But then we get the atheistic religion of humanity of
Feuerbach
and Comte.
Pleiderer - Development of Theology in Germany since Kant
1
It is intelligible that with such premises the religious views of Mill could not rise far above sceptical negations. His father, who had lost all belief in a good God in consequence of his education in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism and of his
reflections on the evils of the world, brought up his son without any religious belief. As compared with the purely negative position of his early days, it marks, therefore, a certain advance when, in his essay on The Utility ofReligion (written between 1850 and 1858), he allows that in early times religious belief in the Divine sanctions of moral laws was an excellent means of introducing and establishing them, and that even now religion, like poetry, answers to a craving in men for higher and nobler ideas than actual life supplies. But it is doubtful whether " the idealism of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made, is not capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings and still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers. " " The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognised as of the highest excel lence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of
desire. This condition is fulfilled by the Religion of Human ity in as eminent a degree, and in as high a sense, as -by the
? even in their best manifestations, and far more so than in any of the others," which, by their threats and promises, strengthen the selfish element of our
nature instead of weakening it. Besides, these religions suffer under so many contradictions and irrationalities that the simple and innocent faith which their acceptance involves can co-exist only with a torpid and inactive state of the speculative faculties, whilst persons of exercised intellect are able to
1 The folly of such a mode of procedure in ethical science, Carlyle has admirably satirised by setting the problem, " Given a world of knaves, to produce an honesty from their united action ? " {Misc. , iv. p. 36. )
supernatural religions
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
323
believe only by the sophistication and perversion either of the understanding or of the conscience. Finally, the Religion of Humanity leaves open an ample domain in the region of the
imagination, which may be planted with possibilities and hypotheses, of which neither the falsehood nor the truth can be ascertained.
In the later essay on Theism, written between 1868 and
had not received the final revisions which was his habit to make), likewise published after the author's death, Mill appears to have advanced beyond this purely critical standpoint. The inquiry not now merely with regard to the utility of religion, but as to the truth of religious ideas, and the result of leads to the acceptance of the pre ponderating probability of certain suppositions, although un doubtedly they are still far enough removed from orthodox belief. From the adaptations in nature, Mill now considers, there evidence which points, not to the creation of the universe, but of the present order of by an Intelligent
Mind though the imperfections in nature necessitate the sup position that its Author has but limited power over and that he has some regard to the happiness of his creatures prob ably, though we are not justified in supposing this his sole or chief motive of action. also possible that a Being thus limited in power may interfere occasionally in the im perfect machinery of the universe, though in none of the cases in which such interposition believed to have occurred
the evidence such as could possibly prove it. In the same way the possibility of life after death must be admitted,
1870 (which
? cannot be converted into a certainty. " To me seems that human life, small and confined as and as, considered merely in the present, likely to remain, even when the progress of material and moral improvement may have freed from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration, for itself and its destination, which the exercise of imagination can yield to without running counter to the
though
. . . "
regard to the government of the universe, and the destiny of
man after death, legitimate, and philosophically defensible. The beneficial effect of such hope far from trifling. makes life and human nature far greater thing to the feel ings, and gives greater strength as well as solemnity to all
evidence of fact. "
The indulgence of hope with
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? 324 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
the sentiments which are awakened in us by our fellow- creatures and mankind at large. " Religious belief in the reality of the divine ideal, notwithstanding all the perver sions and corruptions of has proved its force through past ages, a force beyond what a merely ideal conception could exert. And this belief can only increase in value when the critical thinker resigns the idea of an omnipotent ruler of the world, as then the evils of the world no longer cast a shadow upon his moral perfection. The Divine ideal still more valuable as to be beheld incorporated in the human
of Jesus. However much of the accretions of legend and speculation may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ will remain a unique figure on his words and deeds " there a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity and insight, which must place the Prophet of Nazareth in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. A better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete cannot be found, than to endeavour so to live that Christ would
our life. " In the continual battle between the
powers of good and of evil, to the good man an eleva
ting feeling to know that he helping God by a co-operation
of which God, not being omnipotent, really stands in need, and by which somewhat nearer approach may be made to the fulfilment of his purposes.
The religious idealism which speaks through these words of Mill's the more gratifying that could not be looked for from the principles of his philosophy. After individual happiness had been made morals the main principle,
surprising to find unselfish devotion to the requirements of goodness or the purposes of God constituted the ideal religion. These are, surely, two standpoints far removed from each other, the reconciliation of which Mill has not supplied. And after he had in logic referred causality to the association of subjective ideas, and the objectivity of knowledge had been denied, we are taken by surprise when finally an intelligent Designer and Ruler of the world inferred by means of the law of causation. Evidently Mill's personal feeling and thinking were better than his philosophical prejudices strictly allowed.
The principal representative of the intuitive philosophy, which, Mill supposed, was inclined to consider cherished
personality
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? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
as intuitive truths, and intuition as the voice of God and Nature, having a higher authority than the voice of reason, was the Scotch philosopher, Sir W1ll1am Ham1lton. Against his system Mill wrote his book, Examination of Sir
William Hamilton Philosophy, which he subjected to
dogmas
searching criticism from his own empirical standpoint. But
he seems to have ignored the fact that the " intuitive," or
critico-speculative philosophy has other and more important
representatives than Hamilton and his knowledge of the
history of philosophy, particularly of German philosophy, was defective. 1
Hamilton was indebted to both Reid and Kant he endea voured to combine the realism of the former with the sub
jective criticism of the latter, but without any great success. He himself published an edition of the works of Reid with notes, and after his death his pupils, Mansel and Veitch, edited his Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics (i860, vols. ).
But he had previously plainly indicated his philosophical position in his Review the Philosophy of Cousin, which appeared first in the Edinburgh Review (1829), and finally in the volume of Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, in 1852. There are, he considers, four views with regard to the Unconditioned according to Cousin cognisable and conceivable by means of reflection according to Schelling, though not comprehensible by reflection, knowable by intellectual intuition according to Kant, though not theoretically knowable, knowable as regulative prin ciple, and its notion more than mere negation of the
Conditioned finally, according to Hamilton himself, neither conceivable nor in any way knowable, because simply the negation of the Conditioned, which alone
can be positively conceived. With regard to Kant, Hamilton admits that to him belongs the merit of having first examined the extent of our knowledge, and of having limited to the conditional phenomena of our consciousness, but maintains that Kant's deduction of the categories and ideas was the result of great but perverse ingenuity, and his distinction between the understanding and the reason surreptitious. As Kant admits that the "ideas" involve
As critics of Mill, may be mentioned, McCosh, Green, Bradley (Prin ciples Logic), Martineau.
325
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? 326 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1 825. [Bk. IV.
self-contradiction, and yet makes them legitimate products of intelligence, the speculative reason becomes in his system an organ of simple delusion, and this must lead to absolute scepticism. For if our intellectual nature be perfidious in one revelation, it must be regarded as misleading in all. When the falseness of the speculative reason has been once proved, it is impossible to establish the existence of God, Freedom, and Immortality on the ground of the supposed veracity of the practical reason. Because Kant did not completely exorcise the spectre of the Absolute, it has ever since continued to haunt the German school of philosophy.
Though Schelling perceived the impossibility of getting a philosophy of the Unconditioned by means of conceptual reflection, his " intellectual intuition " of the Absolute was the product of arbitrary abstraction and a self-delusive imagina tion ; for when the antithesis of subject and object, which constitute consciousness, has been annihilated, all that remains is nothing, which is baptized with the name of " Absolute. "
According to Hamilton, the Infinite and Absolute is simply
an abstraction of the conditions under which thought is
? possible, and accordingly a negation of the conceivable. For to think is to condition, and conditioned limitation is the fundamental law of thought. Thought cannot get beyond con sciousness, and consciousness is possible only under the anti thesis of subject and object, which are conceivable only in correlation and mutual limitation. Whence it follows that a philosophy which claims to be more than a knowledge of the conditional is impossible. Our knowledge of mind and matter cannot be more than a knowledge of the relative manifestation of an existence, the essence per se of which the
highest wisdom must acknowledge as unknowable, as Augustine had confessed, ignorando cognosci. But as the power of our thought cannot be made the measure of existence, so neither may we
limit the horizon of our faith to the realm of our knowledge. By miraculous revelation we have received our faith in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all conceivable reality. The saying of Jacobi is therefore true :
an understood God would be no God at all, and to imagine that God is what we think would be blasphemy. The ultimate and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar to the unknown and unknowable God. In this Nature and Revelation, Heathenism and Christianity agree.
? ? ? Ch. l. ] PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY. 327
These ideas of Sir W. Hamilton's were further expanded and made the basis of a system of dogmatic supernaturalism by his disciple Mansel, in his Bampton Lectures, The Limits of
Religious Thought (1852, 5th ed. 1870). The position taken is, that if philosophy undertakes to subject the contents of revealed religion to criticism, it must first show its right to attempt this by the proof of its power to conceive the nature of God. But this proof has hitherto never been forthcoming,
and from the very nature of the mind can never be given. For the " Absolute," the " Infinite," the " First Cause " of philosophy involve irreconcilable contradictions. The Abso lute is one and simple ; how then can we distinguish in it a plurality of attributes ? The Infinite is that which is free from all possible limitation ; how then can it co-exist with its contradictory --the Finite ? And how can the Infinite be at the same time the First Cause, since there is involved in the very idea of cause the antithesis of effect, and accordingly limitation ? From the nature of human consciousness, too, the proof is given that these ideas involve hopeless contra diction. Consciousness is the relation of an object to a subject and to other objects, but the idea of the Absolute precludes all such relation. Further, our consciousness is subject to the laws of space and time, and cannot therefore think the thought of a Being not likewise subject to them. But, Mansel holds, we must not thence infer that the Infinite cannot exist, but only that what the Infinite is and his rela tion to the Finite is for us incognisable. From this our duty is plain -- to accept without addition or subtraction whatever revelation, that the Bible, teaches as to God, on its autho rity. This will be the more easy when we remember that the greatest difficulties of belief have their parallels philo
sophy for instance, the doctrine of the Trinity, in the relation of one Absolute to a plurality of attributes the Divine sonship of Christ, in the relation of the eternal cause to effects in time the two natures Christ, the relation between the Infinite and the Finite miracles, in the conception of government by law at all, and in the relation of the law of causality to freedom generally. If the reason incapable of solving these philo sophical problems, not justified in rejecting the doctrines of revelation because they are also, but not more, inconceivable.
