Philosophy and Religion Part 4

But it is not so much on account of its consequences as on account of its essential unmeaningness and intellectual unintelligibility that I would invite you to reject this formula 'G.o.d is all.' Certainly, the Universe is an ordered system: there is nothing in it that is not done by the Will of G.o.d. And some parts of this Universe--the spiritual parts of it and particularly the higher spirits--are not mere creations of G.o.d's will.

They have a resemblance of nature to Him. I do not object to your saying that at bottom there is but one Substance in the Universe, if you will only keep clear of the materialistic and s.p.a.cial a.s.sociation of the word Substance: but it is a Substance which reveals itself in many different consciousnesses. The theory of an all-inclusive Consciousness is not necessary to make possible the idea of close and intimate communion between G.o.d and men, or of the revelation in and to Humanity of the thought of G.o.d. On the contrary, it is the idea of Ident.i.ty which destroys the possibility of communion. Communion implies two minds: a mind cannot have communion with itself or with part of itself. The two may also in a {106} sense be one; of course all beings are ultimately part of one Universe or Reality: but that Reality is not one Consciousness. The Universe is a unity, but the unity is not of the kind which const.i.tutes a person or a self-consciousness. It is (as Dr.

McTaggart holds) the unity of a Society, but of a Society (as I have attempted to argue) which emanates from, and is controlled by and guided to a preconceived end by, a single rational Will.[8]

(5) _The intuitive theory of religious knowledge_. In other quarters objection will probably be taken to my not having recognized the possibility of an immediate knowledge of G.o.d, and left the idea of G.o.d to be inferred by intellectual processes which, when fully thought out, amount to a Metaphysic. It will be suggested that to make religious belief dependent upon Reason is to make it impossible to any but trained Philosophers or Theologians. Now there is no doubt a great attractiveness in the theory which makes belief in G.o.d depend simply upon the immediate affirmation of the individual's own consciousness. It would be more difficult to argue against such a theory of immediate knowledge or intuition if we found that the consciousness of all or most individuals does actually reveal to them {107} the existence of G.o.d: though after all the fact that a number of men draw the same inference from given facts does not show that it is not an inference. You will sometimes find Metaphysicians contending that n.o.body is really an Atheist, since everybody necessarily supposes himself to be in contact with an Other of which he is nevertheless a part. I do not deny that, if you water down the idea of G.o.d to the notion of a vague 'something not ourselves,' you may possibly make out that everybody is explicitly or implicitly a believer in such a Deity.

I should prefer myself to say that, if that is all you mean by G.o.d, it does not much matter whether we believe in Him or not. In the sense in which G.o.d is understood by Christianity or Judaism or any other theistic Religion it is unfortunately impossible to contend that everybody is a Theist. And, if there is an immediate knowledge of G.o.d in every human soul, this would be difficult to account for. Neither the cultivated nor the uncultivated Chinaman has apparently any such belief. The ignorant Chinaman believes in a sort of luck or destiny--possibly in a plurality of limited but more or less mischievous spirits; the educated Chinaman, we are told, is for the most part a pure Agnostic. And Chinamen are believed to be one-fifth of the human race. The task of the Missionary would be an easier one if he could {108} appeal to any such widely diffused intuitions of G.o.d. The Missionary, from the days of St. Paul at Athens down to the present, has to begin by arguing with his opponents in favour of Theism, and then to go on to argue from Theism to Christianity.

