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BELIEF, FAITH, AND PROOF
AN INQUIRY INTO THE SCIENCE OF
NATURAL THEOLOGY
BELIEF, FAITH, @> PROOF
AN INQUIRY INTO THE SCIENCE OF
NATURAL THEOLOGY
BY THE REV. J. H. BEIBITZ, M.A.
VICAR OF ALL SAINTS*, WARWICK J EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP
OF COVENTRY , SOMETIME VICE-PRINCIPAL OF LICHFIELD
THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
THE RT. REV. BISHOP GORE, D.D.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1922
All rights reserved
105707
To MY WIFE
INTRODUCTION
IT so happened that the writer of this Intro
duction had the opportunity of introducing the
author of this book to its publisher and suggest
ing its publication. So it was that he came to
undertake, when it was accepted for publication,
to make some attempt to recommend it to the
public an attempt which, now that he reads
the book in print, he feels to be superfluous;
for it quite sufficiently recommends itself, and
the " introducer " has no reputation as a philo
sopher such as would enable him to add any
thing to its authority. Nevertheless, he must
abide by his compact.
The world of men has, on the whole, shown
much more confidence in believing in God than
ability to convince by reasoning the minority
of atheists or sceptics. Paley, in 1802, proved
the existence of God from the evidence of design
in Nature, but he would not have removed the
doubts of Hume or of Kant. Certainly the
roots of belief and unbelief appear to lie deeper
than logical arguments. Nevertheless, no faith
Vll
viii INTRODUCTION
can gain or keep the respect of mankind if it
cannot vindicate and maintain itself in the
field of free discussion. If it cannot convince
its determined adversaries, it must at least be
able to satisfy the mass of reasoning mankind
that it has the best of the argument that there
is more intellectual difficulty in resisting belief
than in accepting it. Since the days of the
Greek philosophers theism has, on the whole,
been able to do this. It has left the dissidents
in the position of eccentrics. Accordingly, it is
useful to review the arguments by which theism
has, throughout a long period of history, passing
through very different stages of civilisation and
phases of culture, vindicated its faith and its
claim on the reason of man. Mr. Beibitz begins
his book, without any preface, by an enumeration
of the arguments for the existence of God which
have maintained themselves over a very long
period. Some of them have been apparently
overthrown, as Anselm s ontological proof by
many opponents, or the argument from design
in Paley s form by the rise of the Darwinian
doctrine of evolution. But they have had a
tendency to revive. After all, it has been felt,
there is " something in them." More strength
remains on their side than appeared probable
at the first onslaught. So Mr. Clement Webb
has taught us to feel about Anselm s argument,
INTRODUCTION ix
and multitudes of modern thinkers about the
argument from design. In fact it was the first
great critic of this latter argument, Immanuel
Kant, who himself revived it on what is, I
suppose, its strongest ground by insisting on
the existence in the moral field of absolute
values, and beings who must be regarded as
" ends in themselves/ Others of these argu
ments have been quite antiquated, in the form
in which they used to be urged, by changes
in our conception both of the world, as physical
science has taught us to view it, or of the religions
of mankind, as their wide comparative study
has tended to represent them. Thus the cosmo-
logical argument and the argument from the
consent of mankind at least need complete
restatement. But it does not follow that they
are dead.
Mr. Beibitz therefore takes the old arguments,
re-examines them in the light of our present-
day knowledge, and, restating them, still claims
for each a permanent impressiveness, and taking
them together, an impressiveness which is over
whelming in force.
As I say, I think the book needs no recom
mendation. I feel as I read it but one regret:
I cannot but wish it had been longer. At times
the argument is very closely compressed. And
in the latter part of the book, where the posi-
x INTRODUCTION
tively Christian beliefs in the Triune Being of
God and in the Incarnation and the Cross are,
not indeed assumed or urged as evidence, but
introduced as claiming consideration, I feel to
desire some statement of the Christian idea of
Revelation and its relation to Reason, fuller
than is given at the beginning of the essay.
But, as I say, these positively Christian con
siderations are not urged as evidence or taken
for granted; and nowhere, as far as I can discern,
can the author be accused of ignoring a serious
argument against him. His course of reasoning
strikes me as compressed indeed, but never as
hurried, or as leaving any serious objection
unexamined. And he is always candid and fair.
Thus, in the present " strife of tongues/ I think
this short work on a vast subject should make
any reader who desires to believe in God feel
a profound reassurance a sense that the wisdom
of the ages has not after all been antiquated
by the newer lights.
CHARLES GORE.
CONTENTS
PAGES
INTRODUCTION - - - vii-x
CHAPTER I
AIM AND METHOD
Vastness of the universe Aim of science Scientific use of
hypothesis Meaning of revelation - 1-10
CHAPTER II
PROOF, BELIEF, FAITH
Propositions capable of proof Limitations of proof Faith and
reason The adventure of faith Faith and personality - 11-21
CHAPTER III
THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT {" E CONSENSU
GENTIUM ")
Preliminary difficulties Extension of cult Similarities in cult
Cult and myth Kinds of sacrifice Origin of sacrifice Savage
communion rites Sacrifice and communion High Gods of
low races Primitive monotheism Definition of religion
Religion and magic The idea of "mana " The religious im
pulseRestatement of the argument - 22-53
CHAPTER IV
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The infinite regress Meaning of experience Origin of the
categories The idea of causation The idea of God as First
Cause Deism, pantheism, and theism Restatement of the
argument ... - 54-74
xi
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
PAGES
Kant s criticism Appearances of design Evolution and special
creation Evidences of evolution Natural selection After
Darwin Natural selection and design Psychical factor in
evolution General idea of development Meaning of process
Agnosticism Pantheism Pluralism Christian Theism Re
statement of the argument - - 75-126
CHAPTEB VI
THE MORAL ARGUMENT
The moral sense Mechanism and freedom Our consciousness of
freedom Origin of the moral sense Origin and validity
Differing views of the " good "Social implication of morality
The summum lonum. Restatement of the argument 127-148
CHAPTEB VII
THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
St. Anselm s argument Thought and reality Restatement of
the argument 149-162
CHAPTER VIII
THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
The charge of anthropomorphism Meaning of personality Is
there a permanent self? Self-hood and personality Social
character of personality The Divine personality Values and
ideals Doctrine of the Trinity Infinite personality The
Divine personality and religion - 163-185
CHAPTER IX
OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS
Problem of evil Divine omnipotence Consequences of sin
Problem of pain A suffering God Human immortality The
great hope - 186-199
BELIEF, FAITH, AND PROOF
CHAPTEK I
AIM AND METHOD
NATURAL THEOLOGY is the name given to that
branch of theology which seeks to discover
what evidence concerning the being and character
of God is to be found in nature, using that word
in its widest and most inclusive sense, as em
bracing not only the whole realm of natural
objects, but also the ideas, aims, and aspirations
of the mind of man. Its method has become
more or less stereotyped. Writers on the subject
have long ago formulated the famous five
arguments which are said to prove the existence
of God. These are:
I. The argument from the general consent of
mankind to the existence of God, or gods: the
proof e ccmsensu gentium.
II. The argument from our conception of
cause to the existence of a First Cause: the
cosmological proof.
2
2 AIM AND METHOD
III. The argument from the evidences of
design in nature to the existence of a Designer:
the teleological proof.
IV. The argument from conscience to a Moral
Lawgiver: the moral proof.
V. The argument from the idea we can form
of a perfect Being as necessarily involving the
real existence of such a Being: the ontological
proof.
The present work has for its object to show:
I. That Natural Theology is a real science,
reaching its conclusion by the same method
as has proved so successful in the case of the
natural sciences. This forms the subject of the
present chapter.
II. That the five arguments enumerated above
do not constitute a demonstrative proof of the
existence of God, such proof being from the
nature of the case impossible, but may neverthe
less constitute the foundation of a reasonable
belief. This we seek to show in Chapter II.
III. That modern science and philosophy
make necessary a restatement of the forms in
which those arguments have been put forward,
but that, so restated, they are valid within the
limitation laid down above. This discussion
occupies Chapters III. to VII.
IV. That the evidence tends to establish the
existence not simply of a spiritual background
VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE 3
of nature, or of the spiritual character of the
universe as a whole, but of the Personal God
which religion demands. This we consider in
Chapter VIII.
V. That the difficulties which attach to
theistic beliefs are not insuperable obstacles to
a reasonable faith. This position we try to
justify in Chapter IX.
What, then, should be the method of Natural
Theology ? How, in other words, are we to
set about answering the momentous question,
whether nature does or does not bear witness to
God ? " The invisible things of Him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by those things which are made,
even His eternal power and Godhead." How
are we to bring to the test of our reason,
and thus investigate, the truth of this sublime
belief ?
A tremendous difficulty here confronts us,
in the vastness of that field of nature which the
advance of the natural sciences has disclosed
to us ? The day has long since passed, when
an individual thinker could lay claim to the title
of a natural philosopher."
So far from any single mind being able to
include in its grasp the whole field of natural
phenomena, there is no living man who is master
of all the details of one science. Perforce we
4 AIM AND METHOD
live in an age in which specialisation has been
carried to its extremest limits.
And the complexity of our subject-matter is
enormously increased when we include, as we
must, not only nature as external to us, but the
human mind in which it is mirrored. Our first
business, then, is to try to discover some clue,
if possible, which may serve as a guide through
such a bewildering and intricate maze as the
entire field presented by the natural sciences, as
well as by psychology and the history of human
beliefs.
Such a clue is provided by a method which
has been used with striking success in natural
science, the method of hypothesis. In order to
make perfectly clear to our minds the nature and
employment of this method, we must first recall
what in fact is the aim which science proposes
to itself. All science must begin with the
careful and laborious collection of facts, but this
does not itself constitute a science. The most
complete enumeration of all the species of living
plants or animals is not botany or zoology. The
object of the scientific inquirer is not to ascer
tain as many facts as possible, although this is
the necessary foundation of his work, but to
find out the relations of the facts to each other,
and then to express these relations in as few and
simple formulae as possible.
AIM OP SCIENCE 5
Two accounts of the aim of science have been
given which are apparently, but only apparently,
inconsistent: (1) That science is descriptive, not
explanatory; (2) that science is essentially the
search for the causes of things. The first is true,
inasmuch as science does not propose to give
an ultimate explanation of anything. Its sole
business is to give a simple and accurate descrip
tion of what actually happens, to exhibit as far
as it can the true order or sequence of natural
phenomena. And this is precisely the same
thing as the discovery of their causes, in the
scientific sense of the word "cause," which has
been defined as " the totality of the conditions
in the presence of which an event occurs, and in
the absence of any member of which it does not
occur. More briefly, causation in the current
scientific sense means sequence under definitely
known conditions." In other words, not facts,
but the connection between facts, is the proper
subject-matter of science.
What is the nature of the ultimate reality of
the universe ? What makes things happen in
such and such a way and not otherwise ? are
questions which science relegates to metaphysics.
Now, how does science set out to discover the
connections which exist between natural pheno
mena ? For clearly such connections are not
given simply, as the facts themselves are. They
6 AIM AND METHOD
can only be ascertained by the application of
methods which have been elaborated by minds
trained in and devoted to the pursuit of science.
Among such methods is one which demands the
exercise not of the intellect alone, but of the
imagination. A theory, a guess, occurs to the
scientific inquirer. He proceeds to put it to
the test, by observation or experiment. Will
this formula hold good ? Will it explain the
facts at present known ? If it is so far success
ful, it is adopted as a working hypothesis. The
next step is the collection of yet more facts,
and the result may be that the hypothesis
has to be modified or abandoned. But, on the
other hand, if a given hypothesis does explain
all the facts to which it can be applied, it is on
its way to be accepted as a scientific truth. The
test of an hypothesis is whether it is capable of
giving a coherent and rational explanation of
observed facts. In this manner, most of the
greatest scientific discoveries have been made.
No more brilliant example of this method has
perhaps ever been exhibited than the discovery,
made simultaneously by Darwin and Wallace,
of the principle of " natural selection." That
principle was suggested to the minds of its dis
coverers as the result of relatively few observa
tions. Once made, this hypothesis became the
stimulus to an enormously extended field of
SCIENTIFIC USE OF HYPOTHESIS 7
research. And while to-day many biologists
question the exact extent of its applicability, it
is acknowledged to have been a potent factor in
organic evolution. The hypothesis is accepted,
not as a verified fact given in experience, but as
a theory which is held to be true, because it
explains, or holds together, a vast series of facts
in the world of living forms. And, again, to take
a still more far-reaching example, the uniformity
of nature, the very foundation-stone of all
science, is itself the grandest hypothesis of all
one which can never be absolutely and completely
verified, but which is yet in course of continuous
verification, as science is ever extending its
researches into new territory.
Scientific hypotheses may be divided into
two classes: (1) Those which have suddenly
flashed into the mind of an investigator as
brilliant guesses, the intuitions of genius; (2)
those which have been suggested as the result
of patient and laborious research. In either
case, the only test of their truth is, that they
should supply a rational and coherent explana
tion of the facts.
Here, it seems to the present writer, we have
the most appropriate method for our own
inquiry, and the only one which can safely guide
us through the immense multiplicity of facts
which nature presents. The Being of God will
8 AIM AND METHOD
be our hypothesis, and we can test it by applying
it to the various classes of facts which are
included under the five arguments which have
been enumerated above. The facts will be seen
to be of two kinds: (1) Ordinary phenomena of
nature, which are the proper object of the natural
sciences, and (2) processes which take place in
human minds, and which are dealt with by the
studies of comparative religions, psychology,
ethics, and in part by metaphysics. The first
class includes the cosmological and teleological
arguments, the second the argument e consensu
gentium, and the moral and ontological argu
ments. The cosmological argument also, in
part, falls under the second head, as it will
involve a discussion of the meaning of " cause,"
which belongs to the province of metaphysics.
The same is true, to some extent, of the argument
from design, for the question whether a real
teleology, or purposive striving for an end, is to
be found in nature, must include an examina
tion into the meaning of " process/ But, all
through, our aim will be a simple one namely,
to discover whether our hypothesis of the Being
of God, as compared with other rival hypotheses,
supplies the most rational and coherent inter
pretation of the facts. If we find that it does
this, we shall be justified, according to the canons
of scientific method, in regarding it as true.
MEANING OF REVELATION
Before we enter upon this inquiry, there are
three preliminary points which call for attention,
the first two of which can be dismissed with a
brief notice, while the third will demand treat
ment at greater length.
I. To some, and especially to those who have
never been troubled with religious doubts, it may
appear that this whole investigation is futile,
inasmuch as God has revealed Himself to man,
and therefore it is unnecessary, if not impious,
to discuss the grounds on which belief in His
existence is founded. Such a position, however,
involves a misconception of the nature and
purport of revelation. No knowledge of God
is possible, except by way of revelation. But
it is obvious that He may, and probably will,
reveal Himself in a variety of ways. And we
are safe in assuming that in no case shall we be
excused from vigorous mental effort to discover
the fact and to master the contents of that
revelation. All knowledge implies an element
which is outside us, which is simply " given,"
as well as the mental process whereby we assimi
late it, and make it part of ourselves. Even
to understand the structure of our own minds
we must, as it were, place ourselves outside
them. Still more obviously is this the case with
the knowledge we may seek to gain of another
person. All such knowledge must start with his
10 AIM AND METHOD
self -communication, or revelation, to us. And
it is not otherwise with our knowledge of God,
whether through nature or some other medium.
There is, therefore, no such antithesis as has
been commonly held to exist between " natural "
and " revealed " theology.
II. A certain misapprehension may arise from
our use of the word " hypothesis." This is
largely due to the ordinary non-scientific use of
the term as connoting something which is in its
very nature uncertain. We use it, as stated, in
the sense of the scientific method of the " working
hypothesis," which again and again has proved
its value as a means whereby some of the widest
and most secure generalisations in the sphere of
natural law have been attained. Such dis
coveries as gravitation and biological evolution
may serve as illustrations.
III. Two very important preliminary ques
tions remain. Can we hope to reach a certain
proof of the existence of God ? And, what is the
relation between a belief in God which rests on
arguments, and religious faith ? But to these
a whole chapter must be devoted.
CHAPTEE II
PROOF, BELIEF, FAITH
THE five arguments enumerated at the beginning
of the preceding chapter are sometimes termed
by natural theologians " proofs of the existence
of God." The first question which we have in
this chapter is, whether this title is justified ?
Is the existence of God capable of proof ? A
proof is that which compels the assent of every
normal mind. A proof, therefore, of God s
existence must be an argument of such a nature
that no rational being can withhold assent from
it. Hence, the mere fact that there are atheists
and agnostics who are capable of thinking
rationally, and whose sincerity we cannot doubt,
seems prima facie evidence that no such argu
ment has yet been formulated. But, further,
there are two weighty reasons for holding that
no proof of the kind can ever be forthcoming,
that the existence of God is of necessity in
capable of proof. The first is based on the
constitution of the human mind, on the kinds
of propositions which alone can compel assent;
the second on the nature of God Himself.
11
12 PROOF, BELIEF, FAITH
I. That the existence of God is incapable of
proof follows from the constitution of the
human mind.
Our minds are so constituted that there are
two, and only two, classes of propositions that
can compel assent :
1. Those which rest upon the evidences of the
senses, or can be directly deduced from such
evidence. It is true that I can doubt, and under
exceptional circumstances am right in doubting,
the evidence of my own senses. But the test is
ready at hand, and can in most cases be easily
applied. It is whether other normally con
stituted persons corroborate my own impression.
If I see a colour as blue, which to others appears
as red, I come to the conclusion that I am colour
blind. It is the common testimony of normal
individuals which serves as the distinguishing
test between reality and hallucination. Further,
I am compelled to assent to the evidence of other
men s senses, if I judge their report to be abso
lutely trustworthy. We should consider a man
insane who questioned the existence of pyramids
in Egypt, on the ground that he had never seen
them with his own eyes. We are not, of course,
concerned here at all with the question as to
what does constitute sufficient testimony, but
only with the fact that I am prepared, under
certain conditions, to credit the evidence of
PROPOSITIONS CAPABLE OF PROOF 13
other men s senses equally with that of my
own.
2. Those propositions which can be deduced
from truths already accepted as axiomatic.
Again, we do not deal with the rules which control
such deductions, or with the nature of axioms,
or how they have been reached, but with the
fact that no sane person can doubt the truths
of mathematics, so far as he is capable of
understanding them, and the processes whereby
they have been arrived at. Mathematics is the
science which, above all others, claims to demon
strate or prove its conclusions, for they rest
ultimately on a few axioms, which appear to the
mind as self-evident truths.
As, therefore, the existence of God does not
rest on the testimony of our senses, nor can be
deduced from any of our axioms, it cannot be
presented in such a form as to compel assent.
It cannot be proved or demonstrated.
II. That the existence of God is incapable of
proof follows, further, from the nature of God
Himself.
It is a profound mistake to regard His existence
as one fact among the infinite number of facts
in the universe. " God, if He exists, is not
merely one of the elements in the universe
which we may or may not take into account in
our view of it. He is either the permanent
14 PROOF, BELIEF, FAITH
condition of all that is and happens, or He is
nothing at all." In more familiar words, " in
Him we live and move and have our being/
Hence the attempt, first, to consider the world
apart from God, and then, from such a survey,
to prove His existence, is foredoomed to failure.
For the theistic creed rightly understood insists
that our premiss is not defective, but radically
false.
There is no such thing as a world apart from
God, and from that which is non-existent no
conclusion as to existence *can be arrived at.
A somewhat analogous instance is the barren
attempt to prove our own existence. For every
part of our experience from which we might
seek to draw such a conclusion already involves
the existence of the self which we seek to prove,
or else is an experience without a self, which can
easily be shown to be no experience at all that
is, an unreality. Equally unreal is a world
considered an isolation from God, if He be as,
according to theism, He is the ground of all
existence and the condition of all our thinking
about existence. Hence a true theology teaches
that we cannot prove that God exists, and that
this incapacity follows from the right idea of
God as the one and sole Keality, the ground of
all being and all thought.
LIMITATIONS OF PROOF 15
A SEASONABLE BELIEF.
It does not, however, follow from the fact
that we cannot prove the existence of God, that
we must regard theistic belief as necessarily
insecure and uncertain, as hypothetical in the
popular sense of the word. The vast majority
of the facts which we all believe are equally
incapable of proof. And this is true of them,
in proportion to their living human interest in
other words, to the complexity of the interests
which they involve . While mathematical truths
are susceptible of rigid proof, the other sciences
fall more and more away from this standard in
the exact measure in which they deal with
ascending forms of life. Rigid demonstration
becomes increasingly less possible as we pass
from the sciences of inorganic nature, where
mathematical methods hold sway, to those which
deal with the varied manifestations of life, as we
turn from chemistry and physics to biology,
from biology to psychology, from psychology to
sociology. We are almost tempted to say that
it is only the things which do not matter, which,
at any rate, do not vitally affect us, which can
be proved. With regard to all the rest, alike
in science and in practical life, we have to be
content with an attitude of reasonable belief.
16 PROOF, BELIEF, FAITH
Therefore it ought not to be a cause of disquiet
to us that we seem to take up the same attitude
in regard to the answer to the supreme question
we put to the universe, Does God exist ?
From this it follows that the five arguments
for the Divine existence, even if we deny to
them the title of proofs, are not on that account
deprived of value. We shall see, indeed, that
they are in need of criticism and restatement.
But they afford us the means of applying theism
as a working hypothesis to large classes of facts,
and if this furnishes a better explanation of them
than any other hypothesis we have every right
to assert its truth.
In this connection we do well to remember
that all science starts from a belief in the uni
formity of nature. Apart from this belief no
science could take a single step forward. Yet
uniformity is assumed, and can never be demon
strated, for it must rest to the end on an in
sufficient induction. The proof of it would
necessitate that which must be for ever im
possible a complete knowledge of all the facts
of nature. Thus, in regard to this first article of
the scientific creed, as in regard to the existence
of God, a reasonable belief is the utmost we can
reach. Uniformity, indeed, is being constantly
verified in experience, but this is the test of
every good working hypothesis.
FAITH AND REASON 17
But in regard to the theistic creed, we may
inquire whether there are not other factors of
our nature beside the intellect which can come
into play and produce an inner feeling of certitude
which reasoning is powerless to create. " Faith,"
said Lotze, " supplies the satisfying and con
vincing conclusion of those upward soaring trains
of thought which reason itself began, led by its
own needs, but was not able to bring to a
conclusion/
FAITH.
We therefore conclude this chapter by a brief
inquiry into the nature of faith, in order to
discover, first, its relation to the two attitudes
of mind we have been hitherto considering, a
compelled assent, and a reasonable belief, and
secondly, whether those are right who claim for
faith a certain moral quality or worth. For if
God is, and if faith does possess this moral value,
we can readily understand that He might so order
the constitution of the world and of our minds
as to leave room for, or to call into existence,
its activity.
The following points seem to be clear :
I. The object of faith is from the nature of
the case an object which does not admit of
demonstration that is to say, it does not rest
on the evidence of sense, nor can it be deduced
3
18 PROOF, BELIEF, FAITH
from any of our axioms. The nearest approach
to a definition is the well-known sentence in the
Epistle to the Hebrews: " Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen/ It has to do with a world inaccessible
to our senses, and makes that world a present
reality. It is a power of vision, which transcends
the reach of our physical organs.
II. The contrast is complete between the
assent yielded by faith and that which is com
pelled by demonstration in other words, one
of the chief characteristics of faith is its freedom.
It is not forced by the logical constraint of proof,
nor, like belief, is it inclined this way or that by
a balancing of arguments. Certainly, so long as
it is a rational faith, it includes the exercise of
our reasoning faculty, but it includes also the
exercise of our will and our affections. It repre
sents a spontaneous action of the whole per
sonality. This does not of itself give a moral
worth to faith, but it does indicate the possibility
of it. Eoom is made for moral values to enter
in, wherever the element of freedom makes its
appearance, for it affords scope to the action of
the will. But whether they do enter, in this
particular case, must depend, as in all cases, on
the nature of the thing chosen, or the use made
of freedom. There can be no exercise of will,
therefore no moral value, in the assent which
THE ADVENTURE OF FAITH 19
is compelled by proof. No man is made the
better by his assent to the demonstration that
two sides of a triangle are together greater than
the third. In this respect the attitude of
reasonable belief is more nearly allied to faith,
in fact does partake of the nature of faith, in
so far as, for example, the balancing judgment
may be swayed by the will to believe, for
example, in the supremacy of goodness or truth.
In the unwearied investigations of the man of
science, in the will to overcome obstacles or to
face unpopularity, there is of course present a
strong element of moral value. But we are here
contrasting compelled assent, or even balancing
belief, as purely intellectual attitudes, with faith
as being, by its very nature, an act of the entire
personality.
III. A very distinctive feature of faith is its
adventurous character. The man who has faith
in God does not merely adopt a certain theory
of the universe, but makes the great surrender,
setting his own choices and preferences aside,
and choosing that which he conceives to be the
Will of God. A faith which falls short of this
is a defective faith. A state of mind which does
not at all tend towards this self-surrender, which
has in it no spark of adventure, cannot be
properly described as faith. We cannot apply
the name to a belief which produces no kind of
20 PROOF, BELIEF, FAITH
action as its natural result. The faith known
to St. Paul was " faith energising through love."
At this stage we can have no hesitation in
assigning to faith a moral value, not simply
because it involves freedom, but because of the
use which it makes of freedom.
IV. In its true and proper sense, above all in
its Christian sense, faith has for its object not
a statement of things to be believed, but a
Person. Time after time when St. Paul speaks
of the faith in Christ which justifies, it would be
possible, without altering the meaning, to sub
stitute for the word " faith " the word " loyalty."
In this connection, there is a close parallel
between the Christian faith in Christ and the
faith which we have in the goodness and trust
worthiness of a friend, especially in one whose
friendship is the inspiration of our whole life.
