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THE HUMAN

AND ITS

RELATION TO THE DIVINE.

"That we do know." — John hi. 11,

BY

THEODGEE F. WEIGHT, Ph.D.

PHIIiADBIiPHIA:

J. B, LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1892.

a..

Copyright, 1892,

BY

J. B. LippiNCOTT Company.

Printed by J. B.Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

PREFACE.

When the Master, who was always teaching
men about their relation to God, said to Mco-
demus, " We speak that we do know," the words
may have seemed an overstatement. K his
auditor had imbibed the scepticism of the later
academies which taught that there could be no
conviction, — and this thoughtful teacher of the
Jews probably knew of the current teaching that
every sentence must be introduced with a per-
haps,— he may have deemed the declaration
naive, as many now view it.

A recent writer, whose book is a healthful
combination of theology and common sense, has
said of the analytic habit that, " While it tends
to accuracy of reasoning, it too often seems to
liquefy the mind and incapacitate it for retaining
the impress of any conviction except that knowl-
edge is difficult."^

1 The Kev. P. H. Steenstra, D.D., in " The Being of God as

Unity and Trinity." Boston, 1891, page 32.

3

4 PREFACE.

It is probable that every student of philosophy
has felt something of this aptly termed lique-
faction of mind, and has found the first effect
of his reading to be a sense of uncertainty on
all subjects. In some cases this doubt is per-
manent and causes one regretfully or disdain-
fully, as the case may be, to leave to the less
enlightened the privilege of expressing them-
selves apodictically. Instructors in philosophy
have some responsibility here, especially when
they advise students to adopt that system of
thought which promotes the easiest life, thus
instilling at once agnosticism and epicureanism.

In the following pages I have endeavored to
solve, by means within the reach of all, the
problems which present themselves to him who
seeks to know man and his relation to God,
hoping thus to be of some use in resisting the
tendency of studious minds to cast oft faith, and
in leading them to build on firm foundations
houses which shall be both sanctuaries and
fortresses.

The word of God is frequently referred to,
but undogmatically, and many writers are cited,
as will sufficiently appear without giving a list
of them. 'No quotations from Swedenborg have

PREFACE. 5

been made, because I have written in the spirit
of his works without consulting them.

This little treatise would not be added to the
number of those which already exist in this
field of inquiry if one of them were known to
cover the ground here gone over. I have made
the chapters as brief as possible without leaving
them obscure; if, however, the third be found
wearisome, its concluding page will be sufficient
for the rapid reader's purpose.

Cambridge, Mass.

1*

CONTENTS,

INTKODUCTION.

PAGE

Philosophy variously defined ; its change of aim from time
to time — Wisdom and the word coipla, its origin from
tasting, its first duty to obey the oracle " Know thy-
self," why essential in knowledge — Purpose of the
treatise 11

CHAPTEE I.

SELFHOOD.

Explanation of terms suus^privus, Siud proprius, their Greek
equivalents — Ownership an instinct, grounds of its neces-
sity— Development of the sense of selfhood ..... 17

CHAPTEE II.

THE SELF NOT THE FLESH.

Socrates instructing Alcibiades, the doctrine of the an-
cients— The self mental and superior to the flesh ... 22

CHAPTEE III.

THE SELF OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Consciousness defined and its testimony examined — Per-
sonal identity treated by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Au-
gustine, Scholastics, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, WolflP,
Locke, Butler, Eeid, Hume, Berkeley, Tucker, Ham-
ilton, Yoltaire, Condillac, Edwards, Kant, Fichte, Her-
bart, Schelling, Hegel, Ancillon, Taylor, Cousin, Eos-

8 CONTENTS.

PAGE

mini, Hickok, Schopenhauer, Ulrici, Lotze, Ferrier,
Mansel, J. S. Mill, Gatien-Arnoult, Spencer, Green,
Bowen, Hedge, McCosh, Malone, Seth, Olssen, Knight,
Momerie, and W. James— Criticism of all and sum-
mary view stated 27

CHAPTER IV.

MAN A RECIPIENT.

Meaning stated — Metempsychosis opposed, its position ex-
amined in views of "Walker, Knight, Schopenhauer,
Hume, Emerson, and Hedge, weakness of the theory —
Other forms of life recipient, so with man the microcosm
unless he he Divine — Testimony of experience — The pro-
prium, each one's form of reception, more than the
stream of thought — Each one given a place hy this fact
— Heredity — Necessity of a general plan of human ser-
vice, ethical value of this altruistic doctrine contrasted
with that of metempsychosis 100

CHAPTER V.

MAN REACTIVE.

Recipiency must he active or passive, passive with Budd-
hists, Quietism, Spinozism — Active view defended —
Not original, hut received activity — Illustrated from
nature and the hody, experience of the race and the in-
dividual— Newman's account of the received life . . . 125

CHAPTER VI.

MAN A FREE AGENT.

Freedom defined, determinism criticised in views of Spi-
noza, Edwards, Hume, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Bain —
Affirmative view of Wundt, its moral value with Kant 134

CONTENTS. 9

PACK

CHAPTEE VII.

man's inheritance.

iN'ot to "be doubted, Kibot's statistics vindicated by reason
— Calvinistic dogma of election destructive of freedom
and confusing evil with sin — What is transmitted —
Scientific rejection of freedom criticised, a true education
leads to control of the inheritance 151

CHAPTEK VIII.

THE POWERS OF MAN.

How many primary powers, triple divisions of Hamilton
and others criticised — Will and understanding treated,
confirmation of bodily analogy, will as designer, intellect
as guide, their conjunction in act — Downward rather
than upward inflow of life, use as the law of right
activity — Genesis of evil, Spencer's confusion of evil
with good, purification of self from selfishness .... 163

CHAPTEE IX.

THE DIVINE.

Ancient perception of the Divine — Passage to polytheism,
in ancient and in Christian history, the effect of degra-
dation— Arguments for the existence of God examined,
best of these arguments from man — No original God-
consciousness, but the Divine inferable from man's
recipiency, reactivity, and freedom — The creative Divine,
infinite love, wisdom, and usefulness — The manifestation
of God in the Christ the only perfect theistic argument
— Spirit of the Christ, doubts considered, gross concep-
tions of His work criticised, the Divine personality as
so shown, agnostic substitutes for Christian faith ex-

10 CONTENTS.

PAGE

amined — The revelation perfect in itself and in its deal-
ing with evil — No limitation of God as so exhibited,
Arnold criticised, avoidance of crude anthropomorphism 180

CHAPTEE X.

MAN IMMORTAL.

Not a fact of consciousness, man's knowledge of the Di-
vine plan in his creation, misconceptions reviewed — Man
as a spirit co-operative with God, ancient knowledge of
Immortality, the teaching of the Christ, later return to
physical view — Causes of doubt — Inferences as to the
future life, death and its effect, the spirit now immortally
alive, highest possible aim so afforded 205

CHAPTEE XI.

MAN IN CHRISTIANITY.

The self in the teaching of the Christ, its recipient reac-
tivity and freedom, division of man's powers, the design
of utility, evil in man, man as image of God, man as
microcosm, advent of the Divine in man, immortality,
relation of God, spirit, and matter, vital influence,
miracles 217

CHAPTEE XII.

. THE KNOWABLB.

Need of rational views, criticism displacing dogmatism —
Man may know spirit in himself, also the body and thus
matter, also the Christ and thus the Divine — The last
explained by friendship — God otherwise unknowable,
example of Mozoomdar, mysticism once despised,
rational mysticism beneficent— The three knowables in
their vital relation a unit 254

INTRODUCTION.

Definitions of philosophy have varied in a
marked and significant manner from the begin-
ning to the present day. Men have been wont
to define it as the quest of that which at any
time they most desired. "With Pythagoras it
was the aim of those who sought neither glory
nor gain, but to observe ; with Plato it was a
resembling of the Deity, so far as that is possible
to man ; with Aristotle it was the science of
being; with Bacon it was that part of human
learning which referred to the reason; with
Hobbes it was the knowledge of effects by their
causes; with Leibnitz it was the science of
sufficient reasons; with Adam Smith it dealt
with the connecting principles of nature; with
Kant it treated of the relations of all knowledge
to the necessary ends of human reason ; with
Fichte it had the absolute ego for its ground;
with Schelling it was the science of the absolute ;
with Hamilton it was the study of facts, laws,
and results ; with Hegel it was the thinking of

thinking; with Morell it determined the funda-

11

1 ^

( ,

12 INTRODUCTION.

mental certainty of human knowledge; with
Lewes it was the explanation of phenomena;
with Schwegler it was reflection; and with
Ueberweg and Spencer philosophy is the science
of principles.

All these definitions, and many more which
might be gathered, for every philosophical writer
has given one, are true, and in a sense equally
true. They are true if accurately descriptive
of the facts as historically represented, for these
men were typical men, and their respective defi-
nitions of philosophy mark the objects of the
best thought of their times. Their rational obser-
vations of that which most interested them, each at
his own period, constituted their philosophemes.

If philosophy soared aloft towards the begin-
ning and end of all things with Pythagoras,
Socrates called it down from the heavens, as
Cicero^ tells us, gave it a place in cities, intro-
duced it into men's homes, and forced it to make
inquiry into life and morals. Anon it rose
again; and so it has gone on, now dogmatic
then sceptical, now transcendental then scientific,
all the time an infallible indicator of the progress

* Tusculan Disputations, Book V., 4.

INTRODUCTION. 13

of tlie race, a progress which is thereby shown
to have been unsteady but intensely interesting,
as it was always intensely earnest. There has
been more passion in philosophy than its dev-
otees have acknowledged.

Aristotle gave the most enduring definition,
because most free from accidents of time and
place, when he pointed out that wisdom {ao<pia^
sajpientid) was spoken of the greatest excellence
in the arts, and also of those men who, not ex-
celling in one art, were universally superior in
intelligence ; " thus wisdom," said he, " is the
most limited and the most absolute of the
sciences ; but, since man is the most noble of all
creatures and wisdom relates to that wherein he
excels the brutes, therefore wisdom pertains to
that which is by nature most worthy of honor,
which is intelligence ; wherefore we call Anaxag-
oras, Thales, and such men wise."^

It would be a profitable study to trace through
the languages the root from which is formed the
second half of the word " philosophy," noting its
kinship with the Greek <ra^>y<r, which means
" sure," " clear," as applied to knowledge, and

1 Nicomachean Ethics, Book YI., chap. vii.
2

14 INTRODUCTION.

with the Latin sajpio^ sapiens, which means first
" to taste," and so to be a keen taster, to be quick
in apprehension, to be well informed. The study
would lead us to the Anglo-Saxon supan, the Ger-
man saufen, and the English sip and sup. Appar-
ently, as the child first learns by tasting, putting
everything to its mouth, so man has used the word
for tasting, of course made from the sound of
the lips when taking liquid into the mouth, as
the name for all knowledge, and supremely for
that which answers the most fundamental ques-
tions which from time to time he has been able
to frame ; for, as Olympiodorus has reported to
us from Aristotle, " we must philosophize ; if we
must, we must; and if we must not, still we
must."^ The non-philosophizing man is brutish.
The animal does not question, does not philos-
ophize. It is significant that sipping has be-
come philosophic and has so long been applied
to the getting of wisdom. In Solomon's day a
good taste made a wise man. The Proverbs
said that as honeycomb is sweet to the taste,
so is the knowledge of wisdom ; ^ and we read

1 Commentary on Plato's First Alcibiades, Creuzer's edition,
p. 144. '^Proverbs, xxiv. 13.

INTRODUCTION. 15

in the Psalms, " How sweet are thy words unto
my taste." ^

Philosophy, it would appear, must not lose
itself in words, nor mystify the student rather
than enlighten him, making him agnostic in a
hopeless way ; it must impel him to seek for that
which he needs to know in order to rise and to
raise others, it must impel him to develop what is
best in man, and thereby to make the most of the
world, to seek a wisdom which shall be " in him
a well of water springing up unto eternal life."^

The beginning of such wisdom is evidently
to heed the oracle, " Know thyself," which, Pliny
says, was inscribed in letters of gold on the
temple at Delphi by order of Chilo of Sparta,
one of the seven sages. Unless some clear idea
of what man is in his own essential self be
formed, philosophy must wander in the dark-
ness. All other knowledge, if the self be an
enigma, is as futile as it is to rule all other
things but one's own nature. Unless we know
the self we cannot understand the relation which
we bear to all else. This is therefore the begin-
ning of philosophy. ^-The geometer has lines

1 Psalm cxix. 103. 2 jo^n, iv, 14.

1 6 INTROD UCTION.

and figures," said Ficlite, " the philosoplier only
himself." ^

"No point has been more difficult in philosophy,
though none was more vital. Some have denied
the possibility of knowing the self. " The words
inscribed on the temple at Delphi have been
oracular in vain," said Ferrier.^ But this self,
this "series of faint manifestations," as Spencer*
calls it, must be studied, and can be studied if
man be more than a brute. Cicero says that the
oracle meant "Know thy soul."* We shall
find out what it meant if we can find out the
self. In attempting so to do, we may take en-
couragement from Thomas k Kempis:* "An
humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to
God than a deep search after knowledge." And
Professor Schurman^ has lately wisely said, "It
is from its notion of the self, the inevitable centre
of everybody's world, that every system of phi-
losophy takes its origin and tone."

1 Sonnenklarer Bericht, Lecture 4.

' Institutes, Prop. vii. 4.

*Pirst Principles, 4th ed., p. 154.

* Tusculan Disputations, I. 22.

* Imitatione, Bk. I., ch. iii.
6 Belief in God, p. 222.

THE HUMAN

AND ITS

RELATION TO THE DIVINE.

CHAPTEE I.

SELFHOOD.

The distinction between what is one's own and
what is another's, or between what is one's own
and what is common property, is everywhere
made. The Romans, by their words suus, privus,
proprius, clearly indicated ownership and regard
to self. It is common to regard privus as ex-
pressing the idea of one's own, not another's,
which is to ipnt privus in contrast with alienus,
and to regard proprius as expressing what is one's
own, and not common property, which is to put
proprius in contrast with communis. Again, pecu-
liaris may be contrasted with universalis, as ex-
pressive of one's own rights not shared by all.

Before the Romans the Greeks had the same
b 2* 17

18 THE HUMAN AND ITS

discernment in using oheXoq and 't^toq in contrast
with 8rjii6ffioq and xoi^oq respectively, and Idwq was
also contrasted with dXXotpioq,

It is impossible to think of the universe as
having any sort of law in it without admitting
the idea of ownership. Animals know their
places of rest, their offspring, and their proper
food. The ox knoweth his owner, and the sheep
the voice of the shepherd. Were it not so, the
beasts would not survive a single winter. Men,
however rude, know and insist that others shall
recognize their right to the fruits of their hunting
and their handiwork. "Without this sense of
ownership they would be inferior to the brutes.
Without this the sense of home could never
arise. Without this there could be no sense
of responsibility to serve others with what one
possessed. Without this there would be no
nations. The Greeks going to war with Troy
because Menelaus had lost his own Helen illus-
trate the general sense of property. Amiitit
meriio proprium, qui alienum appetit (" he de-
servedly loses his own who covets another's"),
said Phsedrus, the fabulist, and no one has ever
failed to understand him.

This recognition of what is one's own is more

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 19

than the instinct which leads the dog in an
Oriental city to defend the portion of narrow and
filthy street which is his district, or which causes
the bird to utter plaintive cries when her nest of
little ones is threatened. With the animal it is
irrational and lacks that full sense of the self
which enables a man to define it and discuss it, —
that is, to understand his own nature.

The infant is at first possessed only of sensa-
tions of pleasure and pain; when at peace he
smiles or sleeps, when in pain he cries or writhes ;
this is only an instinct with him ; but ere long
he learns to distinguish between himself and
others, to take an object in his hand and throw
it from him, rejoicing in the sense of power, and
so he comes to form some idea of the external
world. The next step seems to be that of noting
the connection between one act and another ; he
shakes the rattle and obtains a sound, he cries
out and brings the mother to his aid ; it is the
sense of causality awaking within him. Finally
he learns to distinguish self and self-interest, to
make all serve his ends, to know himself as
difierent from others, and to see that he has
thoughts and pleasures of his own. As the self
thus appears, full humanity is evolved. Before

20 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

this he was as an animal, he is now an incipient
man.

In the development of the race there were no
men, properly so called, till consciousness of self
arose; when this arose, there was man, and he
stood upright, and had dominion over the other
animals. As soon as self-consciousness appears,
and not till then, there can be self-determination.
"One whose action is self-determined is a per-
son," said Mulford in " The E"ation," quoting
fromUlrici.^ And Heinroth justly says, "With-
out consciousness this self would not be I. The
brute is a self but no I. I was before I became
an I." ^ Everything in nature acts according to
laws, is the Kantian idea, man according to con-
sciousness of laws.*

jN'ot yet to plunge into the great subject of
consciousness, I only remark that the most
general idea of the self which can be formed is
up to this point sufficient. It has always been
recognized since philosophy recorded itself, and
it is essential to rational humanity. Men philos-
ophize in the degree that they use their own
privilege of gaining knowledge, and they cannot

1 Gott und der Mensch , p. 207.

2 Psychology, p. 27. 3 Kritik, p. 575.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. <21

philosophize till they recognize more than sensa-
tions of pleasure and pain, more than the exter-
nality of other beings and things, more than the
causal connection between acts and events, and
look upon their own individual natures, in every
one a suum, a privum, a proprium. The question,
What is the self? becomes therefore the question,
"What is one's own solely, and, if he live forever,
eternally his own ?

22 THE HUMAN AND ITS

CHAPTER 11.

THE SELF NOT THE FLESH.

One further distinction, which was an approach
to the actual self, was made as the Greeks came
gradually to see that a line was to be drawn
between the man and his body. To the Ionic
School the distinction seems to have been un-
known. They were natural philosophers. To
Thales all things, man included, seemed to arise
from water and to return to it. To Anaximander
came the somewhat higher view that all essences
came forth from the " unlimited, eternal, and un-
determined ground of all things," to which again
they returned. Anaximenes, however, sought for
a more definite principle, and found it in air.

Pythagoras and his disciples distinguished
their school not only by a rigid moral discipline,
but by conceiving of an internal harmony con-
trolling all developments and establishing their
proportions and relations by the law expressed
by number. In accepting also the transmigra-

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 23

tion of tlie soul the Pythagoreans would seem to
have distinguished soul from body, and we know
that they did regard the body as a prison, but
this idea was one which they had borrowed from
the East, and it did not enter with them into the
philosophical teaching for which they are famous.

"With the Eleatics there is a distinct recogni-
tion of being as separate from its manifestations.
Xenophanes declared wisely that being must be
one, and therefore he condemned the polytheism
of his day. Parmenides went farther, and main-
tained that the one must be fixed and that
nothing subject to change could be of it; but he
also, when treating of the phenomenal world,
found fire, rather than water or air, to be the
moving agent. Zeno, as if to reaffirm Par-
menides' abiding One, developed with much skill
the antinomies of magnitude and movement, in
the efitbrt to show that all finite things could be
dialectically shown to be full of contradictions,
and so unworth}' to be regarded in comparison
with the infinite and undetermined.

It is here that one is strongly moved to adopt
in full the Hegelian idea that philosophy has
passed through the same stages in the race as in
the individual. It certainly did begin with mere

24 THE HUMAN AND ITS

consciousness and natural notions in tlie Ionics,
and did advance to a recognition of being with
the Eleatics. We now come certainly to the
one who perfectly illustrates Hegel's next step,
namely, of becoming (werden). This is Hera-
clitus, with his doctrine of the eternal stream of
life in opposition to the fixedness of Parmenides.
In the union of greater and less, of centre-seeking
and centre-fleeing, Heraclitus found unity form
ing and reforming itself without end. The
special agent of this movement was fire.

Not yet, however, had the distinction between
flesh and spirit fully appeared, and certainly the
Atomists did not make it, though they evolved
being per se more fally, as Hegel points out.
Empedocles, with his four elements, must be
classed with the Ionics, while Anaxagoras, with
his doctrine of the world-forming thought {vodq),
leads the way to the point which, later, the
Sophists reached with their full recognition of
the ego, joined in their case with contempt for
the external world.

But Socrates, by the length of his demonstra-
tion to Alcibiades, implies that the distinction
must in his day be taught before it would be
acknowledged, —

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 25

S. " Do you not converse with me ?" A.
"Yes." S. "And I with you?" A. "Yes."
"It is Socrates who speaks?" "Yes." "And
Alcibiades who listens?" "Yes." "Is it not
with language that Socrates speaks?" "Yes."
" He who uses a thing and the thing used, are
not these different ?" " Yes." " Then, does not
a man use his whole body ?" " Yes." " A man
is therefore different from his body?" "Yes."
" What then is the man ?" " I cannot say."
" Does anything use the body but the mind ?"
" IN'othing." " The mind is therefore the man ?"
" The mind alone." ^

This, condensed to one-half its length, was
Socrates' lesson. And Plato had no other
thought upon this point than his master's. So
Aristotle said, " The mind is the man." ^ And
Hierocles, the !N'eo-Platonist, revived Platonism
in the words, "Thou art the soul, the body is
thine." ^ "We are not bodies," said Cicero, in
his first Tusculan Disputation, " nor am I, while
saying these things to you, talking to your
body." * " He who is seen is not the real man,"

1 Plato's Pirst Alcibiades, 129. ^ js^jc. Ethics, ix. 8.

3 Aurea Carmina, 26. * I. 22.

B 3

26 THE HUMAN AND ITS

said Macrobius, "but he is the real man by
whom that which is seen is ruled." ^ Sir "W",
Hamilton concludes a series of such extracts by
quoting from Arbuthnot's " Know Thyself," and
a few of the lines must not be omitted :

" This frame compacted with transcendent skill,
Of moving joints ohedient to my will,
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree,
"Waxes and wastes ; I call it mine, not me.
New matter still the mouldering mass sustains.
The mansion changed, the tenant still remains ;
And from the fleeting stream, repaired by food,
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood."

This distinction between mind and body rec-
ognized, we are brought one step nearer to the
actual self, because we are thereby directed to
seek for it, not in any part of the body, but in
that realm which lies above the bodily, which is
not lessened when a part of the body is ampu-
tated, and which may and often does endure in
strength while the body is going to decay.
When we have admitted that it is mental, we
have the self in full view.

* In Somnium Scipionis, ii. 12.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE, 27

CHAPTER III.

THE SELF OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

The self, which is not bodily and not cogniza-
ble by bodily sense, is revealed by that faculty
which takes note of the mental operations, and
which is well named consciousness. One not
only knows and desires, but he knows that he
knows and desires. He can contemplate his
own mind and its varying states. This knowl-
edge of knowledge is the consciousness. As
Hamilton puts the truth, " Knowing that I know
is consciousness."^ And again he says, "Con-
sciousness is to the philosopher what the Bible
is to the theologian." ^ " It is like an internal
light. It is the knowledge which the thinking
subject has of the modifications of its being."*

The question as to the actual self is therefore
the question, "What does the consciousness re-

* Metaphysics, Lecture ix. p. 110.

» Ibid. V. p. 68. 'Ibid., xi. p. 126.

28 THE HUMAN AND ITS

veal ? This question was easily answered while
men dealt with general views, but when they
began to employ more and more subtile analyses,
they came to differ and even to doubt. Conse-
quently it seems to be necessary to trace the
study of consciousness from the ancients down,
proving it all and holding fast what is good.

The first doubt which was raised was as to
the connection of conscious moments. At any
instant one could say, " I am I, I know that I
am I;" but could he say in the light of con-
sciousness, " I am the I who was, I am the I who
knew, who desired ?" This raised the question
of personal identity and made the study of the
self turn mainly upon this one point, so that a
review must deal largely with this topic, before
one can pass to consider others.

Aristotle makes it evident that this question of
personal identity had invaded the Lyceum, for
he said, "To be of opinion that a thing which
is changed is not when it changes, possesses
some truth, but is attended with ambiguity.
Tor that which casts away possesses something
of that which is cast away. Let it be granted
that a thing does not abide according to quantity,
yet we know that all things abide as to form.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 29

To admit no essence takes away the necessary
subsistence of a thing." ^

Here the Stagirite contends that the change
which is undergone is not a dissolution, which is
not a change, but an extinction, and that in that
which is permanent or which endures the change
the identity is preserved. If there be nothing
which endures, nothing exists except for the
instant, and that which only momentarily exists
has no subsistence. Every subsisting object,
w^hether animate or inanimate, vindicates its self-
identity. Equally so man.

Plotinus seems to have regarded the query as
to identity as already disposed of, for he serenely
rhapsodizes in !N'eo-Platonist fashion : " Often
when by an intellectual energy I am roused from
the body and converted to myself, and being
separated from externals, I retire into the depths
of my essence, I then perceive an admirable
beauty, and am then vehemently confident that I
am of a more excellent condition than that of a
life merely animal and terrene." ^

This merely repeats the saying put by Plato
into the mouth of Socrates : " He who knows his

1 Metaphysics, iv. 5. ^ Descent of Soul, tome iv. 8.

3*

30 THE HUMAN AND ITS

body only, knows that which belongs to him, but
does not know himself." ^

In sharp contrast with the rhetoric of Plotinus
is the eager declaration of Augustine : " I know
that I am myself, that this I know and love. I
fear not Academic arguments which say, What
if you err ? If I err, I am. Mine error proves
my being. Though I be one that may err, yet
in that I know my being I err not." ^ It must
be acknowledged, however, that Augustine did
not meet all cavil by his passionate appeal to
consciousness; for if his knowledge were but
that of the instant, it was not sufficient, and he
was not so successful in his reply to the Academy
as was Aristotle.

The Schoolmen, as skilfully reported to us by
Harper, sought to be more thorough : " Person-
ality is a substantial mode by which a complete
intellectual substance is so individually completed
in its own right that it is incommunicable to any
other." ^ This is an illogical definition, for a
" complete intellectual substance" begs the ques-

* First Alcibiades,

2 City of God, Book XI. ch. xxvi.

' Metaphysics of the School, Glossary, article Personality.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. . 3I

tion by giving to the simple notion " personality,"
an attribute " complete," which carries with it all
that is to be claimed; and the same objection
might be made to the word " individually." But
the Schoolmen deserve credit for going some-
what deeply into the subject when they said,
"We are supremely conscious that there is
something within us which links the past, so far
as memory reaches, to the present in such wise
as to give us fullest assurance and certainty that
each one of us, during the whole of that defined
period, remains personally identical with his own
self. This consciousness does not forsake us
even in our dreams. "We never dream that we
are not ourselves. . . . Consciousness testifies to
the existence of a spiritual something which is
permanent and which is the origin of thought,
will, and imagination. . . .1 am aware of phe-
nomena that are ever changing; of all these I
am conscious ; yet I am equally conscious that
the I remains the same through all modifications.
The phenomena are not essential to my being,
the I is."^

This is admirably clear, though it will be

* Metaphysics of tlie School, vol. ii. pp. 405, 406.

32 5ra^E HUMAN AND ITS

found that others doubt the alleged fact that we
are conscious of remaining the same through all
modifications. Aristotle, with his cautious plea
that a part remains, is more safe, because he
claims only what he can hold against all comers.

!N"ow that we are upon the Schoolmen and
their authoritative teaching, it may be well to
note that the Council of Yienne (France), which
met A.D. 1311, decreed that " whoever henceforth
shall obstinately presume to assert, defend, or
hold that the rationaf or intellectual soul is not
the form of the human body, of itself and essen-
tially, is to be accounted for a heretic." This
was confirmed by Leo X. in the Lateran Council,
1513, and again by Pius IX. in the Brief called
Menim, issued June 15, 1857.^ It is unreasonable
to depreciate the Schoolmen. Hampered by
authority to be feared and by authority to be
preserved they certainly were, and they leaned
much too heavily upon their Angelical Doctor,
but they retained much that was good in Greek
philosophy, and among other things a firm be-
lief in personal identity.

"We reach now, however, a new period which

^ Quoted by Harper, vol. ii. p. 409.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 33

had its beginning with Descartes, a period when
little more was claimed than the right to reason,
and when philosophy looked forward as well as
backward, to a new structure rather than to the
adornment of the old.

Descartes said simply, " I, that is, the mind,
by which alone I am that I am {sum qui sum), is
a thing wholly distinct from the body, much
more easily known than the body, and which
might clearly be the same that it now is, though
the body were not existing."^ This is plain,
except the last part. It is not self-evident that
the mind is absolutely independent of the body.
It may be alert when the body is asleep or
powerless, but this does not justify the much
larger assertion that the mind might be the same
were the body not existing. The mind without
an organ would be like the vision without an
eye, it could only potentially exist, and such
existence can scarcely be called "the same."

Descartes was more exact when he said, "I
can doubt whether I have a body, yea, whether
there be body in the nature of things ; yet it is
not allowable for me to doubt that I am or exist,

I Methode, iv.

34 THE HUMAN AND ITS

SO long as I doubt or think." ^ Here lie was
upon the firm ground of his original proposition,
cogito ergo sum, a ground which future idealism
would not take from him though scepticism
might essay to do so. But Descartes in his
principle was only a pupil of Augustine, with his
saying, "If I err, I am." Descartes in contrast
with the Schoolmen is great; measured by a more
ancient standard, his fame diminishes, except as
a scientist.

There is no place in Spinoza's Ethics where
one can trace the progress of the doctrine of
self, for he excludes it when he says, " When we
say that the human mind perceives this or that,
we say nothing else than that God, not in so far
as He is infinite, but in so far as He is explained
by the nature of the human mind, or in so far
as He constitutes the essence of the human mind,
has this or that idea." ^ He had already said,
" The human mind is a part of the infinite in-
tellect of God." He adds a request to his
readers to defer their decision as to this declara-
tion till they have read the whole, but no delay

1 Meditationes : Objectio Quarta.

" Ethics, Smith's Edition, Part II., Prop, xi.. Cor, and Schol.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 35

found Spinoza making man anything more than
a mirror in which his Creator surveyed His
perfections. " Let us make man" becomes with
this pantheistic monist, "Let us make human
machinery." The system is a superb theocracy,
but the devout Spinoza left no place in it for
himself.

As Descartes repeated Augustine, so Leibnitz
renewed the saying, already quoted, of Aristotle.
Leibnitz attempted to go further, but with doubt-
ful success. He said, " An immaterial being or
a spirit cannot be stripped of all perception of
its past existence. It has remaining the impres-
sions of all that has hitherto come to it, and it
has also presentiments of that which will come.
That continuation and connection of perceptions
makes the same individual a reality, but the
same apperceptions (perceptions of past feelings)
prove again a moral identity." ^

Here, in overstating Aristotle's more cautious
remark, that a changing thing subsists while
changing, Leibnitz has gone so far as to say that
a mind cannot lose its memory, when old age
affords in every community examples of such

^Nouveaux Essais, Lib. II., ch. xxvii.

36 THE HUMAN AND ITS

loss, and wlien disease has often obliterated from
some mind all recollection of the past. It is true
that in no case do one's friends fail to note the
continuance of the personality, but to say that
this is invariably self-perceived is to exaggerate
experience. Moreover, it seems wholly unphilo-
sophical to include as evidences of identity pre-
sentiments, mere conditional notions of what we
shall do to-morrow, along with the impressions
of the past. It would seem impossible to admit
presentiments to the class of perceptions.

But, leaving out of account what Leibnitz
overstated, we find what is of great and perma-
nent value remaining, namely, the sense of
identity through the continuation of perceptions,
and, included therein as an inseparable part, the
sense of accountability for the past. If Augus-
tine and Descartes took an ontological view of
the self, Aristotle and Leibnitz present the em-
piric view. And every one sees the ethical value
of the doctrine of personal identity ; for, if this
be doubted, even so much as by the suave scep-
ticism of Hume, the result is that moral account-
ability ceases at once. From Leibnitz forward
the doctrine is furnished with the defence that it
is essential to ethics, to accountability, and to

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 37

capability of improvement ; for, if there be no
past that is ours, we cannot be instructed by it,
nor warned by it, nor encouraged by it ; nor can
the poet's word then be accepted, —

" Men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things." 1

Wolff carried the thought no further when he
said, " The soul is conscious to itself of itself,
and thus of what is in its act or of its acts. The
mind may also reflect upon itself and its acts." ^
This is a mild way of putting the thought that
the mental self possesses itself and is adapted to
rule itself " The mind is its own place," as
Milton hath it.