I do not deny--on the contrary I strongly contend--that the rational considerations which lead up to Monotheism are so manifold, and lie so near at hand, that at a certain stage of mental development we find that belief independently a.s.serting itself with more or less fullness in widely distant regions of time and s.p.a.ce; while traces of it are found almost everywhere--even among savages--side by side with other and inconsistent beliefs. But even among theistic nations an immediate knowledge of G.o.d is claimed by very few. If there is a tendency on the part of the more strongly religious minds to claim it, it is explicitly disclaimed by others--by most of the great Schoolmen, and in modern times by profoundly religious minds such as Newman or Martineau. Its existence is in fact denied by most of the great theological systems--Catholic, Protestant, Anglican. Theologians always begin by arguing in favour of the existence of G.o.d. And even among the religious minds without philosophical training which do claim such immediate knowledge, their creed is most often due (as is obvious to the outside observer) to the influence of environment, of education, of social {109} tradition. For the religious person who claims such knowledge of G.o.d does not generally stop at the bare affirmation of G.o.d's existence: he goes on to claim an immediate knowledge of all sorts of other things--ideas clearly derived from the traditional teaching of his religious community. The Protestant of a certain type will claim immediate consciousness of ideas about the forgiveness of sins which are palpably due to the teaching of Luther or St. Augustine, and to the influence of this or that preacher who has transmitted those ideas to him or to his mother: while the Catholic, though his training discourages such claims, will sometimes see visions which convey to him an immediate a.s.surance of the truth of the Immaculate Conception. Even among Anglicans we find educated men who claim to know by immediate intuition the truth of historical facts alleged to have occurred in the first century, or dogmatic truths such as the complicated niceties of the Athanasian Creed. These claims to immediate insight thus refute themselves by the inconsistent character of the knowledge claimed.

An attempt may be made to extract from all these immediate certainties a residual element which is said to be common to all of them. The attempt has been made by Professor James in that rather painful work, the _Varieties of Religious Experience_. And the residuum turns out to be something so vague that, if not {110} absolutely worthless, it is almost incapable of being expressed in articulate language, and const.i.tutes a very precarious foundation for a working religious creed.

The truth is that the uneducated--or rather the una.n.a.lytical, perhaps I ought to say the metaphysically untrained--human mind has a tendency to regard as an immediate certainty any truth which it strongly believes and regards as very important. Such minds do not know the psychological causes which have led to their own belief, when they are due to psychological causes: they have not a.n.a.lysed the processes of thought by which they have been led to those beliefs which are really due to the working of their own minds. Most uncultivated persons would probably be very much surprised to hear that the existence of the friend with whose body they are in physical contact is after all only an inference.[9] But surely, in the man who has discovered that such is the case, the warmth of friendship was never dimmed by the reflection that his knowledge of his friend is not immediate but mediate. It is a mere prejudice to suppose that mediate knowledge is in any {111} way less certain, less intimate, less trustworthy or less satisfying than immediate knowledge.

If we claim for man the possibility of just such a knowledge of G.o.d as a man may possess of his brother man, surely that is all that is wanted to make possible the closest religious communion. It is from the existence of my own self that I infer the existence of other selves, whom I observe to behave in a manner resembling my own behaviour. It is by an only slightly more difficult and complicated inference from my own consciousness that I rise to that conception of a universal Consciousness which supplies me with at once the simplest and the most natural explanation both of my own existence and of the existence of the Nature which I see around me.

(6) _Religion and Psychology_. I do not deny that the study of religious history, by exhibiting the naturalness and universality of religious ideas and religious emotions, may rationally create a pre-disposition to find some measure of truth in every form of religious belief. But I would venture to add a word of caution against the tendency fashionable in many quarters to talk of basing religious belief upon Psychology. The business of Psychology is to tell us what actually goes on in the human mind. It cannot possibly tell us whether the beliefs which are found there are true or false. An erroneous {112} belief is as much a psychological fact as a true one. A theory which goes on, by inference from what we observe in our own minds, to construct a theory of the Universe necessarily involves a Metaphysic, conscious or unconscious. It may be urged that the reality of religious experience is unaffected by the question whether the beliefs a.s.sociated with it are true or false.

That is the case, so long as the beliefs are supposed to be true by the person in question. But, when once the spirit of enquiry is aroused, a man cannot be--and I venture to think ought not to be--satisfied as to the truth of his belief simply by being told that the beliefs are actually there.

It may be contended, no doubt, that religious experience does not mean merely a state of intellectual belief, but certain emotions, aspirations, perhaps (to take one particular type of religious experience) a consciousness of love met by answering love. To many who undergo such experiences, they seem to carry with them an immediate a.s.surance of the existence of the Being with whom they feel themselves to be in communion.

