The philosophy of religion; lectures written for the Elliott lectureship at the Western theological seminary, Pittsburgh, Penna., U. S. A., 1916

^mm

BL 51 .07 1922

Ormond, Alexander Thomas,

1847-1915.
The philosophy of religion

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Alexander Thomas Ormoxd

THE
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

LECTURES WRITTEN

FOR THE ELLIOTT LECTLTIESHIP

AT THE WESTERX THEOLOGIC.\L SEMLXARY

PITTSBURGH, PEXXA., U. S. A.

1916

BY

ALEXANDER THOMAS ORMOXD, Ph.D., LL.D.

LATE PRESIDENT OF GROVE CITY COLLEGE

FORMERLY MC COSH PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON

LO^^X)N: HUMPHREY iHLTOBD

OXFORD U>TTERSITT PRESS

1922

Copyright, 1922, by
Princeton University Press

Published 1922
Printed in the United States of America

FOREWORD

I am glad to contribute a brief foreword to
this volume because it affords me au opportun-
ity to pay a tribute of affectionate admiration
to my friend and colleague, Alexander T. Or-
mond.

He was a man of the most transparent sin-
cerity and simplicity of character who could ab-
solutely be relied upon in every relation of life.
There was, besides, no lecturer in the University
whose lectures were more worth while. All his
work was characterized by the most honest in-
dustry and solid judgment.

I consider it a privilege and honor to have
been his colleague.

WooDROw Wilson.
5th July, 1921.

PREFACE

The eight lectures in this volume were writ-
ten during the summer and autumn of 1915 and
were to have been delivered under the Elliott
Lectureship at the Western Theological Semi-
nary, as explained in Dr. Kelso's introduction.
The author's interest for several years had
centered in the philosophy of religion and it had
been his expressed purpose to write a book on
the subject. These lectures were the first fruits
of that intention, and death prevented any fur-
ther elaboration of his ideas.

The majority of the lectures were left in
manuscript in the author's handwriting, and
were typed after his death. They were later
read, and the proofs corrected, by us, his chil-
dren ; and any inaccuracy or lack of clarity that
may appear can be attributed to the fact that
the text was never reviewed by the author, and
we hesitated to make any but very minor
changes in the text as received by us. In this
connection we wish to acknowledge gratefully
aid from Dr. Calder of Grove City, Professor
Armstrong of Wesleyan, and Mr. Minot Morgan
of Detroit.

Alexander Thomas Ormond was born in
Punxsutawney, Pa., in April, 1847, received the
ordinary country school education and began to

• •

Vll

viii PREFACE

teach school himself at the age of seventeen.
He taught and farmed till he reached the age of
twenty-six, when he entered Princeton College
with many conditions. lie graduated in 1877,
taking the Mental Science fellowship, and re-
ceived his Ph.D. three years later. He then
spent three years at the University of Minne-
sota as Professor of History and Logic, return-
ing to Princeton as Professor in 1883. He took
a prominent part in the councils of three admin-
istrations : those of Dr. McCosh, Dr. Patton and
Mr. Wilson, and in addition to his work in the
university, he gave courses of lectures in the
Princeton Theological Seminary for many
years. He remained in Princeton till 1913,
when at the age of sixty-six, he resigned to ac-
cept the presidency of Grove City College,
Pennsylvania. After tw^o arduous, but very
successful years there he died suddenly of heart
failure in December, 1915. A year before his
death he had had a thorough survey of his
physical condition by Dr. Janeway, of Johns
Hopkins, because of some unpleasant symptoms
referable to the condition of his heart, and he
was then told that sudden death might be ex-
pected any time unless he would retire from
active work and live in a milder climate. He,
however, considered it a point of honor to com-
plete the work he had undertaken in connection
with Grove City College. Three weeks before
his death he stated to one of us that he thought
he had brought his work to a successful conclu-

PREFACE ix

sion and that later in the winter he would retire,
remove to a milder climate and devote himself
to writing his book on the Philosophy of Re-
ligion.

None of us, his children, are in any degree
capable of appreciating the Philosophical value
of this book of lectures or of estimating our
father's place as a philosopher, but we could
not fail to appreciate in him those qualities
which impressed all who came into contact with
him — his broad humanity, simplicity and inde-
pendence of character — and singular intellec-
tual honesty.

In publishing this book we wish to dedicate
it to his memory, as a token of our increasing
admiration.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction by Dr. James Kelso xiii

Part I. Religious Knowledge
Lecture I. The Problem of Religious

Lecture

Lecture II.

Lecture III.

Lecture IV.

Knowledge

The Problem of Religious
Knowledge, (continued) . .

The Rational Type of Re-
ligious Knowledge

The Synthesis of the Me-
diate and the Immediate in
Religious Knowledge ....

Part II. The Soul
V. The Soul as Subject of

or.

48

72

Lecture VI.
Lecture VII.
Lecture VIII.

Religious Experience .... 97

The Agency of Man 120

The Overcoming of Evil. 141
The Destiny of the Soul. . 172

INTRODUCTION

The Elliott Lectureship was founded by the
alumni and friends of the Western Theological
Seminary as a memorial to the Rev. David El-
liott, D.D., the Seminary's first professor of
Systematic Theology (1836-74). The object of
the foundation was to provide lectures "in the
defence of revealed truth." In the course of
the years some of the most distinguished Brit-
ish scholars have lectured on this foundation.
There appear on the roll of the Elliott Lecture-
ship, for example, the names of Rev. Professor
Alexander F. Mitchell, who treated "The His-
tory of the Westminster Assembly" (1880);
Principal A. M. Fairbairn, who lectured on
"Theism and Natural Religion" (1890); Rev.
Professor James Orr, whose subject was "The
Progress of Dogma" (1897) ; and Rev. Profes-
sor David Smith, whose theme was "The His-
toric Jesus" (1912). It was in connection with
the Elliott foundation also that Rev. James S.
Dennis, D.D., an American scholar, made a not-
able permanent contribution to the literature of
modern missions. These lectures, somewhat en-
larged, appeared later in three volumes, en-
titled "Christian Missions and Social Prog-
ress." Realizing that, on account of a long and
intimate familiarity with the problems of phi-

xiii

xiv INTRODUCTION

losophy and its relations to theology, as well as
on account of his mature judgment, President
A. T. Ormond, of Grove City College, was ex-
ceptionally well prepared to discuss the funda-
mental problem of the relations of philosophy
and religion, the faculty of the Seminary unani-
mously elected him to treat this theme in a
course on the Elliott foundation. The appoint-
ment was made in December, 1913, and the lec-
tures were to have been delivered sometime
during the Seminary year 1915-16. But in the
providence of God, President Ormond was never
to fulfil this engagement. The lectures had
been written and the date for their delivery defi-
nitely set, when suddenly, while busy with the
duties of his office, Dr. Ormond was summoned
to that realm where metaphysical speculation
ceases and ultimate reality is apprehended.
Notwithstanding these untoward circumstances.
President Ormond 's mature conclusions were
not lost. Soon after his death a part of the
course was read before the students and faculty
of the Seminary by his colleague, the Rev. R.
S. Calder, Ph.D., and arrangements were made
for their publication. The war intervened,
however, and made it necessary to postpone the
issue of the volume which is now given to the
public as a worthy companion to the other mem-
bers of this series of lectures.

James A. Kelso.

PART I
RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

Lectube I. The Pboblem of Religious
Knowledge

The problem I propose to discuss in this and
the following lecture is that of the primary
foundations of religious certitude, whether im-
mediate knowledge, or inference, or faith, or
the sense of value. There have been partisans
of each of these claimants, and it cannot be de-
nied that each has contributed an important
part to the building up of the body of what we
may call religious truth. But the question of
the primary source of religious certitude is
special, and ought to admit of some definite
answer. Now, the proposition that best ex-
presses my own belief in the matter may be
stated as follows : Man is endowed by nature,
and by virtue of his being a potentially self-
conscious being, with a religious consciousness,
which is the organ and source of certain pri-
mary verities that constitute for him the first
data of a possible religious experience. In the
light of this proposition, it is clear that we will
have to deny that either faith or the sense of
value can be taken as a primary source of re-
ligious truth. Let us consider very briefly here

1

2 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

the claims of each to be a primary source. It
is clear in the first place that what we call a
judgment of value is not primarily a judgment
of truth, but rather of our appreciation of
something, whether it be true or not. It can
only acquire epistemological value when we are
led to say of it, that it is so dear or precious, so
essential to the realization of the highest ideals,
that it must needs be true. In other words, to
enlarge the position of Kant, the truth of a
proposition is a postulate of its value. This
proves that the judgment of value is only an in-
direct or mediate judgment of truth. In the
second place, if we analyze what we may call the
judgment of faith, it will become apparent that,
whatever the degree of assurance it may pos-
sess, it is only the assertion, on mediate evi-
dence, of the truth of something that is not now
present. Now, the evidence on which faith rests
may be either some insight of immediate knowl-
edge, or some consideration of value, and the
point of interest here is that in neither case is
it primary, but its appeal is to something that
involves primary truth data. Furthermore,
just as it is clear that, in any great field of
truth, certitude cannot rest, in the last analysis,
on inference, but must have as its basis some
first-hand touch of reality : so here, if the super-
structure of religious experience is to be at
all reducible to a body of assured truth, its
judgments must be capable of being reduced
back to some first-hand facts of knowledge.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 3

Neither faith, which is a kind of inference, nor
inference, nor consideration of value, can sup-
ply the first act in the drama of religious truth.

We come back then to the terms of the origi-
nal proposition — that the primary source of re-
ligious truth is to be found in an original con-
sciousness, which is inseparable from man's
self-consciousness, and is in fact an integral
part of it. That man, by virtue of being self-
conscious, is also religious, — that, in the same
process by which he finds himself, he also finds
his transcendent other, is, I feel sure, the only
ultimate ground on which the claim that re-
ligion is a natural endowment of man can rest.

Before proceeding to the analysis of the re-
ligious consciousness, I wish, however, to con-
sider briefly at this point the claim of Professor
Hoffding, in his Philosophy of Religion, that
religion can supply no valid principle of world-
explanation. Hoffding 's claim is that the prin-
cipal of natural causation, as employed by
science, is the only valid principle of knowledge,
and that the theoretic principle to which relig-
ion lays claim cannot maintain itself in face of
criticism. He rightly names this the principle
of teleology, and holds that the theoretic preten-
sions of religion stand or fall with the validity
of teleology as a principle of world-interpreta-
tion. The religious view of the world is the
teleological, and, should teleology be proved
false, or, in fact, too weak to bear the burden of
world-explanation, it follows that religion would

4 PHILOSOPHY OF BELIGION

be logically bound to give up its theoretic
claims, and to content itself with the world-
view of science, which finds either no place, or,
at least, a subordinate place, for teleology. The
purpose of Hoff ding's book is to induce religion
to give up the theoretic claim which brings it
into conflict with science, and to plant itself
solidly and exclusively on the principle of the
conservation of values. Hoffding sees clearly
that no principle of unconditional value for the
interpretation of reality can be deduced from
the judgment of value. To Hoffding belongs
the credit of having made this perfectly evident.
His position cannot be successfully called in
question by anyone who admits the soundness of
his judgment in regard to teleology.

Without entering into an elaborate discussion
here, I wish simply to give certain reasons why
I cannot accept Hoffding 's low estimate of tele-
ology. In the first place, it is evident that his
conclusion is not founded on any adequate, criti-
cal study of teleology itself. There is a popular
and superficial conception of teleology which
has, unfortunately, dominated the greater body
of our religious literature of the past. It is that
conception that proceeds on the assumption of
a conflict between teleology on the one hand, and
natural causation and mechanism on the other,
leading to the false and mistaken attempt either
to substitute teleology for natural causation
and mechanism, or to limit these in their scope
and seek a place for teleology in the gaps that

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 5

are to be found in the mechanical armor. The
alternative of substitution is the bolder of the
two proposals, and, on account of its radicalism,
has commended itself to certain idealistic phi-
losophers like Schelling ; but neither alternative
has been able to stem the tide of science, and
Hoffding is on safe ground when he rejects as
unsound the principle as thus conceived. There
is, however, a profounder conception of teleol-
ogy that, to my mind, lifts it above the level of
such criticism and vindicates its claim to be a
true principle for the interpretation of the real.
In the first place, a profound psychological
study of experience shows that, at the founda-
tion of our world-view, there is operating a
principle of selection, which underlies and af-
fects all the processes by which we develop a
view of any part of our world. Perception,
which gives our first judgments about the world,
is, in a primary sense, selective, and the later
stages of mental activity are determined by the
same principle. Now, when we study selection,
we are led to the conclusion that, even in the
first stages of perception, there is some quality
of mind that renders it primarily teleological, —
that leads it to act, not mechanically, but with
an activity motived by the sense of something
more or less definite, which it is seeking to rea-
lize. In the lowest stages there is the germ of
an end-motive that instinctively knows what to
appropriate and what to reject. If we follow
this motive into the higher stages of mentality,

6 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

we find it taking on more definitely and con-
sciously the teleological form. When we pene-
trate beneath the surface of the mind's activity
and come on what we may designate its onto-
logical motive, we find that it is always tele-
ological and ideal. To illustrate briefly what
we propose to elaborate more fully at a later
stage in these lectures : above the lower selective
range of perception there is the epistemologi-
cal activity of apperception which gives us the
objects or things of cognition and certain rela-
tions that are central in our judgments about
the w^orld. Very briefly stated, the thing of per-
ception is an object that the mind refuses to
regard simply as a plexus of qualities w^hich it
can reclaim as its own subjective possessions.
It was on the rock of this refusal that Berkeley-
anism in its first draft made shipwreck and had
to be modified. For, in spite of the fact that
Berkeley had forever dispelled the illusion of
material substance, the mind refused to leave
the place of substance empty; and rightly, for
this reason: Strictly speaking the place had
never been occupied by material substance, but
rather by the mind's own ideal which we may
read in the following language ; the qualities of
things are simply the mind's own ideas in an
objective form of existence, and, like these
ideas, on their subjective side, involve some uni-
tary and perdurable subject (substance) of
which they are the plurality of phenomenal
manifestations. In other words, the thing is

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 7

ontologically a teleological ideal of the mind.
The thing is the first overt act of mind in build-
ing a teleological world.

If now we enter the field of the judgment of
cognition, we find the same truth staring us in
the face. When we enter a room and recognize
it as the same room we were in yesterday or
last week, we pronounce the judgment of iden-
tity, which, in its ontological or underlying mo-
tive, means that our mind has appealed from
the perishable and broken order of our own
perceptions as empirical to an order of ex-
istence that is unbroken, and that is perdurable
through the change and perishability of the em-
pirical. If we deny this, we reduce our world
to a flux which supplies no standing ground
for any judgment whatsoever. Here again we
find that the mind, in the self -committal of its
judgment, has, in spite of Hume's destructive
analysis, refused to leave the place of material
substance empty, and has filled it with its own
ideal of being that is unitary and perdurable.
Again, if we study the activity of mind in the
mediate judgment that expresses itself formally
in the syllogism, but ontologically and really in
the search for grounding, we find that the mind
is just as insistent in refusing to accept the
terms of a world-plurality as final, and that, in
its demand for an ontological ground, it is not
obeying any law of things imposed on it from
without, but rather the law of its own ideal,

8 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

which requires the many and changing to be
grounded in the unitary and jDcrdurable.

If we turn to another part of the field and
consider the world from the point of view of
natural causation, we find the same kind of a
situation, AVhen the empiricist finding the only
principle of things open to his vision to be that
of natural causation, which gives us a series of
conditional antecedents and consequents that
commit us to the treadmill of an infinite round
but reveals no ground, the mind following its
ontological motive refuses to rest in a world of
eternal contingency, and, following a deeper in-
sight, fills the vacant place of ground-being with
its own ideal, that of a unitary and perdurable
being that is equally related to every part of
the contingent series, and in the light of which
it is to be interpreted as a manifestation of a
system of reality.

In this brief statement, I have endeavored to
sketch the outline of a deeper doctrine of tele-
ology, which virtually identifies it with the prin-
ciple of ontology itself. Ontology is the science
of being, and its central problem is to determine
the final concept of reality. The ontological mo-
tive is the central inner motive of all mentality.
It inspires the initial selective activity of mind,
and is the prime mover in all the mind's sub-
sequent activities, forbidding it to stop short of
an ideal construction that shall be final and
satisfactory. Teleology, in its deeper sense, is
the same process from the standpoint of its

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 9

most obvious term. A teleological process is
one that is aiming at an end, which is not, how-
ever, a mere end standing as a last link of a
chain, but, rather, the explicit expression of a
motive that has been the selective lode-stone,
the provisional guide, and the purposive activ-
ity out of which the motive has emerged as the
realized end or ideal of the whole.

By identifying teleology with the inner onto-
logical motive of all reality, it is clear that it
becomes a more profound principle, and it be-
comes evident that Hoffding, in rejecting tele-
ology as a source of real knowledge, is casting
aside the central principle of idealism itself.
Now, I am not holding a brief here for idealism
or any particular form of it. What I have
aimed at more particularly is the demonstration
of the fact that, when we penetrate to the inner
constitutive motive of knowledge, we find that
it is teleological, and that to deny its soundness
as a principle of knowledge is to deny the valid-
ity of all knowledge. In its profounder sense,
moreover, it is clear that it can no longer be re-
garded as antagonistic to either mechanism or
natural causation. A mechanical situation may
also (in fact will) be, in a deeper sense, teleo-
logical; and a product of natural causes may,
in a profounder sense, be the manifestation of
design and purpose. We have only to study the
situation in order to find this to be the true re-
sult of analysis. Let us take any work of art,
say a cathedral, and study its construction from

10 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the point of view of ordinary sense-observa-
tion. We will find that the whole from that ex-
ternal point of view will be a phenomenon of
mechanical construction under the operation of
natural forces and causes. Every part of the
work can be accounted for in this way, and the
circle will be mechanically complete, so that no
place will be left for the intrusion of any other
kind of agency. Moreover, the whole, when
completed, although it expresses an idea which
satisfies a rational demand, must yet from the
standpoint of mechanism be either ascribed to
a kind of accident and regarded as an epi-phe-
nomenon, or referred to the necessity inherent
in the composition of physical forces. In no
case can the result be ascribed, in any part of it,
to any agency lying outside of the pure me-
chanical. The logical conclusion from this point
of view will be, therefore, that the rational idea
or design that is present in the completed edi-
fice is a pure come-outer at the end of the pro-
cess, and has had no causal agency toward de-
termining the result.

Now, this seems to be quite obvious, and in
accordance with strict, mechanical logic, and it
has for us this significance, that, arguing from
mechanical data, we can reach only mechanical
conclusions. In other words, the mechanical
system is self -completing, and no point of limit
can be found. But it will also be clear from this
example that, while no limit can be found to
mechanism within mechanical conceptions, yet

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 11

mechanism itself expresses a certain limit to
our insight into the reality of the situation as
a whole. For we know from other data, which
have their roots in the inner regions of our own
self-conscious activity, that another kind of
agency has been at work from the beginning,
and 'that to this agency is due, especially, the
ontological motives that have led to the incep-
tion of the enterprise, as well as the conception
of the idea or plan that is expressed in the com-
pleted work of the cathedral as a whole. Fur-
thermore, it will be clear, in view of this insight,
that not a single stone takes its place in the
structure; not a single mechanical force oper-
ates in any specific direction; not the smallest
detail of construction is effected without the
touch of the idea-purpose, as we may call it, in
the mind of the architect, and communicated to
the minds of the subordinate agents.
• Now, this whole insight, which alone satisfies
the requirements of reason, makes clear also
what i3art of the whole must be ascribed to
extra-mechanical agencies. The parts that
mechanism does not explain will be the origina-
tion of the idea-plan, and the direction of the
mechanical forces to its realization. Origina-
tion and direction are the two specific attributes
of teleological agency as distinguished from
that which is mechanical. If, however, the at-
tempt be made to turn the point of this reason-
ing by distinguishing, as some have done, be-
tween art and nature, on the ground that art

12 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

presents a duality of agencies that is not found
in nature, we answer that this is the very ques-
tion at issue. Allowing that, from the stand-
point of sense-observation, the mechanism of
nature has no limit; that mechanism, to outer
observation, presents a complete circle; it is
yet true that mechanism presents an order or
system that expresses an idea of reason; that
this gives rise to the question whether mechan-
ism be self-explanatory, or must refer for final
explanation to agencies that are extra-mechani-
cal. The answer to this question will, I think,
bring to light the fact that nature presents to
thought the same issue. For nature does not
reveal the motive in which its processes origi-
nate. Nor, as Lotze has pointed out, does the
operation of mechanical forces account for that
specific action of the several forces which im-
parts to them their individual character. If
any particular force acts in a given way and in
no other, this is a fact that cannot be explained
by the mere positing of a force ; but the idiosyn-
cracy of the force raises a question also: Why
it invariably acts in this particular waj^ and in
no other. In other words, quality is a charac-
teristic of idea, and, as such, transcends the
mere mechanical. Furthermore, the order of
the whole of nature, or of a part of it, is but an
expression in the form of developed results of
this same transcendence. The order or system
in nature is no more explicable, in any final

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 13

sense, by the mechanical than are the same phe-
nomena in the work of art.

We seem to be justified, then, in drawing the
following conclusion: from the standpoint of
a complete insight, mechanism, which, in itself,
is unlimited and self -completing, stands limited
and conditioned by an insight that is transcen-
dent; that this insight, proceeding from data
furnished by our own conscious inner agency,
supplies a criterion to reason that fixes for it
the standard of finality of judgment in an idea
or ideal that both expresses the inner ontologi-
cal motive of all activity, and also the teleologi-
cal end that is the directive agency in determin-
ing the rational result. If this be true, mechan-
ism will be the outer form of an agency, (the
form in which it presents itself to outer sense-
observation) that, in an inner and more funda-
mental sense is teleological and rational. And
it will follow that the mechanical explanation of
any natural phenomenon does not thereby shut
out the teleological, but rather, in the light of a
complete insight, calls for it.

Now, what I have been endeavoring to prove
in this part of my argument is that, when pro-
foundly interpreted, the principle of teleology
is the only principle that, in the light of a com-
plete insight, will lead to an interpretation of
things that reason can admit as final in its type.
And it is very significant that this type is to be
come upon at first-hand only in our self-con-
scious experience. There alone we find the

14 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

form of an agency that acts teleologically.
Upon this form reason seizes, and, by a subtle
use of analogy, generalizes it and makes it the
criterion by which it judges reality in general.
Coming back now to the theme from which
we have made this long digression, — the prob-
lem of the religious consciousness; we have al-
ready contended that man is, by virtue of his
nature as a self-conscious being, also a religious
being, and that his religious consciousness,
which has clearly manifested itself in his his-
tory, must rest, like all other primary forms of
consciousness, on some data that are immedi-
ately given and will underlie all deliverances of
inference, or faith, or sense of value. This con-
tention I shall proceed, in the remainder of this
lecture, to elaborate. When we say that man
is, by virtue of his fundamental nature, a re-
ligious being, we mean to say that religion bears
such a relation to his nature that it will affect
both his conscious and his unconscious (or, bet-
ter, his sub-conscious) processes. We mean
that he is a religious being in the same, or even
more fundamental sense, that he is a social be-
ing. He does not need to await the development
of his consciousness into any form of definite
awareness in order to become a social being.
He becomes social in the first profound sense he
has of the existence of beings of his own kind.
This sense of kind is the primary condition, not
the result, of sociality. In other words, we do
not have to consciously reach any definite ex-
perience of our own kind in order to establish

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 15

the germ of the social. Rather, as we have con-
cluded, the opposite order is the true order.
At the basis of the social, and as one of the
primal terms in the development of self-con-
sciousness, is what we may call the sense of the
presence of the other; not the sense of the pres-
ence of the other — not ourself. This would be
too erudite, but merely the sense, in germ, of
the other self. The history of the child shows
this to be true. The first social world of the
child is a world of beings like itself, with which
it instinctively associates. Only later it begins
to distinguish its own kind from other species
of existence. This being true, the child's first
awareness of its other, will be of the nature of
a perception in which the defining or noetic ac-
tivity will be wholly latent and unconscious. It
will not be difficult to determine the type of this
activity, for it could not be other than a sense
of its own type of being. Its first social acts
can be defined as its largely unconscious sense
for itself or its own in another. To use an il-
lustration for which I am indebted, I believe, to
William James, a piece of iron, in the presence
of a magnetic object, will be put into a state of
excitement, which, were it endowed with a bit
of consciousness, would be the feeling of some-
thing that it could not otherwise define. This
primary feeling would be the sense of a pres-
ence in connection with which it would have
what the psychologists call the reality-feeling.
Now, if the iron were really a being, gifted with

16 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION

the potentiality of self-consciousness, it would
have in it the germ of a noetic activity that
would be aroused by this sense of presence to
the effort to define: to determine the what or
kind of existence, and the first effort of the de-
fining mind would take the form, as I have in-
dicated, of an instinctive reading of the type of
its own being into the other. This, I feel sure,
will be taken as describing fairly well the first
act of the social consciousness. It will have,
as its datum, the sense, further undetermined,
of a presence, which will arouse the noetic ac-
tivity into a germinal effort to define.

"Wliat is true of the social will hold in any
primary form of mental activity. There will
be an immediate datum, that of existence, and
this will arouse the noetic effort to define. Now,
in claiming that the religious consciousness is
a primary form, and perhaps the most funda-
mental of all the types, I have not made any
genetic claim that religious experience will
antedate, in time, other forms of experience,
such as the social and the awareness of objects
of sense. This may or may not be true. What
I do contend for is that the religious conscious-
ness is primary in the sense that it is an origi-
nal type, not derived from any other more pri-
mary, nor a modification of it. It is our busi-
ness here, then, to try, if possible, to determine
the distinctive quality or qualities of the re-
ligious type, which differentiate it from any
other primary type, and constitute its distinc-

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 17

tive character. In this enterprise, we are fortu-
nate to have the assistance of almost every
thinker who has dealt with the problem and at-
tempted to give a definition of religion. If you
study the current definitions of religion, you
will find that the large majority of them agree
in the judgment that the differential quality of
the religious consciousness is the sense, or
feeling, of the presence to man of some tran-
scendent being or order, which he is convinced,
somehow vitally affects his life and destiny.
Extracting this core from the definitions, let us
regard it as the one most irrefutable datum of
the religious consciousness. In regard to it,
two questions may be asked. (1) What are the
implications of this datum when critically de-
termined? (2) In its appearance as an active
factor in the life of man, can it be said to
antedate other types of experience? Now, the
first of these questions is one of analysis. The
definitions give us the datum in the sense or
perception of the presence of some transcendent
being or order. This, as you will observe, does
not define, in any sense, the type of being, and
it is important that we should make no assump-
tions of type in this, our initial, inquiry. Nor,
on the other hand, may we minimize the datum
into the mere subjective sense of transcendence.
Like all forms of cognitive activity, there is the
sense of existence (of objectivity) in its first
manifestations. The primary datum may,
therefore, without violence, be spread out into

18 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the form of a germinal affirmation of the ex-
istence of something transcendent. In this
form it becomes, in truth, the datum of a type
of experience, which is distinctive and ranks
with other primary types. Now, I have em-
ployed the term *'type" here in the generic
sense, as simply indicating a form of experi-
ence, which has the transcendent as its object
of determination, without further specifying.
Later on, we shall have occasion to use the word
"type" in a narrower sense. Summing up our
results here, we may say that the primary
datum of the religious consciousness is the
sense of a transcendent object, to which we
stand immediately related.