With Locke the subject was taken up by the
strong empirical British mind, and it took on at
once a fresh interest. Locke said, "Personal
identity consists not in the identity of substance,
but in the identity of consciousness. Conscious-
ness, as far as ever it can be extended, should it
be to ages past, unites existences and actions
very remote in time with the same person. Li

* Tennyson : In Memoriam, i.
' Psych. Emp., Part I., sect. 3, eh. i., n. 261.
4

38 THE HUMAN AND ITS

consciousness alone consists personal identity, —
that is, the sameness of a rational being. Whilst
I know by seeing or hearing that there is some
corporeal being outside of me, the object of that
sensation, I do more certainly know that there is
some spiritual being within me that sees and
hears.'' ^

The criticism of these statements is so thor-
oughly made by Butler and Keid, who had been
stimulated by Hume to use a caution which
Locke did not suspect to be necessary, that it
may be well to pass on at once, only stopping to
point out that, in his desire to avoid the scho-
lastic appeal to substance because it is not an
object of perception, Locke made an equally
serious mistake in ignoring the memory and
placing the evidence of identity in that conscious-
ness of identity or " identity of consciousness,"
which is after all the thing to be proved, and
which is not proved by the assertion that it
always tells us of an inner spiritual being. "We
may be conscious of such an inner life to-day;
we sleep and wake to-morrow with the sense of

* Essay on Human Mind, Book II., ch. xxiii., sect. 9, and ch.
xivii., sect. 15.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 39

an inner being, but, unless memory comes to our
aid, these two separated series of moments of
consciousness will give no perception of the
identity of those inner beings.

Deferring our notice of Hume till we have
brought forward Butler and Eeid as critics of
Locke and defenders of personal identity against
Hume, we note Butler's remarks annexed to the
Analogy, " By reflecting upon that which is my-
self now and that which was myself twenty
years ago, I discern that they are not two, but
one and the same self. Consciousness of per-
sonal identity presupposes but cannot constitute
personal identity, any more than knowledge can
constitute truth which it presupposes. The per-
son, of whose existence the consciousness is felt
now and was felt an hour or a year ago, is
discerned to be, not two persons, but one and
the same person; and therefore is one and the
same. ... If the self or person of to-day and
that of to-morrow are not the same, but only like
persons, the person of to-day is really no more in-
terested in what will befall the person to-morrow
than in what will befall any other person." ^

1 Analogy, First Dissertation.

40 T^^ HUMAN AND ITS

If Butler is justly famous for his Analogy,
wliich opened the way to the grand study of the
correspondence of nature and spirit, he ought
also to he praised for the fine discernment of
these remarks. It is true that the deficiences of
Locke's view and the inadequacy of previous
definitions of identity had been pointed out, but
it is certain that Butler freed Locke's statement
of its weakness and gave one of lasting strength.
To the suggestion that Butler does not call in
the memory, a suggestion which may be hastily
made, it is only necessary to answer that he
certainly does use the memory, though not by
name, when he " reflects" upon himself as he is
and upon himself as he was twenty years before.

Eeid's^ criticism of Locke is more severe in
terms, but not more acute. He notes, of course,
that Locke made identity to consist in conscious-
ness alone, and he points out that a defect in
consciousness, an omission to hold distinctly a
past experience, would then destroy the identity.
He declares that there can be no consciousness
of a past event except through memory, and
that Locke could not have meant what he said.

1 Essay III., chap, iii., sect. 3.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 41

He shows that sense of identity is confounded
by Locke with evidence of identity. He points
out that consciousness alone cannot be the evi-
dence of sameness of the being because it is
" not any two minutes the same." Moreover, he
shows that Locke uses the word " same" in a
way which lays him open to Hume's attack.
Reid had not a hospitable mind, which made a
strange doctrine welcome and put the best con-
struction upon it, but he was justified in dealing
thus with Locke after Hume had opened fire
upon the doctrine and had been hailed by some
as a victorious sceptic.

But before proceeding to Hume there is a
most interesting passage to be noticed in Berke-
ley's " Three Dialogues," in which Hylas, with
prophetic instinct, though, of course, an imagi-
nary character, utters a doubt which Philonous,
who represents Berkeley himself, remedies by
statements as positive as any realist could
make :

"Hylas. It seems to me that, according to
your own way of thinking, and in consequence
of your own principles, it should follow that you
are only a system of floating ideas, without any

substance to support them. "Words are not to

4*

42 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

be used without a meaning ; and as there is no
more meaning in spiritual substance than in
material substance, the one ought to be ex-
ploded as well as the other.

" Philonous. How often must I repeat that I
know or am conscious of my own being ; and that
I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a
thinking active principle that perceives, knows,
wills, and operates about ideas. I know that I,
one and the same self, perceive both colors and
sounds; that a color cannot perceive a sound,
nor a sound a color ; that I am therefore one in-
dividual principle distinct from color and sound,
and, for the same reason, from all other sensible
things and inert ideas. But I am not in like
manner conscious either of the existence or
essence of matter."^

l^othing could be more positive as to the ego
than this, and nothing could have been said be-
forehand which would more nearly have met the
very criticisms which Hume was about to make
upon Berkeley. It cannot be objected to Berke-
ley's idealism, as might be urged against later

1 Works, vol. i. p. 327 et seq. Quoted in Fraser's Selec-
tions, p. 333.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 43

idealists, that it infringed upon the identity and
permanence of the self.

Hume has a long chapter, one of his liveliest,
on personal identity. " There are some philoso-
phers," thus he begins with his usual wave of
the hand, " who imagine we are every moment
intimately conscious of what we call ourself;
that we feel its existence and its continuance in
existence ; and are certain, beyond the evidence
of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity
and simplicity: no proof can be derived from
any fact of which we are so intimately conscious ;
nor is there anything of which we can be certain
if we doubt of this." ^

Having thus set up his target, not quite fairly,
for Aristotle and Augustine were not the tran-
scendentalists which this description implies,
Hume asserts that we have no separate idea of
self, but always derive it from some other idea
of wider content, and that therefore we cannot
truly say that we know self, indeed that other
ideas always place themselves in our way when
we seek to contemplate self. "I never can catch
myself at any time without a perception, and

1 Human Nature, Book I., Part IV., sect. 6.

44 THE HUMAN AND ITS

never can observe anything but the perception."
Moreover, the mind is like a theatre which never
presents twice precisely the same scene; how
then can we speak of identity ? Again, our idea
of identity, if we have any, must be like that
which we have of an animal or a plant, but here
we can only predicate relation of states, not
identity of states, for here we have only resem-
blance. The plant or animal cannot be identi-
cally the same, for it continually increases or is
diminished. The change may be so gradual
that we do not note it, but to use the word
" identical" of it is only to disclose our lack of
observation. A reference is made to Jason's
ship. Men say that two sounds, separated by an
interval of time, are the same, that two churches
which have been erected in succession upon the
same lot or under the same name are the same,
and so on ; but they do not mean it, any more
than they mean the same river when its waters
are always changing. " The identity which we
ascribe to man is a fictitious one and of a like
kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables
and animal bodies. It proceeds from a like
operation of the imagination." Taking up the
subject afresh, Hume then proceeds to hold that

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 45

resemblance, contiguity, and the succession of
states or events which is called causation, are
really all there is of identity. Memory merely
declares the resemblance between our past and
present selves. Causation is only a name for
successive experiences, the actual connection of
which no one can prove. And memory is too
defective to be evidence of identity. " Who can
remember his thoughts and actions January 1,
1715, or March 11, 1719?"^ The doctrine of
identity, in fine, rests on verbal grounds alone,
on words which have been shown to be used
inaccurately.

Hume does not deny the self; he says, " Our-
self is intimately present ;" ^ he only denies the
alleged grounds of the doctrine of the identity
of self. Exactly what he holds and denies we
should have been better able to say if he had
not written a strange note beginning, " Upon a
more strict review of the section concerning per-
sonal identity, I find myself involved in such a
labyrinth that I must confess I neither know
how to correct my former opinions, nor how to

1 Human Nature, Book I., Part IV., sect. 6.

2 Ibid., Book II., Part III., sect. 7.

46 THE HUMAN AND ITS

render them consistent." He then repeats in
hriefer sentences his former doubts, but closes
with the confession that the difficulty of obtain-
ing a perception of a permanent self may be in
his own mind.^

This shows Hume rather in the light of a sin-
cere doubter, endeavoring to be a true Cartesian,
than in that of an incorrigible sceptic, and yet
the necessity of considering his objections is not
diminished by his apologetic note. He is most
thoroughly replied to in a little, almost unknown,
book, entitled " Man in Quest of Himself," by
Abraham Tucker, London, 1763, the only book
but one which is known to deal exclusively with
this subject. He also wrote under the name of
"Edward Search." His little treatise may be
summarized thus :

While replying to an assault on the individ-
uality of the human mind or self, made by Cuth-
bert Comment, in the Monthly Review, Tucker
attempts to reply to all real and possible ob-
jectors by taking up a long line of argument.
The word " same," he remarks, is used vaguely
enough, as when one glass of wine is called the

> Appendix, edition of Selby-Bigge, Oxford, 1888, p. 633-6.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 47

same as another if filled from the same bottle ;
but this is a mere statement of likeness, and
should not be confused with " specific identity."
So a man changes and does not remain the same
as to " flesh, blood, bones, and humours." But
man is a substance, his qualities are not qualities
of nothing; and, when thought of apart from
the qualities of his active life, as in sleep, he is
thought of as to substance. Qualities may and
do change. The same clay may be moulded
into various successive forms. The same water
may be now hot, then cold. But man, clay, and
water continue in existence. Moreover, every
man is an individual ; he may be composed of
parts, but is their perfect sum. They may un-
dergo some change, as the men of a regiment
may change, but the Guards remain the Guards,
and the man remains himself. Were a man not
an individual he would not be a first entity, and
he might be reincorporated into other forms. A
man's personality is the sum of his qualities.
His personality is not a separate thing as the
dozen is not separate from its twelve compo-
nents, itself a thirteenth ; and the personality is
the sum of the real qualities. In sleep we lay
down some qualities for a time and then resume

48 THE HUMAN AND ITS

them, retaining all the time our identity; so
may it be in death. Tucker goes into a skil-
fully-constructed catechism to show the ab-
surdity of making the self anything but an
individuality. He does not call the mind the
man himself, for this undergoes changes ; he
postulates an unchanging substance.

It does not appear whether or not Mr. Com-
ment was forever silenced by this reply. He
might have suggested that, in taking refuge in a
substance and in surrendering even the identity
of mind, Mr. Tucker had voluntarily yielded his
case, and that the identity ought to be something
more than an inference, which Hume at once
would call a fiction. The dozen example is not
bad, but the trouble with it is that personality,
if exhibited thus, seems but a name. On the
whole the clay example is much to be preferred.

Sir W. Hamilton met Hume more acutely by
charging him with making the ego only a bundle
of impressions and ideas, while he, Hamilton,
asserted, " As clearly as I am conscious of exist-
ing, so clearly am I conscious at every moment
of my existence, that the conscious ego is not
itself a mere modification, nor a series of modi-
fications of any other subject, but that it is itself

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 4g

something different from all its modifications
and a self-existent entity." ^ He does not try to
explain this fact, to go below it and account for
it. !N"o one, he truly says, doubts this deliver-
ance of consciousness, though Hume doubted its
truth. Hume, he asserts, argued against the ill-
formed premises of the dogmatic philosophers,
and is refuted by the correction of those premises.
He commends what Locke, Leibnitz, Butler, and
Reid had said of the immorality of the doubt of
personal and moral identity. Hamilton must be
referred to again when the view of Kant is con-
sidered, for he joins Kant with Hume just here.
Deferring further mention of Hamilton for the
present till he is reached in the order of time, we
may go back to the eighteenth century and note
Voltaire's sceptical saying, " It would be a fine
thing to see one's soul. * Know thyself is an excel-
lent rule, but it is for God only to put it in prac-
tice ; who but He can know his own essence ?" ^
Condillac is more philosophical if less epigram-
matic : " The self of every man is only the collec-
tion of sensations which, he experiences and of

^ Lectures on Metaphysics, xix.
2 Dictiormaire philosophique, Ame.
d 5

50 THE HUMAN AND ITS

those which his memory reports to him ; that is
all, — the consciousness of what he is and the
recollection of what he has been." ^ This, of
course, stands or falls with Hume and is to be
judged by its fruits. If Condillac be right, the
self is a fiction indeed, and moral responsibility
a ghost.

Everything that Jonathan Edwards wrote
comes to us with the weight of a great name,
but it would appear that here Edwards was not
in vision. Perhaps he too much approached
Spinoza in his form of mind to give man his
true place. He said, with conspicuous caution,
" We find a great deal of difficulty in conceiving
exactly of the nature of our own souls. And,
notwithstanding all the progress which has been
made in past and present ages, yet there is still
work enough left for future inquiries and re-
searches, and room for progress still to be made
for many ages and generations." ^

He did not know how soon new light would
shine. When he published these words, in 1754,
Immanuel Kant was preparing his first course of

^ Traite des Sensations, quoted by Ueberweg, vol. ii. p. 127.
2 Treatise on the Will, Part IV., sect. 7.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 51

lectures. Taking his starting-point with Hume,
but proceeding in a much more thorough and
convincing way, Kant was, as regards much that
he found in philosophy, wholly sceptical, but he
was also constructive and positive. What do we
possess through pure reason? was his question
in the Kritik. We have sense, and we have
thought; what do we gain thereby? In sense
we have, as d 'priori conditions of all perception,
space and time. Under these and other relations
we know. Our objects are the phenomena of
experience, not noumena. We think under
twelve categories, which are explained. Judg-
ments based on experience directly are a posteriori;
those absolutely made universal are a priori.
Having dwelt at length upon tbese points, in-
cluding also a treatment of synthetic and analytic
judgments, Kant proceeded to free the pure
reason from psychological accretions. " The
transcendental doctrine of the soul is falsely
held to be a science of pure reason, touching the
nature of our thinking being. We can lay at
the foundation of this science nothing but the
simple and perfectly contentless representation /,
which cannot even be called a conception, but
merely a consciousness which accompanies all

52 THE HUMAN AND ITS

conceptions. By this I, or He, or It, who or
which thinks, nothing more is represented than
a transcendental subject of thought = x, which
is known only by means of the thoughts that
are its predicates, and of which, apart from
these, we cannot form the least conception.
Hence we are obliged to go round this repre-
sentation in a perpetual circle.^ All the modes
of self-consciousness in thought are hence not
conceptions of objects (categories); they are
mere logical functions which do not present
to thought an object to be cognized, and there-
fore cannot present my self as an object. . . .
(1) In all judgments I am the determining
subject of that relation which constitutes a judg-
ment; . . . but this does not signify that I, as
an object, am for myself a self-subsistent being
or substance.^ . . . (2) The I of apperception is
a single one and cannot be resolved into a plu-
rality of subjects ; . . . but this is not to declare
that the thinking I is a simple substance. . . .
(3) The proposition of the identity of my self,
amid all the representations of which I am con-

iKritik der Reinen Vemunft, Theil II., Abth. II., Buch
II., p. 404. a Ibid., p. 408.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 53

scious, lies in the conceptions themselves; . . .
but this identity is not the same as the perception
of the subject, whereby it is presented as object,
and therefore this proposition cannot declare the
identity of the person, by which is meant the
consciousness of the identity of its own substance
as a thinking being in all change of circum-
stances. ... (4) I distinguish my own existence
as one thinking being from other things external
to me, among them my body ; , . . but whether
this consciousness of myself is possible without
things external, . . . and whether I can exist
merely as a thinking being (without being man),
I cannot know from this."^

The four paralogisms and their corrections,
condensed as much as possible, are given in the
last four sentences. The whole idea is stated by
Kant thus : " The unity of consciousness which
lies at the basis of the categoris, is considered to
be a perception of the subject as object, and the
category of substance is applied to the subject.
But this unity is nothing more than the unity in
thought, by which no object is given ; to which

1 Kritik der Keinen Vernunft, Theil II., Abth. II., Buch
II., p. 408.

5*

54 THE HUMAN AND ITS

therefore the category of substance, which always
presupposes a given perception, cannot he applied.
Consequently the subject cannot be known." ^

So far as Kant was here aiming to show against
Knutzen, M. Mendelssohn, and others, the fallacy
of grounding belief in immortality upon the
soul as a substance, it is not to the present pur-
pose to deal with him. This was his main ob-
ject in this chapter, but incidentally he sought
to show that we know the self only as subject
and never as predicate or object.

Hamilton's answer to this is that Kant makes
the selfless substantial than consciousness makes
it, and that thus to reduce it is to discredit con-
sciousness,— a proceeding which stops all phi-
losophizing at once. " In disputing the testimony
of consciousness to our mental unity and sub-
stantiality, Kant disputes the possibility of phi-
losophy, and, consequently, reduces his own at-
tempts at philosophizing to an absurdity." ^

This is scarcely just. Kant is not seeking to
do away with the self, thus denying a part of
every thought he has and despising conscious-

1 Kritik der Eeinen Vernunft, Theil II., Abth. II., Buch
II., p. 422. 2 Metaphysics, Lecture XIX.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 55

ness as a guide ; he is only seeking to make self
an apperception rather than a judgment. He
cannot be so rash, skilled introspectionist as he
was, as to deny the possibility of thorough self-
contemplation, of a train of thought which
would end in the sentence, " Such a being, with
such a history, such purposes, such powers, is the
being called I by my self, by my name by others."

Mahaffy seeks to be just to Kant when he
says, "Are you conscious of being presented
with yourself as a substance ? Or are you con-
scious that in every act of thought you must
presuppose a permanent self, and always refer it
to self, while still that self you cannot grasp, and
it remains a hidden basis upon which you erect
the structure of your thoughts ? Kant's view,
the latter, is the simpler and the more consistent
with the ordinary language." ^

It is enough to say to this that this is going
beyond Kant, who did not make the I a hidden
thing, but a " consciousness accompanying all
conceptions." In appealing to " ordinary lan-
guage," again, Mahaffy is wholly unwise, for
that appeal is to ignorance, to Alcibiades before

* Kant's Critical Philosophy for English Readers, Ivi.

56 THE HUMAN AND ITS

he had had his conversation with Socrates, to one
who has not heeded the oracle, " Know thyself."
To vindicate Kant from friendly or unfriendly
misrepresentation we must briefly remark upon
his doctrine of the self as it appears in his
" Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception."
He there presents in vivid contrast the merely
empirical self of the passing moment and the
original and permanent and transcendental self,
and declares : " The empirical consciousness,
which accompanies each determination as it
arises, is in itself broken up into units, and is
unrelated to the one identical subject. Relation
to a single subject does not take place when I
accompany each determination with conscious-
ness, but only when I add one determination to
another, and am conscious of this act of synthesis.
It is only because I am capable of combining in
one consciousness the various determinations
presented to me that I can become aware that
in every one of them the consciousness is the
same. It is only because I can grasp the various
determinations in one consciousness that I can
call them all mine ; were it not so, I should have
a self as many-colored and various as the sepa-
rate determinations of which I am conscious.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 57

Synthetic unity of the various determinations is
therefore the ground of that identity of apper-
ception which precedes d, priori every definite
act of thought. . . . The unity of apperception
is therefore the supreme principle of all our
knowledge."^

By presenting this transcendental synthetic
conception of the self as combining subject
Xant seems to separate himself from Hume by
the vs^hole breadth of this conception, while in
his description of the empirical self he agrees
with Hume and covers all that Hume had to say
of the self. It is clear that Kant is a firm be-
liever in personal identity, and must be counted
on the side of those who affirm the positive, sub-
stantial existence of the individual self, and can-
not be set down as positing only the mere "T
think" of passing experience. Only Kant rightly
declares that some have gone too far in holding
that in thinking we know the self independently
as an object.

Fichte, so modifying or rather transcending
Kant's view as to exclude the dualism of phe-
nomena and noumena, presented the self as ab-

1 Kritik, Theil II., Abtli. I., Buch I., pp. 133-135.

5S THE HUMAN AND ITS

solute, but manifesting itself in consciousness as
knowing subject and known object : " The I is
this, the subject-objectivity, and nothing else
whatever ; the positing of the subjective and its
objective, of the consciousness and its known as
one ; and absolutely nothing else outside of this
identity." ^

Of this doctrine Dr. McCosh says that Fichte
did for Kant what Berkeley did for Locke. He
charges Fichte with denying any self but a phe-
nomenon, and argues that a phenomenon, al-
though but an appearance, is an appearance of
something exhibiting some of its qualities. So
with the self, " We perceive qualities of self, of
self in such and such a state." ^ Dr. McCosh is
too hasty, in conclusion, to do Fichte justice.

Herbart engages vdth the question as treated
by Kant and Fichte : " What we observe in our-
selves is, taken generally, a very great variety
of our thoughts and mental states, a continual
becoming and changing. Over against these ap-
pears the I, which is always present there, to
form a fixed point. ... Of the reality of this I

1 Sonnenklarer Bericht, edition 1801, p. 86.

2 Cognitive Powers, Book I., chap. ii.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 59

we have so strong and immediate a conviction
that it has become a form of oath to establish all
other knowledge and conviction, ' As true as I
am.' . . . What does self-consciousness declare ?
The I declares itself, that is, its I, that is, its self-
declaration. If the inquiries for the ego, the
opening of which is here suggested, be properly-
carried on, the entrance will show itself in spec-
ulative psychology. After Kant and Fichte phi-
losophers must go this way."^

In thus pointing out that the Kantian criticism
had opened a new way which would be much
more prolific in result than the old, Herbart was
surely right. In his strictures upon Fichte he is
skilfully summarized in Dr. C. C. Everett's ex-
position of "Fichte's Science of Knowledge."^
The result is the vindication of self-consciousness
as positing the I in distinction from all else, "In
its highest form it is self-affirmation, which is
the one fundamental and absolute affirmation."^

Schelling, denying the absolutely egoistic point
of view of Fichte, and gradually coming into
direct opposition in mysticism, held that "the

1 Lehrbuch zur Einleitung, I. B. 2, IV. I. 124.

2 Chicago, 1844, pp. 81-87. » Ibid., p. 89.

60 THE HUMAN AND ITS

I can be conscious of itself only in contrast with
a not-self. At the same time this not-self or
limit is laid down by itself and is recognized as
its own. The I is therefore a perpetual process
of laying down and removing a limit." ^ . . .
" There is an immediate consciousness of the
self as distinct from and contrasted with an
outer object." ^ " The question whether the I of
self-consciousness is a thing in itself or a phe-
nomenon is utterly meaningless. To speak of
the I as a thing in itself is to suppose that the I
exists otherwise than for itself, which is as ab-
surd as to suppose that the I exists before it
exists." *

This was a transition from Kant to Hegel, and
in the latter's view the extreme idealistic position
was fully exhibited.

Hegel, in his "Philosophy of History," said
simply, " Two things must be distinguished in
consciousness : first, that I know ; secondly,
what I know. In self-consciousness they are
merged in one ; for spirit knows itself" * Here

1 Schelling's Transcendental Idealism summarized by Wat-
son, Chicago, 1882, p. 111. » i|,ia., p. 127.
3 Ibid., p. 110. * Introduction.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 61

he has set consciousness over against self-con-
sciousness, and has presented his habitual notion
that consciousness, in which the subject and the
object stand over against each other, is but a
step to self-consciousness in which a synthesis
takes place and the mind contemplates itself as
knowing. In another place, which Hegel reached
in the course of a full examination of his cate-
gories, he said, " One has not the least idea of
the I nor of anything, even of the idea itself, so
far as he does not comprehend anything and re-
mains standing only by the simple, fixed percep-
tion and name. It is a singular thought, if it
can be named a thought, that I must myself
make use of the I in order to judge of the I.
The I, which makes use of the self-consciousness
as a means of judging, is indeed an x of which
one, as to the relation of such usage, can have
not the least idea. ... A stone has not this
awkwardness. If it is to be thought or judged
upon, it does not stand in its own way. It is
freed from the inconvenience of making use of
itself for this purpose ; another, outside of it,
must do the thinking."^

» Logik, Werke V., p. 257.
6

62 THE HUMAN AND ITS

It is difficult to make an extract, either from
the "Logic" or from the "Phenomenology,"
which will clearly show how Hegel regarded the
ego, for he is discussing only the process of
thinking, and thus he presupposes the ego all the
way, though at first the ohject, the "this," is
prominent, and therefore mere consciousness
precedes what may more properly be called self-
consciousness. The selhst may be said to be in
Hegel's hands a substance which undergoes a
constant clarifying. He is affirmative in regard
to personal identity and the selfhood, and in
his Nuremberg Outline thus sums up the case:
" The content of reason is for the ego no alien
somewhat, nothing given jfrom without, but
throughout penetrated and assimilated by the
ego and therefore to all intents produced by the
ego." ^ Dr. W. T. Harris expresses it thus :
" Looking closely at his treatment of idea, we
discover plain evidence sufficient to convince us
that he has in his thoughts always a personal
first principle as the necessary result of his
system. "We see well enough that his talk about

^Journal of Speculative Philosophy for August, 1869, p.
174.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 63

method and dialectic treatment is meant merely
for a statement of the nature of this highest
personal self-activity." ^

Passing now to such English, French, German,
Italian, and American philosophers as it has
seemed well to consult in addition, I note Sir
"W. Hamilton's remark : " The I is manifested
only in one or the other of these modes [of per-
ception, feeling, memory, and so forth]; but it
is manifested in them all ; they are all only phe-
nomena of the I. The self, the I, is recognized
in every act of intelligence, as the subject to
which that act belongs."^

Closely affiliated with this perfect faith in
consciousness, which no criticism could shake,
stands the view of J. J. F. Ancillon, a French
resident of Berlin, who sympathized with Jacobi
rather than with Kant. He said, " The con-
sciousness or ego is the impenetrability of souls.
... If the consciousness of ourselves or of the
ego be not an immediate revelation of the re-
ality of our own existence, and if the con-
sciousness of other existences be not given us

1 Hegel's Logic, Chicago, 1891, p. 392.

2 Metaphysics, Lecture IX., p. 116.

^4- ^SE HUMAN AND ITS

in the ego, we can never attain to a real ex-
istence. ... Consciousness gives us the reality
of our own existence and therein the reality
of infinite being. The soul is given us in
and by the consciousness which we have of
ourselves. It is us, and we are it. The ego
forces us to believe in the universe and in our-
selves ; and if we doubt it, we believe absolutely
nothing." ^

This last is not too strongly stated, as may
sufficiently appear from Kant's rejection of such
belief as objectively founded or constitutive, and
his reinstating it as regulative or practically val-
uable. It is right to act, he held, as if there
were a soul. It is not important to ascertain, it
is impossible to know, whether God be in one
person, or three, or ten; it is enough if we
-accept the number which will give the right rule
of conduct. And so on, almost as if one could
be voluntarily self-deceived. Ancillon was on
firm ground here, and made his statement in
another way which seems worthy of quotation :
" The reflective ego distinguishes self from its

* La Science et la Foi Philosophique, Paris, 1830, pp. 101,
136, 163.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 65

modifications and separates spectator from spec-
tacle." ^

It may be well also to hear from Thomas Tay-
lor, although he was only introducing Plotinus
as the reproducer of Plato : " Prior both to
reason and the one life is the one- of the soul,
which says, I perceive, I desire; which fol-
lows all these energies and energizes together
with them ; for we should not be able to know
all these and to apprehend in what they differ
from each other, unless we contained a certain
indivisible nature, which subsists above com-
mon sense, and which, prior to all opinion,
desire, and will, knows all that these know
and desire, according to an indivisible mode of
apprehension." ^

In contrast with this antique and dogmatic
style is the remarkably perspicuous Cousin : " In
every act of consciousness there is the conscious-
ness of some operation, phenomenon, thought,
volition, or sensation ; and at the same time the
conception of our existence. And when memory,
following consciousness, comes into existence, the

1 Nouveaux Melanges, ii. p. 103.

^ Introduction to Plotinus, London, 1794.
e 6*

66 THE HUMAN AND ITS

phenomena which just before were under the eye
of consciousness, fall under that of memory, with
the implicit conviction that the same being, the
same I myself, who was the subject of the phe-
nomena of which I was conscious, still exists and
is the same whom my memory recalls to me. . . .
In the order of nature and reason, consciousness
and memory involve the supposition of personal
identity. In chronological order some act of
memory and of consciousness is the condition
of the conception of our identity. . . . The
condition of consciousness is attention, and that
of attention is the will. It is the continuity of
the will, attested by memory, which gives the
conviction of personal identity." *

Cousin proceeds to criticise Locke's meagre
definition that " consciousness alone makes self,"
and declares that the self is known in the opera-
tions which manifest it, that identity is the con-
viction of reason. He adds : " Personal identity
is the union of your being, yourself, opposed to
the plurality of consciousness and memory. It
is impossible to know phenomena of sensation,
volition and intelligence, without instantly refer-

1 Criticism of Locke, Hartford, 1834, pp. 70, 73.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 67

ring them to a subject one and identical, which
is self, the I."^

Cousin seems to go too far in this criticism of
Locke ; for, if we admit with him that the self
does not fall under consciousness and memory,
but only-the operations in which the self is en-
gaged, we are precluded from making the per-
fectly rational statement, " I am." Indeed, we
should not find difficulty in criticising Cousin
by his own words.

In the works of the Italian Eosmini, whose
system has been conveniently set forth, largely
in the author's words, by Thomas Davidson, who
compared his influence upon the thought of
Italy to that of Aristotle and Kant, may be found
clear statements as to the selfhood: "When I
think, myself, I, the subject, become the object
of my own thought. . . . The human soul is a
single substantial subject.^ . . . The ego is an
active principle in a given nature, in so far as it
has consciousness of itself and pronounces the
act of consciousness. In order to be self-con-
scious, that is, to be an ego, the subject must

* Criticism of Locke, p. 259.

* Kosmini's Philosophical System, London, 1882, pp. 63, 118.

68 THE HUMAN AND ITS

have combined the feeling of selfhood [we de-
cline to adopt Mr. Davidson's meity for the Italian
meita\ with ideal being as intuited, and then, by
reflection, must have analyzed the object thus
formed into the judgment, ' Myself is.' But
this self is precisely what we mean by ego. . . .
The identity of principles in different reflections
arises from the inner feeling, — that is, from the
feeling which man has of his own universal
activity, wherein are virtually contained and
identified all partial activities, and wherein it is
felt that that act which gives rise to perception
and reasoning is nothing other than an act, a
partial application of that first fundamental
activity, from which likewise proceeds reflection
upon that which is perceived and reasoned about,
upon perceptions, upon reasonings, upon the re-
flections themselves, and that this activity is the
very one which speaks and which posits itself
by saying ' I.' Thus is generated the ego." ^

Hickok views the subject similarly : " Some-
thing is while the varied exercises successively
come and go upon the field of human conscious-
ness. What that something is, the conscious-

* Kosmini's Philosophical System, London, 1882, pp. 202, 217.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. gg

ness does not reveal ; but that it permanently is,
in its unchanged identity, the consciousness does
testify. It is as if the mirror could feel itself
and its repeated throes of reflection, while it can
by no means envisage itself, but only that which
stands before it."^

This is the same as to say that consciousness
is a mere mirror. If it were such, the existence
of a self would indeed be but a reflection from a
passive consciousness, but the mirror is at least
so full of life that it can turn a hundred ways,
and can itself make up the composite image, in-
cluding all the reflections. N'ay, more, aided by
the judgment and memory, it can say, " Thou
art the man," and can bid him repent, or suffer
the reward of his deeds.