That, on the intellectual presuppositions of the particular person, seems to be the natural--it may be the only possible--way of explaining the feeling. But even there the belief is not really immediate: it is an inference from what is actually matter of experience. And it is, unhappily, no less a matter of well-ascertained {113} psychological fact that, when intellectual doubt is once aroused, such experiences no longer carry with them this conviction of their own objective basis. The person was really under the influence of an intellectual theory all along, whether the theory was acquired by hereditary tradition, by the influence of another's mind, or by personal thought and reflection. When the intellectual theory alters, the same kind of experience is no longer possible. I will not attempt to say how far it is desirable that persons who are perfectly satisfied with a creed which they have never examined should (as it were) pull up the roots of their own faith to see how deep they go. I merely want to point out that the occurrence of certain emotional experiences, though undoubtedly they may const.i.tute part of the data of a religious argument, cannot be held to const.i.tute in and by themselves sufficient evidence for the truth of the intellectual theory connected with them in the mind of the person to whom they occur. They do not always present themselves as sufficient evidence for their truth even to the person experiencing them--still less can they do so to others. Equally unreasonable is it to maintain, with a certain cla.s.s of religious philosophers, that the religious experience by itself is all we want; and to a.s.sume that we may throw to the winds all the theological or other beliefs which have actually been a.s.sociated {114} with the various types of religious experience, and yet continue to have those experiences and find them no less valuable and no less satisfying. If there is one thing which the study of religious Psychology testifies to, it is the fact that the character of the religious experience (though there may be certain common elements in it) varies very widely with the character of the theoretical belief with which it is a.s.sociated--a belief of which it is sometimes the cause, sometimes the effect, but from which it is always inseparable. The Buddhist's religious experiences are not possible to those who hold the Christian's view of the Universe: the Christian's religious experiences are not possible to one who holds the Buddhist theory of the Universe. You cannot have an experience of communion with a living Being when you disbelieve in the existence of such a Being. And a man's theories of the Universe always at bottom imply a Metaphysic of some kind--conscious or unconscious.

Sometimes the theory of a Religion which shall be purely psychological springs from pure ignorance as to the meaning of the terms actually employed by the general usage of philosophers. Those who talk in this way mean by Psychology what, according to the ordinary philosophic usage, is really Metaphysic. For Metaphysic is simply the science which deals with the ultimate nature of the Universe. {115} At other times attempts are made by people of more or less philosophical culture to justify their theory. The most widely influential of such attempts is the one made by M. Auguste Sabatier.[10] This attempt has at least this much in its favour--that it is not so much to the ordinary experience of average men and women that M. Sabatier appeals as to the exceptional experiences of the great religious minds. He lays the chief stress upon those exceptional moments of religious history when a new religious idea entered into the mind of some prophet or teacher, _e.g._ the unity of G.o.d, the Fatherhood of G.o.d, the brotherhood of Man. Here, just because the idea was new, it cannot (he contends) be accounted for by education or environment or any other of the psychological causes which obviously determine the traditional beliefs of the great majority. These new ideas, therefore, he a.s.sumes to be due to immediate revelation or inspiration from G.o.d. Now it is obvious that, even if this inference were well grounded, it a.s.sumes that we have somehow arrived independently at a conception of G.o.d to which such inspirations can be referred. The Psychology of the human mind cannot a.s.sume the existence of such a Being: if we infer such a Being from our own mental experience, that is not immediate but {116} mediate knowledge. It is a belief based on inference, and a belief which is, properly speaking, metaphysical. The idea of a Religion which is merely based upon Psychology and involves nothing else is a delusion: all the great Religions of the world have been, among other things, metaphysical systems. We have no means of ascertaining their truth but Reason, whether it a.s.sume the form of a rough common-sense or of elaborate reasoning which not only is Metaphysic but knows itself to be so. Reason is then the organ of religious truth.