As little may the reason on moral grounds criticise revelation. For neither are moral principles any means the eternal truth
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? J28 THEOLOGY IN GREVT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
of reason, but are laws which God has revealed with reference to our human nature, without being himself bound by them. When therefore the inspired word of God records commands of God which seem to involve apparent immorality, we may not argue therefrom that God cannot have revealed such com mands, but only that God's nature is not less incomprehensible to our moral than to our speculative reason. Such instances
must be treated as "moral miracles," which prove that God has the right to occasionally suspend the moral laws not less than natural laws, without cancelling their validity in ordinary practical life.
To the obvious question, how with such incapacity of reason we can be in a position to recognise a Divine revelation as such, and to distinguish the revelation of the Bible as the only true one from the alleged revelations of other religions, Mansel replies at the end of his book only, and there but briefly. He warns us not to lay the main stress of the proof on the internal evidence, which would involve an appeal to the incompetent reason. " The crying evil of the present day in religious controversy is the neglect or contempt of the external evidences of Christianity ; the first step towards the establishment of a sound religious philosophy must consist in the restoration of those evidences to their true place in the theological system. " Though unconditional certainty does not belong to any one of them taken singly, in conjunction they constitute a sure foundation of faith in the revelation of the Bible, and the revelation thus established must be accepted from beginning to end, without criticism on the part of the in competent reason. If the teaching of Christ is in any one thing not the teaching of God, it is in all things the teaching of man, and Christ was an impostor or an enthusiast ; but if Christ is in truth the Incarnate Son of God, every attempt to improve his teaching is more impious than to reject it altogether, for this is to acknowledge a doctrine as the revelation of God, and at the same time to proclaim it inferior to the wisdom of man.
It is significant as to the condition of theology in England at that time, that this unqualified dogmatism of Mansel's should have met with a large amount of approbation, and that the author was considered a true Defensor Fidei. It is all the more to the honour of F. D. Maur1Ce that he at once discerned not merely the irrationality of Mansel's theory, but also the
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
329
danger to which laid open Christian faith, and that he
boldly and energetically opposed He very properly con siders that the fundamental mistake of Mansel that he starts from ideas which he has himself set up, and then argues from the contradictions, which he has himself put into them, that the ideas themselves involve contradictions. He falls at once upon the question of the Infinite, and overwhelms his
readers with discussion of metaphysical problems, without so much as touching the fundamental problem of conscious ness, without having asked, " How does our consciousness get at reality at all? " Mansel holds the question as to the nature of reality, of personality, as insoluble, because we cannot know anything beyond the phenomena of our own consciousness, but does not consider that while phenomena constitute the immediate content of our consciousness, the very function of philosophical science to deal not with them, but with what is, das Diiig-an-sich. precisely this-- to distinguish what from what merely appears to be, which the province of reason, without which man would sink to the level of the animal. The same distinction which necessary in daily life, must also be applied in the highest relations of knowledge. When Mansel denies this, he casts aside the Bible as well as reason. If he pronounces Kant's Practical Reason, with its faculty of ideas, as merely faculty of lies, then conscience and the faith of the simple Christian are faculties of lies without any support reality. In order to deliver English theology from the influence of German philosophy, Mansel falls back upon the scepticism of Hume, with whom he shares also the indifference of Positivism, which in the absence of personal conviction advocates the re-assurement of men's minds by means of the established religion of the State. Mansel's endeavour to base faith upon sceptical agnosticism can only serve to strengthen thoughtless indifference and traditional ism, which
? the greatest danger for England.
What a dangerous two-edged sword this agnosticism of the
apologists was very soon made evident. In the course of the next decade, upon this agnosticism Matthew Arnold based his ethical idealism, Seeley his aesthetical idealism, and Herbert Spencer his evolutionism, three theories which, with all their dissimilarities, have this in common, that they all regard the impossibility of a Divine revelation and revealed religion to be the necessary consequence of the incognisability of God.
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In his works, Literature and Dogma (1873), and God and the Bible (1875), Matthew Arnold has advocated, as a sub stitute for supernatural religion, an ethical idealism very much of the same nature as that of Fichte. He had convinced himself that in an age like this, which will take nothing for granted, but must verify everything, Christianity in the old form of authoritative belief in supernatural beings and mira culous deeds, is no longer tenable, and that the only method of defending the Faith which has any promise of success, is that which confines itself to such ethical truths of Christianity as can be verified by experience, and rejects everything beyond them, or admits it only as their merely poetic garb. According to Matthew Arnold, religion has no more to do with supernatural dogma than " with metaphysical philosophy : it is ethical, it has to do with conduct," but as distinguished from ethics, it is " ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling," in a word it " is morality touched by emotion. " The mistaken notion that religion is something more than and different from this, and in some way supernatural, arose from a misunderstanding of the poetic and rhetorical form of speak ing natural to it ; what was meant as a poetic and imaginative representation of ethical experience and emotion, was taken for strictly scientific truth. This holds very specially of belief in God. It would be folly to make religion depend on the conviction of the existence of " the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe " of theology, -- a belief which cannot possibly be verified by experience. The God of religion is a poetical personification of that which alone constitutes the object of religious faith in its moral sense. For this object Arnold has coined the phrase, " the Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness. " All that we can say of this power, on the evidence of experience, is that it is not ourselves, but is ever revealing itself in the universe as the Power making everywhere and always for righteousness, in consequence of which also all things have and tend to fulfil the law of their being. That this Power should be converted by the religious imagination into a personal God, who thinks and loves and rules the world, does no harm so long as we treat the personification simply as representing in a poetic form the unknowable Not-ourselves, of which we can become aware only as working for the production of righteousness. But as soon as ever we try to treat the personal God of
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
33
religion as a really existing being and object of scientific thought, we enter the region of fanciful anthropomorphism or abstract metaphysics, where the possibility of verification by experience, and therefore of sure conviction, ceases. The tra ditional philosophical arguments for the existence of an intelli gent First Cause are equally baseless with the popular proofs from miracles, and have, indeed, less value, as the latter
belong to a great and splendid whole -- beautiful and power ful fairy tale, while the former are only the hollow talk of philosophical sophism. Of personal Governor of the world we can form no clear conception, and can have no certain con viction based upon experience, but we can form an idea and have experiential certainty of a Power making for righteous ness. That idea of personal God had its origin in meta physics, and must be banished, with metaphysics, from religion, that in the future religion may occupy the only solid ground supplied by the moral experience of mankind.
need create no surprise that this theory met with a considerable amount of favour in England, for falls in with the agnostic tendencies of our age, and at the same time endeavours to be just to the moral consciousness, and to retain reverence for the Bible. In Holland, too, known and extensively held under the name of " ethical idealism. " To us Germans presents little that new, but simply another form of the sittliche Weltordnung, which Fichte at the end of the last century pronounced the essence of the idea of God. Arnold also shares Fichte's moral earnestness, and his enjoyment of an onslaught on other opinions, without always observing due moderation in his attack. And as regards the
tenability of the theory, the development of Fichte's philosophy seems to offer an instructive anticipation. at all events certain that the idea of an " Eternal Power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," far from being clear idea derived from experience, as Matthew Arnold maintains but
on the contrary, an abstract philosophical conception, behind the vagueness of which the possibility of very various interpretations hidden. At one time this " Not- ourselves " described as a real, efficient power, to which we feel we are subject, and for which we feel reverence. In that case, the inference can scarcely be withheld, that the effects which we experience presuppose an active, effective, and therefore actual subject, who intends to produce these effects,
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? 332 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
and who must accordingly be conceived as a being capable of having spiritual, moral purposes, which would bring us to a position very much like theism. On the other hand, other passages point to an entirely different interpretation. The " Not-ourselves" is also spoken of as a law of nature after the manner of the law of gravitation, or the law of spiritual beauty; as the latter was personified by the Greeks in Apollo, so the law of moral conduct was personified by the Hebrews in Jehovah, which is not at all inconsistent with the sup position that they might have reached the law by the Dar winian method of adaptation and heredity. Now, since a
"law" is not itself an operative, effective force, but only the manner of the operation of actual beings, the interpretation of Arnold's theory just given conducts necessarily to the Positivist view, according to which the divine consists simply in the morally good feelings and actions of man himself, not
? in any power outside and above man.
But, in that case,
where is the AW-ourselves upon which Arnold lays so much
stress ? To a more thoroughly logical agnostic will it not
seem to be a remnant of mystical speculation, which is not verifiable by experience, but must be got rid of, and the Positivist idea of humanity put in its place ?