Schopenhauer, with his hand against every
man and his mind as inhospitable as possible
towards other men's, views, was acute and bril-
liant in thought and speech. His word is, " All
knowledge presupposes subject and object. Self-
consciousness knows only will, not knowledge.
The ego is as described by the Upanishad : ' It
is not seen, yet sees all things; it is not heard,

^ Empirical Psychology, Schenectady, 1854, p. 75.

70 THE HUMAN AND ITS

yet hears all things ; it is not known, yet knows
all things ; it is not understood, yet understands
all things.' There can be no knowledge of
knowing. 'I know that I know' means only
that I know, and this nothing more than I. The
subject of knowledge can never be known, it can
never become object. . . . The identity of the
willing with the knowing subject, in virtue of
which the word ' I' designates both, is the nodus
of the universe {Weltknoteri), and therefore in-
explicable."^

The answer to this would best be made by one
who was learning with interest something which
he had not previously known. The will to know
would come first, and then the use of knowledge
acquired would follow, and then he might look
upon himself and say, " You, who were ignorant
of this language, can now speak it ; be thankful."
It is needless to analyze Schopenhauer's obstinate
negations.

How different the spirit of Ulrici: "By
strength of his self-consciousness, his higher
spontaneity and his thorough individuality, not
only is the man himself in general but the single

1 Fourfold Koot of Sufficient Keason, sect. 42.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 71

individual in an eminent sense a subject, a self.
Througli the fact of self-distinction he affirms
and knows himself as self; through the will he
actuates and maintains himself as self." ^

These are weighty words which might be en-
larged upon, but they are passed over with the
single remark that they will repay one for the
closest examination.

Lotze does not go quite so far: "Self-con-
sciousness is not an innate endowment of the
mind so that from the first we see mirrored be-
fore us what we ourselves are. Our conscious-
ness never presents to us this image as found;
we are merely directed to a more or less obscure
point in which lies our ego. . . . Self-conscious-
ness is to us but as the interpretation of a sense
of self. With culture the content of the ego
becomes clearer, and extends over an enlarging
circumference." ^

It is, of course, of this cultured self-conscious-
ness, this mature mind obedient to the oracle,
"Know thyself," that we ought to think; and
that Lotze abates nothing from the objective

1 Gott und der Menscli, Leipzig, 1873, p. 30.
* Microcosmos, Book II., chap, v., sect. 3.

72 THM HUMAN AND ITS

reality of this may be seen from Ms words :
•'Among all the errors of the human mind it
has always seemed to me the strangest that it
could come to doubt its own existence, of which
alone it has direct experience, or to take it at
second hand as the product of our external
nature which we know only indirectly, only by
means of the knowledge of the very mind to
which we would fain deny existence." ^ And
still more emphatically he says, "Mortality
reaches its highest stage in self-consciousness.
. . . Self-consciousness sets itself as ego in op-
position to the non-ego."^

When in a passage we meet with an apparent
contradiction of this,, and Lotze is found speaking
of the self as "never rising into complete self-
consciousness,"^ it seems to be his reverence for
man leading him to attribute to him an infinite
depth transcending the plummet of self-con-
sciousness. There is no harm in this, provided
it is agreed that we can know and measure and
judge the agent of our own acts.

Ferrier has some emphatic sentences : " Self

^ Microcosmos^ Book II., chap, v., sect. 6.

2 Ibid., Book IX., chap. iv. 'Ibid., chap. iv.

'RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 73

is the ens unum, the semper cognitum in omnibus
notitiis. It is the centre in which all cognitions
meet and agree. . . . [N'o cognition in which
one does not apprehend one's self is possible. . . .
The ego comes before us along with whatever
comes before us. , . . When I observe a book I
also observe myself. . . . There can be no knowl-
edge of self or ego in a purely indeterminate
state. The ego can know itself only in connec-
tion with some non-ego. . . . Hume says that
he catches his perceptions without any self; in
other words, he finds that they do not belong to
any one. . . . The essence of the mind is the
knowledge which it has of itself with that
which it is cognizant of."^

The expression ens unum seems too strong for
Terrier's purpose, and we note that his last sen-
tence ignores the will ; but his criticism of Hume
shows that he means to be counted among the
supporters of personality as actual, discernible,
and permanent.

It suited the purpose of Dean Mansel to
note the limits of personality, but he affirm-
atively said, "Personality is a limitation, for

^ Institutes of Metaphysics, Propositions I., II., VII., IX.
D 7

74 THE HUMAN AND ITS

the thought and the thinker limit each other.
If I am any one of my own thoughts, I live
and die with each successive moment of my
own consciousness. If I am not any one of my
own thoughts, I am limited hy that very differ-
ence." This is clear, and he goes further in the
direction of definition of the self when he says,
" That which I see, or hear, or think, or feel
changes and passes away with each moment of
my varied existence. I who see, hear, think,
arid feel am one continuous self, whose existence
gives unity and connection to the whole." ^ He
also holds that we are conscious of our selves as
depending upon another Person.

In his note to his father's "Phenomena of
Mind," J. S. Mill has expressed himself with
great vigor : " Suppose a being gifted with sensa-
tion, but devoid of memory; whose sensations
follow after one another, but leave no trace of
their existence when they cease. Could this
being have any knowledge or notion of a self?
"Would he ever say to himself, ^ I feel ; this sensa-
tion is mine?' I think not. The notion of a

1 Limits of Keligious Thought, Lecture III., pp. 103, 105;
iv. p. 130.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 75

self is, I apprehend, a consequence of memory.
There is no meaning in the word ego or I unless
the I of to-day is also the I of yesterday." ^

This is somewhat too strong. It is true that
the notion of the self depends on memory, but
it is not so true that it depends on memory
alone; for an aged person, whose memory is
gone, as the saying is, still retains in momentary
self-consciousness a distinct idea of self, and every
new sensation renews the thought of self. In-
deed, Mill says for himself that " there is a men-
tal process over and above the having a mere
feeling, to which the word consciousness is
sometimes, and it can hardly be said improperly,
applied, namely the reference of the feeling to
our self."^

But in another place, having mentioned a suc-
cession of feelings, he said, " This succession of
feelings, which I call my memory of the past, is
that by which I distinguish myself. Myself is
the person who had that series of feelings, and I
know nothing of myself by direct knowledge
except that I had them. But there is a bond of
some sort among all the parts of the series ; and

iVol. i., note75. 'Ibid.

76 THE HUMAN AND ITS

this bond, to me, constitutes my ego. Here, I
think, the question must rest until some psychol-
ogist succeeds better than any one has yet done
in showing a mode in which the analysis can be
carried farther." ^

Mansel would probably have answered that,
by pursuing the subject of the relation of self to
the other Person, some further light would be
obtained, but this Mill would not have heeded.
Indeed he was wholly a sceptic and might be
joined with Schopenhauer when he (Mill) said,
" There seems to be no ground for believing,
with Sir "W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, that the
ego is an original presentation of consciousness ;
that the mere impression on our senses involves
and carries with it any consciousness of a self,
any more than I believe it to do of a not-self.
The inexplicable tie, or law, or organic union,
which connects the present consciousness with
the past one, is as near as I think we can get to
a positive conception of self." ^

The light that was in him seems to have been
darkness. He spoke of his own mind as if he

» Vol. ii,, note 33.

' Examination of Hamilton, 4th edition, p. 262.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 77

had no more intimate knowledge of it than of
another's. What he groped for lay before his
own consciousness if he could follow Hegel's
advice and raise it to self-consciousness.

In strong contrast with Mill is Gatien-Arnoult,
whom Hamilton approvingly quoted at length.
In a more succinct statement than that used by
Hamilton this writer said, " The identity of the
ego is the continuity of its existence without in-
terruption or alteration. It knows by the mem-
ory and consciousness that it goes on without in-
terruption or alteration. The ego which I am
now is no other than that which I was yester-
day. I am always myself. The identity of the
ego results from its unity, — that is, its simplicity,
immateriality, spirituality." ^

Herbert Spencer, under the question, ** What
is this that thinks ?" declares the ego to be un-
knowable. Common speech makes the ego an
entity, and the belief in it is "unavoidable";
but "it is a belief admitting of no justification
by reason." He expresses his approval of the
views of Sir W. Hamilton and Dean Mansel, and
concludes : " A true cognition of self implies a

* Philosophie elementaire : Keponses aux Question iv.

7*

78 THE HUMAN AND ITS

state in which the knowing and the known are
one, — in which subject and object are identified;
and this Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the anni-
hilation of both. So that the personality of
which each is conscious, and of which the exist-
ence is to each a fact beyond all others the most
certain, is yet a thing which cannot be truly
known at all; knowledge of it is forbidden by
the very nature of thought." ^

Spencer is clearly mistaken here, and the ap-
peal from Spencer can be made to Spencer. He
has said that we must believe in self ("Belief in
the reality of self is a belief which no hypothesis
enables us to escape") ; and he has said that " it
is a belief which reason, when pressed for an
answer, rejects ;" but later he said, " The totality
of my consciousness is divisible into a faint ag-
gregate which I call my mind ; a special part of
the vivid aggregate which, cohering with this in
various ways, I call my body; and the rest of
the vivid aggregate, which has no such coher-
ence with the faint aggregate. The principle of
continuity, forming into a whole the faint states
of consciousness, moulding and modifying them

1 First Principles : New York, 1890, pp. 64, 65.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 79

by some unknown energy, is distinguished as
the ego."^

This personification of the principle of con-
tinuity exercising an unknown energy will not
guide Spencer into all truth, but it would appear
that in t^ years he had come to accept the ego
as something distinguishable in consciousness,
and this is a really noteworthy progress.

T. H. Green is full of light, in contrast with
Spencer, when he says, " The more strongly
Hume insists that ' the identity which we as-
cribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious
one,' the more completely does his doctrine re-
fute itself In all his attempts we find that the
relation, which has to be explained away, is pre-
supposed under some other expression, and that
it is ' fictitious' not in the sense which Hume's
theory requires, that there is no such thing, but
in the sense that it would not exist if we did not
think about our feelings." ^

Still more strongly and with equal clearness
Green has spoken in a passage quoted by Dr. C.

^ Principles of Psychology, sect. 462.

* Philosophical Works, London, 1885, General Introduction,
p. 297.

80 THE HUMAN AND ITS

C. Everett in his " Fichte's Science of Knowl-
edge :" ^ " If there is such a thing as a connected
experience of related objects, there must be op-
erative in consciousness a unifying principle,
which not only presents related objects to itself,
but at once renders them objects and unites
them in relation to each other by this act of pre-
sentation; and which is single throughout the
experience. The unity of this principle must be
correlative to the unity of the experience. If all
possible experience of related objects — the ex-
perience of a thousand years ago and the experi-
ence of to-day, the experience which I have here
and that which I might have in any other region
of space — forms a single system ; if there be no
such thing as an experience of unrelated objects ;
then there must be a corresponding singleness in
that principle of consciousness which forms the
bonds of the relation between the objects." ^

This noble passage might well close the his-
torical summary of the doctrine were there not
a few other authors who deserved mention.
Professor Bowen boldly defends the self against
" all metaphysical cavils" by declaring that it is

^ P. 76. 2 Prolegomena to Ethics, 34.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. gl

indivisible; that it exercises one mind; that there
is " a direct consciousness of self;" that it is a
monad ; that we are conscious of it in itself and
in its passing into thought and act ; that we are
not compelled to ' infer its existence from its
manifestations ; and that the only difficulty with
defining it is that it is indivisible.^

Dr. Hedge, however, is more Kantian in his
view. In his essay on Personality^ he " supposes
the ego to be peculiar to man ; that the brutes
have only simple consciousness, not the reflected
consciousness of self." He mentions Jean Paul's
account of the birth of his self-consciousness. He
proceeds to point out that man has three parts :
" first, the unknown factor which constitutes the
ground of our being ; secondly, the ego or con-
scious self; thirdly, the person." By person he
means, in the proper sense of that word, the
man's manifestation before men. By the ego he
means what Professor Bowen and the rest meant
by it. By the "unknown factor" he means
either the inmost soul which is not rationally
discerned or the Divine mind hidden in its

^ Metaphysics and Ethics, chap. iii.
2 Luther, and other Essays, Boston, 1888, pp. 281-285.
/

82 THE HUMAN AND ITS

infinity. He declines to say whicli of the two lie
means, and it is unnecessary to seek to discover.
He should be reckoned on the positive side as to
the ego, but beyond that he is a pantheist of the
type of the peripatetic Dicsearch, holding that
God cannot be self-conscious, and that the word
" I," attributed to Him in the Scriptures, is an
anthropomorphism.^

Dr. McCosh has been referred to as a critic of
Fichte. Let him also be heard in saying, " Con-
sciousness cannot be said to furnish an idea of,
or belief in, our personal identity, for it looks
solely to the present. But it reveals self as
present. "When we remember the past, there is
involved a memory of self as remembering. "We
compare the two, the present self known and the
past self remembered, and declare the two to be
identical. Consciousness does not constitute our
personal identity. It makes it known. A full
and distinct knowledge of self is a late acquisi-
tion, but from birth there is a knowledge of self
in acts." ^

As to these last words Dr. Hedge is more ac-

* Luther, etc., p. 281.

2 Cognitive Powers, Book I., chap, ii., sect. 1.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 33

curate when he says, " There is a time, varying,
I suppose, from the second to the fourth year,
when a human individual first says to himself,
*L' Jean Paul probably meant a point in the
same period, and perhaps it will be found upon
inquiry that the earliest event which one can
remember is one which, through some extreme
sensation of pleasure or pain, awoke the self-con-
sciousness from its infantile slumber and made a
deep impression."^

Tennyson has accurately and happily described
the awakening self-consciousness, —

"The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is pressed
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ' this is I.'

"But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of I' and 'me,'
And finds * I am not what I see.
And other than the things I touch.'

" So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As through the frame that bounds him in,
His isolation grows defined." ^

1 Luther, etc., p. 282. 2 In Memoriam, xliv.

34 THE HUMAN AND ITS

Perhaps the only rival of Tucker's " Man in
Quest of Himself," as a book treating exclu-
sively of the self, is a little volume by one J. S.
Malone, of Waco, Texas.^ His subject is an-
nounced as "The Self: "What Is It?" and he
proceeds in an earnest way to point out that
the intellect is but an instrument of man rather
than his essential being ; that his real life lies in
sensibility and in the principal desire among all
the desires of any one; that this ruling love is
the ego; that Descartes should have said, "I
feel, therefore I am," rather than, " I think,
therefore lam;" that the sense of responsibility
attaches less to our thoughts than to our pur-
poses; that to know one's self requires scrutiny
of the heart rather than of the head ; that the
development of sensibility must precede that
of the intellectual powers ; that the training of
humanity requires attention to be given to the
affections even more than to the intellectual
faculties ; and that it has been the weakness of
philosophers to "become wholly absorbed in
hair-splitting intricacies of intelligence," while
the Christian teaching was directed to the heart.

1 Louisville: John P. Morton & Co., 1888.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 35

It would be improper to find fault with these
suggestions unless they were in danger of being
carried too far. In exalting the will Mr. Malone
must not forget that the intellect is not only its
servant, carrying out its purposes, but also its
guide and instructor, examining those purposes
and giving judgment upon them. The intellect
trained without regard to the corresponding
education of the will corrupts the nature, but
the least undervaluation of the intellect in the
account causes a serious loss to the nature. The
philosophers are not so guilty as they are here
represented to be, and will be found in good
time to have done an indispensable work.

In his lectures on " Hegelianism and Person-
ality,"^ Professor Andrew Seth has considered
the effect of the doctrine of Hegel in regard to
personality upon the conception of the Divine
Being. After making a presentation of the
views of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Green,
he shows that their tendency was to obliterate
the Divine self-consciousness in favor of the
human or the human in favor of the Divine,
thereby confounding the two, and, in fact, reach-

1 Edinburgh, 1887.
8

36 THE HUMAN AND ITS

ing " a logical abstraction called the Idea, in
which, both God and man disappear." " The
unification of consciousness in a single Self" he
considers to be the radical error of Hegelianism.
He complains that the self recognized by Hege-
lians and IJlTeo-Kantians is but " a logical and
not a real self." It is impossible to see that
there is not the danger which he points out,
yet it is not in the present place necessary to
dwell upon it, except to say that any monistic
plan, Spinozistic, Fichtean, or Hegelian, which
admits but one individuality into its universe,
defeats itself by rejecting the microcosm, the
only explanation of the universe. K man be
not a distinct individuality, the world, made for
naught, comes to naught. There is a truth in
the saying of the sophistic Protagoras, "Man
is the measure of the universe." A God alone
or a man alone is an absurdity. Henry More
was consistent when he wrote, Nullus in micro-
COSMO spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Dcus^ "!N"o
spirit in the microcosm, no God in the macro-
cosm," for both ideas stand or fall together.
In a small volume entitled " Personality," by

* Atheism, III., chap. xvi.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 87

Professor W. W. Olssen, of St. Stephen's Col-
lege, New York,^ we find three lectures, the first
of which deals with the personality of man and
the second and third with that of God. The
treatment is wholly untechnical and without
reference to the philosophers. It is wisely
pointed out that man's personality is not merely
bodily and not merely spiritual, but exists on
both these planes, in the consciousness of a dis-
tinct physical existence with its instinct of self-
preservation, and in the will with its conscious-
ness of power.

In the essay on " Personality and the Infinite,"
which Professor William Knight printed first in
the Contemporary Beview and then in his volume
entitled " Studies in Philosophy and Literature,"^
an excellent statement of the question is to be
found so far as regards the personality of the
Infinite; but, in passing, this thought is ex-
pressed : " The radical feature of personality, as
known to us,— whether apprehended by self-con-
sciousness or recognized in others, — is the sur-
vival of a permanent self under all the fleeting

1 New York, 1882.

'London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879, also Boston, 1891.

88 THE HUMAN AND ITS

or deciduous phases of experience; in other
words, the personal identity which is involved in
the assertion, * I am.' While my thoughts, feel-
ings, and acts pass away and perish, I continue
to exist, to live, and to grow in the fulness of ex-
perience. Beneath the shows of things, the ever-
lasting flux and reflux of phenomenal change, a
substance or interior essence survives." ^

That rapid and brilliant writer, Professor A.
W. Momerie, pursued a similar line of thought
with a similar purpose in his " Personality the
Beginning and End of Metaphysics and a E'eces-
sary Assumption of all Positive Philosophy."^
He means to assail the Comtists with their own
weapons and to entrap them in their own web.
Taking Professor Bain's saying, that " the ego is
a pure fiction, coined from nonentity," as his
starting-point, he proceeds, not sparing his
powers of mockery, to defend the ego as to its
existence, its self-knowledge, and its freedom,
concluding with a chapter on the Infinite Ego.
He says, " The fact that every feeling involves
some one to feel it has never been, in so many
words, denied. The most zealous opponents of

1 Page 79. ^ Edinburgh : William Blackwood & Sons, 1886

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 89

an ego avail themselves of ambiguities by which
the existence of an ego can, at pleasure, be
tacitly assumed. It is sometimes ludicrous to
observe how, after denying a possible ego,
writers are obliged to resort to an impossible
one. Mr. Lewes, in his first volume of ' Prob-
lems,' seems inclined to make the ego consist
of a mass of ^ systematic' sensations, namely, of
nutrition, respiration, generation, and the mus-
cles. These, he says, constitute a stream of sen-
tience, upon which each external stimulus forms
a ripple, and consciousness is caused by the con-
sequent breach of equilibrium. But it is manifest
that this illustration goes for nothing without
the presupposition of a sentient observer. A
mass of feeling, however large, cannot appre-
hend a feeling. . . . Since, then, the necessity
for an ego is never denied without being tacitly
assumed, it may be taken to be really a self-
evident truth, the contradictory of which is in-
conceivable, that, along with every sensation or
feeling of any description whatever, there must
exist a sentient principle capable of feeling it." ^
Dr. Momerie then goes on to consider the aid

1 Page 29.
8*

90 THE HUMAN AND ITS

given by the memory, since the Positivist may
grant that there is a sentient for every sensation,
but may deny the permanent identity of such
subject. The argument is presented by means
of an illustration : " I remember that ten years
ago many of my opinions were changed by the
reading of a certain book. JS'ow this implies (1)
the object remembered, namely, the change of
opinions ; (2) my soul or mind which remembers
the fact; and (3) a consciousness of personal
identity, — that is to say, a conviction that the
mind or soul, which is now experiencing the re-
membrance of the fact, is the self-same mind or
soul which formerly experienced the fact itself,
that it is, in other words, my mind. The identity
of which I am conscious is certainly not an iden-
tity of body, for during the ten years which have
elapsed my body has lost its identity. 'Nov is
the identity an identity of phenomena, for the
remembrance of the fact is something essentially
different from the fact itself. The identity of
which I am conscious is an identity of soul. . . .
In every act of remembrance I know that I
have existed in at least two different states, and
that therefore I have persisted between them." ^

1 Pages 41-43.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 9I

This is not the place to make use of this
writer's argument for the freedom of the ego,
and in what he says of its self-knowledge he is
not as original as elsewhere, but we must quote
a summary paragraph for which we are indebted
to him : " The ego is a real existence. Without
a permanent subject there could never have
existed a single remembrance or cognition, nor
even a sensation. So far negatively. But further
positively : we are sometimes conscious of our-
selves, apprehending ourselves along with our
states in the same indivisible moment of time ;
and, after reflection upon these past experiences,
we are able to form a conception of self not less
distinct, at any rate, than are our conceptions of
material objects or of natural forces." ^

Chronologically last, but in the breadth of its
scope scarcely rivalled, is the treatment of our
subject in Professor James's "l!^ew Psychol-
ogy."^ These general points are first treated
and are called the ^\& characters of thought : (1)
it tends to personal form; (2) it is in constant

1 Page 62.

2 New York, 1890, chapter ix., " The Stream of Thought;"
chapter x., " The Consciousness of Self."

92 THE HUMAN AND ITS

change ; (3) in eacli consciousness thought is sen-
sibly continuous; (4) it is cognitive of objects
which appear to be independent ; (5) it chooses
among its objects while it thinks of them. In
unfolding these parts of the subject Professor
James seems to overstate in one remark when
he declares that there is a " consciousness of a
teeming multiplicity of objects from our natal
day," ^ but he proceeds very clearly to point out
that " the elementary psychic fact is not this
thought or that thought, but my thought, every
thought being owned." ^ The conscious fact is
not " feelings and thoughts exist," but " I think"
and " I feel" ; and he firmly declares : " l^o psy-
chology, at any rate, can question the existence
of personal selves. The worst a psychology can
do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as
to rob them of their worth. . . . There are no
marks of personalty to be gathered aliunde, and
then found lacking in the train of thought. It
has them all already."^ He then shows that no
two states are ever just alike, and argues that
the continuous stream of thought bears with it
the sense of personal identity, so that " the

1 Page 226. 2 page 226. s pageg 226, 227.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 93

consciousness remains sensibly continuous and

one." ^

After dwelling upon the feelings of relation
and tendency in thought, the " fringe" of an ob-
ject which affects us when it is not definitely in
view, the feeling of rational sequence, and the re-
lation of thought to language, our author takes
up his fourth point, that thought appears to deal
with independent objects, and remarks that
" many philosophers hold that the reflective con-
sciousness of the self is essential to the cognitive
function of thought : . . . but this is a perfectly
wanton assumption." ^ By this refusal to accept
the ground of Ferrier, Hamilton, and others
whom he cites, he seems simply to draw the dis-
tinction, made by Hegel, between consciousness
and self-consciousness. In mere consciousness
we know that the thought is ours, but we do not
stop to objectify the owner. The fifth fact, that
the thought always exercises preference, either
in careful discrimination or in mere " accentua-
tion," is treated in the author's vivid way.

In the chapter on " The Consciousness of
Self," Professor James deals with the empirical

1 Page 238. « Page 274.

94 THE HUMAN AND ITS

ego, expanding this to its greatest extent by say-
ing that, " in its widest possible sense, a man's
self is the sum total of all that he can call his." ^
His powers of mind and body, his property, his
family, his ancestry, his acquaintance, his fame,
his works, and his pleasures are enumerated.
Thus the constituents of the self may be divided
into (1) the material, (2) the social, (3) the spir-
itual, and (4) what the Germans would call the
pure self. The social self he rightly divides into
neighborly, official, political, and so on. ^ The spir-
itual self is " a man's inner being," " a certain
portion of the stream abstracted from the rest,"
" that which welcomes or rejects," " which presides
over the perception of sensations," " that around
which the other elements accrete," " the central,
active self," " the self of selves." * But this self
manifests itself to him also in bodily sensations,
and he is inclined to hold that the consciousness
of it is mainly corporeal. He does not definitely
adopt this suggestion, but takes great interest in
the idea as a physiological psychologist, and thus
approaches Herbert Spencer's " faint aggregate"
of mind and " vivid aggregate" of body.

1 Page 291. * Page 295. « Pages 296-301.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 95

The conflicts between the selves of a man are
then acutely described, and favor is given to the
" hierarchy with the bodily self at the bottom,
the spiritual self at top, and the extracorporeal
material selves and the various social selves
between." ^ Each self has its form of self-love,
which may take the form of either self-seeking
or self-estimation.^

In considering the pure ego, he discusses the
postulate : " I am the same self that I was yes-
terday," and defends it on the ground of our
warmth of interest in all that has concerned us,
holding " the ordinary doctrine professed by the
empirical school." ^ But he goes further and
uses the illustration of an owner's brand upon
his cattle to explain the active possession by the
self of all its objects. " Common sense would,
in fact, drive us to admit an Arch-Ego, domi-
nating the entire stream of thought and all the
selves that may be represented in it." * Of
course, he recognizes that this is Kant's transcen-
dental ego. Here again he finds a material
basis for the sense of personal identity in the

1 Page 313. ^ page 329.

8 Page 336. * Page 338.

96 THE HUMAN AND ITS

" sense of bodily existence ;" but this suggestion
is placed in a foot-note.^

Passing then to a discussion as to what the
ego is, he finds three theories : (1) the Spiritualist,
(2) the Associationist, and (3) the Transcendental.
He does not regard the spiritualistic or soul view,
commonly held from Plato down, as necessary
to explain "the phenomena of consciousness as
they appear." ^ The stream of thought is suf-
ficient for him. He does not go behind the
passing thoughts. The hypothesis of a " sub-
stantial soul explains nothing and guarantees
nothing." Still, his " reasonings have not estab-
lished the non-existence of the soul." ^ He
rejects outright the associationist theory as futile
in view of the sense of ownership of the sensa-
tions. He ridicules Kant's transcendental theory
as cumbrous and obscure and mythological : " by
Kant's confession, the transcendental ego has
no properties, and from it nothing can be de-
duced." * The words me and I shall, there-
fore, mean to him " the empirical person and the
judging thought." ® We do not need to refer to

» Page 341. « Page 344. . » Page 350.

* Page 364. ^ Page 371.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 97

the carefully-selected cases cited from the records
of spiritism, hypnotism, and insanity to throw
light upon the self, but pass directly to the au-
thor's own summary :

" The consciousness of self involves a stream
of thought, each part of which as * I' can (1) re-
member those which went before, and know the
things they knew; and (2) emphasize and care
paramountly for certain ones among them as
*me' and appropriate to these the rest. The
nucleus of the 'me' is always the bodily exist-
ence felt to be present at the time. . . * This me
is an empirical aggregate of things objectively
known. The I which knows them cannot itself
be an aggregate, neither for metaphysical pur-
poses need it be considered to be an unchanging
metaphysical entity like the soul, or a principle
like the pure ego, viewed as ' out of time.' It
is a thought, at each moment different from the
last moment, but appropriative of the latter,
together with all that the latter called its own.
All the experiential facts find their place in this
description."^ Even now Professor James ad-
mits that a hard question as to the phases of the

1 Page 400.

BO 9

98 TEE HUMAN AJ^D ITS

thought may be asked, but he ends with saying
that the passing thought is the proper ground of
psychology, and that to go behind this is to enter
the field of metaphysical problems.

This is not a thoroughly satisfactory ending
of 80 rich a discussion, which has been largely
metaphysical ; but one is free to take out of the
impartially presented materials what he will and
to build as he will. The view of Professor
James is, it would seem, just that which psy-
chology would give when describing phenomena
and declining to draw inferences from them. It
would then candidly say, " There may be a self
of all these selves, a judge of these judgments,
but he is not as visible as his acts are, and the
acts we mainly care for." Indeed, Professor
James transcended this " naturalistic point of
view" when he said, " The basis of our person-
ality, as M. Ribot says, is that feeling of our
vitality which, because it is so perpetually pres-
ent, remains in the background of our conscious-
ness." ^ Here, what he means by the personality,
or at least by its basis, is apparently what Kant's
term, " the original transcendental synthetic unity

1 Page 376.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 99

of apperception," means, and what is meant by
such expressions as " a man and his moods," or
Goethe's saying, *'I will be lord over myself."
In this attempted summary of the views of
philosophers remarks have been introduced
which indicate the ground to be taken here as a
basis foiMvhat is to follow, namely, the reality of
the ego, its indivisibility, its distinctly human or
rational quality, its gradual emergence into self-
consciousness in the history of the individual
and of the race, its dependence upon the mem-
ory for full recognition, its endurance in spite of
physical changes, its insistence upon acknowl-
edgment under some mode or other and in a
greater or less degree by all philosophers how-
ever sceptical, its enthronement where all men-
tal operations go on, and, consequently and
necessarily, its supreme demand to be studied
and understood so far as light is given.

100 THE HUMAN AND ITS

CHAPTER lY.

MAN A EECIPIENT.

This indivisible personality which each human
being has is either a created or an uncreated
thing, — ^that is, it looks to some source of life
outside of itself, or it does not do so and looks
solely to itself. Is the self self-formed? Is
there a self-made man ?

To answer " yes" to these questions is inevi-
tably to adopt some theory of metempsychosis or
reincarnation. Every one's age can be told by
somebody, and the only way in which one can
make himself out to be uncreated is to assert
that he lived previously in some other form.
That is by no means tantamount to saying that
he had no date of original creation or birth,
since he may have been reincarnated a thousand
times and still from some superior being may
have received his first form ; but those who have
believed in metempsychosis have assumed that
souls were " from the beginning." Saith the
Bhagavad Gita : " You cannot say of the soul, it

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. IQl

shall be, or is about to be, or is to be hereafter.
It is a thing without birth." A careful writer,
who has given much time to a restatement of
all that can be said in favor of this theory,
declares at once that this is the truth about
it. I^ote some of his utterances at the out-
set of his book, " Reincarnation : A Study of
Forgotten Truth :"^ "The soul enters this life
not as a fresh creation, but after a long course of
previous existences on this earth and elsewhere.
. . . Infancy brings to earth, not a blank scroll,
but one inscribed with ancestral histories
stretching back into the remotest past. . . . The
habits, impulses, tendencies, pursuits, and friend-
ships of the present descend from far-reaching
previous activities. . . . The soul is therefore an
eternal water globule, which sprang in the begin-
ningless past from mother ocean, and is destined,
after an unreckonable course of meandering, to at
last return with the garnered experience of all
lonely existences into the central heart of all." ^
In this statement, much condensed, but not
deprived of any part of its argument, note the

1 By E. D. Walker. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1888. 2 Pages 11-13.

9*

102 THE HUMAN AND ITS

use of the word " therefore" to render " long,"
" remotest," and " far-reaching," equivalent to
" eternal" and " beginningless." This begging
of the question seems to be as old as the theory,
for the self has, at the most, only signs of
antiquity, — to grant this for the moment, — but
no signs whatever of eternal duration, and not
the slightest mark of infinity. Stripped of this
assumption of eternal being, the theory of
metempsychosis does not in itself assert that the
soul is uncreated, but it has made the assumption
and is to be judged by it. Still, Mr. Walker
Bpeaks of the *^ heart of all," and leaves the
impression that his book is really an argument
for immortality, — Christian immortality, too, of
course of a Gnostic type.