But then, let me remind you, Reason includes our moral Reason. That really is a faculty of immediate knowledge; and it is a faculty which, in a higher or lower state of development, is actually found in practically all human beings. The one element of truth which I recognize in the theory of an immediate knowledge of G.o.d is the truth that the most important data upon which we base the inference which leads to the knowledge of G.o.d are those supplied by the immediate judgements or intuitions of the Moral Consciousness.

And here let me caution you against a very prevalent misunderstanding about the word Reason. It is a.s.sumed very often that Reason means nothing but inference. That is not what we mean when we refer moral judgements to the Reason. We do not mean that we can prove that things are right or {117} wrong: we mean precisely the opposite--that ultimate moral truth is immediate, like the truth that two and two make four. It might, of course, be contended that the same Reason which a.s.sures me that goodness is worth having and that the whole is greater than the part, a.s.sures us no less immediately of the existence of G.o.d. I can only say that I am sure I have no such immediate knowledge, and that for the most part that knowledge is never claimed by people who understand clearly the difference between immediate knowledge and inference. The idea of G.o.d is a complex conception, based, not upon this or that isolated judgement or momentary experience, but upon the whole of our experience taken together. It is a hypothesis suggested by, and necessary to, the explanation of our experience as a whole. Some minds may lay most stress upon the religious emotions themselves; others upon the experience of the outer world, upon the appearances of design, or upon the metaphysical argument which shows them the inconceivability of matter without mind; others, again, may be most impressed by the impossibility of accounting in any way for the immediate consciousness of duty and the conviction of objective validity or authority which that consciousness carries with it.

But in any case the knowledge, when it is a reasonable belief and not based merely upon authority, involves {118} inference--just like our knowledge of our friend's existence. The fact that my friend is known to me by experience does not prevent his communicating his mind to me. I shall try to show you in my next lecture that to admit that our knowledge of G.o.d is based upon inference is not incompatible with the belief that G.o.d has spoken to man face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.

At this point it may perhaps be well, for the sake of clearness, to summarize the position to which I have tried to lead you. I have tried to show that the material Universe cannot reasonably be thought of as having any existence outside, or independently of, Mind. It certainly does not exist merely in any or all of the human and similar minds whose knowledge is fleeting, and which have, there is every reason to believe, a beginning in time. We are bound then to infer the existence of a single Mind or Consciousness, which must be thought of as containing all the elements of our own Consciousness--Reason or Thought, Feeling, and Will--though no doubt in Him those elements or aspects of Consciousness are combined in a manner of which our own minds can give us but a very faint and a.n.a.logical idea. The world must be thought of as ultimately the thought or experience of this Mind, which we call G.o.d. And this Mind must be thought {119} of as not only a Thinker, but also as a Cause or a Will. Our own and all other minds, no less than the events of the material Universe, owe their beginning and continuance to this divine Will: in them the thought or experience of the divine Mind is reproduced in various degrees; and to all of them is communicated some portion of that causality or activity of which G.o.d is the ultimate source, so that their acts must be regarded as due mediately to them, ultimately to G.o.d.

But, though these minds are wholly dependent upon and in intimate connexion with the divine Mind, they cannot be regarded as _parts_ of the divine Consciousness. Reality consists of G.o.d and all the minds that He wills to exist, together with the world of Nature which exists in and for those minds. Reality is the system or society of spirits and their experience. The character and ultimate purpose of the divine Mind is revealed to us, however inadequately or imperfectly, in the moral consciousness; and the moral ideal which is thus communicated to us makes it reasonable for us to expect, for at least the higher of the dependent or created minds, a continuance, of their individual existence, after physical death. Pain, sin, and other evils must be regarded as necessary incidents in the process by which the divine Will is bringing about the greatest attainable good of all conscious beings. The question whether our material Universe, {120} considered as the object of Mind, has a beginning and will have an end, is one which we have no data for deciding. Time-distinctions, I think, must be regarded as objective--that is to say, as forming part of the nature and const.i.tution of the real world; but the antinomy involved either in supposing an endless succession or a beginning and end of the time-series is one which our intellectual faculties are, or at least have so far proved, incapable of solving. The element of inadequacy and uncertainty which the admission of this antinomy introduces into our theory of the Universe is an emphatic reminder to us of the inadequate and imperfect character of all our knowledge. The knowledge, however, that we possess, though inadequate knowledge, is real knowledge--not a sham knowledge of merely relative or human validity; and is sufficient not only for the guidance of life but even for the partial, though not the complete, satisfaction of one of the n.o.blest impulses of the human mind--the disinterested pa.s.sion for truth. 'Now we see in a mirror darkly'; but still we see.

