The religious aspect of philosophy; a critique of the bases of conduct and of faith

THE

RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY

A CRITIQUE OF THE BASES OF CONDUCT
AND OF FAITH

BY

JOSIAH ROYCE, PH. D.

INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD COLLEGE

Der Anbliek giebt den Engeln Starke,
Da Keiner Dich ergriinden mag.

GOETHE'S Faust, Prolog.

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street

1885

Copyright, 1885,
BY JOSIAH ROYCE.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Printed by H. 0. Houghton and Company.

To

$>owire& JFrtentr,
GEORGE BUCHANAN COALE,

OF BALTIMORE,
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK,

IN EARNEST AND GRATEFUL RECOGNITION

OF HIS KINDNESS, OF HIS COUNSEL,

AND OF HIS WISDOM.

PEEFAOE.

THIS book sketches the basis of a system of phi-
losophy, while applying the principles of this system
to religious problems. The form and order of the
treatment depend on the nature of these latter prob-
lems themselves, and are not such as a system
of philosophy, expounded solely for its own sake,
would be free to take. The religious problems have
been chosen for the present study because they first
drove the author to philosophy, and because they, of
all human interests, deserve our best efforts and our
utmost loyalty.

A large portion of this discussion seeks to appeal
both to the special student of philosophy and to
the general reader. A considerable part, again, can
with the very best of fortune hope to interest the
special student of philosophy, but cannot hope for
more. The Preface must therefore tell what sort of
appeal is made to each of the two classes of readers.

To begin with the general reader, who may have
the curiosity to glance at this philosophic essay, the

vi • PREFACE.

author must forthwith confess that while on the one
hand he desires to trouble nobody with fruitless and
blank negations, and while his aim is therefore on
the whole a positive aim, yet on the other hand, as
he has no present connection with any visible relig-
ious body, and no sort of desire for any such connec-
tion, he cannot be expected to write an apology for
a popular creed. This confession is made frankly,
but not for the sake of provoking a quarrel, and
with all due reverence for the faith of other men.
If the fox who had lost his tail was foolish to be
proud of his loss, he would have been yet more fool-
ish to hide it by wearing a false tail, stolen mayhap
from a dead fox. The full application of the moral
of the fable to the present case is moreover willingly
accepted. Not as the fox invited his friends to
iniitate his loss, would the present writer aim to
make other men lose their faiths. Rather is it his
aim not to arouse fruitless quarrels, but to come to
some peaceful understanding with his fellows touch-
ing the ultimate meaning and value and foundation
of this noteworthy custom, so widely prevalent
among us, the custom of having a religion. If the
author ends by stating for his own part a religious
doctrine, it will yet be seen upon reading the same
that a man could hold that and much more too ; so
that what is here said is rather proposed as a basis

PREFACE. vii

for a conceivable if very far off reconciliation, than
as an argument to dissuade those who may think
that they can go further than the author, from
proving in a philosophical fashion whatever they
can prove. Such people may manage to interpret
many of the negations that occur in these pages as
directed against an inadequate form, or imperfect
understanding, of their more elaborate creed. If
they can do so, no one will be more heartily de-
lighted than the author, although he may not agree
with them.

As to the relation of this book to what is called
modern doubt, it is a relation neither of blind obe-
dience nor of unsympathetic rejection. The doc-
trine of philosophic idealism here propounded is not
what in these days is popularly called Agnosticism.
Yet doubting everything is once for all a necessary
element in the organism of philosophic reflection.
What is here dwelt upon over and over again is,
however, the consideration that the doubts of our
time are not to be apologetically "refuted," in the
old fashioned sense, but that taken just as they are,
fully and cordially received, they are upon analysis
found to contain and imply a positive and important
religious creed, bearing both upon conduct and upon
reality. Not to have once thoroughly accepted as
necessary the great philosophic doubts and problems

Vlll PREFACE.

of our day, is simply not to have philosophized as a
man of this age. But to have accepted these doubts
without in time coming to find the positive truth
that is concealed in them, is to treat them as the in-
nocent favorite of fortune in a fairy tale always at
first treats his magic gift. It is something common
and dingy, and he lays it carelessly away in his
empty house, feeling poorer than ever. But see :
handle it rightly, and the fairy gift fills your trans-
figured home with a wealth of gems and gold, and
spreads for you a wondrous banquet. To the author
has come the fancy that modern doubt may be some
such fairy gift as this. And he would like to sug-
gest to some reader what may possibly prove the
right fashion of using the talisman.

The general reader, if very " benevolent," may be
able to endure the " First Book " of the present
volume in its entirety ; but in the " Second Book "
he will find much that is meant only for the student
whose interests are decidedly technical. Some warn-
ings are given in the text, to help the general reader
in skipping. But perhaps it may be well for his
purpose to confine himself at once in this Book II.,
at least upon the first reading, to the following pas-
sages, namely : in Chapter VIII., to the introductory
remarks and the first and the last sections of the
chapter ; in Chapter IX., to the introductory re-

PREFACE. ix

marks, and Sections L, II., III., and V. ; in Chapter
X., to the introductory remarks, and Sections I., II.,
and IV.; in Chapter XI., to the introductory re-
marks, and the concluding section only ; and then
he may try the whole of Chapter XII. Thus he
will not be troubled by the technical statement of
the proof of our doctrine, and he will see the trend
of our thought, which may at least amuse him. If
he is then still curious, he may take his own risks
and look farther.

The student of philosophy will find in this volume
a doctrine that undertakes to be in certain signif-
icant respects independent and original, but that,
without ceasing to be the author's own system,
frankly belongs to the wide realm of Post-Kantian
Idealism. Of course no truo lover of philosophy
ventures, when he calls a doctrine his own, to pre-
tend to more than the very moderate degree of rel-
ative originality that the subject in our day permits ;
and of course the author for his own part feels very
deeply how much what he has to offer is the prod-
uct of what he has happened to read and remember
about philosophy and its history. Most of all he
feels his debt to Kant ; then he knows how much he
has gained from Fichte, from the modern Neo-Kan-
tians in Germany, and from the revivers of idealism
in recent years in England and America. To Hegel

X PREFACE.

also he has of course a decided debt to acknowl-
edge.

There are in recent philosophical history two
Hegels : one the uncompromising idealist, with his
general and fruitful insistence upon the great fun-
damental truths of idealism ; the other the technical
Hegel of the " Logik," whose dialectic method seems
destined to remain, not a philosophy, but the idea
of a philosophy. With this latter Hegel the author
feels a great deal of discontent ; to the other Hegel,
whose insight, as we know, was by no means inde-
pendent of that of Fichte and other contemporaries,
but who was certainly the most many-sided and crit-
ical of the leaders of the one great common idealistic
movement of the early part of the century, — to him
we all owe a great debt indeed. It is, however, a
mistake to neglect the other idealists just for the
sake of glorifying him. And it is an intolerable
blunder to go on repeating what we may have
learned from him in the awkward and whimsical
speech of the wondrous and crabbed master. If
Hegel taught anything, then what he taught can be
conveyed in an utterly non-Hegelian vocabulary, or
else Hegel is but a king of the rags and tatters of a
flimsy terminology, and no king of thought at all.
It is therefore absolutely the duty of a man who
nowadays supposes that he has any truth from He-

PREFACE. xi

gel to propound, to state it in an entirely fresh and
individual form. Of Hegelian language repeated to
us in place of Hegelian thought, we have had by
this time a sickening surfeit. Let us therefore
thank men who, like the late lamented Professor
Green, have at last been free to speak their own
thoughts very much in their own way ; and let us be
glad too that the number of so-called Hegelians of
similar independence is daily growing greater. The
author, however, cannot call himself an Hegelian,
much as he owes to Hegel.

Further especial acknowledgments the author
wants to make to Professor William James, to Mr.
Shadworth Hodgson, to Professor Otto Pfleiderer,
to Professor Hans Vaihinger, to Professor Otto
Liebmann, to Professor Julius Bergmann, to Pro-
fessor Christoph Sigwart, and to Mr. Arthur Bal-
four, for the valuable helps in thought that, un-
known to them, he, as a reader of their works, has
felt, and that he now recognizes as distinctly affect-
ing this book. To Professor William James once
more in particular, and also to Professor George
Palmer, the author owes numerous oral suggestions
that have influenced him more than he now can ex-
actly estimate or fully confess. And then there
remain two thinkers to name, men very different
from each other, but both for the author very valu-

Xll PREFACE.

able. Of these one was among the first of the Ger-
man thinkers in the chance order of the author's
early reading, the other was deeply influential both
by his spoken words and by his writings ; the former
is that brilliant and stimulating master of contra-
dictions, Schopenhauer, the other is the now de-
parted Lotze, whose lectures the author will never
forget nor disregard, although what is here taught
is remote enough from most of Lotze's system.

In outer form this work may be considered by the
philosophic student as a sort of roughly sketched
and very incomplete Phenomenology of the relig-
ious consciousness, first on its moral, and then on
its theoretical, side. The parts of the argument that
the author supposes to contain most relative origi-
nality will be found in Book I., Chapters VI. and
VII., and in Book II., Chapter XI. On these chap-
ters all else hinges.

The discussion of the Problem of Evil, as it ap-
pears in Chapter XII., is, as the author has seen only
since that chapter was in type, very closely parallel
to part of the discussion of the same question in the
new second edition of Pfleiderer's " Religionsphilos-
ophie." Yet, as the thoughts of this new edition of
Pfleiderer's argument were indicated in his first edi-
tion, although not so clearly expressed, the author
claims little originality here, save in the form of

PREFACE. xiii

presentation, in the illustrations used, and in the
reference of the whole to the arguments of Chapter
XI. This last matter seems to him, of itself indeed,
quite important.

The work as it here appears is an outgrowth of
several separate lines of study. The questions of
the present Chapter XI. were first attempted by the
author in a thesis for the Doctor's degree of the
Johns Hopkins University in 1878. The argument
has since been essentially altered. Several frag-
ments that are here used as organic parts of the
whole book have appeared separately, in various de-
grees of incompleteness, in the " Journal of Specu-
lative Philosophy," in "Mind," and elsewhere. The
present form of the book has grown out of lectures
on religious questions to the students of Harvard
College ; but only a small portion of the manuscript
of these lectures has entered into the structure of
the book, which, for its own part, tries to be no
patchwork, but a single united, if incomplete, study
of its chosen problem.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., January 11, 1885. ~

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION ; RELIGION AS A MORAL CODE AND AS

A THEORY. 1

I. The Three Elements of Religion 2

II. Relation of Religion and Philosophy 4

III. The Essentials of Religious Doctrine 6

IV. The Place of Skepticism in Religious Philosophy. . 9

BOOK I.

THE SEARCH FOR A MORAL IDEAL.

CHAPTER II.

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM 17

I. The Priority of Ideals in Religious Philosophy 18

II. The Fundamental Difficulty about all Ideals 19

CHAPTER III.

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 32

I. The Difficulty about the Ideal as it appears in

Greek Thought 34

II. The same Difficulty in Christian Morals 39

III. Summary of the Difficulty thus far 47

IV. The Difficulty as illustrated by the Doctrine of Con-

science 50

V. General Summary and Skeptical Result 58

XVI TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

PAGE

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DISCUS-
SIONS * 61

I. Illustration of Certain Doctrines about the Nature

of Altruism . 63

II. Is Altruism Disguised Selfishness ? 65

III. Inquiry as to the real Difference between Altru-

ism and Selfishness 66

IV. If Genuine Altruism cannot now be Disguised Self-

ishness, can Evolution explain the Relations of

the two ? 74

V. Schopenhauer's Effort to define Altruism in Terms

of the Emotion of Pity 85

VI. Further Explanation of Schopenhauer's View.. . 89
VII. The Selfishness and Cruelty that often are the .Re-
sult of Pity 94

VIII. The Cruelty of the Happy, and the Selfishness as-
sociated with active Sympathy 100

IX. Rejection of Pity as the Basis for a Distinction of
Altruism and Egoism. Negative Result of the
Chapter ,. . . 104

CHAPTER V.

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM 107

I. The Skeptical Motive in Pessimism 108

II. The Skeptical Motive in the Romantic Pessimism

of Modern Poetry 110

III. Ethical Skepticism in Mr. Balfour's Statement of

its Positions 127

CHAPTER VI.

THE MORAL INSIGHT 131

I. The Meaning of Ethical Skepticism, and the Ideal

consequently involved in it 131

II. Answers to Objections 141

III. Application to the Problem of Altruism 146

TABLE OF CONTENTS. xvii

PAGE

IV. Selfishness as Illusion 149

V. Altruism as Insight 156

VI. The Real Conflict of the Separate Ideals, and the

Nature of the Moral Insight 162

CHAPTER VII.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE 171

I. The Duties of the First Class , 173

II. The Duties of the Second Class, in relation to He-
donism 183

III. The Worth of the Individual 195

IV. The Phases of Individualism 201

V. The Universal Will as aiming at Organization.

Definition of the Ideal 211

VI. Passage to the Study of Reality 218

BOOK II.

THE SEARCH FOR A RELIGIOUS TRUTH.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE WORLD OF DOUBT 227

I. The Fundamental Difficulty concerning the Exter-
nal World. Temporary Postponement of the
Discussion of this Difficulty. The World of the

Powers 228

II. The Popular Scientific Concept of the World and
the Religious Insignificance of the Law of Evo-
lution 238

III. The Monistic Theories of the External World of

the Powers. Metaphysical and Religious Diffi-
culties of these Theories 252

IV. Monism and the Problem of Evil 264

V. Dualistic Theism in the World of the Powers, its

Metaphysical and Religious Difficulties 271

VI. Empirical Theism and the Design- Argument . . . . 279
6

XV111 TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

VII. Religious Insignificance of the Design- Argument

in the World of the Powers 283

VIII. The World of the Powers as in itself Necessarily

a World of Doubt 286

CHAPTER IX.

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES 291

I. Postulates in Science and Religion 292

II. The General Nature and Use of Postulates 297

III. Postulates in the Notion of the External World. . 299

IV. Psychological Analysis of the Postulates of Com-

mon Life. Beliefs in Relation to the Will 305

V. The Postulates of Science Defined. The Religious
Use of the Postulates. Transition to a Higher
Point of View 324

CHAPTER X.

IDEALISM 333

I. The General Nature and Religious Uses of Philo-

sophical Idealism 333

II. Idealism as an Hypothesis founded on Postulates.
A Modification of the Berkeleyan Hypothesis
stated , 337

III. Explanation and Justification of this Hypothesis,

as Simple and Fair. Subordination of the Pos-
tulate of Causation to other Postulates. Criti-
cism of the Notion of " Possible Experience ". . 354

IV. Difficulty as to the Nature of Error, and Transi-

tion to Absolute Idealism. Religious Conse-
quences anticipated 370

CHAPTER XI.

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR 384

I. Sketch of the History of the Investigation 386

II. The Doctrine of the Total Relativity of Truth

and Error 390

TABLE OF CONTENTS. XIX

PAGE

/ III. The Problem of the Nature of Error stated 396

IV. Psychological Aspect of the Problem 402

V. The Problem in Case of Errors about one's Fel-

low-Beings 406

VI. The Problem in Case of Errors about Matters of

Experience 417

VII. Summary and Solution of the Problem 420

VIII. Answer to the Objection that views Error as

barely Possible 426

IX. Absolute Idealism as the Result of the Chapter. . 431

CHAPTER XII.

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT 436

I. General Survey and Religious Aspect of Philo-
sophical Idealism as stated in the previous Chap-
ter 437

II. The Doctrine of the Absolute Thought as Perfect 441

III. The Problem of Evil 449

IV. The World of the Postulates and the External

World once more 460

V. The Conception of Moral Progress 464

VI. Practical Bearings of the Doctrine 468

EPILOGUE 475

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION ; RELIGION AS A MORAL CODE AND
AS A THEORY.

Auch beweifl' ich, dass du glaubest,

Was so rechter Glaube heisst,
Glaubst wohl nicht an Gott den Vater,

An den Sohn und heil'gen Geist.

HEINE.

INTENDING in the following pages to sketch certain
philosophic opinions that seem to him to have a
religious bearing, the author must begin by stating
what he understands to be the nature of religion,
and how he conceives philosophy to be related to
religion.

We speak commonly of religious feelings and of
religious beliefs ; but we find difficulty in agreeing
about what makes either beliefs or feelings religious.
A feeling is not religious merely because it is strong,
nor yet because it is also morally valuable, n°
because it is elevated. If the strength and the
moral value of a feeling made it religious, patriot-
ism would be religion. If elevation of feeling were
enough, all higher artistic emotion would be relig-
ious. But such views would seem to most persons
very inadequate. As for belief, it is not religious
merely because it is a belief in the supernatural.
Not merely is superstition as such very different from

2 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

religion, but even a belief in God as the highest of
beings need not be a religious belief. If La Place
had needed what he called " that hypothesis," the
Deity, when introduced into his celestial mechanics,
would have been but a mathematical symbol, or a
formula like Taylor's theorem, — no true object of
religious veneration. On the other hand, Spinoza's
impersonal Substance, or the Nirvana of the Bud-
dhists, or any one of many like notions, may have,
either as doctrines about the world or as ideals of
human conduct, immense religious value. Very
much that we associate with religion is therefore
non-essential to religion. Yet religion is something
unique in human belief and emotion, and must not
be dissolved into any lower or more commonplace
elements. What then is religion ?

I.

So much at all events seems sure about religion.
It has to do with action. It is impossible without
some appearance of moral purpose. A totally im-
moral religion may exist ; but it is like a totally un-
seaworthy ship at sea, or like a rotten bank, or like
a wild-cat mine. It deceives its followers. It pre-
tends to guide them into morality of some sort. If
it is blind or wicked, not its error makes it religious,
but the faith of its followers in its worth. A relig-
ion may teach the men of one tribe to torture and
kill men of another tribe. But even such a religion
would pretend to teach right conduct. Religion,
however, gives us more than a moral code. A moral

INTRODUCTION. 3

code alone, with its " Thou shalt," would be no more
religious than is the civil code. A religion adds some-
thing to the moral ^ode. And what it adds is, first,
enthusiasm. Somehow it makes the faithful regard
the moral law with devotion, reverence, love. By
history, by parable, by myth, by ceremony, by song,
by whatever means you will, the religion gives to the
mere code life and warmth. A religion not only
commands the faithful, but gives them something
that they are glad to live for, and if need be to die
for.

But not yet have we mentioned the element of re-
ligion that makes it especially interesting to a stu-
dent of theoretical philosophy. So far as we have
gone, ethical philosophy would criticise the codes of
various religions, while theoretical philosophy would
have no part in the work. But, in fact, religion al-
ways adds another element. Not only does religion
teach devotion to a moral code, but the means that
it uses to this end include a more or less complete
theory of things. Religion says not merely do and
feel, but also believe. A religion tells us about the
thifigs that it declares to exist, and most especially it
tells us about their relations to the moral code and
to the religious feeling. There may be a religion
without a supernatural, but there cannot be a relig-
ion without a theoretical element, without a state-
ment of some supposed matter of fact, as part of
the religious doctrine.

These three elements, then, go to constitute any
religion. A religion must teach some moral code,
must in some way inspire a strong feeling of devo-

4 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

tion to that code, and in so doing must show some-
thing in the nature of things that answers to the code
or that serves to reinforce the feeling. A religion
is therefore practical, emotional, and theoretical ; it
teaches us to do, to feel, and to believe, and it teaches
the belief as a means to its teaching of the action
and of the feeling.

II.

We may now see how philosophy is related to re-
ligion. Philosophy is not directly concerned with
feeling, but both action and belief are direct objects
of philosophical criticism. And on the other hand,
in so far as philosophy suggests general rules for
conduct, or discusses the theories about the world,
philosophy must have a religious aspect. 'Religion
invites the scrutiny of philosophy, and philosophy
may not neglect the problems of religion. Kant's
fundamental problems : What do I know ? and
What ought I to do ? are of religious interest no
less than of philosophic interest. They ask how
the highest thought of man stands related to his
highest needs, and what in things answers to T>ur
best ideals. Surely no one ought to fear such ques-
tions, nor ought any philosophic student to hesitate
to suggest in answer to them whatever after due
reflection he honestly can suggest, poor and tenta-
tive though it may be. In fact there is no defense
for one as sincere thinker if, undertaking to pay at-
tention to philosophy as such, he willfully or thought-
lessly neglects such problems on the ground that he
has no time for them. Surely he has time to be not

INTRODUCTION. 5

merely a student of philosophy, but also a man, and
these things are among the essentials of humanity,
which the non-philosophic treat in their way, and
which philosophic students must treat in theirs.

When, however, we say that the thinker must
study and revere these questions, we must not fancy
that because of their importance he may prejudge
them. Assumptions, postulates, a priori demands,
these indeed are in all thinking, and no thinker is
without such. But prejudice, i. e. foregone conclu-
sions in questionable matters, deliberate unwilling-
ness to let the -light shine upon our beliefs, all this
is foreign to true thought. Thinking is for us just
the clarifying of our minds, and because clearness is
necessary to the unity of thought, necessary to lessen
the strife of sects and the bitterness of doubt, neces-
sary to save our minds from hopeless, everlasting
wandering, therefore to resist the clarifying process,
even while we undertake it, is to sin against what is
best in us, and is also to sin against humanity. De-
liberately insincere, dishonest thinking is downright
blasphemy. And so, if we take any interest in these
things, our duty is plain. Here are questions of tre-
mendous importance to us and to the world. We
are sluggards or cowards if, pretending to be philo-
sophic students and genuine seekers of truth, we do
not attempt to do something with these questions.
We are worse than cowards if, attempting to con-
sider them, we do so otherwise than reverently, fear-
lessly, and honestly.

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

III.

The religious thought of our time has reached a
position that arouses the anxiety of all serious think-
ers, and the interest of many who are not serious.
We are not content with what we learned from our
fathers; we want to correct their dogmas, to prove
what they held fast without proof, to work out our
own salvation by our own efforts. But we know
not yet what form our coming faith will take. We
are not yet agreed even about the kind of question
that we shall put to ourselves when we begin any
specific religious inquiry. People suggest very va-
rious facts or aspects of facts in the world as having
a religious value. The variety of the suggestions
shows the vagueness of the questions that people have
in mind when they talk of religion. One man wants
to worship Natural Law, or even Nature in gen-
eral. Another finds Humanity to be his ideal object
of religious veneration. Yet another gravely insists
that the Unknowable satisfies his religious longings.
Now it is something to be plain in expressing a
question, even if you cannot give an answer. We
shall do something if we only find out what it is that
we ought to seek. And the foregoing considerations
may help us in this way, even if what follows should
be wholly ineffective. For we have tried to give a
definition that shall express, not merely what a
Buddhist or a Catholic or a Comtist or an Hegelian
means by his religion, but what all men everywhere
mean by religion. They all want religion to define

INTRODUCTION. 7

for them their duty, to give them the heart to do it,
and to point out to them such things in the real
world as shall help them to be steadfast in their de-
votion to duty. When people pray that they may
be made happy, they still desire to learn what tfcey
are to do in order to become happy. When saints
of any creed look up to their God as their only good,
they are seeking for guidance in the right way.
The savages of whom we hear so much nowadays
have indeed low forms of religion, but these relig-
ions of theirs still require them to do something, and
tell them why it is worth while to do this, and make
them more or less enthusiastic in doing it. Among
ourselves, the poor and the lonely, the desolate and
the afflicted, when they demand religious comfort,
want something that shall tell them what to do with
life, and how to take up once more the burdens of
their broken existence. And the religious philoso-
phers must submit to the same test that humanity
everywhere proposes to its religions. If one tries
to regulate our diet by his theories, he must have
the one object, whatever his theory, since he wants
to tell us what is healthful for us. If he tells us to
eat nothing but snow, that is his fault. The true
object of the theory of diet remains the same. And
so if men have expressed all sorts of one-sided, dis-
heartening, inadequate views of religion, that does
not make the object of religious theory less catholic,
less comprehensive, less definitely human. A man
who propounds a religious system must have a moral
code, an emotional life, and some theory of things to
offer us. With less we cannot be content. He need

8 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

not, indeed, know or pretend to know very much
about our wonderful world, but he must know some-
thing, and that something must be of definite value.
To state the whole otherwise. Purely theoretic
philosophy tries to find out what it can about the
real world. When it makes this effort, it has to be
perfectly indifferent to consequences. It may not
shudder or murmur if it comes upon unspeakably
dreadful truths. If it finds nothing in the world but
evil, it must still accept the truth, and must calmly
state it without praise and without condemnation.
Theoretic philosophy knows no passion save the pas-
sion for truth, has no fear save the fear of error,
cherishes no hope save the hope of theoretic success.
But religious philosophy has other objects in addi-
tion to these. Religious philosophy is indeed neither
the foe nor the mistress of theoretic philosophy. Re-
ligious philosophy dare not be in opposition to the
truths that theory may have established. But over
and above these truths it seeks something else. It
seeks to know their value. It comes to the world
with other interests, in addition to the purely theo-
retic ones. It wants to know what in the world is
worthy of worship as the good. It seeks not merely
the truth, but the inspiring truth. It defines for it-
self goodness, moral worth, and then it asks, What
in this world is worth anything ? Its demands in
this regard are boundless. It will be content only
with the best it can find. Having formulated for
itself its ideal of worth, it asks at the outset : Is
there then, anywhere in the universe, any real thing
of Infinite Worth ? If this cannot be found, then

INTRODUCTION. 9

and then only will religious philosophy be content
with less. Then it will still ask : What in this world
is worth most ? It cannot make realities, but it is
determined to judge them. It cannot be content
with blind faith, and demands the actual truth as
much as theoretic philosophy demands it ; but relig-
ious philosophy treats this truth only as the material
for its ideal judgments. It seeks the ideal among
the realities.

Upon such a quest as this, we ask the reader to ac-
company us in the following pages. We have not
space to be exhaustive, nor in fact to offer much
more than suggestions ; but we want the suggestions
to be explicit, and we hope that they may stimulate
some reader, and may perhaps help him in complet-
ing his own trains of thought.

IV.

People come to such questions as these with cer-
tain prejudices about the method and spirit of in-
quiry ; and all their work may be hampered by these
prejudices. Let us say yet a little more of what we
think as to this matter. There are two extremes to
fear in religious philosophy : indifference that arises
from a dogmatic disposition to deny, and timidity
that arises from an excessive show of reverence for
the objects of religious faith. Both of these extreme
moods have their defective methods in dealing with
religious philosophy. The over-skeptical man looks
with impatience on all lengthy discussions of these
topics. There can be nothing in it all, he says;

10 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

nothing but what Hume, in an eloquent passage,
called sophistry and delusion. Why spend time to
puzzle over these insoluble mysteries? Hence his
method is: swift work, xjlear statement of known
difficulties, keen ridicule of hasty assumptions, and
then a burning of the old deserted Moscow of the-
ology, and a bewildering flight into the inaccessible
wintry wastes, where no army of religious philoso-
phers shall follow him. Now for our part we want
to be as skeptical as anybody ; and we personally al-
ways admire the freedom of motion that pure skepti-
cism gives. Our trouble with it all, however, is that,
after we have enjoyed the freedom and the frosty air
of pure philosophic skepticism for a while, we find
ourselves unexpectedly in the midst of philosophic
truth that needs closer examination. The short and
easy agnostic method is not enough. You must sup-
plement skepticism by philosophy ; and when you
do so, you find yourself forced to accept, not indeed
the old theology of your childhood, but something
that satisfies, oddly enough, certain religious long-
ings, that, as skeptic, you had carefully tried to for-
get. Then you find yourself with what you may
have to call a religious doctrine ; and then you may
have to state it as we are here going to do, not in an
easy or fascinating way, such as the pure skeptic can
so well follow, but at all events with some approach to
a serious and sustained effort to consider hard ques-
tions from many sides. The skeptical method is not
only a good, but also a necessary beginning of relig-
ious philosophy. But we are bound to go deeper
than mere superficial agnosticism. If, however, any

INTRODUCTION. 11

reader is already sure that we cannot go deeper, and
that modern popular agnosticism has exhausted all
that can be said on religious questions, then we bid
him an immediate and joyous farewell. If we had
not something to say in this book that seems to us
both foreign to the popular modern agnostic range
of discussion, and deeper than the insight of popular
modern skepticism, we should say nothing. The un-
dertaking of this book is not to wrangle in the old
way over the well-known ordinary debates of to-day,
but to turn the flank of the common popular thought
on these topics altogether, by going back to a type
of philosophic investigation, that is nowadays fa-
miliar indeed to a certain school of specialists, but
forgotten by the general public. In this type of in-
vestigation, we have furthermore something to offer
that seems to us no mere repetition of the views of
other thinkers, but an effort to make at least one lit-
tle step in advance of the thoughts that the great
masters of philosophy have given to us. Yet we
know indeed that the range of any useful indepen-
dent thought in philosophy must be, in case of any
one individual, very narrow.

The other mood and its method remain. It is the
mood of excessive reverence. It wastes capital let-
ters on all the pronouns and adjectives that have to
do with the objects of religious faith ; but it fears to
do these objects the honor to get clear ideas about
them. Now we respect this mood when it appears in
men who do well their life-work, who need their re-
ligious faith for their work, and who do not feel any
calling as truth-seekers. No man has any business

12 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

to set up his vocation as the highest one ; and the
man for whom truth is useful in his actual life-work
as an inspiration, revealed to him only in feeling, is
welcome to his feelings, is worthy of all regard from
those whose vocation is philosophy, and shall not be
tormented by our speculations. He is careful and
troubled about many things ; the world needs him,
and philosophy does not. We only lay claim to our
own rights, and do not want to interfere with his.
Our right to clear thought, we must insist upon.
For looked at philosophically, and apart from the nec-
essary limitations of the hard worker, all this dumb
reverence, this vague use of vague names, has its se-
rious dangers. You are reverent, we may say to the
man who regards philosophic criticism as a dangerous
trifling with stupendous truths ; you are reverent,
but what do you reverence ? Have a care lest what
you reverence shall turn out to be your own vague
and confused notions, and not the real divine Truth
at all. Take heed lest your object of worship be only
your own little pet infinite, that is sublime to you
mainly because it is yours, and that is in truth about
as divine and infinite as your hat. For this is the
danger that besets these vague and lofty sentiments.
Unreflected upon, uncriticised, dumbly experienced,
dumbly dreaded, these, your religious objects, may
become mere feelings, mere visceral sensations of
yours, that you have on Sunday mornings, or when
you pray. Of course, if you are a worker, you
may actually realize these vague ideas, in so far as
they inspire you to work. If they do, they shall be
judged by their fruits. Otherwise, do not trust too

INTRODUCTION. 13

confidently their religious value. You, individually
regarded, are but a mass of thought and feeling.
What is only yours and in you, is not divine at all.
Unless you lift it up into the light of thought and
examine it often, how do you know into what your
cherished religious ideal may not have rotted in the
darkness of your emotions ? Once in a while, there
does come to a man some terrible revelation of him-
self in a great sorrow. Then in the tumult of an-
guish he looks for his religious faith to clothe his
nakedness against the tempest ; and he finds per-
haps some moth-eaten old garment that profits him
nothing, so that his soul miserably perishes in the
frost of doubt. Such a man has expected God to
come to his help in every time of need; but the
only god he has actually and consciously had, has
been his own little contemptible, private notion and
dim feeling of a god, which he has never dared fairly
to look at. Any respectable wooden idol would have
done him better service ; for then a man could know
where and what his idol is. Such is only too apt
to be the real state of the man who regards it as
profanity to think clearly and sensibly on religious
topics.

We claim, then, the right to criticise as fearlessly,
as thoroughly, and as skeptically as may be, the
foundations of conduct and faith. For what we crit-
icise are, at the outset, our _gwn_ notion s, which we
want to have conform to the truth, if so be that there
is any truth. As for doubt on religious questions,
that is for a truth-seeker not only a privilege but a
duty ; and, as we shall experience all through this

14 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

study, doubt has a curious and very valuable place
in philosophy, Philosophic truth, as such, comes to
us first under the form of doubt ; and we never can
be very near it in our search unless, for a longer or
shorter time, we have come to despair of it alto-
gether. First, then, the despair of a thorough-going
doubt, and then the discovery that this doubt con-
tains in its bosom the truth that we are sworn to
discover, however we can, — this is the typical philo-
sophic experience. May the memory of this sugges-
tion support the failing patience of the kindly dis-
posed reader through some of the longer and more
wearisome stretches of dry skeptical analysis over
which we must try to journey together. Whatever
may be the truth, it must lie beyond those deserts.

BOOK I.

THE SEARCH FOR A MORAL IDEAL.

CHAPTER II.

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM.

" Certain spirits, by permission, ascended from hell, and said to me,
* You have written a great deal from the Lord, write something also
from us.' I replied, 'What shall I write?' They said, 'Write that
every spirit, whether he be good or evil, is in his own delight, — the
good in the delight of his good, and the evil in the delight of his evil.' .
I asked them, * What may your delight be V ' They said that it was the
delight of committing adultery, stealing, defrauding, and lying. . . .
I said, ' Then you are like the unclean beasts.' . . . They answered,
'If we are, we are.' " — SWEDENBORG, Divine Providence.

" There 's nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." —
Hamlet.

WITH which of the two considerations mentioned
in our introduction shall a religious philosophy be-
gin ? Of its two chief considerations, the moral code,
and the relation of this code to reality, which is the
one that properly stands first in order ? We have
already indicated our opinion. The philosophy of
religion is distinguished from theoretic philosophy
precisely by its relation to an ideal. If possible,
therefore, it should early be clear as to what ideal
it has. The ideal ought, if possible, to be studied-
first, since it is this ideal that is to give character to
our whole quest among the realities. And so the
first part of religious philosophy is properly the dis-
cussion of ethical problems.

18 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

The theoretic philosopher might interpose just
here, and insist that as one can be moral only in a
real world, the philosopher has a theoretical right
and duty to point out, first of all, wherein consists
the reality of the world and whereon is based our
assurance of this reality. Yet this strictly logical
order we must decline, in the present discussion, to
follow. Our interest is, first of all, with the ideal
in its relation to human life. So much of the world
of commonplace reality as we have to assume in any
and every discussion of the ideal, we accept in this
first book wholly without theoretical question. For
such questions, in their relation to religious philoso-
phy, the proper place will come later. But at the
outset we will suppose a moral agent in the presence .
of this concrete world of human life in which we all
believe ourselves to exist. Beyond the bright circle
of these commonplace human relations, all shall for
the present remain dark to this moral agent. His
origin, his destiny, his whole relation to nature and \
to God, if there be a God, he shall not at the outset
know. But he shall be conceived as knowing that
he is alive in the midst of a multitude of living f el- i
lows. With them he is to have and to define and
to develop certain moral relations. For his life, or
for human life in general, he is to form his ideal.
Then later, after forming and striving to realize this
ideal of his, he is to come to the real physical world, 1
and to ask of it how it stands related to these, his
moral needs. In the answer to this question he is

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 19

to find, if at all, the completion of his religious phi- 1
losophy. When he comes to this second stage, which
our second book is to treat, he may find himself
obliged to analyze afresh and skeptically the naive
theoretic notions that he has possessed concerning na-
ture, and so even concerning his own fellow-men. But
for his analysis itself he will have a fresher courage,
because he will have filled himself with the love of
an ideal, whose realization he will be hoping some-
how to find all through all the tedious wanderings
of his theoretic study. If the order of his whole
thought is thus not the order of the truth itself, still
his little inconsequence in beginning his religious
philosophy with assumptions that he proves only '
after he has gone some distance in his investigation,
may be a useful concession both to his own human
weakness and to the needs of his practical nature.

With the search for the ideal, then, we begin, ex-
pressly assuming, in this part of the first book, with- *
out proof, as much of the world of daily life as may
be necessary to a study of the moral law in its ap-
plication to this daily life. Yet, with this explana-
tion, we are only at the beginning of the troubles
that arise in examining the relation between the '
basis of ethics and the real world. These troubles
form a great part of the obscurity of moral doc-
trine.

. II.

In treating of ethical doctrine, it is common to
avoid by all sorts of devices the main and most diffi-
cult problem of all. Men like to fill half a volume

20 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

with a description of the " moral sentiments," or
with a panegyric of the " moral principle in man," or
in these days especially, with a great deal of talk
about savages and about the " evolution of the moral
sense." Having occupied so many pages in enter-
taining digressions, when they come, if they ever do
come, to the central problem, namely, the nature of
moral distinctions considered purely as such, such
writers have no time to do more than to appeal to
the common sense of readers, and then to pass on to
consequences. It seldom occurs to them that a de-
scription of the " moral faculties " in this man or in
that, or a history of moral and immoral notions and
practices as they have come up among men in the
order of evolution, is no more a " moral philosophy,"
in the proper sense, than is a description of the coin-
age or of the products of any country or of the world
a true explanation of the difference between com-
mercial solvency and insolvency.

We for our part shall be obliged, however, by our
limited space, to aim forthwith at the heart of the
problem of a philosophical ethic. What is the real
nature of this distinction between right and wrong ?
What truth is there in this distinction? Is this
truth relative to particular conditions, or independ-
ent thereof? What ideal of life results? These
things we want to know ; and we do not want to
spend our time more than we shall be obliged to do
in irrelevant descriptions of the mental states of this
or that man. All mental states now interest us only
in so far as we first see what logical bearing they
may have upon our problem. We shall have to de-

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 21

scribe a good deal, but that work will have only its
proper subordinate place.

As for the main problem itself, we can best bring
its nature home to ourselves by considering forth-
with some aspects of an old and often neglected
question, namely, the very question before referred
to about the proper relation of one's moral ideal to
the reality that he may have recognized.

We are to form a moral ideal apart, as we have
said, from any theory of the physical universe out-
side of man. But is this practicable ? Is not every
moral theory dependent in truth on a theory of '
things ? Is it possible for us to make for ourselves
our ideal, and only afterwards to go to the real world
and to see if our ideal is realized ? Must not rather
our ideal be founded, in the very nature of the case,
on what we know, or think we know, about the
world ? Is not then this whole undertaking of ours
a blunder ? Is a rational moral distinction possible
save through a knowledge of the facts about the
world ? Can the ideal say to the world : " I demand
that thou shouldst be like me ? " Must not the ideal
rather humbly say : " Thus and thus it is in truth,
and therefore I am what I am ? "

The nature of moral ideals and distinctions is
plainly involved just here. We must look closely
at these questions ; for to answer them aright is to
answer the fundamental questions of all ethical phi-
losophy.