To the second question, we may not be able to
return so specific an answer. That the religious
consciousness is a primary endowment of the
race is a contention that is not only capable of
intrinsic justification, but also one that finds
strong confirmation in the history of religion,
and in the relation it has borne to other forms
of human experience. The testimony of history
to the fact that forms of religious society ante-
date all others is practically unanimous. The
germs of polity and of organized sociality are
to be found in religious motives. The same is
true of art and morality. This is so overwhelm-
ingly demonstrated that there is now no longer
any hesitation on the part of historians of cul-
ture in assigning to religion the parental rela-
tion. All the forms of human civilization have

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 19

had their roots in religious soil; have grown to
maturity under the tutelage of religious motives
and restraints, and, only at the stage of ma-
turity, have separated from the parental roof,
and entered on the experiment of housekeeping
for themselves. That this is no mere accident,
or that the course of human history could not
have been different is beyond question. Fur-
thermore, there is evidence that is convincing to
the effect that religion is so closely identified
with the ground-springs of the life of humanity
that it is a necessary source of power and inspi-
ration for the achievement of its best results.
The proposition is not without verification that
neither art, nor sociality, nor morality can sepa-
rate itself from religion or repudiate the re-
ligious motive, without losing power and suffer-
ing the drying up of inspiration. The great
periods in art, for example, have been the relig-
ious. Sociality, also, without religion is doomed
to run out into the shallows and lose much of
its effectiveness as a force in human life. These
facts have a vital bearing on the question as to
the relative date of the appearance of religion
as a factor in human experience. Without
mooting the perhaps unanswerable question as
to the priority of the social or the religious in
the experience of the individual (and there is
as much evidence for the priority of the relig-
ious as for that of the social), it will be evident
that the considerations we have already brought
out; namely, the testimony of history to the

20 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

parental relation of religion to all other forms
of civilization; the testimony of experience to
the fact that the divorce of other forms from re-
ligion involves a loss of power and inspiration ;
these, it need not be urged, have an important
bearing on the question of priority. Besides,
there is another consideration that will also
have a bearing on the question, if not of prior-
ity in time, certainly on that of the deeper logi-
cal priority of religion to other factors in civi-
lization. The consideration of which I speak
arises out of the existence of evil in the world,
and the exigency which its existence gives rise
to in the life of the individual and the race. No
profound insight into evil can be reached with-
out leading to the conviction that a radical cure
of evil will involve more than the mere reform
of the individual or society. It is not reform
but renewal; the organization of the whole of
life around a new center, that is the funda-
mental need of both the individual and society.
Now, it is clear that there is no other point of
view than that of religion from which this will
be apparent. Furthermore, there is no other
agency outside of religion which is in possession
of that whole insight into reality, that will en-
able us to see that the remedy, to be effective,
must be one that will deal radically with the
whole man, seeking to deliver him from his evil
self and make him fundamentally a new crea-
ture. In short, the insight of religion teaches
the need, not of reform or betterment, but of

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 21

salvation. In this conclusion, we are in agree-
ment with all thinkers who have thought deeply
on the religious problem. This consideration
of the profound relation of religion to the life
of man as a whole, and its insight into the radi-
cal nature of the remedy of evil that is required,
serves to reinforce the other reasons which lead
to the conclusion that religion, as a factor in
the life of the race not only antedates in time
all other factors, but that, logically, it bears a
deeper and more radical and fundamental rela-
tion to the life of man than any other factor in
his civilization.

Having determined what the primary datum
of the religious consciousness is, and its signifi-
cance for the grounding of the religious type of
consciousness and experience, the next point we
wish to consider is that of the noetic activity
that is aroused by this primary datum in ex-
perience. In dealing with the primary datum,
we indicated that it fixed the general type of
the religious consciousness, as that which grows
up around the central sense of a transcendent
being. In dealing with the noetic activity, we
are concerned not only with the further defini-
tion of type, but also with the method by which
intelligible categories gather around this type.
We saw, in treating of the social type, that, in
determining the other as its own kind, the child
performs, largely in an unconscious and instinc-
tive way, a noetic act that may be characterized
as finding itself or its own in the life of another.

22 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Now, it would be a cheap sort of wit for one to
wax humorous, in view of this contention, and
exclaim, *'how absurd to imagine that the child
is capable of carrying through such an erudite
mental process as you have described. In order
to do so, your child must be a philosopher."
But it ought not to be forgotten that the deep-
est things are hidden in the simplest experi-
ences, and that the ''flower in the crannied
wall ' ' conceals in its life many things that baffle
the deepest insight of the philosopher. We
have made no claim for the child that will not
be borne out by a genetic study of its experi-
ence.

Now, applying the same analytic to the noetic
activity in religion, we will be led to analogous
conclusions. Here, however, I shall task your
patience a little further by asking your indul-
gence while I spend a few minutes considering
further the claim that the religious conscious-
ness is a derivation from the social. If this be
true, then, to us men, God can never be so near
as are our fellow-men. There will always be an
interval that will be spanned by the link of the
social. But this would involve the reversal of
what must be true if the consciousness of re-
ligion is at all true. If the primary datum is
not misleading ; if the transcendent being exists
— then that being is more intimately related to
us than any other. If God exists ; that is, if He
is real and not illusory. He is "closer than
breathing: nearer than hands and feet." In-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 23

stead of having to traverse the social link to
get to Him, He is closer than the social, and we
have only to inner ourselves to the secret hiding
place of our real selves in order to find our-
selves in His presence. The theory of social
derivation is a species of deistic separation,
which has been discredited in other fields of re-
ligious thought.

Eeturning, then, to the problem of our analy-
tic, we will be prepared to find, in the noetic
activity of the religious consciousness, an an-
alogy to that of the social, but not a mere dupli-
cation of it. Like the consciousness of which it
is the organ, it will manifest differentia that
will distinguish it from the social activity.
What, then, we may ask, shall we take as the
differentia of the noetic activity of the religious
consciousness ; or, if you like to call it so, of re-
ligious perception? This differentia will reveal
itself, I think, if we translate the sense of the
transcendent being into the ontological sense of
ground. Our warrant for this may be stated as
follows: The ontological motive [which we
have treated in another part of this lecture],
which leads the mind in a process that ends in
the conception of ultimate grounding, is on its
negative or privative side, the sense of de-
pendence arising out of our feeling that the last
secret of our being is not to be found in our-
selves, but that it must be sought in some more
self-sustaining principle of reality in which the
primal roots of our existence will be found.

24 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

The fact that this motive is central in all the ac-
tivities of our life shows how fundamental it
is, and will lead us to seek for its expression in
the most primary experiences of our nature.
Now, it is in the light of this insight that I have
made the translation above proposed, and have
identified the primary sense or perception of
the transcendent being with the sense or per-
ception of a being in which our own existence
is grounded. This translation also satisfies, as
no other can, the sense of closeness and inti-
macy that binds the soul to whatever being it
may call God.

The conclusion we have reached here will be
of great service to us in the further analysis of
the noetic activity of the religious conscious-
ness, for it will safeguard us against that crude
and superficial use of analogy called anthropo-
morphism, into which so many religious think-
ers have fallen in dealing with the sources of
religious ideas. Defining anthropomorphism as
an abusive and uncritical use of analogy, it will
be our task, in the next lecture, to define a criti-
cal conception of the principle and to determine
the nature and limits of its use as a principle of
religious knowledge.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 25

Lecture II. The Problem of Religious
Knowledge (Continued.)

In the last lecture we characterized anthropo-
morphism as a crude and abusive use of an-
alogy, and proposed, in another lecture, to de-
termine a critical and adequate conception of
the same principle. To this task we now pro-
ceed. We may define anthropomorphism as
the tendency to conceive the nature of the
transcendent object of religion in unmodified
terms of our own conscious being. The God of
anthropomorphism will, therefore, be man writ
large, a being with the magnified intellect, pas-
sions and will, with the magnified personality
of a human being. Xenophanes, the critic of the
old Greek theological conceptions, brought out
this characteristic weakness of anthropomorph-
ism in his saying that, could oxen conceive a
God, they would represent Him as a magnified
ox. What, then, is wrong with anthropomorph-
ism? The answer will, I think, bring out two
respects in which it fails: One, the more ob-
vious, and the other the more profound and sig-
nificant. The first of these faults is what we
may call the crudeness and indiscrimination of
its use of the human analogy. It ascribes the
passions, faults and limitations of humanity to
God, as well as its nobler and more rational
qualities. This is exemplified in the lower
forms of religion, as well as in the religious
conceptions of the child. To the child, God

26 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

will be the human father it knows, magnified,
and possessing all the characteristics of the hu-
man parent ; or, if the child has reflected a lit-
tle, and found the human father possessing
some faults, its conception of God will still be
of the purely human type, from which these
faults have been purged. Now, it is not neces-
sary to argue at length, in order to convince the
man of the present day, that no adequate con-
ception of the Divine Being is possible so long
as we adhere to the unmodified type of our o^vn
being, even in its most exalted form. Anthropo-
morphism only needs to be clearly defined in
this regard in order to be condemned as inade-
quate. The second and more erudite fault of
anthropomorphism lies in its failure to appre-
hend the true significance of the fact of tran-
scendence. Why, we may ask, could the vice of
anthropomorphism not be cured by distinguish-
ing critically between the lower and the higher
attributes of man, and founding our analogies
only upon the essential attributes of his rational
and spiritual being? This, we must admit,
would be a great step in advance, and it, no
doubt, represents the highest point of much of
our contemporary religious thinking. But we
must insist that this leaves the more subtle form
of the difficulty untouched. We will never un-
derstand the real import of transcendence so
long as we conceive it in a purely quantitative
sense, — that is, so long as we simply conceive
God's attributes as our own enlarged. If we

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 27

simply regard God 's thoughts as different from
ours in being larger intellections of the same
species, we will not be in the way of forming an
adequate conception. The same will be true of
all other ascriptions, as of knowledge, wisdom,
power, goodness and rationality. The vice here
can only be escaped by conceiving transcen-
dence in the qualitative rather than the quanti-
tative sense. Now, I do not wish to conceal the
fact that the recognition of this does involve a
limitation of our powers of knowledge. If
God's thought is not simply our thought with
the plus sign, but is, in some way, qualitatively
unlike our thought, then there will be a mystery
about the divine thinking that will be impene-
trable to our powers. The acceptance of the
claim that the transcendence of the object of
religion is qualitative rather than quantitative
involves the final surrender of the Gnostic's
claim of the omniscience of human reason. God
cannot be brought onto the plane of the tri-
angle, and made the object of a definition that
will enclose its object.

Let us endeavor, at this point, to grasp the
significance of the step we have taken here. If
it be true that the transcendence of the divine
object is qualitative rather than quantitative, —
that God is different from man in kind as well
as in degree, it follows that our conceptions of
God will be qualitatively inadequate to fully
grasp Him ; that we cannot say that He is a be-
ing like ourselves without qualification. It fol-

28 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

lows that, when we ascribe wisdom, power or
love to Him, we do so with the recognition that
our conceptions of wisdom, power or love are
only imperfect lights; only imperfect symbols
that give an intelligent direction to our think-
ing, but do not conduct it to its goal. It in-
volves the recognition on our part that our
highest conceptions are but approximations to
the reality; that they simply express the
formula of the curve without being able to fol-
low it out to infinit}^

Should anyone, at this point, object that this
conclusion lands us logically in the camp of the
agnostic, I will ask your indulgence for a para-
graph or two on this point before proceeding
with the main line of the discussion. It is a bad
custom of many religious thinkers to regard ag-
nosticism as an altogether reprehensible re-
sult of wrong-headed and perverse thinking.
Now, I do not hold any brief for the agnostic
here, but I wish to point out what I conceive to
be the grain of truth in his position. If we in-
quire what kind of thinking it was from which
agnosticism arose as a reaction, we will find that
it was the type fashionable in the eighteenth
century, a type that involved the infallibility of
the human reason as a judge of all truth. We
find this type prevailing not only in the camp
of the unbelieving rationalist, but also in that
of the orthodox believer. The agnostic is one
who repudiates the infallibility of reason, but
goes farther and proclaims its absolute in-

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 29

competence in the field of transcendent realities.
The highest efforts of reason are only pseudo-
conceptions, to use Herbert Spencer's phrase,
and leave the object absolutely untouched and
mysterious, if it exist at all. Now, what I con-
ceive to be the modicum of truth in agnosticism
is its denial of the absolute claims which ration-
alism makes in behalf of reason. The agnostic
says to the rationalist: ''Your claim that rea-
son is able to grasp and define all truth is one
that cannot be maintained. There is always
something that transcends your highest concep-
tions. You will find that your efforts to define
the object you call God, not only fail, but that
they contradict each other. In the effort to
grasp the transcendent in its conceptions, rea-
son falls into contradiction with itself. This
proves conclusively that the reason of man has
no faculty for representing the transcendent re-
ality in its forms of thought. ' '

Admitting here that the plea of the agnostic
is valid against the extreme position of the
rationalist, the point which I wish to make here
is that the denial of the infallibility of reason
as an organ of truth does not carry with it the
agnostic claim of its absolute incompetence. To
confine our consideration to the field of relig-
ious conceptions, when we affirm, from the in-
adequacy of our conceptions to grasp and de-
fine the transcendent, their absolute incompe-
tence to determine it in any degree or sense,
we ordinarily do so ostensibly on the basis of

30 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the claim that the finite cannot grasp the infi-
nite. But the agnostic conclusion of the abso-
lute incompetence of reason, has hidden in it
the subtle assumption that there is no intelligi-
ble or possible link between the finite and the
infinite. It is clear, however, that, were this
the case, it would be strictly impossible to pass
in thought from the finite to the infinite. In
short, it would be impossible for the finite rea-
son of man to form any conception of the in-
finite. Such a conclusion is flatly in contradic-
tion to the facts of experience. The fact that
we not only conceive the infinite, but assert it
as the necessary correlate of the finite, proves
the distinction to be only relative and not ab-
solute. We will detect the linkage, I think, be-
tween the finite and the infinite if we take two
other analogous conceptions, those of the im-
perfect and the perfect. There is very clearly
a link between the concepts of the imperfect and
the perfect of such a character that the concept
of the imperfect will itself suggest that of the
perfect. Also an intelligent insight into what
constitutes the imperfection of the one will give
us an intelligible conception of the pathway
along which perfection is to be sought. This
will be perfectly consistent with the recognition
of the fact that the idea of perfection is beyond
the complete grasp of the human reason. For,
admitting this, the way of approximation is still
open, and our conceptions, while not valid as
absolute definitions, will be valid as approxima-

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 31

tions. They will serve as guide-boards on the
way to the goal which can never be completely
attained.

Without pursuing this line any further at
present, let us return to the main thread of the
argument. We had reached the conclusion in
our former lecture that the foundation of our
religious consciousness is the sense or percep-
tion of the presence of a transcendent object,
and that this perception, coalescing with the
ontological motive of all human activity, leads
to the translation of this primary datum into
the postulate of the transcendent being as the
ground-spring or primary root of our existence.
The problem then was by what process does the
noetic activity further define this ground-being ?
And at that point we were led into the wide
digression which we have made, not unprofit-
ably, I may hope, in our criticism of anthropo-
morphism. Returning to the main question, we
may take, as the outcome of our discussion up
to this point, the conclusion that, at the basis
of our religious consciousness, rests the postu-
late of the transcendent ground-spring of our
existence. This is deeper than analogy, and is
a deliverance of the primary motives of our
nature. Now, it is when we inquire what form
the noetic activity takes in the further determi-
nation of our religious conceptions that we come
upon the place and function of analogy. We are
able here to distinguish two lines of funda-
mental analogy. (1) The analogy of type, and

32 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION

(2) the analogy of attribute. In both, there is
involved the point of departure from our o^vn
self-hood as revealed in self-consciousness.
Briefly stated, we proceed to the further deter-
mination of the primary datum of religion by
the employment of analogies drawn from our
own self-tjTDe of reality. It is important, then,
that our conception of self -hood, the form of be-
ing revealed in self-consciousness, should be
adequate. "Without going into details, which
will be reserved for a subsequent lecture, let me
have your indulgence while I make a condensed
statement of what I believe to constitute the
outlines of an adequate conception of self. We
know that empiricism, limiting itself to the
plural world of phenomena, is able to find in
consciousness only the existence of a transient
and perishable self. There are states of unity,
identity and perdurability, it is true, but these
are states among other states, and pass in the
perpetual flux of coming into and passing out
of existence. But empiricism finds only a pass-
ing, unreal self, while it denies the existence of
a real, perdurable self. From the standpoint
of a rational self-consciousness, however, we
are led to distinguish between two selves, or,
rather, two orders of self, the empirical, which
is plural, fragmentary and perishable, and the
deeper, real or rational self that is unitary,
stable and perdurable. A deeper criticism of
self-consciousness always reveals this real self
as the ground and ideal of the empirical self

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 33

that is perishable. Ontologically viewed, the
life of the subject of experience may be repre-
sented as a process in which there is a perpetual
effort to pass from the flux and transciency of
the empirical to the stability and unity of the
real and rational. The real self is, therefore,
both the ground of the empirical self and its
ontological goal. It is to the self, viewed from
this rational and ontological point of view as
unitary, stable, unbroken and perdurable, that
we apply the name soul. The soul may then
be identified with the real self, or real subject
of experience, and may be regarded as the uni-
tary and perdurable subject which maintains its
identity in and through the flux of empirical
change. Now, I will ask you to let this brief
characterization serve our purposes provision-
ally at this stage of the discussion. From the
point of view of the real self, the whole effort
of our experience is, as I have said, to find
something permanent, stable and unitary as its
ground. This being true, it will be clear that
the deepest analogies we can employ will be
those we derive from the conception of our real
and deeper selves, and these I propose to con-
sider under the two divisions above indicated.

In the first place, how does the analogy of
self or the soul enable us to define, in any sense,
the primary being? Well, if we consider that
the soul stands related to experience as its uni-
tary ground, as well as its ontological goal or
ideal, we have the deepest reason for affirming

34 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

the same or its analogue of the primary and
transcendent spring of existence. We say, us-
ing this deep analogy, that the primary being is
the unitary ground of existence, as well as its
ontological goal. We say, using the same an-
alogy, that this being is one of our ovm type;
that is, of the soul-type ; in that, we assert of it
the same relation to the total plurality of the
phenomenal world that we assert as existing be-
tween the soul and the plurality of the world of
consciousness. Without further elaborating the
argument here, we may say that the use of this
analogy enables the noetic activity to define the
conception of a being that is generically of
the same type as the soul in us. But, in the use
of this analogy, it must not be forgotten that the
ground-being will, by virtue of its transcend-
ence, be qualitatively different, in some sense,
from our soul type. Can we determine any
sense here in which that may be true? Well, if
we consider the soul as a real subject of ex-
perience, we will find that the notion of a real
subject is not consistent with a passive, but
only with an active agent. If so, the least, and
perhaps the most, we can ascribe to it is what
we call self-activity. But that which is self-
active may not be self -existent. It may have the
principle of self-activity in it, and may yet be
conscious that it does not contain the ground of
its own existence. This will enable us to de-
termine a distinction, — for the transcendent be-
ing, as the ground of all existence, will be not

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 35

only self-active but self-existent, and, as such,
will be qualitatively different from the soul.

Here, I apprehend, we have come upon a
matter of importance for, if we study the onto-
logical proof of God's existence, as developed
by Anselm and adopted by Spinoza, we will find
that, in principle, it is the identification of God
with the self-existent, and the assertion that the
existence of the self -existent is self-evident. It
is only the existence of derived things that
needs to be proved. The spring of all existence
exists necessarily. Analogy enables us, then, to
ascribe the type of our own soul to the tran-
scendent being, with the qualification that this
being is not simply self-active but self-existent,
containing in it the principle of all existence.

Our second point involves the use of analogy
in the field of the attributes of this being. The
first group of attributes we will consider are
what have been called metaphysical: namely,
the attributes of infinitude, absoluteness, om-
nipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and etern-
ity. Taking these attributes as a whole, I think,
when we affirmed of God the attribute by virtue
of which He transcends man in existence, we
have affirmed the principle of all this group of
attributes. If God is self-existent; that is, if
He holds the springs of being within Himself,
He is thereby infinite, free from finite limits;
absolute, free from existential dependence ; om-
nipotent, free from the restrictions of derived
existence; omniscient, that is, the subject of a

36 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION

knowledge that is commensurate with all ex-
istence; omnipresent, that is, present to all re-
ality by virtue of being the principle of all ex-
istence ; eternal, by virtue of His self-existence,
which antedates time and grounds its series.
It seems to be quite evident that, when we have
once grasped the true principle of transcend-
ence the application of the analogy of the self
to the ground-being becomes clear.

Let us, then, take another group of attributes,
which we may call the psychological. The re-
ligious consciousness persists in ascribing
thought and feeling and will to God, in spite of
the prohibition of Spinoza and other great phi-
losophers, who say that there is no warrant for
saying that God either thinks or feels or wills
in any sense that we can understand. Have we
not in our possession a key that will open the
way to a ray of light on this situation ? If God
transcends our type in His self-existence, it is
clear that His intellections, as well as His feel-
ings and volitions, if we suppose Him to be the
subject of such activities, will be commensurate
with His self-existence. This will involve two
conclusions regarding all these activities. They
will be related to the whole of existence, and
they will be related directly and immediately,
since the principle of self-existence will be pres-
ent in all existence. God's thinking will be,
therefore, a function of the whole of reality; it
will be all-including. The Divine intellection
will also be immediate. Kant has the same

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 37

thought in mind when he conceives an under-
standing whose conceptions are immediately
perceptive of the truth. We cannot, he says,
determine whether such an understanding ex-
ists or not. But its possibility cannot be de-
nied, and, could we pass from the idea of God
to His existence, we would then have sufficient
grounds for asserting that this type of intellec-
tion is real. The reason, then, why Kant is un-
able to assert that this type of understanding is
real, is mainly due to the fact that he is forced
to leave the existence of God in doubt. In these
discussions, we have escaped the dilemma of
Kant by refusing to divorce the idea of God
from the existential grounds out of which it
arises. Taking the idea of a perceptive under-
standing as a type of the qualitative difference
that must be recognized as existing between the
divine intellection and its human analogue, the
conclusion will be obvious that both gnosticism,
which assumes the unqualified ability of the hu-
man reason to grasp and define the nature of
the divine intelligence; and agnosticism, which
asserts the total inability of reason to form any
conceptions of the divine, are alike false; — the
one failing to realize the impossibility of form-
ing an intelligent conception of self-existence,
which is, nevertheless, the first datum of all ex-
istence, and thus vitiating all its conclusions;
the other failing to recognize the ability of the
human reason to reach approximate conceptions
of the divine attributes, which, though they are

38 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

inadequate, point the way toward a limiting
ideal and render its nature intelligible.

The last group of qualities we shall study
brieliy in this connection are the moral, the
ascription to God of the attributes of righteous-
ness, holiness, justice, goodness and truthful-
ness. We will find that the ground of discrimi-
nating judgment here is the same as above. It
is not worth while to pause on the question
whether the conception of God involves moral
attributes or not. An immediate necessary in-
ference from the idea of God is that He is good.
This springs immediately from the idea of per-
fection involved in the very notion of God.
But there is a still further reflection that is not
so obvious. The idea of God, we have said, in-
volves perfection, and the idea of God, as main-
tained above, is that of the self-existent ground
of all existence. The perfection of things will
always be determined in the light of their first
principle, which will fix their ideal limit. Hence
God, as the self-existent principle of all exist-
ence, will contain, in His own nature, the ideal
and standard of perfection. It is the conception
of God as the self-existent principle of all exist-
ence that involves perfection as an immediate
necessity. Applying this conclusion to the
moral attributes, we will find that thev must
all be conceived under the idea of perfection.
This will involve the same limits as above. The
righteousness, holiness, justice and truthfulness
of God may be represented intelligently under

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 39

the analogies of our own corresponding human
attributes, provided we take our highest con-
ceptions of these attributes as approximations
which give us intelligent guidance, but never en-
able us to fully grasp the ideal.

We have now proceeded far enough to enable
us to draw some conclusions in regard to the
ground terms of religious knowledge. The re-
ligious consciousness, in common with all pri-
mary forms of consciousness, gives some imme-
diate deliverance, which serves as a datum for
the superstructure which the noetic faculty pro-
ceeds to erect upon it. We have seen that the
primary datum of the religious consciousness is
the sense or perception of a transcendent pres-
ence, which the noetic faculty, following the
ontological motive of grounding, translates into
the notion of the self-existent ground and
spring of all existence. This is the intuition
out of which springs that sense of dependence,
the feeling that he is not self-existent, but has
his being rooted in soil deeper than his own,
which is so fundamental and which so domi-
nates his religious consciousness. With this
perception of the self-existent ground of its ex-
istence as a primary datum, we have seen how
the noetic faculty, proceeding, not from any an-
alogy of sense, but from the analogy of man's
own self-conscious being, as revealed by the
deeper processes of his consciousness, defines
this primal being as the unitary, stable and per-
durable ground of all existence. In other words,

40 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

it is defined in terms that are fundamental to
the soul-type of self-conscious being, and as a
being of the same type.

At this point, we had occasion to criticise the
tendency of anthropomorphism to represent
this being as such a being as ourselves writ
large, and the refutation of anthropomorphism
was founded on the claim that it misinterpreted
the transcendence of this being as being only
quantitative, whereas quantitative transcend-
ence has no significance for religion. The true
sense in which the primal being transcends
we found to be qualitative, and to arise out of
the fact that the ground-spring of existence is
self-existent. This qualitative difference, as
we saw, lifts the ground-being above the plane
of the human soul, and makes it impossible to
define it in unmodified categories of the human
type. This, as we saw, gave rise to the issue
between gnosticism, which asserts the omni-
science of reason, and agnosticism, which af-
firms its total incompetence in the field of re-
ligious conceptions. We met this issue with our
doctrine of approximating conceptions, which,
while they do not enable us to fully grasp or
define the transcendent object, yet render it in-
telligible, and represent the true pathway to-
ward the ideal. Finally, we have seen how the
qualitative transcendence of the ground-being,
having its principle in the self-existence of that
being, must be taken into consideration in shap-
ing our efforts to determine the attributes of the

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 41

ground-being. In employing our own funda-
mental conceptions of the attributes of being, as
ascriptions to the divine being, we have found
it necessary, in all cases, to take into account
the qualitative transcendence of the divine na-
ture, and to treat our conceptions accordingly.
We proceed, now, to another phase of re-
ligious knowledge, which arises out of an ap-
parent conflict of opposite tendencies in the de-
velopment of religious ideas. We have seen
that two forces operate in determining our re-
ligious conceptions, and, more specifically, our
idea of God. The one we may call the self-
analogy, which acts to define the type and at-
tributes of God in terms of our own conscious
being. This force, acting alone and unmodified,
would lead to the extreme of anthropomorph-
ism on the one hand, and that of gnosticism on
the other. Proceeding on this analogy alone,
God would be completely knowable and defin-
able, either in the lower terms of anthropo-
morphism, or in the higher terms of an omnis-
cient reason. But we have found that there is
another and more subtle force which acts in an
opposite way, either consciously or unconscious-
ly, in shaping our religious conceptions. This is
the force of qualitative transcendence, which
constrains us to recognize a qualitative differ-
ence of type and attribute, and apparently un-
does what has already been accomplished by the
use of the self -analogy. Now, the sense of this
opposition, when first apprehended, will, with-

42 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION

out doubt, put the thinker into a sore dilenuna.
He will be strongly driven to commit himself
either to the side of transcendence, or to that
of the self-analogy, and, in either case, will
manifest a characteristic tendency in the field
of religious thought. If the moment of tran-
scendence fertilizes in his mind, he will become
a partisan of the Eleatic gnostic, who puts God
so far removed from the world of plurality and
change, that He is virtually isolated and lost
in His unapproachable oneness and immutabil-
ity. It is only a short step from this conclusion
to the modern Spencerian type of agnosticism
that denies the power of reason to conceive such
a being, and hides it absolutely behind the veil
of mystery. If, however, it is the self -analogy
that fertilizes in our thinking, the sense of
transcendence will fall into the background,
and we will seem to be in possession of a prin-
ciple which renders God intelligible to us, but
one that stamps our categories as adequate and
our reason as competent to grasp God in our
definitions, and reduce His nature to terms as
definite as those of mathematics. Anthropo-
morphism and dogmatic rationalism have a
very close kinship and agree in asserting the
self-sufi&ciency of their own categories to de-
termine the idea of God. But the history of
thought teaches us that dogmatic rationalism
will meet criticism in the way, which will con-
vict it of transgressing the limits of a possible
knowledge and working out formal demonstra-

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 43

tions that have no sound major premises ; while
the lion in the way that will confound anthropo-
morphism is humanism, which will convict it
of the employment of purely human data to
prove a super-human conclusion. For human-
ism is the logical outcome of anthropomorph-
ism, and follows strictly from the terms of the
anthropomorphic logic.