But then we get the atheistic religion of humanity of Feuerbach and Comte. To bring that, however, into harmony with Biblical theism would be more than Arnold could accomplish, even
with his very bold and free exegesis. "
It must be doubted whether Arnold's idea of a Power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," which admits of such various and in fact contradictory interpretations, is
superior in point of clearness and credibility to the conception of God which has hitherto been generally held. Arnold would not have deceived himself so far as he did on this head if he had tried more seriously to think out his ideas. But he often declares, with characteristic mocking irony, that for philosophical thinking he has no faculty. In this he was undoubtedly perfectly right. For a fuller discussion of
Arnold's position, I refer the reader to Martineau's essay on Ideal Substitutes for God (3rd ed. , 1881), to his work, A Study of Religion, its Sources and Contents (1888) ; further, to Tulloch's essay on The Modern Religion of Experience. Tulloch remarks that Arnold's " Power not ourselves, which makes for righteous "^jcan as little be verified by expe
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
333
rience in the sense of natural science as any ancient dogma. All that can be proved by the method of this science the recurrence of certain external conditions, to which Arnold gives the name of "righteousness," and behind which he supposes Power causing them. But this beyond question as much his belief as the creed of any one else his. The idea of righteousness as certainly a product of the con science, or of what Arnold calls metaphysics, as the idea of personality both arise from within, and are not brought from without. In fact, the two are twin ideas, inseparably con nected in the Hebrew and the universal conscience -- a law of conduct and lawgiver, or personal authority, from whom issues. This undoubtedly the voice of experience, though not in Arnold's, but in higher and truer sense of the word. Accordingly, Arnold's notion of dogma as an excrescence or a disease of religion superficial. Of course religion and dogma are not identical. But the latter the product of religious thought, or of the thought of the Church upon the facts of religious experience. The creeds of the Church are the fruit of the best possible efforts of theological thinkers
of every age, accordingly living expressions of the Christian consciousness, deserving as such more respect than they meet with from the representatives of the modern spirit. So far the judgment of Tulloch. His remarks the same essay on the personal and literary characteristics of Matthew Arnold will not repeat here, incontrovertible as they appear to me to be.
The author of the anonymous book, Natural Religion (1882), who we are told, Professor Seeley, of Cambridge,
Arnold's equal in the lucidity and beauty of his style, and superior to him in breadth of view and acutenessof thought. He also proceeds from the conviction that the supernatural
elements of traditional religion are rapidly losing their hold upon the mind of the men of this age, while religion itself to-day as needful and indispensable as ever was. He, too, seeks to ascertain how much of traditional religion will be left when the supernatural has been abandoned. But the answer returned by Arnold, that the essential element of religion morality, does not satisfy Seeley, inasmuch as re ligion makes itself felt other and equally important depart ments of man's " Higher Life. " not so much manner of acting as of feeling, namely, the habitual feeling of admira
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? 334- THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1 825. [Bk. IV.
tion and reverence, combined with love and devotion. It is not merely the God of wonders who can be the object of such a religious worship, but whatever is beautiful, good, and true in nature and man. Seeley accordingly distinguishes three kinds of religion, each of which has its own peculiar value, and can be harmoniously combined with the others. First, the religion of the beautiful in nature, the aesthetic religion of the Greeks ; second, the worship of the morally good in man, the religion of ideal humanity, the very essence of Christianity, which though propagated at first under
the supernatural form of the Christology of the Church, has since the middle of the last century, freed from that husk, developed into the religion of Humanity. Third, to these must be added now the worship of the Unity and Eternity of the universe, which, under the name of " God," is conceived as the Supreme Power, comprehending nature and man ; a religion which will remain though all belief in the supernatural is abandoned. Reverence for the supreme unity and the law of all being is so natural to men, that it will continue to be felt, however they conceive the relation of the One to the various elements of the universe, or of God to the world. We do not find the difference of theories as to man and the relation of his physical and mental powers to one another hinders the practical reverence we feel for human nature ; and as little is our practical worship of the Unity and Regularity of the universe affected by the theological question as to the relation of the one Principle to
the multiplicity of phenomena. The name " Nature" does not adequately represent this Unity, inasmuch as often in the usage of scientific men it leaves out of view the moral and human side of the universe, " which " is to us the more important side. But the word God combines the great ness and glory of nature with "whatever more awful forces stir within the human heart, whatever binds men in families and orders them in states. " God "is the Inspirer of kings, the Revealer of laws, the Reconciler of nations, the Re deemer of labour, the Queller of tyrants, the Reformer of Churches, the Guide of the human race toward an unknown
? The worship of this God, who reveals himself in Nature and in History, is not merely possible in an antisuper-
naturalistic age of art and science, but it is very necessary. For nothing else than the worship of the Divine and Eternal
goal. "
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THKOLOGY.
335
in phenomena able to confer upon art and science the virtue of ideality, and to raise them above commonplace and triviality. The State and Society rest, too, upon the basis of
reverence for the eternal laws of human life, free from all the supernatural wrappings of the past, which render religion stationary and cut off from the living stream of modern life. Natural religion, on the other hand, occupies a place the centre of the movements of the present and the uniting and elevating force of all mani festations of human life. the attainment of the ideal
which the Reformation proposed, which was, fact, the ideal of the Hebrew prophets, for their religion was social, political, historical, and supernaturalism was not its main- spring. But Seeley does not wish to exclude everything supernatural from religion he desires that faith may hold that higher world than that known to us exists, only this transcendental world must not be made the chief thing.
Interesting as this aesthetic agnosticism beyond doubt as a transitional phase an age of scepticism, not possible to entirely withhold assent to the criticisms of those who maintain that thus to widen religion till becomes simply the admiration of everything beautiful and great in Nature and
history, to water down and empty of significance, till the wants of the devout soul are not met. Religion, as Tulloch urges, undoubtedly does not ignore Nature, but dis covers therein the rule of God but the distinctive mark of religion an ideal transcending both Nature and man. The Holy One of the Prophets and the Heavenly Father of Christ are not merely higher conceptions, but also truer ones, than any ideas of Nature of previous religions. The real problem is, Is there a spirit above nature and Man, universal Con sciousness, with which our higher life can have communion To make religion the admiration of the laws of Nature and the ideals of art and science, to introduce confusion into language, and to throw back moral ideas, which Christianity
had grafted upon our thought, to the outlived stage of heathen thinkers. Perhaps we may add that thought itself unable to rest finally in such a vague, problematic relation of the world to the one principle as Seeley expounds and this must be felt the more in proportion as the effort made to comprehend the totality of the universe the unity of thought, which the tendency of evolutionism in its various forms.
religion,
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? 336 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
Herbert SpenCer is regarded as at present the chief representative of agnosticism. But the agnosticism which Spencer adopted from Hamilton and Mansel forms but the one aspect of his philosophy, to a certain extent the con venient background into which all metaphysical problems can be relegated, so as to construct with fewer hindrances a system of natural evolution from the results of modern science. The significance of his philosophy lies in the bold ness with which it makes the idea of evolution, which has controlled natural science since Darwin, the dominant point of view in the formation of a connected and systematic theory of the world. In order to save his doctrine of natural de velopment from collision with the presuppositions of existing belief, he has placed the doctrine of the incognisability of the Absolute as a wall of separation between philosophy and religion, that an eternal peace may be concluded between them ; but, in reality, with the result that he has deprived
religion of its contents and his philosophical system of its prime principles. But, as in Spencer's system the idea of a harmonious and orderly world, or of a systematic unity among phenomena is so prominent, and this idea requires, or pre supposes necessarily, a connecting principle, or a basis of unity, he has not been able to consistently carry out his agnostic theory, but has surreptitiously converted the bare
? which Hamilton's Absolute amounted to, into a reality, which bears the relation of a positive cause to phenomena, only that nothing definite can be known as to its nature and its further relation to phenomena.
In his First Principles (1862), the ultimate principles of his philosophy, Spencer starts from the position, that as religion has always been of great importance in the history of mankind, and has been able to hold its ground in defiance of the attacks of science, it must contain an element of truth. But as there are various religions which claim to be true, and as science also can make the same claim, while yet truth is but one, the latter, Spencer holds, must be looked for in what the various
negative,
have in common with each other and with science. This common element cannot be a definite conception of the Absolute or the First Cause of the world, for it is precisely on
this point that opinions diverge, and in every one of the three main theories -- Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism -- is shown the impossibility of a satisfactory solution that is not self
religions
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
follows that God, the Absolute, the Uncon ditioned, not for us cognisable, but great mystery, as all religions to some extent acknowledge, and the higher their
rank, so much the more fully, only that the philosopher regards this mystery as not merely relative, as the religions regard but as absolute. Science and religion agree in this, for science knows nothing about the most universal ideas-- force and matter, space and time can know things only by comparing them with others that resemble them, and on that very account unable to know the Absolute, which cannot be compared with anything.
But although involved in the very nature of our con sciousness that can know only what finite and limited, Spencer declines to go with Hamilton in maintaining that the Absolute a purely negative concept. On the contrary, he holds that the reality of the Absolute the necessary correlative of the Relative. This both a necessity of thought and of the analysis of things. For every de finite state of consciousness has a limited content, the latter presupposes an unlimited and general content as the raw material of limiting thought. Our self-consciousness, as
the consciousness of the conditioned ego and non-ego, pre supposes an Unconditioned which neither the ego nor the non-ego this the Absolute, which accordingly the necessary correlative of our self-consciousness. And this a priori proof from consciousness confirmed by an a posteriori proof from the analysis of external things. The results of modern physics and chemistry reveal as the constant element in all phenomena Force, which manifests itself in various forms that change places with each other, while amid all their changes remains unaltered. If, accordingly, every specific force only relative changeable phenomenal form of one
contradictory.
