' K<^ °^ ^^O^ Ho ^<5^ .^^ %. <^. ' * o ^ /^ \> ^ •■ * " A -%, \> » '< * » 2^0< < . , Qfe V- S . ^o^ <^ I-% V » ■' * ° . I Q -:^ o of art, it is needless to speak of others. It may be sufficient to state that Pausanias mentions by name towards three hundred remarkable statues which adorned this part of tl;e city even after it had been robbed and despoiled by its several conquer- ors. The Areopagus, or hill of Ares (Mars), so called, it is said, in consequence of that god having been the first person tried there for the crime of murder, was, beyond all doubt, the rocky height which is separated from the western end of the Acropo- lis by a hollow, forming a communication between the northern and southern divisions of the city. The court of the Areopagus was simply an open space on the highest summit of the hill, the judges sitting in the open air, on rude seats of stone, hewn out of the solid rock. Near to the spot on which the court was held was the sanctuary of the Furies, the avenging deities of Grecian mythology, whose presence gave additional solemnity to the scene. The place and the court were regarded by the people with superstitious reverence. This completes our survey of the principal buildings, monu- ments, and localities within the city of Athens. We do not im- agine we have succeeded in conveying any adequate idea of the ancient splendor and glory of this city, which was not only the capital of Attica, but also " The eye of Greece, mother of art and eloquence." We trust, however, that we have contributed somewhat towards awakening in the reader's mind a deeper interest in these classic scenes, and enabling him to appreciate, more vividly, the allu- sions we may hereafter make to them. The mere dry recital of geographical details, and topograph- ical notices is, however, of little interest in itself, and by itself. A tract of country derives its chief interest from its historic as- sociations — its immediate relations to man. The events which have transpired therein, the noble or ignoble deeds, the grand achievements, or the great disasters of which it has been the theatre, these constitute the living heart of its geography. Pal- 3 34 CHRISTIANITY AND estine has been rendered forever memorable, not by any re- markable peculiarities in its climate or scenery, but by the fact that it was .the home of God's ancient people — the Hebrews ; and still more, because the ardent imagination of the modern traveller still sees upon its mountains and plains the lingering footprints of the Son of God. And so Attica will always be regarded as a classic land, because it was the theatre of the most illustrious period of ancient history — t/ie period of youth- ful vigor in the life of humanity, when viewed as a grand organic whole. Here on a narrow spot of less superficies than the little State of Rhode Island there flourished a republic which, in the grandeur of her military and naval achievements, at Marathon, Thermopylae, Plataea, and Salamis, in the sublime creations of her painters, sculptors, and architects, and the unrivalled pro- ductions of her poets, orators, and philosophers, has left a lin- gering glory on the historic page, which twenty centuries have not been able to eclipse or dim. The names of Solon and Pericles ; of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle ; of Isocrates and Demosthenes ; of Myron, Phidias, and Praxiteles \ of Herodo- tus, Xenophon, and Thucydides ; of Sophocles and Euripides, have shed an undying lustre on Athens and Attica. How much of this universal renown, this imperishable glory attained by the Athenian people, is to be ascribed to their geo- graphical position and surroundings, and to the elastic, bracing air, the enchanting scenery, the glorious skies, which poured their daily inspiration on the Athenian mind, is a problem we may scarcely hope to solve. Of this, at least, we may be sure, that all these geographical and cosniical conditions were ordained by God, and ordained, also, for some noble and worthy end. That God, " the Father of all the families of the earth," cared for the Athenian people as much as for Jewish and Christian nations, we can not doubt. That they were the subjects of a Providence, and that, in God's great plan of human history, they had an important part to fulfill, we must believe. That God " determined the time of GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 35 each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical bounds of its habitation," is affirmed by Paul. And that the specific end for which the nation had its existence was fulfilled, we have the fullest confidence. So far ^ therefore^ as we can trace the relation that subsists betwecJt the geographical position and surroundi7igs of that nation, and its national characteristics and actual history, so far. are we able to solve the probletn of its destiny ; and by so much do we enlarge our comprehension of the plan of God in the history of our race. The geographical position of Greece was favorable to the freest commercial and maritime intercourse with the great his- toric nations — those nations most advanced in science, litera- ture, and art. Bounded on the west by the Adriatic and Ionian seas, by the Mediterranean on the south, and on the east by the ^gean Sea, her populations enjoyed a free intercommunication with the Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, Phoenicians, Romans, and Carthaginians. This peculiarity in the geographical po- sition of the Grecian peninsula could not fail to awaken in its people a taste for navigation, and lead them to active commer- cial intercourse with foreign nations.^ The boundless oceans on the south and east, the almost impassable mountains on the west and north of Asia, presented insurmountable obstacles to commercial intercourse. But the extended border-lands and narrow inland seas of Southern Europe allured man, in presence of their opposite shores, to the perpetual exchange of his pro- ductions. An arm of the sea is not a barrier, but rather a tie between the nations. Appearing to separate, it in reality draws them together without confounding them.'* On such a theatre we may expect that commerce will be developed on an exten- sive scale. ^ And, along with commerce, there will be increased * Humboldt's " Cosmos," vol. ii. p. 143. ^ Cousin, vol. i. pp. 169, 170. ^ The advantageous situation of Britain for commerce, and the nature of the climate have powerfully contributed to the perfection of industry among her population. Had she occupied a central, internal station, like that of Switzerland, the facilities of her people for dealing with others being so much the less, their progress would have been comparatively slow, and, in- 36 CHRISTIANITY AND activity in all departments of productive industry, and an en- larged diffusion of knowledge. " Commerce," says Ritter, " is the great mover and combiner of the world's activities." And it also furnishes the channels through which flow the world's ideas. Commerce, both in a material and moral point of view, is the life of nations. Along with the ivory and ebony, the fab- rics and purple dyes, the wines and spices of the Syrian mer- chant, there flowed into Greece the science of numbers and of navigation, and the art of alphabetical writing from Phoenicia. Along with the fine wheat, and embroidered linen, and riches of the farther Indias which came from Egypt, there came, also, into Greece some knowledge of the sciences of astronomy and geometry, of architecture and mechanics, of medicine and chemistry ; together with the mystic wisdom of the distant Orient. The scattered rays of light which gleamed in the east- ern skies were thus converged in Greece, as on a focal point, Jo be rendered more brilliant by contact with the powerful Gre- cian intellect, and then diffused throughout the western world. Thus intercourse with surrounding nations, by commerce and travel, contact therewith by immigrations and colonizations, even collisions and invasions also, became, in the hands of a presiding Providence, the means of diffusing knowledge, of quickening and enlarging the active powers of man, and thus, ultimately, of a higher civilization. Then further, the peculiar configuration of Greece, the won- derful complexity of its coast-line, its peninsular forms, the num- ber of its islands, and the singular distribution of its mount- ains, all seem to mark it as the theatre of activity, of move- ment, of individuality, and of freedom. An extensive conti- stead of being highly improved, their manufactures would have been still in infancy. But being surrounded on all sides by the sea, that '* great highway of nations," they have been able to maintain an intercourse with the most re- mote as well as the nearest countries, to supply them on the easiest terms with their manufactures, and to profit by the peculiar products and capaci- ties of production possessed by other nations. To the geographical position and climate of Great Britain, her people are mainly indebted for their posi- tion as the first commercial nation on earth. — See art. " Manufactrues," p. 277, Encyc. Brit. OREEK PHILOSOPHY. 37 nent, unbroken by lakes and inland seas, as Asia, where vast deserts and high mountain chains separate the populations, is the seat of immobility.^ Commerce is limited to the bare ne- cessities of life, and there are no inducements to movement, to travel, and to enterprise. There are no conditions prompting man to attempt the conquest of nature. Society is therefore stationary as in China and India. Enfolded and imprisoned within the overpowering vastness and illimitable sweep of na- ture, man is almost unconscious of his freedom and his person- ality. He surrenders himself to the disposal of a mysterious ^^fate" and yields readily to the despotic sway of superhuman powers. The State is consequently the reign of a single des- potic will. The laws of the Medes and Persians are unaltera- ble. But in Greece we have extended border-lands on the coast of navigable seas ; peninsulas elaborately articulated, and easy of access. We have mountains sufficiently elevated to shade the land and diversify the scenery, and yet of such a form as not to impede communication. They are usually placed neither in parallel " chains nor in massive groups, but are so disposed as to inclose extensive tracts of land admira- bly adapted to become the seats of small and independent communities, separated by natural boundaries, sometimes im- possible to overleap. The face of the interior country, — its forms of relief, seemed as though Providence designed, from the beginning, to keep its populations socially and politically disunited. These difficulties of internal transit by land were, however, counteracted by the large proportion of coast, and the accessibility of the country by sea. The promontories and in- dentations in the line of the Grecian coast are hardly less re- markable than the peculiar elevations and depressions of the surface. " The shape of Peloponnesus, with its three southern gulfs, the Argolic, Laconian, and Messenian, w^as compared by the ancient geographers to the leaf of a plane-tree : the Pa- gasaean gulf on the eastern side of Greece, and the Ambrakian gulf on the western, with their narrow entrances and consider- ^ Cousin, vol. i. pp. 151, 170. 38 CHRISTIANITY AND able area, are equivalent to internal lakes : Xenophon boasts of the double sea which embraces so large a portion of Attica ; Ephorus, of the triple sea by which Boeotia was accessible from west, north, and south — the Eubcean strait, opening a long line of country on both sides to coasting navigation. But the most important of all Grecian gulfs are the Corinthian and Saronic, washing the northern and north-eastern shores of Peloponne- sus, and separated by the narrow barrier of the Isthmus of Corinth. The former, especially, lays open ^tolia, Phokis, and Boeotia, as the whole northern coast of Peloponnesus, to water approach .... It will thus appear that there was no part of Greece proper which could be considered as out of the reach of the sea, whilst m'ost parts of it were easy of access. The sea was thus the sole channel for transmitting improvements and ideas as well as for maintaining sympathies " between the Hel- lenic tribes.^ The sea is not only the grand highway of com- mercial intercourse, but the empire of movement, of progress, and of freedom. Here man is set free from the bondage im- posed by the overpowering magnitude and vastness of continen- tal and oceanic forms. The boisterous and, apparently, lawless winds are made to obey his will. He mounts the sea as on a fiery steed and " lays his hand upon her mane." And whilst thus he succeeds, in any measure, to triumph over nature, he wakes to conscious power and freedom. It is in this region of contact and commingling of sea and land where man attains the highest superiority. Refreshing our historic recollections, and casting our eyes upon the map of the world, we can not fail to see that all the most highly civilized nations have lived, or still live, on the margin of the sea. • - The peculiar configuration of the territory of Greece, its ■''' forms of relief, " so like, in many respects, to Switzerland," could not fail to exert a powerful influence on the character and des- tiny of its people. Its inclosing mountains materially in- creased their defensive power, and, at the same time, inspired them with the love of liberty. Those mountains, as we have * Grote's " Hist, of Greece," vol. ii. pp. 221, 225. GREEK PHILOSOPHT. 39 seen, so unique in their distribution, were natural barriers against the invasion of foreign nations, and they rendered each separate community secure against the encroachments of the rest. The pass of Thermopylae, between Thessaly and Phocis ; that of Cithaeron, between Boeotia and Attica ; and the mount- ain ranges of Oneion and Geraneia, along the Isthmus of Cor- inth, were positions which could be defended against any force of invaders. This signal peculiarity in the forms of relief pro- tected each section of the Greeks from being conquered, and at the same time maintained their separate autonomy. The separate states of Greece lived, as it were, in the presence of each other, and at the same time resisted all influences and all efforts towards a coalescence with each other, until the time of Alexander. Their country, a word of indefinite meaning to the Asiatic, conveyed to them as definite an idea as that of their own homes. Its whole landscape, with all its historic associa- tions, its glorious monuments of heroic deeds, were perpetually present to their eyes. Thus their patriotism, concentrated within a narrow sphere, and kept alive by the sense of their in- dividual importance, their democratic spirit, ajid their struggles with surrounding communities to maintain their independence, became a strong and ruling passion. Their geographical sur- roundings had, therefore, a powerful influence upon their polit- ical institutions. Conquest, which forces nations of different habits, characters, and languages into unity, is at last the par- ent of degrading servitude. These nations are only held to- gether, as in the Roman empire, by the iron hand of military power. The despot, surrounded by a foreign soldiery, a.ppears in the conquered provinces, simply to enforce tribute, and com- pel obedience to his arbitrary will. But the small Greek com- munities, protected by the barriers of their seas and gulfs and mountains, escaped, for centuries, this evil destiny. The peo- ple, united by identity of language and manners and religion, by common interest and facile intercommunication, could read- ily combine to resist the invasions of foreign nations, as well as the encroachments of their own rulers. And they were able to 40 CHRISTIANITY AND easily model their own government according to their own ne- cessities and circumstances and common interests, and to make the end for which it existed the sole measure of the powers it was permitted to wield. ^ The soil of Attica was not the most favorable to agricultural pursuits. In many places it was stony and uneven, and a con- siderable proportion was bare rock, on which nothing could be grown. Not half the surface was capable of cultivation. In this respect it may be fitly compared to some of the New Eng- land States. The light, dry soil produced excellent barley, but not enough of wheat for their own consumption. Demosthenes informs us that Athens brought every year, from Byzantium, four hundred thousand medimni of wheat. The alluvial plains, under industrious cultivation, would furnish a frugal subsistence for a large population, and the mildness of the climate allowed all the more valuable products to ripen early, and go out of season last. Such conditions, of course, would furnish motives for skill and industry, and demand of the people frugal and temperate habits. The luxuriance of a tropical climate tends to improvidence and indolence. Where nature pours her full- ness into the lap of ease, forethought and providence are little needed. There is none of that struggle for existence which awakens sagacity, and calls into exercise the active powers of man. But in a country where nature only yields her fruits as the reward of toil, and yet enough to the intelligent culture of the soil, there habits of patient industry must be formed. The alternations of summer and winter excite to forethought and providence, and the comparative poverty of the soil will prompt to frugality. Man naturally aspires to improve his condition by all the means within his power. He becomes a careful ob- server of nature, he treasures up the results of observation, he compares one fact with another and notes their relations, and he makes new experiments to test his conclusions, and thus he awakes to the vigorous exercise of all his powers. These phys- ical conditions must develop a hardy, vigorous, prudent, and ^ Encyc. Brit., art. " Greece." GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 41 temperate race ; and such, unquestionably, were the Greeks. " Theophrastus, and other authors, amply attest the observant and industrious agriculture prevalent in Greece. The culture of the vine and olive appears to have been particularly elabo- rate ; and the many different accidents of soil, level, and expo- sure which were to be found, afforded to observant planters materials for study and comparison."^ The Greeks were fru- gal in their habits and simple in their modes of life. The bar- ley loaf seems to have been more generally eaten than the wheaten loaf ; this, with salt fish and vegetables, was the com- mon food of the population. Economy in domestic life was universal. In their manners, their dress, their private dwell- ings, they were little disposed to ostentation or display. The climate of Attica is what, in physical geography, would be called maritime. " Here are allied the continental vigor and oceanic softness, in a fortunate union, mutually tempering each other."^ The climate of the whole peninsula of Greece seems to be distinguished from that of Spain and Italy, by having more of the character of an inland region. The diver- sity of local temperature is greater j the extremes of summer and winter more severe. In Arcadia the snow has been found eighteen inches thick in January, with the thermometer at 16° Fahrenheit, and it sometimes lies on the ground for six weeks. The summits of the central chains of Pindus and most of the Albanian mountains are covered with snow from the beginning of November to the end of March. In Attica, which, being freely exposed to the sea, has in some measure an insular cli- mate, the winter sets in about the beginning of January. About the middle of that month the snow begins to fall, but seldom remains upon the plain for more than a few days, though it lies on the summit of the mountain for a month.^ And then, whilst Boeotia, which joins to Attica, is higher and colder, and often covered with dense fogs, Attica is remarkable for the ^ Grote, " Hist, of Greece," vol. ii. p. 230. "^ Guyot, " Earth and Man," p. 181. ^ Encyc. Brit, art. " Greece." 42 CEBISTIANITY AND wonderful transparency, dryness, and elasticity of its atmos- phere. All these climatal conditions exerted, no doubt, a mod- ifying influence upon the character of the inhabitants.^ In a tropical climate man. is enfeebled by excessive heat. His nat- ural tendency is to inaction and repose. His life is passed in a " strenuous idleness." His intellectual, his reflective faculties are overmastered by his physical instincts. Passion, sentiment, imagination prevail over the sober exercises of his reasoning powers. Poetry universally predominates over philosophy. The whole character of Oriental language, religion, literature is intensely imaginative. In the frozen regions of the frigid zone, where a perpetual winter reigns, and where lichens and mosses are the only forms of vegetable life, man is condemned to the life of a huntsman, and depends mainly for his subsist- ence on the precarious chances of the chase. He is conse- quently nomadic in his habits, and barbarous withal. His whole life is spent in the bare process of procuring a living. He consumes a large amount of oleaginous food, and breathes a damp heavy atmosphere, and is, consequently, of a dull phlegmatic temperament. Notwithstanding his uncertain sup- pUes of food, he is recklessly improvident, and indiflerent to all the lessons of experience. Intellectual pursuits are all pre- cluded. There is no motive, no opportunity, and indeed no disposition for mental culture. But in a temperate climate man is stimulated to high mental activity. The alternations of heat and cold, of summer and of winter, an elastic, fresh, and bracing atmosphere, a diversity in the aspects of nature, these develop a vivacity of temperament, a quickness of sen- sibility as well as apprehension, and a versatility of feeling as ^ The influence of climatic conditions did not escape the attention of the Greeks. Herodotus, Hippocrates, and Aristotle speak of the climate of Asia as more enervating than that of Greece. They regarded the change- ful character and diversity of local temperature in Greece as highly stimu- lating to the energies of the populations. The marked contrast between the Athenians and the Boeotians was supposed to be represented in the light and heavy atmosphere which they respectively breathed. — Groie, vol. ii. pp. 232-3. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 43 well as genius. History marks out the temperate zone as the seat of the refined and cultivated nations. The natural scenery of Greece was of unrivalled grandeur — surpassing Italy, perhaps every country in the world. It com- bined in the highest degree every feature essential to the high- est beauty of a landscape except, perhaps, large rivers. But this was more than compensated for by the proximity of the sea, which, by its numerous arms, seemed to embrace the land on nearly every side. Its mountains, encircled with zones of wood, and capped with snow, though much lower than the Alps, are as imposing by the suddenness of their elevation — " pillars of heaven, the fosterers of enduring snows."^ Rich sheltered plains lie at their feet, covered with an unequally woven mantle of trees, and shrubs, and flowers, — " the verdant gloom of the thickly-mantling ivy, the narcissus steeped in heavenly dew, the golden-beaming crocus, the hardy and ever-fresh-sprouting olive-tree,'"^ and the luxuriant palm, which nourishes amid its branches the grape swelling with juice. But it is the combi- nation of these features, in the most diversified manner, with beautiful inland bays and seas, broken by headlands, inclosed by mountains, and studded with islands of every form and magnitude, which gives to the scenery of Greece its proud pre- eminence. " Greek scenery," says Humboldt, " presents the peculiar charm of an intimate blending of sea and land, of shores adorned with vegetation, or picturesquely girt with rocks gleaming in the light of aerial tints, and an ocean beautiful in the play of the ever-changing brightness of its deep-toned wave."^ And over all the serene, deep azure skies, occasion- ally veiled by light fleecy clouds, with vapory purple mists rest- ing on the distant mountain tops. This glorious scenery of Greece is evermore the admiration of the modern traveller. " In wandering about Athens on a sunny day in March, when the asphodels are blooming on Colones, when the immortal mountains are folded in a transparent haze, and the ^gean ^ Pindar. ^ Sophocles, " CEdipus at Colonna." ^ " Cosmos," vol. ii. p. 25. 44 CHRISTIANITY AND slumbers afar among his isles," he is reminded of the lines of Byron penned amid these scenes — " Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ; Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields ; There the blithe bee his fiagrant fortress builds. The freeborn wanderer of the mountain air ; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds. Still in his beams Mendeli's marbles glare ; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but nature still is fair."* The effect of this scenery upon the character, the imagina- tion, the taste of the Athenians must have been immense. Under the influence of such sublime objects, the human mind becomes gifted as with inspiration, and is by nature filled with poetic images. " Greece became the birth-place of taste, of art, and eloquence, the chosen sanctuary of the muses, the pro- totype of all that is graceful, and dignified, and grand in senti- ment and action." And now, if we have succeeded in clearly presenting and properly grouping the facts, and in estimating the influence of geographical position and surroundings on national character, we have secured the natural criteria by which we examine, and even correct the portraiture of the Athenian character usually presented by the historian. The character of the Athenians has been sketched by Plu- tarch'^ with considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate- and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased ; fond of pleas- antry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh ; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure ; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their ene- mies ; jealous of their liberties, and keeping even their rulers in awe. In regard to their intellectual traits, he affirms their * Canto ii., v. Ixxxvi., " Childe Harold." ^ " De Praecept." GBEEK PHILOSOPHY. 45 minds were not formed for laborious research, and though they seized a subject as it were by intuition, yet wanted patience and perseverance for a thorough examination of all its bearings. " An observation," says the writer of the article on ^^ Attica" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, " more superficial in itself, and arguing a greater ignorance of the Athenians, can not easily be imagined." Plutarch lived more than three hundred years after the palmy days of the Athenian Demos had passed away. He was a Boeotian by birth, not an Attic, and more of a Roman than a Greek in all his sympathies. We are tempted to regard him as writing under the influence of prejudice, if not of envy. He was scarcely reliable as a biographer, and as materials for history his " Parallel Lives " have been pronounced " not alto- gether trustworthy.^ That the Athenians were remarkable for the ardor and vi- vacity of their temperament, — that they were liable to sudden gusts of passion, — that they were inconstant in their affections, intolerant of dictation, impatient of control, and hasty to resent every assumption of superiority, — that they were pleased with flattery, and too ready to lend a willing ear to the adulation of the demagogue, — and that they were impetuous and brave, yet liable to be excessively elated by success, and depressed by misfortune, we may readily believe, because such traits of character are in perfect harmony with all the facts and conclu- sions already presented. Such characteristics were the natural product of the warm and genial sunlight, the elastic -bracing air, the ethereal skies, the glorious mountain scenery, and the elab- orate blending of sea and land, so peculiar to Greece and the whole of Southern Europe.^ These characteristics were shared ^ Encyc. of Biog7'aphy, art. " Plutarch." ^ "As the skies of Hellas surpassed nearly all other, climates in bright- ness and elasticity, so, also, had nature dealt most lovingly with the inhab- itants of this land. Throughout the whole being of the Greek there reigned supreme a quick susceptibility, out of which sprang a gladsome serenity of temper, and a keen enjoyment of life ; acute sense, and nimbleness of ap- prehension ; a guileless and child-like feeling, full of trust and faith, com- bined with prudence and forecast. These peculiarities lay so deeply imbed- ded in the inmost nature of the Greeks that no revolutions of time arid cir- 46 CHRISTIANITY AND in a greater or less degree by all the nations of Southern Eu- rope in ancient times, and they are still distinctive traits in the Frenchman, the Italian, and the modern Greek. ^ The consciousness of power, the feeling of independence, the ardent love of freedom induced in the Athenian mind by the objective freedom of movement which his geographical po- sition afforded, and that subordination and subserviency of physical nature to man so peculiar to Greece, determined the democratic character of all their political institutions. And these institutions reacted upon the character of the people and intensified their love of liberty. This passionate love of per- sonal freedom, amounting almost to disease, excited them to a constant and almost distressing vigilance. And it is not to be wondered at if it displayed itself in an extreme jealousy of their rulers, an incessant supervision and criticism of all their pro- ceedings, and an intense and passionate hatred of t}Tants and of tyranny. The popular legislator or the successful soldier might dare to encroach upon their liberties in the moment when the nation was intoxicated and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success ; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would over- turn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while in- constancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been in- separable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were cer- tainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection for their country,'* and invariable in their sympathy and admi- cumstances have yet been able to destroy them ; nay, it may be asserted that even now, after centuries of degradation, they have not been wholly ex- tinguished in the inhabitants of ancient Hellas." — '■^Education of the Moral Sentiment amongst the Ancient GreeksP By Frederick Jacobs, p. 320. ^ These are described by the modern historian and traveller as lively, ver- satile, and witty. " The love of liberty and independence does not seem to be rooted out of the national character by centuries of subjugation. They love to command ; but though they are loyal to a good government, they are apt readily to rise when their rights and liberties are infringed. As there is little love of obedience among them, so neither is there any tolera- tion of aristocratic pretensions." — Eficyc. Brit., art. "Greece." ' When immense bribes were offered by the king of Persia to induce the Athenians to detach themselves from the alliance with the rest of the Hel- GREEK FHILOSOPHY. 47. ration for that genius which shed glory upon their native land. And then they were ever ready to repair the errors, and make amends for the injustice committed under the influence of pas- sionate excitement, or the headlong impetuosity of their too ar- dent temperament. The history of Greece supplies numerous illustrations of this spirit. The sentence of death which had been hastily passed on the inhabitants of Mytilene was, on so- ber reflection, revoked the following day. The immediate re- pentance and general sorrow which followed the condemnation of the ten generals, as also of Socrates, are notable instances. In their private life the Athenians were courteous, generous, and humane. Whilst bold and free in the expression of their opinions, they paid the greatest attention to rules of politeness, and were nicely delicate on points of decorum. They had a natural sense of what was becoming and appropriate, and an innate aversion ta aU extravagance. A graceful demeanor and a quiet dignity were distinguishing traits of Athenian character. They were temperate and frugaP in their habits, and little ad- dicted to ostentation and display. Even after their victories had brought them into contact with Oriental luxury and extrava- gance, and their wealth enabled them to rival, in costliness and splendor, the nations they had conquered, they still maintained a republican simplicity. The private dwellings of the principal citizens were small, and usually built of clay ; their interior em- bellishments also were insignificant — the house -of Poly tion alone formed an exception.'* All their sumptuousness and magnifi- cence w^ere reserved for and lavished on their public edifices lenic States, she answered by the mouth of Aristides *' that it was impossi- ble for all the gold in the world to tempt the Republic of Athens, or prevail with it to sell its liberty and that of Greece !" ^ These are still characteristics of the Greeks. " They are an exceed- ingly temperate people ; drunkenness is a vice remarkably rare amongst them ; their food also is spare and simple ; even the richest are content with a dish of vegetables for each meal, and the poor with a handful of olives or a piece of salt fish .All other pleasures are indulged with similar pro- priety ; their passions are moderate, and insanity is almost unknown amongst them." — Encyc. Brit, art. " Greece." "^ Niebuhr's Lectures, vol. i. p. loi. 48 CHRISTIANITY AND and monuments of art, which made Athens the pride of Greece and the wonder of the world. Intellectually, the Athenians were remarkable for their quickness of apprehension, their nice and delicate perception, their intuitional power, and their ver- satile genius. Nor were they at all incapable of pursuing labo- rious researches, or wanting in persevering application and in- dustry, notwithstanding Plutarch's assertion to the contrary. The circumstances of every-day life in Attica, the conditions which surrounded the Athenian from childhood to age, were such as to call for the exercise of these qualities of mind in the highest degree. Habits of patient industry were induced in the Athenian character by the poverty and comparative barren- ness of the soil, demanding greater exertion to supply their natural wants. And an annual period of dormancy, though un- accompanied by the rigors of a northern winter, called for pru- dence in husbanding, and forethought and skill in endeavoring to increase their natural resources. The aspects of nature were less massive and awe-inspiring, her features more subdued, and her areas more circumscribed and broken, inviting and emboldening man to attempt her conquest. The whole tend- ency of natural phenomena in Greece was to restrain the im- agination, and discipline the observing and reasoning faculties in man. Thus was man inspired with confidence in his own resources, and allured to cherish an inquisitive, analytic, and scientific spirit. " The French, in point of national character, hold nearly the same relative place amongst the nations of Eu- rope that the Athenians held amongst the States of Ancient Greece." And whilst it is admitted the French are quick, sprightly, vivacious, perhaps sometimes light even to frivolity, it must be conceded they have cultivated the natural and exact sciences with a patience, and perseverance, and success un- surpassed by any of the nations of Europe. And so the Athe- nians were the Frenchmen of Greece. AVhilst they spent their "leisure time"^ in the place of public resort, the porticoes and groves, " hearing and telling the latest news " (no undignified * EuKaip'iw corresponds exactly to the Latin vacare, " to be at leisure." GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 49 or improper mode of recreation in a city where newspapers were unknown), whilst they are condemned as "garrulous," " frivolous," " full of curiosity," and " restlessly fond of novel- ties," we must insist that a love of study, of patient thought and profound research, was congenial to their natural temper- ament, and that an inquisitive and analytic spirit, as well as a taste for subtile and abstract speculation, were inherent in the ' national character. The affluence, and fullness, and flexibility, and sculpture-like finish of the language of the Attics, which leaves far behind not only the languages of antiquity, but also the most cultivated of modern times, is an enduring monument of the patient industry of the Athenians.^ Language is un- questionably the highest creation of reason, and in the language of a nation we can see reflected as in a mirror the amount of culture to which it has attained. The rare balance of the im- agination and the reasoning powers, in which the perfection of the human intellect is regarded as consisting, the exact corre- spondence between the thought and the expression, "the free music of prosaic numbers in the most diversified forms of style," the calmness, and perspicuity, and order, even in the stormiest moments of inspiration, revealed in every department of Greek literature, were not a mere happy stroke of chance, but a prod- uct of unwearied effort — and effort too which was directed by the criteria which reason supplied. The plastic art of Greece, which after the lapse of ages still stands forth in unrivalled beauty, so that, in presence of the eternal models it created, the modern artist feels the painful lack of progress was not a spontaneous outburst of genius, but the result of intense application and unwearied discipline. The achievements of the philosophic spirit, the ethical and political systems of the Academy, the Lyceum, the Stoa, and the Garden, the anticipa- tions, scattered here and there like prophetic hints, of some of the profoundest discoveries of " inductive science " in more modern days, — all these are an enduring protest against the strange misrepresentations of Plutarch. ' Frederick Jacobs, on " Study of Classic Antiquity," p. 57. 4 50 CHlilSTIANITY AND In Athens there existed a providential collocation of the most favorable conditions in which humanity can be placed for securing its highest natural development. Athenian civiliza- tion is the solution, on the theatre of history, of the problem — What degree of perfection can humanity, under the most favor- able conditions, attain, without the supernatural light, and "guidance, and grace of Christianity?