It is claimed by Christians that the friendship
of Jesus Christ does in fact transform the
character into His likeness. The keynote of the
whole religious movement described in the New
Testament is " faith into Christ," and we may
perhaps lay stress on the preposition, as implying
that the disciple throws himself on Christ,
surrenders heart and mind and will to Him, does
in fact so lose himself in Him that he can say,
" I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me."
This faith quite certainly has a moral quality,
FAITH AND PERSONALITY 21
is indeed far more a moral than an intellectual
attitude.
But, once more, faith has, and must have, a
rational element, seeing that it is the attitude
of the whole man, including every element of his
being. So our faith in a friend rests on a
rational basis, while it is far other than a cold
intellectual judgment. And it is with this
rational basis of religious faith that our entire
investigation is concerned. No arguments can
produce a living faith, but only, at best, a
reasonable belief. But while such a belief is not
faith, it is, at all events, faith s necessary founda
tion. And it is well, even in the interests of
faith, that the foundation should be tested, and,
if it may be, secured and strengthened.
CHAPTEE III
THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
(" E CONSENSU GENTIUM ")
THIS argument, as its name implies, is based
upon the universality of religion among mankind,
and concludes therefrom that such a universal
belief must be true. This is, of course, to put
the argument in its crudest form. " What all
men believe to be true must of necessity be
true " is not a proposition likely, at the present
time at all events, to be accepted. It is very
hard to see why the conclusion follows from the
premiss. And if it be meant that all men,
everywhere, entertain definite theological beliefs,
then the premiss can, with a fair amount of
certainty, be shown to be false.
On the other hand, we believe that the argu
ment can be so restated as to form the basis of
a reasonable belief in the truth of theism, and
that, too, on the lines of a strictly scientific
method. We must turn to the young science of
comparative religion to furnish us with our facts,
and then inquire what is the most reasonable
hypothesis which these facts suggest.
22
PRELIMINARY DIFFICULTIES 23
Here we are at once confronted with diffi
culties of various kinds.
I. The field covered is so vast, the collection
of facts relating to early religion, and to the
practices and beliefs of savage races at the present
day, is so unmanageably huge that it is extra
ordinarily difficult to find a path through the
labyrinth.
II. The hypotheses put forward by the ex
perts as, for example, concerning the origin of
religion are so contradictory that it is hard, if
not impossible, to feel sure when we have touched
solid ground. In part this is, no doubt, owing to
the newness of the science, but also, in great
measure, to the nature of the subject-matter.
Here we are not dealing with physical facts,
which can be tested and verified, but with the
complex and intricate workings of the human
mind, and with races whose mental processes are
very different from our own.
III. Yet a third difficulty is the doubt as to
the validity of the argument from the customs
and beliefs of present-day savages to those of
primitive man. From the latter have sprung
the progressive nations of our own time, while
the former represent the backward, non-pro
gressive elements of mankind. We have to take
into account the possibility of degeneration, a
fact not unfamiliar in biological evolution.
24 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
It would seem, then, that our best way of
proceeding will be to select those results of com
parative religion in regard to which there is,
if not unanimity, at least a large measure of
agreement; then to try to discover, by means of
them, some satisfactory definition of religion;
finally, to review the whole position, and inquire
for the most tenable hypothesis, which is to say,
the one which gives the most rational and
coherent account of the facts.
But meanwhile we shall be compelled to use
such words as magic at first without any attempt
at definition, to avoid the use of cumbersome
paraphrases.
I. The first and most assured result of modern
investigation is the universality of cult. Cult
(Lat. cultus, worship) is a most useful technical
term, employed in the science of comparative
religion to denote all acts (and words) of a
magical or religious nature, or of a mixed or
doubtful character, so that it is impossible to
say definitely whether they belong to the province
of magic or to that of religion. The word is
admirably chosen, because its meaning is abso
lutely neutral, and therefore all-inclusive.
It embraces all the means by which man has
ever sought to get into touch with the unseen
world, from the rain-making ritual of the
Australian aborigines to the highest expressions
EXTENSION OF CULT 25
/_
of spiritual devotion of which the human soul
is capable. And it enables us to state the pre
miss of the argument e consensu gentium with
scientific accuracy, and in a form capable of
proof. It has been stated on high authority
that " no tribe or nation has yet been met with,
destitute of belief in any higher beginnings . . .
religion is a universal phenomenon of humanity."
So Professor Jevons (" Introduction to Study
of Keligion," p. 7) thus sums up the verdict of
a number of experts of various views: "There
are no races, however rude, which are destitute
of all idea of religion/ But if our aim is to
express the unanimous opinion of all the students
of this subject, and that in a way in which we
cannot be accused of begging the question, we
should preferably state the matter thus: Cult
is a universal feature of all human societies.
There are no races, even in the lowest stages of
savagery, in whose life cult is not a familiar
and dominant element. But not only is cult
universal in its extension in space. It can be
traced back to the remotest ages of which we
have any knowledge. The drawings traced by
palaeolithic man on the walls of the caves of
Southern France were in all probability no simple
exercises of his artistic faculty, but connected
with magical observances with a view to success
in the chase. In the still more distant ages of
26 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
the Mousterian and Chellian cultures rude flint
implements were laid in the graves, in order that
the ghosts of the dead might use their ghostly
counterparts in the underworld.
Here we may feel some little doubt as to
whether a real worship of the dead is indicated,
or only a desire for the greater comfort of the
departed. In either case, the practice comes
under the head of cult, as it represents a dealing
of man with the unseen world.
Cult may be regarded as predominantly con
sisting in ritual acts, for words, whether con
sisting in prayers or incantations, are chiefly
used, at any rate in the earliest period, to point
the significance of actions. But what kinds of
actions are included under the general description
of cult ? A twofold division is clearest and most
comprehensive :
I. Such as relate to the great crises in the life
of the individual birth, initiation, marriage, and
death.
II. Such as relate to the life of the com
munity, which may in turn be subdivided into
(a) those which aim at securing the regular
supply of food; (b) those which are intended to
avert some present or threatening evil; and
(c) partly overlapping (a) and (&), the immensely
important class of rites connected with sacrifice,
which will demand separate treatment.
SIMILARITIES IN CULTS 27
One or two examples, chosen out of many
thousands, may serve to make clear what is
meant by cult. Under (I.) we may select the
solemn lustration of new-born infants, sometimes
also of the mother, found in the most widely
separated regions, as America, South Africa,
Malaya, Egypt, as well as in the Mediterranean
lands. The formula used among the Aztecs
was: " May this water purify and whiten thy
heart; may it wash away all that is evil/
Under (II.) we may mention the solemn pro
cessions, with sacrifice of oxen, sheep, and pigs
(the suove-taurilia), and prayers to Mars pater,
and libations to Janus and Jupiter, by which
the ancient Eoman agricultural community
sought to secure the fertility of their crops, and
to ward off from them all noxious influences
during the coming year.
1 . A most interesting point is the great similarity
which obtains among the forms of cult all over
the world. This is a fascinating subject, but we
can only now allude to the extraordinary antici
pations of Christian baptism, as in the instance
quoted above, and of the Eucharist, with which
we shall have occasion to deal later. From the
distribution of these similarities, it is certain that
the idea of borrowing must be excluded. We
can only explain them by saying that they must
represent impulses very deeply rooted in our
28 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
common human nature. It will be seen later how
important a part will be played in our final
statement of the argument by this undoubted
and most significant fact that man has tried to
approach the powers of the unseen world in
ways which are so largely identical, in the most
widely separated regions of the earth, and during
all periods of his history. But at present, we
must be content with recalling and re-emphasising
the admitted fact of the absolute universality
of cult.
2. The second result of researches into com
parative religion for which unanimity among
the experts can be claimed, is the very sub
ordinate place occupied by mythology, as com
pared with cult. We have perhaps been in the
habit of imagining that the heathen religions
chiefly consisted in stories about gods and god
desses. No opinion could be farther removed
from the truth. Early religion consisted in the
exact and punctilious performance of the sacred
rites, of which oftentimes the significance had
been lost, or perverted from the original. The
beliefs, if any, that a worshipper entertained
regarding the nature or history of the being
towards whom the rite was directed, or of the
precise way in which it acted, were matters of
absolute insignificance. The one supremely
important thing was, that the rite should be
CULT AND MYTH 29
performed in the ancient, traditional way,
and that he should take his assigned part
in it.
Here is, of course, a very marked difference
between ancient and modern ideas of religion.
No Christian, for example, would hold that a
man s creed mattered not a jot, that the one
essential thing was the correct performance of
the service, yet this is precisely the case with
regard to antique ritual and the religious
observances of savages. Further, the myth can
in very many cases be proved to be later in date
than the rite, and to have originated as an
attempt to explain certain features of it, whose
original meaning had been forgotten. There is
no doubt, for example, that the many beautiful
legends connecting gods and goddesses with
trees owe their origin to one of the most
primitive forms of cult, that of tree- worship.
It is clear, also, that in very many cases
mythology may be truly described as savage
science rather than as savage religion, consisting
in early man s answers to the question why
certain natural phenomena take place. Hence
that numerous class of myths, found in nearly
all nations, relating to the rising and setting
sun.
This, then, is the second fact which modern
research has established, the supreme importance
30 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
of cult, the relative insignificance of belief, or
myth.
3. The third result, on which also we find
unanimous agreement, is the wide prevalence of
that particular form of cult which we term
sacrifice. The case may be perhaps fairly stated
thus: While cult itself is absolutely universal,
known and practised in every tribe and nation
of which we have any knowledge, and as far
back as our knowledge of human customs
extends, the sacrificial form of cult, although of
world-wide occurrence, cannot with quite the
same certainty be described as universal without
qualification. We cannot know, for example,
whether man of the early Stone Age offered
sacrifices, and the same uncertainty, for different
reasons, attaches to the religious rites of the
Australian aborigines. In this latter case, how
ever, we may perhaps trace the germs of the
sacrificial idea in three directions: (I.) In the
rite of circumcision if, as some authorities hold,
one of the meanings of the rite is to enter into
a blood-covenant with the god, or more correctly
perhaps with some vaguely conceived numen of
the tribe; (II.) in the solemn and sparing eating
of the totem animal by the members of the
totem group, before the other members of the
tribe are allowed to partake of it. This is
especially significant if Eobertson Smith s theory
KINDS OF SACRIFICE 31
of the totemistic origin of sacrifice, of which we
shall have to speak directly, be admitted, and
we may note that this custom is to be sharply
distinguished from the magical ceremonies for
increasing the supply of the totem, which take
place much earlier in the year; (III.) certain
ceremonies which appear to have for their
object the establishment of a union of blood
between the members of a totem group and the
totem, as when blood is allowed to flow from
an opened vein on the Sacred Kangaroo rock.
If these instances be allowed to partake of a
sacrificial nature, then there is no exception, as
far as our knowledge extends, to the universal
prevalence of sacrifice.
The modern division of the many varieties of
sacrifice is threefold :
I. Honorific where the aim is to please the
god by an offering of the nature of gift or tribute;
or to express the feelings of homage or worship
which the community entertains towards its
divine protector.
II. Piacular where the community (more
rarely, as in Israel, the individual) believes that
it is under the ban of the god s displeasure, and
seeks to avert his wrath and avert or remove
some calamity by an offering. That is, the aim
here is to restore the normal relation between
the human worshippers and the deity, which
32 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
owing to some cause or other, has been inter
rupted.
III. Sacramental where the object is to enter
into communion with the god, either (a) by
sharing the sacred meal with him, or (6) by
actually feeding upon the god, through partaking
of the flesh or the grain which is believed, by
having been offered in sacrifice, to have become
identified with him, or charged with the divine
life.
We may also conveniently divide sacrifices
into: I. Those which are wholly consumed in the
service of the deity, as is, for example, almost
universally (not at Kome) the case with piacular
offerings, and with the whole burnt-offerings
familiar to us through the Old Testament; and
II. those in which the worshippers share.
The above threefold classification has been
criticised. But it is when we come to the all-
important question, What was the origin, the
primary meaning, of sacrifice ? that we are no
longer on the solid ground of unanimity among
all the specialists in comparative religion, and
have to choose, if we can, among conflicting
hypotheses. Did sacrifice originate as a gift or
tribute to win the favour of the god ? Or was
its first intention to appease his anger ? Or
was it, from the very beginning, an attempt to
enter into communion with him, and so partake
ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE 33
of the divine life ? Or, again, did it originate
in a darker rite : the slaughter of the priest-king,
the predecessor of " the priest who slew the
slayer, and shall himself be slain " ? Fortunately
the task of deciding is not necessary for our
purpose, nor is it even advisable. For if our
ultimate intention be that of ascertaining the
true significance of cult, and thus testing its value
as the basis of an argument for the reality of
its object, it would be a grave mistake to build
upon an hypothesis which may be overthrown
by advancing knowledge.
This, however, we can say with confidence,
that the whole intention of the sacrificial rite
is always, as it must have been from the very
first, to establish a friendly relation between the
worshipper and the object of his worship, god
or spirit or numen. Of necessity, as Professor
Jevons says (" Evolution of the Idea of God "),
the aim is not merely to bring an acceptable
offering, but to make the offerer acceptable. In
this general, undefined sense, communion is of
the essence of sacrifice.
This remains true, whether or not we adopt
Robertson Smith s theory of sacrifice as being
originally the killing of the totem in order that
it might be eaten by the clan, as a means of
sacramental communion with the divine.
Totemism is a very early, though not primitive,
4
34 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
mode of human thought. Essentially it consists
of the idea of kinship between a class or group,
and some species of animal or plant, coupled
with the belief of some power, other than human,
residing in that species. So on the solemn
occasion of the clan sacrifice, one member of the
totem species is slain, or in the case of vegetable
totems, is solemnly offered, and wholly con
sumed by the tribe, in order to cement their
union with god or spirit (who is identified with
the species as a whole) and with one another.
Many anthropologists reject this view as an
explanation of the origin of sacrifice. But there
is no doubt that it does receive some support from
what we know of the solemn eating of the totem
by the totem-group in Australia, a custom to
which allusion has already been made. At any rate,
the association of sacrifice and the sacramental
meal is very widely spread, thus illustrating
what we have said of the curious similarity of
cults all the world over.
And because it is just here that this similarity
is profoundly impressive, and because this
association is so important as throwing light
upon a meaning, if not the original meaning, of
sacrifice, that it will be worth while to enumerate
some striking instances, from different periods
and widely separated regions.
We place first the ritual eating of the totem
SAVAGE COMMUNION RITES 35
in Australia, which we have already mentioned.
Here we may once more remind ourselves of
two points: (a) This rite is altogether to be
distinguished from the spring " Intichiuma "
rites, which are magical in character, and have
for their object the increase of the totem;
(b) that the eating in question is ceremonial in
character is shown by the fact that the men of
the totem-group eat only sparingly of the totem
(kangaroo, witchety grub, etc.), and that before
the other members of the tribe partake. In
culture, the Australian aborigines belong to the
Stone Age.
From Australia we pass to ancient Mexico.
The principal feast of the Aztecs was in the
month of May. Two days before, the sacred
virgins made out of dough, compacted of maize,
honey, and beet-seed, an image of the god
Vitzilipuztli, to which on the feast day worship
was offered. At the feet of the idol were laid
cakes of the same materials. After the cere
monies, whereby these cakes were consecrated
to be " the flesh and bones " of the god, the
people partook of them fasting, and the holy
food was carried to the sick. At other times,
the blood of a human victim was mingled with
the dough, and it is significant that the victim in
question had been for months previously chosen
and designated as the representative of the god,
36 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
and honoured as such. It is scarcely surprising
that the Spanish conquerors of Mexico should
have seen in such a ceremony a Satanic parody
of the Mass.
But, in an earlier age, Christian writers had
said the same thing of the worship of Mithra,
that formidable rival, in the early centuries
of our era, of the new religion. There the
initiated partook of a sacred communion of
bread, water, and possibly wine/
In the old Greek world, such sacramental meals
were known, as in the horrible rite of the eating
of raw bulls flesh in the worship of Dionysus
and the partaking of the sacred grain in
the mysteries of the great Earth Mother at
Eleusis.
In the most ancient worship of Latium, after
wards transferred to Kome, that of the primitive
heaven-god, Jupiter, on the Alban Mount, a
white heifer was slain, and " the flesh was
divided among the deputies of all the Latin
cities, who thus placed themselves in some
mystic relation to their great divinity, at the
same time renewing the solemn covenant of
alliance with each other/ We are here in
the presence of the oldest and finest religious
conception of the Latin race, which yearly
acknowledges its common kinship of blood, and
seals it by partaking in the common meal of a
SACRIFICE AND COMMUNION 37
sacred victim, thus entering into communion
with the god, the victim, and each other/
It is curious to find in St. Paul an allusion to
the heathen idea of communion through sacrifice
and sacred meal, and an express parallel to the
Eucharist: "Ye cannot drink the cup of the
Lord and the cup of demons: ye cannot partake
of the table of the Lord and the table of demons "
(1 Cor. x. 21). At this point, it should be
remembered, we are only collecting our facts.
The vast extent of the custom of the sacramental
meal, and its resemblance to the Christian Holy
Communion are very curious facts, but we must
postpone to the close of this chapter the attempt
to find out an explanation for them.
We may trace in a different connection this
idea of entering into communion with and so
sharing the very life of the god as one of the
meanings of the sacrificial rite. For primitive
races, the blood is a symbol of and identified
with life. Hence the sprinkling with the blood
of the victim is the imparting to the
worshipper of the divine life, and the establish
ing of a bond of union between him and the
god. We have seen the beginning of this in
Australia.
The most familiar instance of this practice is
the record of the great covenant-sacrifice in
Exodus 24, where Moses, after the reading of the
38 THE AEGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
law, sprinkles the sacrificial blood on the altar,
the book, and the people, thus establishing for
all time the covenant relation between Yehovah
and Israel.
One more point may be added before we
leave, for the present, the subject of sacrificial
cult, and that is, the intensely social character
of early religion. While private rites are per
formed, chiefly in connection with the great
crises in the life of the individual, when he enters,
as it were, on a new kind of existence, hence
known as "rites de passage," the sacrificial act
is almost always the approach of the community
as such to its god. The individual (as shown,
for example, in the case of the blood-feud, and
the judgment passed on Achan and his family)
is lost in the household group, or the clan.
While modern religion emphasises the relation
of the individual soul to God, such an idea
scarcely appears in ancient times. An attempt
of a single member of the tribe to perform sacred
rites would bring him in most cases under
suspicion of practising magical arts with some
nefarious intent, as, for example, that of injuring
an enemy. The idea of the worth of the indi
vidual as such, even, we might almost say, of
his very existence as a separate unit, was very
late in making its appearance. The modern
view of personality is largely due to the influence
HIGH GODS OF LOW EACES 39
of Christianity with its tremendous stress on
the value of the single human soul.
4. A fourth result of the study of comparative
religion in more recent times has been the dis
covery of what Mr. Andrew Lang terms " high
gods of low races/ All our authorities would
not agree on the significance of them, and some
would be inclined to question certain parts of the
evidence, but that traces of a belief in a Supreme
Being are to be found in savage tribes, at a
remote distance from each other, is a fact which
does not admit of question, and hence may be
included among the certain and agreed results
of modern investigation. We proceed to give
a few striking examples.
To begin once more with the aborigines of
Australia, among the Yuin and other tribes on
the coast, Daramulan is the supreme deity,
whose name is only divulged at the initiation
mysteries; at other times he is known as " Lord "
or " Father." He is dreaded as " one who
could severely punish the trespasses committed
against these tribal ordinances and customs
whose first institution is ascribed to him."
And, it should be added, among these ordi
nances are instructions of extraordinarily high
moral elevation, given by the elders to the youths
of the tribe.
Bunjil is the All-Father of the Wotjobaluk
40 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
and other tribes. He is spoken of as " Our
Father/ and is considered to dwell beyond the
sky. Baiame occupies this position among the
Kamilaroi. " At the Bora (initiation) ceremony
he is proclaimed as the Father of all whose
laws the tribes are now obeying." There are
many other examples from different parts of the
continent.
Among the Fuegians, a tribe in a very low
state of savagery, a " great black man " is
supposed to dwell in the woods, who is not
propitiated by food or sacrifice, but punishes
breaches of the moral law, as the slaying of a
stranger. In the case of the Andaman islanders,
supposed for a long time to be " godless," has
been found a god, Puluga, " like fire," but
invisible. He is the creator of all, and reads
the thoughts of men s hearts. He is angered
by falsehood, theft, etc., and is the judge of men
beyond the grave.
To pass to races higher in the scale, the Zulus,
" a ghost-worshipping race without a god,"
have a faint tradition of a supreme being,
Unkulunkulu, the Creator, who was before death
came, to whom no worship is offered, and now
is to them but a shadow of a name.
In China is to be found, among a host of
religious ideas of a contrary tendency, the con
ception of a supreme divine power. " The
PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM 41
oldest forms of religion in China militate against
the popular assumption that first animism and
then images preceded the more spiritual mono
theism of what is believed to be the most recent
form assumed by religion." " Four thousand
years ago there was no trace of religion of a
degraded form, and there was a distinct con
ception of a supreme deity, who was worshipped
without temple or idol, in the open air." Still,
at the present day, " the devotions of the
Sovereign are paid to the Supreme in the open
air."
Similarly, it has been maintained that even
in India, " where the choking growth is of
polytheism and fetishism, the original worship
was monotheistic," and that this idea is still in
the back of the mind of the religious Hindoo.
Flinders Petrie is of the opinion that mono
theism was the first stage in the religion of
ancient Egypt, in spite of the enormous growth
of polytheism.
Last, and perhaps most attractive of all, is the
cult of that ancient sky or heaven god of the
earliest Latin race, the Jupiter worshipped in
the open air on the Alban Mount, before the
Etruscans came and built his temple, the worship
which, it may be, the Latins brought with them
from their prehistoric settlements in Northern
Italy.
42 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
It should be understood that all this is only
a small collection from a vast amount of evidence
from the most varied sources, and that this
evidence presents everywhere the same general
features, of a belief, sometimes operative, more
frequently faded out and all but forgotten, in
one supreme being, coexisting with other beliefs
and practices belonging to lower strata of
religious thought, as ghost- worship, fetishism,
and polytheism.
Such, then, are some of the results, and, for
the most part, agreed and established results,
of the study of comparative religion. Before
we try to estimate their significance for our
main argument, we must touch briefly on
certain questions of definition, which are very
important as bearing to some extent on the
question of the origin of religion.
First, then, and most important of all, what
is meant by the term " religion " ? Professor
Marett speaks of the need of a definition of
religion that makes it " coextensive with cult."
Can we find such a definition ? The nearest
approach to it is that quoted from Howerth
by Mr. Warde Fowler in his " Religious Ex
perience of the Eoman People": "Religion
is the effective desire to be in right relation to
the Power manifesting itself in the universe."
This has the merit which we seek in all definitions ;
DEFINITION OF RELIGION 43
it includes all cases which can be covered by the
word we are seeking to define. It embraces
every manifestation of religion, from the rites
of the Australian aborigines to the most sublime
utterances of human aspiration towards com
munion with the unseen. One and all they
exhibit man s deep-seated desire, expressed in
a thousand ways, and showing every degree of
effectiveness, to place himself " in a right
relation to the Power manifesting itself in the
universe." No better definition of religion has
ever been put forward, but it is open to doubt
whether it is absolutely " coextensive with
cult." For some forms of cult seem to be
better described as " magical " rather than as
" religious."
As is well known, Professor Frazer holds that
an age of magic preceded the age of religion.
But what are we exactly to understand by
magic ? And wherein is it differentiated from
religion ? Does the difference simply lie in the
conception of the powers which are to be pro
pitiated or to which a means of approach is to
be sought ?
This view has been held, but wrongly, as it
seems to the present writer. The real distinc
tion lies in the mental attitude of the person as
he performs the rite. To quote once more from
Warde Fowler s great work, by magic " we are
44 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
to understand the exercise of a mysterious
mechanical power by an individual, whether man,
spirit, or deity, to enforce a certain result/ In
magic there is no propitiation, no prayer. " He
who performs a purely magical act, utilises such
mechanical power without making any appeal
at all to the will of a supernatural being/
Religion, on the other hand, is an attitude of
regard and dependence; in a religious stage man
feels himself in the hands of a supernatural power
with whom he desires to be in right relation/
It is true, of course, that magic, so denned, does
imply " a ruder and more rudimentary idea "
of the Power or powers manifesting themselves
in the universe, but the true difference lies in
the fact that magic seeks to compel these powers
to conform to the human will, while religion aims
at winning their approval, making them pro
pitious, in its highest form, of uplifting the
human will into conformity and union with the
divine. " Thy Will be done " is the truest ex
pression of the religious spirit in its highest
manifestation.
In magic there is nothing of the feeling of awe
(religio) and dependence which is of the very
essence of religion. That magic and religion
existed side by side, as in fact they coexist to
this day even in Christian countries, so that it
is sometimes hard to know whether a given rite
RELIGION AND MAGIC 45
should be described as magical or religious, is
not in doubt. That different and even con
tradictory dispositions may be present at the
same time in the same mind does not stand in
need of proof, and is indeed a matter of not
uncommon experience, and it is much disputed
whether Professor Frazer s idea of an age of
pure magic, preceding the dawn of religion, is
not an entire misinterpretation of the facts.
But the important point is that they are
different in kind, so that while it is possible that
magic and religion may have both developed
out of rude and undifferentiated ideas of the
relation of man towards the Power manifested
in the universe, religion as such cannot have
been evolved out of magic pure and simple.
Closely connected with this latter view is the
idea of some anthropologists that religion in its
earliest form consists of a series of more or less
successful attempts to get rid of angry ghosts.
It is known that some kinds of cult have to do
with the placation of the spirits of the departed.
