Christianity and Greek Philosophy Part 4

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 _ident.i.ty of contraries or contradictions_. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or opposites. This ant.i.thesis not only exists in all ideas, but const.i.tutes them. In every idea we form, there must be _two_ things opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear conception. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of darkness; 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 ident.i.ty of Being and Nothing is one of the consequences 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). "Pure being is pure abstraction, and consequently the absolute-negative, which in like manner, directly taken, is _nothing_." 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 conclusion--

3. _Being and Nothing are identical_ (das Seyn und das Nichts ist da.s.selbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being _is_ Being--the Anders-seyn--which becomes _as_ Being to the Seyn. Nothing is, in some sense, an actual thing.

_Being_ and _Nothing_ are thus the two elements which enter into the one Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both together combine to form a complete notion of bare production, or the _becoming_ of something out of nothing,--the unfolding of real existence in its lowest form, that is, of _nature_.

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-reconciliation 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 represented in society, the state, and in history (_ethics, political philosophy,_ or _jurisprudence_, and _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 (aesthetics); secondly, _religion_, in the general acceptation of the term (philosophy of religion); and, thirdly, _philosophy_ itself, as the purest and most perfect form of the scientific knowledge of truth. All historical religions, the Oriental, the Jewish, the Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, are _the successive stages in the development or self-actualization of G.o.d_.[49]

It is unnecessary to indicate to the reader that the philosophy of Hegel is essentially pantheistic. "G.o.d is not a _person_, but personality itself, _i.e._, the universal personality, which realizes itself in every human consciousness, as so many separate thoughts of one eternal mind. The idea we form of the absolute is, to Hegel, the absolute itself, its essential existence being identical with our conception of it. Apart from, and out of the world, there is no G.o.d; and so also, apart from the universal consciousness of man, there is no Divine consciousness or personality."[50]

[Footnote 49: See art. "Hegelian Philosophy," in Herzog's _Real-Encyc._, from whence our materials are chiefly drawn.]

[Footnote 50: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 473.]

This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and conflicts with the actual facts of man's religious nature and religious history. If the word "religion" has any meaning at all, it is "a mode of life determined by the consciousness of dependence upon, and obligation to G.o.d." It is reverence for, grat.i.tude to, and worship of G.o.d as a being distinct from humanity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of G.o.d--a stage in the development or self-actualization of G.o.d. Viewed under one aspect, religion is the self-adoration of G.o.d--the worship of G.o.d by G.o.d; under another aspect it is the worship of humanity, since G.o.d only becomes conscious of himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is that upon which his entire method proceeds, viz., "the ident.i.ty of subject and object, being and thought." Against this false position the consciousness of each individual man, and the universal consciousness 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, there is no difference between _thinking_ we possess a hundred dollars, and actually _possessing_ them.

Such absurdities may be rendered plausible by a logic which a.s.serts the "ident.i.ty of contradictions," but against such logic common sense rebels. "The law of non-contradiction" has been accepted by all logicians, from the days of Aristotle, as a fundamental law of thought.

"Whatever is contradictory is unthinkable. A=not A=O, or A--A=O."[51]

Non-existence can not exist. Being can not be nothing.

[Footnote 51: Hamilton's Logic, p. 58.]

III. The third hypothesis affirms _that the phenomenon of religion has its foundation in_ FEELING--_the feeling of dependence and of obligation_; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition of instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obligation we call G.o.d.

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 Hamilton. Its fundamental position is, that we can not gain truth with absolute certainty either from sense or reason, and, consequently, the only valid source of real knowledge is _feeling--faith, intuition_, or, as it is called by some, _inspiration_.

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 cognition 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--a _feeling_ in whose perfect calm and utter quiescence the Divinity was mirrored; or which, in an ecstatic 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 a.s.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 process 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 cla.s.s 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 spiritual world--G.o.d, the soul, freedom, immortality. Our knowledge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All philosophic 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 reason, but by a feeling, _insight_, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called _G.o.d-consciousness_, and in its highest form, _Christian-consciousness._ The G.o.d-consciousness, in its original form, is the _feeling of dependence_ on the Infinite. The Christian consciousness 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 G.o.d.

Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take account of his doctrine of _self_-consciousness. "In all self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn, and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). 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 without which self-consciousness would not be just this."[52] Every determinate mode of the sensibility supposes an _object_, and a _relation_ between the subject and the object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the object. External sensation, the feeling, say of extension and resistance, gives world-consciousness. Internal sensation, the _feeling of dependence_, gives G.o.d consciousness. And it is only by the presence of world consciousness and G.o.d-consciousness that self consciousness can be what it is.

We have, then, in our self-consciousness a _feeling of direct dependence_, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that dependence we call G.o.d. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are revealed in us."[53] 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 depends for its development; and the sum-total of the forces const.i.tuting religious life, inasmuch as it is a _life_, is based upon immediate self-consciousness.[54]

[Footnote 52: Glaubenslehre, ch. i. -- 4.]

[Footnote 53: Dialectic, p. 430.]

[Footnote 54: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 23.]

