for kindness in reading and criticising my manuscript ; also to my colleague, Professor A. F. West, for painstaking and appreciative interest in my work and for many helpful criticisms and suggestions, and to my pupil, Mr. G. A. Tawney, for valuable assistance in reading proof-sheets. There are other obligations which cannot be acknowledged in detail. My indebtedness to the masters, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, and Lotze, is too obvious to require special mention. Alexander T. Ormond. Princeton, January 20, 1894. CONTENTS PAGE 1 Introductory, I. The Norm, ^ 11. Being and Non-being, 24 III. Becoming, 44 IV. Space and Time, 59 V. Cosmic Nature, "^^ VI. Organic Nature, 83 VII. Psychic Nature, 96 VIII. Consciousness, 115 IX. Morality, 125 X. Non-being and Evil, 138 XI. Communal Nature, 155 Xn. History, I'^'l XIII. Religion, 194 XIV. Art, 218 XV. Knowledge, '^^5 XVI. Logos, 255 XVIL God, 266 XVIII. Spiritual Activity, 292 Conclusion, ^^^ BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY INTKODUCTOEY One of the most striking features of contemporary- thought is its weakness in resiiect to fundamental philosophical concei^tions. The masses of the in- telligent are espousing agnosticism, not as the re- sult of any reasoned conviction, but out of sheer inability to rise above the middle axioms of human thinking. To this weakness is due in great measure the prevalence of sensationalism in Psychology and phenomenism in Philosophy ; the former springing out of a kind of blindness of the soul to its own spiritual nature ; the latter from the inability of the reason of the time to conceive any categories of reality transcending the mechanical and sensible. It is the merit of the transcendental movement, in the thinking of this century, that it possesses an in- sight which leads it to refuse to respect the limits of phenomenism and to insist not only on the exist- ence of realities beyond the sensible horizon but also on the power of human intelligence to embrace these within the circle of knowledge. But tran- 2 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY scendentalism, altlioug-li it has the root of the matter in it, has not been able to wage on the whole a suc- cessful warfare against suiierficial tendencies. Kant- ism has failed on account of its only partial grasp of the conditions of its problem and its consequent aloofness from the processes of experience, while Hegelism, a much more competent theory, and one that has in it the true antidote of phenomenism, fails in part, because of its misconception of the true dialectic of spirit, a misconception that leaves the system prisoned in a closed sphere of absolut- ism. The clash of philosophical systems is thus reducible to a conflict between speculative blind- ness on one side, and a kind of speculative aberration on the other, with no competent mediator in sight to heal the breach. Again, the trend of the ^scientific thinking of the century has been so strong in the direction of evolu- tion that faith in it has come to be a recognized test of scientific orthodoxy ; while, on the other hand, the religious orthodoxy of the time has felt constrained to take toward the evolution theory, if not an atti- tude of hostility, at least one of distrust, on account of its tendency to unsettle religious convictions and its apparent hostility to supernaturalism and the doctrine of final causes. A painful breach has thus arisen between the convictions of science and those of religion, and this breach has contributed still fur- ther to cloud the vision and to trouble the spirit of the time. The following inquiry is an attempt to deal with INTRODUCTORY 3 these and other scarcely less grave issues in a way that will not be oiDen to the charge of superficial- ity. We are convinced that the only radical cure for the limitations of our thinking is to be found in the discovery of profounder and more adequate categories. Knowledge is founded in categories, and its successive stages arise not i3rimarily, out of the generalization of facts, but rather out of the emergence of new categories under which our generalizations are to proceed. We not only gen- eralize facts, but our reflection rises from categories of space and time to those of substance and cause, and only rests finally in the supreme ideas of unity and ground. Now when we seek to construe the ground of things adequately we are led by a necessary trend of reflection to translate it into the self- existent, and this again into the self-active energy of Aristotle. But self -activity in itself does not afford a final rest- ing-place for thought. Consciousness is either a mere by-product and spectator in the universe, or it is inherent in the primal essence of things. But self-consciousness is a form of self-activity and can- not be conceived as a by-product. And all conscious- ness is going on to be self-conscious. The final rest- ing-place of thought is found when self-activity and self-conscious activity are identified, and primal be- ing is translated into conscious self-activity. When primal being is conceived as conscious self-activity its highest category can no longer be the logos construed as abstract intelligence. The re- 4 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY flection of Anaxag-oras and Aristotle is not adequate on this point, but we must learn the lesson of the subsequent historic movement which culminated in the idea of the logos as a xDrinciple of immanent personal activity. And if the objection be raised that such a conception of the logos could not be completely attained without reference to religious history and literature, we would meet the objection with a plea of confession and avoidance. Philos- ophy must recognize its indebtedness to history, and especially to religious history. The highest spir- itual intuitions of the race have been achieved through channels of religious experience. We claim for philosophy the right to seek light wherever it can be found. If this light should come through the channels of sacred literature, that is no reason why philosophy should ngt avail herself of it, pro- vided she do not receive it on mere authority, but is able to translate it into rational terms and deal with it according* to her own legitimate methods. The logos is the highest category of rational in- sight, and when applied to the primal self-activity renders a conception of its nature possible. In short, the cure of the agnostic blindness is to be found in the logos-category. This renders the immanent nature and activity of absolute being intelligible. In its light we are able to conceive a spiritual move- ment of internal conscious distinction and unity, which translates the Absolute into living spiritual energy and personal being. And this achievement not only intelligizes the ground of reality but sup- INTRODUCTORY 5 plies the clew to its productive and generative re- lations to tlie world. For it enables us to achieve an intuition of that primal dialectic of spirit out of which the whole gen- erative movement of things proceeds. Here, as we see, one of the primal difficulties of reflection has arisen. The Hegelian insight has seized upon the dialectic, but has misconstrued it at a vital point. We must not only apprehend that the primal ac- tivity of being contains the dual moments of affir- mation and negation, but we must also realize, as Plato did, that primal opposites can never pass into each other. Being, therefore, affirms itself, but it does not deny itself, but rather its opposite. The problem of the negative becomes thus the last and most erudite issue in philosophy. If we yield the point that primal opposites may pass into one another, then the whole dialectic of reality be- comes a process of the self-affirmation and self-de- nial of being, and the distinction between being and non- being vanishes. In that case, however, the dialectic is shorn of its power as an explanatory principle, for it can never render conceivable the generation of a relative order from the Absolute. Pantheism is thus its logical outcome. If we maintain the position that primal opposites do not pass into one another, we then have the prob- lem of non-being on our hands. For then s^jirit must be conceived as affirming itself, but as denying, not itself but its oi3posite. Non-being thus becomes a transcendent opposite to being, that which it ne- 6 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY gates, opposes, and seeks to suppress and annul. The value of this conception as an explanatory prin- ciple, as we find in the following" inquiry, consists in the fact that it renders the genesis of a relative and imperfect order from the Absolute conceivable. That modification which differentiates the relative from its absolute ground becomes intelligible when we are able to supply a motive for creative energy and thus conceive a distinction between the immanent movement of spirit and its volitional outgo in crea- tive and generative activity. This motive arises in spirit's intuition of its opposite, and its impulse to go out into what may be symbolically represented as the sphere of non-being, in order to annul the negative and generate positive reality in its place. We admit that the doctrine of non-being thus arrived at is not free h'om difficulties. One of these arises from the necessity of conceiving non- being in a purely negative sense, and yet ascribing to it some of the functions of causation. This seems to involve a contradiction. We think, however, that the difficulty is greater in appearance than in real- ity. For it is conceded that effects in being may arise from the non-existence of positive conditions. Now, as the inquiry shows, the essential negative characteristic of the opposite of primal being is the absence from it of a ground or principle of self-existence. In view of this it maj^ be symbol- ized as an abyss in which being has no support. A reality generated in such a sphere would partici- pate in non-being in the sense that it would have INTRODUCTORY 7 no immanent principle or ground of self-existence. In this sense non-being- is a cause in a purely nega- tive sense and contradiction does not arise. This absence of self-existence and this depend- ence on that which transcends it is, as St. Augustine profoundly shows, the differentia of relative and gen- erated being. It is that modification which panthe- istic principles are never able to explain, and upon which naturalism is ever stumbling into agnosti- cism. The same principle, as the inquiry shows, enables us to attain a rational conception of the ground pro- cess of relativity, which is that of a passage from immanent potentiality to realized actuality, an evolu- tion whose presui^position is a spiritual absolute, and whose stages are mechanism, life, and spirit. In the conception of the world-process thus achieved, there is a ground, we think, for the harmonizing of scientific and religious convictions. For if evolu- tion be real and proceed according to the categories of mechanism and the law of natural causation, the basis of science is established and her intuition is vindicated ; whereas, if mechanism and causality themselves have as their presupposition a spiritual absolute, and as their finality the evolution of spirit, the substantial requirements of the intuition of re- ligion have been met and satisfied. And this satisfaction will be the more complete if it is seen that out of the same grounds on which the whole historic ^Drocess arises, springs also that prin- ciple of spiritual mediation which is one of the essen- 8 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tial elements in religion. The whole spiritual his- tory of nature and humanity finds its rationale in the postulate of a transcendent and self-existent being- whose creative energ-y functions in the world as the immanent spiritual principle of its existence and de- velopment. This postulate grounds and rationalizes the whole realm of science and its categories, while in the sphere of the ultimate issues it provides, in the synthesis of immanence and transcendence which it implies, an adequate foundation for a Philosoi3hy of Religion. The spirit of the time is not lacking in scholar- ship or zeal for the truth. What it needs most is a fresh baptism in the fountain of insight. Philos- ophy needs to become more truly historical by escap- ing from the form and entering more into the spirit of the world's thinking. SJie must also use her own eyes to look up into the heavens and down into the heart of humanity. The organ of philosophy is re- flection, but her highest gift is spiritual intuition. Through this she achieves the primal insight she needs to qualify her for her highest mission, which is to unify knowledge and heal the breaches of the human spirit. THE NORM Meditation on the history of thought leads to the conviction that Philosophy has a distinctive and in- dividual norm, and that this norm contains in it the secret of the highest wisdom. But when we essay to search the annals of jDhilosophy for the idea that will express its essence, we find ourselves launched on a perilous voyage over an uncertain sea. The highest point of ancient thinking was that reached in the speculation of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. At the heart of this reflection there functions an idea as the inner motive of its activity and develop- ment. The thought of Socrates is psychologic, and he conceives the idea as a principle of generic activ- ity in the human consciousness. To stimulate this principle and develop from its activity a rational system of truth is the aim of all his teaching. Pla- to's thought transcends the psychologic sphere, and becomes ontologic. To his intuition the idea be- comes transformed into an ontologic archetype, standing objective to conscious reason and energiz- ing as the absolute formative principle in things. Aristotle's thinking is analytic and individual, and 10 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY reacts from the transcendent imiversalism of Plato. The Stagirite attempts, and in a measure achieves, a reconciliation of the j)sycholog'ic and ontologic l^oints of view in his conception of the individual real as including-, in one asxDCct, a synthesis of the universal and particular ; in another, a union of self-activity and iDotence. It is this latter aspect which is of interest here. Socrates had represented the idea as a self-active universal energizing- in the consciousness of man, while Plato elevated it into a transcendent ontologic self-activity. Now Aristotle, in his distinction be- tween self-activity and potence, achieves, what Socra- tes and Plato were not able to do, namely, a rational basis for a distinction between the primal ground of things and the nature of things themselves. The primal ground is pure self - activity, iniriis actus, while things are a dual synthesis of self-activity and potence. While, therefore, the primal ground is complete in itself, and is not moved, things have a history in space and time ; they are not completely self-active but have a movement that de^Dends upon conditions outside of themselves. Their history thus falls into a conditioned series, and evolution is tlieir law. The world's thought presents no deeper insight than this. Aristotle barely misses a final and ade- quate solution of the profoundest issue of philoso- phy. But the Aristotelian chain is not complete. The question still presses. If the primal ground of things be a pure self -active lorinciple, why should THE NORM 11 not all tlie iDroducts of its energizing be the same ? Why should potence and its fruit, imperfection, exist in a system whose creative springs are self-sufficient and perfect ? To these questions this ancient si^ec- ulation has no coherent answer. The modification of self-activity, which constitutes the differentia of produced things, is brought in by what Hegel would call an *' external reflection," and is left without ra- tional ground or explanation. The scene of our meditation changes to the oi3en- ing of modern speculation, and the vision of three epoch-making thinkers rises before our eyes. Des Cartes' thinking, like that of Socrates, finds its start- ing-point in the human consciousness, and the idea it develops is that of the psyche itself as thinking sub- stance. But Des Cartes does not identify his sub- stance with self-activity, conceiving it as relatively inert and motionless. His notion of the psyche turns out, therefore, to be speculatively barren, providing no adequate principle for rationally apprehending either God or nature, whose ideas are, nevertheless, inseparable from the human con- sciousness. The result is a practical failure of his enterprise and the breaking up of his system into a number of intractable and incommunicable spheres. Spinoza is the Platonizing thinker of this group, who transforms Cartesianism into ontology by rais- ing the uncreated substance of Des Cartes to the plane of absolute being, while he reduces the rela- tive substances, mind and matter, to the ranks as the attributes through which it manifests itself. 12 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY But this ontologic transformation does not fully meet expectations. It yindicates the Absolute by swallowing up the relative, and with it the individual. Spinoza follows Des Cartes in his failure to identify substance with self-active principle. His absolute does not move, but stands there forever in the same place. Natura naturans is not a self-active being-, apurus actus, nor is the natura naturata a manifes- tation of this self -activity in the forms of relativity. The relation is static, not dynamic. The primal substance is simply a substrate of attributes and modes which rest upon it, but are not rationally grounded in its nature. In Platonism we find a lower and a higher insight. When thinking in the lesser light Plato conceives the archetypes as mere models and patterns which an external demiurge dips into the material, so to speak, and forms created things. Under the influence of the larger insight, he rises to higher views and identifies the arche- types with self-active principles which operate as the formative energies of creation. Spinoza does not rise to this higher insight of the master. His system is Platonism on the lower plane of the archetypes, conceived after the analogy of the Car- tesian substance and reduced to absolute unity. The pit of Spinozism is not pan-theism, but pan- substantialism. Its bane is its bondage to a false idea of substance, and its cure is to be found, not so much in the breaking up of its all-devouring unity as in the reform of its idea of substance. In Leibnitz we find a reincarnation of the individ- THE NOKM 13 ualizing tliouglit of Aristotle. Leibnitz has learned the fear of the all-devouring- One of Spinoza, and the cure, he conceives, must be brought about by a re- assertion of individualism. In his insight Leibnitz is a true child of Aristotle. He sees that philoso- phy has been bound and i)aralyzed by a false idea of substance, and he seeks to free her from her bond- age by going back to Aristotle and restoring his doctrine of substance as a self-active principle. Un- der the double insight his reflection breaks up the ontologic unity of Spinoza into a xDlurality of self- energizing individual monads, potential or active spiritual psyches, each an independent substance in itself, because it contains in it the principle and motive of its own evolution. Leibnitz is also a true child of Aristotle in recognizing the limitations of pure individualism and in seeking to ground the finite, developing individualities in a " monad of mo- nads," the equivalent of Aristotle's purus actus. In other words, Leibnitz's reform of the idea of sub- stance is a revolution ; it roots out the static con- ceptions which had dominated, and in a sense per- verted, the early period of our modern thinking, and reintroduces into i3hilosophy those dynamic catego- ries under which the highest fruits of ancient spec- ulation were achieved. But in face of the highest problems of philosophy we do not find that Leibnitz is more successful than his master. To the question how the existence of the imperfect and undeveloped is consistent with the existence of a perfect self -active ground, Leibnitz 14 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY has no rational answer. "VVe look in vain in this modern cycle, as we looked in vain in the reflection of the ancient triumvirate, for a datum from which an intellig-ible reason for this emergence of imper- fection from x3erfection can be deduced. It is clear that our meditation must still g-o for- ward. For philosophy, as distinguished from psy- chology, the development from Locke to Hume has chiefly a negative value. It furnishes a natural his- tory of the decline and death of speculation, smoth- ered in a mass of empiric details. In Kant, how- ever, the genius of philosophy again reappears. The Socratic thinking, modified by the Cartesian cycle, is again incarnated. Kant applies his ana- lytic to human consciousness in order to rediscover in it those universals the loss of which had plunged British thought into scepticism. The result is the categories, the most imiDortant single outcome of modern philosophy. These categories are in the Kantian system the self-active universals which translate ordinary experience into rational knowl- edge and thus lay the foundations of science. But Kant, like Socrates, puts a psychologic limit on his categories ; they are valid only for human cogni- tion, but in the transcendent ontologic sphere are without authority. The result is that philosophy stands like a house divided against itself. Knowl- edge is only of subjective value while the shadow of an objective and transcendent Eeal forever haunts the consciousness of man and destroys his rest. Philosophy stands thus as a propounder of a sphinx's THE NORM 15 riddles and swallows up all her own children because they are unable to solve them. Kant's failure was the motive of subsequent spec- ulation. With a backward Dionysian sweep his negations fostered the agnostic tendencies of British thought. The forward impulse is toward transcen- dentalism. The transformation of the psychologic principle of Kant into ontology takes place in Ficlite and Schelling. Fichte's reflection seizes on the shadowy noumenal self of Kant, which Kant had endeavored to secure in a moral postulate, and translates it into the idea of an absolute ego ; while Schelling, rightly denying that Fichte ever com- pletely succeeds in reducing the recalcitrant object or Aiistoss to subjection to his absolute, conceives the project of enlarging the continent of being so as to embrace both subject and object in the notion of the Absolute. Schelling then completes the onto- logic transformation of Kant in his dual conception of a transcendent absolute, in which subject and ob- ject, ideal and real, stand as parallels with a medial relation of indifference between them. But further reflection taught him at length that such a concep- tion of the Absolute is self-contradictory, and that the real absolute in his system is the point of indif- ference itself ; the evolution of which leads again into the closed circle of Spinoza, a fate from which he escapes only by losing himself in the clouds of theosophic mysticism. In Hegel we have again a return from ontologic universalism to individualism. But the Heg-elian 16 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY return is on a higher plane than that of Leibnitz. To Hegel the individual is a category which con- tains in solution the universal and the particular, and from another point of view, the subject and object. Hegel's conception of absolute being is that of a self-active principle which includes the distinction of subject and object, and everywhere leads to individual manifestations. The self-activ- ity of the Absolute expresses itself in a dialectical movement which passes through three stages in its return upon itself and functions everywhere as the inner reality of things. Now Hegel has two modes of conceiving the movement of this dialectic energy, (1) the logical, which starts with the most abstract notion of being and represents the dialectical pro- cession of thought as a perpetual concretion which culminates in the highest and richest idea, that of absolute spirit ; (2) the ontologic, which reversing the logical order starts from the idea of absolute spirit, and represents creation as the going out of absolute spirit into objective self -alienation, through nature and finite siDirit back into itself. The pro- cess of relativity is thus conceived as a drama of self-evolution and self-reconciliation of the Abso- lute Spirit in which it is begun, continued, and ended. Overawed by the magnitude of Hegel's idea our reflection might end here ; but the old questions come up and clamor for an answer. We admit that Hegel has touched the highest point of modern speculation, but we are unable to conceive how THE NORM 17 logically a notion which is, ex hypothesi, the thinnest of abstractions (in Heg-el being- is the last abstrac- tion) can be the bearer of a dialectic that presses on through self-affirmation and self - negation, never staying its footsteps until it has reached the bosom of absolute spirit. The truth is, the logical move- ment is a superinduction. The true dialectic is an external reflection ; it is the movement of the spirit itself refusing to be satisfied until it has reached its own highest category. The normal movement of Hegelism is the on- tologic, the self-uttering of absolute spirit in the sphere of its manifestations. But here we meet a difficulty. How is it conceivable that absolute spirit can evolve or utter from itself anything less IDerfect than itself % We cannot conceive how abso- lute being, simply by an immanental dialectic, can generate from itself a sphere of relative and im- perfect nature. There is no datum in Hegelism, as we found none in Aristotle, which makes it possible to ground rationally the distinctive character of the relative, or to justify the Absolute in resting satisfied with a relative and imperfect result of its energizing. And since this ontologic aspect of Hegelism is its side of chief philosophic value, we conclude that Hegel fails, as Aristotle failed and as Leibnitz failed, to discover a rational 7iexus between the relative and its absolute ground. The chasm still yawns before us, therefore, so that if we start from the relative we fail to reach the absolute ground ; whereas, if we proceed from the Absolute, we are unable to 18 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY find any real passage across to the sphere of rela- tivity. In the foregoing historical survey we have touched only the mountain-peaks of speculation, ancient and modern. The great lesson the masters have to teach is that philosophy reaches its highest category in the notion of being as, in its essence, self-activitj^ The intuition of this is as old as Socrates and Plato. In modern philosophy Hegel is the one thinker whose system has embodied the insight most clearly and adequately ; and for this reason, in spite of all its shortcomings, Hegelism reaches the high-water mark of modern speculation. Its failure, therefore, to ground rationally the sphere of relativity in the Absolute has thrown modern thought back upon it- self in a wave of philosophic despair. If the highest thinking fails to ground knowledge in an absolute princiiDle, the logical inference seems to be that the attempt is vain and that agnosticism is the final out- come of philosophy. Before accepting this conclusion as final, how- ever, some further reflection is necessary. Let us assume that in the idea of self-activity philosophy has achieved its highest category. It is still possi- ble for it to fall short in two distinct directions. It may either fail to conceive adequately the nature and implications of self -activity, or it may overlook some datum that is essential to the solution of its problem. The first of these considerations will oc- cupy the remainder of this chapter. It will be con- ceded, we think, that a cardinal fault of old Platonism THE NORM 19 is its tendency to represent the self-active ideas or archetypes as independent entities, transcendent and objective to the mind of the Creator. And since these archetypes constituted the whole form and structure of rational conception and knowledge, a tendency inevitably arose in later Platonic thinking- to separate the Creator from the world of forms and to regard him as only negatively conceivable, and therefore unintelligible. This tendency was stimu- lated by the contact of Hellenism with the panthe- istic thought of the Orient, which forever oscillates between two poles ; the negative unity of the abso- lute ground of the world and the nothingness of the sphere of plurality and change. An absolute cleft was thus threatened between the world and its cre- ative ground. And for this difl&culty there was no cure in the reflection of Aristotle. For while Aris- totle espoused the doctrine of Anaxagoras and trans- lated his purus actus into vov% or reason, this was conceived as abstract intelligence to which no defi- nable internal character could be ascribed. This was but logical, since the Platonic ideas had been reduced to forms of relative existence, and no categories remained for the inner characterization of the Ab- solute. Now, it was a consciousness of this widening breach, coalescing with a feeling of spiritual distance and alienation from God, that motived those media- tional features which characterize the last efforts of ancient speculation. To this must be ascribed Phi- lo's hierarchy of beings between God and matter, as 20 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY well as that catena of emanations from the unthink- able One down to the plurality of the phenomenal world, which appears in the New Platonism of Plotinus and Proclus. The true speculative signifi- cance of these movements can be understood only when we connect them with old Platonism and the issue which it left open. For to this later reflection the self-active ideas to which the term reason, or logos, came to be applied, could not be left in their alienation, but they were seized upon and introduced as mediators between the Creative One and the created many. And in putting upon them this function they were also hypostatized and clothed with the attributes of quasi-personality. The inter- mediate natures in these later forms of Platonism are not abstractions or mere essences, but they are beings possessing some of the properties of x)ersonal agents. The speculative genius of Christianity responding to a motive which was also active in these pagan systems, was able to take a great step in advance of their solutions. For while this pagan and semi- pagan thinking is able only to subordinate the logos to the Absolute One, and thus to heal the breach between it and the world in a merely external and mechanical way, Christian intuition takes a different road, and, denying the subordination and externality of the logos, conceives it as an immanent personal principle in the nature of the Absolute One. Thus understood, it becomes a medium in a double sense, (1) of the union and interaction between the Creator THE NORM 21 and the world, and (2) of the conceivability of the creative nature. For the gist of the Christian reflection is that reason cannot exist apart from personality, and that i^ersonality is an immanent category of the jDrimal being. Personality is, there- fore, the category that opens the nature of this be- ing and translates into intelligible terms its rela- tions to the world. Modern philosophy has been largely blind to this result of early thinking, and the consequence has been general powerlessness in dealing with the ontologic side of the philosophic problem. But it has been reaching parallel results in the i^sj^cho- logic sphere. The almost irresistible trend of iDhi- losophy, since Kant, has been toward the recognition of self-activity as the highest XDsychological category. Kant's doctrine of the categories is gradually con- quering the world. For we have only to construe these categories as self-active functions in order to recognize them as the analogues in the psychologic sphere, of the Platonic ideas. For just as in Pla- tonism the ontologic elements were conceived as impersonal and external to the creative nature, so in Kantism the categories are regarded as imper- sonal functions external to the real personality of man. The trend of post-Kantian thought has been toward the reduction of these categories from their isolated position and the immanating of them in the constitution of a personal subject of experience. If to the conception of self-activity which is de- veloped in the movements sketched above we apply 22 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the historic designation logos, a term which the Stoics applied pantheistically to the divine world- energy, it may then be truly said that the pro- foundest activity of human thinking has devoted itself to the definition of the logos as the central category of reality. Early thinking, concerning itself chiefly with the ontologic problem, has in its efforts to reach an intelligible conception of the nature of primal being achieved the Christian idea of the Divine Logos, while modern thought, track- ing up the same function of self-activity on the psychological side, has been gradually attaining to an adequate conception of the psychic logos or category of human personality. In both lines of reflection, the ontologic as well as the psychologic, the true progress of thinking has been in the direc- tion of more adequate philosophic conceptions in the light of which self-active energy can be ration- ally conceived only under the category of the logos and as the nature of self-conscious and personal being. In tending toward this result history only con- firms the verdict of direct reflection. True psycho- logic insight shows that the primal root of per- sonality is not to seek in the empirical stream of conscious states, but rather in that ego-principle which unifies the conscious life and gathers up the stream into the personal knot. Metaphysical re- flection confirms the psychologic verdict, with its own insight into primal being as self-activity. It sees that self-consciousness cannot be denied to self- THE NOEM 23 active being" without contradiction, and that self- conscious self-activity is personal activity. The root of personal consciousness is thus to be traced to the self-active intelligence, and not primarily, as the Aristotelians have supposed, to the passive or purely empirical element in man's psychic nature. Logos is construed here as the category of con- scious personal self-activity.* The Stoics applied the term to the energizing principle of the world, which they conceived to be rational but impersonal. Here it is conceived to be the very principle and energy of personal consciousness. Being* cannot render itself completely intelligible under the cate- gories of substance or cause. It will not yield up its secrets if approached as abstract and impersonal intelligence. Neither is the Aristotelian insight, which saw in being a synthesis of self-activity and intelligence, altogether adequate. Being only be- comes intelligible when we translate self -active in- telligence into the energy of self-conscious person- ality. *In the following discussions the term Logos is employed in two senses — (1), as above indicated, for the principle of personal self-activity ; (2), for the personal manifestation itself. The con- text will indicate clearly enough in which sense the term is used. n BEING AND NON-BEING 1. Primal being" is self-activity, and when viewed under the category of the log-os it becomes self-con- scious and personal. If we ask why it is neces- sary to conceive primal being as self-activity, the answer is that no other category is self-explanatory. Causality, for example, simply evades the philo- sophic demand by perpetually shifting the burden of explanation back upon a vanishing antecedent, unless, indeed, we translate causality itself into some form of self -activity. What is true of causality, holds of every other category. If, further, we ask why, having identified primal being with self-ac- tivity, it is necessary to conceive self-activity under the category of the logos, the answer is very much the same. Every idea of self-activity short of one which represents it as self-conscious, will be found to involve a subtle contradiction. This is a hard saying. But self-activity is, in the last analysis, self-affirmation. We have also found it to be identical with purus actus, or being in which the highest loossibilities are actual. Now self-con- scious activity is to us the highest conceivable cate- BEING AND NON-BEING 25 gory. To suppose, then, that self-consciousness is not actual in the pur us actus, is contradictory. Moreover, if self-conscious, then personal, for per- sonality springs necessarily out of being's self -recog- nition of self. The logos is to be conceived as the principle of personality, and personality is self-realization. In order to grasp this clearly a distinction must be made between two things that are commonly con- fused—personality and individuality. If personality be definable as self-realization of self, then person- ality is internal to being and being may include a plurality of personal manifestations. But individu- ality is not internal to being. It is a comprehend- ing unitary category which characterizes being as a whole. We moderns have to a degree confounded personality and individuality and have made the former do duty for the latter. This has worked to the detriment of clear thinking both in philosophy and theology. We broach no novelty in the concept of personality here advocated, but simply revive the dominating idea of the early thinkers of our era. These thinkers distinguished personality from indi- viduality, and conceiving personality to be an imma- nent self-conscious process in being, saw no incon- sistency in coupling the doctrine of the multiperson- ality of the absolute nature with that of its unitary individuality. If this early insight could be restored it would soon prove its value both for theology and philosophy. The importance of the logos principle for philos- 26 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY opliy arises partly from the fact that it breaks our bondage to external reflection, and giving* us an in- sight into being enables us to identify our reflection with its own immanent movement. From this internal stand-point we are able to con- ceive primal being, or the absolute ground of things, as a self-energizing nature, the form of whose activ- ity is a circle of self-affirmation in which is eternally realized distinctive spheres of self-conscious and j)ersonal life. This internal activity of being re- ceived a notable representation in the reflection of the early Christian Fathers. Their motive was the desire to achieve a philosophical statement of the Christian idea of God, and in order to realize this they were led to seize upon the notion of immanent conscious self -activity as the germ out of which their doctrine of the Divine nature was gradually evolved. According to this mode of thinking God is not to be conceived as a motionless unity like the Oriental one, but rather as self -active being, the ceaseless pulsations of whose energy generate dis- tinctive spheres of self-realization. Thus the pri- mal or Father-nature is represented as generating a second nature, an alter ego or eternal Son. This is the Divine Logos which stands as the utterance or Word of the Father, and is thus a necessary me- dium for the going out of the Divine energy in the creation of the world. But this creative logos does not complete the circle of the Divine energy. The creation is not at fiirst an orderly and developed system, but rath- BEING AND NON-BEING 27 er a mass of imorg-anized and disorderly elements. Between this formless world and its author there is a chasm, and this dualism supplies the motive of a further impulse toward unification. Thus arises a third sphere of self-realization, that of the Holy Spirit, which is the necessary medium of the outgo of the Divine love into the world in order to bring- the creature through a process of evolution into union with the Creator. The full significance of this conception of the abso- lute nature does not reveal itself until we connect it with its presupposition ; namely, that this nature can only be represented adequately under the cat- egory of self-active, self-conscious energy ; that is, under the category of spirit. God is a sioirit, and therefore he is eternally active, and his activity is perpetually realizing itself in spheres of personal self - manifestation in and through which it also comes into creative and organizing relations with the world. There is, however, in this early thinking, an un- reflected point, namely, the nexus or mode of con- nection between the Divine nature proper and the world. The immanent movement which this early intuition seized upon is a principle of absolute and perfect manifestation, but in itself it does not ac- count for the rise of the relative and imperfect. This issue was partially obscured for Christian thought by the concrete solution of the problem which was embodied in the Christ as God manifest in the flesh. It did come up in the development of Christian 28 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY dogrnatics in the problem of the double nature of the Christ, which, while asserted, could not be con- ceived, and was, therefore, authoritatively affirmed as a mystery that transcends reason and can be re- ceived only by an act of faith. Now, outside of the early Christian reflection, the only thought of mod- ern times that has reached this jDlane of speculation and the problems, which it presents, is that of Hegel and his school. The central idea of Heg'el, as we have seen, is that of a self-active dialectic which constitutes the inner core and essence of being-, and expresses itself in a self-realizing process, a g-oing out and return upon self. Heg-el is led, like the earlier thinkers, to conceive the primal nature as absolute spirit, and he represents the dialectic as passing through three corresponding stages, giv- ing rise to a procession, of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. To Hegel's intuition the Father-nature as subject-spirit goes out and embodies itself in an ob- ject which, as such, is its negation or not self. In this stage of alienation and distinction it is the world, but in the moment of return into the bosom of the Father it is the eternal Son. Hegel thus, as Dr. Harris says, identifies the world with the second person of the Trinity. In the Hegelian as in the Christian intuition the mediation and unifi- cation of the world with God is the motive of a third sphere of i^ersonal manifestation, that of the Holy Ghost, the immanent spirit in the Divine evo- lution of the world. Now, the unreflected point of the early thinking BEIXG AND NON-BEING 29 has been reflected in Hegel, but not, we think, in a satisfactoiy manner. Hegel's solution of the knot consists in a restoration of tlie negcdive as a necessary philosopliic datmn. The world is the other of ab- solute spirit, and the other is realized through self- negation. That dialectic by which absolute spirit traverses the circle of jDersonal manifestations con- tains in it the moment of negation. In going out from itself it others itself, and this other is its neg- ative or not-self. The not-self is the world, and thus the world and its process are mediated by ne- gation. Philosophy made a great stride in this thought of Hegel. But it has not, we think, reached a final so- lution of the issue involved. For the immanent ne- gation by which being is translated into its other does not break the link of its self-identity. The other is, therefore, the same as being, only in an objective form, and must, therefore, be as absolute and as ]3er- feet as being. Being cannot by self -negation reduce itself from the plane of perfection to that of the rela- tive and imperfect. Hegelism sui3plies no rational grounds for the modification which takes place in the character of being in its translation from the ab- solute ground, to the world, and for this reason it has not achieved a final solution of its problem. In the preceding chapter we pointed out that phil- osophy might fail either through an inadequate con- ception of its categories or by neglecting to take into account some necessary datum. The failure above indicated seems to arise from the latter cause. Both 30 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the early and the later thinking break down at the same point. They fail to make it conceivable how the immanent activity of an absolute nature can give rise to a sphere of relative and imjDerfect manifestation. The first stej) toward the solution of the difficulty must be sought, we think, in a denial that the dialectic of being has been adequately conceived. In order to make this denial good it will be necessary to retrace the steps of the dialectic through which the personal distinctions in the absolute nature are conceived to arise. Following the line of Hegel's reflection we see how the self-manifestation called the Son or logos arises. But the logos does not present it- self as the objective other of the manifesting nature, but rather, to take an analogy from the ego in the human consciousness, it stands forth as the uniting idea or self-conscious manifestation of the primal self. This ego is not the object of the primal self in the sense that it is its not-self, but rather in the sense that it is its alter ego. Now there is a negative movement which arises at this point. The ego con- sciousness arouses, by a necessary reaction, the anti- thetic consciousness of its opposite or not-self. The consciousness of the not-self is, thus, a function of the primal self, but the not-self which it intuits can- not in any sense he conceived as identical either imth the primal self or its realized other. It is excluded from both, and is their object in the sense of being their qualitative opposite. In like manner, in con- nection Avith the logos-consciousness of the absolute, we must conceive that there springs up by a neces- BEING AND NON-BEING 31 sary negative movement, the consciousness of the a-logos as its antithetic opposite, and, therefore, ex- ckided from it. The object which thus arises can- not be in any sense identified with either the Father nature or the logos, but is to be conceived as an outer sphere of antithetic negation. The mistake that reduces Hegelism to ilhision at this point may be stated as follows : Hegel, following the train of Plato's reflection in the Sophist, conceives that the distinction between opposites is only relative and that they may pass into each other. But Plato plainly indicates that in his whole discussion of be- ing and non-being he has the problem of classifica- tion or the basis of genera and species in view, while to the question whether there be an absolute opposite of being he has long since said good-by.* Now it is precisely this question of the opposite of absolute being on which Hegel is engaged. But it is clear that while the opposite of any species of being may be a species of being, the opposite of absolute being cannot be any species of being. The opposite of absolute being must be the negative of its being and must, therefore, be non-being, and it is contra- dictory to conceive that being and non-being can pass into each other. Our intuition will be rectus in curia only when we see clearly and cling to it, that there can be no passage of primal opposites into each other. The primal negative of being is non- being, and this non-being must be conceived as a ♦ The Sophist, Jowett's Translation, Ed. 3, vol. iv., p. 394. 82 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY datum til at ever confronts the intuition of being", and which being ever strives to cancel and annul. Only so does the negative become a real datum in philosophy, supplying a negative ground of the dif- ferentia of relativity as well as a motive for the out- go of the energy of creation. We have, then, the intuition of an absolute nat- ure which by its inner dialectic activity, not only develops a conscious embodiment of the logos or alter ego, but through it also a consciousness of an antithetic otlier which negates its whole sphere of be- ing. To this antithetic other the term non-being may be applied, and we thus arrive at the notion of the Absolute as becoming conscious through its logos- consciousness, by a negative movement, of an a-lo- gos, or outer sphere of non-being. In the idea of non-being we find a key to a prob- lem that has hitherto bailed solution. That prob- lem is the genesis of an imperfect and relative order from an absolute ground. To the question why the world should not be perfect, if it be grounded in absolute being, philosoiDhy has had no answer. The answer here given is that the world is not to be con- ceived as the immediate product of the immanent energy of the Divine, but rather as its mediated product. The mediating term is non-being. The world can be produced only by the outgoing en- ergy of the logos and only in the sphere of non- being and not in God. There is thus an element of nothingness constitutional to things, and this ac- counts for that modification which in the process BEING AND NON-BEING 33 of being created, renders things mutable and im- perfect. That non-being is a real datum, is a conception which philosophy finds great difficulty in realizing. Plato in the " Timaeus " has an intuition of it in his idea of vkt] or matter. But his insight halts, and he conceives the negative sometimes as the mere re- cej)tacle of being and again as the mother of gener- ation. In the first point of view he represents it under the analogies of space ; under the second he conceives it to be a kind of material matrix in which the elemental forces, fire, air, water, and earth are generated and enter into the constitution of the soul as disturbing elements, of temperament and passion. Alexandrian Platonism identified non - being with the corporeal and the coriioreal with evil. Hence arose its determined hostility to the Christian doc- trine of the Incarnation and its decided trend to- ward asceticism. Christianity avoids this extreme while recognizing the dualism between good and evil in the spiritual world, and identifying evil with negation. St. John has an intuition of the cosmic significance of non-being in the glimpse he gives of the drama of creation, and the darkness and chaos standing over against the light-giving Logos. But in the earlier stages of the post-Apostolic move- ment, the speculative genius of Christianity was largely absorbed in the develoi^ment and formula- tion of its conception of the Divine nature, in the course of which the gnosis of the negative was, for the time, left relatively in the background. 