But (i) we may be quite sure that so vast and
complex a system as cult cannot be scientifically
assigned to one simple cause; (ii) a very large
number of instances points to the conception of
the mysterious powers surrounding human life
as actually or potentially friendly; (iii) the
evidence is overwhelming that cult has arisen,
46 THE AKGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
time after time, in the feelings evolved in man
by natural objects; (iv) the widespread belief,
found even in Australia, and in savage races of
almost equally low culture, in supreme gods
!t who have never been men and have never
died " ; and the coexistence of such beliefs with the
fear of ghosts and the worship of deified ancestors
are proofs that we shall not find either in the
placation or the worship of the dead the universal
cause of religion.
Some have regarded religion as developed out
of animism, not merely, that is, the belief in
spirits of the departed, but that natural objects,
or some of them, possess a soul (anima), or will
and personality analogous at any rate to that
of man. Some of them appear to stand out
from the rest, as startling or formidable, and
here arises the belief in what, for lack of a better
word, may be termed their divinity, and, out of
this belief, springs the desire to enter into friendly
relations with them, by sacrifice or other means.
But it is now admitted that animism belongs
to a later stage in savage thought than that of
the beginnings of magico-religious cult.
That is to be sought in a cruder and more
primitive conception.
Certain objects, animate or inanimate, prob
ably at first on account of a weird or uncanny
appearance, or from their being simply unac-
THE IDEA OF " MANA " 47
countable to the savage mind, are conceived of
as being endowed with a mysterious power or
influence. To this the convenient Melanesian
word " mana " is applied by modern anthropolo
gists. An object or person possessing mana
to an unusual degree is sacred. The negative
side of sacred is "taboo," indicating the dan
gerous aspect of mana. " Around the con
ception of mana gathers all the fundamental
principles of savage religion. In short, it is
hardly too much to say that it covers the whole
of magico-religious phenomena. It is sufficiently
vague to describe those early religious ideas
before the conception of personality entered into
the savage consciousness, and at the same time
it is capable of existing in combination with a
doctrine of spirits, souls, ghosts, and anthropo
morphic beings " (James, " Primitive Belief and
Kitual "). The writer from whom this quota
tion is taken points out the impossibility of
deriving the All-Fathers of Australia from
animistic (still more, it would appear, from pre-
animistic) conceptions, as they are viewed as
magnified, non-natural men who have never
died. This brief review of some opinions as to
the origin of religion supports our belief in the
sufficiency of the definition of religion which
we have adopted as " the desire to be in right
relation to the Power manifested in the universe/
48 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
That the Power should have been conceived of
very dimly and crudely at first is precisely
what we might have expected.
We have now to try to gather up our results,
and to inquire what hypothesis may best explain
the universal existence, in so many varied forms,
of this desire. And the first point to notice is
this fact of its universality. It belongs, we may
say, to human nature as such. This is proved
by the universality of cult, in which the desire
finds its expression. From this point of view,
the diverse ways in which the desire manifests
itself are of comparatively little importance.
In the earlier stage there would appear to have
been a fusion of magical and religious elements
lying, as it were, side by side, and not yet clearly
differentiated. This seems more probable than
the theory that there was a stage of pure magic,
followed by one of religion which finally expelled
magic from the authorised cults. For if there
is any sense in which we can speak of the evolu
tion of religion, we may assume that it would
probably be roughly analogous to what we know
of evolution elsewhere, which proceeds by way
of increasing differentiation from what is not
yet differentiated. Further, even in the most
advanced and spiritual religions, we can detect
survivals of the old magical idea of compelling
the Divine Will to conform to human desires by
THE RELIGIOUS IMPULSE 49
appropriate acts and words. Again, the exist
ence of the desire to be in a right relation to the
Power or powers manifested in the universe
is independent of the vast variety of beliefs
which have been held in regard to the nature of
the Power. The theory that the common basis
of all religion is the fear of ghosts is inadequate
to explain all the phenomena. It does not
account, for example, for those " high gods of
low races " who are conceived of as never having
been mortal men.
The same objection applies to the older theory,
which would trace all religious observances back
to the single type of primitive ancestor-worship.
It is this desire to be in right relation to the
Power manifesting itself in the universe which
is the broad fact which modern research into
comparative religion has revealed to us as a
universal attribute of human nature, and which
must be the starting-point of our restatement
of the venerable "argument from general con
sent/ and not any supposed unity of belief.
That desire, in fact, has much deeper roots in
human nature than the assent of the mind to
any form of creed. It is " a permanent under
lying psychological impulse " which lies at the
root of the crudest savage rites and the highest
spiritual religions. It demands, therefore, an
explanation which goes deeper than the theories
5
50 THE AKGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
enumerated in the last paragraphs. Such an
explanation must needs be of the nature of an
hypothesis, not in the sense of an unverifiable
assumption, but in the scientific sense as denned
in our first chapter, of a theory which is capable
of holding together all the facts, as giving a
rational and coherent account of them. Here,
the facts to be accounted for are the existence of
this universal and deep-rooted desire, and the
innumerable forms of cult and belief in which it
has expressed itself, or to which it has given
rise. A fact of secondary but great importance
is the extraordinary similarity of some of these
manifestations, under circumstances which pre
clude borrowing, such as the belief in high gods,
and the wide spread of sacrifice and the sacra
mental meal.
There is a well-known Christian doctrine which
seems in this case to fulfil the conditions of a
satisfactory scientific hypothesis. It is the
old doctrine of the Logos, the Divine Word
or Eeason, as taken over into Christianity,
and there made fundamental, in the prologue
to the Gospel of St. John. If man as such is
sustained and enlightened by the indwelling of
the Logos, the Life of nature and the Light of
men " the Light which lighteneth every man
coming into the world " then it is possible to
see in his long and varied religious history a
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 51
progressive revelation from within of the divine
in man, to which, or rather to whom, he owes
both his rational and spiritual life. The revela
tion has been, on the whole, progressive, but not
without its sad declines and terribly dark phases.
:< The Light shine th in the darkness, and the
darkness overcame it not," did not avail to
extinguish it. Further, this hypothesis has the
merit of yielding an explanation of the remark
able similarities of cult and belief to which
allusion has been just made, and which have
been illustrated in the early part of this chapter.
Such a phenomenon is precisely what we should
expect, if the central doctrine of the Christian
religion be true, that " the Logos became flesh
and dwelt among us/ The religion of the
Incarnation, the satisfaction of man s age-long,
universal desire for union with God, must needs
exhibit many affinities with earlier types of
religion, for it is the same Light which is revealed
in them " in many parts and in many ways,"
and the Incarnation is His fullest, divine-human
manifestation. At this point, we cannot forbear
quoting a beautiful passage from Professor
Jevons " Introduction to the History of Keli-
gion": "Sacrifice and the sacramental meal
which followed on it are institutions which are
or have been universal. (We should now say,
very widely prevalent.) The sacramental meal,
52 THE ARGUMENT FROM GENERAL CONSENT
wherever it exists, testifies to man s desire for
the closest union with his god, and to his con
sciousness of the fact that it is upon such union
alone that right social relations with his fellow-
man can be set. But before there can be a
sacramental meal there must be a sacrifice.
That is to say, the whole human race for thou
sands of years has been educated to the con
ception that it was only through a divine sacrifice
that perfect union with God was possible for
man. At times the sacramental conception of
sacrifice appeared to be about to degenerate
entirely into the gift theory; but then, in the
sixth century B.C., the sacramental conception
woke into new life, this time in the form of a
search for a perfect sacrifice a search which
led Clement and Cyprian to try all the mysteries
of Greece in vain. But of all the great religions
of the world, it is the Christian Church alone
which is so far the heir of all the ages as to fulfil
the dumb, dim expectation of mankind; in it
alone the sacramental meal commemorates by
ordinance of its Founder the divine sacrifice
which is a propitiation for the sins of all man
kind."
Such, then, is the new form in which the old
" argument from general consent " appears.
It supersedes the old form, inasmuch as the
idea of a progressive divine revelation from
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 53
within is both more consonant to our modern
thought and to the facts of early man s mental
and spiritual life which modern research has
disclosed, than the theory of a communication
from without of a definite body of religious truths
in a primitive age. It is also more consonant
to the glimpses we are permitted to have (on the
theistic view) of God s dealings with mankind
in general. And our hypothesis fulfils the
critical test of a scientific theory, in that it gives
an adequate, coherent, and rational explanation
of all the facts, which, so far as we can see, no
other hypothesis succeeds in doing. For those
who hold the Christian creed, and especially to
disciples of the Johannine theology, it has the
supreme merit of regarding all the religions of
the world as forming, in some sense, an organic
and living whole, which finds its consummation
in the final revelation of God to mankind in
Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Logos.
CHAPTEE IV
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
THIS argument is so-called because one of the
forms in which it is stated is this: that which
has begun to be, must have a cause sufficient
to account for it; the universe, or cosmos,
must have had a beginning; therefore it must
have had a cause, which can only be found
in God.
Now, this argument cannot be said to be a
very strong one, for its major premiss, that the
universe must have had a beginning in time,
is an assumption for which it offers no proof.
No reason is given against the supposition that
the universe may be eternal. And the material
istic hypothesis, however discredited it may
now be, cannot be disposed of by the simple
assertion that the only sufficient cause of all
is God.
So we come to a second way of stating the
argument from causation. Every event or thing
must have a cause; but this cause is itself an
effect of another cause, by the same law; and
thus we are led to an infinite succession of causes,
54
THE INFINITE REGRESS 55
each of which, in turn, is an effect. But such
a succession, or " infinite regress," as it is
termed, is inconceivable. We are, then, forced
to believe in the existence of a Cause at the end
of the chain, which is not itself an effect. And
to this uncaused Cause, in which our minds can
alone find rest, we give the name of God. This
argument, therefore, claims, from a considera
tion of what is involved in the law of causation,
to give us the conception of God as the First
Cause.
This is certainly a much stronger position
than the former, and the reasoning at first sight
seems to be unanswerable. For all that, closer
inspection will show that it is exposed to very
serious criticism, both from (I.) the philo
sophical, and (II.) the theological standpoints.
We will consider both these criticisms, and if
they should prove, as we believe they do prove,
to be well founded, endeavour (III.) to decide
whether the argument from causation should
be given up, or whether it is capable of restate
ment in a form less exposed to attack.
I. The argument thus stated bases itself on
the Law of Causation, that every event, or thing,
must have a cause sufficient to account for it.
Its philosophical weakness is, that it takes this
law for granted as an a priori truth that is,
a truth somehow prior to, and superior to,
56 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
experience, to which experience must conform.
Is this assumption justifiable ? Now, causation
is one of the categories of thought, such as space,
time, and substance. Here we have three points
to consider: (1) The function of the categories;
(2) their origin, whether they arise as a product
of experience, or, as it were, stand outside it as
a priori truths or concepts; and (3) the character
of this particular category of causation.
(1) The function of the categories.
Before determining this, we must try to fix
a meaning for that most fluid and ambiguous
term, experience. One of the great difficulties
in the study of modern philosophy consists in
ascertaining the exact meaning in which a writer
uses the word. Hence, it will be well to state,
once for all, in what sense we are going to employ
it in this essay. Experience, then, we shall take
to mean the entire content of our conscious
ness. In other words, it constitutes the universe
as known to us, and other sentient beings of like
organisation with ourselves. How it is that all
human beings do experience, within narrow
limits, the same universe, is a problem on which
we shall not enter here. That the fact is so
cannot be doubted, on the grounds of common
sense. Other beings, with different organisa
tions, say with different sense-organs from ours,
would doubtless experience a different universe.
MEANING OF EXPERIENCE 57
Supposing, for example, that the sensory nerves
of sight and hearing which we possess were
connected with other brain centres, we might
be in the position of seeing sounds and hearing
colours. So we can, more easily, conceive of
creatures with vastly greater, or differently
developed powers of sensation, who would be
able to distinguish sights and sounds to us
invisible and inaudible. There is another meta
physical question, one view of which we shall
here take for granted. Experience without an
experiencing subject appears to us an im
possible and contradictory conception. We
shall therefore range ourselves on the side of
those philosophers who hold that the subject-
object relation is the essential thing in all
experience.
Now there is one outstanding fact with which
we are at present concerned. Our experience is
never a mere random collection of impressions
derived from our sense-organs. On the contrary,
its chief characteristic lies first in this, that it is
a coherent and organised system. But coherence
and organisation are the work of mind. This
is the supreme merit of Kant, to have shown the
activity of the mind itself in the work of per
ception. The mind is not, as Locke called it,
a tabula rasa a blank surface upon which the
outer world makes impressions. Our universe,
58 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
our experience, is, as we have said, very far
from being an unsorted jumble of sense-impres
sions. We may imagine, indeed, that in lowly
stages of development the contents of mind
are limited to sensations received from without.
But the human mind, at least when the earliest
period of its growth has been passed, is at every
moment active in arranging sensations into the
systematic and therefore intelligible world which
we know.
And its instruments in bringing order out of
chaos are such " categories " as time, space,
substance, and causality. This, then, is the
invaluable function which the categories perform
in the growth and formation of experience.
(2) The origin of the categories.
Here we have a different question. Without
the categories, experience, as we know it, would
be impossible. But to lowlier forms of mind
doubtless simpler types of experience correspond.
Modern ideas of growth, and the recent science
of genetic psychology, forbid us to think of the
mind starting on its task of systematising its
experience already, from the very beginning,
fully equipped with its apparatus of categories.
It has been shown how these, in fact, have
developed as the result of interaction of mind
with the materials presented to it. Hence they
have a double relation to experience, as being at
ORIGIN OF THE CATEGORIES 59
once products of it, and, in its later stages, the
instruments whereby it is fashioned into ever
more coherent and intelligible forms. Further,
their sole justification is found in this their
success in the systematisation of experience.
We are thus led to reject the view that they are
a priori to experience itself, or in any sense
stand outside it. We agree with the view of
those who hold that there are no such things as
a priori truths. The discovery and verifica
tion of all truths lie within experience, and
to place ourselves outside of experience is not
merely an impossible feat; the words have no
meaning.
(3) The category of causality.
We are now ready to apply both the foregoing
considerations to the specific category of caus
ality, which is the one which at present in
terests us.
(a) Causation is, like the rest of the categories,
a mental construction. It is an idea, which is
now part of our mental equipment, which we
bring with us to our interpretation of the cease
less changes which we observe around us. It
has become an innate idea.
The question most often on the lips of a child
is, Why ? The child, equally with the man of
science, rejects the thought of an event or thing
entirely isolated from all other events or things.
60 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The answer to the " why " is, the assertion of
some causal connection between the object of
our inquiry and something else. The answer
which the child makes, or the savage makes, may
be grotesquely wrong. The shower of rain may
be attributed to the charms of the medicine man
of the tribe. But, for all that, we never doubt
that there is a true answer to be found. The
" why " is the fundamental question always,
for child, or savage, or scientist.
In other words, causality is one of the instru
ments essential to the work which the mind is
for ever carrying on, systematising its experience,
making its world more and more intelligible,
assimilating the outward to itself.
(b) Genetic psychology leaves us in no doubt
as to the origin of the category of causality.
This can only be found in our experience of our
own activity. Self-activity is the source of our
notion of cause; let us trace the steps whereby
the notion arises.
(i.) We and by this " we " is to be under
stood the human mind at an early stage of
growth become aware of our power to push
an obstacle out of our path, to move our own
limbs, to cause movements in other bodies, and
probably we become aware of our powers in the
order given.
(ii.) In the next stage, we attribute by analogy
THE IDEA OF CAUSATION 61
the idea of power to various objects round us.
The primitive theory of " animism " carries this
analogy very far, and inanimate objects are
endowed with a personality similar to our own.
They are considered as active, as producing
movement in other bodies, in the same way in
which we produce such movements.
(iii.) From this the interval is very short to
the common conception of cause and effect.
If B regularly follows A, then A is the efficient
cause of B that is, it makes B to occur.
(iv.) But in an age of scientific reflection, a
refinement or abstraction takes place in regard
to the view taken of the causal means that is,
the relation between cause and effect.
The notion of activity is abstracted from this
relation, and that of sequence is alone left. A
cause now appears as the antecedent condition,
or, rather, as the sum of the antecedent con
ditions.
A certain school of scientific thought at the
present time proposes indeed to discard the idea
of force altogether. Movement we know, and
can measure its rate and ascertain its direction,
but what have we to do with this unknown thing
called force ? These authorities would discard
the conception altogether, as a piece of mytho
logy, as a lingering trace of the old animism.
When we say that a certain concurrence of
62 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
phenomena, A, B, C, is invariably followed by
a phenomenon D, then A, B, C are the cause
of D, and this is all we should mean, it is main
tained, by the word " cause/ Thus, according
to this view, causality is only another name for
uniform sequence, for the orderliness of the
universe.
To this view we shall return later. The one
point which it is important for our present
purpose to have clearly in mind is that beyond
all doubt the origin of the category of causality
is our experience of our own activity.
Now, how do all these facts about the cate
gories, and the category of causality in par
ticular, bear on the cosmological argument, the
argument from the Law of Causation to God as
First Cause ? In the familiar statement of that
argument, which we set forth at the beginning
of this chapter, the law of causation is assumed
as an a priori truth: the idea of causation is,
without criticism, assumed to be beyond and
above experience, something which we bring
with us to the interpretation or explanation of
experience, and from which we can argue
to the ultimate constitution and origin of the
universe.
Now, any argument we are able to use at all
must arise out of some fact or facts within
experience. The point is, not that the cosmo-
THE IDEA OF GOD AS FIRST CAUSE 63
logical argument is dependent upon experience,
but that it assumes that the category of causa
tion is independent of it. Again, the very point
of the argument is that an " infinite regress of
causes " is impossible impossible because in
conceivable. To this, two replies may be made.
(a) It does not at all follow that because a thing
is inconceivable, in the sense that it cannot be
presented as a distinct idea, therefore it cannot
be. Anything can be, that is not self -contra
dictory, (b) The argument is simply an asser
tion that the universe is not infinite. This may
be true, but a serious argument cannot be based
on an assertion for which no proof is offered.
Thus, the infinite regress is not disproved
because we cannot conceive of it; and the
objection to it conceals an unproved assumption
about the universe.
II. We next take up the theological criticism
of the cosmological argument as commonly
stated. The conception of God as First Cause
is exposed to two criticisms:
(1) God is, on this view, a member of a series.
He is the first member, it is true, and without
Him there would be no series at all. Yet, all
the other members have their existence inde
pendently of Him except as regards this original
impulse. Now God, as one of a series, must
necessarily be finite. It is true that some of
64: THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
our most distinguished philosophers as Mr.
F. C. S. Schiller do at the present day hold
this opinion. Perhaps the strongest argument
on their side is that we must necessarily attribute
will to the Divine Being, and will implies
resistance to be overcome. But this difficulty
can be overcome by the idea of a self -limitation
on the part of the Infinite God, involved in the
very act of Creation. The question to be made
clear is, What is meant by the ascription of
infinity to God ? Quite certainly, it is not
meant thereby that He has not a definite char
acter, that in His case, as in the case of all moral
beings, there are not acts which are impossible
to Him.
God cannot lie. In whatever sense, then,
we call Him infinite, the word cannot mean
the absence of all limits. So far as we can see,
there are two kinds of limitations which we can
ascribe to God: (a) those which are due to His
nature ; and (b) those which are due to the action
of His will. Ultimately, no doubt, these two are
one, for the Divine nature and the Divine will
cannot be separated. But if God can rightly
be called finite in this respect, that is very
different from imputing to Him that kind of
finitude which would make Him but one of a
series. The distinction seems to us to be just
that between " a God " and " God." And by
THE IDEA OF GOD AS FIRST CAUSE 65
the latter term we mean the Being who is not
only the starting-point but the ground of the
whole series and also its goal. This appears a
valid objection to the conception, as commonly
understood, of God as First Cause.
(2) But a more serious criticism is that on
this view God is separated entirely from the
sphere of "Natural Causation." In technical
language, His transcendence is emphasised to
the exclusion of His immanence; we have, that
is, deism, not theism. There are three possible
views of the relation between God and the world.
(a) Deism the view that God is altogether
transcendent; that is, above and outside the
universe. He made it, and then, as it were,
stands off from it, as a mechanic might con
template a machine which he has made. Any
further dealings of God with the universe are
of the nature of interferences in order to repair
or readjust the machine, and such interferences
are what we call miracles. Or, again, some
deists would deny that any such interferences
take place. Such a theory is unsatisfactory,
for the reason that it makes an hypothesis which,
from its own point of view, is unnecessary. For
if the universe can thus run itself, why bring
in the hypothesis of God at all, instead of assum
ing that it is eternal ? The answer made to
this would no doubt be that a machine implies
6
66 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
someone who made it. But one which can
work itself is no longer a mere machine,
especially if it is capable of evolving life and
intelligence by its own unaided efforts. And the
assumption that it was so made as to be able
to work in this marvellous way is not more
improbable than the assumption that it was not
made at all. On the other hand, if we are in
earnest about the doctrine of Divine inter
ferences, we are faced by a very awkward
predicament, owing to the fact that the advance
of modern physical science has had a constant
tendency to close up the gaps to which the
doctrine in question appealed. As the sphere
of " natural " explanation has been steadily
extended, the occasions where it was felt neces
sary to invoke the Divine interference have pari
passu become fewer, so that the result has been
that the more we know of nature, the less reason
we find in it for God. Acceptance of organic,
and many would now add inorganic, evolution
is consistent with pantheism, or agnosticism,
or Christian theism, but hardly with the old
deism.
(b) Pantheism the view that God is simply
immanent, excluding transcendence altogether.
He is, in fact, regarded as identical with the sum
of all being. This view leads to the denials
either of nature or of God, in practice usually
DEISM, PANTHEISM, AND THEISM 67
the latter. Now pantheism is open to the fatal
objection that it confuses altogether distinctions
which are fundamental both for reason and
conscience: between truth and error, good and
evil. For if God be all, then each thing equally
is part of Him, and in the same sense reveals
His nature. The most godlike act of virtue,
the meanest and most heinous crime, are both
alike manifestations of the divine. There is
left no test by which one can be shown to be
preferable to the other, if both are parts of God.
Truth and illusion, the man of science unravelling
nature s secret places, the savage sunk in lowest
and most degrading superstition, are on the
same level of divinity. And, of course, to
believers in any sort of freedom, pantheism is
an impossible theory; for all actions are neces
sitated, being all the acts of God. No doubt,
in its various forms, pantheism exercises a wide
attraction, and has a peculiar fascination for
the modern mind. But in the end its downfall
is assured, when once the confounding of all
rational and moral distinctions is seen to be
involved in it. Here is no resting-place, only
a halt, long or brief, on the road to theism or
atheism.
(c) Theism, the specifically Christian view of
the relation of God to the universe, seeks to
combine the two attributes of transcendence
68 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
and immanence. God is regarded as being
distinct from His universe, exalted above it as
its Creator and Ruler, while at the same time
He is in every part of it, by His Word and Spirit,
the indwelling principle of its order and life and
development. As the whole of this Essay is
an attempt to exhibit the rationality of Theism,
few words need be added here. Only, we do
want a clear idea, which we are seldom given,
of what is exactly meant by immanence. In
what sense can God be said to be " in " the
universe ? Canon Temple, in his book on " The
Nature of Personality/ has said that to speak
of an immanent Will is nonsense, but that we
may rightly speak of the Divine meaning and
purpose as immanent in the world. But this
does not seem to lead us much farther.
Immanent meaning and purpose do not appear
to mean anything different from meaning and
purpose without the " immanent "; the adjective
is unnecessary. We hope, however, that our
restatement of the theistic argument from
causality will carry us a little way towards
gaining a clearer idea of Divine immanence.
So far, then, the cosmological argument is
exposed to a twofold attack: from the philo
sophical side, as being founded on an uncriticised
view of causation; on the theological side partly
as giving us a finite god, partly, and chiefly, as
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 69
separating Him from the sphere of natural
causation, and thus being exposed to the
objections justly brought against the deistic
position.
III. Kestatement.
Two courses are open: (a) The rejection of the
argument altogether; and (b) examination of the
possibility of restating it in a less vulnerable
form. We believe that the second course will
yield a satisfactory result.
What we have to do is to take up once more
the question of the meaning of causation, using
the materials collected in the first part of this
chapter. There we saw that the idea was
developed out of our experience of our own
activity. We are conscious of our power to
move external obstacles, and our own bodies,
and so come to attribute a similar power to the
objects which surround us. Thus, derived
originally from self -activity, the " category " of
causation comes to be an inherited part of the
structure of our minds. In a race of intelligent
beings, who were purely passive, destitute of all
initiative and activity, the idea of causality
could never arise. Their universe would be an
entirely different one from ours, a painted
picture, a world lacking just those character
istics of activity, of ceaseless flow of energy,
which are the distinguishing marks of the world
70 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
we know. But we saw, in the second place,
that the progress of scientific thought was tend
ing to substitute for the idea of active causality
that of uniform succession. " Cause " has come
to mean the sum of antecedent conditions.
Causation in this sense is but another name for
the orderliness of the universe.
The question now presents itself, Is this the
whole account of the matter ? Are we to see
in causation nothing but sequence ? The answer
is to be found in the view we take of the relation
of the human mind to its own experience. The
category of causation, like the other categories, is
no doubt the creation of mind, but is it a case
of creation out of nothing ? Is our feeling of
activity merely a delusion, caused by a bodily
movement following upon the presentation in
consciousness of the idea of the movement ?