^ "Like their ov/n god- * It has been asserted by some theological writers, Watson for example, that no society of civilized men has been, or can be constituted without the aid of a religion directly communicated by revelation, and transmitted by oral tradition ; — " that it is possible to raise a body of men into that degree of civil improvement which would excite the passion for philosophic inves- tigation, without the aid of religion can have no proof, and is contradict- ed by every fact and analogy with which we are acquainted " {Institutes, vol. i. p. 271 ; see also Archbishop Whately, *' Dissertation," etc., vol. i. Encyc. Brit., p. 449-455)- The fallacy of the reasoning by which this doctrine is sought to be sus- tained is found in the assumption "that to all our race the existence of a First Cause is a question of philosophy," and that the idea of God lies at the end of *' a gradual process of inquiry " and induction, for which a high degree of ** scientific culture " is needed. Whereas the idea of a First Cause lies at the beginning, not at the end of philosophy ; and philosophy is sim- ply the analysis of our natural consciousness of God, and the presentation of the idea in a logical form. Faith in the existence of God is not the result of a conscious process of reflection ; it is the spontaneous and instinctive logic of the human mind, which, in view of phenomena presented to sense, by a necessary law of thought immediately and intuitively affirms a personal Power, an intelligent Mind as the author. In this regard, there is no differ- ence between men except the clearness with which they apprehend, and the logical account they can render to themselves, of this instinctive belief Spontaneous intuition, says Cousin, is the genius of all men ; reflection the genius of few men. " But Leibnitz had no more confidence in the principle of causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient reason, than the most ignorant of men ;" the latter have this principle within them, as a law of thought, controlling their conception of the universe, and doing this al- most unconsciously ; the former, by an analysis of thought, succeeded in de- fining and formulating the ideas and laws which necessitate the cognition of a God. The function of philosophy is simply to transform a>,rfiriQ, do^a into kTriaTT^fiTj — right opinion into science, — to elucidate and logically present the immanent thought which lies in the universal consciousness of man. That the possession of the idea of God is essential to the social and moral elevation of man, — that is, to the civilization of our race, is most cheerfully conceded. That humanity has an end and destination which can only be secured by the true knowledge of God, and by a participation of the nature of God, is equally the doctrine of Plato and of Christ. Now, if humanity has a special end and destination, it must have some instinctive tendings, QBEEK PHILOSOPHY. 5 1 dess Athene, the people of Athens seem to spring full-armed into the arena of history, and we look in vain to Egypt, Syria, and India, for more than a few seeds that burst into such mar- vellous growth on the soil of Attica."^ Here the most perfect ideals of beauty and excellence in physical development, in manners, in plastic art, in literary creations, were realized. The songs of Homer, the dialogues of Plato, the speeches of Demosthenes, and the statues of Phid- ias, if not unrivalled, are at least unsurpassed by any thing that has been achieved by their successors. Literature in its most flourishing periods has rekindled its torch at her altars, and art has looked back to the age of Pericles for her purest models. Here the ideas of personal liberty, of individual rights, of free- dom in thought and action, had a wonderful expansion. Here the lasting foundations of the principal arts and sciences were laid, and in some of them triumphs were achieved which have not been eclipsed. Here the sun of human reason attained a meridian splendor, and illuminated eveiy field in the domain of moral truth. And here humanity reached the highest degree of civilization of which it is capable under purely natural con- ditions. And now, the question with which we are more immediately concerned is, what were the specific and valuable results at- tained by the Athenian mind in religion and philosophy, the two momenta of the human mind ? This will be the subject of dis- cussion in subsequent chapters. The order in which the discussion shall proceed is deter- mined for us by the natural development of thought. The two fundamental momenta of thought and its development are spon- some spermatic ideas, some original forces or laws, which determine it to- wards that end. All development supposes some original elements to be unfolded or developed. Civilization is but the development of humanity ac- cording to its primal idea and law, and under the best exterior conditions. That the original elements of humanity were unfolded in some noble degree under the influence of philosophy is clear from the history of Greece ; there the most favorable natural conditions for that development existed, and Christianity alone was needed to crown the result with ideal perfection. ^ Max Miiller, " Science of Language," p. 404, 2d series. 52 CHRISTIANITY AND taneity and reflection, and the two essential forms the)^ assume are religion and philosophy. In the natural order of thought spontaneity is first, and reflection succeeds spontaneous thought. And so religion is first developed, and subsequently comes phi- losophy. As religion supposes spontaneous intuition, so phi- losophy has religion for its basis, but upon this basis it is devel- oped in an original manner. " Turn your attention to history, that living image of thought : everywhere you perceive religions and philosophies : everywhere you see them produced in an in- variable order. Everywhere religion appears with new socie- ties, and everywhere, just so far as societies advance, from re- ligion springs philosophy.'" This was pre-eminently the case in Athens, and we shall therefore direct our attention first to the Religion of the Athenians. ^ Cousin, " Hist, of Philos.," vol. i. p. 302. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 53 CHAPTER II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. " All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion {SeiacdacfioveaTepovg. — St. Paul. AS a prelude and preparation for the study of the religion of the Athenians, it may be well to consider religion in its more abstract and universal form ; and inquire in what does religion essentially consist ; how far is it grounded in the na- ture of man ; and especially, what is there in the mental con- stitution of man, or in his exterior conditions, which determines him to a mode of hfe which may be denominated religious .? As a preliminary inquiry, this may materially aid us in under- standing the nature, and estimating the value of the religious conceptions and sentiments which were developed by the Greek mind. Religion, in its most generic conception, may be defined as a form of thought, feeling, and action, which has the Divine for its object, basis, and end. Or, in other words, it is a mode of life determined by the recognition of some relation to, and con- sciousness of dependence upon, a Supreme Being. This gen- eral conception of religion underlies all the specific forms of religion which have appeared in the world, whether heathen, Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian. That a religious destination appertains to man as man, whether he has been raised to a full religious consciousness, or is simply considered as capable of being so raised, can not be denied. In all ages man has revealed an instinctive tendency, or natural aptitude for religion, and he has developed feelings and emotions which have always characterized him as a re- ligious being. Religious ideas and sentiments have prevailed among all nations, and have exerted a powerful influence on 54 CHRISTIANITY AND the entire course of human history. Religious worship, ad- dressed to a Supreme Being believed to cpntrol the destiny of •man, has been coeval and coextensive with the race. Every nation has had its mythology, and each mythologic system has been simply an effort of humanity to realize and embody in some visible form the relations in which it feels itself to be connected with an external, overshadowing, and all-controlling Power and Presence. The voice of all ancient, and all con- temporaneous history, clearly attests that the religious principle is deeply seated in the nature of man ; and that it has occupied the thought, and stirred the feelings of every rational man, in every age. It has interwoven itself with the entire framework of human society, and ramified into all the relations of human life. By its agency, nations have been revolutionized, and em- pires have been overthrown • and it has formed a mighty ele- ment in all the changes which have marked the history of man. This universality of religious sentiment and religious wor- ship must be conceded as a fact of human nature, and, as a universal fact, it demands an explanation. Every event must have a cause. Every phenomenon must have its ground, and reason, and law. The facts of religious history, the past and present religious phenomena of the world can be no exception to this fundamental principle ; they press their imperious de- mand to be studied and explained, as much as the phenomena of the material or the events of the moral world. The phe- nomena of religion, being universally revealed wherever man is found, must be grounded in some universal principle, on some original law, which is connate with, and natural to man. At any rate, there must be something in the nature of man, or in the exterior conditions of humanity, which invariably leads man to worship, and which determines him, as by the force of an original instinct, or an outward, conditioning necessity, to recognize and bow down before a Superior Power. The full recognition and adequate explanation of the facts of religious history will constitute 2i philosophy of religion. The hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 55 the religious phenomena of the world are widely divergent, and most of them are, in our judgment, eminently inadequate and unsatisfactory. The following enumeration may be regarded as embracing all that are deemed worthy of consideration. I. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in super- stition, that is, in 2^ fear of invisible and supernatural powers, generated by ignorance of nature. II. The phenomenon of religion is part of that process or EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (/. e., the Deity), which gradually unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to perfect self-consciousness in philosophy. III. The phenomenon of religion has its foundation in feel- ing — the feeling of depejidence ai2d of obligation ; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition or instinctive faith, traces this dependence and obligation we call God. IV. The phenomenon of religion had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of reason, that is, the necessary d, priori ideas of the Ififnite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in pres- ence of the changeful and contingent phenomena of the world. V. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in external REVELATION, to which rcason is related as a purely passive or- gan, and heathenism as a feeble relic. As a philosophy of religion — an attempt to supply the ra- tionale of the religious phenomena of the world, the first hy- pothesis is a skeptical philosophy, which necessarily leads to Atheism. The second is an idealistic philosophy (absolute idealism), which inevitably lands in Pantheism. The "third is an intuitional or " faith-philosophy," which finally ends in Mys- ticism. The fourth is a rationalistic or " spiritualistic " philos- ophy, which yields pure Theism. The last is an empirical phi- losophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and culmi- nates in Dogmatic Theology. In view of these diverse and conflicting theories, the ques- tion which now presents itself for our consideration is, — does any one of these hypotheses meet and satisfy the demands of 56 CHRISTIANITY AND the problem ? does it fully account for and adequately explain all the facts of religious history ? The answer to this question must not be hastily or dogmatically given. The arbitrary re- jection of any theory that may be offered, without a fair and candid examination, will leave our minds in uncertainty and doubt as to the validity of our own position. A blind faith is only one remove from a pusillanimous skepticism. We can not render our own position secure except by comprehending, assaulting, and capturing the position of our foe. It is, there- fore, due to ourselves and to the cause of truth, that we shall examine the evidence upon which each separate theory is based, and the arguments which are marshalled in its support, be- fore we pronounce it inadequate and unphilosophical. Such a criticism of opposite theories- will prepare the way for the presentation of a philosophy of religion which we flatter our- selves will be found most in harmony with all the facts of the case. I. If is affirmed that the religious phenomena of the world had their origin in superstition, that is, in a fear of unseen and su- pernatural powers, generated from ignorance of nature. This explanation was first offered by Epicurus. He felt that the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which demands a cause ; and he found it, or presumed he found it, not in a spiritual God, which he claims can not exist, nor in a corporeal god which no one has seen, but in "phantoms of the mind generated by fear.'^ AVhen man has been unable to ex- plain any natural phenomenon, to assign a cause within the sphere of nature, he has had recourse to supernatural powers, or living personalities behind nature, which move and control nature in an arbitrary and capricious manner. These imagina- ry powers are supposed to be continually interfering in the af- fairs of individuals and nations. They bestow blessings or in- flict calamities. They reward virtue and punish vice. They are, therefore, the objects of "sacred awe" and "superstitious fear." GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 57 "Whate'er in heaven, In earth, man sees mysterious, shakes his mind, "With sacred awe o'erwhelms him, and his soul Bows to the dust ; the cause of things concealed Once from his vision, instant to the gods All empire he transfers, all rule supreme, And doubtful whence they spring, with headlong haste Calls them the workmanship of power divine. For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind How things are swayed ; how, chiefly, those discerned In heaven sublime — to superstition back Lapses, and rears a tyrant host, and then Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do, While yet himself nor knows what may be done. Nor what may never, nature powers defined Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass : Hence wide, and wider errs he as he walks."^ In order to rid men of all superstitious fear, and, conse- quently, of all religion, Epicurus endeavors to show that " na- ture " alone is adequate to the production of all things, and there is no need to drag in a " divine power " to explain the phenomena of the world. This theory has been wroug'ht into a somewhat plausible form by the brilliant and imposing generahzations of Aug. Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the in- dividual or the race. He claims to have been the first to dis- cover the great law of the three successive stages or phases of human evolution. That law is thus enounced. Both in the individual mind, and in the history of humanity, thought, in dealing with its problems, passes, of necessity, through, first, a Theological, second, a Metaphysical, and finally reaches a third, or Positive stage. In attempting an explanation of the universe, human thought, in its earliest stages of development, resorts to the idea of living personal agents enshrined in and moving every object, whethei organic or inorganic, natural or artificial. In an advanced stage, it conceives a number of personal beings ^ Lucretius, " De Natura Rerum," book vi. vs. 50-70. 58 CHRISTIANITY AND distinct from, and superior to nature, which preside over the different provinces of nature — the sea, the air, the winds, the rivers, the heavenly bodies, and assume the guardianship of in- dividuals, tribes, and nations. As a further, and still higher stage, it asserts the unity of the Supreme Power which moves and vitalizes the universe, and guides and governs in the affairs of men and nations. The Theological stage is thus subdivided into three epochs, and represented as commencing in Fefichism, then advancing to Polytheism^ and, finally, consummating in Monotheism. The next stage, the Metaphysical, is a transitional stage, in which man substitutes abstract entities, as substance, force. Being in se, the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theologi- cal conceptions. During this period all theological opinions undergo a process of disintegration, and lose their hold on the mind of man. Metaphysical speculation is a powerful sol- vent, which decomposes and dissipates theology. It is only in the last — the Positive stage— that man becomes willing to relinquish all theological ideas and metaphysical no- tions, and confine his attention to the study of phenomena in their relation to time and space ; discarding all inquiries as to causes, whether efficient or final, and denying the existence of all entities and powers beyond nature. The first stage, in its religious phase, is Tlieistic, the second is Pantheistic, the last is Atheistic. The proofs offered by Comte in support of this theory are derived, I. From Cerebral Organization. There are three grand di- visions of the Brain, the Medulla Oblongata, the Cerebellum, and the Cerebrum ; the first represents the merely animal in- stincts ; the second, the more elevated sentiments ; the third, the intellectual powers. Human nature must, therefore, both in the individual and in the race, be developed in the following order: (i.) in animal instincts; (2.) in social affections and communal tendencies ; (3.) in intellectual pursuits. Infant life is a merely animal existence, shared in common with the brute ; GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 59 in childhood the individual being realizes his relation to exter- nal nature and human society j in youth and manhood he com- pares, generalizes, and classifies the objects of knowledge, and attains to science. And so the infancy of our race was a mere animal or savage state, the childhood of our race the organiza- tion of society, the youth and manhood of our race the devel- opment of science. Now, without oftering any opinion as to the merits of the phrenological theories of Gall and Spurzheim, we may. ask, what relation has this order to the law of development present- ed by Comte? Is there any imaginable connection between animal propensities and theological ideas ; between social af- fections and metaphysical speculations ? Are not the intellect- ual powers as much concerned with theological ideas and met- aphysical speculations as with positive science ? And is it not more probable, more in accordance with facts, that all the pow- ers of the mind, instinct, feeling, and thought, enter into action simultaneously, and condition each other? The very first act of perception, the first distinct cognition of an object, involves thought as much as the last generalization of science. We know nothing of mind except as the development of thought, and the first unfolding, even of the infant mind, reveals an in- tellectual act, a discrimination between a self and an object which is not self, and a recognition of resemblance, or differ- ence between this object and that. And what does Positive science, in its most mature and perfect form, claim to do more than "to study actual phenomena in their orders of resem- blance, coexistence, and succession." Cerebral organization may furnish plausible analogies in fa- vor of some theory of human development, but certainly not the one proposed by Aug. Comte. The attempt, however, to construct a chart of human history on such an d priori meth- od, — to construct an ideal framework into which human na- ture must necessarily grow, is a violation of the first and most fundamental principle of the Positive science, which demands that we shall confine ourselves strictly to the study of actual Co CHRISTIANITY AND phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and succession. The history of the human race must be based on facts, not on hypotheses, and the facts must be ascertained by the study of ancient records and existing monuments of the past. Mere plausible analogies and d priori theories based upon them, are only fitted to mislead the mind ; they insert a prism between the perceiving mind and the course of events which decomposes the pure white light of fact, and throws a false light over the entire field of history. 2. The second order of proof is attempted to he drawn from the analogies of individual experience. It is claimed that the history of the race is the same as that of each individual mind ; and it is affirmed that man is religious in infancy, metaphysical in youth, and positive^ that is, scientific without being religious, in mature manhood ; the history of the race must therefore have followed the same order. We are under no necessity of denying that there is some analogy between the development of mind in the individual man, and in humanity as a whole, in order to refute the theory of Comte. Still, it must not be overlooked that the develop- ment of mind, in all cases and in all ages, is materially affected by exterior conditions. The influence of geographical and cli- matic conditions, of social and national institutions, and espe- cially of education, however difficult to be estimated, can not be , utterly disregarded. And whether all these influences have not been controlled, and collocated, and adjusted by a Supreme Mind in the education of humanity, is also a question which can not be pushed aside as of no consequence. Now, unless it can be shown that the same outward conditions which have ac- companied the individual and modified his mental development, have been repeated in the history of the race, and repeated in the same order of succession, the argument has no value. But, even supposing it could be shown that the development of mind in humanity has followed the same order as that of the individual, we confidently affirm that Comte has not given the true history of the development of the individual mind. The GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 6 1 account he has given may perhaps be the history of his own mental progress, but it certainly is not the history of every in- dividual mind, nor indeed, of a majority even, of educated minds that have arrived at maturity. It would be much more in harmony with facts to say childhood is the period of pure receptivity, youth of doubt and skepticism, and maturity of well- grounded and rational belief. In the ripeness and maturity of the nineteenth century the number of scientific men of the Comtean model is exceedingly small compared with the num- ber of religious men. There are minds in every part of Europe and America as thoroughly scientific as that of Comte, and as deeply imbued with the spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, which are not conscious of any discordance between the facts of sci- ence and the fundamental principles of theology. It may be that, in his own immediate circle at Paris there may be a tend- ency to Atheism, but certainly no such tendency exists in the most scientific minds of Europe and America. The faith of Ba- con, and Newton, and Boyle, of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Pascal, in regard to the fundamental principles of theology, is still the faith of Sedgwick, Whewell, Herschel, Brewster, Owen, Agassiz, Silliman, Mitchell, Hitchcock, Dana, and, indeed of the lead- ing scientific minds of the world — the men who, as Comte would say, " belong to the elite of humanity." The mature mind, whether of the individual or the race, is not Atheistical. 3. The third proof is drawn froi7i a stirvey of the history of cer- tain portio?ts of our race. Comte is far from being assured that the progress of hu- manity, under the operation of his grand law of development, has been uniform and invariable. The majority of the human race, the vast populations of India, China, and Japan, have re- mained stationary ; they are still in the Theological stage, and consequently furnish no evidence in support of his theory. For this reason he confines himself to the " elite " or advance-guard of humanity, and in this way makes the history of humanity a very " abstract history " indeed. Starting with Greece as the representative of ancient civilization, passing thence to Roman 62 CHRISTIANITY AND civilization, and onward to Western Europe, he attempts to show that the actual progress of humanity has been, on the whole, in conformity with his law. To secure, however, even this semblance of harmony between the facts of history and his hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts very much as Pro- crustes treated his victims, — he must stretch some, and muti- late others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The natural organization of European civilization is distorted and torn asunder. " As the third or positive stage had accom- plished its advent in his ovm person, it was necessary to find the metaphysical period just before ; and so the whole life of the Reformed Christianity, in embryo and in manifest exist- ence, is stripped of its garb oi faith, and turned out of view as a naked metaphysical phenomenon. But metaphysics, again, have to be ushered in by theology ; and of the three stages of theology Monotheism is the last, necessarily following on Poly- theism, as that, again, on Fetichism. There is nothing for it, therefore, but to let the mediaeval Catholic Christianity stand as the world's first monotheism, and to treat it as the legitimate offspring and necessary development of the Greek and Roman polytheism. This, accordingly, Comte actually does. Prot- estantism he illegitimates, and outlaws from religion altogether, and the genuine Christianity he fathers upon the faith of Ho- mer and the Scipios ! Once or twice, indeed, it seems to cross him that there was such a people as the Hebrews, and that they were not the polytheists they ought to have been. He sees the fact, but pushes it out of his way with the remark that the Jewish monotheism was * premature.' "^ The signal defect of Comte's historical survey, however, is, that it furnishes no evidence of the general prevalence of Fet- ichism in primitive times. The writings of Moses are certainly entitled to as much consideration and credence as the writings of Berosus, Manetho, and Herodotus ; and, it will not be denied, they teach that the faith of the earliest families and races of men was monotheistic. The early Vedas, the Institutes of Menu, * Martineau's Essays, pp. 6i, 62. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 63 the writings of Confucius, the Zendavesta, all bear testimony that the ancient faith of India, China, and Persia, was, at any rate, pantheistic ; and learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as European, confidently affirm that the ground of the Brahminical, Buddhist, and Parsist faith is monotheistic ; and that one Being is assumed, in the earliest books, to be the origin of all things.^ Without evidence, Comte assumes that the savage state is the original condition of man ; and instead of going to Asia, the cradle of the race, for some light as 10 ihe early condition and opinions of the remotest families of men, he turns to Africa, the soudan of the earth, for his illustration of the habit of man, in the infancy of our race, to endow every object in nature, whether organic or inorganic, with life and in- telligence. The theory of a primitive state of ignorance and barbarism is a mere assumption — an hypothesis in conflict with the traditionary legends of all nations, the earliest records of our race, and the unanimous voice of antiquity, which attest the general belief in a primitive state of light and innocence. The three stages of development which Comte describes as necessarily successive, have, for centuries past, been simultane- ous. The theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific ele- ments coexist now, and there is no real, radical, or necessary conflict between them. Theological and metaphysical ideas hold their ground as securely under the influence of enlarged scientific discovery as before ; and there is no reason to sup- pose they ever had more power over the mind of man than they have to-day. The notion that God is dethroned by the wonder- ful discoveries of modern science, and theology is dead, is the dream of the ^'■profond orage cerebraV which interrupted the course of Comte's lectures in 1826. As easily may the hand of Positivism arrest the course of the sun, as prevent the in- stinctive thought of human reason recognizing and affirming the existence of a God. And so long as ever the human mind is governed by necessary laws of thought, so long will it seek ^ *' The Religions of the World in their Relation to Christianity " (Mau- rice, ch. ii., iii., iv.). ' 64 CHRISTIANITY AND to pass beyond the limits of mere phenomena, and inquire after the real Being which is the ground, and reason, and cause of all that appears. The heart of man, also, demands a religion. Its longings can never be satisfied by the generalizations of science, however grand and imposing. Even Comte felt the unutterable yearnings of the religious sentiments, and the ne- cessity that his philosophy should afford them some satisfac- tion. He suddenly discovers that his mission is to re-organize entirely the whole of human society, on the principle of giv- ing ascendency to the heart over the understanding. He pro- claims himself as the founder of a new, final, and universal worship, and " the High-Priest of the Religion of Humanity." This new religion he develops in his " Catechism of Positive Re- ligion^ Having superseded " monotheism," he finds it neces- sary to invent a " new Supreme Being ;" and such a being he has accordingly provided, and ordered to be represented in statuary by " a woman of thirty, with a child in her arms." This " Grand-Etre " is the sum-total of the civilized or progressive part of our race. Thus the worship of humanity is to displace the worship of God. The deification of mortals is to supply the place of " the King immortal, eternal, invisible." This new re- ligion " has its cultus, private and public ; its organization of dogma, its discipline penetrating the whole of life ; its altars, its temples, its symbolism, its prescribed gestures and times ; its ratios and length of prayers ; its rules for opening or shutting the eyes ; its ecclesiastical courts and canonizations ; its orders of priesthood and scale of benefices ; its novitiate and conse- cration ; its nine sacraments, its angels, its last judgment, its paradise ; in short, all imaginable requisites of a religion — ex- cept a God."' This first hypothesis is clearly inadequate. To secure any appearance of plausibility, it is compelled to pervert and misin- terpret the facts of religious history. And, whilst constrained to do homage to the religious sentiment, and provide for its gratification, it fails to comprehend its true import and grand- ^ Martineau's Essays, p. 20. OBEEK PHILOSOPHY. 65 eur, and consequently to develop its true philosophy. Its fun- damental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is con- fined to the observation and classification of sensible phenom- ena — that is, to changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon self-observation and self-reflection, is a " mere illusion ; and logic and ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are altogether baseless." Spiritual entities, forces, causes, efficient or final, are unknown and un- knowable ; all inquiry regarding them must be inhibited, " for Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes at all." II. The second hypothesis offered in explanation of the facts of religious history is, that religioji is part of that process or ev- olution OF THE ABSOLUTE (/. ^., the Deity) which., gradually un- folding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to the fullest self consciousness in philosophy. This is the theory of Hegel, in whose system of philosophy the subjective idealism of Kant culminates in the doctrine of ^^ Absolute Identity.''^ Its fundamental position is that thought and being, subject and object, the perceiving mind and the thing perceived, are ultimately and essentially one, and that the only actual reality is that which results from their mutual rela- tion. The outward thing is nothing, the inward perception is nothing, for neither could exist alone; the only reality is the relation, or rather synthesis of the two ; the essence or nature of being in itself accordingly consists in the coexistence of two contrarieties. Ideas, arising from the union or synthesis of two opposites, are therefore the concrete realities of Hegel ; and the process of the evolution of ideas, in the human mind, is the proc- ess of all existence — the Absolute Idea. The Absolute (die Idee) thus'forms the beginning, middle, and end of the system of Hegel. It is the one infinite existence or thought, of which nature, mind, history, religion, and philoso- phy, are the manifestation. " The absolute is, with him, not the infinite substance, as with Spinoza ; nor the infinite subject, as 5 66 CHRISTIANITY AND with Fichte ; nor the infinite 77imd, as with Schelling ; it is a perpetual process, an eternal thinking, without beginning and without end.'" This livings eternal process of absolute existence, is the God of HegeL It will thus be seen that the Absolute is, with Hegel, the sum of all actual and possible existence ; " nothing is true and real except so far as it forms an element of the Absolute Spirit"' " What kind of an Absolute Being," he asks, " is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included ?"-^ The Absolute, therefore, in Hegel's conception, does not allow of any existence out of itself. It is the unity of the finite and the infinite, the eternal and the temporal, the ideal and the real, the subject and the object. And it is not only the unity of these opposites so as to exclude all difference, but it contains, in itself, all the differences and opposites as elements of its be- ing ; otherwise the distinctions would stand over against the absolute as a limit, and the absolute would cease to be abso- lute. God is, therefore, according to Hegel, " no motionless, eter- nally self-identical and unchangeable being, but a living, eternal process of absolute self-existence. This process consists in the eternal self-distinction, or antithesis, and equally self-reconcilia- tion or synthesis of those opposites which enter, as necessary elements, into the constitution of the Divine Being. This self- evolution, whereby the absolute enters into antithesis, and re- turns to itself again, is the eternal self-actualization of its being, and which at once constitutes the beginning, middle, and end, as in the circle, where the beginning is at the same time the end, and the end the beginning."* The whole philosophy of Hegel consists in the development of this idea of God by means of his, so-called, dialectic method, which reflects the objective life-process of the Absolute, and is, in fact, identical with it ; for God, says he, " is only the Abso- ' Morel], " Hist, of Philos., p. 461." ^ " Philos. of Religion," p. 204. ^ Ibid., chap. xi. p. 24. * Herzog's Real-Encyc, art. " Hegelian Philps.," by Ulrici. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 67 lute Intelligence in so far as he knows himself to be the Abso- lute Intelligence, a7id this he knows only in science [dialectics], and this knowledge alone constitutes his true existence"^ This life-process of the Absolute has three " moments." It may be considered as the idea in itself— hdixe, naked, undetermined, un- conscious idea ; as the idea out of itself in its objective form, or in its differentiation ; and, finally, as the idea in itself 2016. for itself in its regressive or reflective form. This movement of thought giY&s, frst, bare, naked, indeterminate thought, or thought in the mere antithesis of Being and non-Being ; second- ly, thought externalizing itself in nature ; and, thirdly, thought returning to itself, and knowing itself in mind, or consciousness. Philosophy has, accordingly, three corresponding divisions : — I. LOGIC, which here is identical with metaphysics ; 2. philos- ophy of NATURE ; 3. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. It is beyond our design to present an expanded view of the entire philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world a new logic, it may be needful to glance at its general features as a help to the comprehension of his philosophy of religion. The fundamental law of his logic is the identity of contraries or contradictions. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or oppo- sites. This antithesis not only exists in all ideas, but consti- tutes them. In every idea we form, there must be two things opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear concep- tion. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of dark- ness j good can not be thought except in opposition to evil. All life, all reality is thus, essentially, the union of two elements, which, together, are mutually opposed to, and yet imply each other. The identity of Being and Nothing is one of the consequen- ces of this law. 1. The Absolute is the Being (das Absolute ist das Seyn), and " the Being " is here, according to Hegel, bare, naked, abstract, undistinguished, indeterminate, unconscious idea. 2. The Absolute is the Nothing (das Absolute ist das Nichts). ^ "Hist. ofPhilos.,"iii. p. 399. 68 CHRISTIANITY AND " Pure being is pure abstraction, and consequently the abso- lute-negative, which in like manner, directly taken, is nothijigy Being and Nothing are the positive and negative poles of the Idea, that is, the Absolute. They both alike exist, they are both pure abstractions, both absolutely unconditioned, without attributes, and without consciousness. Hence follows the con- clusion — 3. Being and Nothing are identical {^^2,^ Seyn und das Nichts ist dasselbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being is Being — the An- ders-seyn — which becomes as Being to the Seyn. Nothing is, in some sense, an actual thing. Beitig and Nothing are thus the two elements which enter into the one Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both togeth- er combine to form a complete notion of bare production, or the hecoining of something out of nothing, — the unfolding of real existence in its lowest form, that is, of iiatiwe. The " Philosophy of Nature " exhibits a series of necessary movements which carry the idea forward in the ascending scale of sensible existence. The laws of mechanics, chemistry, and physiology are resolved into a series of oppositions. But the law which governs this development requires the self-reconcilia- tion of these opposites. The idea, therefore, which in nature was unconscious and ignorant of itself, returns upon itself, and becomes conscious of itself, that is, becomes mind. The science of the regression or self-reflection of the idea, is the ^^ Philosophy of Mind:' The '■^Philosophy of Mind''' is subdivided by Hegel into three parts. There is, first, the subjective or individual mind {psychology) ; then the objective or universal mind, as represent- ed in society, the state, and in history {ethics, political philoso- phy, ox jurisprudence, zxA philosophy of history) ; and, finally, the union of the subjective and objective mind, or the absolute mind. This last manifests itself again under three forms, representing the three degrees of the self-consciousness of the Spirit, as the eternal truth. These are, first, art, or the representation of beauty (cesthetics) ; secondly, religion, in the general acceptation GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 69 of the term (philosophy of religion) ; and, thvcdXy^ philosophy it- self, as the purest and most perfect form of the scientific knowl- edge of truth. All historical religions, the Oriental, the Jew- ish, the Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, are the successive stages hi the development or self-actualization of God} It is unnecessary to indicate to the reader that the philoso- phy of Hegel is essentially pantheistic. " God is not a person^ but personality itself, /. ^., the universal personality, which real- izes itself in every human consciousness, as so many separate thoughts of one eternal mind. The idea we form of the abso- lute is, to Hegel, the absolute itself, its essential existence be- ing identical with our conception of it. Apart from, and out of the world, there is no God j and so also, apart from the uni- versal consciousness of man, there is no Divine consciousness or personality."