3 34 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY The speculative motive for again bringing it for- ward was introduced largely from the outside. Man- icheism, which was an offshoot of Parseeism, and supposed to have been founded by Manes, one of the Persian Magi, had spread extensively over the East and ultimately came into contact with Christianity, upon which an effort was made to graft its leading tenets. The central idea of the system is that of an absolute spiritual dualism between two indepen- dent, coordinate, and antithetic deities, the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of Light, who engage in an eternal struggle for supremacy. Around this cen- tral core was aggregated a body of doctrines which were for the most part irrational if not immoral. The historic importance of Manicheism for mod- ern philosophy arises almost wholly from St. Augus- tine's connection with it, who for a time an adherent of the system, at length rejected it and reacted vio- lently against it. But Augustine, although he threw off Manicheism, was unable to throw off the problem which it propounded, the relation of negation and evil to God or the Absolute. We find in Augus- tine the fruitful beginning of a real gnosis of non- being. Running through his refutation of the Man- icheans, and his great work Be Clvitate Dei, is a current of rich speculation which culminates in that consummate flower of early Christian reflection, " The Confessions." The "high argument" reaches its climax in Book XII of De Clvitate Dei and in Books XI and XII of " The Confessions." Augustine rejects the Manichean doctrine of the BEmG AND NON-BEING 35 positive nature and eternity of evil. It lias its ac- tual origin in the will of the creature. All wills are primarily good. Evil originates when the creature turns from God and chooses some lower good. Augustine distinguishes between positive and negative causes and conditions, and contends that it is folly to ask for a positive cause of an evil will. The positive antecedent of a bad will is a good will. The good will is not the cause of the evil will. Evil is the turning of the will from the supreme Good ; it has no jDositive cause outside the will that thus turns. The evil will has, how- ever, a negative condition, and that is the mutahility of the creature. This mutability is the differentia of creature existence and it has its ground in the noth- in(/?iess out of which the creature is made. Augus- tine, in his doctrine of creation, opposes both old Platonism, which ijosited a primary matter, and Neo- Platonism, which taught the emanation of the world from God. Against these he develops his theory of creation out of nothing. Now in his whole re- flection it is plain that Augustine's mind oscillates between two inconsistent conceptions of this noth- ing. The view which he verbally espouses is that which perpetuated itself in later theology, and which takes nothing as absolutely identical with unreality. But the assertions which he makes about the noth- ing are consistent only with its negative reality. God did not make things out of himself or out of eternal matter, but out of nothing. The assertion *' out of nothing " would be wholly inane if nothing 36 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY were not conceived as entering- in some way into the nature of the creature. Again, in connection with his theory of creation the problem of evil and its relation to God comes up. God is not the author of evil. The creature is mataUe because he is made out of notliing, but things maybe mutable and good. Mutability is not evil, but it introduces into a nature the liability to evil, since through it contingency aifects the will, in that the creature having the op- tion of the supreme Good or the nothing, before it, may choose the nothing for its good and thus be- come evil. The trend of Augustine's real thought is toward the conception of evil as real though neg- ative, and, in like manner, toward the conception of the nothing which is its negative condition as a neg- ative reality. In other words, to the thought of Augustine the nothing is a datum which explains something, whereas the conception of it that got lodged in subsequent theological thinking is not a datum and is powerless to explain anything. The survival of Augustine's verbal doctrine of the nothing which identifies it Avith the unreal was fol- lowed logically by two unfortunate results. The first was the giving up of the whole problem of cre- ation as an unthinkable mystery. If the nothing is to be identified with mere unreality, then the i^ropo- sition that God made the world out of nothing, can only mean that there existed no external motive or datum for the creation, and that the motive and da- ta of the world must be sought wholly within the Divine nature. The difiiculty is not escaped by as- BEING AND NON-BEING 37 cribing" the origin of the world to a fiat of a Di- vine will. A fiat of will accomiolishes nothing un- less it be accompanied by energy. Even on the fiat theory it is the Divine energy that is the producing cause. Why, then, should we not say that God cre- ated the world out of himself ? This question is unanswerable unless we acknowledge the reality of the nothing. Eationally the only alternatives are the recognition of the reality of non-being or the surrender of the whole problem of the origin of the relative to the agnostic. The second unfortunate result has been the giving up of the problem of evil as an unsolvable riddle. We must regard evil as either positive or negative. If we conceive it to be positive, then we are driven either to the Parsee dualism, if we regard good as also positive ; or to pessimism, if we conceive good to be negative. If, on the contrary, we conceive evil to be negative and identify negation with unreality, we cannot but regard evil as unreal. This is the metaphysical assumption underlying all optimistic or other theories which conceive evil to be the mere privation of good, or good in the making. No theory of evil can be adequate that does not regard it as both negative and real. But unless negation is real this cannot be. We may try to escape these subtleties by seeking the source of evil in free will, and for this we have the example of Augustine. But unless Ave recog- nize the reality of non-being or the nothing, we can find no refuge in free will, for the question con- 38 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY fronts us, why should free will be contingent if the freedom of the Absolute does not constitute liability to evil I Augustine was able to i3oint to the noth- ing out of which the creature is made as constitut- ing the ground of his mutability and the consequent contingency of his free will ; and so must we if our explanation is to have any rational force. But we then raise non-being into a real datum which ex- plains something. There is no escape ; either real- ity of non- being or a choice between a one-sided pessimism or optimism, or else the surrender of the whole problem as an unsolvable riddle. A philosophy that goes to the root-problems must face the negative. It will have not simply the prob- lem of being but also that of non-being on its hands. The crucial questions regarding the negative will be how its reality and its primal relation to absolute being are to be conceived. Now, as we have main- tained, the reality of non-being does not carry with it the supposition that it is any sort of a iDOsitive nature. This has been the mistake of Platonism, which identifies the negative with matter, or at least, with space ; also, of those modern systems which either conceive an abyss out of which both being and the negative arise, or, represent the negative as a hostile potency in the absolute nature which has only to be liberated from the bond of the absolute will in order to develoi^ actual disorder and evil. Non-being cannot be conceived as any kind of ac- tivity, or as a i3otency out of which anything de- velops. It has no type and can be represented by BEING AND NON-BEING 39 no positive, constructive categories. It negates all positive predication. The only gniding- clew we can have to its characterization is that of antithesis and opposition. It is what being excludes from its nat- ure as contradictory. Shall we call it energy, or cause, or substance ? By no means. It is the nega- tion of all these. It is the negation of energy in that so far as it enters as a datum there is a failure of energy to do work. It is the negative of cause in the same sense as Augustine conceives mutability to be the negative cause of evil ; not a generator of evil but the root of that contingency which makes a will liable to evil. It is the negative of substance in that it has no positive principle of existence in itself. It lacks the spring of self-evolution and self- perpetuation, and being the negation of these, it is the root of that mutability, that lack of self-sub- sisting activity, which constitutes the differentia of all creature existence. That the assertion of the reality of non-being is not open to the charge of absolute dualism, and that it is a very important and necessary philosophical datum, the following statement will serve to show. Absolute dualism is a theory of the Parsee type which splits being into two antithetic halves, thus breaking its unity and perpetrating the same kind of an error in philosophy that polytheism is in the sphere of religion. But absolute dualism arises only w^hen being is cleft, and positive, active, and co-ordinate principles are arrayed in antagonism to each other. It is needless to say that no such dual- 40 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ism is involved in the theory of non-being set forth above. In the first phice, the whole conception is arrived at by the use of a unitary principle, the logos, for the interpretation of absolute being. The re- sult of this stei3 is the conception of absolute being as spirit which expresses itself in self-conscious per- sonal self-manifestation. Absolute being is thus a necessary i3resupposition of non-being, and being itself is one. Its unity is not broken. Thus the first presupposition of the real is ])eing. Now the intuition of non-being arises out of the spiritual dialectic. That same movement of intel- lection which reveals being to itself, also confronts it with the intuition of the not-self, an object which in the absolute sphere must be the negative oppo- site of being. The root of the dual intuition is thus found in the heart of being itself. The negative intuition which arises is simply the negative aspect of reality, which is qualitatively op^DOsed to being and excluded by its positive nature. Now, that this negative is not to be conceived as internal and immanent to being is evident from the fact that it is being's opposite, i.e., that which be- ing denies and excludes from itself. The relation is one of primal opposites which, as we maintain, can never be conceived as passing into one another without gross confusion of thought. Negation as an activity is ahvays being's denial of its opposite, and negation as the object of denial is always be- ing's opposite. There is no self -negation of being, but what being negates is its opposite or non-being. BEING AND NON-BEING 41 This is absolutely true in the sphere of the Abso- lute. Qualification is only necessary for the rela- tive. Confusion on this cardinal point leads to the one- sided ItUntitats Philosophies as the Germans call it, which sacrifices distinction and difference to unity, and having- in the ground of the system eliminated the distinction between being" and non-being", is driven by an irresistible trend of logical necessity to its goal in a species of monistic i3antlieism in which the Absolute completely swallows up the relative. Non-being as an objective and antithetic term in reality thus arises as a necessary consequence of being- itself when conceived as spirit and construed in the light of the logos-princiiDle. How, then, can the category of non-being- be shown to be philo- sophically necessary ? Its value arises chiefly as a principle of disjunction and discrimination. So ap- plied it brings some vital x)hilosophical conceptions to the birth which it would otherwise be very diffi- cult to realize. In the first place it makes a disjunc- tion between the immanent and the exeunt energiz- ing of the Absolute not only conceivable but also rational, in the motive it supplies for it in spirit's in- tuition of its own negative and opposite. The very self-assertion of being which is its essence will lead it to assert itself against and upon its opposite for its suppression and annulment. In the second place, as we have seen above, a true conception of non-be- ing renders the origin of the world-series and its 42 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY relative character intelligible. The self-assertion of being against its opposite not only explains the exeunt energy but also the origin of the world-proc- ess, as not in the absolute but in the negative sphere. The negative sphere is being's opposite, and is nega- tive in the sense that it lacks the ground-principle of self-existence which is the essence of being. Logi- cally then, a creature originating in this sphere will be relative and mutable, its ground and rationale being not in itself but in another. In the idea of the negative we thus find the key to a problem over which all philosophy has puzzled ; namely, how an absolute energy could produce a creature that is only relative. The outgoing energy can produce no other than a relative result. The negative also renders intelligible the law of the relative sphere, which is upward development. If the world arises out of non-being and progresses toward being it follows that its process will be from the lowest categories, those which lie nearest to the nothing, through more advanced stages until it reaches its full development under the categories of spirit. From the material to the spiritual, from mechanism to teleology, is therefore the natural order of relative growth. The nature and necessity of non-being thus be- come apparent. It is incumbent on iDhilosophy then to assert the reality of both being and non- being ; being as positive, self-subsistent, and self- active ; non-being as being's qualitative op])osite. The category of being is the logos ; that of non- BEING AND NON-BEING 43 being- the a-log-os. Each is a necessary datum of reality ; being, of its self-existent ground, its origin, positive nature, and development ; non-being, of its mutability, its dependence on other, its tendency to disorder, dissolution, and death. ni BECOMING We think that a rational doctrine of Becoming* is possible only in the light of the dual categories of being- and non-being*. In the preceding- chapters we have investigated these, and have been led to the discovery of a necessary connection between them. We have seen that a true conception of being- leads to the assertion of its negative and antithetic corre- late, non-being- ; and that non-being- cannot be con- ceived as an immanent movement merely, in the evolution of being-. We have seen that if we con- ceive being- as spirit, then non-being- can be re- garded only as its primal and excluded opposite, as that which it iierpetually denies and annuls but never becomes identical with. The category of reality is broader than that of being-. The whole of reality has its negative side, and it is this negative side which being denies. The whole of reality cannot be being, for being is perfect and com^Dlete and could of itself supply no motive for the generation of the relative. Nor can non-being be conceived as internal to being, since non-being is negation and want and being cannot BECOMING 45 be affected internally by these. The activity of be- ing- is, as we have seen, a dialectic in which spirit affirms itself, and denies and negates its opposite. Being never denies itself, but it denies and seeks to annul the whole negative aspect of reality. The processes through which this annulment is realized will, therefore, not be immanent, but will have their existence in the negative sphere of reality. Non- being is thus the negative side of reality and is it- self real. It is the primal opposite of being, that which being denies and annuls. In this qualitative sense it is external and alien to being, a term Avhich must be overcome and suppressed in order that be- ing may be realized. How, then, shall the category of non-being be con- ceived and made available for philosophic reflec- tion ? It cannot be conceived literally as antago- nizing the energy of being, for it would then be transformed into a kind of being. Nor can we con- ceive it simply as the non-existent, since the non- existent is also supposed to be unreal. Non-being has no categories of its own, since all categories primally belong to being, and in the strictest sense it is, therefore, unrepresentable. We have seen, however, that non-being is a nec- essary datum, and in order that philosophic think- ing may get on, it is necessary that there should be some mode of representing it. Now, the negative is to be conceived as the opposite of being in the sense that it is what being denies and annuls. This rela- tion will enable us to represent non-being symboli- 46 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY cally by simply applying to it the negatives of the categories of being. If, then, we conceive being to be a sphere of reason, consciousness, light, order, per- sonality, and individuality ; non-being will be rep- resentable as the opposites of these, unreason, un- consciousness, darkness, cajprice, impersonality, and dividuality. If we conceive being to be creative, generative, formative, and constructive ; non-being will be representable as decreative, degenerative, deformative, and destructive. If we conceive being as energy that makes for ideal truth, beauty, and good, non-being will be representable as the nega- tive ground of falsehood, deformity, and evil. It is only necessary thus to unfold completely the idea and categories of being in order to reach an ade- quate negative conception of non-being. Non-being is irrational, unconscious, dark, chaotic, imperson- al, and dividual. It is decreative, degenerative, de- formative, and dissolutive. It is the negative prin- ciple of falsehood, deformity, and evil. Exercising the philosophic imagination we may represent it as an abyssmal gulf of darkness and caprice eternally confronting the Absolute intuition in opposition to his creative energies. We must not, however, in thus characterizing the negative allow our terms to mislead us. Non-being is a necessary datum of reason and an element in reality, but it is not representable to the imagina- tion except symbolically. Nor can we apply to it any category in the positive, that is, in the active sense. If we conceive it under the category of cause, BECOMING 47 as we must, our term cause must be used in the negative sense. It is not the active generator of the properties of things which it is necessary to exi^lain, but rather their negative condition. Want and ne- gation are negative but not positive causes, and non- being is a cause in that it is a metaphysical want in the nature of relativity. For since the rela- tive arises in the negative sphere, its self-existent ground will not be in it but in another. In this sense, non-being is a negative cause. We think it important that philosophy should achieve this idea of negative causation, for it rep- resents the only practicable mode of characterizing the negative element in reality. It is only when non-being is conceived as negative cause, that the mutability of generated things and their dependence on other can be understood, and it is only when we become able to apply this mode of characterization with insight and discrimination that we can avail ourselves of the true riches of the negative. The question then arises, how are we to employ the dual categories, being and non-being, as data for a theory of becoming. The first three catego- ries of Hegel's Logic are being, nothing, and be- coming. But Hegel identifies being with the thinnest abstraction ; i.e., the real disrobed of every definite and positive attribute. This renders being indistinguishable from nothing, since both are repre- sented under negative conceptions. Hegel is only logical, therefore, when he translates the negative movement of the dialectic into being's denial of 48 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY itself and the wliole activity of being is thus con- ceived monistically as immanent self-evolution. The reform which we think necessary is that the dialectic be dualistically interpreted and that non-being be conceived not as being in the form of negation, but rather as the primal opposite of being, which being denies and annuls. The dialectic of being and non- being, in so far as it is real, must be construed as an outgo of being's energy into the negative sphere of reality, and its activity will be an activity of opposi- tion. This substitution of a dualistic for a monal con- ception of the dialectic of being works a complete revolution in it while preserving and in fact increas- ing its unique suggestiveness and power. So con- ceived, it becomes an activity in which being as self- active spirit, realizes intellectually in its first motion, a dual intuition of itself and its negative opposite. This intuition motives a volitional movement which is to be conceived as the creative impulse of being, embodying itself in the outgoing of energy into the negative sphere. The result of this volitional on- slaught upon non-being is creation, the generation of a positive nature in the sphere of want and negation. In this generated nature we have the origin of the species of reality we call becoming. How then shall the nature of becoming be conceived. In seeking an answer to this question, we must again revert to the antithetic data out of which it has arisen. Fol- lowing the line of reflection opened by the early thinkers and developed by Hegel, we have conceived BECOMING 49 tlie world as the product of the volitional energy of the creative logos, while its evolution is the func- tion of absolute energy conceived as Holy Spirit. The question arises why this distinction is to be made between the energies of creation and evolu- tion. The answer will be found in two considera- tions. In the first ]3lace, while the Absolute is to be conceived as spirit, its primal activity must be in- tellectual, and thus will arise the dual intuition of self or being and of the negative or non-being. This will lead by close sequence to the second moment of activity, which is volitional and presupposes the in- tellectual intuition as its motive. The volitional activity, as we have seen, asserts itself transitively in the energy of creation. The Absolute conceived as thus energizing and motived by the intellectual intuition is the creative logos. We see then that the same reflection which leads to the idea of the volitional activity also assigns to it the function of creation. In the second place we have seen how the creat- ure which arises from the creative energy is gen- erated, not in being, but in the negative sphere. A form of being thus arises out of non-being. This de- termines the generation as beginning with the lowest categories and the creation will be, in its initial stage, next to nothing, and thus removed as far as possible from the Absolute. This distance between the creature and the Creator will motive a third activity of spirit in which it goes out into the created sphere in an energy of unification and love. The 50 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY process which results from this unifying activity is development or evolution. It is a deep insight that applies the name Holy Spirit to the primal being in the exercise of this activity of development. The inner core of holiness is an activity of unification leading to the realization of wholeness or unity of being and the beauty of its manifestation. Thus arises what in theological language is called the procession of the Spirit, or in Scriptural lohrase the moving of the Spirit upon the face of the deep. And this moving of the spirit is the immanent principle of the world-process, including both nature and hu- manity. It is true that nothing is made without the logos. It is also true that the unifying spirit is the immanent agency in the historic evolution of the world. To the generated sphere conceived as the product of the logos and as motived by the spirit, we apply the name becoming. The term is suggestive of the flux of Heraclitus, and it may be conceived under the figure of a flowing and ebbing stream. Becom- ing is not pure being, nor is it pure non-being, but it participates in both, and thus its nature repre- sents a dualistic synthesis. The idea of becoming involves dual and opposite tendencies to being and to non-being. The Heraclitean intuition had the keener sense for the negative side. The flux thus became a species of non -being and sceptical despair was the logical result. But becoming is as truly a tendency to being as to non-being. The energy that generated it continues, as we have seen, as con- BECOMING 51 serving and developing- force, and thus determines the positive moment of becoming not only as real, but also as dominant, so that negation becomes a subordinate and not a ruling feature in the system of things. While, therefore, becoming in its ground- constitution is dualistic and its activity expresses itself in a perpetual oscillation between the posi- tive and negative poles of reality, the immanent energy of the Absolute conserves the positive forces and translates the flux into a movement of develop- ment from lower to higher stages of reality. It is only in the light of this metaphysical dual- ity that we can arrive at a completely rational con- ception of the nature of becoming. This major dualism is necessary to explain (1) the form of rela- tive being ; (2) what may be called the comple- mental duality of its constitution. Becoming is, as we have seen, dual in its constitution ; it is a per- petual flux which is determined by opposite moments of generation and decay. Now, what is the meaning of this duality of form ? It signifies that the rela- tive is not a pure creature of absolute energy, that it cannot be monistically explained. The secret of its dual character is to be found in the fact that it is the generated product of energy that works in the negative sphere, and produces being out of it by the suppression and annulment of the negative. But this war against non-being is endless, and the negative enters as a moment into generated being, rendering it mutable, dependent, and contingent to decay. 52 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY We find here also the key to another feature of the relative ; namely, the complemental duality of its constitution. In a self-conserving, self-subsist- ing- medium a dual balance of forces would not be needed. But in the negative sphere from which the self-existenfc ground is absent, a generated force cannot be self-conserving, but must be conserved by its other or fall into the abyss. The only mode in which a relative nature can be conceived as obtain- ing a TTov o-Tcu is that of a complemental dualism of positive forces. This complemental dualism of forces, which, as we see, is not ultimate, but pre- supposes the Absolute, is the ground of a universal law of relativity ; namely, that of relatim self -i mainte- nance, which has an application to both matter and mind. Limiting our view to the former, the most philo- sophical conception of matter is that which regards it as reducible in its ultimate analysis to dual centres of force. The conception of a material monad as the unit of material constitution, seems to be irra- tional and nugatory. It can only be asserted in a postulate that can give no rational account of itself, and it holds in it no principle that can help us to rationally conceive its own persistence, or that can explain any of the characteristic material phenomena. If we posit the monad, it is necessary for us imme- diately to give it a fellow, held in the grip of a co- hesive and repellant synthesis, before we can take a single step forward. This indicates that the rational unit of matter is the duad and not the monad. It is BECOMING 53 upon tLo duacl only that mechanical science can rise, and a metaphysic of matter lay its foundations. Assuming- the material duad and the law of self- maintenance involved in it, let us consider the basal category of the relative process ; namely, the Series. Heflection here will lead to analogous conclusions. The meta^Dhysical dualism of being and non-being out of which the relative arises, can give rise to no series unless we conceive the comple mental duad as the type of relative being. For we have seen that the mere notion of a dialectic of being and non-being leads to the intuition of a flux, a mere succession of sparks, an alternation of origination and cessation. Decay, dissolution, and death are as real as their op- X^osites ; they are ever X3resent moments in the rela- tive, constituting the negative ground of its muta- bility and dependence. But the moments of origi- nation and cessation do not constitute the series. The principle of conservation in the Absolute is self-subsistence, self-identity, while its opposite in non-being is absolute discontinuity, and dividual- ity. In such a sphere the relative analogue of absolute self-subsistence can only be a succession of pulsations in which the energizing centre of the exfjiring i)ulsation persists and passes into its suc- cessor. This persistent core is to be identified with the spiritual potence in the form of which the immanence of the absolute energy in the world is to be conceived. Thus the series arises, a synthesis of of)posite moments. The series may be conceived either as discontinuity ever striving to make a breach 54 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY in continuity, or as continuity striving- to heal the breaches of the discontinuous. The series express- ing- itself in the category of change is a dual alterna- tion of cessation and origination in which a dialectic core of being persists. The series thus realizes the law of self-mainte- nance, and this law, conceived as the inner principle of the series, is Causality. Here the same funda- mental moments appear. The profoundest science of the time reduces the category of cause, on one side to the universal law of conditions ; that is, the principle by which all phenomena are connected in an order of dependence ; and on the other, to the law of dynamic continuity ; that is, the principle by which the change from cause to effect is conceived to be only a change of form, in which the substance continues the same. Both these lines of conceiving state the same ultimate fact, the dualistic nature of the principle of causation. The first point of view, confining itself more rigorously to the sphere of manifestation, simply embodies in its concei3t of causation the inner nature of the series ; whereas the latter more profoundly transcends serial limits of manifestation, and connects the changing- series with its ultimate dialectic core. But this profun- dity, instead of transcending the sphere of dualism, simply leads to the "hidings of its power," for analy- sis of the elements of the material continuity which is presupposed, only reveals to our intuition that ultimate dialectical opposition of being and non- being which underlies all relative nature. BECOMIXG 55 We conceive that the idea of relativity unfolded above, supplies the only completely rational basis for a x^hilosophy of nature. In the first place, it enables us to see that the real clash of thought in regard to the origin and history of the relative and finite is not between the concepts of creation and evolution, but rather between those of creative dual- ism and monistic self-evolution. All theories of the self-evolution of the world are monistic, and may be classed under two categories : self-evolution from either absolute being, or absolute non-being. Now, from the standpoint we have reached here we are able to see, as by intuition, that self-evolution from absolute being can never rationally explain the origin of relative and finite nature, nor can it give any intelligible account of its universally dualistic character. If the Avorld is simply a self-evolution of absolute being, then the product ought to be absolute and no relative category ought to show its head. If nature is a self-evolution of absolute be- ing, then nature ought to be a sphere of perfect free- dom, and necessity could have no rational right to appear. The categories of relativity are wholly in- explicable from the idea of the world as a jDure phenomenon of absolute being. Even more powerless is the idea of self-evolution from non-being. This is the basis of the negative Dionysian theories and the theories of purely nat- uralistic evolution. To these the primal datum is some sphere of negative reality, the Dionysian theories conceiving the evolution of the logos out 5Q BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY of the a-log-os and relative nature out of the logos, while the naturalistic theories of evolution conceive the same process in materialistic terms. Naturalis- tic evolution i30stulates some primordial world-stuff transcending- the categories of organization, and, therefore, a species of negative absolute out of which organized nature gradually emerges. Now, in order that this absolute world-stuff may supply a fruitful starting-point for development, it must be conceived as containing principles of organization in its bosom. But in that case the organizing lorin- ciples become absolute, and the dual categories of being and non-being are acknowledged. Natural- istic evolution is thus forced, by the simple logic that order and form cannot be conceived as arising out of the orderless and formless, to the positing of absolute being as one of its necessary condi- tions. The only species of monism that has any philo- sophic value is a monism that starts from the pos- tulate of absolute being, and conceives the universe as being the product or manifestation of an absolute self-subsistent principle. The world is then repre- sented as having the springs of its own being and evolution within itself, and its movements are all to be construed under the categories of self-manifesta- tion and self-development. We are able thus to de- velop a concept of the evolution of absolute being, but we find our logic powerless to ground a real relative order, or to rationally interpret its dualistic character and categories. BECOMING 57 Pure self-evolution is a category of absolute be- ing and has no place in a sphere of relativity. Kor does it furnish any adequate exjplanation of the rel- ative. If we start from it as the sole metaphysical datum, we are never able to bridge the chasm from absolute to relative, and if we seek to employ it as a relative principle, we then either elevate the rela- tive into the Absolute by positing the primal springs of nature's subsistence within herself, or we form a closed circle of relativity which excludes the Abso- lute and has no rational ground. We conceive, then, that the category of becoming is that of the whole relative sphere. Its presuppo- sition is a metaphysical dualism of being and non- being. Out of this dual fountain issues the flux, the flowing stream, a creature that is ever coming into being and ever ceasing to be. This creature acquires relative stability through the complemental duality of positive forces which forms the type of a relative constitution, and stands as the analogue of self -existence in the Absolute. By virtue of its persistence it forms a series. The series is the form of the law of self -maintenance. Its inner principle is causality, and by virtue of its causal connections the dialectic core of being passes from moment to moment by change and development, and the sprout- ing of consequents out of antecedents becomes a law of the world's movement. If now we apply the term creation to the genera- ting process by which the relative is grounded, and 58 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the term evolution to the process of g-rowth from an- tecedent to consequent which constitutes its order, then creation and evolution become complemental terms, and a complete theory of relativity will be seen to involve both. IV SPACE AND TIME If the Absolute is a necessary postulate of the ex- istence of things, non-being is a necessary postulate of their imperfection. No reason can be found in the nature of the Absolute why generated existence should be less complete and perfect than its self- existent ground. But a reason for this is sux3plied by the postulate of that which is qualitatively oppo- site to being. AYe have seen how the intuition of non-being arises and supplies a motive for the out- go of the creative energy of being into the sphere of its qualitative opposite. This determines the char- acter of generated being in two w^ays : (1) the rise of things in the negative si^here determines them as contingent and mutable ; that is, as lacking a ground or principle of existence in themselves ; (2) the very necessity that creative energy should not remain immanent, but that it should go out or utter itself, is the reason for another essential character- istic of generated being. The law of all utterance is that what is implicit in the uttering agent shall become explicit, and that what is explicit shall become implicit. To the 60 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY utterer the tlionglit is explicit and the symbol in which it expresses itself lies coiled up in its bosom. When it goes out into the outer sphere this order is reversed. The form uncoils itself and swallows up the thought, which becomes implicit as its inner en- ergy and meaning. Thus the word is necessary to manifest the thought just as in Christian thinking the Divine energy utters itself in the eternal Logos. This law is universal, and it involves an inversion of the categories of being in its outgo into the negative sphere. It is the operation of this law in connection with the modifying influence of the negative, as above explained, we think, rather than any labored effort to trace the moments of logical reflection, that will bring to light the real forms and energies of the world. The most obtrusive elements of the world, as it presents itself to our cognitive intuition, are space and time and matter. Having treated of the genesis of matter in the preceding cha]3ter, we shall devote this reflection to space and time. We must hold to the cardinal doctrine that the world has as its gen- erating ground an absolute being ; that this being is self-activity ; and that self-activity is to be con- strued in the light of the logos, as spirit ; that is, as self-conscious, personal, and individual. Self- activity is then an individualizing energy. It is an energy that is formally unitary, comprehending the whole and including distinction as internal and im- plicit. The inversion of such an energy consequent on its SPACE AND TIME 61 outg*o or external utterance, would lead to a trans- position of relations between its unitary and differ- encing activities. The latter, the category of divid- uality, would become explicit and obtrusive, and the principle of its operation would be the distinction and expulsion of point from point, a process which is endless and to which no assignable limit can be fixed. The operation of such a principle would gen- erate the relations of quantitative self-exclusion and externality. But the force of this dividual prin- ciple would be checked by the implicit unitary force of individuality which, when thus energizing in sub- ordination to its opposite, would take the form of continuity. The quantitative points would thus fall into a species of dialectic, explicitly expell- ing, but implicitly comprehending all other points. Thus would arise that process of generation, that flowing out from points into lines, planes, and solids, which constitutes the central movement of all our space conceptions. We have only to translate this supposition into fact in order to obtain a rational idea of the genera- tion of space. For space is explicitly this principle of unchecked dividuality, this breaking up into an infinity of mutuallj^ expulsive points ; this wholly outering and self-repelling property of reality. But space is imxjlicitly individual and unitary, so that every point includes and comprehends all other points. The law of space conception is thus the evolution of point from point in the process which generates lines, planes, and solids. 62 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY How, then, is space related genetically to the self- active energy of the creative spirit ? We answer, mediately, through the modifying influence of non- being. Space as above construed, is to be con- ceived as a first resultant in the negative sphere, of the outgoing creative energy. The first fruits of the outflow of the creative energy into the negative sphere, is its transformation into a quantitative im- age of its absolute author. This we call ontologic space, and the question arises, what is the relation of ontologic space to matter ? We cannot regard it as a phenomenon of matter, nor yet as separable from matter. In the order of conception it is the ^^Hws of matter. But on the other hand, we cannot conceive its existence apart from the existence of matter. We cannot separate what the Absolute has joined together. The true relation will, we think, be apprehended if we conceive space and matter as arising out of the same generative activity, space being its form while matter is its substance. Form and substance are inseparable, while in the order of conception, form must stand as the priits of substance. Matter and space, therefore, though not to be identified, are as inseparable as substance and form. A distinction is to be made between ontologic and psychologic space. Ontologically considered, space is the form of matter. It is the iDrinciple of divisi- bility and continuity in the material sphere and is, therefore, objective and dependent on the creative energy that underlies the world. Psychologically SPACE AND TIME 63 considered, when we abstract from ontologj^ space seems to be subjective, a phenomenon of our percep- tion. Kant conceives it to be the form of percep- tion, and Berkeley virtually anticipated the Kantian view by reducing it to a perceptive process. The doctrine of the subjectivity of space contains both a truth and an oversight. The truth is that space is not to be conceived as a motionless thing lying wholly outside of the activity by which it is per- ceived. Berkeley and Kant are the authors of a real psychological discovery. We do not objectively contemplate space; rather, we spatialize objective phenomena, and the mode of this spatialization can only be adequately conceived when w^e regard it as analogous to the generation of ontologic space— that is, when we conceive our perception of phenomena in space as resulting from an inversion of the inner ac- tivity of the perceiving subject. Berkeley and Kant are following a deep insight, therefore, when they identify space with the form of external perception. But the doctrine of these thinkers contains an im- portant oversight. It does not take account of the objective factor, the ontologic conditions of per- ception. If we eliminate the objective factor, the incoming energy that meets the outgoing activity, we abolish perception. But if we recognize the objective factor, we have on our hands the whole ontological problem, and we cannot foreclose the case in favor of subjectivity, as these thinkers do, but must include the ontological as an integral part of our theory. When we do this, the intuition gradu- 64 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ally claims that, primarily, space is ontolog-ical and objective, and that in our psychological process we simply retrace the steps of a creative energy that has gone before. The nature of time is to be analogously appre- hended. The root of time, as of space, will be to seek in the nature of the creative activity. This ac- tivity, as we have seen, is one that is explicitly uni- tary and self -identical. But it implicates change in the form of immanent movement or procession, a movement which ever returns upon itself. Now, we have only to bear in mind the law of outer expres- sion, to be able to conceive the expressed activity which goes out upon and in the negative sphere, as undergoing a transformation, so that the category of change has become explicit and obtrusive. The re- sult will be parallel to that in the case of space. The moments of the inner activity which were all comprehended in an eternal consciousness will, through the transformation, have become explicit as a succession of moments or pulsations, each of which expels every other moment from itself. This will give rise to an indefinite plurality of moments which would be wholly disparate and disconnected, were it not for the fact that the self -identical activity, which in the Absolute holds the procession immanent, has now become implicit and functions as a principle of continuity. We have then a result analogous to that noted above. Explicitly, the moments are mutually exclusive and disparate, but implicitly each moment comprehends every other moment. The opposite SPACE AND TIME 65 cliaracteristics of time thus arise, for time flows, but time is also continuous. Time is tlie principle of separate events, but it is time that binds events to- gether in a continuous movement. Thus arises ontologic time, regarding- which we have to ask, as we asked regarding space, how are we to conceive its relation to the material world? In order to mark the distinction between matter, sx3ace, and time, which proceed from a common ac- tivity in the Absolute, we must note their variant relations to the sphere of non-being. The dual con- stitution of matter arises, as we saw, from the want of self-supporting ground in the negative sphere. The peculiar constitution of s^Dace arises from the di- viduality of non-being, the absence from it of any principle of continuity ; while that of time finds its negative condition in the chaos of non-being, the absence from it of any principle of orderly sequence. A cardinal point to be emphasized is that matter, space, and time have a common root in the Abso- lute ; they spring simultaneously out of a common activity, and their differential features are the neg- ative results of the medium in w^hich they are en- gendered. Now, we have seen that space is the form of which matter is the substance. How shall time be related to this complex phenomenon ? In a preceding chap- ter we saw how the serial form of becoming origi- nates. But the idea of time is also that of a series. Time bears the same relation to the series of becom- ing that space bears to matter. It is the form 66 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY of the series, while its substance is that inner dy- namic causal connection which, as we saw, consti- tutes the principle of natural evolution. The two ideas are inseparable, and when we say that the order of becoming is serial, we are also saying- that it is temporal. The form of the series, time, and its substance, causal dependence, are thus inseparable, though not the same, and we are not at a loss to un- derstand a tendency so marked in certain phases of modern thought, to identify the substance with the form, and to conceive causation in terms of pure tem- poral succession. Time thus conceived, we call ontologic, because it has its roots in the creative activities which pro- duce the world. This is to be distinguished from psychologic time, which arises in a way analogous to the rise of psycholo'gic space, and regarding which the same i^roblems have been mooted in mod- ern thought. The solution of these problems need not delay us, since it is analogous to the solution of the space problems. It is true of time, that while it is to be conceived psychologically as the formal activity of the serial consciousness which appre- hends events in succession, yet this subjectivity must be qualified by the recognition of time as springing from ontologic conditions, and, therefore, objective. In thinking time we retrace the pathway of the creative energy. Of the modern analyses of time, that of St. Augustine is the earliest and one of the most interesting. Augustine declines to regard the divisions of time into past, present, and future, SPACE AWD TIME 67 as ultimate. There is in reality only the present, and there are three times, only in the sense of " a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future." * Translating this into psychological terms, we have a memory-pres- ent, a sight -present, and an expectation -present. But when he comes to the analysis of this present which subserves everything, Augustine's insight fails and he confesses himself baffled. Contemporary psychology is scarcely more suc- cessful in meeting the Augustinian difficulty. It distinguishes between a " specious present," which James picturesquely describes as " a sort of saddle- back with a certain length of its own, on which we sit perched and from which we look in two direc- tions into time," and the real present, which for- ever vanishes to a point. This real present the psychologist finds inexiDlicable, and no wonder, for it involves a datum, we think, which transcends the temporal series. The objective life of man moves in a series, but there is a point at which it transcends the flowing stream and contemplates it forward and backward from the standpoint of eternity. It at- tains this point whenever it retreats into the citadel of the I. That intangible and indivisible present, which the keenest analysis of empiric consciousness never traces to its source, is the voice of the I, whose function, in relation to the temporal series, is to com- prehend its plurality and change under its own ideal unity. * Confessions, Chap. xi. 68 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY If this conception be true, we have an ontologic explanation of the " saddle-back of time " which, from this point of view, is to be conceived as rep- resenting the mode of this ideal comprehension and the extent to which it has been developed in the human soul. The mode is ideal and original, but the extent is a function of experience and seems to progress in a direct ratio to the growing wealth of man's consciousness. To the child the grasp is small compared with that of the adult man ; to the adult savage it is small compared with that of the adult civilized man ; to the adult civilized rustic it is small compared with the comprehension of a Plato or a Newton. The " specious present " simjDly measures the triumph of individuality over plural- ity and change ; it is the resultant in the psychic sphere of the perpetual struggle of man's ideal self to overcome the relative formlessness of the actual and bring it into harmony with its own law. And in proportion as man succeeds in the struggle, the flight of the temporal becomes more rapid, its riches are emptied more and more lavishly into the basket of the present, and the circle of his individuality becoming more and more comprehensive, he feels the shackles which have bound him as a thrall to the mere temporal and evanescent, loosening their grasp, and his conscious life taking on more and more the image of the eternal. One of the profoundest of recent thinkers* has * S. H. Hodgson : Time ami Space. SPACE AND TIME 69 an intuition of the ontologic character of space and time, which, with matter in the form of psychic feel- ing-, he represents as the constituents of all knowable being, and his subtle analytic is tasked in order to show how the constituents may be conceived as complicating into all forms of organized existence. But they are represented as ultimates floating at large m a universe without any absolute moorings, and when the question of absolute being comes up, as it must to all speculative minds, this thinker can discover no exit from the sphere of relativity, and finds himself confronted with the hopeless problem of developing a rational theory of relative nature out of purely relative data. Time and space and matter are ontological elements of relative being. But they are not self-explanatory. They only sug- gest the problem to be solved, and the principle of the solution can be discovered only by looking be- yond these relative forms to the absolute springs from which they have emerged. COSMIC NATURE Hitherto we seem to have been dealing- with the fragments of a world-idea. Now the whole vision begins to dawn, and in this chapter we shall seek to trace its outlines. The vision ]3resents itself as the whole idea of cosmic nature, of the world as a sphere of mechanical activities. And just as in the former chapters we achieved the ideas of matter, space, and time, by applying the law of inversion to the outgo of the creative activities into the sphere of non-being, so here we must apx3ly the same prin- ciple in order to reach a conception of the whole mechanical s^Dhere. If we make a synthesis of space, and time, and matter, we have a concept of a sphere of mechanical forces and energies, and if we realize the connection of this sphere with its absolute ground, we have the concei3t of a world-spirit as the transcendent ground of the world manifesting itself immanently in the mechanical categories of the world-activities. Now, the inner material principle of this sphere of world-activity, as we have seen, is causality. How then is this principle to be conceived? We have COSMIC NATURE 71 seen that it is the inner nerve of that world-series of which time is the form. But what we seek here is to determine the mode of that activity which we call mechanical causation. And in order to reach that determination, we must seek the rationale of the modification which self-activity suffers in the ex- ternal sx)here. Self -activity, as we know, moves ever in a circle of return upon self. It is, therefore, self-dependant and self-conservinof. The outgo of self-activity into the negative sphere simjoly breaks this circle and translates it into a series, and the nexus which holds all moments in the grasp of self- dependence is straightened out, so to speak, and becomes a link of dependence upon an antecedent in time. Causality is the activity in which this dependence on antecedents is realized. It has a double aspect. In the first place, it is a principle of external de- pendence. If the link of self-return be broken, then the pulsations of activity will be ever going out from their source in an external succession. Each will go out from and sejDarate itself from each. In this aspect, mechanical causation is a self-alienating, disparate activity, which is ever breaking up unity into isolated moments and parts. But causality has another aspect equally essential, but not so overt and explicit. It is not strictly accurate to say that the movement of self-return is broken bj' the outgo of creative activity into the negative si:>here. It is not broken, but is rather translated into implicit potency. In this form it enters the world-series as 72 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY a principle of inner continuity. Let us endeavor to construe this. We say that a is the cause of h, and that involves the distinction and separation of h from a in the series ; h must be out of a in order to be the effect of a. But if h be simply out of a, it is cut off from «'s influence and cannot be its effect ; h must al- so be in a in order to be produced by it. In other words, there must be continuity as well as distinction, and the outer procession of the effect must be con- ceived as being grounded in an inner procession of cause. Modern science is founded on this intuition of the dual nature of causation. It sees that the world- series and the principle of the external mechanical dependence of the parts of this series, can be rational- ized only by conceiving as implied in it a continuity of the generative activity' by which the series is produced. The basal insight of science thus opens to it the grounds and, at the same time, the limits of its own proper categories and principles. Custom sanctions the employment of causation as a regressive princiiDle for the connection of con- sequents with their antecedent grounds. The look of causation is, therefore, backward, and its presup- position is always, the present of the world wliich it seeks to ground in antecedent conditions that have lapsed. But this regressive employment of causa- tion is merely a convention of science, and it is just as open to a progressive use. It then becomes a principle of forward world-development and evolu- tion. COSMIC NATURE 73 The question then arises, how is woiid-deyelop- ment or evolution to be conceived ? If we reflect on the world-series we will be led, in accordance with the previously developed view, to regard it as the real- ization of a modified form of creative self-activity. How this modification arises and the nature of it, we have already considered. The fact to be em- phasized here is that the life of the series depends on its connection with this activity, and that it can be conceived as possessing- any degree of relative independence and self-sufficiency, only when the creative springs are included in it. But the in- clusion of the creative sjDrings in the series binds it fast to the absolute ground, since it involves the pre- supposition of the creative activity of the Absolute as the immanent source of the world's energy and move- ment. Now, if we include this creative activitj^ in our idea of the world-series, we are enabled to reach the conception of a forward world-movement in which each antecedent section of the world will be regarded as the matrix or spring of production for each section that follows, and in which, therefore, the principle of continuous development reigns su- preme. From this i3oint of view we see that the category of world-development or evolution is vital to the life of science. For science is the intuition of the world-series under the category of causation, and while causation says that every part of the series must have an antecedent condition, its deeper voice says also that in order to be completeh'^ explanatory, 74 BASAL COTnTCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY this condition must also include in it the creative ground of its being-. The idea of world-develop- ment or evolution rests on this deep intuition and embodies, therefore, the ideal which science places before her, just in proportion as her intellig-ence rises out of the mistiness of abstractions into the light of conceptions that are concrete and adequate. The presupposition of evolution is t-hat in the world-series, at any conceivable point, will be found the explanatory conditions of what follows. This presupposition is valid, as we have seen, only when in the world-series, at any given point, we include the creative activity out of which the series springs. But it is not obligatory on science, in its ordinary procedure, to make a constitutive use of this presup- position. Whether dealing with nature or human- ity, science may treat the presupiDOsition as latent, and may construct her explanations in view of condi- tions which appear in the series. And this proced- ure is rendered not only possible, but rational, by the fact that the creative energy manifests itself im- manently in the world-series, and thus translates all its realized activity into the forces and agencies of the series itself. The biologist may, therefore, de- termine the life-series in view of natural, mechanical causes, and the student of man may find in the nat- ure of humanity the data of historic science. Each becomes a charlatan only when he groAvs negatively dogmatic and attempts to eliminate from his prob- lem the latent assumption of the creative ground on which the rationale of evolution depends. But in COSMIC NATURE 75 science as in religion, it is not as a rule lie who keeps noisily crying Lord, Lord, that enters the kingdom, but rather he who, having caught a vision of the Creator in his works, follows in a reverent spirit those mechanical footsteps which symbolize the " hidings of his power." How, then, are we to construe the world-series when conceived under the category of evolution ? The starting-point of the regressive use of causation is the present state of the world. But when science adopts the category of evolution she must transport herself back to the beginning of the series, and look forward to the present as its goal. Eegressive caus- ation is analytic, resolving the present into its past conditions. Progressive evolution is synthetic, con- structing from the conditions of the past the vision of the future. And in order that it may be really explanatory the evolution process must be repre- sented as beginning with a datum that requires no antecedent for its own explanation. This datum has been represented under the category of absolute simi^licity and identified with a point in the world- series, from which all distinction and determination have been eliminated. Thus Herbert Spencer postu- lates a condition of absolute homogeneity as the first datum of evolution, and the process of develop- ment consists in the rise and progressive complica- tion of distinction and integration in this undif- ferentiated medium. Such a conception of the world-process is open to a criticism similar to that which has already been made on Hegel's '* Logic." It 76 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY starts with the thinnest of abstractions and professes to show how, by a species of nature-dialectic, the workl passes from category to category in the path- way of concretion and complication, until it reaches as its goal, the world with all its present riches. But as in Hegel's " Logic," it is the rich spirit of the reflector himself that supplies the motive and stages of the dialectic, so here we must seek, not in the nndiiferentiated homogeneous, but rather in the highly organized and developed intelligence of the Spencerian thinker, for the motives and categories of the process he describes. We must do this unless we are prepared to admit that, either implicit in the homogeneous or tran- scending it, there must be assumed as a necessary datum of the process, an activity which contains cate- gories similar to those Ave' have read into the proc- ess. In other words, the alternatives open to us are either a subjective and psychological construction of the evolution-process which reduces the world to an ontologic illusion, or an objective ontologic con- struction which seeks the rationale of the world-^Dro- cess in its connection with the creative springs. It is only this ontologic conception of evolution that is completely borne out by the investigations of science. Before the principle of evolution could be more than vaguely apprehended, science had to establish her great generalizations known as the laws of the conservation of energy and the correla- tion and transformation of forces. The law of con- servation asserts that, given a certain quantum of COSMIC naturp: 77 energ-y, that quantum will remain constant, subject to neither increase nor diminution by the processes of nature. The empirical proof of this consists in the discovery that when energy disappears its equiv- alent is always found to reapiDear in some other form. This, however, is no complete demonstration, and cannot account for the assurance of science, which rests primarily on its refusal to believe in the possibility of annihilation. The law of correlation and transformation contains the same intuition, but it also involves an additional postulate, that of the continuity of nature through all its stag"es and proc- esses. The changes of nature, therefore, including the apiDarent superinduction of new spheres of being and new species of force and energy, can be con- ceived only as transformations of forces that already exist. Science sjDeaks with absolute assurance v» hen she says that nature's continuity is unbroken, and that evolution can effect transformations, but is un- able to create any new species or increment of force. What is this but a deep intuition of a necessi- ty that apiDears also from other points of view ; namely, of the fact that evolution can be rationalized only by a presui^position that connects its process from the beginning Avith an inexhaustible reservoir of creative activity? Evolution is absolutely shut up to given forces. She can create none, destroy none. She can only work transformations in the materials put into her hands. She can have no voice as to how the forces she employs shall origi- nate, nor how their existence shall be conditioned. 