If experience is the final court of appeal, it
seems decisively to reject this view. In
" forcing " my body to get out of bed, or to
perform some other uncongenial task, I am
aware of self as an active agent, as much as I
am aware of anything in the world. It is only
in the interests of some academic theory that I
can even regard this clear verdict of conscious
ness as an illusion. But if so, I am justified in
concluding that a similar activity is at work in
the world around me. In the vast though
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 71
slow movements whereby the natural world,
inorganic and organic, in the midst of which
I live, and of which I am a part, has been built
up, am I to see nothing comparable to the move
ments of my own body, but only an orderly
procession of phenomena ? That there is no
sense in which one phenomenon can cause
another, in the sense of making it to exist, we
freely admit. But if movement in the case of
my own body has my own will for its inner side
or meaning, then either a similar but greater
will is the inner side and meaning of the move
ments of nature, or else the idea of causality is
not due to the interactions of mind with the
materials presented to it, but that mind not
merely interprets but creates its own world,
and creates it out of nothing. That the universe,
as known to me, is another name for my experi
ence we have already maintained. But it is
a quite different, and wholly incredible, sup
position that it is nothing but the creation of
my own mind, and that the categories of my
thought are wholly spun out of that thought
itself, and have nothing which corresponds to
them in a Keality which both transcends and
includes my experience.
Here, then, is our restatement of the cosmo-
logical argument. For the purpose of scientific
description no concept of efficient cause is
?2 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
needed; all we are called upon to do is to ascer
tain the order, grouping, succession, which obtain
among the infinite variety, and, before science
has unravelled it, the bewildering and confused
mass of phenomena. But when we inquire into
such questions as meaning, when we ask the
eternal " Why ?" we cannot rest in the idea of
succession simply. Our hypothesis here is, that
just as we only directly know the meaning, the
why, of one class of movements, namely, those
of our own bodies, and there that meaning
turns out to be the activity of will, so, in regard
to the movements we observe, or infer, in the
natural order external to us, it is most rational
to assume that in these, too, the activity of will
is implied. We are parts of the universe, and,
infinitesimal parts as we are, the characteristics
of the vast whole are yet reproduced in us. The
microcosm is the true, however inadequate,
reflection of the macrocosm.
According to this view, causality is another
name for will. God is not First Cause, but the
Only Cause. So-called natural causes are not
efficient causes at all, but the signs, the outward
and visible signs, of how, on any given occasion,
the will of God is going to act. The physical
universe is a sacrament of which God is the
inward part, the Eeality.
As we have not only admitted, but insisted,
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 73
this and other theistic arguments are hypotheses
that is, they are incapable of demonstration.
But if they help us to a rational and self-con
sistent view of the universe, this is all we require
of them. This particular hypothesis, that by
causality is meant the working of the Divine
will, has the peculiar advantage of giving an
explanation both of the ultimate origin of the
" category of causality " and of the scientific
view of causation. Our own activity is the
reflection, or reproduction in miniature, of the
reality of which the universe is the outward
expression, and the category has arisen as the
result of the interaction between the mind and
that reality, while the uniformity which science
reveals is due to the orderly or rational working
of a will informed by the Supreme Keason. Once
more, this interpretation gives a clear idea of what
is meant by the Divine immanence . God not only
transcends His universe, but is active in every
part of it, and "natural causes" in all their
endless variety are the signs and symbols of
that activity.
Briefly, we have now rested the theistic
hypothesis, not on the supposed impossibility of
an " infinite regress " of causes, but on what, we
believe, is involved in the conception of causality
itself.
Two difficulties on this view remain: (a) The
74 THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
relation of the Will of God to other wills; and
(6) the problem of evil. These we postpone to
a later chapter.
Meanwhile, we claim for our hypothesis that
it has the merit of giving a rational and coherent
explanation both of the rise of the category of
causality in the human mind, and of those
appearances in the external world which that
category has been evolved to interpret.
CHAPTER V
THE TELEOLOGICAL AKGUMENT
THIS argument, otherwise called the " Argument
from Design/ is one of the most discussed, as
it is perhaps the most interesting, of the so-called
" proofs of the Being of God/
It is based, as the name implies, on the evidence
of purpose, or design (reXos, an end), in nature.
It will perhaps help to place the matter in a
clearer light if we begin by examining two very
general statements which have been made in
regard to it.
1. A very common remark in works on
Apologetics is, that it is more correct to speak
of the argument to rather than /row design, for,
if design be once established, we must admit the
existence of the designer that is, God. Thus,
the only question would be, whether we find
in nature the reality, or only the appearance of
design. At this point, we may well lay down
at least a provisional definition of the term.
By " design," then, we understand a combina
tion or arrangement of certain elements in order
75
76 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
to produce a foreseen result. In the simplest
case, A and B are combined, in order to pro
duce C. This obviously implies an intelligence,
a mind, to which the idea of C was already
present as a necessary result of the combination,
and present also, as a desirable result, a thing
to be aimed at. It implies something else, too
namely, the activity of a will which was able
to effect the combination and so to bring about
the result. No actual case in nature, of course,
is nearly as simple as the one supposed. For
example, in the eye of the higher animals we
have a very intricate mechanism, the combina
tion of a very great number of elements, in order
(apparently) to produce the very desirable result
of vision. The remark which we are criticising
implies that there are, in this and countless
other instances, only two alternatives : either the
combination of elements is due to mere chance
(we shall, later on, have to discuss the meaning
of this word), or to the action of a Supreme
Mind and Will regulating and organising the
system which we call " nature." Without, for
the moment, entering upon this discussion, we
may here state that the alternatives are not two
only, as is assumed, but three. That which has
been omitted is the possibility that the " stuff/
so to speak, of which the universe is composed
is itself intelligent, or made up of an indefinite
KANT S CRITICISM 77
number of more or less conscious beings, the
" monads " of Leibniz. In some form or other,
this idea is rather widely prevalent to-day in
certain circles. Professor Ward, in his " Kealm
of Ends/ has argued that it may well be con
sistent with theistic belief. But obviously it
does not necessarily involve such belief. Thus
we shall have to consider the claims of " Plural
ism," as this view is technically called, as well
as those of " Chance " and " Theism/
2. In the second place, we may briefly notice
Kant s well-known criticism of the teleological
argument. We cannot logically argue, he urged,
from any number of instances of design to an
Infinite Designer. From finite premisses, only
finite conclusions may be drawn. We can whole
heartedly admit the justice of this, without
impairing, in the slightest degree, the validity
of the argument. The real questions lie, as we
have seen, first, between intelligence and the
absence of intelligence, secondly, between one
intelligence and many. Supposing we are led to
the conclusion that the facts really point to one
Supreme Intelligence, then the question whether
this intelligence be rightly called finite or
infinite, so far as this argument will take us,
must remain an open one. From the premisses,
so far we must agree with Kant, we cannot
conclude that it is infinite, but neither can we
78 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
infer the contrary. And the matter does not
seem to be one of vital, or even of very great
importance. If Nature be directed by a mind
so vast in its scope and energies as to include
and penetrate the universe, then, whether this
mind be finite or infinite does not appear to
make much difference, and very possibly may
be unmeaning. We would here refer back to the
discussion in the last chapter on the idea of
a " finite God." We only repeat here that if
by infinity be meant the absence of all limits,
then this would seem to imply also the absence
of all definite character.
We now turn to the examination of the two
main questions: I. Do the facts point to real,
or only apparent, design in Nature ? II. If we
are led to the conclusion that design does really
exist, that there is clear evidence of purpose,
have we any grounds for inferring the existence
of one Supreme Intelligence which designs and
purposes, or shall we have to leave open the
alternative of many intelligences, or, perhaps,
a generally diffused intelligence ? Our method
must be, as before, to interrogate the facts which
science has revealed, and then, following the
path which science itself has traced for us,
inquire which of these hypotheses will give the
most coherent and rational explanation of the
facts.
APPEARANCES OF DESIGN 79
I. Design in Nature, is it real or apparent ?
A. The facts which seem to point to design.
If we start from our definition that design
is the combination of two or more elements in
order to produce a foreseen result, we find, at
once, that the whole of the organic, and at least
a considerable part of the inorganic, world
exhibits at any rate the appearance of design.
We will take the latter case first, for it presents
the problem in a peculiar way. In the separate
parts of the inorganic world, it would be difficult
to point to any evidence of design, while, viewed
as a whole, as a process, it does seem to suggest
irresistibly the idea of purpose. The age-long
process by which the earth was fitted to become
the habitation of living forms, the gradual
cooling of our planet, the distribution of land
and ocean, the disintegration of the rocks into
soil, appear at any rate to be stages in a develop
ment which had the production of life as its
calculated and foreseen result. Still, we cannot
call this evidence conclusive. We could not
give an answer, or, at least, an absolutely con
vincing answer, to the objector who should urge
that things might so have happened, in accord
ance with physical laws, as to present the
appearance of a process intended to make our
planet the abode of life. We must defer con
sideration of this point, for the present only
80 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
remarking that, as far as we have gone, the
latter alternative does not present more proba
bility than the former.
But when we turn to the organic world, we
discover that every single fragment of the vast
whole, with inconsiderable exceptions, which
may possibly turn out not to be exceptions at
all, presents us with the appearance of design.
For there is no single structure in plant or
animal which has not a definite function that
is, some end to fulfil in relation to the life of the
organism as a whole or which did not have such
a function in some previous stage in the develop
ment of the species. We may take one example
of the latter class of instances. The present
rudimentary hind-legs of the whale have obvi
ously now no part to play in the economy of
that animal. But their existence points to the
time when they functioned in the usual way,
when the far-back ancestors of the whale were
land animals, progressing on dry ground. In
order to present the argument in a clearer and
more definite way, we will select some typical
classes of facts which, in the organic world,
seem to point to the operation of design,
which appear, at any rate, to show purpose at
work.
(I.) The first and most familiar instance is
the mutual relation of organ and function, a
APPEARANCES OF DESIGN 81
relation which is the most obvious, as it is the
most universal fact in the organic world, and
which is, indeed, the characteristic of that world.
To set forth this argument in its fullness would
be to write a complete treatise on biology.
Each member, or organ, of the living whole, or
organism, whether plant or animal, has its
definite part to play in the maintenance of the
life of that whole, as regards its own internal
structure, and in its relation to the environment.
This adjustment of organ and function extends
far below the limits of our unaided vision, as in
the cases (to take two obvious examples) of the
internal mechanism of the ear of the higher
animals, and the stomata, or breathing-organs,
in the leaves of plants.
(II.) Our second class of examples which
present the appearance of design includes the
numberless instances of special structures which
have apparently been developed to meet some
special need, and is, accordingly, a subdivision
of our first class. Under this head we may
place (a) protective coloration and imitation,
as in the leaf-insect: (6) the marvellous mechan
isms of many plants with the view of securing
pollination: (c) such structures as hairs on the
stems of plants, to guard against the attacks
of insects: (d) specialised weapons of defence, as
the poison fangs of snakes and the stings of
7
82 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
insects. And these groups, each embracing
innumerable individual instances, are taken at
random from the infinite variety of the organic
world.
(III.) Our third and last example of apparent
design shall be one of the most remarkable
processes which nature presents, one which at
any rate it is almost impossible to describe except
in terms which imply the action of purposive
intelligence. I refer to the regular succession
of defined stages by which the fertilised ovum
or egg-cell develops into the mature animal.
Experiments have been made, notably in the
case of the sea-urchin, which show that the
process exhibits a certain self -repairing, self-
regulating power in the organism. Artificial
hindrances, within certain limits, can be
overcome.
Each step in the development constitutes
a definite advance towards the end, the pio-
duction of the adult creature. We may or
may not accept the view propounded by Samuel
Butler, and adopted by some biologists, that
the explanation is to be sought in a kind of
unconscious memory latent in the organism.
At any rate, in this universal phenomenon of
the organic world, it is extraordinarily difficult
to assume the operation of a blind mechanism
rather than that of intelligence working towards
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION 83
an end. After this very brief survey of a vast
field, we may now consider rival explanations
of these facts in nature which appear to point
to the presence of design that is, of intelligence.
B. Does evolution enable us to dispense with
design ?
I. THE EVOLUTION HYPOTHESIS. There are
two rival hypotheses to account for the in
numerable varieties of plant and animal life
which to-day people our planet. The first is
that of special creation, that each species is now
what it was created at the beginning of the
world. The second is that of evolution, that
all the present species are descended from one
or a few very primitive forms of life. The point
to be borne in mind at the outset is that both
of these views are equally hypotheses. No one
can maintain to-day that Genesis, however lofty
the inspiration of its writers, as shown in their
profound spirituality, and the lessons concerning
God and man there taught, which can never be
outgrown, is meant to be a textbook of science;
while, on the other hand, it is equally necessary
to avoid being dogmatic on the scientific side.
The only test of the validity of an hypothesis, as
we have said again and again, is that it gives an
intelligible account of the facts, that it enables
us to view them as a coherent and rational
whole. And applying this test, it has become
84 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
overwhelmingly clear that the hypothesis of
evolution must be preferred to the hypothesis of
special creation. The following is a summary
of the chief reasons which have led to this
conclusion.
(a) The actual structure of organisms ex
hibiting relationships with each other, nearer or
more remote, according to which they are
grouped into species, genera, families, orders,
classes, phyla, and kingdoms, can be most
intelligibly explained as due to descent from
common ancestors, near or remote. For example,
it is not possible to doubt that the dog and the
wolf, the cat and the tiger, owe their likeness
to the fact of common descent. Nor is it
rational to stop here. The same principle can
be applied, with equal rationality, to the wider
groups, as carnivora, herbivora, mammals, verte
brates. <( The tree-like form assumed by a
natural classification bears an unmistakable
resemblance to the tree-like development of the
whole organic world which evolutionists believe
to have taken place. The two results represent,
indeed, but slightly different aspects of the
same truth; the resemblance between them is
no mere coincidence, but the fact that we are
able to classify organisms in a tree-like manner
indicates very clearly that these organisms have
been produced by tree-like evolution/
EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 85
(6) The embryos of the higher animals re
capitulate, roughly, the various stages through
which their far-back ancestors passed on the
evolutionary theory. In technical language,
ontogeny (the development of the individual)
is a summary of phylogeny (the development
of the race). Owing to various causes, the
correspondence is not exact. But it is scarcely
possible to explain the broad facts of embryonic
development except on the " recapitulation
hypothesis." For example, all the higher animals
begin life as a simple cell, which proceeds to
multiply by division, quite in the manner of the
protozoa, or lowest members of the animal
kingdom. These cells do not lead a separate
existence, but remain together, at first without
any differentiation of structure or function, like
a protozoan " colony." A little later, we have
an arrangement with a two-layered envelope of
cells lining the digestive cavity, technically
known as the gastrula, which represents the
stage next above the protozoa, the ccelenterata,
of which order jelly-fish, corals, etc., are mem
bers. There follows the stage of segmentation,
recalling the worms and their allies. And, above
this, all reptiles, birds, and mammals pass
through a fish-like condition, with gill-slits and
gill-arches, some of which are obliterated, while
others are modified to form the aortic arch and
86 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
the great arteries which supply the head and
fore-limbs.
As we said, the correspondence is by no means
perfect in detail, but it is sufficiently close to
recall a rough outline of the development of the
animal kingdom as a whole, according to the
evolutionary theory. Moreover, the embryos
of different vertebrate types, however widely the
adult animals vary from each other, resemble
each other very closely up to a late stage in their
development. A similar state of things prevails
in the vegetable kingdom. As an illustration,
we may take the common gorse, where the
leaves of the adult plant are modified to form
spines, while those of the seedling retain
still the unmodified, ancestral form, some
what resembling those of the clover. Thus,
" the life-history of the individual is essentially
a condensed epitome of the ancestral history of
the race."
It should, however, be added that the " re
capitulation theory " is rejected by some eminent
biologists and convinced evolutionists, as, for
instance, by Huxley and Professor A. Sedgwick,
while, on the other side, we have to place such
names as Haeckel and Weismann. " It may
be/ says Sedgwick, in " Darwin and Modern
Science," " that these organs " i.e., rudimentary
ones in the embryo which disappear in the
EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 87
adult " never were anything else than function-
less, and that though they have been got rid of
in the adult by elimination in the course of time,
they have been able to persist in embryonic
stages which are protected from the full action
of natural selection/
(c) Evidence from " Vestigial " Organs. These
are organs which are of no possible use now,
and are therefore only intelligible as survivals
from some ancestral form, in which they did
perform some definite function. Such are the
splint bones in the legs of the horse, a survival
from the three-toed stage of its evolution; the
teeth in the whale embryo, later replaced by
whale-bone; the hind-legs of the whale, already
referred to, and the rudimentary hairs on its
skin; the appendix in man, now functionless
and often a source of disease and danger;
the pineal gland in the human brain, which
can be traced back as one member of a
second pair of eyes in some early reptilian
form, and, in fact, in the tuotara of New
Zealand, the oldest surviving type of land
vertebrate, the eye-structures, lens, retina, and
nerve are retained, though even here the
organ is rudimentary and functionless, being
5 \y inch in diameter and deeply buried beneath
the skin. The impossibility of an alternative
explanation of such " vestigial " organs is a
88 THE TELEOLOGICAL AEGUMENT
very strong confirmation of the evolutionary
hypothesis.
(d) The Evidence from Geology. The " imper
fection of the geological record " is a common
place. The earliest types of life, whatever they
may have been, are completely obliterated. And
the chance of any given organism being preserved
in fossil form has always been a remote one.
All the more remarkable, then, is the fact that
" the higher groups of animals and plants have
appeared on the earth in exactly the order
which we should expect on the assumption that
each has arisen from some preceding and more
lowly organised ancestral group." The follow
ing table exhibits the earliest known occurrence
of the various types, arranged in chronological
order :
Cambrian. Invertebrates.
Silurian. Fishes.
Carboniferous . Amphibians .
Permian. Reptiles.
Triassic. Mammals.
Jurassic. Birds.
Pleistocene. Man.
In outline, this scheme represents the order
of appearance according to evolutionary theory,
with the exception of mammals and birds. But
this presents no difficulty, inasmuch as the fact
EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 80
that the earliest discovered birds belong to the
Jurassic does not preclude their existence at
an earlier date, and the occurrence of a type of
primitive mammal in the Trias is not undisputed.
The earliest human remains, as the Heidelberg
jaw, and the Piltdown skull, may possibly be
Pleiocene. The general succession of forms,
from the invertebrates up to man, is sufficiently
impressive. But the geological evidence is not
confined to the exhibition of a general order of
the appearance of successive forms of life on the
broad scale. It is, however, very difficult to
make a selection from such a mass of detail.
Perhaps it will suffice to mention (i.) the dis
covery of " generalised types/ as the archae-
opteryx, an earliest known bird form, which
retains such reptilian features as teeth, and a
tail composed of about twenty separate vertebrae ;
(ii.) the actual tracing of the evolutionary
pedigree of the horse in the tertiary deposits of
North America.
Such, in briefest outline, and with omissions
of great importance (such as the proofs from
protective coloration, reversion to type,
geographical distribution), is the evidence which
has led to the rejection of the special creation
hypothesis, in favour of that of evolution. But
it is important to notice, that what the evidence
commits us to is not the acceptance of any
90 THE TELEOLOGICAL AKGUMENT
particular theory, Darwinian or Lamarckian, or
any other, of evolution, but the adoption of the
evolutionary hypothesis, to the general theory
of " descent with modification " as the preferable
hypothesis to that of special creation, for the
reason that it does give, as the former fails to
give, a coherent and intelligible explanation of
the facts.
II. THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.
For the sake of clearness of thought, it is im
portant to keep this distinct from the general
theory of evolution. For it is, as it were, a
theory within a theory, or hypothesis subsidiary
to the doctrine of descent. None the less, it is
through this secondary theory that evolution
has won such wide acceptance. And this is so
for a very simple reason. Evolutionary theories
are far older than Darwin, for they may, in fact,
be traced back to the Greek philosophers. But
it was the supreme merit of Darwin, that he
traced evolution to the work of causes which can
be shown to be in actual operation to-day, and
so effected what is perhaps the greatest revolution
in thought which the world has ever seen. It may
perhaps be sufficient to give a short summary
of Darwinian doctrine and then indicate some
points in which that doctrine has been outgrown
or modified. The main factors in evolution,
according to this view, have been: (a) The
NATURAL SELECTION 91
enormous fecundity of plant and animal life, and
the consequent struggle for existence. For
example, supposing that each pair of birds
produced young only four times in their lives,
then in fifteen years each pair would have
increased to nearly ten millions, for very few
produce less than two young ones each year,
while many have six, or eight, or ten. The
common flesh fly, if it were to multiply un
checked, would give rise to a hundred billion
descendants in three months. In greater or less
degree, all organisms tend to increase in a
geometrical ratio. (6) The struggle for exist
ence. Now, it is quite obvious that in every
case some check is interposed on this natural
rate of increase. This check takes very various
forms, as the attacks of other animals, or crowd
ing out by other plants, the influence of inclement
weather, the necessary limitations of food supply.
Each species, each individual, has to struggle to
maintain its existence, (c) Variation. No two
individuals are ever alike. Every one presents
some slight variation from type. Now, it is
obvious that those individuals which vary in a
direction which gives them any advantage in this
struggle will survive, while their less fortunate
companions will perish, (d) Heredity. These
favourable variations being handed down by
inheritance will tend to accumulate.
92 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Where interbreeding is prevented, by some
natural check, or geographical isolation, we shall
have a new species, differing in more or less
important respects from the parent one. And
this probably will occur again and again; has, in
fact, according to this theory, occurred un
numbered times in the vast periods of geological
history; and the result has been the extra
ordinary variety of plant and animal forms which
now inhabit our earth. To this process, the
main but not (according to Darwin himself)
the only factor in evolution, the name of Natural
Selection has been given. This name is, in one
respect, happily chosen. For it stands for the
idea that nature very slowly, and during the
course of long ages, acts in a similar manner to
the breeder of animals, who habitually selects
individuals having some particular character
istics from which to breed, and thus produces
a race which has that characteristic in perhaps
a very intensified form. For example, the
enormous variety of domestic pigeons has by
this method been produced from a common type,
the blue rock-pigeon of India. From another
point of view, the term is apt to be misleading,
on the side of undue personification of " Nature."
Strictly speaking, there is no active selection,
as in the case of the human breeder. Individuals
with unfavourable or without favourable varia-
NATUEAL SELECTION 93
tions simply die out. A still more ambiguous
phrase is " the survival of the fittest." This does
not mean at all necessarily those of the highest
type, but simply those most fitted to a particular
environment. We may take a very obvious
illustration. The human race, and our plant and
animal contemporaries, are proved to be the
fittest by the mere fact of survival. But suppose
our present environment to become entirely
changed, as, for example, by the advent of
another severe glacial epoch. Then, mosses and
other arctic plants might be the only denizens
of earth, and these, in their turn, would be
equally good examples of " the survival of the
fittest." " Fitness," in this sense, means only
a certain relation to the environment.
Even this brief summary of the Darwinian
theory would be unjust if we did not repeat that
Darwin himself, in distinction from some of his
followers, never held Natural Selection to be
the only factor in evolution. His own words
are: " I am convinced that natural selection has
been the main but not the exclusive means of
modification." He admitted the Lamarckian
factor of the use and disuse of parts, and to
some small extent, the direct action of the
environment, and the rise of spontaneous varia
tions, now more generally known as " muta
tions."
94 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
III. AFTER DARWIN. It will suffice perhaps
to give a mere outline of the directions in which
thought on this subject has developed since the
epoch-making work of Darwin, (a) In the first
place, we record those discoveries, or theories,
which, however great their biological importance
may be, have only an indirect relation to our
subject, which is the bearing of evolution on
the design argument. Thus, on the one hand,
we have the school of neo-Lamarckians, who
follow Lamarck (some fifty years before Darwin)
in upholding the inherited effects of the use
and disuse of parts as the most potent factor
in evolution, and the school of neo-Darwinians,
laying more stress than their master on the
agency of Natural Selection and altogether
denying the inheritance of " acquired charac
ters/ with Weismann at their head, so famous
for his researches into the microscopic founda
tions of life. Again, there should be recorded
the rediscovery of Mendelism, which is revolu
tionising our ideas of heredity. Finally, we
have the " mutation " theory, especially asso
ciated with the names of de Vries and Bateson,
which holds that the key to evolution is to be
found, not, as Darwin maintained, in minute
" continuous " variations, but in greater and
more abrupt, or " discontinuous/ variations,
the so-called " mutations " which give rise
AFTER DARWIN 95
suddenly to the emergence of new species.
Some of these discoveries and speculations give
promise of recasting, to a great extent, our
ideas of evolution. But we are compelled here
to pass them by with this cursory mention, and
to hasten on to what is perhaps a more subtle
change, or changed direction of thought, which
is more germane to our purpose. (6) There
does seem to be a growing tendency among
men of science, or perhaps it would be more
correct to say, a growing school of scientific
thought, which lays particular stress on the
activity of the organism itself in its response
to the environment. " Adaptation is the very
essence of organism." This phrase of Professor
Burdon Saunderson might serve as a summary
of the position. Of course, it goes without
saying that adaptation has always been one of
the foundation-stones of the evolutionary edifice.
But in practice, an insistence upon its importance
is found to be compatible with a very mechanistic
view of the organism, the ascription of variations
to " chance," and the reduction of physiological
processes to the operation of physical and
chemical laws. The school with whose views
we are now dealing, however, regards all organ
isms, even the lowest, as possessed of a certain
self-directive power, so that their activities
cannot be wholly described in terms of physics
96 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
and chemistry. We may mention such works
as Driesch s " Philosophy and Science of the
Organism/ J. S. Haldane s little book on
" Mechanism, Life, and Personality," and, on
the philosophical side, Bergson s " Creative
Evolution," as illustrating, from various points
of view, this tendency. It would not be correct,
in spite of the title " Neo-Vitalists," to speak
of Vitalism in this connection. For the term
suggests the exploded notion of a mysterious
entity called " vital force," which belongs to
the same order of discarded ideas as the ancient
" caloric." Rather, the conception is, that
organic life represents a distinct category. The
laws of physics and chemistry are illustrated in
all organic actions, but there is also present an
element which is not reducible to them. What
we have found," says Haldane in the work
referred to above, " is that the conception of
the living organism is in common ordinary use,
and differs radically from any physical con
ception. . . . There is no a priori reason why
we should not, if it helps us, take it as the
fundamental conception for biology, just as the
physicist takes the conception of matter and
energy as fundamental for physics."