^ This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and con- flicts with the actual facts of man's religious nature and relig- ious history. If the word "religion" has any meaning at all, it is " a mode of life determined by the consciousness of de- pendence upon, and obligation to God." It is reverence for, gratitude to, and worship of God as a being distinct from hu- manity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of God — a stage in the development or self-actualization of God. Viewed under one aspect, religion is the self-adoration of God — the worship of God by God ; under another aspect it is the worship of humanity, since God only becomes conscious of himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is that upon v/hich his entire method proceeds, viz., " the identity of subject and object, being and thought." Against this false position the consciousness of each individual man, and the universal con- sciousness of our race, as revealed in history, alike protest. If thought and being are identical, then whatever is true of ideas is also true of objects, and then, as Kant had before remarked, ^ See art. " Hegelian Philosophy," in Herzog's Real-Eiicyc, from whence our materials are chiefly drawn. "" Morell, " Hist of Philos.," p. 473. 70 CHRISTIANITY AND there is no difference between ihinkhig we possess a hundred dollars, and 2.QX.\!i'd}A^ possessing them. Such absurdities may be rendered plausible by a logic which asserts the " identity of contradictions," but against such logic common sense rebels. " The law of non-contradiction " has been accepted by all logi- cians, from the days of Aristotle, as a fundamental law of thought. *' Whatever is contradictory is unthinkable. A=not A=0, or A— A=0."^ Non-existence can not exist. Being can not be nothing. III. The third hypothesis affirms that the pheiiomenon of re- ligion has its foundation tn feeling — the feeling of dependence and of obligation ; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous in- tuition or instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obliga- tion we call God. This, with some slight modification in each case, consequent upon the differences in their philosophic systems, is the theory of Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Mansel, and probably Ham- ilton. Its fundamental position is, that we can not gain truth with absolute certainty either from sense or reason, and, con- sequently, the only valid source of real knowledge is feeli7ig — faith, intuition, or, as it is called by some, i?ispiratio?i. There have been those, in all ages, who have made all knowledge of invisible, supersensuous, divine things, to rest upon an internal feeling, or immediate, inward vision. The Oriental Mystics, the Neo-Platonists, the Mystics of the Greek and Latin Church, the German Mystics of the 14th century, the Theosophists of the Reformation, the Quietists of France, the Quakers, have all appealed to some special faculty, distinct from the understanding and reason, for the immediate cogni- tion of invisible and spiritual existences. By some, that special faculty was regarded as an " interior eye " which was illuminated by the " Universal Light ;" by others, as a peculiar sensibility of the soul — 2^ feeling in whose perfect calm and ut- ter quiescence the Divinity was mirrored ; or which, in an ec- ^ Hamilton's Logic, p. 58. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 71 static state, rose to a communion with, and final absorption in the Infinite. Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the " faith- philosophy," as it is now designated, a definite form. He as- sumes the position that all knowledge, of whatever kind, must ultimately rest upon intuition or faith. As it regards sensible objects, the understanding finds the impression from which all our knowledge of the external flows, ready formed. The proc- ess of sensation is a mystery ; we know nothing of it until it is past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge of matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can not doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act of perception there is something actual and present, which can not be referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are also conscious of another class of feelings which correlate us with a supersensuous world, and these feelings, also, must have their cause in some objective reality. Just as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of an external world, so there is an internal sense which gives us an immediate knowledge of a spir- itual world — -God, the soul, freedom, immortality. Our knowl- edge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All philosoph- ic knowledge is thus based upon belief, which Jacobi regards as a fact of our inward sensibility — a sort of knowledge produced by an immediate feeling of the soul — a direct apprehension, without proof, of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal. Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by the deservedly greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental position was that truth in Theology could not be obtained by rea- son, but by a feeling, insight, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called God-consciousness, and in its highest form, Christian- consciousness. The God-consciousness, in its original form, is the feeling of depejidence on the Infinite. The Christian con- sciousness is the perfect union of the human consciousness with the Divine, through the mediation of Christ, or what we would call a Christian experience of communion with God. 72 CHRISTIANITY AND Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take account of his doctrine of i"^^consciousness. " In all self-consciousness," says he, " there are two elements, a Be- ing (ein Seyn) and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweige- wordenseyn). The last, however, presupposes, for every self- consciousness, besides the ego, yet something else from whence the certainty of the same [self-consciousness] exists, and with- out which self-consciousness would not be just this."^ Every determinate mode of the sensibility supposes an object, and a r^- lation between the subject and the object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the object. External sensa- tion, the feeling, say of extension and resistance, gives world- consciousness. Internal sensation, the feeling of dependence, gives God-consciousness. And it is only by the presence of world-consciousness and God-consciousness that self-conscious- ness can be what it is. We have, then, in our self-consciousness 2, feeling of direct de- pendence, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that dependence we call God. " By means of the religious feeling, the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things [external] are revealed in us."^ The felt, therefore, is not only the first religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form of the religious spirit ; whatever lays any claim to religion must maintain its ground and principle in feeling, upon which it de- pends for its development j and the sum-total of the forces con- stituting religious life, inasmuch as it is a life, is based upon immediate self-consciousness.^ The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his '■^Limits of Religious Thought ^ He maintains, with Schleiermacher, that religion is grounded in feelijig, and that the felt is the first intimation or presentiment of the Di- vine. Man '■'■feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being, and the instinct to worship, before he can argue from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and benevo- ^ Glaubenslchre, ch, i. § 4. '^ Dialectic, p. 430. ^ Nitzsch, " System of Doctrine," p. 23. GREEK FHILOSOPHY. 73 lence scattered through the creation."^ He also agrees with Schleiermacher in regarding the feeling of dependence as a state of the sensibihty, out of which reflection builds up the edifice of Religious Consciousness, but he does not, with Schleier- macher, regard it as pre-eminently the basis of religious con- sciousness. "The mere consciousness of dependence does not, of itself, exhibit the character of the Being on whom we depend. It is as consistent with superstition as with religion ; with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent Deity.'"* To the feeling of dependence he has added the consciousness of moral obligation, which he imagines supplies the deficiency. By this consciousness of moral obligation "we are compelled to assume the existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity. "^ " To these two facts of the inner con- sciousness (the feeling of dependence, and consciousness of moral obligation) may be traced, as to their sources, the two great outward acts by which religion, in its various forms, has been manifested among men — Prayer, by which they seek to win God's blessing upon the future, and Expiation, by which they strive to atone for the offenses of the past. The feeling of dependence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a su- perior power; not an inexorable fate, not an immutable law; but a Being having at least so far the attribute of personality that he can show favor or severity to those who are dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope and fear, and reverence and gratitude."* The feeling of moral obligation — "the law written in the heart" — leads man to rec- ognize a Lawgiver. " Man can. be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of God."^ The conclusion from the whole is, there must be an object an- swering to this consciousness : there must be a God to explain these facts of the soul. ^ Mansel, " Limits of Religious Thought," p. 115. ^ Id., ib., p. 120. ^ Id.,ib., p, 122, * Id., ib,, pp. 119, 120. ^ Id., ib., p. 122. 74 CHRISTIANITY AND This "philosophy of feeling," or of faith generated by feel- ing, has an interest and a significance which has not been ad- equately recognized by writers on natural theology. Feeling, sentiment, enthusiasm, have always played an important part in the history of religion. Indeed it must be conceded that religion is a right state of feeling towards God — religion is piety. A philos- ophy of the religious emotion is, therefore, demanded in order to the full interpretation of the religious phenomena of the world. But the notion that internal feeling, a peculiar determination of the sensibility, is the source of religious ideas : — that God can be known immediately by feeling without the mediation of the truth that manifests God; that he can ho. felt as the quali- ties of matter can be felt j and that this affection of the inward sense can reveal the character and perfections of God, is an unphilosophical and groundless assumption. To assert, with Nitzsch, that "feeling has reason, and is reason, and that the sensible and felt God-consciousness generates out of itself fun- damental conceptions," is to confound the most fundamental psychological distinctions, and arbitrarily bend the recognized classifications of mental science to the necessities of a theory. Indeed, we are informed that it is "by means of an independent psychology, and conformably to it," that Schleiermacher illus- trates his "philosophy of feeling."^ But all psychology must be based upon the observation and classification of mental phenomena, as revealed in consciousness, and not constructed in an " independent " and a priori method. The most careful psychological analysis has resolved the whole complex phenom- ena of mind into thought, feeling, and volition.'^ These orders of phenomena are radically and essentially distinct. They dif- fer not simply in degree but in kind, and it is only by an utter disregard of the facts of consciousness that they can be con- founded. Feeling is not reason, nor can it by any logical dex- terity be transformed into reason. * Nitzsch, " System of Doctrine," p. 21. ' Kant, " Critique of Judg.," ch. xxii. ; Cousin, "Hist, of Pliilos.," vol. ii. p. 399 ; Hamilton, vol. i. p. 183, Eng. ed. OBEEK PHILOSOPHY. 75 The question as to the relative order of cognition and feel- ing, that is, as to whether feeling is the first or original form of the religious consciousness, or whether feeling be not conse- quent upon some idea or cognition of God, is one which can not be determined on empirical grounds. We are precluded from all scrutiny of the incipient stages of mental development in the individual mind and in collective humanity. If we at- tempt to trace the early history of the soul, its beginnings are lost in a period of blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny of memory or imagination. If we attempt the inquiry on the wider field of universal consciousness, the first unfoldings of mind in humanity are lost in the border-land of mystery, of which history furnishes no authentic records. All dogmatic af- firmation must, therefore, be unjustifiable. The assertion that religious feeling precedes all cognition, — that " the conscious- ness of dependence on a Supreme Being, and the instinct of worship " are developed first in the mind, before the reasoji is exercised, is utterly groundless. The more probable doctrine is that all the primary faculties enter into spontaneous action simultaneously — the reason with the senses, the feelings with the reason, the judgment with both the senses and the reason, and that from their primary and simultaneous action arises the complex result, called consciousness, or conjoint knowl- edge.^ There can. be no clear and distinct consciousness with- out the cognition of a self 2Ji^ a not-self m. mutual relation and opposition. Now the knowledge of the self — the personal ego — is an intuition of reason ; the knowledge of the not-self is an intuition of sense. All knowledge is possible only under con- dition of plurality, difference, and relation.^ Now the judgment is " the Faculty of Relations," or of comparison ; and the af- firmation '''•this is not that^^ is an act of judgment; to know is, consequently, to judge.^ Self-consciousness must, therefore, be regarded as a synthesis of sense, reason, and judgment, and not a mere self-feeling (coenaesthesis). ^ Cousin, " Hist, of Philos.," vol. i. p. 357 ; vol. ii. p. 337. ' Id., ib., vol. i. p. 8S. ^ Hamilton, " Metaphys.," p. 277. 76 CHRISTIANITY AND A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensa- . tion, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of body without the a priori idea of space. The feeling of movement, of change, can not give the cognition of event without the ra- tional idea of time or duration. Simple consciousness can not generate the idea of personality, or selfhood, without the ration- al idea of identity or unity. And so the mere " feeling of de- pendence," of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea of God, without the rational a priori idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause. Sensatioh is not knowl- edge, and never can become knowledge, without the interven- tion of reason ; and a concentrated self-feeling can not rise es- sentially above animal life until it has, through the mediation of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being ruliog over nature and man. Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its pathological form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appe- tency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mys- terious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended by the reason, before the feeling can have any significance. Regarded in its moral form, as " the feeling of obligation," it can have no real meaning unless a " law of duty " be known and recognized. Feeling, alone, can not reveal what duty is. When that which is right, and just, and good is revealed to the mind, then the sense of obligation may urge man to the performance of duty. But the right, the just, the good, are ideas which are apprehended by the reason, and, conse- quendy, our moral sentiments are the result of the harmoni- GREEK PIIILOSOFHY. 77 ous and living relation between the reason and the sensibili- ties. Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's " feeling of dependence " to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doc- trine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to assume the existence of a moral Deity." We think his " fact of religious intuition " is as inadequate as Schleiermacher's to explain the whole phenomena of religion. In neither instance does feeling supply the actual knowledge of God. The feeling of dependence may indicate that there is a Power or Being upon whom we depend for existence and well-being, and which Power or Being " we call God." The feeling of obligation certainly indicates the existence of a Being to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr. Mansel calls a "moral Deity." But in both instances the character, and even the existence of God is " assumed" and we are enti- tled to ask on what ground it is assumed. It will not be as- serted that feeling alone generates the idea, or that the feeling is transformed into idea without the intervention of thought and reflection. Is there, then, a logical connection between the feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the idea of the Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous Gov- ernor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-rela- tion between the feeling and the idea, so that when the feeling is present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind .? This latter opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept it as the statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not regard it as an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human mind. The idea of God as the First Cause, the In- finite Mind, the Perfect Being, the personal Lord and Law- giver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is manifestly a com- plex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed in con- sciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous ope- 78 CHRISTIANITY AND ration of the whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe, and the primitive intuitions of the rea- son, — a logical inference from the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion which regards the feel- ings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of reason as uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates into mysticism — a mysticism "which pretends to elevate man di- rectly to God, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives man of that which enables him to know God, and puts him in a just communication with God by the in- termediary of eternal and infinite truth. "^ The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted from the union of thought and feelmg — the living and harmonious relation of reason and sensibility j and a philoso- phy which disregards either is inadequate to the explanation of the phenomena. IV. The fourth hypothesis is, that religion has had its out- birth in the spontaneous apperceptions of reason ; that is, in the necessary, a priori ideas of the infinite, the perfect, the uncon- ditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into con- sciousness in presence of the changeful, contingent phenomena of the world. This will at once be recognized by the intelligent reader as the doctrine of Cousin, by whom pure reason is regarded as the grand faculty or organ of religion. Religion, in the estimation of Cousin, is grounded on cognitio7i rather than upon feeling. It is the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of duty in its relation to God and to human happi- ness ; and as reason is the general faculty of all knowing, it must be the faculty of religion. " In its most elevated point of view, religion is the relation of absolute truth to absolute Being," and as absolute truth is apprehended by the reason alone, reason " is the veridical and religious part of the nature of man."" By ' Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. no. "^ Henry's Cousin, p. 510. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 79 " reason," however, as we shall see presently, Cousin does not mean the discursive or reflective reason, but the spontaneous or intuitive reason. That act of the mind by which we attain to religious knowledge is not a process of reasonings but a pure appreciation, an instinctive and involuntary movement of the soul The especial function of reason, therefore, is to reveal to us the invisible, the supersensuous, the Divine. " It was bestowed upon us for this very purpose of going, without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and from necessary and eternal truths, to the eternal and necessary principle " that is God.^ Reason is thus, as it were, the bridge between con- sciousness and being ; it rests, at the same time, on both ; it de- scends from God, and approaches man ; it makes its appear- ance in consciousness as a guest which brings intelligence of another world of real Being which lies beyond the world of sense. Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being di- rectly and immediately, without any intervening medium. To assert this would be to fall into the error of Plotinus, and the Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is the offspring of God, a ray of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be identified with God. Reason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly, and by the in- terposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a man- ifestation of God. "Truth is incomprehensible without God, and God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."^ Incapable of contemplating God face to face, reason adores God in the truth which represents and manifests Him. Absolute truth is thus a revelation of God, made by God to the reason of man, and as it is a light which illuminates every man, and is perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal and perpetual revelation of God to man. The mind of man is ^ Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 103. ^ Id., ib., p. 99.. 8o CHRISTIANITY AND " the offspring of God," and, as such, must have some resem- blance to, and some correlation with God. Now that which constitutes the image of God in man must be found in the rea- son which is correlated with, and capable of perceiving the truth which manifests God, just as the eye is correlated to the lio-ht which manifests the external world. Absolute truth is, therefore, the sole medium of bringing the human mind into communion with God j and human reason, in becoming united to absolute truth, becomes united to God in his manifestation in spirit and in truth. The supreme law, and highest destina- tion of man, is to become united to God by seeking a full con- sciousness of, and loving and practising the Truth.' It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions by which this philosophy of religion is to be tested are — I St. ITow will Cousin prove to us that humaJi reason is i?i pos- session of universal and necessary principles or absolute truths ? and, 2d. How are these principles shown to be absolute ? how far do these principles of reason possess absolute authority 1 The answer of Cousin to the first question is that we prove reason to be in possession of universal and necessary princi- ples by the analysis of the contents of consciousness, that is, by psychological analysis. The phenomena of consciousness, in their primitive condition, are necessarily complex, concrete, and particular. All our primary ideas are complex ideas, for the evident reason that all, or nearly all, our faculties enter at once into exercise ; their simultaneous action giving us, at the same time, a certain number of ideas connected with each other, and forming a whole. For example, the idea of the exterior world, which is given us so quickly, is a complex idea, which contains a number of ideas. There is the idea of the secondary quali- ties of exterior objects; there is the idea of the primary quali- ties ; there is the idea of the permanent reality of something to which you refer these qualities, to wit, matter \ there is the idea of space which contains bodies ; there is the idea of time in which movements are effected. All these ideas are acquired ' Henry's Cousin, p. 511, 512. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 8 1 simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, and together form one complex idea. The application of analysis to this complex phenomenon clearly reveals that there are simple ideas, beliefs, principles in the mind which can not have been derived from sense and ex- perience, which sense and experience do not account for, and which are the suggestions of reason alone : the idea of the I?i- finite^ the Perfect^ the Eternal; the true, the beautiful, the good ; the principle of causality, of substance, of unity, of intentional- ity j the principle of duty, of obligation, of accountability, of retribution. These principles, in their natural and regular de- velopment, carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and re- veal to us a world of real being beyond the world of sense. They carry us up to an absolute Being, the fountain of all ex- istence — a living, personal, righteous God — the author, the sus- tain er, and ruler of the universe. The proof that these principles are absolute, and possessed of absolute authority, is drawn, first, from the impersonality of reason, or, rather, the impersonality of the ideas, principles, or truths of reason. It is not we who create these ideas, neither can we change them at our pleasure. We are conscious that the will, in all its various efforts, is enstamped with the impress of our person- ality. Our volitions are our own. So, also, our desires are our own, our emotions are our own. But this is not the same with our rational ideas or principles. The ideas of substance, of cause, of unity, of intentionality do not belong to one person any more than to another ; they belong to mind as mind, they are revealed in the universal intelligence of the race. Abso- lute truth has no element of personality about it. Man may say " my reason," but give him credit for never having dared to say '■^ my truth." So far from rational ideas being individual, their peculiar characteristic is that they are opposed to individ- uality, that is, they are universal and necessary. Instead of being circumscribed within the limits of experience, they sur- pass and govern it ; they are universal in the midst of particu- 6 82 CHBISTIANITY AND lar phenomena ; necessary, although mingled with things con- tingent ; and absolute, even when appearing within us the rela- tive and finite beings that we are/ Necessary, universal, abso- lute truth is a direct emanation from God. " Such being the case, the decision of reason within its own peculiar province possesses an authority almost divine. If we are led astray by it, we must be led astray by a light from heaven."^ The second proof is derived from the distiiidion between the sponta?ieoiis and reflective movements of reason. Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary ; reflec- tion is personal, spontaneity is impersonal ; reflection is analyt- ic, spontaneity is synthetic ; reflection begins with doubt, spon- taneity with affirmation ; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to all ; reflection produces science, spon- taneity gives truth. Reflection is a process, more or less tardy, in the individual and in the race. It sometimes engenders er- ror and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, from being ra- tional, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force of habit, as if they were natural to us. But spon- taneous intuition is the true logic of nature, — instant, direct, and infallible. It is a primitive affirmation which implies no negation, and therefore yields positive knowledge. To reflect is to return to that which was. It is, by the aid of memory, to return to the past, and to render it present to the eye of con- sciousness. Reflection, therefore, creates nothing ; it supposes an anterior operation of the mind in which there necessarily must be as many terms as are discovered by reflection. Before all reflection there comes spontaneity — a spontaneity of the in- tellect, which seizes truth at once^ without traversing doubt and error. "We thus attain to a judgment free from all reflection, to an affirmation without any mixture of negation, to an imme- diate intuition, the legitimate daughter of the natural energy of thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero, ' Cousin, " True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 40. ^ Id., " Lectures," vol. ii. p. 32. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 83 the enthusiasm of the prophet." Such is the first act of know- ing, and in this first act the mind passes from idea to being with- out ever suspecting the depth of the chasm it has passed. It passes by means of the power which is in it, and is not aston- ished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished when by reflection it returns to the analysis of the results, and, by the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the opposite of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. " Hence comes the strife between sophism and common sense, between false science and natural truth, between good and bad philoso- phy, both of which come from free reflection."^ It is this spontaneity of thought which gives birth to religion. The instinctive thought which darts through the world, even to God, is natural religion. "All thought implies a spontaneous faith in God, and there is no such thing as natural atheism. Doubt and skepticism may mingle with reflective thought, but beneath reflection there is still spontaneity. When the scholar has denied the existence of God, listen to the man, interrogate him, take him unawares, and you will see that all his words en- velop the idea of God, and that faith in God is, without his recognition, at the bottom, in his heart. "^ Religion, then, in the system of Cousin, does not begin with reflection, with science, but with faith. There is, however, this difference to be noted between the theory of the " faith-philoso- phers " (Jacobi, Schleiermacher, etc.) and the theory of Cousin. With them, faith is grounded on sensation ox feeling ; with him, it is grounded on reason. " Faith, whatever may be its form, whatever may be its object, common or sublime, can be noth- ing else than the consent of reason. That is the foundation of faith."^ Religion is, therefore, with Cousin, at bottom, pure Theism. He thinks, however, that "true theism is not a dead religion that forgets precisely the fundamental attributes of God." It recognizes God as creator, preserver, and governor; it cele- ^ Cousin, " True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 106. ^ " Hist, of Philos.," vol. i. p. 137. ^ Ibid., vol. i. p. 90. 84 CHRISTIANITY AND brates a providence ; it adores a perfect, holy, righteous, be- nevolent God. It holds the principle of duty, of obligation, of moral desert. It not only perceives the divine character, but feels its relation to God. The revelation of the Infinite, by rea- son, moves the feelings, and passes into sentiment, producing reverence, and love, and gratitude. And it creates worship, which recalls man to God a thousand times more forcibly than the order, harmony, and beaut}^ of the universe can do. The spontaneous action of reason, in its greatest energy, is i7ispiration. " Inspiration, daughter of the soul and heaven, speaks from on high with an absolute authority. It commands faith j so all its words are hymns, and its natural language is poetry." " Thus, in the cradle of civihzation, he who possessed in a higher degree than his fellows the gift of inspiration, passed for the confidant and the interpreter of God. He is so for others, because he is so for himself; and he is so, in fact, in a philosophic sense. Behold the sacred origin of prophecies, of pontificates, and of modes of worship."^ As an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the hu- man intelligence, the doctrine of Cousin must be regarded as eminently logical, adequate, and satisfactory. As a theory of the origin of religion, as a philosophy which shall explain all the phenomena of religion, it must be pronounced defective, and, in some of its aspects, erroneous. First, it does not take proper account of that living force which has in all ages developed so much energy, and wrought such vast results in the history of religion, viz., the power of the heart. Cousin discourses eloquently on the spontaneous, in- stinctive movements of the reason, but he. overlooks, in a great measure, the instinctive movements of the heart. He does not duly estimate the feeling of reverence and awe which rises spon- taneously in presence of the vastness and grandeur of the uni- verse, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is a symbol and shadow. He disregards that sense of an over- shadowing Presence which, at least in seasons of tenderness ' " Hist, of Philos.," vol. i. p. 129. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 85 and deep sensibility, seems to compass us about, and lay its hand upon us. He scarcely recognizes the deep consciousness of imperfection and weakness, and utter dependence, which prompts man to seek for and implore the aid of a Superior Be- ing ; and, above all, he takes no proper account of the sense of guilt and the conscious need of expiation. His theory, there- fore, can not adequately explain the universal prevalence of sacrifices, penances, and prayers. In short, it does not meet and answer to the deep longings of the human heart, the wants, sufferings, fears, and hopes of man. Cousin claims that the universal reason of man is illumina- ted by the light of God. It is quite pertinent to ask. Why may not the universal heart of humanity be touched and moved by the spirit of God ? If the ideas of reason be a revelation from God, may not the instinctive feelings of the heart be an inspira- tion of God ? May not God come near to the heart of man and awaken a mysterious presentiment of an invisible Presence, and an instinctive longing to come nearer to Him ? May he not draw men towards himself by sweet, persuasive influences, and raise man to a conscious fellowship .> Is not God indeed the great want oi the human heart ? Secondly, Cousin does not give due importance to the influ- ence of revealed truth as given in the sacred Scriptures, and of the positive institutions of religion, as a divine economy, su- pernaturally originated in the world. He grants, indeed, that " a primitive revelation throws light upon the cradle of human civilization," and that " all antique traditions refer to an age in which man, at his departure from the hand of God, received from him immediately all lights, and all truths."^ He also be- lieves that " the Mosaic religion, by its developments, is mingled with the history of all the surrounding people of Egypt, of As- syria, of Persia, and of Greece and Rome.'"' Christianity, how- ever, is regarded as " the summing and crown of the two great religious systems which reigned by turn in the East and in Greece " — the maturity of Ethnicism and Judaism ; a develop- ' " Hist, of Philos.," vol. i. p. 148. '^ Ibid., vol. i. p. 216. 86 CHlilSTIANITY AND ment rather than a new creation. The explanation which he offers of the phenomena of inspiration opens the door to relig- ious skepticism. Those who were termed seers, prophets, in- spired teachers of ancient times, were simply men who resigned themselves wholly to their intellectual instincts, and thus gazed upon truth in its pure and perfect form. They did not reason, they did not reflect, they made no pretensions to philosophy ; they received truth spontaneously as it flowed in upon them from heaven.^ This immediate reception of Divine light was nothing more than the natural play of spontaneous reason ; nothing more than what has existed to a greater or less de- gree in every man of great genius ; nothing more than may now exist in any mind which resigns itself to its own unreflec- tive apperceptions. Thus revelation, in its proper sense, loses all its peculiar value, and Christianity is robbed of its pre-emi- nent authority. The extremes of Mysticism and Rationalism here meet on the same ground, and Plotinus and Cousin are at one. V. The fifth hypothesis offered in explanation of the relig- ious phenomena of the world is that they had theii; origin iii ex- ternal REVELATION, to wJiicJi rcasoii is related as a purely pas- sive organ ^ and Ethnicism as a feeble relic. This is the theory of the school of " dogmatic theologians," of which the ablest and most familiar presentation is found in the " Theological Institutes " of R. Watson.'^ He claims that all our religious knowledge is derived from 07'al revelation alone, and that all the forms of religion and modes of worship which have prevailed in the heathen world have been perversions and corruptions of the one true religion first taught to the earliest ^ Morell, " Hist, of Philos.," p. 66i. " We might have referred the reader to Ellis's " Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature ;" Leland's ** Necessity of Revelation ;" and Horsley's " Dissertations," etc.; but as we are not aware of their having been reprinted in this country, we select the " Institutes " of Watson as the best presentation of the views of " the dogmatic theolo- gians " accessible to American readers. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 87 families of men by God himself. All the ideas of God, duty, immortality, and future retribution which are now possessed, or have ever been possessed by the heathen nations, are only broken and scattered rays of the primitive traditions descend- ing from the family of Noah, and revived by subsequent in- tercourses with the Hebrew race ; and all the modes of re- ligious worship — prayers, lustrations, sacrifices — that have ob- tained in the world, are but feeble relics, faint reminiscences of the primitive worship divinely instituted among the first families of men. " The first man received the knowledge of God by sensible converse with him, and that doctrine was transmitted, with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to the early ancestors of all nations."^ This belief in the existence of a Supreme Being was preserved among the Jews by continual manifestations of the presence of Jehovah. " The intercourses between the Jews and the states of Syria and Babylon, on the one hand, and Egypt on the other, powers which rose to great eminence and influence in the ancient world, was maintained for ages. Their frequent dispersions and captivities would tend to preserve in part, and in part to revive, the knowledge of the once common and universal faith."^ And the Greek sages who resorted for instruction to the Chaldean philosophic schools derived from thence their knowledge of the theological system of the Jews.^ Among the heathen nations this primitive reve- lation was corrupted by philosophic speculation, as in India and China, Greece and Rome ; and in some cases it was entirely obliterated by ignorance, superstition, and vice, as among the Hottentots of Africa and the aboriginal tribes of New South Wales, who " have no idea of one Supreme Creator."* The same course of reasoning is pursued in regard to the idea of duty, and the knowledge of right and wrong. " A di- rect communication of the Divine Will was made to the primo- * Watson, " Theol. Inst," vol. i. p. 270. ^ Id. ib., vol. i. p. 31. ^ See ch. v. and vi., " On the Origin of those Truths which are found in the "Writings and Religious Systems of the Heathen." * Ibid., vol. i. p. 274. 