78 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY The vision of evolution is limited absolutely to her own things ; of the things of the creative energy she sees not so much as a glimmer in the dark. Beyond the limits of her vision rest the whole problem of the origination of natural force and the mode of its introduction into nature, the question of its possible increase or diminution in the ]3rimal springs, the whole question of the possible teleologic meaning of nature, and the relation it may bear to larger and correlated spheres of being. These problems are only for an intelligence which is able to comprehend evolution as an element in a larger system of real- ity. No philosopliy is complete, however, that over- looks the negative side of the world-problem. We have seen how non-being determines that modifica- tion of the world-categories which distinguishes them from absolute spiritual activities. Thus arise the relative and imperfect forms and categories of the world-series and the laws under which it pro- ceeds. We may say that in the positive world-proc- ess, so far as unfolded, negation is held in solution but not suppressed. And that this is true will be apparent when we consider that the categories of evolution have their correlative negative categories which are inseparable from them. Dissolution, de- cay, and death are as real features of the world as evolution, growth, and life, and although, as will be seen in the chapter on Organic Nature, these are subsidized in a measure by the processes of higher organization, yet this result is accomplished only COSMIC NATURE 79 by a new stride on the part of the positive construc- tive forces of nature. The negative tendencies are only overcome and held in check, and that mod- ern intuition which gives us the clearest vision of the processes and laws of evolution, also gives the clearest presentation of the dissolutive process. Evolution and dissolution, growth and decay, are inseparable, though antithetic categories. In the very heart of the developing process science discerns the seeds of decay in a tendency toward an equilib- rium of forces, the principle of differentiation, which is a negative condition of life in a growing organism, becoming a minister of death to an organism in which the force of integration has ceased to dominate. Chaos thus confronts nature, dissolution confronts evolution, death confronts life, as an omnipresent issue. Everywhere in nature, as in the sphere of humanity, progress is achieved only through a struggle of organizing forces to overcome and neu- tralize negative tendencies, and the catastrophe threatened by the equilibrium of forces can be averted only by the infusion of a new increment of organizing energy and the transformation of the stagnant mass into the conditions of a new develop- ment. We are ready now to perform the final synthesis through which an adequate conception of cosmic nature may be achieved. The ground of the world is both transcendent and immanent. Its transcend- ent ground is that primal energy which, as we saw, must be presupposed as the root and spring of all 80 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY derivative being. On grounds which need not be restated here, we are led to posit the outgo of this primal self-activity into the sphere of non-being, w^here, in accordance with the law of external self- expression, it is translated into the world-energy. The immanent ground of the world is this spring of world-energy or potence which we may call the world-spirit, and which constitutes the unfailing spring out of which its forces and movements emerge. This immanent ground is related to the transcendent ground as potence to actuality, so that the ultimate rationale of the world must be sought in the transcendent activity of the Absolute. Out of the immanent ground of the world arise the forces and categories of the world-series. We have seen how the material force which functions in cos- mic nature must be conceived as dual in order that it may be relatively self-maintaining. The rationale of this duality may be found in the same charac- teristics which determine the series, namely, the struggle of immanent and imi^licit unity to over- come explicit difference and dividuality. This dual opposition is conceived as constituting in the atomic elements, to which science reduces the material con- stitution of things, a balance of forces which condi- tions the stability and continuity of the world. The immanent ground of the world is also the immediate source of the order in which the categories of de- velopment make their appearance. The primal category is self-activity. But in the sphere of non- being this is inverted and translated into potence. COSMIC NATURE 81 The order in which this potence is translated again into actuality will be an inversion of the primal activity. Its first manifestation will be at the bottom of the scale, as far from self-activity as possible. Instead of self-activity it will be, explicitly, activity that is ever determined by the other than self. Such activity we call, in substance, material force, and in form, mechanical. Cosmic nature is the sphere of material force acting- under the mechanical form. Its proximate spring is the potential world-spirit, which actualizes itself in the world-series and in the forces and cate- gories of mechanical evolution. The first stage of world-activity is that sphere of energies which arises from a synthesis of space and time and matter. We call it the inorganic because here mechanism reigns supreme. The unitary and individualizing force of the world is still implicit and, in a sense, transcend- ent, acting as a restraint on the externalizing forces, but not entering as a determinative factor into the constitution of things. In this sphere the world- series is mechanical, each part being conditioned and determined by its other. The inner law of this series is causation in its mechanical form, and the principle of its progress is mechanical evolution, the forwa-rd march of differentiation and integration in the course of which the simple homogeneity is transformed into rich and varied heterogeneity. But it has already been made apiDarent that the whole sphere of mechanical development, if ab- stracted from its ground, becomes irrational. It can 6 82 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY be grounded and the world rationalized only by connecting the whole world- series with the creative fountains out of which it arises, and this leads us, as we have seen, back to the immanent power that is the immediate source of the world-energies, and through this to the transcendent source of all things, the self-active energy of Absolute Being. VI OEGANIC NATURE In the preceding- chapters we have achieved what may be called a deduction of the idea of a world- spirit or spiritual potentiality as the immediate and immanent ground of the world's being and develop- ment. This idea of an immanent world-ground de- pends, as we have seen, on the postulate of a trans- cendent and absolute self-active spirit whose energy g-oes out into and operates upon a sphere of nega- tion and non-being, by which it is translated into the inner potentiality of the relative and depen- dent world. The postulate of this potential world-spirit not only grounds the series, but also the order of its development. We have seen how the mechanical categories of the cosmic sphere arise as the first entelecJues of this potential ground. In these, dis- tinction and difference become overt and active, determining the mechanical series and its laws, while the unitary individualizing force remains im- plicit and latent as a regulative and conditioning- principle. But it is the law of potency to gradually pass into actuality, and from the idea of the world- 84 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PJIILOSOPHY spirit, already achieved, Ave would be led to antici- pate that the next stage in the development after the purely mechanical, would be one in which the latent unitary and individualizing- force of the world- ground begins to manifest itself in the series as an active constitutive principle. In other words, we would expect to see a transformation of the form of the series, and the manifestation of a force that pro- duces individual wholes, which will comprehend and unify distinctions and parts. Thus would arise Life or organic nature. What life is, is a question that has puzzled both science and philosophy. The tendency of science is to regard it as a complex product of mechan- ical forces, but how mechanism can produce an individual organism remains a mystery. Defini- tions of life are, as a rule, mere descriptions of its external phenomena. The physicist characterizes a living organism as a machine for generating heat and doing work ; the chemist, as a body composed of highly unstable compounds ; the biologist, as a plexus of organs and tissues which are adapted to the performance of certain functions, or, if he be speculatively inclined, as an inner correspondence to an outer environment. Such definitions, though true and i^erhaps adequate to their purpose, do not reach the heart of the subject, and fail to give any rational insight into the nature of life or its relation to other dei^artmonts of nature. The cosmic series is coextensive with time, for, as we have seen, time and the cosmic series originate ORGAIS^IC T^ATURE 85 together out of a common ground. But life is not co-extensive with time. Life originates hi time, and it may also cease to exist in time. The origin of life thus presupposes a section of the world-series from which vital phenomena were absent, and in which, therefore, only mechanical forces energized. At some point in the series a new phenomenon, which we call life, originates, and this new-comer has no other antecedent conditions among the active forces of the series than the material and mechanical. Nature presents, not a straightforward progress on a x^lane, but rather a hierarchy of graduated steps in an upward progress from plane to plane. Let us develop this conception a little farther. Josejjh Leconte arranges this upward progress into four planes : 1, Elements ; 2, Chemical Compounds ; 3, Vegetables ; 4, Animals ; also into the four planes of corresponding force, Physical force, Chemical force, Vitality, and Will.* We thus reach the con- ception of the world-series as passing through three distinctive stages in its upward career ; namely, those of mechanical, vital, and spiritual force, and their manifestations. Now, naturalistic evolution is a theory which denies the necessity of grounding nature in a poten- tial spiritual principle, and which, therefore, seeks in the mechanical antecedents of life the conditions of its genesis and develo]3ment. More than this, being committed to the postulate of material and mechani- cal force as primordial, it is incumbent on the theory * Conservation of Energy. Int. Sc. Series, p. 194. 86 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY to maintain that all other forces, vital and spiritual, are mere modifications of the material and mechan- ical. Naturalistic evolution has on its hands, there- fore, two main problems : (1) that of the origin of the modification which is called vital force ; and (2) the mechanical explanation of all vital phenomena. In order to solve the first problem, that of the origin of life, it puts forward the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, in which the assumption is made that at some point in the world-series, when all the conditions are supposed to have been most favorable, life was generated from mechanical con- ditions and nature stepped into a new and higher sphere of manifestation. Now, if the fact, or even the jDossibility, of spontaneous generation could be established, naturalistic evolution would have some ground to stand on. But not only have all efforts failed to induce spontaneous generation under con- ditions which are a real test, but these experi- mental efforts tend toward the establishment of a negative. Not only is this the case, but the uni- versal mode, so far as observation can extend, by which nature keeps up her organic supply, is dead against the hypothesis. If nature is callable at all of generating vital out of mechanical force, by an immediate process, this ought to be a permanent possession after life has once appeared. But, as Leconte and others have pointed out, while physi- cal and chemical forces are being constantly trans- formed into vital force, an essential condition of this change is the presence of living matter. The trans- ORGANIC NATURE 87 formatiou of force to a higher sphere exemplifies, here and everywhere, the law that like only i)ro- cluces like, and in order that a qualitative difference may arise, its analogue must be presupjposed in the conditions out of which it arises. The truth of the matter seems to be that the hy- pothesis of spontaneous generation involves, in ad- dition to its other difficulties, a subtle violation of the logical principle, Ex nihilo nihil ft, which ration- ally signifies that nothing can arise as an effect or manifestation, which has not something akin to it in its conditions and grounds. In the economy of nat- ure, life itself is one of the conditions of life. This is the law of the life-series, and it is therefore regu- lative of the whole sphere of biological evolution. If we deny to naturalistic evolution its right to assert spontaneous generation, we take away from its grasp the whole sphere of origins. For in that case those transformations which an energy under- goes in passing from one sphere of force to another would necessarily be conceived as being mediated in some way by the higher force into which it is trans- formed. And this would clearly mark the limit of the principle of naturalistic evolution. Given any species of force, this may differentiate and distribute itself indefinitely, and thus give rise to a movement of development on its own i^lane. But it is strictly limited to this plane, and when the problem is, how nature is to rise to another plane and realize another species of force, here the naturalistic i^rinciple is powerless ; for, as we have seen, nature only makes 88 BASAL CONCEPTS IT^ PHILOSOPHY this step tlirougli the mediation of the higher force itself, and in order that the first step may be taken into this higher sphere, we must presuppose the archetype of tlie higher force as an element in the erround out of which the movement arises. And if we g-eneralize this condition, we reach a position from which we can assert that evolution, in order to be possible without limit, must be grounded in a spiritual x^rinciple which refers ultimately back to an absolute first cause of the world ; whereas, if this spiritual principle be abstracted from or denied, evolution is limited strictly to the movement of a given force along a single plane. Thus if i^hysical and chemical force be given, the conditions of me- chanical evolution in the sphere of the inorganic are present. Again, if we suppose that vital force has been somehow achieved, the conditions of biologi- cal evolution are then present. But for the genesis of these several species of force through which nature is lifted to successively higher planes of ac- tivity, the principle of naturalistic evolution sup- ]Dlies no adequate cause. The second problem which naturalistic evolution has on its hands is the mechanical explanation of vital phenomena. To naturalistic evolution mechan- ical force, that is, physical and chemical, is ihefous et origo out of which all other forms of force arise. Every other force must, therefore, be reducible to mechanical elements, and every form of manifesta- tion in the world-series must be traceable ultimately to mechanical antecedents and conditions. This ORGANIC NATURE 89 necessitates the supposition that life itself is a purely mechanical product ; for, inasmuch as living matter is one of the conditions of the genesis of liv- ing- matter, it follows, if the mythical hyi3othesis of spontaneous generation be given u^d, that the vital antecedent itself must be regarded as a form of mechanical force ; for if any portion of living matter, however small and insignificant, can be successfully reduced to a iDure mechanical phenomenon, the battle of naturalistic evolution has been won, and it can no longer be conceived as imx)ossible to reach a mechanical explanation of the most complicated forms and manifestations of life. What, then, is the obstacle in the way of the me- chanical theory ? It is simply this, that mechanical force cannot account for individuality. We mean by individuality here, the form of an organized prod- uct. A living organism is a body in which the mechanical forces are held in subordination to some unitary and co-ordinating lorinciple. When libera- ted from the grasp of this princij)le, each goes its own way and the organism dissolves ; but while in its grasp and under its sway, they subserve some self-centred power which controls their activities and makes them builders of the organism. The conten- tion of the mechanical theory is that this so-called unitary and co-ordinating principle is not a princi- ple or a non-mechanical force, but merely a product of the conjunction of mechanical forces. But this is a blind assertion which fails to realize any of the difficulties in its way. For what then is death that 90 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY breaks up the conjunction 1 Has some mechanical agent necessary to tlie combination departed, or have the members of the corporation dissolved jDartner- ship by mutual consent ? The truth is that, from the standpoint of the me- chanical theory, the existence of a living- organism is inconceivable. Mechanical forces may develop con- tinuous series, and they may form aggregates and compounds, but the production of self-centred in- dividuality is beyond their province. Mechanical forces have no sense for wholes as such. They move straight forward to simple ends, or flow to- gether into united streams. They may be equal to the complexity of an organism, but its unity, its self- centred individuality, is a phenomenon that trans- cends their power. If naturalistic evolution thus fails to answer satis- factorily either of the problems that confront it, it is clear that the origin and nature of life must be dealt with according to some other iDrinciple. The weakness of naturalistic evolution as a theory of ori- gin, arises from the fact that it cuts itself off from the spiritual principle which supplies the only rational ground of the world-movement ; while its weakness as a theory of the nature of life is to be found in the necessity it is under of regarding the mechanical forces as alone primordial, and all other forms of energy as modifications of these. In view of both sources of weakness the theory plainly breaks down in its unlimited form, and must be limited in order to possess any value. We have already seen where the ORGANIC NATURE 91 limitation must be applied. Naturalistic evolution cannot account for tlie origin of any new form of force, nor for tlie rise of nature from one plane of ex- istence to another. The problem of origins must be dealt with on some other principle. Nor can natu- ralistic evolution give any rational conception of the nature of life. Her mechanical theory commits her to a principle of explanation which regards ma- terial forces as the only primordial forms, and seeks, therefore, to reduce all other forms to the material type. The limit of the principle of naturalistic evo- lution is reached when the limit of mechanical forces and laws is reached. In so far as life and organic nature transcend the scope of these, just in so far do they transcend the limits of naturalistic evolu- tion. The foregoing strictures on naturalistic evolu- tion as a theory of life, are not directed against the principle of evolution. Their aim is simply to clear the ground for a more adequate conception of the idea of world-development. As indicated in the be- ginning of this chapter, no theory of world-evolution is adequate that does not include in it a recognition of the necessity of a world-ground out of which, as from a fountain, shall emerge its forces and phe- nomena. Again, no theory of world-ground is ade- quate that does not identify that ground with a spir- itual principle. Nor is any theory of the spiritual principle adequate that does not connect it as the immanent potency of the world-development, with its transcendent source, in the spiritual self-activity of 92 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY an absolnte nature. The world-evolution is thus grounded immediately in an immanent spiritual jootency, and mediately in the self-activity of a transcendent Creator and First Cause. Upon this foundation we are able to conceive a world-evolution that is at the same time completely universal and completely rational. For in this spir- itual ground, as we have shown, is contained not only the rationale of the existence of a relative and temporal world-series, but also the rationale of its order and the succession of its categories. From this point of view it is rationally necessary that the mechanical forces and categories in which plurality and self-exclusion are most explicit, and the forces of unitary individuality most latent and transcend- ent, should first emerge. The world-series is thus grounded in mechanism. But if the world be grounded in a spiritual principle, a point must come in its develoiDment when the latent and relatively transcendent force of unitary individuality will be- gin to show its head above the stream, a point at which it will cease to be merely regulative, there- fore, and will enter into the series as a constitutive agent. Now, it is at this point that a new phenome- non will make its appearance. Just as soon as the unitary force begins to function explicitly, the nu- cleus of an organism will be formed, for, as though a vortical movement had been originated in some part of the series, the particles will begin to whirl and aggregate around some invisible centre, the or- dinary processes of physical and chemical forces ORGANIC NATURE 93 will become tributary to this new movement, and the product will be a body that is self-centred and that has within itself the princiiDle of its own unity and conservation. AVe have been representing in figure what would happen to the world-series when the spiritual force of unitary individuality begins to function in it as a constitutive agent. Dropping figure, we may say that this i)resupi30sition of a si3iritual world-prin- ciple is the only basis on which a completely ra- tional theory of organic evolution can be grounded. It places at the heart of the world a principle which, beginning Avith the mechanical, has in it the poten- tiality of a progressive evolution up to the spiritual. The continuity of the world-movement is thus se- cured. Not only so, but it enables us to understand rationally why there should be a movement at all, and why this movement should be upward. And lastly, it enables us to understand rationally why the progress of the world should lead it from the purely mechanical into the biological sphere. A living organism realizes the form of individu- ality. It is unity overcoming and comprehending diversity. It is a synthesis, therefore, of mechanical and extra mechanical forces. On the side of its uni- tary individuality it transcends mechanism, and is the first overt spiritual manifestation in nature. On the side of its diversity it is a plexus of mechanical forces and processes. The mode by which a living organism develops is a species of natural dialectic, a conflict of opposite and antagonistic forces, in which 94 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the principle of unitary individuality is striving- per- petually to bring- the plexus of mechanical forces into subordination to itself. The life of the organism is the progressive achievement of this subordina- tion. But a living- organism does not completely realize the essence of individuality. There is no return of the unitary force upon itself, and consequently the organism arrives at no consciousness of itself. The reason of this we conceive to rest in the fact that the unity of life is one which the spiritual principle achieves by going out of itself. It is a unity, in other words, which is superinduced upon a plexus or aggregation of mechanical elements which in them- selves, that is, in their atomic constitution, remain unmodified. These elements persist, therefore, in obeying purely mechanical laws, and simply, while held in subordination to an alien force, subserve the life of the organism. When this alien force relaxes its grasp or is overcome, the mechanical elements resume their autonomy and dissolution of the organ- ism ensues. The achievement of the essence of individuality would involve an additional step in the spiritual evolution ; namely, the completion of the circle of return upon self, and the consequent iilanting of a germ of spiritual self-activity in the atomic elements themselves. This would transform mechanism in its roots and ground those modified spiritual activi- ties and categories which we shall come upon at a later stage of our inquiry. But in the stage of liv- ORGANIC NATURE 95 ing" organisms, this transformation has not been achieved. The unitary force asserts itself in an ex- ternal manner in the aggregation and organization of unmodified mechanical elements. The life-strug- gle is, therefore, an unequal contest between the forces of mechanism on the one hand and an undevel- oped spiritual principle on the other, in which this principle, for a time triumphant, at length succumbs to the mechanical forces, and the organism which has reached the climax of its career as a living body, starts on the downward road of dissolution and death. The continued existence and evolution of life depends not on the individual organism, which IDcrishes, but on the biological series, which is self- periDetuating. For just as we have seen that the world is grounded by the going out of the absolute spiritual energy into potency, so we find that wher- ever spiritual force manifests itself as a principle of individual organization, it carries with it this consti- tutional power to emit its own potential in the form of a germ or norm, and thus establish the nucleus of another organism. Through this going out of self- activity into potency the biological scale is made continuous, and the basis of an evolution is secured ; an evolution which depends formally on the spiritual ground-principle, and which in its process obej^s those laws and categories of development and he- redity which it is the business of biological science to discover and formulate. VII PSYCHIC T^ATURE We have followed the evolution of the world- series through the stages of mechanism and life, and have seen how this progress can be rationally understood only in the light of its spiritual ground. The last and highest stage of the world-series is that of Psychic nature, in which soul becomes the protagonist of the drama. In the soul the essence of individuality is realized. We have seen how in the mechanical sphere the effect of the individualiz- ing force of the world-ground appeared in that prin- ciple of continuity which bound the separate parts into one developing series. Individuality proper, however, transcends mechanism both in its essence and its form. In the organic series the form of in- dividuality lifts its head above the stream and em- bodies itself externally in the living body. But here it achieves only a temporary and incomplete triumph over mechanism, by which its grasp is soon broken, and its continuity is secured only in a suc- cession of perishing organisms. The defect of individuality as it embodies itself in the life-series consists in its failure to realize a com- PSYCHIC NATURE 97 plete circle of return upon self. This, as we have seen, is the type of all complete spiritual activity, and it is the essence of individuality. Now, at the point in the world-series where this complete circle of activity is first achieved, and the world-energy is able to complete the cycle of self-return upon self, soul makes its first overt entrance into nature. Soul is that complete type of individuality which arises out of this perfected circle, and its roots are to be sought, therefore, not in any form of organism, but in the atomic sphere. The category of soul-activity is elemental, and must be conceived as arising in that sx)here of i^rimal forces which antedates all forms of organized existence. Let us consider the modification which the ap- XDcarance of this category would introduce into the world-series. If we posit the persistence of the material atoms or centres of mechanical force, then this psychic force will be conceived as arising in conjunction with the material atoms as a principle of spiritual activity. We will thus arrive at the conception of the soul as, in its elemental constitu- tion, consisting of a duad or synthesis of material and spiritual forces ; and this synthesis will be conceived as the x^rimal centre of psychic activity. We adopt this form of psychic dualism as a proxi- mate conception. Its value consists loartly in the constitutional basis which it provides for the recog- nized dualism of conscious experience,* and partly * James : rsycJiology, vol. i. , chaps, ix. and x. 7 98 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY also in the profounder view it opens as to the relation between matter and spirit in the sphere of the sonl- life. This connection is so close and interpenetrat- ing- as to preclude the common idea that the sonl is a pure spiritual activity that is unmodified by mat- ter, and that it comes into contact with the material only in its organized corporeal form. Such a view reduces the psyche, in its relation to matter, to the position of a mere deus ex 'machina, capable of influ- encing and of being influenced only in an external and artificial way. If the common theory were the true one, then the way in which the categories of the material penetrate into the inner circle of con- sciousness and determine the forms of perception, would be inexplicable. No theory of the connection of the material and spiritual will be satisfactory, we think, that does not trace it to its roots in the con- stitution of the soul itself. The statement of i^sychic dualism above given is not to be taken, however, as final. A profounder view may be achieved by reflection, Aristotle con- ceived the soul to be pure actuality ; but he also con- ceived matter to be potence — Swa^uts — and thus made no absolute distinction between them. He rather conceived a continuity of development from matter up to the purest activity of spirit. The view advocated here is in its main features almost iden- tical with that of Aristotle. We conceive soul in its ideal essence to be pure entelechy, or spiritual self- activity, but in the form of its real existence it is modified hy lower grades of activity. By this we PSYCHIC NATURE 99 mean to say that its ideal essence is not all realized in activity, but that some of it is mere potence. Now, it is the law of potence to be perpetually pass- ing- into activity, and in doing so it passes through g-rades, each of which has its distinctive categories and modes of action. Matter is a form of partially actualized spiritual potency, and there can be no impropriety, therefore, in conceiving it as co-existing in the same individual being with higher forms of spiritual activity. This is the conception of soul to which we are gradually approaching. Nature in her journey up- ward to soul passes through the stages of mechan- ism and life. Now, just as the living organism com- prehends the mechanism by which it is preceded, so soul is to be conceived not alone as the end of nat- ure's evolution, but also as its epitome. Soul is a microcosm, and when we sslj that it is a synthesis of the material and spiritual, or that it unites in its constitution both actuality and potence, we mean to say that nature in her passage up to soul carries all her riches with her, and that in the constitution of the soul is to be found, therefore, a synthesis of the categories and activities of mechanism, life, and spirit. Still, the conceptions of the soul as a duad, and as an epitome and synthesis of nature's evolution, are not completely satisfactory. We will only reach an adequate idea of soul by connecting it with the primal ground out of which it springs. The primal ground of the world is the self-activity of absolute Spirit. This self-activity going out into potentiality, 100 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY constitutes the proximate and immanent ground of the world. Now, if we call this outgo, creation, we cannot regard it as a single act once and for all accomplished in time, for, as we have seen, time it- self originates with this activity. But we must rather conceive it to be an eternal process, which has neither beginning, interruption, nor end in time. In its relation to the time-series, then, we must re- gard creation as a continuous process by which the world and its activities are keiDt in being. In the light of this we are able to jnit a new con- struction on the idea of the soul reached above. It enables us to translate our categories of duality and synthesis into more adequate terms, and to conceive soul as a self -activity whichrealizesitself by passing through the lower stages represented by mechanism and life, in its progress. It will include in its unity, therefore, these moments of potency which will con- stitute a modification of pure self-activity and at the same time make it rationally intelligible how the activity of the soul may also include in it the lower categories of the world-series. It also grounds the dualism of the psychic nature without making any break in its unity. The unitary individuality of the soul is its supreme category. But included in this there is a synthesis of actuality and i:>otency. Out of this synthesis springs a dia- lectic which motives the progressive life of the soul. For, if we conceive the inner movement of the soul to be a ceaseless evolution of self-activity, in the course of which the moments of lower activity are PSYCHIC MATURE 101 passed through and both comprehended and tran- scended, we will be able to conceive the outer move- ments of experience which we come upon in empiri- cal processes, as a dual dialectic between a spiritual principle of unitary activity and the lower ma- terial and mechanical activities, and also how out of this arises the dual form of the soul's life. In order to realize this we have only to consider the categories which belong* to the different species of activity. The mechanical, as we have seen, develo^D the categories of a series which is spatio-tem^Doral in its form, while in substance, the parts are bound together into a continuous chain of conditions and consequents by the mechanical principle of causa- tion. The spiritual activity, on the other hand, de- velops the closed circle of unitary individuality. Now, it is easy to see that if the soul be represented as we have represented it above, its manifested ac- tivity in experience will be a dual process. The mechanical activities will determine its life in the form of a series, each part of which will be condi- tioned on what j)recedes it in time. Thus will arise the flowing stream of which James speaks, that ob- jective empirical self which flows along with the world-series and is held fast in the clutches of its con- ditions. On the other hand, the spiritual activity will be ever realizing itself in a self-centred unitary ego or self, the unitary I of the conscious life. And this unitary I, which we must regard as the form of self-activity, will be ever reaching out and compre- hending in its circle the flowing stream of the ob- 102 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY « jective empirical sell The process is thus dualistic, and takes the form of a strug-gle of the unitary self- activity of the soul to overcome and comprehend the empirical in its cycle, the result of which is that the soul-life can be adequately conceived only as a flow- ing temporal stream that is perpetually being- taken up and transformed into unitary individuality by a principle of immanent spiritual self-activity. By thus immanating" mechanism in the soul's con- stitution we are able to rationally ground the dual process of its experience. Ordinarily the duality of experience is traced to the operation of the primal tendency of spirit to distinguish between subject and object. The objective empirical me of our expe- rience is thought to be fully explained by reference to this category. But a serious difiiculty confronts this view. We have seen in earlier chapters that the dialectic of absolute spirit which proceeds by means of this distinction, ex^Dresses itself in an im- manent self-contained movement of distinction and comprehension. To absolute spirit there can be no flowing stream in which its life will seem to be embraced, but the flowing stream will itself be com- pletely comprehended and made inner in the move- ment of self-return upon self, and no dual process of experience analogous to that of the soul will arise. The idea of soul as pure self-activity is, there- fore, inadequate, and we must, in order to ground its most characteristic manifestations, take into account the modification of self-activity which the presence of the Aristotelian category of potence in PSYCHIC T^ATUKE 103 the form of mechanism and its categories, introduces. The ideal movements of the soul's unitary activity correspond to the movement of absolute spirit, but these are never completely actualized. The ideal spiritual self is ever striving to comprehend the ob- jective empirical self within its completed circle. But its efforts are perpetually aborted by the resist- ance of the stream and its refusal to be completely individualized. The resulting movement of soul- activity never realizes the ideal, therefore, but is simply an approximation to it under the form of a dualistic struggle of the spiritual self-activity to overcome the empirical stream and bring it into subordination to its own ideal. The relation of the soul-activity to that of life is to be somewhat differently conceived. There is a sense in which the elemental forces of the world may be included under two categories, mechanical and spiritual. These embody the two relatively op- posing tendencies toward self -exclusion and the serial form of activity, and self -inclusion or the activity of unitary individuality. The activity of life is simply a form of the latter. It represents the first attempt of nature to qualify mechanism by the principle of individuality. Now, the self -activity of spirit, as it manifests itself in soul, is simply a more complete expression of the individualizing force. There can be no dualism, then, between the activity of life and that of the soul. The soul represents a higher and more potent embodiment of that spiritual energy which is also embodied in life. The soul thus, in one 104 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY point of view comprehends the life-energy in its own activity, while in another sense it presupposes it as its own condition. It is necessary in the order of evolution that living organisms should appear, and that they should reach their climax of development before soul can emerge. And inasmuch as life, apart from the mechanical forces and elements which it subordinates, can be conceived only as an indi- vidualizing function of an immanent spiritual prin- ciple, it is clear that soul is only a more advanced and perfect function of this same principle. Soul, then, in so far as it is a later comer in the world- series than life, must depend on the living organ- ism as a necessary condition of its birth and devel- opment. But in so far as it is a higher embodiment of the same spiritual force, it will comprehend life within itself, and will therefore become the living principle in any organism in which it emerges. Soul is thus a higher manifestation of life. It is life which completes its own circle and returns upon itself. It is, therefore, identical with the activity of spirit. It becomes the indwelling unitary principle in the organism by which it is transformed into a true individual. "We do not conceive, then, that there are two principles of unity in a living organism that also possesses soul ; but we conceive that the living principle has developed into soul and thus realized a higher form of life. There may be, and doubtless are, living organisms without souls. We can scarcely think that the life of an oak or a tulip is worthy of being dignified with the name of soul. PSYCHIC NATURE 105 But we can see no reason to think otherwise than that the ground of that unitary force which deter- mines the individual existence of the oak or tulip, is the same spiritual principle or potency that mani- fests itself also in the energ-y we call soul. The uni- tary life-principle, wherever it manifests itself, and in its lowest as well as its highest forms, is a fore- runner of soul, and contains in it the promise and potency of soul-life. We do not identify life and soul, therefore, but we conceive soul to be a species of life, the highest form that it is capable of achiev- ing in a relative and imperfect sphere. How then shall we conceive the stages and develop- ment of soul-life ? Soul originates in an organism, and belongs, therefore, to the biological scale. AYe may represent it, with Aristotle, as passing through the stages of vegetable, animal, and human. The lowest form of biological individuality is represented in the life of the plant. Here the organism is wholly unconscious of the unitary force that is working in it, and the life-principle may be regarded as trans- cendent and super-imposed on the mechanical forces and elements. In the animal the unitary principle becomes more immanent. The organism begins to feel its unity in an organ we call sensation, and upon this self -feeling the mental life of the ani- mal grows up. But in the animal soul the circle of individuality is not fully achieved. Although the animal lifts its head above the natural stream in the function of self-feeling, yet it is not able to achieve its complete selfhood through self-distinction from 106 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the stream. According- to tlie figure of the ancient thinker, it is half out of the slime and half im- prisoned in it. The complete deliverance of the psyche is effected only in man, through an additional function ; namely, that of self-conce^Dtion or ideation. True ]3sychic individuality is achieved when in ad- dition to the feeling of self which the animal has, the soul ideates itself and distinguishes itself from the stream in which it has hitherto been merged. In man, therefore, the circle of spiritual self-activity is first completed, and a true soul having the basis of a rational and ideal life, begins to exist. Now, as the history of the soul is thus bound up in the history of the biological series, it is reason- able to suppose that the laws of biological evolution will also be laws of psychic evolution. We have seen that, apart from its spiritual ground, life is in- conceivable, and that its development must therefore rest directly on the presupposition of the spiritual ground. The same qualification applies to the question of psychic evolution. That the soul could be evolved, as naturalistic evolution supposes it to have been evolved, out of mechanical and unspirit- ualistic conditions, is unthinkable. Soul is a real- ization of spiritual potency, and cannot be conceived as having any other ground. Admitting this pre- supposition, however, there can be no adequate grounds for excepting the soul from the conditions and laws of biological evolution in general. We have seen how the soul is to be conceived as coming into being at the end of a series of progressive PSYCHIC NATURE 107 manifestations of tlie life-principle, inclnclino- the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and culminating in the man. This is not to say that the soul of the animal develops ont of that of the vegetable, and the soul of man out of that of the animal ; but rather that, presupposing a spiritual principle as the ground of the world, the life-principle in the vegetable, and the souls of animals and man, may be regarded as its successive and progressive mani- festations. The progress will thus manifest the phenomenon of continuous development. The rise of the psyche will, therefore, be connected with the processes, and conditioned by the laws, of biological evolution. It may also be connected, we think, with the biological modes of propagation and inheritance. We have represented self-propagation as primarily a spiritual function, although it may require corporeal organs for its realization. The living principle in an organism projects its self- potential or germ as the nucleus of another organism of the same species, and thus the succession is main- tained. There is no valid reason for supposing that, when the form of the life-principle which we call soul appears, this function will not continue. Eather we may suppose that the soul has the power to project its self-potential or germ, and that thus the succes- sion of psychic individualities is maintained. The germ of the new organism will contain in it, there- fore, the potency of the new soul that arises in con- nection with it, and psyche will thus be connected with psyche as closely as organism with organism. 108 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY And the soul will thus come under the biolog-ical laws of inheritance. Whatever be the true theory of heredit}^, souls will transmit their essential charac- teristics to their psychic successors, and in the transmission of spiritual as well as corporeal char- acter a solid foundation for race exj)erience and race destiny will be laid. If it be objected to this view that it identifies soul too much with the phenomenal series, and makes it too completely a creature of evolution, the answer is that this is an aspect of soul-life to which full justice must be done. But in connection with the theory, the presuppositions on which it is founded must be taken into account. One of these presuppositions is, that no theory of evolution can be rational that does not trace the develoi3ing world-series to a spiritual principle as its immanent ground. The theory of naturalistic evolution is thus ruled out of court. Another and deeper presupposition is, that the immanent spiritual world-ground itself depends directly on a transcendent energy, the creative ac- tivity of an absolute spiritual Being. If we dis- tinguish, as above indicated, between the historical conditions out of which anything arises and its ontological grounds, which supply the immediate basis of its existence, we will be able to see how the historic proposition that the soul belongs to an evolving series, and the ontological proposition that the soul is the creature of a transcendent creative Spirit, may co-exist as mutually complementary truths. PSYCHIC NATURE 109 The idea of the psychic nature which we have unfokled in this chapter gives rise to several impor- tant considerations. One of these has a pedagogi- cal interest. A science of j^edagogy, in order to be adequate, must have two ideas as its basis ; namely, first, the idea of self-activity as the central category of the soul's life, and, secondly, the idea of a devel- opment of the soul's activities and powers. The first idea conceives the soul as actuality, the second as potence. Now, there is needed, in order that peda- gogy may become a real science, such a conception of the soul as will make a rational synthesis of the cate- gories of self-activity and development possible. This need we conceive to be supplied by the theory of the soul's constitution unfolded above, and by the conception of the dualistic nature of experience which it was shown to rationally ground. In the light of this theory, it is made clear that the proc- ess of soul-experience is a perpetual struggle of a thinking principle of s^Diritual individuality to over- come and transform an empirical nature that is dominated by mechanical categories and laws. It also becomes intelligible, that this process should give rise to an evolution of the soul's powers which follows the order of the development of actuality out of potence. This order, as the process of nature indicates, is from mechanism up to spirit. The stages of mental and moral growth will correspond in a rough way to the stages of the natural evolu- tion, and both the intellectual and moral life will be dominated by corresponding categories. Thus in 110 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the sphere of moral growth, which is fundamentally the development of freedom, the child will be domi- nated at first by pure mechanical impulses, which determine its actions as the mechanical forces de- termine the movements of nature. At a later stage, the mechanical impulses will be organized under some external unitary jDrinciple, like that of author- ity. The command or wish of the parent or teacher will be the law which will introduce unity into the child's life. Later still, conscience, which is a prin- ciple of internal unity, will emerge, and with the appearence of this principle the child will begin to acquire a free standing-ground of its own as a self- determining and, therefore, responsible x^ersonal agent. With the emergence of conscience the plane of free moral self-activity is achieved, and the sub- sequent education of the child Avill conserve the de- velopment of this principle out of potence into realized free self-activity. Generalizing the above illustration, we may say that all education is, teleologically, a spiritual func- tion, and must have as its end the awakening and development of the free self-activity of the human spirit. This free self-activity exists largely at first in a state of potency, and must be developed by a process which will lead it from the mechanical up to the spiritual. In the stage of mechanism the life will be governed by corresponding categories. At first isolated facts will dominate the budding con- sciousness, and these will be related in the most naive fashion to their most obvious and customary PSYCHIC NATURE 111 autecedents in time. The conceptions of tlie child will be passively determined by a species of natural photography, and its whole mental activity will be largely a reflex of the nature that environs it. But through the mechanical discipline of this period tlie spiritual potence is gradually struggling into activ- ity. The next important step in its development will be the emergency of a category that will enable it to lift itself partially out of the stream in which it has been engulfed and to impose upon it a prin- ciple of quasi-individuality. This category is that of causation, vvhich constitutes the inner bond of the series, and thus functions in the mechanical sphere as a latent individualizing function, binding the parts each to each in a developing chain. Causation begins to dominate the growing intelligence of the child as a rational norm, which develops in it the historical consciousness and sends it out in a per- petual search for the efficient and final antecedents of things. In this stage the passive, recipient spirit is subordinated to that of an intellectual curiosity, which cannot rest in the presentations of its experi- ence, but prompts the child everlastingly to look inquiringly behind the presentation for the condi- tions that brought it forth. This period of naive rationality, in which the budding spirit begins to assert itself, leads us perhaps to the end of the period of primary education. The great epoch in moral development, as Ave saw, is that in which conscience lifts its head above the conscioiis stream. In the general evolution of the 112 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY child's intelligence there is a corresponding epoch, when the principle of reflection makes its a^DiDear- ance. In reflection the spirit completes the circle of its self-activity in the return upon itself. Reflection contains in it, therefore, the germ of what we may call the ontological consciousness, a consciousness that has apprehended the principle of reason in a higher form than causation. The historical con- sciousness seeks the serial antecedents of things, but the consciousness that has achieved the germ of ontology asks for the grounds or reasons of the series itself. In other words, it only rests satisfied Avhen it has apprehended principles in the light of which things are self-explanatory. The world is self-explanatory if we ground it in a spiritual prin- ciple that is sufiicient to rationally explain to us the existence of the world. Now, we conceive that the ground-principle of the secondary and higher education is to be found in this category of reflective reason in which the self- active spirit first achieves a rational standing- ground of its own as a free rational and personal agent ; and the great business of the secondary and higher education will, therefore, be the develop- ment of this rational principle out of potence into actuality. For it must not be forgotten that, while the end of all culture is the quickening of the spirit, its pedagogical methods and the instruments it uses must adapt themselves to the stages of an evolution. And while a common category rests at the basis of the secondary and higher education, PSYCHIC naturp: 113 pedagogy only becomes a science when it acts on tlie insight, as old as Socrates, that the germ of re- flection is at first hidden in a mechanical womb, and that it must practise a maieutic art in helping it to birth and aiding it in its struggle np to the maturity of a fully realized activity. Another consideration is that of the connection between the empirical and rational branches of psychology. We conceive that the real connection arises through the idea of the soul. It is impossible, we think, to develop a psychology without a soul. But if we distinguish, as Bosanquet has done in his great work on Logic, between generalization and ex- planatory theory, it is possible to allow that the work of observation and generalization of psychic IDhenomena may be performed without the presup- position of any particular conception of the soul's nature. The emiairical psychologist may, there- fore, content himself with the general postulate of some unitary subject of experience as a working hypothesis, without troubling himself further as to its nature. This attitude will not justify him, how- ever, either in denying the soul's existence or the importance of determining, so far as possible, its nature. But when the science passes from the stage of gen- eralization to that of explanatory theory, this prob- lem of the nature of the soul immediately and neces- sarily arises. For explanation, as distinguished from generalization, seeks the rationale of things, and this, as Ave have seen, can be found only in some 8 114 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY principle the presupposition of wliicli renders tlie psychic sphere self-ex]3lanatory. The whole of the preceding" discussion goes to show that the only self-explanatory principle in psychology is the pre- supposition of a soul conceived as a norm of po- tential self-activity, and which stands related to the psychological sphere as the unitary and indi- vidualizing energy of conscious life and experience. In determining this ultimate principle of explana- tion, psychology passes from the empirical to the rational stage. The connection thus becomes clear, and also the light which may be reflected from the conclusions of rational psychology into the em^oiri- cal sphere. For we have seen already that a rational doctrine of the soul's nature gives a new in- sight into the real character of the processes of psy- chic experience, and thus supplies important data to pedagogical science ; and reflection will make it equally apparent that the same fountain will supply valuable light to the generalizer of psychic phe- nomena. VIII CONSCIOUSNESS In the preceding discussions consciousness lias been nsed as a datum without analysis. In this chapter we shall examine the posited element in order to determine its nature and relation to being. Consciousness is an underivable element of the real. Naturalistic evolution, which stands committed to the principle of " deriving everything from some- thing else," is obliged here to fall back on the dis- credited hypothesis of spontaneous generation, in order to account for the genesis of consciousness out of the unconscious. There is no conceivable ground which can produce consciousness, except one that is potentially conscious. Now, potence is an unreal abstraction if it is not connected with a prior actuality. We are thus led to ground con- sciousness immediately in the immanent spiritual potency of the world, and mediately and ultimately in the nature of absolute being. Consciousness has its primal seat in the activity of absolute being. That perfect self-activity which constitutes the spiritual essence of the Absolute must be conceived as a self-conscious activity. 