The view of the Universe which I have endeavoured very inadequately to set before you is a form of Idealism. Inasmuch as it recognizes the existence--though not the separate and independent existence--of many persons; inasmuch as it regards both G.o.d and man as persons, without attempting {121} to merge the existence of either in one all-including, comprehensive consciousness, it may further be described as a form of 'personal Idealism.' But, if any one finds it easier to think of material Nature as having an existence which, though dependent upon and willed by the divine Mind, is not simply an existence in and for mind, such a view of the Universe will serve equally well as a basis of Religion. For religious purposes it makes no difference whether we think of Nature as existing in the Mind of G.o.d, or as simply created or brought into and kept in existence by that Mind. When you have subtracted from the theistic case every argument that depends for its force upon the theory that the idea of matter without Mind is an unthinkable absurdity, enough will remain to show the unreasonableness of supposing that in point of fact matter ever has existed without being caused and controlled by Mind. The argument for Idealism may, I hope, have at all events exhibited incidentally the groundlessness and improbability of materialistic and naturalistic a.s.sumptions, and left the way clear for the establishment of Theism by the arguments which rest upon the discovery that Causality implies volition; upon the appearances of intelligence in organic life; upon the existence of the moral consciousness; and more generally upon the enormous probability that the ultimate Source of Reality should resemble rather {122} the highest than the lowest kind of existence of which we have experience. That Reality as a whole may be most reasonably interpreted by Reality at its highest is after all the sum and substance of all theistic arguments. If anybody finds it easier to think of matter as uncreated but as always guided and controlled by Mind, I do not think there will be any religious objection to such a position; though it is, as it seems to me, intellectually a less una.s.sailable position than is afforded by an Idealism of the type which I have most inadequately sketched.

Mr. Bradley in a cynical moment has defined Metaphysics as the 'finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.' I do not for myself accept that definition, which Mr. Bradley himself would not of course regard as expressing the whole truth of the matter. But, though I am firmly convinced that it is possible to find good reasons for the religious beliefs and hopes which have in fact inspired the n.o.blest lives, I still feel that the greatest service which even a little acquaintance with Philosophy may render to many who have not the time for any profounder study of it, will be to give them greater boldness and confidence in accepting a view of the Universe which satisfies the instinctive or una.n.a.lysed demands of their moral, intellectual, and spiritual nature.

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NOTE ON NON-THEISTIC IDEALISM

It may perhaps be well for the sake of greater clearness to summarize my objections--those already mentioned and some others--to the system of Dr.

McTaggart, which I admit to be, for one who has accepted the idealistic position that matter does not exist apart from Mind, the only intelligible alternative to Theism. His theory is, it will be remembered, that ultimate Reality consists of a system of selves or spirits, uncreated and eternal, forming together a Unity, but not a conscious Unity, so that consciousness exists only in the separate selves, not in the whole:

(1) It is admitted that the material world exists only in and for Mind.

There is no reason to think that any human mind, or any of the other minds of which Dr. McTaggart's Universe is composed, knows the whole of this world. What kind of existence then have the parts of the Universe which are not known to any mind? It seems to me that Dr. McTaggart would be compelled to admit that they do not exist at all. The world postulated by Science would thus be admitted to be a delusion. This represents a subjective Idealism of an extreme and staggering kind which cannot meet the objections commonly urged against all Idealism.