88 CHRISTIANITY AND genitors of our race," and to this source alone we are indebted for all correct ideas of right and wrong. " Whatever is found pure in morals, in ancient or modern writers, may be traced to indirect revelation."^ Verbal instruction — tradition or scripture — thus becomes the source of all our moral ideas. The doc- trine of immortality, and of a future retribution,^ the practice of sacrifice — precatory and expiatory, are also ascribed to the same source.^ Thus the only medium by which religious truth can possibly become known to the masses of mankind is tra- dition. The ultimate foundation on which the religious faith and the religious practices of universal humanity have rested, with the exception of the Jews, and the favored few to whom the Gospel has come, is uncertain, precarious, and easily cor- rupted tradition. The improbability, inadequacy, and incompleteness of this theory will be obvious from the following considerations : I. It is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the well-being of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precari- ous and uncertain a basis as tradition is admitted, even by Mr. Watson, to be. ^ The human mind needs the idea of God to satisfy its deep moral necessities, and to harmonize all its powers. The per- fection of humanity can never be secured, the destination of humanity can never be achieved, the purpose of God in the ex- istence of humanity can never be accomplished, without the idea of God, and of the relation of man to God, being present to the human mind. Society needs the idea of a Supreme Ruler as the foundation of law and government, and as the basis of social order. Without it, these can not be, or be conserved. Intellectual creatureship, social order, human progress, are in- conceivable and impossible without the idea of God, and of ac- countability to God. Now that truths so fundamental should, * Watson, " Theol. Inst.," vol. ii. p. 470. = Id. ib., vol. i. p. 1 1. ' Id. ib., vol. i. p. 26. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 89 to the masses of men, rest on tradition alone^ is incredible. Is there no known and accessible God to the outlying millions of our race who, in consequence of the circumstances of birth and education, which are beyond their control, have had no access to an oral revelation, and among whom the dim shadowy rays of an ancient tradition have long ago expired ? Are the eight hundred millions of our race upon whom the light of Christian- ity has not shone unvisited by the common Father of our race ? Has the universal Father left his "own offspring" without a single native power of recognizing the existence of the Divine Parent, and abandoned them to solitary and dreary orphanage ? Could not he who gave to matter its properties and laws, — the properties and laws through whose operation he is working out his own purposes in the realm of nature, — could not he have also given to mind ideas and principles which, logically devel- oped, would lead to recognition of a God, and of our duty to God, and, by these ideas and principles, have wrought out his sublime purposes in the realm of mind? Could not he who gave to man the appetency for food, and implanted in his na- ture the social instincts to preserve his physical being, have im- planted in his heart a "feeling after God," and an instinct to worship God in order to the conservation of his spiritual being ? How otherwise can we affirm the responsibility and accounta- bility of all the race before God ? Those theologians who are so earnest in the assertion that God has not endowed man with the native power of attaining the knowledge of God can not, on any principle of equity, show how the heathen are " without excuse " when, in involuntary ignorance of God, they " worship the creature instead of the Creator," and violate a law of duty of which they have no possible means to attain the barest knowledge. 2. This theory is utterly inadequate to the explanation of the universality of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas. Take, for example, the idea of God. As a matter of fact we affirm, in opposition to Watson, the universality of this idea. The idea of God is connatural to the human mind. Wherever 90 CHRISTIANITY AND human reason has had its normal and healthy development, this idea has arisen spontaneously and necessarily. There has not been found a race of men who were utterly destitute of some knowledge of a- Supreme Being. All the instances al- leged have, on further and more accurate inquiry, been found incorrect. The tendency of the last century, arbitrarily to quad- rate all the facts of religious history with the prevalent sensa- tional philosophy, had its influence upon the minds of the first missionaries to India, China, Africa, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific. They expected to find that the heathen had no knowledge of a Supreme Being, and before they had mastered the idioms of their language, or become familiar with their my- thological and cosmological systems, they reported them as titter- ly ignorant of God, destitute of the idea and even the name of a Supreme Being. These mistaken and hasty conclusions have, however, been corrected by a more intimate acquaintance with the people, their languages and religions. Even in the absence of any better information, we should be constrained to doubt the accuracy of the authorities quoted by Mr. Watson in relation to Hindooism, when by one (Ward) we are told that the Hindoo " believes in a God destitute of intelligence^^ and by another (Moore) that " Brahm is the one eternal Mind, the self- existent, incomprehensible Spirit.'" Learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as European, however, confidently affirm that " the ground of the Brahminical faith is Monotheistic ;" it recognizes " an Absolute and Supreme Being as the source of all that exists.'^ Eugene Burnouf, M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, Kceppen, and indeed nearly all who have written on the subject of Buddhism, have shown that the metaphysical doctrines of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of the Brahmin- ic philosophy. " Buddha," we are told, is ''^ pure intelligence,^^ " clear light,'' ^^ perfect wisdom /" the same as Brahm. This is ' Watson, " Theol. Inst.," vol. i. p. 46. ^ Maurice, ** Religions of the World," p. 59: Edm. Rroieiu, 1862, art. " Recent Researches on Buddhism." See also Muller's " Chips from a Ger- man Workshop," vol. i. ch. i. to vi. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 91 surely Theism in its highest conception/ In regard to the peoples of South Africa, Dr. Livingstone assures us " there is no need for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a God, or of a future state — the facts being universally admitted .... On questioning intelligent men among the Backwains as to their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and of a future state, they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear conception on all these subjects."^ And so far from the New Hollanders having no idea of a Supreme Being, we are assured by E. Stone Parker, the protector of the aborigines of New Hol- land, they have a clear and well-defined idea of a ^^ Great Spirit^^ the maker of all things. Now had the idea of God rested solely on tradition, it were the most natural probability that it might be lost, nay, must be lost, amongst those races of men who were geographically and chronologically far removed from the primitive cradle of hu- manity in the East, The people who, in their migrations, had wandered to the remotest parts of the earth, and had become isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a spontane- ous and native intuition of the mind, — a necessity of thought. A fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to ^ " It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefi- nite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of the pop- ulace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme Being. But all the important philosophical syst-ems of the Brahmans admit, in some form or another, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist." — Miiller, " Chips from a German Work- shop," vol. i. pp. 224, 5. Buddha, which means "intelligence," "clear light," "perfect wisdom," was not only the name of the founder of the religion of Eastern Asia, but Adi Buddha was the name of the Absolute, Eternal Intelligence. — Maurice, " Religions of the World," p. 102. "^ " Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa," p. 158. 92 CHRISTIANITY AND the events of history, the persistence and pertinacity of tra- dition is exceedingly feeble. The South Sea Islanders know not from whence, or at what time, their ancestors came. ^ There are monuments in Tonga and Fiji of which the present inhab- itants can give no account. How, then, can a pure, abstract idea which can have no sensible representation, no visible image, retain its hold upon the memory of humanity for thou- sands of years ? The Fijian may not remember whence his im- mediate ancestors came, but he knows that the race came orig- inally from the hands of the Creator. He can not tell who built the monuments of solid masonry which are found in his island-home, but he can tell who reared the everlasting hills and built the universe. He may not know who reigned in Vewa a hundred years ago, but he knows who now reigns, and has always reigned, over the whole earth. " The idea of a God is familiar to the Fijian, and the existence of an invisible su- perhuman power controlling and influencing nature, and all earthly things, is fully recognized by him."^ The idea of God is a common fact of human consciousness, and tradition alone is manifestly inadequate to account for its imiversality. 3. A verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence ^'■purely ^assive^'' and ut- terly unfurnished with any ci priori ideas or necessary laws of cognition and thought. Of course it is not denied that important verbal communica- tions relating to the character of God, and the duties we owe to God, were given to the first human pair, more clear and defi- nite, it may be, than any knowledge attained by Socrates and Plato through their dialectic processes, and that these oral revelations were successively repeated and enlarged to the pa- triarchs and prophets of the Old Testament church. And fur- thermore, that some rays of light proceeding from this pure fountain of truth were diffused, and are still lingering among the heathen nations, we have no desire, and no need to deny. All this, however, supposes, at least, a natural power and ^ " Fiji and the Fijians," p. 215. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 93 aptitude for the knowledge of God, and some configuration and correlation of the human intelligence to the Divine. "We have no knowledge of a d3^namic influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can not be moved and controlled by forces and laws, unless it have properties which correlate it with those forces and laws. And mind can not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, un- less it have active powers of apprehension and conception which are governed by uniform laws. The "'material" of thought may be supplied from without, but the " form " is de- termined by the necessary laws of our inward being. All our cognition of the external world is conditioned by the a priori ideas of time and space, and all our thinking is governed by the principles of causality and substance, and the law of " suf- ficient reason." The mind itself supplies an element of knowl- edge in all our cognitions. Man can not be taught the knowl- edge of God if he be not naturally possessed of a presentiment, or an apperception of a God, as the cause and reason of the universe. " If education be not already preceded by an innate consciousness of God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture to act upon."^ A mere verbal revelation can not communicate the knowledge of God, if man have not already the idea of a God in his mind. A name is a mere empty sign, a meaningless symbol, without a mental image of the object which it represents, or an innate perception, or an abstract conception of the mind, of which the word is the sign. The mental image or the abstract concep- tion must, therefore, precede the name ; cognition must be an- terior to, and give the meaning of language.'^ The child knows a thing even before it can speak its name. And, universally, we must know the thing in itself, or image it by analogies and resemblances to some other thing we do know, before the name can have any meaning for us. As to purely rational ideas and * Nitzsch, " System of Christian Doctrine," p. 10. "^ "Ideas must pre-exist their sensible signs." See De Boismont on " Hallucination," etc., p. iii. 94 CHRISTIANITY AND abstract conceptions, — as space, cause, the infinite, the per- fect, — language can never convey these to the mind, nor can the mind ever attain them by experience if they are not an orig- inal, connate part of our mental equipment and furniture. The mere verbal affirmation " there is a God " made to one who has no idea of a God, would be meaningless and unintelligible. What notion can a man form of " the First Cause " if the prin- ciple of causality is not inherent in his mind ? What concep- tion can he form of '' the Infinite Mind " if the infinite be not a primitive intuition ? How can he conceive of " a Righteous Governor " if he have no idea of right, no sense of obligation, no apprehension of a retribution? Words are empty sounds without ideas, and God is a mere name if the mind has no ap- perception of a God. It may be affirmed that, preceding or accompanying the an- nouncement of the Divine Name, there was given to the first human pair, and to the early fathers of our race, some visible manifestation of the presence of God, and some supernatural display of divine power. What, then, was the character of these early manifestations, and were they adequate to convey the proper idea of God ? Did God first reveal himself in hu- man form, and if so, how could their conception of God ad- vance beyond a rude anthropomorphism? Did he reveal his presence in a vast columnar cloud or a pillar of fire ? How could such an image convey any<:onception of the intelligence, the omnipresence, the eternity of God ? Nay, can the infinite and eternal Mind be represented by any visible manifestation ? Can the human mind conceive an image of God ? The knowl- edge of God, it is clear, can not be conveyed by any sensible sign or symbol if man has no prior rational idea of God as the Infinite and the Perfect Being. If the facts of order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd the universe, and the d priori ideas of an uncon- ditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the work of an intelligent mind, how GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 95 can any preternatural display o^ power produce a rational con- viction that God exists? "If the universe could come by chance or fate, surely all the lesser phenomena, termed mirac- ulous, might occur so too."* If we find ourselves standing amid an eternal series of events, may not miracles be a part of that series? Or if all things are the result of necessary and unchangeable laws, may not miracles also result from some nat- ural or psychological law of which we are yet in ignorance ? Let it be granted that man is not so constituted that, by the necessary laws of his intelligence, he must affirm that facts of order having a commencement in time prove mind ; let it be granted that man has 110 intuitive belief in the Infinite and Per- fect — in short, no idea of God ; how, then, could a marvellous display of power, a nev/, peculiar, and startling phenomenon which even seemed to transcend nature, prove to him the ex- istence of an infinite intelligence — a personal God ? The proof would be simply inadequate, because not the right kind of proof Power does not indicate intelligence, force does not imply personality. Miracles, in short, were never intended to prove the exist- ence of God. The foundation of this truth had already been laid in the constitution and laws of the human mind, and mira- cles were designed to convince us that He of whose existence we had a prior certainty, spoke to us by His Messenger, and in this way attested his credentials. To the man who has a rational belief in the existence of God this evidence of a divine mission is at once appropriate and conclusive. " Master, we know thou art a teacher sent from God ; for no man can do the works which thou doest, except God be with him." The Chris- tian missionary does not commence his instruction to the heathen, who have an imperfect, or even erroneous conception of " the Great Spirit,'"' by narrating the miracles of Christ, or quoting the testimony of the Divine Book he carries along with him. He points to the heavens and the earth, and says, " There is a Being who made all these things, and Jehovah is * Morell, " Hist, of Philos." p. 737. 96 CHRISTIANITY AND his name ; I have come to you with a message from Him !" Or he need scarce do even so much ; for already the heathen, in view of the order and beauty which pervades the universe, has been constrained, by the laws of his own intelligence, to be- lieve in and offer worship to the " "Ayvworoe Qeog " — the unseen and incomprehensible God; and pointing to their altars, he may announce with Paul, " this God whom ye worship , though ignorantly, him declare I unto you !" The results of our study of the various hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world may be summed up as follows : The first and second theories we have rejected as utterly false. Instead of being faithful to and adequately explaining the facts, they pervert, and maltreat, and distort the facts of religious history. The last three each contain a precious element of truth which must not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an ex- planation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory, taken by itself, is incomplete and inadequate. The third hy- pothesis overrates feeli?ig; the fourth, reason ; the fifth, verbal msfructio?i. The first extreme is Mysticism, the second is Ra- tionalism, the last is Dogmatism. Reason, feeling, and faith in testimony must be combined, and mutually condition each other. No purely rationalistic hypothesis will meet and satisfy the wants and yearnings of the heart. No theory based on feeling alone can satisfy the demands of the human intellect. And, finally, an hypothesis which bases all religion upon his- torical testimony and outward fact, and despises and tramples upon the intuitions of the reason and the instincts of the heart can never command the general faith of mankind. Religion embraces and conditionates the whole sphere of life — thought, feeling, faith, and action j it must therefore be grounded in the entire spiritual nature of man. Our criticism of opposite theories has thus prepared the way for, and obviated the necessity of an extended discussion of the hypothesis we now advance. GREEK FHILOSOPHT. 97 The universal phenomenon of religion has originated in the a priori apperceptions of reason, and the natural instinctive feelings of the heart, which, from age to age, have been vitalized, unfolded, and perfected by supernatural commtmications and testa?ne?ztary revelations. There are universal facts of religious history which can only be explained on the first principle of this hypothesis ; there are special facts which can only be explained on the latter princi- ple. The universal prevalence of the idea of God, and the feel- ing of obligation to obey and worship God, belong to the first order of facts ; the general prevalence of expiatory sacrifices, of the rite of circumcision, and the observance of sacred and holy days, belong to the latter. To the last class of facts the observance of the Christian Sabbath, and the rites of Baptism and the Lord's Supper may be added. The history of all religions clearly attests that there are two orders of principles — the natural and the positive, and, in some measure, two authorities of religious life which are intimately related without negativing each other. The characteristic of the natural is. that it is intrinsic, of the positive, that it is extrin- sic. In all ages men have sought the authority of the positive in that which is immediately beyo?id and above man — in some " voice of the Divinity " toning down the stream of ages, or speaking through a prophet or oracle, or written in some in- spired and sacred book. They have sought for the authority of the natural in that which is immediately within man — the voice of the Divinity speaking in the conscience and heart of man. A careful study of the history of religion will show a re- ciprocal relation between the two, and indicate their common source. AVe expect to find that our hypothesis will be abundantly sustained by the study of the Religion of the Athenians. 7 98 CHRISTIANITY AND CHAPTER HI. THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS. " All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion {deiac6aiftov£CT£govg). For as I passed through your city, and beheld the ob- jects of your worship, I found amongst them an altar with this inscription — ' TO THE Unknown God.' Whom therefore ye worship " — St. Paul. THROUGH one of those remarkable counter-strokes of Divine Providence by which the evil designs of men are overruled, and made to subserve the purposes of God, the Apos- tle Paul was brought to Athens. He walked beneath its stately porticoes, he entered its solemn temples, he stood before its glorious statuary, he viewed its beautiful altars — all devoted to pagan worship. And " his spirit was stirred within him ;" he was moved with indignation " when he saw the city full of im- ages of the gods."^ At the very entrance of the city he met the evidence of this peculiar tendency of the Athenians to multiply the objects of their devotion ; for here at the gateway stands an image of Neptune, seated on horseback, and brandishing the trident. Passing through the gate, his attention would be immediately arrested by the sculptured forms of Minerva, Jupi- ter, Apollo, Mercury, and the Muses, standing near a sanctuary of Bacchus. A long street is now before him, with temples, statues, and altars crowded on either hand. Walking to the end of this street, and turning to the right, he entered the Agora, a public square surrounded with porticoes and temples, which were adorned with statuary and paintings in honor of the gods of Grecian mythology. Amid the plane-trees planted by the hand of Cimon are the statues of the deified heroes of Athens, Hercules and Theseus, and the whole series of the Eponymi, together with the memorials of the older divinities ; ' Lange's Commentary, Acts xvii. i6. GliEEK PHILOSOPHY. 99 Mercuries which gave the name to the streets on which they were placed; statues dedicated to Apollo as patron of the city and her deliverer from the plague j and in the centre of all the altar of the Twelve Gods. Standing in the market-place, and looking up to the Areop- agus, Paul would see the temple of Mars, from whom the hill derived its name. And turning toward the Acropolis, he would behold, closing the long perspective, a series of little sanctuaries on the very ledges of the rocks, shrines of Bacchus and ^sculapius, Venus, Earth, and Ceres, ending with the lovely form of the Temple of Unwinged Victory, which glit- tered in front of the Propylaea. If the apostle entered the "fivefold gates," and ascended the flight of stone steps to the platform of the Acropolis, he would find the whole area one grand composition of architecture and statuary dedicated to the worship of the gods. Here stood the Parthenon, the Virgin House, the glorious temple which was erected during the proudest days of Athenian glory, an entire offering to Minerva, the tutelary divinity of Athens. Within was the colossal statue of the goddess wrought in ivory and gold. Outside the temple there stood another statue of Minerva, cast from the brazen spoils of Marathon ; and near by yet another brazen Pallas, which was called by pre-emi- nence "the Beautiful." Indeed, to whatever part of Athens. the apostle wandered, he would meet the evidences of their " carefulness in religion," for every public place and every public building was a sanctu- ary of some god= The Metroum, or record-house, was a temple to the mother of the gods. The council-house held statues of Apollo and Jupiter, with an altar to Vesta. The theatre at the base of the Acropolis was consecrated to Bacchus. The Pnyx was dedicated to Jupiter on high. And as if, in this di- rection, the Attic imagination knew no bounds, abstractions were deified ; altars were erected to Fame, to Energy, to Mod- esty, and even to Pity, and these abstractions were honored and worshipped as gods. lOO CHBISTIANITY AND The impression made upon the mind of Paul was, that the city was literally " full of idols," or images of the gods. This impression is sustained by the testimony of numerous Greek and Roman writers. Pausanias , declares that Athens "had more images than all the rest of Greece ;" and Petronius, the Roman satirist, says, " it was easier to find a god in Athens than a man."^ No wonder, then, that as Paul wandered amid these scenes "his spirit was stirred in him." He burned with holy zeal to maintain the honor of the true and only God, whom now he saw dishonored on every side. He was filled with compassion for those Athenians who, notwithstanding their intellectual greatness, had changed the glory of God into an image made in the likeness of corruptible man, .and who really worshipped the creature more than the Creator. The images intended to symbolize the invisible perfections of God were usurping the place of God, and receiving the worship due alone to him. We may presume the apostle was not insensible to the beau- ties of Grecian art. The sublime architecture of the Propylaea and the Parthenon, the magnificent sculpture of Phidias and Praxiteles, could not fail to excite his wonder. But he remem- bered that those superb temples and this glorious statuary were the creation of the pagan spirit, and devoted to polythe- istic worship. The glory of the supreme God was obscured by all this symbolism. The creatures formed by God, the symbols of his power and presence in nature, the ministers of his providence and moral government, were receiving the hon- or due to him. Over all this scene of material beauty and aesthetic perfection there rose in dark and hideous proportions the errors and delusions and sins against the living God which Polytheism nurtured, and unable any longer to restrain him- self, he commenced to " reason " with the crowds of Athenians who stood beneath the shadows of the plane-trees, or lounged ' See Conybeare and Howson's "Life and Epistles of St. Paul ;" also, art. "Athens," in Encyclopedia Britannica, whence our account of the "sa- cred objects " in Athens is chiefly gathered. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. lOl beneath the porticoes that surrounded the Agora. Among these groups of idlers were mingled the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus, who " encountered " Paul. The nature of these "disputations "may be easily conjectured. The opinions of these philosophers are even now familiarly known : they are, in one form or another, current in the literature of modern times. MateriaHsm and Pantheism still "encounter" Chris- tianity. The apostle asserted the personal being and spiritual- ity of one supreme and only God, who has in divers ways re- vealed himself to man, and therefore may be " known." He proclaimed that Jesus is the fullest and most perfect revelation of God — the only "manifestation of God in the flesh." He pointed to his *' resurrection " as the proof of his superhuman character and mission to the world. Some of his hearers were disposed to treat him with contempt ; they represented him as an ignorant "babbler," who had picked up a few scraps of learning, and who now sought to palm them off as a "new" philosophy. But most of them regarded him with that pecu- liar Attic curiosity which was always anxious to be hearing some "new thing." So they led him away from the tumult of the market-place to the top of Mars' Hill, where, in its se- rene atmosphere, they might hear him more carefully, and said, " May we hear what this new doctrine is whereof thou speakest V Surrounded by these men of thoughtful, philosophic mind — men who had deeply pondered the great problem of existence, who had earnestly inquired after the "first principles of things,;" men who had reasoned high of creation, fate, and providence ; of right and wrong ; of conscience, law, and ret- ribution; and had formed strong and decided opinions on all these questions — he delivered his discourse on the being, the providence, the spirituality, and the moral government of God. This grand theme was suggested by an inscription he had observed on one of the altars of the city, which was dedicated "To the Unknown God." "Ye men of Athens ! every thing which I behold bears witness to your carefubiess in religion. 102 CHRISTIANITY AND For as I passed by and beheld your sacred objects I found an altar with this inscription, 'To the Unknown God;' whom, therefore, ye worship, though ye know him not [adequately], Him declare I unto you." Starting from this point, the mani- fest carefulness of the Athenians in religion, and accepting this inscription as the evidence that they had some presenti- ment, some native intuition, some dim conception of the one true and living God, he strives to lead them to a deeper knowl- edge of Him. It is here conceded by the apostle that the Athenians were a religious people. The observations he had made during his short stay in Athens enabled him to bear witness that the Athenians were " a God-fearing people,"^ and he felt that fairness and candor demanded that this trait should receive from him an ample recognition and a full acknowledg- ment. Accordingly he commences by saying in gentle terms, well fitted to conciliate his audience, "All things which I be- hold bear witness to your carefulness in religion." I recognize you as most devout ; ye appear to me to be a God-fearing peo- ple,^ for as I passed by and beheld your sacred objects I found an altar with this inscription, " To the Unknown God," whom therefore ye worship. The assertion that the Athenians were " a religious people " will, to many of our readers, appear a strange and startling utterance, which has in it more of novelty than truth. Nay, some will be shocked to hear the Apostle Paul described as complimenting these Athenians — these pagan worshippers — on their "carefulness in religion." We have been so long ac- customed to use the word " heathen " as an opprobrious epithet — expressing, indeed, the utmost extremes of ignorance, and barbarism, and cruelty, that it has become difficult for us to be- lieve that in a heathen there can be any good. From our childhood we have read in our English Bibles, " Ye men of Athens, I perceive in all things ye are too super- * Lange's Commentary, in loco. ' " 'ilq before detoid. — so imports. I recognize you as such." — Lange's Commentary. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 103 stitious^^ and we can scarcely tolerate another version, even if it can be shown that it approaches nearer to the actual lan- guage employed by Paul. We must, therefore, ask the patience and candor of the reader, while we endeavor to show, on the authority of Paul's words, that the Athenians were a " religious people," and that all our notions to the contrary are founded on prejudice and misapprehension. First, then, let us commence even with our English version : "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious r And what now is the meaning of the word " superstition ?" It is true, we now use it only in an evil sense, to express a belief in 'the agency of invisible, capricious, malig- nant powers, which fills the mind with fear and terror, and sees in every unexplained phenomenon of nature an omen, or prog- nostic, of some future evil. But this is not its proper and orig- inal meaning. Superstition is from the Latin superstitio^ which means a superabundance of religion,^ an extreme exactitude in religious observance. And this is precisely the sense in which the corresponding Greek term is used by the Apostle Paul. AEiffidai/iovia properly means "reverence for the gods." " It is used," says Barnes, " in the classic writers, in a good sense, to denote piety towards the gods, or suitable fear and reverence for them." " The word," says Lechler, "is, without doubt, to be understood here in a good sense ; although it seems to have been intentionally chosen, in order to indicate the conception of /ear (hidu)), which predominated in the relig- ion of the apostle's hearers.'"' This reading is sustained by the ablest critics and scholars of modern times. Bengel reads the sentence, " I perceive that ye are wry religious. ^^^ Cudworth translates it thus : "Ye are every way more than ordinarily re- ligiousJ^^ Conybeare and Howson read the text as we have already given it, " All things which I behold bear witness to ^ Nitzsch, *' System of Christ. Doctrine," p. 33. ^ Lange's Commentary, in loco. ^ " Gnomon of the New Testament." ■* " Intellectual System," vol. i. p. 626. 104 CHRISTIANITY AND your carefulness in religion"^ Lechler reads "very devout;"^ Alford, " carrying your religiaus reverence very far ;'"'^ and Albert Barnes,* " I perceive ye are greatly devoted to reverence for re- ligioftr'' Whoever, therefore, will give attention to the actual words of the apostle, and search for their real meaning, must be convinced he opens his address by complimenting the Athenians on their being more than ordinarily religious. Nor are we for a moment to suppose the apostle is here dealing in hollow compliments, or having recourse to a "pious fraud." Such a course would have been altogether out of character with Paul, and to suppose him capable of pursuing such a course is to do him great injustice. If " to the Jews he became as a Jew," it was because he recognized in Judaism the same fundamental truths which underlie the Christian sys- tem. And if here he seems to become, in any sense, at one with " heathenism," that he might gain the heathen to the faith of Christ, it was because he found in heathenism some elements of truth akin to Christianity, and a state of feeling favorable to an inquiry into the truths he had to present. He beheld in Athens an altar reared to the God he worshipped, and it afford- ed him some pleasure to iind that God was. not totally forgot- ten, and his worship totally neglected, by the Athenians. The God whom they knew imperfectly, "ZT/;;/," said he, " I declare unto you ;" I now desire to make him more fully known. The worship of " the Unknown God " was a recognition of the being of a God whose nature transcends all human thought, a God who is ineffable ; who, as Plato said, " is hard to be discovered, and having discovered him, to make him known to all, impos- sible."" It is the confession of a want of knowledge, the ex- pression of a desire to know, the acknowledgment of the duty of worshipping him. Underlying all the forms of idol-worship the eye of Paul recognized an influential Theism. Deep down in the pagan heart he discovered a " feeling after God " — a • " Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i. p. 378. ' Lange's Commentary. ^ Greek Test. * Notes on Acts. ' Also Clarke's Comment., in loco. ® Timaeus, ch. ix. GREEK rHILOSOPHY. 105 yearning for a deeper knowledge of .the " unknown," the invisi- ble, the incomprehensible, which he could not despise or disre- gard. The mysterious sentiments of fear, of reverence, of con- scious dependence on a supernatural power and presence overshadowing man, which were expressed in the symbolism of the "sacred objects " which Paul saw everywhere in Athens, commanded his respect. And he alludes to their " devotions," not in the language of reproach or censure, but as furnishing to his own mind the evidence of the strength of their religious instincts, and the proof of the existence in their hearts of that native apprehension of the supernatural, the divine, which dwells alike in all human soiils. The case of the Athenians has, therefore, a peculiar interest to every thoughtful mind. It confirms the belief that religion is a necessity to every human mind, a want of every human heart. ^ Without religion, the nature of man can never be prop- erly developed ; the noblest part of man — the divine, the spir- itual element which dwells in man, as " the offspring of God " — must remain utterly dwarfed. The spirit, the personal be- ing, the rational nature, is religious, and Atheism is the vain and the wicked attempt to be something less than man. If the spiritual nature of man has its normal and healthy devel- opment, he must become a worshipper. This is attested by the universal history of man. We look down the long-drawn aisles of antiquity, and everywhere we behold the smoking altar, the ascending incense, the prostrate form, the attitude of devo- tion. Athens, with her four thousand deities — Rome, with her crow^ded Pantheon of gods — Egypt, with her degrading super- stitions — Hindostan, with her horrid and revolting rites — all attest that the religious principle is -deeply seated in the nature of man. And we are sure religion can never be robbed of her supremacy, she can never be dethroned in the hearts of men. It were easier to satisfy the cravings of hunger by logical syllo- * The indispensable necessity for a religion of some kind to satisfy the emotional nature of man is tacitly confessed by the atheist Comte in the publication of his " Catechism of Positive Religion." Io6 CHRISTIANITY AND gisms, than to satisfy the yearnings of the human heart with- out religion. The attempt of Xerxes to bind the rushing floods of the Hellespont in chains was not more futile nor more im- potent than the attempt of skepticism to repress the universal tendency to worship, so pecuHar and so natural to man in every age and cHme. The unwillingness of many to recognize a religious element in the Athenian mind is further accounted for by their miscon- ception of the meaning of the word "religion." We are all too much accustomed to regard religion as a mere system of dogmatic teaching. We use the terms " Christian religion," "Jewish religion," "Mohammedan religion," as comprehend- ing simply the characteristic doctrines by which each is distin- guished ; whereas religion is a mode of thought, and feeling, and action, determined by the consciousness of our relation to and our dependence upon God. It does not appropriate to itself any specific department of our mental powers and sus- ceptibilities, but it conditions the entire functions and circle of our spiritual life. It is not simply a mode of conceiving God in thought, nor simply a mode of venerating God in the affections, nor yet simply a mode of worshipping God in out- ward and formal acts, but it comprehends the whole. Religion (religere^ respect, awe, reverence) regulates our thoughts, feel- ings, and acts towards God. " It is a reference and a relation- ship of our finite consciousness to the Creator and Sustainer and Governor of the universe." It is such a consciousness of the Divine as shall awaken in the heart of man the sentiments of reverence, fear, and gratitude towards God j such a sense of dependence as shall prompt man to pray, and lead him to per- form external acts of worship. Religion does not, therefore, consist exclusively in knowl- edge, however correct ; and yet it must be preceded and ac- companied by some intuitive cognition of a Supreme Being, and some conception of him as a free moral personality. But the religious sentiments, which belong rather to the heart than to the understanding of man — the consciousness of depend- aB^EEK PHILOSOPHY. 