116 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY This necessity will arise from one of two alternative grounds : Either self-conscions activity and the self-activity of the Absolute are to be identified, or the former is to be regarded as necessarily implied in the latter. We are unable to realize the second alternative, while recognizing its possibility. The former is not only conceivable, but also demon- strable, as we have shown in a former chapter ; the form of self-consciousness and self-activity is the same, a self-return upon self. Their substance is also the same ; namely, pure self-activity. Why then should they not be identified, and why should we not say that absolute being and absolute self- conscious activity are one and the same ? Josiah Royce finds in absolute Thought the point of identity between being and consciousness, and this Thought he names logos. With this mode of conception, provided logos be used to con- strue the thought, we shall have no quarrel. That thought is the logical prius of every other form of spiritual activity, follows by necessity from the logos conception of the self-active spirit. As we shall show more at length in subsequent discussions, the dialectic which constitutes the inner life and movement of spiritual activity rests on a dual in- tuition which is a function of intellection. The absolute spirit must think itself and its op^DOsite, in order that the motives of the generative and unifying energies of creation may be aroused. The danger in the rei3resentation of the Absolute as thought is that intellection will be allowed to swal- CONSCIOUSNESS 117 low up every other spiritual fuuction ; whereas the activities we call will and love, while presupposing thought as their logical lyriiis, are not derivative from thought. AVe must rather suppose a synthesis of thought and will in the absolute volition, and a further synthesis of thought, will, and emotion in the absolute love. To return, then, to the main line of reflection, we conceive it necessary to regard self-conscious activ- ity and the self-activity of absolute being as iden- tical. Spirit in its actuality will, therefore, always be self-conscious, and it will be the nature of a spir- itual force, wherever it manifests itself, to become conscious also. Now, if we conceive the self-activ- ity of the Absolute to be essentially self-conscious, it will be necessary, in accordance with the principle developed in the second chaiDter, to conceive that the same outgo of this energy into non-being which transforms it into spiritual potency, will also change its consciousness into potentiality. The immanent world-ground, while not actively conscious, therefore, will contain in it the lootentiality of conscious self- activity. The progress of the spiritual world-principle up to the stage of realized self-activity in the soul of man, will also be a process of the evolution of con- sciousness. In the first stages of this evolution the consciousness in which the world-movement origi- nates is one that wholly transcends it ; namely, the consciousness of the Absolute. In the stage of pure mechanism no consciousness can be x^osited 118 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY anywhere in the world, except as a latent potenti- ality in its ground-principle. And this is iDrobably true also of the vegetable stage of organic nature ; for although the plant manifests the form of unitary individuality, there is no evidence that this is not external to the j)lant itself, or that it has any pres- age, even the vaguest, of its own life. Could the negative of this be established, it would then be reasonable to su^^pose that consciousness in some form is coextensive with life. So far as we know, consciousness manifests itself in the world-series, for the first time, in the animal organism. It appears here in the form of feeling without ideality, and the animal intelligence is therefore rudimentary. But up to its limit it seems to realize a type that is common to it and the intel- ligence of man. If the animal consciousness differs, not simply in degree, but also in kind, from the human, the rationale of the differential marks must be sought, we think, not in an original distinction of type, but in the various degrees of development of a common type. If we suppose the world to spring out of a spiritual ground-principle, and its stages to represent the development of this princi]3le from potence into actuality, it follows that the first mani- festations of consciousness wdll be in a rudimental form, and that more adequate manifestations of the same spiritual type will appear later on in the series. Now, this rudimental form that we call ani- mal intelligence is a manifestation of consciousness as feeling without ideality. Such a consciousness is COTiTSCIOUSNESS 119 capable of feeling- or dimly appreliending itself and its environment, but it is unable to conceive itself or the environment, and cannot, therefore, make any intellectual distinction between itself and the world- stream in which it is merg-ed. Now, this category of feeling without ideality, or, at least, in which ideal- ity remains latent and potential, is the one under which the evolution of animal consciousness pro- ceeds. There are gradations of animal intelligence from a lowest stage of simplest reaction upon stim- ulus, up to a stage which seems to differ little from the lowest manifestations of human intelligence. That these are gradations in the scale of a feeling" consciousness that has not yet achieved ideality, is rendered intelligible by analysis. Feeling* in com- l^arison with ideality is relatively passive, and the supreme principle of its development will be associ- ation. For, until a consciousness has achieved a power of reflection which is a true function of self- activity, its processes must be relatively ijassive and, therefore, associative. Now, analysis has reduced the principles of asso- ciation to two, namely, contiguity and similarity, the former being relatively the more passive, while the latter reiDresents a more active form of mentality and immediately underlies the ratiocinative func- tions proper. James, in Chapter XXII. of his " Psy- cholog-y," takes the ground, and seeks to prove it by numerous illustrations, that the point of differ- ence between the animal mind and the human is the absence from the former of the principle of associ- 120 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ation by similarity. All cases of animal reasoniBg in which similarity seems to be present, are resolv- able, he thinks, into cases of contiguity. It is possible that this may be true, but the distinction seems strained, and we conceive a more natural ex- planation of the difference to be possible. For if we recognize the existence of a rudimental form of con- sciousness in which ideality or the princi^Dle of re- flection is yet latent, it becomes possible for us to enlarge the scope of this consciousness in another direction, and to conceive it as capable of feeling the similarities and distinctions of things as well as their mere contiguities in time and space. For ex- ample, when a dog recognizes his master's footsteps or distinguishes them among the footsteps of strangers, he may feel the similarities and differences on which his recognition depends, without intellect- ually apprehending them at all. And when we rec- ognize this extension of the principle of association in animals, we may also admit a corresponding ex- tension in the sphere of what is called the animal reason. In the light of the distinction between feeling and ideality it is possible to distinguish be- tween two species of reasoning ; namely, reasoning which ends in volition and action, and reasoning which ends in a conception or logical conclusion. The latter is always reflective, while the former is possible without reflection. To see how this may be it is only necessary to analyze a concrete case. A showman has trained a pony to select out of a series of the first seven digits, CONSCIOUSNESS 121 arrang-ed in order on separate cards, the one that represents the day of the week, say Wednesday, on which the exhibition is given. He orders the pony to go and bring him the number for Wednesday. The pony goes as commanded and placing his head by the row of figures, seems to hesitate. The show- man repeats, " the number for Wednesday ! bring me the number for Wednesday." Prompted by some- thing in these words, perhaps a iDeculiar intonation, the pony recovers from his hesitation and picks out the right card. In order to understand the processes involved in this we must connect it with the previous coiu-se of training, in which each stejD in the executive process has been laboriously associated with some word, or gesture, or expression of the trainer. We have only to suppose now that the irony's conscious- ness has the power of associating these two series and of feeling the connection between their associated parts, in order to reach an explanation of his action. And we have only to generalize the illustration in order to see how, on the presupposition of a feeling consciousness and the associative principles of con- tiguity and similarity, the ratiocinations of animals are explicable without the introduction of ideality. In man the form of consciousness is completed by the appearance of ideality. The soul of man is, as we have seen, a circle of self-activity. The comple- tion of this circle makes the function of reflection, the return of self upon self, possible, and reflection is what we have called ideality. Man's conscious- ness is one that not only feels itself and its environ- 122 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ment, but also conceives these in themselves and in their distinction. The human consciousness has the power, therefore, of distinguishing- itself from the stream in which its life flows. In this power of self- concexDtion or reflection we find the ground of that distinction between the unitary self and the empiri- cal stream of consciousness which rests at the basis of the manifested life of man. In the human con- sciousness we find also the same principles of as- sociation which also function in the animal. But there lies coiled up in the human soul, however low down in the scale, this principle of ideal reflection which on the theoretic side of man's intelligence lays the foundations of a distinctive development of free intellectual activity ; wdiile on the practical side it leads to the emergence of conscience and the life of free ethical individuality. Consciousness is from the start the j)otency of both feeling and ideal- ity. But in the animal stage of its manifestation feeling alone is active, while ideality must be con- ceived as existing only as a latent potence. The arousal of this potency into the germ of an active life marks the beginning of an intelligence that we call human. We have rejoresented the activity of the soul as a perpetual passage from spiritual potence to actual- ity. A corresponding representation of conscious- ness will express its truth. In the developed con- sciousness we find a synthesis of feeling and ideality, and this, in view of the nature of the soul of which it is the expression, can be conceived only in terms CONSCIOUSNESS 123 of perpetual movement as a passage from potency to actuality. We have seen that the soul is an epit- ome, a microcosm of the world - process through which it is realized. It leaves nothing behind, but embraces the moments of potency through which it has passed on its way to actuality, in the com- pleted circle of its life. In like manner, conscious- ness epitomizes the stages of its evolution. Man is an animal with an animal organism, and his intelli- gence includes in it the animal intelligence, as a point which he must perpetually loass through in order to reach his own standpoint. But this animal intelligence is a stage or moment that is perpetually being overcome and subordinated, and man only reaches the i3lane of his own true life when he has attained to the standpoint of reflective idealit}^ and thus become a free intellectual and moral agent. Synthesis of the ideas of the psychic nature and of consciousness here reached, makes possible an- other very important advance in i)hilosophic con- ceptions. A self-activity that unites in it the mo- ments of feeling and ideality, constitutes a fountain out of which scoring the intellectual, emotional, and volitional elements of man's actual experience. But the soul is to be conceived also as in a perpetual movement of self-evolution in which it is ever pass- ing from potency to actuality. The complete act- uality at which it aims is not, therefore, a present possession, but an aim that is perpetually being achieved. It is an ideal which embodies the true nature of the soul, and which is constantly pressing 124 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY upon the spheres of its activity as the true law of its being-. Thus arises an ideal spring- of intellectual, moral, and sesthetic elements which stands for the soul's true activity, and which embodies itself in man's spiritual ideals of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. The synthesis reached above gives us an insight into the fact that the ideal is no external and visionary element in our conscious life, but that it is immanent and internal, the true goal tow- ard which all normal psychic activity tends. IX MORALITY A metaphysic of morality cannot be developed exclusively from the idea of the human soul. It must go back of this to the primal ground out of which the soul has come. The soul is proximately the highest entelechy or actualization of the spir- itual principle which constitutes the immanent ground of the world. But this immanent principle is a potence which presupposes a transcendent ac- tuality. This actuality is the absolute self-active Spirit which energizes as the ultimate ground of all things. The evolution of soul may be conceived as the progressive development of spiritual activity. For the soul is a self-active principle. But it is not absolute, nor is the consciousness it develops the consciousness of the Absolute. We have seen that the Absolute has its own immanent consciousness, which is that of a being who is -peviect self-activity and in whom there is no undeveloped potency. There can be no develoiDment, then, in the absolute consciousness. Now the soul, though it realizes at the centre of its being the same category of self- 126 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY activity, yet this process of realization is an evolu- tion or development out of potence into actuality, in which the potence and its categories are a con- tained moment. Actuality in such a nature is an ideal which represents its goal, but not its perma- nently secured possession. The ideal of the soul is thus an absolute life. But this ideal is not realized, and in the nature of things never can be. For, as we have seen, the soul carries the moment of po- tentiality ever with it. Its movement is a perpetual struggle up out of the undeveloped potences, a per- petual effort to overcome and transform the activities of this lower life into the complete self-activities of the ideal. Thus arises that dualistic dialectic, which James has described in its psychological aspects, of the ideal self-activity of the human spirit to over- come the empirical self and to absorb it into its own unitary individuality. And the same dialectic be- comes moral when conscience emerges and the free ethical self-activity of the ideal presses upon the empirical will, as a consciousness of the higher law which its activities are to realize. Now, as it is in the ideal ethical activities of the soul that the norms of duty are to be sought, so it is in this same activity that the soul comes into closest relation with the absolute Spirit, its ground. The form in which the absolute Spirit realizes it- self to itself, we have called logos. Now, the coun- teri^art of this absolute logos in the psychic sphere is the ideal self which stands ever as the unattained goal of the soul's activity. We shall name this the MORALITY 127 Psycliic Logos, and shall use the term always in the same sense, as a designation for that ideal soul- activity which functions as the ever unrealized end of an infinite sijiritual evolution. It is through the psychic logos that the norms of morality are introduced into the human soul. But they have their primal springs in the nature of the Absolute. Now, from the theoretic stand^ooint the absolute activity may be conceived as absolute Thought. But from the ethical point of view it must rather be conceived as absolute Will. Abso- lute will is a free self-activity of choice to which the motives are all internal. Absolute will, there- fore, always and only wills itself. Even when it goes out of itself its motive is self-realization in an outer, negative siDhere. But when we say that ab- solute will wills itself, we mean that absolute self- activity wills itself, and therefore wills that its spiritual content shall be realized. The content of anjrthing is the immanent quality or character of its activity. Now, the spiritual dia- lectic will enable us to realize the ethical content of the absolute activity. We must remember that the Absolute is identical with completely actualized spirit, and that all the highest possibilities are realized in it. The absolute Thought, then, in think- ing itself will think absolute truth, and this ethi- cally conceived is absolute Wisdom. The absolute Will in willing itself wills absolute Good, and this ethically considered has two asj^ects : (1) as a norm of ethical activity it is the Eight, which qualita- 128 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tively conceived is Rigliteousness. (2) As a telos or end of ethical activity it is the Good, which quali- tatively conceived is Goodness. Lastly, the abso- lute Love energizes as the absolute Unity, and this ethically conceived is absolute Holiness, while aes- thetically it is the absolute Beauty. As will be more clearly seen hereafter, the three modes of the activity of the absolute spirit are sim- ply different aspects of its whole or individual life. "When the Absolute thinks itself, will and love are immanent in its thought. When it wills, thought and love are immanent in its volition. Now, the form of ethical activity is will, and the absolute will is a function of the whole absolute individuality. The character of the absolute will is its immanent content, and this, as we have seen, comprises the qualities of wisdom, righteousness, goodness, and holiness. The absolute will then, in willing itself, wills perfect wisdom, righteousness, goodness, and holiness. This immanent content is essential to the conception of the absolute will. Otherwise no distinction could be made between it and a de- moniac will. But when we say that morality is intrinsic we do not mean to assert that the absolute consciousness stands in the same relation to it as does the human. A little reflection will show the fallacy of such an assertion. We have shown that the human con- sciousness is ethically, in a sense, divided against itself. Conscience reveals a distinction between an actual and an ideal. On the one hand the psychic MORALITY 129 logos mediates to the human consciousness the norms of absolute morality which function as ideal laws. On the other hand, the empirical self is imper- fect and perhaps also depraved by evil, and its will falls short of the ideal, or perhaps goes dead against it. A dualistic dilemma thus arises out of the natural conditions of finite existence and there is war in the soul's members between the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit. The point we wish to empha- size here, however, is the fact that the law of the spirit or ideal, imposes itself on the empirical self as a transcendent obligation. It feels obliged to obey a law that is objective to and above it. Obli- gation and the Ought are, therefore, in this trans- cendent sense categories of the relative, and can have no place in the absolute nature. It is a dual- istic nature, one in which an ideal law presses upon the actual, that is conscious of morality as trans- cendent, and has, therefore, a duty. The Absolute has no duty. His activity is the activity of free im- manent moral perfection. It is through the psychic logos that the norms of morality w^ork themselves into the human conscious- ness. This does not, however, free them from the law of development. We have seen that the psy- chic logos itself is subject to this law. There is a point in the world-series when the spiritual princi- ple in which it is grounded incorporates itself in a human soul. This soul is dual from the outset, and embodies a dialectic between what it is in realization and what it ideally is in the perfect self -activity which 130 BASAL CONCEPTS IT^ PHILOSOPHY is the goal of its being. This is tlie ground out of which conscience emerges, and conscience reveals the struggle as a dialectic between what is and what ought to be. The psychic logos in the ethical sphere is the seat of an ideal law which functions as the standard of duty. But the soul in its unity is a developing real, and as a moral personality it is subject to the same lavs^. The moral consciousness is at first a germinal activ- ity. The moral life is largely potential, but it is going on to actuality and in every stage of its evo- lution there is present in it this sense of a dialectic between an actual and an ideal, between what is and w^hat ought to be. If it be asked how an ideal can be subject to the law of development, the answer is that growth is the law of a being that passes from po- tentiality into actuality. And when this being be- comes conscious ; that is, begins to realize itself to itself, the duality of its nature will be revealed to it and it will not only be conscious of what it is — a be- ing whose self-activity is tangled up in the skein of mechanism — but it will have a consciousness of the true ideal law of its nature, that of unimpeded self - activity which in the moral sphere is self-determina- tion, and this ideal law will press upon it as the true principle of its being, a law that it is obliged to re- alize. But it is not necessary for an ideal to reveal actually a jperfect content in order to become a stand- ard of duty. The moral law of conscience as it re- veals itself is simply a law of trend. It is the recog- nition of the fact that perfection is the only true end MORALITY 131 of our being, and that a perfect law — that is, a law that commands perfection— is the only law that can command our nature with unconditional authority. Now, it is obvious that the force of such a law may be clearly recognized, while at the same time it may not be at all clear what content of duty the law enjoins. It is in the sphere of content mainly that the principle of development applies, since man must learn through a growing experience and through many different channels, what his duty is. If it be asked further, how this moral develop- ment takes place, we answer by pointing to the whole history of humanity. Everything that con- tributes to or affects human development also affects moral development. The labor of pointing out the successive stages of the evolution, the forces that are active in it, and the conditions out of which it arises, is one that cannot be undertaken here. But it is essential that the movement should be in- terpreted in the light of its true ontological con- ditions. The whole process of evolution springs out of a potential spiritual principle which has its immediate presupposition in the self - activity of absolute Spirit. This spiritual potency, in x>assing gradually into actuality, realizes the stages of a de- velopment from mechanism up to spirit. On the ethical side of the evolution conscience stands cen- tral, for conscience is simply the ethical form of the conscious self-activity of spirit. Conscience reveals the dualistic dialectic between the realized actual and the ideal Ought which conditions and de- 132 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY termines tlie form of all moral experience. Moral evolution is a movement that presupposes this dua- listic struggle and the ideal function of conscience. Without this it is nugatory, for it is only through this condition that man can become a subject of moral experience at all. It is conscience or the psychic logos as ethical will, imposing its ideal law upon the human soul as unconditionally obligatory, that supplies the inner motive of ethical evolution. And it is conscience, as containing the ideal norms of character and conduct, that supplies the teleologi- cal force of the movement. Out of the moral dialec- tic which arises bet Ave en what man has achieved and the urgent sense of something that he ought to achieve siDrings the spiritual activity through which all his moral riches are acquired. There is a sense in which the whole dialectic of moral progress may be represented as the achieve- ment of Freedom. Morality is a function of con- science, but conscience itself is an ideal will. The law of ideal will is free self-determination. Now, we have seen how the empiric will only partially reali- zes this self-activity. It is in partial bondage to mechanical categories. Its life flows along in the world-stream and is subject to its law of causal ante- cedence. While, then, the form of empiric choice is self-determination and, therefore, formal freedom, in fact this freedom tends to lapse into a species of mechanical determinism. The empirical condition of actual choice is character, and character grows largely out of serial antecedents. Why, then, is the MORALITY 133 determinist not right when he denies freedom and asserts the choice of the will to be strictly deter- mined ? We answer that the determinist only blunders through an inadequate conception of the condi- tions of his problem. The freedom he denies is a will-o'-the-wisp, and the necessity he asserts has little more substantiality. It is true that the empiri- cal will belongs to the series in the sense that what a man has been helps to determine what he is, and that what he is is the immediate antecedent of his choice. This is inyolved in saying that all determi- nation is self-determination. What the determinist insists on is the fact that the self that determines is resolvable into a chain of antecedent selves, and that each antecedent self functions in choice to deter- mine the self that follows. The determinist im- agines that this destroys freedom ; and he is right if the idea of the series be an adequate representation of the moral situation. But it is not, for we must take into account the nature of the soul as a princi- ple of spiritual self- activity, and we must identify this self-activity with freedom. And in connection with this we must exercise our whole insight, and realize that conscience is the organ of this self-ac- tivity in its ideal form, and that out of the moral consciousness arises the intuition of a dialectic be- tween the actual which is caught, so to speak, in the mechanical toils of the series, and the ideal law of self-activity which is revealed and imposed in con- science. We must grasp all this in our intuition. 134 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY and then we will be able to attach a meaning to freedom that will bring it into vital relations with mechanism without being submerged by it. For we may admit the main contention of determinism ; namely, that the choices of the will have as their im- mediately determining antecedents a series of em- pirical selves, and this will supply one of the essen- tial conditions of the moral problem. We have to recognize in connection with this, that the essence of freedom is self-activity, and that the inner history of the soul is an evolution of self-activity out of po- tentiality. And in addition to this we have to rec- ognize that conscience is the organ of this ideal free activity, and that from the standpoint of conscience the dualistic basis of moral progress is revealed. From these data it will become apparent that mechanism is the handmaid of freedom. For free- dom as self -activity is the inner motive of the whole process. And while the process itself is to be con- ceived as serial and as subject, therefore, to the laws of mechanical determinism, we are able to see that the motive of the i:)rocess is to be teleologically rather than mechanically conceived. The teleologi- cal standpoint of morality is that of conscience, which is the organ of ideal freedom. And the proc- ess of moral exi^erience can only be adequately grasped when we conceive it as a dualism in which the ideal force of conscience is perpetually operat- ing upon the empirical self, which is the immediate antecedent of choice, in order to modify it, and transform it into harmony with its own law. The MORALITY 135 realization of freedom thus stands as tlie telos of tlie whole moral drama, and moral evolution is seen to be but an aspect of the larger evolution of the hu- man soul, an unending process in which the activity of mechanism passes into the completer and freer activity of the spirit without being thereby sup- pressed or destro3^ed. A sense of the dualistic basis of moralitj^ constitutes the richest vein in the Kantian speculations. But Kant fails to realize fully the true character of moral dualism, not from any lack of native insight, but because he has never achieved adequate ideas of being, non-being, and the nature of the soul. While he has a, profound intuition, therefore, his failure consists in weakness in the sphere of its apxolication. Kant draws from his dualistic data an inadequate conception of the ultimate sources of morality and a defective doctrine of moral freedom. He truly conceives that the norms of morality are to be found in man's rational and spiritual nature. He, there- fore, makes the ideal moral reason of the soul self- legislating, and conceives autonomy to be the only true principle of morals. So far he reasons well. But because he has made a cleft between the moral reason and the Absolute, he is forced to regard the principle which finds the ultimate springs of moral- ity in the nature of the Absolute as heteronomous and, therefore, false. The principle of moral auton- omy thus becomes abstractly humanistic and irre- ligious, and a chasm yawns between morality and relig-ion which nothins: can bridge over. 136 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY A more adequate conception of the x^bsolute and of the ideal, rational and spiritual element in man's nature would have enabled Kant to escape this fatal error, without sacrificing the principle of autonomy. Had he reached a true conception of the psychic logos and its relation to its primal ground in the absolute nature, he would have seen that the prin- ciple of autonomy is not irreligious, and that when it is thoroughly applied it will lead to the subsump- tion of the moral idea under the idea of religion. Kant also erects upon his dualistic basis an inad- equate doctrine of moral freedom. He truly con- ceives the empiric will to be subject to natural cau- sation, though he does not clearly grasp its form as self-determination in a series ; and since all actual choice and action belong to the sphere of temporal succession, he concludes that freedom has no place in a world like ours. Turning now to the sphere of the noumenon or ideal, he is able to conceive a nat- ure which is not subject to the law of natural causa- tion, and had he been able to fully realize this nature he would have been in possession of the data for a true doctrine. But an unfortunate breach which he has already made between the phenomenal and nou- menal spheres, renders him impotent. He can never reach the intuition of spirit as real, and his sphere of noumena remains empty of reality and is filled with mere possibility. True, he finds grounds of moral necessity for postulating the reality of this sphere, but postulation is not intuition, and his post- ulate remains a virtual abstraction. The law of MORALITY 137 freedom which he conceives as belonging to this sphere is, therefore, of no real effect, and the whole case for morality is left virtually in the hands of natural causation. It is evident that had Kant conceived true ideas of the Absolute and of the psychic nature of man, his fine dualistic intuition would have led him to more adequate results. He would have seen the vital connection between morality and religion, and the true idea of freedom would have been opened to him. For he would have seen clearly that the recog- nition of natural causation as a principle of self- determination in the empirical series is consistent with a true doctrine of freedom. Conscience would have revealed to him the real nature of freedom as an ideal self-activity of the soul, which is ever oper- ating upon and through the empiric will toward its own self-realization. Freedom is, therefore, the in- ner essence of the empirical process, and the tele- ologic law of moral achievement, without which morality would lose all its meaning and value. NON-BEING AND EVIL The practical working- out of moral experience, and especially the fortunes of the struggle of the spirit to transform the empirical will, is profoundly affected by the presence of evil in the world. Evil is a factor that has been variously treated in our modern thinking. It has been identified with be- ing as positive iDrinciple, while good has been con- ceived as negative in its character, and pessimism has been the resulting theory. Again, it has been identified with non-being and non-being with rela- tivity, and a theosophic mysticism has emerged whose ideal is the breaking of the mould of psychic existence and absorption into Nirvana. Lastl}^, evil has been identified with non-being, and non- being with unreality, and optimism has emerged with its denial of the reality of evil, and its blind adherence to the dogma that the actual and the ideal are one, or that whatever is is right. Now, in order to treat the problem of evil with true insight, we must approach it from the stand- point of the fundamental categories, being, non- beinsr, and becoming-. For the most serious defects NON-BEING AND EVIL 139 of theories of evil liave sprung as a rale either from an oversight of some of these categories, or from a confused identification of evil with some of them. In view of this we lay down the proposition that evil cannot be truly theorized except in the light of the trinal categories of reality, and also that it cannot be identified with either being, non-being, or becom- ing, although it has its roots in non-being. The typical pessimist of modern philosophy is Schopenhauer. But the roots of his pessimism are to be sought in the depths of his metaphysics. Schopenhauer denies the rationality of the world, conceiving it to be the product of the blind and un- reasoning impulse of a will which strives wholly without intelligence. The reason and intelligence of the world do not spring from its groand-principle, but are an afterthought, a by-product of blindly groping instinct. The rationality and intelligibility of the world are, therefore, appearance and not reality. The only realities are unreason, caprice, chaos, and mal-adaptation. Now, the metaphysical doctrine of the blindness and irrationality of the world, when carried into the ethical sphere, becomes the ground-principle of pessimism. The Schopen- hauerian pessimism does not follow logically from the identification of the world-ground with will, but rather from the disjunction of will from intelligence and the identification of Avill with non-intelligent instinct. Pessimism does not deny that there are reason and order in the world, but these are late comers, and they find that unreason and caprice 140 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY have been beforehand with them, and have sat, as it were, as the privy councillors of the Creator. The world is conceived as springing- out of an irrational and chaotic root. Its tendency to mal-adax3tation, to the production of misery instead of happiness, caprice instead of reason, chaos instead of law, con- fusion instead of order, disease and poverty instead of health and riches, is, therefore, constitutional, chronic, and incurable. Now, after Schopenhauer it is no longer ]oossible to rest in the easy-going optimism of Leibnitz and the eighteenth century. Schopenhauer has opened our eyes to the fact that evil is a real and very se- rious factor in the world. We can no longer ignore the existence of evil or treat it as a phase of good in the making. Evil is not good in the making, but always and everywhere the opposite and foe of good. But there is a root of illusion in Schopen- hauer. We have seen that the universe becomes intelligible only when we undo the disjunction of will and intelligence and conceive the first impulse of being to be intelligent and rational. This is what Schox)enhauer denies, but his denial carries him too far. In order that the philosophy of Scho- penhauer may be rational the intelligence of Scho- penhauer himself must be rational. The world, then must in Schopenhauer have achieved a stage of rationality and order. Schopenhauer says that this is a by-product, and has no more right against the nature of things than any other epi-phenomenon. Well, if that be true, the standpoint of reason and NON-BEING AND EVIL 141 intelligence has no more riglit, claim, or value than any other. It is a passing phase of existence like the rest, and why should the clay cry out against the potter "i. In short, the logic of Schopenhauer's po- sition leaves no ground or motive for the impressive moral which Schopenhauer draws and which alone clothes pessimism with the dignity of a serious theory. The root of illusion in Schopenhauer is his identification of being and evil. This reduces rationality and good to negativity. If being and evil are one and good, and rationality be negative, then the irresistible and inevitable tendency of the universe is toward the generation of caprice, un- reason, and chaos, and against that of reason and order. It, therefore, swallows up all standpoints, in- cluding that of Schopenhauer, and leaves no ground for any theory of things whatsoever. For a little man to sit in his study and write, and seriously be- lieve, that caprice and unreason constitute the es- sence of things thus involves a self-contradiction that is little less than ludicrous. The typical optimist of modem philosophy is Leibnitz. The roots of his optimism are to be sought in the metaphysical theory on which it rests. Leibnitz distinguishes three species of evil —metaphysical, natural, and moral. Metaphysical evil he identifies with imperfection, thus commit- ting himself unwittingly to the contradictory posi- tion that all relativity and becoming are evil. Leib- nitz did not mean this, but he falls unwittingly into the mistake because he has overlooked the real 142 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY metaphysical ground of evil. Or rather, he traces it wrongly to the will of the Creator, who after re- volving- an infinite number of world-patterns, some of which, Leibnitz lets us think, were perfect, chose the present imperfect pattern as the best practi- cable scheme. Leibnitz was sharp-witted enough to see that his reference of the imperfection of the world to the oi^tion of the Creator committed him logically and ethically to a conception of evil which would deprive it of all serious reality. Other- wise the goodness of the Creator would be im- pugned. He therefore conceives evil in both a neg- ative and an unreal sense, as mere defect of good, as good in the making. Leibnitz shows little signs of any intuition of the fact that evil is the opposite and foe of the good, that it is that which the good must forever suppress and annul. Identifying evil thus with the unreal, Leibnitz is utterly blind to the grav- ity of its nature and to the serious issues in life and destiny to which it gives rise. Like the typical optimist that he is, he confounds and even identifies the actual and the ideal. For though he is not the author of the dictum that whatever is is right, the spirit of his general view is in sympathy with such a sentiment. Leibnitz recognizes evil, it is true, but his recognition is a kind of lip-service, for he cannot for the life of him see that there is anything serious- ly wrong with the world. Evil to Leibnitz is merely a kind of a disciplinary agent, which an optimist Deity employs to train his creatures and lead them to higher stages of good. NON-BEING AND EVIL 143 Well, the pedagogical aspects of the question should not be overlooked. But it is a shallow view of evil that would seat it in the chair of a Divinity School as a teacher of morals. The truth of the matter is that Leibnitz has missed almost the entire philosophy of evil It is of no avail to recognize good as positive and identical with being, and evil as negative, if we do not also conceive evil as the opposite of good, and therefore real. If evil can pass into the good, or if it is good in the making or a pedagogical condition of good merely, then it has no reality, but is an appearance, and optimism of the most roseate hue is the true theory. But the whole rationality of a philosophic theory rests pri- marily in its insistence on the cardinal position that real opposites cannot pass into one another, but deny and annul one another. Evil is opposed to good, and must be suppressed and annulled in order that good may be realized. But Leibnitz lacked the philosophic basis from which an intuition of the true relation of opposites becomes possible. Leibnitz had an intuition of be- ing, but none of non-being. We must trace the rela- tion of opposites back into the very root of spiritual activity itself. There we will see that the primal impulse of being which leads to the intuition and conscious assertion of self, leads also by a necessary dualism to an intuition and denial of being's op- posite, or non-being. We must realize how the intuition of this negative or non-being supplies the rational motive for a disjunction of the energy of 144 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY being and a distinction between immanent self-reali- zation and tlie outgoing energy of voluntary creation. We must realize how the outgo of creative energy into this SjDhere of negation, in order to annul it by the generation of forms of being, in the very neces- sities of the case generates only the relative and imperfect, not the absolute and perfect. We must realize that this imperfection and relativity has its root in the absence from the creature of the ground and jDrinciple of its own existence. The law of the creature is, therefore, that of dependence on other, the self-existent principle on which its own exist- ence depends, transcending it. We must finally realize that this lack of self-existent ground and consequent dependence on other which is the very essence of generated being, is the negative ground of that differentia of the creature ; namely, its muta- hility, which, as Augustine profoundly saw, is the root of the possibility of evil. From this view it becomes evident that a distinc- tion must be recognized between imperfection and evil. We must deny that what Leibnitz calls meta- physical evil is evil at all. No relative being can exist without imperfection. If then imperfection is evil, the relative is evil, and we are led by a short-cut from optimism to the Hindu form of pessimism. For it is the tendency of Hindu thinking to identify all true being with the Absolute, and to carry the idea of the unity of this being so far as to virtually cut off all possible participation of the relative in being. The result is that the two poles of Hindu NON-BEING AND EVIL 145 thinking are, on the one hand an unapproachable One which is the sum of all reality, and on the other a sphere of plurality and change which is pure illu- sion. This is the world of relativity and becoming, w^hich the oriental mind reduces to illusion and evil, a defective veil of 2faia which must be i3ene- trated in order that true being may be realized. The good consists in the soul's rifting this veil of illusion and losing itself in Nirvana or the absolute One. It is a curiously ironical fact that we find one of the keenest of modern thinkers thus resting opti- mism upon a plank which had ages before been ap- propriated by one of the extremest forms of pes- simism. The defect in the position, whether subsi- dized in the interests of i^essimism or optimism, is its virtual identification of relativity and evil. This renders the conclusion inevitable that the Creator is the immediate and intentional author of evil ; a thought from which the human reason shrinks, and in order to escape the issue chooses rather to bury itself in loantheism or atheism, or, if it still clings to theism, to vindicate the Creator by espousing a theory of evil which identifies it substantially with good. The difficulty is overcome when we make a dis- tinction between imperfection and evil. The law of a created being is development, and a developing being must be imperfect. But an imperfect being may be developing along a true curve toward the realization of its ideal end. Imperfection in such 10 146 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY a being will be inseparable from undeveloped po- tence. But normally tliis potence will go on to re- alize itself, and in doing so the creature is achieving the true end of its being. There are then normal types of relative and generated being which must be conceived as good. In a system of relative being, therefore, if evil arise it must arise as something abnormal, as some kind of aberration or departure from the normal types of relativity. We cannot, then, identify evil with any of the three categories being, non-being, or becoming. And that means that evil is not necessary as an element in any system of reality. The question then arises, what is evil 1 Well, when Leibnitz identified meta- physical evil with imperfection he simply mistook the contingency or the liability to evil for evil it- self. We cannot do better here than fall back on the intuition of St. Augustine. The creature is imper- fect, and this imperfection, which, as we saw, has its source in the non-self-existence of the creature and its dependence on other, expresses itself in " a cer- tain mutability " through which the creature is sub- ject to contingency. Now, it is this mutability or contingency in the creative nature that is the nega- tive ground of its fall into evil. Mutability is not in itself evil, for a thing may be, as Augustine says, mutable and yet good. Mutability is inseparable from undevelox)ed potency, and the capacity for growth and development is inseparable from con- tingency or liability to evil. In what sense, then, is the mutability of the rela- NON-BEING AND EVIL 147 tive the condition of the origin and existence of evil ? We must translate mutability into tendency to non-being. The normal, that is, the good type of a relative being, is the development-type, and its law is the law of growth or progress toward the perfec- tion of the type. But the negative of the develop- ment-type and its law of growth, is imperfection, mutability, tendency toward non-being. Now, evil, in its most general and unethical sense, arises when the tendency to non-being so far prevails over the develoi^ment-type and its law as either to arrest growth and initiate the opposite process of decay and dissolution, or when the being falls from its nor- mal path into a kind of aberration. All relativity has in it the contingency of decay or aberration, and when this contingency becomes actual, then evil has originated and become a feature of reality. What Leibnitz calls metaphysical evil, then, is not evil but the negative potentiality of evil ; that is, it is 'that which renders a relative creature liable to evil. Evil proper is some property or characteris- tic of the relative which has its root in this negative ground. All evil may be classed as two species, natural and moral. Natural evil in its principle will be departure from the normal type and law of de- velopment either as a process of decay or as aber- ration, and its manifestation throughout nature will be disorder, caprice, destructiveness, mal-adapta- tion, and in the sentient sphere, i^ain, disease, pov- ei-ty, and death. We can only deal intelligently with natural evil 148 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSORHY when we disting-uish between the principle of eyil and its manifestations or effects. The term is i^opu- larly applied to the manifestations such as pain and disease. These are undoubtedly evils. But a phi- losophy of evil must emphasize the principle rather than the mere manifestations. Now, it is coming to be a recognized doctrine in the psychology of pain, for example, that it has its root in some departure from the normal type and its law, either in func- tional failure of the life processes, or in failure of the organism to adapt itself to its conditions. Not only does this confirm the theory of evil we are de- fending here, but it also indicates very clearly the teleological character of the idea of evil. Evil is departure from the good and must have its primal significance in its relation to the good. But for a developing creature good can only be teleological, and it will be expressed in the end or ideal which the law of its being is realizing. The good of a creature will thus be the whole meaning and ration- ale of its existence. It will include its whole posi- tive reality. The evil of a creature will be the ojj- posite of this, the negative of the positive content of the good, in that it tends to defeat and annul the good end. Whatever tends thus in the negative teleological direction, produces the manifestation of evil in nature and sentient existence — disorder, des- tructiveness, lawlessness, pain, disease, and poverty. Moral evil arises only as a function of the will of an intelligent and personal agent. Moral evil super- adds the element of choice to the generic concept NOiS^-BEING AND EVIL 149 of evil. Choice or option is thus the differentia of moral evil. How then shall moral evil be con- ceived ? In the first place it is evident that evil must be chosen in order to become moral. Mere spontaneous aberration from the good can never rise to the gravity of moral evil. But the choice of evil implies an option, and this must be an oi)tion that is teleological and in view of alternatives which the dual nature of the agent places before it. This is a vital part of the theory, for if the nature of the agent were monal it could have only one con- stitutional good and the dilemma of choice between good and evil could not arise. The Absolute, whose nature is conceived to be monal, must also be con- ceived as free from temptation. The evil is that to which the absolute nature is opposed, and its choice is essentially an annulment of evil. But the psy- chic nature of the creature is dual, and there is a perpetual dialectic between the empirical will of the actualized or empirical self and the law of con- science or the will of the ideal self. Man's dualis- tic nature thus confronts him with an everlasting option between the ideal and the end to which the empirical will is drawn. This is the cardinal moral situation out of which the whole drama of good and evil arises. Moral evil arises when the empirical will asserts itself against the ideal. It thus cuts itself off from the spring of its rationality and spirituality, and be- comes the organ of capricious impulse and unspir- itual and animal propensity. The negative thus 150 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY g-ets the upper hand, and the empirical will having broken with reason and spirit, yields itself to the lawless forces of caiDrice and passion. The result, if the rebellion continues, has been vividly portrayed by Plato. The steeds of the lower nature having- overcome their guide, take the bits in their teeth and plunge madly downward with chariot and driver toward the abyss. This figure of Plato's symbolizes the lawlessness and destructiveness of the empiric will when it has asserted itself against the ideal, and the fall into depravity and moral ruin that inevitably follows. Again, the negative character of evil comes out clearly in its moral form. There is involved, it is true, the choice of some end which is conceived to be a good. But this does not constitute the act morally evil. It becomes moral evil only as it is a rebellion against the ideal good which is imposed on our nature as a law, and the evil arises out of the fact that we voluntarily annul and negate what we recognize at the same time we ought to choose as our true good. Our choice becomes moral evil when it repudiates the higher ideal good and falls on a lower supposed good. All moral evil is thus in its essence a rebellion against good and the taking of a negative, destructive attitude toward it. The most aggravated form of moral evil embodies itself in the will that we call satanic. This last stage of moral obliquity is finely embodied in Milton's Satan, who although a rebel against God and fallen into perdition, has still some remains of his former NON-BEING AND EVIL 151 g-lory in his nature. He does not become a complete devil until, after reflection on his defeat and fall, he deliberately renounces his allegiance to good and chooses evil ; that is, rebellion and warfare against God, as his good. Here the place of the ideal good is deliberately vacated of its true occupants, righteousness, goodness, and love, and unrighteous- ness, wickedness, and hate are enthroned in their stead. The normal relations between good and evil are thus completely inverted, and a demoniac will holds the place of the ejected ideal. The Spirit is thus quenched, which is the unpardonable sin of a creature, and the lost soul has before it only the abyss and an everlasting downward progress in evil. What light does this view of evil throw upon its relation to the absolute Author of the world ? It is clear that we cannot affirm unqualifiedly either that the Creator is, or that he is not, the author of evil. We have seen that evil is no necessary part of the relative order. But its root, the mutability and contingency of the relative, is a necessary feature, and this has its presupposition in non-being. The Creator does not generate evil, but he generates con- ditions which have the contingency of evil in them. Why then is the Creator not morally responsible for evil ? and how can the system of things in which the contingency of evil exists be any longer re- garded as good ? It is clear that moral respon- sibility could not be escaped if the option of creation is between a i3erfect and immutable, and an imperfect and mutable world, both of which are pos- 152 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY sible. If we carry the idea of absolute power to the extent of inclnding" this dual possibility in its scope, then the actual imperfection and evil of the world impugns the goodness of the Creator and leaves no distinctive basis for religion. But if the whole doctrine of being, non-being, and becoming as un- folded in this treatise be true, then the option sup- posed above is a fiction. The very facts that creative energy is outgoing and not immanent, and that cre- ated being must originate not immanentally, but out of the Absolute, in non-being, carry with them the necessity that created being should be imperfect and mutable. Only the uncreated and self-existent Absolute can be jperfect and immutable in its nature. The option then which really exists and which con- fronts the creative intelligence is a choice between non-being and becoming. The creative energy must forever remain quiescent in face of the intuition of the outer sphere of pure negation, or it must rouse itself volitionally to an effort to generate being where now pure negation exists. If, now, the option is between non-being and no created existence, and created existence which shall be imperfect and con- tain in it the contingency of evil, the moral situa- tion is completely altered. It is better that becom- ing or relative and imperfect being should take the place of pure negation and non-being. The spirit can only assert itself against the negative by letting free the creative energy and generating in the sphere of its opposite its own image. The existence of evil is, therefore, not inconsistent NOX-BEING AND EVIL 153 with the supremacy of good. The development- type and law of a relative creature, as we have seen, is good. Now, if the contingency of evil is insepar- able from this development-type and law, and if this contingency results in actual evil in a given sys- tem of relativity, it is i:>ossible for such evil to exist and be real, without thereby vitiating the constitu- tion of things. In other words, it is possible that the evil of the world is a subordinate feature of reality, and that the force and trend of the good tends con- tinually to annul and transcend the evil. The possi- bility of this will become more clear if we view the world from the teleological standpoint in the light of that world-idea which to the Absolute includes within it the whole world-process. If the world- process when comprehended under the world-idea is good, then it stands justified, notwithstanding the negative feature which has been its inseparable accompaniment. It appears then, that the final judgment of evil must be teleologic, and that its nature will be largely determined by the conception we are able to reach of the end and pur^^ose of the world. It is clear then that neither optimism nor pessi- mism sui)ply us with an adequate theory of evil. Optimism treats it altogether too lightly, while pes- simism sacrifices the good to the evil Moloch. A more adequate view than either is meliorism, which while recognizing the reality and gravity of evil, subordinates it to the good and believes, therefore, that the condition of the world is not altoorether 154 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY hopeless, but tliat improvement is possible. The meliorist, with a keen intuition of the evils that are eating' into the fibres of the world and humanity, will yet not lose hope but rather find in these a motive for spiritual activitj^ For althoug-h the end and supreme category of things is the good, this can be attained only through perjDetual struggle. "We must be continually rising above and crucifying our em- pirical selves. This is a universal law of progress, and in its realization man will find that he must not only avail himself of his own most strenuous endeavors, but also of the power that transcends him. XI COMMUNAL NATURE Lucretius pictures man in his primitive state as a naked savage dominated by animal instincts, desti- tute of the arts of civilized life, wandering over the earth without shelter, or finding a temporary lodg- ing in caves, and subsisting on berries, nuts, and the uncooked flesh of animals. He represents him as anti-social, engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with his fellows, and making war the chief business of his life. Out of this war of antagonistic interests sociality gradually emerges ; fire is discovered and man becomes the cooking animal ; clothing and habitations are invented, speech is developed, and man becomes the rational animal and evolves grad- ually the varied arts and complex organisms of civilized life. The Lucretian model has served for a whole school of modern publicists, of whom Hobbes is the chief, who represent man as being, in a state of nature preceding the birth of social order, a purely individualistic, anti-social, and warring animal, who in pursuit of his own selfish interests is in a state of perpetual conflict with his fellow-mortals. These 156 BASAL CONCEPTS I^ PHILOSOPHY publicists follow Lucretius in representing the g-erms of sociality and civic order as springing out of these anti-social conditions, and as being, there- fore, a kind of artificial and conventional growth superinduced upon a soil that is primarily alien to them. Another school, of which Aristotle is the first and greatest exponent, takes an opposite view, rei^ resent- ing man as by nature a jiolitical animal, containing in his nature from the start the germs of sociality and civic order. The representatives of this school do not deny an evolution of sociality and social forms. They in fact assert it as a cardinal doctrine of their creed. What they do deny is that the growth can be regarded as in any sense artificial or conventional, or that man ever existed in a state of pure antagonistic individualism. They maintain that the evolution has as its necessary presupposi- tion a rudimental sociality, and that the social life and order which arise are normal and natural. Now, there is, without doubt, a large measure of truth in the Lucretian view. For, aside from the question whether or not man, historically, began his career as a naked and quarrelsome savage, it must be admitted that there are forces in man's nature which antagonize the social order and which must be