Truly, the thought of man is thrown into a
painful dilemma by this conflict of opposite
principles, neither of which he can repudiate
or neglect without following into extravagance.
Now, the real solution of the dilemma is to be
found, I think, in recognizing the fact that we
have come upon a dialectic of principles, which,
when apart and unqualified, tend to contradic-
tion and paradoxes, but, when kept together in
the relation of mutual qualification, give rise to
true and consistent conclusions. Let us con-
sider, then, how the dialectic will operate in the
genesis of true conceptions. Take, for example,
the ascription of moral attributes to God. The
difficulty here consists in the fact that we do
not understand how morality can be ascribed to
a being without subjecting him consciously to
moral law. But this would make something
else more primary than God, who would thus
become a dependent being. The opposing prop-
ositions which arise are (1) that God is not a
moral being; (2) that He is moral and depend-
ent, or subject to law. This is a sore dilemma
from which thought has not been completely de-

44 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

livered from Plato's time down to the present
day. But is there no way out of it ? The dialec-
tic will give us, at least, some help, and we may,
perhaps, get a hint from Kant's perceptive un-
derstanding. If we regard the opposition as a
real dialectic, how will it help our difficulty ? In
this way; while we regard our principles as
operating on the same plane, they will be in
contradiction ; whereas, if we do not proceed on
this assumption, but recognize the possibility
that we may be dealing with conceptions which
belong to different levels, a way out of the di-
lemma may appear. Now, if we scrutinize the
two principles, that of transcendence and that
of self -analogy, we will find reasons for regard-
ing the principle of transcendence as occupying
the higher level. The principle of self-analogy
is clearly on our human level ; but transcendence
is a category of the self-existent, and is, there-
fore, above us. Naturally, then, in a dialectic,
the higher will be the checking principle of the
lower. To return to our example, the ascription
of moral attributes to God: the principle of
self-analogy will lead us to ascribe morality to
God, but here we come on the difficulty that, if
we ascribe the type of our human morality to
God, we bring Him under law, and there is
something more ultimate than Himself. Shall
we say, then, that God is not moral! The prin-
ciple of transcendence would seem to suggest a
better way. Being a principle on a higher level,
it is not in contradiction with self-analogy.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 45

Rather it is a principle of delimitation, and the
kind of delimitation it enforces will only appear
in the light of the specific character of the prin-
ciple itself. Now, we have already concluded
that the root-notion of transcendence in this re-
gard is self-existence. God transcends the soul
of man by virtue of his self -existence, and this
means that he has the first roots of existence in
himself. Applying this to the case in hand, we
will get a hint of where the difficulty lies. We
were not troubled by the ascription of morality
to God, for to deny Him morality would seem to
be a privation ; but what did trouble us was its
seeming implication of the divine subordination
to law. But the transcendence of God implies
His antecedence to law; that, as the self-exist-
ent, the springs of law are in His own being.
If we ascribe morality to God, we must, there-
fore, do it in the transcendent sense, which will
enable Him to be moral without being con-
sciously subject to law. Is this at all thinkable I
It is here, I think, that Kant's suggestion of a
perceptive understanding will give us a hint.
Kant meant, by a perceptive understanding, one
that, like perception, will constitute its object
or content immediately, and not by a mediate
process. This must be the sense of Spinoza
when he regards thought as perceptive. In
other words, what Kant and Spinoza mean to do
is to ascribe the creative function to the under-
standing ; the power to create the objects of its
own intellection. Applying this insight to the

46 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

case in hand, if we ascribe morality to God, we
must do so creatively. God will be the prime
author of the moral, and it will exist because it
has its first-springs in His nature.

What, now, would be the consciousness of
such a being in connection with his own activi-
ties, either intellectual or moral? Would it be
that of a being who is consciously related to
that which, in its roots, transcends Him, and
to which He is subjected in the sense of law?
Or, would it be the relation of free creativeness,
in which the dominating consciousness is that
of authorship, and not of law or dependence?
Very clearly, the latter.

We have here come upon the terms, as I
think, for the solution of our dilemma. The
dialectic will operate in this way. It will say,
in its moment of transcendence: You cannot
ascribe morality to God in the ordinary sense,
for that would subordinate Him to law ; but He
is self-existent and is the source of all law.
You must, therefore, modify your conception of
the moral, and conceive it as related to a con-
sciousness of free creativeness, in which the
thought of the right or true does not bring its
author consciously into subordination to the law
of something that is objective to him, but is,
rather, creative of the right or true. That the
divine thinking is creative ; that the divine will-
ing is constitutive, — this is the requirement of
the principle of transcendence, and the dialectic
will work out in the following manner. When

PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION 47

we represent God as moral, following the an-
alogies of our own being, the other term of the
dialectic will lead us to qualify this judgment
with the touch of transcendence, so that we will
be led to admit that the morality of the divine
nature cannot be altogether like our own, which
subordinates us to law. It must, rather, be that
of a free, creative being, whose nature is its
prime source, and whose thought creates the
moral law of which he thinks. Whether this can
be made wholly intelligible or not is a problem
to which we will be led to answer both yes and
no : No, if, by wholly intelligible, is meant that
our categories are adequate, and enable us to
fully grasp the conception of creative morality ;
for it is clear that we are here dealing with
terms that are above us; but yes, if we mean
that under the stimulus of the sense of tran-
scendence itself we may qualify our concep-
tions, and treat them as merely approximations.
"We will learn the lesson that things, in order to
be intelligible, do not require to be wholly
graspable or definable; otherwise, our knowl-
edge would be much more limited than it is.
But, in the field of religious ideas, we have
learned that, although our reason must abdicate
its claim to omniscience and full competence,
yet it is possible for us, by the use of our con-
ceptions, as terms of approximation, to render
intelligible that which, nevertheless, transcends
our powers to fully grasp or define. In this we
express, I think, the truth of our most adequate,

48 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

as well as our most reverent, religious con-
sciousness, which is not willing to surrender
the claim that we may know God in an intimate
way, while, at the same time, it would regard as
a kind of blasphemy the claim that He may be
brought completely within the limits of human
thought. Mystery is a necessary factor in a
true, religious experience.

Lecture III. The Rational Type of Religious

Knowledge

Before entering on the principal topic of this
lecture, which is a critical treatment of the
rational type of religious knowledge, I wish to
draw a deduction or two from the conclusions
we have already reached. We saw how the de-
velopment of true and adequate conceptions in
religion involves the exercise of a dialectic by
which opposing principles modify each other in
bringing about satisfactory results. I propose
to show, in the beginning of this lecture, the
v^alue of the dialectic in criticising certain laws
that have been proposed as expressing the real
tendency of history in the development of re-
ligious conceptions. One of these laws is that
laid down by Herbert Spencer. We find the
data for his law in his procedure in the philos-
ophy of the unknowable. Quoting, with ap-
proval, the reasonings of Sir William Hamilton
and Dean Mansel, to the effect that the idea of
God is one that altogether transcends the con-

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 49

ceptions of men ; that, therefore, human reason
is wholly incompetent to form any true concep-
tions of God, Mr. Spencer adduces additional
reasons of his own for accepting the doctrine
of nescience. The peculiarity of his doctrine is
that he affirms dogmatically the existence of the
transcendent reality while maintaining that its
nature is wholly beyond knowledge. This he
regards as a common deliverance of both
science and religion, and he puts forth the dog-
ma of the existence of an unknowable power as
the ground of reconciliation between science
and religion. Now, on this basis, Mr. Spencer
is able to see that the tendency of human think-
ing from the beginning has been to pass from a
stage in which God has been altogether clothed
in the attributes of man to an ideal stage in
which he is regarded as wholly transcendent
and drops into absolute mystery. Logically
and historically, the passage is from crude
anthropomorphism to pure transcendence, the
process being characterized as the gradual
stripping off of human attributes till nothing
remains, and reason, recognizing its incompe-
tence, gives up the attempt to characterize and
restrain negation. This is the single law which
Mr. Spencer regards as valid in the field of the
development of religious ideas. At the oppo-
site end of the scale, we find the position of the
humanists, who deny all transcendence and
supernaturalism, and seek to reduce religion to
purely human and knowable terms. We may

50 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

take Auguste Comte as the classic representa-
tive of humanism. The foundation of his re-
ligious philosophy is to be found in his doctrine
of the law of the three stages in the develop-
ment of human conceptions; the religious, the
metaphysical and the scientific. Comte sees the
race passing through the three stages of mental
gro^vth, beginning with the lowest stage, the
religious, when man peopled the world with
superior beings like himself; passing on to the
metaphysical, in which the place of these beings
is taken by occult and abstract entities, like that
of substance; to a final stage, called the scien-
tific, in which the place of the religious and
metaphysical entities is taken by the notions of
natural causation and scientific law. This, to
Comte, is the final stage, and the only one that
represents the truth. It might be supposed
that, having reached this conclusion, Comte
would propose the abolition of religion, but he
pursues a more logical and rational method.
He proposes to preserve religion, but to erect
it on scientific foundations. Now, two ways are
open to such a project, either that of naturalism
or that of humanism. But Comte, being most
vitally interested in the social sciences, natur-
ally chose the alternative of humanism. We are
not interested here in the details of Comte 's
system, but only in the principle on which it was
founded. The scientific conception of religion
commits it to a knowable and verifiable founda-
tion, and eliminates all ideas of the super-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 51

natural or the transcendent. The idea of man
and his destiny must, therefore, be taken as the
central object of religion. Humanism, as a re-
ligion, will involve the worship of this ideal of
humanity, which may be symbolized as Comte
symbolized it, or left without any symbol. The
principle is that of pure humanism, and has in
it the logical denial of transcendence in its
roots. Now, it is quite clear that the Spencer-
ian law and that of Comte in Humanism are
contradictory. Standing as they do in hostile
opposition, they put reason in a dilemma, and
the truth of one involves the falsehood of the
other, yet it is clear that neither, standing alone,
expresses the full truth of the situation. Each
seems to require the checking and limiting in-
fluence of the other in order to check erratic
tendencies. That Spencer's law requires modi-
fication is evident not only from the refusal of
reason to accept absolute mystery as a finality,
but also, and this is the more significant con-
sideration, because it is logically impossible that
an existential judgment should assert nothing
but abstract existence. The that and the what
of things are strictly not separable, and Mr.
Spencer proves this in his effort to purge his
judgment of the existence of the ultimate power
from any kind of characterization. In fact,
when we come to analyze, we stir up a whole
nest of qualifications, which come in unavoid-
ably with the judgment of existence. I shall not
delay you in pointing out any of these since

52 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

they are not in dispute, but will take them as
evidence of the impossibility of separating ex-
istence from nature. If we know the existence
of something, we have some knowledge of its
kind. The law is, therefore, fallacious in so far
as it asserts a tendency toward absolute mys-
tery. Turning to the law of humanism, we
find it open to the same criticism on the oppo-
site side. The dilemma here arises from the at-
tempt to exclude transcendence in a judgment
that is strictly human in its scope and limita-
tions. It is as though a rope that is ten feet
long should assert that there is nothing beyond
the ten-foot limit, on the ground that its
measuring limit is ten feet. It forgets that its
ability to determine the limits of its own meas-
uring power depends on its possession of a
standard of measurement that transcends its
own limits. In other words, the logic of reason
is such that a boundary, in order to be fixed as
a fact of knowledge, must be overleaped and
viewed from the other side. All limitation is,
therefore, relative, and the Comptean, in order
to restrict the intelligence of man to purely hu-
manistic boundaries, must appeal to trans-
cendence as a necessary datum of his judgment.
It is clear, therefore, that the attempt to elimi-
nate the datum of transcendence absolutely
from our judgments of limitation, involves a
subtle self-contradiction and is unsound. The
exclusion is relative only and presupposes a

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 53

larger insight that reality flows out and beyond
the arresting points of all our judgments.

The conclusion of this critical analysis will
make it clear, I think, that neither of these so-
called laws, taken in its abstract independence,
expresses for us a true principle in the develop-
ment of religious ideas. That either law
should work out true results, it must be checked
by its opposite. The true and adequate con-
ception of the logic that avoids contradictions
and obtains rational results, is that of a dia-
lectic of opposites, such as we have described,
in which the unchartered opposition of one-
sided forces is overcome, and the unchecked ten-
dencies of pure humanism are qualified by the
insight of transcendence, while, reciprocally,
the tendency of transcendence to break with
the boundaries of the finite, is checked by the
insight of humanism. The principle of the dia-
lectic supplies, therefore, a more adequate and
rational law of the development of religious
ideas that is exemplified by the real history of
religions. We do not find in the highest relig-
ions, like Judaism and Christianity, that the
tendency is to magnify either the principle of
transcendence or that of self-analogy to the ex-
clusion of the other. On the contrary, we find
in them a clearer movement of the dialectic,
and a higher and purer exhibition of both prin-
ciples, than in any of the lower types of re-
ligion.

We pass, now, to the consideration of the

54 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

mediate and rational type of religious knowl-
edge. Now, in distinguishing between the im-
mediate and the mediate forms of religious
knowledge, I do not wish to be understood as
claiming that the two are separable. In fact,
they are not, and the noetic activity will reveal
in its earliest and most elementary movements,
the germs of mediation. The distinction is
largely one of aspects, and, in fact, there is no
stage of mentality in which an absolute separa-
tion is possible. But while, heretofore, the
emphasis has been placed on processes which
are dominantly immediate, we are about to shift
the scene and invite you to the study of an
aspect of religious knowledge that is dominant-
ly mediate. I will designate this aspect as the
ideo-rational ; as that aspect of knowledge in
which reason performs its most characteristic
function. Before proceeding, however, it is im-
portant, in the interest of clarity, that we
should point out one or two distinctions. You
have heard of the distinction between two
phases of reason, which are called abstract and
concrete, and you are, no doubt, not unfamiliar
with the fact that, in some quarters, a fashion
has sprung up of speaking of the abstract rea-
son with a certain disrespect. Now, while I,
myself, do not share in this disrespect, it is my
purpose here to draw the distinction in order
that I may make my appeal to the concrete rea-
son. What we mean by the abstract reason,
when we speak with discrimination, is reason in

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 55

its formal activity, as it expresses itself in the
logical processes. This activity is most clearly
revealed in judgments and inferences. A judg-
ment is, briefly, a device by which we think two
contents of our world together that were, here-
tofore, disjoined, in the relation of subject and
predicate, so that the matter of the predication
becomes a qualifier of the subject. What we
call inference is simply an extension of this
thinking together process beyond the limit of
single judgments. This inferential process may
be either immediate or mediate, as, when we
infer from the judgment John Smith is honest,
that John Smith is not a rascal. This would
represent the immediate form. But, if the ques-
tion be whether John Smith be a cultivated man
or not, then, without the means of testing the
question directly, if we happen to know that
John Smith has had a college education, then
we argue, mediately, that John Smith hav-
ing enjoyed the advantages of a college edu-
cation is a cultivated man. Here our inference
takes the technical form of the syllogism in
which our major premise is that a college-
educated man is a cultivated man. Using the
mediating term, college-educated, we are able
to so connect Smith's case with the major that
the conclusion follows as a third judgment.
Stated this way, it will be clear that what we
call the formal or abstract activity of reason
does not deserve our reprobation, but is nearly
as close to us as breathing, and forms the hands
and feet of our intellectual processes. It is

56 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

hardly deserving of the epithet abstract. What
I call the concrete reason is not something dif-
ferent from this and separable from it, but,
rather, the same activity viewed in the light of
its inner, and what I have already called its on-
tological motive. Let us consider, a little fur-
ther, the activity on its formal side. In this
aspect, as a thinking together part of a world
of content that is as yet separate and plural-
istic, it is a movement that seeks to remedy the
detachment and plurality of its world by bring-
ing the fragments together into a unity. It
does this by means of a common quality in the
two contents of a judgment ; by means of a com-
mon or mediating term in the case of mediate
inference. This common term or linkage is the
principle by which reason organizes the parts
of its world into a unity. It is by this means
that it overcomes the immediated plurality of
the materials with which it deals; by which it
cures the instability of the parts by introducing
stability; by which it overcomes the perisha-
bility of passing and disconnected phenomena
by fixing them in an order that is unbroken and
permanent. On its formal side then, we find
that reason is a principle that organizes the
plural and disconnected elements of its world
into an organized order and unity. This formal
aspect of reason, however, while it may be con-
sidered abstractly, is not separable from a
deeper and more hidden aspect by which it is
related to the foundations of reality. We are

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 57

indebted for this insight to the philosopher
Leibnitz, who distinguished the formal aspect
of reason and its principle of contradiction; or,
in the reformed logic which he proposed, iden-
tity, from its more fundamental and real as-
pect, the principle of which he characterized as
that of ground and consequent. This was a
fertile distinction, which was overlooked by
Leibnitz' successors, and led to the attempt to
regard the formal activity of reason and its
principle of identity as constituting its whole
legitimate use. The result was the drying up of
the springs of living knowledge, and the per-
version of philosophy into a species of formal
and dogmatic rationalism, which found its ne-
mesis in a desert of arid abstractions and pure-
ly formalistic demonstrations. Dogmatic ra-
tionalism may be taken as the inevitable type
of philosophy, which will result from the ele-
vation of the formal principle of reason into the
sole organ of thought. If we ask, now, what
deeper and more adequate conception of reason
is possible, we may appeal to Leibnitz for our
answer. Leibnitz saw clearly that, if we regard
reason as a purely formal activity, it will cease
to be an organ of truth, and we will be commit-
ted to some empirical principle for the fruitful
increase of knowledge. But empiricism, in its
scepticism of reason, and its exclusive adhesion
to sense, falls into blindness, as Hume showed
later, and loses itself in a morass. The only
means of vindicating reason from empirical
scepticism, and of making it a real organ of

58 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

truth, was, in Liebnitz's view, to claim for it
a deeper function than the formal, and a princi-
ple that would be synthetic rather than purely
analytic. It has not been sufficiently recognized
that Leibnitz has here anticipated the famous
distinction of Kant, although it did not, in his
case, lead on to the discovery of the categories.
The principle of the deeper and more concrete
exercise of reason, Leibnitz finds in the notion
of ground and consequent. To state the matter
in a form that will bring out the Leibnitzian in-
sight, the formal activity of reason is super-
ficial, and, when abstracted from its deeper mo-
tive, ceases to be an organ of knowledge. But
this separation should not be made since the
formal activity can be kept in vital touch with
the real only if we relate it to a deeper activity,
in the light of which it becomes the formal
elaborative aspect of the process of real knowl-
edge. Now, this deeper activity of reason is one
that springs from an insight which may be ex-
pressed as follows: Nothing is rationally ex-
plained that is not grounded in something that
has more reality than itself. In short, the in-
sight into the qualitative transcendence of a
real grounding principle was the great contri-
bution of Leibnitz at this point. The formal
statement of this insight is to be found in the
phrase ratio-sufficiens, and Leibnitz expresses
in this form the rational demand that nothing
can be regarded as adequately explained that
has not been referred to its ground. It is evi-

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 59

deit, however, that such a statement will be
mere commonplace if it is not conceived in the
light of the insight to which I have referred ; —
the fact that the sufficient ground of anything is
something that qualitatively transcends it. It
then becomes a most significant and fruitful
principle since it forbids the mind to rest satis-
fied with any explanation of a thing that does
not refer it to a qualitatively transcendent
ground. This will not only motive a synthetic
activity that looks outside and beyond the pres-
ent matter for the grounding fact that will ex-
plain it, but it also institutes an unending pro-
cess. The quest for transcendent grounding
never ends until the point is reached where the
whole of existence is seen to have its final
ground in the self-existent. It becomes evident
at this point that the deeper activity of reason,
which we have been considering, is connected
with what has been designated in a former lec-
ture as the ontological motive of reason; the
motive which leads it on from point to point in
the search for truth until it relates all reality
to the foundation of the world. We are ready
to see now that this ontological motive springs
from an insight, and that the insight fixes as
the goal of all rational activity, the point where
existence will find its grounding in the self-ex-
istent. It is from the point of view of this in-
sight that we are able to understand what I
have called the ontological motive of reason.
And since, as we have contended, the rational

GO PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

motive is present in the most direct and imme-
diate form of the noetic activity, we will be pre-
pared for the contention here that this inner
ontological motive of reason will be found oper-
ative in the lowest stages of perception, as well
as in the highest exercises of rationality
Whether we consider the selective process by
which certain experiences are organized into
objective form: or the method by which the con-
cept of the object is formed as synthetizing a
plurality of otherwise disconnected qualities
into the unity of a substance ; whether we con-
sider the appeal that is made in every judgment
of identity to an order that gathers up the frag-
mentary and the perishing into the unitary and
the permanent; or the mediating activity, by
which the fragmentary parts of a plurality are
further organized into a unitary and unbroken
system, we find that every stage reveals the
presence of this rational motive. The inner on-
tological principle by which all mentality is
actuated, which translates the whole noetic ac-
tivity into a teleological process, is rational.
The goal of the process is the rational require-
ment of grounding, which, as the imminent mo-
tive of all its stages, becomes explicit at the end
in the requirement that all existence shall find
its roots in that which is self-existent. Now,
the position I wish to take here is that concep-
tions and conclusions that are formed according
to the principles of our nature, and are motived
by the fundamental data of our whole experi-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 61

ence, will be able to bear the tests of existence
as well as that of rational soundness. In gen-
eral, it is a false deduction that separates the
considerations of existence and nature. To be
sure there are some regions of abstractions into
which human reason is tempted to enter where
the distinction is pertinent, and we need to
bring our conclusions back to the test of existen-
tial conditions ; but, after all, the main guaran-
tee of all our results will consist in the fact that
they have been reached in accordance with the
fundamental motives and conditions of our
cognitive or thinking processes. The scientific
mind does not burden itself with the task of
proving the reality of its world, provided its
conclusions bear the test of phenomena, and
are a satisfactory answer to the questions it
has asked; nor does the artist trouble himself
about the existential value of his creations, pro-
vided they realize for him the highest standards
of beauty. It is only when the artistic mind
begins to aberrate from these standards, and to
produce what cannot be reconciled with the
ideals of beauty, that the question of its truth
to reality will be raised. This is due to the
fact that there is such a thing as artistic per-
ception, which brings the mind into direct rela-
tion with first-hand facts ; a perception in which
all men participate in a measure. Otherwise,
there would be no organ in man to which the
artist could appeal. But this common organ is
raised to a higher power in the mind of the

62 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

artist, and will open a field of perceptions to
him that is not open to the ordinary man. So
long, however, as the productions of the artistic
genius are able to make their appeal to the, per-
haps dormant, artistic perceptions of the aver-
age mind, and to arouse in it a sense of appre-
ciation for that which transcends its own range
of intuitions, while appealing to something in
itself that is akin to the highest, the question
of the correspondence of the artist's concep-
tions with reality need not be raised. Applying
this conclusion to the problem of religious
knowledge, I would lay down, at this point, the
following proposition : If it he true, as we have
endeavored to prove in these lectures, that the
religious consciousness of man is an organ that
brings the mind of man into first-hand and per-
ceptive relations with existential realities, and,
if it he further true, as ive have endeavored to
prove, that the rational motive at the heart of
the whole noetic activity has its roots in the pri-
mary religious consciousness; in its original
datum, the sense of the presence of a transcen-
dent and grounding reality; and if it he true, as
we have also sought to prove, that this inner
motive of the noetic activity develops into the
notion of ground, which is the ideal of the tvhole
reasoning process; then tve have reasons that
are sufficient for concluding that the religious
consciousness, like the artistic, for example, is
an organ of hnoivledge where judgments when
reached, in accordance with motives and data

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 63

that are fundamental to it, will have epistemo-
logical value.

The bearing of this proposition on the mod-
ern criticism of the so-called proofs of the ex-
istence of God will, I think, be obvious. The
classical criticism is that of Kant, and the verve
of it will be found in his critique of the onto-
logical proof. The method of this proof con-
sists in first separating the conceptual process,
in which the idea of God is developed, from the
data that connect conception with existence.
It is then possible, as Kant does, to concede all
the intrinsic rational force that is claimed for
the idea by its authors, while, at the same time,
putting in the plea that the question of exist-
ence is not thereby affected. This will be be-
yond cavil if you study Kant 's reasoning. The
idea of God, he contends, is formed according
to the standards and requirements of reason.
It is rationally without flaw, and embodies what
is necessarily involved in a rationally complete
and satisfactory system of being. But this does
not even bear directly on the question of ex-
istence. At the outset, the question of existence
has been so completely separated from that of
nature that an impassable gulf yawns between
them, so that, how^ever cogent the idea of God
may be, it can have no bearing on the problem
of existence. Moreover, the gap is so wide and
absolute that no credential can pass over from
existence to qualify in any sense the idea. I
hope I do not exaggerate when I say that a

64 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

situation like the one that Kant has created
seems to be so strained and artificial as to de-
stroy the possibility of continued credence. In
a procedure with which we are perfectly fa-
miliar, we are in the habit of testing our judg-
ments by bringing them before the tribunal of
standards that are germane to the matter that
is being tested. It does not occur to the sculp-
tor to apply the rules of surveying to his statue,
nor will the legislator appeal to the laws of
poetry. Every subject-matter has standards
that are germane, and, when these are satis-
fied, the question of reality has been answered.
Now, the spring of the difficulty mth Kant will
be found, I think, in an initial assumption he
makes with regard to existence. Kant was al-
ways more than half an empiricist in some of
his conceptions, and, in that of existence, he
was entirely so. The senses supply to him the
only type of existence. That which does not
phenomenalize in some physical order or time
or space cannot be really existent. But man's
real self and God have no such phenomenal
character : they cannot, therefore, be proved to
really exist. This being true, however convinc-
ing the conception of God as an unphenomenal
being may be, it will not bear the application of
the only standard of existential reality within
the limits of our knowledge. God cannot be af-
firmed, therefore, as a real being. From this
point of view, it will not be difficult to see that
Kant's conclusion about the ontological proof

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 65

was foregone. God cannot be said to really
exist because He cannot be affirmed to exist as
a phenomenal reality. Let us, however, refuse
to commit ourselves to the empirical dogma that
limits existential reality to the sense form. For
this, if we recall what has gone before, we will
have ample justification. Rather, man will have
as many types of reality as he has primary in-
tuitions, and we have made it evident, I think,
that the intutition of the transcendent is pri-
mary. A rational doctrine of self -consciousness
will reveal a type of self -reality that is not con-
formed to the sense-type. When we refuse to
honor the assumption of empiricism that the
sense-type of existence is the sole criterion of
reality, we have broken the barrier that sepa-
rates off the noumenal or the non-sensible from
possible knowledge. Anything that is know-
able has real existence. Taking our stand, then,
that there are as many knowable types of real
existence as there are forms of primary intui-
tion, the whole of our previous discussion may
be taken as justification of the position that the
religious type of being, that of a self-existent
ground of all existence, is one of real existence.
Its intuition is central in the religious conscious-
ness, supplying the norm of its perceptions, and
revealing to man the primary datum of relig-
ious knowledge.

Let us, then, on this basis, make an effort to
reconstruct the ontological proof. The claim
that is common to all the exponents of the on-

66 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

tological proof is that the existence of God is
necessarily involved in his conception, provided
this is able to bear the tests of a real idea of
reason. Few of the ontologists, however, have
fully realized the true significance of their own
assumption. Descartes, for example, treats ex-
istence as an attribute which, when denied of the
idea, leaves it imperfect as an idea. Kant de-
nies that existence can be regarded as a quality,
and proves that the idea of a hundred dollars
will be the same whether it exists or not. Now,
this is conclusive against Descartes, and, per-
haps, against Anselm. But it is to the interest
of the ontological proof to deny that existence
can be treated as, in any ordinary sense, a
quality. Analysis will show that the whole of
the idea of an object is made up of qualities of
kind. They do not say that an object is, but
are wholly devoted to determining its what.
This makes it clear that there is a sense in
which existence is extra-ideal. But there are
two different angles from which an idea may be
viewed; the first and most obvious is that of
its form. In this, it is an activity of ideation
that is exclusively employed in determining
qualities, and organizing them into a unitary
conception. From this point of view, it will be
called a rational conception. The second point
of view is that of content or objective signifi-
cance. Viewed from this angle, the idea will be
considered as the qualification of some object,
as summing up what we believe to be true of

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 67

its nature. It is from this objective relation
that the question of existence arises. We do
not ask whether the idea exists; we know that
it does ; but in its objective character, in its ref-
erence to the system of reality is it true ? Does
it tell the truth about real existence? It will
be clear that this is a question not about an ad-
ditional quality, but rather about the claim of
the idea as a whole as to the real existence of
its objective content. The non-existence of its
content would not affect the idea as a plexus of
qualities. The case may be put hypothetically.
Whether God exists or does not exist as a real
being does not affect, one way or another, the
rational adequacy of his idea, provided this idea
has been formed according to the canons of
reason and is perfect. Why, then, is not the
Kantian criticism justified! The answer will
be two-fold. In the first place, the assumption
of the Kantial critique that a real idea may be
formed entirely apart from the processes of ex-
istence is false and contrary to experience, as
well as refuted by considerations we have al-
ready advanced. This being true, the process
by which a real idea is formed is brought into
vital relations with existential processes, and
will derive from them the presumption of real
existence. Secondly, to recall a conclusion we
have already reached, the claim of the suflfi-
ciency of the idea of God to prove His real ex-
istence does not rest on the mere existence of
the object. If God be conceived to be merely

68 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

existent like other finite objects, then the criti-
cism of the old monk on Anselm's claim would
be valid. The idea of a perfect island does not
carry with it the necessary existence of the
island. But Anselm might have replied that it
was not mere existence but self-existence that is
involved in the idea of God. He might have
said that while the existence of all finite things
is contingent and cannot be assumed as neces-
sary; on the contrary, the self-existence of a
non-contingent ground of all being is neces-
sarily involved in the very conception of it. On
this ground, Anselm would have been invincible,
and the ontological proof, when rested on this
ground, will prove itself able to resist all at-
tacks.