(2) Moreover, the world is not such an intellectually complete system as Dr. McTaggart insists that it must be, apart from the relations of its known parts to its unknown parts. If there are parts which are unknown to any mind, and which therefore do not exist at all, it is not a system at all.

(3) If it be said that all the spirits between them know the world--one knowing one part, another another--this is a mere hypothesis, opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience, and after all would be a very inadequate answer to our difficulties. Dr. McTaggart insists {124} that the world of existing things exists as a system. Such existence to an Idealist must mean existence for a mind; a system not known as a system to any mind whatever could hardly be said to exist at all.

(4) If it be suggested (as Dr. McTaggart was at one time inclined to suggest) that every mind considered as a timeless Noumenon is omniscient, though in its phenomenal and temporal aspect its knowledge is intermittent and always limited, I reply (_a_) the theory seems to me not only gratuitous but unintelligible, and (_b_) it is open to all the difficulties and objections of the theory that time and change are merely subjective delusions. This is too large a question to discuss here: I can only refer to the treatment of the subject by such writers as Lotze (see above) and M. Bergson. I may also refer to Mr. Bradley's argument (_Appearance and Reality_, p. 50 sq.) against the theory that the individual Ego is out of time.

(5) The theory of pre-existent souls is opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience. Soul and organism are connected in such a way that the pre-existence of one element in what presents itself and works in our world as a unity is an extremely difficult supposition, and involves a.s.sumptions which reduce to a minimum the amount of ident.i.ty or continuity that could be claimed for the Ego throughout its successive lives. A soul which has forgotten all its previous experiences may have some ident.i.ty with its previous state, but not much. Moreover, we should have to suppose that the correspondence of a certain type of body with a certain kind of soul, as well as the resemblance between the individual and his parents, implies no kind of causal connexion, but is due to mere accident; or, if it is not to accident, to a very arbitrary kind of pre-established harmony which there is nothing in experience to suggest, and which (upon Dr. McTaggart's theory) there is no creative intelligence to pre-establish. The theory cannot be absolutely refuted, but all Dr.

McTaggart's ingenuity has not--to my own mind, {125} and (I feel sure) to most minds--made it seem otherwise than extremely difficult and improbable. Its sole recommendation is that it makes possible an Idealism without Theism: but, if Theism be an easier and more defensible theory, that is no recommendation at all.

(6) Dr. McTaggart's whole theory seems to me to waver between two inconsistent views of Reality. When he insists that the world consists of a system or Unity, he tends towards a view of things which makes the system of intellectual relations const.i.tuting knowledge or Science to be the very reality of things: on such a view there is no impossibility of an ultimate Reality not known to any one mind. But Dr. McTaggart has too strong a hold on the conviction of the supremely real character of conscious mind and the unreality of mere abstractions to be satisfied with this view. If there is no mind which both knows and wills the existence and the mutual relations of the spirits, the supreme reality must be found in the individual spirits themselves; yet the system, if known to none of them, seems to fall outside the reality. The natural tendency of a system which finds the sole reality in eternally self-existent souls is towards Pluralism--a theory of wholly independent 'Reals' or 'Monads.' Dr. McTaggnrt is too much of a Hegelian to acquiesce in such a view. The gulf between the two tendencies seems to me--with all respect--to be awkwardly bridged over by the a.s.sumption that the separate selves form an intelligible system, which nevertheless no one really existent spirit actually understands. If a system of relations can be Reality, there is no ground for a.s.suming the pre-existence or eternity of individual souls: if on the other hand Reality is 'experience,' an unexperienced 'system' cannot be real, and the 'unity' disappears. This is a line of objection which it would require a much more thorough discussion to develope.

(7) On the view which I myself hold as to the nature of Causality, the only intelligible cause of events is a Will. The events of Dr.

McTaggart's world (putting aside the very {126} small proportion which are due, in part at least, to the voluntary action of men or spirits) are not caused at all. His theory is therefore open to all--and more than all--the objections which I have urged in Lecture II. against the theory which explains the Universe as the thought of a Mind but not as caused by that Mind.