overcome, therefore, before the social order can be established. If we name such forces indi- vidualism, it follows that the grounding of the social order will involve a conflict with the individual- istic forces, and that the development which ensues COMMUNAL NATURE 157 will have its inception in a condition of things in which the individualistic and antisocial forces dom- inate. The primal condition will thus be one that is explicitly and overtly a state of warring- individual- ities, hostile to social organization. What this theory overlooks or ignores, is the pres- ence in human nature of implicit but real social in- stincts and forces, and this oversight blinds it to the real nature of the struggle out of which the social order arises, which is not a mere aimless and fatalistic onset of individualistic forces, but rather a duel between these and their enemy, the developing energy of social order. The deeper intuition of the school of Aristotle realizes this fact, and while admitting the warfare, is able to put a different and more rational construction upon it. Recognizing the fact that social and civic order grows out of a struggle of conflicting forces, they see in this struggle the perpetual effort of a unitary principle to overcome and transform the forces of division and disorder. All theories rest on the common presupposition of an underlying human nature. Frog nature, or in fact the most gifted animal nature, would not serve as a basis for the structure that is to be erected upon it. Lucretius himself recognizes this in the fact that his naked savage dominated by animal instincts, is a very different type of animal from lions or tigers, who also have their unending w^arfare, but out of it do not obtain the rich result which falls to the lot of man. Lucretius and Hobbes in truth assume 158 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY on the part of the human animal, a wealth of capacity which belies their contention that his rationality and civic and social life have emerged out of conditions from which their rudiments were absent. For why, under the stress of antagonism, should all this rich fruitage come if all the parties to the conflict are purely individualistic forces ? The answer will be, of course, that man is a creature who is capable of learning the lessons of exi^erience, and who, seeing that unrestricted antagonism defeats the end he has in view, therefore, calls a halt and sets up a tribunal for the regulation of his lawless tendencies. But this answer contains the very assumption that destroys it. A creature that is capable of drawing such lessons from experience must already have the germs of rationality in its najbure, and in the lull of passion it will be the still small voice of reason that will be heard speaking of a better way. If we assume that man in his original nature is a creature of purely selfish and individual passions, then we are logically committed to the conclusion that any principle of conduct which may arise out of such a soil will be selfish and individualistic also. Men will, there- fore, never rise above selfish individualism. The only escape from this conclusion open to the advocate of the theory in question, is the old recourse to spon- taneous generation, which, to use Hume's phrase, can produce anything out of anything. But for that very reason it is worthless. The truth of the matter is that human nature has been slandered and that man is not a purely selfish in- COMMUNAL NATURE 159 dividualist, but has in liis nature a geiTninating sense of justice, which is the root-principle of altruism and social and civic order. Even social philosophers of the Aristotelian school have not always apprehended all the implications of this truth. They have con- tented themselves, as a rule, with i^ointing to the social relations as the soil out of which the social institutions have sprung*. But they have overlooked the fact that the social relations presuppose some- thing more ultimate than themselves ; namely, a so- cial nature or consciousness out of which they spring*. Otherwise the organic sexual instinct would not lead to the family, nor Avould there jDroceed from this the g-erms of the community and the state. Underlying the question of the social relations is the more fun- damental one, as to what kind of creature the bearer of such relations must be. It is evident that social relations cannot rest on the presupposition of a nature endowed only with organic instincts and individualistic passions. To assert that it could, would be to enter the school of Hobbes by the back door. It is necessary, in order to ground solidly an adequate politico-social theory, to postulate a communal principle or force in man's nature as the basis of his social and civic develop- ment. Such a principle is found, we think, in the idea or sense of justice. The old Greek thinkers of the Socratic school mani- fested not only a sound instinct but profound in- sight in the place they assigned to Justice in their politico-social speculations. Socrates regards it as 160 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY fundamental and is constantly seeking- its definition. Plato lays it at the foundation of his Eepublic as the principle of all communal life. Aristotle gives it a central place in his political theory, and defines it as a principle of equality in the distribution both of awards and possessions, and Aristotle's definition has been the basis of modern conceptions of what is equitable and right, as between man and man. What is needed, then, is an analysis of the idea of justice as the basis of communal consciousness and life. The first step in this analysis will be found in the fact that the conception of justice as a principle of distribution is not its ultimate idea. Underlying distribution must be some criterion or standard, and this the definition includes in the term equal. Equality is then a simpler idea than Justice. Now, equal comes originally from the Greek verb eiW, which means primarily to be like, and then to be fitting, and then to be right, seemly, or reasonable. Justice is from J^i^, which means primarily that which binds or constrains. In the light of its der- ivation, then, justice is the idea of equality with the idea of authority attached to it. Terms swing loosely on their etymologies, but these in general indicate the kind of reflection out of which they have arisen. It is clear that the Greek root ecKw from which equal is derived does not embody a primary reflection, but has a presupposition. To be like presupposes a standard of likeness and the progress of the reflection from likeness to fitness and reasonableness indicates what the primary pre- COMMUNAL NATURE 161 supposition is. It is simply the self when it has be- come conscious of itself and thus realized its own independent unitary individuality. We saw before that this is the iDoint where that ethical conscious- ness arises which reveals man to himself as a free moral and responsible agent. This ethical self is the presupposition we are in search of. The reflection of etKO) is founded on this primary reflection which reveals the self to itself as a free ethical individual. Now, the further question presses, why this ethical self-reflection should go beyond itself and include other individuals. We strike here the root of the whole matter. If we revert to the larimal category of being, that of self-activity, and translate this ac- tivity into will, the outcome will be the notion of a will that is self-willing. Now, we have seen that conscience is to be conceived as such a will. But a will that is self-willing, b^ virtue of that fact tran- scends particularity and hecomes universal. Con- science, as we have also seen, is the principle of eth- ical individuality, since in it the soul rises to an assertion of its free personality. The conclusion follows that the conscious activity in which man as- serts his own ethical personality, is the activity which also asserts itself as universal. True ethical personality is therefore universal. Kant had an intuition of this truth when he de- duced from his conception of the moral will that of the universal legislator whose dicta are binding on all rational beings. But he did not clearly show the connection by pointing out that moral will and 11 162 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY universality come to light in the self-same reflec- tion. Had he done this the relation of his moral principles to legislation would have been clearer. Returning now to the main line of reflection, we see that equality is grounded in this self-assertion of the will of a free moral personality as universally binding. Justice adds to this idea that of the moral will as a law-giver whose commands are, therefore, universally binding in the sphere of moral person- ality. If now we assume that man is the bearer of such a principle as this, it will follow that when he becomes conscious of the existence of other beings, like himself, the principle of justice will assert it- self as a law of reciprocity among these beings, and each will feel obliged, just in proportion as he arrives at a clear conception of the dignity of his own j)erson, to recognize and respect a correspond- ing dignity in the persons of others. It is only necessary to conceive a being endowed with the organic instincts and selfish passions which the Lucretians picture, as also having in his nature the germs of a principle of justice as analyzed above, call it sense or instinct or what you will, in order to see how such a being may and will natural- ly and normally develop a communal consciousness, and out of it the elements of social and civic order. For in the inevitable conflicts and antagonisms which the exercise of the instincts for self- and race- conservation will engender, the sense of justice will also enter as a moderating force. And since most of the conflicts will arise in connection with the COMMUNAL NATURE 163 share each one is to have of the goods and ills of life, justice will function as a principle of distribu- tion. The sense, however obscure, that the personal- ity of your antagonist is as sacred as your own will have its influence on your treatment of him, and if you have succeeded in wresting from him the whole proceeds of his day's toil, this sense will operate in your bosom as an evil conscience and will prompt you to make an equitable restitution. Now, what we assert is that the existence of the germ of this ethical principle of justice in the nat- ure of man is the real presupposition of the Aris- totelian politico-social theory. It supplies what w^e have seen is the great need, a rational foundation for those social relations which the theory postu- lates as the basis of social evolution. And it is their oversight of this principle, or their positive denial of its necessity, that renders the opposing theories irrational at this point. In order to ration- alize the picture of Lucretius and Hobbes, we must endow the naked and militant savage not alone with organic instincts and selfish passions, but also with the germs of a sense of justice. There will be hope then, that in the intervals of his heated conflicts with his fellows, the voice of reflection will be heard giv- ing him some dim intuition of the fact that his an- tagonist is his neighbor, to whom he should give the same measure he would hope to have meted out to himself. How, then, is the principle of justice to be con- ceived in its adequacy as the constitutive force of 164 BASAL COlSrCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tlie communal nature ? Tlie elements of our answer have already been given. The principle of justice, when translated into its most adequate form, is sim- ply the universal ethic will. Its norm is to be found in the individual conscience, which is the conscious will of the ethical personality in man's nature, and we have only to conceive conscience as comprehend- ing under its unitary principle all individual cen- tres of moral activity, in order to reach an adequate conception of the nature of justice. Justice is the voice of the universal ethic will, and as such is the immanent principle of communal activity and life. This does not mean that sociality deiDends exclu- sively on the sense of justice among men. Men are brought together by the organic instincts, by various relations of dependence. No man can live to him- self or without the help of his fellows. But all these connections are consistent with selfish indi- vidualism, and on the assumption that they are the only original endowments of man's nature, there is nothing in them to render the birth of real altruism intelligible. Altruism is not a system of relations, but rather a spirit in which relations are viewed. Why should not the sense of man's dependence on his fellows but tend to foster his selfishness and render his egoism more sensitive and exacting ? Again, sympathy as well as a sense of a certain com- munity of relations are social forces. But sympa- thy, wherever it is not the emotional side of justice, is a blind feeling which may co-exist with the gross- est selfishness, while selfishness is apt to be blind COMMUNAL NATURE 165 to the community of interests, and when it does real- ize them, subordinates them not to any genuine ethical principle, but to maxims of i^rudence. The principle of justice alone supplies the " hold- ing- turn " which is necessary to translate all the forces and relations we have noted into terms of sociality. Under the moulding influence of justice the organic instincts are modified and touched with ethical feeling, while antagonisms are softened and conflicts are mediated. In its light the solidarity of interests becomes apparent, and conflicting interests, where they remain unmediated, are arbitrated before a higher tribunal. Under its transforming touch sympathy becomes wide-eyed love and regard for human kind, while the selfish passions are more and more restrained within the bounds of moderation. Thus the foundations of social and civic organization are laid, and upon these man through his checkered experience is able to build the fabric of his com- munal life. The principle of justice as the ground of commu- nal nature is to be conceived as the communal con- science, and therefore as an ideal will. This enables us to determine the real form of the dualism that underlies the social life of man. The terms are, on the one hand, a plexus of forces which are either anti- social and disintegrating, or without ethical import. This plexus, when viewed in the abstract as unmodi- fied by any other influences, does not tend to lift man above the level of egoism. On the other hand, the principle of justice functions as an ideal communal 166 BASAL CONCEPTS 11^ PHILOSOPHY will, and as a norm of social organization. Man as swayed by the unetliical forces is an egoist, but the ethical forces are altruistic and tend to subordinate the unethical elements of his nature to altruistic laws. If then we conceive the unethical forces as constitut- ing an egoistic will, and the ethical as constituting an ideal altruistic will, the communal dialectic may be represented as a struggle between the egoistic and altruistic wills in which the latter makes per- petually for the social life of man. The conflict is ever waged on these lines. The egoistic will ever tending to seliish individualism, while the effort of the altruistic will is to subordinate egoism to the social and civic order. This dualism is the inner motive of social development. Subject to the modi- fying influence of the environment, it gives rise to existing communal organisms in any given time and place. Now, the determining force in such an organism is called sovereign. How then shall the sovereign power of a community be construed % We may regard the community itself as rising out of unethical grounds, and then we will be committed to the view of Hobbes ; namely, that sovereignty is unethical, and therefore arbitrary. Or we may con- ceive the community as grounded in ethical princi- ple, and then sovereignty will be affected by moral quality. The whole view elaborated above is con- sistent only with the latter supposition. We con- ceive the community to be an ethical individual whose sovereignty embodies itself in a communal will. Will is not arbitrary unethical force. But COMMUT^AL TTATURE 167 wliere there is will there is also conscience, which, as we have seen, is an ideal and universal will that imposes its law on the actual. And where there is conscience there is a consciousness of right as well as a consciousness of responsibility. We do not mean to assert that the individual conscience as such dominates or should dominate the community. But the same ethical norms are active in conscience whether it be an organ of the individual or an organ of the community. The communal will thus stands related to a communal conscience in a way that is analogous to the relation of the individual will to the individual conscience. The communal will, like that of the individual, may act capriciously and arbi- trarily. But the relation of the individual will to conscience imposes upon it the ideas of right and responsibility. In like manner there is a public conscience which contains the norms of communal right and responsibility. The public conscience like the individual is an ideal will founded on the princi- ple of justice. It arises through the sphering out of the individual conscience into an organ of the community. The communal conscience is the con- scious recognition of justice as the norm of commu- nal right. Thus the idea of Eight arises in the social sphere. Communal right is simply justice, regarded as a standard or law of action, and obliga- tion in this sphere is the pressure of this ideal stan- dard on the will of the community. It cannot be said, then, with truth, that the com- munal sovereignty is unethical, or, on the contrary, 168 BASAL COT^CEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY that it is the basis of ethical distinctions. It cannot be said that it creates right or justice in the ethical sense. It is an inversion of the true order to say that any thing is morally right or just because it has been ordained by law. It is legally right, of course, but that is tautology. The community that utters the law rises upon the principle of justice. This is the conscience that functions in it, that gives it the sense of right and responsibility, and that infuses all its energy with ethical quality. The community is an ethical individual endowed with will and conscience. Like all true individ- uality, its life is a process which is to be construed as a dialectic struggle between an actual and an ideal. The actual is the plexus of forces and condi- tions which determine the actual energizing will of the community. The ideal is that sense or principle of justice which functions in the communal con- science. The progress or evolution of communal life arises from the perpetual dialectic between these forces, the communal individual uttering its will under the i^ressure of the communal conscience, which is ever striving to bring it into harmony with its own law. The progressive outcome is the uttered life of the community, its body of laws written and unwritten, its civil and ecclesiastical organisms, its constitutions and forms of government. It is only when we view the community as an un- folding individual, that we can determine its true end or good. The immanent end of individual ac- tivity is self-realization. But it is self-realization COMMUNAL NATURE 169 in view of an ideal which imposes the standard of the self to be realized. The immanent end thus transcends the actual, and throngh translation into the law of the ideal becomes the ideal good and true good of the individual activity. We may apply this without modification to the community. The im- manent end of the communal individual is what it is realizing in its progressive life. But the communal conscience imposes upon its activity the standard and law of ideal justice. The true end thus trans- cends the limits of actual self-realization, and takes the form of an ideal and teleologic good. The good of communal activity is, therefore, the realiza- tion of the ideal communal life. What, then, is this ideal communal life ? The principle of justice will here be our true guide. That principle, as we saw, is one that imposes on each individual's will the obligation to regard the right and good of every other individual as equal to his own. Justice thus effects an equation of individual wills, and thereby subordinates them to a common, universal standard. The idea of the community is that of an organism in which individual wills are subordinated to the will of the whole, and the ideal community is one in whose will the principle of justice is completely triumphant. We thus reach the idea of an organism in which justice is completely dominant, an organism in which the universal right comprehends and realizes all individual rights. And since this universal right thus conserves the true individuality of the members 170 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY of the community in realizing" its own liigliest self, it becomes the highest good of the community. For it is an ideal good of the whole in which the ideal good of all the parts is contained. The notion of such an organism is an ideal that is never com- IDletely realized. But it functions in every commu- nal organization as its conscience, and it is the guiding light of all true political philosophy and statesmanship. The rise of the community is a momentous step in the evolution of the free spirit of man. As the old Greeks clearly saw, it establishes the conditions in which alone man's highest and truest activities can be realized. The community is an ethical indi- vidual and has its roots in the spiritual principle which underlies the world.. We have seen how this principle embodies itself in the psychic constitu- tion of man, and lays the foundation of the evolu- tion of free spiritual life. We see here how it achieves a further embodiment in a communal life of humanity, an embodiment whose ideal is the realization of spiritual activity in its highest and freest form. It is as an organ of the communal con- sciousness and as an intelligent member of a com- munal organism that man reaches the highest devel- opment possible to him in this world, and in losing his life in the common life of humanity finds it again in a higher and nobler form. xn HISTORY The idea of communal nature mediates that of Humanity in that it supplies the sphere in which the common life of man is unfolded. The motive which leads the individual consciousness to sphere out into a universal life is practical, springing from the activity of the ideal principle of justice. When through ethic principles, hovv^ever, man has achieved the basis of a common life, this gives opportunity, as we have seen, for a freer and larger exercise of his spiritual activities, and his whole rich nature pours the fruits of its energies into the common lap. The idea of humanity is that of a common life in v/hich the potencies of individual lives are realized. This idea may be conceived either statically or dynamically, and two branches of humanistic sci- ence will thus arise which may be styled resx)ective- ly, Anthropostatic and Anthropodynamic. These will have the same content, the outj^ut of the human spirit energizing in the communal sphere ; but anthropostatics will treat this output under the category of work done, as the achieved product of the psychic activities ; while anthropodynamics v* ill 172 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY proceed under the category of active energy to in- vestigate the processes in and through which the results are obtained. The idea of anthropostatics is that of culture, a term that is used here as identical with civilization, and stands for the whole achieved product of man's activities in any great age and place. It will include Science, Art, Religion, and Social Organization. The idea of anthropodynamics is that of History. History is culture conceived in the making, and therefore under the categories of force and energy. History deals with the common life as a sphere of becoming which expresses itself in an evolving series. It treats science, art, religion, and the social organism, therefore, not as products, but under the category of development. - The idea of liistory sug- gests its fundamental problems, which are, (1) the nature of the historic series, (2) the conditions of his- toric progress, and, (3) the laws of historic progress. History deals with a series. The life of humanity embodies itself in a succession of manifestations. This succession is a conditional one. Not only does it represent a temporal order, but also a dynamic and causal order. If we look at it externally it pre- sents the unbroken appearance of a flowing stream. "When we penetrate deeper we discover that the stream is subject to the law of conditions, that each phase of its manifestation is traceable to its causal antecedents. And when we cast our glance forward the phenomenon presented is that of evolution. The life of humanity is a procession, a becoming, in HISTORY 173 which every stage is found to rise out of some series of conditions that precedes it. The most obvious view that we can take of the historical movement is, therefore, a mechanical one. The categories of the cosmic series may be applied without modification to the historic series, and every- thing may be conceived as springing out of antece- dent conditions by a species of invincible mechanical necessity. This view leads, therefore, to a kind of fatalism which eliminates freedom from the life of humanity, and with it the larger part of its ethical significance. History, from this point of view, is simply a species of statistic gathering for which a strict mathematical calculus is all that is needed in order to deduce the past and work out infallible pre- dictions for the future. Now, fatalism would be true if nothing had been overlooked in the inventory. But there has been an important oversight. It is true that if we cut the plexus of historic tissues transversely at any point, we will find that its strands are continuous, and this may seem to demonstrate the fatalistic conclusion. But it is forgotten or denied that what has been cut at the centre is the quivering heart of humanity it- self. And this quivering heart is the self-active spirit of man himself. If we eliminate the self- active human spirit from the problem, we have left a corpse and not a living organism. If, however, we count the self-active spirit as one of the factors, then our evolution is secured, but it has lost its fatal- istic aspect ; for a series of manifestations which has 174 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY at its heart the pulsatory movement of a self-active spirit, may in the order of its outward manifestation obey the law of mechanical necessity, but its inner spring- will be a fountain of free activity. The question here is not one of fact, but rather of interpretation. The fact is a humanistic world- series that realizes the phases of an evolution. The problem is how this evolution is to be construed ? "We have seen, in treating- of other aspects of the world-series, that evolution is unintelligible and irrational, if we do not ground it in a spiritual X)rinciple. From this point of view, mechanism, and in particular mechanical evolution, is to be conceived as a form of energizing which presup- poses, but does not contain, the self-activity of the spiritual principle. To characterize the humanistic series as mechanical, would, therefore, be to place it on a level with the cosmic series, and to affirm that while it presupposes, it does not contain, the spir- itual principle. But such a view is not tenable. We have seen how in the psychic stage of the world-evolution, the self-activity of spirit enters into the series as its cen- tral category, so that the x^henomena of the psychic series are not open to purely mechanical construc- tion. Now, the psychic series simply spheres out into the humanistic world-series, at the heart of which, therefore, functions the spiritual energy of the psychic nature. The humanistic world-series is no more open, then, to the purely mechanical con- struction than is the individual psychic series, for HISTORY 175 it contains in it as its central category the principle of spiritual activity. And where there is spiritual self-activity, there also is the i3rinciple of free activ- ity. Freedom thus enters into the series, and func- tions at the heart of the mechanical conditions as a force which transcends mechanism and lifts the whole historic process above the plane of the purely mechanical. In order to discover the conditions of historic progress it is necessary, first, to realize the problem to be solved. This is not purely spiritual or purely mechanical, but rather mechanico-spiritual. It is the problem of the development of a spiritual ac- tivity under mechanical categories and conditions. The elements to be taken into account w^ill be, (1) the historic series itself, which may be analyzed into two parts, the inner activity of the spiritual principle and the form of mechanism or outer ne- cessity which this activity assumes ; (2) the external and limiting conditions of the series as a whole. Now, the central element of the series which de- termines its essential character, is the spiritual energy that works at its heart. This spiritual en- ergy we have already treated in the chapters on Psychic and Communal nature, and have reached the conception of it as a self-active principle whose movement or dialectic is to be construed as an evolution out of potentiality into actuality. It is this immanent dialectic which constitutes the inner motive of the evolution, and also determines it as spiritual in its character. But as we have seen, the 176 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY order of development in a world of becoming is from mechanism to spirit. Spiritual activities must manifest themselves in and through mechanical categories and conditions. We thus have the me- chanical form of the spiritual manifestation and its principle of natural necessity which determines the dependence of its parts. The first question to be settled is that of the rela- tion of the spiritual activity to the form of necessity in which it manifests itself. Spiritual activity and freedom are identical, as we have seen, and the rec- ognition of spiritual activity at the heart of the historic series is also the recognition of the princi- ple of freedom at its heart. Assuming that human- ity holds the principle of free activity in its bosom, the question is whether the form of necessity which mechanism imposes on its expression leaves man in possession of any actual freedom. This seems to admit of the following answer. The existence of the principle of free activity is at all events left un- touched by the conditions of the problem. Man has, therefore, a princi^ole of free activity in his nature. But the categories and laws of manifestation in this world are all mechanical, and the sphere of mani- festation is dominated, therefore, by necessity. Does this effectually block freedom, or is it possible for freedom to overcome necessity ? In the chapter on Morality we have already pointed out the dualism to which this antinomy between freedom and necessity gives rise. From the moral point of view, the spiritual dialectic takes HISTORY 177 the form of a struggle of the spiritual principle to overcome mechanical necessity, and bring it into harmony with its law of freedom. This is a step toward the solution of the present difficultj^ We have only to ascertain how freedom can overcome mechanism in order to make the solution complete. Now, we may concede at the outset that freedom cannot overcome mechanism by suppressing it. Such is not the mode of spiritual progress. But it may overcome by transformation. The law of the series is mechanical causation ; that is, the determination of consequents through antecedent conditions. But choice, as we have seen, is self-determination, the self which determines being the empirical self. Now, if we suppose that this empirical self is the term in the series through which mechanical ne- cessity maintains its grip on human volition, we have only to conceive that free self-activity, in the form of conscience or ideal will, is able to modify the empirical self in such a way that its determina- tions will gradually approximate to the requirements of the ideal law. This would mean the triumph of freedom over mechanism, not by its suppression, but by its transformation, so that while maintaining the integrity of its form, it becomes the instrument of a free sxiirit. The j)ossibility of subordinating mechanical ne- cessity to freedom is the first and most fundamental condition of historic progress. To deny this is tantamount to denying the possibility of progress. The remaining conditions are important, but they 12 178 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY are external. The closest of these are the biologi- cal. The spirit of man animates a corporeal organ- ism which modifies and conditions the whole form of his existence. The biological series includes the psychological and is itself included in the cosmic. The cosmic conditions embrace man's whole phys- ical environment external to his own organism, such as climate, soil, food, habitat. The biologic and cosmic conditions are to be in- cluded in the plexus of mechanical forces which enter into and affect the destiny of man. The vari- ous degrees in which this influence is exerted rela- tive to the strength of the human spirit, have doubt- less much to do in determining race differences and the distinctive characteristics of different tribes or nations. Now, we may accord to these mechanical forces and agencies the full measure of influence which the most liberal construction of facts may call for, without thereby establishing any valid plea for fatalistic necessity. Fatalism rests on the pre- suppositions of the pure passivity of the human spirit and the absolute inflexibility of mechanical conditions. Both presuppositions are false, for, in the first place, we have seen that the very idea of spirit involves activity of the highest form. The soul of man, which is a developing spiritual activity, cannot in its nature be a mere sufferer from the mechanical forces, but must react upon them and modify them as they modify it. In the second place, mechanism is not inflexible. It is itself a modified function of a spiritual principle and is to HISTORY 179 be conceived, therefore, as holding an inner fluency within its inflexible outer form. The world-process, as we have seen, is an evolution in which an inner force passes throug'h mechanism to higher forms of activity. The temper of mechanism is, therefore, flexible and may be moulded into a variety of shapes. Without its presuppositions fatalism falls to the ground, and the conception of necessity that re- mains is one which identifies it with mechanical causation or the iDrinciple that connects phenomena with conditions out of which they arise, and thus maintains the continuity of the series. But this principle, as we have seen, only limits the freedom of spirit in this sense that it determines the form of spiritual manifestation. Mechanism and spirit are not completely antithetic terms. They rather make up a complemental dualism which expresses the potential and actual, the outer and inner of reality. The above conception of the conditions of man's life enables us to see how the gradual evolution in and through them of a spiritual type of being is possible. If the spiritual principle in man is active it will react upon the mechanism which environs it, and if this mechanism is flexible, then it will be modified and the conditions of progress will be established. Not only so, but that very principle of continuity which enables mechanism to impose a limit upon spiritual activity is an instrument which spirit turns to its own use. For if, through it, mech- anism loads its dice and predetermines results, it 180 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY is always possible that the weights may be spir- itual and that the outcome may be spiritual advance. The only inflexible strand in mechanical causation is that which binds every part of the series fast to the car of some antecedent. It demands that in this antecedent shall be found the determinants of what follows. But it gives no insight into the nature of these determinants. They may be me- chanical agents or they may be a spiritual activity. In the psychic series the antecedent of choice is the empirical self, that is, the self with all the modifica- tions it has inherited and acquired through its own experience. But we have seen how this empirical self is open to the constant modifying influence of an ideal spiritual force which is ever active in the human consciousness, and how, upon this activity of the ideal the possibility of an approximation of the empirical self to the ideal standard is grounded. In the psychic series the antecedent is a fluent term and may be spiritually modified, and we have only to recognize the same essential conditions as affecting the life of humanity in order to see hoAV the antecedent in the historic series, which is some- thing analogous to the empirical self of the psycLic series, will be always open to the modifying influ- ence of that ideal spiritual activity which is ever energizing in the conscious experience of man. The principle of mechanical continuity may thus be made subservient to the development of spiritual freedom. The great obstacle in the way of recognizing this HISTORY 181 is a false idea of freedom. The only absolute free- dom is that of a self-active spirit which has all the conditions of its activity within itself. That is to say, the only absolutely free being is absolute spirit. But man is not absolute spirit. He is a creature endowed with a spiritual iDrinciple, but this principle is not in a state of pure actuality, but it is rather passing- perpetually from potence into actu- ality. This determines man as a developing being who has a history in time, and whose life is subject to mechanical conditions. The freedom of such a being cannot be absolute, but must be that which is open to a developing creature. At the centre of man's nature is a spiritual iDrinciple, which is the potency of absolute freedom. Its ideal is, therefore, absolute freedom, and this ideal is uttered in the voice of conscience. But the ideal stands as the goal of an infinite progress through mechanical conditions which modify the spiritual activity in the following manner. Choice is self-determination, and if all the condi- tions of it were immanent to the self-activity that chooses, then absolute freedom would be realized. But some of the conditions of man's self-determina- tion are external to his self-activity and enter into it, therefore, as modifying elements. Now, the empiri- cal self that determines in choice is the self-activity thus modified. And since it is a modified self that determines, it will be a modified self that is deter- mined. The form of absolute freedom ; that is, self- determination, will be maintained in this activity, 182 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY but the activity itself will be one that is modified by external and mechanical conditions. The freedom that is realized in such an activity will not be an ab- solute freedom, but one that is modified in various degrees by the mechanical conditions to which the spiritual activity is subject. It is clear that the extent to which the mechanical conditions are able to modify the spiritual activity and bring it down from the plane of absolute free- dom, will depend on the state of development of this spiritual activity itself, and that it will vary with this development. And here comes in the function of the ideal through which the law of perfect free- dom is kept perpetually before the spirit of man, quickening it ever into higher stages of activity, and thus xDenetrating and modifying that mass which we call the empirical self. The presence of an ideal of freedom in the human consciousness as the goal of spiritual activity thus makes the achievement of a relative and modified freedom possible. For, while man has a spiritual principle in his nature which sets before him an ideal freedom as the law of his being, he is a developing creature and the law of his activity must be a law of becoming, that is, a law of xDrogress. His relative freedom, the only freedom that is open to him, is achieved in an in- finite and perpetual progress toward the realization of a spiritual ideal. It is on the negative side of the problem that we hit upon the only real element of fatalism with which the destiny of man is affected. So long as we deal HISTORY 188 with positive principles and forces, we are in the sphere of progress, growth, and development. But there is a negative side to human life as well as to the world in general. We have seen in the chapter on Non-Being and Evil, that evil is a kind of eccen- tricity or aberration which arises out of negative grounds. These negative grounds are inevitable to creature existence and may be traced to one primal root, the absence from the creature of the principle of self -existence and its primal dependence, therefore, upon another. If we ask for the primal ground of the world we are led out of the world to its transcen- dent source. This negative quality of the creature constitutes its dependence, and out of its dependence springs its mutability and liability to aberration. It is true that the creative energy expresses itself in a spiritual potence in the world as the immanent IDrinciple of its development. But the immediate presupposition of this potence is the self-activity of absolute Spirit. It would otherwise be an abstrac- tion. Now, when we represent this potentiality as gradually passing into actuality in the world-series, and as finally becoming the norm of conscious spirit- ual life in the soul of man, we do not in reality bring in a mediatory principle between the Creator and the world, but we rather indicate the mode in which absolute self-activity can be conceived as becoming the creative energy of an imperfect and dependent world. The world could not be the immediate phe- nomenon of the Absolute without being absolute itself. But as the gradual product of absolute 184 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY energy conceived as going- out into the negative sphere in the form of spiritual potence, the rise of a real world which is yet absolutely dependent on a transcendent ground becomes intelligible. If now we suppose the world-series to become self- conscious at any point, as it does in the soul of man, we can well understand that its consciousness will not be that of the Absolute, but rather a creature con- sciousness which, through the same process by which it becomes conscious of itself, will also arrive at the consciousness of the absolute ground on which it depends. Some such reflection as this must have been in the mind of Descartes when he affirmed a necessary connection between man's idea of himself and his idea of God, and further conceived the idea of God to be the presupposition of man's self-con- sciousness. Descartes must have felt dimly what may be apprehended more clearly; namely, that what we have called the ideal self in man or the psychic logos, is the immediate organ of man's intuition or intimation of the Absolute whom his spirit calls Father. And since this ideal self con- tains the norms of our conceptions of absolute good- ness, beauty, and truth, the spontaneous synthesis in which our consciousness binds these with the idea of God and represents God as the ideal good of man, is the true voice of a profound reason. To return now from a seeming digression : We have said that it is on the negative side of the prob- lem that we hit upon the only element of fatalism with which the destiny of man is affected. This can HISTORY 185 now be verified. If fatalism enters our world at all, it comes in through the door of evil. "We have seen that evil is aberration, or departure of any creature from its normal orbit which represents its good. It is only when the creature is in its normal i^osition, fulfilling" the true law of its being, that the world is friendly to it and x^resents itself as a sphere of order, law, and development. If it wanders from its true path, the forces which before were propitious be- come hostile and do it harm. What was before a sphere of order becomes one of cross purposes and caprice. To the wandering planet the world is out of joint and cosmos has been turned into chaos. Evil enters as an active force into the destiny of man through the will. The normal choice of the human will is the ideal good, and the normal path- way of its orbit is toward its realization. This is true however we may conceive the ideal good, whether as an ideal spiritual self or as God. Evil enters into the life of such a being when it departs from its true orbit and chooses some other guide than the law of conscience which is the law of the ideal, or when, in the extreme case, it says to evil " be thou my good." The soul that thus chooses has wrenched itself from its true orbit and become a wanderer in the moral universe. The forces which made for good when it was in its true plane, now make for evil. The vision of the soul becomes distorted and it can no longer see truth or beauty. Its will hav- ing lost its ideal guide, yields itself to i^assion and caprice. The stars seem to fight against it, and it 186 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY gradually sinks into the pit of darkness and " jDri- mal eldest chaos." If we generalize this rei^resentation we will reach the idea of evil as a negative factor in human prog- ress. The ills of humanity do not all spring from normal causes. The worst of them are the fruits of an abnormal force. Evil enters the human series as a deioravity of will, it leads to a degradation of character and type. It acts as a disturbing factor, creating disorder, strife, warfare and devastation. It is the principle of hate instead of love, of chaos instead of cosmos, of stagnation instead of healthful activity, of dissolution instead of development, of death instead of life. We have now reached a point from which it is possible to obtain a general conce^Dtion of the con- ditions of historic progress. There are two main factors in the historic stream, one positive, the other negative. The positive factor includes all the positive forces, spiritual and mechanical. The negative is the force of evil. The positive forces are conditions of development and determine the on- ward movements of the race. Central among these, functions the activity of the human spirit. But this spiritual activity, as we saw, is conditioned and modi- fied in various modes and degrees by the mechan- ical forces which surround and affect it. These forces themselves are not, however, inflexible and fatalistic in their nature and tendency, but are fluent and flex- ible, and while determining the empirical form of the spiritual life of humanity, are open to the modi- HISTORY 187 iying and moulcling- influences of spiritual laws. The result of the synthesis of the spiritual and me- chanical forces is the possibility of a movement of spiritual evolution toward an ideal which may be characterized as the gradual realization of human freedom. The great foe to this movement of spiritual evo- lution, as we have seen, is evil, which having its negative grounds in non-being, is ever tending tow- ard non-being. Evil enters the humanistic stream through the inlet of will. It is a capricious, fatalis- tic force, opposing and destroying the work of the positive principles, and acting ever as a disintegra- tive, dissolutive agent. The principle of evil is the motive force of disturbance, disorder, anarchy and chaos. It is the one irreconcilable foe of freedom, the one baleful, demoniac spirit which ever dogs the footsteps of life with the shadow of death. The laws of historic progress are to be determined in view of the nature and conditions of the historic series. We do not mean by laws, in this connection, the particular forces which enter into the historic movement. These are all included in the conditions of the movement. By law is here meant mode or method, and when we seek the laws of the historic movement we are looking for the categories that will adequately represent it as a whole. Now, it is possible to advance two radically differ- ent theories in explanation of the same fact. The historic series may be subsumed under either the category of mechanical causation or that of self- 188 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY determining will. The first alternative will give rise to tlie necessarian, and in some cases fatalis- tic, theories in which all things are conceived to be strictly predetermined by mechanical conditions, and no place is left for freedom. The second alter- native leads to the denial of necessity and the as- cription of everything to a self-determining agent. Freedom, therefore, reigns supreme and the ten- dency is to ignore the claims of mechanism. But we have seen in the preceding analysis that no such short and easy methods are possible. The fact we have to deal with is two-sided, and its ex- planation is one which must in some way effect a synthesis of mechanism and freedom. How this is to be done may be suggested by the insight we have already obtained into the nature and condi- tions of the historic series. In the light of all the elements that enter into it, the whole significance of the historic movement is expressed in the idea of a progressive struggle of the human spirit toward the realization of ideal freedom. In the progress itself consists the actual freedom that is open to a devel- oping creature. Now, if we confine our attention to the positive factors, the fact that presents itself is a dialectic in- teraction between spiritual and mechanical forces, in which progress is made when the spiritual forces are able to dominate and modify the mechanical. If we suppose this to be uniformly the case and also assume the constancy of the forces, the result will be a straight-forward and gradual process of spirit- HISTORY 189 ual evolution. But nowhere does such a movement appear, and this because neither of our suppositions is strictly true. In the history of the race it is not true that the spiritual forces have uniformly domi- nated, or that the interacting forces have remained constant. Given a particular combination of me- chanical forces, as for example the environment of a particular nation or race, and it may be assumed that the operation of these will be fairly uniform. But the spiritual forces show a disposition to ebb and flow. The human spirit is mysteriously seized by some inspiration and the force of its energy sweeps everything before it. Again, some paralysis seems to fall on the spirit of a people, and there fol- low an atrophy of spiritual activities and a lapse to a lower stratum of development. 80 our expectation of even-paced jDrogress is dis- appointed, and instead we find a dual movement in which the fruits of development seem to be ever fall- ing into the jaws of dissolution. The truth is, the positive forces never act alone, but the whole drama has its negative side. There is in the world a ten- dency to non-being which makes it necessary for the evolution i3hilosopher to couple with his category of development that of dissolution. Progress is made through the triumph of integrative over disintegra- tive forces. But at length equilibrium is reached, a period of stagnation ensues, and then the destruc- tive forces take the lead in the race and the whole labor of the builders is gradually undone. This is the picture in the sphere of mechanical forces. 