To understand then more justly the nature of this
difficulty, let us consider more closely the two possi-
ble answers to the foregoing questions. Let us call

22 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

a man who insists in spite of all upon going to the
real world, to find there in some way the sole basis
for his ideal distinctions between good and evil, an
ethical realist. Let us on the other hand call him
who would somehow demonstrate if he could some
ideal as the true and only moral ideal, without in any
wise making it depend upon physical reality, a moral
idealist. Let us then let the two parties discuss, in
their opposing ways, the question at issue. Let us
hear their views briefly stated and argued. First the
view of the extreme ethical realists : " Go to real-
ity," they say, " and to whatever reality you need to
consider. Thence derive your notion of duty. Mo-
rality must not be built in the air, but on a solid
foundation of natural fact. Your moral doctrine
may have to depend upon all that you can find out
about the universe." — On the other hand we have
the idealistic doctrine : " Morality," say the sup-
porters of this view, " is for the first an ideal. From
reality one learns the relations that are to be judged
by the ideal, but cannot by any searching find the
ideal itself. From reality one can learn the means ;
the End of action is an Ideal, independent of all real-
ity save the bare existence of our choice of this End.
As Prometheus defied Zeus, so the moral conscious-
ness could and must defy the forces of nature in case
they made the ideal forever hopeless. If the good
be unattainable, that makes it no less the good. If
the existent world were the worst world imaginable,
it would not be justified by the mere fact that it was
the real world. Ideals must be realized in so far as
we can realize them, but what can be realized need

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 23

not therefore turn out to be the ideal. The judg-
ments : This is, and, This is good, are once for all
different ; and they have to be reached by widely dif-
ferent methods of investigation." — Such are the two
opposing views. We cannot yet repeat in detail the
arguments for each, but we can suggest a few of
them.

" See," says the supporter of the first view, " how
absurd it is to evolve moral theories out of one's
inner consciousness. What happens to such theories ?
Either nature favors them, and then they survive in
the struggle for life, or they are unequal to the tasks
of the real world, and then their supporters go mad,
or die. But in the first case they are merely such
theories as could have been much better reached by
a process, not of guessing at truth, but of study-
ing nature's laws. In the second case, the result is
enough for common sense people. The moral theory
that is destined to die out for want of supporters can
hardly triumph over more useful opinions. If we
want a moral theory, we must therefore consider what
kind of action, what rule of life, wins in the battle
of existence, and tends most to outlive its rivals.
That rule is the one destined to become universal."

The maintainers of the second view are ready with
their answer. " What sort of morality is this?" they
say. " Is this the morality of the martyrs ? Is this
an ideal that can satisfy us ? The preservation of
truly valuable life may indeed be an end in itself,
and therefore an action that tends, on the whole, to
destroy rather than to save such life may be bad from
any point of view ; but the moral thinker is not, on

24 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

that account, bound to choose a code that will make
its believers survive. The believers are not all who
are affected by obedience to the code, and it may be
the believer's place to be sacrificed, either because
his life is worth less than his ideal, or because the
unbelievers may somehow be bettered through his
death. And, in general, what would be the conse-
quence of the consistent following out of the prin-
ciple that the true goal is conformity to reality ?
Assume that, for instance, a man in society is to reg-
ulate his actions solely according to the demands
that society as a real power makes upon him, in view
of his place in the social organism, and that morality
thus expresses simply the requirements that the in-
dividual must meet if he is to remain a successful
member of this social organism. Then, to get your
moral code, you are to examine the facts of social
life. You are to see, for example, what each man
must nowadays do if he is to be tolerable to his
fellows. You will find something of this sort : It
will not do for him to kill his fellows, or to steal
from them, or openly to insult them. It will be un-
profitable for him to be caught in cheating them, or
in lying to them. He will do well to help them as
far as his means allow, and so to get a reputation
for kind-heartedness and public spirit, as well as for
strict integrity. For such, at least in our society,
are some of the requisite or useful kinds of adjust-
ment to our environment. On these is founded our
moral code, if it is to be founded on realit}^ alone.

" But these requirements are not equally good in
all societies. Once a power to kill certain kinds of

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 25

people was a necessary condition to happy social life.
A reputation for fearlessness, for prowess, for mili-
tary skill, for a certain kind of cunning, for perfect
willingness to take your weaker enemy's property ;
all this was a part of the necessary adjustment to
one's environment. Was all this then for that soci- •
ety true morality? If morality were the body of
rules governing successful adjustment to the social
environment, then morality would be relative to the
environment, and would vary with it. So even now
such rules vary with one's social position. Minis-
ters of religion are considered to be best adjusted to
the environment if they are outwardly meek, save
when defending their creeds against heretics. But
politicians are best adjusted when they are aggres-
sive and merciless. A poet or artist is best adjusted
if he has a reputation for very ideal and impersonal
aims, and he can then even afford to leave his debts
unpaid ; but a business man must be very concrete
in behavior, severely definite in his dealings with his
fellows. And so runs the world away. Find your
place, and farm it cleverly, for that is the whole
duty of man.

" Such would be," say our idealists, " the conse-
quences of looking simply to reality for a definition
of the moral code. There would no longer be a dif-
ference between morality and cleverness. Practical
skill in the art of living is what survives in this
world : and if it is survival, or tendency to survival,
that distinguishes a true from a false moral code,
then universal cleverness as a moral code would on
the whole tend to survive, with its adherents."

26 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

But a realistic opponent is not thus silenced.
" Such caricatures," he insists, " do not fairly repre-
sent my doctrine." He, too, has an ideal but it is
wholly dependent on reality. What he means by
conformity to reality as the foundation of a moral
code is properly expressed by the more thoughtful
advocates of the doctrine of evolution. " Adjust-
ment to one's real surroundings is always," they say,
" one very important element in morality. But
there are higher and lower forms of adjustment.
Cannibals, or conquerors, or bad politicians, may be
sufficiently adjusted to their environment to be mo-
mentarily successful; but true philanthropists and
truly great statesmen are better than they, since the
statesmen and philanthropists have a higher form of
adjustment than have the others, and are thus higher
in the scale of progress. There is in the world a
constant evolution of higher out of lower form^.of
life. This applies also to society. And on this fact
of evolution depends the true morality. The ideal
morality is that form of adjustment of the social
man to his environment towards which society in its
progress forever tends." How then shall we define
our moral code ? " Why, once more," says the evo-
lutionist, " by the facts. Do not make your code
first and then judge the world. You will do well
to accept the universe even if you did not make it.
But examine the world to see in what way it is tend-
ing. Then conform yourself to that tendency ; try
to hasten the realization of the coming ideal perfec-
tion. Progress does not depend on you, but you will
do well to assist progress. So, by experience, we

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 27

are to find the direction in which society is moving,
we are to discover the goal toward which this move-
ment tends, and this object of life, once formulated,
is to give us our moral code."

Again, however, the idealist objects. This, he
admits, is a view higher, no doubt, than the preced-
ing ; but is it a clear and consistent view ? Will it
bear criticism ? In one respect, as appears to him,
it fails badly. However certain and valuable the
facts about evolution may be, the theory that founds
morality wholly upon these facts of evolution is de-
fective, because it confuses the notion of evolution »
with the notion of progress, the conception of growth
in complexity and definiteness with the conception
of growth in moral worth. The two ideas are not .
necessarily identical. Yet their identity is assumed
in this theory. How does it follow that the state
toward which a physical progress, namely, evolution,
tends, must be the state that is to meet with moral
approval ? This is not to be proved unless you have
already done the very thing that the doctrine of evo-
lution wishes to teach you to do, that is, unless you
have already formed a moral code, and that hide- /
pendently of what you know of the facts of natural ^
evolution. Why is the last state in an evolution
better than the former states ? Surely not because
it is the last stage, surely not because it is physically
more complex, more definite, or even more perma-
nent ; but solely because it corresponds to some '
ideal that we independently form. Why should my
ideal necessarily correspond with reality ? Why
should what I approve turn out to be that which ex-

28 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ists ? And why, if any correspondence is to exist,
should that particular bit of reality that comes at the
end of a physical process called evolution be just
the one bit that is to answer my ideal demands ? It
will be very satisfactory if such correspondence be-
tween the real and the ideal is found to result ; but
how can I know beforehand that it must result ?

Evolution and progress : what do the terms re-
spectively mean ? Evolution, we learn, is an increase
in the complexity, definiteness, individuality and
organic connection of phenomena. But progress is
any series of changes that meets with the constantly
increasing approval of somebody. The growth of a
tree or of a thistle is an evolution. The climbing of
a hill for some purpose may throughout be a prog-
ress. Evolution may or may not meet with the ap-
proval of anybody ; and a pessimist might fully
accept some proposed law of evolution. But unless
, there is some approval from some source, we have •
* no progress. How thoughtless then it is, our idealist
, insists, to confound such different notions. But is
a case of evolution ever a process of degeneration ?
Certainly. You want to eat asparagus before it is
full grown. Hence every moment of its evolution
after a certain point is for you distinctly a degenera-
tion. You want the potatoes in your cellar to keep
fresh. If they sprout, a process of evolution has be-
gun, but every moment of it is for you the reverse
v>" of progress. The egg that begins to incubate is in
full course of evolution ; but what if it is wanted
for market? Might not the evolution of the whole
world conceivably be for the moral consciousness

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 29

what such cases of evolution are for the purposes of
ordinary life?

"But," the realist may say, "in fact the world
does grow better. The course of evolution is on the
whole a progress." " Be it so," the idealist answers,^
" but how can we know it ? Only by first setting
up our moral ideal, and then comparing the facts'
with this ideal. If we know what we mean by bet-
ter, we can judge whether the world is growing
better. But we may not pretend to determine what
is better by simply observing how the world grows.
Growth and improvement are not identical ideas.
One may grow while growing ever worse."

And thus a moral code, according to our idealist,
does not, as a code, depend on physical facts ; tells
us nothing of what does exist, but tells us solely
what ought to exist. If the ideal either does exist,
or some day will exist, so much the better ; but
through all the changes of fate the terrible ought
remains, and judges fearlessly the world, whether it
be good or whether it* be evil. But here the realist, «•
to whom the moral code that is not built on natural
fact is just a dream, interposes what shall just here
be his final objection. " Be it so," he says, " judge
after your heart's desire ; but remember this, that ,
some other idealist beside you will be judging the
world in his own way, after what will seem to you
the folly of his heart, and his judgment and yours
will differ, as the dreams of any two dreamers must ^
differ. Did Plato's ideal agree with Paul's ? or did
Byron judge the world after the same fashion as
Wordsworth? Even so in the present day the

30 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ideals war their wars, shadowy struggles, such as one
would expect the tedious ghosts of Ossian's heroes
to carry on in their cloudy cars ; but reality will
never be one whit the wiser for all such deeds.
For when you forsake the real world you have no
basis left for your ideals but individual caprice,
and every idealist will be his own measure of all
things, and an elastic measure at that."

To this, how can the idealist answer ? Only, if at
all, by the fact of his success in establishing such a
criterion as shall be independent of his own caprice,
without being realistic.

We have let the contending doctrines fight some
part of their old battles over again. How shall we
decide between them? Alas! the decision is the
whole labor of founding a moral doctrine. We have
not yet seen deeply enough into their opposition.
They may both be one-sided. The truth may lie in
the middle. But as yet we have no right to dog-
matize. This capriciousness in the choice of ideals
seems a grave defect in a moral system ; we cannot
submit to the objection that our boasted ideal is just
our whim. Yet how shall we escape this ? Equally
unsatisfactory it seems to say : " I believe in such
and such ideal solely because I see it realized."
That is too much like saying, " Might is right."
And thus we should come to an equal capriciousness
on this side ; for if might makes right, then another
and opposing might, if triumphant, would make an-
other and opposing right. And in this wise there
would be no true distinction at all between right and
wrong. There seems in fact so far only an acciden-

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. 31

tal distinction. This ideal or that is the highest be-
cause somebody chances to choose it for his, or be-
cause the physical world chances to realize it. This
is a perfectly empty distinction.

But difficulties must not discourage us so early in
the day. The world has talked of these matters be-
fore. Let us turn to the history of some of the spec-
ulations about the ideal. They may suggest some-
thing to us.

CHAPTER III.

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS.

Sure, if I find the Holy Grail itself,
It too will fade, and crumble into dust.

TENNYSON, Holy Grail.

The spirits I have raised abandon me,
The spells which I have studied baffle me —
The remedy I recked of tortured me.
I lean no more on superhuman aid.

BYRON, Manfred.

WE are yet without an ideal, and as we come
nearer to our task, its difficulties increase. We have
described above the remarkable position in which
every moral idealist finds himself. He says that
his moral doctrine is to be more than a mere bit of
natural history. He wants to find out what ought
to be, even if that which ought to be is not. Yet when
some man says to him : " Thy ideal is- thus but thy
personal caprice, thy private way of looking at
things," he does not want to assent. He wants to
reply : " My ideal is the true one. No other rational
ideal is possible." Yet to do this he seems to need
again some external support in reality. He seems to
require some authority based upon facts. He must
somewhere find his ideal in the world of truth, ex-
ternal to his own private consciousness. He must
be able to say : " Lo, here is the ideal ! " He must

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 33

be able to show it to us, so that we shall see it to be
more than his whim. But thus he is in danger of
forsaking his idealism. His position so far has there-
fore seemed to us an uncertain one. We have felt
the force of his needs ; but we have not been able to
see as yet just how they are to be satisfied. The
satisfaction of them would in fact be a complete
ethical doctrine. And the foundation of such a doc-
trine is just what we here are seeking.

It is incumbent upon us yet further to show how
the search for a moral ideal has in the past been
hindered by the weight of this doubt about the exact
relation of the real and the ideal. The controversy
that the last chapter considered is a controversy end-
lessly repeated in the history of moral doctrines.
Everywhere we find a moral ideal maintained by some
devoted idealist as the one perfectly obvious aim for
human life. Everywhere there stands over against
this ideal some critic who says : " The choice of this
aim for life is an accident. I reject this boastful
ideal. For where in reality is found the firm basis
of fact on which the ideal is founded ? " Then pos-
sibly the idealist, relaxing the rigor of his idealism,
points out in the external world some real or myth-
ical support for his ideal. And thereupon either his
critics reject the creed about the external world thus
offered to them, or they deny the moral force of the
supposed realities, or, again, themselves assuming an
idealistic attitude, they reproach the idealist with his
unworthy desertion of "his own high faith, in that he
has yielded to realistic demands, and has founded
the lofty Ought on the paltry Is. And thus the con-

34 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

troversy continues. Often it seems to us that the
struggle must be endless. At all events we must
here look at some of its phases.

I.

In the days of the Sophists, Greek thought had
reached its first great era of ethical skepticism. This
skepticism was directed against the ideals of popular
morality. " They are not self-evident and necessary
ideals," said in substance the Sophists. " They are
conventions. They are private judgments." The
popular ideals were of course popularly defended
against such assaults by the use of the national re-
ligion. "The gods made these distinctions," it is
replied. " The gods are able to enforce them ; there-
fore, fear the gods."

Skepticism had two answers to this defense. The
one answer was simple : " Who knows whether there
are any gods, or what the gods, if they exist, may
choose to do ? " The other answer was more subtle,
because it really expressed in skeptical guise a new
form of moral idealism. It is best preserved to us
in a fine passage in the second book of Plato's Re-
public. Here the young men, Glaucon and Adei-
mantos, confess that certain sophistic objections to
the reality of moral distinctions are deeply puzzling to
themselves. They ask Socrates to discuss the matter
in some such fashion as to remove these doubts.
They sum up the doubts in substance as follows :
Grant that the gods are of irresistible might, and
that they are disposed to enforce some moral law ;

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 35

still does that fact give any true distinction between
good and evil as such ? For whoever urges us to do
right merely to get the favor of the gods, urges us
in reality just to do what is prudent. Such doctrines ' I
make justice not desirable in itself, but desirable )j
solely for what it brings in its train. And thus there
would be no difference between good and evil as such,
but only between what brings reward and what ^
brings punishment. " Therefore, O Socrates," they
in effect say, " do thou defend for us justice in itself,
and show us what it is worth in itself, and how it is
different from injustice. But put us not off with
stories about reward and punishment." Such is a
brief summary of their two speeches.

No better could either the need or the difficulty
of the task of moral idealism be set forth than in
these eloquent statements. How does Plato lay the
ghosts that he has thus raised ? How does he give
an independent foundation to the ideal of justice ?
He surely felt how hard a problem he was under-
taking. He has, in fact, attempted several answers
to it. But the main answer, given in the Repub-
lic itself is insufficient, though noble. This answer*
is, in effect, that the properly balanced, fully and
harmoniously developed soul, absorbed in the con-
templation of eternal truth, cannot possibly desire
injustice ; that only the tyrannical soul, in which
the desires have the upper hand, where nothing is
secure, whose life is like the life of an ill-governed
or even anarchic community, tumultuous, wretched,
helpless before passion, only such a soul can desire
injustice. Injustice, then, means desire for discord, ) f

36 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

it means the victory of the desires over the reason,
it is inconsistent with the life of the soul that is
given to blessed contemplation of the eternal ideas.
For such a blessed soul its blessedness is, in the fine
phrase that Spinoza long afterwards created, not the
reward of virtue, but virtue itself ; so that such a
soul will not do the right as a means by which it
may procure the blessed contemplation of the eter-
nal, but, being engaged in this blessed contempla-
tion, it is thereby enabled to do right.

But to the wicked soul of the unjust man Plato
seemingly has no inducement to offer in order to per-
suade it to become just, save the eloquent statement
of the pains that accompany injustice, the picture of
the warfare of desires, the proof of the wretched in-
stability and of the possibly eternal misery in which
the tyrannical soul must live. And thus Plato him-
self would be in so far open to the objection that his
Glaucon and Adeimantos had made to all previous
moralists, namely, that they never gave a reason
why justice in itself was to be chosen, but always
made justice desirable by reason of the rewards that
result from it. For Plato's view, as for that of less
ideal moralists, the unjust man should seek to be-
come just because, until he does become just, he will
be wretched. Can no other basis for the virtue of
justice be found save this one ? If none can be
found save this, then whenever a soul exists that
prefers the tumult of desire, with average success in
injustice, to the solemn peace of the contemplation
of ideal good apart from the satisfaction of sensuous
desires, for that soul Plato's argument will be worth-

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 37

less. Such a tyrannical nian will delight to remain
a tyrant, and that will be the end of life for him.

The suggestiveness, the deeper significance of this
Platonic doctrine, we do not deny. But, as it stands,
the doctrine' is not complete nor consistent. For
Plato himself has given us as the support for his
ideal, a fact, or a supposed fact, of human nature.
A moral skeptic will deal with it as Glaucon and
Adeimantos had dealt with the popular morality.
The supposed fact, they will say, may be doubted.
Perhaps some tyrant will actually feel happier than
some struggling and aspiring soul far higher up in
the heavens. But, leaving that doubt aside, there is
the other objection. The ideal justice has come to
be founded on a bare physical fact, namely, on the
constitution of the soul, which might, for all we can
see, have been different.

Important as he is in concrete ethical questions,
Aristotle does nothing of importance to remove this
fundamental difficulty, since his position as to this
matter is too near to Plato's. Still less do the Epi-
cureans, for whom in fact just this difficulty does not
exist. Plainly they declare that they merely state
physical facts. Generosity, fidelity to friends, and
other idealistic activities they indeed regard as the
part of the wise man, but the end of all is very
frankly declared to be his selfish advantage. As
Cicero expresses their view : l " Cum solitudo et
vita sine amicis insidiarum et metus plena sit, ratio
ipsa monet amicitias comparare, quibus partis con-

1 De Fin., I. 20, 66. Quoted in Zeller's Philos. d. Griechen, Th.
3, Abth. I. (3ded.) p. 460.

38 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

firmatur animus et a spe pariendarum voluptatum
sejungi non potest."

The Stoics have a new thought to offer, one that
would have been as revolutionary as Christianity it-
self, if they could but have grasped arid taught its
full meaning. But that was for them impossible.
Their new thought, which gave foundation to their
moral ideals, was the thought of the perfect equality
of all men in the presence of the universal Reason,
to which all alike ought to conform. Everyone, they
said, ought to be rational ; everyone ought to try to
extend the empire of reason. If one's neighbor is
a rational being, one can and must try to realize the
rational in him almost as much as in one's own self.
Hence one's duty to do good to men. This duty, to
be sure, commonly did not for the Stoics extend to
the point of very great practical self -sacrifice. But
at any rate they gave a new foundation for justice.
One works not only to conform one's self to the
ideal, but also to realize the ideal here in this world
in others as well as in himself. The ideal Reason
can be realized in yonder man through my efforts,
much as, through my acts, it can be realized in me.
All men are in so far brothers, members of one fam-
ily, children of one Father, and so all alike objects
of moral effort for every one of their number.1

1 For a collection of the passages illustrative of this doctrine,
see the quotations in Zeller's Philos. d. Griechen, Th. 3, Abth. L
p. 285, sqq. (3d ed.). Marcus Aurelius is prominent in the list.
Epictetus is responsible for the deduction of human brotherhood
from the common fatherhood of God. Seneca has frequent expres-
sions of similar thoughts. Yet for all that the wise man is to be
independent and separate. In his respect for humanity, he is not
to lose himself.

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 39

II.

This thought was indeed a deep one, and if the
Stoics gave but an imperfect practical realization of
it to the world, they prepared thereby the way for
the reception of the higher thought of Jesus, when
that thought appeared. We may therefore more
readily suggest the skeptical criticism of the Stoical
thought by first looking at the well known comple-
tion of the notion of God's fatherhood in the doc-
trine of Jesus.

Jesus founded his morality in his theology, yet he
did not make moral distinctions dependent on the
mere fact of divine reward or vengeance. An act
is for him wrong, not because outside the kingdom
of heaven there is weeping and gnashing of teeth ;
rather should we say that because the act is opposed V
to the very nature of the relation of sonship to God, (
as Jesus conceives this relation, therefore the doers
of such acts cannot be in the kingdom of heaven, all
whose citizens are sons of the King. And outside
the kingdom there is darkness and weeping, simply
because outside is outside. Therefore, if Jesus gives
us a theological view of the nature of morality, he
does not make morality dependent on the bare des-
potic will of God, but on a peculiar and necessary*^
relation between God and his creatures. So long /
as God is what he is, and they remain his crea-
tures, so long must this relation continue. Jesus in
fact, as we know, gives us a higher and universal
form of the morality of the prophets. They had
said, Jahveh has saved his people, has chosen them

40 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

from all the earth, has fed them with his bounty,
has treated them as his well-beloved vineyard, has
taken the nation as it were to wife. And so, if the
people offend against the law of righteousness that
is written in their hearts and known through the
words of prophecy, they are guilty not alone of dan-
gerous revolt against irresistible might, but also of
something far worse, namely, of the basest ingrati-
tude. Their sin is unheard of in all the earth. The
heathen forsake not their wretched gods, that are
yet no gods, and shall Israel turn against the will
of its living, almighty lover ? The waste vine-
yard, the unfaithful wife, these are the types of the
iniquity of the people. Their sin is a miserable
state of utter corruption. What the very beasts do,
to know the masters that feed them, Israel forgets,
whose master is not only the maker of all things,
but also the loving spouse of his chosen nation.

This sanction for morality, not the might so much
as the tender love of God, is by Jesus extended in
range and deepened in meaning. Every man stands
before God as beloved son. If he wanders, the
Father would fain seek him as the shepherd would
a lost sheep ; would fain, like the prodigal's father,
fall upon his neck and kiss him, if he will but re-
turn ; would fain feed and clothe him with the best ;
would not forget him amid all his sins. And the
Father's rain and sunshine are for just and un-
just. Deeper and tenderer is this thought than the
prophetic idea, because the relation is no political
one, but a close personal one. To be conscious of it
means, according to Jesus, to wish to live in accord-

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 41

ance with it, so as to return to the Father love for
love. Hence, in knowing this relation, one has the
highest sanction for all good acts. The ultimate
motive that Jesus gives to men for doing right is
therefore the wish to be in harmony with God's
love. So the Father in his holiness wills for each of
us, and so each son, conscious of the love of the
Father, also desires, as soon as he is aware of the
Father's will. One cannot know of this infinite love )
without wishing to be in union with it. Even with- /
out knowing of the love, the very consciousness of
the wretchedness of the lonely, separate life of selfish
wickedness must lead one to want to forsake the
husks and find the Father, even if he should be but
the angry Father. Much more then if one has
found the Father, has found him caring for the spar-
rows, and for the lilies, and for the least and the
worst of his children, must orie, thus knowing the
Father, desire to submit to him. One is lost in the
ocean of divine love. Separate existence there is no
more. One is anxious to lose his life, to hate all
selfish joys, to sell all that one has, to be despised
and rejected of all the world, if so be that thereby
one can come into accord with the universal life of
God's love, in which everything of lesser worth dis-
appears.

Duty to one's neighbor is but a corollary to all
this. In the first place one's neighbor is no longer
a mere fact of experience, a rival, a helper, an
enemy ; but he is, instead of all this, a child of God.
Every other aspect of his life is lost in this one. As
child then he represents the Father. The highest

42 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

messenger of God will say in God's name at the last :
Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my
brethren, ye did it unto me. And so each brother
is the ambassador of God. When Job had spoken
of his duty towards the lowly, he had given the sanc-
tion for it in the thought : Did not one fashion us ?
Jesus gives a higher sanction : Does not one Father
love you all ? In the presence of the Father the
children are to lose their separateness. They are to
feel the oneness of their life. There is no longer
any rival or enemy, any master or slave, any debtor
or creditor here, for all are in infinite debt to the
Infinite One, and all in his sight brethren.

The Stoics had conceived of a common Father.

But they regarded him as an impersonal, all-pervad-

f ing Reason. The thought of Jesus gave to his idea

of the fatherhood of God a warmth and life unknown

to any previous thought. And in this warmth and

life he intended the idea of Duty to grow. The high-

] est principle of the doctrine is : Act as one receiv-

• ing and trying to return an Infinite Love. To

thy neighbor act as it befits one so beloved to act

towards his brother in love. And thus is Duty

explained.

For our present skeptical inquiries this doctrine of
Jesus in its original form is no longer enough. For
one thing, Jesus himself did not intend it as a philos-
ophy, but always expresses it as an insight. And in
our time this insight is clouded by many doubts that
cannot be lightly brushed away. This idea of God
as a Father, — it is exactly the idea that our philos-
ophy finds most difficulty, nowadays, in establishing.

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 43

For many in all the future history of our race this
idea will be harder to establish than will be the
moral doctrine that was deduced by Jesus from it.
For many*who with steadfast faith accept the doc-
trine of God's fatherhood, their ultimate reason will
rather be that, first accepting the morality of Jesus,
they find it most natural to accept therewith what
they understand to be his theology. His moral doc-
trine will be to them the insight, the theology will
be taken on trust. Many others will accept indeed
the morality, but be unable to accept the theology.
In ethical faith they will be Christians, in theology
Agnostics. And therefore, to the philosophic stu-
dent, who must prove all things, and hold fast only
what he finds sure, it is impossible to take the the-
ology of Jesus on simple faith, and not profitable to
postpone the discussion of the moral problems until
he first shall have established a theology. Morality
is for us the starting-point of our inquiry. Theol-
ogy comes later, if at all. And, as we shall presently
see, the theology, if accepted, would not satisfy all
the questions of the ethical inquirer.

Yet if the doctrine of Jesus does not belong
among the purely idealistic theories of duty, since it
gives duty the fact of God's fatherhood as its foun-
dation, it has one aspect that would make the recapit-
ulation of it necessary even in the course of a study
of purely ideal ethics. For, while this doctrine
founds duty ultimately on the consciousness that
God is a Father, and so on a belief in a physical or
metaphysical truth, still the immediate ground of
the idea of duty to one's neighbor is the conscious-

44 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ness in each man that his neighbor is his brother.
In the teachings of Jesus this latter insight follows
from the sense of common sonship that Jesus wants
to give to men. But, apart from the theology, the be-
lief in the brotherhood of men, in case it can be made
clear and definite, may have just the relation to the
idea of duty that Jesus, in his theological ethics,
wished the idea of the common sonship to have.

But it is our present purpose to see how doubt
follows the track of the moral idealists. And to
carry out even here this purpose, it is very important
to note that however much the morality of Jesus
seems to rest upon his theology, and did, for him, rest
upon that theology, for us that basis would be of it-
self insufficient, even if we could unhesitatingly ac-
cept the theology. For the skeptical question might
arise in the inquiries of the philosopher, to whom all
questions are allowed, Why is it evident that one
ought to return the Father's love ? Granting the
fact of this love, how does it establish the ideal ?
And this question, easy as seems the answer of it
to a believer, is just the question that the " almost
persuaded " of all times have been disposed to ask.
Any particular individual may believe in the theol-
ogy of Jesus, and yet fail to feel the force of the
moral doctrine. Why does this love constrain me ?
he may say. In fact the church has always found
it necessary to construct for itself a process, or even
a series of processes, through which the unbeliever
must go, in order to reach the point of development
where he could begin to feel the constraining force
of the divine love. It has been recognized as a fact

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 45

that the unregenerate could believe and even trem-
ble and yet remain unregenerate. The saving faith
was seen to be not identical with the mere belief in
God as Father. For the saving faith, divine grace
was necessary, adding to the unregenerate recogni-
tion of the bare truth the devotion of the loving
child of God. And therefore the church has never
been content with the doctrine of Jesus in its unde-
veloped simplicity.

But if all this is so, then for us the morality of
Jesus, considered as morality, is founded, not on the
theological theory alone, but also on a peculiar insight
that each man is to have into the duty of returning
the divine love. That the divine love is real, gives a
basis for all duty in case and only in case one first
sees that it is one's duty to return the divine love.
And wherein is this insight as such any clearer than
the direct insight into the duty of loving one's neigh-
bor ? If a man loves not his brother whom he has
seen, how shall he love God whom he has not seen ?
Is not the duty of gratitude first evident, if at all, in
man's relations to his fellows ? Is not love given first
as a duty to one's companions, and only secondarily
as a duty to God, and then only in case one believes
in God ? In other words, are we not here, as in the
discussion with the realist at the outset, led to the
view that not a physical doctrine, nor yet even the
sublimest metaphysical doctrine, as such, but only an
ethical doctrine, can be at the base of a system of
ethics ? The doctrine that God loves us is a foun-
dation for duty only by virtue of the recognition of
one yet more fundamental moral principle, the doc-

46 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

» trine that unearned love ought to be gratefully re-
'* turned. And for this principle theology as such
gives no foundation. But on the other hand, upon
what should the ideal principle itself be founded?
Why is unearned love to be gratefully returned ? Is
this principle founded once more on some doctrine
of the constitution of human nature ? The same ob-
jection would again appear. A physical fact is no
ideal. So, then, this insight is just an insight, the
acceptance of an ideal wholly for its own sake ? But
then returns the old objection. What is such an
unfounded ideal but the individual caprice of some-
body ? Let the faithful be never so devoted ; still
there are the unregenerate, who are somehow to be
convinced of a truth that they do not recognize. And
how are they convinced, if at all ? Not by showing
them the facts, which they have already known with-
out conviction ; but by arousing in them a new feel-
ing, namely, gratitude. Thus the Christian ideal
seems to have for its sole theoretical foundation the
physical fact that man often feels gratitude. It is true
that no one can accuse Jesus of expressly giving this
• or any other theoretical foundation to his doctrine.
He was necessarily wholly free from the theoretical
aim in his dealings with the people. But for us now
the point is the theoretical point. If the foundation
c. of Christian ethics as popularly understood be not
i the physical fact of the Father's love, then is it not
i just the physical fact of the frequent existence of
u gratitude ? And is either of these a satisfactory foun-
dation for an ethical theory as such ? Nay, if Chris-
tian ethics be the highest from the practical point of

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 47

view, still must we not dig much deeper to find the
theoretical foundation on which this glorious struc-
ture rests ?

III.

We have been seeking to illustrate our funda-
mental difficulty in ethics, — one that is too fre-
quently concealed by rhetorical devices. The un-
certainty here illustrated results from the difficulty
of giving any reason for the choice of a moral ideal.
Single acts are judged by the ideal ; but who shall
judge the judge himself? Some one, as Plato, or
some Stoic, or Jesus, gives us a moral ideal. If we
are of his followers, the personal influence of the
Master is enough. Then we say : " I take this to* be
my guide," and our moral doctrine is founded. But
if we are not of the faithful, then we ask for proof.
The doctrine says : " Behold the perfect Life, or the
eternal Ideas, or the course of Nature, or the will of
God, or the love of the Father. To look on those
realities is to understand our ideal. If you remem-
ber those truths, you will hesitate not to do as we
say." But still the doubter may be unwilling to
submit. He may say to Plato : " The tyrant is easy
to find who wiJl laugh at you when you talk of the
peace of philosophic contemplation, who will insist
that his life of conflict and of danger is fuller and
sweeter in its lurid contrasts and in its ecstasies of
sensuous bliss, than are all your pale, stupid joys of
blank contemplation. And if the tyrant says so,
who shall decide against him? Has not many a
man turned with eagerness from the dull life of the

48 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

thinker, once for a while endured, to the richer joys
and sorrows of the man of the world? Have not
such men actually held the pleasures of life, however
dearly bought, to be better than the superhuman
calm of your philosophic ideal ? " Even so to the
Stoic, the objector may say : " Granted that your
eternal Reason does pervade all things and is our
common Father, why should that cause me, who am
one of his creatures, to do otherwise than I like?
Who can escape from his presence ? Even if I live
irrationally, am I not still part of the Universal
Reason ? The bare fact that there is an Eternal
Wisdom does not make clear to me that I must
needs be very wise. My destiny may be the destiny
of 'a being made solely to enjoy himself." • And, to
the Christian doctrine, the skeptic may oppose the
objection that if the truth does not at once spiritu-
ally convert all who know it, the proof is still lacking
that the Christian Ideal actually appeals to all pos-
sible natures. " If I feel not the love of God," the
objector will say, " how prove to me that I ought to
feel it ? " Or, as human nature so often questions :
" Why must I be loving and unselfish ? "

Now, the simple, practical way of dealing with all
such objectors is to anathematize them at once. Of
course, from the point of view of any assumed ideal,
the anathema may be well founded. " If you do not
as I command," so says any moral ideal, "I con-
demn you as an evil-doer." " He that belie veth not
shall be damned." But anathemas are not argu-
ments. To resort to them is to give up theoretic
ethics. We who are considering, not whom we shall

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 49

practically condemn, but what we can say in favor
of any moral theory, must be unwilling to be put off
with mere oratorical persuasion, or to mistake prac-
tical adhesion for theoretical conviction. We want
a code that shall seem not only admirable, but, if so
it may be, demonstrable.

Such objections, then, blocking the path of our
idealist, what is he to do with them ? Is there any
direction in which he can successfully seek a foun-
dation for his ideals ?

We have, indeed, much seeking yet to do ere we
can find the right direction. For, in the next place,
we shall have to show how just such objections as
we have applied to other ethical doctrines will apply
to all those doctrines that put the basis of morals in
the often-used mass of instincts called Conscience.
Conscience undoubtedly expresses the results of civ- •
ilized ancestry and training. It no doubt must al- •
ways prove an indispensable aid in making practical
moral decisions ; but if it be used to give a theo-
retical basis to ethics, one can say of it what has
been already said of other realities. Its universal
and uniform presence among men can be doubted,
and its value where it is present can be called in
question whenever it is employed to give a basis for
ethics ; since as a mere physical fact of the constitu- '.
tion of human nature, conscience is not yet an ideal, •
nor an obvious foundation for an ideal. Both of
these objections have been frequently urged. Let
us venture to repeat the old story.
4

50 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

IV.

Instincts in general are useful, not because they
are infallible, much less because they are rational
(for they are neither), but because they work quickly
and are less capricious than are our less habitual
impulses, and so, in common life, are our substitutes
for reason. But, in theory, no act is good merely
because the instinct called conscience approves of
it ; nor does conscience in any man always instinc-
tively approve of good acts. Therefore conscience
is, for the purpose of founding an ethical theory, as
useless as if it were a mere fiction. It gives no
foundation for moral distinctions.

To be sure, we must be understood as referring
here not to the moral consciousness of man in its
highest rational manifestations ; for that there is a
rational and well-founded moral consciousness we
ourselves desire to show. The conscience that we
criticise is conscience as an instinct. When people
say that so and so is the right because the immediate
declaration of conscience shows it to be the right,
they generally mean that so and so is right because
it feels right. And when moralists found their eth-
ical doctrine on conscience, they are in great danger
of making their whole appeal to mere feeling. But
such mere feeling can only give us problems ; it can-
not solve problems. To illustrate by a notable case :
When Butler, in analyzing the data of conscience,
in his " Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue," comes
upon the fact that benevolence, or the effort to in-
crease the general happiness, is, for our common pof

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 51

ular conscience, only a part of virtue, not in any sort
the whole of it, he really discovers nothing positive
about the nature of virtue, but only gives us a very
interesting problem about the nature of virtue. If
benevolence were the sole basis of virtue, then, says
Butler, for our conscience treachery and violence
would be "no otherwise vicious than as foreseen
likely to produce an overbalance of misery to society."
Therefore, he continues, "if in any case a man could
procure to himself as great advantage by an act of
injustice as the whole foreseen inconvenience likely to
be brought upon others by it would amount to, such
a piece of injustice would not be faulty or vicious at
all." Even so, it would not be wrong, he points
out, to take A's property away and give it to B, if
B's happiness in getting it overbalanced A's incon-
venience and vexation in losing it. But since con-
science disapproves of such actions, therefore, con-
tinues Butler, " the fact appears to be that we are
constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked
violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to
some preferably to others, abstracted from all con-
sideration, which conduct is likely to produce an
overbalance of happiness or misery." Were God's
"moral character merely that of benevolence, yet
ours is not so." All this now shows how full of
problems our uncriticised conscience is. It is the
starting-point, not the guide, of moral controversies.
Conscience approves benevolence, and it also ap-
proves the repression of benevolence in cases where
justice, distributive or retributive, seems to the pop-
ular mind to be opposed to benevolence. And when

52 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

some moralist tries to reduce justice in all its forms
to benevolence, the natural conscience is dissatisfied.
Retribution it approves, not because retribution may
ultimately increase happiness, but because retribu-
tion seems good to it. And if the natural conscience
is again appealed to, and is at last brought to admit
that benevolence is, after all, really the highest end,
and punishment only a means, then this appeal is
simply a setting of conscience against itself. The
popular conscience is, as an instinct, once for all
confused and uncertain about the true relations of
justice and benevolence. It is useless to ask this
instinct to do what the natural conditions that made
it never prepared it to do, namely, to make a system
of morals. A thinker like Butler, with his serious-
ness and depth of insight, defends the claims of con-
science only by analyses which bring home to us
that our conscience is a mystery, and that its asser-
tions about all the deepest ethical questions become
uncertain or confused as soon as we cross-question it.
An instinct is, in short, like any other habit. You
run fast down a familiar flight of stairs so long as
you do not think what your feet are doing. Reflect
upon your running, and ten chances to one you shall
stumble. Even so conscience is a perfectly confident
guide as long as you ask it no philosophical questions.
The objections here in question have been so
frequently urged that it is hardly worth while for
those who can feel their force to dwell on them very
long. It is enough for the present purpose to add
what all the moral skeptics from the time of the
Sophists have insisted upon, namely, that the con-

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 53

sciences of various men, nations and races, are con-
flicting in their judgments of acts. This objection,
worthless when urged against a well-founded theory
of the moral consciousness, is fatal to any theory that
makes morality dependent upon a particular emo-
tional or intellectual " constitution " of human nature,
that declares morality to be known by men through
one faculty or " sense " of a peculiar character. If
there are many consciences, each claiming rank as
the true conscience, and all conflicting, then the
choice among these can only be made on the ground
of something else than a conscience.