107 ence, the sense of obligation, the feeUng of reverence, the in- stinct to pray, the appetency to worship — these may all exist and be largely developed in a human mind even when, as in the case of the Athenians, there is a very imperfect knowledge of the real character of God. Regarding this, then, as the generic conception of religion, namely, that it is a mode of thought and feeling and action deter- mined by our consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, we claim that the apostle was perfectly right in compliment- ing the Athenians on their " more than ordinary religiousness," for, I. They had, in some degree at least, that faith in the being and providence of God which precedes and accompanies all re- ligion. They had erected an altar to the unseen, the unsearchable, the incomprehensible, the unknown God. And this " unknown God " whom the Athenians " worshipped " was the j;rue God, the God whom Paul worshipped, and whom he desired more fully to reveal to them; '''Him declare I unto you." The Athenians had, therefore, some knowledge of the true God, some dim recognition, at least, of his. being, and some concep- tion, however imperfect, of his character. The Deity to whom the Athenians reared this altar is called " the unknown God," because he is unseen by all human eyes and incomprehensible to human thought. There is a sense in which to Paul, as well as to the Athenians — to the Christian as well as to the pa- gan — to the philosopher as well as to the peasant — God is '"'' the unknown^^ and in which he must forever remain the incomprehensible. This has been confessed by all thought- ful minds in every age. It was confessed by Plato. To his mind God is "the ineffable," the unspeakable. Zophar, the friend of Job, asks, " Canst thou by searching find out God t Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection ?" This knowl- edge is " high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? deeper than hell j what canst thou know ?" Does not Wesley teach us to sing. lo8 CHRISTIANITY InD ** Hail, Father, whose creating call Unnumbered worlds attend ; Jehovah, comprehending all, Whom none can comprehend ?" To his mind, as well as to the mind of the Athenian, God was "the great unseen, unknown." " Beyond the universe and man," says Cousin, " there remains in God something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence, in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in this inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new be- ings, new manifestations. God is therefore to us incomprehensi- ble."^ And without making ourselves in the least responsible for Hamilton's " negative " doctrine of the Infinite, or even re- sponsible for the full import of his words, we may quote his re- markable utterances on this subject : " The Divinity is in part concealed and in part revealed. He is at once known and un- known. But the last and highest consecration of all true relig- ion must be an altar * to the unknown God.' In this consum- mation nature and religion. Paganism and Christianity, are at one.'"* When, therefore, the apostle afiirms that while the Athenians worshipped the God whom he proclaimed they " knew him not," we can not understand him as saying they were destitute of all faith in the being of God, and of all ideas of his real character. Because for him to have asserted they had no knowledge of God would not only have been contrary to all the facts of the case, but also an utter contradiction of all his settled convic- tions and his recorded opinions. There is not in modern times a more earnest asserter of the doctrine that the human mind has an intuitive cognition of God, and that the external world reveals God to man. There is a passage in his letter to the Romans which is justly entitled to stand at the head of all discourses on " natural theology," Rom. i. 19-21. Speaking of the heathen world, who had not been favored, as the Jews, with * '* Lectures," vol. i. p. 104. ^ " Discussions on Philosophy," p. 23. OBEEK PHILOSOPHT. 109 a verbal revelation, he says, " That which may be known of God is manifest in them," that is, in the constitution and laws of their spiritual nature, " for God hath showed it unto them " in the voice of reason and of conscience, so that in the instincts of our hearts, in the elements of our moral nature, in the ideas and laws of our reason, we are taught the being of a God. These are the subjective teachings of the human soul. Not only is the being of God revealed to man in the consti- tution and laws of his rational and moral nature, but God is also manifested to us objectively in the realm of things around us ; therefore Paul adds, " The invisible things of him, even his eternal power and Godhead, from the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." The world of sense, therefore, discloses the being and perfections of God. The invisible attributes of God are made appElrent by the things that are visible. Forth out of nature, as the product of the Di- vine Mind, the supernatural shines. The forces, laws, and har- monies of the universe are indices of the presence of a presid- ing and informing Intelligence. The creation itself is an exam- ple of God's coming forth out of the mysterious depths of his own eternal and invisible being, and making himself apparent to man. There, on the pages of the volume of nature, we may read, in the marvellous language of symbol, the grand concep- tions, the glorious thoughts, the ideals of beauty which dwell in the uncreated Mind. These two sources of knowledge — the sub- jective teachings of God in the human soul, and the objective manifestations of God in the visible universe — harmonize, and, together, fill up the complement of our natural idea of God. They are two hemispheres of thought, which together form one full-orbed fountain of light, and ought never to be separated in our philosophy. And, inasmuch as this divine light shines on all human minds, and these works of God are seen by all hu- man eyes, the apostle argues that the heathen world " is with- out excuse, because, knowing God {yvovreQ top Qeov), they did not glorify him as God, neither were thankful ; but in their rea- sonings they went astray after vanities, and their hearts, being no CHRISTIANITY AND void of wisdom, were filled with darkness. Calling themselves wise, they were turned into fools, and changed the glory of the imperishable God for idols graven in the likeness of perishable man, or of birds, and beasts, and creeping things, . . . and they bartered the truth of God for lies, and reverenced and worshipped the things made rather than the Maker, who is bless- ed forever. Amen."^ The brief and elliptical report of Paul's address on Mars' Hill must therefore, in all fairness, be interpreted in the light of his more carefully elaborated statements in the Epistle to the Romans. And when Paul intimates that the Athenians " knew not God," we can not understand him as saying they had fio knowledge, but that their knowledge was imperfect. They did not know God as Creator, Father, and Ruler ; above all, they did not know him as a pardoning God and a sanctify- ing Spirit. They had not that knowledge of God which purifies the heart, and changes the character, and gives its possessor eternal life. The apostle clearly and unequivocally recognizes this truth, that the idea of God is connatural to the human mind j that in fact there is not to be found a race of men upon the face of the globe utterly destitute of some idea of a Supreme Being. Wherever human reason has had its normal and healthful de- velopment, it has spontaneously and necessarily led the human mind to the recognition of a God. The Athenians were no ex- ception to this general law. They believed in the existence of one supreme and eternal Mind, invisible, incomprehensible, in- effable — " the unknown God." 2. The Athenians had also that consciousness of dependence upon God which is the foundation of all the primary religious emotions. When the apostle affirmed that " in God we live, and move, and have our being," he uttered the sentiments of many, if not all, of his hearers, and in support of that affirmation he could quote the words of their own poets, "for we are also his off- * Rom. i. 21-25, Conybeare and Howson's translation. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Ill spring ;'" and, as his offspring, we have a derived and a depend- ent being. Indeed, this consciousness of dependence is anal- ogous to the feehng which is awakened in the heart of a child when its parent is first manifested to its opening mind as the giver of those things which it immediately needs, as its continu- al protector, and as the preserver of its hfe. The moment a man becomes conscious of his own personality, that moment he becomes conscious of some relation to another personality, to which he is subject, and on which he depends.^ A little reflection will convince us that this is the necessary order in which human consciousness is developed. There are at least two fundamental and radical tendencies ^ "Jove's presence fills all space, upholds this ball ; All need his aid; his power sustains us all, For we his offspring are^ Aratus, " The Phasnoraena," book v. p. 5. Aratus was a poet of Cilicia, Paul's native province. He flourished B.C. 277. " Great and divine Father, whose names are many, But who art one and the same unchangeable, almighty power ; O thou supreme Author of nature ! That governest by a single unerring law ! Hail King ! For thou art able, to enforce obedience from all frail mortals, Because we are^dll thine offspring, The image and the echo only of thy eternal voice." Cleanthes, " Hymn to Jupiter." Cleanthes was the pupil of Zeno, and his successor as chief of the Stoic philosophers. ^ " As soon as a man becomes conscious of himself, as soon as he per- ceives himself as distinct from other persons and things, he at the same mo- ment becomes conscious of a higher self, a higher power, without which he feels that neither he nor any thing else would have any life or reality. We are so fashioned that as soon as we awake we feel on all sides our depend- ence on something else ; and all nations join in some way or another in the words of the Psalmist, ' It is He that made us, not we ourselves.' This is the first sense of the Godhead, the sensus numinis, as it has well been called ; for it is a sensus, an immediate perception, not the result of reasoning or generalization, but an intuition as irresistible as the impressions of our senses. . . . This sensus numinis, or, as we may call it in more homely lan- guage, yaz//^, is the source of all religion ; it is that without which no religion, whether true or false, is possible." — Max Miiller, " Science of Language," Second Series, p. 455. 112 CHRISTIANITY AND in human personality, namely, to htow and to ad. If we would conceive of them as they exist in the innermost sphere of self- hood, we must distinguish the first as self -consciousness, and the second as self-determination. These are unquestionably the two factors of human personality. If we consider the first of these factors more closely, we shall discover that self-consciousness exists under limitations and conditions. Man can not become clearly conscious of self with- out distinguishing himself from the outer world of sensation, nor without distinguishing self and the world from another being upon whom they depend as the ultimate substance and cause. Mere cosncBsthesis is not consciousness. Common feeling is un- questionably found among the lowest forms of animal life, the protozoa, but it can never rise to a clear consciousness of per- sonality until it can distinguish itself from sensation, and acquire a presentiment of a divine power, on which self and the outer world depend. The Ego does not exist for itself, can not per- ceive itself, but by distinguishing itself from the ceaseless flow and change «ot sensation, and by this act of distinguishing, the Ego takes place in consciousness. And the Ego can not per- ceive itself, nor cognize sensation as a state or affection of the Ego except by the intervention of the reason, which supplies the two great fundamental laws of causality and substance. The facts of consciousness thus comprehend three elements — self, nature, and God. The determinate being, the Ego, is never an absolutely independent being, but is always in some way or other codetermined by another ; it can not, therefore, be an ab- solutely original and independent, but must in some way or another be a derived and conditioned existence. Now that which limits and conditions human self-conscious- ness can not be mere- nature, because nature can not give what it does not possess ; it can not produce what is toto ge?iere dif- ferent from itself. Self-consciousness can not arise out of un- consciousness. This new beginning is beyond the power of nature. Personal power, the creative principle of all new be- ginnings, is alone adequate to its production. If, then, self- GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 1 13 consciousness exists in man, it necessarily presupposes an ab- solutely original^ therefore tmconditioned, self -consciousness. Hu- man self-consciousness, in its temporal actualization, of course presupposes a nature-basis upon which it elevates itself; but it is only possible on the ground that an eternal self-conscious Mind ordained and rules over all the processes of nature, and implants the divine spark of the personal spirit with the corpo- real frame, to realize itself in the light-flame of human self-con- sciousness. The original light of the divine self-consciousness is eternally and absolutely first and before all. " Thus, in the depths of our own self-consciousness, as its concealed back- ground, the God-consciousness reveals itself to us. This de- scent into our inmost being is at the same time an ascent to God. Every deep reflection on ourselves breaks through the mere crust of world-consciousness, which separates us from the in- most truth of our existence, and leads us up to Him in whom we live and move and are."^ Self-determination, equally with self-consciousness, exists in us under manifold limitations. Self-determination is limited by physical, corporeal, and mental conditions, so that there is " an impassable boundary line drawn around the area of voli- tional freedom." But the most fundamental and original lim- itation is that oi duty. The self-determining power of man is not only circumscribed by necessary conditions, but also by the moral law in the consciousness of man. Self-determination alone does not suffice for the full conception of responsible freedom ; it only becomes, will, properly by its being an intel- ligent and conscious determination ; that is, the rational subject is able previously to recognize " the right," and present before his mind that which he ought to do, that which he is morally bound to realize and actualize by his own self-determination and choice. Accordingly we find in our inmost being a sense of obligation to obey the moral law as revealed in the con- science. . As we can not become conscious of self without also becoming conscious of God, so we can not become properly ^ Miiller, " Christian Doctrine of Sin," vol. i. p. 81. 8 114 CHRISTIANITY AND conscious of self-determination until we have recognized in the conscience a law for the movements of the will. Now this moral law, as revealed in the conscience, is not a mere autonomy — a simple subjective law having no relation to a personal lawgiver out of and above man. Every admonition of conscience directly excites the consciousness of a God to whom man is accountable. The universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in history, has always associated the phe- nomena of conscience with the idea of a personal Power above man, to whom he is subject and upon whom he depends. In every age, the voice of conscience has been regarded as the voice of God, so that when it has filled man with guilty appre- hensions, he has had recourse to sacrifices^ and penances, and prayers to expatiate his wrath. It is clear, then, that if man has duties there must be a self-conscious Will by whom these duties are 'imposed, for only a real will can be legislative. If man has a sense of obligation, there must be a supreme authority by which he is obliged. If he is responsible, there must be a being to whom he is account- able. ^ It can not be said that he is accountable to himself, for by that supposition the idea of duty is obliterated, and " right " becomes identical with mere interest or pleasure. It can not be said that he is simply responsible to society — to mere con- ventions of human opinions and human governments — for then " right " becomes a mere creature of human legislation, and ^^ justice " is nothing but the arbitrary will of the strong who tyrannize over the weak. Might constitutes right. Against such hypotheses the human mind, however, instinctively revolts. Mankind feel, universally, that there is an authority beyond all human governments, and a higher law above all human laws, from whence all their powers are derived. That higher law is the Law of God, that supreme authority is the God of Justice. To this eternally just God, innocence, under oppression and wrong, has made its proud appeal, like that of Prometheus to The thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor whose name is Judge."— Kant. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 1 15 the elements, to the witnessing clouds, to coming ages, and has been sustained and comforted. And to that higher law the weak have confidently appealed against the unrighteous enact- ments of the strong, and have finally conquered. The last and inmost ground of all obligation is thus the conscious relation of the moral creature to God. The sense of absolute depend- ence upon a Supreme Being compels man, even while conscious of subjective freedom, to recognize at the same time his obli- gation to determine himself in harmony with the will of Him " in whom we live, and move, and are." This feeling of dependence, and this consequent sense of obligation, lie at the very foundation of all religion. They lead the mind towards God, and anchor it in the Divine. They prompt man to pray, and inspire him with an instinctive con- fidence in the efiicacy of prayer. So that prayer is natural to man, and necessary to man. Never yet has the traveller found a people on earth without prayer. Races of men have been found without houses, without raiment, without arts and sci- ences, but never without prayer any more than without speech. Plutarch wrote, eighteen centuries ago, " If you go through all the world, you may find cities without walls, without letters, without rulers, without money, without theatres, but never with- out temples and gods, or without prayers, oaths, prophecies, and sacrifices, used to obtain blessings and benefits, or to avert curses and calamities.^ The naturalness of prayer is admitted even by the modern unbeliever. Gerrit Smith says, " Let us who believe that the religion of reason calls for the religion of nature, remember that the flow of prayer is just as natural as the flow of water ; the prayerless man has become an unnat- ural man."^ Is man in sorrow or in danger, his most natural and spontaneous refuge is in prayer. The suffering, bewilder- ed, terror-stricken soul turns towards God. "Nature in an agony is no atheist ; the soul that knows not where to fly, flies to God." And in the hour of deliverance and joy, a feeling of gratitude pervades the soul — and gratitude, too, not to some * " Against Kalotes," ch. xxxi. ^ " Religion of Reason." Il6 CHBISTIANITT AND blind nature-force, to some unconscious and impersonal power, but gratitude to God. The soul's natural and appropriate lan- guage in the hour of deliverance is thanksgiving and praise. This universal tendency to recognize a superior Power upon whom we are dependent, and by whose hand our well-being and our destinies are absolutely controlled, has revealed itself even amid the most complicated forms of polytheistic w^orship. Amid the even and undisturbed flow of every-day life they might be satisfied with the worship of subordinate deities, but in the midst of sudden and unexpected calamities, and of terrible catastrophes, then they cried to the Supreme God.^ "When alarmed by an earthquake," says Aulus Gellitis, " the ancient Romans were accustomed to pray, not to someone of the gods individually, but to God in general, as to the Unknowny^ "Thus also Minutius Felix says, 'When they stretch out their hands to heaven they mention only God ; and these forms of speech. He is great, and God is true, and If God grant (which are the natural language of the vulgar), are a plain confession of the truth of Christianity.' And also Lactantius testifies, * When they swear, and when they wish, and when they give thanks, they name not many gods, but God only ; the truth, by a secret force of nature, thus breaking forth from them whether they will or no ;' and again he says, ' They fly to God ; aid is desired of God ; they pray that God would help them j and when one is reduced to extreme necessity, he begs for God's sake, and by his divine power alone implores the mercy of men.' "^ The account which is given by Diogenes Laertius* of the erection of altars bearing the inscription " to the unknown God," clearly shows that they had their origin in this general sentiment of dependence on a higher Power. " The Athenians ^ ** At critical moments, when the deepest feelings of the human heart are stirred, the old Greeks and Romans seem suddenly to have dropped all mythological ideas, and to have fallen back on the universal language of true religion." — Max Miiller, '* Science of Language," p. 436. ' Tholuck, " Nature and Influence of Heathenism," p. 23. ^ Cudworth, vol. i. p. 300. * " Lives of Philosophers," book i., Epimenides. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 1 17 being afflicted with pestilence invited Epimenides to lustrate their city. The method adopted by him was to carry several sheep to the Areopagus, whence they were left to wander as they pleased, under the observation of persons sent to attend them. As each sheep lay down it was sacrificed to the propi- tious God. By this ceremony it is said the city was relieved ; but as it was still unknown what deity was propitious, an altar was erected to the unknown God on every spot where a sheep had been sacrificed."^ " The unknown God " was their deliverer from the plague. And the erection of an altar to him was a confession of their absolute dependence upon him, of their obligation to worship him, as well as of their need of a deeper knowledge of him. The gods who were known and named were not able to deliver them in times of calamity, and they were compelled to look be- yond the existing forms of Grecian mythology for relief Be- yond all the gods of the Olympus there was " one God over all," the Father of gods and men, the Creator of all the subor- dinate local deities, upon whom even these created gods were dependent, upon whom man was absolutely dependent, and therefore in times of deepest need, of severest suffering, of ex- tremest peril, then they cried to the living, supreme, eternal God.^ 3. The Athenians developed in a high degree those religious emotions which always accompany the consciousness of de- pendence on a Supreme Being. The first emotional element of all religion is fear. This is unquestionably true, whether religion be considered from a ^ See Townsend's " Chronological Arrangement of New Testament," note 19, part xii.; Doddridge's "Exposition;" and Barnes's ".Notes on Acts." "^ " The men and women of the Iliad and Odyssey are habitually religious. The language of religion is often on their tongues, as it is ever on the lips of every body in the East at this day. The thought of the gods, and of their providence and government of the world, is a familiar thought. They seem to have an abiding conviction'of their dependence on the gods. The results of all actions depend on the will of the gods ; it lies on their knees (deuv h yovvaci Keirat, Od. i. 267), is the often repeated and significant expression of their feeling of dependence. "-^Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," p. 165. 1 1 8 CHRIS TIA NIT Y AND Christian or a heathen stand-point " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Associated with, perhaps preced- ing, all definite ideas of God, there exists in the human mind certain feelings of awe, and revere?ice, and fear which arise spontaneously in presence of the vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the visible and the tangible, there is a personal, living Power, which is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its light and life ; that " the universe is the living vesture in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of an overs hadowi?tg Presence which " com- passeth man behind and before, and lays its hand upon him." This wonderful presentiment of an invisible power and pres- ence pervading and informing all nature is beautifully described by Wordsworth in his history of the development of the Scottish herdsman's mind : " So the foundations of his mind were laid In such communion, not from terror free. While yet a child, and long before his time, Had he perceived the presence and the power Of greatness ; and deep feelings had impressed So vividly great objects, that they lay Upon his mind like substances, whose presence Perplexed the bodily sense. In the after-day Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn. And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags, He sat, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind Such was the Boy, — but for the growing Youth, What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light ! He looked ; Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him: far and wide the clouds were touched. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 119 And in their silent faces could he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank . The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form All melted into him ; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live. And by them did he live ; they were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God."^ But it may be said this is all mere poetry ; to which we an- swer, in the words of Aristotle, " Poetry is a thing more phil- osophical and weightier than history. '"* The true poet is the interpreter of nature. His soul is in the fullest sympathy with the grand ideas which nature symbolizes, and he " deciphers the universe as the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit." Spontaneous feeling is a kind of inspiration. It is true that all minds may not be developed in precisely the same manner as Wordsworth's herdsman's, because the development of every individual mind is modified in some measure by exterior conditions. Men may contemplate nature from different points of view. Some may be impressed with one aspect of nature, some with another. But none will fail to rec- ognize a mysterious presence and invisible power beneath all the fleeting and changeful phenomena of the universe. " And sometimes there are moments of tenderness, of sorrow, and of vague mystery which bring the feeling of the Infinite Presence close to the human heart."^ Now we hold that this feeling and sentimefit of the Divine — the supernatural — exists in every mind. It may be, it undoubt- edly is, somewhat modified in its manifestations by the circum- stances in which men are placed, and the degree of culture they have enjoyed. The African Fetichist, in his moral and intel- lectual debasement, conceives a supernatural power enshrined in every object of nature. The rude Fijian regards with dread, and even terror, the Being who darts the lightnings and wields the thunderbolts. The Indian " sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." The Scottish " herdsman " on the lonely ^ " The Wanderer." « Poet, ch. ix. ^ Robertson. I20 CHBISTIANITY AND mountain-top " feels the presence and the power of greatness," and " in its fixed and steady lineaments he sees an ebbing and a flowing mind." The philosopher* lifts his eyes to " the starry heavens" in all the depth of their concave, and with all their con- stellations of glory moving on in solemn grandeur, and, to his mind, these immeasurable regions seem " filled with the splen- dors of the Deity, and crowded with the monuments of his power ;" or he turns his eye to "the Moral Law within," and he hears the voice of an intelligent and a righteous God. In all these cases we have a revelation of the sentiment of the Divine, which dwells alike in all human minds. In the Athenians this sentiment was developed in a high degree. The serene heaven which Greece enjoyed, and which was the best-loved roof of its inhabitants, the brilliant sun, the mountain scenery of unsur- passed grandeur, the deep blue sea, an image of the infinite, these poured all their fullness on the Athenian mind, and fur- nished the most favorable conditions for the development of the religious sentiments. The people of Athens spent most of their time in the open air in communion with nature, and in the cheerful and temperate enjoyment of existence. To recognize the Deity in the living powers of nature, and especially in man, as the highest sensible manifestation of the Divine, was the pe- culiar prerogative of .the Grecian mind. And here in Athens, art also vied with nature to deepen the religious sentiments. It raised the mind to ideal conceptions of a beauty and a sub- limity which transcended all mere nature-forms, and by images of supernatural grandeur and loveliness presented to the Athe- nians symbolic representations of the separate attributes and op- erations of the invisible God. The plastic art of Greece was designed to express religious ideas, and was consecrated by re- ligious feeling. Thus the facts of the case are strikingly in har- mony with the words of the Apostle : " All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion," your "reverence for the Deity," your " fear of God."' " The sacred objects " in ' Kant, in " Critique of Practical Reason." " Sec Parkhurst's Lexicon, under l^tLCLdatfiovia, which Suidas explains by GREEK PHILOSOPET, 121 Athens, and especially " the altar to the Unknown God," were all regarded by Paul as evidences of their instinctive faith in the invisible^ the supernatural, the divine. Along with this sentiment of the Divine there is also associ- ated, in all human minds, an instijidive yearning after the Invisi- ble ; not a mere feeling of curiosity to pierce the mystery of be- ing and of life, but what Paul designates " a feeling after God," which prompts man to seek after a deeper knowledge, and a more immediate consciousness. To attain this deeper knowl-" edge — this more conscious realization of the being and the pres- ence of God, has been the effort of all philosophy and all relig- ion in all ages. The Hindoo Yogis proposes to withdraw into his inmost self, and by a complete suspension of all his active powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite.^ Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to apprehend " the unchangeable and permanent Being," and, by a loving contemplation, to become " assimilated to the Deity," and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God. The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortifi- cation to prepare himself for divine communings. He would contemplate the divine perfections in himself ; and in an ecstatic state, wherein all individuality vanishes, he would realize a un- ion, or identity, with the Divine Essence.^ While the universal Church of God, indeed, has in her purest days always taught that man may, by inward purity and a believing love, be render- ed capable of spiritually apprehending, and consciously feeling, the presence of God. Some may be disposed to pronounce this as all mere mysticism. We answer. The living internal energy of religion is always mystical, it is grounded in y^^///?^ — a ^^ sensus numinis^'' common to humanity. It is the mysterious tv7A^ELa Tzepi to Qeiov — reverence for the Divine^ and Hesychius by ^o^oBua —fear of God. Also, Josephus, Antiq., book x. ch. iii. § 2 : " Manasseh, af- ter his repentance and reformation, strove to behave himself (r?7 deicidaLfiovia Xpfjadai) in the most religious manner towards God." Also see A. Clarke on Acts xvii. ■* Vaughan, " Hours with the Mystics," vol. i. p. 44. ' Id. ib., vol. i. p. 65. 122 CHRISTIANITY AND sentiment of the Divine ; it is the prolepsis of the human spirit reaching out towards the Infinite ; the Uving susceptibiUty of our spiritual nature stretching after the powers and influences of the higher world. " It is upon this inner instinct of the super- natural that all religion rests. I do not say every religious idea, but whatever is positive, practical, powerful, durable, and popu- lar. Ever^'where, in all climates, in all epochs of history, and in all degrees of civilization, man is animated by the sentiment — I would rather say, the presentiment — that the world in which he lives, the order of things in the midst of which he moves, the facts which regularly and constantly succeed each other, are not all. In vain he daily makes discoveries and conquests in this vast universe ; in vain he observes and learnedly verifies the general laws which govern it ; his thought is not inclosed in the world surrendered to his science ; the spectacle of it does not suffice his soul, it is raised beyond it ; it searches after and catches glimpses of something beyond it ; it aspires higher both for the universe and itself; it aims at another destiny, another master. " * Par dela tous ces cieux le Dieu des cieux reside.' "^ So Voltaire has said, and the God who is beyond the skies is not nature personified, but a supernatural Personality. It is to this highest Personality that all religions address themselves. It is to bring man into communion with Him that they exist. "^ 4. The Athenians had that deep consciousness of sin and guilt, and of consequent liability to punishment, which confesses the need of expiation by piacular sacrifices. Every man feels himself to be an accountable being, and he is conscious that in wrong-doing he is deserving of blame and of punishment. Deep within the soul of the transgressor is the consciousness that he is a guilty man, and he is haunted with the perpetual apprehension of a retribution which, like the spectre of evil omen, crosses his every path, and meets him at every turn. * " Beyond all these heavens the God of the heavens resides." ' Guizot, ♦' L'Eglise et la Societe Chretiennes" en 1861. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 123 "'Tis guilt alone, Like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mode, Fills the light air with visionary terrors, And shapeless forms of fear." Man does not possess this consciousness of guilt so much as it holds possession of him. It pursues the fugitive from justice, and it lays hold on the man who has resisted or es- caped the hand of the executioner. The sense of guilt is a power over and above man ; a power so wonderful that it often compels the most reckless criminal to deliver himself up, with the confession of his deed, to the sword of justice, when a false- hood would have easily protected him. Man is only able by persevering, ever-repeated efforts at self-induration, against the remonstrances of conscience, to withdraw himself from its pow- er. His success is, however, but very partial ; for sometimes, in the moments o'f his greatest security, the reproaches of con- science break in upon him like a flood, and sweep away all his refuge of lies. " The evil conscience is the divine bond which binds the created spirit, even in deep apostasy, to its Original. In the consciousness of guilt there is revealed the essential re- lation of our spirit to God, although misunderstood by man un- til he has something higher than his evil conscience. The trouble and anguish which the remonstrances of this conscious- ness excite — the inward unrest which sometimes seizes the slave of sin — are proofs that he has not quite broken away from God."' In Grecian mythology there was a very distinct recognition of the power of conscience, and a reference of its authority to the Divinity, together with the idea of retribution. Nemesis was regarded as the impersonation of the upbraidings of con- science, of the natural dread of punishment that springs up in the human heart after the commission of sin. And as the feeling of remorse may be considered as the consequence of the displeasure and vengeance of an offended God, Nemesis came to be regarded as the goddess of retribution, relentlessly pursuing the guilty until she has driven them into irretrievable * MUUer, " Christian Doctrine of Sin," vol. i. pp. 225, 226. 124 CHRISTIANITY AND woe and ruin. The Erinyes or Eumenides are the deities whose business it is to punish, in hades, the crimes committed upon earth. When an aggravated crime has excited their dis- pleasure they manifest their greatest power in the disquietude of conscience. Along with this deep consciousness of guilt, and this fear of retribution which haunts the guilty mind, there has also rest- ed upon the heart of universal humanity a deep and abiding conviction that something must he done to expiate the guilt of sin — some restitution must be made, some suffering must be endured,^ some sacrifice offered to atone for past misdeeds. Hence it is that men in all ages have had recourse to penances and prayers, to self-inflicted tortures and costly sacrifices to appease a righteous anger which their sins had excited, and avert an impending punishment. That sacrifice to atone for sin has prevailed universally — that it has been practised " sem- per^ ubiqiie, et ab omnibus^^^ always, in all places, and by all men — will not be denied by the candid and competent inquirer. The evidence which has been collected from ancient history by Grotius and Magee, and the additional evidence from contem- poraneous history, which is being now furnished by the re- searches of ethnologists and Christian missionaries, is conclu- sive. No intelligent man can doubt the fact. Sacrificial ofier- ings have prevailed in every nation and in every age. "Al- most the entire worship of the pagan nations consisted in rites of deprecation. Fear of the Divine displeasure seems to have been the leading feature of their religious impressions ; and in the diversity, the costliness, the cruelty of their sacrifices they ' " Punishment is the penalty due to sin ; or, to use the favorite expres- sion of Homer, not unusual in the Scriptures also, it is the payment of a debt incurred by sin. "When he is punished, the criminal is said to pay off or pay back (drror/ve^v) his crimes ; in other words, to expiate or atone for them (Iliad, iv. i6i, 162), a'vv re //eya/iw anhicav ol'v Gheno7nena in their orders of co-existence^ succession, and resemblance. Man has no faculty for cognizing substances, causes, forces, reasons, first principles — no power by which he can know God. This class may be again subdivided into — 1. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification of mental phenomena {e. g., Idealists like J. S. Mill). 2. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification of material phenomena {e. g., Materialists like Comte). II. Tlie second class comprises all who admit that philosophic knowledge is the knowledge of eff^ects as dependent on causes, and of qualities as ifiherent in substa?tces; but at the same time assert that ^^ all knowledge is of the phenomenal.^^ Philosophy can never attain to a positive knowledge of the First Cause. Of exist- ence, absolutely and in itself, we know nothing. The infinite GREEK PJIILO SOPHY. 