Professor William Knight deals very gently
with this theory, admitting its ethical value and
saying, " The ethical leverage of the doctrine
is immense. Its motive power is great. With
peculiar emphasis it proclaims the survival of
moral individuality and personal identity, along
with the final adjustment of external conditions
to the internal state of the agent." ^ But he also

* Philosophy and Literature, page 189.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 103

makes the same mistake as to tlie unbegotten
quality of the soul, for he says, in closing, that
the only alternative which can be held, if
metempsychosis be rejected, is " a perpetual
miracle, the incessant and rapid increase in the
amount of spiritual existence in the universe." ^

This is the same as to say that the doctrine of
pre-existence or reincarnation holds that there is
no increase of spiritual existence in the universe;
that there is, and has been, no sort of creation in
case of the souls already existing ; and that these
souls always have existed. If otherwise, then at
some time there was a miracle, an increase of
spirit. Rejecting such increase, one may seem
to be forced to conclude that the souls now in
existence have always been in existence, and
were never created; that, indeed, there are as
many gods, as many infinite people, as there are
souls, or, at least, as many " eternal globules,"
differing from the ocean in size, but not in
quality.

All the way down the theory is traced, through
India, Egypt, Persia, Glreece (especially with
Pythagoras), and western Europe. Schopen-

^ Philosophy and Literature, page 153.

104 THE HUMAN AND ITS

hauer liked it as a remedy for the fear of death,
and said all he could in its favor. Hume made this
argument for it : " The soul, if immortal, existed
before our birth. What is incorruptible must be
ungenerable. Metempsychosis is the only system
of immortality which philosophy can hearken to."
The assumption here is in the premises. It
is not necessary that the soul, to be immortal,
should have had pre-existent personality ; and it
is not necessary that the incorruptible should be
ungenerable or uncreated. Lessing, Fichte,
Herder, Thomas Brown, Shelley, Southey, and
many others, are quoted by Walker in defence
of reincarnation. Emerson said in his " Method
of l^ature:" "We cannot describe the natural
history of the soul, but we know that it is divine.
This one thing I know, that these qualities did
not now begin to exist, cannot be sick with my
sickness nor buried in my grave ; but that they
circulate through the universe ; before the world
was, they were. JSTothing can bar them out, or
shut them in, but they penetrate the ocean and
land, space and time, form and essence, and hold
the key to universal nature." ^

1 Walker, p. 98.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 105

This is so vague as to mean almost anything,
but a cooler writer on metempsychosis follows
the same line of thought : " Of all the theories,"
says Dr. Hedge, " respecting the nature of the
soul it seems to me the most plausible, and
therefore the one most likely to throw light on
the question of a life to come." ^ The poets are
fall of what reincarnationists call their doctrine.
" Nearly all the poets profess it," says Walker.

It is, however, very noticeable in all writers
on this subject that the exceeding weakness of
their arguments from perceptions of new places
as familiar, from seeming recollections of persons,
and from immortal instincts, has compelled them
to grasp at every possible support, so that, for ex-
ample, they cite as an authority Spenser with his
lines, —

" For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form and doth the hody make,"

and even find metempsychosis in the words of
Scripture, which prophesied that Elijah should
go before the Messiah (Mai. iv. 5), and which
later reported the Messiah saying of John the

^ Ways of the Spirit, chap, xii., on " The Human Soul."

106 THE HUMAN AND ITS

i9

Baptist, " This is Elias, whicli was to come
(Matt. xi. 14).

Were the array of authorities, legitimately or
illegitimately cited to support some form of this
theory, a thousand times larger, the fact would
remain that to declare souls uncreated is to de-
clare of every feeble infant, of every dunce, that
he is a god.

But even this theory admits that men are
passing through states of preparation for higher
achievements, and, shorn of its preposterous
polytheism, it presents the living man in much
the common way, as an infant, a child, a youth,
an adult, always receiving impressions, always
developing for good or evil by means of instruc-
tion received directly and consciously through
parents and teaches, or indirectly and uncon-
sciously through associations and sympathies
and ambitions.

Even in this view, then, man is a recipient
form. Every organism has its cells which secrete
that which it needs for nutriment and develop-
ment. The brain, the heart, the lungs, the bones,
the muscles, the nerves are made of cellular
tissue, and this unmistakably indicates a recep-
tive life in the body, a body formed to receive

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 107

from without, to assimilate what it needs, and
thereby to live. It is but a step from this to the
thought that the whole, being but a complex of
cells, is fitted to receive a soul, an animating
presence, or whatever the inner man may be
called; and it is but a step beyond that to the
thought^hat this inner man is a recipient, but,
of course, this cannot be anatomically demon-
strated.

In respect to the indivisible selfhood, the idea
of infinite pre-existence must give place to some
view more consonant with reason and experience.
The only alternative is that the mind is a created
existence, in this respect the perfect analogue of
the body. Here, again, two ways appear : for
we may think of the mind as created and com-
pleted, once for all, at some past time ; or we
may think of it as created in the sense that it is
so made as to require to be continually recipient
of that which it needs for sustenance and
growth.

The former view, that the mind was created at
one stroke and sent forth, supplied once for all
with inexhaustible energy, is that which is held
by those more cautious reincarnationists who
avoid giving man self-creative or infinite power,

108 THE HUMAN AND ITS

and the same view seems to be lield by all those
who regard ^ every one as from his beginning
elected or reprobated by his Creator, especially
when held in the extreme form that all subse-
quent men were on trial for their lives in the
first man. ^ But with the daily-increasing
evidences gathered by science that the cosmic
creation goes on and always will go on, the
general mind is accepting the idea that the
individual man, himself a creation, and a mi-
crocosmic type of the creation, is in process of
development. This only revives the old saying,
"Preservation is perpetual creation." As the
body, confessed by all to be created, must be fed,
so the soul, or immaterial man, being less than
the Divine, is a recipient of life, of immaterial
" daily bread."

Every one who has observed the development
of an individual from infancy to maturity has
noted the gradual reception and appropriation of
motives and manners, whether gained by means
of lessons learned, or acquired by that observa-
tion and imitation of others which is, in a large
degree, indiscriminating, and which gives so

* The Assembly's Catechism, Question 16.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 109

mucli of good or evil to the child. As Emerson
said, in his essay on " Spiritual Laws :" " There
is no teaching till the pupil is brought into the
same state or principle in which you are; a
transfusion takes place ; he is you and you are
he ; there is a teaching."

Granting the immeasurable influence of
teachers upon young minds, the question may be
asked, " Do not the influences of heredity need
to be reckoned of great importance ?" Certainly,
but this is not an objection to the doctrine of the
receptive quality of the self. What we inherit we
certainly receive, — by another way, indeed, than
that by which we receive the influences of in-
structors, but none the less do we receive the
traits which are so important a part of ourselves.
It is an objection to metempsychosis that heredity
seems to destroy the fancy of man ascending
independently by successive reincarnations, but
against the simple idea of the receptivity of
man no such objection lies.

It is, however, when one examines himself

that he is most convinced of the fact that he is a

recipient. As he looks over the library of his

precious, earliest books he sees from what source

he drew his information, now made a part of

10

110 THE HUMAN AND ITS

himself by constant exercise. As lie looks upon
the portraits of his teachers he recalls the scenes
in which they ministered to him of their abun-
dance. As he goes back in memory to early
days he is like a traveller who views the trophies
of his rambles, and says, " This I got one day
in E^aples, that in Cairo, that in Calcutta." A
man's memory may fail to enable him to name
the respective sources of all that he has mentally
acquired, but others may assist him to complete
the account. Especially can they assure him
that certain of his tendencies clearly represent
his parents and ancestors.

Thus he learns, from the exclusion as absurd
of the view of himself as an uncreated being,
from the analogy of all other created existences,
from his own experiences revealed by memory,
and from the information which intimate older
friends can give him, that his life is, and has
been since its inception, a recipient life ; that his
selfhood is an organism of cells spiritually filled
or filling ; that he was made by some power
greater than himself, and that his daily life is a
process of acquisition from sources outside of
himself.

He, therefore, regards without dismay the

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. m

alternative presented by Professor Knight : either
every man an uncreated god, or the miracle of
increase of spiritual existence in the universe;
but he corrects the alternative by pointing out
that the second member should read, " increase
of forms of spiritual existence," for every man is
a recipient form of life. If the source of life be
in God, his gift from an infinite source to a
newly-created form should arouse the repugnance
of Professor Knight no more than the irrigation
of a hitherto arid and untilled plain v^hich is
made thus to increase the plant-life of the uni-
verse.

Finally, the selfhood of each individual, his
proprium, is not uncreated and independent, but
it is the peculiar form of life which he is, that
combination of receptive qualities, which com-
bination makes him to be unlike all others, his
own self. It is the special and permanent
capacity to receive in his own way, and to exer-
cise what common sense wisely calls his " gifts"
in his own way by making use of what he re-
ceives, which capacity is his individuality, for
" what is received is received ad modum recvp-
ientis."

Professor James's figure of the stream of

112 THE HUMAN AND ITS

thought is as graphic as it is convenient, but it
should never be forgotten that we cannot think
of a stream without its banks ; that we think of
a stream with one kind of bed and banks as
rushing forcefully along to perform magnificent
tasks, and, on the other hand, that we think of a
stream with another kind of bed and banks as
moving sluggishly, with little capacity for giving
power as it goes. It is not our heredity alone, it
is not what we have imbibed alone, which makes
us what we are, or two boys of the same family,
attending the same school, would be much the
same ; it is not only our own acquisitions, plus
our heredity, for then the children of a family
would be more alike than they are seen to be ;
it is something plus heredity, plus acquisition,
which something is the primary cause of
individualization, and which makes every one so
distinct a personality.

"What this something is can be told by sug-
gesting the microcosmic image instead of that
of the stream alone. While the stream correctly
describes the thoughts in their flow, we need
to think also of the solid ground beneath and
beside the stream, the voluntary nature which
underlies the intellectual and which constantly

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 113

modifies the stream, and we need to think of
that which makes both bed and stream to be the
man's own and not another's. This is his pecu-
liar, original nature, and it is something which
the man has not made, and which his ancestors
have not made, and which his teachers may in a
degree mould but cannot make ; it is the special
form originally given to his nature, not by an
irrational decision that he shall be elect or repro-
bated, but by a decision of infinite wisdom that
he shall be fitted to fill a certain place. It is the
man whom the Lord God putteth into the garden
with its ground and its river to dress it and to
keep it. As the Israelites drew lots to obtain
places in the promised land, so there is assigned
to every one, apart from his parents' wishes and
prior of course to acts of his judgment, a place
to fill. " Poets are born, not made," is a true
saying ; but the word " born" here is equivalent
to " are created," and is not to be taken in an
atheistic sense, as if the poet were such because
he from birth happened to be such. And so
Dryden says, " Genius must be born and never
can be taught," ^ meaning the original creation

1 Epistle X., line 60.
10*

114 THE HUMAN AND ITS

of the mind. Genius is an inherent aptitude to
do a work, and to this aptitude heredity and edu-
cation minister, but they do not do more. It
was weak in Gray to sing, —

" Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air,"

and then to go on about " some mute inglorious
Milton," and so forth, because to be seen is not
the whole purpose of a flower, and because a
true Hampden or Milton or Cromwell is in-
suppressible.

ITo conception of human order at all commen-
surate with cosmic order can be formed without
admitting that every man has a place in the uni-
versal plan, and that his place is worthy of him
and of his Maker. We have thousands of men
in one profession, it is true, but they are all
different, and their propinquity emphasizes their
separateness. The greater the variety in a har-
mony the more perfect the harmony. Since no
possible conception of the human order is greater
than this, so all inferior conceptions are unsatis-
factory, because they leave one to conclude that
some are brought into the world to have no
vocation except to imitate others. That some

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. II5

are of more humble capacity than others does
not militate against this conception, because the
humility of a task is no bar to its being regarded
as important and as conferring true dignity upon
its faithful minister. The great are not always
to be envied their proportionate responsibility,
and it is neither more easy nor more magnani-
mous to be a king than to be an artisan.

*' "Who sweeps a room as for thy laws
Makes that and the action fine." ^

It is a part of the wonderful universalism of
human order, the infractions of which will be
considered hereafter, that one grows into his
place. With many a young man an anxious
state of waiting to see what his life-work shall
be is conspicuous, and this anticipates the deci-
sion which will come very gently in the mingled
lesson of conviction and circumstance when the
time is ripe. Others have no anxiety, but find
duty calling them to some task, by no means
easy, but not impossible, as it would be if they
had no fitness for it.

In his essay on " Lords of Life," Dr. Hedge

^ George Herbert, Elixir.

116 THE HUMAN AND ITS

makes ajust distinctiou between tlie influences
brought to bear upon a man from without and
his inward essential life: "It is often affirmed
that circumstances make the man ; that charac-
ter and destiny are the product of influences that
have acted upon us from without; that we are
what these influences have made us, and could
not, with such motives, have been other than
we are; that had circumstances been different
we should have developed differently, it might
have been better, or it might have been worse.
. . . This view of man overlooks the element
of individuality, or makes individuality itself an
accident."^ But he then proceeds to make a
statement which militates against our principle
of creative individualization : " If all that before
our birth contributed to make us what we are ;
if pre-natal as well as post-natal influences are
to be reckoned as circumstance, — then it is un-
questionably true, or rather, it is an identical
proposition, that circumstances make the man ;
for then circumstances are the man." ^

It seems impossible to take this otherwise

^ Atheism in Philosophy, p. 378.
2 Ibid., p. 379.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. WJ

than atheistically. "By circumstance I under-
stand external surrounding," is the author's defi-
nition. Pre-natal circumstances, then, would
mean those conditions which go to make up the
heredity of a person, and this is the same as to
say that his personality is his heredity, and that
his here3ity is his individuality. JSTow, if this
were true, the man would be, not self-created
indeed, but man-created, — that is, created by
parents and ancestors. But if one man cannot
be self-created, one's ancestor cannot be self-
created ; and if ancestors and parents have not in
them the source of life, they cannot create other
men; they can be only agencies of creation.
Moreover, if the whole man were essentially
what his heredity was, what would become of
the world plan ? And how could children rise
above parents, a David above a Jesse, a John
above a Zebedee ?

Not only is it irrational thus, with Dr. Hedge,
to make finite men do the work, unaided, of in-
finite energy, but it wholly excludes the thought
of a Divine authorship of individual and collec-
tive humanity. It limits the Holy One of Israel,
and the limited god is mythological. If it is a
part of infinite wisdom to make men, who must

118 THE HUMAN AND ITS

be recipients of life, also mediums of the trans-
mission of life, it is a mistake in the medium to
say, " I create."

It is what is created from above which first
receives the heredity as it afterwards receives the
education, bearing both wisely or unwisely. The
man is more than the stream of his thought, and
he is more than its bed, yea, more than both ;
for he is the owner of both, the user of both, at
once a master and a steward.

When a man begins to discern his peculiar
gift and to develop it for the sake of making his
life " tell" to the fullest extent, when he goes on
chastening and perfecting himself as a wise son
uses the portion of goods that falleth to him, he
is filling his place in the mighty aggregate of
humanity. Acknowledging that he cannot make
himself another man, but must remain in his
special quality and capacity what he was designed
to be, making himself, as Bacon said, " a debtor
to his profession," he does not exalt his own in-
terest to the disregard of others' interests and
rights, but does his work and exercises his gifts
in the way which Kant admirably declared in his
categorical imperative of duty: "Act as if the
maxims of thy action were to become through thy

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. Hg

will a universal law of nature." And, since Pro-
fessor Knight has been criticised here, let him
he heard from in a wise word on this point : " Let
your whole nature expand to the very uttermost
of which it is capable, in every possible direction,
that it may grow into a perfect structure, com-
pacted by^that which every joint supplieth," ^ ^

The ethical effect of this doctrine is indeed
" immense." It appoints duty, it enforces duty, it
glorifies duty. " What have I to do ?" one asks ;
and the answer is ready, " What you can do."
And herein is individuality vindicated, for there
is neither comfort nor value in the possession of
a special gift, or of anything which is peculiarly
one's own, unless there be a demand for the ex-
ercise of that gift, a place for one's peculiar form
of usefalness.

This thought is illustrated upon a day's jour-
ney, especially among communities not so large
that the individual seems lost in the mass, nor so
small that there is little room for combination of
activities. In a town one sees a few thousand
persons exercising the arts required for the
general welfare. In ways which need no

1 " The Summum Bonum," p. 255.

120 THE HUMAN AND ITS

enumeration all are busy. There may be some
idle on account of wealth, and some on account
of poverty ; but, between the home of luxury
and the poor-farm, the average life of the com-
munity occupies itself. It does not matter that
several may pursue one calling, for of a dozen
physicians, each one has so far his own pref-
erences as to treatment of disease that all
worthy ones have work, and that no two do the
like work. It is so with those who might seem
most bound to sameness of task, — the agricul-
turists. As to them it is enough to say that no
two farms are alike, and no two men alike, and
that individuality is even more noticeable in the
farmer than in the inhabitant of the city. Pass-
ing on his way, the traveller reaches another
community likewise furnished with its people of
various capacities ; and so he may go on and on,
round the world, l^o two communities, how-
ever, are precisely alike ; no two states, no two
nations. The cosmos is a unit composed of myr-
iads of lesser units, as the body has its multitude
of parts ; and the rational unit is a human self-
hood, a person. What each one can do is,
therefore, what each one ought to do. Selfish-
ness raising the demands of the individual above

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 121

those of the community may sadly mar this
system of order, but unselfishness can restore it,
and, so far as it is found, it mirrors in its un-
spotted surface the plan of the universe, the
cosmic unity in variety.

" Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised,
But as the world, harmoniously confused,
Where order in variety we see,

And where, though all things differ, all agree." *

So wrote Pope most wisely. And others
have sung the same strain, as when Shakespeare
applies the thought to government, by making
Henry Y. say, —

" For government, though high, and low, and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent j
Congreeing in a full and natural close.
Like music." 2

A brief comparison between the ethical value
of this view of a recipient personality, part of a
universal unity, and the ethical value of the
view now known as reincarnation, shows at once
the difference to be so great that what Professor

1 Windsor Forest. ^ Act I., Scene 2.

F 11

122 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

Knight calls the " immense" value of the latter
dwindles to nothing, and it is seen to he only
self-seeking. That theory is wounded in the
house of its friends. The misanthropic Schopen-
hauer should not have heen permitted to praise
it as the remedy for the fear of death, for the
weariness of memory, and for the tsedium of
" life-dreams until the will abolishes or abrogates
itself." ^ Even Professor Knight talks of its
" horizon of hope," a purely selfish consideration.
This is Epicurean, this looks to Mrvana.
"Ethical leverage" must use the strength of
altruism. It has long been with many the re-
proach of the Christian pulpit that it stimulates
self-love, proclaims future reward for righteous-
ness, and appeals to the sinful to avoid future
misery. In his essay on " Ethical Systems,"
Dr. Hedge points out this defect in Paley's
" Moral Philosophy," once a standard text. In
this appeal to selfishness, the pulpit has uttered
a false gospel and denied its Christ, of whose
unselfish love it was truly said, " He saved others.
Himself he cannot save." ^ A good shepherd,

1 The World as "Will and Idea ; chapter on Death.

2 Matt, xxvii. 42.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 123

laying down his life for the sheep, rather than
a hireling, whose own the sheep are not, is the
model Christian. And life lays itself down for
its friends when it pursues its daily round in
acknowledgment of its obligation to make re-
turn for benefits had, and to serve the world
with all4t hath, even all its living.

Schopenhauer, pessimistic reincarnationist, felt
no " ethical leverage" as he sank lower and
lower in despair. The " ethical leverage" of the
theistic view may be studied in the martyrs from
Stephen down, in every humble and faithful
worker, in every pure patriot living or dying, in
all such as, with the spirit of Abou Ben Adhem,
climb " the great world's altar-stairs,"

In this altruism is no concealed selfishness of
the baser kind. The self has consecrated itself.
The personality regards itself as a sacred trust.
It asks not, " What shall I do that I may inherit
eternal life?" going away grieved when the
answer calls for self-sacrifice ; ^ it bears its cross
silently; in its underserved suffering it com-
mands its friends, " Weep not for me, but weep
for yourselves and your children ;" ^ it makes no

iMarkx. 22. ^Lukexxiii. 28.

124 THE HUMAN AND ITS

excuses when called to give account of its stew-
ardship, but is ready to answer with truth,
" Thou deliveredst unto me ^yq talents : lo, I
have gained other five talents ;'^ ^ it has no reluc-
tance to confess, " Thine eyes did see mine im-
perfect substance, and in thy book were all my
members written, which day by day were fash-
ioned, when as yet there was none of them." ^

The self, in this view, beholds as its ideal the
greatest possible excellence of serviceableness, or
more correctly the effort to approach that, and it
rejoices in the discipline necessary to its training
for the largest, because the most devoted, useful-
ness in its own task, its own loved office among
the uses of this life, and its preparation thereby
for a higher usefulness in another life of imma-
terial conditions.

More wisely than he knew spake Polonius
when he said, —

" This above all, — to thine own self he true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man." *

^ Matt. XXV. 20. 2 Psalm cxxxix. 16.

3 Hamlet, Act I., Scene 3.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 125

CHAPTER y.

MAN REACTIVE.

If the self be a created and not an uncreated
thing, if, being created, it is and must forever be
a recipient or perish ; if the fact of this recipient
nature be regarded as sufficiently shown from
reason and experience, and if the personality be
regarded as the peculiar form of receptivity
which each one possesses, which gives form to
his own life, and which gives to him his own
place in the great body of humanity, the ques-
tion will arise. Is this reception active or passive ?
This is to ask whether the self in man is a mere
conduit or not, a passive receptacle or an active
agency.

That man is or ought to be passive has been
a favorite view with many of widely different
origins. Nirvana is not regarded in precisely
the same way by all, but it means to present as
the goal of the soul a state that is passive. Sir

11*

126 THE HUMAN AND ITS

Edwin Arnold is surely an authority on tlie sub-
ject, and he has said, —

" If he shall day hy day dwell merciful,

Holy and just and kind and true ; and rend
Desire from where it clings with hleeding roots,
Till love of life have end :

" Never shall yearnings torture him, nor sins
Stain him, nor ache of earthly joys and woes
Invade his safe eternal peace ; nor deaths
And lives recur. He goes

"Unto Nirvana. He is one with Life,

Yet lives not. He is hlest, ceasing to he.
Om, mani padme, om ! the dewdrop slips
Into the shining sea."^

Here the passivity is not present but to come.
The restlessness of man is to attain it by hard
striving. But the implication is that the best
state of the self is its passive one, — "sinless,
stirless rest."

Similarly the Christian quietist contemplates
and cultivates passivity as the supreme end.
Molinos, in his " Spiritual Guide," makes a
similar utterance : " By the way of nothing thou

1 Light of Asia.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 127

must come to lose thyself in God (which is the
last degree of perfection), and happy will thou
be if thou canst so lose thyself. In this same
shop of nothing, simplicity is made, interior and
infused recollection is possessed, quiet is ob-
tained, and the heart is cleansed from all imper-
fection/"^ Such expressions caused the sympa-
thetic Vaughn, in his " Hours with the Mystics,"
to speak of the " holy indifference" of quietism.

Schopenhauer is far removed from Molinos
and Fenelon, but his tendency to seek for a
Nirvana in which the will would cease from
troubling has been shown above.

Spinoza in a very different way came even
more openly to the conclusion that man, the
wise man, is passive : " He is scarcely moved in
mind; but, being conscious of himself, of God,
and of things, by a certain eternal necessity,
never ceases to be, but is always possessed of
true satisfaction of mind." ^

But these and similar opinions only point out
by contrast the true view. Man is not passive
and never will be passive. His energies demand

1 English edition, 1699, p. 157.

2 Ethics, Part Y., Prop. XLII., Scholium.

128 THE HUMAN AND ITS

exercise, and his development in any rational
way does not diminish but increases his energy,
concentrating it on some one function to which
all his powers minister, and in the performance
of which he contributes his best gift to the wel-
fare of the whole. It is unnecessary to offer
arguments for the necessity and consequent
nobility of work. Without exercise the mind
and body wither. Lethargy, whether in Mrvana
or out of it, is as destructive as it is abnormal
and unworthy. " The gods sell everything for
toil," said Epicharmus, and Socrates quoted it
to Aristippus, who had attempted to defend an
idle life.^

There is no true conception of human life
which overlooks or depreciates its capacities.
The will which Schopenhauer would have ab-
rogated must be a diseased will, wanting purifi-
cation. If the will to live be or become the will
to serve, it is not to be compared for value with
an ignoble and self-contented sloth. The " holy
indifference" of the quietist can be called such
only in the degree that self-interest is subordi-
nated to a broader interest in the welfare of the

1 Xenophon's Memorabilia, II. 1.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 129

race. All talk of self-extinction is miserable,
because selfish, unless it means tbe overcom-
ing of that in a man which limits his servicea-
bleness.

If it be granted that the self is active rather
than passive, that its recipiency is not that of a
mere sponge or a mere conduit, the question then
arises. Is its activity self-originated or reactive ?
This is involved in what has been said already as
to the created self. If now independently active,
the soul can be conceived of as having always
been so. If self-propelled thus far, then now it
needs no aid from without. And the reverse
follows if the opposite view be taken of its nature.
Reasons have been given for holding that man is
a created and receptive being.

Receptivity, if at all active, implies, in the
degree of its activity, a constant reaction. The
mind's agency is a reagency. It is to be re-
gretted that the words " react" and " reagent"
have only a scientific use, but the fact that they
are almost entirely restricted to physics is highly
significant. It has not been seen that man and
nature are in correspondence, and so far nature
is better understood than man.

The tree is a recipient of all that it can obtain

130 THE HUMAN AND ITS

by leaf and root, and, reacting upon the life so
received, it brings forth fruit stored with the
sunlight and the moisture formed by it into the
olive or the apple, which contain the seed or
germinal cell of a new tree. Sundered from
these sources of life the tree would speedily
perish. Eeceiving the contributed life without
reactive operation the tree would have no seed
in itself and would hopelessly cumber the
ground. By its reaction upon the action which
it receives the tree is a tree of life. The bird is
not self-created, but likewise depends upon life
which is given to it and upon which it must
react in co-operative activity by all the means in
its power, building a nest, rearing young, j&nding
food, flying hither and thither as climate requires.
Refusing to do its part as a reagent the bird
would die. Doing its little part with instinctive
faithfulness, it is " the herald of the morn."

Is not this true, upon a grander scale, of man ?
IN'ot self-caused, nor self-perpetuated, like all else
that is created, he receives his life and receives
it as a reagent. " Freely ye have received, freely
give." ^ Hamilton has well said, " Life is energy,

1 Matt. X. 8.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 131

and conscious energy is conscious life."^ Il^ow
all that is received by mind and body must
be energized by the mind or body and sent
forth in activity, or there is no life in us.

The body is certainly reactive. " The vital
agencies are at work incessantly all over the
systemT^as if it were a busy laboratory, in build-
ing up the tissues, in converting elements into
immediate principles [reckoned as eighty-four],
and in separating and casting out of the body
the superfluous and deleterious materials."^
" The food in the stomach is rolled in a spiral
course, is mingled and worked over with the
acid gastric fluid whose function it is to set the
purer parts of the food free and to separate them
from the gross and worthless." ^

If the mind be not fed, if there be no mental
assimilation in it, it is different from all other
created things. But since it has been found to
be dependent upon life received and made its
own, its activity is, like that of the body and all
IN'ature, reactive.

1 Metaphysics, Lecture XLII.

2 Hitchcock's Anatomy and Physiology, n. 789.

' Worcester's Physiological Correspondences, p. 45.

132 THE HUMAN AND ITS

The empirical evidence of this doctrine is as
perfect as possible. The infant, so far as it be-
gins to manifest a thought, is found to be giving
to the life which it receives a form, an utterance,
which is its own. The child, as it uses its facul-
ties to question why this is done and why that,
is forming its own opinions, and developing, in
reaction upon the information and all formative
influences received, its own character. The
adult, engrossed perhaps in business, sleeps and
wakes, indifferent to questions of his origin or
relations, but nevertheless every act is but the
result of some life received, reacted upon in his
mind, and sent forth again by voice and hand.
The most strongly individual men are those in
whom the reactive force is greatest, so that they
give forth opinions or perform their acts with
peculiar emphasis and with marked effect upon
others. The more reaction a man has, the
stronger man he is ; the more nearly one ap-
proaches to the condition of a mere conduit, a
mere transmitter of opinion, a mere tool of
another, the weaker he is.

The movement from the savage state to the
civilized is in the direction of the development
of individuality, that is, of reactive ability. The

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 133

perfection of modes of education looks in the
same direction, and does not attempt to fill the
memory and merely enable one to answer the
questions of others, but aims to expedite devel-
opment, to sharpen the faculties, and to produce
noble men and women. Sir W. Hamilton, in
his address^n " Academic Honors," rightly de-
fined the object of instruction as " determination
of the student to self-activity," and what is self-
activity but the putting forth of one's powers by
energetic rea-ctive exercise ?

Professor !N"ewman, in his " Theism," describes
the case : " This energy of life within is ours,
yet it is not we. It is in us, it belongs to us, yet
we cannot control it. It acts without bidding
even when we do not think of it. I^or will it
cease its acting at our command, or otherwise
obey us. . . . But while it recalls from evil, and
reproaches us for evil, and is not silenced by our
efibrt, surely it is not we. Jt pervades mankind,
as one life pervades the trees." ^

1 Edition 1874, p. 9.

VL

134 THE HUMAN AND ITS

CHAPTER YI.

MAN A FREE AGENT.

It is in the acknowledgment of man's true
place in the creation as a recipient but not a
mere conduit, an agent but not a tool, a reagent
and not absolute inactivity, that his freedom of
agency is vindicated from all objection.

It may be conceded at once that he is not as
free as if he were not in a world which has its
laws, and that he is restrained by his understand-
ing of law and of the penalty which its infringe-
ment brings, and thus that he is free, not as
a lawless tyrant, but within the limits which
belong to a rational, created, recipient, reactive
being. He is not free to make himself another.
He is not free to render himself absolutely inde-
pendent of the source of life. He is not free to
cease to be a reagent. But, with " the portion
of goods that falleth to him," he is free to go
and expend it as he will, and free to return ; free
to dwell in a far country of ways foreign to his

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I35

best good, or to abide in peace with bis Father ;
free, when affected by a seductive impulse, to
refuse to heed it, or free to obey the siren's
voice; free to decide what occupation he will
pursue, and free to pursue it in accordance with
what he finds to be his capacity, or in defiance
of lessons which tell him that he is out of place ;
free to be a wise man, or to be an unwise
man.

It is somewhat common to deny freedom on
the ground that, when two roads are before a
man and he weighs the reasons for taking this
or that, he is impelled by the circumstances of
the case and makes no free choice. But the
fact is that he is just as free to ignore as to be
influenced by the circumstances, to remain still
as to take either road. A lion being in one path
and a lamb in the other leaves him perfectly free
to go the way of the lion, if he will. " What
shall I do to inherit eternal life?"^ sounded as if
the young man, when informed, must go in the
way pointed out; but no, he turned his back
upon it. "What must I do to be healed?" one
asks a physician, and he seems to have no free-

1 Mark x. 17.

136 THE HUMAN AND ITS

dom in tlie matter, but lie can take tlie remedy
or neglect it, as he will.

There is no freedom with Spinoza, there is
none with Edwards, and there is none with
materialistic determinism, but in all these and
similar views there is neglect of the empiric
evidence of freedom. Even Spinoza finds the
unwise man using as much " imagination" as he
pleases in doing his own thinking; even Ed-
wards seems to have given man liberty to sin ;
and modern materialism, with all its extreme
exaltation of heredity and environment, has not
made out its case that man is a slave to impulse
and that his acts are the mere reflex of his sensa-
tions.