337
? universal unchangeable force, this must be regarded as the absolute reality which must necessarily be presupposed as
the background and basis of all that relative and pheno
menal. The entire universe to be explained from the movement of this absolute Force, which takes place rhyth
mically as attraction and repulsion, integration and disinte
gration, evolution and dissolution the phenomena of nature
and of mental life come under the same general laws of
matter, motion, and force, which are however only symbols of
the absolute Reality or Force which in itself unknowable. S
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? 338 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
It is obvious that Spencer has thus very seriously modified the doctrine of Hamilton and Mansel as to the incognisability of the Absolute. The Absolute of Spencer, of which substan tiality, causality, eternity and immutability are predicated, is no longer the simple Unknown, which would be beyond all our conceptions. The only question which arises is whether Spencer's doctrine of the Absolute is adequate to account for the world of mental life, and whether it is adapted to serve as the basis of the reconciliation of science and religion. An affirmative answer can hardly be given to this question. For there is surely much force in the contention of Spencer's opponents, that his agnostic evolutionism is really only a disguised materialistic (hylozoistic) Pantheism ; for if the supreme principle is nothing but force manifesting itself in various motions, it does not land us beyond materialism. On the other hand, it must be allowed that Spencer's real intention is directed to something higher, the attainment of which has been frustrated by his entanglement in the principle of empiricism and the psychology of association, though in many of his statements he approaches very nearly a higher position. If the Absolute must be conceived as the neces sary correlative of our self-consciousness, can it be conceived simply as physical force, and not rather as universal self- consciousness, as a spiritual self? And if we get the idea of force from the experience of our own power of volition, its action and its resistance, is it not natural to think of mind- force as prior to physical, and accordingly of the absolute Force at the basis of all specific forces as Mind ? The doctrine of evolution would harmonise perfectly well with these inferences, only it would have to become idealistic instead of materialistic, and only after this transformation had been made would a practicable basis be supplied for the reconciliation of religion and science which Spencer has done well to attempt.
Spencer would probably himself have taken this further step, if he had been able, on the decisive question as to the fundamental act of knowledge, to set himself free from the superficiality and confusions of the association-psychology. This he has failed to do, and defines consciousness as a suc cession of sensations or changes, which implies a relation of different states, and is brought about by different impressions of force. The question here arises, as in Mill's system, Can
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
339
succession of feelings or changes be consciously felt without
subject to recognise the change, without an active synthetic principle to combine the changing states of feeling into the unity of consciousness But Spencer has no place in his system for such a subject, as he holds that the ego consists simply of " faint " and the object of " vivid " series of sensations. He acknowledges therefore really nothing more than passive sensations, or impressions of force, and supposes he can explain consciousness from their changes alone, while undoubtedly wholly inexplicable without the active synthesis of the ego. Spencer can have ignored this prime factor only because, like all empiricists, he " confuses the succession of feelings with cognition of succession, changes of consciousness with consciousness of change. " When he speaks of change of states of consciousness as the result of changing impressions of force, he seeks to find the origin of consciousness in effects produced from without, which cannot, however, surely, be perceived as succession and changed save by reference to previously existing consciousness he really, therefore, presupposes consciousness as already wardly present, while he seeks to explain from external action. In fact, we must concur the searching criticism of Green,1 that Spencer has not grasped the fundamental pro blem of the source and nature of knowledge, as was pro posed by Hume and solved by Kant the synthetic function of the ego. Spencer supposes that Kant has been refuted
by the new discovery of the doctrine of natural evolution, namely, that the supposed a priori or innate ideas which are considered to precede experience, are in reality only the result: of the experience of the race which the individual inherits. 2 But Spencer here fails to perceive the real nature of the pro blem, which How experience imany form possible? A problem which remains unaltered whether the experience that of the individual or the race, and to the solution of which no historical " psychogenesis " of nature can contribute in the smallest degree. And while his evolutionary psycho
logy contributes nothing whatever towards solution of the problem as to the nature of knowledge, Spencer really makes
? Works Thomas Hill Green, vol.
See Martineau's critique of this doctrine, Types Ethical Theory, vol.
PP- 357 sqq.
pp. 383 sqq.
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? 34-0 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
a solution of it impossible by degrading the relation of sub ject and object, the ego and the non-ego, to a mere difference of degree in the strength or vividness of a series of sensa tions. An error so fundamental at the crucial point can do no other than produce a fatal effect upon the whole system built upon it. If a man fails to perceive in himself the active subject, the self-conscious mind, it cannot be expected of him that he should find it in the Absolute.
With reference to the religious import of the Spencerian doctrine of the Unknowable, the forcible criticisms of Mar- tineau and J. Caird may here find a place. The former1 says that " Spencer's testimony against the purely phenomenal doctrineis of high value " ; for " it betrays his appreciation of that outlook beyond the region of phenomena for the con ditions of religion which cannot eventually be content to gaze into an abyss without reply. " But his position, that we can know only that the absolute power but not what untenable, because self-contradictory. We can know the first fact by thought only, and " how can there be thought with nothing thinkable " " By calling this existence a
Power' Mr. Herbert Spencer surely removes by one mark from the unknown but, besides this, we are obliged,' he says, to regard that Power as omniscient,' as eternal, as one, as cause manifested in all phenomena list of predi
cates, scanty indeed when measured by the requisites of religion, but too copious for the plea of Nescience. " When we distinguish this Absolute from all that " related to
we know for to distinguish to know. This negative ontology which identifies the supreme reality with total vacuity, and makes the infinite in Being the zero in thought, cannot permanently poise itself in its precarious position must either repent of its concessions to realism and lapse into the scientific commonplace, 'all we know phenomena'; or
else advance, with what caution and reserve pleases, into ulterior conceptions of the invisible cause, sufficient to soften the total eclipse into the penumbra of sacred mystery. "
Martineau makes further the pertinent remark, that
but natural that the pretensions of men to more knowledge than they can substantiate should lead to this reaction into
? A Study Religion, vol.
pp. 131 sqq.
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? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
34
John Caird, his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
(1880),1 has given a searching criticism of Spencer's agnos ticism, the chief points of which are as follows. The two propositions that our intelligence confined to the finite and relative, and that we have cognisance of an existence beyond the finite, are contradictory and cancel each other. Whoever maintains that human knowledge limited shows thereby that not limited merely by the relative, because in that case could have no knowledge of its own limits. The true conclusion from the principles of Spencer's theory of know ledge not the incognisability of the Absolute, but its non existence his " unknowable Absolute " simply the negation of thought and therewith of being, in every sense in which we can use the expression. In reality, the assertion of the unknowableness of the Absolute based upon an abstraction; a fictitious logical entity first created, and then conscious ness charged with imbecility because of its inability to think that fiction. Nothing can possess any reality for us save as
capable of forming part of our thought, or itself a thinkable reality. All science proceeds on the tacit assump tion that nature and the world of man are intelligible, of the presence of reason, thought in things, and of rational rela tions in the events of history. This general presupposition cannot leave us when we rise beyond nature and humanity to the ultimate basis of all phenomena. If reason irresistibly impelled (even according to Spencer) to seek, above and beyond the manifold and changeful phenomena, a permanent unity, an infinite and absolute reality, can at this stage, as little as at any previous one, fall into the suicidal contradic tion of seeking by thought an object which has no relation to thought, and of seeking the ultimate explanation of all rational relations in the irrational. The presupposition and the final goal of thought cannot be an Absolute which simply the negation of thought, but rather that which comprehends all finite things and thoughts only because itself the Unity of Thought and Being, and in which therefore our human
finds its fullest revelation. Lastly, Caird observes, Pages 10-38.
imaginary ignorance. " " The Gnosticism of theologians responsible for much of the Agnosticism of this century. "
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? 342 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
that Spencer's demand of religious worship of the Unknow able is an impossible one for the human heart to meet. It is true all religion contains an element of mystery, inasmuch as finite intelligence cannot be the measure of the infinite ; but a religion all mystery is an absurd and impossible notion, and would be nothing else than the apotheosis of ignorance. The homage which we render to the Being in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, all the inexhaustible
wealth of that boundless realm of truth in which thought finds ever increasing stimulus to aspiration, to wonder and delight, is totally different from the dumb wonder of ignorance or the grovelling awe of the supernatural, as it is exhibited in the fetish-worshipper, whose religion is the nearest approach to the religion of the Unknowable. True religion is not the blind fear of an" unknown Being, but trust, sympathy, and
love toward the God who is light, and in whom is no dark ness at all," and to know whom is eternal life for the human spirit.
As is evident from this critique of Spencer's position, and as he himself intimates in his "prefatory note," John Caird takes essentially the standpoint of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion. He founds his proof of the existence of God on the fundamental principle of Hegelian speculation, in which he finds the essence of the ontological argument, namely, that the correlation of thought and being in our consciousness
involves as its necessary presupposition the absolute unity of both in the divine consciousness. After the example of Hegel, he describes the forms of the religious consciousness as the representative, figurative form of knowledge, as the abstract, disintegrating logical understanding, and as synthe tic, reintegrating speculation, which discovers in the contradic tions, to the understanding insoluble, of finite and infinite, freedom and necessity, etc. , the inseparable moments or members of a concrete unity. Caird's idea of religion is also formed after Hegel's, though with a stronger accentuation of the ethical side, and in that respect related to Fichte's ethical mysticism.