190 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY Where tlie spiritual forces enter the fact is not al- tered, but it requires different interpretation. Upon the mechanical dialectic which still goes on is su- perimposed a dialectic of spirit. Mechanism affects spirit not externally but through spirit itself. All the conditions, positive and negative, are translated into spiritual effect and become immanent in the spiritual struggle. Thus arises a law of duality which brings the whole movement under the categories of develop- ment and dissolution. The forces of growth and organization prevail for a time and we have the phenomena of human progress, of nations develop- ing in power and civilization, of races moving on to a splendid destiny. But a time comes Avhen the forces of negation which Imve been held in solution assert themselves, paralysis of energy ensues and then the sinews of the people's strength begin to rot under the corroding influence of vice, their faith bov/s to scepticism, the rich fabrics which they have built with the travail of their spirit dissolve and, amid the ruins of the once fair tenement of their spirit, courage fails and hope sinks into the night of despair. The world thus seems to be a monster that swal- lows up all its own children. The baleful spell of evil and negation seems to have destroyed our fair vision of a humanity rising gradually into the light of freedom and thrown the shadow of fatalism over the whole scene. This would be the logical conclu- sion were not a higher interpretation of the human HISTORY 191 story iDossible, which enables us to see light through the darkness and to bind again the broken threads of continuity. The true method of history can be best appre- hended, we think, by conceiving the origin in in- dividual form, of reservoirs of stored-up spiritual energy which stand at the beginning of each new ex^och. We may represent a new increment of con- scious spiritual force as being generated in these reservoirs and as supplying the living inspiration of a new culture. The new movement may be local, national, or racial ; its history will be that of the struggle of a new ideal, partial as it ordinarily is, to transform the emj^irical conditions in which it en- ergizes, into new and higher forms. The struggle will under normal conditions be successful until the potential of the primal inspiration has been ex- hausted. Then the forces of the negative will begin to dominate and a movement will set in toward dis- solution and death. Now, there is no natural reason why the movement of decay should not end in dissolution and bring historic evolution to a close. And this Avould in- evitably happen, we think, did not the historic in- dividual or group, in which the new order is ini- tiated, bear a peculiar relation to the old. The rise of prophets of new dispensations is coincident with the deep decline of the old. When the destnictive forces are most rampant and the spiritual world in which man has lived crumbles about his ears, hoi:>e is crushed and the spiritual consciousness is thrown 192 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY back violently upon itself. It is tliis violent back- flow of spiritual reaction that precedes new incarna- tions of organizing force and the incoming of a new and higher ideal in the consciousness of some his- toric individual. There appears on earth then a new hero, perhaps a new martyr, the founder of a new movement, or a spiritual regenerator of the order that is dying out. This back- flow of the spiritual consciousness upon itself, caused by a deep sense of the prevalence of death and dissolution, is a necessary condition of the birth of new spiritual forces and ideals. But it alone will not explain the result. The reactionary wave is one of despair and in itself will produce only the skeptical iDessimist who gives up the struggle and escapes the anguish of it by a plunge into non- being, or the stoic who stubbornly resists in the in- ner citadel of his personality, the onset of despair and when his dearest hopes are dead " orders his stout heart to bear it." But it is only when the back-flow is met and overcome by some Divine in- flow of new si3iritual energy, that the historic indi- vidual is born and the stoic is transformed into the hero-martyr of a new dispensation. In order, then, to conceive the true fortunes of the struggle for spiritual freedom in human history, we must modify our concept of fatalistic evolution and decay by this idea of an epochal inflow of spiritual force which embodies itself in the consciousness of some historic individual or group, in whom it be- comes the living energy of new ideals of life and HISTORY 193 culture, and in whom also it stands related to the dissolutive stag-es of the old order, checking its re- action of spiritual des^Dair by that inflowing- wave of new Divine force which brings to light new spheres of ideal spiritual life. This intuition enables us to restore the broken threads of continuity and to see how the X3athway of humanity may through all its vicissitudes be up- ward toward the light. But it contains a x^resuppo- sition ; namely, the inability of the race to conserve its own development and its dependence on some power that transcends it for the renovation of its springs of spiritual energy. For, just as we discov- ered in the sphere of the individual life, the neces- sary function of a psychic logos which at the same time supplies an ideal spiritual force to its devel- opment and binds it in a living bond to the being that transcends it ; so here, in the broader sphere of the universal life of humanity, we come upon the necessity for a historic logos which shall at the same time supply the race with its advancing spir- itual ideals and bind it with an indefectible bond to that absolute fountain of spiritual energy to which it owes the continuity of its life. 13 XIII EELIGION Eeligion is the highest spiritual outcome of the common life of humanity. Its spring- is that his- toric log-OS in which there is a functional union of man's spiritual nature with the absolute Spirit which is its presupposition. It is in this synthetic spring that religion has its primal source. An in- tuition of this fact enables us to understand, as we could not otherwise do, the religious phenomena of the race. Man's religious consciousness, even in its lowest forms and whatever be the circumstances and conditions of its rise, holds in it a sense, however vague, of some power that transcends it, upon which it depends, and with which it needs to be at peace. The conscience of man, instinctively at first and re- flectively afterward, identifies this power with the source of its own ideal life, and thus the object of the religious consciousness becomes also the ideal of supreme good. Eeligion thus includes the ethic springs in which, as we have seen, are contained the norms of the social and civic life of man. And this explains, we think, the universal fact that all social and civic life RELIGIOIS- 195 and organization are historically g-rounded in relig- ious soil. For religion is the faith by which the spirit of man maintains its vital connection with the transcendent ground of its existence and activity, and this faith, however rudimental it may be, con- stitutes the medium in w^hich man's whole life is unified and developed. But we are specially interested at this point, not so much in the historic aspect of religion as in its nat- ure and the grounds on which it rests. The idea of religion presupposes certain structural conceptions treated of in former chapters ; namely, the ideas of absolute being, the world-process as related to its absolute ground, and the human soul. Without some rational notions of these it will be impossi- ble to conceive either the grounds out of which the religious consciousness arises or the fundamental problems it has to solve. Religion rests on a dual relation of distinction and synthesis between the human soul and its ab- solute ground. This connection can be rendered intelligible only when we conceive the Absolute as spirit, that is, as self-conscious personal being. This absolute Spirit, energizing in the outer nega- tive sphere, generates the world which is to be con- ceived as the product of a transcendent spiritual cause and as containing the potence of spiritual development in it as the immanent principle of its activity. This potence, which is nothing independ- ent of the Absolute, represents the mode in which the creative force generates a developing and de- 196 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY pendent sphere of reality. It actualizes itself in tlie world-process, passing u]3 from mechanism to spir- itual actuality, which it first achieves in the soul of man. The human soul is thus the highest actualization of the spiritual potence that is immanent in the world. But the human soul is not complete actual- ity. In it the unfolding world-energy has become conscious, and it is, therefore, a being that is ever passing out of potence into actuality. This consti- tutes its activity a ceaseless evolution, the infinite good of which is completely actualized spirit. Ui3on this basis, as we have seen, rises the soul's dual consciousness and life. Its activity is a dualistic dialectic, a passage from mechanism to spirit and in its consciousness exiDerieiice is a species of dialectic between an empirically limited and modified self and an ideal self which we have called the psychic logos. This logos functions as a spiritual ideal which contains the norms of perfection and im- poses its ethical law upon the soul as its uncondi- tional standard of duty. We have seen, also, how this psychic logos spheres out into the historic lo- gos in the universal life of humanity, and how this historic logos becomes the special organ of religion. In order, however, to determine truly the nature and grounds of religion, there is a special factor which must be taken into account, and that is the existence of evil. We have in another place endea- vored to theorize evil as a factor of reality. Here the point of interest is its bearing on the conditions KELIGION 197 witli which religion has to deal. This, however, is a diffic-iilt problem w^hose solution involves a rational insig-ht into the nature of the relation that subsists between the soul of man and the Absolute, since on our conception of this relation hangs our whole theory of the nature of evil. Now, in the light of conceptions already achieved we are led to view the relation as being necessarily one of consciously distinct individualities. The Absolute can be con- ceived only as purus actus or completely actualized spirit, and its consciousness will consequently be that of comi^lete and self -realized individuality, while the human soul is ever passing from potence to actuality in the stages of an evolution, and its consciousness is that of an imi:>erfect, developing creature. The synthesis is the function of the lo- gos. This is one of the hardest points in religious philosophy ; namel}^ to realize how the ideal which imposes its law upon the soul, functions also as the organ of religion. It is necessary, however, to mas- ter it in order to become competent to deal with the most vital issues of religious theory. When we posit a synthesis between the human soul and the Abso- lute in the logos, we do not assert the ultimate identity of the two. There is an identity of essence, since both are spiritual activities. But there is not identity of individuality, of consciousness, or of per- sonality. The individualities are distinct in that, while both are unitary, the Absolute is self-compre- hended in an eternal circle, while the human ego is related to an empirical stream which it is ever gath- 198 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ering up into knots, but never completely comxDre- hending. The consciousnesses and personalities are distinct for analogous reasons, because in man they are functions of imperfect, developing activities which determine their distinctive characteristics, while the consciousness and personality of the Ab- solute are absolute and, therefore, incapable of de- velopment. The synthesis involved must then mean something other than identity. It is a common experience in imparting instruction, that the thoughts which are perfectly comprehended in the mind of the master are able to penetrate the consciousness of the pupil, even when they are very imperfectly understood. In such case they are only seeds planted, which must spring up and ripen before they are capable of becoming in the mind of the pupil what they are in that of the master. Now, we may find in this experience of the interaction of minds a key to the connection between the Absolute and the human soul, in the logos. It is possible that the contents of the absolute consciousness may enter the human consciousness as norms of a perfection which it only dimly comprehends, and the reasonableness of this supposition is borne out by the fact that man has in conscience such anticipations of a perfection that he does not understand, but which at the same time presses on him as the ideal law of his nature. We conceive, then, that in the consciousness of the ideal self or psychic logos, there is such a synthesis of the Absolute and the soul of man as enables the RELIGION 199 Absolute to communicate its own thought to the hu- man consciousness as the norm of ideal truth, and its own will or volition as the norm or law of an ideal good. We conceive, in short, the existence of such a synthesis as makes the inflow of the Absolute's thought and energy into the channels of human spir- itual activity not only iDossible but rational and probable. The result we obtain from this, perhaps over- subtle, disquisition, is the concei^t of the human soul as a being distinct in its conscious individuality and in the type of its activity, from the absolute Spirit, while it is yet, through its logos-conscious- ness, in close and effective connection with it. And this brings us to the point where the bearing of evil on the religious problem can be most clearly seen. If the individuality of the soul is distinct from that of the Absolute, then the will of the soul is also distinct and it has the power of individual choice. But we have seen that the ideal perfection of the soul consists in thinking what the Absolute thinks and willing what the Absolute wills. The soul has a distinct will, however, and may use it to dethrone the Absolute from the place of the ideal and to put some inferior and creature good in its place. Thus evil will originate in the soul and aber- ration or departure from its normal orbit will fol- low, with all the consequences which have been de- tailed in the preceding chapter. The effect of this fall into evil, in the religious sphere, will be twofold. In the first place, it will 200 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY produce within the soul a depravation of will and a consequent corruption of the whole nature. In the dualistic strug-gle between the positive and negative forces of good and evil, the negative will gain the ascendancy and the soul will set out on a downward road. In the second place, it will produce what we may call a typed defection, namely, a fall from God. The distinction between the soul and its absolute ground will widen into a breach and the difference of will and consciousness will become a gulf and the soul will become possessed with a painful sense of its distance and alienation from God. Accompanying this sense of alienation will be a deepening experience of the disturbance of the normal emotional relation of the soul to God. The sense of harmony and of the Divine favor will be exchanged for a growing feeling of discordance and a deepening sense of the Divine Avrath, and under the weight of the sense of its own fall from the path of the ideal and its own consequent demerit, a load of conscious guilt will begin to weigh it down, until instead of a joyful bathing of the soul in the light of God's countenance, there will be a fearful look- ing for of Divine judgment. The primal sense of religious need is founded in the nature of man as an imperfect creature whose progressive life must consist in a development of his spiritual potencies into actuality. AVe have seen in the last chapter that humanity has not the power in itself to conserve its own development, but that the springs of its strength are in the Absolute. Man RELIGION 201 is, therefore, both a growing and a dependent creat- ure, and out of this springs his sense and his need of religion. The primal function of religion, there- fore, is to subserve the sxDiritual evolution of man by binding his soul fast to the absolute source of its strength, and by opening it to the inflow of the Divine grace through the channel of unifying love. But this religious need is intensified and made more urgent hy evil. The moral degradation of the soul under the sense of its fall becomes a conviction of sin, and the feeling of guilt and the consequent anticipation of the Divine wrath are all experiences arising from the soul's aberration from the normal of its true orbit. In view of them the religious need becomes not simply spiritual development and com- munion with God but redemption, regeneration, re- storation from a fall, atonement and pardon. Conceiving the need of religion as thus intensified by the existence of evil and its effects in the spirit- ual world, we see that the problem of religion is profounder than that of simple morality. It is true that religion must conserve morality, but this arises not from the identity of religion with morality, but from the fact that religion includes morality. The moral intuition conceives spiritual renovation and the evolution of man from the inner standpoint of conscience. In conscience the ideal law of the soul's higher self is revealed and moral progress consists in the gradual approximation of the em- liirical self to the standard of the ideal. The moral drama is, therefore, the inner drama of conscience 202 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY as an autonomous force. The relig-ious intuition goes deeper. It sees that conscience can be auton- omous only so far as the Absolute functions in it and causes it to think the divine thoughts and utter in its legislation the divine will. Only thus, by becom- ing the voice of God, does conscience become the organ of an ideal law and, therefore, autonomous. Eeligion recognizes the fact that conscience may be- come perverted by turning away from the primal source of its inspiration and becoming either self- willed and trusting to its own inner light, or plac- ing some inferior and creature good upon the throne of the ideal. Eeligion says, therefore, that the primal need of all, which underlies the moral, and the satisfaction of Avhich is the precondition of moral good, is the soul's i*ecognition of its depend- ence on God and its need of a life in union with his. Man is an individual with a conscience and a moral ideal to realize. He is also a type of being standing in relation to the absolute ground of his ex- istence and toward which the normal law of his be- ing tends in an upward spiritual progress. He has, therefore, a typal destiny before him, the achieve- ment of unity with the divine life. In view of the issues evil has created in the exx^erience of our race, both the moral and typal problems have become more grave and more urgent. The synthesis of re- ligion must include both. It must conserve moral renovation and development ; it must also conserve the typal need by leading man back to God and RELIGIOT^ 203 keeping" ever alive in liim tlie consciousness of liis divine relationship. The conclusions we come to here enable us to interpret another element which stands central in religious experience and connects it with the pro- foundest law of historic i)rogress. It has already appeared that humanity is not able to conserve its own spiritual evolution, but must seek the springs of its i^ower in the Absolute. From this point of view the energy of the Absolute must be conveyed into the channels of human activity, and hence arises the ne- cessity for mediation. Historic progress in general, as we saw, is mediated by the appearance of historic characters and groups, through whom the spiritual supply is introduced from the Absolute into the hu- man sphere. These historic individuals or groups thus serve as reservoirs of a stored-up siDiritual energy which gradually permeates the mass of humanity and constitutes the inspiration of a new national devel- opment, or it may be, a new chapter in civilization. This law of mediation finds its most important and momentous application in the sphere of religion. The profoundest root of religion is, as we have seen, the synthesis of the human consciousness with the Divine in the historic logos, and out of this root springs also the deepest issue of religion ; namel}^ the typal union of tbe soul with God as the primal condition of all spiritual and moral good. Since, then, religion is concerned with the springs and roots of all spiritual life and development, it is to be expected that this spiritual law of mediation 204 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY will have its most momentous application in the re- ligious sphere. Every historic personage through whom a real advance is made in human progress is a mediator, and every group or nation which adds a chapter to the spiritual evolution of humanity is the bearer of an inspiration which it has received from a higher source. But the mediator may not be con- scious of his mission. The historic logos may use the individual or the nation for the accomplishment of a purpose which the agent does not realize. This has been finely portrayed by Shakespeare in the his- torical plays. Julius Cfcsar, as the incarnation of the imperial spirit, rides triumphantly into power over the ruins of the Republic, although his own re- flection shows little other motive than personal am- bition. Again, in the English series, Bolingbroke is able to destroy the old monarchy and introduce a new chapter in English history, because he is the bearer of the new national spirit, although he shows little consciousness of the mission he is realizing and is dominated, in the main, by somewhat paltry personal aims. The historic logos employs uncon- scions and, it may be, hostile instruments to accom- i:)lish its purposes, and history will be studied with- out discernment if the wide and important scope of this unwitting mediational function be not recog- nized. For there is a true sense in which the logos overrules all things, and even the wrath of wicked men is made to subserve the ends of good. But the religious mediator is one who is conscious of his spiritual mission. Whether he be the foun- RELIGION 205 cler of a new dispensatioii or a prophet and reformer of an old one, he must feel himself to be the mouth- piece and organ of the Supreme Power. He must be God's man, and speak and act as he is moved by the Holy Ghost. He may be mistaken and the light that is in him may be mingled with darkness, but he must always be the conscious organ of a spiritual power that is higher than himself. Every new re- ligion and every great reform, or revival of an old religion, is mediated by such a historic individual or group, and the new spiritual impulse that is thus commiinicated to the race will have a power to mould and elevate humanity that is proportioned to the spiritual purity and elevation of its organ. The mediation effected may, however, be only rel- ative and incomplete. The historic individual may found a new dispensation, as Mohammed did, with- out himself claiming divine honors or becoming an object of religious worship. The historic mediator may simply regard himself as God's prophet. He may be conscious simply of speaking as he is moved by the Holy Ghost, and although in performing this function he may found a new religion or introduce a new spiritual content into one that already exists, his function will be different from that of a media- tor who is also the Christ. This will appear if we determine what the Christ-function is and what it implies. The historic logos is the medium through which all spiritual truth comes to man. Now, the primal ground of spiritual communication in this medium is a synthesis of the divine and the human, 206 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY in wliicli the divine s^Dirit informs the human spirit with energies that inspire it, but which the human spirit only partly apprehends. The prophet is the man who realizes this mode of divine communica- tion in his consciousness, and is inspired by it to the utterance of new truth. There is conceivable, however, a higher conscious- ness than this ; namely, the consciousness of the syn- thesis itself. The logos, as we have seen, is that or- gan in which the norms of perfection are revealed, conscience giving the revelation on the ethical side. These norms imperfectly apprehended by the human spirit, are recognized as lineaments of an absolute consciousness in which they are completely realized. Could the logos now completely realize its con- tent, there would appear- a soul in which the con- sciousness of the synthesis would arise and it would feel itself to be both human and divine. There is no contradiction involved in the conception of such a nature. It is in fact the logical outcome of the idea of creation developed in the chapters on Being and Non-Being and Becoming. We there reached the conception of the world as the product of the logos- energy of the Absolute. But the world rises to spiritual consciousness in the human soul and this soul has immanent in it the consciousness of an ideal which it cannot fully realize and this ideal, con- ceived as completely actualized, is also its idea of absolute spirit. The ideal thus mediates between the soul and the Absolute, entering on the one side into the developing series of the temporal life and RELIGION- 207 on the other side resting" in the eternal blessedness of the Absolute. In it the teleological idea of the creation is therefore realized. The synthetic consciousness which thus arises is that of the Christ as distinguished from the religious IDrophet. It is a consciousness in which an ideal harmony or atonement is established between the divine and the human. It is a consciousness in which the typal gulf is perpetually closed and unity is restored by the entering of the soul into the son- ship of God and the reciprocal passage of the divine Father spirit into the soul as God in the Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The Christ, then, is the ideal mediator between God and the human spirit. There may be prophets without number, who embody the divine inspira- tion, and founders of new dispensations which mark decided spiritual advances of the race. But as there is only one God and one perfect ideal for humanity, it is not conceivable that there should be more than one perfect type of mediation. The historic individual in whom this perfect type is embodied, will stand, therefore, as the Christ of the race. He will be the founder of the perfect universal religion of the spirit, which will ideally meet every need and become the great spiritual fountain-light for all humanity. The above analysis supplies criteria by which various religious conceptions may be judged. Of these conceptions the leading at the present day are mysticism, agnosticism, i^ositivism, the moralistic 208 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY theory of Kant, and the absolutism of the school of Hegel. Mysticism is an element in true as well as false religion. Its truth consists in the fact that the soul, through the organ of the logos, becomes inspired with truth which it can only imperfectly understand. It is compelled, therefore, to resort to symbols and imagery which present in concrete vision what the reason is able only xoartially to translate. Mysticism becomes false when it at- tempts to substitute its symbols for completely rationalized conceptions. The two historic embodi- ments of this misuse of mysticism are Hindu pan- theism and the Theosophy of Jacob Bohme. Hindu pantheism starts with the conception of the noth- ingness of the relative or phenomenal world and reaches with a bound the idea of the Absolute as the unitary negation of this nothingness, an un- thinkable Nirvana into which everything falls and is lost. Jacob Bohme starts with the conception of absolute being as a chaos of struggling and hetero- geneous elements, light and darkness, life and death, good and evil, out of which a dualistic world gradually emerges. Neither of these forms of mysticism are able, how- ever, to arrive consistently at true religious concep- tions. Hindu pantheism, through its negative idea of the Absolute, can achieve nothing but an ideal which swallows up the human spirit, and it can found no religious discipline, therefore, except a prescription for self-annihilation. The Bohmistic scheme fails also, but in a somewhat different way. KELIGION 209 Through its confusion of being and non-being in one concei3tion, it is unable to achieve any rational or coherent ideas of the world. The result is a species of intellectual chaos out of which the pro- foundly religious feeling of Bohme is able to elicit onh^ the semblance of order. Agnosticism is the theory that postulates the ex- istence of an unintelligible absolute as the ground of the world. It clings to the transcendent idea of religion, but because the absolute nature is incon- ceivable it finds itself unable to realize any nexus between the Absolute and the relative. This deprives it of any intelligible basis for religion and it is com- pelled to fall back on the sense of mystery as the sole content of the religious consciousness. This is tantamount to defecating the religious idea of both its moral and tjq^al significance. The agnostic may then speak of reverence and worship, but these sentiments can only be called forth by moral and spiritual attributes. The logic of agnosticism in the end reduces the whole religious problem to an enigma which it is compelled to give up. Positivism eliminates the Absolute from its relig- ious conceptions altogether and seeks to find in humanity a satisfying object for the religious con- sciousness. Its idea of man is also a purely natural- istic one, from which all sx3iritual elements are elim- inated. There is, thus, no sj^iritual foundation left to build on and what it proposes is not religion, but a substitute that fails to satisfy most of the pro- founder demands of the religious consciousness. 14 210 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY Of the moralistic theory of rehgion Kant is the ablest exponent. "Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason " is almost the greatest modern phil- osophical treatise on religion. It is founded on a line intuition of the dualistic nature of man's moral consciousness. The indwelling in man of opposing principles of good and evil is posited as the ground of an everlasting moral struggle. And this strug- gle supplies the basis, on the humanistic side, for a doctrine of the atonement made by Jesus Christ, through which is secured the victory of the good over the evil and the establishment of a kingdom of God on earth. Here is a moral conception which leads us to expect much when the philosopher takes up the consideration of the transcendent aspect of his problem. But here Kant strikes the limits of his philosophy. The root of the difficulty is his failure, in dealing with the metaphysical side of the problem of knowledge, to reach any adequate notion of the nature of God or any solid assurance of his existence. His failure here cuts him off from any rational doctrine of transcendence, a failure which is not retrieved in his moral postulates. For these simply assert as moral necessities, but without any additional speculative insight, the fundamental data of religion ; namely, the existence of God as a tran- scendent being and the freedom and immortality of the soul. And depending absolutely on moral grounds for their validity, the data of religion must be subordinated to the data of morality. The result of this failure to assert any real transcendence is RELIGION 211 tliat relig-iou is virtually redaced to a humanistic basis. Kant's theory of religion is line on its ethical side, but its siDeculative blindness causes it to miss or adumbrate many of the basal ideas and distinc- tions on which an adequate philosophy of religion must be grounded. Absolutism in religion is represented by the Heg- elian school. Hegel's intuition strikes deeper than Kant's, and obtains a fuller and firmer grasp of spirit- ual reality. For a concex)tion of the internal move- ment of spiritual activity and of the living process of absolute spirit, Hegelism alone, of modern systems, supplies an effective clue. But Hegel fails in one cardinal point of religious theory. He is never able to differentiate absolute spirit from the spirit of man. This weakness arises, as we have seen m an earlier chapter, from his failure to achieve a true doctrine of the negative. This alone enables us to conceive the modification that constitutes tbe differentia of rela- tivity and consequently the differentia of the human soul. Not being able to differentiate the Absolute from the conscious activity in man, Hegel sees no oth- er way of defining religion than as the consciousness which the Absolute has of itself. This is virtually to annul the human spirit as a distinct individuality, and, as we have seen, this would suppress the basal re- lation out of which the religious consciousness arises. This difficulty appears very clearly, in a somewhat different form, in a recent work by a distinguished member of the school.^ The primal distinction in ' Evolution of Religion — Edward Caird. 212 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY consciousness, this antlior reasons, is that between subject and object. But this dualism is reduced to unity by a hig-her bond. This bond which unifies subject and object is God, and the unitary con- sciousness is what Hegel would call the Absolute's consciousness of himself. This doctrine has far- reaching- consequences in the work alluded to, for it virtually assumes that God and the principle of unity are one and the same. The author so under- stands it, and when the question of God's relation to the world-process arises he flatly denies all tran- scendence and identifies God completely with the immanent principle of the world's evolution. The truth is, we find a common microbe at work here and in old Hegelism. For the unitary bond which is here identified! with the Absolute is the common possession of all self-conscious spiritual beings. That fact, however, is consistent with the existence of distinct consciousnesses, individualities, and wills, and these constitute the real distinctions in the spiritual world. What this author calls God is an abstraction, for it is what is left of spirit when all distinctive characteristics have been abstracted from. The idea of the unitary bond is the bare idea of spiritual substance. And it is clear that when this abstract notion of spiritual substance is mistaken for the idea of God, the thinker who commits the mistake will be in a dilemma similar to that of Spinoza, and there will be no escape from a species of naturalistic pantheism. An adequate conception of the historic evolution RELIGION 213 of religion is possible only in view of the true data of religion. These, as we have seen, are (1) a trans- cendent Absolute whose energy functions creatively in the world as an immanent spiritual princij)le or po- tency ; (2) the human soul a spiritual principle pass- ing perpetually from potence to actuality and thus epitomizing the world-progress from mechanism up to actualized spirit ; (3) the logos which functions immanently as man's ideal law -giver and tran- scendentl}^ as the organ of divine communication to the human soul. It thus becomes the organ of the religious consciousness. Oat of these conditions the evolution of religion arises. No evolution is con- ceivable on a i^urely naturalistic basis ; much less an evolution of religion, for, as we have seen, all world-progress is the function of a spiritual potence and the immediate presupposition of this potence is a transcendent actuality. Now, the religious con- sciousness involves this presupposition raised to its highest power, since it is the organ of man's highest, that is, his ideal spirituality, and springs out of the function of the logos, which is the point of imme- diate spiritual communion between the human and the divine. The very existence of this communion involves the idea of an absolute spiritual energy transcending in its conscious individuality and will the human spirit with which it communicates. And the evolution of religion is the direct function of this inter-communion which is the spring of a de- veloping spirituality and of an evolving religious consciousness. 214 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY The law of religious evolution is also that law of general spiritual progress which we have developed in the preceding chapter, raised to its highest power. That law is founded on the presupposition of an inter-communion between the human spirit and its transcendent ground. Its operation is con- ditioned, as we have seen, by two circumstances of profound import. One is the inter-dependence of the transcendent and immanent agencies in deter- mining the stages of the evolution. It has been pointed out how the ap]3earance of the pro^ihet or founder of a new dispensation is conditioned on the one hand by a back-flowing wave of spiritual de- spair and on the other, by an inflow of new spiritual energy from the absolute spring. The juncture and inter-action of the immanent and transcendent forces, thus produces the spiritual embodiment of a new advance in the religious progress of humanity. The other circumstance is the inter-play of evil with the forces of good. Evil is an omnipresent fact and con- tingency in the world and it functions as an adver- sary, as a principle of degeneration, rotting spiritual fibre and producing an ever-active tendency to dis- solution and death. "We have seen how active moral evil arises as an effect of the human will wresting itself from the divine and embarking on its own re- sources. It thus attempts to ignore or cancel one of the profoundest negative laws of human experi- ence ; namely, man's inability, either as an individ- ual or as a race, to conserve his own spiritual evolu- tion. The option of the evil will cuts the divine RELIGION 215 branch on which humanity rests and the inevitable tendency is a gravitation downward toward spiritual death. The operation of evil thus comx3licates and intensifies the situation and gives to the whole spir- itual history of humanity the ajopearance of an evo- lution which is constantly being swallowed up in dissolution. It is only in the light of the true law of spiritual IDrogress that the outlook becomes more hopeful. The spiritual ocean may on its surface seem a stag- nant x^ool covered with the debris of dead and de- caying religions and civilizations. But beneath are the currents that conserve its life and enable it to throw off the miasma of death. These embody themselves in new spiritual reservoirs which supply the energy of a new national development or civili- zation. And since exi3erience teaches us that the absolute springs require many human vessels and that it is not given to the same nature or line of historic individuals to be the bearers of the highest inspirations in art, literature, iDhilosophy or civil government, so we must bear the same lesson in mind in our search for the true steps of religious evolution. We must look for the nations and lines of prophets which are the bearers of the highest religious inspiration and which embody, therefore, the gulf-stream of spiritual history. The fortunes of the movement which embodies the highest religious experience of the race, will not include the whole record of religious evolution, nor will it enable us to isrnore the inferior liofhts of other movements in 216 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PIIILOSOPHY spiritual history, but it will mark the line of g:reat- est intensity, the i^oints where the religious forces converg-e, and where the highest issues of the spirit- ual drama of the race are decided. We may expect also that the race mediator and the race religion, if they are to be born into the world, will appear in connection with this supreme movement. For if spirit finds it necessary to con- centrate its energies into special lines in order to produce the master-results in other spheres of race-progress, much more shall we expect that in this highest sphere of its energizing the same law will apply and that the embodiment of the supreme ideal of the religious consciousness of the race will emerge in historic form at the flood-tide of the gulf- stream of spiritual experience. That the spirit of man requires but one ideal mediator is clear. That the embodiment of such a mediator must be the su- preme effort of spiritual evolution seems no less clear. And from this it seems to follow with con- vincing force that but one such embodiment is pos- sible to a race, and that in this it achieves the ideal basis of its universal religion. The religious theory of evolution posits as its primal ground a transcendent and absolute spirit whose creative energy is the presupposition of the spiritual potence of the world. It posits a world- process which passes from mechanism to spirit, and which has for its immanent ground a spiritual po- tence that contains the forms of relative being. It posits a human soul which is a spiritual i^otence RELIGION 217 passing" into actuality, and which in its experience epitomizes the world - process through which its self-conscious individuality has been achieved. It posits in this soul an immanent ideal which ener- gizes as the main-spring' of its moral and spiritual activity and as the logos in which it is individually and historically united to its transcendent spiritual ground and which functions, therefore, as the spring of its religious consciousness and life. It posits on this basis a religious evolution in which, through the divine agency and assistance manifesting itself through the law of spiritual mediation, the race presses upward toward God its Father. And it posits as the supreme point of this movement, as appearing at a supreme crisis in spiritual history, the ideal mediator and the founder of the universal religion of humanity. This ideal mediator is the incarnation of the consciousness of the logos in which God is manifest, reconciling the world to him- self. This is the highest, the ideal outcome of the world's spiritual history. The religious theory of evolution thus posits a divine process which, as be- gun, continued and ended rests upon God, but a proc- ess which cannot be i^antheistically conceived, since in its inception, in every stej) of its progress, and in its ideal culmination in the logos, a real distinction is grounded and maintained between the creation and the absolute spirit to whose energy it owes its being-. XIV ART A true Metaphysic of Art can be achieved only in the lig-ht of the categories of being, non-being, and becoming. We have already seen how these ideas supply a basis for a structural ontology of theo- retic and practical xjhilosophy. They will be found equally effective in helping us to arrive at a rational theory of art. There are three categories in the philosophy of art which must be kept distinct ; namely. Art Crea- tion, Art Bepresentation, and Art Appreciation. The highest category is that of art creation. In dealing with it, it will be necessary, as in the treat- ment of morality and theoretic science, to distin- guish between absolute and relative and to seek the first norms of art in the bosom of absolute being. In the chapter on Morality, we followed the dia- lectic of the absolute spirit through stages of intel- lection and volition to that of love, which includes both and i3roceeds under the category of unity to realize wholeness or com^^leteness of being. And we saw how out of this unifying impulse of the Abso- lute spring the norms both of the moral idea of lioli- ART 219 ness and the sestbetic idea of beauty. Now, back of this impulse lies the concrete spiritual activity it- self, which in this relation we may call the artistic intelligence, which is to be conceived on one side as a sense for unity and on the other, in Mathew Ar- nold's phrase, as a sense for beauty. We will have, in short, the idea of an intelligence that apprehends and grasps all parts and details mediately through the idea of the whole from the contemplation of which it also derives an aesthetic satisfaction. If we apprehend rightly the nature of art-intelli- gence we have a clue also to the ideal of all art-crea- tion. For no category will be adequate to the art- intelligence but that of unity, and no ideal but that of wholeness. And in the absolute sphere this ideal can be none other than the idea of absolute being itself. It is the idea of a nature in which unity is not reached through the compounding of differences, but in which the unity strikes first, so to speak, and differences arise through it and exist and are intelligible only in relation to it. The idea of absolute art is, therefore, absolute being conceived from the standpoint of its individual unity, that is, as a unity that comprehends all differences. It is clear, in view of the above conceptions, that the art-process in the Absolute is identical with that of the absolute self-activity as a whole and in its most concrete form. This self - activity conceived in the light of the logos includes the categories of intellection or ideal truth and of volition or ideal good, as well as that of feeling or ideal beauty, and 220 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY it enables us to reach tlie intuition of absolute art as realizing beauty, the ideal of feeling-, under the highest idea or form of the intellect and in the mode of the ideal good, which is free self-expression. Now, the idea of absolute art here reached does not differ materially from that of Plato, or his modern disciples, so far as they reproduce the spirit of the master. But in Plato's theory there are two defects. In the first place he does not anywhere clearly distinguish between absolute and relative art, and secondly, he is never able to hit upon a rational rela- tion of the ideas of the beautiful and the good. He tends, therefore, continually to merge the beau- tiful in the good, and to restrict art to the represen- tation of the good. His shortcomings in tlifs latter respect come out somewhat glaringly in his Eepublic, where for ex- ample, in adapting the products of art to pedagogi- cal needs the Iliad is so expurgated as to metamor- phose Homer into a species of Hellenic Tupper sedately aiming moral aphorisms at the heads of the Greeks. Had Plato carried out his dialectic more completely and realized the true distinction between the beautiful which is an emotional category, and the good which is a category of will, he would have been enabled to determine a sphere for art at once related to ethics and distinct from it. Kant in all his Critiques has the vision of an intel- ligence that is constitutive, to use his own term, and whose activities are creative rather than representa- tive. But he is never fully able to realize his intui- ART 221 tion. It is clear, however, that in this notion of a constitutive intelligence is contained a germ Avliich might be unfolded into the idea of self-activity, and it is clear also that the conception of such an activity would have supplied to Kant a clue he was con- stantly searching for but could never find, to the true idea of art. Heg-el has discovered this clue and conceives art to be the immediate self-manifestation of absolute sx3irit in the sensuous sphere, while the beautiful is the absolute idea shining in sensuous form. Hegel's intuition is the Platonic and he realizes clearly enough the essential nature of absolute beauty. But he falls into a difficulty analogous to that of Plato ; namely, a failure to make a true dis- tinction between the absolute and relative spheres and conceptions of art. In view of the modification which the absolute energy undergoes in constitut- ing the categories of relativity it is evident that there can be no unmediated manifestation of the Absolute in sensuous form, and that the categories of relative art must be determined in view of this modification. The sphere of absolute art is the absolute nat- ure, and the objects of the absolute artist in that sphere is the eternal and absolute Spirit, -which em- bodies the supernal beauty. Relative art -creation has two spheres, that of the creative artist and that of man. The relative products of the creative artist can be conceived only through a true idea of crea- tion, which we have seen to be, not an immanental, but an outgoing, activity of the Absolute and to 222 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY consist in the production of forms and energies of becoming in the sphere of non-being. We have also seen how the categories of the absolute energy are modified in this process into the categories of relativity, and how a process of development is grounded in which the creature passes from mechan- ism U13 to spirit. It is only through the idea of creation as a mode of the absolute energy that a true notion of the work of the absolute artist in the sphere of becom- ing can be achieved. Creation is to be conceived as a formative energy working ui^on pure formless negation and producing out of it a relative, and not an absolute, manifestation. It is also through the same idea that an intelligible conception of the archetypes of becoming may be realized. We have already seen how the absolute energy becomes im- manent in the world as the sjjiritual potentiality out of Avhich its development, springs. Here we have to add, that this potentiality is not undifferentiat- ed capacity but rather a sphere of archetypal ener- gies which realize themselves in the progressive categories of the world. This spiritual potential -stands thus as the equivalent of the Aristotelian forms before they have become actualized. And conceived as containing the potential archetypes of the creation, this spiritual ]3otence stands for the world-idea as it exists in the mind of the divine artist. Now the world-idea as it embodies itself creative- ly in the spheres of cosmic and psychic nature, ART 223 may be conceived as passing" through the categories of mechanism, mechano - teleology, and teleology. Mechanism realizes itself in cosmic nature and has its norm in a mathematico-mechanical idea of order and harmony. The old Pythagorean notion of num- ber as constituting the principle of cosmic order is an anticipation of this mechanical ideal. It is this notion of a mathematically complete order, harmo- ny and system in space and time that must be con- ceived as constituting the immanent idea of art in the sphere of mechanical becoming. Mechano-teleo- logy manifests itself in that process in cosmic nat- ure which leads to its transcendence in the genesis of psychic nature. Its idea is that of mechanism as implicitly containing a teleologic iDrinciple which is wholly concealed in the inorganic sphere, but be- gins to manifest itself in the organic in the form of an explicit design or adaptation of organs and parts to a rational idea which can only be construed ade- quately as their end. In the sphere of organisms, therefore, we come upon the first explicit traces of teleology. It is only in the culmination of the or- ganic, however, in the appearance of soul as an or- gan of spiritual self -activity that mechano-teleology reaches its climax, in the notion of the production of soul as the final goal of cosmic nature. In other words, it is only in psychic nature as embodied in man that the underlying design and rationality of cosmic nature is completely manifested. Teleology is the artistic category of psychic nat- ure. Here we enter the sphere of the explicit 224 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY strug-g-le of tlie ideal rational and spiritual, to over- come and transform the mechanical. The idea of this strug-g-le and its solution is the immanent ar- tistic motive of the psychic movement, while the transcendent ideal which stands as its goal is the idea of typal reconciliation between the psyche and its absolute ground. The artistic idea in the psychic sphere embraces therefore the whole strug- g-le of humanity, viewed from the ideal teleologic standpoint, as a progressive triumph of the ideal ra- tional and spiritual principle over its opposite, a tri- umph which realizes itself in sensuous, intellectual, moral, politico-social and religious stages. The su- preme idea of art in the teleologic sphere is that of the absolute religion which embraces, as we have seen, a perfect form of mediation in its ideal syn- thesis of relative and absolute nature in the divine logos. Teleologically, the wdiole drama of becom- ing culminates in this idea. The absolute artist thus realizes beauty in abso- lute and relative forms. Now, art creation viewed as a function of the human psyche, in the most gene- ral sense of the term, includes all civilization and culture, the whole output of humanity. But more restrictedly it embraces only that part of the output which has had for its dominating motive the grati- fication of what Mathew Arnold calls the sense for beauty. We have already analyzed the idea of beauty into the emotional aiDprehension of the unity of a whole, and the artistic intelligence into that free teleologic activity which proceeds from ART 225 tlie idea of the whole to that of distinctions and de- tails. It is activity working' under the category of free self-ex^Dression rather than mechanical activity working under a laAV externally imposed. Now, an artistic product, even in its most rudimental form, whenever it is genuinely motived by the impulse of beauty, will be found to rise above the requirements of utilitarian necessity. Thus a drinking vessel will serve the utilitarian demand just as well if it is wholly devoid of beauty or even positively ugly. The motive that leads to the moulding of it into proportions of symmetry and to the executing on it of some design, however rude, of a vine or a drink- ing scene, will not, therefore, be the promi^ting of necessity, but will rather spring from the free im- pulse of beauty. Art-creation then, as distinguished from other forms of human productivity, is free construction motived by the sense of beauty. This differentiates it from industry and all other forms of loroduction. It is only the absolute Spirit, however, that can realize the ideal of absolute beauty. The psychic nature of man rises out of a dualism of being and non-being which determines its whole activity as a development from potence into actuality. The ideal of beauty, then, so far as it is realizable in a human intelligence, will be relative and imperfect. This being the case there will arise in the artistic sphere the same necessity for unending development as exists in other spheres of i:)sychic activity. The perfect ideal is just as unattainable in art as it is in 15 226 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the spheres of morality and religion. Art aspires after the absolute beauty, but the ideal of its aims is something- that can never be completely realized. The soul of art is its creative spirit ; its body is the mode of representation in which it manifests itself. This mode embraces both the i^rinciple and the form of representation. Plato originated the false theory that art is mere imitation, and he con- ceived imitation in the ig-noble form of mimicry, thus confounding the first form of the art impulse with its essential nature. That the first form of the art impulse is imitation seems to be a well-estab- lished doctrine.* What is denied here is that the impulse would develop true art if it did not event- ually rise above imitation. Aristotle adopts the Platonic idea, but represents imitation as something worthy and dignified. Now, there are branches of art, as statuary and portrait painting, in which imi- tation plays a leading part. But even here it is modified by the conception of the artist. Imitation is only a secondary principle in art proi3er, whose * This follows from the general course of Psjcho-geiiesis, which is from mechanism up to spirit. Genetically the art-impulse would first take the form of imitation. See an ahle and suggestive article on Imitation — A Chapter in the Natural History of Conscious- ness, by Professor J, Mark Baldwin, in Mind, January, 1804. The principle developed in this article would admit of a special applica- tion to the genesis of the art-impulse. Only we must here as else- where interpret the genetic process in the light of the basal cate- gory of spirit which is development from mechanism to self activity. Imitation is the mechanical moment in a process through which it is at length subordinated to a higher form of activity. ART 227 essence is free creation. Ai't does not imitate life merely, but reproduces it Avitli a free hand and embodies it in its characteristic forms. The form of art-representation is both sensuous and symbolic. In its sensuous form it appeals to either eye or ear and expresses itself either in the static order of coexistence in space or in the dynamic order of the time-series. As symbolic the static branch subdivides into the plastic and the pictorial, the former employing as its material, substances that are capable of being moulded into solid form, the latter achieving its results by means of a blending of color and light and shade on a flat surface. The dynamic branch employs the rhythmic series of sound and subdivides according as the sounds are simx)ly tones or articulate speech. We thus arrive at the following classification according to sensuous and symbolic form. (1) Static : architecture, sculpt- ure, and painting. (2) Dynamic : music, poetry and artistic prose. Art may also be classified according to the degree in which it realizes freedom of expression, as fol- lows : — architecture, which is hampered both by util- ity and mass ; sculpture, which escapes utility and reduces mass ; painting, which escapes mass, and is limited only 'hy the capacity of light and colors to create perspective ; poetry and artistic prose, which escape spatial restrictions and are bound only by the limits of rhythmic succession of articulate sounds, and lastly music, which escapes the restrictions of articulate speech and is obliged to observe only one 228 BA.SAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY limit, that of rliytlimic tone. In the freedom of its expression music is, therefore, the supreme art, since its rhythmic forms present, so to speak, typal moukls into which infinite varieties of spiritual histories may be poured. The question as to relative worth and dignity of modes of representation arises in the siDhere of each art, but has no special significance as between dif- fent types of art. Every art may be made a vehicle of the highest spiritual expression, and all arts are, therefore, equally worthy in themselves. Different arts may, however, and do, differ in their capacities for various modes of representation. Thus an im- portant distinction between the static and dynamic arts consists in the superior capacity of the former to express more and to express it more comi^letely, in the unity of a single representation. Sculpture, painting, and architecture are in this respect vastly superior to music and literature. On the other hand, the dynamic arts have a great advantage in their superior capacity for representing the stages of spiritual history. While, therefore, in their power to gather up a history into a single representation, they are greatly inferior to the static arts, they are perhaps more than compensated for this by their capacity for a series of representations in which almost unbounded liberty as to details is enjoyed. One of Lessing's greatest contributions to the phi- losophy of art is his recognition of this distinction. Lessing also observes the other fact which is a de- duction from the primal distinction ; namely, the ART 229 greater freedom of expression which is enjoyed by the dynamic arts. All art is free to represent the ugly and the horrible as well as the beautiful, provided that in the whole representation these features be subordinated to the requirements of beauty. But, as Lessing" shows in his reflections on the Laocoon, this proviso is a much more strin- gent limit upon freedom in the static than in the dynamic arts. And the stringency is only i^artially relieved in a series of representations Avhich em- body a history. But in the dynamic arts, where it is not the repose of the figures or the perfection of single pulsations, but the iDrogressive movement, that impresses, there may be included an indefinite amount of horrible and repulsive details, i3rovided the movement as a whole realizes the idea of the beautiful. On the whole, it is doubtless true that the greater freedom of musical and literary representation ren- ders these arts superior as vehicles of spiritual self-expression. There seems to be a philosophical reason for this at once profound and simple. The inner motive of art-creation, as we have seen, is what may be called a sense for wholeness. Now, the conception of this sense for wholeness as oper- ating under the category of free self-expression, gives us the most general idea of love. Love seeks wholeness and love is, therefore, everywhere sjmthetic and mediatory. But mediation is, as we have seen, not only the inner core of all relative spiritual history, but it is a teleologic idea which 230 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY can be realized only in a dynamic series. The representation-form of music and literature is this dynamic series, and this renders them the most fitting vehicles for the representation of the drama of mediation. The g-reatest and most typal spiritual theme of art is a struggle which is mediated by love and ends in reconciliation and peace. Music, on account of its freedom from the definite suggestiveness of articulate speech, is the highest vehicle of this mediational motive and touches most profoundly the fountains of love. Literature in its supremest forms of epic and dramatic poetry, is an embodi- ment of this same typal spiritual theme. The epic works out the struggle and achieves its media- tion and unity in the "broad field of national or tribal history, while the drama embodies the same theme in the sphere of particular individualities. Comedy presents the lighter phases of the theme, while in tragedy the deepest notes of spiritual ex- perience are struck. The struggle is to the death and mediation can be achieved only by the shed- ding of blood, while the reconciliation and peace which ensues is the attainment of a higher plane of spiritual life and experience. Aristotle has a pro- found insight into the cathartic quality of real tragedy which renders it a means of purification through terror and pity. A profounder and simpler insight will see in it, as its core of spiritual meaning, a drama of love and mediation. Art and religion are very closely allied both in ART 231 their history and their essence. It is in the common theme of the hig-hest music and the profomidest literature that their ideas seem to coalesce. In the same theme we seem to discover the inner spiritual idea of art in the lig-ht of which the whole develop- ment becomes teleologic. For just as the real tele- olog-y of cosmic nature manifests itself in soul, and the real teleology of psychic nature reveals itself in the perfect type of religion, so here in the idea of spiritual struggle mediated through sacrifice, and reconciliation and peace achieved on a higher plane, we seem to find the real teleologic ideal of art. Art-appreciation is not a category of the artist, but rather of the spectator and student of art. This appreciation has two branches, the intellectual and the emotional, and it passes through psychological and ontological stages. Ontologically its intellect- ual branch is a species of rational knowledge and consists in the apprehension of the fundamental ideas of art. Rational art-knowledge, in common with other forms, can be completely achieved only in the light of the categories of being, non-being, and becoming. For the philosophy of art, in common with all philosophy, must find its start- ing-point in the idea of absolute being. From this idea it is able to deduce the notions of absolute creativeness and absolute beauty. But these ideas cannot, as we have seen, be carried over unmodified into the relative sphere. We cannot truly define human art as the Absolute manifesting itself in sensuous form until by a true conception of non- 232 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PiriLOSOPIIY being and the clualistic conditions of creation, we have achieved a rational idea of the form of becom- ing and its differentia. It will then be possible to conceive the iDresence and activity of a principle of absolute intelligence in the psychic sphere, pro- ducing manifestations that do not transcend the rel- ative limitations. This is a crucial point in art as it is in all i)hilosophic theory. The psychic intelli- gence contains an absolute princi^Dle. But this prin- ciple is embodied in a dualistic and developing type of individuality, and this difference of type de- termines its actual consciousness as relative and dis- tinguished from the Absolute. Ai-t, so far as it is a function of the human psyche, is a manifestation of the dual psychic activity in sensuous form. Psychologic art-appreciation on its intellectual side manifests itself as art-perception. It follows an empirical and genetic order, beginning Avith the simplest and most sensuous relations whose appre- hensions are accompanied with x>leasurable or jiain- ful feeling, and passing through stages correspond- ing pretty well to those laid doAvn to Socrates b}^ the Theban i3rophetess. In its j^ath upward the psyche first apprehends the beauty of sensuous forms in colors and x^hysical proportions. A higher stage is the ajoprehension of the mathematical relations of symmetry, harmony, and proportion. The upward footsteps then enter the sphere of teleology, passing through the joortal of mechano-teleology into teleol- ogy proper, where the spiritual types of beauty are realized, its highest manifestation being in the ideal ART 233 form of spiritual mediation and unity embodied iu the highest conceptions of art and religion. Art-appreciation on the side of feeling is the emotional impulse aroused by the contemplation of the beautiful. It is the Eros of the Greeks and ex- presses not simply i^assive enjoyment, but an active appropriation of the object. The art-feeling, like other forms of spiritual activity, however, passes from a potential stage of relative passivity to one of realized actuality. It begins as a feeling of pleasure or pain that is immediately aroused by the contem- plation of sensuous beauty. The development of actuality in the aesthetic emotion accompanies the progress of the ideal element. As the higher ideas and relations of beauty dawn uiDon the intelligence they constitute the ideal basis of higher forms of cesthetic emotion. Thus the emotional appreciation of the beautiful rises through the categories of moral beauty to that of spiritual beauty proper, the sphere of the religious emotions, and culminates in the ecstatic state of emotion aroused by the beauty of holiness. Art and utility are very closely related in certain departments of art, as for exam^Dle in architecture. But even here art begins where utility leaves off. A homely and even hideous structure will serve the ends of utilitarian comfort. It is the sense for beauty that dictates and motives all the features of architecture that can be called artistic. This is universally true and the only claim utility can have on beauty is that of self-i^reservation. It can justly 234 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPPIY demand that it be not sacrificed in the interest of beauty. Art and morality are more intimately connected. They are one in the sense that the supreme motive of both is love, and so far as morality embodies love, it is beautiful. The relation of the moral law to art, however, is analogous to that of utility. Mo- rality has the right to demand that its law be re- spected and that the good be not sacrificed in the interest of beauty. The relations between art and religion are of the closest kind. The form of the artistic intelligence is the same as that of religion. Both are synthetic and teleologic, operating under the categories of unity and design. Both are spiritual and concrete, appealing with equal power to reason and feeling. And both contemplate in their highest forms the same spiritual ideal, the solution of spiritual strug- gle and the realization of unity and peace on a higher plane through mediational sacrifice. XY KNOWLEDGE Knowledge is not reality, bnt the conception of reality. The real is, therefore, its presupposition. To deny reality is to abolish the possibility of knowledge. But the denial is not dangerous, for it begins with the denial of itself. If the sphere of knowledge is only a sx)here of illusion, then illusion itself becomes real. Illusion is not an ultimate concept. It is the real masquerading in a false dress. The false dress presu^Dposes normal cloth- ing. The illusory is a species within the genus real. Kegarding knowledge, four fundamental questions arise : (1) How is knovdedge possible ? (2) How is it made actual ? (3) How are the processes of knowledge correlated ? (4) Has knowledge any limit ? The first question involves two considerations : (1) the presupposition ; (2) the first principle of knowl- edge. McCosh says the presux^position of knowl- edge is reality, and this we also assert. If the real is not, then knowledge falls into self-contradiction. To say, however, that knowledge presupposes the real is only affirming in other words that philosophy must have a primal datum to start from. A little 236 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY reflection will show the identity of these proposi- tions. The reality assumed cannot be every or any sort of existence. Let us start with some jDhenom- enon which is a species of reality and we find our- selves forced back of the iDhenomenon to its ante- cedent in time. But the temporal antecedent is only a jDassing stag-e in a procession of reason which moves on from the idea of antecedent to that of causal nexus as a form of mechanical activity and from this to the idea of ground or activity that returns upon itself and is, therefore, self -existent. This iDroves that every assumption is provisional except the last, and that every species of reality ex- cept the last is provisionally assumed and depends upon that last for its justification. The unconditional - assumption of knowledge, that on which all provisional assumptions depend, is absolute reality. We thus come back to the primal insight of Plato and Aristotle, v/ho saw that philos- ophy must have an absolute foundation. This ab- solute was construed by Aristotle, as we already know, into purus actus, or pure self-activity, in which there is no unrealized potency. The conclusion we reach here is simply a reassertion of the Aristotelian principle which makes absolute reality, that is, absolute self-activity, the first and only uncon- ditional presupposition of knowledge. This first presupposition of knowledge leads us by a few steps to the first principle of knowledge. When Descartes pointed to self-consciousness as the first iDrinciple of philosophy and defined mind as KNOWLEDGE 237 tliiuking substance, he had one foot in the kingdom but was misled by his false notion of substance. Had he learned the lesson of Aristotle and trans- lated the idea of substance into that of self -activity, his whole theory would have been revolutionized. If to the position here asserted, that pure self- activity is the first xDresupposition of knowledge, we add the position reached in the chapter on Con- sciousness ; namely, that self-activity and self-con- scious activity are identical, we arrive at the idea of self -consciousness as the first jjriJicq^le of Tinowledge. But so conceived it is a more effective principle than that of Descartes. For the idea of substance has been translated into the idea of self -activity, and when self-consciousness and self-conscious activit}^ are identified the principle of self -consciousness be- comes one with the princiiole of self-activity. Self- consciousness thus absorbs the idea of substance into itself. The consequences of this are far-reaching. In the first place it reveals the fact that all knowledge rests on an absolute first principle. If the pre- supposition of knowledge is pure self-activity, and its first iDrinciple self-consciousness, which is con- scious self -activity, then it is clear that no catego- ries short of pure self-activity and the conscious- ness of pure self -activity will serve as x>rimal grounds for knowledge. But pure self-activity is absolute being and pure self-consciousness is the self-con- sciousness of absolute being. The ground and first principle of knowledge are, therefore, absolute. 