The caprices of moral instinct are not exhausted
when one has enumerated, as nowadays men often
do, as many practices as one can find approved
or demanded by the consciences of filthy savages.
Among civilized men, yes, in our own hearts, each
of us can find numberless conflicting and capricious
estimates of actions, and it has only a psychological
interest to study them in detail, or to try to reduce
them to any semblance of principle. Such con-
science as we have about common matters is too eas-
ily quieted ; and, as a mere feeling, the conscience
that can be called moral is not readily distinguish-
able in this, or in any other respect, from a mere
sense of propriety, from a reverence for custom, or «
from the fear of committing an offense against eti-
quette. That certain blunders hurt us more than
our lesser crimes, and that our remorse for them i
like our remorse for venial immorality, only more
intense, is nowadays a matter of frequent remark.
You ride using another man's season-ticket, or you

54 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

tell a white lie, or speak an unkind word, and con-
science, if a little used to such things, never winces.
But you bow to the wrong man in the street, or you
mispronounce a word, or you tip over a glass of wa-
ter, and then you agonize about your shortcoming
all day long, yes, from time to time for weeks.
Such an impartial and independent judge is the
feeling of what you ought to have done. Shall
ethics be founded on feeling, which to-day is and to-
morrow is cast into the oven ?

The traditional answer of the advocates of con-
science, when these facts are urged against them, is
well known. They say, various less dignified mental
tendencies may at times be mistaken for conscience ;
but the moral sense is real and trustworthy notwith-
standing all these mistakes. Shame, or love of
praise, or sense of propriety may pass themselves off
as conscience; but the genuine conscience, when
you find it, is infallible. But we may still rejoin
that, if the difficulty is of this nature, the consequence
must be very much the same as what we are insist-
ing upon. For if the question can arise whether a
given impulse in me, which I take to be conscience,
really is the voice of the infallible conscience or not,
then this question cannot be decided by appeal to
conscience itself ; since the very problem then is :
" Of two impulses, both pretending to represent con-
science, which is the genuine conscience?" And
questions of this sort must be appealed to some
higher tribunal than the conflicting impulses them-
selves. It will not be enough to apply even Antig-
one's sublime test to the warring impulses, and to

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 55

say : This impulse is not of to-day nor of yesterday,
and no man can tell whence it came, therefore it is
the voice of infallible conscience. For, fine as that
saying is, when applied to a genuine eternal truth,
the test is not a sufficient one for us in our weakness
to apply to the impulses that we find in our poor
selves. For we soon forget whence came our preju-
dices and even our bad habits, and we can fancy that
to be of immemorial antiquity which has begun to
be in our own parish, and within the memory of the
old men. A child born in one of our far western
settlements grows up amid a community that is a
few years older than himself, and not as old as his
eldest brother. Yet he shall look upon all these
rickety, wooden houses, and half -graded streets, full
of rubbish, as the outcome of an immense past; he
shall hear of the settlement of the town as he hears
of ancient history, and he shall reverence the oldest
deserted, weather-beaten, rotting log-cabin of the
place, with its mud chimney crumbling to dust, quite
as much as a modern Athenian child may reverence
the ruins of the Parthenon. A time when all these
things were not, shall be beyond his conception.
Even so, if moral truth be eternal, we yet dare not
undertake to judge what it is by merely examining
ourselves to see what customs or tastes or moral
judgments feel to our present selves as if they must
have been eternal. Such absolute validity one might
possibly feel as belonging to his mother's way of mak-
ing plum-pudding. Snow, to use a comparison of
Aristotle's, is as white after one day as if it had
been lying untouched and unmelted for a thousand

56 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

years. And high judicial authority lately expressed
the opinion, a propos of a change in standard time,
that usage may alter itself in a day as well as in a
century, and be as authoritative in one case as in the
other. Nothing feels older than a well-established
custom, however recent it may be.

Conscience then cannot be recognized as infallible
merely through the test of antiquity as judged by
our feeling. Conscience furthermore, or emotions
that pretend to the authority of * conscience, may be
found counseling or approving contradictory ways
of action. Therefore conscience is no sufficient
moral guide.

But even if all this were waived, if conscience
were in actual agreement among all men, and if
there were no difficulty in distinguishing the voice
of conscience from the voice of passion, or from
other prejudices or sentiments, it would remain true
that no ultimate theory of the difference between
right and wrong could be founded on the assertions
of any instinct. Why an individual should obey his
conscience unless he wishes to do so, cannot be made
clear by conscience itself alone. Nor can the neces-
sity and real truth of a distinction be made clear by
the assertions of a faculty that, however dignified it
may be, appears in the individual as a personal emo-
tion, a prejudice or choice, determined by an im-
pulse in him. Even if other people actually have
this same impulse, that does not make their common
prejudice necessary or rational. Conscience, if uni-
versal, would still be only a physical fact. If there
are actually no differences among various consciences,

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 57

it is still impossible to see why there might not be.
And the possibility is as fatal to the authority of bare
conscience as the reality would be. In conscience
alone, without some higher rational test, there is no
ground evident wherefore its decisions might not
have been other than they are. But what the mor-
alist wants is such a distinction between right and
wrong as does not depend upon any mere accident of
reality, even upon the accidental existence of a moral
sense. He wants to find the eternal ethical truth.
We insist then that one of the first questions of the
moralist must be, why conscience in any given case ^
is right. Or, to put the case otherwise, ethical doc- /
trine must tell us why, if the devil's conscience ap- (
proves of the devil's acts, as it well may do, the ^
devil's conscience is nevertheless in the wrong.

The discussion has, we imagine, after all, a practi-
cal importance in a way not always sufficiently re-
membered. In the name of conscience many crimes
have been done. In the name of conscience men
condemn whatever tends towards true moral prog-
ress, so long as this new element is opposed to popu-
lar prejudice. In the name of conscience they kill
the prophets, and stone every one that is sent unto
them. In the name of conscience wars are waged,
whole tribes are destroyed, whole peoples are op-
pressed. If conscience is the great practical guide
in common life, conscience is also, in many great
crises, the enemy of the new light. It is the sensi-
tive and penetrating eye of the heart, but it is often
blind before the coming day, even because it has
been so useful to us in finding our way in the night.

58 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

It ought to be a commonplace of morals that there
are certain times when the moral reason must cast
aside the moral instinct, when the lover of the right
must silence the voice of conscience. The more dan-
gerous such moments are, the more dreadful the mis-
takes that people at such times are apt to make, the
more necessary it is that the moralist should dis-
cover some criterion whereby to decide when instinct
fails. And this criterion cannot be conscience it-
self. We must seek yet deeper.

V.

Our criticism of conscience is only another exam-
ple of the method before applied to the criticism of
the moral ideals. You make a distinction between
right and wrong, you give to this distinction the dig-
nity of a principle, you deduce special moral judg-
ments therefrom. But then some one asks you for
any foundation for the principle, beyond your own
caprice. You thereupon seek to produce an ultimate
reason for your faith. And your ultimate reason
— what is it but some fact external to your choice
and to your ideal judgments ? But such dead exter-
nal facts were just what you wanted to avoid. You
had said that an ideal must have only an ideal foun-
dation. And now you say that the ideally right
thing depends on God's nature, on the existence of
the universal Reason, or on the assertions of Con-
science. Say thus what you will, have you done
what you intended? Have you made evident the
necessity of your ideal ? If, per impossibile, you

THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS. 59

suppose your present physical beliefs falsified, if the
All-Father changed his mind, and came to hate his
children, or if, per impossibile, the Devil triumphed,
or the eternal Ideas melted away like snow, or the
universal Reason became insane, or the Consciences
of all men grew corrupt, would that alter the ideal
for you ? If the moral ideal assumes its desired
position as judge of all things, then what matters
it to the ideal if evil is triumphant in the world?
" Fiend, I defy thee with a calm, fixed mind," the
idealist will say, after the manner of Shelley's Pro-
metheus, and that however much the real world
may threaten him. Therefore how can the Is pre-
determine the Ought to be ? But if the Ought to
be be independent of the /$, how does discussion
about the power of God, or his goodness, about the
universality of conscience, or its inner strength as a
feeling, affect our judgment of the ideal distinction
between right and wrong ?

Thus we are thrown back and forth between the
conflicting demands of criticism. " Give us a moral
system that is no caprice of thine," say the critics
of one sort. That seems reasonable. Therefore we
affirm, " This system of ours is founded on a rock of
eternal truth," namely, on God's will, or on the intui-
tion of universal conscience, or on some like fact of
the world. But thereupon other critics say to us :
" Wherein do you differ from those who say that
might is right, or that success determines the right,
or that whatever exists ought to exist ? For after
all you say, something that is, ought to be, merely
because it is." And always still other critics are

60 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

present, to doubt whether we are right about God
or conscience as physical facts. Such critics very
plausibly say, " Why found moral truth, which ought
to be so secure and clear, on physical or metaphys-
ical doctrines that are so often doubted and so hard
to establish ? "

Such is the general difficulty illustrated in the
warfare of the moral ideals. They want some high-
est judge to decide among them. If they seek this
judge in the real world, they seem to endanger their
idealism. If they seek their judge among them-
selves, the warfare begins afresh. For what one of
them can be the sole judge, when they are all judges
one of another?

CHAPTER IV.

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DIS-
CUSSIONS.

But if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that dark-
ness!

NOT even yet have we exhausted the perplexities
involved in this fundamental difficulty of moral
theory. Some one may say : " Let the ideals in
general take care of themselves. We are concerned
in this world with individual and concrete duties.
These at least are plain." But these also involve
questions concerning the ideal. Let us see then how
the same difficulty that has beset the more general
moral doctrines, returns to plague us in case of the
theoretical treatment of one of these plain duties.
Our discussion will here gain in definiteness what it
loses in generality. Let us choose a concrete moral
question, namely, the problem of the true ground of
the moral distinctions and other moral relations be-
tween what people nowadays like to call altruism
and what they like to call egoism.

Upon what, then, if upon anything, is founded the
moral precept : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy-
self? Or is there any foundation for it at all ? To
be quite familiar in discussing this problem, let us
take it as it appears in recent discussion. The

62 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

answers of some recent moralists will illustrate for
us afresh the great problem of ethics. We shall find
two classes of efforts made to solve the difficulty. On
the one hand moralists appear whose tendency is
mainly, although not always quite wholly realistic.
They say that, assuming the selfish aim as from the
beginning self-evident, the unselfish aim soon appears
as a necessary concomitant and assistant of the self-
ish aim. Such writers, from Hobbes to the present
day, have insisted upon unselfishness as a more or
less refined selfishness, the product of enlightenment.
To this view one opposes very naturally the objec-
tion that real unselfishness is thus in fact rendered
impossible. The moral ideal resulting is therefore,
whether right or wrong in itself, at all events at war
with other well-known ideals. And hence the expla-
nation satisfies nobody. One still lacks a judge to
end the warfare.

On the other hand, however, more idealistic mor-
alists have tried to make unselfishness dependent on
some impulse, such as pity or sympathy, whose dic-
tates shall be perfectly definite and self-evident, and
yet not, like the supposed dictates of conscience,
either abstract or mysterious. But to such a foun-
dation one opposes very naturally again the objec-
tion that all such judgments of feeling are capri-
cious, that pity and sympathy are confused and
deceitful feelings, wholly unfit to give moral insight,
and that no ideal can be founded on the shifting sand
of such realities.

The results of such criticisms will once more be
skeptical, but the skepticism on which we are here

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 63

insisting is so necessary a foundation for ethics, that
we make no apology for dwelling upon it yet farther,
devoting to the special problems suggested by these
recent discussions of selfishness and unselfishness a
separate chapter.

I.

In a collection of Servian popular tales may be
found one that runs somewhat as follows : Once there
lived two brothers, of whom the elder was very in-
cautious and wasteful, but always lucky, so that in
spite of himself he grew constantly richer, while the
younger, although very industrious and careful, was
invariably unfortunate, so that at last he lost every-
thing, and had to wander out into the wide world to
beg. The poor wretch, after much suffering, resolved
to go to no less a person than Fate himself, and to
inquire wherefore he had been thus tormented. Long
and dreadful wildernesses were passed, and finally
the wanderer reached the gloomy house. Now visit-
ors at Fate's dwelling dare not begin to speak when
they come, but must wait until Fate shall address
them, and meanwhile must humbly do after Fate
whatever he does. So the wanderer had to live in
the house for several days, silent, and busily imitat-
ing Fate's behavior. He found that Fate lives not
always in the same way, but on some days enjoys
a golden bed, with a rich banquet and untold heaps
of treasure scattered about ; on some days again is
surrounded with silver, and eats dainty but some-
what plainer food ; on some days has brazen and
copper wealth only, with coarse food ; and on some

64 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

days, penniless and ragged, sleeps on the floor, digs
the ground, and gnaws a crust. Each night he is
asked by a supernatural voice: "How shall those
live who have this day been born ? " Fate always
replies : " As I have fared this day, so may they
fare."

Thus our beggar found the secret of his own mis-
fortunes ; for he had been born on a day of poverty.
But when at last Fate broke the silence, the visitor
begged him to tell whether there could be any way
whereby he might escape from the consequences of
his unlucky birth. "I will tell thee," said Fate.
" Get thee home again, and ask thy brother to let
thee adopt his little daughter. For she was born on
one of the golden days. Adopting her, thou shalt
thenceforth call whatever thou receivest her own.
But never call anything thine. And so shalt thou
be rich." The beggar joyfully left Fate's dreary
house, with its sad round of days, and went back to
the world of labor and hope. There, by following the
advice that he had received, he became in fact very
wealthy ; since all that he undertook prospered. But
the wealth was his adopted daughter's. For always
he called his gains hers. One day he grew however
very weary of this, and said to himself : " These fields
and flocks and houses and treasures are not really
hers. In truth I have earned them. They are mine."
No sooner had he spoken the fatal words than light-
ning fell from heaven and began to burn his grain-
fields, and the floods rose to drown his flocks. So
that terror-stricken the wretch fell on his face and
cried : " Nay, nay, O Fate, I spoke no truth ; they

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 65

are not mine, but hers, hers alone." And thereupon
flame and flood vanished, and the man dwelt thence-
forth in peace and plenty.

II.

The really deep thought that imperfectly expresses
itself in this little Servian tale may suggest many
sorts of reflections. Just now we shall busy our-
selves with only one of the questions that are brought
to mind by the story. Many who nowadays have
much to say about what they call altruism, actually
explain all altruism as a kind of selfish evasion of
the consequences of cruder selfishness, so that at
bottom they really counsel men much as Fate coun-
seled the wanderer. They say in effect : " To make
thyself happy, do certain things called duties to thy
neighbor. That we call altruism. Thou shalt have
thy reward. For what is more useful to a man than
a man? If therefore thou dost well to him, thou
shalt make him in many ways of great service to
thee. And so, to get happiness for thyself, see that
thou be not openly merely a seeker of thy happi-
ness ; but ^call that which thou seekest his happiness.
Calling it his will help to make it thine. Be selfish
by casting aside grosser selfishness. Live for the
others as the means of living for thyself. In co-
operation is safety. Act therefore as a good mem-
ber of the community, and thou shalt prosper. But
such action requires altruism. As the man gave his
wealth to his adopted daughter, so that he might
own it himself and outwit his destiny, so must thou
5

66 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

make thy interests into the interests of society, and
by so doing be true to thyself." But now such al-
truism, as one at once sees, has no right to parade
itself as genuine altruism at all, and if it be the end
of conduct, there is no moral conduct distinct from
cleverness. But if this be true, it is at least incum-
bent upon the moralist to explain why the popular
ideal of unselfishness is thus so very far wrong.

More or less disguised, the doctrine here generally
stated appears in modern discussion since Hobbes.
Let us follow it into some of its hiding-places, and
to that end let us distinguish selfishness and unself-
ishness as ideals or ends of conduct, from selfishness
and unselfishness as means, accidentally useful to
get an end.

III.

Altruism is the name of a tendency. Of what
tendency ? Is it the result or the intent that makes
a deed altruistic ? Was our hero an altruist when
he gave to his adopted daughter the name and the
enjoyment of a possessor of wealth ? Or would he
have needed in addition to all this a particular dis-
position of mind ere he could be called an altruist ?

We need not dispute about mere names as such.
Let everybody apply the name Altruism as he will ;
but possibly we shall do well to recall to the reader's
mind what ought nowadays to be the merest com-
monplace of ethics, namely, that we cannot regard
any quality as moral or the reverse, in so far as the
expression of it is an external accident, with which
the man himself and his deliberate aim have nothing

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 67

to do. Ethical judgments deal with purposes. On
any theory of right and wrong the man himself, not
the accident of fortune, determines the moral char-
acter of his act ; and this view must be held equally
whether one believes the man's will to be free or to
be bound. Hence the unforeseen or unintended out-
come, or any other accidental accompaniment of my
act, does not make me egoistic or altruistic in case
egoism and altruism are to be qualities that have
any moral character at all. If my property is acci-
dentally destroyed by fire, and if the loss causes great
damage to my creditors or to people dependent on
me, the loss makes me no less or more an altruist,
although I can no longer do good as before. If my
purely selfish plan chances to do others good, I am
no less an egoist, although I have made my fellows
happy. In short, he who means anything, and does
what he can to realize his intention, must be judged
according to his intent. Circumstances control the
outcome, and they make of the chance discoverer of
the first bit of gold in a California mill - race a
greater altruist, to judge solely by consequences,
than a hero would be who sacrificed himself in a good
cause, and lost the battle. But no moral system
could make genuine saintliness out of the deed of
the man who by chance has found what the world
needed. And to take one more example, the power
die stets das Bose will, und stets das Grute schafft,
is not altruistic in the moral sense, however vast its
creations may become.

All this we maintain, because, if you are morally
criticising a disposition, you must study what it is,

68 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

not what are its accidental surroundings. Moral
distinctions must apply to aims as such. Unless
you are judging men exactly as you judge the north
wind or the value of rain, not as consciously good or
bad, but as mere forces that happen to produce such
and such results under such and such conditions,
you must study, not first the accidental circum-
stances, but the men. And in fact all moralists,
however much they may condemn the weighing of
mere motives, however much they desire to take just
the consequences into account, as Bentharn did, are
nevertheless forced to separate in their moral judg-
ments accidental from expected consequences. We
maintain that this abstraction of a disposition from
its accidental expressions must be rigidly carried
out in order to get a n^pral doctrine of any sig-
nificance. Let others study natural forces. We
here are studying men, and are considering what
ideal of a man we can form. Whatever the acci-
dents of the outer world give him in the way of
means, we want to know his real intent, and to judge
that. But if the intent of the man does alone make
him altruistic or the reverse, then what, for example,
is the position, in ethical controversy, of any system
that declares altruism to be morally good because the
individual needs the social order to assist him, and
must therefore in all prudence try to further the so-
cial ends as a means to the furthering of his own ?
Does such a system say anything whatever about
altruism as such ? Does it not make enlightened
egoism the one rule of life ? And if this is what is
meant, why not say so plainly ? If the intent of the

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 69

act makes it altruistic or the reverse, then a man
who helps his friend, or his neighbor, or society, and
who is honest, and kind, and public- spirited solely be-
cause he wants to get protection and help in return,
is no altruist, but is as egoistic as a Judas or as a
Thoniassen. He is only clearer-headed than they
were. On the other hand, if by any possibility any
one makes the good of others his sole end, and with
this as end takes care of his own health, or devel-
ops his mental powers, or amasses wealth, but all
merely for the sake of being able to benefit others,
then is such a man not egoistic, even while working
for himself, but altruistic throughout. For such a
man by hypothesis aims, not at his own personal
good, but solely at the good of others.

All this is consequent upon the general doctrine
that the distinction between altruism and egoism, as
moral qualities, must depend on no external acci-
dent, but on the personal deed of the man himself.
For, to make special mention of what many forget,
the means that you take to get any end are for you
merely physical accidents. If things were other-
wise, you would with the same intent do other things
to get what you seek. Not what you have to do in
getting your ends, but what you actually aimed at, is
morally significant. Hence the altruism of conse-
quences as such is morally insignificant, and the al-
truism of intent is alone morally significant. But
yet this obvious and seemingly very commonplace
distinction is, by the views that we are combating,
wholly lost sight of in its further application to hu-
man life. We may hear in modern controversy,

70 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

for instance, of a "conflict between altruism and
egoism," such as the one that Mr. Spencer discusses
in his " Data of Ethics," and we may draw near to
learn how the conflict goes. We shall possibly find
the question put thus : If a man in trying to be
altruistic were so far to forget himself as to injure
his health, or to become so weak as to have no
healthy children ; if he were to be careless of his
property, to let his mind go untrained, or to narrow
his own life too much, why then his own objects
would be defeated, he would be unable to help any-
body, he might do harm, and he could be no genuine
altruist. Therefore altruism must not oppose ego-
{\ * ism too much, else altruism will defeat itself. On
the other hand, we hear, if egoism is extravagant, it
will in its turn fail to get its own great end, self-sat-
isfaction. For it is useful to one to have his fellow-
members in the social organism well-contented, effi-
cient, and moral. One must try to make them so,
that he himself may enjoy the fruits of their happi-
ness. He pays more taxes, and also higher prices
for what he buys, if the community as a whole is
not contented and happy, as well as healthy and
moral. Enlightened selfishness therefore means for
him public spirit. His neighbor's diseases are apt
to infect his own family ; hence, if enlightened, he
will do what he conveniently can to keep his neigh-
bor well. His neighbor's peace of mind tends to
make his own mind peaceful, hence he will help his
neighbor out of trouble. Otherwise he would have
to live in anxiety, loneliness, weakness, and danger.
His life would be hard, and probably his death would

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 71

be early. So egoism must not be too extravagant. 7
Altruism is " equally imperative." Thus, perhaps,
we should hear the so-called " conflict " discussed.
If such views were urged, what should we say about
them ? We should have to say that they touch in
no wise at all the true moral distinction and warfare
between selfishness and altruism. They show only
that, whatever the opposition in aim, the two princi-
pies have after all, in this world of limitation, to
use very much the same means. Surely it is no
new thing to learn that in warfare both parties have
to burn the same quality of gunpowder, and that
even the cats when they fight all have to scratch
with claws that are very much alike. Do such re-
marks explain or tend to diminish or to end the con-
flicts in question ?

How insignificant is this way of studying the con-
flict of egoism and altruism, we shall see if we take
yet other illustrations. In the sense of the fore-
going comparison of egoism and altruism, even a
pirate, in his treatment of merchant vessels, would
have to be moderately altruistic ; namely, he had
better not try to do harm to a merchant vessel that
is too well armed for his force to overcome it. On
the contrary, his egoism will in this case counsel him
unselfishly to let it prosper in its own way. Nay,
he may even try to speed it on its course, if it ap-
pears disposed to change roles and to attack him.
He may say that in just this case he thinks that this
merchantman ought to have peace, and to be pre-
served from injury. The other alternative would
just here increase his own bill for repairs, or might

72 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

make his own existence less happy, or might even
bring him to the gallows. The happiness of the
crew of the merchantman is therefore just now an
object of concern for him, as perhaps furthering his
own. So he may be willing to compromise the dif-
ficulty, even if it should cost him a large sum to per-
suade the belligerent captain of the armed merchant-
man to let him alone. Thus he might even add
quite a fortune to what the merchantman's captain
and crew already have of good things, and this
would surely be very marked altruism. Thus ego-
ism and altruism may oppose each other, and thus,
by careful calculation, their opposing claims may be
balanced ! Or yet again, suppose that a robber
meets me in the highway, and egoistically demands
my purse. If now I should manage to disarm him,
to present a pistol to his head, and to ask him to
accompany me to the nearest town, evidently the
claims of altruism would for that man have a consid-
erably stronger emphasis than they had the moment
before. He would now be willing not merely to
live and let live in peace for the present ; he would
not merely be delighted to recognize my rights of
property and to leave me free to enjoy them ; but he
would undoubtedly be glad to increase my happiness
by giving me anything of value that he might have
about him, or any information of value to me that I
might desire, if by such means he could get me to
let him go free. A great altruist would my robber
now be, however great his egoism just before.

Now do such discussions of the claims of egoism
and altruism mean anything for the moralist ? But

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 73

if somebody tells us of the altruism that leads a man
to advocate good drainage lest he himself may have
a fever, of the altruism that pays one's debts to the
sole end that one may get further credit, of the sub-
lime unselfishness that makes a man civil even to
his rivals, because civility in these days is a social
requirement, — what have all these wondrous virtues
to do in constituting the moral value of altruism as
a disposition, more than have the virtues just illus-
trated ? We have two dispositions in us : one order- *
ing us to respect our neighbor as such, to labor in •
his behalf because he exists and needs help ; the *
other demanding that we regard him as a mere in- •
strument for our personal pleasure. Only the dis-
positions as such concern the moralist. Surely in
fundamental ethics we are discussing what we ought
to aim at, not how we can get our aims, so long at
least as we confine ourselves to the general princi-
ples. Applied morality may have much to say of
means. But of principles, this balancing of means
can tell us nothing. The means are the physical ac-
cidents, nothing more. What we want to know is
whether egoism as an aim is morally the worthiest
aim, or whether altruism is a morally better aim.
And we ask not yet how, if one's aim is egoistic, he
can most successfully be selfish, but only whether
one's aim ought to be selfish, and in how far. To tell
us that if we are sensible and selfish we shall avoid
having too much trouble with our fellows, is not to tell
us that our aims ought to be altruistic, but only that
sensible selfish men are not fools. To tell us that
if we are wise and altruistic we shall avoid wasting

74 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

our own powers profitlessly, and shall try to preserve
our own health, and to cultivate our own wits in use-
ful ways, all this is to tell us that unselfish wise men
are not fanatics. It may be useful to say this, but
it is not useful to the discussion of fundamental
moral doctrines. We want to know, for the first,
not how successfully to be altruistic, or selfish, but
why the effort to be altruistic or to be selfish is mor-
ally right or wrong.

IV.

If now such comparisons of the claims of altru-
ism and egoism throw no light on the fundamental
moral questions, what shall we say of the chance that
the " conflict " may be explained or diminished by
any proof that the evolution of our race will tend in
time to diminish, or even to extinguish, the opposi-
tion ? If some one shows us that by and by the most
selfish being in the social order will find it his own
bliss to give as much bliss as he can to everybody
else, so that men shall all be even as the people at a
successful party, getting pleasure as freely as they
give it, and giving it because they get it : and if
such predictions seem to anybody to help us to know
what duty is, then what can we say in reply, save to
wonder at the insight that sees the connection be-
tween all these facts and our present duty? If a
society ever does grow up in which there are no
moral conflicts, nothing but a tedious cooing of bliss
from everybody, then in that society there will be
no moral questions asked. But none the less we
ask such. If the people of that day no longer dis-

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 75

tinguish egoism from altruism, they may all be
blessed : but what is that to us ? We ask, What
ought we to do ? We learn in answer that the peo-
ple of the future will feel no need to ask that ques-
tion. We desire that duty be defined. We learn
in answer that if men ever get perfect, the sense of
obligation will vanish, so that nobody will question :
What is duty ? at all. This may be magnificent, but
it is not ethics.

For what do we really learn by hearing about the
society of the future ? Only that, in the time com-
ing, there will be such and such freedom from moral
problems ? Do we then also learn that we ought
to do our best to bring about that reign of peace ?
Not at all, for we are sure that we shall never live
to see that day ; and we cannot know why we should
work for it so long as we are still in doubt about the
value of selfishness. Do we learn that we ought to
conform as nearly as is possible to the rules that will
govern men in that ideal state ? But how then do
we learn that ? Is it because the coming form of
conduct will be the " highest form of adjustment of
acts to ends" as the modern apostles of evolution
teach that it will be? Nay, though we do accept
most confidently all that- these apostles teach about
the future, since surely they must know about it, we
still miss anything of moral significance in these
physical facts. For why is this coming state the
highest ? Does any one say : Because it will come
at the end of the physical process of evolution ?
Nay then, if every more advanced state is to be more
acceptable, by such reasoning the sprouting potato

76 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

or the incubating egg would always be more accept-
able than the fresh potato or the fresh egg. Highest,
as last, or as most complex, or even as most perma-
nent, cannot be in meaning identical with the mor-
ally highest that we want defined for us. We ought
to work for the realization of that far-off state, if at
all, then, because we see it to be, not merely the last
in point of time, but also actually the best, and that
for some other reason than this physical one. But
once more then, why is it best ? And why ought we
to try to realize it ? Because in that state, every
individual will be happiest ? But then we want to
know what we now are to do, and we see that this
future happiness will be at present for us unattain-
able. If we were in that state we should be happy.
But it is not at all plain that, by trying to approach
it, we shall now be making ourselves any happier.
And why should we do anything unselfish ?

Evolution then, as a mere prospect, throws no
light on the real and fundamental meaning of duty.
If we know what we are to try to do, then we can
judge whether we ought to help or to hinder evolu-
tion as a means to that end. But unless we know
our duty otherwise, there is nothing in the mere
physical fact of evolution that indicates what is mor-
ally higher or lower, better or worse. Why should
I work for future ages, if it is not already quite
plain, apart from any knowledge of evolution, that I
ought to do what I can just now for my brother
here?

After all, however, it is another aspect of evolu-
tion upon which nowadays most stress is laid in

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 77

ethics. It is said that, the future aside, evolution
has made us what we now are, and, in particular, has
formed our society, and us for society. Hence not
only is our welfare in fact best served by a wise al-
truism, but this fact is plain to us in our very organ-
ization and instincts. Therefore while throughout
our aim is our happiness, our nature has been so or-
ganized by generations of social evolution as to make
pretty certain that our happiness is already depen-
dent on our good character as social beings. There-
fore the doctrine of evolution shows that selfishness
must itself become even in our day altruistic if it
would be successful.

Is this aspect of evolution any more ethical than
the other? That is, does it show us, not the means,
but the moral End ? We must deny that it does. To
be sure, if we never actually felt any conflict between
egoism and altruism as dispositions, then indeed for
us just that ethical problem would not exist. But
we do feel a conflict. And since for us our selfish-
ness is not altruistic in aim, it is quite useless to try
to make the warring impulses one by declaring that
a perfectly enlightened selfishness, even in our own
society, would be altruistic, not indeed in aim, but in
consequences. For, in the first place, that would
actually be a false statement for our present social
condition ; since it is still quite possible for a clever
selfish man to live very comfortably, by somehow
legally wronging and oppressing others. And, in the
second place, if the statement were true, it would be
ethically worthless. For if good treatment of others
is uniformly the behavior that is, selfishly viewed, the

78 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

most advantageous, the man who acts upon that prin-
ciple is still selfish, not altruistic at all, and he has
not solved for himself the conflict between the two
principles, save by utterly disregarding the principle
of altruism. If altruism were the only goodness,
then altruism of aim would be goodness still, what-
ever the selfish consequences. If altruism needs to
be limited in any way by selfishness, then the limit-
ation must still be a matter of aim, not of accidental
result. Altruism as a means to selfish ends would
however be no aim at all, but only an accidental
tool. If circumstances varied, it would be cast
aside, while the selfish aim itself remained constant.
J. S. Mill, following others, tried to distinguish
the motive from the intent of an act. According to
this distinction, a selfish act would be altruistic by
intent, if there was in it the deliberate purpose to make
somebody happy, however selfish the motive of the
act. So it would be altruism to be deliberately and
selfishly just. But this distinction, however useful
for some purposes, is for our purpose worthless.
The question is : What in the act belongs to the
man, and what is this part of the act worth ? Now
whatever belongs not to the actor, but to the condi-
tions under which he works, is morally insignifi-
cant. For it is what we have called the physical
accident of his surroundings. But intent, apart
from motive, seems to be just such a physical acci-
dent ; for intent, apart from motive, must relate, not
to the real aim as such, but only to the means. A
man aims to be selfish. If now he lives where his
selfishness requires him to feed and clothe his enemy,

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 79

•

he will, if enlightened, do so, and deliberately too.
And he will show in the act just as much and just as
little charity as he would have shown had he lived
where selfishness was best served by killing his
enemy, and had he killed him. The intent, apart
from the motive of the man, can have reference only
to the means by which he seeks to get his ultimate
aim. And such intent relates to accidental matters.
If by a physical accident the selfish man grows up
where you must speak politely to your antagonist,
and treat him with great show of respect, then the
selfish man will deliberately, and with conscious in-
tent, do so ; and if he grows up where you challenge
your antagonist to a duel, he will possibly try that
way of getting rid of an enemy; and if he lives
among the cannibals, the selfish man, no more or
less selfish than in the other cases, only by training
more brutal in tastes, will torture and eat his antag-
onist. And if the doctrine of evolution shows that
one of these forms of " adaptation " is more complete
than another, or proves to us that we personally shall
be most prudent in adopting one only of the possible
courses, all this can in no wise tell us what aim in
conduct is morally best, but only what means most
exhaustively accomplish the selfish purposes of a
civilized man. So intent is morally valuable only
in connection with motive.

It is hardly worth while to dwell longer on the
curious devices by which certain defenders of the
application of the hypothesis of evolution to ques-
tions of fundamental ethics have tried to establish
that the truths of evolution teach us that we ought

80 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

to do right. The whole undertaking resembles that
of a man who should try to show us that the truth
of the law of gravitation clearly indicates that we
all ought to sit down. What is evident or doubtful
apart from the law of evolution, cannot, in this field,
be proved or disproved by the law. Shall we say :
" Do good to thy neighbor to-day, because evolution
tends to bring into existence a race of future beings
who will do good ? " To say this is to say something
utterly irrelevant. What do we care about remote
posterity, unless we already care about our neigh-
bors as they are ? Or shall we say : " Do good to
thy neighbor because evolution has made thee a
social being, whose instincts lead thee to desire thy
neighbor's good?" To say this is to say what is
only very imperfectly true. One's instincts often
lead him to take much selfish delight in thwarting
his neighbor. If it were true universally and
strictly, it would not show us why to do right, nor
yet what is right. For it is not obviously a funda-
mental ethical doctrine that we ought to follow an
instinct as such. And if we follow an instinct be-
cause we find it pleasing, our aim is still not to do
any right save what pleases us personally. And the
whole wisdom of the doctrine of evolution would be
reduced to the assurance that we ought to do as we
like, with due regard to prudence. Shall we then
say: "Do good, because the social order that has
evolved is too strong for thee, and will hurt thee
unless thou submittest to it?" Still one has the
selfish motive insisted upon, and morality is still
only prudence. And the doctrine will still have to

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 81

admit that whenever one can outwit society pru-
dently, and can gain for himself his selfish aims by
anti-social but for him in this case safe means, then
and there the selfish man may do this anti-social
thing if he likes, the doctrine, with all its good mo-
tives, being unable to show why not. For it will not
do to resort to some such subterfuge as this, and to
say : " A man's advantage depends upon the pros-
perity of the whole. But anti-social acts ultimately
tend to weaken society. Hence they ultimately tend
to diminish the prosperity of the whole, and there-
fore tend to harm the selfish individual." All this
is irrelevant, in case the social consequences cannot
return upon the selfish individual's head during his
lifetime. The wasteful owners of great forests in
our western mountains, the great and oppressive
capitalists that crush rivals and outwit the public,
the successful speculators, the national leaders whose
possession of the biggest battalions enables them to
demand of weaker neighbors unjust sacrifices, all
these may listen in scorn to talk about their prosper-
ity as dependent upon that of society, their enemies
and victims included. " We eat the fruit," they can
say. " To be sure we consume it by eating, and we
like to waste it so long as we ourselves profit by the
waste, and we could neither eat it nor waste it if
there were no fruit ; but there is enough to last us
and our children for our lifetimes. After us the
social famine, but for others, not for us." The now
famous reply ascribed to one of our great railroad
kings when, some time since, he was asked about the
" accommodation of the public " by a certain train,

82 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

well illustrates our point. " Damn the public," said
the great servant and master of the traveling world.
If he really did not say that, very likely there are
those who would have meant it. And may the evo-
lutionist condemn them solely on his own grounds ?

Or finally, shall the doctrine retreat behind an
ancient maxim, and state itself thus : " Evolution
shows us what are the ultimate tendencies of acts ;
but no act ought to be committed which belongs to
a class of acts whose general tendency is bad " ?
Would not this be a lamentable surrender of the
whole position ? Yet such a surrender is found in
one or two passages of the book that is nowadays
supposed best to represent the doctrine that we have
been criticising in the foregoing, namely, in Mr. Spen-
cer's "Data of Ethics." The physical facts of evo-
lution are to give us our ideal. How? By telling
us what in the long run, for the world at large, pro-
duces happiness. But if my individual happiness in
the concrete case is hindered by what happens to be
known to help in the long run towards the produc-
tion of general happiness, how shall the general rule
be applicable to my case ? Mr. Spencer replies, in
effect, that the concrete consequences for individuals
must not be judged, but only the general tendency
of the act. Happiness is the ultimate end ; but in
practice the " general conditions of happiness " must
be the proximate end. But how is this clear ? If I
know in a given case what will make me happy, and
if the means to my happiness are not the general
ones at all, but, in this concrete case, something con-
flicting therewith, why should I not do as I please ?

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 83

Because, Mr. Spencer says, the concrete case must
be tested by the general law of Evolution. But once
more, why ? The only answer is the principle, which
Mr. Spencer sometimes tacitly assumes, sometimes
very grudgingly acknowledges, sometimes seems to
claim as his peculiar property, namely, the well-
known Kantian principle, that nothing should be
done which we could not wish to see done universally^
or that the rule of the single act ought to be a rule
adapted to serve as an universal rule for all ra-
tional beings. But if this maxim is essential to the
foundation of a moral system, then how poor the
pretense that the law of evolution gives us any
foundation for ethics at all. The facts of evolution
stand there, mere dead realities, wholly without
value as moral guides, until the individual assumes
his own moral principle, namely, his ideal determi-
nation to do nothing that a person considering the
order of the world as a whole and desiring universal
happiness would condemn, from the point of view of
the general tendencies of acts. Grant that princi-
ple, and you have an ideal aim for action. Then
a knowledge of the course of evolution will be use-
ful, just as a knowledge of astronomy is useful to a
navigator. But astronomy does not tell us why we
are to sail on the water, but only how to find our way.
With Kant's principle assumed, we already have at-
tained, apart from any physical doctrine of evolution,
the essentials of an ethical doctrine to start with ;
and we need no doctrine of evolution to found this
ethical doctrine, but need it only to tell us the means.
But if we have not already this Kantian principle,

84 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

then it is hard indeed to see what the doctrine of
evolution can do to help us to get it. Mr. Spencer
seems to forget that a doctrine of Means is not a
doctrine of Ends.

