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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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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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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. Religion is the realisation of the ideal, which
in morality is never more than approximately reached ; for religion is the surrender of the finite to the infinite will, the abnegation of all private individual volition, and complete identification of the personal will with God's. Hence en trance upon the religious life is the termination of the struggle
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
343
between " the false self and that higher self which at once mine and infinitely more than mine," the realisation of the divine self in the human. The last chapter in the book, which deals with the relation of the philosophy to the history of religion, offers excellent observations on false and correct applications of the idea of development to the history of religion. This idea according to Caird in no way incon sistent with the claim of Christianity to a divine origin, the
latter not understood in such sense as to sever Chris tianity from human history, which not the interest of the apologist to do. There reason to resist the application of the idea of evolution to Christianity in sense which would assert that there was nothing new and original in but only combination in new forms of pre-existing elements. The connection of Christianity with the past must be conceived as the transmuting of the past by new creative spiritual force. Thus, based upon Hegel, we have here an idealistic form of evolutionism in opposition to that of Herbert Spencer.
The Scottish philosophers, Edward Caird and Hutchison Stirling, and the Oxford Professor, Thomas Hill Green, have successfully endeavoured to introduce their countrymen to the philosophy of Hegel the two former by excellent mono graphs on Kant and Hegel, in which, while differing on many points, they concur in representing the Kantian philosophy as the fundamental basis of the speculation which reaches its climax in Hegel. This conception of the relation of the two great German philosophers appears to prevail pretty generally in England and Scotland, and without doubt much more correct than the view which prevails in Germany, in conse quence of the interpretation of Kant brought into vogue by the Neo-Kantians during the last decades. According to this interpretation, in order to remove him as far as possible from the tabooed Hegel, Kant to be explained in the sense of Hume and Locke, whereby the epoch-making
element of his philosophy totally ignored. really remarkable phenomenon in national psychology, that in the same years in which in Germany the younger generation dis covers the progress of philosophy in backward movement from Hegel to Kant, and from Kant to Hume and Locke, the younger generation in Great Britain has gone in the exactly opposite direction. In his elaborate Introductions to Hume's works (1874), by which he first obtained name as philo
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? 344 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
sophical thinker, Thomas Hill Green sought to show that the English philosophy of the last hundred years has remained stationary, because it has continued to build upon the founda tion of the empiricism of Locke, although Hume had shown its untenability, and that therefore the first condition of an advance is a serious reconsideration of the problem proposed by Hume, a problem the solution of which Green considers possible only in the direction of the speculative philosophy begun by Kant and carried further by Hegel. He had given expression to this conviction a few years earlier (1868), in the suggestive essay on Popular Philosophy in its Relation to
Life, at the close of which he says : 1 "
A peculiar charac
teristic of our times is the scepticism of the best men. Art,
religion, and political life have outgrown the nominalistic
logic and the psychology of individual introspection ; yet the
only recognised formulae by which the speculative man can
account for them to himself, are derived from that logic and
psychology. Thus the more fully he has appropriated the
results of the spiritual activity of his time, the more he is
baffled in his theory, and to him this means weakness, and
the misery of weakness. Meanwhile, pure motive and high
aspiration are going for nothing, or issuing only in those
wild and fruitless outbursts into action with which speculative
misery sometimes seeks to relieve itself. The prevalence of
such a state of mind might be expected at least to excite an
interest in a philosophy like that of Hegel, of which it was
the professed object to find formulae adequate to the action of
reason as exhibited in nature and human society, in art and
religion. "
As a tutor in Oxford, Green exercised, by the force of his
strong and sterling personality, directed always, both specu latively and practically, to the highest ideals, a powerful influence, which continues to work, upon the young minds
that gathered around him. His importance as a philosophical thinker became known to wider circles only after his death by his posthumous writings. For our purpose it is his Pro
legomena to Ethics, and his theological essays and addresses \ / (in the third volume of his collected works), that are of special importance. On these and the references of his
editor, in the memoir prefixed to the third volume of his 1 Works, vol. iii. p. 124.
? ? ? ? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
345
In a review of Caird's Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Green complains that Caird does not "sit looser to the dialectical method " of Hegel, and identifies thought and
reality without sufficient explanation that the vital truth which Hegel had to teach must be presented in form which will
be more acceptable to serious and scientific men generally. Green thus summarises this "vital truth" of Hegelianism " that there one spiritual self-conscious being, of which all that real the activity or expression that we are related to this spiritual being, not merely as parts of the world which
its expression, but as partakers in some inchoate measure of the self-consciousness through which at once constitutes and distinguishes itself from the world that this participation
the source of morality and religion. " The exposition of these propositions constitutes the subject matter of Green's philosophy of religion. He finds the foundation of faith in God in the intellectual and moral nature of man. Our know ledge of the world, being the mind's active combination of various appearances into the unity of consciousness, becomes the ground of the knowledge of self-conscious Mind in the universe, which the necessary condition of the existence of
works, the following sketch of his religious philosophy based.