It would not seem to be necessary to plead
against a form of religious enthusiasm like
Spinoza's or Edwards's, which would make God
to have defeated His own end and to have pro-
duced a race whose humanity was only a name
for machinery, and this can be considered later
when the relation of the self to its Maker is
treated of; but the objection to free agency on
account of controlling circumstances and inheri-
tances requires a brief comment; for Professor
Huxley states a fact when he says, " The prog-

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I37

ress of science in all ages has meant the ex-
tension of the province of what we call matter
and causation, and the concomitant gradual
banishment from all regions of human thought
of what we call spirit and spontaneity." ^

Hume illustrated this tendency when, in treat-
ing of^berty and necessity, he pointed out that
all movements in nature are necessary : " Every
object is determined by an absolute fate to a
certain degree and direction of its motion, and
can no more depart from that line in which it
moves than it can convert itself into an angel or
spirit or any superior substance. The actions,
therefore, of matter are to be regarded as in-
stances of necessary actions ; and whatever is in
this respect on the same footing with matter
must be acknowledged to be necessary. That
we may know whether this be the case with the
actions of the mind, we shall begin with ex-
amining matter."^

Unfortunately for the value of his argument,
he not only begins with examining matter, but
ends there ; thus : the bodily difference between

1 Lay Sermons : New York Edition, 1871, p. 142.

2 Human Nature, Oxford, 1888, p. 400.

12*

138 THE HUMAN AND ITS

the sexes is tlie same as tliat of their minds,
with bodily decline in old age goes mental de-
cline, with the hard hands of the laborer goes a
corresponding quality of mind, with climates
racial traits agree; and this correspondence is
so noticeable that it marks a law. Madmen
have no liberty because they act as moved ; nor
have others because they too act as moved. But
men dislike to confess that they are under
necessity to act as they do, and they do indeed
feel a false sensation of indifference or liberty of
choice, and their religion, " which has been very
unnecessarily interested in this question," per-
suades them that they are free. But every act,
continued Hume, has its cause both with God
and men, and there is no liberty. '^Upon a
review of these reasonings I cannot doubt of an
entire victory." ^ Later on in the essay he said,
"As to free-will we have shown that it has no
place with regard to the actions no more than
the qualities of men. It is not a just consequence
that what is voluntary is free. Our actions are
more voluntary than our judgments, but we
have not more liberty in one than in the other." ^

1 Human Nature, p. 422. 2 i\^i^^^ p^ 509.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 139

This view is consistent with itself, but it is not
consistent with the facts. It must be admitted
that the sexes have physical marks, but this is
not to admit those marks to be the cause of the
difference between men and women; for the
woman, though her frame be weaker and her
skin softer, is as brave and makes as unyielding
a martyr as the man. It must be admitted that
bodily decline is often accompanied with mental
weakness; but in the extreme weakness of ill-
ness the mind is often strong and the will imper-
ative, and in old age there is often discernible a
youthfalness and innocence which are exactly
the reverse of what a shrunken and marred
body would lead us to expect. It must be ad-
mitted that hard hands and a certain stupidity
are often found together; but, so far are the
hands from producing this state of the mind
that Tolstoi is by no means a singular instance
of hard hands and tender sensibilities ; indeed,
every community furnishes its learned black-
smith or its studious apprentice. There is reason
to think that the hand of the college oarsman is
harder than that of the mechanic, and that the
soft hand of the effeminate student is not a sign
of intellectual superiority. It must be admitted

140 THE HUMAN AND ITS

that in warm climates the natives are more ex-
citable than those of colder regions; but this
correspondence of man with nature is carried
too far when it makes the climate determine the
character, as may be seen with the Africans who,
transported to America, make no change of
character except through self-determined and
persevering effort.

That madmen have no liberty is a dangerous
argument for Hume, since their very capricious-
ness in many cases defies all attempt to ascertain
physical causes of their moods. They are more
free than the sane, seeing that they recognize no
bonds of moral and civil law.

As for Hume's suggestions that liberty is a
wilful self-deception from pride of autocracy, or
a deception imposed by some other from kind-
ness, or a religious delusion, it is enough to say
that vilification is not argument, and that men
are neither so vain nor so fallible as they are
here represented to be in order to sweep away
common sense arising from consciousness and
observation. Hume felt that his assault had
been successful, but his "entire victory" was
spoiled by his own performances rather than by
those of his unperturbed foe ; for note some of

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 141

the expressions which he saw fit to use in his
" advertisement," in which he was guilty of
mentioning " my design" — " the subjects I have
here planned out to myself" — " I was willing to
take advantage of this natural division in order
to try the taste of the public" — " if I have the
good fortune to meet with success, I shall pro-
ceed"— "the approbation of the public I con-
sider as the greatest reward of my labors, but
am determined to regard its judgment, whatever
it be, as my best instruction." And these phrases,
full of liberty in Hume and in the public, from
the one who rejected the idea! As with the
woman, of whom Valerius Maximus tells, who
appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober, so
here an appeal needs only to be taken from
Hume speculating to Hume advertising.

Wundt disposes of this cavil against liberty of
will when he says, "When we say that the
character of a man is a product of light and air,
of education and circumstances, of food and
climate, that it is necessarily determined, as
every natural phenomenon, by these influences,
we draw an entirely undemonstrable conclusion."^

1 Grundziige, II,, p. 396.

142 THE HUMAN AND ITS

Schopenhauer, naming his treatise " Freedom
of the Will," but meaning the opposite, has
said, " Man never does but what he wills, never-
theless he always acts necessarily. "While we
act we are at the same time acted upon." ^ To
this Wundt also answers.

This tendency, strongly augmented by Hume,
to consider the mind in the light of physical re-
search alone, has been brought to maturity by
many modern scientists famous for their achieve-
ments as such, but less successful as metaphy-
sicians than as physiologists. Thus, Herbert
Spencer has said, " That every one is at liberty
to desire or not to desire, which is the real prop-
osition involved in the dogma of free-will, is
negatived as much by the internal perceptions
of every one as by the contents of the preceding
chapters." ^

What perceptions are meant here will be ap-
parent in a moment. They are not direct per-
ceptions of a character to be compared with
those of conscious freedom of the will, but they
are physical, and imply to Spencer determinism.

^ Freiheit, p. 44.

2 Principles of Psychology, sect. 207.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I43

He says again, after showing the correlation of
physical forces and effects, " The forces which
we distinguish as mental come within the same
generalization. There is no alternative but to
make this assertion, the facts which justify it or
rather which necessitate it being abundant and
conspicttous. . . . Besides the correlation and
equivalence between external physical forces and
the mental forces generated in us under the form
of sensations, there is a correlation and equiva-
lence between sensations and those physical
forces which, in the shape of bodily actions,
result from them."^

This bowing out of the freedom of the will is
joined vdth remarks upon the heart beating
quickly under excitement, the teeth grinding
together in pain, the muscles tightening for
energetic action, the circulation of the blood in
the brain in connection with mental activity, the
effects of stimulants, and other " proofs," as Mr.
Spencer calls them. But do they prove more
than the corresponding conditions of the organs
employed? Looking upon these and similar
phenomena, does the observer know what is

* Eirst Principles, Part II., chap, vii., sect. 71.

144 THE HUMAN AND ITS

taking place in the mind of the subject? The

observer sees that the man is in pain; can he

predict what the man will do ? If these causes

have their precisely correlative effects, the man

suffers according to his injury; but do two men,

under the same degree of pain, act alike ? May

not one, while the pain lasts, rail on the Christ,

while his crucified companion rebukes him and

uses a wholly different tone ? One is reminded

of Dryden's lines, —

" A man so various that he seemed to be,
Not one, but all mankind's epitome ;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong ;
Was everything by starts, but nothing long ;
But, in the course of one revolving moon.
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. "^

In defending the freedom of the ego in the
volume already referred to. Professor Momerie
quotes as an authority Bain's "Emotions and
"Will," and answers the arguments of this ne-
cessitarian with those of Carpenter's " Human
Physiology," and adds what R. S. Wyld has
said in his "Physics and Philosophy of the
Senses :" " Cerebral actions are the symbols of
thought, but they are no more thought itself

1 Absalom and Ahithophel, Part I., line 546.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I45

than the sentences of a book. "We must assume
the presence of an intelligent principle to in-
terpret the symbols, or we cannot conceive
thought to exist. Though the brain may follow
a certain involuntary course of action, and may
suggest to the mind a train of thought, we know
that the mind has the power of controlling the
cerebral action. We can interrupt one chain of
thought and start another, and out of a variety
of thoughts we can reject those that are the
most pressing." "In other words," concludes
Momerie, after an exceedingly instructive discus-
sion, " the ego is not merely passively acted on
by the brain, but is also capable of voluntary
self-originated action." ^

As the exclusion of free agency by Spinoza is
due to an exaggeration of the superior influence,
so that of the scientists is due to an exaggeration
of the inferior influence. Between the two in-
fluences, both of which are here acknowledged,
a balance exists, and man's choices are actual
and not seeming. The youth considering various
ways of life among which he must choose, Csesar
upon the bank of the Eubicon, every man not

1 Page 100.
13

146 THE HUMAN AND ITS

a willing slave to habit, is an example of free
agency. Each side of the scale is examined,
while, by a power not the man's, the beam re-
mains level, and then, when the weight of his
decision is joined to either side, the beam in-
clines. To go or stay, "to serve God or mam-
mon," these are the decisions which men can
make, and which men must make, or they igno-
bly surrender to some enslaving passion and sell
their birthright. Personal liberty is the universal
demand, but what is that worth unless it be the
correlative of mental liberty, of free agency ?

The moral value of the doctrine of free agency
has, of course, always been recognized. Men,
regarded as the creatures of circumstance, are
irresponsible. Men necessitated from any cause,
outward or inward, can have no account to
render. The unfaithful servant in the parable,
bringing back the unused talent, pleaded that he
was under necessity to let it rust, for his master
was so unreasonable and implacable that the
servant was forced to remain inactive, and he
thus represented the large class of people who
do nothing but grumble over their situation;
but the just answer was and is that the imaginary
severity of master or environment cannot be

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 147

pleaded as an excuse, since there is still left
abundant opportunity to turn the talent to
account.

This is the ground taken by Kant in the " Met-
aphysic of Morality," namely, that " the will is
the causality of living beings so far as they are
ration^,'' and "that freedom is that causality
not determined to action by any cause other than
itself," and that " freedom is a property of all
rational beings," and that " a true conception of
morality is reduced to the idea of freedom," and
that " the idea of freedom explains the possibility
of categorical imperatives ;" ^ but this owes much
to Aristotle's treatment of the freedom of the
will in the ISTicomachean Ethics, the third book
of which concerns itself with that subject, not
refraining from difficult practical questions:
"Praise and blame accompany voluntary acts;
pardon and pity, involuntary. Violence, being
external, adds nothing of benefit to him who
acts or to him who suffers. Choice is accom-
panied by reason. . . . Choice is a desire for or
tendency to what is in our power, accompanied
by consultation. The acts pertaining to an end

Watson's Selections, sect. 3, pp. 250-255.

148 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

must be voluntary and of deliberate cboice. . . .
In a bad as well as in a good man, there is a
power to act from himself. . . . The temperate
man acts conformably to right reason. . . . That
part of the soul which energizes according to
desire should live conformably to reason."^

" Fatalism and atheism," said Hamilton, " are
convertible terms ;" ^ and here is a profound fact
which needs at the present only to be stated,
namely, that a belief in God is so far from
taking away the freedom of man that it alone
opens the way for a clear conception of that
freedom, a freedom which he is too weak to
provide for himself, but which he constantly
receives from the providence of the Omnipotent.

It may be well here to pause a moment upon
the difficult problem of reconciling freedom,
especially freedom to do wrong and to inflict
misery, with the goodness of God or even with
His government. Perhaps the difficulty, which
so many writers among the Scholastics have
struggled with, and which has led to such noble
but fruitless efforts as Leibnitz's Theodicy, lies

iNic. Eth,, Book III.
^ Metaphysics, p. 556.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I49

in the original misconception of creation. It is
assumed that God had many possible worlds in
view, and for inscrutable reasons found the one
we have, sin and suffering included, to be the
best, and so, by a kind of necessity, made it for
better or worse, and thus that His plan can only
be regarded with a resigned and apologetic spirit
which represses question and refuses to doubt
His goodness. This is certainly a very crude
idea of the Divine. How much more rational
it is to regard the world as the natural outcome
of the love and wisdom and power of God, a
form of Divine order produced by Him for the
sake of His children and embodying His pur-
poses. If there were another God, there would
be another world, but with our God — and no
other can be thought without accepting some
inferior conception of Him — comes our world.
He is not the mere chooser of it, He is the soul
of it in an unpantheistic sense. He made every-
thing by sending forth His creative energy form-
ing its receptacles and iilHng them with creat-
ures, and the world was good as its Source was
goodness itself.

How then with evil ? It is not a foreign crea-
tion introduced by necessity or mistake. It is

13*

150 THE HUMAN AND ITS

man's free perversion of the good things. The
love of self, for example, is surely good in its
own place ; but, made supreme, it renders man
selfish. The love which would have protected
his body now becomes his dominant motive.
He bows down to that as an idol which other-
wise would have been an innocent thing. The
calf was good in itself, but, named Jehovah, it
was a means of injury and sin to those at Sinai.
This old difficulty was pressed to its extreme
form when the question was raised, Is not the
Divine redemption itself indebted to evil for its
opportunity and so made subservient to disorder ?
The answer to this is that the redemption was
the Divine care of men taking that form which
their perverseness required, but which, in its es-
sential motive, was, as always, the Divine provi-
dence. While the law was in their hearts, God
was manifest ; while angelic messengers sufficed,
God thereby was manifest ; but, when only this
mode would suffice, God made His love and wis-
dom manifest in the Christ and perfectly delivered
men from the accumulated power of evil so far as
they would freely receive the aid. In redemption,
as in creation, God was the loving parent, free in
Himself and loving the freedom of others.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 151

CHAPTEK YII.

man's inheritance.

It might seem at first sight highly important
to postulate for man absolute freedom from
hereditary influence, and to insist that every one
is in no sense dependent upon nor influenced by
his predecessors. The appearance is that, if the
least hereditary factor be admitted into the ac-
count, the individuality is so biased as to lose its
freedom. To assent to the ordinary claim made
in the name of heredity is apparently to sur-
render human freedom, making the ancestor the
master. But let the questions first be answered,
Must the claim of heredity to be a law of life be
allowed ? And is it the case that every man has an
inheritance which is a factor in his individuality ?

The answer Yes must be given at once. There
is not a shadow of doubt about the fact of human
heredity, nor about all other forms of it. Parent-
age means transmission of characteristics of race,
family, and individual. They are not always

152 THE HUMAN AND ITS

conspicuous in the descendant, but they are suf-
ficiently evident to place the theory among the
laws of nature. The accumulation of examples
is enormous and need not be gone into. In his
book on the subject Ribot^ has traced the trans-
mission of instincts, sensorial qualities, memory,
imagination, intellect, passion, will, national
character, and disease. Under all these heads,
drawing upon the facts collected by Galton,
Lucas, Darwin, Montaigne, Morel, Despine, and
others, he has shown that the reception of life
through a parent brings with it for good or evil
an inheritance which may seem overwhelming
in its influence upon the will.

There should be no disposition to ignore or
undervalue heredity. It is an indispensable pro-
vision for preserving the symmetry of the human
race and of all life. Without it the races would
lose their distinctive qualities and mankind would
be but a chaos, not a harmony of varieties, not a
unit. Without the operation of this law, there
could be no improvement of domestic animals
by careful breeding. Without it the farmer
would not know what seed to plant. Without

* Heredity: Englisli edition, by D. Appleton & Co., 1875.

RELATION TO TEE DIVINE. I53

it the order of the universe, in every form in
which science observes it, would be at an end.
It is, therefore, not only impossible to deny the
fact of heredity, it would also be irrational to do
it. Does it then take away from man his free
agency, and so make the liberty of self a sham
and nofa reality ?

As, in the consideration of freedom in the
preceding chapter, it was found that the nega-
tive side had been taken by two widely different
parties, the religious enthusiasts and the material-
ists, so here we have two kinds of negative reply
to the question. Does heredity leave a man free ?

The answer of that theology commonly called
Calvinistie (but it is older than Calvin) has been
that man received from the earliest pair a ten-
dency to evil which he could not counteract.
This was to deny freedom in the name of
heredity under cover of religion. To this Cal-
vin added the dogma, derived through his legal
training from Tertullian and the Roman Law,
that some were " elected," or involuntarily freed
from the controlling influence of heredity which
otherwise made them of the reprobated class.
But this was only to make men more fully slaves,
since it took away from the elect the power to

154 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

fall and from the reprobates tlie power to rise.
A general doom to evil still left room for de-
scent, but this took away from the elect even
tbat liberty. Here Calvin was not tbe first,
rive hundred years before him the Angelical
Doctor had said, " Many who now are living
well are reprobates, and many who now are
evil-doers are elect." ^ Du Moulin, Professor of
History at Oxford, published in 1680 a little
book^ in which he reached the conclusion:
" That there is a million of reprobates to one that
shall be chosen so as to be saved;" by which he
seems to mean that the vast majority had no
freedom in matters of eternal interest, and that
the little minority, " chosen so as to be saved,"
of course had not.

Calvin, however, was the chief assailant of
human freedom in the name of original sin:
" Grace snatches a few from the curse and
wrath of God and from eternal death, who
would otherwise perish; but leaves the world
to the ruin to which it has been ordained."*

1 Commentary on 2 Peter i. 10.

2 Moral Eeflections, etc., London, 1680.
* Commentary on John xvii. 9.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 155

" I ask, how has it come to pass that the fall of
Adam has involved so many nations with their
infant children in eternal death, and this without
remedy, but because such was the will of God ?
It is a dreadful decree, I confess."^ Many ex-
pressions of a like nature in creeds and dis-
courses^may be found gathered with the in-
dustry of theological controversy in the " Doom
of the Majority," ^ by Eev. S. J. Barrows.

This view of the effect of heredity resulted
from a confusion of evil with sin, an inexplica-
ble mistake unless the writers of that day are
supposed to have been so hard-hearted that they
cared to look for no escape from their grim doc-
trine. It was seen that evil was transmitted,
that lawlessness and passion showed their traces
in the third and fourth generation, and this
transmission was mistaken for a transmission of
sin and guilt. "In Adam's fall we sinned all,"
was the word constantly spoken, but never ques-
tioned. The least examination would have anni-
hilated the doctrine of hereditary guilt.

Understanding by hereditary evil the trans-

1 Institutes, Book III. 23, 7.

2 American Unitarian Association, Boston, 1883.

156 THE HUMAN AND ITS

mitted tendency to repeat the sins of tlie parent,
the disarrangement of the nature, an ill con-
dition, there is no room to doubt the fact of
such inheritance. The facts with regard to
transmitted criminal tendencies are overwhelm-
ing ; and, if no such facts had been collected, it
would be easy to conclude a priori that all ten-
dencies, good or evil, are transmitted. But, just
as surely, sin and guilt cannot be transmitted.
The infant is innocent, and cannot be otherwise,
except he be regarded as a specimen of metemp-
sychosis. Guilt cannot be transmitted. The in-
clusion of children in the punishment of parents
under Greek, Roman, and later law has been
seen since Calvin's day to be utterly unjustifiable,
and the Constitution of the United States there-
fore prohibits it. The very Scriptures on which
the Genevan commented would have taught
him : " What mean ye, that ye use this proverb,
. . . The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the
children's teeth are set on edge? As I live,
saith the Lord God, ... all souls are mine ; as
the soul of the father, so also the soul of the
son is mine ; the soul that sinneth, it shall die.
. . . The son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 157

of the son. . . . Wherefore turn yourselves, and
live ye." ^

When this distinction has been made, the fact
remains that a righteous parent transmits helpfal
tendencies to the child, and an unrighteous
parent unhelpful tendencies. What is the power
of those^ tendencies to control the life ? is the
question ; and this may be considered in connec-
tion with materialistic fatalism held in the name
of heredity.

There are three views which make heredity
fatal to the freedom of the will. The first is
that God dooms many and elects a few in spite
of themselves, thereby leaving men no more
free than Spinoza leaves them. Of untheologi-
cal views one holds that the inherited mental
qualities control the life, and the other lays stress
on the physical transmitted peculiarities as con-
trolling the mind and so the life.

The first view has been considered. The
second view is nearly the same except as it may
be held by an atheist. If so held, it must be
met by an cl prion appeal to man's essential need
of free agency if he be man, and by an a posteriori

1 Ezekiel xviii. 2, 3, 4, 20, 32.
14

158 THE HUMAN AND ITS

appeal to experience and observation. Both
have been already dwelt upon. It is sufficient
to say that a man's sense of freedom, which is
not the easy self-deception which Hume de-
scribed, has the same ability to disregard in-
herited tendencies that it has to disregard cir-
cumstances.

Suppose one of a passionate race. He looks
with envy on others who have inherited no such
temper. Does he perceive himself to be borne
along irresistibly by his nature, so that it is abso-
lutely impossible for him to pause before he
strikes? If he has given way already to this
tendency till a habit of passionate utterance and
action has been formed, does he find it impossi-
ble to change his course ? Perhaps as good an
answer as any is the increasing conviction in the
world that bad men can be reformed, that prisons
are not to be conducted in a hopeless, fatalistic
spirit, and that the Howards and Elizabeth Frys
and Whitefields were justified in their under-
takings. As one reads the statistics of crime in
certain families, and sees the fearfal effects of
heredity, let him ask himself. Were these neces-
sary effects ? and he will find himself answering,
No, if he has had experience with criminals and

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I59

has seen the successful efforts of some to reform.
Alcoholism is a terrible source of hereditary de-
pravity, but instances are many of its worst
effects being overcome.

Physiological fatalism is the most difficult of
all forms of determinism to meet, because its
claims ^re so arrogant. Here the aid of Ribot
is valuable : " Suppose it to be proved," he says,
" that all modes of psychical activity are trans-
missible; is the aggregate of these modes the
v^hole sentient and conscious being ? We often
hear of hereditary talents, vices, and virtues;
but v^hoever will critically examine the evidence
will find that we have no proof of their exist-
ence. The way in which they are commonly
proved is in the highest degree illogical; the
usual way being for writers to collect instances
of some mental peculiarity found in a parent
and in his child, and then to infer that the pecu-
liarity was bequeathed. By this mode of reason-
ing we might demonstrate any proposition." ^

This is a severe arraignment of the inductive
method and goes near to being unjust. It may
be granted that much evidence for fatalistic

1 Heredity, pp. 140, 141.

IQQ THE HUMAN AND ITS

heredity lias been gatliered in tlie way of
statistics, but it can justly be urged that statistics
of reformation of the character have been left
out of the account. Again, Ribot says, with
greater force, "By free-will we are ourselves;
by heredity [viewed as controlling] we are
others." But it must be confessed that he closes
with the admission : " This supreme antithesis
between free-will and mechanism is insolvable
to us." ^ He has only a hope that the solution
will sacrifice neither the one nor the other.

Neither will be sacrificed. Man will come to
say to himself, " I perceive my tendencies, and
I learn that they are hereditary; what shall I
do ? Shall I go down the inclined plane of self-
surrender, choosing always to do that which
requires the least exercise of will ? Or shall I
resist my tendencies, set myself another goal,
and, taking command of myself and my powers,
say with the centurion to this one, Go; to
another. Come ; and to a third. Do this ?" ^ Ten-
dencies so ruled will become servants, and he in
his noble purpose will be king, ruling his own
spirit. As Goethe said, "I will be lord over

1 Page 392. 2 Lu^e vii. 8.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. \Q\

myself. Ko one who cannot master himself is
worthy to rule, and only he can rule."^ But
long before him Seneca had declared that no
man is free who is a slave to the flesh. And
long before him Solomon had said, " He that is
slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he
that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a
city." 2

It may be well to refer again to the fact that,
while the physiologist observes from without the
movement of the system in reflex action, the
man within looks upon the sensations only as
suggestions, and is not controlled by them.

It may also be pointed out that governments
must recognize as factors the hereditary traits of
the people to be governed, but must not regard
these traits as absolutely controlling the people,
for there can be no reward of righteousness and
punishment of guilt unless the individual be
regarded as free, and so as responsible for his
acts; nor can laws be made with any hope of
their beneficial influence unless the people re-
gard the law-makers, and the law-makers the
people, as free agents.

1 Lewes 's Life, Book Y. 2 Prov. xvi. 32.

I 14*

162 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

In parental government the child's inherited
tendencies must be viewed with full recognition
of their strength, but the child's ability to resist
temptations from within and from without must
not only be recognized but pointed out, so that
he may gradually learn to rule his own spirit.

The heritage is not the man, and the influence
of inherited quality is not the man's master, if
he determine to call no man master upon earth.
!N'either by motive nor by heredity is the man
ruled unless he voluntarily accepts by repeated
surrenders such a ruler. " Man is his own star,"
wrote Fletcher again and again in his " Honest
Man's Fortune," and Milton repeated it in his
lines, —

" The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." ^

And Tennyson put into the mouth of Enid
the words, —

" Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down ;
Our hoard is little, hut our hearts are great ;
For man is man, and master of his fate." ^

* Paradise Lost, i. 253.

2 Idylls of the King,— Enid.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 163

CHAPTER YIII.

^^ THE POWERS OF MAN.

The self is a unit, but it has various powers.
As it beholds the operations which are modifica-
tions of itself, it distinguishes them into classes
and notes their interrelations. " Man's spirit has
a self-cognizant existence," says Hegel.^ That
consciousness constantly reveals the self, has
been remarked upon. As to the proper classifi-
cation of the activities which it has and takes
note of, there is a difierence of opinion.

Sir W. Hamilton remarks, " The distinction
taken in the Peripatetic School, by which the
mental modifications were divided into Gnostic
or Cognitive, and Orectic or Appetent, and the
consequent reduction of all the faculties to the
facultas cognoscendi and the facultas appetendi, was
the distinction which was long most universally
prevalent, though under various but usually less

* Philosophy of History, iii. 2.

164 THE HUMAN AND ITS

appropriate denominations. For example, tlie
modern distribution of the mental powers into
those of the understanding and those of the
will, or into powers speculative and powers
active, — ^these are only very inadequate, and very
incorrect, versions of the Peripatetic analysis.
But this Aristotelic division of the internal
states into the two categories of Cognitions and
of Appetences is exclusive of the Feelings. . . .
Kant was the philosopher to whom we owe this
trilogical classification. But Kant only placed
the key-stone of the arch which had been raised
by previous philosophers among his countrymen.
The phenomena of Feeling had attracted the
attention of German psychologists, and had by
them been considered as a separate class of men-
tal states." ^ Hamilton then mentions Sulzer as
having done this in 1751, and others later. " It
remained, however, for Kant to establish by his
authority the trichotomy of the mental powers."^
He then gives some account of efforts to restore
the dual classification.

Krug^ declares against thus dignifying the

1 Metaphysics, Lecture XLI.

2 Grundlage zu einer neuen Theorie der Gefiihle, 1823.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 1^5

feelings, because they seem to him to look
neither inward nor outward, with no " deter-
minate direction" — " in fact directed upon noth-
ing"— " nothing better than a powerless power"
— " a wholly inoperative force." To this Hamil-
ton finds no difficulty in replying that it under-
estimates the feelings, and he calls attention to
them as they come into exercise : " In reading
the story of Leonidas and his three hundred
at Thermopylae, what do we experience? Is
there nothing in the state of mind, which the
narrative occasions, other than such as can be
referred either to the cognition or to will and
desire ? Our faculties of knowledge are called
certainly into exercise, for this is indeed a condi-
tion of every other state ; but is the exultation
which we feel at this spectacle of human virtue
to be reduced to a state either of cognition or of
conation in either form ?" Hamilton grows still
more ardent, and cites the ballad of " Chevy
Chase," as if it were unmanly to give the feel-
ings less than the highest rank.

Dr. McCosh goes still further back, to the
Eleatic School, but he does not modify essen-
tially the account which Hamilton gives of the
ancient classification. He adds, " Of a later

IQQ THE HUMAN AND ITS

date some have felt it necessary to draw distinc-
tions of an important kind between the various
powers embraced in the Will, and this led to a
threefold division, the Cognitive, the Feelings,
and the Will, a classification adopted by Kant
and Hamilton. In this division the senses must
be included under either the Cognitive or the
Feelings, or divided between them. To avoid
this awkwardness there is a fourfold distribution,
the Senses, the Intellect, the Feelings, and the
Will. It should be observed that in this dis-
tribution the Conscience or Moral Faculty has
no place." ^ This spreading of the classification
leads him to propose a new arrangement of the
faculties under the two great heads of the Cog-
nitive and the Motive, the former including
Sense-Perception, Consciousness, Memory, Judg-
ment, and Imagination, and the second including
Conscience as a motive-power, the Emotions,
and the Will.

Thus McCosh returns to what Hamilton calls,
when blaming Reid for accepting it, the " vulgar
division of the faculties." Without going more
thoroughly into the history of the controversy,

^ The Cognitive Powers, Introduction, VIII.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 167

and admitting that tlie threefold division now
prevails, let me examine for a moment the appar-
ently firm position of the Hamiltonians. They
regard the threefold distinction as self-evident.
" I see a picture, I recognize what the object is.
This is Cognition or Knowledge. I may experi-
ence certain affections in the contemplation, —
gratification or dissatisfaction. This is Feeling,
of Pleasure and Pain. I may desire to see the
picture long, to see it often, to make it my own,
and perhaps I may will, resolve, or determine so
to do. This is Will and Desire." ^ This inter-
mediate state is the one which is not to be " re-
duced" to the others, as Hamilton puts it.

The only question is. Does the mind proceed
from knowledge immediately to desire, or does
it pause — a longer or shorter time, as the case
may be — between knowledge and desire ? I see
the picture in the first place, and I end with a
strong desire to possess it ; do I pass from sight
directly to longing, or do I abide meanwhile in
pleasure? Undoubtedly there is a middle
ground; which is neither all cognitive, as when
I am first looking at the picture and concluding

^ Hamilton, p. 127.

168 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

as to what it represents, nor all appetent, as when
I am borne along by a craving to possess it. Yet
in this middle state neither the cognitive nor the
appetent is wholly wanting. I continue carefully
to scan it. I begin to desire it. What else do I
do ? What other states have I than of contem-
plating its excellence and closing my affections
upon it ? " The feeling of pleasure," answers the
Hamiltonian. Certainly, the pleasure of the con-
templation and the pleasure of the longing which
anticipates possession. In passing from the cog-
nitive end of the line, so to speak, to the appetent
end I pass through a combination of knowledge
and will which is certainly not neutral, — that is,*
without knowledge of perfection or imperfection
and without craving or aversion, but which seems
to be a state in which both enter so evenly that
neither predominates in a marked degree.

But Sir William appeals to the exploits of
Leonidas and Widdrington, — that is, to past
events, — as if to cut off all possibility of will in
the matter, and as if to leave one in passive
patriotic feeling alone ; but here again the feel-
ing only describes the transition from knowl-
edge to will, their interpenetration in the middle
of the affair. For no one repeats the story or

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 169

the ballad merely to produce pleasure or pain;
and, if this were the object alone, the mind
would not be content with that, but would feel
the movement to do likewise, the desire to praise
and proclaim the act, and the will to act bravely
in the immediate circumstances of life.

A b^ter defence of the feelings as a third
grand division of the powers might be made by
appealing to the sentiments of pleasure and pain,
which are felt but are not readily accounted for,
as a pleasure in tormenting animals or an un-
easiness in the company of certain persons.
Here knowledge seems to be wanting, and de-
sire does not move one so much as in other
cases. But is not this pleasure the result of
knowing or of desire to know what animals do
when tortured, and of wish to obtain the pleas-
ure of contemplating the victim's writhings?
And the uneasiness in certain company, — what
is it but a perception of some unsympathetic
condition and a desire to escape from it?

Another way of looking at the case is from

the ground of bodily analogy. If the mind has

three divisions, it must be acknowledged at once

that nothing in the body corresponds with it ; if

it has two, everything corresponds. The two
H 15

170 THE HUMAN AND ITS

lobes of the cerebrum, the halves of the cere-
bellum, the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the bones,
the double lungs and heart, the members, all
divide into two, into a right and a left. The
doubleness of the body is no more evident,
however, than its arrangement into internal and
external parts. Every portion has its inner and
its outer. Let us see if this universal distinction
of right and left, inner and outer, is illustrative
of the mental arrangement.