In sum then, either the fundamental moral dis-
tinctions are clear apart from the physical fact of
evolution, or the physical fact cannot illustrate for
us the distinctions that we do not previously know.
If there is a real moral conflict between egoism and
altruism, then this conflict must concern the aims of
these two dispositions, not the accidental outcome
that we reach, nor the more or less variable means
that we employ in following the dispositions. And
any effort to reconcile the two tendencies by showing
that through evolution, or otherwise, it has become
necessary for an altruistic aim to be reached by
seemingly selfish means, or for a selfish purpose to
be gained by seemingly altruistic devices, — any such
effort has no significance for ethics. If the question
were : " Shall we buy mutton or beef at the market
to-day ? " it would surely be a strange answer to the
question, or " reconciliation " of the alternatives, if
one replied, " But whichever you do you must go
over the same road to get to the market." How
then are we helped by knowing that, in our society,
altruism and egoism, these two so bitterly opposed
moral aims, have very often to hide their conflicts
under a use of very much the same outward show of
social conformity.

There is indeed no doubt that all the knowledge
we may get about the facts of evolution will help us
to judge of the means by which we can realize the

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 85

moral ideals that we independently form. But the
ideals themselves we apply to the course of evolution
as tests of its worth, or hold as aims to be realized
through knowledge of nature. We do not get them
from studying the course of nature as a mere pro-
cess. There is no doubt of the reality and of the
vast importance of the physical fact of evolution.
Its ethical importance, however, has been, we hold,
misunderstood. Evolution is for ethics a doctrine
not of ends, but of the means that we can use. In
fact, there is an applied ethic of evolution, but no
fundamental ethical doctrine based upon evolution.
Those who investigate evolution are doing much to
further the realization of ethical ideals, but they
cannot make or find for us our ethical ideals. They
show us where lies the path to an already desired
goal. For them to try to define the goal merely by
means of their physical discoveries, is a great mis-
take. It can lead only to such labored efforts as we
have here been criticising, efforts to prove some
such opinion as that altruism is a form of selfish-
ness, or that selfishness is the only possible altruism.
Whether we are just in fancying that these latter
efforts are really identical with the actual efforts of
any recent evolutionists, the reader must judge for
himself. Altruism we must, at all events, justify in
another way.

V.

But now let us turn from those who define unself-
ishness as a useful means to a selfish end, and let us
consider the effort to make pure unselfishness a self-

86 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

.v evident goal of conduct, by founding unselfishness
". on the direct revelation of the emotion of Pity.
Here, as before, we shall meet with the skeptical
criticism that the mere physical fact of the existence
of certain conditions is no proof of the validity of an
ideal moral demand. Just as the physical fact that
a clever self-seeker must pretend to be unselfish, and
must outwardly produce effects that benefit others,
is no foundation for a genuinely unselfish ideal,
I just so the presence of a pitiful impulse, a mere fact
*; of human nature, is no foundation for an ideal rule
i of conduct. The feeling is capricious, just as the
social conditions that render public spirit and gen-
erosity the best selfish policy are capricious. As
the selfish man would behave with open selfishness
in case he were where unselfishness in outward con-
duct no longer was worth to him the trouble, even so
the pitiful man would, merely as pitiful, be cruelly
selfish if cruel selfishness, instead of generous deeds,
could satisfy his impulse. In fact, he often is cru-
elly selfish ; and if sympathy were always unselfish,
still, as a feeling, it is a mere accidental fact of hu-
man nature. So again, the effort to found a moral
ideal on a natural fact will fail. But let us look
closer.

• Schopenhauer is the best modern representative of
' the view that Pity or sympathetic emotion is the

• foundation of right conduct. In pity he finds the
only unselfish principle in man, and he insists that
pity is a tendency not reducible to any other more
selfish emotion of our nature. He finds it necessary
to refute as an error the oft repeated opinion that l

1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 211 (2d ed ).

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 87

" pity springs from a momentary illusion of imagi-
nation, so that we first put ourselves in the sufferer's
place, and now, in imagination, fancy that we suffer
his pangs in our person." This, replies Schopen-
hauer, is a blunder. " It remains to us all the time
clear and immediately certain, that he is the suf-
ferer, not we ; and it is in his person, not in ours,
that we feel the pain, and are troubled. We suffer
with him, so in him ; we feel his pain as his, and do
not fancy that it is ours ; yes, the happier our own
state is, and the more the consciousness of it con-
trasts in consequence with the situation of our neigh-
bor, so much the more sensitive are we to pity."
And of this wondrous feeling no complete psycholog-
ical explanation can be given ; the true explanation,
thinks Schopenhauer, must be metaphysical. In
pity a man comes to a sense of the real oneness in
essence of himself and his neighbor.

This pity is, therefore, for Schopenhauer, the only
moral motive, first, because it is the only non-egois-
tic motive, and secondly, because it is the expression
of a higher insight. The first character of pity is
illustrated by Schopenhauer in an ingenious passage,
by means of a comparison of pity and other motives
as exhibited in a supposed concrete instance. We
shall find it well to quote the most of the passage in
full: —

" I will take at pleasure a case as an example to furnish
for this investigation an experimentum crucis. To make
the matter the harder for me, I will take no case of char-
ity, but an injustice, and one, too, of the most flagrant
sort. Suppose two young people, Caius and Titus, both

88 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

passionately in love, and each with a different maiden.
Let each one find in his way a rival, to whom external cir-
cumstances have given a very decided advantage. Both
shall have made up their minds to put each his own rival
out of the world ; and both shall be secure against any
discovery, or even suspicion. But when each for himself
sets about the preparations for the murder, both of them,
after some inner conflict, shall give up the attempt. They
shall render account to us, plainly and truthfully, of why
they have thus decided. Now what account Caius shall
render, the reader shall decide as he pleases. Let Caius be
prevented by religious scruples, by the will of God, by the
future punishment, by the coming judgment, or by any-
thing of that sort. Or let him [with Kant] say : ' I re-
flected that the maxim of my procedure in this case would
not have been fit to serve as an universal rule for all pos-
sible rational beings, since I should have used my rival as
means and not at the same time as End in himself.' Or
let him say with Fichte : * Every human life is Means or
instrument for the realization of the Moral Law; there-
fore I cannot, without being indifferent to the moral law,
destroy one who is destined to contribute to that end/
Or let him say, after Wollaston : ' I have considered that
the deed would be the expression of an untrue proposi-
tion.' Or let him say, after Hutcheson : ( The moral
sense, whose sensations, like those of every other sense,
are not further to be explained, has determined me to
refrain.' Or let him say, after Adam Smith : 6 1 foresaw
that my deed, if I did it, would arouse no sympathy with
me in the spectators of the act.' Or, after Christian
Wolff : ' I recognized that I should thereby hinder my
own growth towards perfection without helping the growth
of anybody else.' Or let him say, after Spinoza : i Hom-
ini nihil utilius homine ; ergo, hominem interimere nolui.9

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 89

In short, let him say what he will. But Titus, whose ac-
count of himself I reserve for my choice, let him say :
4 When I began to prepare, and so for the moment was
busy no longer with my passion, but with my rival, then
it became for the first time quite clear to me what now
was really to be his fate. But just here pity and compas-
sion overcame me. I grieved for him ; my heart would
not be put down ; I could not do it.' I ask now every
honest and unprejudiced reader, which of the two is the
better man ? To which of the two would he rather in-
trust his fate ? Which of them was restrained by the
purer motive ? Where, therefore, lies the principle of
moral action ? " l

What shall we say of this foundation for altru-
ism ? Are pity and unselfishness thus shown to be,
for the purposes of ethics, identical ? Schopenhau-
er's suggestion seems attractive, but from the outset
doubtful. Let us examine it more carefully.

VI.

This Pity is, at all events, for the first just an im-
pulse, no more ; so at least, as we learn, it appears
in the unreflective man.2 " Nature," Schopenhauer
tells us, has " planted in the human heart that won-
drous disposition through which the sorrows of one
are felt by the other, and from which conies the voice
that, according to the emergency, calls to one 4 Spare,'
to another, ' Help,' and calls urgently and with au-
thority. Surely there was to be expected from the
aid thus originating more for the prosperity of all

1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 231.

2 Grundlage der Moral, p. 245.

90 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

than could have been expected from a strict maxim
of duty, general, abstract, and deduced from certain
rational considerations and logical combinations of
ideas. For from the latter source one might the less
expect success, because the mass of men must re-
main what they always have been, rude men, unable,
by reason of their inevitable bodily tasks, to get
time to cultivate their minds, and therefore, being
rude men, must find general principles and abstract
truths unintelligible, so that only the concrete has
meaning for them. But for the arousing of this
pity, which we have shown to be the only source of
unselfish actions, and so the true basis of morality,
one needs no abstract, but only perceptive knowl-
edge (bedarf es keiner abstrakten, sondern nur der
anschauenden Enkenntniss), only the mere under-
standing of the concrete case, to which pity at once
lays claim, without further reflective mediation."
And, to make his view clearer, Schopenhauer fur-
ther appeals to passages quoted by him with ap-
proval from Rousseau : l "II est done bien certain,
que la pitie est un sentiment naturel, qui, moderant
dans chaque individu 1'amour de soi-mSme, concourt
a la conservation mutuelle de toute 1'espece. . . .
C'est, en un mot, dans ce sentiment naturel plutdt,
que dans les argumens subtils, qu'ilfaut chercher la
cause de la repugnance qu* eprouverait tout homme
a mal faire." Pity, then, is no abstract principle,
but a tendency to do so and so in a concrete case.
For the natural and unlearned man it is a mere
sentiment, a feeling with his fellow, no more.

1 " Discours sur 1'origine de 1'inegalite." Quoted in the Grund-
lage der Moral, p. 247.

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 91

But then does this sentiment exhaust for Schopen-
hauer the whole meaning of pity ? In no wise. Not
for this sole reason is pity the whole basis of morality,
namely, because it is the only non-egoistic impulse in
us ; but besides this reason, there is the second rea-
son used by Schopenhauer to give special dignity to
pity. This other reason is in fact the deeper basis
for him of pity as the principle of conduct. Pity is
namely a revelation in concrete form of a great fun-
damental truth, the one above referred to, the great
fact of the ultimate and metaphysical Oneness of all
sentient beings. Because pity reveals this, therefore
has this sentiment an authority, a $epth and a sig-
nificance that a sentiment, merely as such, could
never have.

About this aspect of the matter, Schopenhauer in-
structs us more than once in his writings. A few
quotations from one discussion will serve for present
illustration.

" The difference between my own and another's person
seems for experience an absolute difference. The differ-
ence of space that separates me from my neighbor,, sep-
arates me also from his joy and pain. But on the other
hand, it must still be remarked, that the knowledge that we
have of ourselves is no complete and clear knowledge." 1
..." Whereon is founded all variety and all multiplicity
of beings ? On space and time ; through these alone is va-
riety or multiplicity possible, since what is many can only
be conceived as coexistent or as successive. Because the
many like things are called individuals, I therefore call
space and time, as making possible the existence of a mid-

1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 267.

92 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

titude of individuals, the principium individuationis." l
. . . "If anything is undoubtedly true in the explanations
that Kant's wonderful insight has given to the world, then
surely it is the Transcendental ^Esthetics." ..." Ac-
cording to this doctrine, space and time . . . belong only
to the phenomena. . . . But if the world in itself knows
not space or time, then of necessity the world in itself
knows nothing of multitude." ..." Hence only one iden-
tical Being manifests itself in all the numberless phenom-
ena of this world of sense. And conversely, what appears
as a multitude, in space or in time, is not a real thing in it-
self, but only a phenomenon." ..." Consequently that
view is not false that abolishes the distinction between
Self and Not-self ; rather is the opposed view the false
one." ..." But the former is the view that we have found
as the real basis of the phenomenon of pity, so that in fact
pity is the expression of it. This view then is the meta-
physical basis of ethics, and consists in this : that one in-
dividual directly recognizes in another his own very self,
his own true essence.19 2

These passages from Schopenhauer are, as one sees,
interesting not only because they defend the emotion
of pity as the foundation of morals, but also because
they offer an interesting suggestion of an aspect of
the matter not before noticed in our study. Like
so many of Schopenhauer's suggestions, this one is
neither wholly original, nor very complete in itself.
But it is so expressed as to attract attention ; it is
helpful to us by its very incompleteness. It is stim-
ulating, although it proves nothing. This modern
Buddhism brings to our minds the query (which goes

1 Grundlage, p. 267. 2 Grundlage, p. 270.

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 93

beyond the present scope of this chapter), whether
the altruistic motives, whatever they are, might not
somehow be made of evident and general validity as
ethical principles, if we could show that in the mo-
ment of pity or in some other altruistic moment
there is expressed the nascent discovery of an Illu-
sion^ namely, the Illusion of Selfishness. That is
what Schopenhauer supposed himself to have found
out. In pity he found an unselfish impulse. But this
unselfish impulse was, for the first, just an impulse,
a sentiment, beloved of Rousseau, remote from the
abstract principles that the philosophers had been
seeking. Here was unselfishness, but still seeming
to need reflective development and deeper founda-
tion. Schopenhauer thought that he had found such
a deeper basis for pity when he suggested that it was
an imperfect metaphysical insight. In effect one
might sum up his views thus : In deeper truth, he
says, you and I are one Being, namely, the One great
Being, the Absolute Will, which works in us both.
But because we both perceive in time and space,
therefore you and I seem to ourselves to be different
and perhaps warring individuals, like the two halves
of a divided worm. Only the sentiment of pity sees
through the temporal veil of illusion, and so seeing,
in its own intuitive, unreflective way, it whispers to
us that the pain of each is in truth the other's pain.
And when we really feel thus, we forget the illusion
of sense, and act as if we were one. So acting we fol-
low the higher insight, and when metaphysic comes,
it will justify us in our view. Such, in our own
words, are Schopenhauer's ideas.

94 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

We are still not concerned for Schopenhauer's
metaphysic, which, God knows, was a rotten enough
tub for a wise man to go down to the sea in. But
in his character as keeper of beautiful curiosities,
Schopenhauer shows us in his literary museum, that
is built on the dry land, many very useful thoughts ;
and we need not follow him out onto the great deep
at present. But we note with interest this sugges-
tion that he adds to his theory of pity. Is that sug-
gestion worth anything ? Is pity in fact a detection
of an illusion ? And does this illusion constitute the
basis of selfishness? Perhaps that suggestion will
be needed in a future chapter. Meanwhile, how-
ever, we have at present to do only with pity as a
mere emotion. Surely if pity does discover for us
any illusion in selfishness, then it must be a particu-
lar form of pity to which this function belongs. For
much of pity simply illustrates this illusion. We
cannot then do better than first to distinguish the
selfish from the altruistic forms of what we popu-
larly include under the one name Pity, or, to use the
more general word, Sympathy. We shall have to go
over old and commonplace ground, but we need to ;
for the illusion of selfishness, to be detected, needs
also to be illustrated.

VII.

When one sees his neighbor in pain, does one of
necessity come to know that pain as such, to realize
its true nature as it is in his neighbor ? Or does
one often fall into an illusion about that pain, regard-

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 95

ing it as somehow not quite real ? Schopenhauer
would reply : The heartless man, who has no compas-
sion, falls into a sort of illusion about his neighbor.
He thinks more or less clearly that that pain of his
neighbor's is a sort of unreal pain, not as living as
would be his own pain. But the pitiful man, the
only quite unselfish man, — he perceives the reality
of his neighbor's suffering. He knows that that is
no phantom suffering, but even such pain as his own
would be.

We want to test this idea in a practical way. So
we say : Let us judge of this sympathy by its fruits ?
Are we in fact certain to be led to unselfish acts
if in all cases we obey the dictates of sympathy ?
Schopenhauer thinks that he has secured altruism
for his sympathetic or pitiful man by remarking that,
in true pity, one feels the pain, not as his own, but
as the other's pain. To follow the dictates of this
sympathy would of necessity lead, one might say,
to the effort unselfishly to relieve the other. But
then does not this depend very much upon the way
in which pity comes to be an object of reflection for
the man that feels it ? Pity is often of itself an in-
determinate impulse, that may be capable of very
various interpretation by the subsequent reflection
of the pitiful mind. One may through pity come to
reflect that this feeling stands for a real pain in the
other man, and may act accordingly ; or one may
have very different reflections. One may fail to
realize the other's pain as such, and may be driven
back upon himself. For most people the first re-
flection that follows upon strong pity is no unselfish

96 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

one at all. It is very simply the precept : " Get rid
of the pain that your neighbor causes you to feel."
Sympathy with pain may make you tremble, grow
faint, feel choked, weep ; and all these sudden emo-
tions are followed perhaps by long-enduring melan-
choly. All this causes you to forget the reality of
the other's pain. This personal trouble of yours,
felt in stronger cases in your body as a physical dis-
turbance, as something unnerving, prostrating, over-
whelming, turns your reflection upon yourself, and
you are very apt to ask : What am I to do to be free
from it ? So to ask is already to begin to forget
your neighbor. The pain that his pain caused has
simply become your pain. You are, even through
your pity, bound fast in an illusion. For there are
three ways of removing this pain, and of satisfying
for you the sympathy that caused it. One way, and
often a very hard one, puzzling to follow, full of re-
sponsibility and of blunders, would be taken if you
did your best, perseveringly and calmly, to get your
neighbor out of his trouble. That would doubtless
take a long time, you would never be adequately
thanked for your trouble, and you might very easily
blunder and do harm instead of good to him, thus
causing in the end yet more sympathetic pain for
you, coupled this time with remorse. The second
way is to get used to the sight of pain, so that you
no longer feel any sympathetic suffering. The third
way is generally the easiest of all. That is to go
away from the place, and forget all about the sad
business as soon as possible. That is the way that
most sensitive people take in dealing with most of

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 97

the suffering that they meet. The first way gives
you the most of hard work to do. The second way,
by dulling your sensibilities, makes you less alive to
the pleasures that are to be gained in the company
of happy men. The stern man, who has seen so
much suffering as to be indifferent to it, may be less
alive to the bliss of sympathy that gentler natures
come to know, in refined and peaceful society. By
far the most inviting way is the third. It prevents
you from growing callous, cold, and harsh. It leaves
you sensitive, appreciative, tender-hearted, freshly
sympathetic, an admirable and humane being. But
it also saves you from the pangs that to refined na-
tures must be the most atrocious, the pangs of con-
templating a world of sorrow which your best efforts
can but very imperfectly help. People with a deli-
cate sense of the beautiful surely cannot endure to
go about seeing all sorts of filthy and ugly miseries,
and if they can endure it, will they not be much
happier, as well as more refined, more delicate in
taste, much higher in the scale of beautiful cultiva-
tion, if they do not try to endure it, but keep them-
selves well surrounded by happy and ennobling com-
panions ? For the sight of pain is apt to make
you coarse ; it might degrade you even to the level
of the peevish sufferer himself. Does a refined soul
desire that ? No one is a duller, a less stimulating,
a less ennobling companion, than the average man
when he is suffering atrociously. Pain brings out
his native brutishness. He is abject, he curses, he
behaves perhaps like a wild beast. Or he lies mute
and helpless, showing no interest in what you do for

7

98 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

him, hating you possibly, just because you are the
nearest creature to him. His gratitude is apt to be
a myth. So long as he yet suffers, he does not ap-
preciate what you are doing for him, for why should
he thank you while you make him no better ? And
if you can cure him, what then ? Nobody can re-
member very clearly a very sharp pain once over.
Hence he will underrate your services. You can
much better appreciate your moderate trouble in
helping him than he can afterwards appreciate the
very great and agonizing trouble from which you
saved him. One forgets in part one's greatest an-
guish, one's most dangerous diseases. The worst
troubles are not favorable to clear memory. Above
all, however, his memory will be weak for what you
did in his case. He will shock you afterwards by
having failed to notice that you took any serious
trouble in his behalf at all. But, if he was sick and
you nursed him, he will remember very well how
you harassed him as you nursed him. He will re-
member a creaking door or an ill-cooked steak, when
he forgets your cups of cold water, your sleepless
nights, your toil to secure silence when he needed it,
your patience when he complained, your sacrifice of
all other present aims in life on his account. All
that he will forget, not because he is a bad man, but
because he is an ordinary creature whom pain de-
based and corrupted, so that he became hardly a fit
companion for an elevated and refined soul like
yours. He is only human. If you were an average
man yourself, you would treat your friends that
aided you in your worst suffering after much the

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 99

same fashion. It is well if the sufferer and his
helper do not begin a quarrel that will last a life-
time, all because of the meddlesome self-sacrifice of
the officious helper. For to the wretched any help
is apt to seem officious, because no help is imme-
diately and unconditionally successful.

So then, if you are- tender-hearted, does tender-
heartedness dictate all this waste of sympathy ?
Plainly not. Tender-heartedness need not say : My
neighbor must be relieved. Tender-heartedness, as
a personal affection of yours, says only : Satisfy me.
And you can satisfy this affection if you forget about
all those degraded wretches that are doomed to suf-
fer, and associate with those blessed ones whose in-
nocent joy shall make your tender heart glad of its
own tenderness. Let us rejoice with those that do
rejoice, and those that weep, let them take care of
themselves in everlasting oblivion. Such is the dic-
tate of tender-hearted selfishness ; and our present
point is the not at all novel thought, so often elab-
orated in George Eliot's novels, the thought that,
the tenderer the heart, the more exclusively selfish
becomes this dictate of tender-heartedness. Very
sensitive people, who cannot overcome their sensi-
tiveness, are perforce selfish in this world of pain.
They must forget that there is suffering. Their
pity makes them cruel. They cannot bear the sight
of suffering ; they must shut the door upon it. If
he is a Dives, such a man must first of all insist that
the police shall prevent people like Lazarus, covered
with sores, from lying in plain sight at the gate.
Such men must treat pain as, in these days of

100 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

plumbing, we treat filth. We get the plumber and
the carpenter to hide it so well that even our civ-
ilized nostrils shall not be offended. That we call
modern improvement in house-building. Even so
we get the police to hide suffering from us ; and,
when that help fails, or is inapplicable, we appeal
to the natural sense of decency in the sufferers, and
demand, on the ground of common courtesy, that
they shall not intrude their miseries upon us. Thus
we cultivate a tender sympathy for the most delicate
emotions of the human heart, as we never could do
if we let suffering, as our forefathers used to let filth,
lie about in plain sight. Ignore another's suffering,
and then it practically becomes non-existent. So
says selfishness.

VIII.

If we ourselves are very happy, our lack of will-
ingness to consider suffering may become greater and
greater as we get happier. Nobody is colder in
shutting out the thought of misery than a joyous
man in a joyous company. " If there be anywhere
any wretched people (which we doubt) let them keep
well away from this place." That is the voice of
the spirit of overflowing sympathetic joy, as Schiller
so finely expresses it in the hymn an die Freude: —

" He who, proving, hath discovered,

What it is a friend to own,
O'er whom woman's love hath hovered,

Let him here his bliss make known :
Yea, if but one living being,

On the earth is his to-day, —

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 101

I And who ne'er has known suth,; fipeJn£,r ' • '

Let him weep his grief away* * *
"Joy," says the enthusiastic young "Schiller* in
this rhapsody, " Joy was bestowed on the worm."
" All beings drink joy at Mother Nature's breast."
Delightful generosity of the happy man ! But what
do the crushed worms think about it? " Whoso hath
a friend," — but what of the poor wretches in the
slums of great cities, beaten, starved, imprisoned,
cheated, and cheating, starved and imprisoned again,
all through their lifetimes? How many souls do
these poor Ishmaelites call their own ? But of whom
shall the joyful man think, of whom does he or can he
think ? Of these ? No, it is the tendency of selfish
joy to build up its own pretty world of fancy. Every-
thing in that world, from cherub to worm, has joy's
sympathy, but only in so far as it is also joyous.
Seid umsMungen Millionen! dieser Kuss der
ganzen Welt ! But in fact dieser Kuss is intended
only for the happy world, which in the illusion, beau-
tiful, but yet cruel, of the innocently joyous man,
seems to be the whole world. Much good will such
kisses do to the Millionen that groan and writhe !
Joy ignores them, cannot believe them real.

Such then are some of the dictates of sympathy,

1 Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen

Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen

Mische seinen Jubel ein !
Ja, — wer auch nur eine Seele

Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund !
Und wer 's nie gekonnt, der stehle,

Weinend sich aus diesem Bund.

102 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Which cf ten bear 'to our conduct such relation as, in
a saying ^of Emerson's, the desire to go to Boston
tears to the possible 'ways of getting there. " When
I want to get to Boston," says in substance Emerson,
" I do not swim the Charles River, but prefer cross-
ing the bridge." Emerson's saying was intended to
illustrate his own preference for reading translations
of foreign authors rather than the originals. It
does illustrate very well the preference that we all
have for the shortest way out of our sympathetic
troubles. To help your suffering neighbor is hard
swimming, perhaps amid ice-blocks ; to go on and
find elsewhere merry company is to take the bridge
direct to Boston. Sympathy leads therefore often
to the ignoring of another man's state as real. And
this is the very Illusion of Selfishness itself.

Pity may then turn to selfish hatred of the sight
of suffering. It is hardly necessary to dwell at length
upon the disheartening reverse aspect of the picture,
namely, on the fact that, when pity does not lead us
to dread the suffering of others, it may lead us to
take such credit for our very power to sympathize
with pain, that we come to feel an actual delight in
the existence of the events that mean suffering to
others. Our hearts may so swell with pride at our
own importance as pitiful persons, that we may even
long to have somebody of our acquaintance in trou-
ble, so that we can go and pose, in the presence of
the sufferers, as humane commentators on the occur-
rence, as heroic endurers of sorrows that we do not
really share. This is the second stage of selfish pity.
It is even more enduring and incurable than the

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 103

first. The dread of the sight of pain may be made
to pass away by enough of inevitable experience.
But the selfish love of the office of comforter grows
with the sense of our personal importance, and with
the number of times when we are called upon to ex-
ercise our powers. There are people who are always
fretful and disconsolate unless they know of some-
body who very badly needs consoling. Then they
are calm and happy, for they are sure that they are
admirable as comforters, they feel themselves the
centre of an admiring neighborhood, they are plying
their noble avocation in a graceful fashion. This
type is surely no very uncommon one. Such people
are apt to be intolerable companions for you unless
you have a broken leg, or a fever, or a great bereave-
ment. Then they find you interesting, because you
are wretched. They nurse you like saints ; they
speak comfortably to you like angels. They hate to
give the little comfort that can be given from day
to day to those who are enduring the ordinary vex-
ations of healthy and prosaic life. They rejoice to
find some one overwhelmed with woe. The happy
man is to them a worthless fellow. High tempera-
ture is needed to soften their hearts. They would
be miserable in Paradise, at the sight of so much
tedious contentment ; but they would leap for joy if
they could but hear of a lost soul to whom a drop of
water could be carried. To them the most blessed
truth of Scripture is found in the passage : " For
the poor ye have always with you." Yea, blessed
are the merciful, for they shall never lack work.
They shall be like the sculptor, delighting in the

104 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

rough blocks of marble that contain his beloved
statues. For them the world will doubtless have al-
ways a plenty of blocks.

These are not the vulgarly malevolent. Yet they
would be disconsolate altogether if evil were to
cease. They regard misery as their special prop-
erty ; hence they would be very much disappointed
to hear that Paradise had come again, and that mis-
ery had been abolished. And we are speaking now,
not of the professional enthusiasm that must make
the physician interested in the diseases that he stud-
ies, but of the pure delight in pity that distinguishes
certain unprofessional people whose lives would be
almost utterly empty of all joy were their neighbors
not subject to serious calamities. Surely it is not
this sort of pity that overcomes the illusion of self-
ishness. Rather does such pity well illustrate that
illusion.

IX.

Sympathy then, as an emotion, is not always altru-
istic, but frequently very selfish. It does not always
overthrow, but often strengthens, selfishness. And
so deceitful an emotion cannot be trusted with the
office of giving moral insight. In so far as pity ever
does involve the detection of an illusion of selfishness,
we may have occasion to speak of it hereafter. For
on that side, Schopenhauer's thought still looks at-
tractive. But if we view pity with reference not to
insight but to emotion, if we ask whether a given act
was unselfish because it was pitiful, then we can
already answer that, in so far as unselfishness consti-

ALTRUISM AND EGOISM. 105

tutes morality, the pitiful character of an act does
not insure its unselfishness, and hence not its morality.
Schopenhauer's own typical example, quoted above,
is indeed interesting, but not conclusive as to this
question. "I pitied him," says the lover, who has
refrained from slaying his rival. " Had he not re-
sembled my father as he slept, I had done it," says
Lady Macbeth. Possibly Lady Macbeth' s pity was
good in itself, but not quite sufficient in quantity.
But her words remind us of what the lover might do,
if only pity stood in the way of the murder that he
desired to commit. He might get somebody else to
take care of the whole business, preparations and all,
and so save his own tender emotions. In fact, how-
ever, Schopenhauer's young lover has something
more than a mere emotion of pity in him.

But so far as we have considered sympathy, we
have had but another illustration of the difficulty
with which we are dealing. Even if sympathy were
always unselfish, never capricious, perfectly clear in
its dictates, there would remain the other objection.
Sympathy is a mere fact of a man's emotional nature.
To an unsympathetic man, how shall you demonstrate
the ideals that you found upon the feeling of sympa-
thy ? And so one returns to the old difficulty. You
have an ideal whereby you desire to judge the world.
But this ideal you found in its turn on the fact that
somebody has a certain sort of Emotion. Any one
who has not this emotion you declare to be an in-
competent judge. And so your last foundation for
the ideal is something whose worth is to be demon-
strated solely by the fact that it exists.

106 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Thus in this and in the last chapter, in general
and in particular discussions, we have found the one
problem recurring. The ideal is to have an ideal
foundation, yet we seem always to give it a founda-
tion in some reality. And if we then look about us,
we always find some skeptic saying, either that he
does not feel sure of the existence of any such
reality, or that he doubts whether it means what we
say that it means, or, again, that in any case there are
other people, who have found other realities, and
whose moral principles, founded on these other real-
ities, are in deadly opposition to ours. The idealist
of our preliminary discussion on the methods of eth-
ical inquiry has so far met with numerous misfor-
tunes. He has continually been enticed over to a
sort of realistic position, and then just the same
arguments that he used against the realist are used
against him. If, however, true to himself, he as-
saults the realism of the modern descendants of
Hobbes with the argument that all their physical
hypotheses are worthless without ideals, then he
hears the challenge to show an ideal that is not
his whim, and that is not founded on a physical doc-
trine. There seems no refuge for him as yet but to
turn skeptic himself.

CHAPTER V.

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM.

Long is the night to him who is awake ; long is a mile to him who
is tired ; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law. —
DHAMMAPADA.

To turn skeptic himself, we said, seemed the only
way open before our idealist. If only he had placed
his standard a little lower ! If only he had not
insisted on getting his ideal by ideal methods!
Then he might have remained safe in some one of
the positions that he temporarily assumed. But al-
ways he drove himself out of them. Some stupen-
dous external reality, some beautiful mental state,
would suggest itself to him, and he would say : " Lo,
here is the ideal that I seek." But forthwith his
own doubt would arise, accusing him of faithlessness.
" What hast thou found save that this or that hap-
pens to exist ? " the doubt would say, and our ideal-
ist would be constrained to answer, " Not because it
exists, but because I have freely chosen it for my
guide, is it the Ideal." And then would come the
repeated accusation that caprice is the sole ground
for the choice of this ideal. Skepticism, then, total
skepticism as to the foundation of ethics, seems to
be the result that threatens us. We must face this
skepticism and consider its outcome.

108 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

I.

It is in fact in such skepticism as this that one
finds the real power and meaning of most genuine
modern Pessimism. Not so much in the hopeless-
ness of our efforts to reach our ideals once chosen as
in our perpetual hesitation or unsteadiness in the
choice of ideals, we most frequently find the deepest
ground for pessimistic despair. Choose an ideal,
and you have at least your part to play in the world.
The game may seem worth the trouble ; for far off
as may be what you seek, there is the delight and
the earnestness of free self-surrender to a great aim.
But pessimism is almost inevitable if you have been
long trying to find an ideal to which you can devote
yourself, and if you have failed in your quest.
Therefore those advocates of pessimism are most
formidable who dwell less upon the ills of life, as
bare facts, and more upon the aimlessness of life.
Von Hartmann, therefore, to whom pessimism is
more the supposed result of a process of summation,
and thus is a belief that the sum of pains in life
overbalances the sum of pleasures, produces little
effect upon us by his balance-sheet. But Schopen-
v hauer, who dwelt not only upon the balance-sheet,
( but still more upon the fundamental fact that life is
f restless and aimless, — he is nearer to success in his
pessimistic efforts. It is here that one finds also
the true strength of Schopenhauer's model, the
Buddhistic despair of life. Choose your aim in life,
says in effect Buddhism, let it be wife or child,
wealth or fame or power, and still your aim is only

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 109

one among many, lost in the eternal strife, at war
with all the rest, and never able to prove its right to
supremacy in the world. From life to life you pass,
now a Brahman, now a king, now a worm, now a
tiger, now a beggar, now in hell, now among the
demons of the air ; your aims alter everlastingly
with each new birth, and nowhere do you find life
anything but a succession of aims, no one of which
is intrinsically more significant than the others.
The world of aims is a world of strife, and no life
has any real significance. No desire is of any es-
sential worth. Therefore, seeing all this, give up
desire. Have it as your one aim to have no aim.))
Such is the outcome of the insight into the eternal
warfare of aims. The Buddhist parables try to
make plain this insignificance of life both by dwell-
ing on the fact that men must finally fail to get their
aims, and by insisting that, if men temporarily suc-
ceed, their condition is no less insignificant than it is
when they fail. The failure is used to show a man
not so much the difficulty of getting his aim in this
bad world, as the worthlessness of his aim. The
success when it comes is embittered for the success-
ful man by reminding him that all desire is tran-
sient, and that what he now loves will come to seem
hateful to him. In both cases the lesson, whether of
the success or of the failure, is, not that the order of
things is diabolical, and therefore an enemy of man-
kind, but that the desires themselves are hopelessly 1
confused and worthless. If Buddhism dwelt only*
on the hopelessness of our efforts to get the good
things that we want, the doctrine would result in a

110 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

sort of Promethean defiance of the physical world,
our powerful and cruel enemy. But Buddhism in-
sists upon it that we know not what are the good
things that we pretend to want. Our desires being-
ignorant, and endlessly changeable, we have no right
to hope for success. The moral of their stories is
not a protest against the physical evils about us, but
a general condemnation of the vain aims that are
in us.

The same aimlessness of life is the subject of
lament in much of our modern romantic poetry.
Here is, for the melancholy romantic poet, the great
evil of existence, that we know not what is good.
Here is the great disappointment of life, that we
have no object in life. Here is the great failure,
that we cannot make up our minds to undertake
anything. Here is the great emptiness, that we
have nothing to fill. And thus the ethical skepti-
cism that has so far beset our path in the present
investigation becomes, when we dwell upon it and
fully realize its meaning, an ethical pessimism. We
shall then illustrate afresh our problem if we con-
sider how this difficulty of the choice of an ideal
has affected the search of certain among our modern
romantic poets for what they would call the ideal
emotion.

II.

Of all the subjects of reflection in romantic poetry,
none is more familiar than the question of the mean-
ing and worth of human life as a whole. The first
and natural answer of the modern poet to this ques-

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. Ill

tion is well known. Human life means for him the
emotional side of life. The highest good, when
found, must be an emotional good. The romantic
poet, criticising life, must aim to make clear what
kind of emotional condition is the most satisfactory
one. In this view we have no mere truism. Many
forms of Hedonism would oppose the doctrine that
in the intenser emotions can be found the ideal
states of consciousness. The common sense of men
of the world sees in the more moderate pleasures of
polite leisure, in the attainment of practical knowl-
edge, in a successful professional or business career,
the sources of permanent satisfaction. Several
schools of ancient philosophy regarded tranquillity
as constituting the essence of a blessed life. But to
all this the spirit of modern poetry was from the
outset violently opposed. Tranquillity, once ex-
changed for storm and stress, is not again regarded
as the goal. Active emotion, intense in quality, un-
limited in quantity, is what the poets of the revolu-
tion desire. One need only mention " Werther,"
"The Robbers," "The Revolt of Islam," "Man-
fred," "Faust," to suggest what is meant by this
spirit of the revolutionary poetry.

Life, then, can be of worth only in so far as it is
full of the desirable forms of poetic emotion. But
is such fullness of life possible ? Is the view that
makes it the ideal a tenable view? Must not the
consistent following of this view lead ultimately to
pessimism ? The answer to this problem is the his-
tory of the whole romantic movement. Here must
suffice a sketch of some of the principal results of
the movement.

112 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

The stir of modern life, then, has awakened sensi-
bility, quickened desire, aroused the passion for free-
dom, disturbed old traditions. Above all, the theo-
logical ideals of life have been, for the romantic poet,
disturbed, perhaps shattered. His highest good must
be sought in his own soul. What is the consequence ?
First, of course, a sense of splendid independence, a
lofty spiritual pride. The joy of freed emotion is
equaled by few delights on earth. The self- worship of
poetic genius is surpassed by few forms of conceit.
Shelley, rejoicing in his strength, writing u The Ne-
cessity of Atheism," and defending, in all innocence
of evil, adultery and incest, is a good example of the
expression of this spirit. Lavatar's account of the
nature of genius is another instance : " As the appa-
ritions of angels do not come, but are present, do not
go away, but are gone, as they strike the innermost
marrow, influence by their immortality the immortal
in men, vanish and yet still influence, leave behind
them sweet shuddering and tears of terror, and on
the countenance pale joy, so the operation of genius.
Describe genius as you will, — name it f ruitf ulness of
soul, faith, hope, love, — the unlearned, the unlearn-
able, — the inimitable, the divine, — that is genius.
?T is inspiration, revelation, that may be felt, but not
willed or desired ; 't is art above art, its way is the
way of the lightning." 1 We cannot quote a tenth
part of this rhapsody, wherein the self-admiration
and the mutual admiration of the young men about
Goethe, in the years just before and after 1780, re-
ceive a characteristic expression.

1 See the passage at much greater length in Koberstein's Gesch.
der deutschen. Nationalliteratur, bd. iv., p. 26, of the 5th edit.