It is intelligible that with such premises the religious views of Mill could not rise far above sceptical negations. His father, who had lost all belief in a good God in consequence of his education in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism and of his
reflections on the evils of the world, brought up his son without any religious belief. As compared with the purely negative position of his early days, it marks, therefore, a certain advance when, in his essay on The Utility ofReligion (written between 1850 and 1858), he allows that in early times religious belief in the Divine sanctions of moral laws was an excellent means of introducing and establishing them, and that even now religion, like poetry, answers to a craving in men for higher and nobler ideas than actual life supplies. But it is doubtful whether " the idealism of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made, is not capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings and still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers. " " The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognised as of the highest excel lence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of
desire. This condition is fulfilled by the Religion of Human ity in as eminent a degree, and in as high a sense, as -by the
? even in their best manifestations, and far more so than in any of the others," which, by their threats and promises, strengthen the selfish element of our
nature instead of weakening it. Besides, these religions suffer under so many contradictions and irrationalities that the simple and innocent faith which their acceptance involves can co-exist only with a torpid and inactive state of the speculative faculties, whilst persons of exercised intellect are able to
1 The folly of such a mode of procedure in ethical science, Carlyle has admirably satirised by setting the problem, " Given a world of knaves, to produce an honesty from their united action ? " {Misc. , iv. p. 36. )
supernatural religions
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
323
believe only by the sophistication and perversion either of the understanding or of the conscience. Finally, the Religion of Humanity leaves open an ample domain in the region of the
imagination, which may be planted with possibilities and hypotheses, of which neither the falsehood nor the truth can be ascertained.
In the later essay on Theism, written between 1868 and
had not received the final revisions which was his habit to make), likewise published after the author's death, Mill appears to have advanced beyond this purely critical standpoint. The inquiry not now merely with regard to the utility of religion, but as to the truth of religious ideas, and the result of leads to the acceptance of the pre ponderating probability of certain suppositions, although un doubtedly they are still far enough removed from orthodox belief. From the adaptations in nature, Mill now considers, there evidence which points, not to the creation of the universe, but of the present order of by an Intelligent
Mind though the imperfections in nature necessitate the sup position that its Author has but limited power over and that he has some regard to the happiness of his creatures prob ably, though we are not justified in supposing this his sole or chief motive of action. also possible that a Being thus limited in power may interfere occasionally in the im perfect machinery of the universe, though in none of the cases in which such interposition believed to have occurred
the evidence such as could possibly prove it. In the same way the possibility of life after death must be admitted,
1870 (which
? cannot be converted into a certainty. " To me seems that human life, small and confined as and as, considered merely in the present, likely to remain, even when the progress of material and moral improvement may have freed from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration, for itself and its destination, which the exercise of imagination can yield to without running counter to the
though
. . . "
regard to the government of the universe, and the destiny of
man after death, legitimate, and philosophically defensible. The beneficial effect of such hope far from trifling. makes life and human nature far greater thing to the feel ings, and gives greater strength as well as solemnity to all
evidence of fact. "
The indulgence of hope with
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? 324 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
the sentiments which are awakened in us by our fellow- creatures and mankind at large. " Religious belief in the reality of the divine ideal, notwithstanding all the perver sions and corruptions of has proved its force through past ages, a force beyond what a merely ideal conception could exert. And this belief can only increase in value when the critical thinker resigns the idea of an omnipotent ruler of the world, as then the evils of the world no longer cast a shadow upon his moral perfection. The Divine ideal still more valuable as to be beheld incorporated in the human
of Jesus. However much of the accretions of legend and speculation may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ will remain a unique figure on his words and deeds " there a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity and insight, which must place the Prophet of Nazareth in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. A better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete cannot be found, than to endeavour so to live that Christ would
our life. " In the continual battle between the
powers of good and of evil, to the good man an eleva
ting feeling to know that he helping God by a co-operation
of which God, not being omnipotent, really stands in need, and by which somewhat nearer approach may be made to the fulfilment of his purposes.
The religious idealism which speaks through these words of Mill's the more gratifying that could not be looked for from the principles of his philosophy. After individual happiness had been made morals the main principle,
surprising to find unselfish devotion to the requirements of goodness or the purposes of God constituted the ideal religion. These are, surely, two standpoints far removed from each other, the reconciliation of which Mill has not supplied. And after he had in logic referred causality to the association of subjective ideas, and the objectivity of knowledge had been denied, we are taken by surprise when finally an intelligent Designer and Ruler of the world inferred by means of the law of causation. Evidently Mill's personal feeling and thinking were better than his philosophical prejudices strictly allowed.
The principal representative of the intuitive philosophy, which, Mill supposed, was inclined to consider cherished
personality
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? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
as intuitive truths, and intuition as the voice of God and Nature, having a higher authority than the voice of reason, was the Scotch philosopher, Sir W1ll1am Ham1lton. Against his system Mill wrote his book, Examination of Sir
William Hamilton Philosophy, which he subjected to
dogmas
searching criticism from his own empirical standpoint. But
he seems to have ignored the fact that the " intuitive," or
critico-speculative philosophy has other and more important
representatives than Hamilton and his knowledge of the
history of philosophy, particularly of German philosophy, was defective. 1
Hamilton was indebted to both Reid and Kant he endea voured to combine the realism of the former with the sub
jective criticism of the latter, but without any great success. He himself published an edition of the works of Reid with notes, and after his death his pupils, Mansel and Veitch, edited his Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics (i860, vols. ).
But he had previously plainly indicated his philosophical position in his Review the Philosophy of Cousin, which appeared first in the Edinburgh Review (1829), and finally in the volume of Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, in 1852. There are, he considers, four views with regard to the Unconditioned according to Cousin cognisable and conceivable by means of reflection according to Schelling, though not comprehensible by reflection, knowable by intellectual intuition according to Kant, though not theoretically knowable, knowable as regulative prin ciple, and its notion more than mere negation of the
Conditioned finally, according to Hamilton himself, neither conceivable nor in any way knowable, because simply the negation of the Conditioned, which alone
can be positively conceived. With regard to Kant, Hamilton admits that to him belongs the merit of having first examined the extent of our knowledge, and of having limited to the conditional phenomena of our consciousness, but maintains that Kant's deduction of the categories and ideas was the result of great but perverse ingenuity, and his distinction between the understanding and the reason surreptitious. As Kant admits that the "ideas" involve
As critics of Mill, may be mentioned, McCosh, Green, Bradley (Prin ciples Logic), Martineau.
325
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self-contradiction, and yet makes them legitimate products of intelligence, the speculative reason becomes in his system an organ of simple delusion, and this must lead to absolute scepticism. For if our intellectual nature be perfidious in one revelation, it must be regarded as misleading in all. When the falseness of the speculative reason has been once proved, it is impossible to establish the existence of God, Freedom, and Immortality on the ground of the supposed veracity of the practical reason. Because Kant did not completely exorcise the spectre of the Absolute, it has ever since continued to haunt the German school of philosophy.
Though Schelling perceived the impossibility of getting a philosophy of the Unconditioned by means of conceptual reflection, his " intellectual intuition " of the Absolute was the product of arbitrary abstraction and a self-delusive imagina tion ; for when the antithesis of subject and object, which constitute consciousness, has been annihilated, all that remains is nothing, which is baptized with the name of " Absolute. "
According to Hamilton, the Infinite and Absolute is simply
an abstraction of the conditions under which thought is
? possible, and accordingly a negation of the conceivable. For to think is to condition, and conditioned limitation is the fundamental law of thought. Thought cannot get beyond con sciousness, and consciousness is possible only under the anti thesis of subject and object, which are conceivable only in correlation and mutual limitation. Whence it follows that a philosophy which claims to be more than a knowledge of the conditional is impossible. Our knowledge of mind and matter cannot be more than a knowledge of the relative manifestation of an existence, the essence per se of which the
highest wisdom must acknowledge as unknowable, as Augustine had confessed, ignorando cognosci. But as the power of our thought cannot be made the measure of existence, so neither may we
limit the horizon of our faith to the realm of our knowledge. By miraculous revelation we have received our faith in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all conceivable reality. The saying of Jacobi is therefore true :
an understood God would be no God at all, and to imagine that God is what we think would be blasphemy. The ultimate and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar to the unknown and unknowable God. In this Nature and Revelation, Heathenism and Christianity agree.
? ? ? Ch. l. ] PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY. 327
These ideas of Sir W. Hamilton's were further expanded and made the basis of a system of dogmatic supernaturalism by his disciple Mansel, in his Bampton Lectures, The Limits of
Religious Thought (1852, 5th ed. 1870). The position taken is, that if philosophy undertakes to subject the contents of revealed religion to criticism, it must first show its right to attempt this by the proof of its power to conceive the nature of God. But this proof has hitherto never been forthcoming,
and from the very nature of the mind can never be given. For the " Absolute," the " Infinite," the " First Cause " of philosophy involve irreconcilable contradictions. The Abso lute is one and simple ; how then can we distinguish in it a plurality of attributes ? The Infinite is that which is free from all possible limitation ; how then can it co-exist with its contradictory --the Finite ? And how can the Infinite be at the same time the First Cause, since there is involved in the very idea of cause the antithesis of effect, and accordingly limitation ? From the nature of human consciousness, too, the proof is given that these ideas involve hopeless contra diction. Consciousness is the relation of an object to a subject and to other objects, but the idea of the Absolute precludes all such relation. Further, our consciousness is subject to the laws of space and time, and cannot therefore think the thought of a Being not likewise subject to them. But, Mansel holds, we must not thence infer that the Infinite cannot exist, but only that what the Infinite is and his rela tion to the Finite is for us incognisable. From this our duty is plain -- to accept without addition or subtraction whatever revelation, that the Bible, teaches as to God, on its autho rity. This will be the more easy when we remember that the greatest difficulties of belief have their parallels philo
sophy for instance, the doctrine of the Trinity, in the relation of one Absolute to a plurality of attributes the Divine sonship of Christ, in the relation of the eternal cause to effects in time the two natures Christ, the relation between the Infinite and the Finite miracles, in the conception of government by law at all, and in the relation of the law of causality to freedom generally. If the reason incapable of solving these philo sophical problems, not justified in rejecting the doctrines of revelation because they are also, but not more, inconceivable.