(8) It is just possible that some one might suggest that the first of my objections might be met by the allegation that there is nothing in the scheme which forbids us to suppose that the whole of Nature is known to more than one of the spirits which make up Reality, though not to all, or indeed any, of the human and non-human spirits known to us. I should reply (_a_) that the considerations which lead to the hypothesis of one omniscient Being do not require more than one such spirit, and _entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_; (_b_) such a scheme would still be open to Objection 7. If it is a speculative possibility that all Nature may exist in the knowledge of more than one spirit, it cannot well be thought of as willed by more than one spirit. If the Universe, admitted to form an ordered system, is caused by rational will at all, it must surely be caused by one Will. But perhaps a serious discussion of a polytheistic scheme such as this may be postponed till it is seriously maintained. It has not been suggested, so far as I am aware, by Dr.

McTaggart himself.

(9) The real strength of Dr. McTaggart's system must be measured by the validity of his objections to a Theism such as I have defended. I have attempted to reply to those objections in the course of these Lectures, and more at length in a review of his _Some Dogmas of Religion_ in _Mind_ (N.S.), vol. xv., 1906.

[1] Cf. Flint's _Theism_, Ed. v., p. 117 and App. xi.

[2] The most illuminating discussion of time and the most convincing argument for its 'objectivity' which I know, is to be found in Lotze's _Metaphysic_, Book II. chap. iii., but it cannot be recommended to the beginner in Metaphysic. A brilliant exposition of the view of the Universe which regards time and change as belonging to the very reality of the Universe, has recently appeared in M. Bergson's L'evolution Creatrice, but he has hardly attempted to deal with the metaphysical difficulties indicated above. The book, however, seems to me the most important philosophical work that has appeared since Mr. Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_, and though the writer has hardly formulated his Natural Theology, it const.i.tutes a very important contribution to the theistic argument. Being based upon a profound study of biological Evolution, it may be specially commended to scientific readers.

[3] Such a view is expounded in Dr. Schiller's early work _The Riddles of the Sphinx_ and in Professor Howison's _The Limits of Evolution_. The very distinguished French thinker Charles Renouvier (_La Nouvelle Monadologie_, etc.), like Origen, believed that souls were pre-existent but created.

[4] I use the word 'causally connected' in the popular or scientific sense of the word, to indicate merely an actually observed psycho-physical law.

[5] In part, perhaps, also to a mistaken theory of predication, which a.s.sumes that, because every fact in the world can be represented as logically a predicate of Reality at large, therefore there is but one Substance or (metaphysically) Real Being in the world, of which all other existences are really mere 'attributes.' But this theory cannot be discussed here.

[6] In _The New Theology_.

[7] _E.g._ by Mr. Bradley in _Appearance and Reality_ and still more uncompromisingly by Professor A. E. Taylor in _The Problem of Conduct_, but I rejoice to find that the latter very able writer has recently given up this theory of a 'super-moral' Absolute.

[8] I think it desirable to mention here that Professor Watson's account of my views in his _Philosophical Basis of Religion_ completely misrepresents my real position. I have replied to his criticisms in _Mind_, N.S. No. 69 (Jan. 1909).

[9] This is sometimes denied by Philosophers, but I have never been able to understand on what grounds. If I know _a priori_ the existence of other men, I ought to be able to say _a priori_ how many they are and to say something about them. And this is more than any one claims.

[10] In _Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion d'apres La Psychologie et l'histoire_.