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 113

This pride leads directly to the effort to build up
a wholly new set of ideals. The patience of the
statesman, of the student of science, of the business
man, is unknown to these forceful young men.
They must make a world of their own, and in a day
too. At the same time they are without any definite
faith. In fact, definite faith would endanger for
them the freshness of their emotions. They fear any
creed but one self-made. And they can more easily
tear down than build up. One of the most- interest-
ing of the young geniuses of the age of the German
romantic development l is the early lost Novalis
(Friedrich von Hardenberg), a representative, like
Shelley after him, of the emotional or romantic po-
etry in its pristine innocence. A truly noble soul,
joined to a weak body, oppressed by many troubles,
unable to grow to full manly spiritual stature, he
shows us the beauty and imperfection of the emotional
movement in close union. He writes pages of vague
philosophy, which afterwards impressed the young
Carlyle as an embodiment of a sense of the deep
mystery of life. You find delight in wandering
through the flowery labyrinths of such speculation ;
you learn much by the way, but you come nowhere.
Only this is clear : the young poet persists that the
world must in some way conform to the emotional
needs of man. And he persists, too, that a harmo-
nious scheme of life can be formed on a purely ro-
mantic plan, and only on such a plan. He actually

1 The age in question extends from 1770 to 1830. No special
effort is here made to follow chronological order. Our purpose is
to cite illustrations, not to give a history.
8

114 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

explains no reality and completes no scheme of life.
He hints, at length, that the Catholic church is the
best expression of the needs of man. With this un-
satisfactory suggestion, the little career of wander-
ing ends in death. But in what could it have ended
had life continued ?

Perhaps in what was called by the close friend of
Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, the romantic irony.
This is the next stage in the growth, or, if you like,
in the decay of the romantic spirit. Emotion is our
guide and our goal. But what is emotion ? Some-
thing changeable and by nature inconsistent. Each
I emotion sets up a claim to fill the whole of life. For
< each new one, the earnest poetic soul feels willing to
. die. Yet each is driven away by its follower. The
feet of them that shall bear it out are before the
door even while the triumphant emotion is reigning
over the heart within. Fullness of such life means
fickleness. Novalis, upon the death of his betrothed,
made a sort of divinity of the departed, and dated a
new era from the day of her death. His diary was
for a while full of spiritual exercises, suggested by
his affliction. He resolved to follow her to the grave
in one year. Within this year he was betrothed
anew. If such is Novalis, what will be a lesser
spirit? Conscious of this inevitable decay of each
emotion, Friedrich Schlegel suggests that one should
make a virtue of necessity, and declare that the
higher life consists in a sort of enthusiastic fickle-
ness. The genius must wander like a humming-bird
in the garden of divine emotions. And he must be
conscious and proud of his wanderings. Activity,

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 115

or rather agility, is his highest perfection. The
more numerous his emotions, the nobler the man.
The fickler the man, the more numerous his emo-
tions. This conscious union of nobility and fickle-
ness is the romantic irony, which consists in receiv-
ing each new enthusiasm with a merry pride. 'T was
not the first, and will not be the last. We see
through it, even while we submit to it. We are
more than it is, and will survive it. Long live King
Experience, who showers upon us new feelings !

So much for an ingenious and thoroughly detesta-
ble view of life, in which there is for an earnest man
no rest. This irony, what is it but the laughter of
demons over the miserable weakness of human char-
acter ? The emotion was to be our god. It turns
out to be a wretched fetich, and we know it as such.
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thou-
sands. It is gone, though we trusted in it. It was
our stay, and it has flowed away like water. This
is not fullness, but hollowness, of life. And how
shall the romantic irony supply the vacancy ? This
irony is but the word of Mephistopheles about the
ruin of Gretchen : Sie ist die erste nicht. Not the
first change of emotion is this present one ; not the
first breaking up of the fountains of the great deep
within us ; but what misery in that thought ! Then
there is nothing sure, nothing significant. In our
own hearts were we to find life, and there is no true
life there ; only masks with nothing beneath them ;
only endless and meaningless change.

The consciousness of this result is present in an-
other form of the romantic spirit. The consequence

116 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

is what Hegel, in the Phanomenologie des Geistes,
described under the name of Das Ungliickliche
Bewusstsein, and what is more familiarly known to
us as the Byronic frame of mind. The very strength
of the previous emotion renders this consciousness
of the hollowness of emotion the more insupport-
able : —

" When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead."

The brighter the lamp, the deeper the darkness that
follows its breaking.

The romantic despair thus described took many
forms in the poetry of the early part of the century.
To describe them all were to go far beyond our lim-
its. A few forms suggest themselves. If we are
condemned to fleeting emotions, we are still not de-
prived of the hope that some day we may by chance
find an abiding emotion. Thus, then, we find many
poets living in a wholly problematic state of mind,
expecting the god stronger than they, who, coming,
shall rule over them. Such a man is the dramatist
and writer of tales, Heinrich von Kleist. " It can
be," writes this poet to a friend, December, 1806,
" it can be no evil spirit that rules the world, only a
spirit not understood." In such a tone of restless
search .for the ideal of action, Kleist remains through-
out his life. No poet of the romantic school had a
keener love of life-problems purely as problems.
Each of his works is the statement of a question.
In so far Kleist resembles that more recent repre-
sentative of the problematic school of poetry, Ar-
thur Hugh Clough. Kleist answered his own ques-

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 117

tions at last by suicide. Others have other ways of
fleeing misery. Ludwig Tieck, after running through
the whole round of romantic questions, rids himself
of his demons by turning his attention to other lit-
erary work, and lets most of the old romantic ideals
alone, or playfully writes amusing stories about
them. Friedrich Schlegel finally escapes from him-
self by means of a scholarly toil and Catholic faith.
Holderlin takes refuge in a mad-house. Shelley
manages to endure his brief life, by dint of childlike
submissiveness to his emotions, joined with earnest
hope for yet better things. Schiller had joined with
Goethe in a search for perfection in the ancient
Greek world. There are many fashions of quieting
the restlessness that belonged to the time, yet what
one of them really answers the problems of the ro-
mantic spirit? There is still the great question:
How may mankind live the harmonious emotional
life, when men are driven for their ideals back upon
themselves, when traditional faith is removed, when
the age is full of wretchedness and of blind striving,
when the very strength of poetic emotion implies
that it is transient and changeable ? The conscious
failure to answer this question is more or less de-
cided pessimism.

Could modern poetry free itself from that reflective
tendency in which we have found its most prominent
characteristic, the pessimism could disappear with
the criticism of life. But this is impossible. Omit
part of our lyric poetry, some of our comedy and of
our satire, and the rest of our best nineteenth cen-
tury poetic work is a more or less conscious struggle

118 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

with pessimism. The grounds and the nature of this
struggle have been set forth in the foregoing. The
poet once for all accepts the emotional criterion of
the worth of life. Determining to see in the harmo-
nious emotional life the best life, feeling as the most
certain of principles that " there is a lower and a
higher," the poet seeks to picture the perfect exist-
ence thus defined. Failure means for him pessi-
mism ; not von Hartmann's really quite harmless
" eudamonologischer Pessimismus" but the true
pessimism of the broken will, that has tried all and
failed. The life that ought to be, cannot be; the
life that is, is hollow and futile : such will be the
result of disappointed idealism. In our time, the
idealistic poets that are not pessimists have all
fought more or less consciously the same battle with
pessimism. Think only of the " Excursion," or of
the " In Memoriam," or again of " Faust," that
epitome of the thought of our century.

But before we allow ourselves a word on the rela-
tion of " Faust " to our problem, let us look a little
more closely at Byron. " Faust " is the crown of
modern poetic effort. If that fails as a solution, all
in this field has thus far been lost. But in Byron
there is a confessed, one may add a professed, moral
imperfection, whose nature throws light, not so much
on the solution of the problem of pessimism, as on
the problem itself.

The development of Byron's poetry has two very
marked periods, the sentimental and the critical.
The sentimental Byron of the years before 1816 is
not of very great present interest. The Byron of

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 119

" Manfred," "Cain," and " Don Juan," represents an
independent phase of the romantic movement, whose
faults are as instructive as its beauties. This pe-
riod of Byron's poetry is of course but very roughly
described by the word critical, yet that word is at
any rate suggestive. A sensitive man, and yet he-
roic, strong in spirit, but without fixed ideals of life,
a rebel by nature who yet finds 110 greater soul to
lead him, no faithful band to follow him in any defi-
nite effort for mankind, Byron is a modern likeness
of him that in the legend afterwards became St.
Christopher. Only Byron seeks the strongest with-
out finding him, learns to despise the devil, and never
meets the devil's master. Worn out with the search,
the poet flings himself down in the woods of doubt
and dreams "Don Juan." We look in vain for
the right adjective with which to qualify this poem :
it is so full of strength, so lavish of splendid re-
sources, and yet in sum so disappointing. It has no
true eniiing, and never could have had one. It is a
mountain stream, plunging down dreadful chasms,
singing through grand forests, and losing itself in a
lifeless gray alkali desert. Here is romantic self-
criticism pushed to its farthest consequences. Here
is the self-confession of an heroic soul that has made
too high demands on life, and that has found in its
own experience and in the world nothing worthy of
true heroism. We feel the magnitude of the blun-
der, we despise (with the author, as must be noticed,
not in opposition to him) the miserable petty round
of detestable experiences — intrigues, amours, din-
ners— in brief, the vulgarity to which human life

120 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

is reduced ; but the tragedy is everywhere to be
read between the lines, not in what is said. The
romantic spirit has sought in vain for the satisfac-
tory emotional state, and for the worthy deed to per-
form, and now rests, scornful and yet terrified, in
dizzy contemplation of the confused and meaning-
less maze of sensations into which the world has re-
solved itself. " There is nothing there to fear or
hope," this spirit seems to say.

" When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,
And proved it, 't was no matter what he said."

Or again : —

" ' To be or not to be ? ' Ere I decide
I should be glad to know that which is being ;

'T is true we speculate both far and wide,
And deem, because we see, we are all-seeing.

For my part, I '11 enlist on neither side,
Until I see both sides for once agreeing.

For me, I sometimes think that life is death,
• Rather than life, a mere affair of breath."

In " Manfred " the same spirit seeks another, and
not quite so successful, a form of expression. The
only peace that can come to this world-weary spirit,
Manfred expresses at the sight of a quiet sunset.
The only freedom from eternal self-examination is
found in an occasional glance at peaceful nature.

" It will not last,

But it is well to have known it though but once ;
It hath enlarged my thoughts with a new sense,
And I within my tablets would note down
That there is such a feeling."

The famous last words of Manfred, —

" Old man, 't is not so difficult to die/'-r

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 121

coming as they do after all Manfred's vacillation
upon just this point, indicate the final resolution of
despair to brave all possible wretchedness from with-
out for the sake of feeling within, in all its strength,
though but for a moment, the fierce defiance of the
rebellious Titan. Hungry for deeds, finding noth-
ing to do, fearing the possible future life, and hating
the present, the hero at last resorts to an untrue but
stirring assertion of absolute personal independence
of all the hateful universe here and hereafter : —

" Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me.
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey —
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter."

This is pessimism that overleaps itself. The out-
come of self -analyzing romanticism is the determina-
tion to build afresh a world that shall be nobler than
this poor world of decaying passive emotions. Feel-
ing will not do. Manfred attains something by ac-
tion, even though he first acts in the moment of
death. Doing work of some kind is, then, that to
which we are necessarily driven. But if the action
of defiance can make death tolerable, why might not
some kind of activity make life tolerable ? Is not
the worthy life then to be found, not in emotion,
but in work ? Is not the ideal state the ideal activ-
ity, not the ideal feeling? This suggestion had
been at the foundation of the prototype of Manfred,
the Faust of Goethe.

Praise of the first part of Goethe's " Faust " is
nowadays superfluous. Doubtless the work is a

122 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

torso,1 but so is the life of man. Extravagant en-
comium of " Faust," such as that wherewith Her-
mann Grimm has marred, as with a showman's ha-
rangue, the conclusion of his otherwise most instruc-
tive " Lectures on Goethe," seems as out of place as
applause in a cathedral. The poem is grand and
profound, because the life problems it so truthfully
portrays are grand and profound ; in form, if you
except digressions, it is sublimely simple and unas-
suming. Its imperfections are as open to view as is
its grandeur. The doctrine of the poem may be thus
briefly suggested. Here is a world wherein nature,
the expression of divine intelligence, is perfect ;
wherein man, by the same divine wisdom, is left in
darkness and confusion. The angels, who simply
contemplate nature's perfection, are the " true sons
of God." But they do nothing. They only see and
think. Man is to act. By his action he is freely to
create such perfection as already passively exists in
nature. That is, his life is to become an harmonious
whole. The postulate of the Lord is that this is
possible. Mephistopheles holds the opposite opinion.
The question is to be solved by the case of Faust.

Faust is a man in whom are combined all the
strength and weakness of the romantic spirit. No
excellence he deems of worth so long as any ex-
cellence is beyond his grasp. Therefore his de-
spair at the sight of the great world of life. So
small a part of it is his. He knows that he can

1 Cf. the opinion of M. Edm. Scherer as quoted in Mr. Matthew
Arnold's essay, A French Critic on Goethe, in the Mixed Essays, p.
291.

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 123

never grow great enough to grasp the whole, or any
finite part of the whole. Yet there remains the
hopeless desire for this wholeness. Nothing but the
infinite can be satisfying. Hence the despair of the
early scenes of the first part. Like Byron's Man-
fred, Faust seeks death ; but Faust is kept from it
by no fear of worse things beyond, only by an acci-
dental reawakening of old childish emotions. He
thereafter feels that he has no business with life, and
is a creature of accident. He is clearly conscious
only of a longing for a full experience. But this ex-
perience he conceives as mainly a passive one. He
does not wish as yet to do anything, only to get
everything.1 But at the same time with this desire
for a tempest of new feelings, Faust has the con-
sciousness that there never can be a satisfactory feel-
ing. Mephistopheles, stating the case of the con-
tented man of the world, assures him that the time
will come for enjoying good things in peace. Faust
indignantly replies that pleasure can never deceive
him, the tolerable moment never come. In making
this very assertion, however, and in concluding his
pact with Mephistopheles upon the basis of this asser-
tion, Faust rises above his first position, and assumes
a new one. The satisfactory pleasure can never be
given to him, and why ? Because he will always
remain active. Satisfaction would mean repose, re-
pose would mean death. Life is activity. The
meaning of the pact is of course that, for good or

1 Cf. the lengthy discussion of this point in Friedrich Vischer,
Goethe's Faust, Neue Beitraye zur Kritik des Gedichts, especially p.
291 and p. 304. " Er (FaustJ weiss also fur jetzt nur von der Lust"

124 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

for evil, all the existence of a man is work, and that
no one is ever wholly lost so long as the power of
accomplishment remains his. But if work is the es-
sence of life, then satisfaction must be found not in
feelings but in deeds. The world is good if we can
make it so, not otherwise. The problem of Faust is
therefore the discovery of the perfect kind of activity.

With this insight the romantic spirit has risen be-
yond itself. The essence of romanticism is the de-
sire for fullness of personal experience. The essence
of this new spirit is the eagerness to accomplish
something. The difference is vast. Faust, following

is new tendency, might be led to an obscure toiling
life of endless self-sacrifice. His pessimism (for in
the early scenes he is a pessimist) might give way
before unquestioning heroic devotion to some great
end. Does this take place ? We know too well the
answer. The whole poem is indeed a conflict be-
tween the two tendencies in Faust, but the first, the
desire for manifold passive experiences, is until the
last scenes of the second part predominant. Faust
is active, but his activity is mainly a continual pur-
suit of new experiences. Even at the end he is not
active as other men are active ; his work is done by
magic ; and the accomplishment for whose sake he
is at last willing to say, This is the highest moment,
is an anticipation, not a reality. In the real world
the satisfactory work is never found. And thus the
solution of the problem is not fully given, though
the poet, while suggesting it, has done more than
any other modern poet. The revolution had fur-
nished as life-ideals grand emotion and heroic ac-

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 125

tion. The two cannot wholly be harmonized. The
highest forms of activity imply self-sacrifice, drudg-
ery, routine, cool-headed calculation. The highest
forms of emotion, pursued by themselves, intoxicate
and enervate. It is the purpose of Goethe to lead
his hero through the various stages of emotional life,
for the sake of making him prefer in the end a mode
of action to all forms of simple emotion. The result
is to be a man above the deadness of ordinary work-
a-day realism, yet as devoted to toil as the stupidest
realist. There is to be a free surrender of a full
self to the service of some high end. Nothing is
lacking to the conquest over pessimism, except the
clear statement of that for which the converted
Faust is to work. The goal of activity once found,
the problem will be solved, and the devil's wager
lost. But the dim allegorical suggestions of the sec-
ond part will not suffice to give us the account of
what is wanted. Faust is to work for human pro- ;
gress, and progress means the existence of a whole \
nation of hard-laboring, fearless men who fight for-
ever for their freedom. To have been the father of
such a people is the highest blessedness. Good, in-
deed, we say ; but to have wrought by the devil's
aid, through magic and oppression, is this the high-
est ? Is this the type of the best activity ? And is the
great problem after all really solved ? For what is
the ultimate good of the eternal warfare with nature
in which mankind are thus left ? Faust leaves be-
hind him a nation of toilers, whose business it will
be to build dikes to keep the sea out. A worthy
end of romantic hopes, truly ! That Goethe him-

126 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

self is not wholly content therewith is proven by the
epilogue in heaven, which means, if it means any-
thing, that the highest end of human activity is
something very fine, but altogether inexpressible, in-
visible, inconceivable, indefinite, a thing of ether
and dreams. One longs in this last scene for the
presence of Mephistopheles, who surely has as much
right there as in the prologue, and who would be
sure to say, in his terse and sinewy fashion, just the
right and the last word about the whole business.

The incompleteness of " Faust " is the incomplete-
ness of modern thought. The poet is silent about
the final problem, because modern thought is still
toiling away on the definition of the highest human
activity.

Thus we have found that our moral problem is
shared by others than the moral philosophers. Al-
most at random we have taken a few suggestive
illustrations of this same moral problem as it ap-
pears to the poets. Had we made use of the poets
of the present day, we could have illustrated still
other aspects of the question. The restless dramatic
genius of Browning, for instance, always giving us
glimpses of new ideals that men of strange fashions
have or may have, unweariedly warns us not to pre-
tend to narrow the possible objects of life down to
one, however sacred we may think that one to be.
Life, thus viewed, seems a grand everlasting war-
fare of ideals, among which peace is impossible.
And with this insight into the actual and seemingly
irreconcilable warfare of human aims, ethical doc-
trine must begin. The outlook is gloomy, but the
problem must be faced.

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 127
III.

Such are some of the motives that give genuine
meaning to modern pessimism. This instability of -
all ideals is the greatest danger to which idealism
can be subject. And the problem is not one of mere
theory, nor yet even of poetic emotion alone. The
problem is one of daily life. We choose some fash-
ion of life in the morning, and we reject it before
night. Our devotional moments demand that all
life shall be devotional ; our merry moments that all
life shall be merry ; our heroic moments that all life
shall be lived in defiance of some chosen enemy.
But we are false to all these our ideals, even while
we pretend to have them. And the most dishear-
tening aspect of the whole matter lies in the fact
that we cannot prove even our faithlessness to be un-
worthy, unless we can bring ourselves steadfastly to
accept some ideal by which our faithlessness itself
can be judged. And this would imply that we were
no longer faithless.

We have thus reached the root of moral skepti-
cism. The worst that moral skeptics can say is that
all choice of ideals is an accidental caprice, that
ideals have no basis but this caprice, and that a
moral code depends for its successful propagation
wholly on the persuasive personal force of the man
that happens to have it and to teach it.

For the first, then, we provisionally accept this
skeptical view. We shall regard the moral ideals in
this light. We shall seek no impossible proof for
any of them. But we shall try to see whither the
skeptical view itself leads us.

128 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

If we look now for a final and perfectly cold-
blooded statement of this moral skepticism, a state-
ment that shall let us see once for all its meaning, its
foundation, and its scope, the present author knows
of no better expression of it than the one that is con-
tained in the appendix to Mr. Arthur Balfour's
44 Defense of Philosophic Doubt," l under the title
44 The Idea of a Philosophy of Ethics." Mr. Bal-
four has shown us by the book in question that he
has a very useful office in philosophic discussion,
and we can only thank him for having made posi-
tive advance in ethics easier, by his clear statement
of the difficulties that in the past have barred the
way.

44 Scientific judgments and ethical judgments deal,"
says Mr. Balfour, " with essentially different sub-
ject-matters." Scientific propositions state "facts
or events, real or hypothetical." Ethical proposi-
tions do not " announce an event," nor yet do they
tell any " fact of the external or internal world."
Ethical writers too often consider the " psychology
of the individual holding the moral law." But this
is no matter for ethics, but only for psychological
science. In fact, " if a proposition announcing ob-
ligation require proof at all, one term of that proof
must always be a proposition announcing obligation,
which itself requires no proof." 44 There is no arti-
fice by which an ethical proposition can be evolved
from a scientific or metaphysical proposition, or any
combination of such." 44 The origin of an ultimate
ethical belief can never supply a reason for believing

1 London, MacMillan & Company, 1879.

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM. 129

it, since the origin of this belief, as of any other
mental phenomenon, is a matter to be dealt with by
science ; and my thesis is that (negatively speaking)
scientific truth alone cannot serve as a foundation
for a moral system ; or (to put it positively), if we
have a moral system at all, there must be contained
in it, explicitly or implicitly, at least one ethical
proposition, of which no proof can be given or re-
quired."

The reader may ask : Is all this the loftiest ideal-
ism, or is it simply philosophic skepticism about the
basis of ethics ? We may leave the reader to ex-
amine for himself Mr. Balfour's very ingenious dis-
cussion, but one or two very obvious and simple
consequences may be quoted from the rest of the es-
say, and these will serve well enough to show here
the drift of the discussion.

" An ethical proposition is one that prescribes an
action with reference to an end." Every such prop-
osition " belongs to a system." " The fundamental
proposition of every such system states an end, which
the person who receives that system regards as final
— as chosen for itself alone." " When two such
systems conflict, their rival claims can only be de-
cided by a judgment or proposition not contained in
either of them, which shall assert which of these re-
spective fundamental ' ends ' shall have precedence."
" If revenge against a particular individual is for
me an end-in-itself, a proposition which prescribes
shooting him from behind a hedge may be one of the
dependent propositions belonging to that particular
system." " Though under the name ethical are in-

130 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

eluded not only moral, but also non-moral and im-
moral systems, the distinctions regarded from the
outside between these subdivisions are not essential,
and have no philosophic import." Such then is the
skeptical outcome of this very idealistic position from
which we ourselves started. Thus viewed, the moral
world seems essentially chaotic. Each end, if chosen,
has its own way of marshaling acts as good and bad.
But one end cannot establish itself theoretically
over against another. The warfare among them is
practical, but is not rationally to be judged or ended.
Each says, " In me is the truth about right and
wrong. I am the Way." But for one another they
have, not arguments, but anathemas. They give no
proof, only assertion and condemnation. It is the
contemplation of this chaos that has suggested to us
that plausible and yet dreadful pessimism of which
modern thought has had so much to say, and of
which this chapter has tried to give some notion.

CHAPTER VL .

THE MORAL INSIGHT.

Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths.

SHELLEY, Epipsyckidion.

WE have needed to dwell on our ethical skepti-
cism, to experience the real strength of its doubts,
in order that we should be able to get new and bet-
ter methods of construction for our own doctrine.
Deep as is the truth that lies at the basis of many
ethical doctrines now either doubted or abandoned,
one thing always seems defective about their fashion
of building. This one defect has made us question
their worth as theories. And our theoretical doubt,
as we dwelt upon it, has become practical. We
have seen how this ethical skepticism leads to the
gloomiest pessimism. Both the skepticism and the
pessimism we must meet fairly and fearlessly. And
we must ask them how even they themselves are
possible.

I.

Our skeptical criticism of ethical theories has
been so far either internal or external. We have
criticised each doctrine in itself, questioning either
its consistency or its inner completeness ; or else we

132 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

have criticised it with reference to other doctrines.
In the first case our criticism led to no general
skepticism, and had importance only in the special
case. But the other kind of criticism was of more
importance, and took another turn. We said to
the doctrine : " Perfect as your system may be in
itself, your assumption of your highest end always
finds over against itself an equally stubborn assump-
tion of an exactly opposing end. And you have 110
proof to offer for your rejection of that end. You
simply insist upon calling it a diabolical end ; you
hurl at it your anathema. Now we, who have
wanted proof, not mere enthusiasm, we, who stand
critically before your doctrine, and view it from
without, and desire to know why we are to accept
it, we feel a skeptical indifference about your end,
as soon as we compare it with the opposing end,
and as soon as comparing, we find the difference be-
tween them to be one that rests, not on demonstra-
ble truth, but on a mere kind of caprice. Practi-
cally we may agree with you in choosing, as men
of action, your aim. Our personal caprice may
agree with yours. But theoretically we cannot jus-
tify this aim. We find, in all that you say, no ob-
jective moral truth, but only somebody's capricious
resolution. And even if we chance to accept your
resolution, who knows when we shall change our
minds, and begin acting in some new way, so that
what we now call good shall be called evil? In
brief, if there is to be possible anything more than
moral preaching, if there is to be anything worthy
of the name of demonstrated moral doctrine, then

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 133

all your discussion must lead to something not de-
pendent on the bare choice of individual moral
agents. But in truth what you give us is just the
fact of your choice. And hence it is that we are
skeptics."

What does this our skepticism mean? Unreflec-
tive, self-satisfied skepticism always means mental
death ; but in self -critical skepticism, observant of
itself as of everything else, moves the very life-blood
of philosophy. And of this the whole of the present
book will try to be an illustration. Just here, there-
fore, we want to be as watchful of our skepticism as
we were of the systems whose theoretical Weakness
led us hither. What is the sense of this theoretical
skepticism of our present attitude ? On our reply
all else turns. And our reply is : This skepticism
expresses an indifference that we feel when we con-
template two opposing aims in such a way as mo-
mentarily to share them both. For the moment we
realize equally these warring aims. They are ours.
The conflict is in us. The two wills here represented
are our will. And for this reason, and for this only,
can we feel the skeptical indecision. Had we the
will to choose the one end alone, we should unhesi-
tatingly choose it, and should not see enough of the
opposing will to be skeptics. Had we only the will
that chooses the opposing end, we should feel equally
indifferent to the first. Had we neither will at all
in mind, did we realize neither one of the opposing
ends, we should be feeling no hesitation between
them. Our doubt arises from the fact that momen-
tarily and provisionally we are in the attitude of as-

134 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

suming both. Our indifference is not the indiffer-
ence of ignorance, but of knowledge ; not of failure
to understand either end, but of readiness to realize
both ends. Hence it follows that moral skepticism
is itself the result of an act, namely, of the act by
which we seek to realize in ourselves opposing aims
at the same time. This observation is of the great-
est importance to tis, and we must dwell upon it. It
shows us that above all our skepticism is the su-
preme End that makes the skepticism itself possible.

The ethical aims themselves are all of them the
expression of somebody's will. Their conflict is the
conflict 6"f wills. Doubt about them depends upon
the realization of their existence and of their oppo-
sition. Therefore this doubt depends for its very
existence on the conditions of this realization. We
have tried to state what the conditions are. To
realize opposing ends so completely that one feels a
genuine doubt which of them to accept, implies, we
say, the simultaneous provisional acceptance of both.
And this may be shown in a more popular psycholog-
ical way, as well as in a more general philosophical
way. We take the psychological way first.

How can I know that there is anywhere a will, W,
that chooses for itself some end, E ? Really to know
this implies something more than mere outer obser-
vation of the facts. One must repeat in one's own
mind more or less rapidly or imperfectly this will,
W, that one conceives to exist in somebody else.
And this need of repetition is a well-known psycho-
logical truth, very easily illustrated by all sorts of
commonplace facts. Let us refer to some of these.

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 135

To think of a bodily act is to perform the act, or
at least mentally to initiate the performance of the
act. According to Professor Bain's now generally
accepted principle, the memory or the conception of
an act is physiologically connected with the fainter
excitation of just the same nerve-tracts as would be
more intensely excited in the real performance of
the act. Therefore it is true that to think of yawn-
ing is to initiate a yawn, to think of walking is to
initiate steps ; and, in case of any excitable person,
or in case of any momentary predisposition to per-
form the act, the conception may immediately be-
come the act, because the nascent excitation involved
in the conception of the act may at once pass over
into the completer excitation, and the ideal deed
may become a visible fact. Thus the excited man,
if not checked by company, may at once talk aloud
to himself, his thoughts becoming words. If very
much excited, he may mutter to himself even in the
presence of company. He is much more apt to do
this if he thinks not only of the words themselves,
but of the act of speaking them, namely, if he im-
agines himself talking to somebody, and emphatic-
ally bringing his thoughts home to that other. In
a weak state of body, this tendency to repeat an act
whenever one conceives it may become quite dis-
tressing. To think of vomiting may mean to vomit.
Or again, to think of laughter or of tears may in
such a case make one laugh or cry. Hence the weak
man may dislike to begin laughing, because he
knows that, other exciting causes apart, the mere
memory that he has laughed may keep him laugh-

136 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ing afresh long after the sense of the ridiculous has
passed away, so that to begin laughing may mean
total exhaustion before he can stop.

Imitation rests at least in part upon this tendency.
An act is performed, we witness it, we see or know
how it is done, we conceive the effort that would
lead to the performance of it, and forthwith this con-
ception becomes the performance. We imitate the
gesture of the actor or of the story-teller before us,
and we feel an inner imitation of many acts, even
though we suppress the outward signs. In general,
for us to realize an act means that we shall do it,
either in outward fact, or through a nascent perform-
ance that is not outwardly visible. Much of the
recently so-called "mind-reading," more accurately
named by some psychologists " muscle - reading,"
rests upon this foundation. For the conception of
acts that are not outwardly performed is often indi-
cated by slight motions or tensions of arm or of fin-
gers, or of the whole body, and the muscle-reader,
getting some close contact with his subject, amuses a
company by interpreting these unseen, but readily felt
signs of the thoughts of his subject. Very deeply do
such facts enter into the structure of our mental life.
Mr. Galton, investigating word-associations, found in
many cases that the idea immediately aroused by a
word was a sort of dramatic reproduction of the act
expressed by the word. This dramatic reproduction
consisted, at least in part, in the feeling of effort in
those muscles that would be concerned in performing
the act itself. If the momentary association first
aroused by the sudden and unexpected sight of the

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 137

word involves this dramatic imitation of the act
named, how much more would the thought involve
the dramatic repetition of the act, if one were to dwell
upon the nature of this act, and were fully to realize
its nature in his own mind. So much then for psy-
chological illustration of the view that we are here
advancing. If two opposing fashions of action are
present to our minds, and if mentally we are trying
to realize them both, then mentally we are seeking
to reproduce them both. Our skeptical hesitation
between them expresses our effort to attain mentally
both these ends at once. For what we have said
about bodily acts will apply equally well to what we
usually call mental acts, and even to general resolu-
tions, all of which have a physical side, and are apt
to be symbolized by some bodily gesture that we
mentally or outwardly repeat when we think of the
act or of the resolution in question.

But all this is not a bare accident of the psycholog-
ical structure of our minds ; it is a philosophical ne-
cessity. What represents a Will but a Will? Who
would know what it is to have an end unless he act-
ually had ends himself ? Who can realize a given
aim save by somehow repeating it in himself ? And
so it is rationally and universally necessary that one
shall realize the end of a moral system by reproduc-
ing in himself the will that accepts this end. But,
on the other hand, in so far forth as he reproduces
this will alone, he cannot refrain from accepting the
end. In so far forth as he reproduces this will, it is
his will. And the end is his end. Therefore our
skepticism itself was a hesitation, resulting from the

138 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

realization of several opposing ends, and from a si-
multaneous reproduction of the wills that aimed at
them. Therefore, as we see, absolute ethical skepti-
cism would not really be total absence of moral aim,
but would rather be the neutrality that would result
from a provisional acceptance of all the conflicting
aims in the world of action. Absolute ethical skepti-
cism, if it were actually possible without self-destruc-
tion, would still presuppose an end, namely, the effort
to harmonize in one moment all the conflicting aims
in the world of life. It would not be what it had
supposed itself to be. Absolute skepticism would thus
be founded on absolute benevolence. Its own aim
would be harmony and unity of conduct. But just
for that reason is absolute skepticism self -destructive.
Possibly this result may be somewhat unexpected.
But did not the very pessimism of our last chapter
illustrate it ? Why this pessimism ? This despair
of life, what was it but the sense of the hopelessness
of our task ? What made the task seem hopeless ?
And what was the task ? The task was the forma-
tion of an harmonious ideal of life. This task
^seemed hopelessTHbecause weT Telt that the actual
ideals of life among men are in deadly conflict. Our
pessimism was after all not what it seemed to us to
be. It was not the bare renunciation of all aims ;
it was the effort to satisfy them all, embittered by
the sense that they were in seemingly hopeless con-
flict. Even our pessimism had its ideal. Without
its ideal it would have experienced no despair. The
conflict of aims would have meant no evil. The pes-
simistic despair was the natural outcome of our skep-

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 139

ticism, solely because our skepticism was itself a real-
ization of the aims with which men live, and of the
warfare of these aims.

From the world of dead facts, we had said, you
can get no ethical doctrine. Physical truth never
gives moral doctrine. Therefore the world of facts
seemed to stand on one side, and the world of moral
aims seemed to stand on the other, no logical connec-
tion being discoverable between them. This was our
theoretical objection to the ethical doctrines that we
examined. Separate as they were from the world
of facts, they seemed to dwell alone, ungrounded and
conflicting acts of caprice. Yet for them to pass
over to the world of facts was to lose their ethical
character. But now we seek to overcome our diffi-
culty by considering, not the world of physical facts
themselves, but the world of ends. And this world
we consider, not now in detail, but as a whole.
What highest end is suggested, we ask, to him who
realizes for himself this whole world of ends ? The
very end, we answer, that, as first dimly seen, forced
upon us our skeptical pessimism. Whoso realizes an
end, his, for the time being, is that end. And since
it is his end, he mentally wills to realize it in ideal
perfection. But whoso realizes the various conflicting
aims in the world, his are all these aims at the mo-
ment of insight, when, so far as in him lies, he real-
izes them, and mentally desires their success. In pro-
portion as his realization is or can be catholic and
genuine, his will becomes, for the time, these con-
flicting wills. In him is how the warfare. He feels
in his own person the bitterness of the universal

140 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

strife. And therefore it is that, in the first moment
of his new insight, the pessimism comes to him.
" This warfare cannot be ended," he despairingly
says. But has he thus uttered the final word ? For
he has not yet added the reflection that we are here
insisting upon. Let him say : " Then I too have an
end, far-off and unattainable though it seems, and
so my will is not aimless. I desire to realize these
aims all at once. Therefore I desire their harmony.
This is the one good that comes up before my fancy
as above all the various conflicting individual goods
of the various separate aims. This Higher Good
would be attained in a world where the conflict
ceased. That would be the Ideal World, where all
possible aims were pursued in absolute harmony."

Barren at first sight this reflection may appear.
It may have been unexpected, but we shall certainly
be disposed at first to call it fruitless. For here are
the aims, and they do conflict. In the actual world
there is ceaseless warfare. Only the wager of bat-
tle can decide among the opposing ethical faiths.
But now, if some idealist comes who says that his
insight gives him the higher ideal of Harmony, then
one may reply that his ideal is, in its confessed na-
ture, a mere fantasy of his benevolent imagination.
Such harmony never can be realized, unless indeed
some day, by the aid of bigger battalions, some one
of the ideals overcomes all the rest. Yet is our
idealist so lightly to be answered ? Can he not at
once reply: "My Ideal is thus defined, and fantastic
though it be, far-off though it seems, it is still an
ideal towards which I can direct my efforts. For

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 141

behold, made practical, brought down from its lone-
some height, my Ideal very simply means the Will
to direct my acts towards the attainment of univer-
sal Harmony. It requires me to act with this my in-
sight always before me. It requires me to consider
all the conflicting aims that will be affected by each
one of my acts, and to dispose my act with reference
to them all. It sets up this new moral principle be-
fore me, a principle perfectly catholic, and above all
that skepticism which we have felt with regard to
the special moral aims. This Principle is: So act
as thou wouldst will to act if all the consequences of
thy act for all the aims that are anywhere to be af-
fected by this act, could be realized by thee now and
in this one indivisible moment. Or more briefly put :
Act always in the light of the completest insight
into all the aims that thy act is to affect- This
rule is no capricious one, chosen for some individual
reason, but an universal maxim, since its choice de-
pends on the general realization of all the conflicting
aims of the world of life. And thus we have after
all found, in the very heart of our skepticism itself,
a moral doctrine. In the midst of the warfare of in-
dividual wills, we have caught sight of an Universal
Will.

II.

" But no," some one will say : " All this is still
mere caprice. Has it not in fact fallen already a
prey to the same skepticism that pursued other moral
aims ? For first, you have tried to found it on a phys-
ical fact, namely, on the fact that only by a given

142 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

effort of will one thinking being can realize the will
of another. But does this tell me that I ought thus
to realize the conflicting wills that are in the world ?
And if I do not, what significance has this physical
fact for me ? But, on the other hand, physical facts
aside, is not your doctrine just your capricious deter-
mination to respect the conflicting aims that exist in
the world ? "

This objection, if made, would be founded on a
misunderstanding of what we have discovered. We
have discovered something that has a value for us
quite independently of its importance as a mere phys-
ical fact. We set out to find a distinction between
right ^nd wrong. Our difficulty always was that,
since this distinction involves the acceptance of a
highest aim as the standard of judgment, and since
there are numerous aims possible, we always were
confused by the fact that among these manifold aims
there was found no ground of choice. For to show
any reason why we have chosen in a given way be-
tween two of these aims, is to have a third aim that
includes one and excludes the other. And the choice
of this third aim seemed again just as accidental as
the first choice would have been without this third
aim to justify it. Thus our original thought of an
aim, as the foundation of ^an ethical doctrine, had
been shattered before our eyes into a spray of sepa-
rate possible or actual aims, and we saw no way of
collecting this spray again into unity. If that was
the reason for our skepticism, then of course any-
thing more that we may say about ethics must pre-
suppose a hearer who can feel such skepticism, at

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 143

least provisionally. The physical fact that he can
understand the nature of our doubt is indeed presup-
posed ere we can go further, but that is no objection
to our progress. The physical fact that we have an
intelligent hearer must always be presupposed by
us. If one cannot feel the doubt, then he cannot
undertake any ethical inquiry. We only say to
him : " If you doubt about the acceptance of a moral
aim, this that we have pointed out to you is the real
reason for your doubt. If now you understand your
doubt, then you are actually in the state that we have
described above. Your doubt has in fact a general
character. It means a provisional moral skepticism,
founded on an insight into the conflict of aims.
This insight means skepticism because, and only be-
cause, you are at the moment of insight yourself pos-
sessed of the conflicting aims, yourself at war with
yourself, and therefore undecided. This spray of
aims into which your first pure idea of a moral aim
as such has been scattered, this confused and blind-
ing cloud of purposes, represents for you your own
moral position. Divided in yourself, disunited, con-
fused, you float cloud-like and inactive, seeking unity
of aim and finding none. But if you reflect on all
this, you see that in truth you occupy the position
that we have above described. You really have
still a highest aim. You seek unity. You desire the
warfare to cease. You have an ideal. All this is,
to be sure, a physical fact, dependent on your na-
ture as voluntary being ; but it is not valuable just
for that reason alone, but for the reason that, in dis-
covering this fact, you have discovered what you

.445 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

«^^*^

were seeking for. You have found that you are in
possession of an ideal. You cannot get away from
that ideal save by repeating the very process that
has brought you to it. Your moral insight is at-
tained, and the foundation of your doctrine is no
longer a particular aim that is accepted by a mere
caprice of one individual, but it is the necessary aim
that arises in the mind of any one who actually real-
izes the warfare of the particular aims. It is the
ideal of ideals. It is the absolute ideal that arises
for you out of the consideration of the separate
ideals. Each of them was relative to the mood of
the man who happened to choose it ; this Ideal is
relative only to the insight that comprehends the
whole moral world. Unable as we men are 'fully to
realize just the actual nature of every single aim in
the world of life, still we are able fully to realize cer-
tain conflicting aims ; and, realizing this conflict, we
can form for ourselves the notion of that absolute
realization that means, as we have seen, first the
skeptical despair of our last chapter, and then, by a
deeper reflection, the ideal that we have just set
forth above. Thus we no longer are capriciously de-
ciding upon the worth of physical facts as such.
We are passing a necessary judgment upon ideals as
ideals.