" The soul," says Schopenhauer, " is the union
of will and intellect." ^ He places the will first.
Indeed, Weber, in making up a motto for his
" History of Philosophy," says, " The vdll is at the
heart of everything," and places as authorities
the names of Schelling, Schopenhauer, Secretan,
and Eavaisson. He also quotes the saying of
Maine de Biran : " 'No perception without voli-
tion;" and in his conclusion he quotes Wundt
as declaring, "It is from the will that the per-
ception proceeds, and not the reverse." He
would make the will " being in its fiilness, and
all the rest phenomena." It is the " essence of
the human soul" (Duns Scotus), " the principle

1 Will in Nature, I.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 171

on which heaven and all nature depend" (Aris-
totle), " the individual's life itself" (Brandis).

The least reflection shoves that the v^ill is the
spring of action, as the heart is of the bodily
life. Without the w^ill to do something, knov^l-
edge is as powerless to effect action as the winter
sun to^roduce vegetation. With will, knowl-
edge is operative. With desire aroused, the in-
tellect co-operates. With this precedence of the
will in potency it is not necessary that it should
precede in time. The senses are always reporting
to the intellect events and conditions. The will
is always instructed and guided by the intellect.
If it were not so guided, it would be blind, as
when passion controls reason and leads the will
to disregard the intellect, making its voice heard
through conscience or memory or foresight.
But, when the will is aroused, what does the
intellect do?

It ministers to the wish, as the lungs minister
to the heart. It finds the way, it provides the
means, it puts at the disposal of the will its
whole accumulation of information. The intel-
lect is a helpmeet for the will. The thought
embodies the desire. It is the existere of which
the will is the esse. It is the left of which the

172 THE HUMAN AND ITS

will is tlie right. It is the outer of which the
will is the inner. In their mutual dependence,
their co-operative activity, the will and under-
standing are in correspondence with the sexes,
for in the man the intellectual predominates, and
in the woman the voluntary. It is with will and
intellect as Longfellow truly says of man and
woman, —

** As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman ;
Though she bends him she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows ;
Useless each without the other."

The will and intellect uniting bring forth act,
as Horus was born of Osiris and Isis. It is easy
to illustrate : A piano is heard, and the desire to
play upon it and bring forth like music is formed.
The intellect responds with information slowly
acquired. But daily practice is necessary to
bring will and intellect into act. When at last
this has been done in the plane of the body, the
end is gained. Or, a young man desires to enter
the ranks of some profession. The desire is not
enough. The intellect must respond, or he will
fail. If the intellect does respond, he will slowly
prepare himself His preparation is a constantly

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 173

perfected union of will with intellect, so that,
when he desires to do a professional act, he may
know how to do it, and so that, when he has
learned how to do this and that part of his work,
he may have the will which will give energy and
patience and power.

In the third the former two are one and effi-
cient. This is life, not to will only, nor to know
only, hut to go forth from the will by means of
the understanding into serviceableness.

It will be observed that, in this view of the
mental operations, the movement of life is from
above downward, from the spiritual into the
natural, and not the reverse. Of course it is not
denied that the organs of sense, afiected by ex-
ternal causes, often offer the first incentive to
action ; but that they do not control the action,
which they may advise, is evident from the fact,
already referred to, that the mind may, and often
does, reject the impulse to cry out, or to run
away, or otherwise to obey the prompting of
the flesh.

Spiritual influx from mind to body, therefore,

is here maintained instead of the physical influx

preferred by materialists. Thus man may be

described as will and intellect looking to act.

15*

174 THE HUMAN AND ITS

His qualities are love and wisdom looking to use.
His possessions are goodness and truth for the
sake of life, of that life which shall make him
useful, which shall vindicate his existence, and
which shall make all men rejoice in the exercise
by each of his own gift. " Life," nobly said Maz-
zini, " is a mission. Religion, science, philosophy,
though still at variance upon many points, agree
in this, that every existence is an aim." ^

•It is, however, in the power of man to will for
himself — that is, for some private enjoyment —
rather than for others and for useful service.
He may love that which is evil. His intellect
pointing out to him two possible ways, he may
choose that which is injurious rather than that
which is helpful. Thus he may refuse to listen
to conscience which would guide him, and may
degrade his intellect to serve his base desires.
In this case, the more intellect, the more harm
will result ; because the intellect must serve the
will, be it never so depraved. The man finds a
way for his anger or his greed. And now man
is not love and wisdom looking to use, but
lust and folly looking to sin and harm. The

* Life and Writings, Chap. v.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 175

corrupt tree does not bring forth good frait. The
lisrht that is in him is darkness. And instead
of life, larger and larger, as the years go on, he
earns the wages of sin, which is spiritual death.

The origin of evil is not entered upon at
length here, but it may at least be said that
the possibility of sinning is bound up in man's
free-agency, and so a selfhood, not devoted to
use, reluctant in its obedience to laws which
exalt the good of others as of equal importance,
at least, with that of the individual, is a source
of disorder and danger. But man would not be
man were he deprived of this power to regard
self as paramount if he would; and that man
has misused this power, and has for a long time
been transmitting from generation to generation
a tendency to misuse it, must be granted at once
on historical grounds.

The history of human decline in innocence is
repeated in every wayward youth. It is a move-
ment to consult for self, which, imperceptibly
originating and increasing with increase of con-
scious power, separated and separates the soul
from its purity and makes it ashamed before its
judge. While men were infantile in intellect
there was no transgression. But the growth of

176 THE HUMAN AND ITS

rationality opened the way to perversions of
every kind ; and that it was taken and pursued,
and is pursued, the wars, the crimes public and
private, testify on every hand. " So many laws
argue so many sins." ^

It is true that ways have been found to make
the selfish man useful, to make the wrath of man
to praise God; but this is only a palliation of
evil, not a cure of it ; and cure cannot be found
except in the formation in the evil man by means
of his own intellect, which can discern a better
life and is able to rise above his will, of a new
heart and a new spirit.

In so far as this is done, the self dies to live
again; it operates in the symmetry of human
order ; it is the image of its Maker ; it is such
that the king in Hamlet could say, " Try what
repentance can : what can it not ?"

Herbart in sad play on words said, " He who
was yesterday the best (beste) may to-day be the
worst (boseste) ;'' ^ but the reverse is also true,
and sins, though they be as scarlet, may be made
as white as snow.

1 Paradise Lost, xii. 283.

2 Lehrbuch, Book TV., chap, ii., sect. 130.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I77

Man does not escape injury from his trans-
gressions ; but, with the change of his purpose,
the evil is remedied at its root. He is not only
forgiven, but rescued. The self, humbled, puri-
fied, becomes a house of God eternal in the
heavens.

The disposition to regard evil as merely im-
mature good, as a transient phase of develop-
ment, is natural if, by a perversion of reason,
evil is associated only with the state of the
savage or the ignorant. The mild forms of sin
which men commit, knowing no better, are much
like the act of a child who throws a valuable
vase to the floor to hear its fragments rattle,
having no idea of the evil it is doing. The
serious sin is done wittingly and purposely.
Callicles was intelligent enough to know better
than to say to Socrates, " Greatness is providing
to the full indulgences of evil passions;" and
Socrates was able to show him that nothing
could be further from greatness, and to declare,
" I^one but a fool is afraid of death, but of wrong
doing. To go to the world below having one's
soul fall of injustice is the worst of evils." ^

* Gorgias of Plato.

178 THE HUMAN AND ITS

Cjrenaic indifference to evil has found many
apologists. Herbert Spencer^ quotes Shake-
speare's saying, " A soul of goodness in things
evil," and seems to hold this as an ethical
opinion, but Henry Y. was speaking of circum-
stances then threatening him from without.^ To
say in any sense that moral evil is good is self-
contradictory. It is to say that things diametri-
cally opposite — a quality and its perversion — are
one. Epictetus was more just when, looking
upon the adulterer, he declared that he knew
not where there was a place for him, as there
was no place for a stinging wasp.^

The confusion of evil with good seems to be
due to the obscurity which arises from associ-
ating evil with ignorance and brutishness. Evil
is to be found in its genuine form and mature
development among the cultured, among those
who know perfectly the difference between good
and evil, and who are capable of instructing
others and perhaps are in the practice of giving
such instruction. It is Dr. Faust rather than
the untutored Marguerite who can grievously

* First Principle, chap. 1. ^ Henry V., Act IV., Scene 1.

•Book II., chap. iv.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 179

sin, and who in sin presents evil in its true aspect.
If the men about the Christ had said that they
were blind, they had not had sin : ^ if He had
not come and spoken unto them, if He had not
done among them the works which none other
did, they had not had sin; but now, fully in-
formed trf the right attitude to take, they had
chosen to hate Him, and their sin was without
excuse.^

1 John ix. 41. 2 joim xv. 22, 24.

180 '^SE HUMAN AND ITS

CHAPTER IX.

THE DIVINE.

The self of man has been found to be a recipi-
ent, a reactive agent, and a free agent whose
freedom it finds but which it does not produce
by the exercise of power sufficient to govern the
rest of the universe and to hold it in equilibrium.
The implication of these facts is, to say the least,
most significant, and has not been sufficiently
considered by theistic writers. They seem gen-
erally to take too distant views of the Divine,
and to view it as if they had no relation with it.

In ancient times this was not so. " All is full
of Jove," said Yirgil, as Augustine relates.
"Jupiter is whatever you see, wherever you
move," said Lucan. " Think oftener of God
than you breathe," -said Epictetus. " God is
truth, and light is His shadow," said Plato.
" There is certainly a God who sees and hears
whatever we do," said Plautus. And this con-
ception remained while men grew sensual in

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 181

their lives. But at length their idea of God be-
came so degraded that the worship of Him con-
sisted of animal sacrifices, and He was thought of
as likely to show special favor to chosen peoples.
The question of polytheism, whether it or
monotheism preceded, and how, if it followed,
polytheism arose from monotheism, does not
require full consideration here; but the sug-
gestion may be offered that the more degraded
men become, the more superstitious they are,
and the more inclined to make deities to reign
over places and diseases and events. Primitive
Christianity, with its purity of thought and life,
was markedly monotheistic; mediaeval Chris-
tianity, with its priestcraft in place of ministry,
its defence by tortures of what was called faith
but which was ecclesiasticism, its indulgences,
its enormities of every kind, multiplied divine
persons and saints to be invoked at this place
and at that till the litany included as adorable
" Maria Dei geneirix, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael,
angels and archangels, holy orders of blessed
spirits, all the disciples, the innocents," thirty
others by name, all the popes, and the sanctm et
sancti not numbered, but said to amount to at
least twenty-five thousand.

16

182 THE HUMAN AND ITS

The cliange from tliat one God to this pan-
theon may be safely regarded as having an actual
connection with the ignorance and depravity of
the later period; and the inference is that a
similar period in antiquity had like character-
istics,— priests in power multiplying objects to
be worshipped with costly offerings, and people
in ignorance accepting with superstitious com-
pliance the deities and sub-deities presented for
their prayers. A pristine state, however, free,
on the one hand, from priestly oppressions and,
on the other, from superstitious fears arising
from a sense of guilt on account of disorderly
practices, may be supposed to have been mono-
theistic from the lack of reason to be otherwise.
" The one is God," said Xenophanes, striving
to cure polytheism. " I am about to become
a god," said the dying, avaricious Vespasian,
showing the evil at its height.

Thus, not only does it appear that polytheism
arises out of monotheism when unfortunate con-
ditions favor its development, but it is also evi-
dent that the theistic conception, the recognition
of God, has been subject to marked vicissitudes.
To one like Augustine, who could find God
rather by ignorance than by knowledge, there

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 133

was no need of attempted demonstration. To
one of atheistic temper, however, arguments
seemed necessary, and in the formulation of
such arguments much mental effort has been
expended, with some success and some failure.
Some have undoubtedly been thus convinced;
others remain unm-oved in their doubts, not only
as to the pantheon claimed by the medisevalists,
but even as to the One of the best religious
conception.

These arguments have been stated over and
over again, and their respective claims have been
examined by friends and foes.

There is the ontological proof which Professor
Knight regards as having " a singular fascination
to the speculative mind," ^ but he finds it incon-
clusive. It holds that the notion of God, being
conceivable, must be true. The ground of Des-
cartes was that all which he could clearly and
plainly perceive was true. " Possible ideas are
true, impossible are false," is the dictum of
Leibnitz.^ But these are overstatements, and
would not be made at the present time when in-

1 Essay on Theism in Studies in Philosophy and Literature.
^Nouveaux Essais, Book II., chap. iii.

184 THE HUMAN AND ITS

telligent scepticism lias forced theists to weigh
their words. Wolff was more cautious when
he made the declaration, " That is possible to
which some notion responds ;" ^ hut even then
he was on an insecure foundation for an ex-
tended argument, since it might he retorted that
it is as possible to think of a malign God as of
a merciful one. " Falsehood can never be clearly
conceived or apprehended to be true," ^ declared
Cudworth ; but this is also unsound, as the long
acceptance of the Ptolemaic theory shows. The
ontological proof will never satisfy a doubter,
who will not admit that the logical is actual,
that an idea well founded in reason is necessarily
as well founded in fact. Descartes, reasoning
that " necessary existence is contained in the
concept of God,"* is reasoning round a circle.
He put the contents into the concept and then
drew them out.

The cosmological argument seeks for the
cause of things. It enlarges upon the order of
the universe and concludes as to its Maker.
This has been the common way of appealing to

1 Ontologia, sect. 102. 2 Eternal Morality, p. 172.

' Meditations, Objections, 1.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 185

scientists of atheistical turn. The student has
been appealed to on the ground of his own
discoveries. But the difficulty with this argu-
ment has been often pointed out. It is incom-
plete. Its first cause is not necessarily personal,
nor intelligent, nor even omnipotent. " In the
admission of a first cause," remarks Hamilton,
"atheist and theist are at one."^ This proof
may end in Spencer's Unknowable as well as in
the Christian's Father in heaven.

The argument from design, the teleological
proof, is well known. Kant called it "the
oldest, clearest, and most adapted to ordinary
human reason."^ Everything has a purpose.
The watch found on the sea-shore is not dumb,
but has a tale to tell of the intelligent designer
and skilful manufacturer. The preference has
been given by many to this argument because it
so fully presented God as personal. But there
is also difficulty here, for many phenomena
tempt one to infer an imperfect designer whose
plan did not exclude accidents and disorders,
and there is all the time the possibility of con-
cluding that Law, an impersonal working out of

1 Metaph , Lecture II., p. 19. ^ Kritik der E. V., p. 651.

16*

186 THE HUMAN AND ITS

a self-caused evolution, has produced what is in
itself so wonderful a universe. Professor Knight
wisely remarks that from this proof we get
Nature, which is not quite what was sought for.
He says, too strongly, " The conception of deity
as a workman could never lead to reverence,"*
for this is not impossible ; but it is true that skill
is not the best attribute to dwell upon in present-
ing the idea of God to a sceptical mind.

The argument from intuition, from instinct, is
preferred by Knight. He grants that the innate
idea of God is at first weak and dim, but claims
that it improves with mental growth. He re-
gards it as a revelation within the soul. This
revelation is not qualified by man's conceptions,
as in the case of other arguments, but comes
pure and perfect from above. It is not constant
in the mind, to be sure, but sometimes clearly
declares itself. He finds these recurring intui-
tions persistent in the individual, the same in
various generations, harmonious with all other
useful ideas, and vindicated from all suspicion
by their beneficent influence upon the mind.
He defends this instinct against the " cold

1 Essay on Theism.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 187

nescience" of Comte, Bain, Spencer, and others,
and charges Sir W. Hamilton and Dean Mansel
with being of like tendency. He claims that, to
deny this, we must give up the omnipotence of
God, for we take away His power to reveal Him-
self. He holds that to find God revealed in this
instincfls to find Him, not in nature, but in man,
and thus in the most perfect image of God. He
finds the whole aesthetic or poetic sense respond-
ing to this view. Worship vindicates it, being
instinctive. With appeal to Fenelon and Cardi-
nal ISTewman, Professor Knight ends his essay.

On the other hand, Dr. Momerie, in the bright
little book previously cited,^ has a chapter on the
Infinite Ego, in which he favors the argument
from design.

Again, Dr. Hedge, in an essay on " Theism,"
questions all the arguments, concludes that reason
alone " does not sufi3.ce to prove the God whom re-
ligion craves," and looks to faith "which requires
the qualifying check of science, without which
she would lapse into monstrous superstition." ^

^ Personality.

2 " Theism of Keason and of Faith," in Luther and other

Essays.

188 THE HUMAN AND ITS

It would seem that an argument drawn from
nature must always be inferior to one drawn
from man, because the God of nature manifests
power, skill, or majesty, — some one quality or
other by no means foreign to a true conception
of God, but not by itself adequately representing
Him.

Is it then to be held that man knows God
transcendentally, that there is not only a con-
sciousness of the self and its operations, but also
of God and His relations therewith ; not only
a self-consciousness, but a God-consciousness ?
" When I become self-conscious," said Theodore
Parker, " I feel that dependence [upon God],
and know of this communion, whereby I re-
ceive from Him." ^

It is idle to claim a universal God-conscious-
ness in so sweeping a way. History will not
support the claim. Observation must reject it.
A general sense of dependence on man's part
may be admitted. A sense of personal relation
with God cannot be admitted as an integral part
of self-consciousness, or as a necessary concomi-
tant of it. If this were so, there would be no

^ Views of Keligion, p. 243.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 189

atheists but the insane. If this sense of God's
presence came unbidden to every youthfiil mind,
free agency would be with some affected, and
with some at least prevented from development.
It is with Parker as with others: controversy
spoils calm reasoning and leads to too large a
claim fo^he intuitional proof of a mooted point.
The same claim is made by Mulford in his " Re-
public of God," though from another point of
view: " From the beginning, and with the growth
of the human consciousness, there is the con-
sciousness of the being of God and of a relation
to God,"^ to all which the answer is every
atheistic book.

But, when we return to the ground that man
is a recipient, a reagent and a free agent, we find
that he is adapted to, and dependent for his best
development upon, a rational recognition of the
Source of his life, the One omnipotent upon
whose inflowing life he and all conscientious
men react with prayerful co-operative energy,
the all-merciful One who preserves him in free-
dom from hour to hour, save as he voluntarily
makes himself slave to some citizen of the

1 Page 1.

190 THE HUMAN AND ITS

country far from tlie Father's house, tlie 30untry
of tlie harlot and the swine.

With his sense of dependence he freely ac-
cepts everything which leads him to acknowl-
edge God. As a child, if properly taught, he
already confesses Him. If untaught, he has
this fact of a Father's care still to learn. If
taught a polytheism as the source of his life,
he accepts it. He is left of God free to ac-
cept Him or to reject Him. He is not com-
pelled in this or in anything. He is led, in-
deed, as hy a good shepherd; but he may go
astray, if he will, saying, in his folly, "There
is no God." ^

As revealed to the man who has been well
taught, and who has practised what he has
learned, such a man as Dr. Mulford had in mind,
God is a Father. He is wholly personal. He is
the infinite prototype of man. In Him the will
is full of infinite love, embracing all, even the
unthankful and the evil. In Him the intellect is
full of infinite wisdom, caring for no one to the
exclusion of others. In Him the union of these
is perfect, and they go forth, the Love by the

* Psalm liii. 1.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I9I

Wisdom, the Wisdom from the Love, in infinite
activity. God is seen to be humanity in its
source. In the imperfect image of weak and
wayward man He is dimly seen as having in
perfect form every attribute of an infinite Hu-
manity.

It may^also be seen that this infinite One, con-
cerned with all that He has made or will make,
dwells above the laws of space and time which
He has introduced into the world as the neces-
sary accompaniment of material conditions ; and
that He is omnipresent, in all space but not of
space, and in all time but not of time, so that the
here and the there, the past and the future, are
ever in His presence. " Before Abraham was I
am"^ is Divine language as to time; "where
two or three are gathered in my name, there
am I in the midst of them" ^ is Divine language
as to space.

" Kot circumscribed by time, nor fixed to space,
Confined to altars nor to temples bound." '

It is by a self-revelation that God is made

1 John viii. 58. 2 Matthew xviii. 20.

' Hannah More's poem, " Belshazzar."

192 THE HUMAN AND ITS

known, whether directly to one entering into his
closet to pray in secret, or by the spoken word
of the prophet. To early innocent man the in-
ward conviction, to depraved man the spoken
word belongs. Had man been left without such
a revelation of God by Grod in some form, he
would not have known Him ; for the ignorance
of his infancy would, in this respect, have con-
tinued. And, having learned to know God, and
losing his light through neglect of it, man would
have remained unconscious of God if He had
not renewed the knowledge among men of His
nature.

But all revelation of God to man, through the
ear or in the heart, was incomplete till, in one
life, the infinite love and wisdom and gracious
activity of God were revealed in a day-by-day
manifestation. K the Christ failed to be tender
to all, if He failed to be so wise as to know the
future and to speak as never man spake, and if
He failed to be able to succor the fallen who ac-
cepted His aid. He failed to manifest God ; if He
were infinitely loving, even to enemies, so wise
that He was the very Word made flesh, so pow-
erful that no one's cry of anguish was in vain. He
was such that he that had seen Him had seen the

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. I93

Father,^ — that in Him dwelt the fulness of the
Godhead bodily.^

This is not the place to consider the work of
the Christ, but it is proper to point out that, in
the Christ, when He had freed Himself by puri-
fication through temptation from all the infirmity
of the fl^sh, and when He had thereby made
Himself supremely victorious over all forces of
evil, — that is, when He had finished the work
given Him to do, — the Divine Being not only
declared His existence, but vindicated His provi-
dence. Thenceforward all arguments, from the
possibility of the conception, from the cosmical
demand, from the wonders of design, from in-
stinctive want, and from human history, must
yeld in power to the demonstration of the Divine
by the Divine in the Christ. The argument
from the Christ, — the Emanuel, *' God-with-us,"
— is, and forever will be, unmatched. He was
actually Jesus. — that is, Jehovah the Saviour.
He was " the image of the invisible God." ^

There are two probable reasons why this argu-
ment has not been used: first, the histories of
the Christ had been called in question ; secondly,

1 Jolin xiv. 9. ^ Colossians ii. 9. ^ Colossians i. 15.

in 17

194 THE HUMAN AND ITS

He was not so much regarded in His constantly
declared representative, as in His supposed pro-
pitiatory, character. This was double surrender
to scepticism and to dogmatism. The past time
of darkness may have required it, but it is no
longer necessary to yield to such influences.
As more and more the life of the Christ is
studied in the land of His work and among all
nations, as more and more His mighty works are
spiritually fulfilled in mankind, the scepticism
which was mainly the revolt from gross, me-
diaeval traditionalism will be cured, and the
simple and sublime facts of the life of the Christ
will stand forth in their majesty, while their
infinite significance will afford a constantly in-
creasing proof of the truth of Gospel history.

Again, the prevalence of juster ideas of God,
less marred by gross notions of His temper and
judgments, will lead men to look upon the
Christ as one with God in mercy and in every-
thing,— " the brightness of His glory, the express
image of His person." ^

At the same time the personality of God, at
first so clearly seen in the terms Father, Son, and

1 Hebrews i. 3.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 195

Holy Spirit of the baptismal command that the
apostles obediently baptized their converts in the
name of the Lord Jesus/ but later so misunder-
stood that a return towards polytheism was made,
especially when Mary was recognized ^s a fourth
person to be worshipped, will be seen to be repre-
sented, iipt by three human images, but by a single
human nature with its trinal constitution of love
and wisdom and their union in outgoing useful-
ness, which three are sometimes spoken of as heart,
head, and hand.^ So God in His essential Divin-
ity presented Himself through the glorification
of the Christ in a Divine Humanity, forming it
as man's soul forms for itself the body full of life.
The Son was thus the embodiment of the
Father, and the saying was fulfilled : " Unto us
a child is born, unto us a Son is given : and the
government shall be upon His shoulder : and His
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the
mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince
of Peace," ^ In their perfect union, when the
Christ had " ascended on high," when captivity

1 Acts viii. 16.

2 Campanella's human trinity is velle, cognoscere, posse.
' Isaiah ix. 6.

196 THE HUMAN AND ITS

to sin had been made captive, and when death
had been swallowed up in victory,^ the Holy
Spirit was sent forth, as the energy of human life
proceeds out of the body from the soul. We read,
" The Holy Spirit was not yet [given] because
Jesus was not yet glorified," ^ and we also read that
He came to them in the evening of the resurrec-
tion day and said, " Eeceive ye the Holy Spirit." ^

Before the completion in time of this incarna-
tion there was the infinite wisdom, the Divine
form, of which infinite love was the substance,
and from these the spirit of God had created
and preserved the universe ; but, with the Incar-
nation, the Word, which was in the beginning,
was made flesh, that which was to the infinite
love as son to father dwelt among us, and, when
the redemptive work was done on the part of the
Lord, He breathed on His disciples the Holy
Spirit, and they went forth to make disciples of
all nations, with the baptism of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit received into their lives, making
them the sons of God.

So far as this is received there is a conscious-

1 Psalm Ixviii. 18 j Isaiali xxv. 8.

» John vii. 39. » John xx. 22.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 197

ness of God in the Christ watching over the life,
ministering to it, and doing mighty works in it
from day to day even to the changing of the
nature, so that the bhnd in spirit see and the
spiritually leprous are cleansed. With this con-
sciousness the self perceives the Divine Self
operating^ upon it, yet always leaving it free.
With this consciousness the acts and words
of the Christ become transparent with eternal
meaning, and Christianity is seen to be a walk
with God, who is but indistinctly revealed in
other religions. The self, retaining its full free-
dom, takes Him for its Lord, and follows in His
footsteps in order to be most serviceable to man-
kind. It finds its place in the kingdom of God ;
it is a member of the body of which the Christ
is the head ; it becomes part of an eternal strucr
ture of which the Christ is the chief corner-stone,
rejected, indeed, by the. builders in their blind
depravity, but made according to the Divine
plan the head-stone of the corner.*

Morell has truly said, after reviewing in his
*' History of Modern Philosophy" ^ the arguments

^ Psalm cxviii. 22.
2 New York, 1848, p. 740.
17*

198 THE HUMAN AND ITS

for the personality of God, " Were we required
to point out the region in which the whole argu-
ment is best concentrated, we should refer to
man as himself a living embodiment of all the
evidences. If you want argument from design,
then you see in the human frame the most
perfect of all known organizations. If you
want the argument from being, then man, in
his conscious dependence, has the clearest con-
viction of that independent and absolute One,
on which his own being reposes. If you want
the argument from reason and morals, then
the human mind is the only known reposi-
tory of both. Man is in fact a microcosm, —
a universe in himself; and, whatever proof
the whole universe affords, is involved in
principle in man himself. With the image of
God before us, who can doubt of the Divine
type ?"

This is what Jacobi had already said, " Nature
conceals God, man reveals God." ^

But man, so examined, may give only an im-
personal deity, only an Over-Soul with Emerson,
" a pure identity" with Hegel, Fichte's " opera-

^ Works, iii. p. 424.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 199

live moral order," Leibnitz's " original monad,"
Spencer's Unknowable, or some germ from
which man may have been developed. It is in
the Christ, with God as His inmost soul, minis-
tering to man — every motive full of love, every
word one of wisdom, every act a gift of grace
— that the argument becomes perfect. Lotze
has said, "Perfect personality is in God only,
to all finite minds is allotted but a pale copy
thereof," ^ and this is true, but to the Christ the
spirit was given without measure.

The Divine Self is in the Christ. The " I am
that I am,"^ sum qui sum, is not unrevealed,
cognizable only as hidden behind a veil, but the
" I am" is before us as " that I am," the esse in
existere, the Divine Substance in its Form ; and
so it is man's fault if he does not know it when
unperverted Christianity proclaims it and pre-
sents it in love and light an d life.

The Divine Self is in the Christ, and needs no
other manifestation than its own. Cousin was
right when he said, "Everything leads us to
God; there is no bad way of arriving thither;

1 Microcosm, Book IX., chap, iv., sect. 5.
' Exodus iii. 14.

200 THE HUMAN AND ITS

we may go in different ways." ^ But of all good
ways there is a best, and it is to look to Him
who truly said that He was the Way, the Truth,
and the Life.^

As the man walks with God in Christ he has
empiric understanding of His wise ways. He
finds that evil is to a degree permitted when
man is determined to go wrong, for otherwise he
could not be led in freedom, and the use of his
own reason would be infringed. He learns to
say, "Before I was afflicted I went astray."^
He also comes to perceive that the many disor-
ders of the world are directly or indirectly such
as man has produced by the abuse of the powers
committed to him, and yet that they are so
wisely watched over that not a sparrow falls
unnoticed. The man, with his feeble outlook,
does not gain the explanation of every calamity,
but sufficient experience convinces him that, if
he does not know now, he will know hereafter
when he will see eye to eye.

The objection to this view of the Divine is not
a practical one, a charge that it is likely to lead

^ Critique of Locke ad finem. ^ John xiv. 6.

3 Psalm cxix. 67.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 201

tlie receiver of it astray from morality ; but it is
a theoretical one, namely, that it is an anthro-
pomorphic view. Determinatio est negaiio^ (Defi-
nition is denial), said Spinoza. Matthew Arnold
declared^ it a delusion "that God is a person
who thinks and loves." God, he would have us
believe, is^not personal at all, but " a power that
lives and breathes and feels;" "a stream of ten-
dency;" "the eternal not ourselves that makes
for righteousness." Herbert Spencer selected
the term "ultimate cause," and Hamilton and
Mansel held that the Infinite, being uncon-
ditioned, is unknowable. Fichte's doctrine was
that every precise notion we form of God must
be an idol ; to have an idea of God is to limit
Him : " The act of Thy will I cannot compre-
hend, I only know that it is not like mine.
Thou art not as I now and always must conceive
of being." ^

Thus is the perfect revelation of God in the
Christ set aside, and nothing but a sense of lone-
liness is left to the mind, with a metaphysical
abstraction to be contemplated. But the weight

1 Ueberweg's History, vol. ii. p. 66.

2 God and tlie Bible. ^ Vocation of Man, Book III.

202 THE HUMAN AND ITS

of this objection is seen to be easily lifted. If
we cannot know God in His infinity, we can
know Him in His influence upon us. If we form
an idea of Him from the risen Lord, we neither
degrade the reason nor lower the standard of
righteousness. Dr. F. E. Abbot is not unwilling
to say, in his " Scientific Theism," "Because the
universe is an infinite organism, its life princi-
ple must be an infinite, omniscient Power, acting
everywhere and always by organic means for
organic ends, and subordinating every event to
its own infinite life, — ^in other words, it must be
infinite Will directed by infinite "Wisdom. . . .
It thus manifests infinite wisdom, power, and
goodness. It must be conceived as infinite
Person, absolute Spirit, creative Source and
eternal Home of the derivative finite person-
alities which depend upon it, but are no less real
than itself^ . . . On the other hand, Pantheism
is the denial of all real personality," ^

In his " Idea of God," John Fiske, who is
equally remote from mysticism, has said, "The
utter demolition of anthropomorphism would be
the demolition of theism." *

1 Page 209, ? Page 211. ' Page 117.

RELATION TO TBE DIVINE. 203

This is the same as to say that it is wholly
possible to avoid those limiting and lowering
notions of God, from which Christianity, in
common with all faiths, has suffered, and yet to
receive God as revealed in the Christ who, for a
time in the flesh like others as to mortality and
all that ^ace and time control, rose in the end
superior to every limitation, yet remained a
Person.

The spirit which prevents one from forming a
low conception of God is commendable. The
spirit which puts Him aside behind a veil of
metaphysics is wholly to be deprecated, in that
it takes away what life requires for its peace, — a
shepherd of the sheep.