Let us make sure of this conclusion before
passing on to other considerations, for in this
is involved the whole claim of the religious con-
sciousness to have a world-theory of its own.
We may, without further ado, dismiss Kant's
divorce of real existence from the normal pro-
cess by which ideas are formed, as unsound.
Why, then, do we take the principle of ontology,
the principle of the ontological proof, as the
central nerve of the theoretic basis and claims
of religion? We can answer this now without
undue elaboration. Because ontology rests on
the insight and postulate of self-existence. It
takes as its primary datum the self-existence of
the transcendent; that is, the self-existent
ground of all reality, and it rests the cogency

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 69

of its claim on the fact that, when we study the
processes of the souPs activity, either intellec-
tually, emotionally or volitionally, we find that
they attach themselves to reality by means of
their inner ontological motive, which forbids
them to rest until they have reached a ground
of existence that will supply the explanatory
principle of the whole. The lesson of ontology
is that the beginning and the end of existence
is the same, and that the whole process of re-
ality can be rendered intelligible and self -con-
sistent by bringing it around to the point of its
beginning. This is what we mean when, in re-
ligious phraseology, we characterize God as the
Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end
of all things. The detailed verification of this
conclusion we cannot attempt here; it will be
found in following out, into greater detail, the
data and principles which we have not done
much more than formulate in the preceding lec-
tures of this course, and I wish to say right
here that the necessary limits of these lectures
have made them as conspicuous for what they
have omitted as for what they have included in
a brief and inadequate discussion.

There is one other topic on which I wish to
dwell briefly before closing this lecture. The
plea which we have made here for the theoretic
rights of religion brings us into apparent col-
lision at least, with the doctrine of Professor
Hoffding and others, who deny this theoretic
claim, and, as Professor Hoffding does, limit re-

70 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ligion to the conservation of values in the world.
Leaving out of consideration the negative side
of the doctrine, which we are the more justifi-
able in doing in view of the plea already made
for the theoretic claims of religion, I wish to
consider for a few minutes the question whether
the motive of value can be maintained at its
maximum altogether apart from the question
of the theoretic truth of the value-consideration
itself. It is not claimed here that a relative
separation of worth-considerations from those
of theoretic truth may not be both possible and
desirable. This is freely conceded, and the im-
portance of the worth-consideration is insisted
on. But the position I wish to argue here is
that the distinction is only relative, and that
value-judgments will be impoverished if the
separation is made absolute. What Professor
Hoff ding's conception of religion in its out-
working is, I am unable to say, but we have an
example of the divorce in the case of Kant's
moral theology. Having determined that, theo-
retically, the existence of God cannot be main-
tained, while conceding the moral value of the
conception, Kant works out a practical theol-
ogy which consists in affirming God as a postu-
late of the moral consciousness. The founda-
tions of morality would be impaired, and the
unconditional worth of its judgments would be
weakened if the foundations were not secured
by the postulate of a Supreme Being, whose
care it will be to guarantee the moral order of

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 71

the world. This, I think, is more creditable to
Kant's heart than it is to his head; for, when
challenged to say how a being, whose existence
cannot be affirmed theoretically, can yet be the
mainstay of our moral Judgments, he can only
give this counsel: The idea of God is so valu-
able that you cannot afford to deny His real ex-
istence. Otherwise, morality would cease to be
unconditionally valid : Act, therefore, as though
God did exist, and you will be right. But, aside
from the impossibility of acting with full as-
surance on an assumption that we cannot know
to be true, Kant's position is self-refuting ; for,
if the unconditional worth of morality is the
ground on which we are to postulate God as a
real being, and, if the failure to make this postu-
late impairs the unconditional value of moral-
ity, then the worth of morality is impaired, and
the full reason for making the postulate does
not exist. We come upon a typical difficulty
here in Kant; one that besets all attempts to
make the separation between truth and value
absolute. Professor Hoffding himself seems to
recognize this when he regards it as a desider-
atum, if it were possible, that some reconciling
medium between the value judgment of religion
and the truth judgment should be discovered.
The doctrine here defended is that no absolute
divorce is possible ; that the denial of the theo-
retic claims of religion so diminishes its worth
that it soon ceases to be a prime force in the
life of humanity.

72 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

Lecture IV. Synthesis of the Immediate and
Mediate in Religious Knowledge

When Professor James characterizes relig-
ious experience as introducing the mind of man
into a new dimension of life, he is using more
than a figure of speech. The statement is scien-
tifically accurate, and, as I hope to show, is
capable of demonstration. If we refer back to
the conclusions we have reached about the pri-
mary datum of the religious consciousness, it
will appear that what we have claimed for the
religious intuition is the revelation of a new di-
mension of life. Let us consider in this light
the whole original insight of the religious con-
sciousness, that of a self-active subject of ex-
perience in perceptual relations with the self-
existent ground of its existence. If we say that
the empirical conception of the self as a flowing
stream, or as a series of perishable states, rep-
resents the first dimension of conscious exist-
ence, it will follow that the conception of the
rational or real self as a unitary and perdur-
able being will represent a two dimensional ex-
istence. Now, we are in danger of being led
astray here by space-analogies. Spatially con-
ceived, the first dimension is a line, w^ile the
second is a flat. Some mathematicians have in-
dulged in curious speculations about the con-
sciousness of a being who dwelt in flat land, and
had no perception of a third dimension. This,
however, is misleading, for we know that con-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 73

sciousness cannot be spatially determined, and,
though there is some ground, as Bergson has
shown, for using the linear dimension of space
as a symbol of the mental series, there are none
that would justify the employment of the flat
in the same way. Our conscious experience re-
veals to us the fact that the second or rational
dimension is that by which the series of states
is connected with an inner subjectivity, which
relates all its parts to a common centre, through
which relation they become elements in a uni-
tary and perdurable experience. When, with
the empiricist, we speak uni-dimensionally,
there is only the linear analogy for our guid-
ance, in the light of which the series is per-
petually resolving into its plurality of states,
and losing itself in the flux. But when we speak
duo-dimensionally, we have a more adequate
symbol, that of a subject-owned experience for
our guidance in the light of which the serial
states are transformed and take on a new sig-
nificance. For the fact is not that simply a new
region has been added to insight which gives
the plus-sign of a new dimension. The fact is
one of far greater significance. The light of
the new dimension transforms the terms of the
old, and imparts to them a character and signifi-
cance they did not before possess. For it is
evident that the individual terms that are con-
nected by the serial linkage could not, as an ab-
stract series, be aware of their serial character.
This awareness will be the function of some

74 PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION

consciousness that qualitatively transcends the
series. This difficulty long ago gave trouble to
John Stuart Mill, who found difficulty in con-
ceiving how a series could be conscious of itself.
The truth is that, from the insight of the duo-
dimensional or self-consciousness, it is seen to
be strictly impossible. The consciousness of
two dimensions brings in a light that gives a
new character to the terms of the series. They
become aware of their serial character and of
other members of the series, and, being perish-
able, when they die are able to make the suc-
ceeding state their residuary legatee. That this
is no fancv has been shown bv James in his
elaborately worked out doctrine of the perish-
able self. According to James, the old belief in
a perdurable subject of experience is fallacious,
and will not bear destructive criticism. It must,
he contends, be replaced by the uni-dimensional
conception of a thought that is part of the
stream and passes, but, in passing, hands over
its treasure to the thought that follows. It is
a curious short-sightedness that prevented
James from seeing that it is only the duo-di-
mensional consciousness that makes a transac-
tion of this testamentary sort possible. For it
is true that, looked at from tlie purely empirical
point of view, this seems to be exactly what
happens. The consciousness of self is ex-
pressed in a thought that exists only momen-
tarily, and another reigns in its stead. And the
singular fact which troubled Mill, though it

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 75

does not seem to have troubled James, is that
the new self -thought is aware of the act of in-
heritance, and traces its own fortunes back to
its dead ancestor. This would be perfectly in-
telligible from the standpoint of a duo-dimen-
sional consciousness, but, from the empirical
point of view, it is as surprising as would be
the phenomenon of a man walking on one leg.
The doctrine we wish to make clear and em-
phatic here is that, in the light of the new di-
mension, no fact of the old dimension remains
what it was before ; it takes on a new character
that belongs to it only by virtue of perceptions
which come from a transcending source of light.
It will be obvious, from this, what is meant
when we say that the first intuitions of religion
introduce into the human consciousness the
transforming sense of a new dimension. Just
as it is true that the empirically perishing self
cannot be conscious of its inheritance from its
ancestor, nor, after it is dead, hand over its
possessions to its successor, unless there be an
insight that comes from a higher consciousness ;
so it will appear to be true that the duo-dimen-
sional conciousness will be unable to translate
its experience into that of a subject that is
stable and perdurable, without the transform-
ing agency of the tri-dimensional consciousness
of religion. Let us analyze this point more in
detail. If self-consciousness only made us
aware of ourselves as the subjects of particular
experiences, it would be impossible for us to lift

76 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ourselves out of the empirical stream. For,
like the order of perception in general, our par-
ticular acts of self-consciousness belong to an
order that is pluralistic and broken. "We might
suppose a second dimension then, in the light
of which our serial states would organize
around self-centres. But, if this were all, these
self -centres would partake of the serial charac-
ter, and would present the phenomenon of a
passing series of self-centred states. This was,
no doubt, what James had in mind. But what
he did not see was that, in order to be true to
our whole self -consciousness, it would be neces-
sary to find some higher ground from which the
self could transcend the serial flux, and secure
for itself a more stable position. When I say,
in order to be true to the whole self -conscious-
ness, I can only explain by appealing to the
judgment of personal identity, in which a con-
scious subject that, as a fact of natural history,
has only a momentary existence, appeals to an
order of existence that is unbroken and perma-
nent. Now, what I wish to insist on here is that
this conscious appeal to the judgment of iden-
tity transcends the ordinary consciousness in
precisely the same sense as the awareness of
our unitary self transcends the limits of a serial
consciousness. What it does, in the judgment
of personal identity, is to identify its true life
with an order that abides through its changes
and imparts to them an unbroken — that is, a
non-serial existence. For, in pronouncing such

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 77

a judgment, as that of identity, we are always
exemplifying the scriptural injunction to lay
up our treasure where moth and rust do not cor-
rupt, and where thief will not break through
and steal.

The question, then, is how it can be made to
appear that this conserving judgment is pos-
sible only in the light of the higher insight of
the religious consciousness. If we can make
this clear, we will be able to accept Tolstoy's
definition of religion as 'Hhat by which men
live" as literally true. Let us at this point go
back a little and recall some conclusions we have
already drawn. You will bear in mind that,
at one point in our discussion, we reached the
definition of the real self or subject of experi-
ence as a self-active being. The reasons for
this definition, which were not then fully stated,
I will attempt to briefly enumerate here. In the
first place, we have learned that all the real ac-
tivities of the mind are self-determined, for, in
the light of the best psychological analysis, it
may be said to have been demonstrated that the
cause of choice, or any other characteristic ac-
tion of the mind, is the self that acts. In other
words, it is a form of what we may call self-
activity. That self -activity is the primary form
of mental activity will further appear from the
fact that, if we deny initiative to the mind in its
actions, we thereby place the initiative in other
than mind, and reduce the mind to a purely pas-
sive and receptive agent. This, in the first

78 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

place, is not intelligible, and, in the second
place, belies the consciousness that connects our
responsibility with the sense of our ownership
of our actions, a sense that would be impossible
were our actions determined mechanically, as
one billiard ball by the propulsion of another.
I think I am safe in saying that, in these times,
onlv the extremist will denv real initiative to the
mind in connection with its activities. No proof
is needed to make it clear that real initiative in-
volves the power of self-activity — that is, the
power of action that is self -initiative. If, how-
ever, we consider what this power of self-activ-
itv involves intrinsicallv, we will find that it
cannot be ascribed to any being that is conceived
abstractly as dependent for its being on some
more ultimate spring of existence. For it will
be clear on reflection that only the self-existent
is capable of real self-initiative. In other
words, it is only being as self-existent that can
be regarded as self-active in an unqualified
sense. If, as I think we are obliged to, we
ascribe self -activity to the human subject, we
seem to be logically committed to the conclusion
that it is also self-existent, which, in another
place, we have been led to deny. Now, there
are two ways open to us at this point. We may,
without further parley, take the pantheistic
road, and identify the soul with the self-ex-
istent ground of all existence. This is, of
course, the solution which much of the deeper
thought of the world has reached ; the practical

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 79

identification of the real self with the principle
of absolute existence. The master in the Upani-
shads leads his pupil on by individual examples
to seek the invisible principle that is concealed
in all the things that appear to the senses, and,
when he has reached the end of his analysis, and
found nothing visible or phenomenal, the master
concludes "that art thou." We have here very
clearly the identification of the soul with the
self-existent principle of all existence. But
there is another way open to which we seem to
be committed here, if the whole self -conscious-
ness of man involves, not alone the sense of his
two-dimensional self, but, also the sense of the
transcendent ground of his own existence. This
gives him, to use James' analogy, the sense of
a new dimension, and the insight which trans-
forms his two-dimensional world, and imparts
a character to his real selfhood, which it would
not otherwise possess. Now, it is this fact of
the transforming light of the new dimension
that is the significant consideration here, and it
is this that I shall ask you to follow me in elabo-
rating in the remainder of this lecture. Des-
cartes takes the position, in his fourth medita-
tion, that the knowledge of God is not only the
most clear of all knowledge, but that it is the
ground of clearness in all other fields of knowl-
edge. This position Descartes is unable to re-
duce to demonstration, because he seems to lack
some of the data necessary to a proof. Had he
clearly realized the fact that the principle of the

80 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ontological proof of God's existence is the
identification of him with the self -existent
ground of all existence, it would then have
occurred to him that an appeal to this principle
would not, in the first instance, be an inference
of reason but a datum of immediate insight. In
the light of this insight, the existence of God
would be the clearest of all knowledge for the
reason not alone of its immediacy, but also, and
more significantly, because it would be an in-
sight that would accompany and condition all
other knowledge. It is this latter point that will
claim our attention here. How can the propo-
sition be established that all our knowledge is
conditioned and qualitatively affected by the in-
sight of the religious consciousness. There are
several steps in the proof that we shall offer.
In the first place, all knowledge of existence
rests, in the last analysis, on the postulate of
self-existence. The world cannot be contingent
in the last resort of its being. It is a clear
datum that, without the self -existent, the con-
tingent could not be. But it has been made evi-
dent that this postulate rests on the insight of
the religious consciousness. Again it has been
proved, in previous discussions, that, in every
genuine act of knowledge, two orders are in-
volved; the empirical order, in which the cog-
nition is simply a member of a broken and
pluralistic series; a term that perishes in the
using. But in every act of cognition there is
something that proves eternal. This is revealed

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 81

in the objective appeal to an order that is per-
manent, though it is, at the same time, invisible.
When I look out and cognize a building, my act
is perishable and soon disappears. The visible
part of the phenomenon perishes with my cog-
nition, but cognition is what it is only by virtue
of the appeal it makes to an invisible order that
transcends the perishable order of perception,
and is unitary, unbroken and perdurable. If
we take the judgment of recognition, the case
becomes clearer still; for, from a momentary
act, in which we recognize a visible phenomenon
that is but a complex of perishable qualities, we
affirm an invisible order of existence that has
continued unbroken and perdurable in the long
intervals between the occurrences of our perish-
able experience. Nor do we fill up the gaps in
the visible order and make it continuous by any
device like that of J. S. Mill, who supposes that
what we mean by asserting the continued ex-
istence of anything is simply the experience of
an ideal observer, who keeps himself in circum-
stances where his perceptions will constantly
repeat themselves and give a continuous order.
It requires very little penetration to see that
something deeper is involved; that, when we af-
firm the continuous existence of the objects of
our cognition, we are really pronouncing an
ontological judgment. We are, by implication,
asserting the great truth that, in every act of
cognition, the appeal is in fact to some onto-
logical grounding of the phenomenon, without

82 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

which the act would lose its real significance.
This consideration may be generalized and ex-
tended so as to cover the whole scope of knowl-
edge ; and it may be applied outside the scope of
the noetic activity to the movement in the life
of the emotions or volitions. Everywhere the
real significance of the movement will be ap-
prehended only in the light of its ontological
motive, which demands the grounding of the
contingent and perishable in the self-existent
and permanent. It will be evident here that the
whole activity is motived by the transcendent
insight of the new dimension revealed in the
religious consciousness. Furthermore, when
we consider our conscious activities in the light
of our deeper consciousness of self, we will find
ample evidence of the same transforming light.
Not alone is the consciousness of self-activity
significant for the judgment of ground, but the
most characteristic judgments of self -conscious-
ness involve this higher insight. The rational
consciousness, by which we relate all our transi-
tory states to a subject that is one and unbroken
and perdurable, is one that implies the pres-
ence of this higher insight. For, when we assert
for ourselves a perdurable and self-identical
selfhood, we are going flat against all the em-
pirical evidence. The empirical facts of the
case, taken abstractly, would only justify the
judgment of Hume that a permanent self is an
illusion; or, at most, the judgment of James
that the real self is a perishable thought, which

PHILOSOPHY OP RELIGION 83

is unable to rise above the stream of contin-
gency. But, to repeat our former contention,
the doctrine of the perishable thought is only
plausible when a datum is introduced into it
that contains deeper presuppositions.

The logical conclusion that follows from the
foregoing considerations is, I think you will ad-
mit, that, in all the mental activities, the prin-
ciple of grounding is supplied by that three-
dimensional consciousness, which we have called
the religious consciousness; that, as Words-
worth has said, it is the foundation light of all
our day, the master light of all our seeing : that
Tolstoi's definition of religion as that by which
men live, stands completely vindicated. It also
supplies a basis of insight to the profound con-
victions of so many of the greater religious
thinkers, that the soul of man can only reach
the completeness of its own being by identify-
ing itself with God, the ground-spring of its ex-
istence. This would seem to bring our pro-
foundest western thought round to the point
of identity with the insight of the Oriental's.
For, as I have pointed out in the illustration
from the Upanishads, the master and pupil, hav-
ing come upon the invisible principle of being,
identify the soul with it in the formula: That
art thou. This seems strongly pantheistic, and
I will ask your indulgence a few minutes in an
effort to show how, from the positions we have
developed here, the close identification of hu-
man spirit with the divine may be secured with-

84 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

out involving the pantheistic conclusion, which,
if I do not mistake, means the breaking up of
the human personality as a distinct centre of
individual existence. If we consider the situa-
tion from the point of view of its ontological
motive, we will see that the impulse in all this
movement of identification is toward the com-
pletion of our own being. This would not seem
to be consistent with the breaking up of our
centre of individual existence. Again, if we
bear in mind that the sense of transcendence is
one that is present in the closest relations ; that
otherwise the religious consciousness, and, with
it, the religious situation, would disappear ; this
fact will bear against the breaking up of the
centre of individuality. Lastly, we have found
reason for affirming an identity of type between
the human soul and the ground-being, and this
would mean, reading our insight from the hu-
man to the divine, that the ground-reality is of
the soul-type, an individual defined in terms of
a higher dimension of being. If this be true,
it will be possible for us, in the light of it, to be-
gin to see that entrance into the life of this
higher dimension will not involve the breaking
up of our own individual centre of existence,
but, on the contrary, will be the means of realiz-
ing it in a higher sense. This being true, we
may conclude that the impulse of the soul to
more and more identify itself with the divine
spring of its existence may be given unlimited
scope without entailing the breaking up of its

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 85

own individual existence. It is possible, there-
fore, to turn the point of pantheism without, in
any sense, weakening the force or the truth of
that identification with the divine, toward which
the soul is moved by the strongest forces of its
being.

There are two problems growing out of our
study of religious knowledge, which I wish to
treat briefly before closing this lecture. The
first is the problem of the so-called proofs of
God's existence. I am not about to reargue
here the question of the validity of these his-
torical proofs. But assuming that, on the basis
of the religious consciousness, and its vital con-
nection with the whole nature of man, there will
naturally be evidence, the question here will
take the following form : What is the principle
of all mediate proof of God's existence, and
what are the principal definitive forms or lines
in which it may be stated f The principle of all
proof, I think, we are in a position here to state
very briefly. It is this: That, in view of the
fact that the existence of God adds a new di-
mension to reality, as viewed from the empir-
ical standpoint, it will affect and transform the
whole of reality in such a way that, in order to
intelligently understand any part of it, we must
understand its divine principle ; that is, we must
be able to see it in the light of its self-existent
ground. The principle of all theistic proof will
be, therefore, the immediate necessity of the
self -existent as the suflScient reason or ground-

86 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

big principle of all existence, whether consid-
ered as a whole or in its details. It will follow
that, given any existential system like the pres-
ent with which we are connected, there will be
no part of it, not even the smallest and most
insignificant detail, that, to the eye of reason,
will not be luminous with the secret of its
origin. The pebble on the beach, or the little
worm at your feet, will say to your listening
ear ; I am a being that exists, but not of myself.
My being is rooted in a being that is self-exist-
ent, and that holds me in my place against the
flux of contingency that is perpetually sweeping
me into nothingness. To the listening ear of
reason this will constitute the formula of all
contingent being, and, whether it be a star or a
mote in the sunbeam, it will utter the same
voice. This is not mere poetic fancy, but the
soundest philosophizing; for, after science has
exhausted all its resources in bringing out the
nature of things, it has only brought into
clearer light, and into more insistent form, the
demand of reason that only by connecting it
with the self-existent spring of its existence do
we reach its final meaning and explanation. The
principle of all theistic evidence is that which is
embodied in what has been called the ontologi-
cal proof, because it is simply a statement that
the necessity of self-existence as the ground of
all existence is self-evident. The application of
it is to the idea of God which has been formed
according to the canons of reason and is a real

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 87

idea. That this idea involves existence in some
way has been insisted on from the beginning.
In other words, that the existence of the being
conceived in the idea of God is self-evident has
been felt, even when the formal demonstration
admittedly fell short. It is only when the ex-
istence involved is conceived as self -existence,
we are able to say now, that the argument be-
comes convincing, and our instinctive feeling of
necessity is justified.

Aside from the ontological, that embodies the
principle of all theistic proof, there have been
developed historically three other forms, which
we will treat very briefly here; the cosmologi-
cal; the proof from the evidence of design or
intelligence in nature, the ordinary form of the
teleological proof; and, lastly, the proof from
moral teleology developed by Immanuel Kant.
The principle of the cosmological proof is to be
found in the contingency of the phenomena of
empirical existence, whether viewed in them-
selves or in the light of their linkage with other
phenomena, they are not self-explanatory, but
refer to something beyond themselves for their
explanation. This fact of dependence we call
contingency, and the inner motive of the cosmo-
logical proof is the appeal from the contingent
to that which cures its contingency and grounds
it, the self -existent. The wide sweep of this
proof will be evident for, touching the empirical
world at any point, we find this contingency and
its ontological demand. The proof from design

88 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

is of a different character. It does not appeal
to the contingency of things, but, rather, to the
empirically unseen and non-contingent, the
presence in the world of order and system.
Now, science finds order and system as its ulti-
mata, but the ontological reason, finding that
these concepts are not self-explanatory, but that
they themselves are phenomena that can be fin-
ally explained only when their existence as
phenomena is referred to some self-existent
ground, in the light of which they will be con-
nected with intelligent purpose, finds its satis-
faction in connecting order and system with in-
telligence and purpose, while, for the ground-
ing of these, it finds it necessary to appeal to
its own first principle the necessity of self-ex-
istent being as the gi'ound of all existence.
When, finally, we turn to the Kantian proof,
which we have called moral teleology, it would
seem that here we have, at last, found a line of
evidence that is independent of all theoretic
considerations. Now, recalling the conclusion
we have reached in regard to the validity of a
pure-value consideration when abstracted from
all implications of truth, I think this is what we
will be led to say about moral teleology. As a
theoretic proof, its value will be measured by
its bearing on the question of existence; in
other words, on its epistemological value, con-
ceding that the exigencies of the moral law
make God a moral necessity, the value of this
will be assessed when we determine what bear-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 89

ing the moral necessity has on the theoretic
question of existence. For this assessment,
Kant himself furnishes us with the data. If
morality represents the highest values, and
these values can be conserved only by supposing
God as their guarantee, then the non-existence
of God would plunge the moral universe into
chaos, a result which is intolerable to reason.
What, now, is involved in this reasoning f I
think you \\'ill agree with me that there are two
things involved in it. In the first place, the ap-
peal has been made to a genuine theoretical is-
sue. If the non-existence of God, morally, is
irrational, then it would be irrational not to
affirm His existence, not simply in the interests
of morality, but in the interests of reason her-
self. Again, when we seek to determiiie why it
is that the non-existence of God would mean
the defeat of reason from the moral point of
view, do we not find that the removal of God
from the ethical situation takes away its self-
existent ground, and that morality, like all ex-
istence, is ruined by the loss. When we reach
this insight, we will be ready for the conclusion
that the necessity on which the strength of the
moral argument depends leads directly to the
postulate of a self-existent ground of the moral
as its only guarantee of stability. We are thus
able to trace all lines of proof back to their
first principle in the ontological necessity of a
self-existent ground of all reality. And it will
be clear, without further proof, that, in the last

90 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

analysis, all considerations of worth will only
have unconditional value it* they are grounded
in the self-existent, and that the proposal to
divorce judgments of value from theoretic con-
siderations is tantamount to emptying value it-
self of much of its significance.

I pass, in conclusion, to a brief consideration
of another problem ; namely, that of the relation
of the higher sources of religious knowledge to
which we give the names inspiration and revela-
tion, to the lower and more common sources. If
we have followed, with assent, the doctrine that
has been developed in the preceding discussions,
we will be ready, I think, for some such proposi-
tion in the outset as the following : If it be true
that man is, by virtue of his fundamental con-
stitution, endowed with a religious conscious-
ness that introduces a new dimension of being
into his conscious life, and is the source of im-
mediate intuitions that supply the first data of
his whole experience as a religious being ; it will
not, then, be necessary to suppose that the pres-
ence of any new organ is involved in the com-
munication of the highest truths of religion. I
am not about to ask you, at this point, to accept
any statements as to the sufficiency of reason
for the apprehension of religious truth. Far
otherwise, I am only taking the ground that, if
God has not first created man a reasonable be-
ing and left it to accident to make him religious,
but, rather, as we have contended, has brought
him into the world with the three-dimensional

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 91

consciousness of religion, we are in a position to
say that, in the conditions of his nature, man
has all the faculties that are necessary to make
him the organ of the highest truth. It is only
necessary to raise his native powers to a higher
degree in order to put him on the plane of
higher truth. In other words, if God desires to
communicate a higher truth to the race, it will
only be necessary for Him to raise the religious
nature of some man to a higher degree of
spiritual susceptibility and intuition in order
that the new truth may be realized. When this
heightening of the natural powers occurs in the
other fields we call it genius; when in the field
of religious perception, we call it inspiration,
but, in all instances, it involves the same prin-
ciple. Let us, then, consider very briefly inspi-
ration and revelation from the standpoint of the
prophetic function in religion. The prophet,
we say, is the inspired bearer of new truths
which would not be open to him in his ordinary
moods. We mean that his spiritual intuitions
have been stimulated and aroused to a more
than ordinary degree of activity and insight;
for it is evident that this elevation can be at-
tained in no other way than by the sharpening
of the powers of intuitive insight. This we
may call inspiration. Now, inspiration may
lead to truths that are not revealed; that is, in
connection with which there is not the sense of
having received them from a higher source. It
is likely that most of the truths discovered by

92 PHILOSOPHY OP RELIGION

genius have been arrived at in this way. The
genius will feel inspired, but his truths will not
be revelations in the strict sense of that word.
Such inspiration is, no doubt, as common in re-
ligion as in art. But with the religious prophet
it is different. His dominating consciousness is
that of an agent who receives his message from
a higher source, and his certitude as to the truth
and authority of his message will spring di-
rectly out of his consciousness of being the me-
dium and agent of a higher being. Now, the
fact on which I wish to put the emphasis here is
this. We have already reached the conclusion
that the sense of the transcendent ground of
his existence is a primary intuition of man's
nature. Let us suppose that the inspiration of
the prophet, which, in general, has raised his
ordinary intuitions to a higher degree, has, in
the case of the prophet, stimulated, in an espe-
cial sense, his intuition of the transcendent. It
will follow that he will be dominated with the
consciousness of the transcendent source of the
truth he realizes, and he will feel himself to be
the organ of the transcendent being, who re-
veals truths to him of which he is conscious of
not being, himself, the author. The conclusion
I am reaching here is that we have here a ra-
tional principle by which we can connect the
highest stages of religious knowledge with its
lower stages in such a way that the whole may
be organized into a coherent and rational sys-
tem. If the objection be urged that some truths

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 93

of religion are super-rational, this will readily
be granted, if reason be regarded only as the
organ of ordinary tnith. But, if reason, in its
highest sense, be a three-dimensional faculty,
and has in it the light of the transcendent, then
we may take courage and go forward, for in-
spiration and revelation will be included in the
scheme as organs of higher rational truth ; then
the whole issue between reason and revelation
may be regarded as being no longer vital, for,
if the central demand of reason is for a God who
is the self-existent ground of all reality, it fol-
lows that reason itself will be hospitable to the
highest revelations of God's truth.