The standpoint of this modern school is well
summarised by Professor Pringle-Pattison in
" The Idea of God," Chapter IV., in the foUowing
AFTEE DARWIN 97
sentences: "The autonomy of life, or the inde
pendence of biology, means, as I interpret it,
that physical and chemical categories are super
seded throughout that we pass to another
range of conceptions altogether, if we wish to
describe accurately the behaviour of anything
that lives. Strictly speaking, there is no inor
ganic happening * in any living creature. We
may, of course, by the ordinary method of
scientific abstraction, isolate different aspects
of what happens, and usefully study organic
processes, at one time from a purely physical,
at another time from a chemical, point of view.
But such accounts do not represent anything
independently real, as if we had a set of facts
into which life enters, and which it proceeds to
manipulate. The organism as an autonomous
active whole/ every function of which is centrally
or organically determined, is the only conception
which suffices to describe the biological facts;
and however mechanistic a physiologist may be
when he is working at the details of specific
movements and connections, he will be found
recurring instinctively and unavoidably to this
fundamental conception as soon as he begins to
speak of the physiological fact as a whole in its
proper nature, and to discuss, for example, the
fundamental phenomena of assimilation, growth,
and reproduction/
8
98 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Along with writers of the school of thought
whose views are represented by this extract,
we have mentioned M. Bergson. This is
obviously no place for a detailed discussion of
the Bergsonian philosophy. One remark only
will be made in this connection. Bergson is at
one with the biologists who, like Haldane, insist
that organic activity is not explicable in mechani
cal terms, that biology is more than a branch of
physics or chemistry. But he goes far beyond
this, and seeks to determine the cause of all
evolution in an original impulse, the elan vital,
which is in reality life or consciousness ever
striving to mould matter to its own purposes
that is, in the direction of indetermination or
freedom. Bergson is, however, no dualist, for
matter itself is a product of an " inverse move
ment " of consciousness. Into this difficult
speculation we do not propose to follow him, as
it would lead us too far astray from our immediate
subject. But it is very relevant to this to note
one of his arguments in refutation of the idea
that natural selection by a purely mechanical
action, acting, that is, on merely chance or
haphazard variations, can account for the infinite
complexity of living creatures. He points out
that, even in microscopic detail, the eye of the
mollusc and that of the vertebrate closely
resemble one another. This result has been
AFTER DARWIN 99
attained along two very different lines of evolu
tion, starting from the pigment spot of the
infusoria. And he points out the absolute
impossibility of conceiving that an identical
result could have been reached both along the
line of development which produced the molluscs,
and that which culminated in the higher verte
brates, by the simple accumulation of a vast
number of happy accidents.
It is of very great importance to notice the
agreement, along such various lines of thought,
of many eminent authorities, that life, and the
evolution of life, cannot be explained by merely
mechanical categories. This is not one of the
least significant movements of post-Darwinian
thought.
We have thus endeavoured to set forth a brief
summary of the hypothesis of evolution. First,
we have had before us the grounds for preferring
this to the hypothesis of special creation, in a
brief summary of some of the " proofs of evolu
tion." Then, we considered how the theory
was placed on a firm foundation, and gained an
immensely wider acceptance, through the work
of Charles Darwin, inasmuch as he showed how
evolution in the past proceeded by means of
forces which can be traced in the world to-day,
above all, by the action of natural selection on
the products of variation and heredity. Lastly,
100 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
we very shortly reviewed some of the leading
results of thought applied to this subject since
the time of Darwin, and the resulting changes
in the conception of evolution.
We now turn to consider the bearings of this
theory on the Argument from Design.
IV. NATURAL SELECTION AND THE DESIGN
ARGUMENT. It has been argued that the
acceptance of natural selection as the principal
agent in evolution enables us to dispense with
design that is, intelligence in Nature alto
gether. When, for instance, the eye of the
higher animals could be regarded as an optical
instrument, fashioned as it were from outside
for the purpose of vision, Paley s argument was
unanswerable. When, however, the eye is
regarded as having its origin in a mere pigment
spot in certain infusoria, just capable of dis
criminating between light and darkness, and
as having through long ages developed its present
structure by almost insensible increments, the
case is altered. It is still more altered if these
increments be regarded as chance variations
preserved in each case by the action of natural
selection that is, owing to the accident that
each of these variations placed its possessor in
a somewhat more favourable position in regard
to its environment.
Now on this, several criticisms may be made.
NATURAL SELECTION AND DESIGN 101
(a) In the first place, as has been often
observed, natural selection gives no account at
all of the origin of variation. It assumes the
facts of variation and heredity, but makes no
attempt to explain them. The nearest approach
to such an explanation has been made by
Weismann, who traces them back to differences
of nutrition in the primarchial elements of the
cell. But, in the first place, this is what Hartog
terms a " formal hypothesis " that is, only a
restating in other words of the problem to be
solved, not really an explanation or simplifica
tion of it. And, in the second place, it only
presents us, in place of the first, with a second
series of variations, which themselves will have
to be explained. And to speak of " chance "
variations is simply to give up the attempt to
solve the problem, to surrender as hopeless its
prospect of a rational solution of " the riddle
of the universe/ For " chance " seems here
to mean the negation of law, or rationality
altogether, and to admit chance in this sense is
to cut away one of the foundations of natural
science, which is bound to assume, as its working
hypothesis, the rationality of nature from begin
ning to end.
If, however, by " chance " we simply mean
the action of some law, or laws, of whose
nature we are, and possibly always will be,
102 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
in ignorance, in this sense we may indeed
admit the existence of chance, though the name
is most unhappily chosen, for the reason that,
in thus using it we can hardly avoid associa
tions from the first, and most common usage,
creeping into our minds. But here again we
have no explanation, but the abandonment of
explanation.
(b) Even assuming that natural selection has
been the sole or chief factor in evolution, how
were the earliest variations, those too small to
possess " survival value/ preserved ? Ad
mittedly, not by natural selection, which can
only act when this stage is reached. And
if the theory cannot account for the foundation,
how can it account for the superstructure
which rests upon it ? But supposing evolution
has not taken place by minute variations, as
Darwin supposed, but by leaps and bounds
supposing, that is, we adopt the theory of
" mutations " we shall have the further diffi
culty of answering the question, How did these
mutations arise, and why have they all taken
a certain direction ? Moreover, still keeping to
our typical instance of the eye, we have the
insuperable problem propounded, as we have
seen, by Bergson, What has brought about
precisely the same result along two such distant
and utterly distinct lines of evolution as those
NATURAL SELECTION AND DESIGN 103
which have resulted respectively in the pro
duction of the mollusca and of the highest
vertebrates ?
(c) But in fact, as we have seen, a consider
able school of scientific thought since Darwin
declines to allow to natural selection even that
importance which he assigned to it as a factor
in evolution. And, in particular, we can range
here all those authorities who claim for Biology
a unique place in the hierarchy of the sciences,
who claim for her the right, while using the
results or the categories of physics and chemistry,
to employ a distinctive category of her own to
interpret the phenomena of life; who stand for
the principle of the autonomy of the organism."
From this point of view, the organism is no
longer a more or less passive piece of mechanism,
entirely at the mercy of the environment. It
not merely actively responds to the environ
ment; this active response is its very nature, its
essence, as an organism, that which constitutes
it as such. Variations, or some variations, are
the expression of this active, vital response. If
this be so, then the whole case against design,
or teleology, founded on the supposed supremacy
of Natural Selection interpreted mechanically,
falls to the ground. Not, indeed, in the sense
that any proof has been given, so far as the
argument has gone, of a Supreme External
104 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Designer. But we have now at least cogent
reasons for believing in the existence of an
" immanent design " in nature. Organic life, if
its essence be response, the striving for a niche
in the scheme of things, the overcoming of
difficulties, the securing of a certain fulness of
life, already seems to involve a psychical factor,
may we not say exhibits at least the rudiments
of cognition and will ?
We have no doubt that natural selection has
played, in fact is playing, an important part
in the development of living things. But that
part is a negative one. It explains the elimina
tion of the unfit, not the production of the fit.
We must reject its claim to be an alternative
to the action of intelligence in nature, even if
we are not convinced that that action has yet
been conclusively made out. For, in the first
place, the staunchest advocates of the omni
potence of natural selection again and again are
found using the altogether non-mechanical lan
guage of adaptation, in spite of themselves, as
it were, slipping into terms of teleology. And,
in the second place, natural selection, which
has to assume such vital facts as variation and
heredity, however great its importance as a
factor in evolution, cannot sustain the burden
which it is sought to force upon it, the task of
explaining the evolution of organic life on our
PSYCHICAL FACTOR IN EVOLUTION 105
planet. We leave to professed biologists the
ascertainment of its true role. Neither from the
point of view of science or of philosophy is it
entitled to rank as an all-embracing, all-explain
ing hypothesis.
We have thus seen reason to give a negative
answer to the question, ft Does evolution
necessitate the abandonment of design V 9 if
we at least take design in its widest sense,
as denoting the operation in nature of factors
which at any rate seem to be akin to intelli
gence and will. For so much is involved in
the rejection of the omnipotence of natural
selection viewed as mechanically acting upon
chance variation.
We shall presently see that there is much more
to be said. Meanwhile, let us note that the
conceptions of " adaptation as the essence of
organism/ of " the organism as an active auto
nomous whole/ of biology as an independent
science, using the categories of physics and
chemistry, but also employing a unique category
of its own, do imply the existence and operation,
the continuous existence and the constant
operation, in the world of life, of a non-
mechanical factor which can be best described
as psychical. Once admit an adaptive action
in the strict sense, and we have cognition and
will, in however rudimentary a form. True,
106 THE TELEOLOGICAL AKGUMENT
when we read of the unicellular protozoa
adopting " the method of trial and error/ we
are indefinitely below the distinct conception
of an end and the conscious striving towards
its realisation. But we do have the dim begin
nings, the first germs of these things, and, there
fore, perhaps still more obviously, of feeling
also, the vague feeling, it may be, of want, of
discomfort, and their removal. But the relation
of this factor of intelligence, rising in clearness
and in complexity as we ascend in the scale of
life, to the " design argument " is still to seek.
Just at this stage of the argument, however,
it is sufficient to remark that this newer type
of evolutionary theory renders necessary the
assumption of some psychical element in organic
nature. But we are under no necessity to stop
at this point. A broader view of the implica
tions of evolution will enable us to attain to a
firmer grasp of the nature and working of this
element.
V. THE IMPLICATIONS or THE THEORY OF
EVOLUTION, AS BEARING ON THE DESIGN ARGU
MENT. We have thus seen that evolution does
not enable us to dispense with intelligence, that,
on the contrary, it seems to demand at least
an immanent intelligence as a working factor
in organic life. We may go as far as to call it
the working factor, inasmuch as it constitutes
GENERAL IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT 107
the differentia of organic, as contrasted with
mechanical, processes. This is so, of course, if
we follow the teaching of those evolutionists
who attach its full value to the word " adapta
tion." We now leave behind us the considera
tion of all special theories of evolution, neo-
Darwinian (natural selection), neo-Lamarckian
(use and disuse), or any possible blend between
them, and simply regard evolution, in the
broadest sense, as a scientific hypothesis. We
saw that there are weighty most modern
thinkers consider conclusive grounds for pre
ferring this to the rival hypothesis of special
creation. We do not, it should be needless to
add, mean to beg the question as between the
two, by the use of the term " scientific/ Special
creation and evolution are alike hypotheses, and
each must stand or fall on its own merits.
The only reason for preferring the latter must
be that it appears to supply a more intelligible
and coherent account of the facts. Most people,
indeed, with or without scientific training, are
evolutionists, in so far as the natural modern
tendency is to regard the present state of the
world, or at least of the living beings who people
it, as the outcome of a long process of develop
ment. Few, for example, would now maintain
that the several species of the dog or cat tribes
were specially created. After all, each of us as
108 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
individuals is the result of a development from
a single cell. And evolution is but the inter
pretation of the world-organism on the same
lines as those on which we know individual
organisms do in fact develop.
What, then, is implied in a world process
which starts with a minute speck of protoplasm
and culminates in the rational life of man ?
To attempt to answer this question is to essay
to found a philosophy of nature on evolutionary
science. Aristotle is here our best guide. For
he gave an answer which is applicable to all
views, ancient or modern, which regard the
world as a process. "The first step/ he
wrote, " is not the germ, but the finished
product " (TO Trpvrov ov p.v crTrcp^d dXXa TO
re Xeioi>).
If we take this as our test, what does it
exactly mean, and how are we to translate it
into modern terminology ? Shortly, we may
state the matter thus: If in fact, man as a
rational and moral being has appeared as the
product of an age-long process, then the lowest
and simplest stage in the process, and each
succeeding stage, at least on the line which
leads up to man, must be interpreted in the
light of its end. The process has been such as
to issue in rational and moral life. Man is not
to be interpreted by the amoeba, but the amoeba
MEANING OF PROCESS 109
by man. We do not, of course, regard man as
in some mysterious way included in his " proto
plasmic ancestor," any more than the individual
is included in the ovum from which he comes.
We are not guilty of the " Chinese puzzle" idea
of evolution. But the only tolerable explana
tion of a process which issues in rational and
moral life is the presence at each stage of a
rational and moral principle, not, as it were, as
a spectator, but as a real, active, energising
cause, originating and guiding the long course
of development.
VI. The acceptance of the evolutionary hypo
thesis does not then overthrow the " design
argument." But it does change its character,
and the change is fundamental. We cannot
now build upon particular instances of design,
however numerous and striking. For we have
been, as it were, liberated into a much wider
sphere, and enabled to survey the world process
as a whole. The result of our long discussion
has been to compel us to regard nature as a
process which displays throughout the working
of a rational and moral principle. At this
result we arrive on the sound philosophical rule
that the nature of a process is only manifested
in its end, or, perhaps we should say, is more
clearly displayed in its later than in its earlier
stages. It is not, as we said before, that the end
110 THE TELEOLOGICAL AEGUMENT
is in some mysterious fashion included in the
beginning. A process must be viewed as an
organic whole, unified by being regarded, as it
is only truly regarded, as the manifestation, in
time, of a single principle which is immanent
throughout. But the real character of that
principle is only gradually disclosed, and fully
disclosed only in the final stage. Nor does this
involve an isolation of the last term, as if
it were independent of the process which has
brought it about, as if man, in the present
instance, should be considered as independent
of nature. It is rather that in man we
can most truly discover what that nature is,
of which he is an inseparable part. We may
take another illustration lower down in the
scale.
It has not yet been proved that life originated
from inorganic matter. The view was held, by
the older apologists, that here we have an
instance of a direct intervention by God, life
having been, as it were, inserted from outside.
Professor Flint, indeed, in his " Theism/ regards
a proof to the contrary, if ever it should be
forthcoming, in the light of a death-blow to
theism, or any form of belief in God. Yet a
theology which thus builds upon " gaps " in the
scientific explanation of the world is in a very
dangerous and insecure position. As a matter
MEANING OF PROCESS 111
of fact, the theory of continuity is so strongly
held in modern times, and so weightily supported
by analogy, that it has become incredibly
difficult to believe that such gaps as are left are
real, and not merely apparent, being due to the
deficiency of our knowledge. We are coming
to see that, if the divine is really to be found in
nature, it must be looked for, not in sudden and
abrupt interventions, but in the process of
world-becoming as a whole. But if the simpler
forms of life did in fact originate (as possibly
they are doing at the present day) from the
suitable collocations of inorganic material, col
loids or the like, then this will mean, not the
degradation of our conception of life, but the
raising of our conception of the inorganic world.
We shall be forced to admit, as most thinkers
to-day are coming to admit, that the popular
idea of " dead matter " is misleading. We shall
regard the inanimate in the light of that which
has issued from it, that which it had in itself
the potency to become. Here, again, we shall
be interpreting the earlier stages of the process
by the later, in which for the first time their
true character is revealed.
But, if we thus regard nature as displaying
throughout a rational and moral principle or
life, which is most clearly manifested in and to
ourselves, this does not yet give us the God of
112 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
religion. It does yield a teleological conception
of the world, as exhibiting purpose or will, and
therefore intelligence and desire, a conscious
striving (or a striving which is continually
becoming more conscious and aware of itself)
towards an end. But the question has still to
be faced, How are we to describe the relation
of this principle to the cosmos, the universe
which it indwells, and which is its manifestation
under conditions of time and space ? And to
this question three answers, and only three, can
be given.
I. It is the universe, the whole, which is itself
conscious, purposive, rational. This is the
answer of Pantheism.
II. The universe is composed, and wholly
composed, of a vast number of intelligent and
sentient beings, of every degree of intelli
gence and sentiency. This is the answer of
Pluralism, which may, or may not, be combined
with (III.).
III. The universe is the creation (in whatever
sense) of a Kational Being, who indwells it, as
the principle of its rationality and progressive
activity (hence, is ever creating), but is also
transcendent, the rich fulness of His life being
not exhausted by its temporal and spatial
manifestation. This is the answer of Christian
Theism.
AGNOSTICISM 113
It may, of course, be objected that three other
solutions are possible namely, those which are
offered by Agnosticism, Materialism, and Deism.
But of these, the last two can hardly be described
as living theories. To-day it is hardly necessary
to offer an elaborate refutation of the view that
" matter " is a self -existent entity, apart from
its relation to a perceiving subject.* And in the
following chapter we shall deal at some length
with the theory that consciousness is merely
a by-product of certain material changes.
Again, the notion of God as altogether external
to the universe, as having no more vital or
intimate connection with it than that of the
engineer with the machine which he has con
structed, is altogether repugnant to our modern
conception of Him, and is, we believe, definitely
disproved in advance by the whole line of
argument sketched above. Agnosticism is by
no means a dead theory. Essentially, it is the
assertion that not only do we know nothing,
but that, from the circumstances of the case,
we can know nothing, of the ultimate principle
of the universe. But as far as the foregoing
argument has gone to prove the existence of
conscious striving towards an end that is,
of intelligence and will, as permeating the
* For the "New Realism," cf. Gore, "Belief in God,"
pp. 51, 52.
9
114 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
universe, and imparting to it, in fact, its
specific character as a process or becoming,
we have, to that extent, disproved the agnostic
contention.
Pantheism, Pluralism, and Christian Theism
are the only three answers consistent with this
view of the universe. But they are, each of
them, equally consistent with it. Hence we
have to inquire what other grounds there may
be for making our choice between them.
I. Pantheism is not merely a widespread
theory, ranging from the ancient religious systems
of the East to the most modern philosophy.
It is one which, as far as we can see, is destined
to survive and to continue to exercise a potent
fascination on inquiring and devout minds.
Shortly, it may be described as the assertion of
the Divine immanence in the cosmos, to the
exclusion of transcendence, or the view that
God is wholly included (to use a spatial metaphor)
within the universe. Even more briefly, it may
be summed up in two equations, which are
apparently, but not really, identical: God=the
universe, and the universe = God. These yield
two distinct types of Pantheism, according as
stress is laid, in the first, on the Divine life
which is manifested, or, in the second, on
the material medium of its manifestation.
Thus Pantheism is ever tending, on the one
PANTHEISM 115
hand, towards theism, on the other, towards
materialism.
Strangely, these two types, distinct as they are,
may be found combined in the same thinker,
so that Spinoza, a typical pantheist, could be
described both as an " atheist " and as a " God-
intoxicated mystic." Spinoza, with his doctrine
of the One Keality manifested both in extension
(matter) and intension (thought), has exercised,
directly and indirectly, an influence which rather
grows than decreases with the lapse of time.
Haeckel s " Kiddle of the Universe " is an attempt
to combine modern biological science with the
Spinozistic philosophy. And it may well be
that the next great Christian system of philo
sophy will borrow from Spinoza its metaphysical
foundation.
Yet, as a world-theory, Pantheism is exposed
to two fatal objections:
(a) It is essentially the denial of the existence
of personality and that which personality con
notes freedom both in the case of God and
man. The Divine life is, as it were, unfolded
from within according to necessary laws, which
are not the expression of spontaneity or freedom.
And men, as all other beings, are but parts or
fragments of the Divine, entirely destitute of all
that is meant by self-hood, and of every moral
attribute, because they are mere parts, entirely
116 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
necessitated by the nature of the whole. Is
it to be wondered at that Pantheism, in spite
of the religious fervour which it is capable of
inspiring in certain minds, does yet tend, in
other minds, towards the opposite extreme of an
atheistic materialism ?
(b) But there is yet more to be said. For
Pantheism, pushed to its logical consequences,
means not the blurring merely, but the entire
obliteration of all intellectual, aesthetic, and
moral values. For it stands or falls by the
belief that God is equally manifested in every
part of the universe, and that every act reveals
His true nature. But, if so, as we have pointed
out already, then the distinctions between the
true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly,
the good and the evil, are not founded in the
nature of things. For each member of these
contrasted opposites is equally divine. God is
alike revealed, and in the same sense, in the
truth which has been laboriously acquired and
in the lowest superstition ; in the beauty which
uplifts us and the ugliness which repels us; in
the most heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and in the
vilest and most inhuman crimes which have
disgraced our humanity. There is no reason for
giving a preference to the Christian saint over
the most abandoned criminal, for both are parts
of God and reveal His character.
PLURALISM 117
In spite, then, of all that is spiritual and
indeed fundamentally true, in some of the
teachings of pantheistic writers, these two fatal
flaws must prevent the acceptance of Pantheism,
in its natural and logical meaning, as a satis
factory theory of the universe.
II. Pluralism is perhaps, for the moment, the
most fashionable mode of philosophy. It stands
at the opposite extreme of thought from Pan
theism. As that reduces the universe to the
manifestation of one Being or Life, so this
resolves it into an innumerable multitude of
centres of intelligent, or at all events sentient,
activity. It is the interaction of these beings, or
" monads," as Liebniz (the typical pluralist, as
Spinoza is the recognised exponent of pan
theism) termed them, which produces the cosmos,
or harmonious whole, which we call the universe.
Here, then, we have an extreme form of idealism,
for mechanism, and even materiality, becomes
thus an appearance merely. Just as Pantheism
preserves one side of Theism, and indeed lays
a one-sided and exaggerated emphasis upon it,
so Pluralism may be, and by some pluralists
e.g., Professor James Ward is taken over
bodily and adopted into theistic doctrine. For
obviously one monad may be supreme among
the other monads, or even the ground of their
existence. More than this, we can consistently
118 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
be both theists and pluralists even if (with
Howison) we regard all the monads as self-
existent and eternal. The great merit of Pan
theism is its insistence on the Divine immanence,
that of Pluralism is the stress which it lays on
personal, or at least individual willing and
initiative. The fault of Pantheism is that it so
annuls distinctions as to destroy personality and
all values; that of Pluralism is that it so em
phasises distinctions as to do away with unity,
and renders the harmony which our universe
does undoubtedly present an insoluble riddle.
More in detail, Pluralism cannot be accepted
as a world-theory:
(a) Because mechanism, physical laws, the
material, that whole side of things which the
natural sciences explore, cannot be a mere
delusion. To exalt this side into the Absolute
Reality is the error of naturalism, but to deny
its relative reality appears to be no less an error.
For, so far as we can see, mechanism, materiality,
is no mere appearance, but the vehicle or neces
sary medium for the manifestation and activities
of spirit. From the point of view of Christian
Theism we should say that they represent that
self-limitation of God whereby He comes to be
immanent in the universe. However, it is not
from this point of view that we are now criticising
the pluralistic hypothesis, but rather on the
PLUEALISM 119
ground that it betrays the true interests of
idealism by this practical denial of the reality
of that law-abiding, orderly world which physical
science has revealed to us. We cannot but hold
that the " laws of nature " which patient
research discloses (while not governing or con
trolling nature, but being merely statements of
the orderly sequence of natural phenomena) are
rather the frame in which the activities of free
creatures are set, and indeed their necessary
frame, than the mere average results of those
activities themselves. Professor James Ward
writes that " orderliness and regularity we now
observe are held to be the result of conduct not
its presupposition." We believe that the exact
reverse of this statement is the conclusion to
which we are led alike by physical science and a
sound metaphysic. The " orderliness and regu
larity " of the universe are the expressions of the
whole, and are the necessary conditions of the
activity and spontaneity of the living creature.
As Pringle-Pattison points out: "A system of
unvarying natural order ... is demanded in
the service of the higher conscious life as the
condition of reasonable action/
(6) But further, Pluralism fails to account for
the harmony and orderliness of the universe
that is, for the very features which constitute
it a cosmos, and not a mere chaotic jumble of
120 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
disconnected events. The " reign of law " may
be, in fact is a postulate of natural science, one
which can never be completely verified in ex
perience. But it is a postulate which is in the
course of constant verification, and without it
not only science, but the ordinary intercourse
of life would be impossible. Now the pluralistic
theory furnishes no answer to the question,
What makes the activities of these numberless
sentient beings into a system, an ordered and
harmonious whole ?" The idea of a " pre-
established harmony " appears as a deus ex
machina, imparted arbitrarily from outside, in
order to solve a difficulty for which no solution
can be found in the theory itself. And, if we
invoke thus the direct action of God, what
becomes of the spontaneity of the monads ?
As Pantheism tends to degenerate into material
ism, so Pluralism tends to hand over the universe
to the reign of chance. And it makes matters
no better if the elements of this " chance " are
the irresponsible actions of the beings who
compose it. Surely, again, we may argue, the
very idea of the actions and interactions of these
monads implies a system other than themselves
within which they act and interact.
For these reasons, then, we are compelled to
reject the theory of Pluralism as a sufficient
account of the universe.
CHRISTIAN THEISM 121
III. We are now left with the hypothesis that
Christian Theism is the true explanation of a
teleological universe, that is, one of which the
characteristic is that it is a process, including,
in an ordered and harmonious whole, countless
subordinate processes, all alike being of neces
sity (for this is the very meaning of process)
directed towards an end. The fact that, on what
appear to be sound reasons, we have been led
to reject the rival hypotheses of Pantheism and
Pluralism, would naturally predispose us toward
its acceptance. But this predisposition is raised
to as near a certainty as the case admits of
(see Chapter II. on Belief and Faith) when we
discover that this view includes the truths which
the others embody, while avoiding the errors, or
exaggerations, into which they both fall.