To him who abhors gross anthropomorphism
much of public prayer must be extremely ob-
jectionable. The attention of God to the sick,
to the crops, to the country, is urgently asked for
as if He were, indeed, indifferent till aroused, or
unlikely to provide till informed. This is wholly
unbecoming to the present age, and ought to
cease. In the prayers uttered by our Lord a very
different spirit prevails, that of humble expres-
sion of trust, of need, of dependence, and of
danger. God is not asked to hearken, nor to

204 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

show special favor, but the soul opens itself to
the Divine influence in order that it may say,
" Thy will, not mine, be done," and may perse-
vere in its patience.

With all that is objectionably anthropomorphic,
because falsely conceived, removed from our idea
of God in the Christ, He remains the essence and
source of Personality, and reveals to man the
Father to his sonship, the giver to his recipiency,
the agent to his reagency, the master to his free-
dom, the rock to his dependence, the redeemer
to his sinMness, thereby restoring to man what
was lost by waywardness, and which only God
could restore. "As in Adam all die, so in the
Christ shall all be made alive." ^

* 1 Corinthians xv. 22.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 205

CHAPTEE X

MAN IMMORTAL.

To the question, Is man conscious of being
immortal ? the answer must be given at once in
the negative, on the ground that it is not given
to man to know by his own consciousness any-
thing except what is either present or past.
What goes on with him now he knows, and he
also knows so much of past experience as he at
any time recalls ; but, except for rare presenti-
ments, he has no knowledge of the future. His
predictions and aspirations are not perceptions,
but are inferences from present conditions. He
does not live in the future, but only in the
passing instant. " The present hour alone is
man's," as Samuel Johnson said.

But when man has gained some conception

of the Divine Lord, his view of life is greatly

enlarged. Already he may have perceived that

his was a recipient, though not a passive life;

but now he comes to know the motive of his

18

206 THE HUMAN AND ITS

Creator and Preserver. He finds Him a being
of surpassing love joined with wisdom, lie com-
prehends that the power of God is the exercise
of love, and he learns that the whole universe is
an expression of love and wisdom, except so far
as man may have marred it. But he also sees
that he is himself the head of the creation ; that
it has been made to serve him ; and that he is
superior to it in his capacity to understand it
and to make use of it. He distinguishes himself
from all else, and gives names to all.^ He finds
that a relation may exist and, for the promotion
of his usefulness, ought to exist between him
and his Lord; not the relation of the servant
who knoweth not what the master doeth,^ but
that of friend, as in the case of a father and son
who are at one in spirit. He comes at length to
perceive that this God of love could not have
dwelt alone, contemplating His own perfections,
but must in His very nature have sought for
those whom He might bless, thus loving not
Himself so much as others out of Himself. He
finds, as all students of mind have found, that
he cannot think of God except in His universe ;

^ Genesis ii. 20. » John xv. 15.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 207

that lie cannot form an idea of Him except in
the field of His work, surrounded by His chil-
dren, or preparing a place for them that they
might dwell with Him.

The arbitrary and perverted ideas of a God
before whom the world is doomed, who has re-
lented to elect a few, which few in consideration
of infinite pain endured by the Son of God
are forgiven, while all the rest are calmly con-
templated as irrevocably destined to perdition, —
all these ideas, it is needless to say, have no basis
in the religious experience, except so far as man
condemns himself for his own perverseness, and
they can have no place in a philosophical view
of God. To fallen man He so at times appeared,
and, since the prophet's messages, to be of any
avail, must be clothed in the language and ideas
of the people addressed. He suffered Himself so
to appear; but, as the sun emerging from its
cloud shows its full radiance, so in the Christ
the quality of God was plainly shown, and it
was a fearful perversity which led men back to
the old conceptions, afresh denying the self-
revelation of God in the Christ, or rather insist-
ing upon holding concerning it a purely Jewish
view, beholding the blood that was spilled, but

208 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

overlooking the spirit tliat led to tlie sacrifice.
These lurid views of God are disproved by all
genuine experience wherein men daily learn
that to obey is better than sacrifice, to hearken
than the fat of rams.^

It also comes to be empirically known that
God is a spirit; not a law merely, though His
name is law and His work is order ; not a force
merely, though there is no force but has its
origin in His infinite love; but a spirit, whose
mind was seen in the Christ and may be known
by every child who looks to Him for its daily
blessing.

It is also perceived that man is a spirit. This
is made plain from his capacity to grow in intel-
lectual power while his body is from any cause
declining, from his constant transcendence of
space and time as he reads of the past or accom-
panies in imagination his friend upon a journey,
and from his ability to come into relation with
the Divine Spirit.

He comes to perceive that his highest aim is
to co-operate in carrying out the sublime pur-
poses of his God, and that his highest attain-

1 1 Samuel xv. 22.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 209

ment will be to do so with increasing love and
wisdom and power for ever. The perception of
these aims, as representing the purpose of the
infinite One in creating and preserving man, is
the perception of the certainty of immortality.

*' 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us,
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter
And intimates eternity to man." ^

That this understanding was that of the best
life of ancient time there can be no doubt, in
view of the indisputable evidence of this fact in
the sacred books of Egypt and Asia, and in the
traditions of all nations. '^ There is, I know not
how," said Cicero, " in the minds of men a pres-
age, as it were, of a future existence;" and, in
the first book of his " Tusculan Disputations," he
treats of the " Contempt of Death" by showing
that all men look beyond death. "It was the
deep-seated belief of those of the Latin race
whom Ennius describes as of the greatest an-
tiquity, that there is consciousness in death ; ^ . . .
that it is not a catastrophe that takes away and

1 Addison's Cato.

2 Peabody's Translation, Boston, 1886, p. 20.
o 18*

210 THE HUMAN AND ITS

blots out everything, but is, so to speak, a migia-
tion and a change of life." ^

And Cicero made the right distinction between
the mortal and immortal parts when he said, " It
was not Hector that you dragged, Achilles, but
the body that had been Hector's." ^

In his "Phsedo," Plato treats of the soul's
immortality, giving his authorities from Homer
down. The Latin poet Ennius, a century before
the Christ, wrote as his own epitaph, —

" Let no one grace my funeral with tears ;
A living soul, I fly where floats my song."

It is, however, in the Christ that the percep-
tion of personal immortality is most distinct.
In perfect calmness, as He was about to lay
down His life. He spoke of the house of the
Father and the place to be prepared for the
disciples, using as always the language which
they would best understand, and promising them
that in due time they should be with Him. In
all that occurred with Him the perception of
immortality was conspicuous.

But the disciples had originally only the
Jewish tradition that the bodies, placed in

1 Page 21. 2 Page 77.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 211

graves, would at some time far distant be raised
again ; and, though they were better instructed
by word and example by the Christ, they lapsed
again, so that there was no difference between
the Jewish and the mediaeval Christian notions
of resurrection as to physical bodies to be raised
and skies to be rent. That more light is now
enjoyed by many is perhaps in part due to a
study of the doubtful phenomena of spiritualism
and other evidences of a spirit in man and its con-
tinued existence after death; but belief in im-
mortality is especially due to a fuller participa-
tion in the consciousness of relation with God in
the Christ and to a consequent understanding of
the words and example of the Christ. He re-
moves the fear of death, and it presents itself as
the entrance to a life more full than this because
less burdened with tribulation and less hampered
with doubt, — a life still in conjunction with the
Lord, but free from death and sorrow and pain.

" In the desert of the Holy Land I straj'^ed,
"Where Christ once lived, hut seems to live no more ;
In Lebanon my lonely home I made ;
I heard the wind among the cedars roar,
And saw far off the Dead Sea's solemn shore :
But 'tis a dreary wilderness, I said,
Since the prophetic spirit hence has fled.

212 THE HUMAN AND ITS

Then from the convent in the vale I heard,
Slow chanted forth, the everlasting Word,
Saying, ' I am He that liveth, and was dead,
And, lo, I am alive for evermore.'
Then forth upon my pilgrimage I fare,
Eesolved to find and praise Him everywhere."

For doubts about resurrection and immortality,
arising from a solely material view of man,
there is no remedy save in the training of the
mind by reason and experience. If Clifford
could write for his epitaph only, " I was not, I
lived, I loved, I am not," it is evident that, in
exclusive attention to science and in abhorrence
of unreasonable dogmas, he had closed his mind
to the Christ who could remedy Sadduceeism
without making a man a Pharisee. There are,
indeed, myriads of men who through ignorance
do not at present participate with the Christ in
the faith of immortality, but as it is certain that
all are created for heaven so surely will they
sooner or later be given in freedom an opportu-
nity to dwell with Him. " And other sheep I
have which are not of this fold; them also I
must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and
there shall be one fold and one shepherd." ^

1 John X. 16.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 213

The existence of the spiritual world is not a
direct revelation of consciousness, because that is
concerned with the work of this life ; but, so far
as the mind is enlightened with the presence
of the Christ, it draws the necessary and joyful
inference that the earthly body and the physical
world are^ not the whole of the creation but are
its basis, and that the spirit within man, not
physical and not mortal, already belongs to a
world of spiritual substance, not, of course, re-
vealed to its organs of flesh, but existing as cer-
tainly as the infinite spirit itself.

Reason may also conclude that the world
adapted to its immortal life is no place of idle-
ness nor of mere ecstasy, but is a world of noble
uses, of scenes superior to those of earth, and of
indefinite variety of forms of life. As man finds
that his conception of God must rise above the
earthly rule of space and time, he may infer that,
in the spiritual world, space and time will be
rather the apparent than the actual environment,
that souls in sympathy will need no arduous
journey to be in converse, and that time will
not be measured, as in this world, by lapse of
days, but rather by the movement of the mind.
With the sense of the presence of the Christ as

214 THE HUMAN AND ITS

the light of daily life may be conjoined the
thought that His presence will be the sun of
heaven, even as when He was transfigured.^

From its own experience in sin, the mind
infers that every one, however wayward, will be
cared for with mercy and kindness in the here-
after, though it is seen that the region in which
disorderly thought surrounds itself with its like
will be utterly different from that in which the
life of the inhabitants reflects itself in holy forms
and precious substances, and in which

** Trees of life ambrosial fruitage bear."

The effect of sleep upon the mind is nothing
save as, refreshed by gift of life during uncon-
sciousness, it gathers strength. The effect of the
brief sleep of death upon the mind will be
nothing unless it wakes ere long endowed with
peaceful and restful gifts. " In the third day He
will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight." ^
But it is clear that, in a spiritual world, the en-
ergies of the soul will find an ability to go forth,
which they could not have while using a physi-
cal body restrained by physical laws and more or
less diseased.

1 Matthew xvii. 2. ' Hosea vi. 2.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 215

The mind now can free itself from an organ-
ized body only in thought. It will always be so.
Thought alone, not life, works without hands.
A spiritual body will be necessary to the spirit's
usefulness. And research has already gone far
enough to show that man now has a spiritual
body encompassed by a physical, but to be freed
from it by death. How much of this was known
a century ago is plain from Jung-Stilling's
" Theory of Pneumatology." Mrs. Browning
put the same perception into poetic form, —

" With stammering lips and insufficient sound,
I strive and struggle to deliver right
The music of my nature, day and night,
With dream and thought and feeling interwoven,
And inly answering all the senses' round.
With octaves of a mystic depth and height,
Which step out grandly to the infinite,
From the dark edges of the sensual ground." ^

The immortality of man is the destiny which
infinite Love has assigned to him, and to which
infinite Wisdom trains him. To become aware
of this great truth, and to keep it ever in view,
is human wisdom. So to live that man conjoins
himself with God in the Christ is to protect his

1 Sonnet : " The Soul's Expression."

216 THE HUMAN AND ITS

recipiency from the intrusion of evil, to promote
his reactive work in casting out what is un-
worthy in motive and in obtaining what is
worthy because helpful to the fellow-man, to
magnify his free-agency above all subversion to
the slavery of sinful habit, and to open before
him a vista of increasing usefulness.

Man can imagine nothing better, he can ask
for nothing more, than that he should be thus
preserved and promoted in strength and right-
eous service, world without end.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 217

CHAPTER XL

MAN IN CHRISTIANITY.

If tlie previous portions of this essay seem to
contain rational views, their reasonableness may
be deemed their sufficient support. If they seem
to reach the ultimate ground of human knowl-
edge, they are philosophically approved. The
course of the treatment, however, led us up to
God, not as an idea only, but as Himself a self,
a personality of infinite and self-subsisting na-
ture, self-revealed in part in the working of the
world, but especially and perfectly in the qualities
of the Christ. It would therefore seem fitting
to compare these views with the words of the
Christ in order that it may be seen whether they
obtain favorable judgment as being of the Truth
which was in Him.

The same order of thought may be followed,
and this brings first to mind —

1. THE SELF OF MAN.

Of course it will be granted that, if the self
of man be but a delusion, there is no rationality

K 19

218 THE HUMAN AND ITS

in the words of appeal or warniDg or instruction
wMch may have been uttered by the Christ or
by any other. In that case man does not control
his acts, and is not responsible for them. In
that case the gospel, or any uplifting message, is
a mockery and a part of the general deceit to
which man is subject. The very attitude of the
Christ is, therefore, an evidence of His finding
a self in man, and such a self, it may in the end
appear, as has been herein described.

It would be easy to show from many of His
sayings that the Christ found in Himself no
mere reflection of Divinity, but an actual per-
sonality, whose name was Jesus, whose inheri-
tance was weighted with that which made Him
open to constant temptation, and whose purifica-
tion from all frailty was the work of overcoming
the world's evil, and so delivering man ; but this
is not the point which needs here to be enlarged
upon : only let it be understood that the words
of the Christ were not words of which He was
merely a messenger, but were words from His
own experience. He knew what was in man.*
He spoke that which He knew, and He testified

1 John ii. 25.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 219

that which He had seen.^ The gospel is the ex-
perience of the Christ which, for their sakes,
He shared with men. For their sakes He sanc-
tified Himself that they might be sanctified
through the truth.^ To as many as receive Him
is given power to become the sons of God, so
that He-may speak to each one of " my God and
your God,"^ and so that they may say one to
another, "Beloved, now are we the sons of
God."*

It is, however, to His words as to others,
rather than as to Himself, that attention is now
called.

A striking passage is found in His address to
some Jews who were examining His claim to be
from God. They, boasting of their sure inheri-
tance of the promise made to Abraham, were
warned by Him that they were of another father,
another nature, and that this devil, or spirit of
evil, was deceiving them : " There is no truth in
him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of
his own ; for he is a liar and the father thereof."*
This is the rendering of both versions. The

1 John iii. 11. * John xvii. 19. ^ John xx. 17.

* 1 John iii. 2. * John viii. 44.

220 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

new has, however, as an alternative the interest-
ing change, — " When one speaketh a lie,"
making the declaration universal, and to the
effect that a lie, a misuse of intellect and voice
to declare the opposite of the fact in any case, is
an act of evil self-assertion. "He speaketh of
his own," kx. Twv idtcDu, is as complete a declaration
of the selfhood as could he indirectly made. It
recognizes the self of man, and points out its
power. "What man has as his own to use or
to ahuse is that which some call the ego and
others the personality, and which is the jproprium,
the peculiar possession, intended to he used by
each in filling his particular place in the great
whole of humanity, but intended also to consti-
tute him an individual and truly a man. The
lie is not spoken from God by man, and it is not
the truth of God; it is spoken by man of or
from what is his own, and it is the truth of a
wayward, self-directed man who has rejected the
father who gave the portion of goods and has
gone away to a far country to waste his sub-
stance and to join himself to one of that country
in place of his father. The lie is riotous living.
The same marked declaration of the selfhood
is found in a passage addressed to the disciples

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 221

to forewarn them of difficulties to be met with
in their work : " If ye were of the world, the
world would love its own."^ Here the world
means, of course, the company of the worldly.
If the disciples could fall in with the way of the
majority, all would be made pleasant; but if, as
was necessary, they must oppose the world, then
danger would arise from the general hatred of
them. K they were of the world, of the world's
party and opinion, they would be safe, for the
world would love its own, rd Uwv. It had self-
love and no other. For that which did not
serve its self-love it had hatred. Here the men,
not loving to serve, but loving each to rule from
self-love, were described as having a selfhood
perverted and hostile to its true use. K the
selfhood of men had not been perverted, there
would have been no one persecuted for right-
eousness' sake.

When speaking to the disciples about faithful-
ness, the Christ said, " If ye have not been faith-
ful in that which is another's, who will give you
that which is your own ?" ^ This is the same as
to say that, if, as stewards of Divine gifts, men

1 John XV. 19. 2 Luke xvi. 12.

19*

222 THE HUMAN AND ITS

are unfaithful, tliej do not acquire thereby true
riches, but are wanting in noble qualities. They
reject what is given, and then, as to the treasures
of heaven, have not any that are their own.
Their own possessions are base and, in the sight
of heaven, valueless. This passage does not
take away selfhood, as might appear to be the
case at first sight, but points out the emptiness
of the selfhood of the evil as to all that is of
true worth.

An important saying is that which is found in
two gospels and which was the subject of an
extended explanation : '' Not that which entereth
into the mouth defileth the man ; but that which
proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the
man." ^ In another place the saying is recorded
thus : " There is nothing from without the man,
that going into him can defile him; but the
things which proceed out of the man are those
that defile the man."^ The Pharisees had
showed their displeasure at a doctrine which
neglected their ceremonial ablutions, and the
disciples, who were not clear as to their Master's
teaching, appealed to Him for an explanation.

1 Matthew xv. 11. ^ Mark vii. 15.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 223

It was at once given by making use of food as
an example. If a substance which the body-
could not assimilate was taken into the system,
it was finally expelled ; and so a man might re-
ject a harmful influence and go undefiled. But,
if he received it with appetite and appropriated
it, then^ became a part of himself, of his self-
hood, and it defiled him from within. This was
the only defilement to be feared.

With this belongs the saying, " The good
man out of the good treasure of his heart
bringeth forth that which is good ; and the evil
man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth
forth that which is evil : for out of the abun-
dance of the heart his mouth speaketh." ^ This
clearly points out that, whether it be good or
evil, and, of course, equally so if it be of a
mixed quality, the selfhood is the heart of the
man, and its acts are truly his acts.

A similar recognition of the self in man is
found in the rebuke which was given to one of
the disciples who, yielding to fear and to a short-
sighted afiection for his master's comfort, had
sought to dissuade Him from going to Jerusalem

* Luke vi. 45.

224 THE HUMAN AND ITS

and death : " Thou mindest not the things of
God, but the things of men." ^ Here the things
of men represent those self-seeking and unlov-
ing qualities which had unfortunately become
the characteristics of the self in man.

The same unholy condition is fully illustrated
in the parable of the wicked husbandmen who
refused to recognize the rights of the owner of
the vineyard, seeking to render themselves free
from his authority, and even killing his son with
the hope to "take his inheritance," "that the
inheritance may be ours," as they said.^ This
precisely sets forth the waywardness which leads
man to refiise to exercise himself for the sake
of his God, — that is, of others, for God has no
selfish aim, — and to prefer to exercise himself in
fancied contempt of God and for his own sake.
The good husbandman would have enjoyed his
gifts as constituting a trust, but the evil husband-
man would brook no supervision but wished to
be as God, knowing no superior authority.

The same thought as to perversion of the self
is found in the words spoken to the disciples :

1 Mattliew xvi. 23 ; Mark viii. 33.

2 Mattliew xxi. 38 ; Mark xii. 7 ; Luke xx. 14.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 225

" What is a man profited, if he gain the whole
world, and lose or forfeit his own self?" ^ This
question is also found in the form, " What is a
man profited, if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own life?"^ For "life" here the
old version read " soul." But the meaning is
conveyed^^by the words " his own self." If he
pays away the purity of his nature for worldly
benefits, making himself a slave to greed, he has
forfeited his own self, he has profaned the dwell-
ing-place of God even to the ground.

It was this evil independence — which is really
slavery — which was meant when the Christ said
that, if one came " in his own name," he would
be received f for it was plain that His enemies
had a high appreciation of the self-assertive life
and no respect whatever for the life of steward-
ship.

The possibility of man's self-assertion and
consequent abuse of his gifts is implied in the
words uttered by the father to his son in the
parable of the prodigal : " All that I have is
thine."* The elder son, to whom this was said.

1 Luke ix. 25 ; Matthew xvi. 26. ^ jyf ^rk viii. 36.

» John V. 43. * Luke xv. 31.

P

226 THE HUMAN AND ITS

might also go away, it was granted, with the
goods of the father, and waste them.

These explicit teachings show how fully the
self, the individuality, the proprium, was recog-
nized out of His own experience and through
His unmatched enlightenment, by the Christ of
God.

2. RECIPIENCY AND REACTIVITY

are no less fully recognized. Indeed, they are
implied in the passages already quoted, for it
everywhere appears that ^true or false steward-
ship, the righteous use or the unrighteous abuse
of gifts, is human life as seen by the Christ.
Some other sayings will be quoted, however,
which especially indicate man's recipiency.

The question, " Shall He not clothe you ?" *
implies man's recipient relation to God. "It
shall be given you in that hour what ye shall
speak" ^ teaches the same lesson. The parable
of the sower ^ presents men receiving with much
variety of capacity, as the field receives its seed
with varying results which it cannot control, as
man can.

1 Matthew vi. 30. « Matthew x. 19.

' Matthew xiii., Mark iv., Luke viii.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 227

The whole of what is said about prayer ex-
presses the truth that man receives what he has ;
that he is able to enlarge his capacity by conse-
cration of his powers, and that his becoming
attitude towards God is that of request and affec-
tionate trust. " Give us this day our daily
bread" ^ is the model supplication. " Give, and
it shall be given unto you" ^ is the law of life.
" Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye
shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you : for every one that asketh, receiveth ; and
he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that
knocketh, it shall be opened. If ye, being evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more shall your Father which is
in heaven give good things to them that ask
Him ?" ^ And the value of prayer has its fullest
statement in the words : " All things whatsoever
ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall re-
ceive,"* which words are interpreted by the
other saying : " If ye abide in me, and my words
abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall
be done unto you." *

1 Matthew vi. 5. 2 L^ke vi. 38. ' Matthew vii. 7, 8, 11.
* Matthew xxi. 22. * John xv. 7.

228 THE HUMAN AND ITS

A remarkable evidence of the recognition of
human recipiency by the Christ is found in the
frequent use of the proverbial phrase, " He that
hath ears to hear, let him hear," ^ or, as it is said
in one place, "He that is able to receive it, let
him receive it;"^ plainly indicating that every
man has not only his inherited measure given
him in his creation, but that he makes that
measure larger or smaller by his own use of it
in life.

So He spoke of receiving the kingdom of God,
saying, that unless one received it as a little
child, he could not enter therein;^ and to a
man making surrender of his selfish interests
for the sake of God's service. He promised that
he should " receive manifold more in this time,
and in the world to come eternal life." *

When our Lord spoke of good deeds as
"wrought in God,"^ He did not ignore man's
reactive free-agency, but He showed that the
good deed is the unperverted exercise of the
gifts of God.

It was precisely this relation fally recognized

* Matthew xi. 15. 2]y[attliew xix. 12.

» Luke xviii. 17. * Ibid. 30. ^ john iii. 21.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 229

which led the Christ to say, " I can of mine own
self do nothing. I seek not mine own will, but
the will of Him that sent me;"^ for He felt
within Himself a power bestowed for good, and
He avoided all thought of perverting it by
denying its source.

" I give unto them eternal life," ^ He said of
those who followed Him, meaning that as "in
Him was life," so by Him it was communicated
in rich measure to those who would prepare
themselves to receive it. " I am come that they
may have life," He said, " and may have it
abundantly."^ And this interprets the words
which ignorance, having no living experience of
their truth, is apt to regard as mysterious:
" Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.
He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood
hath eternal life. He that eateth Me he also
shall live because of Me." *

Similarly, in the parable of the talents, it was
said that the gift was " to each according to his
several ability;"® and it is made plain in this

1 Jolin V. 30. 2 joiin X. 28. ^ John x. 10.

* John vi. 63, 54, 57, ^ Matthew xxv. 15.

20

230 THE HUMAN AND ITS

and in the parable of tlie pounds that no more
was expected of any one than his nature and
acquired abilities would warrant.

This law is illustrated by the saying in respect
to the Spirit of Truth: "Whom the world
cannot receive, for it beholdeth Him not, neither
knoweth Him ; ye know Him, for He abideth
with you and shall be in you." ^

Thus does the fact of man's self as reactive
and recipient stand forth everywhere in the
teachings of the Christ. It is not necessary to
follow any of these points into the apostolic
teaching, but this fact is also conspicuous there,
for example, in Paul's saying, " The natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God; for they are foolishness unto him."^

Passing to the subject of man's

3. FREE-AGENCY,

we note, as before, that this is implied in all that
has been already quoted. The recipiency by the
Christ of what was of God, and by man of what
was of God in the Christ, is never spoken of as
a passive, much less as a compelled, agency.

* John xiv. 17. ^ 1 Corinthians ii. 14.

RELATION TO TEE DIVINE. 231

The servant takes the talent to be in his own
keeping, and to do with it what he will, — this is
always the view presented. In addition, how-
ever, for the sake of greater definiteness, some
passages may be cited.

Every command to sinful men to "repent"
recognized their self-control, their ability to
choose or to alter their course. Such commands
as that they were to love their enemies, to do
good to them who hated them, to resist not evil,
to forgive seventy times seven times, to give no
anxious thought to the morrow, to deny self, —
all these and many others proposed a new way
of life, and one of great difficulty, which they
could pursue only by taking command of them-
selves and insisting within themselves upon
acting freely in spite of strong pressure of scorn
without and of self-love within. They were thus
not only regarded as free, but they were urged
to demand a larger liberty, a kingship over
themselves.

When the Pharisees were warned that for
every idle word they must give account,^ the
same meaning is conveyed. The man who sells

1 Matthew xii. 36.

232 THE HUMAN AND ITS

all tliat he has and buys the precious field ^ ex-
hibits his liberty. So is it with the man who
might have had compassion on his fellow-ser-
vant, but did not pity him.^ So is it with the
son who said, "I go and went not;" and with
him who said, " I go not, but afterwards he re-
pented himself and went."^ So was it with
those who received the invitation to the feast,
but " made light of it," and " would not come,"
and " went their ways." * So was it with those
whom the Lord would have gathered, but to
whom He must say in truth, "And ye would
not."«

It is noticeable throughout that the freedom
of man is as distinctly recognized in his relation
to God as in his relation with men. The Christ
said to the Pharisees, "Ye tithe mint and rue
and every herb, and pass over judgment, and
the love of God; but these ought ye to have
done, and not to leave the other undone." ^ He
predicted that they were so hardened that they
would refuse to accept any evidence of their
own depravity: "If they hear not Moses and

1 Matt. xiii. 44. 2 j^^tt. xviii. 33. » Matt. xxi. 29

* Matt. xxii. 3, 5. ^ Matt, xxiii. 37. « Luke xi. 42.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 233

the prophets, neither will they he persuaded, if
one rise from the dead." ^ In a similar strain
He spoke of those who " loved darkness rather
than light; for their works were evil."^

The custom of the Christ to ask one what he
would have, hefore exercising His beneficent
power upon him, should not be overlooked, for
it was a needless question in itself to address to
a blind or sick man ; but it was always asked, or
the equivalent of its answer was always de-
manded,— " "What wilt thou that I should do
unto thee ?" " Wilt thou be made whole ?"
Had a negative answer been given, He must
have passed on, as He passed neglected among
Pharisees or scribes.

An important passage is that which was spoken
when, at the last. He confided many thoughts to
the disciples, saying, " l^o longer do I call you
servants ; for the servant knoweth not what his
lord doeth; but I have called you friends;"^
meaning that they were to rise above the inferior
liberty of obeying or disobeying to that of par
ticipation in the plan of their master.

Another word of the Christ, not in the gospels,

* Luke xvi. 31. ^ John iii. 19. ^ John xv. 15.

20*

234 THE HUMAN AND ITS

must be cited because it so perfectly expresses
the free agency of man: "Behold, I stand at
the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice
and open the door, I will come in to him, and
will sup with him, and he with Me."^
As to the

4. DIVISION OF man's POWEKS,

it may be enough to note that, in all the teach-
ings which have been quoted, the will of man
with its loves is constantly dwelt upon and the
intellect of man is constantly instructed; that,
in fact, the appeal is always to man's love
through his intellect; but that the feelings are
in no case recognized as of equal importance.
It is very true that joy and sorrow are spoken
of, and that, in His last words, the Christ speaks
of His joy to be fulfilled in the disciples ; ^ but
it is easily seen that it is the peace from work
well performed that was enjoyed in that hour of
danger, the joy of the will which had sought
and did seek the lost sheep, and of the un-
derstanding which discerned the way to final
triumph.

The law that

^ Eevelation iii. 20.

2 As in John xv. 11 ; xvi. 20-24; xvii. 13.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 235

5. USE IS THE DESIGN

of the self, which destiny it accepts or rejects, is
everywhere set forth. The whole example of
the Christ indicated this sole aim. It is found
in all His words. He said, " Whosoever would
become great among you shall be your minister ;
and whosoever would be first among you shall
be your servant ; even as the Son of Man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and
to give His life a ransom for many." ^ And
again He said, " He that is greatest among you
shall be your servant." ^

He taught them that the talents must be
traded with. He showed them that the Sabbath
was not made for idleness when good deeds
could be done. He likened Himself to a shep-
herd whose whole thought is for his sheep.
" My Father worketh even until now," ^ He said
to the indolent class of His day, "and I work."
" I must work the works of Him that sent me,
while it is day,"* He said.

A striking saying was that in which He drew
the picture of the servant coming in from the

1 Matthew XX. 26-28 ; Mark x. 43-45. ^ ^att. xxiii. 11.

' John V. 17. * John ix. 3.

236 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

field, and not demanding to be served, but wait-
ing upon his master : " Even so ye also, when ye
have done all the things which are commanded
you, say, "We are unprofitable servants, we
have done that which it was our duty to do." ^
This saying is at one with the words, " Freely ye
received, freely give."^

Such was always His principle of conduct:
" Be ye perfect," ^ was His injunction. " If thou
wouldest be perfect,"* was His address to the
young man who was boasting his righteousness,
as He showed him how much remained to be
done. His golden rule, as it is justly called, is
an ethical standard, which is not extravagant,
calling upon men to forget themselves, but
which is perfect wisdom in its requirement that
they should remember others with equal care.
And this is the law and the prophets also.*

The Christ was equally clear in what He
said of

6. EVIL IN MAN.

He plainly taught its source when, standing in
the court of the temple, He charged the priests

1 Luke xvii. 10. ' Matthew x. 8. ' Matthew v. 48.

* Matthew xix. 21. ^ Matthew vii. 12.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 237

with the crime of polluting it : " Ye have made
it a den of robbers." ^ Here was no room for
doubt as to the cause of the evil which had made
its way into the high places of Judaism. And
from this one may conclude as to all evil. But
it is even more plainly declared in the long
series of woes which He denounced to the hypo-
crites, who would not go into the kingdom of
God and would not let others go in, who made
proselytes and rendered them children of hell,
who quibbled about oaths and were liars, who
strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel,
who cleansed the outside of the cup but filled it
full of extortion and excess, who whitened them-
selves outwardly like sepulchres but were black
and foul with iniquity within, who had slain
the prophets and who must bear the burden of
their deeds.^

There is no evil in the talent, and there is
none given to him who receives it; he himself
creates the evil by misusing the talent, and is
therefore judged out of his own mouth.*

The wretched fate of the betrayer was that of

1 Matthew xxi. 13 ; Mark xi. 17 ; Luke xix. 46.
' Matthew xxiii. ^ Luke xix. 22.

238 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

liis own devising. He was caught in the net
which he had made. He betrayed himself to
his own destruction. " See thou to that." ^

When our Lord said that from him who had
not should be taken even that which he seemed
to have,^ He meant that, sooner or later, the
wilful abuse of possession would bring posses-
sion to an end.

And this leads to the thought of the control
of evil, which control, by successful resistance to
its continued assaults, He gained, and which He
would have others gain by resisting evil for
themselves with His aid. l^ot only the embodi-
ments of evil in priest and scribe opposed Him,
but even more the people of the other world
who were in complete possession of some in this
life. It is no fancy that He contended with evil
spirits, and no delusion of an ignorant time.
Spiritism has confirmed the record. Possession
is still known, under the form of " control." ^
But the mischievous ones who now torment
a mediumistic victim are nothing to those
" legions" * of the day of Herod and Caiaphas.