? a like activity in ourselves, and the source and bond of the ever growing synthesis called knowledge. But as the source of all knowledge God not knowable by us in the same sense as any other object, and can only be thought of under metaphors and practically experienced as the power by which our minds think and love. As our thought presupposes as the ground of its possibility an eternal thinking Mind, so our moral action presupposes an eternal Will employing man as the instrument of the realisation of its ends. For all moral action self-realisation, the development of our true nature, the endeavour to perfect our actual nature in the direction of a highest ideal. This effort after self-improvement the practical proof of an absolute perfection. For the possibili ties of our nature which wait for realisation
presuppose a superhuman self from which, in which, and for which they are actual there must be an eternal subject which all that the imperfect subject destined to become by the unfolding of
its powers. in this sense that Green uses the somewhat bold expression, " God our possible or ideal self. " But he
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? 346 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
does not mean by this that this self is an empty, merely
ideal ; on the contrary, it is the only realising principle, or cause, of our personal self, which is never more than a relative reality. As little may this be understood in the sense of a pantheistic identification of God with man, be cause our imperfect, perpetually developing being distinguishes us essentially from the eternally perfect being of God. But what the expression does mean is that the human mind is in principle one with the Divine, relatively participates in God, is a reproduction of the Divine under the conditions of the finite. According to Green, the inner essence of Christianity lies in its sense of this fact, that God is not an alien, far-off outward Power, but the Father, whose " word is nigh unto us," of whom we may say that we are reason of his reason, whose spirit lives in us, and for whom we live in living for the brethren ; and thereby we live freely, because in obedi ence to a spirit which is our self; and in communion with whom we have assurance of eternal life. A self which can think and will eternal ideas, can seek to realise eternal ends, is itself above time, shares in the nature of the eternal ; the perfect development of its capacities cannot be its annihila tion, although we can form no conception of the positive state of the realised ideal, because it lies beyond our experience.
The philosopher is accordingly conscious of being in essen tial accord with Christian faith when this is conceived in its religious sense, that as disposition of mind or character, consisting in the consciousness of potential unity with God, and issuing in the effort to realise this unity in life, self- denial, and in confiding love. This faith independent of historical proofs in every form, and carries the evidence of its own certainty along with As a religious faith cannot come into conflict with knowledge, as both alike have their source in reason or self-consciousness, which itself again a
revelation of the Divine reason. But religious faith its empirical ecclesiastical form has another side, by which necessarily comes into conflict with knowledge. The one spiritual truth clothed in the forms of the imagination, which can never adequately represent the idea. The pro gressive revelation of God in the spirit of man and in the whole course of human history narrowed to an event of the past, occurring but once or occasionally, and of an exceptiona and absolutely miraculous nature. Events of this kind are
imaginary
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? Ch. I. ] PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY. 347
then made to constitute the immediate object of faith, and this faith in miracle the indispensable condition of Christian piety and morality. But in this view it is forgotten that as sent to historical traditions, be they well or attested, true or untrue, can never be more than an act of the intellect, which would make no difference to the moral value of man, to his religious and moral character. From this faith, still required in the churches, in the miraculous as the specific form of divine revelation, the moral feeling and the intellectual culture of our day have revolted. For when once the idea of
" nature " conceived as continuous, uniform system of laws, " supernatural event " would be breach of the con tinuity of the order of which was supposed to be an ele ment, that would contradict the conditions under which alone a thing can be an event. " As long as the truth of religion supposed to depend on supernatural events, science
? right in pronouncing fiction and in identifying faith with unreason. " The business of apologetics can be no other
than to distinguish faith its spiritual and religious essence from the inadequate forms of the imagination, and to learn to
understand historically the rise and growth of the latter.
was not within the scope of Green's vocation as a philo
sopher to deal with the critical history of Christian faith, but he everywhere shows close acquaintance with the results of recent historical criticism, as far as they could serve to confirm
his philosophical speculations. " The glory of Christianity," he says,1 " not that excludes, but that comprehends
not that came of a sudden into the world, or that
complete in particular institution, or can be stated complete in particular form of words but that the expression of a common spirit which gathering together all things in one. We cannot say of Lo, here or Lo, there now, but was not then. We go backward, but we cannot reach its source we look forward, but we cannot foresee its final power. We do wrong in making depend on a past event, and in identifying with the creed of certain age, or with visible society established at particular time. What we thus seem to gain in definiteness, we lose in permanence of conviction for importunate inquiry will show us that the event can only be approached through series of fluctuating
The Witness of God, Works, iii. pp. 240 sqq.