Put briefly, Christian Theism is that doctrine
of the nature of God, and of His relation to the
universe, which results from the belief in an
historic Incarnation. Still more shortly, and
stated in a form which no doubt demands
expansion, it is the view that God is both tran
scendent and immanent. We now expand this
statement, in the form of a contrast with the
two rival world-theories which we have just
criticised.
(a) With Pantheism, Christian Theism pre
serves the unity of the universe. It is an
122 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
harmonious whole, because it represents the
thought of a single mind. Again, Theism
regards the existence of the cosmos, and all its
processes, as due to the presence and working
in it of the immanent God, who is yet tran
scendent, and the Creator.
The metaphysical explanation which it offers
of the world-process, or evolution in the largest
sense, is, that it represents the gradual self-
revelation of the Divine Word or Reason, the
Logos, from the inorganic, through all orders
of the organic world, culminating in the rational,
self-conscious, moral life of man. " That which
has come to be in Him was life, and the life was
the light of men." The Logos is that rational,
moral principle of the world which our studies
in this chapter have led us to postulate, and
which was fully revealed in the Person of Jesus
Christ: "The Word became flesh and dwelt
among us." He is the source of all creation,
" apart from Him there came into existence not
even one single thing," He is its sustaining life,
" in Him all things consist," and He is the goal
of the long process of the universe: in Him all
shall be at last gathered up, and find its com
pleted harmony and the resolving of all contra
dictions, for it is the Divine purpose " to sum
up all things in Christ."
CHRISTIAN THEISM 123
Unlike Pantheism, Christian Theism preserves
the relative freedom of all creatures, and finds
room for the free play of individuality and
initiative. In fact, the world-process is seen as
a gradual advance towards freedom and per
sonality, as the creatures move upwards and
partake more and more fully of the nature of
the Logos.
The expansion of this thought we must reserve
to our chapter on personality. And because the
eternal values, goodness, truth, and beauty,
inhere in personality, Theism fully preserves
these also, and thus escapes that which we have
noted as the cardinal error of Pantheism, their
obliteration in a unity without real distinctions.
It is important to observe in what way these
distinctions are preserved and reconciled with
the oneness of the universe. Creation in this
view is an act of Divine self-limitation, springing
from the very nature of God, Who is Eternal
Love. More especially is this seen in the
creation of men, who in a sense which cannot be
predicated of other creatures, are independent
centres of thought and activity, so that man
can set his will in opposition to the Divine will.
In that possibility, due itself to a supreme act
of self-limitation or sacrifice on the part of God,
lies also man s chance of true, because freely
124 THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
chosen, perfection, through bringing his own will
into harmony with the Will of God.
God, whose power brought man into being,
Stands, as it were, a hand-breadth off, to give
Room to the newly made to live,
And look at Him from a place apart,
And use His gifts of mind and heart.
(6) Fewer words are needed to point the
likeness and contrast between Christian Theism
and Pluralism, contrast at least with the un
mitigated, or non-theistic form of the latter.
Like Pluralism, as we have seen, Theism
insists on the twin facts of freedom and per
sonality. Ample room is found for them,
owing to that act of Divine self-limitation
which is creation and the sustaining of creation
in being.
Pluralism, we saw, labours under the difficulty
of accounting for the order, the unity of the
cosmos, if that be the result of the independent
activities of countless individuals. This diffi
culty does not exist for the theist, who regards
the universe as the expression in time and space
of the Mind of God as transcendent, and all its
myriad workings, as due to the presence in it
of God as immanent. For him the independence
of the creature is not self-originated, but
due to the continuous self-limitation of the
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 125
Creator; and while real, is yet relative and
never absolute, for in Him " we " and all
other creatures " live and move and have our
being."
The special problems of Christian Theism, the
Personality of God (and of man), and the dis
tinctions which it holds to exist within His
Personal Being, we reserve for further discussion
in a later chapter.
Meanwhile our restatement of the " argument
from design " is so far complete, and it appears
to us to lead to a conclusive result, as con
clusive, that is, as any of the results of science
which do not admit of direct and complete
verification in experience. Such verification, we
have insisted, is not obtainable in regard to any of
the truths by which men live. Certainty as to the
supreme truth of all, the Being of God, can be
reached, but not by the power of reasoning alone,
though that must play its part. But, so far as
reasoning goes, the line of thought which we have
here pursued appears to lead without a break
or flaw to its goal. We have seen that an over
whelming body of facts, laboriously collected by
the natural sciences, points to the existence in
the universe of a rational and moral principle,
which is revealed in a process of striving towards
an end, and that end appears to be an increasing
126 THE TELEOLOGICAL AKGUMENT
measure of rationality and freedom. And of the
various hypotheses which have been offered in
explanation of this world process, that of Chris
tian Theism alone stands the supreme test of
embodying in itself the truths enshrined in other
systems, and at the same time avoiding the
errors by which they are disfigured.
CHAPTER VI
THE MOKAL AEGUMENT
THE fourth of the so-called " Proofs of the
Being of God " is founded on the fact of con
science, in the sense of " the feeling of moral
obligation/ This is what is known as " the
Moral Argument/ because it is based on the
existence, in man, of the " moral sense."
In its usual form the Moral Argument runs
somewhat as follows: We have the feeling, or
sense, that we " ought " to do, or to abstain
from doing, certain acts. This feeling is an
ultimate fact of human nature, which can
neither be explained away, nor analysed into
simpler elements. It is entirely independent of
any calculation of the results of a given action,
for it pronounces that it is " right " or " wrong "
whatever its consequences may be, either to
myself or to others. In fact, this independence
of and indifference to consequences is precisely
that feature which distinguishes the moral sense
from prudential considerations, or " enlightened
self-love." Moreover, this feeling is always
127
128 THE MORAL ARGUMENT
accompanied by the sense of authority. To use
Kant s well-known phrase, it comes to us under
the form of " the categorical imperative/ It
issues commands and expects to be obeyed,
irrespective of our personal inclinations. How
ever we may desire to do so, we cannot change
or modify it in the slightest degree. Once more,
if we do disobey its behests, we are visited by
the feeling of remorse, and this feeling, again,
is unanalysable into other elements, and in
particular can be sharply distinguished from
the mere feeling of regret, of which we are aware
when we have made, as we say, a mistake, or
acted contrary to the dictates of prudence.
Hence, while this moral sense, or feeling of
obligation, is truly part of ourselves, in fact
belongs to the deepest stratum of our being,
it cannot be self -originated. This conclusion
follows from its unconditional character (its
entire independence of consequences), the sense
of authority which it carries with it, and its
attendant feeling, or accompanying shadow of
remorse. We must, then, find its source in an
authority external to ourselves, in the Personal
Will of a Eighteous God. This is the essential
form of the Moral Argument.
Three serious objections have been brought
against it. These we must first state, and then
consider how far they are valid.
THE MOKAL SENSE 129
1. In the first place, it is said that human
actions cannot be isolated from any other
happenings in the physical universe. Like all
other events they form part of a rigid system
of causes and effects, which is governed according
to unalterable laws. But if our acts be thus
determined, the sense of moral obligation is a
delusion, for it necessarily involves a certain
freedom to obey or to disobey. If we can only
act in one particular way, then there can be no
meaning in saying that we " ought " to act in
this, or in any other way.
2. In the second place, the moral sense which
human beings undoubtedly now possess, can, it
is claimed, be shown to have been derived
from non-moral, infra-human beginnings, and
this destroys the validity, in the sense of
the absolute, binding character of our moral
judgments.
3. In the third place, it is asserted that the
many conflicting ideas which exist as to what is
morally right or wrong, preclude any universal
inference from the " moral sense. "
Thus if in any form the Moral Argument is to
survive destructive criticism, it is necessary
(1) to establish the fact of human freedom, and
(2) either to disprove the evolutionary account
of conscience, or to show that the problem of
origin has no bearing on that of validity, or that
10
130 THE MOKAL AEGUMENT
it has a different bearing from that which is
suggested.
1. FREEDOM. We have, in the first place, to
think of what kind of freedom the " moral argu
ment " demands, if it is to stand at all. For it
is quite clear that in any case unlimited freedom
is not to be attributed to human beings. While
we may stop far short of the idea conveyed by
the popular phrase " creatures of circumstance/
it does remain true that to a large extent we
are the creation of our circumstances, if by
these are meant our inherited qualities and
acquired habits and our past and present environ
ments. The real question is not whether these
limitations exist, which they undoubtedly do,
but whether, within them, we are possessed of
that degree of freedom which entitles us to
regard ourselves as responsible, and therefore
moral agents. Pure determinism would regard
us as not the authors, but only the spectators
of our actions. Have we any valid reasons for
rejecting this theory ?
(a) It is maintained in the interests, as we
saw, of a rigid mechanical theory, which, in the
last resort, and expressed in the simplest terms,
views Reality as consisting in the movements of
material particles determined by mathematical
laws. In this case, as Laplace held, from the
original constitution of the solar system, all
MECHANISM AND FREEDOM 131
subsequent events, including the actions of
human beings, might be predicted by an intel
ligence of sufficient power and range, with the
same accuracy and certitude as astronomers
predict an eclipse. On this view, spirit appears
as an inert and ineffectual concomitant of
certain physical changes. To put it shortly, the
autonomy of the spirit is denied on the ground
of the uniformity of nature. But on what
grounds is the principle of uniformity itself
asserted ? Careful consideration reveals that,
at any rate, it is not an inference from experi
ence, for the very simple reason that our experi
ence does not cover the totality of being, and
therefore no inference as to the whole range of
existence can be drawn from it. Uniformity is
rather a postulate, or working hypothesis, which
natural science is compelled to make in order
to deal at all with its materials. And it is
found to " work," to be justified, within the
range of experience in which it is applied
namely, the phenomena which the natural
sciences investigate. But this is not in itself
a reason for extending its application to a quite
different region of experience namely, all the
actions of all conscious beings. This is, of
course, no proof that it does not apply here also,
but only that it does not of necessity so apply.
That is precisely what the advocates of
132 THE MORAL ARGUMENT
freedom maintain. The postulate of uniformity,
it is urged, however much it may be verified in
the one sphere, breaks down if we assume it as
a working principle in history. Human actions
are unpredictable from the past, whether that
past be the primordial material of the universe,
or the past of the race, the nation, or the indi
vidual. Even in regard to " Nature " in the
ordinary and restricted sense, the confident
assertion is made to-day in various quarters that
the future does not resemble the past, that we
are always witnessing the creation of something
fresh. This is the cardinal point of the Berg-
sonian philosophy, and the contention of all
lc pluralists." But we are leaving the truth or
otherwise of this assertion entirely on one side.
It is sufficient for us to notice that the principle
of uniformity is found in a real sense to work
in regard to Nature s mechanism: the only
question before us at present is, Whether the
actions of human beings must be brought within
this mechanism ? And we have just seen that
examination of the ground of the principle of
uniformity shows that they need not be brought
within it. But is there any positive reason
why they should be so excluded ? Is there any
warrant in reason for the faith that, within
whatever limits, either all or some human
actions are not mechanically determined, are
OUE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FKEEDOM 133
not predictable from a knowledge, real or
possible, of the past ? There is one such reason
given, and we are now to consider whether it is
valid or not. The foundation of the belief in
our freedom is our consciousness that we are
free. It is certain that we have this conscious
ness. I am conscious of being myself the cause
of the greater part of my bodily movements.
I am conscious that time after time when there
lie before me two or more alternatives, I am free
to choose this one or that. Nor can any mental
effort, whatever my philosophical creed may be,
rid me of this impression. And, again, I find
that this consciousness is shared by all other
human beings with whom I have to deal. They
regard me, and I regard them, as responsible
(and therefore free) beings. Otherwise, all
human intercourse would cease to be possible,
at any rate under the forms with which we are
familiar, for its very foundation is this common
recognition of moral responsibility. The deter-
minist, while he admits this consciousness of
freedom, asserts it to be an illusion. The point
to be considered is, that it rests on the only
ground on which any valid assertion can be
rested, that of experience; the only ground on
which we can in any sense justify, or verify, the
principle of uniformity itself. Freedom is,
moreover, an immediate fact of experience, while
134 THE MORAL ARGUMENT
uniformity is only to be verified by comparison
of certain facts which are mediated by a multi
tude of sense impressions, thought associations,
and the like. Further, if the common experience
of men is not a guide to the truth, if, in other
words, the race is, in this respect, suffering from
collective hallucination, we cease to have any
grounds for believing in the truth of any state
ment on any subject. Not freedom only, but
uniformity, disappears out of sight, sunk in the
quagmire of a universal scepticism. From this
point of view, we do not seem to be merely
balancing probabilities. The belief that our
consciousness of freedom does represent the
truth, and the denial that we can attain to any
solid truth at all, is the alternative before us.
We must notice how far this argument will
carry us. It gives no support to the view that
we have, or ever had, absolute freedom, if any
meaning can be attached to such a phrase. No
human action is unmotived, and motives arise
from the past, our own or of our ancestors, or
generally of the race, as well as from our environ
ment. But the argument has established a
certain freedom of dealing with motives, a
power, within whatever limits, of discrimination,
selection, rejection. And this is quite sufficient
to constitute us (within these limits) moral,
because responsible beings, and sufficient, there-
OKIGIN OF THE MOEAL SENSE 135
fore, to remove that particular objection to the
moral argument which is rooted in a rigid
determinism. The " moral sense " which that
argument is founded upon, may, or may not,
justify the erection upon it of theistic belief.
It cannot, however, be said to be an illusion on
the ground that we are not free agents, and
therefore in no real sense to be held to account
for our actions.
2. ORIGIN AND VALIDITY OF THE MOEAL
SENSE. But, on the other hand, some hold the
opinion that conscience, or the sense of moral
obligation, is deprived of its unique quality, its
authoritativeness, by being traced to its origin
in non-moral conditions. Such is the contention
of the school of " evolutionary ethics." Accord
ing to these thinkers, we are to find the ultimate
origin of our moral ideas in the conflict which
arose in prehistoric times, between unbridled
individualism and the interests of the social
group, the clan, or the tribe. Men soon found
that " unity is strength," that by banding
together they could secure results (e.g., safety
from the incursions of savage beasts) which they
could not secure as isolated individuals. But
the continued existence of the group was seen
to be impossible, if each separate individual
was allowed free scope to his impulses. Hence
certain actions had to be forbidden, and, in early
136 THE MORAL ARGUMENT
society, such prohibition was made effectual, not
only by means of physical force, but by some
form of religious, or at least supernatural,
sanction, by being, according to the original
sense of the word, " tabooed/ At this point,
the aid of the principle of inheritance is in
voked. At first, rudimentary morality was
enforced by external sanction, physical or
spiritual, or partaking of the nature of both.
But, in the course of ages, moral ideas became
part of the inherited structure of the individual
mind, woven into its essential fabric. Thus
the external sanction became transmuted into
an internal sanction. And so the genesis of
conscience becomes transparently clear, and
we need not summon, in order to account for
it, the aid of any transcendental or spiritual
factor. Such is the new form which the older
utilitarianism has assumed, through its alliance
with the evolutionist philosophy, in the teaching
of Herbert Spencer and others.
On the whole position, the following criticisms
may be made :
(a) The construction is an entirely hypo
thetical one. And it may be questioned whether
this hypothesis does give a coherent and intel
ligible account of the facts. In particular, does
it explain why what we may call for convenience
the " evolution " of morality has been in the
ORIGIN OF THE MORAL SENSE 137
direction of a greater, not less, degree of self-
abnegation, as in the Christian teaching of
the supremacy of love ? Or why moral progress,
as we know it in historical times, has been the
work of morally gifted individuals, whose lives
have been a continual protest against the rela
tively low level of the social morality of their
time ? At the outset, these considerations lead
one, we will not say to the rejection straight
away of the whole theory, but at least to a very
serious doubt of its soundness.
(b) To-day, however, the account here given
of the origin of human society has an hope
lessly old-fashioned and superficial appearance.
That social life did afford supreme advantages
in the struggle of prehistoric man for self-
preservation against his inanimate and animate
surroundings is obvious enough. But it is not
equally obvious that the consciousness of these
advantages was the origin of human society.
Probably no one at the present time would
maintain that such politic and prudential con
siderations can yield a true account of the
matter. They inevitably suggest the discredited
" contract theory " of the origin of the State.
Society is now regarded as a " natural " rather
than an artificial product. And even in the
sphere of pre-human evolution, the most modern
thought inclines more and more to recognise
138 THE MORAL ARGUMENT
the operation of other, and, as we should say,
higher elements than the selfish struggle for
existence. " Animal life is not expressible in
terms of the economics of modern commercialism.
Its foundations are laid ... on the facts of
sex and parenthood. In the attraction of mate
for mate, and in the care of offspring, as well as
in the further facts of association and co-opera
tion in flocks and herds, we can see prefigured
the altruistic virtues which form the staple
of our human morality." Here, we believe,
is the truth contained in the theory which we
are criticising, a most important and vital truth,
to which it has given a distorted expression.
Morality is a social thing. In its highest
development it is the individual finding his
truest and fullest life in subordination to the
interests of the largest whole of which he can
conceive, ultimately of humanity as such. But
for its origin we go deeper down, and search
farther back, than the school of evolutionary-
utilitarian ethics would have us do. In other
words, a shallow and superficial must give
place to a much profounder and more sym
pathetic philosophy of evolution.
(c) But, further, such a philosophy is alto
gether opposed to judging the validity, the true
value or worth, of an instinct, an idea, or an
organism, by the test of origin. That, as we
ORIGIN AND VALIDITY 139
have already pointed out, is to mistake entirely
the meaning of any given process, for such
meaning becomes only explicit in that to which
the process leads or in which it issues. If the
physical origin of man is to be traced back to
some lowly amoeba-like form, that does not
degrade man in our estimation. Instead, we
are led to a higher appreciation of the mystery
of life embodied in such simple forms. If
life itself arose from inorganic matter, we realise
that " matter " means far more than we sup
posed. If we may not (and indeed we cannot
without a serious breach of continuity) exclude
man as a moral being from the evolutionary
process, then, in whatever sense, we must invest
that process with a moral meaning.
We have thus disposed of two objections from
the side of " naturalism " to the moral argument.
The moral sense is not an illusion, as it would
be if man were not a free that is, a responsible
agent. And the attempt to discredit it, in
a certain sense, as derived from non-moral
elements, as we have just seen, is due to a
thoroughly unsound philosophy of evolution.
3. CONFLICTING IDEAS OF MORALITY. But
there is another, and a more formidable, objec
tion, based upon entirely different considerations,
to the attempt to found any theistic inference
upon the existence of the moral sense in man.
140 THE MOKAL AKGUMENT
It is urged, and truly, that very varied and
discordant ideas of what constitutes morality
have prevailed at different epochs, and still
prevail in different nations. To take one, but
a very striking example. There is no doubt
that the Hindoo widow, as a rule, still considers
it a solemn obligation to immolate herself on
the funeral pyre of her dead husband even if
prevented from so doing. We condemn such
an act, because we, on the other hand, consider
self-destruction, under any circumstances, to be
wrong. Now, against what we might call the
rough-and-ready form of the moral argument,
this and very many other similar instances do
furnish a conclusive objection. The Divine
Being cannot be supposed to be the author of
directly conflicting commands. But a deeper
analysis of the moral sense will, we think, lead
to such a restatement of the argument as is no
longer open to the objection which is based on
the conflicting verdicts of conscience.
4. THE MOKAL ARGUMENT RESTATED. The
essence of the moral sense or conscience is the
feeling that we " ought " to do or to abstain
from doing. But the contents of this " ought "
are not fixed once and for all. Not only, as
we have remarked, are they in many instances
contradictory, but we see for ourselves that
they can be greatly affected by many influences,
DIFFERING VIEWS OF THE " GOOD " 141
such as education and religious convictions.
What we require here is a searching analysis
of the term " good." We say, that we " ought "
to do that which is good. In one of its mean
ings, that is, the good is simply a name for
the unanalysed content of the " ought/ In
another, and wider sense, it stands for the aim
of human action at large. All men pursue
some end which at least they represent to
themselves as good.
Hedonists maintain that by the good in this
sense is meant some condition of self-satisfaction.
Utilitarians hold that the good is not my own
individual satisfaction, but " the greatest happi
ness of the greatest number/ Actions, then,
are good in so far as they tend to promote the
most desirable condition of the greatest possible
number of human beings. Intuitionists fall
back on the irreducible and ultimate verdict
of the moral sense; the good is that which is
directly " given " in the moral consciousness.
A considerable body of thinkers identify the
good with " self-realisation," the completest
development of the nature of the individual,
the highest cultivation of all our faculties.
We may, however, gain a clearer light on this
matter by considering what we have acknow
ledged to be the element of truth in evolutionary
ethics. While discarding the shallow and arti-
142 THE MORAL ARGUMENT
ficial account there given of the rise of human
society, we saw that we had to deal, not with
a view which was simply erroneous, but with
a distortion of a fundamental, or rather the
fundamental, principle of human morality, one
which emerges, however dimly, at infra-human
levels of life. This principle can be shortly
stated thus : The good has always a social
reference. Essentially it involves the subordina
tion of the interests of the isolated self to those
of some wider whole. We are inclined to
believe that even when this social reference of
the " ought " does not appear at all in the
field of consciousness, it nevertheless is present,
however obscured. In the most intimate and
individual moral problems, if I deliberately do
that which conscience tells me I " ought not "
to do, I am, so far, rendering myself unfit to
make my personal contribution, to give the best
of myself, to the life of the whole of which I
am an integral part. Again, when I judge a
certain course of action to be unworthy of myself,
the " self " of which I am thinking is not a mere
isolated unit, but a person who, in the fullest
sense of existence, exists only in a complex
network of social relationships, past, present,
and future.
There is a very deep meaning in the Apostle s
injunction to speak the truth " for we are
SOCIAL IMPLICATION OF MORALITY 143
members one of another." It may be, indeed,
that my moral sense bids me act contrary to
the opinion of the social group to which I
belong. If I am to continue true to the
highest and best in me, I may be called upon
to enact the unpopular or even dangerous role of
" Athanasius contra mundum." The Hebrew
prophets irresistibly occur to the mind in this
connection.
To take a different example, I may be led by
conscience to appear, and to be condemned,
as unpatriotic, by offering my individual oppo
sition to some course to which my country is
committed, such as entering upon a war which
I consider unjust. But even in such cases the
social reference is present. I am acting, or
conceive myself to be acting, in the higher
interests of my nation. I am vindicating what
appears to me the true, as opposed to some
debased, ideal of the life of the whole to which
I belong.
Our first point, then, is that the moral sense
has always, whether implicit or explicit, this
social reference. The action it condemns is
always some form of self-assertion. The action
which it approves is always some form of denial
of self of the lawless, loveless self. " Sin is
lawlessness/ because the law of love the seeking
144 THE MOKAL ARGUMENT
of some higher, wider good than my own indi
vidual, isolated good is the only basis of true
and healthy social life, the law which is meant
to bind men into one.
But, in the second place, it is obvious that
the moral sense only does not yield an absolutely
sure criterion. However highly we may rate
it, it is yet an instinct, and may be a blind
instinct. Hence it needs to be guided and
controlled by reason. To speak of conscience
as needing to be educated is not to detract
from its dignity, even as we do not disparage
the faculties by which we discover scientific
truths or appreciate beauty, if we insist on
the obvious necessity of their education if they
are to perform their work rightly. This is the
true answer to the third objection stated above.
Differences of moral conceptions of particular
acts depend on different degrees in the educa
tion, or development, of conscience.
We are left, then, with the conception of the
moral sense as a fundamental instinct of all
normal human beings, which, in an endless
variety of forms, bids them give actual existence
(in thought, word, and act) to the " good/
And the good, in its ultimate analysis, turns
out to be the denial of some lower because
purely selfish and individual interest, and the
THE SUMMUM BONUM 145
assertion of some higher interest, higher for
the precise reason that it is the interest of the
whole, of which the " self " forms a part, and
in the life of which the self finds its complete
realisation and perfection. Following out this
same line of thought, the " good " in its second
and wider meaning, as the proper aim of all
moral beings, can be best defined as the most
perfect human society, " where love is an
unerring light and joy its own security/ In
religious language, the highest good, the
summum bonum, of human life is the Kingdom
of God.
We have also seen that the characteristic
of this moral sense or instinct is the authori
tative and unconditional nature of its com
mands, and that conscious and deliberate
disobedience to these commands is followed
by the unique and characteristic feeling which
we call remorse.
The existence of this fundamental instinct
of human nature demands explanation. We
saw that the attempt to explain it by explaining
it away by reduction to the non-moral impulses
of a supposed prehistoric condition of mankind
breaks down on examination. Such a theory
is false history, for it presents an unreal picture
of the rise of human society; and false philo-
11
146 THE MORAL AEGUMENT
sophy, for it rests upon a now exploded view
of the nature of a process viz., the inter
pretation of the higher in terms of the lower
stages. Is there a better hypothesis which can
be brought forward ?
Every instinct corresponds to some reality
e.g., the instinct of fear. Now, the reality to
which the moral instinct points is that of a
Divine Life which wills the good and is ever
striving to realise that will through the free
and conscious actions of human beings. If the
supreme law of that Divine Life is love, then
we can understand why the good, in the sense
of the rule of conduct, demands the denial of
the self considered in isolation from the whole
of which it is a member, and, in the sense of the
aim or ideal to be striven for, appears in the
form of the perfect community. Christian
theology holds that that Divine Life was in
carnate in a human life of perfect love, in the
Person of Jesus Christ: that His Life was the
manifestation, on the stage of human history,
of that " Light which lighteth every man coming
into the world " : that His example is summed
up in the Cross, the surrender of life for the
redemption of the world from the curse of sin
which is self-assertion: that the object of His
Coming was the establishment of the Kingdom
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 147
of God, the ideal community in which love
is at last realised as the perfect fulfilment
of law.