* Luke xxvii. 4. 2 Luke viii. 18.

» New Psychology, vol. i. pp. 228, 394. * Luke viii. 30.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 239

Before the attack of such as He contended with,
the Christ bowed in the garden of Gethsemane,
and His sweat of blood made record of His
agony.

It was a contest of Person against persons, of
one self against many ; yet the many yielded once
and again till every plant which the heavenly
Father had not planted was rooted up, as was
predicted.^ Yet this kind of enemy was not
conquered without " prayer and fasting."^ The
life of the Christ was a contest. The contest
was between Him and all the human foes of
God. In His victory He led captivity captive,
and the prince of this world was cast out.
Henceforward evil was limited by the power of
the Christ as it had not been limited before, and
it still is and forever will be limited by Him;
not prevented from arising in any perverse will,
but issuing only as permitted for possible good.

7. MAN THE IMAGE OF GOD

was an essential principle of Judaism and was
taken for granted in all the teachings of the
Christ, and distinctly uttered in the oft-repeated
phrase, "Your Father," in the instruction to

1 Matthew xv. 13. 2 j^^tt. xvii. 21.

240 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

open prayers with " Our Father," and in the
words to Mary Magdalene, " My Father and
your Father." "Ye therefore shall be perfect
as your heavenly Father is perfect" ^ admits of
no other interpretation. " Blessed are the peace-
makers, for they shall be called sons of God" ^
marks the use of the term to designate those
who were sons of God not merely in view of
their origin, but in conscious relation of filial
afiection. " The children of God that are scat-
tered abroad" ^ was the designation of the people
needing help.

In a marked manner the idea of man made in
God's image appears in all that was said as to a
new birth, a regeneration, by which a new nature
took and takes the place of the old, and a puri-
fied selfhood is obtained. "But as many as
received Him, to them gave He the right to
become children of God ; which were born not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God." *

It would not be out of place here to remark
that, though

1 Matthew v. 48. » Matthew v. 9.

» John xi. 62. * John i. 13.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 241

8. MAN AS MICROCOSM

is nowhere distinctly presented, for the words of
the Christ were always addressed to the practical
aspects of life, yet that His teaching is full of
indirect evidence of this great fact. To form some
idea of what is meant one need only recall the
constant use of all nature as representative of
man and the absolutely perfect recognition that
every visible object and act was significant of
human life in some way. A mere enumeration
of some of the objects employed will be suffi-
cient. Without pausing to give references, we
note : childhood, youth, old age, king, prince,
noble, beggar, poor, physician, priest, shepherd,
bridegroom, bride, fisherman, judge, virgin, ser-
vant, thief, heir, hypocrite, adversary, traveller,
childbirth ; sowing, reaping, watching, sleeping,
marriage, hireling, health, sickness, war, famine,
dancing, weeping, purging, buying, selling, pay-
ing; eyes, ears, hair, hand, head, foot, mouth,
cheek, face, lip, voice, belly, heart, blood,
shoulder, loins, finger, hunger, thirst, dinner,
supper ; cattle, ass, sheep, lamb, goat, dog, wolf,
calf, fox, fish, worm, hen, dove, eagle, sparrow,
raven, serpent; tree, fruit, root, harvest, field,
ground, vine, grass, thorns, reed, vineyard, mar-

L g 21

242 '^SE HUMAN AND ITS

ket-place, grapes, seed, lily, water, salt, bread,
leaven, wine, oil, wheat, tares, ^g-, sand, earth,
hill, earthquake, sepulchre, light, darkness, rock,
wind, sky, sun, moon, star, rain, cloud, east,
west ; house, chamber, closet, gate, mill, throne,
crown, seat, beam, mote, altar, door, prison,
tower, barn, fold, cross ; lamp, cup, candle,
bushel, sickle, needle, plough, yoke, bag, bottle,
pitcher, bed, purse, girdle, linen, napkin, coat,
cloak, hem, pipe, net; treasure, tribute, wages,
talent, pound, pearls, gold, silver, bank, debt,
account, alms, burden, snare, sword, furnace,
stumbling-block, lightning, fire.

This enumeration, without further and more
full examples of the Christ's usage of symbols,
may indicate that, to Him, the environment was
transparent with a meaning, a correspondence
with humanity, which all poets have seen to
some degree, or there had been no poetry, but
which has its perfect exemplification in the
sayings of the Light of the World.

9. THE DIVINE

was fully revealed, as has been remarked, in the
Christ. It was also described in His words. It
was set forth as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 243

which terms have been treated of as exemplified
in man's will, intellect, and outgoing activity of
life. When He commanded His disciples to
baptize in this threefold name, they understood
Him, and rightly, that they were to think of all
three as in Him ; and they baptized " in the
name of the Lord Jesus." God is the father of
man, God is a spirit, there is none good but One,
— these are the expressions which lead the
thought to turn to God, not as a " stream of
tendency," not merely as the Unknowable, but as
Person. His love is declared in such teachings
as, — " It is not the will of your Father who is in
heaven that one of these little ones should
perish." * His infinite intelligence, knowing no
bound in time or space, is evident in the predic-
tions of which Palestine is to-day the unmis-
takable fulfilment. His power, the power of
wisdom full of love, is manifest in all the works
of the Christ, and in the endurance and growth
of Christianity.

When the Divine would reveal itself for the
succor of man, near destruction of all that was
above the brute in him, and when, with infinite

^ Matthew xviii. 14.

244 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

patience and skill, the Divine would apply itself
to the task of subduing without destroying evil
men and evil spirits, it is most important to
notice that God made His

10. ADVENT BY MAN ;

that He was incarnated in human nature as His
appropriate manifestation. The Christ came in
the name of Jehovah ; He declared the God
whose voice had not been heard, whose shape
had not been seen; in Him God was glorified
and did glorify Himself; ^ He was before Abra-
ham,^ and, having conquered, ascended up where
He was before;^ he that hated Him hated the
Father also ; ^ he that had seen him had seen the
Father ; ® he that received Him received Him
that sent Him ; ® therefore, when triumphant, He
had all power in heaven and on earth.^ He was
the bread of God that had come down from
heaven to give life unto the world. ^ The help-
less infant of Bethlehem was only in a faint
degree, only potentially, God manifest ; the per-
fected Christ, forgiving all, knowing all, working

1 John xiii. 31, 32. ^ Jq^^^ y^i 53. 8 John vi. 62.
* John XV. 23. » John xiv. 9. « Matt. x. 40.

' Matt, xxviii. 18. ® John vi. 41.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 245

wonders of Divine energy, was one with the
Father, the Christ of God.

These expressions from the words of the
Christ may suffice to bring the fact to plain view
that God is infinitely Human, not such a being
as the Jews worshipped in the desert, deeming
Him kind to their nation only, nor such as be-
nighted Christians have worshipped, deeming
Him angry and appeasable with their tortures
or their gifts, but so perfectly Human that He is
the One, the " I am that I am," the Alpha and
the Omega of being.

11. THE IMMORTALITY OF MAN

is as clearly indicated as possible in the sayings
of the Christ, but it is an immortality of Divine
gift. Men had sunk so low that the full faith in
future life characteristic of more ancient time
was lost to view, and only later generations have
brought it to light as they learned to decipher
hieroglyphic or cuneiform records. The Sad-
ducees doubted resurrection. The Pharisees
regarded it as the exclusive privilege of their
sect of that nation, and they held it to be a re-
vival of life after long delay and a restoration of

the physical body. They buried their dead near

21*

246 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

to Jerusalem in order not to be overlooked at
the last day, or put a handful of Jerusalem dirt
into the grave, if remote, to effect its upheaval.

To all this came the words of the Christ like
the dawn to the night. His first words were a
proclamation of immortality : " Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven ; blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God; rejoice and be exceeding glad,
for great is your reward in heaven." ^ He spoke
of laying up treasures in heaven.^ He said that
he who endured to the end would be saved.^
He told much of the angels in heaven to whom
the risen righteous would be equal.* He spoke
of eternal and everlasting life. He declared the
Father's house to be of many mansions.^

More than this, He convinced the Sadducees by
bidding them know that all the dead were living
with God, who was not a God of dead men, but
of living.^ He taught Martha of Bethany that
He was Himself resurrection and life.^ To the
dying thief He promised paradise that day.^

1 Matt. V. 3, 8, 12. ^ ;j£att. vi. 20. ^ ^att. x. 22.

* Luke XX. 36. ^ John xiv. 2. « Matt. xxii. 32.

' John xi. 25. * Luke xxiii. 43.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 247

The eternal life of righteous co-operation with
God was much treated of: " There is no man
that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or
mother, or father, or children, or lands, for my
sake and for the gospel's sake, but he shall re-
ceive a hundredfold now in this time, houses,
and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and chil-
dren, and lands, with persecutions; and in the
world to come, eternal life." ^ The wicked were
not to be annihilated, but their future He de-
scribed in terms of sorrow.

His own resurrection lifted the disciples out
of despair, and made them meet death calmly,
saying, " To live is Christ, to die is gain." ^
Peter spoke of the "inheritance incorruptible,
and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, re-
served in heaven."^ John wrote of 'Hhe
promise which He hath promised us, even life
eternal." *

In His closing words our Lord manifested
His own approaching victory over evil and the
grave, and assured His disciples of every age
that the other world was a real world, and that

1 Mark x. 29, 30. ^ PMlippians i. 21.

» 1 Peter i. 4. * 1 John ii. 25.

248 THE HUMAN AND ITS

He would prepare a place for them, that they
might be with Him in the Father's house, and
go no more out.^

It is important to note that the Christian
system recognizes three grand divisions of life,
namely,

12. GOD, SPIRIT, MATTER,

and that one of these is no more distinctly pre-
sented than the other. The prayer in Gethsem-
ane reveals Grod in Divine love prompting the
utmost patience in suffering for the sake of re-
deeming man, the spirit or burdened mind of
the Christ " willing" to do all the Divine pur-
pose, and the flesh which was " weak" and in
agony. More distinctly perhaps this threefold
division of all being is seen in several parables,
where the lord of the vineyard, the householder,
or the father, represents the Divine, the steward
or laborers or husbandmen or servants represent
the spiritual, and the pounds or talents or goods
represent the material. It will be found upon
reflection that God, spirit, and matter are con-
stantly in view in the gospels, and that they are
spoken of in relation.

^ John xiv. 3 ; Kevelation iii. 12.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 249

13. THE VITAL INFLUENCE

is the influence of God upon spirit and through
spirit in the inhabitants of heaven and in the
mind of man upon matter. It is a movement
of life and a circulation of force downward in
the scale of being, and it is responded to by the
reactivity of the recipient. When the body,
which is matter, loses its connection with the
spirit or mind or essential man, it dies and re-
turns to its dust. When the spirit in its un-
faithfiilness closes itself to the life from above,
its power for good lessens. In so far as it opens
itself to that influence by prayerful activity, it
lives with eternal vigor. It is an influence which
man controls so far as the use to which he devotes
it is concerned ; that he cannot utterly cut off his
connection with the source of life is the Christian
teaching.

14. MIEACLES,

which have been a stumbling-block to those who
rightly refuse to regard them as arbitrary in-
fractions of law. Divine or natural, are intelligi-
ble enough in view of this vital connection, or
constant transmission of life, or perpetual crea-
tion. A miracle wrought by human power is im-
possible, and so is one wrought by material force ;

250 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

but a coming forth of the Divine life manifesting
its quality is not a miracle, that is, a mere wonder,
but a sign, as the Greek (rr^fxeiov means, and as
the revisers have rendered it. A marked sign
of Divine power, not annulling law, but quicken-
ing it, bringing for the time heavenly phenomena
to view upon earth, is the normal accompaniment
of the Christ, but at the same time let it be
noticed that He did not do such works for the
unbelieving or those who checked the inflowing
energy.

Thus His presence brought forth from the evil
spirits their ready submission, and even entreaty
that He would sufter them to go into swine
rather than compel them to retire to their own
place ; but nothing of the sort would have oc-
curred if He had not resisted His own tempters,
thereby achieving by orderly methods the subju-
gation of the evil. The miracle is, therefore, in
the faithfulness of the Christ ; with this proved,
the casting out of the devils, however impossible
to others in their doubts, was certain to follow
His command.

In the case of disease, the hand upon the head
or eyes put into effect the thought, " I will, be
thou clean ;" and leprosy was cleansed, and

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 251

blind eyes opened, and palsied arms strength-
ened. But He gave charge that the patient
should sin no more lest a worse thing should
come to him,^ because all the time the man was
a free agent, had been healed only through his
wish to be made whole, and had retained liberty
to involve himself in worse evils.

In feeding a multitude with a few loaves and
fishes, the Christ could have done nothing if His
love had not gone out to the people, material-
izing itself as it went ; so that the loaves were
the form of His " compassion." It should be
remembered, in connection with this very event,
that He said, " It is the spirit that quickeneth :
the flesh profiteth nothing." ^ And He gave the
clew to the source of His power when He said
to the tempter that man must not live by bread
alone.*

This power of the self over its benefits re-
ceived from above was constantly illustrated by
the use of the words, " Thy faith hath saved
thee," " According to thy faith be it unto thee ;"
for the people referred to had received just that
which they had prepared themselves to receive,

1 John V. 14. 2 John vi. 63. » Luke iv. 4.

252 THE HUMAN AND ITS

and the blessing had been awaiting their desire
to receive it when the Christ was nigh.

The forgiveness of sins depended upon a simi-
lar state of the recipient. Active repentance
secured healing of the nature, — that is, the re-
mission of the power of evil; but the opposite
state had no forgiveness. "Her sins, which are-
many, are forgiven; for she loved much."^ A
sin which had no forgiveness' was spoken of,
and this language has caused much disquiet
among Christians. Its meaning was explained
at the time of utterance to be that one may so
" sin against the Holy Spirit," so determinedly
oppose the voice of conscience in his soul, that
he actually and permanently stifles it and does
himself a lasting injury.

These signs of the connection of God, spirit,
and matter were not wrought to astonish people,
much less to gain approval and applause for the
meek and lowly One, but were the outcome of
His presence wherever need was and wherever
the wish to be helped was found. And these
signs in their spiritual efficacy may be wrought
again, and must be wrought if the Christ is to

1 Luke vii. 47. =» Mark iii. 29.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 253

be more than a historic figure, even the Saviour
of men from all unworthiness. Belief in Him
cannot be transferred from one to another : it
must be the fruit of one's own experience with
the Christ, not an experience merely with those
called Christians, but an experience with the
Christ Himself, establishing a relation between
the human self and the Divine Self, a relation in
which the recipient, free in his reactivity, eter-
nally assured of his own life and place in the com-
monwealth of uses, abides in the Christ and the
Christ in him, so that they, God in the Christ
and the Christ in men, are made perfect in one.*

1 John xvii. 23.

22

254 THE HUMAN AND ITS

CHAPTER XII.

THE KNOWABLE.

A FEW concluding pages may not be out of
place by way of anticipating the objection that
the writer has passed, or has attempted to pass,
from the firm ground of consciousness to that of
mere belief, and has disregarded the spirit of
the age, which is above all things critical, and
which does not so much ask "What do you
know?" as "How is such reputed knowledge
possible ?" It is said of Renan that he praised
Spinoza by saying that " he could not accept
Christianity, for he could not surrender his lib-
erty, since Descartes was his master." ^ This, if
so spoken, was only another and a needlessly
deistical way of stating the same unwillingness
to be led by aught but reason, which made
Dante declare, " Aristotle is the master of those
who know."

1 Quoted by E. S. Phelps in The Struggle for Immortality :
Boston, 1889, p. 13.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 255

Especially since Kant is it impossible to con-
found knowledge with assumption without in-
stant detection. His strongest claim on the
respect of posterity is the revolution which he
made by the introduction of criticism into phi-
losophy. Descartes had attempted this and had
honestly freed his mind of its prepossessions,
but had immediately readmitted without chal-
lenge such ideas as seemed to him " clear and
distinct." Before him Hobbes and after him
Hume had carried the questioning spirit on to
scepticism. It was Kant who led philosophy
back to more positive ground. He avoided the
Scylla of a credulous scholasticism and the
Charybdis of an equally unfruitful scepticism,
and safely made his way where every wise pilot
will be careful to follow. His minor tenets may
be but stepping-stones to higher views, but his
principle of criticism as a substitute for dogma-
tism, whether scholastic or sceptical, is impreg-
nable. There can be no more scanning of the
surface of the field of knowledge with affirma-
tion or denial according to the onlooker's real or
fancied powers of vision, but men must now sink
their shafts and learn what lies below the surface.
There shall be no more descriptions of the tree

256 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

of knowledge, but men must tell us how its roots
are placed. Gnosticism in the second century
thought that it knew everything about thirty
ranks of gods ; ^ and, as the natural consequence,
there were atheists in plenty then. ITow, in
place of mere denial, we have criticism, which
asks, " How do you kuow ?" Seeing Q. E. D. at
the end of an argument, men do not ask for the
figure of the syllogism but for the foundation of
the premises.

Such a change in the state of the public mind
necessarily involves much questioning of his-
torical beliefs, both philosophical and theological.
The scientist who lately said that he attended
church till he could no longer endure the re-
peated declaration by the clergyman of a faith
which certainly was not in any sense knowledge
illustrated the common feeling. In its reluc-
tance to submit its creeds to criticism and re-
vision, the church has been unintentionally a
" stone of stumbling" to many, and has caused
them the suffering of being drawn in one direc-
tion by reason and in another by respect for a
traditional faith. A new spirit, however, begins

* Valentinus.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 257

to be found and to utter itself courageously.
Men begin to obey the wise saying of Confacius :
"When you know a thing, to hold that you
know it; and when you do not know a thing,
to allow that you do not know it; this is
knowledge." *

It has already been suggested that man's self-
knowledge is a knowledge of himself as spir-
itual,— that is to say, of the sensations and ideas
which, whatever their source, present them-
selves to his mind as immaterial. The ground
of the idealist is perfectly firm as to the ability
of the mind to have immediate knowledge only
of its ideas. The argument of Johnson kicking
the stone is out of date. There can be no ques-
tion about the dictum of Plato that the mind
proceeds from ideas through ideas to ideas.
Locke expanded this into the remark, " Since
the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings,
hath no other immediate object but its own
ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it
is evident that our knowledge is only conversant
about them." ^

1 Analects, Book I. chap. iv.

2 Human Understanding, Book II. chap, iv, n. 1.

r 22*

258 THE HUMAN AND ITS

Spirit, then, it may be taken for granted, is
knowable in the ideas presented to the mind, —
that is, it is known if man knows anything.

" Eerumque ignarus imagine gaudet." ^

" I know by seeing and hearing," said Locke
again, " that there is some corporeal being out-
side of me ; I do more certainly know that there
is some spiritual being within me that sees and
hears." ^

To materialists this statement may seem an
inversion of the truth, for they may hold that
man knows himself only as a body or material
organism, the brain secreting thought as the
liver secretes bile (Professor Huxley), but there
is no ground for such a comparison, since the
bile has its limited physical field, while the
thought is by no means limited to the brain or
body. It is no parasitic Anchises riding in his
shrivelled helplessness on the back of pious
^neas, but it may say of itself, —

*' I have flown on the winds through the vaulted sky,
In a path unseen by the vulture's eye ;

1 ^neid., viii. 730.

' Ibid., Book II. chap, xxiii. sect. 15.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 259

I have been where the lion's whelps ne'er trod,

And nature is mute in the sight of God ;

I have girdled the earth in my airy flight,

I have wandered alone 'mid yon spheres of light." ^

In regard to our knowledge of matter, it is
granted at once that we cannot mentally go to it
and have immediate knowledge of it as we have
of spirit. Indeed, to attempt this would be to
surrender the vantage-ground of the spirit's in-
termediate position between the two other ob-
jects of desired knowledge, namely, matter and
the Divine. Kant was unquestionably right
when he placed the things in themselves outside
of the field of consciousness and limited our
knowledge to that of the phenomena. In de-
claring the noumena to be in themselves unknow-
able he wisely followed Aristotle, who had said,
H uXt) ayvwaToq xaff aurr^v^ Matter in itself is Un-
knowable.^

Admitting, then, that the mind has no imme-
diate dealing with matter, are we shut up to
eternal ignorance of the outer world ? It is by
some said that Kant should have been so con-
sistent with himself as to reject the things in

* Henry Smith, Thought. " Metaph., vii. (vi.), chap. x.

260 THE HUMAN AND ITS

themselves and to hold a purely idealistic ground ;
but there is some reason to doubt the positions
taken by those who came after him in this re-
spect ; and this for the simple reason that a purely
subjective idealism, unfruitful of any knowledge
of aught above or aught below itself, is as unsat-
isfactory in its way as Spinozism, which finds its
single ground in the Divine and ignores both
spirit and matter ; or again as materialism, which
ignores everything above its plane, whether
finitely spiritual or absolutely Divine. We must
hold Kant to be consistent when he says, " Be-
hind phenomena are things in themselves which,
though hidden, are the conditions of phenomena.^
. . . The conception of noumena is not only possi-
ble, but necessary.^ . . . By means of practical
postulates we learn that there are objects corre-
sponding to ideas." ^

If, then, matter cannot be ignored without
turning our ideas into phantasies, and if never-
theless it is impossible to know matter immedi-
ately, how can we know it ? The answer is, of
course, that we know it through our sensations

1 Pure Eeason, p. 307. ^ Practical Keason, p. 46.

» Page 141.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 261

whicli come over a wire, as it were, at one end
of which the mind is and at the other that which
originates the sensation, namely, the body. This
is common philosophical ground. For example,
in Walter's " Perception of Space and Matter"
we read, "By ordinary inference from ideas,
sensations, and perceptions we are able to gain
a trustworthy knowledge of matter. In the
muscular sense something resists our volition.
Touch gives magnitude."^ Bain says in his
" Senses and Intellect," " The sum total of all
the occasions for putting forth active energy, or
for conceiving this as possible to be put forth, is
an external world. This leads us to form to our-
selves an abstraction that comprehends all our
experience, past and present, and all the experi-
ence of others, which abstraction is the utmost
that our minds can attain to respecting an ex-
ternal or material world." ^ Bascom, with equal
care, speaks thus in his " Science of Mind,"
" What the mind directly knows must be purely
mental, what it indirectly knows are the phe-
nomena interpreted by its own experience. Did
not perception constantly involve inference, per-

1 Boston, 1879, p. 405. 2 jq-gw York, 1879, p. 377.

262 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

ception and consciousness would give but one
and the same set of data, and the distinction
would disappear." ^

Thus it would appear that by an inference,
which it would be insanity not to make, the
material world is known, of course most inti-
mately by every one in his own body, and less in-
timately, but not less accurately, in other forms.
All scientific knowledge is immediately of ideas
alone, but inferentially and accurately of beasts
and trees and rocks.

If it be granted that nescience as to the mate-
rial world is irrational, and that matter is indeed
knowable, a brief survey of our possible knowl-
edge of the Divine may next be made.

"No one will deny that we can know another,
for example, a near friend from whom we derive
information and in whose companionship we find
joy. The ideas which come to us by hearing
while our eyes are looking upon a beloved face
never bring with them any doubt of the reality
of the friend unless we have previous reason for
indulging a temporary doubt of the healthful
working of our organs. "When a man says that

1 New York, 1881, p. 113.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 263

he knows another, he means that by experience
he has been made certain of his existence, has
at first perceived him only externally, but has
gradually been made aware of the emotions and
thoughts of his friend, who has not only con-
vinced him thus of his possession of a distinct
personality, but has also displayed that similarity
of purpose or sympathetic quality of heart which
has made the two one in a real sense. Pythago-
ras defined friendship as one soul in two bodies.
They are, of course, not one, but at one.

This knowledge of another is as trustworthy
as the knowledge of one's own body, and is even
more easy to gain than a knowledge of matter
in general, because the other, being a spirit, is
on the same plane of life. With our eyes of
flesh we see only the friend's body, but we may
know him as to his spirit much more thoroughly
than we know his body. Indeed, we may never
have seen the general of our army or the presi-
dent of our nation, and yet we may have come
to know this one or that by other means suffi-
ciently to put a rational trust in the honesty, or to
feel a well-grounded distrust in the dishonesty
or incapacity, of general or president.

iJTow, if we are to know the Divine at all, it

264 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

must be as another whom we have not seen in
His person. Knowledge of the Divine is more
than an inference as to its existence. It is more
than an examination of the arguments which
were reviewed above in their own place. We
may conclude that there is every reason for be-
lieving that Washington did exist or that Glad-
stone does exist without having any knowledge
of them except remotely and partially; but if
we are to know God or man sufficiently to justify
the use of the word knowledge, we must have
some relation with them. Experience must
enter into the acquaintance. We must know
" not because of thy saying," ^ as the Samaritans
said to the woman, but must know actually,
rationally, indisputably.

We certainly cannot know God in His un-
manifested infinity ; of that which so far tran-
scends us we can only use negative terms, —

" Being above all beings ! Mighty One

Whom none can comprehend and none explore I

"Who fill'st existence with thyself alone, —
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er, —
Being whom we call God and know no more !

And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high,

Even like past moments in eternity.'"

* John iv. 42. ' Derzhavin.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 265

But this impossibility of adequately conceiving
of the Divine should not lead men, as before
remarked, to suppose that they can know in
religion only rules of conduct. Even in the
material world we find a limit beyond which it
is too vast for us. But the scientist, knowing
but little of the world, knows enough to affirm
it and to claim acquaintance with it. Even with
a friend it is not necessary to know everything
of his secret thoughts before we can feel at one
with him. It is not necessary to be as wise as
God in order to know Him sufficiently and very
much as a child knows its parent whose vastly
greater wisdom it does not fathom.

The boundlessness of the Divine qualities is no
bar to our knowledge, if they be qualities lead-
ing to friendship and not to aversion. To say,
" Thou art great and doest wondrous things.
Thou art God alone," ^ is not to confess inability
to know Him with sufficient certainty, but rather
to declare that the mind rests in a sense of its
inferiority to Him as contentedly as in a sense of
its superiority to the body.

It is not only reasonable to conclude that the

* Psalm Ixxxvi. 10.
M 23

266 THE HUMAN AND ITS

God who made all things is most like the most
perfect of His creations, namely, man ; but it is
also easy to conclude that His capacity is such
that He can make Himself known, and that He
has in man the most adequate means of mani-
festing Himself. A finite man would, to he sure,
reveal God only in the very inadequate degree
seen in Moses or Socrates ; but one of such an
origin as the Christ might reveal Him fully, or
with increasing fulness as He grew in grace, till
at length the glorified Christ, with face as the
sun, would reveal God as fully as man can ask.
" All mine are thine and thine are mine." ^

Avoiding a repetition of what has been already
said as to this manifestation, let me only meet
the question. Can we know the Christ ? If He
be known only historically we do not know
Him, and thus do not know the Divine in any
adequate sense. We may not doubt that the
Gospel account is true, but to assent to it is not
to know the Divine as we know ourselves, our
friends, and the external world.

In his " Oriental Christ" Mozoomdar gives
this experience : "I sat near the large lake in

* John xvii. 10.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 267

the Hindu College compound, in Calcutta. It
was a week-day evening. I was meditating on
the state of my soul, on the cure of all spiritual
wretchedness, the brightness and peace unknown
to me, which was the lot of God's children. I
prayed and besought Heaven. Suddenly, it
seemed to me, let me own, it was revealed to me,
that close to me there was a holier, more blessed,
more loving personality, upon which I might
repose my troubled head. The response of my
nature was unhesitating and immediate. Jesus,
from that day, to me became a reality whereon I
might lean." ^

Such was the experience of the Oriental, for
no one can doubt that the account is truthful.
Varied according to temperaments, it would be
that of all those who can truly say that they
know God in the Christ. The zealot, on his way
to Damascus as a Jewish hater of Christians, was
quickly convinced of his error, and could never
thereafter doubt nor be " disobedient unto the
heavenly vision." ^ The language of Thomas k
Kempis is not extravagant : " All the glory and

1 Published Boston, 1883, p. 11.

2 Acts xxvi. 19.

268 1's:e human and its

beauty of the Christ are manifested within . . .
and the peace that He brings passeth all under-
standing."^ All the way down the Christian
centuries there have been some who could say,
even under threats of martyrdom, that they
knew the Christ, and, though once called mystics
with a degree of contempt, they have endured,
and their numbers have increased. I^atural re-
ligion, with its general perception of the imma-
nent God in nature, needs to have no scorn for
that more intimate, even personal, relation which
the Christ enables one to form with the Divine, —
a relation unknown to idolatrous antiquity and
unknovni to Christian formalism, but definitely
promised by the Christ, — " I am with you always : ^
where two or three are gathered together in my
name, there am I in the midst of them," ^ and
so easily realized that a writer says with truth,
" Christ never was more really in the world than
He is now. He is as much to those who love
Him and believe on Him as He was to the
friends in Bethany. . . . "We may form with
Him an actual relation of personal friendship

* Imitation of Christ. ^ Matthew xxviii. 20.

' Matthew xviii. 20.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE, 269

wliich will grow closer as the years go on,
deepening with each new experience." ^

The philosopher must remove himself from
all that is irrational, whether it goes under the
name ot Christian theology or otherwise, but to
regard the Christ as the greatest of all teachers
is to bring the reason into the largest light and
the ftillest liberty, " the liberty of the glory of
the children of God."^

" All knowledge is a gathering into one," said
Priscianus, and these knowables, the spirit, the
Christ, and the flesh, are not to be thought as
three disjoined worlds, but as mutually related,
reciprocally active, and finding their meeting
point in that which is midway between the
Divine and the material, namely, the spirit, the
mind. It looks upward to its Lord in prayer
and in service, it looks inward with the ability
which man alone of all created forms of life
possesses and which makes him a philosopher,
and it looks downward and outward to the flesh
and the world. In its relation to the Divine it
finds the purposes of life, in its own intelligence

1 Silent Tunes, by J. E. Miller, D.D., p. 23.

2 Romans viii. 21.

28*

270 ^^^ HUMAN AND ITS

it finds tlie means of realizing those purposes,
and in the outer world it produces from its pur-
poses by the means or causes which the mind
supplies the effects, which are words and deeds.
So is humanity one from its Source to its out-
mosts. The worlds of spirit and matter are one
because they are the homes of men, and the
Creator and created are one because both are
human, the one absolutely such, the other finitely
such; but here is no mystery, for the Word,
which was with God and which was God, and by
which all things were made, and in which was
life, " was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of
grace and truth." ^ " For of Him and through
Him and unto Him are all things." ^

" All human knowledge," says Morell, " rests
upon the three notions of nature, man, and
God."^ And this is only repeating the great
first note of Holy Scripture : " In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth ;" * for
man, while he dwells upon the earth, is not in
place if he be earthy, and in the heavens — that is,
in a spiritual life — he is truly a man. " Knowl-

^ John i. 1, 14. ^ Romans xi. 36.

' Modern Philosophy, ii. 466. * Genesis i. 1.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 271

edge," said Spencer, "is permanent conscious-
ness." ^ Precisely, it is the permanent conscious-
ness of the self in its relations upward and
downward; it is a consciousness which is "a
temple of the living God," ^ — " a house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens." ^

" That we do know" is the distinct and per-
manent self, its recipiency, its reagency, its free
agency, its inheritance which affects but does
not determine its acts, its trinal form, its rela-
tions testifying of the Divine, its immortality, —
aspects which are fully presented in the teach-
ings of the Christ, — in whom we have certain
knowledge of God and spirit and matter. When
the Christ said to Mcodemus, " "We speak that
we do know and testify that we have seen," He
used the plainest terms to declare what was
known to Him, and what any man may know by
the aid of the Christ Whose light lighteth every
man that cometh into the world, and Who prom-
ised that His disciples should know the truth.

1 First Principles, p. 142. ^ 2 Corinthians vi. 16.

* 2 Corinthians v. 1.

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