PART II
THE SOUL

THE SOUL

Lecture V. The Soul as Subject of Religious

Experience

The most difficult thing the modern man is
asked to believe is that he has a soul. His
trouble may be due largely to the form in which
the question is ordinarily stated. That a man
has a soul would seem to classify it among the
things he may possess and of which he is, there-
fore, the subject. This Lockian conception of
the soul is a hard one to entertain. If the soul
is simply one of a man's possessions, like other
pieces of property, it may be lost and there is
nothing of which the modern man feels more
sure than this, that, if he ever had a soul, some
how in the hurly-burly of modern life, it must
have dropped out; at least, he is not now con-
scious of having any such possession. Were the
question changed, however, and were he asked
the question, **Are you a soul," the form of the
query would throw him back onto himself and
it would become a problem of his own essential
personality. It is clear that the question when
put in this form could not be treated with the
same light hearted superficiality. Take, for ex-
ample, the classical example in modern philos-
ophy of a sceptical doctrine, critically reached

97

98 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

by a mind of the first order, regarding the re-
ality of the soul as a substantial and perdurable
subject of experience; that of David Hume.
Hume is, in fact, what James would call a pure
empiricist. To him there is only one order of
being, the empirical or sensible, and any mental
content that is not in the last analysis reducible
to terms of that order is fictitious and imagin-
ary. Now, if we carefully attend to the empiri-
cal order, we find that it is resolvable into a
plurality of parts which have no stability in
themselves and no real connections with other
parts of the plurality. This being so, there is
no principle of continuity that can bind the em-
pirical into an unbroken order and, especially,
there is no point of unity from which the plur-
ality of perishable states can be organized into
a one subject of experience. The doctrine of the
one self that lies back of and owns the states is,
therefore, an illusion. Hume establishes the
empirical doctrine in detail in, (1) his sceptical
refutation of the doctrine of spiritual sub-
stance, which consists in simply applying to the
mind itself the logic by which Berkeley reduced
the concept of material substance to an illusion,
reaching the conclusion that nothing can be
proved to exist in consciousness but a plurality
of conscious states. When I look into my con-
sciousness for the evidence of a unitary self, I
never see anything but a particular state, and
Hume is sure that nothing else exists and his
scepticism as to spiritual substance is complete.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 99

(2) The second count in Hume's refutations is
his sceptical analysis of identity as a real rela-
tion of existence. When Hume scrutinizes the
empirical order, he finds in it no point of per-
manence in continued existence. What seems to
be a case of identity, as when I judge that this
pen I hold in my hand is the same object I held
in my hand last week, or that it maintains its
existence in an unbroken flow of a present per-
ception, resolves under Hume's analysis into a
mere succession of broken and distinct acts of
consciousness. What we mistakenly judge to be
identity is resolvable into two facts, (1) a rapid
succession of separate states and, (2) the close
resemblance of these states. The judgment of
identity is, therefore, one of those inevitable il-
lusions of consciousness which common sense
takes to be real. The application is sufficiently
obvious. The judgment of objective identity
has no foundation but the empirical fact of a
rapid flow of a plurality of states. The same
rapid flow is the sole fact and basis of the judg-
ment of personal identity; insofar as it seems
to assert the continued existence of the self it is
a fiction. The only fact is the rapid succession
of subject-states. The self loses its stand in be-
ing, therefore, and becomes a mere passing
phenomenon of an empirical flux. Now, Hume
may be taken as the chief prosecuting attorney
in the case of empiricism versus a real and per-
durable soul in self. But he has a very able as-
sistant in William James, who introduces what

100 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

he conceives to be important new evidence in
favor of the empirical conclusion. We may con-
cede, he says, that there is in consciousness the
idea or thought of a unitary and perdurable self
which is the permanent subject of all our chang-
ing experiences. But this idea or thought is it-
self momentary and perishable. While it lives,
it performs the office of a real subject. When
it passes, however, it transmits its self -content
as an inheritance to the thought that succeeds
it, which thus becomes its residuary legatee.
We have here an interesting phase of the Hindu
doctrine of Karma; only, in this case it is not
the evil destiny alone that is transmitted. But,
like the doctrine of Karma itself, in order to
escape contradiction, it must concede the point
of continued existence. It is impossible to
imagine the legacy of the dead self-thought as
leaping the gulf of absolute extinction to the
new self-thought that comes into existence on
the other side.

Now, if I were the attorney for the defense,
I would endeavor to show that the empirical
argument owes its cogency to the fact that it
has been blind to one very important piece of
data. When Hume fails to find any unitary
self, and when James fails to find any self that
persists, they are both taking the attitude of ob-
servers of a consciousness that cannot present
itself as an object of scrutiny except in the form
of an empirical plurality of states. For the
consciousness under question can only be that

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 101

of the observer himself. In order to make it
an object, it must be projected as onto a can-
vas, and the self-states will be part of the pro-
jection. That being true they could not be
otherwise than part of the moving show. There
is no permanence about any part of a moving
picture show, but the parts succeed one another
in a series of dissolving views. There is, how-
ever, a very subtle fallacy involved in this whole
method of dealing with the subject. In order to
project the contents of consciousness onto a
screen so that they may be observed, there
must be an observer left behind and that ob-
server will be the real subject of the inspection
and the judgments that are pronounced. What
about this back-standing subject of all the ob-
servations ? It will seem almost inevitable that,
if Mr. Hume objectifies his inner consciousness,
his self-states will be thrown out with the others
and they will all seem to be but moments in a
passing show. But what about Mr. Hume him-
self? Is he also a passing moment in the show?
And, if so, what is the possible value of his
judgment? It is self-evident that, if the world
is to be judged a passing show, the standpoint
of the judgment itself must be permanent, for it
is only in relation to a fixed point that anything
can be in the state of passing. The truth of the
matter is, that it is only when the real subject
has abstracted itself from the situation and has
become the observer of what we may call the
empirical self, that the self seems to lose its

102 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

permanence and sinks into the flux of existence.
In this case, its judgments are true, since the
empirical self is a phenomenon of the perishable
aspect of the soul's life. But its judgments be-
come false if they are supposed to qualify the
self that is the subject of them and pronounces
them. To this back-standing subject of judg-
ments, the term epistemological self has been
applied. I have no quarrel with this designa-
tion, if it means the self that knows in any real
situation. But it ought to be observed that it is
the same self that, also, feels and wills. The
empiricist has simply left the real self out of
view in his reasonings, while, as a matter of
fact, it has been because he has used it that he
has been able to reach any conclusions at all.

Now the loss of the soul in the modern world
is due, in part, to the empirical blindness I have
been trying to expose. But it is due, in part
also, to another cause of a different order.
When the traditional slavery of mediaevalism
was broken and the modern world set out on the
path of free inquiry, its problem was nothing
less than the rediscovery of both the inner and
the outer world. The mediaeval system found
no place for first hand inquiry into either the
nature of man or that of the world. The entire
body of orthodox knowledge was defined in
terms of tradition and authority. I do not mean
to say that there were not original searchers
for the truth, like the mystics and scientists;
but these were outsiders and, if not directly un-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 103

der the ban, were regarded as objects of sus-
picion. When the bonds of tradition could no
longer hold and the mind of man freed itself
from the restraints of authority, it acted logic-
ally when it threw out, provisionally, at least,
as in the case of Descartes, all the content of
the old culture and set out on the task of build-
ing up a new knowledge and culture by means
of methods of original and first hand inquiry.
The result of this was the fact that both nature
and man were regarded as unknown realms and
the modern mind had on its hands the discovery
or the rediscovery of both the outer and the in-
ner worlds. The record of the way in which this
great task has been prosecuted includes the his-
tory of both philosophy and science. To pass
over all details, we may say that to philosophy
and psychology fell the task of explaining the
inner world of man's nature, while that of the
outer realm or the outer world fell to the lot of
the physical sciences. I shall only briefly allude
to the fact that, while philosophy has made
some splendid achievements in its researches
into the inner world, yet it has been surpassed
beyond compare by the progress of the sciences.
The dominance of the concepts of the physical
sciences over the minds of men has been almost
overwhelming and, while the effects have on the
whole been good, there is one effect of this
dominance that vitally concerns the problem of
this discussion. So completely have the physi-
cal conceptions and categories incorporated

104 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

themselves with the modern ways of thinking
that the average mind has suffered a kind of
atrophy of the spiritual and the result has been
not so much a positive disbelief, but rather an
inability to believe, in the inner spiritual world
as real. This inability reveals itself in the
vogue of empiricism, which can find no basis for
a doctrine of a real self, and is predetermined
by the limits of its data to a sceptical conclu-
sion regarding the inner spiritual realm and its
objects. To this is no doubt largely due the
fact that through its blindness to spiritual fact
the modern mind may be said to have gained the
whole world of outer and physical reality at the
cost of losing its own soul. The task, there-
fore, which the friend of the spiritual has on
his hand is that of the revival of the lapsed
sense of spiritual reality and the re-discovery
of the soul.

Let me say then in a word, that the object of
the preceding lectures of the course has been
to contribute something to the revival of the
lapsed sense of spiritual reality. If man is by
virtue of his constitution a religious being in
the profound sense that his perception of
spiritual realities adds a new dimension to his
consciousness and transforms all the activities
of his nature ; if it be true that his spiritual in-
heritance is so deep that to take it from him
would virtually relegate him to an existence be-
low the human type ; if the activity by which he
knows the smallest detail of knowledge or by

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 105

which he achieves the smallest result in life be
such that its motive can be completely satisfied
only in the grounding of its human existence
in the divine life ; then the reality of the spirit-
ual can be no longer in question and with the
development of this insight the sense of the re-
ality of the soul will grow from more to more.
Making bold then to use the insight we have
acquired in dealing with the problem of the
soul or real self, I think you will be ready to go
with me in the following argument. The as-
sumption of empiricism that there is only one
order of reality, the empirical, is false, since it
cannot account for irrefutable facts of con-
sciousness. There are two orders of reality,
one, the empirical, the other we may call the
real or rational. The presence of these two
orders will be found to be involved in any act
of cognition. Take, for example, the cognition
of a Greek temple. The cognition itself as an
experience was momentary; but, if you are
asked in connection with it the question, does
the temple exist, you know that the question
goes beyond your cognition as a conscious ex-
perience. It means does the temple continue
when you are not looking at it or thinking about
it; and, when you consider this, you find that
what the questioner really wishes to know is
whether the temple belongs to an order of ex-
istence that is different from your perceptions ;
or is altogether a phenomenon of your percep-
tions and shares the fortunes of their order.

106 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

When you further consider the question, you
find that it involves something still more pro-
found. The order of your perceptions is a
broken one and presents many gaps : it is made
up of momentary and perishable experiences,
so that were you to take the Berkeleyan posi-
tion, esse est per dpi, you would not be able to
escape the logic of it but would conclude that
the Greek temple is wholly an affair of your
personal consciousness. You know, however,
that the questioner will be satisfied with no such
subjective answer. What he has in mind in
putting his question about the existence of the
Greek temple is an order of reality different
from the empirical order of perceptions; an
order that is unbroken and perdurable, so that
the temple has had a continuous being. Now
the appeal has been here to the empirically un-
seen: to that which transcends the empirical
and at the same time grounds its object by giv-
ing it a real status in being. Turning now to
the problem of the self, we find the same dual
distinction necessary to any adequate doctrine.
The question regarding any individual, Does he
exist, or has he a soul? will involve the dis-
tinction between what we may call his empirical
and his real self. The empirical self will be the
self considered as a phenomenon of the empiri-
cal order. We have seen that the sceptical
empiricist has smooth sailing so long as we per-
mit him to play his game of the one order. The
self may be projected then as part of a moving

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 107

panorama and will be perishable like all the
other parts. But when you search for his real
self and find it not in the show itself, but find it
identical with the deeper point to which the
show is a contemplated object, you will then be
in a position to understand the deeper meaning
of the question. The real self will be that which
remains identical with a fixed point of contem-
plation when all that is empirical and objectifi-
able has been projected into the picture. This
will be the self that the questioner will imply
when he asks, does he exist, or has he a soul!
There is, then, another self that is implicit in
the empirical as possessing qualities that the
empirical self does not possess and which are,
in fact, the opposites of the qualities of the em-
pirical self.

What, then, are these qualities? In the first
place a quality of the empirical arises from the
fact that all its groundings are resolvable into
pluralistic elements. There is an empirical
self, but it is a dissolving momentary grouping
and lapses into the stream ; but the real self is
a unity that is not thus resolvable. There are
no seams in the garment of the real self. This
is what constitutes it a real rather than an em-
pirical fact. The whole validity of the empiri-
cal perception depends on the fact that it is re-
lated to a unitary point of view which is not in-
fected with plurality. This is necessarily true
whether we can understand it or not. Again
the moments of the empirical are perpetually

108 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

losing their identity and passing into something
else, whereas the real self is only conceived to
be real as it maintains itself from thus passing
into something not itself. The real in experi-
ence is identical, from this point of view, with
the stable ; with that which is its unbroken self.

When we consider the deeper facts of knowl-
edge, we will find the conclusions reached above
confirmed by every part of it. For, as I have
already shown, no act of knowledge completes
itself and obtains full cognitive value except
by appealing to some order that is more stable
and unbroken ; that is, more substantial than the
perceptual order of which it, as a subjective ex-
perience, forms a moment. In every act ; in the
cognition of a thing as something more than a
mere plexus of perishable qualities; in the
judgment of identity, which is involved in rec-
ognition, in which an unbroken order of exist-
ence is affirmed; in the immediate and mediate
processes of reasoning, which consist in their
ontological sense in binding that which in itself
is particular and unstable to an order of being
that is one and unbroken ; — in short, there is no
act of knowledge that does not reveal the same
inner motive. The process of objective knowl-
edge may then be represented as a movement in
which the subject-known is continually passing
from an empirical order which is plural, un-
stable and broken, to a rational order of exist-
ence that is unitary, stable and unbroken.

Much more when we turn our attention to the

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 109

world of consciousness, do we find the same
thing to be true. What we call the empirical
self is a temporary aggregation of states con-
stituting an eddy in the stream, which dis-
charges a temporary function, then dissolves
into the current. If this be the whole of self-
experience, then James' representation is the
only one logically possible, and the self is a
momentary and perishable thought, as unstable
and transitory as any other eletoent in the
stream of existence. But when we look deeper ;
or to put the same thing in different words,
when we think from the standpoint of the self
that is pronouncing the judgments, it becomes
clear that the passing of the empirical self can
become a fact of knowledge only as a pronounce-
ment of a subject-known, that does not pass but
speaks from a durable point of existence. If
this be true, and I can see no tenable position
from which it can be gainsaid, then, the way to
a doctrine of a rational and stable self as the
real subject of experience is made clear. The
act in which we affirm our own identity, as well
as the act in which we affirm the phenomenal
character of the empirical self, is the act of a
knower that itself transcends the empirical and
identifies itself with the rational and abiding.

Taking this as established, let us now con-
sider, as briefly as possible, what are the funda-
mental attributes, or to use the Kantian term,
categories, of the real self. In a former lec-
ture, we had occasion to draw a distinction be-

110 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

tween the two categories of self-existence and
self-activity. This was done for the purpose of
showing that, while self -existence cannot be af-
firmed of anything but the ground of all ex-
istence, self-activity may be a property of a
being that is immediately conscious of its de-
pendence on its ground. For self-activity im-
plies simply the power of initiative arising out
of the self -determining character of its actions.
The concept of self-determination will be con-
sidered more in detail in a later lecture; here
we will content ourselves with the statement
that self-activity involves the initiative of an
action that originates with ourselves and is not
determined by other. That the subject of ex-
perience possesses this power is borne out not
only by the testimony of self consciousness but,
also, by the consideration that the only alterna-
tive to initiative is passivity, whereas the no-
tion of a subject of action is contradictory to
the notion of passivity. We could define a sub-
ject of action as that which initiates the action
by making it its own. The definition would be
true whether the proposed act originated with
the given subject or was originated by another
and simply received the stamp of its own en-
dorsement. In both instances, the subject is
self-active. Now in this sense that its acts only
become its own by virtue of its own endorse-
ment we call the real subject of experience self-
active. It could be shown that not only does
this notion of a real subject of experience in-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 111

volve self-activity, but, also, that this is in-
volved in the notion of responsibility. For we
are responsible for actions only so far forth as
we own them; that is, put the initial stamp of
our endorsement upon them. The so-called
refutations of the self -activity of the subject
of experience owe their entire force to the fact
that their application is limited to the empirical
self. It is difficult to see how a subject that is
constantly dissolving into the stream of con-
tingency can be the bearer of a function so dig-
nified as that of self -activity. Besides, the logic
seems to be unassailable that what is purely
phenomenal cannot be conceived as exercising
any real agency. If, however, we refuse to
limit our view to the empirical and identify the
real self with the subject that pronounces the
judgments on the empirical situation, it will
then be clear that the value of the empirical
judgments themselves will be conditioned on
other judgments proceeding from a standpoint
that transcends the empirical. Taking it as
established then that self-activity must be
ascribed to the real subject of experience as the
form of its agency, let us go on to the question
of other essential attributes. We do not need
to dwell altogether on a group of attributes of
which we have had something to say in former
lectures; the categories of unity, stability and
perdurability, which inhere in the very concep-
tions of a subject that transcends the empirical
stream and is able to judge its phenomena. Let

112 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

us ask the question, how is it possible for us to
know and judge that some things are empirical ;
that is, mere appearance, unstable and pass-
ing,— except from the standpoint of a judg-
ment that is not affected by such contingency?
That the subject that issues the non-empirical
judgment is itself non-empirical follows with-
out question. That a subject which utters judg-
ments that are unitary, — that are stable and
that perdure, is itself unitary, stable and per-
durable, is equally beyond question ; otherwise,
it would be necessary to regard the real self
that is the subject of the unphenomenal judg-
ments as a duplicate of the empirical, and the
left hand would thus tear down what the right
hand had builded.

There are, however, certain categories of the
real subject of experience, so fundamental to its
unphenomenal character that they must be
treated with more detail. These are individu-
ality, personality and personal identity. It
might be argued that what is self-active, will,
also, be individual, and the conclusion would be
hard to refute. But what we propose here is,
first, to determine, as far as possible, the con-
cept of individuality. If we say that the in-
dividual is not decomposable into parts, we ut-
ter an important but identical proposition. If,
however, we say that an individual is an ex-
istence that maintains its own integrity and is
not broken into by other existences, we utter a
proposition that follows immediately from the

PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION 113

notion of individuality itself. When we say,
further, that the individual is one: That it is
not broken into by change ; that it is perdurable,
we utter propositions some of which, at least,
are mediate and not immediately certain. For
example, the judgment of unity may be taken as
a definition of individuality from a certain point
of view ; but the propositions that the individual
is not broken into by change and that it is per-
durable, are not self-evident. The first propo-
sition, that the individual is not broken into by
change is not obvious until we have looked at
it on its obverse side and have perceived that
change itself has no significance except as it is
related to the permanent and unbroken. The
individual in order to be a subject of change
and to be aware of change must itself be un-
broken and aware of its integrity. We do not
mean here that individuality excludes change,
like the being of the Eleatics ; rather that change
may enter into it without breaking its continu-
ity. If we are able to grasp the concept that
something may change through and through and
yet maintain its being unbroken, we will have
mastered the secret of individuality. The indi-
viduality of the self is the respect in which it is
unbroken by the changes of its experience.
Other aspects of individuality are expressed in
the fact that, like the Leibnitzian monad, its
life-activity is internal rather than external;
another way of saying that the individual is
self-active and not determined from without.

114 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

From another angle individuality will express
the substance of a thing, — that by virtue of
which it transcends the empirical concept of a
bunch or plexus of perishable qualities. We
are justified in concluding, I think, that when
we say that the subject of experience is a real
individual, we have ascribed to it the attributes
of unphenomenal and stable existence ; we have
afl5rmed its unity, its integrity and its perdura-
bility.

When we say that the real subject is per-
sonal, we ascribe to it individuality, plus some
further characterizations. To be a person is to
be an individual; but the concept of person is
richer than that of individual. When we speak
of individuality, we have in mind certain un-
phenomenal attributes of being; we have in
mind the self for example, not in its aspect of
change and plurality but rather in that of its
unity and permanence of existence. But, when
we speak of personality, we have in mind, not
simply the unphenomenal character of the self,
but rather the self as a concrete, as a synthesis
of the real and the phenomenal. It is this syn-
thetic view that is the source of the richness of
personality. Let us take, for example, here
the profound conception of personality adopted
by the early Christian thinkers; that of the
Logos; a conception that combined the notion
of a permanent substance or individual with
that of utterance or expression. In its sub-
stance or unbroken individuality, or being, it is

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 115

one, but in its phenomenal or empirical expres-
sion or manifestation it is plural. Now I am
not about to ask your participation in a theo-
logical discussion, but rather to assist me in ab-
stracting the core of insight from this profound
doctrine of theology. Personality is the indi-
vidual nature of a man viewed from the side
of its empirical expression. Personality is
plural and changeable, so that the total impres-
sion of it will be that of a rich variety; but it
will not represent simply a heterogeneity of
change. There are certain genuine forms of
psychic activity which determine the funda-
mental types of personal expression. I mean
the three first forms of conscious activity, ex-
pressed in the terms, thought, feeling and vo-
lition, or whatever more modern terms the psy-
chologists may have invented for these forms
of mental action. We will express the full sig-
nificance of personality, I think, if we regard
it as the individual nature of a being expressing
itself in any of the threefold forms of psychic
activity, thinking, feeling or willing ; or in some
blend of the three. With us the types, the vari-
ations, may be practically infinite, so that what
is called the play of personality is more than a
figure. The significant fact about personality,
for us here, is its synthetic character: it is a
unitary nature expressing itself in a plurality
of forms.

The third category of our list is in many re-
spects the most significant of them all. No one

116 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

doubts that personality is an attribute of man,
although there may be a variety of doctrines as
to its nature. But there is no such unity re-
garding personal identity. In order to develop
any adequate doctrine of personal identity, it is
necessary for us to keep in mind the distinction
between the real and the empirical. This we
have found to be a distinction of cardinal im-
port in every field of existence. From the stand-
point of pure empiricism, there is no adequate
ground for maintaining any real identity of the
self. The empirical self as James has con-
tended, does not persist but is a perishable
thought that dissolves into the flux, leaving self-
hood to be taken care of by another thought as
perishable as itself. It is only from the stand-
point of one who recognizes the unphenomenal
character of the real self that there seem to be
sufficient grounds for maintaining the real con-
tinuity of the perishable self. This will be
clear, if we consider John Locke's doctrine of
personal identity. He seems to regard person-
ality itself as a forensic term employed by the
jurists to fix legal responsibility for acts. Psy-
chologically, he regards it as a matter of con-
sciousness, so that the maintenance of the same
person would depend on the continuity of con-
sciousness. If a man should forget himself, he
would become another person. But, while this
may be true in a measure, as the modern in-
vestigations into plural and alternating person-
alities have shown; yet the significant fact is

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 117

not that a man may forget himself, but that
having done so he may, perhaps after long
lapses, come back to himself and re-establish an
unbroken thread of continuity. The common
fact of memory is one that cannot be explained
from the standpoint of the empirical conscious-
ness alone, since the judgment of recognition in
memory appeals to an order of reality that is
unbroken; otherwise, recognition would be im-
possible and every act of mind would be a fresh
creation. It is impossible to take time here to
develop this position in order to bring out all
its implications; but memory-acts, in common
with all cognitive acts, make a common appeal
to an unbroken order of existence. In this case,
the unbroken order is that of the real subject
of experience, which not only transcends the
empirical order but, also, grounds it.

We pass now to the closing topic of the lec-
ture; that of the self as a subject of religious
experience. It is vital that we should determine
what self is the court of appeal in the case of
religious experience. If it be the empirical self,
then we meet the difficulty that the empirical
self is too transient and perishable to be the
bearer of a religious intuition or the subject of
an experience that binds the soul of man to the
rock of the immutable. The court of appeal
must be the real self which as an individual and
perdurable being will find some affinity with
that which appeals to the sense of the unitary
and abiding. Now we have seen how the re-

118 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ligious consciousness opens up in the soul of
man the insight of a new dimension of being.
In the light of this new dimension which con-
nects existence with its self-existent ground, we
have seen that the fundamental relation of re-
ligion to the whole activity of man is made
clear. Not only does it appear that religion
supplies the true end of his being which is the
salvation of his soul. But what is even more
significant here, it supplies the ontological mo-
tive of all his activities, so that whether we re-
gard him as an intellectual, emotional or vo-
litional being the mainspring of all his activi-
ties is found in the common and persistent im-
pulse toward the self-existent ground of being
as the goal of all endeavor. Furthermore, there
is an insight here that will be necessary to the
completion of our doctrine of the self. We have
been led to the distinction between the empirical
and the real self as fundamental, and we have
found that the real self must be conceived as a
self -active individual subject of experience. In
ascribing self-activity to the soul of man, we
have been led to distinguish between self-ex-
istence and self-activity and have recognized
the fact that the self-activity of the soul does
not involve its self-existence. At the basis of
the soul-life there is the insight into the tran-
scendent ground, the spring of its existence and
the rock on which it rests. What I wish to point
out here in conclusion is the fact that it is only
in this transcendent insight; in this three-di-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 119

mensional vision, that we discover the datum
that is needed to give final and unconditional
value to all our rational conclusions. For the
position that we have maintained from the be-
ginning- : that the doctrine of selfhood must go
beyond the limits of the empirical which is
broken and perishing, and must find the concept
of the real self in that which is unitary, un-
broken and perdurable, is one that depends for
its final justification on the insight of the re-
ligious consciousness. There is a sense in which
the fruits of all our labors are dropping from
us, and the non-empirical self is in danger of
dropping into the stream of the empirical and
being lost. If there were not the three-dimen-
sional consciousness which gives the insight of
religion, the soul, although it is a self-active
individual, would have no sense of its self-ex-
istent ground. The logic of empiricism would
be constantly prevailing against it and it would
be incessantly facing the annihilation of its
dearest and most fundamental hopes. But the
three-dimensional insight of religion supplies it
with the light that ** never was on land or sea"
that enables it to lay hold of the self-existent
and complete the story of its life with the vision
of that which has life in itself. Or to put the
truth in different words : The soul of man can
be sure of its own unbroken and permanent ex-
istence only when it sees it in the light of its
relation to its divine spring. This will mean
that it is only the self-existent principle of ex-

120 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

istence that imparts to the soul of man its own
permanent individuality and it is only in the
light of the ground-intuitions of religion that
the soul obtains a clear insight into its own na-
ture and destiny.