This, it seems to us, is the true form in which
the moral argument should be stated. At
least, it does give an explanation of all the facts,
and does unite them into a coherent and intel
ligible whole. The moral sense is not the com
munication to us, from outside, of infallible
Divine commands, but the stirring and awaken
ing within us of that Divine Life which is our
truest and highest self, for we are made in the
Image of God. The good which it authorita
tively and unconditionally enjoins upon us is the
law, the very essence or nature of the Divine
Life itself. The good to which it points as
aim or ideal is the realisation of the Divine
Life in a community of human persons. The
remorse with which it visits us is the sense of
being untrue, disloyal to the highest which we
can know, ultimately to a Person in whom it is
embodied. And, at the same time, because
man is a developing creature, his moral sense
needs to be developed and educated, like all
other faculties of his being, that he may become
a more perfect organ of the Divine Life, and a
more suitable instrument for the fulfilment of
the Divine Purpose. And, as we have laid
148 THE MORAL ARGUMENT
down as our guiding principle, in conformity
to scientific method, that hypothesis which gives
the most coherent and rational account of the
facts must be accepted, unless and until a
better one be found, as their true explanation.
CHAPTER VII
THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
THE ontological argument is so called because
it seeks to prove the Being of God from the
very idea of Being (TO 6V), to show that the
notion of a perfect Being necessarily involves
the reality of its object. In its scholastic form,
associated with the name of St. Anselm, it
runs as follows: The human mind, somehow,
finds itself possessed of the idea or concept of
a perfect Being that is, God. But a perfect
Being must be an existing Being, for existence
is an essential part of perfection. Hence the
existence of God is a necessity of thought.
This argument, long before the days of Kant,
had been subjected to much rough handling.
That philosopher neatly summed up the objec
tions to it by saying that the fact that I can
form the idea of a hundred dollars in my pocket
does not guarantee the fact that they are there.
One may suppose that the answer of St. Anselm
would have been that such an idea is a merely
contingent one, whereas the idea of God or
140
150 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
the perfect Being is a necessary one, in
volved, that is, in the constitution of the human
mind.
Nevertheless, the Kantian objection does
really lay bare the weakness of the argument.
For (I.) " existing " means " corresponding to
reality/ and that cannot be, as it were, smuggled
into the content of any idea. To say that
perfection has for a part of its meaning " cor
responding to reality " is simply an untrue
statement, although, as we shall see later on,
it is a blundering attempt to express a very
great truth. (II.) Again, what is meant by a
" necessary idea "? Necessity involves depend
ence on some other idea or fact, as when we
speak of a necessary inference or consequence.
If A is true, then B must be true also, is the
typical expression of such necessity; whereas
the ontological argument, in this form, makes
no attempt to establish the necessity, in such
a sense, of the idea of a perfect Being. (III.) But
it may be said there are certain necessities of
thought itself, laws which perforce it must obey.
Such is the Law of Contradiction, that A can
not be both B and also not B, that you cannot
apply to one and the same subject contra
dictory predicates. And the ontological argu
ment tries to show that the denial of the Being
of God involves a denial of the Law of Contra-
ST. ANSELM S ARGUMENT 151
diction. It is in effect the assertion that
{f perfect " and " non-existent " are contra
dictory predicates. But, once again, this is to
beg the existence of the subject from the start.
" There is a perfect Being and this Being is
non-existent " is, of course, nonsense, as every
statement is nonsense that sins against the
Law of Contradiction. But from " I have the
idea of a perfect Being " to " there is a perfect
Being " is a step which is not forced upon us
by the Law of Contradiction. What the argu
ment does imply is a correspondence of a certain
idea to reality which is not proved by calling
this particular idea a " necessary " one. This
crude attempt at an a priori proof of the
Being of God breaks down, as we might
have expected it to do, if our main contention
is sound, as stated in our first chapter, that
no demonstrative proof of His existence is
possible, from the very nature of the case.
Such a proof the older ontological argument
tried to produce a proof, that is, which
every sane, logically thinking man is bound to
admit.
In the remainder of this chapter we seek to
show that this argument, though expressed in
too scholastic a form, and, as thus expressed,
untenable, does contain an element of extra
ordinary value, which in fact will lead us very
152 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
far on the way, as far indeed as we can expect
any argument to lead us, towards the theistic
conclusion.
1. The principle which underlies it is the
correspondence of Thought and Eeality. The
ordinary man accepts this principle without
question, and so does the man of science as
long as he keeps to his science and does not
turn philosopher. When he does, as, for
example, Karl Pearson in his " Grammar of
Science/ and very many others do, he is apt
to be infected with some form of the Kantian
agnosticism, and to tell us (in different terms
according to his point of view) that, after
all, it is only our sensations which we know,
and not f< things in themselves"; that we
are dealing with phenomena, and not with
reality.
Such forms of idealism are essentially agnostic
in the proper, not the common or theological,
meaning of the word, in that they all assume
that our reason is unable to give us the truth
of things. External objects are the cause of
certain sensations in us, but these sensations
cannot, it is asserted, yield any knowledge of
the nature of those objects in and for themselves.
This is a form of the familiar antithesis between
" reality " and " appearance." We can know
appearance only, reality is veiled from us. This
THOUGHT AND REALITY 153
profound distrust of reason goes back to Kant,
although it has since taken many forms. He
drew a distinction, as is well known, between
the " speculative " and the " practical " reason.
The former is incapable of arriving at ultimate
truth. Its work is done when, by means of the
" categories " which itself supplies, it has so
related the materials supplied by the senses as
to form a body of organised knowledge, which,
however, as it is of " phenomena " only, is not
and can never be a knowledge of reality. On
the other hand, the " practical " or moral reason
does yield absolute or ultimate truth in the
form of the ideas of freedom, immortality, and
God. Since the days of Kant we have wit
nessed the rise of schools professing a % more
thoroughgoing scepticism of the capacities of
our rational faculty. For Kant himself, as has
been said, the rift is still one within reason
itself. But for some of his successors, reason
as a whole, whether " speculative " or " prac
tical," is disparaged as an instrument for arriving
at truth, in favour of the feelings or the will.
Consider, for example, how for Pragmatism there
is no such thing as truth existing in its own
right. That is " true " which is found " to
work," to yield satisfactory results in the
conduct of life.
We do well to notice the fundamental assump-
154 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
tion of all these ways of thinking namely, that
there is not merely a distinction, but an opposi
tion, between a thing as it really is in itself,
and the same thing as it appears to us. But
the time has at length arrived when philosophers
are beginning to question this assumption, and
when, therefore, that imposing edifice, of very
varied materials, which has been reared on the
foundations of the Kantian antithesis between
the " phenomenon " (the thing as it appears)
and the " noumenon " (the thing as it is), is at
least seriously shaken, if not tottering to its
fall. For, after all, what ground has ever been
shown for the belief that things are not as they
appear to us ? And, on the other hand, the
contrary belief rests on the patent fact that
after all man is a part of the Nature which he
observes, that his sense-organs have been
developed through his contact with nature,
or, more accurately, through his sharing of her
life, and therefore it is at least an act of " reason
able faith " that the nature which is mirrored
in the mind of man is a reflection of the very
truth of things as they are. That our reason,
so far as it has yet been developed, or perhaps
in its highest possible development, is im
measurably far from exhausting the nature of
Keality, we must perforce admit. But that
THOUGHT AND KEALITY 155
this same reason gives us a misleading account
of that fraction of Reality which it does appear
to grasp is a statement which never has been,
and, from the nature of the case, never can be
proved. However agnostic his philosophy may
be, the man of science, when engaged in his
researches, does believe that he is in contact
with real objects, that he is not merely mani
pulating or rearranging his own subjective
sensations, and for this belief he has very good
ground. In our opinion, it is a very healthy
sign that modern philosophy appears to be, on
the whole, moving away from the position of
extreme idealism, towards that of a " modified
realism." So far, then, we may recognise a
valuable element in the very setting, so to speak,
of the ontological argument, in that it assumes
as its starting-point a real correspondence
between the reality of things and our thought
of them. And this value is not impaired
if we are compelled to question or to deny
altogether its particular application of this
principle.
2. But we may go farther, and say that
the main implication of the ontological argu
ment is a thoroughly sound one. For if in it
we can discover any condition on which the
validity of our thinking as a whole depends,
156 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
such, that is, that unless we admit that con
dition, we cannot trust any result obtained by
our reasoning faculty, then we are entitled to
say that that condition represents a necessary
truth. We rejected, indeed, the form in which
that argument states this proposition namely,
that our idea of a perfect Being necessarily
involves the existence of such a Being, for the
reasons which we have briefly sketched. A
necessity of thought, as we saw, means the
dependence of one judgment on another which
is admittedly true. But a real case of such
necessity is expressed in the statement that
unless the universe is itself rational, no process
of reasoning can be valid, or, indeed, possible.
Here is a condition implicit in every exercise
of thought, and which is therefore strictly a
necessary truth, unless we are prepared to
adopt the position of universal and thorough
going scepticism that is, to commit intellectual
suicide. The very fact that the universe shows
itself tractable to our thought, that we can
reason about it at all, proves that reason, or
thought, is part of its very structure. We may
take as an apt illustration the analogy of (say)
a play of Shakespeare, and the same letters
and the same number of letters shaken together
and distributed in haphazard fashion. We can
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 157
read and understand and enjoy, in the former
case, because a mind like our own lias arranged
the letters into words and the words into
sentences. In the second case, the result
would be absolutely unintelligible. Similarly,
the very fact that the universe is intelligible
proves that an intelligence like our own is
inherent and active in its every part.
How far will this argument take us ? It
appears to us that here we have the nearest
approach to a demonstrative proof of the Being
of God. For all philosophy and all science
point to the unity of the universe, and hence
the intelligence which informs and directs it
must be also one and self-consistent. Nor is
the force of this argument really destroyed by
any tenable form of pluralistic theory. For if
the universe be an harmonious whole, then the
" monads," or whatever we like to call the
ultimate thinking atoms or centres of experience,
must exist in a system of harmonious relations,
and this, again, implies a single and self-con
sistent Supreme Intelligence.
It might be urged against this argument,
from the naturalistic point of view, that, as
man is a part of nature, and as his intelligence
has been evolved by natural processes, this is
a sufficient explanation of the intelligibility of
158 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
nature, for man must of necessity be akin to
that from which he has developed and of which
he is a part. In this statement there appears
to be a mixture of truth and error, truth in
what is asserted, error in what is implied. We
cannot assert too strongly man s kinship with
nature, but we must decline to admit that this
of/ itself explains the fact that nature is a rational
system, which, as we have seen, is the only
cause of its being intelligible. Naturalism holds,
in one form or another, the view that mind is
a kind of by-product of the evolution of a
nervous system. But such a system is found
only in a small corner of nature, so far as our
knowledge goes, while a rational system, which
nature undoubtedly is, must be one penetrated
through and through with mentality, a system
of which the underlying reality, which holds
it together and expresses itself through it, must
be a Reason akin to our own, though of im
measurably greater range and power. And it
seems impossible to conceive of any hypothesis
which explains this central principle of all our
thinking, more reasonable than that which holds
that the universe is the revelation of the Divine
Reason in the image of which man, as a rational
being, has been created.
3. But there is something more to be said
RESTATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 159
for the ontological argument in regard to its
insistence on the significance of the bare fact
that we can form the idea of a perfect Being.
Here it very closely touches on a branch of
modern philosophy which at present is attract
ing the attention of some of our acutest thinkers
namely, the theory of values. Historically,
not indeed the origin, but the stress laid upon
the idea of value or worth, dates from the work
of Lotze. As is well known, he draws a sharp
distinction between judgments of fact, or exist
ence, and those of value, between the realm
of that which " is," and that of the " ought
to be/ The main point for our purpose is this :
the human mind is such, that it not only deals
with things actually existing, and their rela
tions, but has the power of forming ideals, of
goodness, truth, and beauty, which it instinc
tively pronounces are the best, the highest
things in the universe. We cannot, obviously,
form a clear, comprehensive concept of any of
them, for as ideals they transcend our finite
experience. But we do feel that the striving
after these things is the only worthy and proper
end of a willing, rational, and feeling being such
as man. Man is never more truly man than
when he is arriving at a higher degree of good
ness than that whereto he has attained, when
160 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
he is laboriously seeking after a fuller, higher,
more comprehensive view of the truth, when
he is trying to embody, in whatever material,
words or sounds or colours or marble, some
haunting vision of a beauty which yet ever
eludes him. Now it seems quite fair to put
the matter thus: either all this that is, the
highest and most distinctively human quality
of man, his power of " visualising/ however
imperfectly, the ideal, and straining after an
ever nearer approximation to it, is just a
pathetic mistake, a baseless dream, or else
these ideals, so far transcending his present
experience, are somehow and somewhere realised.
But if realised beyond this human sphere, by
their very nature, they must be realised in a
perfect experience, an experience so far like
our own, that it must contain elements which
correspond, on a higher plane, to those which
we name will and thought and feeling, while
it yet transcends to an infinite degree the
highest reaches of human achievement in the
moral, intellectual, and aesthetic spheres.
Further, this transcendent experience must
stand in some very close relation to our own,
so as to be able to communicate something of
itself to us. Of the finest results of human
effort, is it not the best explanation, after all,
RESTATEMENT OF THE AKGUMENT 161
that " God worketh in us " ? In some way
that transcendent experience must be immanent
in us, at once the source of our ideals, and our
inspiration in their pursuit. This, it is true,
falls short of a logical demonstration, but it is
a most " reasonable faith/ and one which does
enable us to go on, and makes of life, not a dull
succession of failures but a great and shining
adventure. " For thence, a paradox which com
forts while it mocks, Shall life succeed in what
it seems to fail. What I aspired to be, And
was not, comforts me/ The great alternative
is more than a matter of speculative interest.
Either the best part of life is an illusion, or the
theistic creed is true. Which hypothesis we
shall adopt depends on more than intellectual
considerations. And although reason is the
special faculty for the discovery of truth, it
would seem to be a mistake to bar out the will
and the feelings as the colleagues of reason in
its quest.
We have thus given grounds for holding that
while the ontological argument in its older,
scholastic form cannot be regarded as tenable,
yet it contains elements of extraordinary value
and interest. Such elements are, its insistence
on the correspondence of thought and reality;
the contention that any principle found to be
12
162 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
necessary for the validity of thought in general
must be accepted as true; and the stress laid
on the idea that it is rational to believe in the
objective existence of the chief " values " of
human experience. Thus, in any reasoned think
ing out of the basis of theism, this argument
must always hold an important place.
NOTE TO CHAPTER VII.
If the view of the " New Psychology " is
accepted, some modification in the phraseology
of this chapter (and possibly of Chapter III.)
will be required. But the general conclusion
will in each case stand. For the religious and
moral sentiments are at any rate, in the most
recent views of them, based upon fundamental
human instincts. And we have already dealt
with the relation between theories of develop
ment and the idea of validity.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PEKSONALITY OF GOD
THE various lines of argument which we have
so far pursued have, we think, established as the
most reasonable hypothesis the existence of
a spiritual principle immanent alike in the mind
of man, and of the nature of which he is both
part and spectator. In the last chapter we saw
that it is to the presence of this principle, both
in nature and in the mind which observes nature,
that we can alone ascribe the rationality of the
universe. In earlier chapters we found reason
for attributing to this same spiritual principle
the possession of will (Chapter IV.), of purposive
intelligence (Chapter V.), and a moral character
like, but infinitely higher than, our human
conception of goodness (Chapter VI.).
Now, such qualities as these inevitably suggest
to us the idea of personality. Rationality, will,
moral goodness are found in personal beings and
in them alone. Two other considerations which
we have had before us bear in the same direction.
First, we saw that this spiritual principle is not
163
164 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
rightly described as being merely immanent,
but that it must also, in some real sense, be
transcendent. That is to say, it is not, as it
were, exhausted in the universe, so as to be
identical with it, as just another name for the
sum of all finite existence, if we may use for the
moment a rather question-begging epithet. The
spiritual principle of the universe, such is our
contention, is truly manifested in everything
which exists, but is more than the total sum
of all its manifestations. In the second place,
we were led, so to speak, naturally, following
the unforced current of our thought, to a more
or less precise identification of this principle
ever at work and ever manifesting itself in the
universe, with the Logos of the Johannine
theology. And there is no doubt at all that, in
this system, the Logos is a personal Being. But
this second consideration, if we follow it out
in all its implications, will lead us to a discussion
of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, into
which, for the moment, we do not propose to
enter.
Our present point is this: Various lines of
thought seem to lead to the view that the
spiritual principle of the universe is personal
in other words, to be identified with the God of
religion. And this is so momentous a con
clusion as to force us to retrace our steps, and
THE CHARGE OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM 165
to inquire (1) What is the real meaning of the
phrase " the Personality of God ": in what sense
can we speak of the Supreme as a Person ?
and (2) What grounds have we for believing,
in whatever sense, in His Personality ? Can
we really justify such a position ?
I. THE MEANING OF DIVINE PERSONALITY.
In the first place, we must, I think, admit that
this is an anthropomorphic mode of expression.
It attributes to God a quality which we believe
to belong to human beings. But this is not, in
itself, a fatal objection. The sneer of Xeno-
phanes, that if horses could entertain the belief
in God they would undoubtedly conceive of
Him as a magnified, non-natural horse, repre
sents a charge against religion which we must
acknowledge to be true, while contending that
it does not, on that account, reduce all religion
to an irrational absurdity. If we are to speak
of God at all, or in any way represent Him to
ourselves, we must inevitably do so in human
language and under the familiar terms of our
human thought. This does not make our
language or thought untrue, although it does
compel us to the admission that they are hope
lessly inadequate to the expression and con
ception of their object. To be inadequate is
to fall short of the truth, but not necessarily
to contradict it, or even to fail to express some
166 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
part or aspect of it. Of course, if we accept
the doctrine that man is in the image of God,
this at once supplies both a philosophical basis
of anthropomorphism and a criterion by which
to distinguish true from false anthropomorphism.
To imagine God as possessed of like passions
and failings with ourselves must be false. But
to regard our highest qualities of mind and heart
as faint reflections of His infinite perfections
cannot be described as an unworthy or irrational
view. It has been said that the false anthropo
morphism regards God as in the image of man,
while the true regards man as in the image of
God. There is no reason, therefore, to reject
the doctrine of the Divine Personality on the
ground that it attributes to God a quality
which we know, and can only know, as belong
ing to human beings.
II. But this takes us only a little way. For
it follows, from what has been already said,
that before we can discuss the meaning of
personality as applied to God we must first
be reasonably clear as to its meaning when
applied to man. In other words, we find our
selves faced with the old question, What, after
all, do we mean by a person ?
I think that we can best approach the problem
by saying that there are two words so closely
connected in meaning that we may treat them,
MEANING OF PEKSONALITY 167
at first, as synonymous terms, and these two
words are " self " and " person/
The simplest definition of the self or person
is that by these terms is meant the subject of
experience. Now, this most familiar of words
in modern philosophy, when correctly used,
stands for the entire content of consciousness,
It embraces such diverse elements as sensations,
perceptions, memories, desires, resolves, imagin
ings, and whatever else can be " experienced."
In other words, as we said in Chapter IV., it
constitutes our universe. In saying this, we
do not commit ourselves to any opinion as to
the reality or non-reality of the external universe
apart from the minds which perceive it. For
it is incontrovertible that for us there can be
nothing outside experience, taken in this broadest
sense. At the present time, however, there is
a tendency in some quarters to overwork this
concept of experience in fact, to make it do
the work as well which belongs to the concept
of the self. With this tendency Mr. Merrington
has dealt in a masterly fashion in his " Problem
of Personality." It will be necessary for us
briefly to examine the relation of the self to
experience, or better, to the consciousness of
which experience is the content, in order to
establish the reality of the self. The question
resolves itself into this: Do we mean by the
168 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
self, or ego, or subject, anything different from
consciousness itself ? Consciousness is well
described as a flowing stream. We speak of
" conscious states/ but these are not marked
off one from the other by any defining limits
or boundaries, any more than we can cut sections
in the stream of a running river. As was said
of old, as we sit on the bank, it is never the
same river we observe as it glides swiftly by.
So if we turn our eyes inward, the stream of
consciousness defies our efforts to fix it, for it
no longer is what it was a fraction of a second
ago. The tendency, in some quarters, is to deny
the existence of the watcher on the bank
the subject, or ego. I am, according to these
thinkers, nothing but the mental stream, or that
portion of it which occupies the fleeting moment.
It would seem to follow from this that, unless
we can maintain that the stream goes on flowing
when the brain has ceased to function, "I"
cease to exist at the moment of physical death.
With this inference we are not called upon to
deal, for it can, I think, be quite definitely
shown that the theory which denies the existence
of the self is untenable. We are forced to reject
it for the following reasons:
(a) One clear fact I know about myself is
that I am self-conscious. I am not only aware
of the successive states of my consciousness,
IS THERE A PERMANENT SELF ? 169
but I can make myself the object of my own
thought, as truly as I can so do in regard to
any external object or event. And it is evident,
on reflection, that a series for, according to
the view we are criticising, the so-called self is
but a series of conscious states, or one of such
a series cannot possibly be aware of itself as
such. Nor can a member of a series know
itself as such, and contrast itself with other
members.
(h) I am not only aware of a succession of
conscious states, which fact itself proves that
I am other and more than any one, or the sum
of them, but I also become aware that there is
a certain unity underlying them, and uniting
them, however various they may be, as mine.
And this unifying principle cannot be anything
else save the ego, the self-conscious subject or
person.
(c) The existence of this permanent self is
necessary in order to explain the cardinal fact
of memory. I know myself as the person who
experienced such and such feelings, or had such
and such perceptions in the past. Here we
have nothing to do with the mechanism, psychi
cal or physical, of memory, but only with the
fact itself, which testifies to a permanent prin
ciple underlying the ever-changing, shifting
scenes of the mental drama.
170 THE PEESONALITY OF GOD
(d) Once more, if we turn from the nature of
consciousness to its content, which is what we
call experience, we must remind ourselves that
it involves two factors, the object which is
experienced, and the subject which has the
experience. If we take the case of cognition,
we cannot have the known without the knower;
I who know must be distinguished from, and
can by no means be a mere part of, that which
I know. By no possible feat of mental gym
nastics can we rid cognition, or any other form
of experience, of this twofold, subject-object
character.
Hence, for these reasons, we assert the reality
of the self or person. One caution may be
added. The relation between the self and the
mental stream is only partly analogous to that
between the watcher on the bank and the river
which he is contemplating. The former relation
is, of course, far more intimate, for otherwise
we shall be making of the self a mere point
destitute of all attributes, an empty and barren
abstraction. We should thus have, in another
form, the old Kantian " thing -in-itself," the
mysterious entity which underlies the sensible
qualities of the object. As we know the object
as it really is, though doubtless not fully or
adequately, when we know its attributes, and
have long ago discarded the notion of the thing-
SELF-HOOD AND PERSONALITY 171
in-itself, even so we know the self as manifested
in its various activities, as thinking, feeling,
and willing. What can we make of man, or
God, apart from the activities in which their
nature is manifested ? And what is that nature,
apart from its activities, known or unknown ?
All we are concerned to maintain is the existence
of the real, concrete self or person, the unifying
and permanent condition of thought, and feeling,
and will.
At this point we proceed to discriminate
between the terms " self " and " person " which
we have hitherto treated as synonymous. The
true difference between them will appear at the
end of our discussion. But at present we can
only say this, of which the truth will appear
more clearly in the sequel, that while self-hood
is a given fact, personality, in this sense, stands
for a quality to be acquired, although it lies
implicit in every self. Self -hood admits of no
degrees; while personality advances from the
imperfect towards perfection. According to
Lotze, God alone is the perfect Person. Finite
spirits possess more or less of personality as
they partake more or less of His nature.
To begin with, then, the three fundamental
attributes of the self are feeling, will, and thought.
But, and this is the all-important point, these
faculties can only be developed in and through
172 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
social intercourse with other selves. Thus,
and thus only, can the ideals to which they are
directed become realised in consciousness, and
possible, in any sense, of attainment.
(a) We begin with thought. The proper
object of thought is the truth. But it is evident
that for the discovery of truth we are dependent
on the labouis of other men, both our contem
poraries, into whose experience we can partly
enter by reading and conversation, and the
seekers of past generations, whose discoveries
have become part of the inherited experience
of the race or of some smaller social unit.
And here we may note, what is true equally
of the other two faculties of our nature, that
there is such a thing, however we explain it,
as unconscious social inheritance. We of the
civilised world, at any rate, " enter/ all un
knowingly, " into other men s labours/ The
strivings and the achievements of countless
generations come to be woven as it were into
the stuff of which we are made. Hence it is
that each one of us has not to start afresh on
the level of the prehistoric savage. The vision
of truth as a far-off goal, an ideal infinitely
distant, towards which we must be ever striving,
can only arise at a certain level of culture. But
when it does so arise, it is as the result of
social intercourse, whereby the self enters in
SOCIAL CHARACTEK OF PERSONALITY 173
some measure into the experience of other
selves.
(b) The proper object of the will is the good.
And here in still more manifold ways we are
dependent on others. We are dependent on
them for our knowledge of the nature of the
good. To take an obvious illustration, our
conception of the moral aim of action will vary
very greatly according as we have been brought
up, say, in a heathen, or a Mohammedan, or a
Christian society. And even in the latter case
the Christian moral tradition will be modified,
sometimes in a very great degree, in accordance
with the special moral tradition or tone of our
nation, our community, till we come down to
our family and immediate social surroundings.
Further, we cannot be " good " as isolated
selves. The very conception of goodness in
volves relations to other men. And this becomes
yet clearer if the true moral ideal be the
Christian one of service and sacrifice for others,
and its perfect exemplar be seen in the Christ.