As little may the reason on moral grounds criticise revelation. For neither are moral principles any means the eternal truth
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? J28 THEOLOGY IN GREVT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
of reason, but are laws which God has revealed with reference to our human nature, without being himself bound by them. When therefore the inspired word of God records commands of God which seem to involve apparent immorality, we may not argue therefrom that God cannot have revealed such com mands, but only that God's nature is not less incomprehensible to our moral than to our speculative reason. Such instances
must be treated as "moral miracles," which prove that God has the right to occasionally suspend the moral laws not less than natural laws, without cancelling their validity in ordinary practical life.
To the obvious question, how with such incapacity of reason we can be in a position to recognise a Divine revelation as such, and to distinguish the revelation of the Bible as the only true one from the alleged revelations of other religions, Mansel replies at the end of his book only, and there but briefly. He warns us not to lay the main stress of the proof on the internal evidence, which would involve an appeal to the incompetent reason. " The crying evil of the present day in religious controversy is the neglect or contempt of the external evidences of Christianity ; the first step towards the establishment of a sound religious philosophy must consist in the restoration of those evidences to their true place in the theological system. " Though unconditional certainty does not belong to any one of them taken singly, in conjunction they constitute a sure foundation of faith in the revelation of the Bible, and the revelation thus established must be accepted from beginning to end, without criticism on the part of the in competent reason. If the teaching of Christ is in any one thing not the teaching of God, it is in all things the teaching of man, and Christ was an impostor or an enthusiast ; but if Christ is in truth the Incarnate Son of God, every attempt to improve his teaching is more impious than to reject it altogether, for this is to acknowledge a doctrine as the revelation of God, and at the same time to proclaim it inferior to the wisdom of man.
It is significant as to the condition of theology in England at that time, that this unqualified dogmatism of Mansel's should have met with a large amount of approbation, and that the author was considered a true Defensor Fidei. It is all the more to the honour of F. D. Maur1Ce that he at once discerned not merely the irrationality of Mansel's theory, but also the
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
329
danger to which laid open Christian faith, and that he
boldly and energetically opposed He very properly con siders that the fundamental mistake of Mansel that he starts from ideas which he has himself set up, and then argues from the contradictions, which he has himself put into them, that the ideas themselves involve contradictions. He falls at once upon the question of the Infinite, and overwhelms his
readers with discussion of metaphysical problems, without so much as touching the fundamental problem of conscious ness, without having asked, " How does our consciousness get at reality at all? " Mansel holds the question as to the nature of reality, of personality, as insoluble, because we cannot know anything beyond the phenomena of our own consciousness, but does not consider that while phenomena constitute the immediate content of our consciousness, the very function of philosophical science to deal not with them, but with what is, das Diiig-an-sich. precisely this-- to distinguish what from what merely appears to be, which the province of reason, without which man would sink to the level of the animal. The same distinction which necessary in daily life, must also be applied in the highest relations of knowledge. When Mansel denies this, he casts aside the Bible as well as reason. If he pronounces Kant's Practical Reason, with its faculty of ideas, as merely faculty of lies, then conscience and the faith of the simple Christian are faculties of lies without any support reality. In order to deliver English theology from the influence of German philosophy, Mansel falls back upon the scepticism of Hume, with whom he shares also the indifference of Positivism, which in the absence of personal conviction advocates the re-assurement of men's minds by means of the established religion of the State. Mansel's endeavour to base faith upon sceptical agnosticism can only serve to strengthen thoughtless indifference and traditional ism, which
? the greatest danger for England.
What a dangerous two-edged sword this agnosticism of the
apologists was very soon made evident. In the course of the next decade, upon this agnosticism Matthew Arnold based his ethical idealism, Seeley his aesthetical idealism, and Herbert Spencer his evolutionism, three theories which, with all their dissimilarities, have this in common, that they all regard the impossibility of a Divine revelation and revealed religion to be the necessary consequence of the incognisability of God.
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? 33? THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
In his works, Literature and Dogma (1873), and God and the Bible (1875), Matthew Arnold has advocated, as a sub stitute for supernatural religion, an ethical idealism very much of the same nature as that of Fichte. He had convinced himself that in an age like this, which will take nothing for granted, but must verify everything, Christianity in the old form of authoritative belief in supernatural beings and mira culous deeds, is no longer tenable, and that the only method of defending the Faith which has any promise of success, is that which confines itself to such ethical truths of Christianity as can be verified by experience, and rejects everything beyond them, or admits it only as their merely poetic garb. According to Matthew Arnold, religion has no more to do with supernatural dogma than " with metaphysical philosophy : it is ethical, it has to do with conduct," but as distinguished from ethics, it is " ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling," in a word it " is morality touched by emotion. " The mistaken notion that religion is something more than and different from this, and in some way supernatural, arose from a misunderstanding of the poetic and rhetorical form of speak ing natural to it ; what was meant as a poetic and imaginative representation of ethical experience and emotion, was taken for strictly scientific truth. This holds very specially of belief in God. It would be folly to make religion depend on the conviction of the existence of " the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe " of theology, -- a belief which cannot possibly be verified by experience. The God of religion is a poetical personification of that which alone constitutes the object of religious faith in its moral sense. For this object Arnold has coined the phrase, " the Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness. " All that we can say of this power, on the evidence of experience, is that it is not ourselves, but is ever revealing itself in the universe as the Power making everywhere and always for righteousness, in consequence of which also all things have and tend to fulfil the law of their being. That this Power should be converted by the religious imagination into a personal God, who thinks and loves and rules the world, does no harm so long as we treat the personification simply as representing in a poetic form the unknowable Not-ourselves, of which we can become aware only as working for the production of righteousness. But as soon as ever we try to treat the personal God of
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
33
religion as a really existing being and object of scientific thought, we enter the region of fanciful anthropomorphism or abstract metaphysics, where the possibility of verification by experience, and therefore of sure conviction, ceases. The tra ditional philosophical arguments for the existence of an intelli gent First Cause are equally baseless with the popular proofs from miracles, and have, indeed, less value, as the latter
belong to a great and splendid whole -- beautiful and power ful fairy tale, while the former are only the hollow talk of philosophical sophism. Of personal Governor of the world we can form no clear conception, and can have no certain con viction based upon experience, but we can form an idea and have experiential certainty of a Power making for righteous ness. That idea of personal God had its origin in meta physics, and must be banished, with metaphysics, from religion, that in the future religion may occupy the only solid ground supplied by the moral experience of mankind.
need create no surprise that this theory met with a considerable amount of favour in England, for falls in with the agnostic tendencies of our age, and at the same time endeavours to be just to the moral consciousness, and to retain reverence for the Bible. In Holland, too, known and extensively held under the name of " ethical idealism. " To us Germans presents little that new, but simply another form of the sittliche Weltordnung, which Fichte at the end of the last century pronounced the essence of the idea of God. Arnold also shares Fichte's moral earnestness, and his enjoyment of an onslaught on other opinions, without always observing due moderation in his attack. And as regards the
tenability of the theory, the development of Fichte's philosophy seems to offer an instructive anticipation. at all events certain that the idea of an " Eternal Power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," far from being clear idea derived from experience, as Matthew Arnold maintains but
on the contrary, an abstract philosophical conception, behind the vagueness of which the possibility of very various interpretations hidden. At one time this " Not- ourselves " described as a real, efficient power, to which we feel we are subject, and for which we feel reverence. In that case, the inference can scarcely be withheld, that the effects which we experience presuppose an active, effective, and therefore actual subject, who intends to produce these effects,
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? 332 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
and who must accordingly be conceived as a being capable of having spiritual, moral purposes, which would bring us to a position very much like theism. On the other hand, other passages point to an entirely different interpretation. The " Not-ourselves" is also spoken of as a law of nature after the manner of the law of gravitation, or the law of spiritual beauty; as the latter was personified by the Greeks in Apollo, so the law of moral conduct was personified by the Hebrews in Jehovah, which is not at all inconsistent with the sup position that they might have reached the law by the Dar winian method of adaptation and heredity. Now, since a
"law" is not itself an operative, effective force, but only the manner of the operation of actual beings, the interpretation of Arnold's theory just given conducts necessarily to the Positivist view, according to which the divine consists simply in the morally good feelings and actions of man himself, not
? in any power outside and above man.
But, in that case,
where is the AW-ourselves upon which Arnold lays so much
stress ? To a more thoroughly logical agnostic will it not
seem to be a remnant of mystical speculation, which is not verifiable by experience, but must be got rid of, and the Positivist idea of humanity put in its place ?