167 can not by us be comprehended, conceived, or thought. Faith is the organ by which we apprehend what is beyond knowledge. We beheve in the existence of God, but we can not know God. This class, also, may be again subdivided into — 1. Those who affirm that our idea of the Infinite First Cause is grounded on an intuitional or subjective faith, ne- cessitated by an "impotence of thought" — that is, by a mental inability to conceive an absolute limitation or an infinite illimitation, an absolute commencement or an infi- nite non-commencement. Both contradictory opposites are equally incomprehensible and inconceivable to us ; and yet, though unable to view either as possible, we are forced by a higher law — the " Law of Excluded Middle " — to admit that one, and only one, is necessary {e. g., Hamilton and Mansel). 2. Those who assert that our idea of God rests solely on an historical or objective faith in testimony — the testimony of Scripture, which assures us that, in the course of history, God has manifested his existence in an objective manner to the senses, and given verbal communications of his character and will to men j human reason being utterly incapacitated by the fall, and the consequent depravity of man, to attain any knowledge of the unity, spirituality, and righteousness of God {e. g., Watson, and Dogmatic Theologians generally). It will thus be manifest that the great question, the central and vital question which demands a thorough and searching consideration, is the following, to wit : Is God cognizable by hu- man reason ? Can man attain to a positive cognition of God — can he k7tow God ; or is all our supposed knowledge " a learned ignorance,"^ an unreasoning faith ? We venture to answer this question in the affirmative. Human reason is now adequate to the cognition of God ; it is able, with the fullest confidence, to affirm the being of a God, and, in some degree, to determine his character. The parties and schools above referred to an- swer this question in the negative form. Whether Theologians ^ Hamilton's " Philosophy," p. 512. 1 68 CHRISTIANITY AND or Atheists, they are singularly agreed in denying to human reason all possibility of k?iowmg God. Before entering upon the discussion of the negative positions enumerated in the above classification, it may be important we should state our own position explicitly, and exhibit what we regard as the true doctrine of the genesis of the idea of God in the human intelligence. The real question at issue will then stand out in clear relief, and precision will be given to the en- tire discussion. (i.) We hold that the idea of God is a common phenomenon of the universal human intelligence. It is found in all minds where reason has had its normal and healthy development; and no race of men has ever been found utterly destitute of the idea of God. The proof of this position has already been furnished in chap, ii.,^ and needs not be re-stated here. We have simply to remark that the appeal which is made by Locke and others of the sensational school to the experiences of infants, idiots, the deaf and dumb, or, indeed, any cases wherein the proper conditions for the normal development of reason are wanting, are utterly irrelevant to the question. The acorn contains within itself the rudimental germ of the future oak, but its ma- ture and perfect development depends on the exterior condi- tions of moisture, light, and heat. By these exterior conditions it may be rendered luxuriant in its growth, or it may be stunted in its growth. It may barely exist under one class of condi- tions ; it may be distorted and perverted, or it may perish ut- terly under another. And so in the idiotic mind the ideas of reason may be wanting, or they may be imprisoned by impervi- ous walls of cerebral malformation. In the infant mind the de- velopment of reason is yet in an incipient stage. The idea of God is immanent to the infant thought, but the infant thought is not yet matured. The deaf and dumb are certainly not in that full and normal correlation to the world of sense which is a necessary condition of the development of reason. Language, the great vehiculum and instrument of thought, is wanting, and ^ Pp. 89, 90. GREEK FHILOSOPHY. 169 reason can not develop itself without words. "Words with- out thought are dead sounds, thoughts without words are noth- ing. The word is the thought incarnate."^ Under proper and normal conditions, the idea of God is the natural and necessary form in which human thought must be developed. And, with these explanations, we repeat our affirmation that the idea of God is a common phenomenon of the universal human intelli- gence. (ii.) We do not hold that the idea of God^ in its completeness^ is a simple^ direct, and immediate intuition of the reason alo7ie, indepejid- ent of all experience^ and all knowledge of the external wo7'ld. The idea of God is a complex idea, and not a simple idea. The af- firmation, "God exists," is a synthetic and primitive judgment spontaneously developed in the mind, and developed, too, inde- pendent of all reflective reasoning. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the outer world of nature and the primary in- tuitions of the inner world of reason — a logical deduction from the self evident truths given in sense, consciousness, and reason. " We do not perceive God, but we conceive Him upon the faith of this admirable world exposed to view, and upon the other world, more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves- "^ Therefore we do not say that man is born with an " innate idea " of God, nor with the definite proposition, " there is a God," written upon his soul ; but we do say that the mind is pregnant with certain natural principles, and governed, in its development, by certain necessary laws of thought, which de- termine it, by a spontaneous logic, to affirm the being of a God ; and, furthermore, that this judgment may be called iiinate in the sense, that it is the primitive, universal, and necessary de- velopment of the human understanding which " is innate to it- self and equal to itself in all men."^ As the vital and rudimentary germ of the oak is contained in the acorn ; as it is quickened and excited to activity by the external conditions of moisture, light, and heat, and is fully de- ' Miiller, " Science of Language," p. 384. "^ Cousin, " True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 102. ^ Leibnitz. lyo CHRISTIANITY AND veloped under the fixed and determinative laws of vegetable life — so the germs of the idea of God are present in the human mind as the intuitions of pure reason {Rational Psychology) ; these intuitions are excited to energy by our experiential and historical knowledge of the facts and laws of the universe {Phe- nomenology) ; and these facts and intuitions are developed into form by the necessary laws of the intellect {JVofnology, or Pri- mordial Logic). The logical demonstration of the being of God commences with the analysis of thought It asks, What are the ideas which exist in the human intelligence ? What are their actual charac- teristics, and what their primitive characteristics ? What is their origin, and what their validity ? Having, by this process, found that some of our ideas are subjective, and some objec- tive ; that some are derived from experience, and that some can not be derived from experience, but are inherent in the very con- stitution of the mind itself, as d priori ideas of reason j that these are characterized as self-evident, universal, and neces- sary ; and that, as laws of thought, they govern the mind in all its conceptions of the universe ; it has formulated these neces- sary judgments, and presented them as distinct and articulate propositions. These d priori^ necessary judgments constitute the major premise of the Theistic syllogism, and, in view of the facts of the universe, necessitate the affirmation of the existence of a God as the only valid explanation of the facts. The 7tatural or chrojtological order in which the idea of God is developed in the human intelligence, is the reverse process of the scientific or logical order, in which the demonstration of the being of God is presented by philosophy ; the latter is reflective and analytic^ the former is spontaneous and synthetic. The natural order commences with the knowledge of the facts of the universe, material and mental, as revealed by sensation and experience. In presence of these facts of the universe, the d priori ideas of power, cause, reason, and end are evoked into consciousness with greater or less distinctness; and the judgment, by a natural and spontaneous logic, free from all GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 171 reflection, and consequently from all possibility of error, affirms a necessary relation between the facts of experience and the d p7'iori ideas of the reason. The result of this involuntary and almost unconscious process of thought is that natural cog- nition of a God found, with greater or less clearness and defi- niteness, in all rational minds. The d posteriori^ or empirical, knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations to time and space, constitute the minor premise of the Theistic syllogism. The Theistic argument is,' therefore, necessarily composed of both experiential and d priori elements. An d posteriori element exists as a condition of the logical demonstration. The rational d priori element is, however, the logical basis, the only valid foundation of the Theistic demonstration. The facts of the universe alone would never lead man to the recognition of a God, if the reason, in presence of these facts, did not enounce certain necessary and universal principles which are the logical antecedents, and adequate explanation of the facts. Of what use would it be to point to the events and changes of the material universe as proofs of the existence of a First Cause., unless we take account of the universal and necessary truth that " every change must have an efficient cause ;" that all phenomena are an indication oi power ; and that "there is an ultimate and sufficient reason why all things exist, and are as they are, and not otherwise." There would be no logical force in enumerating the facts of order and special adaptation which literally crowd the universe, as proofs of the existence of an Intellige^it Creator., if the mind did not affirm the necessary prin- ciple that " facts of order, having a commencement in time, suppose mind as their source and exponent." There is no logical conclusiveness in the assertion of Paley, " that experi- ence teaches us that a designer must be a person ;" because, as Hume justly remarks, our " experience " is narrowed down to a mere point, " and can not be a rule for a universe ;" but there is an infinitude of force in that dictum of reason, that " intelligence, self-consciousness, and self-determination neces- 172 CnmSTIANITY AND sarily constitute personality." A multiplicity of different effects, of which experience does not always reveal the connection, would not conduct to a single cause and to o?te God, but rather to a plurality of causes and a plurality of gods, did not reason teach us that "all plurality implies an ultimate indivisible unity," and therefore there must be a First Cause of all causes, a First Principle of all principles, the Substance of all substances, the Bei7ig of all beings — a God " of whom, in whom, and to whom are all things " {i^avra iic rov deou, h rw 0£w, ek Tov deor). The conclusion, therefore, is, that, as the idea of God is a complex idea, so there are necessarily a number of simple a priori principles, and a variety of experiential facts conspiring to its development in the human intelligence. (iii.) The universe preseiits to the hufnan mind an aggregation a?id history of pheno77iena which dei7iands the idea of a God — a se/fexiste7tt, i7itenige7it, perso7tal, righteous First Cause — as its ade- quate expla7iatio7i. The attempt of Positivism to confine all human knowledge to the observation and classification of phenomena, and arrest and foreclose all inquiry as to causes, efficient, final, and ulti- mate, is simply futile and absurd. It were just as easy to arrest the course of the sun in mid-heaven as to prevent the human mind from seeking to pass beyond phenomena, and ascertain the ground, and reason, and cause of all phenomena. The his- tory of speculative thought clearly attests that, in all ages, the inquiry after the Ultimate Cause and Reason of all existence — the apx;>/) or First Principle of all things — has been the inevita- ble and necessary tendency of the human mind j to resist which, skepticism and positivism have been utterly impotent. The first philosophers, of the Ionian school, had just as strong a faith in the existence of a Supreme Reality — an Ultimate Cause — as Leibnitz and Cousin. But when, by reflective thought, they attempted to render an account to themselves of this in- stinctive faith, they imagined that its object must be in some way appreciable to sense, and they sought it in some physical element, or under some visible and tangible shrine. Still, how- GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 173 ever imperfect and inadequate the method, and however unsat- isfactory the results, humanity has never lost its positive and ineradicable confidence that the problem of existence could be solved. The resistless tide of spontaneous and necessary thought has always borne the race onward towards the recog- nition of a great First Cause ; and though philosophy may have erred, again and again, in tracing the logical order of this inev- itable thought, and exhibiting the necessary nexus between the premises and conclusion, yet the human mind has never wa- vered in the confidence which it has reposed in the natural logic of thought, and man has never ceased to believe in a God. We readily grant that all our empirical knowledge is con- fined to phenomena in their orders of co-existence, succession, and resemblance. " To our objective perception and compar- ison nothing is given but qualities and changes; to our induc- tive generalization nothing but the shifting and grouping of these in time and space." Were it, however, our immediate concern to discuss the question, we could easily show that sen- sationalism has never succeeded in tracing the genetic origin of our ideas of space and time to observation and experience ; and, without the d priori idea oi space, as the place of bodies, and of time, as the condition of succession, we can not conceive of phenomena at all. If, therefore, we know any thing beyond phenomena and their mutual relations ; if we have any cog- nition of realities underlying phenomena, and of the relations of phenomena to their objective ground, it must be given by some faculty distinct from sense-perception, and in some proc- ess distinct from inductive generaHzation. The knowledge of real Being and real Power, of an ultimate Reason and a per- sonal Will, is derived from the apperception of pure reason, which afiirms the necessary existence of a Supreme Reality — an Uncreated Being beyond all phenomena, which is the ground and reason of the existence — the contemporaneousness and succession — the likeness and unlikeness, of all phenomena. The immediate presentation of phenomena to sensation is the occasion of the development in consciousness of these d, 174 CHRISTIANITY AND priori ideas of reason : the possession of these ideas, or the im- manence of these ideas, in the human intellect, constitutes the original power to know external phenomena. The ideas of space, time, power, law, reason, and end, are the logical antece- dents of the ideas of body, succession, event, consecution, order, and adaptation. The latter can not be conceived as distinct notions without the former. The former will not be revealed in thought without the presentation to sense, of resistance, movement, change, uniformity, etc. All actual knowledge must, therefore^ be impure ; that is, it must involve both a priori and d posteriori elements ; and between these elements there must be a necessary relation. This necessary relation between the ci priori and d, posteriori elements of knowledge is not a mere subjective law of thought. It is both a law of thought and a law of things. Between the d posteriori facts of the universe and the d priori ideas of the reason there is an absolute nexus, a universal and necessary correlation ; so that the cognition of the latter is possible only on the cognition of the former; and the objective existence of the realities, represented by the ideas of reason, is the condi- tion, si7ie qua noft, of the existence of the phenomena presented to sense. If, in one indivisible act of consciousness, we im- mediately perceive extended matter exterior to our percipient mind, then Extension exists objectively ; and if Extension exists objectively, then Space, its cotiditio si?ie qua non, also exists ob- jectively. And if a definite body reveals to us the Space in which it is contained, if a succession of pulsations or move- ments exhibit the uniform Time beneath, so do the changeful phenomena of the universe demand a living Power behind, and the existing order and regular evolution of the universe presuppose Thought — prevision, and predetermination, by an intelligent mind. If, then, the universe is a created effect, it must furnish some indications of the character of its cause. If, as Plato taught, the world is a " created image " of the eternal archetypes which dwell in the uncreated Mind, and if the subjective ideas which GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 175 dwell in the human reason, as the offspring of God, are "cop- ies" of the ideas of the Infinite Reason — if the universe be "the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit which has also repeat- ed itself in miniature within our finite spirit," then may we deci- pher its symbols, and read its lessons straight off. Then every approach towards a scientific comprehension and generaliza- tion of the facts of the universe must carry us upward towards the higher realities of reason. The more we can understand of Nature — of her comprehensive laws, of her archetypal forms, of her far-reaching plan spread through the almost infinite ages, and stretching through illimitable space — the more do we com- prehend the divine Thought. The inductive generalization of science gradually ascends towards the universal ; the pure, essen- tial, (^/W<9r/ reason, with its universal and necessary ideas, de- scends from above to meet it. The general conceptions of sci- ence are thus a kind of idece icmbratiles — shadowy assimilations to those immutable ideas which dwell in essential reason, as possessed by the Supreme Intelligence, and which are partici- pated in by rational man as the offspring and image of God. Without making any pretension to profound scientific accu- racy, we offer the following tentative classification of the facts of the universe, material and mental, which may be regarded as hints and adumbrations of the ultimate ground, and reason, and cause, of the universe. We shall venture to classify these facts as indicative of some fundamental relation ; (i.) to Per- manent Being or Reahty; (ii.) to Reason and Thought; (iii.) to Moral Ideas and Ends. (i.) Facts of the universe which i7tdicate some fundamental re- lation to Permanent Being or Reality. 1. Qualitative Phenomena (properties, attributes, qualities) — the predicates of a subject; which phenomena, being charac- terized by likeness and unlikeness, are capable of compari- son and classification, and thus of revealing something as to the nature of the subject. 2. Dynamical Phenomena (pretension, movement, succes- 176 CHRISTIANITY AND sion) — events transpiring in titne, having beginning, succes- sion, and end, which present themselves to us as the expres- sion oi power, and throw back their distinctive characteristics on their dyfiamic source. 3. Quantitative Phenomena (totahty, multiplicity, relative unity) — a multiplicity of objects having relative and compo- site unity, which suggests some relation to an absolute and indivisible U7iity. 4. Statical Phenomena (extension, magnitude, divisibility) — bodies co-existing in space which are limited, conditioned, relative, dependent, and indicate some relation to that which is self-existent, unconditioned, and absolute. (ii.) Facts of the universe which vidicate some fundameiital re- lation to Reason or Thought. 1. Numerical and Geometrical Proportion. — Definite pro- portion of elements (Chemistry), symmetrical arrangement of parts (Crystallography), numerical and geometrical relation of the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies (Spherical Astronomy), all of which are capable of exact mathematical expression. 2. Archetypal Forms. — The uniform succession of new ex- istences, and the progressive evolution of new orders and species, conformable to fixed and definite ideal archetypes, the indication of a comprehensive plan (Morphological Bot- any, Comparative Anatomy). 3. Teleology of Organs. — The adaptation of organs to the fulfillment of special functions, indicating design (Compara- tive Physiology). 4. Combinatiojt of Homotypes and Analogues. — Diversified homologous forms made to fulfill analogous functions, or special purposes fulfilled whilst maintaining a general plan, " indicating choice and alternativity. (iii.) Facts of the imiverse which indicate some fundai7iental relation to Moral Ideas and Ends. GREEK PHILOSOrHT. 177 1. Ethical Distinctions. — The universal tendency to dis- criminate between voluntary acts as right or wrong, indicating some relation to an immutable inoral staridard of right. 2. Sense of Obligation. — The universal consciousness of dependence and obligation, indicating some relation to a Supreme Power, an Absolute Authority. 3. Feeling of Responsibility. — The universal consciousness of liability to be required to give account for, and endure the consequences of our action, indicating some relation to a Supreme Judge. 4. Retributive Issues. — The pleasure and pain resulting from moral action in this life, and the universal anticipation of pleasure or pain in the future, as the consequence of pres- ent conduct, indicate an absolute Justice ruling the world and man. Now, if the universe be a created effect, it must, in some de- gree at least, reveal the character of its Author and cause. We are entitled to regard it as a created symbol and image of the Deity; it must bear the impress oi his power ; it must reveal his infinite /r^j-^7zr^ ; it must express his thoughts ; it must em- body and realize his ideals, so far, at least, as material symbols will permit. Just as we see the power and thought of man re- vealed in his works, his energy and skill, his ideal and his taste expressed in his mechanical, artistic, and literary creations, so we may see the mind and character of God displayed in his works. The skill and contrivance of Watts, and Fulton, and Stephenson were exhibited in their mechanical productions. The pure, the intense, the visionary impersonation of the soul which the artist had conjured in his own imagination was wrought out in Psyche. The colossal grandeur of Michael Angelo's ideals, the ethereal and saintly elegance of Raphael's were real- ized upon the canvas. So he who is familiar v;ith the ideal of the sculptor or the painter can identify his creations even when the author's name is not affixed. And so the " eternal Power " of God is " clearly seen " in the mighty orbs which float in the 12 178 CHRISTIANITY AND illimitable space. The vastness of the universe shadows forth the infinity of God. The indivisible unity of space and the ideal unity of the universe reflect the unity of God. The mate- rial forms around us are symbols of divine ideas, and the suc- cessive history of the universe is an expression of the divine thought j whilst the ethical ideas and sentiments inherent in the human mind are a reflection of the moral character of God. The reader can not have failed to observe the form in which the Theistic argument is stated ; " if the finite universe is a created effect, it must reveal something as to the nature of its cause : if the existing order and arrangement of the universe had a commencement in time, it must have an ultimate and adequate cause." The question, therefore, presents itself in a definite form: "/r the tmivej-se finite or infi7iite ; had the oi^der of the universe a begifining, or is it eternal V It will be seen at a glance that this is the central and vital question in the Theistic argument. If the order and arrange- ment of the universe is eternal, then that order is an inherent law of nature, and, as eternal, does not imply a cause ah ext?^a ; if it is not eternal, then the ultimate cause of that order must be a power above and beyond nature. In the former case the minor premise of the Theistic syllogism is utterly invalidated ; in the latter case it is abundantly sustained. Some Theistic writers — as Descartes, Pascal, Leibnitz, and Saisset — have made the fatal admission that the universe is, in some sense, infinite and eternal. In making this admission they have unwittingly surrendered the citadel of strength, and de- prived the argument by which they would prove the being of a God of all its logical force. That argument is thus presented by Saisset : " The finite supposes the infinite. Extension supposes first space, then immensity : duration supposes first time, then eternity. A sudden and irresistible judgment refers this to the necessar}^, infinite, perfect being."^ But if " the world is in- finite and eternal,"^ may not nature, or the totality of all exist- ence {to TTctv), be the necessary, infinite, and perfect Being? An ^ "Modern Pantheism," vol. ii. p. 205. ^ Ibid, p. 123. GREEK PMILOSOPHT. 179 infinite and eternal universe has the reason of its existence in itself, and the existence of such a universe can never prove to us the existence of an infinite and eternal God. A closer examination of the statements and reasonings of Des- cartes, Pascal, and Leibnitz, as furnished by Saisset, will show that these distinguished mathematicans were misled by the false notion of " mal/ie7nafica/ infinitude" Their infinite universe, after all, is not an " absolute," but a " relative " infinite ; that is, the indefinite. " The universe must extend indefinitely in time ' and space, in the infinite greatness, and in the infinite littleness of its parts — in the infinite variety of its species, of its forms, and of its degrees of existence. The finite can not express the infinite but by being multiplied infinitely. The finite, so far as it is finite, is not in any reasonable relation, or in any intelligi- ble proportion to the infinite. But the finite, as multiplied infi- nitely,^ ages upon ages, spaces upon spaces, stars beyond stars, worlds beyond worlds, is a true expression of the Infinite Being. Does it follow, because the universe has no limits, — that it must therefore be eternal, immense, infinite as God himself? No ; that is but a vain scruple, which springs from the imagi- nation, and not from the reason. The imagination is always confounding what reason should ever distinguish, eternity and time, immensity and space, relative infinity and absolute infinity. The Creator alone is eternal, immense, absolutely infinite."^ The introduction of the idea of " the mathematical infinite " into metaphysical speculation, especially by Kant and Hamil- ton, with the design, it would seem, of transforming the idea of infinity into a sensuous conception, has generated innumerable paralogisms which disfigure the pages of their philosophical writings. This procedure is grounded in the common fallacy of supposing that infifiity and quantity are compatible attributes, and susceptible of mathematical synthesis. This insidious and ^ " The infinite is distinct from the finite, and consequently from the mul- tiplication of the finite by itself; that is, from the indefinite. That which is not infinite, added as many times as you please to itself, will not become in- finite." — Cousin, " Hist, of Philos.," vol. ii. p. 231. ^ Saisset, " Modern Pantheism," vol. ii. pp. 127, 128. l8o CHRISTIANITY AND plausible error is ably refuted by a writer in the "North Ameri- can Review."^ We can not do better than transfer his argu- ment to our pages in an abridged form. " Mathematics is conversant with quantities and quantitative relations. The conception of quantity, therefore, if rigorously analyzed, will indicate d prm-i the natural and impassable boundaries of the science ; while a subsequent examination of the quantities called infinite in the mathematical sense, and of the algebraic symbol of infinity, will be seen to verify the re- sults of this a priori analysis. " Quantity is that attribute of things in virtue of which they are susceptible of exact mensuration. The question how much, or how many {quantus), implies the answer, so much, or so many {tantus) j but the answer is possible only through reference to some standard of magnitude or multitude arbitrarily assumed. Every object, therefore, of which quantity, in the mathematical sense, is predicable, must be by its essential nature mensurable. Now mensurability implies the existence of actual, definite lim- its, since without them there could be no fixed relation between the given object and the standard of measurement, and, con- sequently, no possibility of exact mensuration. In fact, since quantification is the object of all mathematical operations, mathematics may be not inaptly defined as the science of the de- terminations of limits. It is evident, therefore, that the terms quantity Tm.^ finitude express the same attribute, namely, limita- tion — the former relatively, the latter absolutely ; for quantity is limitation considered with relation to some standard of meas- urement, and finitude is limitation considered simply in itself. The sphere of quantity, therefore, is absolutely identical with the sphere of the finite ; and the phrase infinite quantity, if strictly construed, is a contradiction in terms. " The result thus attained by considering abstract quantity is corroborated by considering concrete and discrete quantities. Such expressions as i?ifnite sphere, radius, parallelogram, line, and so forth, are self-contradictory. A sphere is limited by its ^ " The Conditioned and the Unconditioned," No. CCV. art. iii. (1864). GREEK PltlLOSOPHT. l8l own periphery, and a radius by the centre and circumference of its circle. A parallelogram of infinite altitude is impossible, because the limit of its altitude is assigned in the side which must be parallel to its base in order to constitute it a parallelo- gram. In brief, all figuration is limitation. The contradiction in the term infinite line is not quite so obvious, but can readily be made apparent. Objectively, a line is only the termination of a surface, and a surface the termination of a solid ; hence a line can not exist apart from an extended quantity, nor an infi- nite line apart from an infinite quantity. But as this term has just been shown to be self-contradictory, an infinite line can not exist objectively at all. Again, every line is extension in one dimension \ hence a mathematical quantity, hence mensura- ble, hence finite ; you must, therefore, deny that a line is a quantity, or else affirm that it is finite. "The same conclusion is forced upon us, if from geometry we turn to arithmetic. The phrases infinite number, infinite se- ries, infinite process, and so forth, are all contradictory when literally construed. Number is a relation among separate uni- ties or integers, which, considered objectively as independent of our cognitive powers, must constitute an exact sum ; and this exactitude, or synthetic totality, is limitation. If consider- ed subjectively in the mode of its cognition, a number is infi- nite only in the sense that it is beyond the power of our im- agination or conception, which is an abuse of the term. In either case the totality is fixed ; that is, finite. So, too, of series 2ind process. Since every series involves a succession of terms or numbers, and every process a succession of steps or stages, the notion of series and process plainly involves that of 7tiim- ber, and must be rigorously dissociated from the idea of infinity. At any one step, at any one term, the number attained is de- terminate, hence finite. The fact that, by the law of the series or of the process, we may continue the operation as long as we please, does not justify the application of the term infinite to the operation itself; if any thing is infinite, it is the will which continues the operation, which is absurd if said of human wills. 1 82 CEEISTIANITY AND Consequently, the attribute of infinity is not predicable either of ' diminution without limit/ ' augmentation without limit/ or 'endless approximation to a fixed limit/ for these mathemat- ical processes continue only as we continue them, consist of steps successively accomplished, and are limited by the very fact of this serial incompletion. " We can not forbear pointing out an important application of these results to the Critical Philosophy. Kant bases each of his famous four antinomies on the demand of pure reason for unconditioned totality in a regressive series of conditions. This, he says, must be realized either in an absolute first of the series, conditioning all the other members, but itself uncondi- tioned, or else in the absolute infinity of the series without a first ; but reason is utterly unable, on account of mutual con- tradiction, to decide in which of the two alternatives the uncon- ditioned is found. By the principles we have laid down, how- ever, the problem is solved. The absolute infinity of a series is a contradiction in adjecto. As every number, although im- measurably and inconceivably great, is impossible unless imity is given as its basis, so every series, being itself a number, is impossible unless a first term is given as a commencement. Through a first term alone is the unconditioned possible ; that is, if it does not exist in a first term, it can not exist at all ; of the two alternatives, therefore, one altogether disappears, and reason is freed from the dilemma of a compulsory yet impossi- ble decision. Even if it should be allowed that the series has no first term, but has originated ab ceterjio, it must always at each instant have a last term; the series, as a whole, can not be infinite, and hence can not, as Kant claims it can, realize in its wholeness unconditioned totality. Since countless terms forever remain unreached, the series is forever limited by them. Kant himself admits that it can never he coi7ipleted, and is only potentially infinite ; actually, therefore, by his own admission, it is finite. But a last term implies a first, as absolutely as one end of a string implies the other ; the only possibility of an uncon- ditioned lies in Kant's first alternative, and if, as he maintains. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 183 Reason must demand it, she can not hesitate in her decisions. That number is a Uinitatmi is no new truth, and that every se- ries involves number is self-evident ; and it is surprising that so radical a criticism on Kant's system should never have sug- gested itself to his opponents. Even the so-called moments of time can not be regarded as constituting a real series, for a series can not be real except through its divisibility into mem- bers ; whereas time is indivisible, and its partition into mo- ments is a conventional fiction. Exterior limitability and inte- rior divisibility result equally from the possibility of discontinu- ity. Exterior illimitability and interior indivisibility are simple phases of the same attribute of necessary continuity contemplated under different aspects. From this principle flows another upon which it is impossible to lay too much stress, namely, illimitability and indivisibility, infinity and unity ^ reciprocally ne- cessitate each other. Hence the Quantitative Infinites must be also Units, and the division of space and time, implying absolute contradiction, is not even cogitable as an hypothesis.^ " The word infinite^ therefore, in mathematical usage, as ap- plied to process and to quantity^ has a two-fold signification. An infinite process is one which we can continue as long as we please, but which exists solely in our continuance of it.^ An infinite quantity is one which exceeds our powers of mensura- tion or of conception, but which, nevertheless, has bounds and limits in itself^ Hence the possibility of relation among infinite quantities, and of different orders of infinities. If the words infinite, infinity, irfinitesimal, should be banished from mathe- matical treatises and replaced by the words indefinite, indefinity, and indefinitesimal, mathematics would suffer no loss, while, by removing a perpetual source of confusion, metaphysics would get great gain." The above must be regarded, as a complete refutation of the ^ By the application of these principles the writer in the " North American Review " completely dissolves the antinomies by which Hamilton seeks to sustain his " Philosophy of the Conditioned." See " North American Re- view," 1864, pp. 432-437. 2 De Morgan, " Diif. and Integ. Calc." p. 9. ^ Id., ib., p. 25. 1 84 CHRISTIANITY AND position taken by Hu7Jie, to wit, that the idea of nature eternally existing in a state of order, without a cause other than the eternally inherent laws of nature, is no more self-contradictory than the idea of an eternally-existing and infinite mind, who originated this order — a God existing without a cause. The eternal and infinite Mind is indivisible and illimitable ; nature, in its totality, as well as in its individual parts, has interior di- visibility, and exterior limitability. The infinity of God is not a quantitative^ but a qualitative infinity. The miscalled eternity and infinity of nature is an indefinite extension and protension in time and space, and, as qitantitative^ must necessarily be lim- ited and measurable, therefore yf/^V^. The universe of sense-perception and sensuous imagination is a phenomenal universe, a genesis, a perpetual becoming — an entrance into existence, and an exit thence j the Theist is, therefore, perfectly justified in regarding it as disqualified for self-existence, and in passing behind it for the Supreme Entity that needs no cause. Phenomena demand causation, entities dispense with it. No one asks for a cause of the space which contains the universe, or of the Eternity on the bosom of which it floats. Everywhere the line is necessarily drawn upon the same principle ; that entities may have self-existence, phenom- ena must have a cause. ^ IV. Psychological analysis clea7'ly attests that iii the phe?t07ne?ta of consciousness the?'e ai-e foimd elements or principles which, in their regular and nornial development, t7'anscend the li77iits of C07i- scious7iess, and attai7i to the k7iowledge of Absolute Bei7ig, Absolute Reaso7i, Absolute Good, i. e., God. The analysis of thought clearly reveals that the mind of man is in possession of ideas, notions, beliefs, principles (as e. g, the idea of space, duration, cause, substance, unity, infinity), which are not derived from sensation and experience, and which can not be drawn out of sensation and experience by any process of generalization. These ideas have this incontestable peculiar- * " Science, Nescience, and Faith," in Martineau's " Essays," p. 206. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 185 ity, as distinguished from all the phenomena of sensation, that, whilst the latter are particular, contingent, and relative, the former are universal, necessary, and absolute. As an example, and a proof of the reality and validity of this distinction, take the ideas oibody and oi space, the former unquestionably derived from experience, the latter supplied by reason alone. " I ask you, can not you conceive this book to be destroyed ? Without doubt you can. And can not you conceive the whole world to be destroyed, and no matter whatever in existence ? You can« For you, constituted as you are, the supposition of the non-ex- istence of bodies implies no contradiction. And what do we call the idea of a thing which we can conceive of as non-exist- ing ? We call it a contingent and relative idea. But if you can conceive this book to be destroyed, all bodies destroyed, can you suppose space to be destroyed ? You can not. It is in the power of man's thought to conceive the non-existence of bod- ies ; it is not in the power of man's thought to conceive the non-existence of space. The idea of space is thus a necessary and absolute idea."