Lecture VI. The Agency of Man

The problem of this lecture is that of the
agency of man, and the special question will
be that of human freedom. The chief difficulty
involved in the discussions of this subject has
arisen from the presence in the mind of the in-
vestigator of some predetermined concept of
freedom. This has rendered the problem, ap-
parently, so hopeless that we are often dis-
posed, like Milton, to relegate it to the angels
along with the problem of fore-ordination, on
the ground that they will have ample leisure for
its discussion. If, however, we do not dogma-
tize on the subject before investigating it, and,
if we can hold our judgment open for the time,
at least, it may be that, travelling this new road,
we may be led to some valuable discoveries. At
the outset, therefore, I would be chary of com-
mitting myself or you to any statements of the
question. When the two knights quarreled
about the color of the shield they were both
right, and it is possible that two parties, at op-
posite ends of an argument, may be defending
one and the same thing. Most men will, at
times, find difficulty squaring their abstract

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 121

theory with the theory that is implied in their
practice. Much of the perplexity surrounding
the problem of freedom arises, without doubt,
from the fact that it is, in some respects, more
simple than is ordinarily supposed, while, in
other respects, it is much more profound. For
example, if we accept the testimony of con-
sciousness as final, which we must as far as its
testimony goes, as I hope to be able to show,
then the fact of freedom is very simple ; where-
as, if we go deeper into the subject, and raise
the question whether the action of man has not
been predetermined in such a way that he is not
free in the sense which his consciousness con-
firms, we will find that a very deep issue has
been raised, the settling of which may baffle our
deepest insights. Instead, then, of indulging in
premature definitions, or even statements of the
question, I will ask your leave to proceed di-
rectly to the consideration of a negative propo-
sition; namely, that human agency is not a
form of mechanical activity. The doctrine of
mechanical determination may take several dif-
ferent forms, all of which have this in common,
that they treat the relation of choice to its
antecedent as an external relation, which may
be quantitatively conceived, if not definitely de-
termined. The relation of the antecedent, which
we may call motive, to the choice being ex-
ternal ; the motive, as a force, stands outside of
the subject that is determined, and the choice is
the result of a stronger force operating upon a

122 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

weaker. It is ordinarily regarded as a case of
natural causation. The result is strictly de-
termined, and there is no more place for free
action than there is in the case of one billiard
ball producing, by impact, an effect in another.
When, however, we analyze the situation in an
act of choice, we find that it cannot be externally
represented; that A, the motive, in order to
produce an effect, B, in the agent, must give up
its external position, and become a feeling or
desire in the consciousness of Y. This relates
A internally to all the other states of Y, which
are not a determinate number exercising a de-
terminate force. For A, like any other form
of stimulus, is a challenge which rouses the
memory processes in an effort of the conscious-
ness stimulated to pull itself together, so to
speak, for the present occasion. Let the recol-
lected self be composed of N states, all of which
will blend together into one consciousness. The
state A, which, let us say, is an inducement to
steal, will blend with the other states, and there
will be, as a result, a subject that will feel in-
clined to steal. It is clear that the situation
cannot be mechanically represented since the
matter in hand is an internal transaction in a
consciousness, the states of which have ceased
to exist separately, and are constantly varying
in force, according to the states with which they
blend or stand in contrast. If the states, in the
restored consciousness with which the desire to
steal is able to blend, are able, in combination,

PHILOSOPHY OP RELIGION 123

to determine the whole trend of the conscious-
ness that decides, then we will feel sure that
the choice of theft will follow, unless some in-
hibitory motive should, in the meantime, come
in and redress the balance. Now, while this
analysis shows that the situation is not mechan-
ical, is it not open to the construction of being
the prevailing of the stronger consciousness
over the weaker? Or, to put it differently; if
we represent the situation as that of a struggle
between two empirical selves as to which should
be realized in this instance, may it not be in-
terpreted as the succeeding of the stronger self,
and the temporary suppression of the weaker
self? I see no way of escaping this conclusion,
unless there are other facts not yet considered
that would modify the situation. That there
are such facts, I will now proceed to show. In
the first place, the strength of motives are sub-
jectively determined by the internal character
of the subject. The internal nature of each sub-
ject is a selective principle which expresses it-
self in certain motives, desires and impulses.
The internal character of a lodestone is such
that it will attract iron filings, but will have no
power to draw wood or copper. The selective
principle here may be expressed as follows ; the
lodestone has a desire for iron, a latent impulse
to seek iron which will be aroused when iron
comes into the neighborhood, but will be dor-
mant if the objects are of wood. Putting it
from the standpoint of the iron, we may say

124 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

that the iron has latent in its nature a desire
for the magnet, which its presence and attract-
ing power will call into action, but that there is
no such desire in wood and copper. There is
a subjective principle in consciousness analo-
gous to this in the light of which we can say that
the strength of all motives is to be expressed
in terms of evaluation by consciousness itself.
If the sexual instinct were not latent in man
there would be no temptation in female beauty.
This is the first point. The second is a deeper
aspect of the same situation that is revealed in
connection with deliberate action. It is present,
but not so obvious in action that is spontaneous.
The fact I wish to call attention to is this ; that,
viewed as a whole, the act of deliberation is one
in which the decision is held up until the con-
scious nature as a whole has an opportunity to
put its valuation on the factors involved. If
A, objectively, may be the knowledge of the
combination of a safe in which valuable stock
is locked up, it is clear that the force of
the internal feeling or desire to steal cannot be
determined from the knowledge itself, but will
depend for its force altogether on the internal
assessment of it by the person who possesses
the knowledge, and that this will vary indefi-
nitely at different times in the life of that in-
dividual. These facts will, I think, cause us to
reverse our judgment, and say that no objec-
tive motive possesses any power over a con-
scious being that is not given to it by the in-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 125

ternal assessment of the subject who has cog-
nizance of it. This, together with the fact that
this assessment varies infinitely, will wholly dis-
credit the quantitative measurement, and will
convince us that we must seek the coefficient
of choice in the nature of the choosing subject,
and not in the force we may ascribe to any ob-
jective motive.

If, now, we accept this as the final refutation
of the mechanical theory of choice, the ground
will be clear for some further advances. If we
scrutinize a process that leads to and deter-
mines choice or action, we will find that, psycho-
logically, it is teleological rather than mechani-
cal. A mechanical process is one from which
all selection, prevision or internal guidance
has been eliminated. The forces push for-
ward, however definite may be their path,
blindly, so far as any internal vision is con-
cerned, and fatalistically, as far as any purpose
or end may be concerned.

'^The ball no question asks of ayes or noes,
But here and there where strikes the player
goes."

But, if we scrutinize a choice situation, we will
find that it is motived from beginning to end by
a prevision of the end, which motive, at first a
point of selectiveness, becomes progressively a
prevision of end, a purpose and a goal of reali-
zation, where the mechanical agent is blind, like
the ball, and goes, fatalistically, where the

126 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

player strikes; the psychical agent is seeing,
and goes intelligently, to the realization of a
prevised goal. When an action is thus intelli-
gently informed, we call it self-determined to
distinguish it from the mechanical type, which
is determination by other.

We are ready now to return to our question
of freedom, and I think we will be prepared for
the conclusion that freedom, whatever it may
be, will be identical with self-determination.
We mean by that, not that all self-determina-
tion is free determination, for that would be
the simple conversion of a proposition in A, but
that all acts of freedom will fall under the cate-
gory of self-determination. If, then, we distin-
guish between the form and the substance of
freedom, we will be justified in saying that all
acts that are self-determined are formally free.
How, then, are we to distinguish the substance
of freedom from its form? This will lead us
along another line of investigation. At the out-
set, we may say that, while consciousness is an
adequate witness to the fact that we are form-
ally free from any constraint, there are condi-
tions of real freedom that go beyond its vision.
For example, if the question is not as to present
determination, but takes the form of a question
of pre-determination, we are plainly facing an
issue that an appeal to consciousness or to the
psychic form of human choice cannot determine.
I do not wish to conceal the fact that the grav-
est issue in the whole question of freedom is

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 127

that of pre-determination. Is our choice pre-
determined, and, if so, in what way, and does
this militate against free choice?

In dealing with this phase of our question,
there are two lines of consideration. (1) The
bearing of the forces of the soul's ordinary life
in the problem of its choice, and (2) the bear-
ing of its relation to God, or the self-existent
ground of its existence, or the nature of its own
agency. If we consider the first problem, we
are brought into relation with the forces of the
world, and their bearing on the nature of the
soul's life and agency. There is one conclusion
which we have already reached that will simpli-
fy the problem. It has been made clear that the
agency of the soul is not mechanical but teleo-
logical. This removes the mechanism of the
world from any direct causal part in determin-
ing the life and agency of the soul. If the soul
of man is vitally connected with the world-pro-
cess, it is with its life and history. It is the
process of the world in time ; what we call its
development in time ; to which the history of the
soul is vitally related. If, then, we conceive
the soul to be connected with the world's life,
and a part of that life, we will have before us
the task of determining the part which these
evolutionary forces have played and continue to
play in constituting it, and fixing its place in the
life system to which it belongs. Now, without
attempting to determine any theory of evolu-
tion, which would be out of place here, the fol-

128 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

lowing proposition will, I think, be accepted as
true. The forces that determine or affect the
soul 's life will be inheritance, environment, and,
as a subordinate factor in the latter, what is
called the physical habitat. Let us allow to
these forces a full measure of agency in deter-
mining the nature and status of the soul. Let
us say, for example, that it is through heredity
that the soul has its rootage in the life of the
world, while, in heredity taken with environ-
ment, we have the factors that enable us to give
the natural history of the soul as a product and
manifestation of the world's life. Two ques-
tions may be asked, when all the claims of natu-
ral agencies have been satisfied. (1) Do these
forces account for the absolute origin of the
soul, and (2) what effect do they have on the
freedom of the soul's action? In order to
answer any of these questions, we must form
some critical concept of the forces we call
heredity and environment. The term heredity in
the popular mind bears an evil repute, since the
public only hears of it in connection with dis-
ease or the transmission of criminal tendencies,
like the propensity to steal in the Duke family.
But it is clear that the agency of such a princi-
ple cannot be confined to what the Hindu phi-
losophy calls Karma; the self -perpetuation of
evil ; that it will be absolutely indifferent to the
good and evil, and will transmit both with equal
facility. In other words, the whole genetic stem
of its existence, the soul will owe to the princi-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 129

pie of inheritance. Heredity will be a faithful
transmitter of whatever be given to it, and this
will be true whatever theory of heredity we may
espouse, for any theory accepts the principle,
and seeks simply to determine the limits within
which it operates. If, then, we say that the
business of heredity is impartial transmission,
it will be clear that no creative function can be
ascribed to it. It is the analogue of habit in the
psychic realm, and, like habit, its sole function
is that of conservation. Passing to the other
factor, environment, leaving out of view the
subordinate influence of the habitat; it will be
evident that in relation to the soul-life of man,
the environment will be a very broad and signifi-
cant factor. It will be clear, also, that, while
biologically considered, it will be important as
a factor in the lower life of the soul, yet, in its
higher life in the human stage, its psychological
aspect will be much more vital in its bearing on
the problems of our inquiry. For the environ-
ment will include all the forces and agencies of
man's own civilization, including the social,
moral and religious ; it will include all the edu-
cational agencies that bear on his culture, in-
cluding his science, literature, history and art.
In short, the whole operation of the environ-
ment which man has builded about himself on
the basis of his physical surroundings.^ Now, it
is clear that the environment, so conceived, will
not be a mere conserver of riches already ac-
cumulated, but rather a stimulus to new ad-

130 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

vances in the fields of achievement. The biolo-
gist, in considering the relation of the organism
to these forces in the light of the organic re-
action, calls one habit, the other adaptation;
the organism conserving its past through habit
while adaptation is its way of taking a step in
advance in response to the stimulus of the en-
vironment.

From this point of view I think we will be in
the way of reaching two important conclusions.
The first will bear on the question we stated
sometime back, as to whether evolution ac-
counted for the absolute origin of the soul or
only for its place in a natural scale of being. If
heredity only conserves the germ, it is evident
that it can shed no light on the origin of the
organism which it conserves. This is so obvi-
ous as to require no further elaboration. In re-
gard to the environment we meet a somewhat
different situation. Given the organism, which
may be a germ cell, the environmental agencies,
acting with heredity, will account for the ad-
vances in organization from one stage of de-
velopment to another. If now we apply the
name evolution to the combined function of
these agencies, the question comes up in the
general form as to how far, if at all, creative
functions may be ascribed to evolution. This
brings us at once face to face with the opposite
claims of the two prevailing philosophies of the
day — pre-formationism and eugenics. The pre-
formationists tell us that not only is the germ-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 131

cell the protagonist in the drama of evolution
but that it must be regarded as a little micro-
cosm which contains in it the germ-forms of
all that is to unfold from it; that the first lion
germ-cell for example has wrapped up in it all
the lion-germs which will develop all the lions
that are to succeed it to the oldest generation.
This was the philosophy held by the early bi-
ologists of the seventeenth century and that ob-
tained its most perfect expression in the mo-
nadology of Leibnitz. It was set aside by Dar-
win, and the opposing doctrine of epigenesis ob-
tained vogue until recently when, as my friend
and former colleague. Professor Conklin, tells
me, the biological wind has set in an opposite
direction and the ship is now sailing danger-
ously close to the Charybdis of preformation-
ism. The theory of epigenesis differs from pre-
formationism in this that it is willing to concede
only an irreducible minimum of initiative to the
germ-cell, while on the contrary it ascribes a
larger and more creative function to the en-
vironment. For example, while it finds it nec-
essary to admit some original quality in the
germ that in a vague and indefinite way acts as
a force of predetermination, its tendency is to
minimize this and to regard it as practically a
negligible quantity. Not only the definable de-
velopment of the germ along the line of its own
type but the more original steps, the branching
off into species, it ascribes to the creative
agency of the environment. Darwin expressed

132 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

this mere creative view in his statement : given
a few original germs and the development of
all existing species may be accounted for by
natural selection and the other forces of evo-
lution.

Now when we consider the situation criti-
cally, I think it will become clear that in both
philosophies the germ as a pre-determining
form is assumed. Only the epigenesist reads
out of it all except the indispensable minimum,
while the preformationist finds in the germ-cell
the hidden antetype of all the forms that are to
develop from it. For our purposes here we do
not need to take sides for it is obvious that both
parties disclaim the responsibility of absolute
origin. Furthermore when we scrutinize the
concept of the minimum indispensable to the
evolution that follows, I think we will be led to
the following conclusion. The primary germ-
cell may not have in it all the definite poten-
tiality which the preformationist ascribes to it,
but when all deductions have been made, in
order that the minimum may be able to perform
its biological duty it must have in it the pre-
determining form of some kind of individuality.
The germ-cell must be able to say, I am not the
centre of a force that is perfectly general and
indeterminate for then I would have nothing to
say as to the type or form of existence into
which the forces of nature are shaping me. In
that case an inorganic germ would serve the
purpose as well as an organic. The very fact

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 133

that I am living is a force of predetermination
in regard to what I am to become. Now how I
am to conceive that force of predetermination
is a difficult question for I am not conscious of
nursing in my womb any definite predetermin-
ing forms. But of this much I am quite confi-
dent : As a life-germ I have a kind of individu-
ality that belongs to my nature and I feel quite
sure that anything that develops from me will
inherit from me the form of an individual. We
may, I think, take the work of the germ-cell as
expressing the true philosophy of the whole
problem. It is the insight into the fact that
evolution, when its largest claim is allowed, is
creative only in a relative sense: That some-
thing original has to be postulated and that the
responsibility for absolute origin is waived.

We are now in a position to debate the other
question ; namely that of the bearing of the phi-
losophy of evolution on the problem of freedom.
Carrying with us the insight of the conclusion
already reached, let us consider its logical bear-
ing on the question of human agency. The first
point we will emphasize is this : There is at the
heart of the soul's life an original something
which we call its individuality which evolution
must assume and for which it has no explana-
tion. When now we try to conceive what this
individual form which is inherent in the living
germ, may be, one thing will seem to be evident ;
the principle, whatever it may be, will be active
rather than passive. For if it did not involve

134 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

an initial activity, there would be no occasion
for postulating it at all. The responsive move-
ment in obedience to stimulus is all explicable
except the primary initiative that is presup-
posed as the very condition of response. We
begin to see here that all activity involves self-
activity and that the evolutionist is brought un-
willingly to the admission at this point in his
philosophy that the germ of self-activity is
involved in life itself and that when the living
being reaches the stage of human self -conscious-
ness, it becomes conscious of this self-activity
in its own agency, — a doctrine which in the light
of the present discussion will not need to be
argued at length.

From this point of view we may answer the
question as to the bearing of evolution on the
question of freedom as follows: Although in
the operation of its forces of heredity and en-
vironment, evolution seems to defy the category
of predetermination and to close the door to any
reasonable concept of freedom; yet when con-
sidered more critically in the light of its neces-
sary presupposition, it tells a different story.
In the postulate of individuality, the principle
of active initiative is secured for the living sub-
ject and the possibility of free self-initiated ac-
tion is left open. Furthermore, if we consider
the history of the movement of the human spirit
itself as expressed in the process of an advanc-
ing civilization, the following fact will become
clear. The forces of inheritance and environ-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 135

ment will be able at any given stage in the his-
tory to explain the rise of the contemporary
spirit to the level of the past. This will be ac-
counted for by habit and accommodation. But
the characteristic of each generation is that it
adds something to the achievement of the past.
In order that there may be advance, each gen-
eration must add its increment by taking a new
step forward. This being true, it will be clear
that whether from the standpoint of the race as
a whole or from that of the individual, there
will be this open door to freedom. The way of
advance will be open and the forces of pre-
determination will have brought the spirit of
man up to the point where the demand for free
initiative will be in old hands.

I think the conclusion here Is obvious ; a study
of the problem of human agency as a whole
brings us to this result, whether we study the
psychological form of human agency from
which we conclude that choice is non-mechanical
and takes the form of the free and teleological,
or, view the problem in its deeper aspects aris-
ing out of the pre-determining agencies of the
forces of evolution, in which case we come upon
the fact that pre-determination prepares the
way for freedom. In each case the possibility
of free agency stands demonstrated; not only
so, but the necessity of it, in order that the pri-
mary postulate of creative evolution may be
justified and in order that evolution itself may
not force the spirit of man into a procrustean

136 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

bed of a pre-determined fate that would para-
lyze activity and render all advance in life and
civilization impossible.

We now pass to the consideration of the re-
ligious aspect of the problem. But first a pre-
liminary statement: If we recall the ground
distinction we have made between the empirical
and real self, it may be said that the conclusions
we have reached above will not be obvious from
any purely empirical point of view. The em-
pirical self taken abstractly is too much of a
passing phenomenon to bear the responsibility
of any dignified function like that of freedom.
The subject of free activity must have some
real standing in being. The point of view from
which the doctrine of freedom will seem reason-
able is that of the synthesis of the empirical
and the real in view of which the whole life of
the soul may be construed as a movement in
which the soul strives to secure itself from the
contingency of its empirical life by seeking its
grounding in the stable and perdurable. From
this point of view it will appear that though
the soul has in its possession all the conditions
of the possibility of free agency, it is neverthe-
less true that the achievement of real freedom
is a process that includes the whole life struggle
of the soul. Its life may be teleologically char-
acterized as the effort to pass from potential to
real freedom. As a matter of fact it may be
true, as Henri Bergson says, that man is only
free in the great crises of his life when he acts

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 137

most characteristically. Such a conclusion will
harmonize with the principle of our argument
here for we have distinguished between formal
and real freedom as a teleological achievement.
When we pass to the religious aspects of free-
dom, certain problems arise which we now pro-
ceed to consider. Referring back to the doc-
trine of the religious consciousness as devel-
oped in former lectures, we may ask what new
light does this doctrine shed on the problem of
the soul's agency. Bear in mind that we have
distinguished between self-existence and self-
activity and have shown that the soul, while
self-active, is not self-existent. It is the intui-
tion of self-existence that imparts the new di-
mension to the soul's being. The question we
are debating here is what modification, if any,
this new insight makes necessary in our con-
cept of the soul's agency. Let us ask how the
concept of self -existence can be brought to bear
on the real in order to become to it the source
of new insight! This question would be unan-
swerable if it were not in part an answer to
itself. The only way to such an insight will be
that of inclusion ; that is, the soul must identify
the transcendent ground into its own conscious
life that the insight of the transcendent will be
its own. This is what we call the immanence of
the divine in the human, a term that is often
used with little insight into its meaning. This
being true, at the point of immanence the dis-
tinction between the agency of the transcendent

138 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

and that of the soul itself will lapse, and there
will be a blend of both into one. I apprehend
that this will express the most perfect form of
the religious consciousness; the stage above
that which the poet expresses thus : * ' Our wills
are ours to make them thine," when the blend
has been completed and there is no longer any
consciousness of two wills but of one only which
the religious consciousness ascribes to God.
The immanence of God in the human means
here not the complete absorption of the human
will into the divine, but the blending into one
will which so far as concerns the individual hu-
man is his own will.

This will, I think, shed some light on the re-
ligious aspect of freedom and will explain the
consciousness we have that in approaching to
God we do not lose the sense of our freedom but
on the contrary feel it greatly enhanced. For
if the religious consciousness leads to a blend
of the divine in the human, then it will be only
when we are most highly conscious of our rela-
tion to God that our consciousness of freedom
in any sense approximates to that of God Him-
self. For we have seen that our own freedom,
even when at its highest, apart from the con-
sciousness of religion, is only relative; that it
falls short of the absolute freedom of the self-
existent. It is only through the medium of the
religious consciousness, that in its highest
reaches identifies the divine life with the hu-
man, that this relativity can be overcome in a

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 139

measure and the spirit of man rise to the sense
of a freedom that is absolute. The conclusion
we have reached here will be true only to the
spirit that has risen to the consciousness of this
identification. It will not be true for any soul
that is alienated from God or whose wickedness
has made a chasm between the human soul and
the divine. Sin is something that in its very
nature cuts the soul off from this high preroga-
tive.

Finally I wish to consider in this connection
the doctrine that is sometimes called theologi-
cal fatalism. It arises, as in the case of Jona-
than Edwards, in the identification of an act of
choice with the mechanical type of natural caus-
ation so that the antecedent of the choice is
some agent outside of the self that is able to de-
termine it to action. In the case of the soul's
relation to God, it is the will of God that is
the antecedent, and in relation to it the soul has
no freedom of choice. Now I do not need at this
point to repeat the refutation of the mechanical
doctrine of choice as it bears on the relation of
the soul 's action to natural antecedents. For it
is not too much to say that Edwards was mis-
taken in his conception of the real form of hu-
man choice and that in consequence his indefec-
tible logic leads to what may be called a non-
sequitur. To return then to the doctrine of the-
ological fatalism, it proceeds on the assumption
that the situation is one in which there is an
issue between two forces, the divine will and the

140 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

human, and that on the principle of the stronger
force overcoming the weaker, the human will be
overcome and the divine will prevail. If the
situation were analogous to that of a tug of war,
no doubt that would be the result, and we would
all be partisans of the divine. But I do not
need to insist here that such a representation
is crude almost to the verge of absurdity. Let
us admit that the wrecked man in some way
makes himself the ward of fate, but let us take
the testimony of the normal religious conscious-
ness as giving us the truth of the matter. This
will teach us that, one will cannot affect an-
other in such an external and mechanical fash-
ion but only by becoming internal as a motive
or desire of the consciousness to be influenced.
The only point in the experience of a human
soul, therefore, on which the plea of fatalism
can be brought to bear with any force is that
where the distinction between the two agencies
seems to lapse in the blending of the two into
one. Now the fact that at that point we do not
lose our freedom, but on the contrary have our
sense of it heightened, is very significant. If
fatalism were true that would be the point
where the soul ought to feel a sense of the con-
traction of its power but the universal testi-
mony is that the opposite sense of great en-
largement is the dominating one. All the con-
siderations that have a vital bearing on the
issue seem to point in the same direction. The
free agency of man does not suffer contraction

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 141

or suppression from the existence or agency of
God except in the case where the soul regards
God as its enemy. But normally the insight of
the religious consciousness introduces a new
dimension not only into the conscious life but
into the conscious agency of man. The blending
of the divine and the human will initiates man
into a new consciousness of freedom, one that
is in some sense commensurate with His divine
origin. If we define a free act as one that in
the last analysis has the initiative of its own
movement in itself, it will be clear that the
proof of freedom is to be found wherever there
is a real agent for we have but to penetrate be-
neath appearances in order to see that the con-
ditions of freedom are deeply rooted in our na-
ture, and that the achievement of freedom as a
full possession is the teleological goal of our
whole being: One that can only be fully real-
ized in the highest insights and experiences of
the religious consciousness.

Lecture VII. The Overcoming of Evil.

Here, as in the case of the problem of free-
dom, much depends on clearing the ground of
confusing and misleading issues. We cannot
say that anything unsatisfactory is evil. The
unsatisfactory condition may be temporary and
incidental to the working out of processes and
results that are normally good. If we define as
good that which is tributary to life, we have

142 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

simply determined the genus of good while the
species has been left undefined. It may be true
that what is not tributary to life is evil but we
cannot assume it, for the statement looks sus-
piciously like the simple converse of a proposi-
tion in A. We need to be more definite as to the
meaning of the phrase, tributary to life, and we
need to inquire for the species of the non-tribu-
tary that may be defined as real evil. Now
when we say tributary to life we may fairly well
understand what tributary means. It means
promotion of the development or completeness
of life and more specifically the conservation of
what we may call the true ends or ideal values
of life. This restriction not only defines a spe-
cific problem but brings it into the forming of
conscious life where alone the problem has any
existence. The question of the true end or ideal
of life seems by its very statement to be very
complex and diflficult, perhaps beyond answer.
But if we consider it from the standpoint of the
ontological motive of the living process which
we have treated in former lectures it would
seem to be possible to define the good in terms
of that which is deemed to be permanently de-
sirable. That men will differ as to what is per-
manently desirable is a minor consideration,
since men may be mistaken in all fields of in-
quiry. The core of the matter lies, I think, in
the phrase permanently desirable. We admit
the possibility of mistaking the temporarily de-
sirable for the permanent, and even the possi-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 143

bility of deliberately choosing the temporary in
preference to the permanent. And we admit
also the difficulty of determining what the per-
manently desirable is. But these perplexities,
again, do not touch the core of the definition.
Everything being granted that seems reason-
able, it still remains true that men will agree
that the good and the permanently desirable
are one and the same thing. It will be clear
also that a thing may be desirable without be-
ing permanently so, and it may be possible on
this basis to determine a subspecies of minor
goods which perish with the using. In fact it
seems obvious enough that there are temporary
goods that while they last are tributary to life
and cannot in any sense be ranked as evil on
account of their transitoriness. But it is also
evident that these goods are a lower species
and that the term good in the absolute sense
must be reserved for the goods that are perma-
nent. Going on to the second question ; that of
the specific character of evil, several like dis-
tinctions are pertinent. The term evil will be
applicable to that species of the non-tributary
to life which may be defined as positively hos-
tile or unfavorable to it. This will put evil in
opposition to the good and will provide in the
very concept for the avoidance of that confusion
that sometimes results in mistaking evil for im-
perfect or abortive form of good. There would
be reason for doubting whether such, if it exist,
could be put into the category of evil at

144 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

all. The evil will be that which is opposite
to good. But in order that its definition may
be commensurate with that of the good, we must
exclude the category of things that are only in
temporary opposition to the good as a relative
species in regard to which the question may be
put whether or not they are not to be consid-
ered, in the last analysis, as in some sense tem-
porary phases of the good. Evil as such and in
its full concept will be defined as the perma-
nently undesirable : as that which in its nature
is in permanent opposition to the good.

Having reached the definition of evil as that
which is permanently undesirable and therefore
hostile to the good, we are in a position now to
consider the seemingly hopeless question : what
is the real problem of evil 1 I call it seemingly
hopeless because there are so many and con-
flicting ways in which it has been formulated.
For example the hedonist will say that evil is
pain and that the question is whether in a calcu-
lus of pains and pleasures, the pain side of the
account has a balance in its favor. The result-
ing theory of the world will be optimistic or
pessimistic according as the balance swings in
favor of pleasure or pain. As the utilitarian
who is generally a hedonist will define evil as
that which is hurtful, meaning opposite to use-
ful, the question with him will be whether the
hurtful processes in the world overbalance
the useful. An example of this would be the de-
duction of Malthus from the alleged truth that

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 145

population tends to increase more rapidly than
the means of subsistence, that the economic ten-
dency of the race is toward poverty. The Kant-
ian moralist on the other hand, regarding not
happiness but righteousness, or as some of the
modern Kantians term it, excellence, as the cri-
terion of good, would formulate the question in
terms of his own ideal. Is there a tendency
for righteousness to prevail over its opposite;
or do conditions exist which would justify us
in hoping that righteousness will prevail over
its opposite? The Kantian will be an optimist
or a pessimist according as he believes that the
forces that make for righteousness or their op-
posite are likely in the long run to prevail. I
propose to avoid this field of conflict by stating
a proposition to which it is not impossible that
all the parties will be able to assent; namely,
that, as a colleague and friend of mine said re-
cently in some lectures on pessimism, delivered
before the Grove City Bible School, the critical
problem of evil is not whether there are, as a
matter of fact, conditions in existence that tend
toward evil results, but whether the fundamen-
tal constitution of the world is evil or good. To
state the proposition in a somewhat different
form, the great problem of evil is not whether
evil exists, or how much harm it does in the
world, but rather, is evil so entrenched in the
conditions of existence that all efforts to eradi-
cate it are doomed to failure. Stated thus it is
clear that the answer to all other questions

146 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

about evil will depend on the answer we return
to this central problem.