But then we get the atheistic religion of humanity of Feuerbach and Comte. To bring that, however, into harmony with Biblical theism would be more than Arnold could accomplish, even
with his very bold and free exegesis. "
It must be doubted whether Arnold's idea of a Power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," which admits of such various and in fact contradictory interpretations, is
superior in point of clearness and credibility to the conception of God which has hitherto been generally held. Arnold would not have deceived himself so far as he did on this head if he had tried more seriously to think out his ideas. But he often declares, with characteristic mocking irony, that for philosophical thinking he has no faculty. In this he was undoubtedly perfectly right. For a fuller discussion of
Arnold's position, I refer the reader to Martineau's essay on Ideal Substitutes for God (3rd ed. , 1881), to his work, A Study of Religion, its Sources and Contents (1888) ; further, to Tulloch's essay on The Modern Religion of Experience. Tulloch remarks that Arnold's " Power not ourselves, which makes for righteous "^jcan as little be verified by expe
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
333
rience in the sense of natural science as any ancient dogma. All that can be proved by the method of this science the recurrence of certain external conditions, to which Arnold gives the name of "righteousness," and behind which he supposes Power causing them. But this beyond question as much his belief as the creed of any one else his. The idea of righteousness as certainly a product of the con science, or of what Arnold calls metaphysics, as the idea of personality both arise from within, and are not brought from without. In fact, the two are twin ideas, inseparably con nected in the Hebrew and the universal conscience -- a law of conduct and lawgiver, or personal authority, from whom issues. This undoubtedly the voice of experience, though not in Arnold's, but in higher and truer sense of the word. Accordingly, Arnold's notion of dogma as an excrescence or a disease of religion superficial. Of course religion and dogma are not identical. But the latter the product of religious thought, or of the thought of the Church upon the facts of religious experience. The creeds of the Church are the fruit of the best possible efforts of theological thinkers
of every age, accordingly living expressions of the Christian consciousness, deserving as such more respect than they meet with from the representatives of the modern spirit. So far the judgment of Tulloch. His remarks the same essay on the personal and literary characteristics of Matthew Arnold will not repeat here, incontrovertible as they appear to me to be.
The author of the anonymous book, Natural Religion (1882), who we are told, Professor Seeley, of Cambridge,
Arnold's equal in the lucidity and beauty of his style, and superior to him in breadth of view and acutenessof thought. He also proceeds from the conviction that the supernatural
elements of traditional religion are rapidly losing their hold upon the mind of the men of this age, while religion itself to-day as needful and indispensable as ever was. He, too, seeks to ascertain how much of traditional religion will be left when the supernatural has been abandoned. But the answer returned by Arnold, that the essential element of religion morality, does not satisfy Seeley, inasmuch as re ligion makes itself felt other and equally important depart ments of man's " Higher Life. " not so much manner of acting as of feeling, namely, the habitual feeling of admira
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? 334- THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1 825. [Bk. IV.
tion and reverence, combined with love and devotion. It is not merely the God of wonders who can be the object of such a religious worship, but whatever is beautiful, good, and true in nature and man. Seeley accordingly distinguishes three kinds of religion, each of which has its own peculiar value, and can be harmoniously combined with the others. First, the religion of the beautiful in nature, the aesthetic religion of the Greeks ; second, the worship of the morally good in man, the religion of ideal humanity, the very essence of Christianity, which though propagated at first under
the supernatural form of the Christology of the Church, has since the middle of the last century, freed from that husk, developed into the religion of Humanity. Third, to these must be added now the worship of the Unity and Eternity of the universe, which, under the name of " God," is conceived as the Supreme Power, comprehending nature and man ; a religion which will remain though all belief in the supernatural is abandoned. Reverence for the supreme unity and the law of all being is so natural to men, that it will continue to be felt, however they conceive the relation of the One to the various elements of the universe, or of God to the world. We do not find the difference of theories as to man and the relation of his physical and mental powers to one another hinders the practical reverence we feel for human nature ; and as little is our practical worship of the Unity and Regularity of the universe affected by the theological question as to the relation of the one Principle to
the multiplicity of phenomena. The name " Nature" does not adequately represent this Unity, inasmuch as often in the usage of scientific men it leaves out of view the moral and human side of the universe, " which " is to us the more important side. But the word God combines the great ness and glory of nature with "whatever more awful forces stir within the human heart, whatever binds men in families and orders them in states. " God "is the Inspirer of kings, the Revealer of laws, the Reconciler of nations, the Re deemer of labour, the Queller of tyrants, the Reformer of Churches, the Guide of the human race toward an unknown
? The worship of this God, who reveals himself in Nature and in History, is not merely possible in an antisuper-
naturalistic age of art and science, but it is very necessary. For nothing else than the worship of the Divine and Eternal
goal. "
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THKOLOGY.
335
in phenomena able to confer upon art and science the virtue of ideality, and to raise them above commonplace and triviality. The State and Society rest, too, upon the basis of
reverence for the eternal laws of human life, free from all the supernatural wrappings of the past, which render religion stationary and cut off from the living stream of modern life. Natural religion, on the other hand, occupies a place the centre of the movements of the present and the uniting and elevating force of all mani festations of human life. the attainment of the ideal
which the Reformation proposed, which was, fact, the ideal of the Hebrew prophets, for their religion was social, political, historical, and supernaturalism was not its main- spring. But Seeley does not wish to exclude everything supernatural from religion he desires that faith may hold that higher world than that known to us exists, only this transcendental world must not be made the chief thing.
Interesting as this aesthetic agnosticism beyond doubt as a transitional phase an age of scepticism, not possible to entirely withhold assent to the criticisms of those who maintain that thus to widen religion till becomes simply the admiration of everything beautiful and great in Nature and
history, to water down and empty of significance, till the wants of the devout soul are not met. Religion, as Tulloch urges, undoubtedly does not ignore Nature, but dis covers therein the rule of God but the distinctive mark of religion an ideal transcending both Nature and man. The Holy One of the Prophets and the Heavenly Father of Christ are not merely higher conceptions, but also truer ones, than any ideas of Nature of previous religions. The real problem is, Is there a spirit above nature and Man, universal Con sciousness, with which our higher life can have communion To make religion the admiration of the laws of Nature and the ideals of art and science, to introduce confusion into language, and to throw back moral ideas, which Christianity
had grafted upon our thought, to the outlived stage of heathen thinkers. Perhaps we may add that thought itself unable to rest finally in such a vague, problematic relation of the world to the one principle as Seeley expounds and this must be felt the more in proportion as the effort made to comprehend the totality of the universe the unity of thought, which the tendency of evolutionism in its various forms.
religion,
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Herbert SpenCer is regarded as at present the chief representative of agnosticism. But the agnosticism which Spencer adopted from Hamilton and Mansel forms but the one aspect of his philosophy, to a certain extent the con venient background into which all metaphysical problems can be relegated, so as to construct with fewer hindrances a system of natural evolution from the results of modern science. The significance of his philosophy lies in the bold ness with which it makes the idea of evolution, which has controlled natural science since Darwin, the dominant point of view in the formation of a connected and systematic theory of the world. In order to save his doctrine of natural de velopment from collision with the presuppositions of existing belief, he has placed the doctrine of the incognisability of the Absolute as a wall of separation between philosophy and religion, that an eternal peace may be concluded between them ; but, in reality, with the result that he has deprived
religion of its contents and his philosophical system of its prime principles. But, as in Spencer's system the idea of a harmonious and orderly world, or of a systematic unity among phenomena is so prominent, and this idea requires, or pre supposes necessarily, a connecting principle, or a basis of unity, he has not been able to consistently carry out his agnostic theory, but has surreptitiously converted the bare
? which Hamilton's Absolute amounted to, into a reality, which bears the relation of a positive cause to phenomena, only that nothing definite can be known as to its nature and its further relation to phenomena.
In his First Principles (1862), the ultimate principles of his philosophy, Spencer starts from the position, that as religion has always been of great importance in the history of mankind, and has been able to hold its ground in defiance of the attacks of science, it must contain an element of truth. But as there are various religions which claim to be true, and as science also can make the same claim, while yet truth is but one, the latter, Spencer holds, must be looked for in what the various
negative,
have in common with each other and with science. This common element cannot be a definite conception of the Absolute or the First Cause of the world, for it is precisely on
this point that opinions diverge, and in every one of the three main theories -- Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism -- is shown the impossibility of a satisfactory solution that is not self
religions
? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
follows that God, the Absolute, the Uncon ditioned, not for us cognisable, but great mystery, as all religions to some extent acknowledge, and the higher their
rank, so much the more fully, only that the philosopher regards this mystery as not merely relative, as the religions regard but as absolute. Science and religion agree in this, for science knows nothing about the most universal ideas-- force and matter, space and time can know things only by comparing them with others that resemble them, and on that very account unable to know the Absolute, which cannot be compared with anything.
But although involved in the very nature of our con sciousness that can know only what finite and limited, Spencer declines to go with Hamilton in maintaining that the Absolute a purely negative concept. On the contrary, he holds that the reality of the Absolute the necessary correlative of the Relative. This both a necessity of thought and of the analysis of things. For every de finite state of consciousness has a limited content, the latter presupposes an unlimited and general content as the raw material of limiting thought. Our self-consciousness, as
the consciousness of the conditioned ego and non-ego, pre supposes an Unconditioned which neither the ego nor the non-ego this the Absolute, which accordingly the necessary correlative of our self-consciousness. And this a priori proof from consciousness confirmed by an a posteriori proof from the analysis of external things. The results of modern physics and chemistry reveal as the constant element in all phenomena Force, which manifests itself in various forms that change places with each other, while amid all their changes remains unaltered. If, accordingly, every specific force only relative changeable phenomenal form of one
contradictory.