238 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY Descartes apprehended, thoug-h not very clearly, the force of this reflection when he argued that the existence of an infinite and perfect being is tlie nec- essary presupposition of the self -consciousness of man, a contention that is perfectly sound, but which rests on its true and irrefragable ground only when the principle in the human consciousness is asserted to be absolute in its essence and, therefore, in its perfect activity, the necessary bearer of an abso- lute consciousness. Absolute being is thus an im- mediate presupposition of self-consciousness. In the second place, this conception of self-con- sciousness enables us to discover and ground the categories of an adequate and comprehensive theory of knowledge. Self -activity is the immediate id re- supposition of self-consciousness, but its primal categories are those of self and the not -self con- ceived as its negative opposite. That both these categories are not categories of being Avill appear from the following reflection. Absolute being is pure self -activity, and pure self -consciousness is consciousness of pure self-activity. The self then of the dual categories must be self-active. What then is the not-self ? What is it that can be dis- tinguished from self-activity as its negation ? There is no completely rational answer to this possible, ex- cept one that endows being with a primal power to distinguish itself from its negative opposite, non- being. And this non- being cannot, therefore, be conceived as in being but as out of it, as its qualita- tive opposite and adversary. KNOWLEDGE 239 The primal not-self, or object, of pure self-activity or absolute being is not, then, anything- internal to being. It is not being (self- activity) going out in self-alienation into its other, for this other would still be the self and the dialectic which leads to it would be only the activity of internal self-evolution. The primal not -self is the negative and foe of all this self-active process. It is something that must be annuled before the universe can contain any other conscious individualities distinct from the self-conscious absolute. How this negative of be- ing is to be conceived and characterized, we have treated at length in the chapter on Being and Non- Being. The j)oint we wish to insist on here is that the primal categories of reality are being and non- being, and that non-being is not the alter ego but the opposite of being. The alter ego of being is being in some form, but the negative of being is its opj)osite, non-being. Now, it is to be remembered that while these categories of self and not-self are ]primal in self- consciousness, there is an immediate presupposition of self-consciousness and that is self-activity. If we call this being, we may then say that the very first step of all is being's consciousness of self. Being becomes conscious of itself. This is the princijDle of self-consciousness. The second step is that of the distinction noted above. Being becomes con- scious of itself as distinguished from and opposed to non-being ; that is, negation and want. The fact that self-consciousness is the prcsuj^position of this 240 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY distinction between self and not-self, has led some thinkers to the conclusion that self-consciousness is the unity of self and its negative, or as they prefer to say, subject and object. The logic of this position is that the negative is only the other of the self and ultimately identical with it. Self-consciousness is thus made a one-sided i^rinciple of comprehension which identifies opposites, and comprehends in being want and negation as well as the plenum of ]30sitive reality. But it must be evident that if this ab- solute principle comiorehends vacuum, that is, want and negation, its integrity and its absoluteness are destroyed. The Absolute as pure self -activity must exclude want, negation, and imperfection. We must construe the principle of self-conscious- ness as the unity of being and as the i3rincij)le which, therefore, distinguishes being from its not-self, negation and want, and excludes it as qualitatively outside of and opposed to it. The primal category of knowledge, after its first principle, self-conscious- ness, is the distinction of self from its negative, or as we prefer to say, being from non-being. Now, knowl- edge we have defined as the conception or idea of reality. The two terms of reality here reached are being and non-being. A complete theory of knowl- edge must then embrace conceptions of non-being as well as conceptions of being. We have seen, how- ever, in the second and third chapters of this book, that no positive idea of non-being is possible. Non- being is the purely negative term in the universe of reality. As pure negative it must be represented KNOWLEDGE 241 by neg-ative conceptions. We have seen that it may be best symbolized as an outer sphere which con- tains the neg-ative oppositesof the energies of being, and which must, therefore, be overcome in order that being may realize itself. The part which non-being plays as a datum in a theory of knowledg-e enters in those modifications of relativity which cannot otherwise be explained. Postulating the negative, however, it may be said that the chief industry of a theory of knowledge is to be devoted to the discovery and exposition of the categories of being. In fact its sole interest consists in tracing- the fortunes of being, non-being playing the i^art of an adversary that must be warred against and overcome. Those thinkers who adopt the monal concept of reality criticised above, also limit the inner dialectic of being to self-affirmation and self-negation. But the conception of non-being as the antithetic of being- cancels the moment of self -negation and makes it nec- essary to distinguish between the internal activity of self-affirmation and the transitive energy by which being goes out upon its oi:)posite. We have seen in the chapters on Being and Non-being, and Becoming-, how non- being supplies a rational motive for this outgo of energy and thus grounds negatively the whole process of becoming. It is this dual energiz- ing of self-assertion, and negation of the not-self or non-being, that is comx^rehended in the unity of self-consciousness. The dual activity is a function of being, therefore, but the negated is not included, 16 242 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY but excluded and opposed by the energy of being. The idea of the self-negation of being involves a subtle self-contradiction. The dialectic of self-consciousness begins with the primal distinction between self and not-self. The not-self is non-being, the negation and opposite of the self. The second step is one in which the self is volitionally asserted, and the not-self volitionally denied. But this denial of the not-self is not a pure intellectual activity of the self; it is rather its volitional activity which is to be construed as the putting forth of creative energy in the process of producing being out of non-being. Of this comiDOund dialectic the first step is domi- nantly a process of intellection. In the logic of be- ing conception precedes and is presupposed in voli- tion. Else the whole movement is dark and irrational. The position of Schopenhauer and his school is an inversion of the necessary logic of being. But they draw the inevitable conclusion from their transposed premises. If we invert the world it becomes irra- tional and absurd, and life becomes a ghastly joke. We agree with the philosophy that identifies the Absolute with absolute thought, in its main con- tention ; namely, that logically the first activity of all must be intellection. The Absolute must t/iink in order to i.viU and act rationally. We only deprecate in such thinking its rationalistic tendency to force every spiritual function into the intellectual mould, a tendency which may be cured by the reflection that in the Absolute, which can only be conceived as pure KNOWLEDGE 243 actuality without undeveloped potence, there may be logical dependence, but no derivation. If we do not mean then to eliminate volitional function from our idea of the Absolute, we must conceive its depen- dence on intellection in a way that will consist with its originality. This, we think, is possible only on the supposition that self-conscious activity has three perfectly primal and insex)arable modes or aspects ; that in one aspect it is intellection ; in another emo- tion ; in another volition ; but that in every move- ment of its activity, intellection is the first presup- position. If in this sense the first act of the spiritual dia- lectic is one of thinking, we can see how the intel- lectual activity completes its circle, going out from itself in the intuition of the negative outer sphere and returning upon itself enriched with a dual intui- tion of being and non-being. And this will motive, as we have seen, the second act, which is one of will, the volitional activity going out in the energy of creation into the negative sphere, and returning upon itself enriched with a dual realization of being and becoming, or, in other phrase, of self and the other. This again, to complete the movement, will motive the third act, which is dominantly one of unity, in which the absolute activity, going out in the energy of love upon the other, or becoming, re- turns upon itself enriched with a dual realization of self and the other reconciled. In this dialectic of spiritual activity it is funda- mental to observe that the primal intellectual intui- 244 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tion which differentiates non-being from being is not mediated, but stands open, and that this supplies the motive for the whole consequent dialectic, the will to cancel the negative by producing being in its sphere, which gives rise to the creature, a nature that contains the potentiality of spiritual being, and lastly the outflow of synthetic love which mediates the spiritual evolution of the creature and brings it into harmony with the creative spirit. A clear conception of this, as we think, fundamental truth, will make it plain that non-being cannot be comprehended as a moment in the evolution of being, but that it is the op^DOsite of spirit and to be mediated only by being overcome. This medi- ation can be effected only by volition and love, and has for its moments creation and evolution, the pro- duction of potential being out of non-being and the development of this potence toward the ideal of actualized spirit. In grounding a theory of knowledge it is not cus- tomary to go so deep into ontology. The sufficient justification for doing so, however, is its necessity. The first principle of knowledge is self -conscious- ness, and we have seen that this cannot be conceived in any other way than as conscious self-activit}^ It, therefore, absorbs the idea of substance into it and becomes also the first principle of ontology. It is impossible to develop a rational theory of knoAvledge without showing the ontologic grounds on which it rests, and since a complete theory of knowledge must include both the Absolute and the relative, its KNOWLEDGE 245 structural oiitolog'y will include a rational insig-lit into tlie nature of absolute and relative being. Not only so, but since there is a difterence between absolute and relative as well as a sameness, these relations must have their reason for knowledge in real ontological grounds. For it is rationally clear that no theory of knowledge can profess adequacy which does not correlate the world and its absolute ground in such a manner that reflection may find in the ground the rationale, not only of the world's existence, but also of its distinctive nature and evo- lution. From the development of the first principle of knovdedge and the presupi^osition of reality on which it rests, namely, that of self - existence, we reach a structural conception of the system of reality. x4nd this, taken as a whole, is to be regarded as the condition of the possibility of knowledge. For, when the situation has been thoroughly analyzed, the discovery is made that the real presupj)osition of knowledge is a whole system of reality ; that the assumption of self-existence leads reflection by an inevitable route to the ideas of being and non-being and the sphere of dependent being and relativity. Knowledge confronts this structural system of things and its practical problem is how this sys- tem of reality is to be actuiilized in the conscious- ness of the individual. This ranks as the second great question in a theory of knowledge. The mode of individual acquisition is grounded in the nature of the human soul. The soul, as vv^e 246 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY have seen, is a develoiDing spiritual principle. It is, therefore, dual in its constitution, combining" in itself both potence and actuality. As a developing- ]3otence it is a flowing stream ; as an actuality it is a self-centred individual. Its life and evolution con- sist in a progressive dialectic between these terms, in which the tendency is to iDass from a stage in which the life is dominated by mechanical categories to one in which spirit has realized its free activity. This idea of the soul as a developing spiritual prin- ciple explains two fundamental characteristics of individual knowledge. The first is the possibility of knoAvledge being an individual possession at all when its first principle is a universal. There is a common fund of reality, but there can be no com- mon fund of knowledge. This arises from the fact that man is a developing creature. If he were abso- lute there Avould be a common fund of knowledge, but there would be only one being to enjoy it, for there can be but one absolute consciousness. But, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, the mode of man's spiritual activity as a developing creature, determines his conscious individuality and will as distinct. The human consciousness, therefore, con- tains an absolute lorinciple ; namely, that of spiritual self-activity, but in man, it is a principle of a de- veloping life that is ever passing through potence to actuality in the stages of growth and evolution. The second fundamental characteristic of knowl- edge which the idea of the soul explains is the proc- ess of acquisition. From mechanism to spirit is KNOWLEDGE 247 the law of evolution. The process of acqiiisitio]i will follow this law, and the stages in the development of its modes, from sensation up to the highest ra- tional activity, will correspond to and depend on the stages in the evolution of the spiritual principle. The fact that in the beginnings of the intellectual activity the categories of space and time determine the form of experience, is not wholly explained by conceiving a budding soul in a bodily organism ; but a deeper root of this is to be found in the fact that the spiritual potence of the soul is itself in that stage of activity when the form of its activity is most dominated by the mechanical categories. This explains why the whole representation - framework of its life is mechanical, so that any truth that aims to reach the inner citadel of aj)prehension must come thickly coated in the dress of material representa- tion. As the life i^rogresses the modes of apprehension change ; the merely spatio-temi)oral forms begin to give place to the dynamic, and the intelligence be- gins to grasp causation, the inner principle of the series. This marks the starting-point of reflection and of the intellectual life proper. For the appre- hension of causation, even in its most mechanical form, leads the mind to look from the fact to the condition out of which it rises. And this marks the transition from mere representation to conception, which is the first term of the life of reflection. The central principle of the conceptive form of intellec- tion is causation conceived as a bond that connects 248 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY plienomena with a chain or series of conditions. It is the dominating" category of that middle stage of mentality to which the name understanding has been applied. But the evolution of spiritual activity makes it impossible for the reflective life to stop here. Mechanical causation which holds phenomena in the bonds of conditions external to them is not an ultimate form of activity, but has coiled up in it the suggestion of a mode of activity that transcends it. In other words reflection must progress from the idea of the dependent, or that which has the reason of its being outside of itself, to the idea of ground, or that which has the reason of its being within itself and is, therefore, self-existent. The idea of ground is that of self-activity, and thus in the no- tion of ground spirit has achieved an idea of its own highest category which is self-explanatory. Thus the intellectual life culminates on the ob- jective side in the category of self - existence or absolute being which we have seen in another connection to be the unconditional presuiD position of knowledge. On its inner side the conscious life passes from its representation-form, in which flows the life of the purely empirical self, through the con- cept-form, which embodies the emi3irico-rationaI self, up to the idea -form, whose principle is self- consciousness and whose embodiment is the purely rational self. On its inner side, therefore, the intel- lectual life culminates in the principle of self-con- sciousness, which we have found to be the ground- principle of knowledge. By following the clew KNOWLEDGE 249 furnished by the idea of a spiritual principle de- veloping* from potence to actuality, we are thus able to show how the process of acquisition leads u-p to that synthesis of ground-principle and presup- position on which the possibility of knowledge de- pends. The third fundamental question is that of the correlation of i^rocesses of knowledge. There are two generic methods, the deductive or rational, and the inductive or empirical. These are both founded on what are called the fundamental axioms of thought ; namely, identity and contradiction, or, in Platonic phrase, the same and the different, and suf- ficient reason. Now, these laws Avlien reduced to their primal form resolve into the dialectic of spirit which we have already unfolded. This dialectic is a primal antithetic of thinking by which self-includ- ing being excludes its opposite, non-being. The two antithetic categories, the same and the dif- ferent, constitute the primeval eyes of thinking, and its original constitution, therefore, predetermines it to be ever on the search for the same throughout a chaos of differences. Translating this into terms of self-activity which is the highest category of si3int, we may say that the fundamental law of thinking is dual, and that it is of the essence of thought to think itself inclusively, and its oi^posite exclu- sively and antithetically. This dialectic functions at the heart of all intellectual processes. But it is capable of two different modes of application, and these modes are the two generic methods. If 250 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY we start with a rational presupposition and apply our dual dialectic to it, the method is rational. Here the thought is a two-armed instrument and the move- ment of demonstx'ation is the self-inclusion of the same and the antithetic exclusion of the different. Thought thus cuts both ways, like a double plough- share, and the demonstrated result of the process is the thought's own self-included offspring. The hackneyed syllogism, " Man is mortal, Socrates is a man ; therefore, Socrates is mortal," illustrates this. The thought has combined humanity and mortality, and wherever it finds humanity it reasserts itself and binds humanity to its fellow, mortality. But this process of inclusion is by itself an abstraction and impossible. The act that connects man and mortality is only half a complete thought. The concrete thought has its negative exclusive side, not-mortal, not-man, which forms the negative back- ground of the intellection and follows it through every step to the end. The dialectic of thought is negative and exclusive as well as positive and inclu- sive. But it never negates or excludes itself, always its oiD^Dosite. If, however, we start, not with a rational presup- position but a fact or group of facts, the same dia- lectic will proceed in a different manner. In the ra- tional process the dialectic proceeds from an assumed relation, and its business is that of dual inclusion and exclusion under this relation. But here we seem to have isolated facts without any relation. Thought, however, cannot get on without relations. KNOWLEDGE 251 How then does the dialectic of thought apply to the case ? Evidently in this way : In thinking, reason includes her own, but excludes and negates her op- posite. Now, facts without relations, that is, iso- lated unaccounted facts, are irrational. Thought expels them from her province and then goes out upon them by a volitional act in order to overcome them and create a rational system out of the irra- tional. Here we get at the root of the other great l^rinciple of thinking ; namely, sufficient reason. For sufficient reason is not a purely intellectual princij)le, but contains an element of volition. It is the demand of the human spirit that the irrational shall be su^Dpressed, and that out of it shall be pro- duced a rational system. This demand, which arises in view of the negative, is the motive that leads to the reference of isolated facts or groups to their causal conditions. The result is the emergence of a rational order out of the irrational. And we have only to follow this process through its successive stages of rational genesis until it reaches the high- est category and realizes a spiritual result, in order to see that in this law of sufficient reason we have struck a motive, in substance the same as that which we have been led to attribute to the absolute spirit as the motive of creation. Now, regarding the correlation of these two pro- cesses, rational and empirical, it is clear that they ought to mutually bear out and supplement one another. For whether we stai-t with a rational sup- position and come down to the details of its appli- 252 BASAL COXCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY cation under the guidance of the dual law of identity and difference, or begin with irrational and isolat- ed facts, or groups, and proceed upward under the impulse of sufficient reason, we are but traversing the same circle in opposite directions, and ought to come around to some point where the conclusion of one method will bear out the other. That this is the true idea of correlation finds confirmation in the fact illustrated in the first division of this chapter ; namely, that if we start from self -consciousness as the first principle of knowledge, we are led by rational reflection upon it to a structural ontology in which a sphere of relative and created being is grounded on the self-existent absolute. Whereas, if we start from x^henomena and follow the demand of sufficient reason, we are led step by step to a point where we find in self-existence the objective ground, and in self-consciousness the inner principle of all rational knowledge. The result here is, on the one hand, the grounding of the empirical sphere by means of the rational method ; on the other, the confirmation of the primal data of the rational method by means of the empirical iDrocedure. That one method should confirm the other is only riitional. For whether we start with the i^rinciple of identity and difference, or with that of sufficient reason, the procedure is one and the same, the self- assertion of spirit against its negative. If we pro- ceed upon the former principle, spirit asserts itself overtly and explicitly, and excludes and sublates its negative ; whereas, if our procedure is under the KNOWLEDGE 253 principle of sufficient reason, spirit overtly and ex- plicitly excludes and sublates tlie negative, wliile tlie implicit motive of its whole movement is its as- sertion of itself. The whole movement, for instance, of the logic of Hegel is intelligible and rational if we conceive that here spirit is proceeding under the principle of sufficient reason and asserting itself against the negative in an activity which is continu- ally producing out of the irrational the stages of a rational evolution. On the other hand, Hegel's or- dinary i3rocedure is an application of identity and difference, the principle of the common logic, and its dialectic when truly understood consists in an overt dualistic movement in which spirit persistent- ly asserts and includes itself, while it just as persist- ently excludes and sublates its negative. As to the limits of knowledge, we have seen that all method is reducible to one formula, si3irit's as- sertion of itself. Now, as spirit includes both ab- solute and relative, this formula must include the whole continent of reality. Log'icall}^, then, there can be no a priori limit of knowledge. The principle of knowledge is all-comprehensive, and this renders omniscience logically possible. But there is an onto- logical, or rather an onto-psychological, principle of limitation which is to be found in the nature of the human soul. We have seen that the soul is not 13ure actuality, but rather a spiritual principle that is passing continually from potence to actuality. This means that the soul is an imperfect, developing creature. Now, undeveloped potence is, as we have 254 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY seen, a limitation which determines the distinctive form and bounds of the soul's activity. It is here that we strike the true limit of knowledge. It is a limit of energy, of spirit's ]3ower of asserting itself, and rests therefore primarily in the will, and not in the thought or intelligence. The limit of knowledge is, therefore, not fixed but movable. As the human spirit unfolds into actual- ity, its ]30wer of asserting itself increases, and as its intelligence unfolds, thought in its self-assertion is able to master progressively higher categories. The highest category is that of spirit itself, and when the human soul is able to realize all things com- pletely under the self-active category of spirit, it is able to say that it apprehends even as it is appre- hended. XVI LOGOS We have seen in the first chapter of this book that the logos-principle is the norm of intelligibility in the sphere of reality. What this logos-princij)le is we are now able more clearly to determine. His- torically, the principle has its ontologic root in the idealism of Plato. From Plato it gradually worked its way into the heart of xDhilosox3hic thinking until, under the spiritual impulse of Christianity, it be- came, as the category of immanent self-conscious liersonality, the constructive norm of theological as well as philosophical conceptions. The unapproach- able One of Neo-Platonism, the unrelated Absolute of Hellenic Judaism, which is connected with the world only through an external logos, becomes the divine logos, the Being who is internally self-conscious and personal and who manifests himself as the Creator of the world out of non-being, and as the mediator who leads the world out of its alienation up to God. Psychologically, we have found this same principle energizing at the centre of modern thinking as the basis of certitude and the ground-category of knowl- edge. In modern philosophy it is the principle of 256 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY self-consciousness, which, as conceived by Descartes failed to realize its full i30wer. But the tendency of modern thinking has been in the direction of a spe- cies of psychological immanence which conceives the logos as the inner category of substance and thus translates it into living spirit. The principle of self-consciousness becomes thus a norm of conscious self-activity, and conscious self- activity is identical with personal, spiritual being. And combining the ontologic and psychologic intu- itions, the conclusion is reached that all being is in its core spiritual and personal. It is clear, then, that the logos-principle and the principle of pure self-conscious personality are iden- tical ; that when we call God the logos we call him the self-conscious personal being, and that when we call man a self-conscious personal being we thereby conceive him as a being of whose spiritual nature the logos is the immanent principle. There is then a relation of sameness between the absolute spirit and the soul of man in the principle which determines their conscious and personal life. This vital point gives rise to two important con- siderations. The first concerns the function of the logos-principle as enabling us to determine the in- ner natures, respectively, of the absolute spirit and the soul of man. Regarding absolute spirit, we only need here to summarize the results of former reflec- tions. In the chapter on Knowledge we were able, by conceiving the logos-principle as a norm of spiritual activity, to follow the immanent dialectic of spirit LOGOS 257 and determine the self-conscious personal life of the Absolute under three logically correlated aspects, as absolute thought, absolute will, and absolute love. And by construing the negative side of this dialectic in the light of the same princii^le we were able to see how the intuition of non-being arising in the primal activity of absolute thought, supplies the motive for the out-go of the absolute will in the cre- ation of the world in the sphere of non-being, and how also the imperfect and undeveloped nature of the creature, its distance from the creator, sup- 13lies the motive for the out-go of the absolute love in the work of evolution and mediation. The principle is equally potent in revealing the inner nature of the human soul. We have seen how the true idea of the creative function leads to a rational conception of becoming and relative nature. It determines the soul as a spiritual potence which is consciously passing into actuality, as a developing creature, therefore, with an infinite spiritual ideal. It leads, therefore, to a rational conception of the dualism of the soul's conscious experience, and ena- bles us to translate it into a struggle of the ideal jprinciple of self-conscious activity, to overcome and comprehend the flowing stream of the empirical life. And it further leads to a rational idea of the con- scious stages which the sovd passes through in this dual evolution. For just as the ai^plication of the idea of self-conscious dialectic enables us to conceive three logically correlated aspects of the personal life of the Absolute ; namely, absolute thought, absolute 17 258 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY will, and absolute love ; so in tlie psychic sphere its application reveals to us a corresponding dialectic in which the spirit asserts itself intellectually in the Xorinciple of identity and diflerence, volitionally in the princii^le of sufficient reason and aesthetically in the principle of unity which is the soul of love. But in the human spirit this self-assertion is an ideal that is never completely realized, since the spirit itself is a developing xootence whose basal movement is an evolution. The second consideration is that of the relation between the absolute logos and the spirit of man. We have seen that in the possession of a common principle they are the same. But this sameness is only community of essence. It justifies the assertion, that the ideal principre of man's spiritual nature is absolute, and that he may, therefore, be the bearer of absolute ideas and a knowledge of the Absolute. But this only implies community of essence. The modification which constitutes man a creature ; name- ly, the form of his spiritual activity as a growth or evolution from potence to actuality, which also de- termines the order of his progress from mechanism to sx3irit, is the basis of his distinction of conscious- ness, individuality, and will. This constitutes him the bearer of a conscious life whose principle is ideally absolute, but whose individuality is relative and distinct. There is thus community and distinction between the absolute logos and the spirit of man. And we have seen in the chaj^ter on Religion how, through LOGOS 259 this community of spiritual jDrinciple embodying- it- self on the one hand in the soul's ideal and on the other in the Divine logos, a medium of interaction and intercommunion is maintained between the soul and its transcendent ground. The log-OS stands thus as a fruitful norm of phil- osophic ideas. It is the principle from Avhich a rational conception of absolute being may be de- duced. Without it only the existence of an abso- lute could be affirmed, while its nature would baffle conception. It is the only princi]3le also that makes a true conception of the dualistic dialectic of spirit possible. "Without the insight it gives the true nat- ure and differentia of relativity would be hidden mysteries, and no adequate conception of the nature of the human spirit and its relation to the Absolute would be possible. On any other princii)le agnos- ticism could not be clearly transcended, nor yet pantheism or atheistic individualism. The logos is a principle that intelligizes the whole system of reality, binding absolute and relative each to each in close bonds, without infringing the vested rights of either. The logos also mediates the evolution of the world-process. The categories of its progress are, as we have seen, mechanism, life, and spirit. The mechanical forces are the first actualities of the po- tential world-ground. They act without conscious- ness or teleologic motive of their own, but they are not to be conceived, therefore, as blindly working forces, for hidden in them is the will of the logos 260 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY working under the categ-ory unity. Cosmic nature is the si3here of mechanism and of mechanical forces and laws. But her x3resupposition is a sx)iritual ac- tivity which can alone supj)ly a completely rational idea of her order. The world-process, under the impelling* will of the log-OS at length transcends the pure mechanical stage and enters that of life, where the spiritual prin- ciple begins to function as an immanent unifying force in the production of organisms. In the plant consciousness is transcendent, but it enters the ani- mal as instinct and feeling, and the animal is able, therefore, to assert itself against a merely mechani- cal existence and to develop a species of imperfect individuality. But to the animal, ideality is still a hidden force. The animal is a blind servant of the logos and represents only a transitional stage in the passage of the world from the cosmic to the psychic sphere. The category of life is that of mechano-teleology. Its overt forces and laws are mechanical, but under the influence of the hidden activity of the logos these forces realize a product which transcends them and points necessarily to a spiritual ground. In the psychic nature, as Ave have seen, the logos be- comes immanent as a principle of self-conscious activity and experience, not as the logos of God, however, bringing with it an absolute consciousness, but rather as the ideal principle in the conscious- ness of an imperfect and develox3ing creature. Here it functions as the principle of knowledge and as the LOGOS 261 organ that contains the ideal norms of philosophy, science, morality, and art. It is by virtue of the logos-principle also that the soul of man is able to transcend the limits of its particular individuality and to achieve a race-con- sciousness as the arena for a historic experience and common civic life. Here its outj^ut is culture and civilization and all that splendid and pathetic record that is embodied in human historj^ In this sphere the logos also functions as a i3rinciple of spiritual freedom motiving and inspiring that teleologic up- ward movement of social, intellectual, and spiritual progress, which through and over all negative oppo- sition and in spite of all subversive and destructive tendencies has made the historic record, with all its obverse side of darkness and disorder, one of splen- did and enduring achievement. But not without the Logos of God. The deepest intuition of j)hilosophy is that Avhich beholds the spirit of man in close and living union with its di- vine fellow. The human psyche is never away from the logos of God, but, as the profound Descartes asserted, the conscious lorinciple which gives the soul its idea of self gives it also in inseparable fel- lowship its idea of God. The plummet that sounds the profoundest depths of psychic nature touches also the nature of God. That God and the psyche are identical is, and ever must be, precluded by the basal type of psychic nature. But there is unity of principle in diversity of type and distinction of con- sciousness. The psychic logos and the logos of God 262 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY are one in their ground principle. Only, the latter is pu7'us actus in the nature and consciousness of the Absolute, while the psychic logos is a germ con- taining the potency of rational and spiritual evo- lution. It is in the light of this potentiality that psychic history transcends the category of mechanism and becomes com]3letely teleologic. For just as the teleologic meaning of cosmic nature is only revealed in the appearance of the psyche, so the teleology of psychic nature, and through it of all relativity, is made clear only in the ideal realization of the psychic type. This, as we have seen, is achieved by gradations in the spiritual movements of humanity and in the medium of historic individuals through whom new increments 'of spiritual force flow in from the transcendent logos into human channels. Thus humanity travels the toilsome road of a spiritual development through which it is enabled to ap- proach the goal of its asi3iration. It is only from the stand-point of religion, how- ever, that the teleology of the world can be com- pletely understood. Religion, as we saw, is founded on a need of mediation which is inherent in the psychic nature. Even though evil had never be- come real the psyche is mutable and needs tran- scendent help to work out its si3iritual destiny. Much more, then, is this assistance needful when the psyche has fallen into evil and sin has become a baleful and destructive force. The medial function must in that case also become remedial, and the LOGOS 263 psycliic nature must be renovated as well as spirit- ualized. But the remedial function can be no after-tliouglit to the Absoluts. For the possibility of evil in the sphere of the relative can be no after-thought. And if no after- thought, then it must be contemplated in the world-idea which underlies creation, and in which the ultimate key to the solution of the problem of evil and all other problems is to be sought. How, then, is this world-idea to be conceived ? What is the highest thought of the Absolute for the relative? It must be the thought of the absolute religion. It must be a mediation that transcends ordinary his- toric channels although it embodies itself in the su- l^reme historic individual. The logos of God must come down to us men from God, must enter into the sphere of relativity, into the world of the psychic logos, must achieve a consciousness of the material and corporeal, must achieve an empiric character and consciousness, and a dualistic nature in which a spiritual principle and law dominates the empiri- cal and brings it into harmony Avith itself. The logos of God must enter the psychic mould and the psycliic consciousness in order that it may pene- trate the whole sphere of relative being with a realiz- ing sense ; in order that it may have a sense of the nature, the needs, the weaknesses, the woes, the sins, and the struggles of psychic existence. For only thus can the ideal good of the race be actual- ized, and only thus can the whole relative order be finally justified. 264 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY In actualizing this highest good of the relative, the logos of God becomes the ideal mediator and redeemer of an evil-smitten and struggling race. The ideal spiritual life into which man is perpetu- ally to enter is not finite but infinite and divine. The Christ-idea is thus no product of the mytholog- ical fancy. It springs out of a necessity that is con- stitutional to the psychic nature. It is the spirit- ual ideal, which though but dimly ai^prehended the relative order has ever had at its heart. The Christ- idea is the true infinite ideal of humanity conceived as actualized in self-conscious and personal form. And as God is the infinite ideal of the soul con- ceived as actual, the Christ-idea, when it has once become a self-conscious and personal being, will embody an ideal syntliesis of the human and divine. But such an actualization cannot be the product of speculation or reflective activity. The redemption of humanity cannot be worked out in the closet of the philosopher. It must embody itself in concrete personal form in some historic individual manifesta- tion which philosophy may reflect and translate into terms of knowledge, but which she could never create from her own resources. The logos of God thus becomes the necessary medium of the highest spirit- ual revelation and the highest good to humanity. It becomes the supreme revelation of the divine right- eousness and truth. It embodies the divine pity, the divine love and mercy. Into it the divine help- fulness and the heart of the divine goodness enter in their fulness. It is in the vision of the logos of LOGOS 265 God that the problem of the relative order and the world's destiny finds its most adequate solution, and it is in the light of that vision that science, philos- ophy, art, and religion may clasp hands in the bonds of a common faith and hope. XVII GOD The greatest thoug-lit of the human spirit is the thong-ht of God. The org-an of this thought is the logos, and to attain to it the spirit must j^ut forth its supremest effort. The genesis of the divine idea has both subjective and objective roots. Subjec- tively the idea of God arises as the first presupposi- tion of the human spirit. We have seen that this is self-existence. The idea of God arises out of that of self-existence when the spirit construes it under its own highest category, namely, that of personal- ity. The objective genesis proceeds from the idea of the world-ground. The idea of cause has coiled up in it the idea of self-activity, and when this pre- sui3X3osition is drawn out the idea of the world ground is born. The last step in tlie objective sphere is identical with that in the subjective. To the idea of a self-active world-principle the spirit applies its own highest category, and the idea of God emerges as the ground of the world. A true insight will be able to apprehend the ra- tionale of this process. It is the siDirit's assertion of its own ideal-self ; tliat is, of its infinite and perfect GOD 2G7 self, as actual. God is tlie ideal of siiirit, and the idea of God is the idea of a being- in whom this ideal is actual. "We thus come around again to the Ai'is- totelian conception of purus actus, but now trans- lated into terms of spiritual selfhood. The idea of God is, therefore, the ideal of the human sjnrit assei^ted as actual. * The problem of God's existence, or rather of his actuality, plaj^s a great part in all human thinking. The basis of the problem is the synthesis which we have discovered in the idea of God between the con- cept of the ideal and the assertion of its actuality. This identifies the idea of God as it comes into the human consciousness with the spirit's assertion of its ideal and infinite self. The God -consciousness of humanity, as it may be called, is not, then, a pure intellection. It is not the absolute thought think- ing itself, but it is the absolute will, in which the thought is presupposed, asserting itself. The idea of God is, therefore, the function of the logos, in which there is a synthesis of thought and will. The various attitudes which the human spirit may take toward the problem of God's actually can be most clearly conceived from the stand-point of spirit- * It is not sufficient to say that God is the ideal of the human spirit. The spirit does not leave the ideal floating about us a mere idea. But the self-assertion of its actuality is part of its essence. Spirit either affirms or denies God as an actuality. Tliis is, I think, the real core of Des Cartes' contention that the idea of God involves the predicate of existence. But Des Cartes' argument is only an adumbration of the truth. 