My friend reached the optimistic answer that
the fundamental order of the world is good. I
must go on, however, and reach my own con-
clusion. You know the famous dictum of the
pessimism of Schopenhauer, that the root of ex-
istence, the effort to live is painful and there-
fore irrational. The conclusion of Schopen-
hauer is, of course, that good is impossible and
that evil is inherent in the root of living itself.
This may be true or not. There is much to
prove that living in itself is sweet. Further-
more, if we maintain that the act of living is
painful and yet admit as one must that the in-
stinct to life overcomes the aversion that the
pain of it inevitably causes, the question comes
as to the inner motive of this instinct itself. It
would seem that even granting the truth of what
Schopenhauer says, the ontological motive of
life, that in it which impels it to press for its
own completeness, is stronger than the pain of
actual existence. If this be true, and how oth-
erwise can we explain the instinct which life has
for its own preservation, have we not the wit-
ness of radical pessimism in favor of the truth
of our own proposition that it is the ontological
motive, the end motive of life that determines
for us our final conceptions of good and evil!
It would seem that the question as to whether
the root of existence is sweet or bitter, like that
of the balance between goods and evils of ex-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 147

istence, is one that cannot be solved. Perhaps
we may go further and say that the balance of
facts that have a real bearing on the case will
point to a different conclusion.

But there are other points of view from which
the question as to the character of the funda-
mental order may be approached. If we say
that the concepts of good and evil are formed
in view of the end-motive of living ; that is, the
attainment of that which will be permanently
satisfactory, and if the permanently satisfac-
tory means fullness and completeness of life:
this will itself have a significant bearing on the
question. In this case the whole nature of good
and evil would have to be determined in view
of their relation to the ideal end of life. It
would not be a problem that could be stated in
the form of a question as to whether or not life
is worth living. The fact that life has ideal
values would seem to have disposed of the ques-
tion as to whether it is worthwhile. At all
events, to stop to argue this point here would
be a loss of valuable time. Let us assume that
the fact that life has ideal values does set aside
the question, whether or not it is worth living ;
for when we go into a game we calculate to play
it fairly and go on to the finish. The presump-
tion of the fact that life has ideal values is in
favor of the conclusion that life is worth living
whether it be bitter at its roots or not. It is
also in favor of the presumption that the funda-
mental order of the world is consistent at least

148 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

with the possibility of good. For, to go back a
step or two, the fact that the ontological mo-
tive of existence supplies a propulsive force in
life toward its full realization or perfection is
proof that the most central and significant thing
in life is its idealistic trend. It is in the light of
this that the whole meaning of life is to be de-
termined. Wc have seen that the concepts of
good and evil can be developed only in terms of
the ideal, and the general position we take here
is that inasmuch as the very notions of good
and evil are functions of the ideal, it follows
that the true significance of all the facts and
phenomena that bear on the problem will ap-
pear only when they are brought into the light
of the ideal. This is obvious, for good and evil
are distinguishable only in view of the ideal
values of life, and the solution of all other prob-
lems will depend on the clearness with which
this distinction is realized and accepted.

Taking this point as settled, and confining
our attention to evil as a factor in the life of
conscious beings, we may look further into the
bearing of the ideal character of good and evil
on the question as to whether the fundamental
order of the world is to be regarded as good. If
we say that it is good we must do so in view of
the fact that evil exists and that good is in peril
at least of being defeated. Is there any reason
for saying that the existence of evil in the
world is an insuperable bar to the proposition
that the fundamental order of the world is

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 149

good? Let us examine the proposition. If good
and evil upon inspection prove to be conceptions
that are coordinate and of equal positive value,
then we shall have to conclude that the funda-
mental order cannot be regarded as unquali-
fiedly good. There are, however, several con-
siderations that have a bearing on this question.
When we consider the two concepts of good and
evil, reasons will appear for denying that they
can be taken as resting on the same plane. For
if we ask this question, are the two concepts
mutually implied in one another, the answer
will be that while the concept of evil implies
that of good, it is not true on the contrary that
the concept of good implies that of evil. The
good is therefore the prior concept and has an
ontological value that the evil does not possess.
Again when we consider the concept of evil, we
find that it is not positive like that of the good,
having ontological structures of its own, but
that it rather uses the form of the good in order
to ruin the structure of the good. A lie for ex-
ample has no independent structure of its own
but employs the form of truth in order to de-
feat the truth. From this which will be found
true generally, we may draw the conclusion that
evil is negative in its ontological structure
while good is positive. In the world evil is the
spirit of denial and negation : it is the destroyer
not the builder; its negative ideal is chaos and
disorder; its symbol is darkness rather than

150 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

light, and abysmal perdition rather than the
stable and permanent.

If then evil is negative, and if it has no per-
manent ontological ideals, it would appear that
it is not only not entitled to the position of a co-
ordinate with the good; but also that it is not
provided for in the original constitution of
things, and, like a late intruder, finds it nec-
essary to make a place for itself by creating a
breach in the order already established. This
I should say is more than a mere appearance.
The negative character and function of evil
confirms its truth, and also explains the fact
that the notion of evil always implies a good
without which the evil could not exist. We will
be on firm ground, I think, if from these sig-
nificant facts we conclude that evil is not a fact
of the fundamental order of existence at all, but
presupposes the existence of that order, and
that its business is to prey upon that order and
defeat and destroy it. The fundamental order
is good and the idea of good is therefore that
of the permanent satisfaction that arises from
the realization of the permanent order of the
world. Or, to put it in other words, the good
may be defined as the permanent satisfaction
which arises from the realization of the ideal
order of life. The ideal of life will be its com-
pleteness or perfection, and this will be part of
the ideal order of the world which constitutes
its fundamental nature.

Let us now consider the concept of evil in

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 151

somewliat further detail. We may define as
evil the failure of the good, but it is not clear
that mere failure can be called evil ; nor can we
regard mere privation of good as evil. The
concept in both cases is too empty. Also the no-
tion of imperfection is inadequate since it only
implies the absence of the sense of attainment;
not even its failure. We do not deny that fail-
ure, privation, and imperfection, may in some
of their consequences be evil, but in all such
cases some condition more definitely inconsis-
tent with the good will enter. We begin to
reach definite ground of evil when we define it
as aberration or a tendency to depart from the
good. Aberration will be evil in the sense that
it is a departure from the line of the good.
While aberration considered as eccentricity
may be considered evil and in many instances
is in fact, we do not in mere aberration from the
good standard get an adequate concept of evil.
For example the line of statement may be an
eccentric departure from the perpendicular of
truth without necessarily becoming a lie. We
find it necessary to introduce the notions of op-
position and contradiction in order to fill out
the full measure of the concept of evil. For a
lie, for example, is more than a departure from
the truth or a failure to tell the truth. It is op-
posed to and contradictory to the truth. We
must not mistake, however, wherein this con-
tradiction lies. It does not consist in a contra-
dictory ontological structure. If it did, the lie

152 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

would be impossible : nor does it consist essen-
tially in stating the opposite of the facts. This
happens frequently without any lie being told.
It will consist, and this is significant, in deceiv-
ing and misleading the person to whom the
statement is made. It is the use of a form of
truth to convey a meaning the opposite of that
which a true statement would convey. In short
it is an appeal to the ideal. There is a standard
of truth which commands common acceptance.
This is an ideal to which all are committed in
their statements. The liar is false to the ideal.
His act is one that assails it and attempts to
destroy it. We may generalize this instance
and say that in all cases where the essential na-
ture of evil can be determined it will be found
that it is opposite and contradictory to the ideal
of the good.

If now we attempt to distinguish between dif-
ferent forms of evil, we will be able to make sev-
eral distinctions of greater or less value. Leib-
nitz is perhaps our best guide here. He classi-
fies the species of evil under three different
heads; natural, metaphysical, and moral. The
natural, to hold the discussion within limits al-
ready defined, would include what are called the
natural evils of life, pain, disease, poverty and
death. Metaphysical evil would consist in im-
perfections while moral evil can be brought un-
der the category of sin. Turning then to the
form of evil called natural, it may be said that
while all the forms we have stated except the

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 153

phenomenon of death are evils of a grave order,
two facts are true regarding them. In the first
place they are either avoidable or curable.
Pain in the abstract is an unqualified evil but
concretely it may in general be regarded as a
danger signal set up by nature to warn con-
scious beings from breaking some of her laws.
This is generally true, and even where pain
strikes innocent victims, we can trace the agen-
cies that enable us to see that it is avoidable
and thus take the hopeful and remedial view.
In the case of disease and poverty the case is
clearer. There are economic evils which are
traceable to bad but remediable causes, and
while it is true that in the case of both disease
and poverty the world is full of innocent vic-
tims, the fact that these are all remediable and
that by a more perfect action of human agencies
they might have been prevented, is sufficient to
justify the conclusion that bad as they are the
case is not hopeless. They contain in them the
implication of no infraction of the fundamental
order of the world. That this is good and that
therefore sickness and poverty ought not to ex-
ist is rather the logic of all hopeful measures
for their relief. As to death which has been
called the arch-enemy of life, we do not know
enough about it to be able to say whether this
is true or not. But there are some facts about
death which will perhaps shed some rays of
light into the dark prospect. It is to be borne
in mind that death, apart from the apprehension

154 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

of it, in its relation to life is only an event with-
out significance, and so far as we know the act
is painless. It is only a consciousness that
can look before and behind, that can have some
sense of the sweetness of life and of its ideal
outlook, that can regard death as an evil or feel
any regrets at the prospect or certainty of its
approach. The significance of this is great. If
life be sweet, we may feel in the prospect of
death, as the shade of the ancient Greek is rep-
resented as feeling, that a single day of life
among men is better than an aeon in Hades. In
this case it is not any mystical thing caUed
death but simply the ending of a desirable state
of existence that is considered the evil. Again,
I think we may say that the largest ingredient
in the evil of death to mortals arises from the
fact that it seems to be a defeat of the plans
and purposes and ideals of life. The sense of
the vanity and of the futility of life springs
largely from the feeling of life's brevity. In
the midst of his plans and enjoyments, the de-
stroyer strikes, and his house of cards is shat-
tered and the cup falls from his lips. Surely
life is a vain show. Now the point of all this
as it bears on our problem is that the evil of
death is measured largely in terms of some ideal
of life which we mortals entertain. It is not so
much that it dashes the cup from our lips, but
it seems to block the way to all ideals of perma-
nent satisfaction. It is as a destroyer of the
ideal that death seems to be the great evil of

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 155

existence. We can understand this and it in-
terprets for us the attitude taken toward death
in much of the literature of the world where
life is idealized and death is represented as the
great enemy that breaks in and thwarts the ef-
forts of life toward permanent satisfaction.
How else could the gloom be so deep ; the regret
so poignant? When a child dies we do not
interpret the evil from the standpoint of the
child-consciousness to which it is doubtless al-
most nil, but rather from our own larger per-
spective and in terms of the ideal satisfactions
it has been cut off from realizing. Of course we
may be pessimists and then we will not regard
the child's death as an evil at all, but as an
escape from evil. If then death is considered
an evil only, or for the most part, as it seems to
contradict our ideal estimate of the value of
life, we come back to our old proposition that
the evil of life is to be estimated in terms, not
of brute fact as Professor Royce would say,
but in terms of ideal values. This is true of all
the forms we have considered, and if we elimi-
nate from the problem the evils that are reme-
diable, we will have as our irreducible residu-
um those evils that are bound up with mortal
existence, pain, defeat, and death. In regard
to these we have already reached the conclusion
that the respect in which they are unmistakably
evil arises out of their relation to the ideal
values of life. Pain, for example, may be re-
garded as disciplinary up to the point where it

156 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

clearly stands in the way of realizing the good ;
it then becomes destructive.

There remains then of our species of evil, sin
or its moral aspect. There is a famous old
formula that defines sin as any want of con-
formity to, or transgression of, the law of God.
This formula is profoundly significant, for it
seems to cover the grounds of both the meta-
physical and the moral as per the classification
of Leibnitz. Such is in fact the case if we do
not interpret the formula too narrowly, for if
want of conformity be construed objectively and
apart from our consciousness of it, it will
simply be measured by the distance between
action and its ideal standard. Sin itself is de-
fined objectively in terms of this distance or on
its more positive side in terms of opposition to
the ideal standard. If we translate it into psy-
chological terms and substitute philosophical
for theological terms, the formula may be read
as follows : Sin is the soul's sense of its failure
to realize the ideal standard of perfection and
of its active transgression of the ideal stan-
dard. The two evils, a sense of failure to rea-
lize and of actual infraction of the standard,
seem to fill out the measure of sin as a state of
the conscious life of the subject.

Let us consider then these two aspects in the
conception of sin. There could be no sin, it is
clear, except from the point of view of the ideal
values of life. This is evident. Now, the first
part of the definition; the sense of the failure

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 157

to measure up to the standard of ideal value,
while it does not involve any actual transgres-
sion, or in fact any disposition to transgress, is
yet the source of the profoundest consciousness
of sin. It was no doubt from this inevitable
failure to realize the ideal that the Stoics as
well as the early Christian thinkers developed
their doctrine of total depravity. Christian
thought connected the doctrine with that of the
fall of man and the hereditary transmission of
its effects along spiritual lines; whereas, in
stoicism there is no such saving clause, but the
depravity is inherent in man's constitution. It
may be overcome by those who are able to live
up to the requirements of the life of perfect
reason. But for all men, except a few, the fail-
ure, like the Karma of the Hindu philosophy
will be an inevitable perdition. It must be con-
fessed that the Christian doctrine of total de-
pravity has shown a constant tendency to free
itself from the limits of the doctrine of the fall
and to find the real root of depravity intrinsic
in the constitution of man. Without following
this line farther, it will be evident, I think, that
the deepest sense of sin will spring from the
consciousness of the failure of our lives to
measure up to the standard of ideal values. On
the other hand our actual sense of sin in the
plural will be largely, if not exclusively, that of
acts or attitudes that are in contravention of
the law of the ideal.
Now without going further into detail we are

158 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

in a position from which the following conclu-
sion may be drawn. The implication of all
forms of sin is that life has ideal values which
set the standards of living to which the soul by
virtue of its constitution is committed. These
standards are both the lineaments of the ideal
and the laws of its activity. Sin, therefore, im-
plies a service of the ideal. It is its sense that
this service expresses its true life that gives it
the deep sense of sin in view of its failure to
conform or of its actual infractions or its temp-
tations to infract.

The question of the origin of evil has, per-
haps, been surrounded with difficulties that are
more apparent than real. It is usual to hamper
the problem with certain assumptions about the
author of existence which turn out to be incon-
sistent with any rational treatment of the prob-
lem. It is my purpose here to point out the
only assumption that seems to be necessary as
a condition of a rational answer. This is the
conclusion toward which the whole of the pre-
ceding discussion has been pointing. There is,
in the first place, nothing in the fact of the ex-
istence of evil in the world to militate against
the doctrine that the fundamental constitution
of things is good. Secondly, our analysis of the
concepts of good and evil, as well as our study
of the different forms of evil, may strongly
support the doctrine that evil in all its forms is
to be interpreted in the light of the ideal values
of life. If, in other words, the constitution of

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 159

things did not reveal a standard of ideal values,
evil would practically cease to be evil by losing
a large part of its significance. We may then
conclude with a high degree of rational certi-
tude that the fundamental constitution of the
world is good. This I am prepared to claim as
the only assumption that it is necessary to make
in order to make a rational solution of the prob-
lem possible. In the first place then if the fun-
damental constitution of things is good, it will
follow that evil will arise out of conditions that
are themselves good. Augustine recognizes this
when he says in his Confessions, that the ante-
cedent of an evil will is a good will. In other
words, if we go deep enough into the problem we
will find a point where evil vanishes and every-
thing becomes good. This seems to be at first
sight only a deeper mystery. How can evil
come out of good? In answering this question
I wish to state in the first place a very deep
fact which I will be unable to elaborate. It is
this, that our whole doctrine of evil, as we have
unfolded it, involves a certain conclusion about
the nature of men. We have given our reasons
for assuming that a rational solution of the
problem of evil depends on the postulate of the
goodness of the fundamental order of the world.
A branch of that postulate will have a vital
bearing on the question of the origin of evil in
man's nature. In short in order to make the
situation at all rational, it will be necessary to
assume that, fundamentally, the nature of man

160 PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION

is good and incorruptible. We have seen that
sin can only be known as sin in the light of a
standard of ideal values. The consciousness of
sin arises from our recognition of this standard
as expressing our true existence. Sin is the con-
sciousness of failure to realize our ideal, which
is our real self, or our consciousness of volun-
tary infraction of its law. What the theologian
calls the Will of God will be from another point
of view the law of the real self. This we have
justified in our doctrine that there is a point of
immanence where the Divine Will and the hu-
man will become one. In one aspect of it, it
becomes the will of a self of ideal values which
is presupposed in the whole theory of evil.
There is a point in the constitution of man
where it becomes identical with the fundamental
constitution of the world and when it speaks, it
will speak from the standpoint of that constitu-
tion. It is from this point of view that Kant's
doctrine of the autonomy of the will derives its
true significance. For it is the will of the un-
perverted noumenal self that utters the cate-
gorical imperative of the moral law, and this
will, if Kant had seen the fact, is at the same
time both the Divine will and the will of the
unperverted self. When Augustine says that
the antecedent of the evil will is the good will,
he has a deeper truth in mind than that in the
empirical line of acts of choice we come to a
point where the next antecedent is not evil. He
meant this but much more. Metaphysically

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 161

speaking, there is always a will that is good, and
that is the will of the real self that stands above
the empirical and through conscience utters its
law to the empirical. If we enter into the
deeper Angnstinian insight, the situation that
reveals itself will be that of a nature that has
in it a distinction between an empirical and a
real self. The empirical self will be the self
that makes our individual and momentary
choices. It acts and passes and some other
empirical subject takes its place. But back of it
or above it or within it, as we have seen, there is
an abiding self which holds the empirical to per-
manent conditions and utters the permanent
law of existence. If we ask where evil belongs
in this constitution, the answer will be that it
is man's empirical and perishable self that is
evil. The significance of James ' doctrine of the
perishable self will be recognized here. James
finds some principle of continuity like the Hin-
du Karma that binds the empirical selves into
a continuous chain along which the empirical
doom of the antecedent may be transmitted. If
we recall a doctrine that we developed in a
former lecture, we will be able, I think, to find
the true interpretation for this conclusion of
James, and at the same time secure a signifi-
cant clue to the way in which evil may arise in
a system that is good. The doctrine I refer to
is that it is in the synthesis of the empirical and
the real selves ; of the momentary and the abid-
ing ; that we find the key to the concrete life of

162 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the soul. From that point of view we saw that
the law of its activity as a whole could be char-
acterized as a perpetual effort to pass from the
momentary and perishable to that which is
abiding and stable. If we hold fast to this con-
ception and avail ourselves of the insight of
natural history which teaches the lesson of a
gradual genetic progress of life upward through
the animal stages to the human, and in the
human, from the senstitive to the rational, we
will reach something like the following. The
life of the soul in its natural history passes
through a number of progressive stages from
the lower to the higher, each of which manifest
a mode of activity that is appropriate to its
stage of existence and therefore good. Thus
we say that the animal stage will be dominated
by instinct, the lower human by sense, and the
higher by reason. Now what we find in each
one of these stages, going from the lower to the
higher, is the survival of the law of the pre-
ceding stage in the higher, as a lower nature
which the higher stage, when its activity is nor-
mal, subordinates to the higher law of its own
nature. Thus, in a being that has reached the
stage of reason, the laws of instinct and of the
sensitive nature will survive. If these are held
in subordination to reason, all will go well. But
it is evident that these lower forces will seek
to dominate the higher nature and that whether
they succeed or not, they will constitute a temp-
tation to the higher nature to fall under the law

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 163

of the lower. It is evident also that should a ra-
tional being that has the higher ideals of life,
and recognizes these as its law, fall under the
law of the lower and act in the level of instinct
or sense, it would immediately develop the sense
of sin. It would be conscious not only of having
fallen short, for this consciousness might not
give rise to the sense of sin ; but also of having
contravened the higher law; of having proved
traitor to its higher nature. I think we have a
perfectly clear account here of the way in which
a being that is good may fall into sin. The sin
would consist in the fact that a higher nature,
or, if you prefer, will, whose prerogative it is
to dominate the lower will of instinct or sense,
has fallen under the dominance of the will of in-
stinct or sense, and chooses the good of the
lower for its own proper and higher good.
Augustine says virtually the same things in his
contention that the soul falls into evil and com-
mits sin by choosing some lower or creature
good as its supreme good and putting it in place
of the supreme good which is God. A strong
confirmation of the truth of this is found in the
consciousness of it that is displayed in the best
spiritual literature. I need not quote Augustine
further. The classical example will be found in
that famous passage in Romans in which Paul
describes a warfare between the flesh and the
spirit in which the spirit is constantly being
brought under bondage to the law of the flesh,
and as a consequence deadening the conscious-

164 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ness of sin. The consciousness of the same
struggle is betrayed in the biographies of the
saints and in the common consciousness that
arises when a propensity that is innocent in it-
self has been gratified in circumstances where a
higher law is contravened.

To develop this position at length here would
be impossible. But an insight has been reached,
I think, that will lead to the conclusion that the
existence of evil in the world is consistent with
the doctrine that the fundamental order of the
world is good. We will also be ready to admit
that an intelligible theory of the possible origin
of evil and sin in a good system is possible ; that
in the doctrine that sin originates in a fall of a
good will, temporarily at least, under the law
of that which is lower, we are able to interpret
the classical passages on the subject in the
spiritual literature of the world. The gravity
of moral evil or sin arises from the fact that
while it is not inconsistent with the goodness of
the fundamental order of the world, it does, in
fact, involve a breach in that order at a particu-
lar point: the higher will has surrendered it-
self to the lower will and has thereby become
evil. This shows the gravity of sin as a breach
in the order of the world at a point where the
life of an individual soul touches and is one with
it. From this point of view the final problem of
the cure of evil arises. This problem has spe-
cial reference to sin or evil in its moral and its
most serious aspect. If it be true that sin is a

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 165

breach in the fundamental order at the vital
point where the soul's existence becomes one
with it, the seriousness of the situation and the
inadequacy of any proposed remedies that do
not go deep into the nature of man becomes al-
most self-evident.

The problem of the cure of evil will divide
naturally into two parts, that which concerns
the group of evils which are included in the cate-
gory of remediable by ordinary human agencies
and those like death and sin that are not cur-
able in that way. Regarding the first group lit-
tle need be said except that the difficulties are
to be met by human intelligence and foresight.
They involve the regeneration of human society,
the eradications of the causes of the disturb-
ances, and the reorganization of the social
forces along the lines of human welfare. To
correctly diagnose the disease and to devise
practicable and effective remedies are tasks that
will call for more, no doubt, than the present
resources of human knowledge and devotion to
the good. But the point of interest to us here
is the fact that men may approach the task with
the reasonable belief that it is not only practic-
able but that it is not beyond their human re-
sources. We may leave the rest to the practical
reformer. In regard to the second group, the
case is different. No one in his sober senses
has proposed to abolish death. It stands there
a door of exit from the only life of which we
have any conscious knowledge. We have seen,

166 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

however, that the evil of death is largely esti-
mated from the point of view of the ideal values
of life : that if the scope of the life vision could
be circumscribed by the limits of time and sense,
as in the case of the animals, death could scarce-
ly be called an evil. It is in view of the life that
is **on ahead" with its ideal satisfactions that
death becomes the great destroyer. If this be
true, and there is not room for reasonable doubt
on the subject, it would appear that redress of
the evil of death would have to be sought in
some conception of the ideal values of life. If
death is inevitable the cure of death as an evil
will be to seek in a conception of life from the
point of view of its ideal values that will make
it appear, not what to the ordinary view it ap-
pears to be, the end and defeat of life, but
rather an episode in a life history that opens
the door into new fields of realitv. Aside from
this prospect nothing remains except the con-
sideration that a life may be so filled with satis-
factions that the desire for the "on ahead" will
be swallowed up in the sense of the worth of
what has been already achieved. That this is
a consideration of some value may be admitted
but that the most generous souls, those whose
loyalty to the good is greatest, could not with-
out lowering their ideals take advantage of its
consolation, is also evident. For the most gen-
erous souls value life for the scope it gives to
their beneficent activities, and there is a subtle
self-contradiction involved in the supposition

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 167

that they could regard the cutting off of these
opportunities as anything but an evil. Not to
dwell on what we must consider the major issue
here, the question whether there are grounds to
rationally justify a conception of life that will
remove death from the category of evils, a
theme that will come up for further considera-
tion in the lecture on the Destiny of the Soul,
let us now take up our final problem — that of
the remedy for sin or moral evil. Going back
to the conclusion reached in a former passage
of this lecture ; that sin involves a breach in the
fundamental order of the world at the point
where that order vitalizes in the consciousness
of the sinner; there are several questions on
which the insight of this will shed some light.
In the first place it helps us to realize the na-
ture and gravity of sin as an evil, and how
radically it affects the nature of man. If sin is
a breach of the fundamental order at the point
where the soul becomes conscious of it as its
own highest order, it will mark a radical per-
version of that order, and from the point of
view of the deepest consciousness a sense of
treason to that order. The soul that sins will
feel that it has thereby become a traitor to the
highest, and further that there is no atonement
that it can itself make for its offense. From
any lower point of view than the highest, com-
pensation would be possible, since it would be
possible to atone in terms of a higher order than
that in which the offence was committed. Thus

168 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

if I take advantage of a position of trust and
steal money that belongs to another, I cannot
atone by simply restoring the breach I have
made in the order of property rights. If that
were true, I could make complete atonement by
replacing the money I had stolen. I might,
however, do this and still be a thief. My chief
offense has been that of treason to the law of
human trust and confidence. I can only atone
truly by ceasing to be a thief and becoming
loyal to the law of trust and confidence. And I
will be restored to my former position only
when I have convinced my employer of my re-
stored loyalty. But if the overt breach has been
made in the order that is highest, there is then
nothing higher from which to make real atone-
ment. The sin is against God and our con-
sciousness is that of the Psalmist, ** against thee
and thee only have I sinned and done this evil
in thy sight." The soul feels that for such an
oif ense there is no atonement within its power ;
it cannot repent though it seek it with tears.
In the second place, light will be shed on the
reason why this is true if we are able to see
that sin is an oif ense of the religious conscious-
ness. We have seen that the religious con-
sciousness adds a new spiritual dimension to
life in the light by which life is seen to be
transformed by its relation to its self-existent
ground. If sin be an offense of the religious
consciousness, it then reveals itself as a breach
in the Divine foundation of the soul's existence.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 169

It is disloyalty; treason to the Divine Order in
which its life has its deepest roots. The result
will be that not only is atonement impossible
from the standpoint of its own resources, but
also that the poison of the primal sin will affect
its whole being; that is, its being as a whole
and every part of it. From the very nature of
sin it follows that it is a perversion of the whole
nature. If the essence of sin be disloyalty to
the highest, the effect of it will be an attitude
of will that will pervert and turn into wrong
channels all the streams of its being. If then,
sin be an evil that corrupts the whole nature,
and if the soul out of its own resources cannot
atone for it, two conclusions seem to follow. In
the first place it is clear that the evil of sin be-
ing one that affects the whole nature of man in
a very radical way, it cannot be remedied by any
kind of superficial reform. A sinner cannot
make himself good by cutting off evil habits,
checking evil tendencies or even holding him-
self in check by a strong will. We feel the
superficiality of all this. What the sinner needs
is salvation and salvation will always involve
atonement, the restoration of the sinner to com-
plete unity with the highest. This will make an
operation that will radically affect his whole
nature. In the second place it will follow from
this that if the sinner cannot save himself be-
cause of the fact that sin is a breach of the
transcendent order of his being; the vicarious
principle must enter into and constitute the

170 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

constructive feature of a real act of salvation.
For the true principle of vicarious action is that
of the entering of the higher into the life of the
lower in order that the lower may be lifted to
the plane of the higher. There may be and no
doubt is vicarious action where no offense has
been committed. But in the case of sin and sal-
v^ation, an offense has been committed against
the highest order which the sinner is unable to
redress. The only redress possible in the case
is for someone who is a bearer of the highest
order and against whose nature the offense has
been committed to identify himself in some way
with the conscious life of the sinner for without
this identification the sin could not be atoned
for, as without it it could not have been com-
mitted. He will be able to do this in the first
place through the consciousness of perfect unity
in himself with the highest, and secondly
through perfect sympathy with the sinner in his
sin and anguish. This will make it possible for
him to bear the burden of the sinner's sin and
anguish in a way in which the sinner will be-
come conscious that he bears it himself through
a stronger than himself that he feels to be in
him. St. Paul says it is no longer I but Christ
that dwells in me. The strength of vicarious
atonement is in the consciousness of its vicar-
ious character which the sinner has in him.
That he cannot atone but that he is being vi-
cariously atoned is the saving quality of his
consciousness. Now this is the great transac-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 171

tioii on which in its transcendent sense the sal-
vation of men depends. There are, however,
many relative and human illustrations of the
vicarious principle in human experience. Royce
has shown with great weight how the conscious-
ness of a community which has been thrown in-
to spiritual confusion by the rise of treason in
its midst to the highest, may be restored to unity
with itself by the vicarious action of a good
man whose act is the embodiment of the tran-
scendent principle. In simpler form the same
principle is exemplified in individual instances.
The good father or mother who follows an err-
ing son and finally by their sacrificing love are
able to enter into the conscious life of the son,
as a stronger and elevating force, perform a
true act of vicarious atonement. In conclusion
I wish to make two observations. In the first
place I have not been attempting here any
apologetic justification of the Christian doc-
trine of the atonement. I have rather followed
out logically certain deep insights and philo-
sophical considerations which lead to the con-
clusion that the issues which the Christian doc-
trine of atonement is designed to meet are the
deepest and gravest issues of man 's nature. If
the evil of sin is to be really cured, it must be by
measures that will reform the very foundations
of the nature of man. In the second place it is
clear, I think, that the problem of sin is one of
the religious consciousness. It is through this
consciousness that the soul achieves a new

172 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

spiritual dimension and gets an insight into the
true foundations of its being. It is only in the
light of this new spiritual dimension that one
can arrive at a true conception of sin, and it is
only in its light that we can see how salvation
from sin is possible and how the highest may
interfere vicariously for the redemption of a
soul that has ruined itself through disloyalty to
the highest.