And we have tried to show that this our resulting
ideal is not a barren one. At first sight it seems so.
At first sight one says : " This harmony is a self-
contradictory dream." But no, not self-contradictory
is the dream ; for, if we cannot perfectly realize this
new ideal, if absolute harmony is unattainable, one

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 145

can still walk in the light of the ideal. One can say :
" I will act as if all these conflicting aims were mine.
I will respect them all. I will act in the light that
has brought me my moral insight. And to that end
I will act at each moment as one would act who
saw himself about to suffer in his own person and
at one time all the consequences of his act for all
the aims that are to be affected by what he does."
But now the ideal becomes practical, now it ceases^
to be barren. It is no longer the mere wish that
was at the heart of our skepticism, a wish gloomy, in-
active, terrified at the warfare that is in the world.
It is a cool determination. It says : " This disease
of conflicting aims cannot now be cured, but it shall
be dealt with. These aims are as my own. I will
deal with them as such. I will work for their har-
mony." If one doubts this ideal, then he doubts
the very foundation of ethical doubt itself. But this
is not all that our absolute ideal accomplishes. Not
merely for the moment of insight does this ideal give
an aim ; but it extends itself to the other moments
of life. It says : " The highest good would be realiz-
able only in case not merely the aim of this moment
of insight itself, but the aims of all the conflicting
wills in the world, were brought into conformity to
this insight. The highest good would be attainable
if all the conflicting wills realized fully one another.
For then, not abandoning each its own aim, each
would have added thereto, through insight, the aims
of the others. And all the world of individuals
would act as one Being, having a single Universal
Will. Harmony would in fact be attained." There-
10

146 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

fore our ideal has another precept to give us. It
says : u Act in such wise as to extend this moral in-
sight to others." Here is a definite practical aim,
and it justifies us in saying to all the conflicting
wills: "You should respect one another." For so in
fact they all would do if they had the moral insight.
And to have it, as we now see, is the prerequisite
to the attainment of the highest good, namely, this
ideal Harmony that we seek at the moment of moral
insight.

III.

•

We fear that such general discussion of what we
have called the moral insight may seem, at first sight,
too abstract to be real. We hasten to a more con-
crete study of this insight. Leaving those more ab-
stract aims that have been used as the foundation of
moral systems, let us study our moral insight as it
applies to the special aims that come into conflict
when a man is dealing with his neighbor. Let us
see how just the considerations that we have applied
to the conflict of ethical aims in general apply di-
rectly to the conflict between selfishness and unself-
ishness, which we so long and so vainly considered
in the last chapter. This warfare of selfishness and
unselfishness is indeed not the deepest of moral
problems, and to solve the problem here involved is
not, as some have supposed, to define forthwith the
Highest Good. Yet we shall do well to fix our minds
for the time on this special problem.

Why is selfishness easier to me than unselfishness ?
Because it is easier for me to realize my own future,

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 147

and my own desire about it, than to realize the desires
of my neighbor. My will is the datum; his the dimly-
conceived, remote fact. Hence it seems to me obvious
that his will must be to me less significant than my
own. Therefore he and I are often in deadly war-
fare, just because I realize his will not in its inner
nature, but as a foreign power, and because he deals
even so with me. We stand over against each
other like two moral systems, condemning and fight-
ing each the other. Now, however, there often ap-
pear disinterested moralists, who try to patch up our
differences. We have seen how and why they have
so often failed. They tell me that my neighbor and
I shall give each other much more selfish delight if
we stop fighting and begin cooperating. But that
wise advice in no way touches the root of the diffi-
culty between us. If we did cooperate for this rea-
son, we should still be two foreign powers, virtually
discordant. And whenever it happened that either
of us could do better by oppressing or by crushing
the other than by continuing to cooperate with him,
he not only would do so, but, so far as we have seen,
must do so. Another moralist hopes that if we
keep on cooperating long enough, we may evolve
into purely unselfish beings some day. The hope is
a pious one, but gives us no sufficient reason why we
ought to cooperate unselfishly now, when in fact we
are selfish. Yet another moralist asks us to reflect
on the nature of our emotions of pity and sympathy
for each other. We reply that these feelings are in-
determinate in character, and may lead us to do any-
thing or nothing for each other. So all these mor-

V

148 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

alists leave my neighbor and me just where we were.
If it is to our personal advantage to fight, we shall
do so ; otherwise we may by chance remain for a
while in practical harmony ; but, throughout, our
moral aims will remain what they were, selfish and
conflicting.

Forsaking these unsatisfactory attempts to found
a moral doctrine concerning one's duty to one's
neighbor, let us try to do what Schopenhauer so
haltingly suggested, namely, to see what moral in-
sight as moral insight, and not as pity or as far-
sighted egoism, tells us about the moral relations of
selfishness and unselfishness. If a man not merely
pities but knows his neighbor's will, what moral
ideal does he get ? We affirm that insight into the
reality of the neighbor's will, insight that considers
his will as it is in itself, and that accordingly repeats
it in us, gives us a position above the struggle of
self and neighbor, and lets us see the higher ideal of
Harmony, whose precept is : Act as a being would act
who included thy will and thy neighbor's will in the
unity of one life, and who had therefore to suffer
the consequences for the aims of both that will fol-
io 10 from the act of either. This insight is not the
mere emotion of pity nor yet sympathy, but some-
thing different from these, namely, something that
involves the realization, and therefore the reproduc-
tion in us, of the opposing will of the neighbor. This
insight therefore deprives each will in its separate-
ness of its absolute significance, and commands that
we should act with an equal reference to both. It;
says not merely, "Love thy neighbor as thyself, "!

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 149

\Jbut, " In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert
t once thy neighbor and thyself" " Treat these two
Ityes as one life."

We must try to show how this insight leads to this
result. We must try so to bring home the insight
to the reader that he shall in his person accomplish
the act of which we speak, and so come to accept
the ideal upon which we are insisting. It is in him-
self that he is to experience this ideal, or else he
will not be able or willing to accept it. We can
only suggest the way. And so we shall try forthwith
to suggest what is the nature of that common imper-
fect realization of our neighbor's life which does not
lead to the moral insight, and then to dwell upon
this insight itself.

IV.

The common sense, imperfect recognition of our
neighbor implies rather realization of the external
aspect of his being, as that part of him which affects
us, than realization of his inner and peculiar world
of personal experience. Let us show this by example.
First, take my realization of the people whom I com-
monly meet but do not personally very well know,
e. g. the conductor on the railway train when I
travel. He is for me just the being who takes my
ticket, the official to whom I can appeal for certain
advice or help if I need it. That this conductor has
an inner life, like mine, this I am apt never to realize
at all. He has to excite my pity or some other spe-
cial human interest in me ere I shall even begin to
try to think of him as really like me. On the whole,

150 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

he is for me realized as an automaton. But still fre-
quently I do realize him in another way, but how ?
I note very likely that he is courteous or surly, and
I like or dislike him accordingly. Now courtesy and
discourtesy are qualities that belong not to automata
at all. Hence I must somehow recognize him in this
case as conscious. But what aspect of his conscious-
ness do I consider ? Not the inner aspect of it as
such, but still the outer aspect of his conscious life,
as a power affecting me ; that is what I consider. He
treats me so and so, and he does this deliberately ;
therefore I judge him. But what I realize is his de-
liberate act, as something important to me. It sel-
dom occurs to me to realize fully how he feels ; but
I can much more easily come to note how he is dis-
posed. The disposition is his state viewed as a power
affecting me.

Now let one look over the range of his bare ac-
quaintanceship, let him leave out his friends, and the
people in whom he takes a special personal interest ;
let him regard for the first the rest of his world of
fellow-men : his butcher, his grocer, the policeman
that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in
his kitchen, his business rivals whom he occasionally
talks to, the men whose political speeches he has
heard or read, and for whom he has voted, with some
notion of their personal characters, — and then all
the rest of the outside world, the Turks or the In-
dians, the men of historic fame, Napoleon, Cicero,
CaBsar, the imaginary people in fictions that have
excited little of his stronger emotional interest : how
does he conceive of all these people ? Are they not

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 151

one and all to him ideal or real ways of behavior
towards himself or other people, outwardly effective
beings, rather than realized masses of genuine inner
life, of sentiment, of love, or of felt desire ? Does he
not naturally think of each of them rather as a way
of outward action than as a way of inner volition ?
His butcher, his newsboy, his servant, — are they not
for him industrious or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite
or uncivil, useful or useless people, rather than self-
conscious people ? Is any one of these alive for him
in the full sense, — sentient, emotional, and other-
wise like himself ; as perhaps his own son, or his
own mother or wife seems to him to be ? Is it not
rather the kind of behavior of these beings towards
him which he realizes ? Is it not rather in general
their being for him, not for themselves, that he con-
siders in all his ordinary life, even when he calls
them conscious ? And this being for him is what he
calls their dispositions. They are all good fellows
or bad fellows, good-humored or surly, hateful or ad-
mirable. They may appear even sublime or ideal
beings, as a CaBsar might to a student of history.
Yet their inner life need not therefore be realized.
They remain powers, ways of acting, dispositions,
wonderful examples of energy. They are still seen
from without. Not their inner, volitional nature is
realized, but their manner of outward activity ; not
what they are for themselves, but what they are for
others.

Such then is our natural realization of our fellows
even when we call them conscious. The imperfect
realization in question extends even to the case of

152 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

closer affection. Lear realizes in his daughters, or
thinks that he realizes, only the dispositions that they
express. Real effort to enter into the inner life of
their emotions is foreign to his simple and imperious
mind. Even when I delight in another's love, I am
still apt to realize rather the disposition than the
inner and more personal emotional life that is the
cause of this way of behavior. The act is what I
want,1 the voice, the look, the gift, or the other as-
surance of an energy in harmony with my will. The
ordinary emotion of gratitude is another very good
illustration of the imperfect realization of our neigh-
bors that accompanies even the plainest verbal rec-
ognition of their conscious existence. As I write
these words, my heart is just now going out in ad-
miration and respect, not to say affection, to a man
whom I but imperfectly know. I feel a desire to
do him a favor, if it were possible. Why? Do I
reflect on his true nature and needs as a being like
myself ? Do I feel our common weakness, our com-
mon longings ? Have I dispelled the illusion of self-
ishness that separates us ? No, — I grieve and am
ashamed to confess it, — this being is to me almost
as wholly external as my plumber, not much better
realized than my walking-stick. I am dwelling not
on his own inner life at all. In my mind's eye I
see just his outer form. Yet he has written me a
graceful and pleasing letter, expressing his interest
in some of my plans, and his desire to help me. I
am selfishly delighted to find such help. I have an

1 " I M give all my income from dreamland
For a touch of her hand on my cheek."

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 153

instinctive feeling that it demands compensation. I
feel an animal delight in being in friendly company.
My gratitude is here no moral emotion at all.

The emotion of sympathy does indeed often tend
to make me realize the other and more completely
internal aspeqt of my neighbor's reality ; but sym-
pathy does this in the halting and uncertain way de-
scribed in a previous chapter. And at all events,
whatever sympathy leads to, it is not by itself the
insight. And so, to sum up our present way of
studying the illusions of selfishness, we find by these
examples that by nature our neighbor's conscious
life is realized for us rather as an active agency that
affects our fortunes, than as an inner experience, or
as it is in itself, namely, as a Will ; and hence it is
that we are disposed to treat it with coldness, rather
than to respect its true nature. Resistance, con-
quest, employment of this agency, seem to us axi-
omatic aims of prudence ; unselfish respect for its
inner accompanying experiences seems to us a hard
if not a meaningless task. Such is the nature and
ground of the illusion of selfishness.

If now our activity of realization were confined to
the range of common-sense emotions, there would be
no escape from all this. It is our critical reflection
that appears on the scene, saying : " O common
sense, what thou hast realized cannot be all. We
must resolve to recognize more, else will our reso-
lutions never lose their inconsistency and darkness.
Be honest, O common sense. Is not thy neighbor
after all just a dead fact of nature, an automaton
with certain peculiar energies ? " A.nd common

154 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

sense answers : " No, for is he not most assuredly a
conscious agent, whose action I realize ? " " Dost
thou then know that he wills, and not realize what
this will means for him, namely, that he experiences
it ? " " No," answers common sense, " if he wills as
I do, he must experience as I do." " Eealize it
then, and see what thou then wilt do with him."
And common sense must, we affirm, so realizing,
simply reply, " As he is real, he is as much an ob-
ject for my effort as I myself am, in case I can af-
fect him. Ours is one life." This common sense
must see, if it fully realizes the neighbor. And if
it realizes his activity, as it always in some fashion
does, then it must come to realize his experience,
and so to realize him fully, so soon as it undertakes
to complete the incomplete act by which it has be-
gun to realize his will. This completion may be
hastened by pity, or may be hindered by the weak-
ness that pity often involves ; but when it comes, it
must be an act of clear insight, made possible by
the rational nature of our mental life. Whatever
in our thought is done in part, we are ready either
to abandon wholly, or to finish altogether, so soon as
we realize that we have been doing it in part. Our
resolution to recognize an existence cannot remain
confused or self-contradictory when we come to re-
alize where the confusion and self-contradiction lie.
And as we simply cannot give up recognizing our
neighbor, we must of necessity resolve, when we see
this inconsistency of our natural realization, to real-
ize him wholly.

Such is our reflective account of the process that, in

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 155

some form, must come to every one under the proper
conditions. In this process we see the beginning of
the real knowledge of duty to others. The process
is one that any child can and does, under proper
guidance, occasionally accomplish. It is the process
by which we all are accustomed to try to teach humane
behavior in concrete cases. We try to get people to
realize what they are doing when they injure others.
But to distinguish this process from the mere tender
emotion of sympathy, with all its illusions, is what
moralists have not carefully enough done. Our ex-
position has tried to take this universally recog-
nized process, to distinguish it from sympathy as
such, and to set it up before the gates of ethical doc-
trine as the great producer of insight.

But when we say that to this insight common
sense must come, under the given conditions, we do
not mean to say : "So the man, once having attained
insight, must act thenceforth." The realization of
one's neighbor, in the full sense of the word reali-
zation, is indeed the resolution to treat him as if he
were real, that is, to treat him unselfishly. But this
resolution expresses and belongs to the moment of
insight. Passion may cloud the insight in the very
next moment. It always does cloud the insight after
no very long time. It is as impossible for us to
avoid the illusion of selfishness in our daily lives, as
to escape seeing through the illusion at the moment
of insight. We see the reality of our neighbor, that
is, we determine to treat him as we do ourselves.
But then we go back to daily action, and we feel the
heat of hereditary passions, and we straightway for-

156 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

get what we liave seen. Our neighbor becomes ob-
scured. He is once more a foreign power. He is
unreal. We are again deluded and selfish. This
conflict goes on and will go on as long as we live
after the manner of men. Moments of insight, with
their accompanying resolutions ; long stretches of
delusion and selfishness : That is our life.

V.

To bring home this view in yet another way to the
reader, we ask him to consider very carefully just
what experience he has when he tries to realize his
neighbor in the full sense that we have insisted upon.
Not pity as such is what we desire him to feel. For
whether or no pity happens to work in him as self-
ishly and blindly as we have found that ii> often
does work, still not the emotion, but its consequences,
must in the most favorable case give us what we
seek. All the forms of sympathy are mere impulses.
It is the insight to which they bring us that has
moral value. And again, the realization of our
neighbor's existence is not at all the discovery that
he is more or less useful to us personally. All that
would contribute to selfishness. In an entirely dif-
ferent way we must realize his existence, if we are to
be really altruistic. What then is our neighbor?

We find that out by treating him in thought just
as we do ourselves. What art thou ? Thou art now
just a present state, with its experiences, thoughts,
and desires. But what is thy future Self ? Simply
future states, future experiences, future thoughts

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 157

and desires, that, although not now existing for thee,
are postulated by thee as certain to come, and as in
some real relation to thy present Self. What then
is thy neighbor ? He too is a mass of states, of ex-
periences, thoughts, and desires, just as real as thou
art, no more but yet no less present to thy experi-
ence now than is thy future Self. He is not that
face that frowns or smiles at thee, although often
thou thinkest of him as only that. He is not the
arm that strikes or defends thee, not the voice that
speaks to thee, not that machine that gives thee
what thou desirest when thou movest it with the
offer of money. To be sure, thou dost often think
of him as if he were that automaton yonder, that an-
swers thee when thou speakest to it. But no, thy
neighbor is as actual, as concrete, as thou art. Just
as thy future is real, though not now thine, so thy
neighbor is real, though his thoughts never are thy
thoughts. Dost thou believe this ? Art thou sure
what it means ? This is for thee the turning-point
of thy whole conduct towards him. What we now
ask of thee is no sentiment, no gush of pity, no
tremulous weakness of sympathy, but a calm, clear
insight.

But one says : " All this have I done from my
youth up. Surely I hold and always have held my
neighbor to be real and no automaton. Surely I
have feared his reproof, have been angry at his ill-
will, have rejoiced in his sympathy, have been influ-
enced by his opinions, all my life. And yet I have
remained selfish." Nay, but just at the moment
when thou hadst to act towards him so or so, thou

158 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

wert no longer quick to realize him. Then it was
that thy passion made him for thee a shadow. Thou
couldst not love him, because thou didst forget who
he was. Thou didst believe in him enough to fear
him, to hate him, to fight with him, to revenge thy-
self upon him, to use his wit as thy tool, but not
enough to treat him as real, even as thou thyself art
real. He seems to thee a little less living than thou.
His life is dim, it is cold, it is a pale fire beside thy
own burning desires. He is a symbol of passion to
thee, and imperfectly, coldly, with dull assent, with-
out full meaning to thy words, thou dost indeed say,
when asked, that the symbol stands for something
real, as real as thyself. But what those words mean,
— hast thou realized it, as, through selfish feeling,
thou dost realize thy equally external future Self ?

If he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a
light, as warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee ; his
will is as full of struggling desires, of hard problems,
of fateful decisions ; his pains are as hateful, his
joys as dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire
and of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred,
realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and
then with clear certainty add : Such as that is for
me, so is it for him, nothing less. If thou dost that,
can he remain to thee what he has been, a picture, a
plaything, a comedy, or a tragedy, in brief a mere
Show? Behind all that show thou hast indeed
dimly felt that there is something. Know that
truth thoroughly. Thou hast regarded his thought,
his feeling, as somehow different in sort from thine.
Thou hast said : "A pain in him is not like a pain

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 159

in me, but something far easier to bear." Thou hast
made of him a ghost, as the imprudent man makes
of his future self a ghost. Even when thou hast
feared his scorn, his hate, his contempt, thou hast
not fully made him for thee as real as thyself. His
laughter at thee has made thy face feel hot, his
frowns and clenched fists have cowed thee, his sneers
have made thy throat feel choked. But that was
only the social instinct in thee. It was not a full
sense of his reality. Even so the little baby smiles
back at one that smiles at it, but not because it
realizes the approving joy of the other, only because
it by instinct enjoys a smiling face ; and even so the
baby is frightened at harsh speech, but not because
it realizes the other's anger. So, dimly and by in-
stinct, thou has lived with thy neighbor, and hast
known him not, being blind. Thou hast even de-
sired his pain, but thou hast not fully realized the
pain that thou gavest. It has been to thee, not
pain in itself, but the sight of his submission, of his
tears, or of his pale terror. Of thy neighbor thou
hast made a thing, no Self at all.

When thou hast loved, hast pitied, or hast rever-
enced thy neighbor, then thy feeling has possibly
raised for a moment the veil of illusion. Then thou
hast known what he truly is, a Self like thy present
Self. But thy selfish feeling is too strong for thee.
Thou hast forgotten soon again what thou hadst seen,
and hast made even of thy beloved one only the instru-
ment of thy own pleasure. Even out of thy power
to pity thou hast made an object of thy vainglory.
Thy reverence has turned again to pride. Thou hast

160 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

accepted the illusion once more. No wonder that in
this darkness thou findest selfishness the only rule of
any meaning for thy conduct. Thou forgottest that
without realization of thy future and as yet unreal
self, even selfishness means nothing. Thou forgot-
test that if thou gavest thy present thought even so
to the task of realizing thy neighbor's life, selfishness
would seem no more plain to thee than the love of
thy neighbor.

Have done then with this illusion that thy Self
is all in all. Intuition tells thee no more about thy
future Self than it tells thee about thy neighbors.
Desire, bred in thee by generations of struggle for
existence, emphasizes the expectation of thy own
bodily future, the love for thy own bodily welfare,
and makes thy body's life seem alone real. But sim-
ply try to know the truth. The truth is that all this
world of life about thee is as real as thou art. All
conscious life is conscious in its own measure. Pain
is pain, joy is joy, everywhere even as in thee. The
result of thy insight will be inevitable. The illusion
vanishing, the glorious prospect opens before thy
vision. Seeing the oneness of this life everywhere,
the equal reality of all its moments, thou wilt be
ready to treat it all with the reverence that prudence
would have thee show to thy own little bit of future
life. What prudence in its narrow respectability
counseled, thou wilt be ready to do universally. As
the prudent man, seeing the reality of his future
self, inevitably works for it ; so the enlightened man,
seeing the reality of all conscious life, realizing that
"it is no shadow, but fact, at once and inevitably de-

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 161

sires, if only for that one moment of insight, to
enter into the service of the whole of it.

So the illusion of selfishness vanishes for thy
present thought (alas ! not for thy future conduct,
O child of passion ! ), when thou lookest at what
selfishness has so long hidden from thee. Thou seest
now the universal life as a whole, just as real as thou
art, identical in joy and sorrow. The conflict of
selfishness and unselfishness vanishes. Selfishness is
but a half realization of the truth expressed in un-
selfishness. Selfishness says : I shall exist. Un-
selfishness says : The Other Life is as My Life.
To realize another's pain as pain is to cease to desire
it in itself. Hatred is illusion. Cowardly sympa-
thy, that hides its head for fear of realizing the neigh-
bor's pain, is illusion. But unselfishness is the real-
ization of life. Unselfishness leads thee out of the
mists of blind self -adoration, and shows thee, in all
the life of nature about thee, the one omnipresent,
conscious struggle for the getting of the desired. In
all the songs of the forest birds ; in all the cries of
the wounded and dying, struggling in the captor's
power ; in the boundless sea, where the myriads of
water-creatures strive and die ; amid all the countless
hordes of savage men ; in the hearts of all the good
and loving ; in the dull, throbbing hearts of all pris-
oners and captives ; in all sickness and sorrow ; in
all exultation and hope ; in all our devotion ; in all
our knowledge, — everywhere from the lowest to the
noblest creatures and experiences on our earth, the
same conscious, burning, willful life is found, end-
lessly manifold as the forms of the living creatures,
ll

162 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as these im-
pulses that even now throb in thy own little selfish
heart. Lift up thy eyes, behold that life, and then
turn away and forget it as thou canst ; but if thou
hast known that, thou hast begun to know thy duty.

VI.

But this unity that the moral insight has found
for us in life must not be falsely interpreted.
Rightly interpreted, the moral insight will solve for
us many very difficult problems ; but we must not
imagine that it shows us all this individual life as
in any mystical sense already actually in the har-
mony that we seek. Not because these aims are al-
ready in themselves one, but because we, as moral
seers, unite in one moment of insight the realization
of all these aims, for that reason alone is this life
one for us. It is in this sense alone that the moral
insight gives us a solution of the problem of egoism
and altruism, as well as a foundation for a general
doctrine of the Highest Good. The moral insight
does not enable us to say : These beings have always
actually but blindly sought what was in itself the
Highest Good. We can only say : Each one has
sought in his blindness only what was to him desir-
able. And not, save by the realization of the con-
flict of desire, can the truly highest good be con-
ceived. The moral insight discovers harmony not
as already implied in the nature of these blind, con-
flicting wills, but as an ideal to be attained by hard
work.

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 163

We point this out in order to show that we do not
fall into the hackneyed error of those moralists who
insist that they merely tell men what one thing it is
that men have all been blindly seeking. Such mor-
alists often say : u Our system is but an expression
of the tendency that was always there, latent in
men. It tells them in plain words what they al-
ways wanted, and then it tells them how to get this
end." This specious pretense of so many moral sys-
tems we have implicitly condemned in the previous
part of our discourse. It constitutes in many cases
that appeal to the physical facts which we have set
aside as always useless and often ungrounded. If
one looks the pretense fairly in the face, how flat
and stale it seems ! Yonder vast wealth of conflict-
ing aims among men, base and noble, devilish and
divine, — what moralist has been able to sum all of
them up in any formula, save in the wholly abstract
formula that we have above referred to, namely,
that all these beings seek what seems to them desir-
able. How presumptuous to say to them : " In fact
you all desire this that I formulate in my text-book
of morals." In fact they do not. And it is absurd
to watch the turnings and twistings of language by
which a moralist tries to make out that they do.
For instance, let the moralist be J. S. Mill, and let
him declare, as he does, that happiness is the one
goal of all men. If happiness includes the attain-
ment of any possible object of anybody's desire, then
indeed the theory is a truism. But with this truism,
of course, no sort of progress would have been made
in ethics. Mill must tell us something about what

164 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

sorts of happiness there are, and about what sorts
ought to be sought most of all. He says, as we
know, that there are " higher " and " lower " pleas-
ures, and that higher pleasures ought to be sought
in preference to the others, the pleasure of the intel-
lect, of generosity, etc., instead of the sensual pleas-
ures. What can be the proof ? That happiness
was the goal we were to learn, because all men ac-
tually seek it. But that the " higher " happiness is
the goal, rather than a lower form, how do we learn
that ? Because men always choose it ? In fact they
do not. So Mill has to shift the ground a little.
They do not all of them actually seek it, but they
would seek it if they knew it. Most of them are ig-
norant of what they would prize most, namely, of
these " higher " pleasures. But here again Mill
meets a disheartening fact. Most men, if they ever
love " higher " pleasures at all, are found loving
them more for a while in the ideal enthusiasm of
youth than later in the prosaic dullness of middle
life. Men who have known the " higher " happi-
ness do then deliberately turn away from it. This
is a regular fact of life, well known, and often la-
mented. How does this agree with Mill's doctrine ?
Alas ! it does not agree, and only by worthless de-
vices can he conceal from himself the fact. The
people who enjoy the higher know the lower and re-
ject it. The people who enjoy the lower do not
know of the higher, or, if they ever knew it, they
have forgotten it, or if they have not quite forgotten
the higher, they have " lost capacity for it." As if
all this could not just as plausibly be said from the

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 165

side of the " lower " pleasures. Just as if it were
not constantly said from that side in every good
drinking-song, with a result precisely opposed to
Mill's. In fact Mill is driven in this controversy
with imaginary opponents to the worst subterfuge
possible for so skilled a thinker, when he at last
says that the pleasure which seems the higher of two
pleasures to the " most of those who have experi-
enced both " is actually the higher. For thus, to
keep up the show of merely interpreting to men their
actual will, Mill has to appeal to the opinion of the
majority, has to use a purely practical habit of de-
liberative assemblies for the purpose of deciding a
question of theory, and then has most absurdly to
declare that a man's experience about his own
pleasure is worth nothing as a test of its value un-
less the majority of his fellows agree with him in
his judgment.

In fact all this is benevolent trifling. Men declare
at one time one pleasure to be " highest," that is,
most desirable, and at another time they declare an-
other pleasure to be the only desirable one. Differ-
ent men persist in having different aims. To de-
fine their duty by telling them that they all have
one aim is wrong. From the point of view of the
moral insight all this struggling life becomes one ;
but that is not because it as yet ceases to struggle,
but because the being possessed of the moral insight
comes to realize it all at once. For him it is one,
because he identifies himself with the struggling
aims. He seeks their harmony, and must do so if
he have the insight. But they are not in harmony

166 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

as yet at all ; else would he have no work to do.
Let him then not deceive himself. The conflict itself
is real and not illusory. The illusion lies in the fact
that no one of the fighters realizes the inner life of
the others. But to overcome that illusion in any
soul is not to show that all the fighters have been
desiring the same thing.

J. S. Mill is by no means our only case of the ef-
fort to convince people that they always have had
one object of search, which the moralist has but to
name in order to bring peace on the earth. Ben-
tham undertook the same task, and showed in his
v blunt way as much skill in subterfuge as he ever ac-
cused his opponents of showing, while he tried to
make out that all men always have been Bentham-
ites, to whom pleasure was the only good. Mr.
Spencer in his turn tries to define the Good so that
it shall agree not only with the popular usage of the
word good, but also with the Spencerian notion of
what constitutes the Good. If anywhere a usage of
the word appears that does not agree with the Spen-
ceriaii usage, Mr. Spencer insists, sometimes, that,
if cross-questioned, the man who so uses it would
have to come over to the Spencerian usage, and
sometimes that the usage in question is a survival
in culture of a savage notion, or that it is in some
other way insignificant. Thus the proof of Mr.
Spencer's view about the nature of the ideal be-
comes so simple and easy that when, a little further
on, it is necessary to recognize the existence of pes-
simists, Mr. Spencer finds no difficulty in regarding
it as perfectly plain that a man can become a pes-

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 167

simist only in case he believes that the Spencerian
ideal of the Good is unattainable. Thus axioms are
manufactured whenever we need them.

All this is mere neglect of whatever ideals do not
at once fit into one's own ideal. Such neglect is un-
worthy of an ethical inquirer. Yet it has been fre-
quently committed in recent times, and it is com-
mitted whenever a man endeavors or pretends, as
Professor Clifford also very skillfully endeavored
and pretended, to found ethical science wholly upon
the basis and by the methods of natural science.
Such attempts are like the efforts of a man trying to
build a steamboat, who should first drop the steam-
engine into the water, and then seek to build the
boat up about the engine so as to float it and be
driven by it. For natural science will indeed give
us the engine of our applied ethics, as indispensa-
ble as the steam-engine to the boat. But first we
must lay the keel, and we must get the boat ready
for the engine, the ideal ready for the science that
is to apply it. All such attempts as those that put
the " scientific basis " first, lamely strive to conceal
their helplessness behind a show of appealing to the
" facts of human nature and of the social structure,
as science discovers them." But these facts reveal
a confused warfare of aims among men, no one aim
being actually chosen by the whole of men. And
then the " scientific moralist " tries to show by all
sorts of devices that all men really have the same
aim. But he cannot show that, because it is not
true. What aim is common to the whole life of any
one of us ? Much less then is any aim common to
all men.

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

But this mistake is not specially modern. Not
only the modern scientific moralists have been guilty
of it, but moral preachers of all schools since Soc-
rates have been prone to insist on occasion, for pur-
poses of persuasion, that somehow or other all evil
conduct arises from mere ignorance of what one
wants. This view is a mistake. One may want
anything, and may know it very well. There is no
known limit to the caprice and to the instability of
the human will. If you find anybody desiring any-
thing, the only tolerably sure and fairly universal
comment is, that he will stop desiring it by and by.
You can seldom get any ultimate analysis of the
motive of such a desire.

But we do not found our moral system on any
such analysis. We do not say even that it is phys-
ically possible for any of us to get and to keep the
moral insight long together. What we affirm can
once more briefly be summed up as follows : —

1. Moral insight, whenever, however, to whomso-
ever it comes, consists in the realization of the true
inner nature of certain conflicting wills that are ac-
tual in the world.

2. An absolute moral insight, which we can con-
ceive, but which we never fully attain ourselves,
would realize the true inner nature of all the con-
flicting wills in the world.

3. The moral insight involves from its very na-
ture, for those who have it, the will to harmonize,
so far as may be possible, the conflicting wills that
there are in the world, and that are realized at the
moment of insight.

THE MORAL INSIGHT. 169

4. If the moral insight be concerned directly with
two conflicting wills, my neighbor's and my own,
then this insight involves the will to act as if my
neighbor and myself were one being that possessed
at once the aims of both of us.

5. If the moral insight be concerned with con-
flicting general aims, such as could express them-
selves in systems of conduct, then the moral insight
involves the will to act, so far as may be, as if one
included in one's own being the life of all those
whose conflicting aims one realizes.

6. Absolute moral insight would involve the will
to act henceforth with strict regard to the total of
the consequences of one's act for all the moments
and aims that are to be affected by this act.

7. The moral insight stands in all its forms op-
posed to ethical dogmatism, which accepts one sepa-
rate end only. The insight arises from the con-
sciousness that this one aim is not the only one that
is actual. Imperfectly and blindly ethical dogma-
tism also realizes this truth, and so hates or even
anathematizes the opposing aims. But the hatred
is imperfect realization. The moral insight there-
fore says to those who possess the dogmatic spirit :
"In so far as you seek a reason for the faith that is
in you, you can find none short of the assumption of
my position." The moral insight says to itself, " I
ought not to return to the dogmatic point of view."
So the moral insight insists upon giving itself the
rule-, " Dogmatism is wrong."

8. The only alternatives to the moral insight are :
(a) ethical dogmatism, which once for all gives up

170 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

the effort to get any basis for ethics save its own ir-
rational caprice ; and (6) ethical skepticism, which,
, as we have seen, is only a preliminary form of the
moral insight, and passes over into the latter upon
reflection.

9. There is no other distinction between right and
wrong save what the dogmatic systems on the one
hand give as their capricious determinations, and
what the moral insight on the other hand shows as
the expression of what it involves.

Our conclusion so far is therefore this : Remain
blind if you will ; we have no means of preventing
you. But if you want to know the whole ethical
truth, you can find it only in the moral insight. All
else is caprice. To get the moral insight, you must
indeed have the will to get the truth as between the
conflicting claims of two or more doctrines. This
will being given, the moral insight is the necessary
outcome even of skepticism itself.

Yet now, after all our argument and enthusiasm,
the reader must know that what we have so far por-
trayed is only the most elementary aspect of the
moral insight. The unity that we have insisted upon
is so far an empty unity, a negative freedom from
conflict. To show the real worth of this whole view,
we must pass from the beggarly elements of duty to
more advanced conceptions. The moral insight must
be so developed as to tell us about the Organization
of Life. The empty unity must be filled with con-
tent. We must discuss more in concreto what men
possessed of the moral insight will do.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE.

Die wahre Freiheit ist als Sittlichkeit dies, dass der Wille nicht sub-
jektive, d. i. eigensiichtige, sondern allgemeinen Inhalt zu seinen
Zwecken hat. — HEGEL, Encyclopddie.

UNEXPECTEDLY we have been saved from our eth-
ical skepticism even in and through the very act of
thinking it out. Here, as elsewhere in philosophy,
the truth is to be reached, neither by dreading nor by
discountenancing the doubt, but by accepting, expe-
riencing, and absorbing the doubt, until, as an ele-
ment in our thought, it becomes also an element in
an higher truth. We do not say, therefore, to com-
mend our moral principle, as it has just been pro-
pounded, that it is immediately acceptable to all
healthy consciences, or that it is a pious, or a respect-
able, or a popularly recognized principle. We say
only this : Doubt rationally about moral doctrines,
and your doubt itself, if real, thorough-going, all-em-
bracing, merciless, will involve this very principle of
ours. We find the principle by means of the univer-
sal doubt, and it is this method of procedure that
distinguishes the foregoing discussion of the basis of
morals from many of those that have previously been
concerned with this problem. To point out that the
average man, or the reputed saint, or the inspired

172 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

prophet, or the great poet, or the reader himself,
whenever he is enthusiastic has or has had a given
ideal, is not to justify this ideal. Yet of such a na-
ture are the justifications that most moralists have
given for their ideals. If we have gained our re-
sult by any better method, that was because we were
free to doubt all those pretended defenses of the
good. We have found the nature of the absolute
and universal will, by rigidly questioning the signifi-
cance of all the individual wills.

But our ideal must be made to do work in the
world. It must accomplish something, by solving
for us a few concrete moral problems, such as actu-
ally trouble men. Even the present discussion must
consider some of these consequences of our general
principle ; for religious philosophy, in seeking an
ideal for life, does not want a barren abstraction,
but such an ideal as can also be our guide. What
does our principle tell a man to do ?

The principle, as is plain, may be viewed in two
ways. If by moral insight we mean what the last
chapter defined, namely, insight into the fact of the
existence of other conscious wills besides our own,
coupled with full rational appreciation of this truth,
then our principle may be viewed as saying to each
of us : Get and keep the moral insight as an expe-
rience^ and do all that tliou canst to extend among
men this experience. On the other hand, the prin-
ciple may be equally well viewed as saying : Act
out in each case what the moral insight bids thee
do ; that is, as before explained, Having made thy-
self, in so far as thou art able, one with all the con-

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 173

flicting wills before thee, act out the resulting uni-
versal will as it then arises in thee. Two classes of
human duties are thus defined, one formal and pro-
visional, the other permanent. We must explain in
some measure each of them, in order that we may
show the practical applications of our moral prin-
ciple.