"In this we have come to know what love is,
because He laid down His life for us, and
we ought to lay down our lives for the
brethren/ In the identification of morality
with love (" love is the fulfilling of the law "),
its social implications become manifest as no
where else.
174 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
(c) The proper object of feeling is the beautiful,
and here, at first sight, we seem to have come
across something purely individual. My delight
in the beauty of a sunset, or an oratorio, is
surely unique, and in its true essence incom
municable. Yet, in saying this, we do not
rightly judge. To that very appreciation of the
beautiful there has contributed the long educa
tion of generations preceding me, whose ex
perience has entered unconsciously into my very
being, not to speak of my own education and
the formative power of personal influences of
the extent of which I am only partially aware.
My savage ancestor often witnessed sunsets as
beautiful, but not, in all probability, with any
thing like the same appreciation; and it may
well be that the oratorio would have waked
in him very different feelings. The sense of
beauty, as the vision of truth, or the realisation
of the true nature of goodness, is the result of
a long process of growth, and the means of that
growth, in all three cases, has been the social
intercourse of selves, whereby they have become
sharers in each other s experience.
We can now appreciate the difference between
self-hood, which is, of course, the ground of
personality, and personality itself, which is the
development of the latent qualities of the self.
Personality has been defined as " the capacity
SOCIAL CHARACTER OF PERSONALITY 175
for fellowship/ The present writer would
rather define it as the capacity, by means of
fellowship, of becoming conscious of and striving
towards the attainment of ideals. And the
ideals in which personality seeks and finds (so
far as they are attained in any measure) its
completion and satisfaction are the ideals of
truth, goodness, and beauty, which answer to
the elementary qualities of the self, as the self-
conscious subject of experience which thinks
and wills and feels. These are, to use the current
phrase, the eternal values, and they exist only
for and in persons: while in the consciousness
and pursuit of them mere self-hood is raised
to a new power, almost to a new level of being,
and becomes personality. At the same time,
we must remember that personality is not a
static condition. It is capable, as far as we
can see, of indefinite growth. We are persons,
and yet, in proportion as we seek to appropriate
more and more of truth, goodness, and beauty,
we are ever becoming more and more truly
personal. And we can so grow only in and
by means of intercourse with other persons.
III. In the light of these considerations, we
are now prepared to attach a definite meaning
to the phrase "the Personality of God/ We
are not yet concerned to argue for or against
the idea embodied in the phrase, but only,
176 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
at present, with the meaning to be assigned
to it.
In the first place, then, following the order of
our thought, which proceeded from the concept
of self to that of person, it must mean that the
spiritual principle in the universe, which is yet
more than the universe which it indwells, is not
an abstraction, but has an independent concrete
existence, as the Subject of an experience which
includes all that is. There is no contradiction
if we imagine that the divine experience includes
finite centres of experience which are to some
extent impermeable to the creative and sus
taining Spirit, for this would be due to the
divine self -limitation. Briefly, when we speak
of the spiritual principle, it is truer to speak of
" Him " rather than " it," of God rather than
the Absolute. Further, God must, if personal,
be self-conscious and free. We saw reason (in
Chapter VI.) to attribute freedom to the per
sonal spirit of man, but the Divine Spirit must
possess perfect freedom, in the sense that all
His actions are the necessary expression of His
nature. Freedom and determination are here
combined in a higher synthesis. And this last
thought leads us to a most important point. In
God there can be no distinction between self -hood
and personality, such as we have found to exist
in man. If He is, and on the theistic view He
THE DIVINE PEESONALITY 177
can be nothing short of this, the Perfect Being,
then He is personal in a sense in which we are
not, for we are only acquiring, with all our
efforts, the lowly beginnings of personality. For
His Life is the perfect and eternal realisation
of those ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty
in the approximation towards which human
personality consists.
IV. THE GROUNDS FOR BELIEVING IN THE
PERSONALITY OF GOD. Can we show that the
belief in a Personal God is a reasonable belief ?
We can do so on two very sufficient grounds :
1. The Divine principle, which we have seen
to be both immanent in and transcending the
universe, cannot be lower than any form of
existence which it has produced, or in which
it manifests itself. By universal admission,
personality is the crown of evolution, the highest
form of life which we know. Hence, if we are
to speak or think of this divine principle at all,
we must do so in the terms, and under the cate
gory, of this highest form of our experience.
This is the true anthropomorphism. The best
and highest we know must be our truest, even
if inadequate, representation of the divine. An
impersonal Absolute, to which we could not
attribute self-consciousness, knowledge, love,
would be lower in the scale of existence than
its own highest manifestation. God, who is
13
178 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
the source and archetype of our personal life,
must be Himself at least personal, even though
He must immeasurably transcend all we can
mean by the concept of personality. Thus we
may say, that in speaking of God as personal,
we are giving expression to the highest truth
which we can think about Him, to that, there
fore which we must hold to be really true, unless
we are utterly to distrust our intellectual
faculty which we believe to be His gift, " the
candle of the Lord " within us, and therefore
given to guide and not to misdirect us. We
can say and believe this, while we recognise
that the absolute truth of the Divine Existence
can only be present to the Divine Consciousness
itself. " As the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are My ways higher than your ways,
and My thoughts higher than your thoughts/
But we must be careful to guard against the
supposition that that which is only relatively
true is in any sense untrue, which would lead
to a kind of scepticism involving the paralysis
of all our thinking.
2. The second ground on which we are
compelled I venture to think this expression
is not too strong to assert the Divine Per
sonality is, that it is the necessary postulate
of our most fundamental conviction about the
universe in which we find ourselves. That
VALUES AND IDEALS 179
conviction is, that goodness, truth, and beauty
are eternal realities, existing by their own
indefeasible right, independent of us as, in their
perfection, they are immeasurably above as.
This is what we mean when we speak of
" values/ As objects of our conscious strivings,
as aims beyond our reach, while yet our true
life consists in the ceaseless effort to approximate
towards them, we name them " ideals." And
it is a conviction as certain as any produced by
scientific demonstration, that these values are
the true meaning, not alone of our little human
lives, lived on a tiny planet, but of the universe
itself, that they belong to the innermost heart
of Eeality. To quote Professor Pringle-Pattison,
" It is all-important in the discussion of value
and ideals to realise that these are in no sense
private ends which we seek to impose upon the
universe . . . when man confronts the world
with his standards of value, his attitude is not
that of a suppliant but of a judge. He does not
appear as one who craves a kindness, but as
one who claims a right; or rather, as invested
with the authority of a higher tribunal, he
pronounces sentence on the travesty of a uni
verse which materialism offers him."
Now these values, while in no sense self-
originated, yet have no meaning except for
persons, self-conscious centres of moral, Intel-
180 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
lectual, and emotional life. Not only do we
in no sense originate them, but also, as we said,
they constitute ideals to which we cannot attain,
while yet in seeking to attain them lies the only
road to the development of our personality.
We are forced, therefore, to postulate, as the
Reality of which the universe is a partial mani
festation, a Supreme and Perfect Personality,
in whom these values, which for us are ideals,
are completely and eternally realised. Thus
personality is not only a human quality which
we attribute to God, on the ground that He
cannot be less than the highest which we know
or in which He is manifested; we now see that
He alone, to repeat the saying of Lotze already
quoted, can truly be called a Person. Our
own personality, however far it may have been
developed, is only a faint adumbration of an
attribute which can rightly be predicated of
God alone.
It would almost seem that we need another
term to describe the Personality of God, and
it has been suggested that we should speak of
Him as super-Personal. But there are two
objections to this. In the first place, the idea
of the super-Personal God, true as it is in what
is meant to be asserted, namely, that He tran
scends any conception we may form of per
sonality, tends almost insensibly to slide into
DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 181
that of an impersonal Absolute. And, secondly,
the term " the Personality of God " serves to
keep us in mind of the important truth, that
He is not only the source but the archetype
of our own personality.
The idea which the word " super-personal"
is meant to express that is, transcendence of
what we mean by " person " finds expression
in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In
the first place, that doctrine stands for what is
called the " Economic Trinity " that is, for
what Christians believe to be true in regard to
God s self-manifestation and creation and re
demption. The Father is God as transcendent,
the Son is God as revealed in the world and
above all in the Incarnation, the Spirit is God
as immanent in nature and in man. But this
is one aspect only of the doctrine in question.
It is also held that these various stages of God
in action represent a much deeper truth rooted
in the Divine Nature, which is at any rate
logically prior to His self-manifestation in nature
and redemption.
We have seen that on the human plane fellow
ship is necessary for the development of such
measure of personality as we may attain, as
being involved in the supreme values of truth,
goodness, and beauty, corresponding to the
three distinctively personal attributes of know-
182 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
ledge, will, and emotion. Now, the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity is that what we under
stand as fellowship is on some higher plane
realised within the Perfect Personality, which is
thus, as it were, self-contained. This in no wise
conflicts with the idea of late so powerfully
advocated, as by Pringle-Pattison, that creation
is the necessary and eternal consequence of
God s essential nature as love, and therefore
as self -communicating. Eather, it emphasises
the Divine attribute of self-communication, by
representing it as being a character internal to
the Godhead. So the universe would appear
as the unfolding, or the expression in time and
space, of that which God is in Himself, in His
own eternal Existence. The difficulties which
have been felt in regard to this belief are at
any rate largely due to the associations of the
word " person," which have, on the other hand,
led in popular Christianity to something neaily
approaching Tritheism. The subject is well
treated in C. J. Webb s recent work, " God and
Personality." It will be sufficient here to add
two remarks. The doctrine itself is independent
of the phraseology which, however hallowed by
long tradition and sacred associations, would
be admitted by all theologians to be but an
attempt to express the inexpressible. And
while the Holy Tiinity is a revealed doctrine,
INFINITE PERSONALITY
it seems to afiord the nearest approach to an
emanation of the relation of God to the uni
verse, a relation which, as we have seen, must
be one of both transcendence and immanence,
while it expresses the truth sought to be con
veyed by the term " super-personal/
One objection to the doctrine of the Divine
Fetsonafity ^tM* already been fleaH with implicit Iv
and by anticipation, when we laid stress on the
fact that He is not less but more than we mean
by personal, and that all terms must be applied
to die Divine Being, not as expressing the
absolute troth, which must be for ever beyond
us, but by way of accommodation only, It has
been said that the idea of an infinite personality
is a contradiction in terms. But (L) the point
of such objectkm lies in its seizing irp<m the idea
of limitation which is *nb**qnt in h^m^n per-*
sociality, as if we meant to tnunrnd the Divine
are but TriVyJJti g> * (though we
believe them to be true and not false reflections)
of a truth which we can neither think nor utter.
And (EL) as we have already had occasion to
*" ^~~~ ^*~^~^ ^1" ~~ -^ """ ^ - "*<i "*"* ** ^- ^
to be somewhat ambiguous as applied to God*
Its proper and useful sphere i& not in theology
in milhiBUlin I* may stand, it & be
184 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
understood to mean that there is no measure
to the Divine wisdom and love. But we must
definitely reject it in its bare and simple meaning
of " having no limits at all/ For then it would
mean that no personal character, no moral
attributes, could be predicated of God. All
character, in God and man alike, means some
thing definite, and therefore, in that sense,
limited. There is nothing indeed outside God
whereby He can be limited. That is the truth
involved in speaking of Him as infinite. But,
strictly interpreted, the term would imply the
very reverse of what we can mean by God &
Being characterless, amorphous, chaotic. We
should be therefore very careful in our use of
the word, and especially in regard to drawing
inferences from it.
As we have shown that the belief in the Divine
Personality is well-founded in reason, we may
perhaps say once more, that it is a belief which
lies at the root of religion. For us, at any rate,
the very meaning and essence of religion is
personal intercourse and union with God. And
the possibility of a personal relation to Him
depends upon the truth that He is truly personal.
Prayer, the very life of religion, is inconceivable
except as being our intercourse, vocal or silent,
with One whom we know to be like ourselves
(we must not be afraid to say this) a Person.
THE DIVINE PERSONALITY AND RELIGION 185
This way of speaking doubtless, as we have said,
falls far short of the truth. But it is true for
us. It is the highest truth which we can grasp,
the truth by which our spirit lives through the
highest exercise of which it is capable, in per
sonal communion with Him who is its source,
in whose Image it is made.
CHAPTER IX
OUTSTANDING PEOBLEMS
IN this concluding chapter we consider two
questions, both connected closely with our
main subject, and not entirely unconnected
with each other. These questions are the
existence of evil, and human immortality.
I. THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL. This has ever
been the crux of the theistic creed. If God
be good, and also almighty, how can we explain
the facts of physical and moral evil, pain and
sin?
At the outset we may notice one point,
which is not always made sufficiently clear.
I believe, and all our previous discussions have
shown how well grounded is that view, that
theism is a " reasonable belief," in the sense
that it is the only hypothesis which affords a
rational and coherent explanation of the universe.
It does not overthrow this belief, even if con
siderable difficulties attach to such a faith,
unless it can be shown (a) that they destroy
the grounds on which it is held, or (b) exhibit
that faith as involving an internal contradiction.
186
PROBLEM OF EVIL 187
Now, obviously (a) does not enter into the
debate, for the existence of evil does not touch
any of the grounds on which theism rests, as
a reasonable account of nature and mind. But
it is claimed that (6) does apply, that there is
such a contradiction between two attributes of
God, His goodness and omnipotence, and the
existence of evil, as to render theism irrational.
Such a conflict or schism in reason itself as
would be thus involved, in holding that the
same faith is rational and irrational, is intolerable,
unless some hypothesis could be framed which
would unite both the grounds on which we
hold that theism is the one rational account of
the universe, and of ourselves as part of it,
and the ground on which it is rejected, in some
kind of higher synthesis which should include
both. Here at once we are met by the various
systems of dualism, which assert the coexistence
of a good and an evil principle contending for
the sovereignty of the world, in all their endless
variety. So we have Ormuzd and Ahriman of
the ancient Persians, the Father and the
Demiurge of the Gnostic, " God " and the
" Veiled Being " of Mr. H. G. Wells. But it
can be shown that dualism, however attractive
it may be as an apparent way out of an insoluble
difficulty and how great that attraction is its
wide dissemination and its countless forms
188 OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS
sufficiently prove is no real halting-place for
the human mind. We cannot acquiesce in this
as the final solution of the riddle of the universe.
Science, philosophy (with a few exceptions), and
the higher types of religion, agree in demanding
some principle of unity be it God, or the
Absolute, or an abstract idea of uniformity as
the only sufficient explanation of a universe
which is a rational and organic whole, a unity,
however we name or explain it, which holds
together an infinite variety of particulars.
The same argument applies to a particular
kind of dualism which is in vogue, in certain
quarters, at the present day. We refer to the
doctrine of a " finite God/ in the sense which
would make God limited, not by His own nature,
as He assuredly is, but by some force outside
Himself, as, for example, by " intractable
matter/ or by the universe as such, whether
that be viewed as created by Him, or as co-
eternal with Him. This specious way out of
the difficulty we cannot accept. For the theist,
God is not a Being over against the universe,
dealing with it from without, but its immanent
principle of life, however He may transcend it
in the fulness of His Personal Being. He
creates it ever, for it is from moment to moment
the expression of His Mind and Will and Love.
But, if we thus reject dualism in every shape
DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE 189
and form, how can we reconcile that goodness,
without which God would not be God, with the
existence of evil in the universe ? How are we
to deal with the dilemma, " either not almighty
or not good "?
In the first place, we must get a clear idea of
what we mean, or ought to mean, when we speak
of God as " almighty/ Omnipotence is defined
as the power to do all things which are not
intiinsically impossible. There are obviously
limits to the, power of God. He cannot make
that which is false to be true, or vice versa.
There are things, as the above definition allows,
which are per se impossible. Their impossibility,
that is, is not due to a defect of power, but is
grounded in the nature of things, involved in
the rational structure of the universe, which
is precisely the same thing as saying that they
are impossible for God, the rational Principle
of the whole.
Among such things must be reckoned the
creation of a moral being incapable of sin. On
this our human plane, where souls are " made,"
or rather in the making, through their own
moral efforts, the possibility of the choice of
good involves that of the choice of evil. The
alternative is that between a man freely willing
and a machine so constructed that it cannot go
wrong. But to the latter, no moral qualities
190 OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS
can be attributed. And we believe that God,
to speak in human fashion, deliberately took
the risk, because He willed to dwell in a com
munity of sons, rather than to be surrounded
by a collection of faultlessly running machines.
God thus allowed for the possibility of sin, as
the price of a greater good. A world in which
moral good is capable of being realised is
worthier of Him, we may surely say, than one
from which moral evil should be excluded by
a fiat of " omnipotence/ The meaning of the
world, the purpose of its age-long evolution,
can be nothing less than the production of moral
personalities. And at the root of the whole
process is the perpetually renewed act of the
Divine self -limitation or sacrifice. To speak in
terms of Christian theism, the Cross, the symbol
of the self-sacrifice of God, is marked on all
creation. The very act of creation, as far as
we can realise it, was a spontaneous limiting
of the mode of the Divine Existence, involved in
the very nature of Eternal Love. Still greater,
we conceive, was that degree of limitation which
is implied in the creation of man, with power
to oppose his own will to the will of God.
And, as Christians believe, for the purpose of
human redemption the Divine Logos " emptied
Himself . . . and coming into existence in
form of man, humbled Himself, and became
CONSEQUENCES OF SIN 191
obedient unto death, even the death of the
Cross."
Sin brings certain consequences. In the
language of theology, the chief of them is the
loss of the Vision of God. The finer faculties
of the soul are coarsened and obscured. In
practical experience, most of the misery and
pain of the world is due to moral evil, to the
lawless self-seeking which is of the very essence
of sin. When we speak of the " punishment "
of sin, we must remember that the results of
the breach of the divine order of the world
follow, as it were, automatically. They are
involved in the nature of sin. We speak truly
of "remedial punishment," for the laws of
the spiritual and the natural realms are alike
the expression of the Divine Love, ever seeking
that the banished may be restored. On the
other hand, no fact is more familiar than that
the consequences of wrongdoing are not con
fined to the sinner, but fall oftentimes, and
sometimes with far heavier force, upon the
innocent. In such cases, it is not possible to
rid ourselves of the sense of injustice. Nor is
it possible for the Christian theist to dissociate
the suffering of the innocent from what he
believes to be the supreme instance of such
suffering, in Him " who bore our sins in His
own Body on the tree." In the latter case,
192 OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS
as in the former, it is possible to speak of
injustice, if by justice we mean that each one
should receive his deserts, no more and no less.
But there is, after all, a fallacy underlying
such judgments. And the fallacy consists in
the assumption that there is such a thing as
an individual pure and simple; that any human
being can exist as an isolated unit, apart from
the human environment. Whereas, in fact, no
one of us can live for himself, or die for himself.
We are what we are, as parts of an organic
whole, which is humanity itself. Our good and
our evil, in great measure, though by no means
exclusively, come from our social inheritance
and our social environment. In the end, unless
our highest instincts, our judgments of value,
are but false lights to lead us astray, we may
trust to the justice of God. We hold that the
sufferings of the innocent, in consequence of the
disorder which sin, as a breach of the divine
order, has caused, are such things as follow
necessarily from that which is one of the condi
tions of there being a moral order at all, the
solidarity of the human race. That it should
not be so would, in this case, be something
intrinsically impossible, for it would be contrary
to the rational order of the world.
II. But what are we to make of all that mass
of pain and suffering, animal and human, which,
PROBLEM OF PAIN 193
so far as we can see, is not attributable to sin ?
The qualification, " so far as we can see/ is
inserted advisedly, for some have held that
the rebellion of intelligent wills, angelic and
human, against God has introduced a disturbing
factor into the world, in much the same way
as a grain of dust will interfere with the working
of a delicately adjusted watch. We would not
rule out the possibility of an element of truth
in this suggestion, but it is one difficult, to say
the least, to defend by argument, except in so
far as we can clearly see that sin, being in its
own nature irrational, and in conflict with the
Divine order of the universe, must have very
far-reaching effects. From this it does follow
that many of the indirect consequences of the
intrusion of moral evil into the world must be
such as are extremely hard to assign to their
proper origin.
But there are two other considerations which
throw some light on this dark problem.
I. We must believe that the supreme end
of the Divine Creation working in the world
is the emergence of free spirits, capable of a
rational obedience and love. As freedom can
not be directly created, for then it would cease
to be freedom, this implies that creation itself
is an act of Divine self -limitation or sacrifice.
It is, from this point of view, conceivable that
14
194 OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS
suffering represents a condition without which
that end could not have been attained. In
this case, a material universe calculated to
issue in the appearance of free, therefore moral,
beings, from which the possibility of suffering
should be excluded in advance, may be some
thing intrinsically impossible, contrary to that
innermost rationality of things which is the
nature of God Himself. On a somewhat lower,
or, at any rate, less abstract plane of thought
biologists speak of the evolution of pain, or,
rather, of a sentient organism capable of pain,
as necessary to the appearance of all the higher
forms of animal life. Pain is a danger-signal,
and, as such, a powerful factor in self-preserva
tion. And in the region of moral and spiritual
experience, it is a commonplace to point to the
ennobling and refining influence which pain may
exercise, and has in fact exercised on human
character, both in the case of the sufferers
themselves and of those who minister to their
relief. We should expect to discover some such
results, if it be indeed the case that the possi
bility of suffering is a necessary result of that
act of self-limitation by which God creates and
sustains in being a world which has for its chief
purpose the " making of souls," the production
of free, spiritual, and in a real sense, self-
creative personalities.
A SUFFEKING GOD 195
II. If this view is at any rate an approxima
tion to the truth, it corresponds in a very
wonderful way to a thought, which, however
modern in its expression, and however much
it may owe, in the emphasis now laid upon it,
to the stress of recent events, is yet as old as
Christianity itself namely, the conception of
a God who suffers in and with His world. It
has always been, and is now increasingly felt
to be, an intolerable idea, that He is a mere
Spectator of the world s tragedy, like the deities
of Epicurus, in some aloof, unapproachable
heaven, where
"No sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred, everlasting calm."
Rather, as truly immanent in His world, He
must be immanent both as Actor and Sufferer.
His self -limitation, which springs from His
nature as Love, involves suffering for Himself
in and with His creatures who are struggling
upwards towards Him as the goal and perfection
of their being.
It is unnecessary to point out at length how
this idea of the redemptive suffering of God is
one central to the Christian Creed. If we
follow the teaching of the New Testament, we
are led to believe that the Cross is not merely
a definite historical fact, but represents a time-
196 OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS
less, eternal Sacrifice of God on behalf of His
creation. The Lamb was " slain from the
foundation of the world/ As has been finely
said, " There is eternally a Cross in the life of
God."
Such a conception may become a real moral
dynamic. For it is a summons to us both to
work and suffer with God for the redemption
of the world. In this Divine work, we are
o-vvepyol 0eov, fellow-workers of God. We
may trace a similar thought in that fine phrase
of St. Paul, where he speaks of himself as " filling
up that which is lacking in the sufferings of the
Christ."
One more point remains to be dealt with
namely, the bearing of the theistic creed on
the problem of human immortality. The ques
tion, of course, is not, as it is popularly and
crudely expressed, " if a man die, shall he live
again ?" but whether we have any grounds in
reason, setting aside, for our purpose, the
peculiarly Christian answer, which rests on
belief in the Kesurrection of Christ, for the
hope that personality persists after the death
of the physical organism which is its present
expression ?
I. We may believe that certain fundamental
human instincts (as they appear to be) which
are here involved, such as the almost universal
HUMAN IMMORTALITY 197
belief in survival, the craving for a future in
which righteousness shall be vindicated, appear
ances of injustice removed, inequalities re
dressed, are as truly parts of the structure of
the universe as the fact itself of physical death.
Now, on the theistic view, the universe is not
a haphazard collection of facts, nor, as being
in its essence rational, can it be destined to
confound our highest aspirations. For the
purest hopes of immortality are unselfish, being
concerned not with personal destiny, but with
wider and larger hopes of the future of the
race, and the vindication of the moral order.
Surely, then, a theist is justified in holding that
such instincts are true, being grounded in that
One Eeality of which the universe, as we know
it, is the partial and temporary expression.
II. There is another and perhaps a stronger
ground for the hope in question. It is of the
very essence of the theistic belief that the ideals
of goodness, truth, and beauty are eternally
valid. In the life of God Himself, we believe
that they are realised in their timeless perfection.
We know them here and now, not as abstract
ideas, but as embodied, with greater or less
imperfection, in human personalities. Our in
stinctive conviction that such embodiments,
however imperfect, can never be lost to the
universe, that they are what they seem to be
198 OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS
on the face of them, prophecies of a more com
plete attainment, can only be satisfied by the
survival and progress, in some future state, of
individuals, and not by some vague belief in
racial advance, or by the existence of such ideals
in the Divine Mind. God could never have
kindled such sparks only to be quenched for
ever. If goodness, for example, be eternal,
then its eternity cannot mean anything less
than the immortality of personalities in whom
it is to any degree realised now. If we assent
to the words of the poet that the " wages of
virtue " are " going on and not to die/ we
must remember that virtue is an abstraction,
and therefore (so far as human) non-existent,
save as an attribute of virtuous persons, and
that therefore such an aspiration has no meaning
at all, unless it be that these persons are to
" go on/ and that the death of their bodies
is not, for them, the end of all moral progress.
Belief in human immortality (in the only
sense in which immortality can appear desirable
to a rational being namely, not as a mere
survival, but as an opportunity for a fuller and
richer, more truly moral and personal life) is
involved in the belief that the universe has its
ground, and only rational explanation, in an
Eternal Person who is Himself the Perfect
Kealisation of all goodness, truth, and beauty,
THE GREAT HOPE 199
and the ever-present indwelling Source of the
embodiments of these ideals in created per
sonalities. Theism has for its necessary corol
lary the firm conviction that, in all the wide
universe of God,
" There never shall be one lost good."
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