^ Take, again, the ideas of event and cause. The idea of an event is a contingejtt idea ; it is the idea of something which might or might not have happened. There is no impossibility or contradiction in either supposition. The idea of cause is a necessary idea. An event being given, the idea of cause is nec- essarily implied. An uncaused event is an impossible concep- tion. The idea of cause is also a universal idea extending to all events, actual or conceivable, and affirmed by all minds. It is a rational fact, attested by universal consciousness, that we can not think of an event transpiring without a cause ; of a thing being the author of its own existence ; of something gen- erated by and out of nothing. Ex Jiihilo nihil is a universal law of thought and of things. This universal " law of caus- ality " is clearly distinguishable from a general truth reached by induction. For example, it is a very general truth that, during twenty-four hours, day is succeeded by night. But this is not ^ Cousin's " Hist, of Philos.," vol. ii. p. 214. 1 86 CHRISTIANITY AND a necessary truth, neither is it a universal truth. It does not extend to all known lands, as, for example, to Nova Zembla. It does not hold true of the other planets. Nor does it extend to all possible lands. We can easily conceive of lands plunged in eternal night, or rolling in eternal day. With another sys- tem of worlds, one can conceive other physics, but one can not conceive other metaphysics. It is impossible to imagine a world in which the law of causality does not reign. Here, then, we have one absolute principle (among others which may be enumerated), the existence and reality of which is revealed, not by sensation, but by reason — a principle which transcends the limits of experience, and which, in its regular and logical development, attains the knowledge of the Absolute Cause — the First Cause of all causes — God. Thus it is evident that the human mind is in possession of two distinct orders of primitive cognitions, — one, contingent, relative, and phenomenal ; the other universal, necessary, and absolute. These two distinct orders of cognition presuppose the existence in man of two distinct faculties or organs of knowledge — sensation^ external and internal, which perceives the contingent, relative, and phenomenal, and reason^ which ap- prehends the universal, necessar}^, and absolute. The knowl- edge which is derived from sensation and experience is called empi7'ical knowledge, or knowledge d posteriori, because subse- quent to, and consequent upon, the exercise of the faculties of observ-ation. The knowledge derived from reason is called transcendental knowledge, or knowledge d p?'iori, because it fur- nishes laws to, and governs the exercise of the faculties of ob- servation and thought, and is not the result of their exercise. The sensibility brings the mind into relation with \}ciQ. physicaL world, the reason puts mind in communication with the i7i- telligible world — the sphere of d p7'iori principles, of necessary and absolute truths, which depend upon neither the world nor the conscious self, and which reveal to man the existence of the soul, nature, and God. • Ever}^ distinct fact of consciousness is thus at once psychological and ontological^ and contains these GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 187 three fundamental ideas, which we can not go beyond, or can- cel by any possible analysis — the soul, with its faculties ; matter, with its qualities ; God, with his perfections. We do not profess to be able to give a clear explication and complete enumeration of all the ideas of reason, and of the nec- essary and universal principles or axioms which are grounded on these ideas. This is still the grand desideratum of meta- physical science. Its achievement will give us a primordial logic, which shall be as exact in its procedure and as certain in its conclusions as the mathematical sciences. Meantime, it may be affirmed that philosophic analysis, in the person of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Cousin, has succeeded in dis- engaging, such d priori ideas, and formulating such principles and laws of thought, as lead infallibly to the cognition of the Absolute Being, the Absolute Reason, the Absolute Good, that is, God. It w^ould carry us too far beyond our present design were we to exhibit, in each instance, the process of ijiimediate ab- straction by which the contingent and relative element of knowl- edge is eliminated, and the necessary and absolute principle is disengaged. We shall simply state the method, and show its application by a single illustration. There are unquestionably /z£/^ 5orts of abstraction : i. '■^Com- parative abstraction, operating upon several real objects, and seizing their resemblances in order to form an abstract idea, which is collective and mediate ; collective, because different individuals concur in its formation ; mediate, because it re- quires several intermediate operations." This is the method of the physical sciences, which comprises comparison, abstrac- tion, and generalization. The result in this process is the at- tainment of a gene7'al truth. 2. ^^ Immediate abstraction, not comparative ; operating not upon several concretes, but upon a single one, eliminating and neglecting its individual and varia- ble part, and disengaging the absolute part, which it raises at once to its pure form." The parts to be eliminated in a con- crete cognition are, first, the quality of the object, and the cir- 1 88 CHRISTIANITY AND cumstances under which the absolute unfolds itself; and sec- ondly, the quality of the subject, which perceives but does not constitute it. The phenomena of the me and the not-me being eliminated, the absolute remains. This is the process of ra- tional psychology, and the result obtained is a universal and necessary truth. " Let us take, as an example, the principle of cause. To be able to say that the event I see must have a cause, it is not indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment is already complete in the first as in the last event ; it can not change in respect to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less num- ber of applications. The only difference that it is subject to in regard to us is that we apply it, whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its particular application. The question is not to eliminate the particularity of the phe- nomenon wherein it appears to us, whether it be the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for every event that begins to exist. Here it is not because I am the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf falls ; at the same moment I think, I be- lieve, I declare that this falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed ; at the same instant I believe, I pro- claim that this death must have a cause. Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances, and some- thing universal and necessary, to wit, both of them can not but have a cause. Now I am perfectly able to disengage the uni- versal from the particular in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in the thousandth ; for a thou- sandth is not nearer than the first to the infinite — to absolute GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 189 universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with necessity. Pay particular attention to this point ; if necessity is not in the first fact, it can not be in any j for necessity can not be formed little by little, and by successive increments. If, on the first murder I see, I do not exclaim that this murder had necessarily a cause, at the thousandth murder, although it shall be proved that all the others had causes, I shall have the right to think that this murder has, very probably, also a cause, but I shall never have the right to say that it necessarily Had a cause. But when universality and necessity are already in a single case, that case is sufficient to entitle me to deduce them from it,"^ and we may add, also, to affirm them of every other event that may transpire. The following schema will exhibit the generally accepted re- sults of this method of analysis applied to the phenomena of thought : (i. ) Universal and necessary p7'inciples^ or primitive judgments from whence is derived the cognitio7i of Absolute Being. 1. The pidiiciple of Substance; thus enounced — "every quality supposes 2^ subject or real being." 2. The principle of Causality ; " every thing that begins to be supposes 2. power adequate to its production, /. e., an effi- cient cause." 3. The principle of Unity ; " all differentiation and plurality supposes an incomposite unity ; all diversity, an ultimate and indivisible identity." 4. The prijiciple of the Unconditioned ; "the finite supposes the infinite, the dependent supposes the self-existent, the temporal supposes the eternal." (ii.) Uiiversal and necessary prificiples^ or primitive judgments, from which is derived the cognition of the Absolute Reason. I. The principle of Ideality ; thus enounced, "facts of order — definite proportion, symmetrical arrangement, numerical ^ Cousin, " True, Beautiful, and Good," pp. 57, 58. 190 CHRISTIANITY AND relation, geometrical form — having a commencement in time, present themselves to us as the expression of Ideas, and refer us to Mind as their analogon, and exponent, and source." 2. The principle of Cojisecution ; "the uniform succession and progressive evolution of new existences, according to fix- ed definite archetypes, suppose a unity of thought — a compre- hensive //^;2 embracing all existence." 3. The principle of Intentionality or Final Cause; "every means supposes an e?id contemplated, and a choice and adaptation of means to secure the end'' 4! TJie principle of Personality ; " intelligent purpose and voluntary choice imply a personal agent." ( iii. ) Universal and necessary principles, or primitive judgments, from whence is derived the cognition of the Absolute Good. 1. The principle of Moral Law ; thus enounced, "the ac- tion of a voluntary agent necessarily characterized as right or wrong, supposes an immutable and universal standard of right — an absolute moral Law." 2. The priiiciple of Moral Obligation; "the feeling of obli- gation to obey a law of duty supposes a Lawgiver by whose authority we are obliged." 3. The principle of Moral Desert ; "the feeling of personal accountability and of moral desert supposes 2i judge to whom we must give account, and who shall determine our award." 4. The p7'inciple of Retribution ; " retributive issues in this life, and the existence in all minds of an impersonal justice which demands that, in the final issue, every being shall re- ceive his just deserts, suppose a being of absolute justice who shall render to every man according to his works." A more profound and exhaustive analysis may perhaps re- solve all these primitive judgments into one universal principle or law, which Leibnitz has designated " The principle or law of sujfficicnt reason,'' and which is thus enounced — there must be an ultimate and sufficient reason why any thing exists, and GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 191 why it is as it is, rather than otherwise ; that is, if any thing begins to be, something else must be supposed as the adequate ground, and reason, and caiise of its existence ;" or again, to state the law in view of our present discussion, " if the finite tmiverse, with its existing order and arrangemeiit., had a beginning., there must be an ultimate and sufficient reason why it exists., and why it is as it is, rather than otherwise!'^ In view of one partic- ular class of phenomena, or special order of facts, this " princi- ple of sufficient reason " may be varied in the form of its state- ment, and denominated " the principle of substance," " the principle of causality," "the principle of intentionality," etc.; and, it may be, these are but specific judgments under the one fundamental and generic law of thought which constitutes the major premise of every Theistic syllogism. These fundamental principles,, primitive judgments, axioms, or necessary and determinate forms of thought, exist poten- tially or germinally in all human minds; they are spontane- ously developed in presence of the phenomena of the universe, material and mental ; they govern the original movement of the mind, even when not appearing in consciousness in their pure and abstract form; and they compel us to 2&}cvi\. a permanent being or reality behind all phenomena — 2, power adequate to the production of change, back of all events ; a personal Mtnd, as the explanation of all the facts of order, and uniform suc- cession, and regular evolution ; and a personal Lawgiver and Righteous Judge as the ultimate ground and reason of all the phenomena of the moral world ; in short, to affirm an Uncon- ditioned Cause of all finite and secondary causes ; a First Princi- ple of all principles ; an Ultimate Reason of all reasons ; an im- mutable Uncreated Justice, the liviftg light of conscience ; a King immortal, eternal, invisible, the only wise God, the ruler of the world and man. Our position, then, is, that the idea of God is revealed to man in the natural and spontaneous development of his intelli- gence, and that the existence of a Supreme Reality correspond- ing to, and represented by this idea, is rationally and logically 192 CIIR IS TIA XI TY A XD demonstrable, and therefore justly entitled to take rank as part of our legitimate, valid, and positive knowledge. And now from this position, which we regard as impregna- ble, we shall be prepared more deliberately and intelligibly to contemplate the various assaults which are openly or covertly made upon the doctrine that God is cognizable by human reason. GREEK PBILOSOPHT. ^ 193 CHAPTER VI. THE UNKNOWN GOD {continued). IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON ? " The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, but the confession oi despair." — Lightfoot. AT the outset of this inquiry we attempted a hasty group- ing of the various parties and schools which are arrayed against the doctrine that God is cognizable by human reason, and in general terms we sought to indicate the ground they occupy. Viewed from a philosophical stand-point, we found one party marshalled under the standard of Idealism \ another of Mate- rialism j and, again, another of Natural Realism. Regarded in their theological aspects, some are positive Atheists ; others, strange to say, are earnest Theists ; whilst others occupy a posi- tion of mere Indifferentism. Yet, notwithstanding the remark- able diversity, and even antagonism of their philosophical and theological opinions, they are all agreed in denying to reason any valid cognition of God. The survey of Natural Theism we have completed in the previous chapter will enable us still further to indicate the exact points against which their attacks are directed, and also to estimate the character and force of the weapons employed. With or without design, they are, each in their way, assailing one or other of the principles upon which we rest our demon- stration of the being of God. As we proceed, we shall find that Mill and the Constructive Idealists are really engaged in undermining '■^ th.Q pi^inciple of substattce f^ their doctrine is a virtual denial of all objective realities answering to our subjec- tive ideas of matter, mind, and God. The assaults of Comte 13 194 CHRISTIANITY AND and the Materialists of his school are mainly directed against ^'- the principle of causality ^^ and "■ the principle of intentionality •'^ they would deny to man all knowledge of causes, efficient and final. The attacks of Hamilton and his school are directed against " the principle of the unconditioned;''^ his philosophy of the conditioned is a plausible attempt to deprive man of all power to think the Infinite and Perfect^ to conceive the Uncon- ditioned and Ultimate Cause ; whilst the Dogmatic Theologians are borrowing, and recklessly brandishing, the weapons of all these antagonists, and, in addition to all this, are endeavoring to show the insufficiency of " the principle of unity " and the weakness and invalidity of " the moral pri?tciples,^^ which are re- garded by us as relating man to a Moral Personality, and as indicating to him the existence of a righteous God, the ruler of the world. It is necessary, therefore, that we should concentrate our attention yet more specifically on these separate lines of at- tack, and attempt a minuter examination of the positions as- sumed by each, and of the arguments by which they are seek- ing, directly or indirectly, to invalidate the fundamental princi- ples of Natural Theism. (i.) We commence with the Idealistic School, of which John Stu- art Mill must be regarded as the ablest living representative. The doctrine of this school is that all our knowledge is nec- essarily confined to mental phenomena; that is, '-^ to feelings or states of consciousness," and " the succession and co-existence, the likeness and unlikeness between these feelings or states of consciousness."^ All our general notions, all our abstract ideas, are generated out of these feelings'^ by " inseparable asso- ciatio?^" which registers their inter-relations of recurrence, co- existence, and resemblance. The results of this inseparable association constitute at once the sum total and the absolute limit of all possible cognition. ' J. S. Mill, " Logic," vol. i. p. 83 (English edition). ^ In the language of Mill, every thing of which we are conscious is called " feeling." " Feeling, in the proper sense of the term, is a genus of which Sensation, Emotion, and Thought are the subordinate species."—" Logic," bk. i. ch. iii. § 3. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 195 It is admitted by Mill that one apparent element in this to- tal result is the general conviction that our own existence is really distinct from the external world, and that the personal ego has an essential identity distinct from the fleeting phenomena of sensation. But this persuasion is treated by him as a mere illusion — a leap beyond the original datum for which we have no authority. Of a real substance or substratum called Mind, of a real substance or substratum called Matter, underlying the series of feelings — " the thread of consciousness " — we do know and can know nothing ; and in affirming the existence of such substrata we are making a supposition we can not possibly verify. The ultimate datum of speculative philosophy is not " I thifik,^^ but simply " Thoughts or feeli7igs are^ The belief in a permanent subject or substance, called matter, as the ground and plexus of physical phenomena, and of a permanent subject or substance, called mind, as the ground and plexus of mental phenomena, is not a primitive and original intuition of reason. It is simply through the action of the principle of as- sociation among the ultimate phenomena, called feelings, that this (erroneous) separation of the phenomena into two orders or aggregates — one called mind or self; the other matter, or not self — takes place ; and without this curdling or associating process no such notion or belief could have been generated. " The principle of substance," as an ultimate law of thought, is, therefore, to be regarded as a transcendental dream. But now that the notion of mijid or self, and of matter or not self do exist as common convictions of our race, what is philosophy to make of them ? After a great many qualifications and explanations, Mr. Mill has, in his " Logic," summed up his doctrine of Constructive Idealism in the following words : " As body is the mysterious something which excites the mind to feel, so mind is the mysterious something which feels and thinks."^ But what is this ''mysterious something?" Is it a reality, an entity, a subject ; or is it a shadow,. an illusion, a dream? In his " Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," where, ^ " Logic," bk. i. ch. iii. § 8. 196 CHRISTIANITY AND it may be presumed, we have his maturest opinions, Mr. Mill, in still more abstract and idealistic phraseology, attempts an answer. Here he defines matter as " a permanent possibility of se?isatio7i,^'^ ?ind mind as ^'' a permanent possibility of feelifig.^''^ And " the belief in these permanent possibilities," he assures us, " includes all that is essential or characteristic in the belief in substance."^ "If I am asked," says he, "whether I believe in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, I believe in matter : and so do all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this, I do not. But I affirm with con- fidence that this conception of matter includes the whole meaning attached to it by the common world, apart from philo- sophical, and sometimes from theological theories. The reli- ance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of pos- sibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no sensations are actually experienced."* " Sensations," however, let it be borne in mind, are but a subordinate species of the genus feel- ing.^ They are "states of consciousness" — phenomena of mind, not of matter ; and we are still within the impassable boundary of ideal phenomena ; we have yet no cognition of an external world. The sole cosmical conception, for us, is still a succession of sensations, or states of consciousness. This is the one phenomenon which we can not transcend in knowl- edge, do what we will j all else is hypothesis and illusion. The no7i-ego^ after all, then, may be but a mode in which the mind represents to itself the possible modifications of the ego. And now that matter, as a real existence, has disappeared under Mr. Mill's analysis, what shall be said of mind or self.? Is there any permanent subject or real entity underlying the phenomena of feeling ? In feeling, is there a personal self that feels, thinks, and wills ? It would seem not. Mind, as well as matter, resolves itself into a " series of feelings," varying and fugitive from moment to moment, in a sea of possibilities of * Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p. 243. ' Ibid., vol. i. p. 253. ^ Ibid., vol. i. p. 246. * Ibid., vol. i. pp. 243, 244, * '* Logic," bk. i. ch. iii. § 3. GREEK PUILOSOPHY. ' 197 feeling. " My mind," says Mill, " is but a series of feelings, or, as it has been called, a thread of consciousness, however supplemented by believed possibilities of consciousness, which are not, though they might be, realized."^ The ultimate fact of the phenomenal world, then, in the philosophy of Mill, is neither matter nor mind, but feelings or states of consciousness associated together by the relatiojis, amongst themselves, of recurrence, co-existence, and resem- blance. The existence of self, except as " a series of feel- ings ;" the existence of any thing other than self, except as a feigned unknown cause of sensation, is rigorously denied. Mr. Mill does not content himself with saying that we are ignorant of the nature of matter and mind, but he asserts we are igno- rant of the existence of matter and mind as real entities. The bearing of this doctrine of Idealism upon Theism and Theology will be instantly apparent to the reader. If I am nec- essarily ignorant of the existence of the external world, and of the personal ego, or real self, I must be equally ignorant of the existence of God. If one is a mere supposition, an illusion, so the other must be. Mr. Mill, however, is one of those courteous and affable writers who are always conscious, as it were, of the presence of their readers, and extremely careful not to shock their feelings or prejudices ; besides, he has too much con- scious self-respect to avow himself an atheist. As a specula- tive philosopher, he would rather regard Theism and Theology as " open questions," and he satisfies himself with saying, if you believe in the existence of God, or in Christianity, I do not in- terfere with you. " As a theory," he tells us that his doctrine " leaves the evidence of the existence of God exactly as it was before. Supposing me to believe that the Divine mind is sim- ply the series of the Divine thoughts and feelings prolonged through eternity, that would be, at any rate, believing God's ex- istence to be as real as my own [!]. And as for evidence, the argument of Paley's ' Natural Theology,' or, for that matter, of his ' Evidences of Christianity,' would stand exactly as it does. ^ " Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p. 254. ■198 CHRISTIANITY AND The design argument is drawn from the analogies of human ex- perience. From the relation which human works bear to hu- man thoughts and feelings, it infers a corresponding relation between works more or less similar, but superhuman, and su- perhuman thoughts and feelings. If it prove these, nobody but a metaphysician needs care whether or not it proves a mysterious substratum for them."^ The argument from design, it seems to us, however, would have no validity if there be no external world offering marks of design. If the external world is only a mode of feeling, a series of mental states, then our notion of the Divine Existence may be only " an association of feelings" — a mode of Self And if we have no positive knowledge of a real self as existing, and God's existence is no more " real than our own," then the Divine existence stands on a very dubious and uncertain foundation. It can have no very secure hold upon the human mind, and certainly has no claim to be regarded as a fundamental and necessary belief That it has a very precarious hold upon the mind of Mr. Mill, is evi- dent from the following passage in his article on "Later Specu- lations of A. Comtey"^ "We venture to think that a religion may exist without a belief in a God, and that a religion without a God may be, even to Christians, an instructive and profitable object of contemplation." And now let us close Mr. Mill's book, and, introverting our mental gaze, interrogate co?iscious?iess, the verdict of which, even Mr. Mill assures us, is admitted on all hands to be a decision without appeal.^ I. We have an ineradicable, and, as it would seem, an in- tuitive faith in the real existence of an external world distinct from our sensations, and also of a personal self, which we call " I," " myself," as distinct from " my sensations," and " my feelings." We find, also, that this is confessedly the common belief of mankind. There have been a few philosophers who ' " Examination of Sir \Vm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p. 259. ^ Westminster Review, July, 1835 (American edition), p. 3. ^ " Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p. 161. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 199 have affected to treat this belief as a " mere prejudice/' an " ilkision ;" but they have never been able, practically, so to regard and treat it. Their language, just as plainly as the lan- guage of the common people, betrays their instinctive faith in an outer world, and proves their utter inability to emancipate themselves from this "prejudice," if such it may please them to call it. In view of this acknowledged fact, we ask — Does the term ^^ permanent possibility of sensations " exhaust all that is contained in this conception of an external world .? This even- ing I remember that at noonday I beheld the sun, and experi- enced a sensation of warmth whilst exposing myself to his rays; and I expect that to-morrow, under the same conditions, I shall experience the same sensations. I now remember that last evening I extinguished my light and attempted to leave my study, but, coming in contact with the closed door, experienced a sense of resistance to my muscular effort, by a solid and ex- tended body exterior to myself ; and I expect that this evening, under the same circumstances, I shall experience the same sensations. Now, does a belief in " a permanent possibility of sensations " explain all these experiences ? does it account for that immediate knowledge of an external object which I had on looking at the sun, or that presentative knowledge of resist- ance and extension^ and of an extended, resisting substa?tce, I had when in contact with the door of my study ? Mr. Mill very confidently affirms that this belief includes all ; and this phrase expresses all the meaning attached to extended " matter " and resisting "substance" by the common world.^ We as confi- dently affirm that it does no such thing ; and as " the common world " must be supposed to understand the language of con- sciousness as well as the philosopher, we are perfectly willing to leave the decision of that question to the common conscious- ness of our race. If all men do not believe in a permanent reality — a substance which is external to themselves, a sub- stance which offers resistance to their muscular effort, and which produces in them the sensations of solidity, extension, ^ " Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," vol. i. p. 243. 200 ' CHRISTIANITY AND resistance, etc. — they believe nothing and know nothing at all about the matter. Still less does the phrase ^^ a permanent possibility of feelings" exhaust all our conception of a personal sel£ Recurring to the experiences of yesterday, I re7nember the feelings I experienced on beholding the sun, and also on pressing against the closed door, and I confidently expect the recurrence, under the same circumstances, of the same feelings. Does the belief in " a permanent possibility of feelings " explain the act of memory by which I recall the past event, and the act of prevision by which I anticipate the recurrence of the like experience in the future ? AVho or what is the " I " that remembers and the " I " that anticipates ? The " ego," the personal mind, is, according to Mill, a mere " series of feelings," or, more correctly, a flash of "/r^j-^;?/ feelings " on "a background of possibilities of pres- ent feelings."* If, then, there be no permanent substance or reality which is the subject of the present feeling, which re- ceives and retains the impress of the past feeling, and which anticipates the recurrence of like feelings in the future, how can the past be recalled, how distinguished from the present ? aiid how-, without a knowledge of the past as distinguished from the present, can the future be forecast ? Mr. Mill feels the press- ure of this difficulty, and frankly acknowledges it. He admits that, on the hypothesis that mind is simply " a series of feel- ings," the phenomena of memory and expectation are "inex- plicable " and "incomprehensible."^ He is, therefore, under the necessity of completing his definition of mind by adding that it is a series of feelings which " is aware of itself as a series f^ and, still further, of supplementing this definition by the conjec- ture that " something which has ceased to exists or is not yet in ex- istence^ can stilly i7i a inanner^ he present. ''^^ Now he who can un- derstand how a series of feelings can flow on in time, and from moment to moment drop out of the present into non-existence, and yet be present and conscious of itself as a series^ may be ac- * " Exam, of Hamilton," vol. i. p. 260. "^ Ibid., p. 262. " Ibid. GREEK rillLO SOPHY. 20l corded the honor of understanding Mr. Mill's definition of mind or self, and may be permitted to rank himself as a dis- tinguished disciple of the Idealist school ; for ourselves, we ac- knowledge we are destitute of the capacity to do the one, and of all ambition to be the other. And he who can conceive how the J>asf feeling of yesterday and \he possible feeling of to-mor- row can be in any manner present to-day ; or, in other words, how any thing which has ceased to exist, or which never had an existence, can 7iow exist, may be permitted- to believe that a thing can be and not be. at the same moment, that a part is greater than the whole, and that two and two make five ; but we are not ashamed to confess our inability to believe a contra- diction. To our understanding, "possibilities of feeling " are not actualities. They may or may not be realized, and until realized in consciousness, they have na real being. If there be no other background of mental phenomena save mere " possi- bilities of feeling," then present feelings are the only existences, the only reality, and a loss of immediate consciousness, as in narcosis and coma, is the loss of all personality, all self-hood, and of all real being. 2, What, then, is the verdict of consciousness as to the exist- ence of a permanent substance, an abiding existence which is the subject of all the varying phenomena ? Of what are we really conscious when we say " I think," " I feel," " I will ?" Are we simply conscious of thought, feeling, and volition, or of a self, a person, which thinks, feels, and wills? The man who honestly and unreser\^edly accepts the testimony of conscious- ness in all its integrity must answer at once, we have an imme- diate consciottsness, not merely of the phenomena of mind, but of a persofial self as passively or actively related to the phenomena. "We are conscious not merely of the act of volition, but of a self, a power, producing the volition. We are conscious not merely of feeling, but of a being w^ho is the subject of the feeling. We are conscious not simply of thought, but of a real entity that thinks. " It is clearly a flat contradiction to maintain that I am not immediately conscious of myself, but only of my sensa- 202 CHRISTIANITY AND tions or volitions. Who, then, is that / that is conscious, and how can I be conscious of such states as mi?ie f ^ The testimony of consciousness, then, is indubitable that we have a direct, immediate cognition of self— I know myself as a distinctly existing being. This permanent self, to which I refer the earlier and later stages of consciousness, the past as well as the present feeling, and which I know abides the same under all phenomenal changes, constitutes my personal identity. It is this abiding self which unites tlie past and the present, and, from the present stretches onward to the future. We know self immediately, as existing, as in active operation, and as hav- ing permanence — or, in other words, as a " substance. ^^ This one immediately presented substance, myself, may be regarded as furnishing a positive basis for that other notion of substance, which is representatively thought, as the subject of all sensible qualities. 3. We may now inquire what is the testimony of conscious- ness as to the existence of the extra-mental world ? Are we conscious of perceiving external objects immediately and in themselves, or only mediately through some vicarious image or representative idea to which we fictitiously ascribe an objective reality? The answer of common sense is that we are immediately conscious, in perception, of an ego and a non-ego known together, and known in contrast to each other ; we are conscious of a perceiving subject, and of an external reality, as the object per- ceived." To state this doctrine of natural realism still more ex- plicitly we add, that we are conscious of the immediate per- ception of certain essential attributes of matter objectively ex- isting. Of these primary qualities, which are immediately per- ceived as real and objectively existing, we mention extension in space and resistance to muscular effort, with which is indissolu- bly associated the idea of externality. It is true that extension and resistance are only qualities, but it is equally true that they ' Mansel, " Prolegomena Logica," p. 122, and note E, p. 281. ■^ Hamilton, "Lectures," vol. 1. p. 288. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 203 are qualities of something, and of something which is exter- nal to ourselves. Let any one attempt to conceive of extension without something which is extended, or of resistance apart from something which offers resistance, and he will be convinced that we can never know qualities without knowing substance, just as we can not know substance without knowing qualities. This, indeed, is admitted by Mr. Mill' And if this be admitted, it must certainly be absurd to speak of substance as something " unknown." Substance is known just as much as quality is known, no less and no more. AVe remark, in conclusion, that if the testimony of conscious- ness is not accepted in all its integrity, we are necessarily in- volved in the Nihihsm of Hume and Fichte ; the phenomena of mind and m.atter are, on analysis, resolved into an absolute nothingness — "a play of phantasms in a void."* (ii.) We turn, secondly, to the Materialistic School z.^ repre- sented by Aug. Comte. The doctrine of this school is that all knowledge is limited to material phenomena — that is, to appearances perceptible to sense. We do not know the essence of any object, nor the real mode of procedure of any event, but simply its relations to other events, as similar or dissimilar, co-existent or successive. These relations are constant; under the same conditions, they are always the same. The constant resemblances which link phe- nomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them, as antecedent and consequent, are termed laws. The laws of phenomena are ail we know respecting them. Their essential nature and their ultimate causes, efficient ox final, are unknown and inscrutable to us.^ It is not our intention to review the system of philosophy propounded by Aug. Comte ; we are now chiefly concerned with his denial of all causation. ^ " Logic," bk. i. ch. iii. § 6. ^ Masson, " Recent British Philos.," p. 62. ^ See art. " Positive Philos. of A. Comte," Westminster Review, April, 1865, p. 162, Am. ed. 204 CHRISTIANITY AND I. As to Efficient Causes. — Had Comte contented himself with the assertion that causes lie beyond the field of sensible ob- serv'ation, and that inductive science can not carry us beyond the relations of co-existence and succession among phenomena, he would have stated an important truth, but certainly not a new truth. It had already been announced by distinguished mental philosophers, as, for example, M. de Biran and Victor Cousin.^ The senses give us only the succession of one phe- nomenon to another. I hold a piece of wax to the fire and it melts. Here my senses inform me of two successive phenomena — the proximity of fire and the melting of wax. It is now agreed among all schools of philosophy that this is all the knowledge the senses can possibly supply. The observation of a great number of like cases assures us that this relation is uniform. The highest scientific generalization does not carry us one step beyond this fact. Induction, therefore, gives us no access to causes beyond phenomena. Still, this does not justify Comte in the assertion that causes are to us absolutely unknown. The question would still arise whether we have not some faculty of knowledge, distinct from sensation, which is adequate to fur- nish a valid cognition of cause. It does not by any means fol- low that, because the idea of causation is not given as a " phys- ical quaesitum " at the end of a process of scientific generaliza- tion, it should not be a " metaphysical datum " posited at the very beginning of scientific inquiry, as the indispensable con- dition of our being able to cognize phenomena at all, and as the law under which all thought, and all conception of the system of nature, is alone possible. Now we afiirm that the human mind has just as direct, im- mediate, and positive knowledge of cause as it has of effect. The idea of cause, the intuition oipowe7% is given in the imme- diate consciousness of mind as determining its own operations. Our first, and, in fact, our only presentation of power or cause, is that of self as williiig. In every act of volition I am fully ^ " It is now universally admitted that we have no perception of the causal nexus in the material world." — Hamilton, *' Discussions," p. 522. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 205 conscious that it is in my power to form a resolution or to re- frain from it, to determine on this course of action or that ; and this constitutes the immediate presentative knowledge of pow- er.^ The will is a power, a power in action, a productive power, and, consequently, a cause. This doctrine is stated with re- markable clearness and accuracy by Cousin : " If we seek the notion of cause in the action of one ball upon another, as was previously done by Hume, or in the action of the hand upon the ball, or the primary muscles upon the extremities, or even in the action of the will upon the muscles, as was done by M. Maine de Biran, we shall find it in none of these cases, not even in the last ; for it is possible there should be a paralysis of the muscles which deprives the will of power over them, makes it unproductive, incapable of being a cause, and, consequently, of suggesting the notion of one. But what no paralysis can prevent is the action of the will upon itself, the production of a resolution ; that is to say, the act of causation entirely mental, the primitive type of all causality, of which all external move- ments .... are only symbols more or less imperfect. The first cause for us, is, therefore, the will, of which the first effect is volition. This is at once the highest and the purest source of the notion of cause, which thus becomes identical, with that of personality. And it is the taking possession, so to speak, of the cause, as revealed in will and personality, which is the condition for us of the ulterior or simultaneous conception of external, impersonal causes."^ Thus much for the origin of the idea of cause. We have the same direct intuitive knowledge of cause that we have of effect ; but we have not yet rendered a full and adequate ac- ^ " It is our immediate consciousness of effort, when we exert force to put mat- ter in motion, or to oppose and neutralize force, which gives us this internal conviction of power and catisation, so far as it refers to the material world, and compels us to believe that whenever we see material objects put in mo- tion from a state of rest, or deflected from their rectilinear paths and changed in their velocities if already in motion, it is in consequence of such an effort somehow exerted." — Herschel's " Outlines of Astronomy," p. 234 ; see Han- sel's " Prolegomena," p. 133. ^ " Philosophical Fragments," Preface to first edition. 2o6 CHRISTIANITY AND count of the principle of causality. We have simply attained the notion of our personal causality, and we can not arbitrarily substitute our personal causality for all the causes of the uni- verse, and erect our own experience as a law of the entire uni- verse. We have, however, already seen (Chap. V.) that the belief in exterior causation is necessary and universal. When a change takes place, when a new phenomenon presents itself to our senses, we can not avoid the conviction that it must have a cause. We can not even express in language the relations of phenomena in time and space, without speaking of causes. And there is not a rational being on the face of the globe — a child, a savage, or a philosopher — who does not instinctively and spontaneously affirm that every movement, every change, every new existence, must have a cause. Now what account can philosophy render of this universal belief? One answer, and only one, is possible. The reason of man (that power of which Comte takes no account) is in fixed and changeless relation to the principle of causation, just as sense is in fixed and cTiange- less relation to exterior phenomena, so that we can not know the external world, can not think or speak of phenomenal ex- istence, except as effects. In the expressive and forcible lan- guage of Jas. Martineau : " By an irresistible law of thought all phenomena present the^nselves to us as the expression of power ^ and refer us to a causal ground whence they issue. This dynamic source we neither see, nor hear, nor feel ; it is given in thought^ supplied by the spontaneous activity of mind as the correlative prefix to the phenomena observed.'" Unless, then, we are pre- pared to deny the validity of all our rational intuitions, we can not avoid accepting "this subjective postulate as a valid law for objective nature." If the intuitions of our reason are pro- nounced deceptive and mendacious, so also must the intuitions of the senses be pronounced illusory and false. Our whole in- tellectual constitution is built up on false and erroneous prin- ciples, and all knowledge of whatever kind must perish by "the contagion of uncertainty." ^ " Essays," p. 47. GREEK PHILOSOPHT. 207 Comte, however, is determined to treat the idea of causation as an illusion, whether under its psychological form, as will, or under its scientific form, as force. He feels that Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes ;' and he is more anxious that theology should perish than that truth should prevail. The human will must, therefore, be robbed of all sem- blance of freedom, lest it should suggest the idea of a Supreme Will governing nature ; and human action, like all other phe- nomena, must be reduced to uniform and necessary law. All feelings, ideas, and principles guaranteed to us by conscious- ness are to be cast out of the account. Psychology, resting on self- observation, is pronounced a delusion. The immediate consciousness of freedom is a dream. Such a procedure, to say the least of it, is highly unphilosophical ; to say the truth about it, it is obviously dishonest. Every fact of human na- ture, just as much as every fact of physical nature, must be ac- cepted in all its integrity, or all must be alike rejected. The phenomena of mind can no more be disregarded than the phe- nomena of matter. Rational intuitions, necessary and univer- sal beliefs, can no more be ignored than the uniform facts of sense - perception, without rendering a system of knowledge necessarily incomplete, and a system of truth utterly impossi- ble. Every one truth is connected with every other truth in the universe. And yet Comte demands that a large class of facts, the most immediate and direct of all our cognitions, shall be rejected because they are not in harmony with the funda- mental assumption of the positive philosophy that all knowl- edge is confined to phenomena perceptible to sense. Now it were just as easy to cast the Alps into the Mediterranean as to ob- literate from the human intelligence the primary cognitions of immediate consciousness, or to relegate the human reason from the necessary laws of thought. Comte himself can not eman- cipate his own mind from a belief in the validity of the testi- ^ " The inevitable tendency of our intelligence is towards a philosophy rad- ically theological, so often as we seek to penetrate, on whatever pretext, into the intimate nature of phenomena" (vol. iv. p. 664). 2o8 CHRISTIANITY AND mony of consciousness. How can he know himself as distinct from nature, as a Uving person, as the same being he was ten years ago, or even yesterday, except by an appeal to conscious- ness ? Despite his earnestly-avowed opinions as to the inutility and fallaciousness of all psychological inquiries, he is com- pelled to admit that " the phenomena of life " are " knowji by imtnediate consciousness ^^ Now the knowledge of our personal freedom rests on precisely the same grounds as the knowledge of our personal existence. The same " immediate conscious- ness " which attests that I exist, attests also, with equal dis- tinctness and directness, that I am self-determined and free. In common with most atheistical writers, Comte is involved in the fatal contradiction of at one time assuming, and at an- other of denying, the freedom of the will, to serve the exigencies of his theory. To prove that the order of the universe can not be the product of a Supreme Intelligence, he assumes that the products of mind must be characterized by freedom and variety — the phenomena of mind must not be subject to uniform and necessary laws ; and inasmuch as the phenomena presented by external nature are subject to uniform and changeless laws, they can not be the product of mind. " Look at the whole frame of things," says he ; " how can it be the product of mind — of a supernatural Will ? Is it not subject to regular laws, and do we not actually obtain prevision of its phenomena ? If it were the product of mind, its order would be variable and free." Here, then, it is admitted that freedom is an essential characteristic of mind. And this admission is no doubt a thought- less, unconscious betrayal of the innate belief of all minds in the freedom of the will. But when Comte comes to deal with this freedom as an objective question of philosophy, when he directs his attention to the only will of which we have a direct and immediate knowledge, he denies freedom and variety, and asserts in the most arbitrary manner that the movements of the mind, like all the phenomena of nature, must be subject to uniform, changeless, and necessary laws. And if we have not ' " Px)sitive Philos,,"vol. ii. p. 648. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 209 yet been able to reduce the movements of mind, like the move- ments of the planets, to statistics, and have not already obtain- ed accurate prevision of its successions or sequences as we have of physical phenomena, it is simply the consequence of our inattention to, or ignorance of, all the facts. We answer, there are no facts so directly and intuitively known as the facts of consciousness ; and, therefore, an argument based upon our supposed ignorance of these facts is not likely to have much weight against our immediate consciousness of personal free- dom. There is not any thing we know so immediately, so cer- tainly, so positively, as this fact — we are free. The word " force," representing as it does a subtile mental conception, and not a phenomenon of sense, must also be ban- ished from the domains of Positive Science as an intruder, lest its presence should lend any countenance to the idea of causa- tion. " Forces in mechanics are only movements^ produced, or tending to be produced." In order to " cancel altogether the old metaphysical notion of force," another form of expression is demanded. It is claimed that all we do know or can possi- bly know is the successions of phenomena in time. What, then, is the term which henceforth, in our dynamics, shall take the place of "force ?" Is it "Time-succession ?" Then let any one attempt to express the various forms and intensities of movement and change presented to the senses (as e.g.., the phenomena of heat, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, muscu- lar and nervous action, etc.) in terms of Time-succession, and he will at once become conscious of the utter hopelessness of physics, without the hyperphysical idea of force, to render itself intelligible.' What account can be rendered of planetary motion if the terms "centrifugal force" and "centripetal force" are abandoned ? " From the two great conditions of every Newtonian solution, viz., projectile impulse and centripetal ten- dency, eject the idea oi force., and what remains ? The entire conception is simply made up of this, and has not the faintest ^ See Grote's " Essay on Correlation of Physical Forces," pp. 18-20 ; and Martineau's " Essays," p. 135. 14 2IO CHRISTIANITY AND existence without it. It is useless to give it notice to quit, and pretend that it is gone when you have only put a new name upon the door. AVe must not call it * attraction,' lest there should seem to be a power within j we are to speak of it only as 'gravitation,' because that is only 'weight,' which is noth- ing but a 'fact,' as if it were not a fact that holds a power, a true dynamic affair, which no imagination can chop into inco- herent successions.^ Nor is the evasion more successful when we try the phrase, 'tendency of bodies to mutual approach.' The approach itself may be called a phenomenon ; but the 'tendency' is no phenomenon, and can not be attributed by us to the bodies without regarding them as the residence of force. And what are we to say of the projectile impulse in the case of the planets ? Is that also a phenomenon ? Who wit- nessed and reported it? Is it not evident that the whole scheme of physical astronomy is a resolution of observed facts into dynamic equivalents, and that the hypothesis posits for its calculations not phenomena, but proper forces ? Its logic is this : If^rs. impulse of certain intensity were given, and ^such and such mutual attractions were constantly present, then the sort of motions which we observe in the bodies of our system would follow. So, however, they also would if willed by an Omnipotent Intelligence."^ It is thus clearly evident that human science is unable to offer any explanation of the exist- ing order of the universe except in terms expressive of Power or Force ; that, in fact, all explanations are utterly unintel- ligible without the idea of causation. The language of uni- versal rational intuition is, " all phenomena are the expression of power ;" the language of science is, " every law implies a force." It is furthermore worthy of being noted that, in the modern doctrine of the Correlation and Conservation of Forces, science is inevitably approaching the idea that all kinds of force are *' "Gravity is a real power of whose agency we have daily experience.'' — Herschel, *' Outlines of Astronomy," p. 236. * Martineau's " Essays," p. 56. OTtEEK PHILOSOPHY. 211 but forms or manifestations of some 07ie central force issuing from some 07te fountain-head of power. Dr. Carpenter, perhaps the greatest living physiologist, teaches that " the form of force which may he taken as the type of all the rest " is the conscious- ness of living effort in volition.' All force, then, is of one type, and that type is mind ; in its last analysis external causation may be resolved into Divine energy. Sir John Herschel does not hesitate to say that " it is reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or will exerted somewhere."^ The humble Christian may, therefore, feel himself amply justified in still believing that "power belongs to God ;" that it is through the Divine energy " all things are, and are upheld ;" and that " in God we live, .and move, and have our being;" he is the Great First Cause, the Fountain-head of all power. 2. As to Final Causes — that is, reas'ons, purposes, or ends for which things exist — these, we are told by Comte, are all "disproved" by Positive Science, which rigidly limits us to " the history of what is^^ and forbids all inquiry into reasons why it is. The question whether there be any intelligent pur- pose in the order and arrangement of the universe, is not a subject of scientific inquiry at all ; and whenever it has been permitted to obtrude itself, it has thrown a false light over the facts, and led the inquirer astray. The discoveries of modern astronomy are specially in- stanced by Comte as completely overthrowing the notion of any conscious design or intelligent purpose in the universe. The order and stability of the solar system are found to be the necessary consequences of gravitation, and are adequately ex- plained without any reference to purposes or ends to be ful- filled in the disposition and arrangement of the heavenly bodies. "With persons unused to the study of the celestial bodies, though very likely informed on other parts of natural philosophy, astronomy has still the reputation of being a sci- ence eminently religious, as if the famous words, * The heavens ^ " Human Physiology," p. 542. ^ '* Outlines of Astronomy," p. 234. 212 CHRISTIANITY AND declare the glory of God,' had lost none of their truth. . . . No science has given more terrible shocks to the doctrine oi final causes than astronomy/ The simple knowledge of the move- ment of the earth must have destroyed the original and real foundation of this doctrine — the idea of the universe subordi- nated to the earth, and consequently to man. Besides, the ac- curate exploration of the solar system could not fail to dispel that blind and unlimited admiration which the general order of nature inspires, by showing in the most sensible manner, and in a great number of different respects, that the orbs were cer- tainly not disposed in the most advantageous manner, and that science permits us easily to conceive a better arrangement, by the development of true celestial mechanism, since Newton. All the theological philosophy, even the most perfect, has been henceforth deprived of its principal intellectual function, the most regular order being thus consigned as necessarily estab- lished and maintained in our world, and £ven in the whole universe, by the simple mutual gravity of its several parts ^"^ The task of " conceiving a better arrangement " of tl^e celes- tial orbs, and improving the system of the universe generally, we shall leave to those who imagine themselves possessed of that omniscience which comprehends all the facts and relations of the actual universe, and foreknows all the details and rela- tions of all possible universes so accurately as to be able to ^ In a foot-note Comte adds : "Nowadays, to minds familiarized betimes with the true astronomical philosophy, the heavens declare no other glory than that of Hipparchus, Kepler, Newton, and all those who have contrib- uted to the ascertainment of their laws." It seems remarkable that the great men who ascertained these laws did not see that the saying of the Psalmist was emptied of all meaning by their discoveries. No persons seem to have been more willing than these very men named to ascribe all the glory to Him who established these laws. Kepler says : " The astrono- mer, to whom God has given to see more clearly with his inward eye, from what he has discovered, both can and will glorify God ;" and Newton says : " This beautiful system of sun, planets, comets could have its origin in no other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful Being. We admire him on account of his perfections, we venerate and worship him on account of his government." — Whewell's "Astronomy and Physics," pp. 197, 198. * " Positive Philosophy," vol. ii. pp. 36-38 ; Tulloch, *' Theism," p. 115. GREEK PJIILOSOPHY. 213 pronounce upon their relative " advantages." The arrogance of these critics is certainly in startling and ludicrous contrast with the affected modesty which, on other occasions, restrains them from " imputing any intentions to nature." It is quite enough for our purpose to know that the tracing of evidences of design in those parts of nature accessible to our observation is an essentially different thing frorn the construction of a scheme of optimisjn on d priori grounds which shall embrace a universe the larger portion of which is virtually beyond the field of observation. We are conscious of possessing some ra- tional data and some mental equipment for the former task, but for the latter we feel utterly incompetent.^ The only plausible argument in the above quotation from Comte is, that the whole phenomena of the solar system are adequately explained by the law of gravitation, without the in- tervention of any intelligent purpose. Let it be borne in mind that it is a fundamental principle of the Positive philosophy that all human knowlecj^e is necessarily confined to phenomena perceptible to sense, and that the last and highest achievement of human science is to observe and record " the invariable relations of resemblance and succession among phenomena." We can not possibly know any thing of even the existence of "causes" or "forces" lying back of phenomena, nor of "rea- sons" or "purposes" determining the relations of phenomena. The " law of gravitation " must, therefore, be simply the state- ment of a fact, the expression of an observed order of phenom- ena. But the simple statement of a fact is no explanation of the fact. The formal expression of an observed order of suc- cession among phenomena is no explanation of that order. For what do we mean by an explanation ? Is it not a " making plain" to the understanding? It is, in short, a complete an- swer to the questions how is it so ? and why is it so ? Now, if Comte denies to himself and to us all knowledge of efficient and final causation, if we are in utter ignorance of " forces " operating in nature, and of "reasons" for which things exist in ^ Chalmers's " Institutes of Theology," vol. i. pp. 117, 118. 214 CHRISTIANITY AND nature, he can not answer either question, and consequently nothing is explained. Practically, however, Co-mte regards gravitation as a force. The order of the solar system has been established and is still maintained by the mutual gravity of its several parts. We shall not stop here to note the inconsistency of his denying to us the knowledge of, even the existence of, force, and yet at the same time assuming to treat gravitation as a force really ade- quate to the explanation of the how and why of the phenomena of the universe, without any reference to a supernatural will or an intelligent mind. The question with which we are imme- diately concerned is whether gravitation alone is adequate to the explanation of the phenomena of the heavens ? A review in extenso of Comte's answer to this question would lead us into all the inextricable mazes of the nebular hypothesis, and in- volve us in a more extended discussion than our space permits and our limited scientific knowledge justifies. For the masses of the people the whole question of CQgmical development re- solves itself into " a balancing of authorities ;" they are not in a position to verify the reasonings for and against this theory by actual observation of astral phenomena, and the application of mathematical calculus ; they are, therefore, guided by bal- ancing in their own minds the statements of the distinguished astronomers who, by the united sufirages of the scientific world, are regarded as " authorities." For us, at present, it is enough that the nebular hypothesis is rejected by sorne of the greatest- astronomers that have lived. We need only mention the names of Sir William Herschel, Sir John Herschel, Prof Nichol, Earl Rosse, Sir David Brewster, and Prof Whewell. But if we grant that the nebular hypothesis is entitled to take rank as an established theory of the development of the solar system, it by no means proves that the solar system was formed without the intervention of intelligence and design. On this point we shall content ourselves with quoting the words of one whose encyclopaedian knowledge was confessedly equal to that of Comte, and who in candor and accuracy was certainly OBEEK PHILOSOPHY. 215 his superior. Prof. Whewell, in his " Astronomy and Physics," says : " This hypothesis by no means proves that the solar sys- tem was formed without the intervention of intelligence and design. It only transfers our view of the skill exercised and the means employed to another part of the work ; for how came the sun and its atmosphere to have such materials, such motions, such a constitution, and these consequences followed from their primordial condition ? How came the parent vapor thus to be capable of coherence, separation, contraction, solidi- fication ? How came the laws of its motion, attraction, repul- sion, condensation, to be so fixed as to lead to a beautiful and harmonious system in the end ? How came it to be neither too fluid nor too tenacious, to contract neither too quickly nor too slowly for the successive formation of the several planetary bodies ? How came that substance, which at one time was a luminous vapor, to be at a subsequent period solids and fluids of many various kinds ? What but design and intelligence pre- pared and tempered this previously-existing element, so that it should, by its natural changes, produce such an orderly sys- tem ?"^ " The laws of motion alone will not produce the regu- larity which we admire in the motion of the heavenly bodies. There must be an original adjustment of the system on which these laws are to act ; a selection of the arbitrary quantities which they are to involve ; a primitive cause which shall dis- pose the elements in due relation to each other, in order that regular recurrence may accompany constant change, and that perpetual motion may be combined with perpetual stability."^ The harmony of the solar system in all its phenomena does not depend upon the operation of any one law, but from the special adjustment of several laws. There are certain agents operating throughout the entire system which have different properties, and which require special adjustment to each other, in order to their beneficial operation, ist. There is Gravita- tion^ prevailing apparently through all space. But it does not ^ "Astronomy and Physics," p. 109. '^ Chalmers's " Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 119. 2i6 CHRISTIANITY AND prevail alone. It is a force whose function is to balance other forces of which we know little, except that these, again, are needed to balance the force of gravitation. Each force, if left to itself, would be the destruction of the universe. Were it not for the force of gravitation, the centrifugal forces wdiich impel the planets would fling them off into space. Were it not for these centrifugal forces, the force of gravitation would dash them against the sun. The ultimate fact of astronomical sci- ence, therefore, is not the law of gravitation, but the adjustffteht between this law and other laws, so as to produce and main- tain the existing order. ^ 2d. There is Light, flowing from num- berless luminaries ; and Heat, radiating everywhere from the warmer to the colder regions ; and there are a number of ad- justments needed in order to the beneficial operation of these agents. Suppose we grant that by merely mechanical causes the sun became the centre of our system, how did it become also the source of its vivifying influe?tces? "How was the fire deposited on this hearth ? How was the candle placed on this candlestick?" 3d. There is an all -pervading Ether, through which light is transmitted, which offers resistance to the move- ment of the planetary and cometary bodies, and tends to a dis- sipation of mechanical energy, and which needs to be counter- balanced by well-adjusted arrangements to secure the stability of the solar system. All this balancing of opposite properties and forces carries our minds upward towards Him who holds the balances in his hands, and to a Supreme Intelligence on whose adjustments and collocations the harmony and stability of the universe depends.^ The recognition of all teleology of organs in vegetable and animal physiology is also persistently repudiated by this school. When Cuvier speaks of the combination of organs in such order as to adapt the animal to the part which it has to play in nature, Geoffroy Saint Hilaire replies, " I know nothing of ani- mals which have to play a part in nature." " I have read, con- ' Duke of Argyll, " Reign of Law," pp. 91, 92. ^ M'Cosh, " Typical Forms and Special Ends," ch. xiii. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 217 cerning fishes, that, because they live in a medium which re- sists more than air, their motive forces are calculated so as to give them the power of progression under these circumstances. By this mode of reasoning, you would say of a man who makes use of crutches, that he was originally destined to the misfor- tune of having a leg paralyzed or amputated."^ With a m.od- esty which savors of affectation, he says, " I ascribe no inten- tions to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers of my reason. I observe facts merely, and go no farther. I only pretend to the character of the historian of what is J'' " I can not make Nature an intelligent being who does nothing in vain, who acts by the shortest mode, who does all for the best.'"^ All the supposed consorting of means to ends which has hitherto been regarded as evidencing Intelligence is simply the result of "the elective affinities of organic elements " and " the differentiation of or- gans" consequent mainly upon exterior conditions. ^^Func- tions are a result^ not an end. The animal undergoes the kind of life that his organs impose, and submits to the imperfections of his organization. The naturalist studies the play of his ap- paratus, and if he has the right of admiring most of its parts, he has likewise that of showing the imperfection of other parts, and the practical uselessness of those which fulfill no func- tions.""'' And it is further claimed that there are a great many structures which are clearly useless ; that is, they fulfill no pur- pose at all. Thus there are monkeys, which have no thumbs for use, but only rudimental thumb -bones hid beneath the skin ; the wingless bird of New Zealand (Apteryx) has wing- bones similarly developed, which serve no purpose ; young whalebone whales are born with teeth that never cut the gums, and are afterwards absorbed; and some sheep have horns turned about their ears which fulfill no end. And inasmuch as there are some organisms in nature which serve no purpose of ^ Whewel], " History of Inductive Sciences," vol. ii. p. 486. "^ Id., ib., vol. ii. p. 490, ^ Martin's " Organic Unity in Animals and Vegetables," in M. Q. Review, January, 1863. 2i8 CHBISTIANITT AND Utility, it is argued there is no design in nature ; things are used because there are antecedent conditions favorable for use^ but that use is not the end for which the organ exists. The true naturalist will never say, " Birds have wings given them in order to fly;" he will rather say, "Birds fly because they have wings." The doctrine of final causes must, therefore, be abandoned. It is hardly worth while to reply to the lame argument of Geoffroy, which needs a " crutch " for its support. The very illustration, undignified and irrelevant as it is, tells altogether against its author. For, first, the crutch is certainly a con- trivance designed for locomotion ; secondly, the length and strength and lightness of the crutch are all matters of calcula- tion and adjustment ; and, thirdly, all the adaptations of the crutch are well considered, in order to enable the lame man to walk ; the function of the crutch is the final cause of its drea- tion. This crutch is clearly out of place in Geoffiroy's argu- ment, and utterly breaks down. It is in its place in the teleo- logical argument, and stands well, though it may not behave as well as the living limb. The understanding of a child can per- ceive that the design-argument does not assert that men were intended to have amputated limbs, but that crutches are de- signed for those whose limbs are paralyzed or amputated. The existence of useless members, of rudimentary and abor- tive limbs, does seem, at first sight, to be unfavorable to the idea of supremacy of purpose and all -pervading design. It should be remarked, however, that this is an argument based upon our ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. It does not by any means follow that because we have discovered no reasons for their existence, therefore there are no reasons. Science, in enlarging its conquests of nature, is perpetually dis- covering the usefulness of arrangements of which our fathers were ignorant, and the reasons of things which to their minds were concealed ; and it ill becomes the men who so far " mis- trust their own feeble powers " as to be afraid of ascribing any intention to God or nature, to dogmatically aflirm there is no purpose in the existence of any thing. And then we may ask, GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 219 what right have these men to set up the idea of " utility " as the only standard to which the Creator must conform ? How came they to know that God is a mere " utilitarian ;" or, if they do not believe in God, that nature is a miserable " Benthamite ?" Why may not the idea of beauty, of symmetry, of order, be a standard for the universe, as much as the idea of utility, or mere subordination to some practical end ? May not conformity to one grand and comprehensive plan, sweeping over all nature, be perfectly compatible with the adaptation of individual exist- ences to the fulfillment of special ends? In civil architecture we have conformity to a general plan ; we have embellishment and ornament, and we have adaptation to a special purpose, all combined j why may not these all be combined in the archi- tecture of the universe ? The presence of any one of these is sufficient to prove design, for mere ornament or beauty is itself a purpose, an object, and an end. The concurrence of all these is an overwhelming evidence- of design. Wherever found, they are universally recognized as the product of intelli- gence ; they address themselves at once to the intelligence of man, and they place him in immediate relation to and in deep- est s}Tnpathy with the Intelligence which gave them birth. He that formed the eye of man to see, and the heart of man to admire beauty, shall He not delight in it ? He that gave the hand of man its cunning to create beauty, shall He not himself work for it ? And if man can and does combine both " orna- ment" and "use" in one and the same implement or machine, why should not the Creator of the world do the same ? "When the savage carves the handle of his war-club, the immediate purpose of his carving is to give his own hand a firmer hold. But any shapeless scratches would be enough for this. When he carves it in an elaborate pattern, he does so for the love of ornament, and to satisfy the sense of beauty." And so "the harmonies, on which ail beauty depends, are so connected in nature that use and ornament may often both arise out of the same conditions."^ ^ Duke of Argyll, "Reign of Law," p. 203. 220 CHRISTIANITY AND The " true naturalist," therefore, recognizes two great prin- ciples pervading the universe — a principle of order — a unity of plan, and a principle of special adaptation^ by which each object, though constructed upon a general plan, is at the same time accommodated to the place it has to occupy and the pur- pose it has to serve. In other words, there is homology of structure and analogy of function^ conformity to archetypal forms and Teleology of organs, in wonderful combination. Now, in the Materialistic school, it has been the prevalent practice to set up the unity of plan in animal structures, in opposition to the principle of Final Causes : Morphology has been opposed to Teleology. But in nature there is no such opposition ; on the contrary, there is a beautiful co-ordination. The same bones, in different animals, are made subservient to the widest- possible diversity of functions. The same limbs are converted into fins, paddles, wings, legs, and arms. "No comparative anatomist has the slightest hesitation in admitting that the pectoral fin of a fish, the wing of a bird, the paddle of the dol- phin, the fore-leg of a deer, the wing of a bat, and the arm of a man, are the same organs, not^vithstanding that their forms are so varied, and the uses to which they are applied so unlike each other."^ All these are homologous in structure — they are formed after an ideal archetype or model, but that model or type is variously modified to adapt the animal to the sphere of life in which it is destined to move, and the organ itself to the functions it has to perform, whether swimming, flying, walking, or burrowing, or that varied manipulation of which the human hand is capable. These varied modifications of the vertebrated type, for special purposes, are unmistakable examples of final causation. Whilst the silent members, the rudimental limbs instanced by Oken, Martins, and others — as fulfilling no pur- pose, and serving no end, exist in conformity to an ideal arche- type on which the bony skeletons of all vertebrated animals are formed,^ and which has never been departed from since ' Carpenter's " Comparative Physiolog}'," p. 37. "^ Agassiz, " Essay on Classification," p. 10. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 221 time began. This type, or model, or plan, is, however, itself an evidence of design as much as the plan of a house. For to what standard are we referring when we say that two limbs are morphologically the same ? Is it not an ideal plan, a mefi- tal pattern, a metaphysical conception ? Now an ideal implies a mind which preconceived the idea, and in which alone it really exists. It is only as "an order of Divine thought that the doctrine of animal homiologies is at all intelligible ; and Homology is, therefore, the science which traces the outward embodiment of a Divine Idea.' The principle of intentionality or final causation, then, is not in any sense invalidated by the discovery of " a unity of plan " sweeping through the entire universe. We conclude that we are justly entitled to regard "the principle of intentionality" as a primary and necessary law of thought, under which we can not avoid conceiving and describ- ing the facts of the universe — the special adaptation of means to ends necessarily implies mind. Whenever and wherever we ob- serve the adaptation of an organism to the fulfillment of a spe- cial end, we can not avoid conceiving of that end2i's> foreseen and premeditated, the means as selected and adjusted with a view to that end, and creative energy put forth to secure the end — all which is the work of intelligence and will.'^ And we can not describe these facts of nature, so as to render that account intelligible to other minds, without using such terms as "con- trivance," "purpose," "adaptation," "design." A striking il- lustration of this may be found in Darwin's volume " On the Fertilization of Orchids." We select from his volume with all the more pleasure because he is one of the writers who enjoins "caution in ascribing intentions td" nature." In one sentence he says : " The Labellum is developed into a long nectary, in order to attract Lepidoptera ; and we shall presently give rea- sons for suspecting the nectar \^ purposely so lodged that it can ^ Whe well's " History of Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 644 ; " The Reign of Law," p. 208 ; Agassiz, " Essay on Classification," pp. 9-1 1. ^ Carpenter's ** Principles of Comparative Physiology," p. 723. 222 CHBISTIANITY AND be sucked only slowly, ijt order to give time for the curious chemical quality of the viscid matter settling hard and dry " (p. 29). Of one particular structure he says : " This contriv- ance of the guiding ridges may be compared to the little instru- ment sometimes used for guiding a thread into the eye of a needle." The notion that every organism has a use or pur- pose seems to have guided him in his discoveries. "The strange position of the Labellum, perched on the summit of the column, ought to have shown me that here was the place for experiment. I ought to have scorned the notion that the La- bellum was thus placed for no good purpose. I neglected this plain guide, and for a long time completely failed to understand the flower" (p. 262).^ So that the assumption of final causes has not, as Bacon affirms, "led men astray" and "prejudiced further discovery;" on the contrary, it has had a large share in every discovery in anatomy and physiology, zoology and botany. The use of every organ has been discovered by starting from the assump- tion that it must have some use. The belief in a creative pur- pose led Harvey to discover the circulation of the blood. He says : " When I took notice that the valves in the veins of so many parts of the body were so placed that they gave a free passage to the blood towards the heart, but opposed the pas- sage of the venal blood the contrary way, I was incited to im- agine that so provident a cause as Nature has not placed so many valves without design^ and no design seemed more proba- ble than the circulation of the blood. "'^ The wonderful discov- eries in Zoology which have immortalized the name of Cuvier were made under the guidance of this principle. He proceeds on the supposition not onl^ that animal forms have some plan, 'some purpose, but that they have an intelligible plan, a discov- erable purpose. At the outset of his " R