The first class of duties comprises those that have
most especially to do with the moral education of our
race. We are, and must long remain, exceedingly
imperfect and blind creatures. If there is possible
any state of humanity in which all shall be ready to
act in accordance with the moral insight, that state
must be, morally speaking, better than any other.
Therefore the first demand that the moral insight
makes of us so soon as we get it is : So act as to
increase the number of those who possess the insight.
Here, of course, is a precept of a very formal char-
acter, and plainly provisional in its nature. It is as
if one were to be among blind men, himself blind,
and were by some magical act, say by accidentally
washing in a miraculous fountain, to get at one stroke
and for the first time the power of sight, in all its
maturity and perfection. Such an one would per-
haps say : " How noble is this new sense ! But to
what end shall I use it ? For the first I must use
it to bring these other men to the fountain, to wash
their eyes, that they may miraculously learn in one
instant to see this glorious world." But some one
might object : " In this way, if the only use to be

174 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

made of a man's sight is to extend the power of sight
to others, of what use is the power itself ? The sole
aim of seeing cannot be to cause others to see. Else
what good would result to any one, if all followed
your precept?" The answer would be plain:
" When all or the most of us get the power, then
indeed we can use it for other ends. But because it
is the best of powers for all these other ends, there-
fore the best provisional use to make of it is, not to
spend much time upon these ends, but to spend time
upon extending the possession of the power. When
this is done, then first will begin the real use of the
power for its own sake." As in this case of the sup-
posed miraculous acquirement of a new sense in all
its maturity of power at one stroke, so it is in case
of the much more gradual acquirement of the moral
insight. To be sure, the ultimate aim of life cannot
be merely the extension of the power to realize the
wills that are active about us, but must at last be
found by defining the course of action that best har-
monizes these wills. But, provisionally, we have a
task before us that is easily defined, because elemen-
tary. Harmony cannot be even partially attained,
the best human activity cannot be even imperfectly
developed, until a very great number of men have
this, the very first, most elementary requisite of con-
scious morality, namely, the power to see the facts of
human life as they are. So long as a man is bound
up in his individual will, he may be instinctively up-
right, he cannot be consciously and with clear intent
righteous. So long therefore as this is true of him,
he will be dependent on traditions that are often per-

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 175

nicious, on conscience that is often brutal prejudice,
on faith that is often bigotry, on emotion that is the
blindest of all guides ; and if he does good or if he
does evil, the power responsible for his deeds will
not be a truly moral impulse. To gain the moral
ends of humanity, the indispensable prerequisite is
therefore the moral insight in its merely formal as-
pect, as an human power and as an experience of life.
When a good many more men have reached the pos-
session of this power, then more of life will be taken
up with concrete duties. Until that time conies, the
great aim must be this formal and provisional one :
to produce in men the moral mood, and so to pre-
pare the way for the further knowledge of the high-
est good. If we put the matter otherwise we may
say : The mtfral insight, insisting upon the need of
the harmony of all human wills, shows us that, what-
ever the highest human good may be, we can only
attain it together, for it involves harmony. The
highest good then is not to be got by any one of us
or by any clique of us separately. Either the high-
est good is for humanity unattainable, or the human-
ity of the future must get it in common. Therefore
the sense of community, the power to work together,
with clear insight into our reasons for so working,
is the first need of humanity. Not what good thing
men may hereafter come to see, but how they shall
attain the only sense whereby they can ever get to
see the good, is the great present human concern.

Starting with this duty, we can now examine
what rule of life this duty will give us. Extend the
moral insight among men, and in thy own life:

176 THE RELIGIOUS "ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

this is the first commandment. The direct conse-
quence is that, so regarded, the first duty of man in
the present day cannot be either to get happiness
himself, or, in view of this present state of human
life, to make other people happy. All that he may
indeed be in some measure required to do, but not,
in the present state of the world, as an end, but solely
as a means to an end. This at all events is not the
day for contentment, but for work ; and joy is now
a proper part of human life chiefly in so far as it
tends to preserve, to increase, or to foster the moral
insight. Here we have the present practical solu-
tion suggested for all the questions about the right
and wrong of so-called hedonism. Hedonism is the
product of an imperfect understanding of the moral
insight. Benevolent hedonism springs from the in-
sight that men like to be happy. Eealizing this, the
believer in universal hedonism says : Make men
happy so far as thou canst. But this principle of
hedonism is surely not the immediate truth for this
present time, whatever may or may not turn out to
be the case in future. For to labor to increase happi-
ness may for the present mean to increase the moral
blindness of men. Some sorts of happiness tend to
make us blind, as has in fact been shown in a for-
mer chapter. Unless a man experiences very bit-
terly the reality of the conflict of wills in this world,
the moral insight is apt to forsake him. But until
the moral insight becomes practically universal, the
highest good for humanity cannot be got. There-
fore all forms of happiness that hinder rather than
help the moral insight are evil, and we ought to do

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 177

what we can to get rid of them out of the world.
And all experiences, however painful, that certainly
tend to the increase of the power of moral insight,
are good for men ; and if we see no other experi-
ences more suitable for this purpose, we ought to do
what we can to increase among men the number
and the definiteness of these pains.

Yet of course it will at once appear, when we ex-
amine human emotional experiences in the light of
what we know of men, that there is a decided limit
to the morally educative power of painful experi-
ences, and that, on the other hand, very many pleas-
ant experiences are useful to the moral insight, either
by directly aiding it, or by preparing a man to at-
tain it. In considering this branch of the subject,
we at last reach the point where a scientific psy-
chology can give us a great deal of help. We re-
jected the so-called " scientific basis " for morals be-
cause it founds the ought to be upon brutal physical
facts. Now, however, we can turn to science to help
us in our present task, because, having defined our
ought to be, we are dealing with applied ethics, and
are asking how this moral insight is to be attained.
Psychology must tell us what it can as to this mat-
ter. And here such suggestions as those in Mr.
Spencer's " Data of Ethics " are indeed a useful aid
to applied moral doctrine. We reject wholly the no-
tion that Mr' Spencer or any like teacher has even
caught a glimpse of the fundamental ethical problem.
Mr. Spencer seems to be in the most childlike igno-
rance that there is any such problem at all. But we
are glad to find that Mr. Spencer once having very

12

178 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

illogically accepted a partially correct fundamental
notion about the ideal of life, does suggest a good
deal about this problem of applied ethics with which
we are now dealing. He does tell us some very sen-
sible things about the attainment of this ideal.

Among these sensible suggestions is the insistence
upon the value- of pleasure as an indication of the
increase of healthy life in the man who has the pleas-
ure ; and the further insistence upon the thought
that, since pleasure thus indicates in some wise
health and efficiency, and since efficiency is an indis-
pensable prerequisite to sound practical morality,
there must always be a certain moral presumption
in favor of happiness, and in favor of whatever tends
to increase happiness. Properly understood and
limited, this doctrine of Mr. Spencer's is an obvious
and useful consequence from what we know of psy-
chology. Mr. Spencer dwells on it at tedious and
wholly unnecessary length, but he is surely justified
when he protests, against the ascetics, that their
ideal man must be in general a puny, inefficient, and
perhaps wholly burdensome man, whose ill -health
may make him, at last, hopelessly selfish. This we
know on good scientific grounds, and it is well to
have said the thing plainly in an ethical treatise.

But what is the result ? Is happiness the only
aim of life because the permanently unhappy man is
apt to be a poor diseased creature, useless, or even
dangerous ? No ; the consequence of all this is that
the first moral aim must be to make a man efficient
in possessing and extending the moral insight. Ef-
ficiency for moral ends is still our proximate goal.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 179

Happiness is, at least for the present, only a subordi-
nate means. Therefore we say : By all means make
men happy, so far as their happiness tends to give
them and to preserve in them moral insight. True
it is, as scientific psychology shows us, that a man,
in order to be as good as possible, must generally be
possessed of respectable health, of what he thinks a
good place in the world, of friends, and of numerous
pleasures. He must digest well, he must enjoy the
esteem of his fellows, he must be strong, and he must
be frequently amused. All this is true, and is in
fact a commonplace. When an ascetic denies this,
he maintains a pernicious heresy, that tends to de-
stroy moral insight by depriving men of the phys-
ical power to get it. But these facts must not be
misinterpreted. Whatever might be true of a society
in which moral insight had been attained, nothing is
plainer than that happiness at the present time can-
not be regarded from our point of view as more
than a means to the present great end. If we try
to amuse our neighbors, to relieve their woes, to im-
prove their worldly estate, we must do so not as if
this were the end of the present life, but as workers
in a very vast drama of human life, whose far-off
purpose must govern every detail. The good Sa-
maritan must say to himself, as he helps the poor
wretch by the wayside : " In so far as I realize only
this man's need, my purpose is indeed simply to re-
lieve him. But my purpose must be higher than that.
This man is not alone, but one of a multitude. My
highest aim in helping him is not to make him indi-
vidually happy, but to increase by this, as by all my

180 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

acts, the harmony of mankind. Not alone that he
may by and by go away and enjoy himself do I help
him now, but because by so doing I hope through
him to increase among men moral insight." There-
fore, notwithstanding Schopenhauer's ridicule, Fichte
was right in saying that we ought to treat the indi-
vidual man not chiefly as an individual, but as an
instrument for extending and serving the moral law.
Because a certain kind of happiness means efficiency,
and efficiency morality, therefore and therefore alone
have we the right and duty, in this present genera-
tion, to labor for this kind of happiness.

Equally, therefore, it becomes our duty to labor
to increase pain, whenever pain is the best means of
fostering the moral insight. Therefore, in this pres-
ent day, it cannot be our duty to labor to diminish
pain in the world, simply as pain. Again we must
appeal to psychology to guide us aright. The pains
that foster moral insight, although limited in num-
ber and intensity, are numerous, and still imper-
fectly defined. It would be a useful task to study
more in detail than psychologists have yet done, the
moralizing power of pain. This is a task for the
psychology of the future. In general, of course, we
can say that the range of such pains has been much
exaggerated by ascetics. Bodily pain, if severe, is
generally brutalizing, at least for most people, and
the moral insight is in it' only in so far as the past
experience of bodily pain helps us to know the sig-
nificance of the suffering of others, not by giving
us that blind emotion of sympathy before criticised,
but by giving us the means to form a cool abstract

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 181

estimate of the value of this evil of physical pain.
For thus we can realize the strength of the will that
seeks to escape it, and can act with due respect to
this will. But nature generally gives us enough ex-
perience of pain to furnish excellent material for the
calculations needed. Therefore, bodily pains, save
as punishments, are seldom useful instruments for
our great purpose. Not thus can self be duly mor-
tified.

It is different with certain mental pains. All
those that tend to make the individual feel his own
necessary limitations, and thereby to approach the
realization of the great world of life about him, are
necessary evils. His will must be overwhelmed, that
the Universal Will may have place to establish it-
self in him. Therefore, without considering whether
we are thereby increasing or diminishing the sum
of human misery, we all of us unhesitatingly set
about the work of contending with blind self-con-
fidence and self-absorption wherever it may appear.
Therefore it is right that we ridicule all pretentious
mediocrity that is unconscious of its stupidities.
Therefore, in fact, it is right that we should criticise
unsparingly all pretenders, however much they may
be pained by our criticism. Therefore it is well that
we should feel not a selfish but a righteous joy when-
ever pride has a fall, whenever the man who thinks
that he is something discovers of a truth that he is
nothing. Therefore, also, do we put down excessive
forwardness and vanity in growing children, although
so to do hurts their sensitive young selfishness very
keenly. In all such ways we must ask and we must

182 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

show no mercy, save when these keen pains of
wounded vanity are so given as to inflame and in-
crease this vanity itself. All healthy, truthful criti-
cism of individual limitations is a duty, even if it is a
present torture to the individual criticised. For this
individual is blind to other life because he is wrapped
up in himself. If by showing him his insignificance
you can open his eyes, you are bound to do so, even
though you make him writhe to see his worthless-
ness. For what we here defend is not that ill-natured
criticism whose only aim is to gratify the miserable
self of the critic, but the criticism whose edge is
turned in earnest against every form of self-satisfac-
tion that hinders insight. Let a man be self-satis-
fied when he is at rest, after dinner, or in merry
company. It is a harmless and even a useful amuse-
ment. But when he is at work doing good he ought
to hate self-satisfaction, which hinders the moral in-
sight, which exalts his will above the universal will,
which takes the half-done task for the whole task,
and altogether glorifies the vanity of vanities. If
now my critic rids me of such self-satisfaction, he
may hurt me keenly, but he is my best friend. My
life may often be miserable in consequence, but then
I am an instrument, whose purpose it is to attain, to
foster, to extend, and to employ the moral insight.
My misery is a drop, evil no doubt in itself (since
my poor little will must writhe and struggle when it
sees its own vanity and the hopelessness of its sepa-
rate satisfactions), but a relative good, since through
it I may attain to the moral insight. All such pains
must be dealt with in the same way. Hence the

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 183

utilitarian principle of benevolent hedonism, even if
right in its application to the far-off future, has but
little direct practical application to a life that must
to-day be judged by such standards as these.

II.

But has the principle of hedonism any truth even
in its application to a world where all had attained
the moral insight as an experience ? If we con-
sider the higher human activities, whose worth is not
merely provisional, but permanent, the activities that
men will carry on when they have freed themselves
from selfish strife, is the aggregate happiness as such
the goal of the action of this unselfish society ?

There are existent already among men activities
that belong to spheres where selfish strife is, rela-
tively speaking, suppressed. These activities are
foreshadowings of the life of the possible future hu-
manity that may come to possess the moral insight.
Art, science, philosophy, are the types of such life.
These activities form still but a small part of the
aggregate work of men, a ad so it must long be ; yet,
though subordinated in extent to the pressing moral
needs of an imperfect state, these activities are al-
ready among the highest in our lives. But now, are
they valuable because of the aggregate happiness
that they cause, or for some other reason ? To judge
of this we must study the definition of the second,
more permanent class of human duties.

Suppose then that the first and provisional aim of
human conduct had been attained, and that all men

184 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

possessed the moral insight, what would this insight
then lead them to do ? Here the hedonist will expect
to have his revenge for our previous neglect of his
advice. " My precepts have been set aside so far,"
he may say, " as having no immediate application to
the moral needs of the moment. To get this merely
formal condition of harmony among men, the moral
man has been advised to subordinate all direct efforts
towards making people happy, to the end of making
them first possess what you have called the moral
mood. But now at last, in the supposed case, the
great end has been attained, and men are formally
moral. Now surely they have nothing to do but to
be as happy as possible. So at last my plan will be
vindicated, and the ideal man will come to be a
seeker of ideal pleasures."

The hedonist is too sanguine. His ideas of the
highest state may have their value, but they are in-
definite in at least one respect. When he says that
he wants all his ideal men, in the ideal state, to be
happy together, he never tells us what he means by
the individual man at all, nor what inner relation
that individual's happiness is to have to the happi-
ness of other men. All men, in the ideal state, are
to be harmonious and happy together : this the he-
donist tells us ; but he does not see how many dif-
ficulties are involved in the definition of this ideal
state. He plainly means and says that in this ideal
state the good of the whole society is to be an aggre-
gate of a great number of individual happy states,
which the various men of the blessed society are to
feel. He assumes then that in the ideal state each

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 185

man would be able to say : " I, separately regarded,
am happy, and so are all my fellows." Now pos-
sibly the very notion of an ideal state, in which the
separate selves are as such happy, and in which
the blessedness of the whole is an aggregate of the
blessedness of the separate individuals, is a contra-
dictory notion. At all events it is a notion whose
meaning and validity every hedonist coolly and un-
questioningly assumes. Yet it is an assumption that
we must examine with care.

If a man sets before himself and his fellows the
goal of individual happiness, as the hedonist wants
him to do in the supposed ideal state, can he con-
ceivably attain that goal? The hedonist supposes
that the only moral limitation to the pursuit of per-
sonal happiness is the moral requirement of altru-
ism, according to which no one ought to seek his
own pleasure at the cost of a greater misery to an-
other. In the ideal state, as all would be in the
moral mood, and all disposed to help one another,
and to get happiness only together, this one limita-
tion would be removed. Then, thinks the hedonist,
the highest law would be : Get the most happiness,
all of you. This happiness the hedonist conceives as
an aggregate of states that would exist in the various
separate individuals. So each individual will strive
after his own joy, but in such wise as to hinder the
joy of nobody else. But we oppose to this the ques-
tion : Is there not some other limitation than this to
individual search for happiness ? Is not the ideal
of individual happiness as such an impossible ideal,
not because the individuals in the imperfect state

186 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

lack harmony, but because, even in the supposed har-
monious state, there would be an inner hindrance to
the pursuit of this ideal by any individual ? Would
not the moral insight detect the hindrance, and so re-
ject this ideal ? There are at least some very famil-
iar reasons for thinking this to be the case. These
reasons do not of themselves prove, but they certainly
suggest, that the notion of a progressive individual
happiness has in it some strange contradiction.

First, then, we have the old empirical truth that
individual happiness is never very nearly approached
by any one, so long as he is thinking about it. The
happy man ought to be able to say, " I am happy."
He can much more easily say, " I was happy ; " for
present reflection upon happiness interferes in most
cases with happiness. So here is an inner difficulty,
very well known, in the way of making individual
happiness the goal of life. We have no desire to
dwell here upon this difficulty, which has so often
been discussed. We do not exaggerate its impor-
tance. We consider it only the first suggestion that
the hedonistic ideal of life has some inner contradic-
tion in its very nature, so that there is some deeper
conflict here going on than that between selfishness
and altruism.

In the second place, we notice that, if anybody
tries to sketch for us the ideal state of human life
as the hedonist conceives it, we aje struck with a
sense of the tameness and insignificance of the whole
picture. The result is strange. Here we have been
making peace and harmony among men the proxi-
mate goal of life, yet when this harmony has to be

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 187

conceived in hedonistic fashion, when the hedonist
gives us his picture of a peaceful society, where, in
the midst of universal good humor, his ideal, the hap-
piness of everybody concerned, is steadfastly pursued,
we find ourselves disappointed and contemptuous.
That harmless company of jolly good fellows is un-
speakably dull. One listens to the account of their
happiness as one might listen to the laughter and
merry voices of some evening club of jovial strangers,
who had been dining at the hotel in which one hap-
pened himself to be eating a late and frugal supper,
in sobriety and weariness. Those unknown crea-
tures whose chatter in the next room the traveler
dimly hears at such a time, — a confused babble of
stupid noises ; how insignificant their joys seem to
him ! Who cares whether that really wretched set
of animals yonder, with their full stomachs and their
misty brains, think themselves happy or not ? To be
sure, among them the harmony seems in some sort
to have been momentarily realized. One would no
doubt seem to enjoy it all just as well as they, if he
were one of them. But one is viewing it at a dis-
tance, from outside ; and so looking at it he possibly
sees that a mass of individual happiness is not just
the ideal of ideals after all.

Just such, however, is the feeling that comes to one
in considering Mr. Spencer's description of his ideal
society. And similar feelings have been awakened
in many reflective people when they have considered
traditional notions of heaven, and have tried to esti-
mate the value of the life of individual bliss therein
pictured. Professor William James has recently so

188 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

well stated these objections in a few brilliant sen-
tences, that we cannot do better than to quote from
his recent article on " The Dilemma of Determin-
ism " : ! —

" Every one must at some time have wondered at that
strange paradox of our moral nature, that, though the
pursuit of outward good is the breath of its nostrils, the
attainment of outward good would seem to be its suffoca-
tion and death. Why does the painting of any paradise
or Utopia, in heaven or on earth, awaken such yawnings
for Nirvana and escape ? The white-robed, harp-playing
heaven of our Sabbath-schools, and the ladylike tea-table
elysium represented in Mr. Spencer's 6 Data of Ethics,' as
the final consummation of progress, are exactly on a par
in this respect, — lubberlands, pure and simple, one and
all. We look upon them from this delicious mess of in-
sanities and realities, strivings and deadnesses, hopes and
fears, and agonies and exultations, which form our pres-
ent state ; and tedium vitce is the only sentiment they
awaken in our breasts. To our crepuscular natures, born
for the conflict, the Rembrandtesque moral chiaroscuro,
the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom, such
pictures of light upon light are vacuous and expression-
less, and neither to be enjoyed nor understood. If this
be the whole fruit of the victory, we say; if the genera-
tions of mankind suffered and laid down their lives ; if
prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the fire, and all
the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a
race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should suc-
ceed, and protract in scecula sceculorum their contented
and inoffensive lives, — why, at such a rate, better lose
than win the battle, or at all events better ring down the
curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business
1 Unitarian Review for September, 1884.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 189

that began so importantly may be saved from so singu-
larly flat a winding-up."

Now not only does all this seem true in such cases,
but we have similar feelings about even so ideal a
picture of happy future life as is Shelley's, in the last
act of the " Prometheus." There are indeed many
deeper elements in that noble ideal of Shelley's, for
he distinctly says that his true ideal is " Man — Oh !
not men " ; or, as he again expresses it : —

" One undivided soul of many a soul
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea."

And when he says this, he gets far beyond mere he-
donism. But yet there are other elements in his
account that are not so satisfactory, and that are
decidedly hedonistic. Their expression is indeed
perfect. Surely if the noblest hedonism could ever
succeed with us through the noblest of statements^
such an advocate as Shelley would convince us. But
when the poet glorifies mere individual pleasure, as
he does in part of his picture, our clearest reflection
is that, after all, the end of the tragedy is petty when
compared with the beginning.

For consider what a world it is in which we begin
the poem. At first glance it is a gloomy and terri-
ble world of brutal wrong. But soon the picture
grows brighter, even while the wrong is depicted.
There is the glorious figure of the suffering Titan,
there is the sweetness of the tender love that watches
him ; and above the tyrant himself one feels that
there is somehow a heavenly might, that does not
suffer him to do his worst. The world in which

190 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

these things live is not intolerable. But then come
the spirits that sing to Prometheus, in his anguish,
of immortal deeds done on the earth, of great
thoughts and lofty passions. All these are born of
the conflict, and have their being in the midst of the
terrors of the tyrant's dominion. It is indeed no
perfect world, this ; and one needs some higher
light, such as Prometheus has, to prophesy that the
good will ever triumph ; but one sees forthwith that
from the perfect world, if it ever comes, these great
strivings for good, this sublime devotion and love
and heroism, must not wholly vanish.' These things
must not be laid aside like old garments whenever
Prometheus wins and is free ; their spirit must be
preserved as an element in the higher life of the
future. If they are worth anything, their true na-
ture must be eternal.

And as for the real worth of this world in which
the evil is so far triumphant — we learn something
of that from Demogorgon. This mysterious being
has indeed no very definite religious philosophy to
offer. He meets plain questions with vague an-
swers, when Asia and Panthea catechise him ; and
one feels it to be well for his reputation as a pro-
found teacher that his questioners are neither men
nor Socratic inquirers. But still what he tells of the
deep truth that is " imageless," is enough to make
us feel that even this world of horrors is not without
a divine significance. Jove reigns, but, whatever the
visible world may be, the truth of things is a world of
hope and love, where the real God is somehow above
all and through all, a Spirit of Eternal Goodness.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 191

To have found this out in the midst of all the evil
is surely not to have found life wholly vain.

But then what happens ? By the accident that,
according to Shelley, rules the world, the revolution
is accomplished, and Zeus is hurled headlong into the
abyss. What glorious life shall now begin ? When
the deep and magnificent truth that was felt to be be-
neath all the horror of the tyrant's reign, comes out
into full light, what tongue shall be able to sing the
glories of that beatific vision ? We listen eagerly —
and we are disappointed. Prometheus arises grandly
from his bed of torture, and then — he forthwith
bethinks himself of a very pretty cave, where one
might be content to rest a long time in the refined
company of agreeable women. There one will lie,
and wreathe flowers, and tell tales, and sing songs,
and laugh and weep ; and the hours will fly swiftly
by. And then what will become of the rest of the
world ? Oh, this world simply becomes a theatre of
like individual enjoyments. Everybody to his cave
and his flowers and his agreeable companions. And
that will then be all. No organization ; just good
fellowship and fragmentary amusements.

No, that cannot be all. Shelley felt as much,
and added the last act of the play. There we are
to have depicted grandly and vaguely the life of or-
ganized love. The world shall be all alive, and the
universal life shall join in the hymn of praise. All
the powers of reality shall feel the new impulse of
perfect harmony, and what shall spring from their
union shall be some higher kind of existence, in
which there is no longer to be any talk of thine and

192 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

mine ; but the " one undivided soul of many a soul,"
" where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea,"
shall enter upon a life of transcendent significance,
upon a task of eternal duration, and of a meaning
too high for us poor mortals of this present world
well to comprehend. But this is no longer pure
hedonism, although the verses hereabouts are so full
of the joyous outbursts and of the anticipations of
rapture. In fine, the outcome is no perfect and har-
monious conception at all. We find the joy of the
freed and loving, yet still separate selves, and the
higher life of the all-pervading universal spirit, both
alike glorified ; and we never get from the poet any
clearness about their actual relation. Is the world
blessed just because the tyrant no longer interferes
with each man's flower-wreathing and other amuse-
ments ? Or is the sole source of bliss the disposi-
tion of everybody to give everybody else everything ?
Or is the real source of the perfection this : that
these souls, no longer oppressed by hatred, have at
last come to feel not only their freedom, but also
some higher aim of universal life ? Shelley hints,
but does not consistently make us feel, what his real
result is. There was in fact always about Shelley
that childish innocence of benevolent hope, to which
the only evil seemed to be the hatred of men for one
another, and the highest good the outburst of uni-
versal kindliness. Now that is the beginning of
moral insight, but cannot be all of it. As if the be-
nevolence would not turn out to be utter emptiness,
unless there is something beyond it ! As if there
could be any value in this unity of life, unless there

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 193

is something to be done by the one life after it is
united ! As if the moral insight must not reveal
some deeper truth than can be seen in its first mo-
ments !

One expects what we are coming to. In discuss-
ing this problem of Shelley's we are reaching the
sense that the moral insight must be yet further
completed, or else it will be all in vain. The moral
insight says to us all : Act as one being. We must
come to that point ; but we must also go beyond.
We must ask : What is this one being to do, after
the insight has made all the individuals of one will ?
And we already begin to see, in opposition to hedon-
ism, that it cannot be the end of this universal will
simply to make of us so and so many new separate
individuals once more. The mass of tediously happy
selves seems insipid to our common sense, just be-
cause we all dimly feel the truth that we must now
come to understand better, namely, that the univer-
sal will of the moral insight must aim at the de-
struction of all which separates us into a heap of
different selves, and at the attainment of some higher
positive organic aim. The "one undivided soul"
we are bound to make our ideal. And the ideal of
that soul cannot be the separate happiness of you
and of me, nor the negative fact of our freedom
from hatred, but must be something above us all,
and yet very positive.

Had we deduced our principle in any other way
than the one we chose, we should be unable to take
this, our present necessary step forwards. The feel-
ing of sympathy, for instance, is concerned with the
13

194 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

individual object of our sympathy. To sympathize
with all men is to wish everybody happy, each after
his own fashion. But we rejected that emotional
sympathy as such. We said : The facts of life show
us a conflict of wills. To realize this conflict is to
see that no will is more justified in its separateness
than is any other. This realization is ethical skep-
ticism, a necessary stage on the way to the true
moral insight. The ethical doubt means and is the
realization of the conflict. But this realization
means, as we see on reflection, a real will in us that
unites these realized wills in one, and demands the
end of their conflict. This is our realization of an
Universal Will. The rest of our doctrine must be
the development of the nature of the universal will.
This will first says to each of the individual wills :
" Submit thyself to me." Or otherwise put, let
each will be so acted out as if by One Being who
combined in himself all the other wills. Hence the
universal will must demand, not the indefinitely con-
ceived or dimly and sentimentally desired separate
satisfaction of everybody, but an organic union of
life ; such an union as this our world would try to
make of itself if it were already in empirical fact
what the universal will demands it to be, namely,
one Self. This one Self, however, could no longer
will to cut itself up again into the separate empir-
ical selves, any more than it could in any narrow,
priggish fashion set itself up for a new specimen of
a lofty individual, to be obeyed as an arbitrary law-
giver. It would demand all the wealth of life that
the separate selves now have ; and all the unity that

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 195

any one individual now seeks for himself. It would
aim at the fullest and most organized life conceiv-
able. And this its aim would become no longer
merely a negative seeking for harmony, but a posi-
tive aim, demanding the perfect Organization of
Life.

III.

But the postulate of all hedonism, utilitarian or
other, this postulate of the absolute worth of indi-
vidual satisfaction, finds its practical refutation for
every growing character in yet another form. Every-
body has tried to realize the ideal of individualism,
this ideal of a happy or satisfied self, either for him-
self or for some loved one ; and everybody finds, if
he tries the thing long enough, what a hollow and
worthless business it all is. If there is, or is possible
anywhere, a really satisfied self, it certainly has no
place in any fleshly body ; and the reason is not
alone what disappointed people call the " disagree-
able order of things in this wicked world," but the
inner contradictions of this notion of a perfected hu-
man self. Let us remind ourselves of some of these
contradictions.

Hedonism has no meaning, unless the satisfied hu-
man self is logically possible. The ideal of hedon-
ism, with all its vagueness, has at least one essential
element, in that it demands the satisfaction of hu-
man selves by the free supply of all that they desire
for themselves. Hedonism therefore must and does
assert that what a man desires is his own content-
ment ; so that, if you could, physically speaking,

196 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

give him all that he asks for himself, you would have
reached the goal for him. But now, if all this is a
delusion, if in fact a man does not really want his
own satisfaction alone, but does actually want some-
thing more, that is not his individual satisfaction, and
that is not to be attained through his satisfaction,
then the hedonistic ideal does not express the truth
of life. And this paradoxical experience we all get,
sooner or later. We find that our little self does
desire something that, if gained, would be not its
own satisfaction at all, but its own destruction in its
separate life as this self. So the aim of life cannot
be ultimately hedonistic. For, if possessed of the
moral insight, we cannot will that each self should
get the greatest possible aggregate of separate satis-
factions, when in truth no one of the selves seeks
merely an aggregate of self -satisfactions as such, but
when each does seek something else that is unattain-
able in the form of separate self -satisfaction.

But possibly a reader may incredulously demand
where the proof is of this self-contradictory desire
that all the selves are declared to have. The proof
lies in the general fact that to be fully conscious of
one's own individual life as such is to be conscious
of a distressing limitation. This limitation every one
very shrewdly notices for the first in other people.
The knowledge of it expresses itself in personal crit-
icism. One first puts the matter very naively thus,
that, whereas the rule of life for one's own person is
simply to get all the satisfaction that one can, the
appearance of anybody else who pretends to be con-
tent with Airaself must be the signal not for admira-

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 197

tion at the sight of his success, but for a good deal
of contempt. One sees at once that he is a person
of serious limitations. One sees and feels perfections
that the other has not. One despises then the other
man's complacency, because it is so plainly founded
in illusion. '* If he could only see himself as others
see him," one says, " he could not be self-satisfied."
Criticism thus seems to indicate why he ought to be
discontented, and why he would, if he knew more,
feel a contempt for himself. All such criticism is
really an abandonment of the hedonistic principle.
If an individual ought to be dissatisfied, although he
is actually satisfied, and if he ought to be dissatisfied^^
merely because he has not some perfection that ex-
ists in somebody else, then the doctrine that a self
reaches its goal in so far as it reaches inner content-
ment is given up. No benevolent hedonist has any
business to criticise a happy man who is harming
nobody by his happiness. He is at the goal, or ap-
proximately so. Let him alone. To do otherwise,
by criticising him, is a crime.

But no ; every one feels that the true goal is not
attained for this man. And this feeling, though in
itself as feeling it proves nothing, is the first sug-
gestion to many of some deeper truth. This truth,
however, enters like iron into his soul, when some-
body else ably and justly and severely criticises him
in his turn. Here, for example, I have been for a
time content with myself, and have been saying to
my soul : " Soul, take thy ease," and here comes one
who says to me, very justly, " Thou fool," and points
out some great lack in my conduct, or in my charao

198 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ter, or in my knowledge. And now I have a strange
experience of conflicting passions. This critic has
caused me a sharp pang. Perhaps I hate him for it ;
but then, when I go away and think the matter over,
I see that as to the fact, he is right. This great lim-
itation does actually exist for me, and perhaps I can-
not remove it ; so I can but suffer from the sense of
it. I was innocent and ignorant before, and there-
fore happy. If the critic had not showed me to
myself, I should have kept this bliss. But it is in
vain now to think of returning to that innocence. I
am indeed a wretch and a fool ; and how shall I
escape myself ? Alas for my lost pleasure in con-
templating my fancied perfection !

But no : cannot I in fact return to that ignorance,
and to the blissful illusion of my own worth once
more ? Surely I can if I but try awhile. To flatter
myself, to curse the critic, to talk of his jealousy and
of his blindness : surely this will bring me back to
my ignorance again in time. He will be forgotten,
and I contented. But once more, my enlightened
self revolts from this lie. The defect is real, and I
know it. Would my ignorance make it less real ?
To have this defect and to suffer from it is bad
enough ; but with horror do I now contemplate the
state of going on forever with this defect, but still
ignorant of it and so not suffering from it. My old
innocence seems really pitiful. It actually adds much
to my present pang of chagrin, that I previously
ought to have felt the chagrin, and yet had it not.
I tremble when I reflect how, amid all that selfish
complacency, I really was a fool the whole time, and

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 199

appeared so to discerning people, and yet knew it
not. And therefore now, through all the pang of
the discovery, runs the feeling that I would not if I
could, no, not for any delight of complacency, return
to that state of hollow, delicious, detestable igno-
rance. It was a fool's paradise ; but I have escaped
from it. I know my nakedness, and I prefer the fruit
of the tree of knowledge, with bitter exile, to the
whole of the delights of that wretched place. It is
a contradictory state, this. My knowledge is torture
to my foolish, sensitive self ; yet while I writhe with
the vainest of pangs, I despise utterly the thought
of escaping it by illusion, or by forgetfulness, or by
any means save the actual removal or conquest of
the defect. And this I feel even when the defect is
seen to be utterly irremovable without the destruc-
tion of myself. Better go on despising myself, and
feeling the contempt of others, than return to the
delights of foolishness ; or, if the pain of knowing
what I am is insupportable, then it were better
to die, than to live in despicable ignorance. Oh,
wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me ?

Is all this mere emotion? or is it insight? In
fact it is a growing, though still imperfect insight,
a form of the moral insight. The pangs of this
wounded self-love are themselves in truth also van-
ity, like the complacent self-love that they mourn ;
but only through the gateway of this pain can most
people get beyond these vanities of individualism.
For this wounded self-love, that refuses to be com-
forted by any deliberate return to its old illusions,
is, as Adam Smith long since pointed out, an emo-

200 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

tional expression of the result of putting ourselves
at the point of view of our critics. We see our
limitations as they see them. Our will conforms
itself, therefore, to their contemptuous will concern-
ing us, because we realize the existence of that will.
In recognizing and sharing their contempt, we there-
fore realize in part the universal will that must con-
demn all individual limitations as such. We prac-
tically experience the truth that a perfectly fair judge
of us all would not be satisfied merely with our indi-
vidual contentments as such, but would also demand
the destruction of all our individual limitations. We
thus get practically far beyond hedonism. We see
that as we are weak and wretched in the eyes of one
another, we should all be far more so in the eyes of
a god Our ideal of life must then be the notion of
a life where no one being could fairly criticise any
other at all. But such a life would be no longer a
life of separate individuals, each limited to his petty
sphere of work. It would be a life in which self was
lost in a higher unity of all the conscious selves.

Singular may appear this conception even now,
after all that we have said ; but it is a practical con-
ception in our every-day human life. That we criti-
cise the limitations of others, and desire them to sac-
rifice their pleasures for the sake of removing these
limitations, may be regarded at first as our cruel ca-
price, if you will so regard it. But when the edge
of the sword is turned against us, when we, feeling
the bitterness of criticism and seeing our limitations,
long to be beyond them, hate ourselves for them, and
yet refuse to escape from the pain of all this by

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 201

forgetfulness of the defect, we pass from capricious
criticism to something higher. We accept with ag-
ony the point of view of the one who stands outside
of us. And, so doing, we pass in effect to the accep-
tance of the demands of the universal will. If there
were a will that included in one consciousness all our
separate wills, it could not will our individual de-
fects as such. It would be absolute critic, as well
as absolute harmonizer, of all of us. It would tear
down these individual barriers of our petty lives,
as the corporation of a great city may tear down
wretched old rookeries. It would demand that we
be one in spirit, and that our oneness be perfect.
But if we experience this universal will, we experi-
ence that hedonism, whose life-blood is the insistence
upon individual states as such, cannot be upheld by
the moral insight, either now, or at any future stage
of our human life on this earth. We perceive too
that we all have a deep desire for self-destruction, in
so far as we recognize that our self-love means ab-
sence of perfection.

IV.

We have seen in general the moral outcome of in-
dividualism. Let us study some of its forms and for-
tunes more in detail. Individualism, viewed as the
tendency to hold that the ideal of life is the separate
happy man, is itself very naturally the normal ten-
dency of unreflecting strong natures, to whom happi-
ness has been in a fair human measure already given.
Children and child-like men, full of vigor, are inno-
cently selfish ; or, when they act unselfishly, their

202 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

whole ideal is the making of others like themselves.
They fall into a notion about life that the author
not long since heard well-expressed by a cheerful
young friend, a former fellow-student, who, having
early plunged into a busy life, has already won both
influence and property. This man, full of the enthu-
siasm of first success, was talking over his life with
the writer, and fell to defining his opinions on vari-
ous subjects, such as young men like to discuss. At
last he was asked about the view of life that he had
already formed in his little experience. He was
quick, honest, and definite in his answer, as he al-
ways has been. " My notion of a good life is," he
said, " that you ought to help your friends and whack
your enemies." The notion was older than the
speaker remembered ; for Socratic dialogues on the
Just, with their ingenious Sophists making bold as-
sertions, form no part of his present stock of sub-
jects for contemplation. But what was interesting
in the fresh and frank manner of the speech was
the clearness of the conviction that a world of suc-
cessful and friendly selves, whose enemies chanced
to be all recently " whacked," would be at the goal
of bliss. Such indeed is and must be the individ-
ualism of the successful and unreflecting man, by
whom all the world is classified as being either his
or not his, as to a cow all is either cow feed or not
cow feed. A man in this position has never yet
known the burden of Faust's soul when he says,
Cursed be what as possession charms us. If such
a man gets any moral insight, it will be on this stage
imperfect. He will seek only to multiply himself

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 203

in the forms of other men. These he will call his
friends. That in which he does not recognize him-
self, he will " whack."

But most men cannot keep this form of the illu-
sion of individualism. They pass most of their lives
in the midst of disappointment. The self cannot get
its objects. The ideal independence is hampered.
The stubborn world asserts itself against us. We
feel the littleness of our powers and of our plans.
The broken and despairing self has to seek refuge
elsewhere. And so individualism most commonly
assumes another shape. In inner self-development
we seek what the world refuses us in outer self-reali-
zation. Thoughts at least are free. Our emotions
are our own. The world does not understand them ;
but the world is cold and unappreciative. Let us
be within ourselves what we cannot get in the outer
world. Let us be inwardly complete, even if we are
outwardly failures. Then we shall outwit the cruel
world, and produce the successful self, in spite of
misfortunes.