Lecture VIII. The Destiny op the Soul

We saw, in the last lecture, that the only point
of view from which death could be lifted from
the category of irremediable evils was that of
an interpretation of life in the light of its ideal
values. Is any such interpretation possible?
We are free to answer that it will be possible,
if we can find sufficient reason for the convic-
tion that our life, in its very constitution, is such
as to ignore and cancel any proposed limits of
time and sense. If time and sense limits are
purely empirical, and, in a real sense, physical,
it may then be that, in our doctrine of the soul 's
life, as transcending the empirical, we will find
the transcendent point of view for which we are
searching. Now, that time and sense are em-
pirical, and, in a real sense, physical, is a propo-
sition that is, I think, open to proof. There is
no question about the senses. Every man who
admits the limit of sense to the possibility of

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 173

knowledge is an empiricist who believes in the
one order ; that of perception. But that time is
purely empirical and physical is more open to
debate. In dealing with the problem of time in
this connection, we will be helped, I think, by
the analytic insight of Henri Bergson, who dis-
tinguishes between time as succession, and non-
serial time as duration. The metaphysical con-
cept of time is that of duration, which is exis-
tence apart from any distinction of moments or
measures of lapse. Time only becomes a suc-
cession of moments when we apply to it the
linear measure of space. Time has no dimen-
sion, but, as a series, it has been spatialized by
fitting it into the linear dimension of space.
This phenomenalizes it by adapting it to the
changes of the world, and it imparts to it physi-
cal character in spatializing it, since space is the
form of the physical which imparts to it dimen-
sion and capacity for mathematical measure-
ment. So, when we apply the serial measure to
consciousness, we thereby translate it out of
pure time, which is duration, and render it
physical by introducing its pulses into the
measures of space.

Now, without developing this doctrine fur-
ther, or committing myself to all the Bergson-
ian deductions from it, I wish to point out a
sense in which it seems to me not only to be
true, but also vitally important. If we take
our consciousness in its higher dimension; —
that is, in terms of its self-conscious activity of

174 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

thinking, we will find that, in no sense, does it
follow the linear order of the time series. The
activity is one that is self -centralizing, and all
the moments are internal to the conscious life
of the self. It is only when we throw our
thoughts out, — that is, make them terms in a
space-world, that they take on the form of the
series. They really occupy a place in space, and
are, so far, physical. The life of the soul, there-
fore, as it is lived in serial time and space, is
a physical life which pertains to the body. It
naturally and logically ends with the dissolution
of the body, therefore, and supplies no point of
departure for any doctrine of survival. I do
not think that, from the empirical point of view,
any doctrine of survival can be logically de-
fended. It is only when we deny the sufficiency
of the empirical point of view, and, recognizing
the validity of the distinction we have drawn
between the empirical self and the real self, that
we will begin to see the grounds of a logic that
goes beyond the limits of the empirical. Let us
attempt to develop a little ways the logic of the
position we have here reached. If the serial
time-form is a form of the physical, then to rep-
resent consciousness as a simply flowing stream
is to picture it as a physical phenomenon. The
physical is decomposable, and it is by decompo-
sition that death occurs to the body. If con-
sciousness is physical, it will be decomposable
in the same way. Death will be the end of both
soul and body. And I submit that this is the

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 175

only point of view from which the mortality of
the soul can be affirmed. It must first be re-
duced to the terms of physical existence ; it will
then be reasonable to conclude that, like the
body, it is perishable. It is a matter of vital
importance that we should have reached this
conclusion, since, from any other point of view
than that which identifies the soul-life with that
of the physical, the question as to its survival
of the dissolution of the body is open.

Let us, then, consider the bearings which the
doctrine of the soul we have already found rea-
son to accept will naturally have on the prob-
lem of survival. We have already attained to
one or two conclusions which will have an im-
portant bearing here. In the first place, we
have seen that the real self transcends the em-
pirical and physical by the measure of a whole
dimension; that it refuses to conform to the
serial world, and unifies itself around a self-
centre, and claims for itself a stable and abiding
existence. Looking at it from this angle, we see
a self-centred life that is maintaining the in-
tegrity of its existence through the broken and
perishable order of its empirical existence.
This is something that wholly transcends the
empirical, and from the empirical point of view
is incomprehensible. Again, we have seen that,
in the light of the religious consciousness, the
soul achieves a new dimension of spiritual in-
sight, which enables it to see itself in the light
of its transcendent origin. The insight here is

176 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

into the eternal life of the self-existent ground,
into which the soul enters and participates by
virtue of its religious heritage. That the soul,
from the standpoint of its religious conscious-
ness, becomes the bearer of a life that constitu-
tionally transcends the physical measures of
time and sense is so apparent as to require little
further elucidation. But all that follows will
be, in a sense, but the elaboration of that propo-
sition.

Let us ask again here the question, what is
the real life of the soul; the life that is most
characteristic of it? Do we say that it is living
a life worthy of its nature when it is seeking its
whole satisfaction in the perishable things of
the present, or when it simply follows the dic-
tates of prudence for this present life, and lays
up material treasures alone to the neglect of
the more spiritual values ? Or even when it re-
sponds to the moral side of life to the extent of
obeying the laws of honesty, truthfulness,
purity and fair dealing, — do we say, even then,
that the soul has filled out the full measure of
a life-ideal that can be taken as permanently
satisfactory? To all of these questions we will
be constrained to return a negative answer.
What is sometimes called mere morality, — that
is, a point of view that is satisfied with the ful-
fillment of ordinary moral obligation, will not
save a soul that is fully awake to its real con-
dition and needs. Nor can we say that the soul
can find the ideal of its true life in the terms

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 177

of ethical culture, however exalted they may be.
The whole trend of the ideals of the ethical
schools may be in the line of the soul's true de-
velopment. They may nurture a life-ideal that
is rich in self-sacrificing devotion to the high-
est forms of personal and social good. They
may nurture the sense of a value in life that is
higher than mere happiness; that places the
highest excellence at the pinnacle of achieve-
ment. Even then, if these ideals are restricted
to the sphere of humanistic limits, and are not
touched with the sense of transcendence, I think
we will have to say that they do not fill out the
measure of a life that is completely satisfac-
tory. Why do we insist on this? Not that we
do not fall in with most of the positive content
of the teaching of the leading ehtical culturists ;
for our entire criticism of their programs has
for its motive the belief that they show a cer-
tain lack of insights that are of vital impor-
tance. The central contention of these lectures
is; that man is, by nature, a religious being;
that his religious consciousness opens up to him
a new dimension of life ; that the insights of this
new spiritual dimension transform all the other
issues of his life, so that he becomes, in his es-
sential activities, a religious being; so that
ideals that will meet the full requirements of
his life must give satisfaction to his religious
nature; that they can do this only when they
are developed in the light of the highest that is
in man, — in the light of the insight which the

178 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

soul has into the self-existent ground of its
being, and into the fact that it attains its high-
est only when it realizes, in its consciousness,
its identity with the most fundamental order of
the world. If we have here sketched the funda-
mental conditions of the soul's realization of its
highest good, then the conclusion follows that
the highest life is that of religion ; that no pro-
gram of life can be completely satisfactory in
which the ideals of religion do not hold the cen-
tral place.

Now, this conclusion has been reached here
not alone in the interests of the life of religion.
Rather, our chief aim has been to show that it
is only from the standpoint of the life of re-
ligion that any very certain conclusions can be
reached regarding the destiny of the soul. This
I mean to be taken broadly, as not involving any
issue between religion and rational reflection,
but rather as indicating that it is only when
philosophy avails itself of the insights of the
religious consciousness that it is in a position to
grasp the problem in its fullest significance.
One thing may be taken, I think, as settled ; that
a philosophy that confines itself to the physical
limits of time and sense has no problem on its
hands; or, if it succeeds in formulating one, it
is cut off by its limitations from the data of a
true solution. How, then, can the data of a
hopeful solution be reached? In the first place,
to revert to our discussions in the lecture on the
nature of the soul, we will find it necessary to

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 179

be in earnest with the distinction we have there
worked out between the real and the empirical
self. We found there that, while, empirically,
the self may be represented as a transient fea-
ture of a flowing stream of conscious existence,
in reality the soul that cognizes the flowing
stream must itself have an abiding stand on the
rock of permanent being. We saw that the em-
piricist, who applies his solvent analysis to the
self, has unconsciously reserved the self with
which he has identified himself as the observer.
This observer-consciousness that pronounces all
the judgments is not the self that is judged, else
no judgments would be possible. We saw, also,
that it is only from the point of view of the
synthesis between the empirical and the real
that the true teleological motive of the whole
living activity of consciousness can be interpre-
ted. So viewed, it becomes a struggle up from
the fragmentary and unstable to the ground of
the unbroken and stable ; and it is only as this
struggle is successful that the abiding satisfac-
tion of life is attained. If we add to this the
fact that this effort is only unconditionally suc-
cessful when, through the insight of religion,
the soul is able to see its relation to its self-
existent and transcendent ground ; for it is only
through this insight that it is able to fix its own
life on the rock of essential existence, — if, I
say, we add this insight, we will then be in pos-
session of the data that will enable us to work
out a true philosophy of life, in the light of

180 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

which we may throw some light on the mystery
of death.

For, if these data enable us to put a rational
construction on life, it is very likely that we will
find in them a clue to the interpretation of the
ideal values of life. We have seen that the evils
that afflict the life of man can be understood
only in view of the ideal values of life. Now,
all these values we have summed up in the
phrase, permanent satisfaction. What, then,
are the permanent satisfactions of life? I do
not propose here to enter upon a task of enu-
meration, but rather to seek some criterion that
will enable us to determine what a satisfaction
must be in order to be permanent. In the first
place, it is mere tautology to say that nothing
can give permanent satisfaction that perishes in
the using; and, by perishing in the using, we
mean, superficially, the object that does not
last, like a feast which mil be eaten up. More
profoundly, we mean the decay of our capacity
for obtaining satisfaction from any such source.
In the scope of our teleological proposition,
however, we find a judgment of condemnation
on all those projects of life that are foredoomed
to failure from the fact that the transient will
cease to be sweet and will turn into the ashes of
bitterness. But, passing on to the more serious
aspects of the problem : another criterion of the
permanently satisfactory is its transcendence,
in its essential power to satisfy, of all the acci-
dents of time and sense. Wealth may satisfy,

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 181

and the pursuit of it may be still more attrac-
tive; but it is liable to accident; we never pos-
sess it with absolute security, and, even when
we extend its satisfaction to the utmost limit, it
must cease with this life of time and sense.
Much more durable are the satisfactions yielded
by a good education or a character of solid ex-
cellence. These, however, owe their superior
excellence to the fact that they are relatively in-
dependent of time and sense, and belong to the
category of spiritual values. Now, when I say
that there is no one that will regard either the
perishable or the relatively permanent as meet-
ing the highest demands of the soul, I mean, of
course, no one that has come to any true reali-
zation of himself ; such realization, for example,
as comes in the time of great calamity or the
imminence of death. There is no one that will
find in these things, at such moments as these,
that which will permanently satisfy the soul.
We strike the deepest note when we put the
question, — what alone will the soul regard as un-
conditionally valuable in these moments of
deepest realization'? It is very significant that
the goods of time and sense are like straws
which the soul grasps in vain. The true in-
stinct of life, which is hidden in ordinary cir-
cumstances, asserts itself, and the soul seeks
the abiding that is higher than itself. It is the
religious consciousness that asserts itself here ;
the soul, in the attitude of death, so far as the
empirical is concerned, arouses to its real life,

182 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

and cries out to the source of its existence.
There can be no mistaking the significance of
this experience. The soul, when the world is
going well with it, and its eyes are holden from
the deeper things of life, may satisfy itself with
any mess of pottage; but there comes a time
when all the cups of enjoyment are shattered,
and the skull and bones appear at the end of the
broken feast ; then the soul realizes its true na-
ture, its deeper needs begin to clamor, and it
realizes that, after all, the only destiny that will
satisfy its cravings is an immortal one. The
soul, in its real life, is a three-dimensional
spiritual being. Its deepest insights, and, con-
sequently, its deepest ideals, are those of re-
ligion. This is true of the lower stages of its
existence, though it does not realize the truth;
for the religious insight alone explains the fact
that creature goods cannot satisfy; that it is
the sense for the highest that sends it out on
that unending search for good that is the most
significant feature of its life.

In ancient philosophy, the most cogent proofs
of immortality were two of Plato's, which he
presents in various parts of his works. One is
founded on the substantial nature of the soul, as
what he calls the self-moving principle of mo-
tion. Now, we have found in our study that it
is necessary to ascribe to the soul the principle
of self-activity. No soul-life would be possible
without real initiative, and we have seen that
real initiative is self-initiative. If this ex-

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 183

presses the substantial nature of the soul, it is
clear that Plato has seized on a fact that has
great significance in its bearing on the problem
of the soul's life. The principal reason why, in
physics, science is obliged to assume the inde-
structibility of matter is that, as we have al-
ready pointed out, existence implies self-exis-
tence as its ground. Hence, if matter is to be
postulated as permanent, it must involve in it
the self-existent. Science, however, is not inter-
ested in this implication of its assumption. The
insight to which science is blind rests at the
foundation of Plato's proof. He says that the
soul, having in it the self -moving principle of
motion, cannot perish. In the light of our own
previous conclusions, we are able to see that
Plato affirms, with intelligent insight, what
science implies without insight ; only we are not
able to say whether Plato's affirmation was
made in the light of the last insight in this
field, — namely, that it is only when that which
is not the spring of its own existence, lays hold
upon its self-existent ground that its immor-
tality can be affirmed. It is a three-dimensional
spiritual insight that rests at the foundation of
the proof, and makes it valid as the soul's as-
sertion of its own existential prerogative.

The second proof of Plato is founded on the
principle of his idealism; — namely, that it is
the true prerogative of the soul to contemplate
the highest truth. These truths are the first
and eternal principles of things, and the soul's

184 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

knowledge of them is direct and immediate. It
is clear here that Plato expresses a principle
that we have become familiar with in our study
of religious knowledge. There we saw that the
whole activity of knowledge, when viewed from
the standpoint of its ontological motive, is to
be regarded as a movement from the fragment-
ary and perishable order of its empirical life to
an unseen and permanent order of truth and re-
ality. In the course of this movement, the soul
is consciously in the way of realizing its ideal
destiny. Now, Plato states this proof in the
intellectual form; but, in the light of his ideas,
which are ethical as well as logical, the proof
is capable of the broader construction we have
given it, when we pointed out that the same
movement is found at the heart of the emotional
and volitional struggles of the soul's life. The
force of the proof will appear when it is con-
cretely and broadly stated. It is founded on an
insight into the fact that the inner movement of
the soul's life is away from the temporal and
perishable elements of existence to those that
are eternal and perdurable. In the light of the
insights that are open to us, the theoretic co-
gency of these proofs is unmistakable.

There is another proof of a different char-
acter which Plato cites, the principle of which
is this; that, since the whole of the existent
has been made after the idea of the good; this
establishes the realization of the good as the
end-category of the world-system as a whole.

PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION 185

Now, the soul is the apex of the creation; that
in which, what it has had at its heart from the
beginning has come to realization. It would be
contradicting the good and would spell its de-
feat, were the soul itself to prove mortal and
perishable. This we see clearly in an inference
from the soul 's value as the highest term in the
realization of life to the immortal and imperish-
able quality of its existence. The force of this,
which has been felt by great thinkers in mod-
ern times, is obvious, and will come up again
for consideration. The Platonic proofs we have
cited have never, in fact, been set aside. We
have a restatement of them under the episte-
mological category of probability in Cicero, and
they dominated the thought of the middle ages.
When the modern mind broke away from me-
diaevalism, and set out on its own independent
pathway, it still carried some of the old heritage
with it. For example, the first fruitful stage of
our modern thinking may be called the period
of substantialism. It includes Descartes, Spi-
noza, and, in a modified sense, Locke, Liebnitz,
and his German successors before Kant. It was
Hume that cleared the field of substance, and
opened the way for empiricism. If we study
this age of substantialism, we find that its
thought was dominated by the ontological proof
of the existence of God, and what Kant called
the dogmatic, rationalistic proof of the inunor-
tality of the soul. The form of this latter proof
which brought it under Kant's criticism was

186 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

that of Mendelssohn, one of Wolff's successors,
who argued from the substantiality of the soul
to its spiritual unity and indestructibility. Now,
Mendelssohn had, perhaps, lost some of the in-
sight of the early thinkers, and Kant's task was
comparatively easy.

But, if we go back to Descartes and Spinoza,
we will find a basis for proof that is not lacking
in cogency. As I have pointed out in another
connection, the principle of the ontological
proof of God's existence is the same in both
Descartes and Spinoza ; that of the self-evident
or necessity of the self-existent. This is in-
volved in the concept of substance, and is ap-
plied in the same sense to the soul by both these
great thinkers. For Descartes' distinction be-
tween created and uncreated substance, and his
identification of the soul with created substance
that has only God for its presupposition, while
formally repudiated by Spinoza, is accepted in
principle in his doctrine of the soul as a mode
of the Divine thinking, having only the arche-
typal thought in the mind of God as its antece-
dent.

What I wish to say in this connection is that,
in the light of a distinction with which we are
now familiar, between the self -active substance
of the soul, and the self-existent ground of its
existence, a clear basis can be found in the sub-
stantialism of Descartes and Spinoza for a co-
gent proof of immortality. We have seen that
the soul gets a true insight into the nature of

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 187

its own being only when it identifies itself with
the self -existent ground of its existence. In the
light of this three-dimensional insight, the con-
viction of the permanency of its own essential
being ripens into certitude. If these old think-
ers had realized this, which they did in princi-
ple, they could have built up a cogent argument
upon its basis, for the immortality of the soul.
They could have contended that, inasmuch as
the soul is a substance in the sense that, as
Plato says, it contains the self -moving principle
of motion, and inasmuch as the soul only attains
the true ground of its life when, through the
ontological insight, it seeks to identify itself
with the self -existent ground of its existence, it
may be concluded that its true life is a life with
and in God, and that the life, all of whose
springs are permanent, will itself be permanent
and eternal. It was open to Mendelssohn to
build up such a proof, but he was able to find no
cogent proof of the substantiality of the soul,
and the task of Kant in showing that his whole
reasoning is a paralogism was made easy.

Whatever we may think of Kant's critical
doctrine of substance, the outcome of it is very
significant. The notion of substance is treated
by Kant epistemologically ; that is, as a factor
in knowledge. He has shown that, epistemo-
logically, it is the principle of the permanent
which all knowledge demands for its founda-
tion. Kant probably did not realize all the im-
plications of his doctrine. But we can see, in

188 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the light of our own studies, that the notion of
substance, as the necessary ground of knowl-
edge, is easily translatable into terms of the
inner ontological motive of knowledge, — a mo-
tive that forbids the noetic activity in man to
rest until it has anchored the whole of knowl-
edge in the permanent.

When this has been seen, the deeper meta-
physical significance of the principle will ap-
pear. The soul, not alone in its noetic activity,
but in the whole movement of its being, is obey-
ing a three-dimensional insight which leads it
to see that it can live its true life only when it
follows the religious light of the higher reason,
and identifies itself with the self-existent ground
of its being. Kant had some insight into this
when he came to the problem of the moral con-
sciousness, of which we will have something to
say later.

It only remained for the post-Kantians to de-
velop the insight that the real is not identical
with the notion of substance as the unstamped
material of being that gives it permanence, but
that it is individual, and, as the permanent in
being, must bear the individual stamp.

There is not time here to point out how, be-
ginning in its Socratic form with individuality
in its subjective aspect, the concept freed itself
from its subjective limitations, and took on the
universal, ontological form in the thought of
Hegel. Since Hegel, the concept of substance,
as held by the early rationalists, has passed into

PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION 189

that of individuality; which is simply that of
the permanent in existence, with the stamp of
the highest reality upon it. The real is the
concrete universal of being, and the later
thought has on its hands the problem of deter-
mining the final relation of the self-conscious
individuality of man to the individuality of the
self-existent or absolute.

Now, the way is open to Pantheism here if
one wishes to enter. But, as I have contended
elsewhere, it is open to us to accept the princi-
ple of this doctrine of individuality as the con-
crete universal without becoming pantheists.
We have only to recognize the distinction be-
tween the soul of man; — the finite individual,
and the absolute self-existent individual in
order to see that, at the highest point of the
soul's experience, it may, and does, in fact, iden-
tify itself with the absolute, so that the abso-
lute life becomes its own, and the absolute in-
sight becomes its own insight, without thereby
losing its own individuality or the sense of it.
In fact, it is in those moments of highest reali-
zation that the lineaments of its true individu-
ality stand out in the clearest light. We seem
here to come upon the great paradox of the in-
dividual consciousness ; namely, that it is in the
moment when we rise to the clearest insight into
our own identity with what we may call, para-
phrasing Emerson's phrase, our over-individu-
ality, that we have the strongest sense of our
own individuality which, in the terms of an out-

190 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

side logic, ought to be completely absorbed at
that point. The truth of the paradox is, how-
ever, incontrovertible.

I think I have given a suflScient statement of
the theoretic proofs of the soul's immortality,
and will now turn to another phase of the prob-
lem. We have made clear, in another place, that
life is to be estimated in terms of its ideal
values. That the question of value cannot be
absolutely separated from that of theoretic
truth I have already contended. But it is not
altogether identical with it, either. One may
despair of theoretic proof, and yet be con-
vinced by the worth of the consideration. That
the truth of immortality may be postulated on
the ground of its value is the principle of
Plato's teleological proof of immortality. If
the end of the creation is the good, and the good
reaches its highest expression in the soul of
man ; it would mean the defeat of the good and
the lapse of the whole scheme of creation into
irrationality, if we were to suppose the soul
itself to be mortal and perishable. The integ-
rity of the whole system of reality is staked on
the perdurability of the soul. That this is a
strong consideration is evident.

Again, when Kant, having critically under-
mined the theoretic proofs, appeals to the con-
sideration of moral value, and argues that the
worth of the moral order of the world is so
great that whatever is an essential condition
of its realization must be postulated as true, he

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 191

appeals to the same principle. Kant sees very
clearly that to impose a moral destiny on a be-
ing whose life is mortal and perishable, wonld
involve a glaring contradiction before which the
obligation-ness of the moral would be destroyed.
But moral values are the highest, and, in order
to prevent a kind of treason to the highest, a
life must be ascribed to the soul that will be
commensurate with its highest ideals. Kant is
here proceeding on ground that has become fa-
miliar to us.

Let us turn from Kant to the philosophy of
modern evolution for our last example of reas-
oning along this line. The late John Fiske, in
his little book entitled *'The Destiny of Man,"
practically espouses the value-argument of
Plato. Fiske, in his earlier treatise on **The
Idea of God," had developed a theistic concep-
tion of evolution, in which, like Plato, he con-
nects the whole evolution process with the reali-
zation of a good purpose. His argument in
''The Destiny of Man," assumes this theism as
its basis, and, taking the ground, as Plato did,
that, in the soul of man, the whole evolution pro-
cess reaches its culmination, and reveals what
has been at its heart from the beginning, he
argues that to suppose that this outcome should
itself be mortal and perishable, would be an
affront to the reason of man. God would not
so affront the intelligence of man, and bring
the creation to a conclusion so irrational. On
the strength of this consideration alone, Fiske

192 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

subscribes to a belief in the immortality of the
soul.

Now, whether we be convinced or not by con-
siderations that were convincing to Plato, Kant
and Fiske, we will be ready to admit the force
of the moral and teleological argument. Its
true force will appear, however, if we maintain
its connection with the theoretic proofs. If the
soul is immortal in its nature, then its immortal-
ity ought to shine through every true insight in-
to its nature. This seems to be literally true;
for, whether our insight be into the true essence
of the soul's life, or into the significance of the
end values which it places before itself, it will
lead us to the same conclusion, that the true
concept of the soul is that of a being whose life,
while lived empirically in a world of time and
sense, and subject to its contingency, is yet, in
its essential nature, as well as in its life-ideals,
a being that transcends these limits, and lays
hold on that which is abiding and eternal.

At the conclusion of this lecture, I wish to
point out certain conclusions which may be
drawn from what has preceded. In the first
place, we will, perhaps, experience a feeling of
surprise in view of the strength of the consider-
ations which the resources of philosophy enable
us to bring to bear on the problem of the soul's
immortality. These resources are a treasure
that must be mined for, and the tendency is very
strong to assume that, because the gold is not
lying around on the surface, it does not exist.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 193

What lies on the surface is mortal and perish-
able, and the tendency is to conclude that all
life is doomed to perish. When, however, we go
beneath the surface, the deeper we mine the
more assurances we find that life, in its pro-
founder aspects, is different; that the soul, in
the light of its essential nature, as well as in
that of its end-values, is the bearer of a tran-
scendent life, and is a natural heir to immor-
tality.

In the second place, I think the results of our
mining will enable us to throw a side light on
the absolute assurance that existed in the mind
of the Founder of Christianity, not only as to
his own immortality, but in regard to the im-
mortal existence of the souls of men. If the re-
ligious consciousness reveals to us a new di-
mension of spiritual life, in the intuitions of
which we are able to identify our lives with the
transcendent ground of their existence, much
more will these intuitions be clear to the Mas-
ter, who came out from the bosom of the Father,
and whose vision would, therefore, be ideally
perfect. That insight, in which he realized his
oneness with his father, would be the insight
that would reveal the true. Divine nature of
the life that he lived. The problem of immor-
tality would not exist at all for him, and he
would see in men around him, however ignorant
and degraded, the same essential nature, which,
on its lower level of absorption in time and
sense, had lost the intuitions of its higher birth-

194 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

right. His wish was to recall men to their lost
inheritance, and raise them to a level where
their deeper intuitions would revive, and they
would see their true destiny with something
like his own clarity and assurance. When it is
said that he brought life and immortality to
light, the insight might have been truly and
just as adequately phrased, the life of immor-
tality; for, once get a clear vision of life, and
the conviction of immortality follows. The
Master of life does not place an empty hope
before us, but one that is rich in the promise
of fulfillment. In the light of the life, the hope
blossoms into assurance.

The third and final consideration is that of
the bearing of the doctrine of immortality on
the problem which death presents to us men.
If man were merely mortal, and yet were gifted
with the power of prevision, death would be to
him the king of terrors. It would mean to him
the absolute defeat of life, and the skull and
bones would be the symbol of despair. But the
doctrine that crowns life with immortality sets
death aside from the path of life as no longer
an absolute fact. Death only means the falling
away of the physical and mortal. But the soul's
real self is transcendent; its nature is stable
and perdurable, and all its end-ideals are shaped
in the moulds of the eternal.

To die is, then, only to break the moulds of
the present existence, and to make a new be-
ginning in the drama of living. That this is

PHILOSOPHY OP RELIGION 195

true, we need not doubt. What it signifies for
the new life-chapter we cannot say, but it is a
legitimate object for the brush of a hopeful
imagination.

We may state the outcome of this lecture,
and, in fact, of all the lectures, in the following
proposition: The soul is born heir to an im-
mortal existence, and the whole teleological sig-
nificance of the struggle of its life may be
summed up in that fine, old scriptural state-
ment— it seeks a house not made with hands;
eternal in the heavens.

1012 01014 9534