given
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? 348 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
interpretations of behind which its original nature cannot be clearly ascertained that the visible Church of one age
never essentially the same as that of the next that
only in word, or to the intellectually dead, that the creed of the present the same as the creed of the past. " But
doubtless true that the roots of the system of practical ideas which we call Christianity are as old as mankind, the ideas would never have been developed save through definite historical events and personal influences, among which some outweigh all others in importance. The Son of Man came, who was conscious, in the meanness of human life and death, of the communication of God to himself, and through him to mankind. Then came Paul, who found his idea of the " heavenly man," borrowed from the philosophy of his day, realised in Jesus, and made the death and resurrection of
the symbol of the fundamental principle, that man comes to his true self only by the passing out of his old nar row self into the true divine self. But while Paul had placed this moral and spiritual element above the miraculous, sub
the relation was reversed the miraculous over powered the moral and the spiritual. Yet two generations after Paul followed the author of the Fourth Gospel, " who gave that final spiritual interpretation to the person of Christ which has for ever taken out of the region of history and of the doubts that surround all past events, to fix in the puri fied conscience as the immanent God. " By combining faith the spiritual with the moral, God with man, "this Gospel has filled the special function of presenting the highest thought about God in language of the imagination, and has thus become the source of the highest religion. " But while according to Paul and John Christ dwells and works as spirit in believers, the Church he has been step by step " ex ternalised and mystified. " Thus arose dogma with its mys teries, from which knowledge and the purest moral culture are estranged. But trustful, child-like love, set before us by the Biblical presentation of Christ, and made an inward part of our life and character, sufficient to meet and overcome all the blows of criticism and the problems as to historical events. And as must be allowed, no longer possible for the modern thinking Christian to retain the communion
'Works, iii.
? Jesus
sequently
219.
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? Ch. PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
349
and fellowship of the confessions and creeds of the ancient Church, he must, nevertheless, continue to feel bound to his fellow-Christians by the ties of practical love. Green's own life was an example of this, and he combined in an uncommon degree practical social labours with philosophical pursuits.
There are not wanting various indications that, as in Ger
many the original Hegelianism, so England Neo-Hege- lianism, so far from being the final end of philosophy, that even those thinkers who are intimately conversant with the latter, and ungrudgingly acknowledge its noble and massive idealism, have nevertheless not been able to convince them selves of the tenability of the system, and so find themselves compelled to advance in the direction of speculative theism (which also predominates the post- Hegelian speculation of Germany). We must mention, as written on these lines, the able book of Andrew Seth, Hegelianism and Personality
(1887), which appears to have been occasioned by the writ ings of Green for begins with critical observations on the crucial doctrine of Green's system, that a universal or divine self present in every individual as the efficient principle of its theoretical and practical knowledge. In order to under stand and fairly judge this doctrine, Seth holds necessary to go back to its genesis in the philosophy of Kant and his successors, especially of Hegel. An acute analysis and cri tique of these systems leads to the result that the fundamental error of Hegelianism and the allied English doctrine the identification of the human and the divine self-consciousness, and that this identification depends throughout on the ten dency to take mere form of consciousness, which the same in all individuals, and so universal, as a real being, to hypostatise and call the self common to God and men. This contrary, Seth maintains, to the characteristic nature of the self, which, although in knowledge principle of unity,
in existence, or metaphysically, principle of isolation (? ). For the most certain testimony of consciousness that have a centre of my own -- will of my own. Nor does the
? consciousness lend any countenance to the represen tation of the human soul as a mere mode or efflux of the divine. On the contrary, religious self-surrender of the will
to the divine will presupposes the active self of the man. What Hegel calls "spirit," "absolute spirit," at bottom
religious
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? 350 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
nothing more than the abstract scheme of intelligence, which Fichte constructs in his VVissenschaftslehre. But this ab stract form has neither reality nor real value. The attempt of the Hegelian schools to unify the divine and the human subject is ultimately destructive of both. We cannot rightly conceive either the divine or the human self in this impossible union ; nor is this wonderful, seeing they are merely two in separable aspects of our own conscious life isolated and hypo- statised. If we are to ascribe real existence to God, Seth declares with truth, there must be a divine centre of thought, activity, and enjoyment, which can no more be lost in its manifestations in the universe than human personality in its life for others. The admission of a real self-consciousness in God moreover, demanded by the fundamental principle of the theory of knowledge --interpretation by means of the highest category within our reach the self-conscious life the highest in us, we cannot deny to God he may, indeed must, be infinitely more than we know ourselves to be, but he cannot be less. The Hegelian system, continues Seth, as ambiguous on the question of man's immortality as on that of the personality of God, and for precisely the same reason-- that the self of which assertions are made not a real but a logical self. The two positions are two complementary sides of the same view of existence. If we can believe, with the Hegelians of the Left, that there no permanent Intelligence
and Will at the heart of things, then the self-conscious life degraded from its central position, and becomes merely an accident in the universe but, on the other hand, to a philo sophy founded upon self-consciousness, and especially upon the moral consciousness, must seem incredible that the suc cessive generations should be used up and cast aside -- as character were not the only lasting product and the only valu able result of time. Seth summarises his critique of Hegel and Neo-Hegelianism the sentences, " Hegel the pro tagonist of idealism, and champions the best interests of hu manity but in its execution the system breaks down, and ultimately sacrifices these very interests to a logical abstrac tion styled the Idea, in which both God and man disappear.