The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his "_Limits of Religious Thought_." He maintains, with Schleiermacher, that religion is grounded in _feeling_, and that the _felt_ is the first intimation or presentiment of the Divine. 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 benevolence scattered through the creation."[55] He also agrees with Schleiermacher in regarding the _feeling of dependence_ as _a_ state of the sensibility, out of which reflection builds up the edifice of Religious Consciousness, but he does not, with Schleiermacher, regard it as pre-eminently _the_ basis of religious consciousness. "The mere consciousness of dependence does not, of itself, exhibit the character of the Being on whom we depend. It is as consistent with superst.i.tion as with religion; with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent Deity."[56] 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 a.s.sume the existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as const.i.tuted by the nature of that Deity."[57] "To these two facts of the inner consciousness 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 G.o.d'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 superior 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 grat.i.tude."[58] The feeling of moral obligation--"the law written in the heart"--leads man to recognize a Lawgiver. "Man can be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of G.o.d."[59] The conclusion from the whole is, there must be an _object_ answering to this consciousness: there must be a G.o.d to explain these facts of the soul.

[Footnote 55: Mansel, "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 115.]

[Footnote 56: Id., ib., p. 120.]

[Footnote 57: Id., ib., p. 122.]

[Footnote 58: Id., ib., pp. 119, 120.]

[Footnote 59: Id., ib., p. 122.]

This "philosophy of feeling," or of faith generated by feeling, has an interest and a significance which has not been adequately 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 G.o.d_--religion is _piety_. A philosophy 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 G.o.d can be known immediately by feeling without the mediation of the truth that manifests G.o.d; that he can be _felt_ as the qualities of matter can be felt; and that this affection of the inward sense can reveal the character and perfections of G.o.d, is an unphilosophical and groundless a.s.sumption. To a.s.sert, with Nitzsch, that "feeling has reason, and is reason, and that the sensible and felt G.o.d-consciousness generates out of itself fundamental conceptions," is to confound the most fundamental psychological distinctions, and arbitrarily bend the recognized cla.s.sifications 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 ill.u.s.trates his "philosophy of feeling."[60] But all psychology must be based upon the observation and cla.s.sification of mental phenomena, as revealed in consciousness, and not constructed in an "independent" and a priori method. The most careful psychological a.n.a.lysis has resolved the whole complex phenomena of mind into thought, feeling, and volition.[61] These orders of phenomena are radically and essentially distinct. They differ not simply in degree but in kind, and it is only by an utter disregard of the facts of consciousness that they can be confounded. Feeling is not reason, nor can it by any logical dexterity be transformed into reason.

[Footnote 60: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 21.]

[Footnote 61: Kant, "Critique of Judg.," ch. xxii.; Cousin, "Hist, of Philos.," vol. ii. p. 399; Hamilton, vol. i. p. 183, Eng. ed.]

The question as to the relative order of cognition and feeling, that is, as to whether feeling is the first or original form of the religious consciousness, or whether feeling be not consequent upon some idea or cognition of G.o.d, 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 attempt 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 affirmation must, therefore, be unjustifiable. The a.s.sertion that religious feeling precedes all cognition,--that "the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, and the instinct of worship" are developed _first_ in the mind, before the reason 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 knowledge.[62] There can be no clear and distinct consciousness without the cognition of a _self_ and a _not-self_ in 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 condition of plurality, difference, and relation.[63] Now the judgment is "the Faculty of Relations," or of comparison; and the affirmation "_this_ is not _that_" is an act of judgment; to know is, consequently, to judge.[64] Self-consciousness must, therefore, be regarded as a synthesis of sense, reason, and judgment, and not a mere self-feeling (cnaesthesis).

[Footnote 62: Cousin, "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 357; vol. ii. p.

337.]

[Footnote 63: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 88.]

[Footnote 64: Hamilton, "Metaphys.," p. 277]

A profound a.n.a.lysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of without the a priori idea of s.p.a.ce. The feeling of movement of change, can not give the cognition of event without the rational idea of time or duration. Simple consciousness can not generate the idea of personality, or selfhood, without the rational idea of ident.i.ty or unity. And so the mere "feeling of dependence," of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea of G.o.d, without the rational a priori idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause. Sensation is not knowledge, and never can become knowledge, without the intervention of reason, and a concentrated self feeling can not rise essentially above animal life until it has, through the mediation of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being ruling over nature and man.

Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its _pathological_ form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, 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 mysterious 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, consequently, our moral sentiments are the result of the harmonious and living relation between the reason and the sensibilities.

Mr. Mansel a.s.serts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to _a.s.sume_ 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d." 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 G.o.d is "_a.s.sumed_" and we are ent.i.tled to ask on what ground it is a.s.sumed. It will not be a.s.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 Governor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-relation 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 G.o.d in the human mind. The idea of G.o.d as the First Cause, the Infinite Mind, the Perfect Being, the personal Lord and Lawgiver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is manifestly a complex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation of the whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe, and the primitive intuitions of the reason,--a logical inference from the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion which regards the feelings 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 directly to G.o.d, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives man of that which enables him to know G.o.d, and puts him in a just communication with G.o.d by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth."[65]

[Footnote 65: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 110.]

The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted from the union of _thought_ and _feeling_--the living and harmonious relation of reason and sensibility; and a philosophy which disregards either is inadequate to the explanation of the phenomena.

IV. The fourth hypothesis is, _that religion has had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of_ REASON; that is, in the necessary, a priori ideas of the infinite, the perfect, the unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness 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 _cognition_ rather than upon feeling. It is the knowledge of G.o.d, and the knowledge of duty in its relation to G.o.d and to human happiness; 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."[66] By "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 reasoning_, but a pure appreciation, an instinctive and involuntary movement of the soul.