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LECTURE V

REVELATION

I have tried in previous lectures to show that the apprehension of religious truth does not depend upon some special kind of intuition; that it is not due to some special faculty superior to and different in kind from our ordinary intellectual activities, but to an exercise of the same intellectual faculties by which we attain to truth in other matters--including, however, especially the wholly unique faculty of immediately discerning values or p.r.o.nouncing moral judgements. The word 'faith' should, as it seems to me, be used to express not a mysterious capacity for attaining to knowledge without thought or without evidence, but to indicate some of the manifold characteristics by which our religious knowledge is distinguished from the knowledge either of common life or of the physical Sciences. If I had time there would be much to be said about these characteristics, and I think I could show that the popular distinction between knowledge and religious {128} faith finds whatever real justification it possesses in these characteristics of religious knowledge. I might insist on the frequently implicit and una.n.a.lysed character of religious thinking; upon the incompleteness and inadequacy of even the fullest account that the maturest and acutest Philosopher can give of ultimate Reality; upon the merely probable and a.n.a.logical character of much of the reasoning which is necessarily employed both in the most popular and in the most philosophical kinds of reasoning about such matters; and above all upon the prominent place which moral judgements occupy in religious thought, moral judgements which, on account of their immediate character and their emotional setting, are often not recognized in their true character as judgements of the Reason. Most of the mistakes into which popular thinking has fallen in this matter--the mistakes which culminate in the famous examination-paper definition of faith as 'a means of believing that which we know not to be true'--would be avoided if we would only remember, with St. Paul and most of the greater religious thinkers, that the true ant.i.thesis is not between faith and reason but between faith and sight. All religious belief implies a belief in something which cannot be touched or tasted or handled, and which cannot be established by any mere logical deduction from what can be touched or tasted or handled. So far from implying {129} scepticism as to the power of Reason, this opposition between faith and sight actually a.s.serts the possibility of attaining by thought to a knowledge of realities which cannot be touched or tasted or handled--a knowledge of equal validity and trustworthiness with that which is popularly said to be due to the senses, though Plato has taught us once for all[1]

that the senses by themselves never give us real knowledge, and that in the apprehension of the most ordinary matter of fact there is implied the action of the self-same intellect by which alone we can reach the knowledge of G.o.d.

It may further be pointed out that, though neither religious knowledge nor moral knowledge are mere emotion, they are both of them very closely connected with certain emotions. Great moral discoveries are made, not so much by superior intellectual power, as by superior interest in the subject-matter of Morality. Very ordinary intelligence can see, when it is really brought to bear upon the matter, the irrationality or immorality of bad customs, oppressions, social injustices; but the people who have led the revolt against these things have generally been the people who have felt intensely about them. So it is with the more distinctly religious knowledge. Religious thought and insight are largely dependent upon the emotions to which religious {130} ideas and beliefs appeal. The absence of religious thought and definite religious belief is very often (I am far from saying always) due to a want of interest in Religion; but that does not prove that religious thought is not the work of the intellect, any more than the fact that a man is ignorant of Politics because he takes no interest in Politics proves that political truth is a mere matter of emotion, and has nothing to do with the understanding. Thought is always guided by interest--a truth which must not be distorted with a certain modern school of thought, if indeed it can properly be called thought, into the a.s.sertion that thinking is nothing but willing, and that therefore we are at liberty to think just what we please.

And that leads on to a further point. Emotion and desire are very closely connected with the will. A man's moral insight and the development of his thought about moral questions depend very largely upon the extent to which he acts up to whatever light he has. Vice, as Aristotle put it, is _phthartike arches_--destructive of moral first principles. Moral insight is largely dependent upon character. And so is religious insight. Thus it is quite true to say that religious belief depends in part upon the state of the will. This doctrine has been so scandalously abused by many Theologians and Apologists that I use it with great hesitation. I have no sympathy {131} with the idea that we are justified in believing a religious doctrine merely because we wish it to be true, or with the insinuation that non-belief in a religious truth is always or necessarily due to moral obliquity. But still it is undeniable that a man's ethical and religious beliefs are to some extent affected by the state of his will. That is so with all knowledge to some extent; for progress in knowledge requires attention, and is largely dependent upon interest. If I take no interest in the properties of curves or the square root of -1, I am not very likely to make a good mathematician. This connexion of knowledge with interest applies in an exceptional degree to religious knowledge: and that is one of the points which I think many religious thinkers have intended to emphasize by their too hard and fast distinctions between faith and knowledge.