268 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ual dialectic. We have seen how the primal intui- tion of being and non-being- arises in the intellect and forms the basis of the self-assertion of the spirit under the category of will against non-being, in the energy of creation. This self-assertion, as we have seen, is the function of the spirit as logos. Now if we keep the dual dialectic before us we will see that the spirit may (1) deny its ideal self, and this gives rise to atheism ; (2) it may assert its ideal self, which gives rise to positive theism ; (3) it may assert the negative of its ideal self or the a-logos, and this will give rise to negative theism, a theory that finds the negative ground of things in God ; (4) it may assert its ideal-self as the unity of being and non-being, and this will give rise to four species of pan-ontology. Of these two will be negative ; (a) the negative pan- theism of the Orient which conceives the plurality of definite existence as emanating out of a negative and indeterminate one ; {!?) naturalism which reverses the process and conceives the cosmos as emerging from a negative and indeterminate plurality. The remaining alternatives are species of positive panthe- ism ; (c) a theory in which non-being is conceived sim- ply as the self -limitation of being ; this gives rise to a pantheism of the type of Spinoza in which all de- termination is negation ; (d) a theory in which nega- tion is conceived as a principle of self-diremption and non-being, therefore, as a moment of being. This gives rise to an absolutism of the type that is ordinarily ascribed to Hegel. The insight of the dialectic will also make a very GOD 269 brief criticism of these theories possible. If we penetrate to the heart of atheism we find that it in- volves a self-contradiction, for it is the virtual denial of self-existence, which, as we have seen, is the first presupposition of knowledge. Atheism in thus can- celling knowledge cancels itself. Negative theism arises, we saw, from the spirit's asserting its ideal as the negative of self; that is, as a spiritual be- ing whose nature negates spiritual categories and cannot, therefore, be conceived. It is clear that this is self-contradictory, since the assertion of spiritual being carries with it the assertion of spiritual at- tributes. Negative theism is founded on a kind of amphiboly of the spirit in which an oscillation be- tween i)ositive and negative conceptions generates perpetual illusion. In what we have called the pan-ontological theo- ries there is a common fault that vitiates them all. In these theories the spirit asserts its ideal self as the unity of being and non-being. But this reduces dif- ference ultimately to identity, which means stagna- tion and spiritual death rather than life. In assert- ing itself as the unity of being and non-being spirit virtually cancels itself. Now this suicidal movement may be discovered in all the theories which rest on this assumi^tion. The Oriental thinking in its type is a species of negative pantheism, in which from a negative one the all is conceived as proceeding by emanation. But if the one negates plurality it is a contradiction to conceive a plurality as arising out of it. The world is, therefore, cancelled. Natural- 270 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ism inverts the mistake by conceiving the unity of the cosmos as emerging from a negative plurality. Here, however, the negation of unity in the ground contradicts the assumption of unity in the product, and the cosmos is therefore cancelled. The positive theories of the iDantheistic type are no better off. In Spinozism difference arises through the self-limitation of being. But being can limit it- self and i3ass into its opposite only so far as it can- cels itself. Si^inoza avoids this i3it by asserting the unreality of being's opposite, thus cancelling differ- ence and reducing the universe to the stillness of a moveless identity. In the second species of positive pantheism, the conception of non-being as a move- ment in being identifies it with being. Difference is thus cancelled and the foundation taken away from that living dialectic of siDirit the affirmation of which constitutes the principal merit of Hegelism. There remains, then, positive theism, in which the spirit asserts the ideal of its infinite and perfect self as actual. Now, if we scrutinize the logic of positive theism we will find it to be the only religi- ous theory that keeps straight with the inner dialec- tic of spirit. AVe have seen how this dialectic starts with an intuition of being and non-being, and hoAV this intuition rouses the Avill and induces the logos to go out creatively into the sphere of non-being as well as to energize internally as a principle of self- realization. This dialectic keeps wholly clear of the confusions of being and non-being, into which the theories criticised above have fallen. The losfos GOD 271 acts on tlie dual intuition of identity and difference, the former being the principle of an eternal self- assertion by the divine Spirit ; the latter that of an eternal opiDOsition to non-being in the activity of creation. It is precisely this dialectical being that positive theism asserts. The God of theism is the Logos who asserts himself and creatively opi30ses non-being, who loves good and hates evil, who gives light and causes darkness to flee away. The God of positive theism is the God of the spirit whose vision is unclouded and whose intuitions grasp the primal dualism of reality. The ontological proof of God's existence is, when reduced to its essence, simply the spirit's assertion of the actuality of its infinite ideal. The force of the proof lies partly in an assumx^tion that under- lies it, namely, that of self-existence. But we have seen that this assumption is the primal datum of phi- losophy, namely, that primal being is self-existent. Now the inner dialectic of the ontological proof is this : self-existent being is self-active, and self-activ- ity is a spiritual category, and, therefore, the primal being is spirit. The proof asserts, if self -existence, then spiritual existence. God can be denied only by denying self-existence, which is tantamount to the spirit's denying itself, which is self -contradictory. The founders of this proof in modern philosophy failed to clearly apprehend the inner nerve of it. Anselm defines God as a being than whom a greater cannot be conceived, and then reasons that to deny his existence would leave him less than the greatest 272 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY conceivable being, which is contradictory. Had Anselm translated his quantitative conceptions into quality he would have seen the force of his reason- ing" to be that the last x3resupposition of all think- ing is self-existence, and that this presupposition cannot be construed under other than spiritual categories. The primal being is, therefore, spirit. Des Cartes unfolds three as]3ects of the same proof : (1) That the idea of God involves the X3redicate of existence ; (2) that the idea of God involves an ade- quate cause which must be an infinite and perfect being; (3) that the idea of God is the immediate presupiDOsition of man's idea of himself, and, there- fore, God exists. Underlying all these is a common dialectic process which Des Cartes did not clearly apx3rehend. For the aim of the ontological proof is not to establish mere existence, but rather to identify the idea of God with that of self-existence, which must be assumed. Now self-existence, as we have seen, is identical with self-activity, and self-activity is spirit. But the idea of God is that of a self-active spirit. It is therefore identical with that of the self- existent, which must be assumed. The idea of God is, therefore, the spirit's assertion of the actuality of its ideal ; that is, of an infinite and perfect self. The Kantian criticism of the ontological proof misses the fact that the relation of ideality on which the proof rests is resolvable into the self-assertion of spirit. The idea of God is identical with the idea of self-existent being, because they are both identical with that of spiritual self-activity, and GOD 273 spiritual self - activity is primal reality. Kant's thought had not reached the plane where such re- flection is possible, and his criticism is, therefore, inconclusive. The criticism of Kant rests, however, on the plane where doubt arises. The ontological proof contains, as we have seen, a volitional element of self-asser- tion, the sx)irit asserting its own infinite ideal as the highest actuality. Now, wherever will enters as a factor in conviction doubt is possible, for thought may abstract itself from will, and the mere abstract concept does not carry the reality of its object with it. From the stand-point of abstract thinking Kant is right and the doubt is natural. The historical proofs from cosmology and final cause are to be regarded, primarily, as reflections entered upon by the spirit for the purpose of restor- ing its lost confidence in its own ideal self-assertion. The x^roof from cosmology is simply the reassertion in an objective form of the identity between the idea of God and that of self-existent being. Kant's criti- cism of this, that it is incomplete and cannot reach God without having recourse to ontology, is a jDiece of insight which he misuses ; for, as we have seen, ontology proceeds on the same assertion of identity but finds the clinch which realizes the whole in the idea of spirit as self-activity, and, therefore, primal being. Now, cosmology falls back ui^on ontology to the extent of borrowing this clinch from her in order to complete its own dialectic. What Kant should have observed is the substan- 18 274: BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tial identity of the two proofs, since they involve the same dialectic in subjective and objective forms. The proof from final cause is founded on a differ- ent principle, namely, that of sufficient reason. It observes in the world-series, mainly in the sphere of living- organisms, certain i)henomena, manifesta- tions of a principle of unitary individuality, which it can explain only on the supposition that there is a unitary cause, and when it further analyzes this as- sumption of unitary cause it finds wrapped up in it the presupposition of self -activity, which leads by a further step of refiection to the assertion of self- active spirit. The proof from final cause thus leads to the same goal that is reached by the other two proofs. Kant's criticism of tliis proof is an act of logical abortion. He sees that it touches points that are common to ontology and cosmology, and assumes that it is compelled therefore to have recourse to these two arguments in order to complete its own case. "What Kant fails to see is that the proof from final cause rests on a different principle from the others, that while they proceed analytically on the principle of identity, the argument from final cause proceeds synthetically on the princii^le of sufficient reason. It is, therefore, homogeneous, and expresses the self-assertion of spirit negatively as its refusal to be satisfied with any exi^lanation that does not rest ultimately on a spiritual principle. The legitimate force of these proofs in removing doubt and restoring conviction may be seen from GOD 275 two considerations. In the first place, they reveal the fact that whether our reflection proceeds sjm- thetically or analytically, upon the iDrinciple of sufficient reason or upon that of identity, it reaches the same conclusion ; namely, that the ultimate g-round of the world must be self-existent spirit. In the second place, they fit into that dialectic which constitutes the spirit's inner activity. This dialectic, as we have seen, is dual, and includes three stages of spiritual life ; first, that of thought, in which siDirit thinks itself and its opposite non - being ; second, that of will, in which spirit affirms itself in the princii)le of identity and denies its opposite in the principle of sufficient reason ; third, that of love, in which spirit mediates the dual activities of iden- tity and sufficient reason in the principle of unity. If this dialectic be conceived as the inner activity of the absolute Spirit, we arrive at the intuition of the absolute intellect as intuiting itself and its opx)o- site; the absolute intellect and will as affirming itself and going out creatively upon its negative in the production of the creation ; the absolute intel- lect, will, and love mediating the dual activities of the spirit and bringing the creature into unity with the Creator. If this dialectic be conceived as the inner activity of the human spirit, the same moments will be real- ized as in the absolute consciousness. There must first be the self-conscious thought that thinks itself and its opposite the not-self. This supplies the inner motive to the will, and the second stage arises 276 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY in wliicli the human spirit, as thought and will, as- serts itself affirmatively in the iDrinciple of identity, and negatively against its opposite in the principle of sufficient reason. But here the human spirit strikes upon the limitations of its creaturely nature. It is largely undeveloped potence jpassing into actu- ality, and its undeveloped potence limits the effec- tive energy of will and leads to a sense of its own impotence. It also limits the spirit in this sphere qualitatively, robbing it of the creative function, for it finds that the creative intelligence has been before- hand with it, and that its function is to rethink the thoughts of the Absolute and to reproduce the crea- tions of its power. The spirit finds that the pathway of its knowledge and experience leads it in the foot- steps of a creative intelligence that has preceded it. Now^ it is in this sphere where the spirit expresses itself in a synthesis of thought and will that the reflec- tions embodied in the lines of theistic loroof consid- ered above have their rise-. They arise in the human spirit's assertion of the ideal and infinite self, affirm- atively and negatively, under the categories of iden- tity and sufficient reason, as the ultimate ground of being. And they simply indicate trails which the finite intellect and will follow in their effort to make their way from the creature up to the Creator. But these proofs are not final or complete. There is a third stage in spiritual dialectic in which the spirit, as thought, will, and love asserts itself synthetically in the principle of unity. In love spirit asserts itself emotionally as well as intellectually and volitionally. GOD 277 What the spirit loves as well as wills and thinks, is an object of worth or value. Modern thinking- j)roceeding' upon this recognition has shown a ten- dency to separate the possessions of the spirit in- to two groups, labelling- them respectively things of knowledge and things of worth or value, the one group catering to the intellectual satisfaction of the human spirit, the other to its aesthetic and moral demands. On the basis of this distinction a further distribution of principles has been made, identity and sufficient reason being assigned to the intellect or theoretic function, while to the aesthetic is allotted the category of unity. Against this division nothing special can be urged. But the unity of the spirit is imiDcrilled when a further step is taken and it is proposed to effect a complete divorce of the in- tellectual from the aesthetic and moral spheres. Motives for this divorce spring from two opposite sources : (1) from a species of neo-Kantian thought, which, having despaired of the intellect as an organ of religious truth, aims to found religion exclu- sively upon aesthetic and moral grounds ; (2) from a rationalistic type of thinking, which resents the in- trusion of aesthetic and moral considerations and aims to restrict philosophy to the plane of purely intellectual motives. It is to the interest of both these styles of thinking to separate the sphere of the aesthetic off from that of the intellect and to apply to it a different standard of valuation. No such separation is x^ossible. We have seen that the spirit completes itself in the third sphere of 278 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY its dialectic activity in the principle of unity. But this third sphere is not purely emotional, it is the completest expression of si:>iritual activity, a syn- thesis of the intellectual, volitional, and emotional. The principle of unity is not, then, a category of emotional satisfaction simply, but it is a category that embodies the w^hole demand of the spirit, intel- lectual and volitional as well as emotional. It is the completest and most adequate form of the spirit's assertion of itself. In order, then, to complete the proof of God's existence we must supplement the lines of evidence which have been supplied by identity and sufficient reason, by the evidence of the category of unity. The very constitution of the spirit forbids that we should wrest the moral de- mand, as Kant does, from its affiliations with the the- oretic reason, or that we should attempt, with Jacobi and Schleiermacher, to effect the same diremption between theoretic reason and feeling. The insight of the dialectic warns us that we are the rather to conceive the principles and demands of the theoretic reason as achieving their comjDletest and rii^est fruitage in the principle and demand of the moral and aesthetic nature. The principle of unity must then be taken as hav- ing the same species of authority as the principles of identity and sufficient reason. They are all modes of spiritual self-assertion. They all embodj^ de- mands of the spirit. And when the principle of unity comes with its demand for moral satisfaction in God, and for aesthetic satisfaction in a being in GOD 279 whom it finds tlie fruition of the budding hopes of its own nature, the demands cannot be dismissed as mere vain longings. They are the richest fruitage and the most adequate expression of that spiritual activity which motives the entire fabric of man's knowledge and experience. If God is, how is he related to the world ? This question has been virtually answered in preceding chapters. God is, in the first place, the absolute and transcendent ground of the world. The world is the product of an immanent spiritual potence which has as its immediate presupposition spiritual self- activity. This self-activity as the self-existent /^rw^s of all being we have found to be God. God cannot be completely immanated in the world-process. His self -activity is a presupposition of immanent potence and its denial leaves no foundation for any immanent function. God is the Creator of the world. We have already in the earlier chapters of this book endeavored to ground rationally the crea- tive idea. It is only intelligible in the light of that living spiritual dialectic in which a key is found to so many mysteries. God as the Creator is the logos. He is God, conceived as intellect and will, assert- ing his divine energy in the production of the creat- ure out of non-being. We have seen how this neg- ative sphere arises as an intuition of the divine intellect. The logos as the di^dne intellect and will asserts its energy against non-being, producing out of it creature existence and the order of becoming. Thus the world-process is grounded. The immanent 280 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ground of tliis process is a spiritual potence which leads it in its evolution through stages of mechan- ism and life up to the soul of man, in which spirit becomes self-conscious. As world-creator God is the logos, the will of the absolute spirit, uttering itself in the energ}^ that an- nuls non-being and produces out of it the creature. But God is also related to the world as its builder and completer. The world as it begins is in its nature far from God ; it originates as unconscious matter and mechanical force and energy. We have seen how this mechanism is rationally grounded only in a po- tential spiritual principle. But it is the lowest po- tence of spirit, unconscious, undesigning, pluralistic, and held in the clinch of necessity. The world is fai from God and must be brought to him. This is the motive of the world-evolution which is a process of development along the pathway of spirit. Now God as the Creator is the logos, but God as the world- builder and developer is the unifying Spirit. The principle of his activity is unity and his motive is love. The process of evolution is not identical with creation. It presupposes and in a sense includes it just as unity includes all other principles. The proc- ess of evolution is the upward progress of the creat- ure toward unity with the Creator. In the first stages of the world-process the motive of this unification is transcendent. The mediation which it involves is also transcendent, therefore, embodying itself in the unconscious advance of nature to higher planes of activity, the unconscious establishment of stores of GOD 281 potential energy as the basis of nature's advances, and the unconscious sacrifice which is involved in the achievement of higher forms of life. Though tran- scendent, however, the motive must be conceived as immanent in the divine activity that pulsates at the heart of the world-i^rocess. God's relation to the world can be adequately conceived only when we combine the ideas of the logos and the unifying Spirit, the one the activity that brings the world into existence out of chaos, the other the activity that moves on the face of the deep and leads the world on the pathway of order and development. God's relations to humanity are closer because they enter more into consciousness. They are, how- ever, generically the same as his relations to the world. God is the Creator, the Father of the human spirit. He plants in man creatively the same spirit- ual principle which he immanates in the world. Man is part of the world-process. But this principle in man becomes self-conscious, and thus energizes as the centre of a spiritual life that allies it to its divine author. But man is not God. He is only his image ; that is, he is only a potency whose infinite and perfect actuality is God. God is, therefore, the ideal of the human sjiirit. And it is because the spirit is conscious of this ideal that it can call God Father. God the logos is the creative principle of humanity. We have seen how through the ideal consciousness of man an organ of close intercommu- nion exists between God and the human spirit, en- abling God on the one hand to inform the human 282 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY spirit with the norms of an ideal life, and the human spirit, on the other, to call God Father and to hold communion with him. God as unifying- Spirit is also the builder and developer of humanity. We have seen that the uni- fying Spirit works under the category of unity, and that its energizing- motive is love. This unity is effected by mediation, and just as we saw in the world below humanity that the mediational function transcends the consciousness of the woiid-forces, which are its unwitting instruments in leading- the world up to God, so in the evolution of humanity there is a stage where the true idea of this mediation is transcendent and its human instruments realize it unwittingly, or with only half consciousness. We have said in the chapter on Eeligion that the relig- ious prophet or founder of a new dispensation must be conscious of his mission. He must intend to be God's man, speaking the thoughts and doing the will of God. But this is consistent with the exist- ence of only a partial consciousness of the divine idea he is uttering. The prophet is only the organ which the divine energy flows into and inspires, but does not fully enlighten. Devout men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, which had not as yet become immanent, so that it could speak in its own proper voice. But there comes a point in the spiritual evolution of the race when God becomes immanent in the consciousness of humanity. The mode of this has been considered in the previous chapter, and the GOD 283 synthetic unification of the divine and human con- sciousness is effected in an individual soul, and the God-man is Ijorn into the world. Not only so, but the God-man consciousness is born into humanitj^ and can no long-er be foreig-n or merely transcendent to it. And this new birth of humanity into the di- vine likeness is the initiation of a new epoch in the mission of the sj^irit. The unifying- Spirit has been in a sense a transcendent agent in human history. But now the door of a new dispensation has been opened. The logos-ideal has become a conscious possession of humanity, and through and in this lo- gos-ideal the unifying Spirit becomes immanent in man's consciousness and functions as the regenera- tor, the illuminator, the sanctifier, the comforter. It performs the mediation of love more effectually than before, because now it is the spirit of the Christ, and through and in the Christ it enters the heart of humanity and leads the race on the pathway up to glory. Thus God as unifying Si)irit energizing as the principle of atonement and as the heart of love, perfects the mediational work as God in the Christ reconciling the world to himself. God is free and sovereign in his own world. It is true, as we have seen in the chajiter on Non-being and Evil, that the divine option cannot include the X^ossibility of creating an absolute and immutable world. The idea of a created Absolute, to which this is tantamount, is self-contradictory. It is true also that the relative order is one of time and develop- ment, and that not even absolute power could invert 284 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the laws of growth and development so that the spiritual should be first in the temporal order, and then the material and mechanical. For if creative power could produce at a cov^) that which is nearest to itself, then the whole labor and process of crea- tion becomes irrational, for it would be unnecessary. Again, it is true that absolute power cannot gen- erate a creature that shall not be mutable, and, therefore, conting-ent to evil. A creature that has not the conting-ency of evil in it must be immuta- ble, and therefore self-existent, which is contradic- tory. If absolute power be subject to these apparent limitations, how can we say that God is free and sovereign in his own world ? The answer is to be found not in denying -the limitations, but in showing that they are only apparent, but not real, limitations of iDOwer. In the first place, power is a function of will, and a limit arises when iDower falls short of will. Were the creative volition to go forth and no crea- tion be forthcoming, or were the creature to tremble on the verge of being and then drop back into the abyss of non-being, in either case the power of the Absolute would meet a real limit and would no longer be absolute. But the very supposition that the ab- solute volition should contemplate the creation of another absolute outside of itself, or in addition to itself, involves, as we have seen, a monstrous self-con- tradiction. No real limit is involved in the avoid- ance of self-contradiction. There is no rationality, but the opposite, therefore, in conceiving the neces- GOD 285 sary finitiide and mutability of the creature as im- posing a limitation on absolute xDOwer. But is not the subjection of the creative energ-y, as it enters into the world, to the orders of time and development, a limitation of the absolute pow- er? Now, there is a sense in which this question becomes identical with the one considered above, and involves the same contradiction. It may mean why does not the absolute creative energy, if it be absolute, produce an absolute world that shall be perfect and immutable and not subject to the finite relation of time and development ? We do not need to thrash over again the old irrationality. Avoiding this absurdity the sober question is, whether the necessary subjection of relative and created being to the orders of time and development is any limitation on the power of the Absolute ? To this the answer is patent. Not if time and develop- ment themselves are not conceived as absolute. The relation of the creative energy to these categories of relativity is that of their founder. They are the modes in which the energy of the Absolute enters into relative production. Development is a category, therefore, which depends on the Absolute, and in- stead of shutting God out of his world, or limiting his power, its whole rationality rests in its neces- sary presupposition of the transcendent function of the Absolute, ^\e saw in the chapters on History and Eeligion, as well as in those on Cosmic, Organic, and Psychic Nature, how development necessitates the perpetual inflow of energy from absolute springs. 286 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY If development is God's creature and rests directly upon the divine energy it can contain no real limit of the divine power. Analogous considerations bear on the problem of the temporal order. If we make time absolute, then God must work in time, and the accomplishment of his purposes will have to wait. And so between the creative fiat and the completion of the world aeons must elapse sufficient to tire, if possible, even the divine patience. " God spake and it was done " thus becomes a poetic fiction, and the true idea of the deity is that of one who must wait through all the ages for the accomplishment of his purposes, while in the meantime rack and ruin are threatening the world. Such a view is irrational. Time can be conceived as only relative, and, as such, a creature of the Absolute. Lotze argues this question very subtly in his " Dic- tata on the Philosophy of Religion." God, he says, cannot be conceived as being in time. His relation to time is that of its founder. Now if God founds time, " its free ends " — this is Lotze's iDlirase— must con- verge in God. The consciousness of God will there- fore be related in the same way to all the parts of time. There will be no vanishing past or oncoming future, but the whole temporal order will be what the psy- chologists call a " specious present." This view of time brings God into immediate relation with every part of the world. It closes up the chasm between the divine purpose and its fulfilment. It brings the world-idea in God's mind, and the world-end as it embodies itself in the far-off divine event, into im- GOD 287 mediate relation. It restores tlie old sublime con- ception of God's free sovereignty over his own world. God speaks and it is done. God does not have to wait through the long ages for the fulfil- ment of his designs. To God the end and the be- ginning are one. The weary waiting, the long ages of gi'adual evolution, the purpose back in eternity, and the fulfilment yonder, are ours. These things are true for us, they are necessary categories of the relative, but to God all things are present, open and immediate. God's life is immutable and eternal. Therefore the soul's faith in God creates in it a divine thirst for immortality. The sj^nthesis between belief in God and belief in immortality is normal and natu- ral. Belief in God may be eclii^sed, and then the rose of immortality begins to fade. But the resto- ration of the spirit's belief in the actuality of its own infinite ideal brings with it a revival of faith in an infinite progress of the spirit toward the ideal. The law of the soul's life, as we have seen, is that of progress toward the ideal. Whatever vivifies the ideal, therefore, and makes it real, will stimulate the ideal aspirations of the soul and gender in it the idea of a life that is commensurate with their reali- zation. In the olden time, before the Christ-idea became a jiossession of humanity, when the abso- lute Spirit was wont to work in a transcendent manner, the idea of an immortal life could not "be fully apprehended. But when the Christ-idea be- came immanent, then the thought of the immortal 288 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY life came into the foreground, and as it grew clear and definite man's faith in it became a firm and liv- ing conviction. There are two species of difficulty which the faith in immortality has been obliged to meet, one phil- osophical and the other scientific. The former takes various forms, but here, since our conception of the human soul is generically the same as Aristo- tle's, the difficulty will be also of the Aristotelian type. Aristotle distinguishes between the active and passive reason {vov<; -TroirjTLKO'; and vov? Tra^r^riKos), and connecting the latter with the corporeal prin- ciple, as a function is related to its organ, conceives that at death it perishes, and that the active reason alone is the immortal principle in the soul. Aris- totle teaches the doctrine of immortality, but inas- much as the root of personality is by him located in the passive reason, the difficulty has been to conceive the survival of any principle of personal and indi- vidual consciousness. This difficulty led the Ara- bian commentators on Aristotle in the middle ages, as a rule, to pronounce against the personal immor- tality of the soul, and this was one of the chief points of controversy between them and the later schoolmen. We avoid the difficulty, however, when we conceive the soul itself to be a developing spirit- ual principle which is continually passing from po- tence to actuality, and thus as including a synthesis of the passive and active rationality in its own con- stitution. This dual constitution also, as we have seen, involves the possibility of a conscious Individ- GOD 289 ual life distinct from that of the Absohite. It is clear that Aristotle did not realize to the full the signifi- cance of his own principle, or if so, that his com- mentators have not fully understood him. For if we conceive the soul as containing in its constitution the dual moments of potence and actuality, we have an idea of its nature which renders the persistence of its distinctive life both conceivable and rational. The scientific difficulty may be stated as follows : Modern science has come to regard the brain as the organ of conscious life, and our modern thinking finds it hard to conceive any idea of conscious psychic existence apart from a brain. The diffi- culty seems to increase as physiological knowledge grows in accuracy and detail. Not only do we ahvays find psj'chic consciousness in connection with a brain, but the method of difference seems to demonstrate that where there is no brain there can be no consciousness. A blow on the head causes a cessation of consciousness ; a lesion of a particular part interrupts the flow of some portion of the con- scious stream. Brain conditions seem to determine conscious states, and as an organized whole as well as in its molecular constitution nerve-tissue seems to constitute an indispensable condition of psychic life. This difficulty would be insurmountable, we think, if the relation between the human soul and its corporeal organism were conceived as one of mutually exclusive entities. The fact that it is ordi- narily so conceived simply testifies to the survival 19 290 BASAL COiS-CEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY of the Cartesian dualism. The whole theory of this treatise is, however, a denial of that view and an assertion of a merely relative distinction between them, one that is mediated by a spiritual principle. Matter is the first potency of spirit, and mechanism and its laws are spiritual in their foundations. Now as the soul is not only a part of the world-energ"y, but also an epitome and synthesis of it, there is log- ically involved in the idea of the soul that of a prin- ciple which holds in it a duality of potencies, mate- rial and spiritual. We thus transfer the bond which binds the material and spiritual together from an external position to its seat in the soul itself. And by so doing we arrive at the conception of a dual psychic constitution, Avhich contains in itself the germs of both material and spiritual organiza- tion. The corporeal organism may dissolve, then, and the basal constitution of the soul will still re- main intact as the norm of a continuous life of conscious growth and activity. And when the idea of an ultimate Psychic constitution has once been achieved, the i^resumption of science changes, for it is then seen that the dissolution of the body does not necessitate the destruction of the soul. Thus the negative presumptions of i^hilosoiDliy and science are overcome, and the spirit is left free to assert its own ideal life. It is the same voice of the spirit under the same category of unity that de- mands both the divine ideal and the unending life. It is in this dual synthesis of God and immortality that the soul finds the satisfaction of its thirst for GOD 291 unity and completeness. In the same synthesis is found an unfailing well-sx)ring' of joyous and hope- ful activity both for the individual soul and for hu- manity. Man is born an heir to immortal existence. The voice that cries out in him for an unending life is the utterance of his deepest nature. But the soul tragedy of modern life is that the intellect has grown sceptical and contradicts the deeper voice of the spirit. The spirit cries out for immortality, but the intellect saj^s, Cease your striving, nor vain- ly imagine that the universe exists only for your delectation. But the soul's demand is vital and its disappointment means death. So the waters of existence become bitter to the palate, and the fine spiritual nature, robbed of its holiest birthright, plunges into pessimistic despair and longs for some Lethe stream in which to forget its troubled dream. Or, if it wills to live bravely on and work, the joys of life become apples of Sodom in its mouth and the solid structure of the world that surrounds it shrinks into a mere veil of illusion behind which stalks, not Nirvana, but the gaunt spectre of Abad- don, For when the immortal hope is gone, life shrinks into a thing of shreds and patches and all philosophy becomes in truth *' a meditation on death and annihilation." XVIII SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY We have seen that primal being* can be conceived only as self-activity. Self-activity is activity that contains its primal impulse within itself. Self-ac- tivity is also self-conscious activity. And we have seen that self - conscious activity is self-asserting- and self-realizing-. We inean this when we say that primal being- is spirit. - The dialectic of spirit is the form of its activity. The dialectic i^resupposes the primal motive. AVhy being should be active is a question that transcends all answer. We assume it when we say primal be- ing is self-activity. Its first impulse to action is identical with itself. Now this first impulse is the initial step of the dialectic. The moments of it are all iDulsations of self-assertion. The initial pulsa- tion, as we have seen, is one of intellection. Being is primally intelligent and rational. Its first activ- ity is thought, a thought in which the primal im- pulse embodies itself. It thinks itself. But the primal impulse reveals the primal distinction. The thought that thinks itself also thinks its opposite. It is as impossible to derive difference as it is to de- SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 293 rive identity. They are involved in the primal im- pulse of being. It is the essence of spirit to think the same and the different. The result of the primal impulse is the dual intui- tion of being's self, and being's not-self, or of being and non-being. It is here that we strike upon the crucial point of tlie whole dialectic of spirit. When in this primal activity being thinks the not -self, does it simply negate itself and then by another act negate the negation, and thus reach self-affirma- tion through negation? Or, putting it in another form, is it being that goes out as the nothing and then returns again as a higher form of being ? This is the ordinary Hegelian interpretation. We think a radical reform is needed at this cardinal point. Be- ing never denies itself except in a relative sense. Its negation is directed against its opposite. We would then construe the movement of the primal imiDulse as follows. When in accordance with the original dual category being thinks the not-self, it thinks objectively, and its intuition is of that which negates self ; that is, the opposite of self. Now the intuition of that Avhich is opposite to self is a point of reaction for what is called the return upon self, which means the reassertion of the self against its opposite, or the reassertion of identity against differ- ence. We may speak by a species of dialectic license of this movement as a return of being out of nothing upon itself, or as a return of identity out of differ- ence, if we avoid the contradictory assumption that being has ever lost itself in nothing, or identity in 294 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY difference. The distinction liere is just as primal as the thinking itself, for it is constitutional to it. The primal movement of spirit, as we have said, is self- assertion, and in this primal intellection it is self-as- sertion through identity and difference. This does not mean, however, that spirit thinks itself as the same and then thinks itself as the different ; that is, as the not-self. Spirit is not the arch- juggler of the universe. What is meant is something simpler. Spirit thinks itself as the same ; that is, the self be- comes conscious of itself. Spirit thinks the not-self as different ; that is, the self becomes conscious of a not-self, as its different or opposite. The primal dialectic of thinking is between the same and the different. But they are never identified. The intel- lectual impulse has nothing erudite about it. To it being and nothing are not identical but opposite, and the true genius of intellection is sacrificed when- ever this distinction is obscured. To be clear on this cardinal point settles the whole dialectic of spirit. The other moments fol- low from the nature of spirit as self-conscious activ- ity. The intuition of the negative or non-being constitutes a motive that determines the procession of the spirit. The primal impulse to self-assertion in view of this intuition becomes self-assertion against the negative, in a volitional form ; that is, as the will to suppress and annul the negative. Now, absolute will is self-active and moves upon the nega- tive or non-being as energy of creation. The crea- tive impulse is not primal, if we use the term in a SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 295 log-ical sense, but has as its presupposition tlie ac- tivity of absolute intellection which reveals the negative sphere. Creation is thus both rational and volitional and may be conceived as the will to annul non- being by the production of forms of being-. But here again our thinking must avoid entangle- ment. In creation the distinction of being and non-being is not annulled. Creation is not a proces- sion of the Absolute in a relative and finite dress. Eelativity and finitude are more than appearances ; they are constitutional to the creature. The abso- lute will does not finitate or limit itself in the crea- tion. The idea of absolute self-limitation involves that of the annihilation of energy and is self-contra- dictory. The only possible concept of a creature is that of a nature that contains opposite momenta of being and non-being. Plato in the Timaeus clothes a true intuition in symbols. The Demiurge compounds opposite ingredients, the same and the other, into a third existence, in which the intractable nature of the other is compressed into synthesis Avith the same. The creative energy annuls non- being by generating a created nature into which non-being, while it enters as a dividual, separative, dissolutive condition, is held in subordination by the unitary principle of being ; that is, the principle of self-con- scious spiritual activity. The dual nature of the creature thus originates, a nature that is ever in a state of flux, as Plato says, and that is ever oscillating between the opposite 296 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY poles of being and non-being. And it is this dual nature of tlie creature, as we saw in the first cha^Dters of this book, that renders it open to change and evolution. Being does not limit itself in the crea- tion, but the negative element is the limit that re- duces spiritual energy to jDotence and thus makes development essential. Now, it is in connection with the evolution of the creature that the third movement in the dialectic of spirit arises. Evolution is to be conceived as the gradual development of the principle of being in the nature of the creature, from potence to actual- ity, through a progressive suppression or transcen- dence of the negative. Being can grow only through the transcendence, the annulling of non-being. And non-being can be completely transcended only in the unification of the creature with the Creator through an infinite approximation. Spirit's primal impulse of self-assertion, in view of the negative char- acter of the creature, its distance and alienation from actualized spirit, is to go out in the energy of love as a developing and mediating force of unifica- tion. But here again our thinking must keejD clear of entanglements. It is not the unity of being and non-being that is conserved in this developing proc- ess. Non- being is annulled and suppressed from the beginning to the end of it. It is the unity of being and becoming, the creature and the Creator, that is conserved. And the negative side of this con- serving process is the war against and the suppres- sion of non-being. SPIPJTUAL ACTIVITY 297 This dialectic of spirit which thu-s passes through the moments of negation, creation and unification is completely realized only when we conceive it in a twofold manner, (1) on its subjective side as a logical self - comi^letion of spirit in the unity of thought, volition, and love ; (2) on its objective side as the progressive completion of the creature through the momenta of creation and evolution, culminating in the final mediation and unity of creature and Creator. Thus we conceive the movement of absolute spirit under its own categories. Subject to the limita- tions of its finite nature the dialectic of the human spirit is to be conceived under the same categories. We have already in the chapter on Knowledge de- veloped the process of the intellectual life in which it travels through the categories of identity and dif- ference and sufficient reason up to that of unity, under which it realizes the rational ideal of knowl- edge. We have only to translate the stages of this progress into volitional terms in order to see how the whole practical life of man becomes a battle with the negative, a struggle to overcome the world. The life of the spirit is a conflict waged x^ositively, as the spirit's assertion of itself in the progress of its own inner evolution and the development of its spiritual potences, negatively as a battle against negation and evil, and as a refusal to be satisfied with anything short of the highest good. And this ideal is realized only through the unify- ing activity of love. In the absolute sphere unity 298 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY of the Creator and his world is effected, as we have seen, only through the activity of love manifesting itself on the broad arena of nature and humanity and realizing itself through mediation and sacrifice. This is also the law of the human spirit. In the unifying activity of love the spirit asserts itself negatively in the progressive annulment of the negative forces that hinder spiritual development ; in its progressive triumph over sin and evil in the individual and common life of humanity ; in the war of extermination that it perpetually wages against selfishness and falsehood. It asserts itself positively in the rise of the spirit's activity, through comprehension, into ever larger and larger spheres of life. Thus, for example, the life of the individual is transcended and comprehended in the larger life of the family. That of the family is transcended and comprehended in the larger life of the commun- ity and the institutions of church and state, while the supreme unification is reached in the sphere of religion where the larger life of humanity is brought into ideal harmony with God. Thus the larger life of the human spirit realizes itself, but not without renunciation. The suppres- sion of the negative is an inseparable accompani- ment of positive growth. The spirit, in order to enter into the higher and broader life, must deny its lower and less developed self by throwing off restrictions and hinderances. In order to enter into the larger life of the family, the state, the church, or the race, the old man must be put off and the SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 299 new man must be put on. And that largest and su- premest life of the spirit, which it enters into in the religious sphere, the life with God, is conditioned on the supremest act of self-renunciation. Here the war with the negative reaches its final stage, where on the one side the demand for self-renuncia- tion and annulment is most absolute, while on the other the comprehension and unification is most comxDlete. For through all its renunciations the spirit carries its true self with it ; only the nega- tive, the imperfect, the evil is progressively cast aside, while the real self ever increases its riches as it merges into larger and more comprehensive spheres of activity. We have only to complete this idea of the strug- gle of the human spirit with the idea of its depend- ence upon its absolute ground, in order to obtain a key to the whole life of humanity. The human spirit cannot conserve its own development, but in unity with the absolute source of its being it may, through constant accessions of transcendent strength and grace, be able to overcome all the forces of negation and evil and to advance continu- ally in the progressive stages of an endless life. CONCLUSION Looking back over the path we have travelled in this inquiry several reflections suggest themselves in conclusion. In the first place, we have found in personality the highest category of interpretation in the spheres of both the relative and the Absolute. Now personality is first known as a psychological fact in the soul's experience, and the inference would seem to follow that all philosophy rests on psychol- ogy. This we shall not attempt to deny. The spirit of the knower must be able to find in itself the clews to all the mysteries of being, so far as they may be resolved. At the same time the dependence of phil- osophy on psychology cannot be construed in any narrow or exclusive sense. Philosophy is not simply an extension of psychology. An inquiry such as the present one has been, is fitted to open our eyes to the fact that our psychological categories only become philosophically competent after they have, so to speak, passed through the historic medium and em- bodied themselves objectively in the experience of humanity. The psj^chological categories must, in short, be translated from subjective to objective universals. The fact that only history is compe- tent to this translation renders that insight which CONCLUSION 301 only comes from a real knowledge of the historic evolution of thought indispensable to philosophy. The true organ of philosophy is constituted by a syn- thesis of the spiritual insights of both psychology and history. The truth of this is demonstrated in the instance of personality. The riches of this category never would yield themselves to introspective and sub- jective analysis alone. Far less would they give up their secrets to the exclusive analysis of the individ- ual consciousness. The full significance of personal- ity emerges only in the objective thinking and the spiritual experience of the race, and it is only when the spirit finds its subjective categories embodied for it in these objective forms that they become ad- equate to the demands of philosophy. There may be some who will think that in the attempt to break the agnostic limitations we have gone too far toward the gnostic extreme. But such persons may be reassured. The intelligence of the creature will always find that the Creator has been beforehand with it, so that, penetrate as far as it may, it will find itself only tracing the footsteps of an absolute intelligence that has preceded it. Besides, the aim of this whole inquiry has been to penetrate the mysteries of the Absolute only so far as may be necessary in order to discover how it rationally grounds the relative order. The category of per- sonality conceived as an immanent activity of being gives us this insight, but we know not, and doubt- less can never know, what abysses of the Absolute 302 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY still remain unpenetrated. The category of person- ality does not abolish mystery, but simply lifts the veil a little way and reveals a glimpse of the cre- ative energy in its relation to the world. Our inquiry has also tested the value of the dual categories being and non-being in solving phil- osophic problems and in developing the outlines of a coherent and comprehensive theory. Whatever speculative difficulties may yet remain, the working power of these conceptions can no longer be ques- tioned. It may be maintained with Hegel that the highest category is an absolute idea which compre- hends the dual moments, being and non-being, within itself. To this we may yield a qualified as- sent, provided this idea be translated into spirit and its dialectic be conceived as on its affirmative side, self-affirmation, but on its negative side the denial of its opposite. The reform in Hegelism, which has been urged throughout this inquiry, may be ex- pressed in the following statement : being must be identified with spirit. The inner movement of spirit is a dual dialectic in which spirit asserts itself and denies its opposite. The dual movement is thus im- manent in being. But the negative which spirit denies is not in being. It is an oppositive excluded conception, which spirit forever wars against and suppresses, but which never passes into its opposite. The negative activity of spirit thus becomes from one point of view an outgoing oppositive energy, as distinguished from the immanent activity of self-af- firmation, while from another point of view it is the CONCLUSION 303 volitional energy of creation and development. This conceiDtion of absolute spirit in its dual activity ren- ders its whole relation to the relative order, includ- ing evil and negation, botli intelligible and rational. The current thinking of our time can find no better answer to the question how it happens that an absolute energy produces only a relative and imperfect creature, than the assertion that the Ab- solute imposes a limit upon itself and voluntarily restrains its creative energies within finite bounds when otherwise the result would have been infinite and perfect. Now it is clear that no theory of ar- bitrary self-restraint can supplj^ the ground of a rational explanation, and if the conception is to be saved from becoming positively irreligious it must be subsumed under the category of the good. The only motive, in other words, that can make such self-restraint reasonable must be derived from the absolute goodness. But in view of the actual evil that has arisen out of the finitude and imperfection of things the goodness of the Absolute cannot be vindicated, if, as the theory in question implies, the creative will had before it an option between the generation of an infinite and perfect world, and one that is finite and imperfect. For the fact remains, on this supposition, that a world-scheme which in- volves the contingency and actuality of evil has been preferred to one from which these features are absent. A rational insight into the negative cuts the knot of the difficulty by helping us to see that the suppo- 304 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY sition of such an option is irrational and that the only option conceivably before the absolute will is a choice between loure negation and a finite and rel- ative order of being-. It is no impeachment of abso- lute power that its outgoing energy does not gener- ate another absolute alongside of itself, nor is it any impeachment of the absolute goodness that it pre- fers to non-being a relative and finite order of being which involves the contingency of evil. We have seen that the true significance of the world-order can be seen only in the light of the highest concep- tions of religion, and that from the stand -point of religion evil becomes a subordinate though real feat- ure of the world, while the good stands supreme as the end and rationale of its whole history and devel- opment. Furthermore, our reflection enables us to conceive a rational solution of the issues between monism and dualism, on the one hand, and idealism and realism on the other. A monistic theory of reality which identifies it with being must always be in- adequate since the real must include the opposite of being, which can never be identified with being with- out transgressing basal principles. Also any mon- istic theory must be inadequate which ignores the distinction between the Absolute and the relative and seeks to apply a unitary principle, let it be spiritual or material, without regard to that distinc- tion. For in that case, if we start from absolute being, we will miss the actual duality of the relative, whereas if we take our departure from the relative we CONCLUSION 305 will never be able to conceive any point where a tran- sition of the real from relative to absolute is possible. And this inability will carry with it the impossibility of assurance as to the existence of the Absolute. A rational metaphysic will admit the distinction between being and reality, and while asserting- the unitary character of the one will acknowledge the duality of the other. The real includes the negative of being. It will also admit the distinction between being and becoming, and while asserting the unitary character of being will admit the duality of becoming. In short, a rational metaphysic is identical with a spiritualistic theory of reality, which, postulating an absolute spirit as the self-existent principle of things, is able to see not only how the necessity of non- being springs from this postulate, but also how the negative supplies a necessary datum of the rel- ative, accounting for its modified and dualistic char- acter. Monism is right when it says there is only one principle of being, but it is mistaken when it identifies being and reality, and on that basis denies the reality of the negative. The issue between idealism and realism is not so stringent. There are several types of theory which a spiritualistic metaphysic will reject. One of these is a type of ontologic idealism which suppresses volition and feeling in the interests of abstract thought. Another is a si^ecies of subjective psj^- chological idealism which ignores the ontologic as- pect of reality and completely identifies the object of knowledge with the subjective psychic process 20 306 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY through which it is apprehended. Still a third type is a species of realism which assumes the distinction between spirit and matter to be absolute, thus, by implication at least, carrying the duality of sub- stances up into the nature of the Absolute. The truth which metaphysics is chiefly concerned to assert is that the real is primally spiritual. A spiritualistic theory leads, as we have seen, to the recognition of a distinction between the Absolute and the relative and the inclusion of both in the synthesis of reality. This makes it imj)ossible to reduce the relative to mere appearance. The rela- tive is real. It has its roots in the Absolute, but it is not a mere schein of the Absolute. We have seen that relativity has a distinctive constitution and type which make it analogous to a word that, once ut- tered, cannot be recalled. The word of the Absolute endureth forever. Moreover, in the relative sphere the material is not a mere schein of the spiritual. We have seen that the law of relativity is, first the material, then the spiritual ; that the spiritual cate- gories are the highest. But this does not mean the supioression of the material or its reduction to un- reality. In achieving the spiritual, the material and mechanical are gone through but not left behind. The material stands there hard and durable, and the moment of mechanism is ever present in the highest manifestations of spirit. The world is a solid and firm -jointed reality which confronts the knower and fills his categories with objective con- tent from the beginning to the end of the process of CONCLUSION 307 experience.* A theory which thus asserts a system of reality at the heart of which pulsates the personal energ-y of spirit may be idealistic in its conception of the tnode of knowledge, since knowledge and re- ality must be distinguished, but it will be realistic in its metaphysic. Not the idea, but concrete spirit is the primal unit of being. If, however, the idea should be identified with concrete spirit and en- riched with a content of volition and love, and then its exponent should cling to idealism as the best designation of his creed, the issue is not one over which philosophy need go to i)ieces. Again, in view of conclusions already established, we think a settlement of the issue between natural- ism and supernaturalism becomes practicable. Hux- ley points with some concern to the victorious march of naturalism in our modern thinking. Everywhere the supernatural is falling into discredit, and even religion, if it would avoid the charge of superstition, must assume a naturalistic garb. Now there is a scientific naturalism which is sound and, in fact, necessary. Science deals with causation and de- velopment, and we have seen that these are categories of the natural series. Not only the sciences of nat- ure but psychology and history are obliged to be naturalistic in this sense. Now between such nat- uralism and spiritualism there is no issue. The cause and the movement may be both spiritual and material. ^Tien, however, naturalism is carried over * In this we simply reassert the position which McCosh and the Scottish thinkers maintain against wliat may be called phenomenal idealism. 308 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY into metaphysics as an exclusive category it becomes false. The first presupposition of metaphysics is the Absolute, which is both transcendent and super- natural. The metaphysical ground of an adequate world-theory is a synthesis of the natural and i^he- nomenal with this supernatural ground. MetajDliy- sics must affirm a synthesis of natural and super- natural, and this synthesis must also be found at the heart of every adequate philosophy of religion. The suppression of the supernatural carries with it the death of true naturalism. Lastly, we have in our inquiry been led to see how a rational solution of the modern antinomy be- tween the ideas of immanence and transcendence is possible. We do not any longer need to work the old treadmill of annulling one in the supposed in- terest of the other, for we have seen that they are not contradictory, but rather complementary con- ceptions. The first presupposition of all being is a self-existent Absolute which stands as the transcen- dent ground and principle of the world. The world is generated by the outgoing volitional energy of this Absolute. But the creative energy itself enters into the world as the immanent spring of its exist- ence and development. The Creator is in his world, but he is not wholly sv/allowed up by it. A synthe- sis of immanence and transcendence is necessary in order to rationalize the w^orld. We are not obliged, then, to be either deists or pantheists, but true philosophic insight will lead us to a religious posi- tion in which the shortcomings of both are escaped.