337
? universal unchangeable force, this must be regarded as the absolute reality which must necessarily be presupposed as
the background and basis of all that relative and pheno
menal. The entire universe to be explained from the movement of this absolute Force, which takes place rhyth
mically as attraction and repulsion, integration and disinte
gration, evolution and dissolution the phenomena of nature
and of mental life come under the same general laws of
matter, motion, and force, which are however only symbols of
the absolute Reality or Force which in itself unknowable. S
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It is obvious that Spencer has thus very seriously modified the doctrine of Hamilton and Mansel as to the incognisability of the Absolute. The Absolute of Spencer, of which substan tiality, causality, eternity and immutability are predicated, is no longer the simple Unknown, which would be beyond all our conceptions. The only question which arises is whether Spencer's doctrine of the Absolute is adequate to account for the world of mental life, and whether it is adapted to serve as the basis of the reconciliation of science and religion. An affirmative answer can hardly be given to this question. For there is surely much force in the contention of Spencer's opponents, that his agnostic evolutionism is really only a disguised materialistic (hylozoistic) Pantheism ; for if the supreme principle is nothing but force manifesting itself in various motions, it does not land us beyond materialism. On the other hand, it must be allowed that Spencer's real intention is directed to something higher, the attainment of which has been frustrated by his entanglement in the principle of empiricism and the psychology of association, though in many of his statements he approaches very nearly a higher position. If the Absolute must be conceived as the neces sary correlative of our self-consciousness, can it be conceived simply as physical force, and not rather as universal self- consciousness, as a spiritual self? And if we get the idea of force from the experience of our own power of volition, its action and its resistance, is it not natural to think of mind- force as prior to physical, and accordingly of the absolute Force at the basis of all specific forces as Mind ? The doctrine of evolution would harmonise perfectly well with these inferences, only it would have to become idealistic instead of materialistic, and only after this transformation had been made would a practicable basis be supplied for the reconciliation of religion and science which Spencer has done well to attempt.
Spencer would probably himself have taken this further step, if he had been able, on the decisive question as to the fundamental act of knowledge, to set himself free from the superficiality and confusions of the association-psychology. This he has failed to do, and defines consciousness as a suc cession of sensations or changes, which implies a relation of different states, and is brought about by different impressions of force. The question here arises, as in Mill's system, Can
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
339
succession of feelings or changes be consciously felt without
subject to recognise the change, without an active synthetic principle to combine the changing states of feeling into the unity of consciousness But Spencer has no place in his system for such a subject, as he holds that the ego consists simply of " faint " and the object of " vivid " series of sensations. He acknowledges therefore really nothing more than passive sensations, or impressions of force, and supposes he can explain consciousness from their changes alone, while undoubtedly wholly inexplicable without the active synthesis of the ego. Spencer can have ignored this prime factor only because, like all empiricists, he " confuses the succession of feelings with cognition of succession, changes of consciousness with consciousness of change. " When he speaks of change of states of consciousness as the result of changing impressions of force, he seeks to find the origin of consciousness in effects produced from without, which cannot, however, surely, be perceived as succession and changed save by reference to previously existing consciousness he really, therefore, presupposes consciousness as already wardly present, while he seeks to explain from external action. In fact, we must concur the searching criticism of Green,1 that Spencer has not grasped the fundamental pro blem of the source and nature of knowledge, as was pro posed by Hume and solved by Kant the synthetic function of the ego. Spencer supposes that Kant has been refuted
by the new discovery of the doctrine of natural evolution, namely, that the supposed a priori or innate ideas which are considered to precede experience, are in reality only the result: of the experience of the race which the individual inherits. 2 But Spencer here fails to perceive the real nature of the pro blem, which How experience imany form possible? A problem which remains unaltered whether the experience that of the individual or the race, and to the solution of which no historical " psychogenesis " of nature can contribute in the smallest degree. And while his evolutionary psycho
logy contributes nothing whatever towards solution of the problem as to the nature of knowledge, Spencer really makes
? Works Thomas Hill Green, vol.
See Martineau's critique of this doctrine, Types Ethical Theory, vol.
PP- 357 sqq.
pp. 383 sqq.
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a solution of it impossible by degrading the relation of sub ject and object, the ego and the non-ego, to a mere difference of degree in the strength or vividness of a series of sensa tions. An error so fundamental at the crucial point can do no other than produce a fatal effect upon the whole system built upon it. If a man fails to perceive in himself the active subject, the self-conscious mind, it cannot be expected of him that he should find it in the Absolute.
With reference to the religious import of the Spencerian doctrine of the Unknowable, the forcible criticisms of Mar- tineau and J. Caird may here find a place. The former1 says that " Spencer's testimony against the purely phenomenal doctrineis of high value " ; for " it betrays his appreciation of that outlook beyond the region of phenomena for the con ditions of religion which cannot eventually be content to gaze into an abyss without reply. " But his position, that we can know only that the absolute power but not what untenable, because self-contradictory. We can know the first fact by thought only, and " how can there be thought with nothing thinkable " " By calling this existence a
Power' Mr. Herbert Spencer surely removes by one mark from the unknown but, besides this, we are obliged,' he says, to regard that Power as omniscient,' as eternal, as one, as cause manifested in all phenomena list of predi
cates, scanty indeed when measured by the requisites of religion, but too copious for the plea of Nescience. " When we distinguish this Absolute from all that " related to
we know for to distinguish to know. This negative ontology which identifies the supreme reality with total vacuity, and makes the infinite in Being the zero in thought, cannot permanently poise itself in its precarious position must either repent of its concessions to realism and lapse into the scientific commonplace, 'all we know phenomena'; or
else advance, with what caution and reserve pleases, into ulterior conceptions of the invisible cause, sufficient to soften the total eclipse into the penumbra of sacred mystery. "
Martineau makes further the pertinent remark, that
but natural that the pretensions of men to more knowledge than they can substantiate should lead to this reaction into
? A Study Religion, vol.
pp. 131 sqq.
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? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
34
John Caird, his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
(1880),1 has given a searching criticism of Spencer's agnos ticism, the chief points of which are as follows. The two propositions that our intelligence confined to the finite and relative, and that we have cognisance of an existence beyond the finite, are contradictory and cancel each other. Whoever maintains that human knowledge limited shows thereby that not limited merely by the relative, because in that case could have no knowledge of its own limits. The true conclusion from the principles of Spencer's theory of know ledge not the incognisability of the Absolute, but its non existence his " unknowable Absolute " simply the negation of thought and therewith of being, in every sense in which we can use the expression. In reality, the assertion of the unknowableness of the Absolute based upon an abstraction; a fictitious logical entity first created, and then conscious ness charged with imbecility because of its inability to think that fiction. Nothing can possess any reality for us save as
capable of forming part of our thought, or itself a thinkable reality. All science proceeds on the tacit assump tion that nature and the world of man are intelligible, of the presence of reason, thought in things, and of rational rela tions in the events of history. This general presupposition cannot leave us when we rise beyond nature and humanity to the ultimate basis of all phenomena. If reason irresistibly impelled (even according to Spencer) to seek, above and beyond the manifold and changeful phenomena, a permanent unity, an infinite and absolute reality, can at this stage, as little as at any previous one, fall into the suicidal contradic tion of seeking by thought an object which has no relation to thought, and of seeking the ultimate explanation of all rational relations in the irrational. The presupposition and the final goal of thought cannot be an Absolute which simply the negation of thought, but rather that which comprehends all finite things and thoughts only because itself the Unity of Thought and Being, and in which therefore our human
finds its fullest revelation. Lastly, Caird observes, Pages 10-38.
imaginary ignorance. " " The Gnosticism of theologians responsible for much of the Agnosticism of this century. "
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? 342 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
that Spencer's demand of religious worship of the Unknow able is an impossible one for the human heart to meet. It is true all religion contains an element of mystery, inasmuch as finite intelligence cannot be the measure of the infinite ; but a religion all mystery is an absurd and impossible notion, and would be nothing else than the apotheosis of ignorance. The homage which we render to the Being in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, all the inexhaustible
wealth of that boundless realm of truth in which thought finds ever increasing stimulus to aspiration, to wonder and delight, is totally different from the dumb wonder of ignorance or the grovelling awe of the supernatural, as it is exhibited in the fetish-worshipper, whose religion is the nearest approach to the religion of the Unknowable. True religion is not the blind fear of an" unknown Being, but trust, sympathy, and
love toward the God who is light, and in whom is no dark ness at all," and to know whom is eternal life for the human spirit.
As is evident from this critique of Spencer's position, and as he himself intimates in his "prefatory note," John Caird takes essentially the standpoint of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion. He founds his proof of the existence of God on the fundamental principle of Hegelian speculation, in which he finds the essence of the ontological argument, namely, that the correlation of thought and being in our consciousness
involves as its necessary presupposition the absolute unity of both in the divine consciousness. After the example of Hegel, he describes the forms of the religious consciousness as the representative, figurative form of knowledge, as the abstract, disintegrating logical understanding, and as synthe tic, reintegrating speculation, which discovers in the contradic tions, to the understanding insoluble, of finite and infinite, freedom and necessity, etc. , the inseparable moments or members of a concrete unity. Caird's idea of religion is also formed after Hegel's, though with a stronger accentuation of the ethical side, and in that respect related to Fichte's ethical mysticism.