The reader need not be reminded of what vast
development individualism has undergone in this di-
rection. Literature is full of accounts of struggles
for inward self-realization, made by men whose outer
growth is impeded. The Hamlets and the Fausts
of poetry, the saints and the self-conscious martyrs
of great religious movements, are familiar examples.
We have already in a former chapter studied the out-
come of this romantic individualism in a few cases.
There is no time to dwell here afresh at any length
on so familiar a theme, but for the present we may

204 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

point out that all illustrations of the tendency fall
into two classes, representing respectively the senti-
mental and the heroic individualism. These are the
forms of that Nobler Selfishness which benevolent
hedonism defends. They are efforts to find the con-
tented and perfected self. Their failure is the fail-
ure of individualism, and therewith of hedonism.

As for the sentimental individualism, we have seen
already how unstable are its criteria of perfection,
how full of fickleness is its life. \£he sentimental self '
admits that the world cannot understand it, and will
not receive it ; but it insists that this neglect comes
because the world does not appreciate the strength
and beauty of the inner emotional life. The ideal,
then, is devotion to a culture of the beautiful soul,
and to a separation of this soul from all other life.
Let other souls be saved in like fashion. One does
not object to their salvation ; but one insists that
each saved soul dwells apart in its own sensitive feel-
ings, in the world of higher artistic pleasures. Now
in fact such lives may be not uninteresting to the
moralist ; but no moralist can be really content with
their ideal. Its best direct refutation is after all a
sense of humor strong enough to let the sensitive and
beautiful soul see once in a while how comical is its
demure pursuit of these subjective phantoms. This
miserable life of deep inward excitements and long-
ings, how absurd it seems to any critic who, standing
outside, sees that there is nothing more than froth
and illusion and hypocrisy in it. Heine's anecdote
of the monkey boiling his own tail so as to get an
inward sense of the nature and worth of the art of

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 205

cookery, is what first comes to mind when we see
such a man as this subjective idealist of the emo-
tions. You have only to get him to laugh heartily
once or twice, and his Philistine narrowness can no
longer content «hini. "Why is just my feeling worth
so much?" he will say. And then he will wake up
to observe that his ideal was all a bad dream ; and
that an experience has no more or less worth because
it happens in connection with the decomposition of
his particular brain-stuff. Faust discovered that, as
we have seen ; and so in time will any other sensible
man. The real reason after all why Mephistophe-
les could not get Faust's soul was that Faust could
understand the Mephistophelean wit, which was
throughout destructive of individualism. The sen-
timentalist wno has no humor is once for all given
over to the devil, and need sign no contract. He
stares into every mirror that he passes, and, cursing
the luck that makes him move so fast in this world,
he murmurs incessantly, Verweile dock, du bist so
schon. And so in the presence of the moral insight
he is forthwith and eternally damned, unless some
miracle of grace shall save him. It is noteworthy
that one or two of our recent and youngest novelists
in this country have gained a certain reputation by
sentimental stories of cpllegiate and post-graduate
life that precisely illustrate this simple-minded but
abominable spirit. May these young authors repent
while there is time, if indeed they can repent.

Less dangerous to genuine morality, and far
higher in the scale of worth, is the Titanic form of
individualism, the form that has given birth to such

206 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

expressions as the Everlasting No of " Sartor Resar-
tus." The name of Prometheus at once springs to
our lips when we think of this view of life. Pro-
metheus is so fully the representative of Titanism,
that there is no better way of characterizing its
whole spirit than to call it the Heresy of Prome-
theus, the finest of all moral heresies, and the last.

The world will not grant you outward freedom, and
you see the hollowness of that inward life of blessed
emotions. You despise it in others ; you see that
the moral insight cannot approve such a form of
selfish separation in you or in them. But there is
another form of self - development. You must be
something. Why not be heroic ? Possibly the ideal
is a world of courageous selves, that find their per-
fection in their independence of action. Prometheus
gave this ideal a peculiar emphasis by reason of the
fact that he had a Zeus to defy. But the same ideal,
in a more moderate expression, is the ideal of many
a quiet, matter of fact man, who has little happiness,
but much spirit and energy, who is too busy and too
healthy to be sentimental, who knows little of poetry,
who has never heard the name of Prometheus, but
who knows what it is to hold his own in the fight
with the world. This man you cannot put down ;
he cares little for the opinions of others. There is
no judge above him save God or his conscience. He
is no saint ; but he is at least an admirable fellow.
He belongs to the race of Achilles ; he believes in
the gospel of eternal warfare against whatever seems
to him evil. He respects others ; he wants to do
good in his way. But he thinks that the best good

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 207

that he could do would be to make other men brave
like himself. This lonely, active, indomitable self
he thinks the ideal type of perfection. For him the
moral insight does not go beyond the approval of
such life as this, indefinitely multiplied.

It is always a delight to follow this Titanism in
its various shapes. Buddhism, as we know, is a re-
ligion wholly founded on self-denial, and it counsels
austere self-extinction. And yet, by a strange freak
of moral dialectics, it is Buddhism that has given
us some of the best expressions of the Titanic indi-
vidualism. In a Buddhist homily in the Sutta Ni-
pata1 one may find such an outburst as the follow-
ing, — one of the finest of the confessions of the
Titans : —

" Having laid aside the rod against all beings, and not
hurting any of them, let no one wish for a son, much less
for a companion : let him wander alone like a rhinoceros.

" In him who has intercourse with others, affections
arise, and then the pain which follows affection ; consid-
ering the misery that originates in affection, let one wan-
der alone like a rhinoceros.

" He who has compassion on his friends and confiden-
tial companions loses his own advantage, having a fettered
mind ; seeing this danger in friendship, let one wander
alone like a rhinoceros.

" Just as a large bamboo-tree, with its branches entan-
gled in each other, such is the care one has with children
and wife ; but like the shoot of the bamboo not clinging
to anything, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros.

" As a beast unbound in the forest goes feeding at pleas-
1 Max Miiller's Sacred Books of the East, vol. x., part ii., p. 6

208 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

lire, so let the wise man, considering only his own will,
wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . .

..." Discontented are some ascetics, also some
householders, dwelling in houses ; let one, caring little
about other people's children, wander alone like a rhinoc-
eros.

" If one acquires a clever companion, an associate right-
eous and wise, let him, overcoming all dangers, wander
about with him glad and thoughtful.

" If one does not acquire a clever companion, an asso-
ciate righteous and wise, then as a king abandoning his
conquered kingdom, let him wander alone like a rhinoc-
eros. . . .

. . . " Seeing bright golden bracelets, well- wrought by
the goldsmith, striking against each other when there are
two on one arm, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros.

" Thus, if I join myself with another, I shall swear or
scold ; considering this danger in future, let one wander
alone like a rhinoceros. . . .

. . . " Both cold and heat, hunger and thirst, wind and
a burning sun, and gadflies and snakes, — having over-
come all these things, let one wander alone like a rhinoc-
eros.

" As the elephant, the strong, the spotted, the large,
after leaving the herd walks at pleasure in the forest, even
so let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . .

" Not adorning himself, not looking out for sport, amuse-
ment, and the delight of the pleasure in the world ; on
the contrary, being loath of a life of dressing, speaking
the truth, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . .

..." This is a tie, in this there is little happiness,
little enjoyment, but more of pain, this is a fishhook, so
having understood, let a thoughtful man wander alone
like a rhinoceros.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 209

" Having torn the ties, having broken the net as a fish
in the water, being like a fire not returning to the burnt
place, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros. . . .

..." Not abandoning seclusion and meditation, always
wandering in accordance with the Dhammas, seeing misery
in the existences, let one wander alone like the rhinoc-
eros.

44 Wishing for the destruction of desire, being careful,
no fool, learned, strenuous, considerate, restrained, ener-
getic, let one wander alone like a rhinoceros.

" Like a lion not trembling at noises, like the wind not
caught in a net, like a lotus not stained by water, let one
wander alone like a rhinoceros.

" As a lion strong by his teeth, after overcoming all an-
imals, wanders victorious as the king of the animals, and
haunts distant dwelling-places, even so let one wander
alone like a rhinoceros."

..." They cultivate the society of others, and serve
them for the sake of advantage ; friends without a motive
are now difficult to get, men know their own profit and
are impure ; therefore let one wander alone like a rhinoc-
eros."

When one contemplates the ideal of the heroic in-
dividualism in this its purest form, rugged, empty of
sensuous comforts, yet noble and inspiring in all but
the highest degree, one feels how hard the decision
as to its worth will be, unless the moral insight gives
very definitely and authoritatively its ruling in the
matter. But fortunately, in trying to judge of even
so splendid a caprice as this, we are not left to our
individual opinion. The will of the Titan as to the
world of life is simply, by hypothesis, not the univer-
sal will. The one being that included in his life all
14

210 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

our petty lives, how must he regard this self-seeking
loneliness of disposition ? What is this heroic life
but an overflow from the great stream of universal
life, a pool, that, left to itself by some subsiding
flood, slowly dries away in its shallow stagnancy,
until it becomes a mud-puddle? And as for the
proof of this, what becomes of your hero if you take
him at his word, and leave him to himself like a rhi-
noceros ? Then indeed he soon sinks to the level of
a peevish animal. His admirable character is what
it is by reason of his conflicts with his fellows, and
by reason of the respect that he excites in others.
Stop talking about him, cease admiring him, do not
even fight with him, ignore him utterly ; and with
these external supports see his inner heroism vanish.
He exists as hero, in fact, only because he is in or-
ganic relation to the world about him. His boasted
loneliness is an illusion. Could not Mephistopheles
have his laugh here too?

But the Titan is often properly the hero not only
of a comedy, but also of a tragedy ; and a tragedy,
as we know, always discovers to us the gloomy worth-
lessness of this individual life as such. Mortal man,
once brought to possess the moral insight, finds his
destiny not in himself, but in the life about him, or
in the ideal life of God. And the tragedy expresses
one way of getting this insight.

In short, just what the Heresy of Prometheus as-
serts to be the perfect, namely, the complete and all-
sided development of life, just that can belong only
to the general, not to the individual life. Hence
Titanism always contradicts itself. It says that I,

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 211

the narrow, limited self, who am dependent for every
quality of my life on constant living intercourse with
other people, must become perfect, independent,
practically infinite. But to ask this is to ask that I
destroy myself, and my Titanism with me. Unquiet
is and must be the life that seeks perfection in any
group of selves. And so the ideal cannot here be
found.

V.

Somewhat hastily, as our limits have required, we
have pursued the definition of our ideal through the
imperfect forms of individualism. And now what
must it be that the moral insight, with its Universal
Will, demands of the possible future moral humanity,
not as the negative task of preparing the way for
goodness, but as the positive ideal task of the com-
munity in which the moral insight is attained ? This
demand is : Organize all Life. And this means :
Find work for the life of the coming moral human-
ity which shall be so comprehensive and definite that
each moment of every man's life in that perfect
state, however rich and manifold men's lives may
then be, can be and will be spent in the accomplish-
ment of that one highest impersonal work. If such
work is found and accepted, the goal of human prog-
ress will be in so far reached. There will then be
harmony, the negative expression of the moral in-
sight ; and there will be work, and organization of
work. And this work will be no more the work of
so and so many separate men, but it will be the work
of man as man. And the separate men will not

212 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

know or care whether they separately are happy ;
for they shall have no longer individual wills, but
the Universal Will shall work in and through them,
as the one will of two lovers finds itself in the united
life of these twain, so that neither of them asks, as
lover, whether this is his perfection or the other's
that he experiences. For their love makes them
one. In such wise we must figure to ourselves the
ideal state of humanity. And anything short of
that we are required by the moral insight to alter in
the direction of that end.

The reader may ask, What work can be found
that can thus realize the universal will ? It is not
for us to know the whole nature of that work. We
set before us the ideal task to discover such forms
of activity as shall tend to organize life. The com-
plete organization we cannot now foresee. But we
can foresee in what general direction that human
activity will tend, if it is ever discovered. For we
have certain human activities that do now already
tend to the impersonal organization of the life of
those engaged in them. Such activities are found
in the work of art, in the pursuit of truth, and in a
genuine public spirit. Beauty, Knowledge, and the
State, are three ideal objects that do actually claim
from those who serve them harmony, freedom from
selfishness, and a wholly impersonal devotion. Both
in art and in the service of the state, the weakness
of human nature makes men too often put personal
ambition before the true service of their chosen
ideal. The faultiness of all such individualism is,
however, generally recognized. The dignity and se-

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 213

verely impersonal relationships and language of offi-
cial life are intended to express the sense that no in-
dividual has as such the right to recognition at the
moment when he exercises an official function. He
lives at the time wholly in his office. The state is
just then everything. Even so all higher criticism
professes to disregard the personal pleasure of the
artist, and the personal whim of the critic. The
production and the criticism of Art are no amuse-
ments of two individuals. They are work done
in the service of the one mistress, the divine art it-
self. But still, notwithstanding the recognition o£
this ideal devotion to one's country or to one's art,
our typical politician and our typical ambitious ar-
tist show us that these activities still but imperfectly
overcome individualism, or lead men to the higher
plane of moral life. Better success in organizing life
one finds, when one passes to the activity of truth-
seeking, especially in fields where human thought
is best master of itself, and best conscious of its
powers. When one considers the work of a company
of scientific specialists, — how each one lives for his
science, and how, when the specialty is advanced
and well organized, no one in official expressions
of his purely scientific purposes dares either to give
himself airs of importance as an individual, or to
show any benevolence or favoritism or fear in con-
sidering and testing the work of anybody else ; when
one sees how impersonal is this idea of the scientific
life, how no self of them all is supposed to have a
thought about his science because it pleases him,
but solely because it is true, — when one consid-

214 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ers all this, one sees faintly what the ideal relation
of mankind would be, if the ideal work for all men
were found. This devoted scientific spirit is itself
only an ideal even to-day ; and all sorts of personal
motives still interfere to disturb its purity. But
here, at all events, one sees dimly in a concrete in-
stance what the organization of life may yet be-
come.

Now suppose a world in which men had some one
end of activity that united somehow all the differ-
ent strivings of our nature, — aBsthetie, social, theo-
retical. Suppose that in the pursuit of this end all
the petty, selfish aims of individuals had been for-
gotten. Suppose that men said no longer : " I have
won this good thing for myself and my friends,"
but only, " This good is attained," no matter by
whom. Suppose that thus all life was organized in
and through this activity, so that a man rose up
and lay down to rest, ate and drank, exercised and
amused his senses, met his fellows, talked with them,
lived and planned with them, built his cities, wan-
dered over the oceans, searched the heavens with
his telescopes, toiled in his laboratories, sang his
songs, wrote his poems, loved and died, all for the
service of this one great work, and knew his life
only as the means to serve that one end, then would
the ideal of the moral insight be attained. The
world of life would be as one will, working through
all and in all, seeking the ends of no one individual,
caring not for any stupid and meaningless " aggre-
gate " of individual states, but getting what as in-
sight it demands, the absolute Unity of Life. Then

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 215

indeed we should have reached the ideal ; and this
being the ideal, all is good that helps us in the di-
rection thereof, and all is evil that drives us in the
opposing direction.

The imperfection and the relative justification in
its place of benevolent hedonism are thus indicated.
The moral insight being attained by all men as an
experience, this insight could not will for individuals
such painful experiences as would degrade the suf-
ferers below the level of the insight itself, back to
the struggles and the illusions of individualism. It
would be the business of men then as now, to remove
useless pain out of the world, not however for any
other reason than that pain implies separation of
the sufferer from the consciousness of universal life,
and consequent disharmony of his will in its relation
to other wills. Pain that springs from selfish disap-
pointments we must often temporarily increase, that
we may lead a man out of himself. But for the
rest, the moral insight rejects pain, though only be-
cause it means disharmony of the wills that are in
the world.

Thus we have completed the expression of our gen-
eral ideal. We must add a few concrete precepts
that this ideal has to give us concerning the conduct
of our daily life. Plainly, if such a goal as this is
what we aim at from afar, the acts of our lives must
be influenced by it. What relation between me and
my neighbor to-day does this moral law establish ?

Thou and I, neighbor, have in this world no rights
as individuals. We are instruments. The insight
that begins in me when I find thee, must go further.

216 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

I find not only thee, but also Life Universal. In-
asmuch as I do anything for thee, I do it also to
the life universal; but, even so, it is only because
I serve the life universal that I dare serve thee.
Thy happiness, however near and dear thou art to
me, is but a drop in this vast ocean of life. And
we must be ready to sacrifice ourselves to the Whole.
But while we live together, and while we may with-
out sin enjoy each other's presence, how shall we treat
each other ? As mere masses of happy or miserable
states ? As selves to be made separately perfect !
No, that cannot be. We must live united with each
other and the world. Therefore must we do our
part to find work vast enough to bring us all in so
far as may be into unity, without cramping the tal-
ent of any of us. Each then is to do his work, but
so as to unite with the work of others. How may
we accomplish this ? By seeking to develop every
form of life that does bring men into such oneness.
Our vocation, whatever it be, must not end simply
in increasing what people call the aggregate happi-
ness of mankind, but in giving human life more
interconnection, closer relationship. Therefore we
must serve as we can art, science, truth, the state,
not as if these were machines for giving people pleas-
ant feelings, but because they make men more united.
When we urge or seek independence of character,
we must do so only because such independence is a
temporary means, whose ultimate aim is harmony and
unity of all men on a higher plane. In all this we
must keep before us very often the high ideal that
we are trying to approach. And when we judge of

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 217

a good action we must say, not that this was good be-
cause it made some one happy, but that it was good
because it tended directly or remotely to realize the
Universal Will.

And so, however much mere harmony may be our
aim, we must be ready very often temporarily to fight
with disorganizing and separating tendencies, forces,
or men. When we fight we must do so for the sake
of conquering a peace in the name of the Highest.
And so we must fight resolutely, fearlessly, merci-
lessly. For we care not how many stubbornly disor-
ganizing spirits are crushed on the way. The One
Will must conquer. But on the other side we must
be very careful of every soul, and of every tendency
that may, without destruction, be moulded into the
service of the Universal Will. The moral insight
desires that no hair fall from the head of any living
creature unnecessarily. The one aim is stern to its
steadfast enemies, but it is infinitely regardful of all
the single aims, however they may seem wayward,
that can at last find themselves subdued and yet
realized in its presence, and so conformed to its will.
All these rivulets of purpose, however tiny, all these
strong floods of passion, however angry, it desires to
gather into the surging tides of its infinite ocean,
that nothing may be lost that consents to enter. Its
unity is no abstraction. The One Will is not a one-
sided will. It desires the realization of all possible
life, however rich, strong, ardent, courageous, mani-
fold such life may be, if only this life can enter into
that highest unity. All that has will is sacred to it,
save in so far as any will refuses to join with the

218 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

others in the song and shout of the Sons of God.
Its warfare is never intolerance, its demand for sub-
mission is never tyranny, its sense of the excellence
of its own unity is never arrogance ; for its warfare
is aimed at the intolerance of the separate selves,
its yoke is the yoke of complete organic freedom,
its pride is in the perfect development of all life.
When we serve it, we must sternly cut off all that
life in ourselves or in others that cannot ultimately
conform to the universal will ; but we have nothing
but love for every form of sentient existence that can
in any measure express this Will.

VI.

We have done for the present with the ideal, and
must turn to reality. Our religious consciousness
wants support for us in our poor efforts to do right.
Is this real world that we have so naively assumed
thus far, in any wise concerned to help us in realizing
ideals, or to support us by any form of approval in
our search for the right ? We must face this prob-
lem coolly and skeptically, if we want any result.
We must not fear the thunders of any angry dog-
matic thinker, nor the pain that such researches must
cause us if they are unsuccessful. It is something
very precious that we seek, and we must run great
risks, if need be, to get it.

Let us begin to define a little better what this is
that we seek. By a support for moral acts in outer
reality, we do not mean merely or mainly a power
that will reward goodness. The moral insight cares

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 219

not for individual rewards. Only the good intention
is truly moral. Good acts done for pay are selfish
acts. So the outer support that we want in our mo-
rality is not reward as such. We want to know that,
when we try to do right, we are not alone ; that there
is something outside of us that harmonizes with our
own moral efforts by being itself in some way moral.
This something may be a person or a tendency. Let
us exemplify what we mean by some familiar cases.
Job seeks, in his consciousness of moral integrity,
for outer support in the midst of his sufferings.
Now whatever he may think about rewards, they are
not only rewards that he seeks. He wants a vindi-
cator, a righteous, all-knowing judge, to arise, that
can bear witness how upright he has been ; such a
vindicator he wants to see face to face, that he may
call upon him as a beholder of what has actually
happened. " Oh that I knew where I might find
him, that I might come even to his seat. I would
order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with
arguments. I would know the words which he
would answer me, and understand what he would
say unto me. . . . There the righteous might dis-
pute with him ; so should I be delivered forever from
my judge. Behold I go forward, but he is not there ;
and backward, but I cannot perceive him : On the
left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold
him : he hideth himself on the right hand, that I
cannot see him : But he knoweth the way that I
take : when he hath tried me I shall come forth as
gold." .

So again in the great parable of the judgment day,

220 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

in the twenty -fifth chapter of Matthew, the moral
force of the story is not expressed by the rewards
and punishments described, any more than in Elijah's
vision on Horeb, — the Lord was in the thunder and
in the fire. But the moral force of the scene lies in
the concluding words that the judge is made to speak
to the multitudes of just and unjust. " Inasmuch as
ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto me."
That is, if we may paraphrase the words of the judge :
"J^LJie says, " represent all beings. Their good is
mine. If they are hungry or naked or sick or im-
prisoned, so am I. We are brethren ; ours is all
one universal life. That I sit in this seat, arbiter
of heaven and hell, makes me no other than the rep-
resentative of universal life. Such reverence as ye
now bear to me is due, and always was due, to the
least of these my brethren." The infinite sacredness
of all conscious life, that is the sense of the story ;
the rest is the scenic accompaniment, which, whether
literally or symbolically true, has no direct moral
significance. Now the knowledge such as Job sought,
the knowledge that there is in the universe some con-
sciousness that sees and knows all reality, including
ourselves, for which therefore all the good and evil
of our lives is plain fact, — this knowledge would be
a religious support to the moral consciousness. The
knowledge that there is a being that is no respecter
of persons, that considers all lives as equal, and that
estimates our acts according to their true value, —
this would be a genuine support to the religious need
in us, quite apart from all notions about reward
and punishment. A thinking being, a seer of all

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 221

good and evil, is thus desired. This thinking being
would still have religious significance, even if it had
no other attributes than these. Should we find it
necessary to regard this being as without affection,
sympathy, or even power to act, as without willing-
ness to avenge wrong-doing, if we had to deprive it
of everything else that is human save knowledge ;
let this be a passionless and perfect knowledge,
an absolutely fair judgment of our moral actions,
and there would still be in the world something of
religious value. It is not affirmed that we ought
to rest content with such a conception as this, but
at all events this conception would not be valueless.
Even so again, the conception of some natural ten-
dency in the world that, being " a power not our-
selves," " makes for righteousness," this conception,
as Mr. Matthew Arnold has so well shown us, would
have a religious value. Something of this kind then,
more or less definite and full of life, is what we seek.
What indication is there that such search is not
hopeless ? For the author's part, he professes to be
quite willing to accept any result of research, how-
ever gloomy or skeptical, to which he is led by gen-
uine devotion to the interests of human thought as
thought. But he insists that as moral beings we
should make clear to ourselves what are the inter-
ests of thought, and that we should see whether they
do lead us to results that are not wholly skeptical,
nor altogether gloomy. There is no reason for clip-
ping our own wings for fear lest we should escape
from our own coops and fly over the palings into
our own garden. Let us get all the satisfaction from

222 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

philosophy that we can. In truth we shall never get
too much.

But, for the rest, the reader must be reminded of
one thing that was said in the opening chapter about
the magnitude and boldness of the demands that re-
ligious philosophy makes in coming to the study of
the world. We said that we will be satisfied only
with the very best that we can get. We want to
find some reality that our ideal aims can lead us to
regard as of Infinite Worth. If we cannot find that,
then the best possible aspect of reality must be
chosen instead. We will not be satisfied with little,
if we can get much. Our religious demands are
boundless. We will not falsify the truth ; nor yet
will we dread any disaster to our ideal aims, how-
ever great the disappointment that would result from
failure. But, while pursuing the truth with rever-
ence, we will not withdraw our demands until we see
that we can get no certain success in them.

We insist, therefore, that the religiously valuable
reality in the world shall be, if so we can find it, a
Supreme Reality, no mere chance outcome of special
circumstances, but an ultimate aspect of things.

Furthermore, the special form that our ideal has
taken demands another character in our object of
religious satisfaction. It must be such as to support
the realization of our particular ideal. If a power,
it must aim at the unity of our lives ; if in some
other way approved as the deepest truth of things, it
must show us how our ideal either can be realized
by us, or else is already realized at the heart of this
truth.

THE ORGANIZATION OF LIFE. 223

Such is the work of our second book. We ap-
proach it not as if we expected any mystical revela-
tion, but solely as having for our one desire to find
out what a sensible man ought reasonably to think of
the world wherein he finds himself.

BOOK II.

THE SEARCH FOE A RELIGIOUS TRUTH.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WORLD OF DOUBT.

WHEN we turn from our world of ideals to the
world actually about us, our position is not at once
a happy position. These ideals that we have agreed
upon, in so far as they are our own, do not make the
world, and people differ endlessly about what the
world is and means. Very naturally, then, we also
must ourselves begin with difficulties and doubts.
For if we want a religious doctrine that in these days
can stand us in good stead, we must fear nothing,
and must run the risk of all the disasters of thought.
The warfare of faiths is so angry and ancient, that
we must be content if, with our best efforts, we get
anything out of it at all. As millions of brains must
toil, doubtless, for centuries before any amount of
ideal agreement among men is attained or even ap-
proximated, we must be content if we do very little
and work very hard. We can be tolerably certain
that in a world where nearly all is dark very much
of our labor will be wasted. But this is natural.
There is the delight of activity in truth-seeking ; but
when, at the outset, you compare your hopes and
claims with the shadowy and doubtful results that
you may reach, the comparison cannot seem other-
wise than melancholy. Through the failures of mil-

228 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

lions of devoted servants, the humanity of the future
may possibly (we do not, at least at this point in our
study, know that it will certainly) be led to a grand
success. This far-off divine event to which, for all
we know, our fragment of creation may be moving,
but which at any rate we regard with longing and
delight, constitutes the moral aim of our philosophic
studies. It is good to strive.

In the present chapter, therefore, we shall devote
ourselves for the most part to negative criticism of
certain views that are or may be held about the real
world.

I.

That skepticism in studying reality is to some ex-
tent useful, most people will admit. But not every
one will follow us at once into the thorough-going
and uncompromising skepticism that we shall have
to present in the following as the very basis of our
positive doctrine. It is surprising how easily the
philosophic need is satisfied in the minds of most
persons, even in the minds of many professed philo-
sophic students. A few very complacent questions,
readily if unintelligibly answered, put to rest the
whole desire that such people feel to cross-examine
reason. In fact they seem to hold that a certain
disrespect would be shown by questioning reason
any more sharply ; and so their philosophy is like a
Congressional investigation of the doings of a politi-
cian, conducted by his fellow-partisans. But we feel,
in writing this book, that such a philosophy, whose
only business it is to " whitewash " reason, is an in-

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 229

suit to reason. Reason's investigations of its own na-
ture are not partisan affairs conducted for the sake
of effect ; nor does reason seek, like a demagogue, to
get a popular " vindication," but solely to reach the
deepest possible insight into its own absolute truth.
Hence we refuse utterly to have the following re-
garded as in any narrower sense an " apology " for
any religious truth, since the defensive or apologetic
attitude in presence of religious problems is once for
all an insult to genuine religion. If there is truth
absolute, we desire to know the same, and if we ever
get a glimpse of it, doubtless it will need very little
apology from us. But meanwhile we propose to
doubt fearlessly and thoroughly. If our limits pre-
vent here the proper exhaustive search for all the
actual difficulties of the views that we present, still
we want to have, and as far as may be to show, the
spirit of honest, determined, conscientious skepti-
cism. A clerical friend of the author's impressed
him very much in early youth by the words : " God
likes to have us doubt his existence, if we do so sin-
cerely and earnestly." These words are almost a
truism ; they surely ought to be a truism. Yet they^
have been forgotten in many a controversy. Surely,
if God exists, he knows at least as much about phi-
losophy as any of us do ; he has at least as much ap- 1
preciation for a philosophic problem as we can have.
And if his own existence presents a fine philosophic )
problem, he delights therein at least as much as we
do. And he then does not like to see that problem
half-heartedly handled by timid, whining, trembling
men, who constantly apologize to God because the

230 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

existence of certain fools called atheists forces them
to present in very pious language certain traditional
proofs of his existence. No, surely not in this spirit
would a rational God, if he exists, have us approach
the question. But with at least as much coolness and
clearness of head as we try to have when we toil over
a problem in mathematics ; with at least as merciless
an analysis of all that is obscure and doubtful and
contradictory in our own confused ideas as we should
use in studying science ; with at least as much eager-
ness in finding out the weakness and the uncertainty
of men's wavering and ill-trained judgments as we
should bring to the examination of an important
commercial investment, — with at least so much of
caution, of diligence, and of doubt we should ap-
proach the rational study of the Highest. For what
can insult God more than careless blundering ? It
is shameful that men should ever have treated this
matter as if it were the aim of religious philosophy
to have a store-house of formulated traditional an-
swers ready wherewith to silence certain troublesome
people called doubters. In these matters the truly
philosophic doubt is no external opinion of this or
that wayward person ; this truly philosophic doubt
is of the very essence of our thought. It is not to
be " answered " or " silenced " by so and so much
apologetic pleading. The doubt is inherent in the
subject-matter as we must in the beginning regard
the same. This doubt is to be accepted as it comes,
and then to be developed in all its fullness and in all
its intensity. For the truth of the matter is con-
cealed in that doubt, as the fire is concealed in the

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 231

stony coal. You can no more reject the doubt and
keep the innermost truth, than you can toss away the
coal and hope to retain its fire. This doubt is the
insight partially attained.

Such must be our spirit. And now, to apply it
at once to the problems before us, where shall we be-
gin our search for a religious truth ? We are to find,
if possible, some element in Reality that shall have
religious significance. But how shall we do this un-
less we have made clear to ourselves in what sense
we know Reality at all ? It would seem that our re-
ligious philosophy must begin with the problem of all
theoretical philosophy : What can be our knowledge
of this world, and whereon can this knowledge be
founded ?

A dark and dismal topic, one may say. But re-
member, here and here only can our beloved treas-
ure be found buried. Either there is no religious
philosophy possible, or it is here ; and here we must
delve for it. Nor let one be too much terrified at
once by the forbidding aspect of the question. It is
indeed no easy one ; yet to answer it is but to know
the real meaning of our own thoughts. This truth
that we seek is not in the heavens, nor in the depths ;
it is nigh us, even in our hearts. Only inattention
can be hiding it from us. Let us look closer.

This real world that popular thought declares to
exist outside of us — we have so far taken it on
trust. But now, what right have we so to take it?
What do we mean by it? When we say that we
can know it, do we not mean that it is in some way
bound to conform to some of our thoughts ? Or, if

232 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

you will put the matter in the reverse order, and
will say, with seeming modesty, that our thought is
so constituted as to have a certain likeness to real-
ity, do you really make the matter clearer? The
mysterious conformity between our thought and
what is no thought of ours remains, and we have to
make clear our assurance of that. This assurance
itself, if we got it, would seem to be in just the same
position as is the conformity of which it is to assure
us. Itself again would be outside of the external real
world, and in our thought. Yet this assurance is to
tell us something about that external world, namely,
its conformity to certain of our thoughts. What
can we thus know about any external object at all ?

The difficulty is an old one. Our solution of it,
if we get any, must determine the whole of our re-
ligious thought. Let us see at all events where the
difficulty arises, and why. Whether or no there is
possible any solution, the difficulty plainly lies in a
certain conceived relation between us and the world.
All the common metaphysical and religious doctrines
begin by setting a thinker over against an external
world, which is declared independent of his thought,
and which his thought is then required to grasp and
know. This supposed relation of subject and object
gives metaphysics its seemingly insoluble problems.
This thinker, whose thought is one fact, while that
world out there is another fact, how can he learn by
what takes place in his thought, that is, in the one
of these two supposed entities, what goes on in the
other of these entities, namely, in the world ? Once
for all, this marvelous relation of pre established har-

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 233

mony between these supposed separate entities de-
mands philosophic deduction. The relation, to be
sure, may be itself a metaphysical figment. We
hold that it is. We shall try to show hereafter the
baselessness of this notion of a world of external
fact on one side, in the barren isolation of its tran-
scendental reality, with an equally lonesome thinker
on the other side, somehow magically bound to fol-
low after the facts of that world. We hold, to put
it in plain language, that neither the external world
nor the individual thinker has any such reality as
traditional popular beliefs, together with most met-
aphysical schools, have desired us to assume. But,
for the first, we cannot yet undertake to trouble the
reader with this our philosophic speculation. That
will come in its good time, we hope not too unintel-
ligibly, and it will have its place in our religious
doctrine.

We begin, however, with the popular metaphys-
ical concept, of a separate external world, and of a
thinker bound somehow to repeat the facts of it in
his thought. We ask, with popular metaphysics:
How can we be sure that he does this ? And from
metaphysical systems, both popular and unpopular,
we get an amazing jargon of answers.

The most popular answer, after all, is a threat, a
threat repeated endlessly in all sorts of apologetic
books, but still a mere base, abject, wholly unphilo-
sophical threat. It is said to us that we must be-
lieve our human thinker to be capable of thinking
correctly the facts of this supposed external world,
because, if he does not, the result will be disastrous

234 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

to the whole common sense conception of the world.
If this thinker does not somehow magically repro-
duce external facts in his private mind, then is our
faith vain, and we are all very miserable. It is as-
tonishing how this, the most helpless abandonment
of all philosophic thought, is constantly reiterated
by certain of those who pretend to be philosophers.
Can a threat scare us from philosophy ? To get a
sure foundation for our religion, we begin by asking
how a man can really know the external world at
all. We get as reply the threat that, unless we ad-
mit the knowledge of the external world, we must
be in eternal doubt, and therefore wretched. To
doubt this knowledge, we are told, would be to
doubt all that makes life worth living. But it is
just because we want to find a sure basis for what
makes life worth living that we begin with this
doubt. We are determined to get at the root of
this matter, however bitter may be the evil that will
befall us if our skepticism does not succeed in get-
ting past this guarded gateway of philosophy. We
persist in asking, all threats to the contrary notwith-
standing, just how and why and in what sense the
external world can be known to us, if indeed this
conception itself of an external world is justly
formed at all.

Yet we grant that the full force and need and
bitterness of our problem may not be plain to the
reader, unless he has first undertaken to examine
with us at some length the philosophic character
and consequences of this popular metaphysical con-
ception of the external world. To get him to share

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 235

well our doubt, we must first provisionally accept
this notion of popular metaphysics itself. We must
waive for the moment our difficulty, that it may re-
cur to us with greater importance by and by. Let
the reader once come to see that this popular notion
of an external world is an utterly vague conception,
capable of numberless forms, and religiously unsat-
isfactory in all of them, and then we shall expect
him to feel the force of the deeper philosophic prob-
lems involved. This present chapter will therefore
proceed directly to an examination of the popular
notions about the external world. We shall exam-
ine them, namely, to find whether they offer any
religious aspect. We shall find that they do not
offer any such aspect in any satisfactory sense.
That the good is supreme in the external world as
popularly conceived, nobody can establish. This
supposed external world is once for all a World of
Doubt, and in it there is no abiding place. When
the reader has come to feel with us this truth, then
he will be ready to look deeper into the matter.
Then some other more genuinely philosophic con-
ception of Reality will have its place. Hence in
the rest of this chapter we shall be accepting pro-
visionally notions that we are hereafter to reject,
and assuming much on trust that is at best very
doubtful. We shall show that, even so aided, the
popular notions about the religious aspect of this
world cannot bear criticism. This visible world of
popular faith will lose its worth for us. We shall
have to look elsewhere.

The religious significance once removed from the

236 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

popular realistic philosophy, with its crudely meta-
physical notion of things, we shall be ready to listen
to skepticism about the foundations of this notion ;
and we shall be ready for some new conception.
This new conception will indeed* not falsify the true
moral meaning of that innocent faith in a real world
upon which we have so far depended in our research.
The popular notion of an external world, practically
useful for many purposes, and sufficient for many
scientific ends, will be refuted and rejected in its
contradictions and in its absurdities, but the soul of
truth that is in it will be absorbed into a higher
conception both of the eternal Reality and of our
relation thereto. Our seeming loss will become our
gain. That bad dream, the dead and worthless
World of Doubt in which most of our modern teach-
ers remain stuck fast, will be transformed for us.
We shall see that the truth of it is a higher World,
of glorious religious significance.

So for the first we turn to that supposed world of
popular metaphysics, to test its religious value. It is
conceived as a world existent in space and time, and
as a world of real things which act and interact. For
convenience sake, we shall in the following use the
word Power to mean any one of these things, or any
group of them, that in this external world may be
supposed to produce effects upon any other thing or
group of things. However these Powers get their ef-
ficiency, the religious significance of the supposed ex-
ternal world, if it has any, must lie in the supremacy
of the Good in this world of the Powers. One must
then view this external world historically as a mass

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 237

of Powers, which work together in harmony or in
discord, and which give you Products. The religious
ideals must find satisfaction here, if at all, in con-
templating the goodness of these powers and of their
works. If the religious ideals here fail, there will
be the other aspect open. Regarded in a truly phil-
osophical way, and in its eternal nature, the world,
as we shall hereafter come to see, cannot be supposed
to be either a power or a heap of powers. For pow-
ers have their being only in time, and only in rela-
tion to one another. If then all fails when we con-
sider this external world of powers, this figment of
popular metaphysics, the eternal nature of reality in
some deeper view of that nature may still be found
of infinite value to us. In fact we shall find the
search for a religious truth, among the powers of this
popularly conceived external world, very dishearten-
ing. The jargon of their contending voices will not
unite into any religious harmony. We shall find
these powers like the thunder and the fire. The still
small voice is not in them. We shall be driven to
some other aspect of the world. We shall approach
that aspect in ways that imply no disrespect to those
who have been so long scientifically studying the
history and forces of the assumed external world.
Their results, with the practical consequences in daily
life, and with all that Agnosticism about the nature
and purposes of the powers of this visible world
which such men nowadays feel bound to proclaim,
we shall on the whole accept. We too shall be Ag-
tics, namely, as to the powers that rule the visible
world. But we shall find a very different way, un-

238 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

trodden by scientific research, and yet, we hope, not
a way of mere dreams, not a way into a world of
fancy, but a way that leads us to a point whence we
get a glimpse into that other aspect of things. This
way Modern Idealism since Kant has been busy in
finding and clearing. How wearisome some of the
exploring expeditions have been, we well know. Our
search also may end in a wilderness ; but we fancy
ourselves to have found an open path that to some
readers will seem at least in part new. And some
of the prospects on that road may not be wholly dis-
heartening, even to the most exacting religious
seeker. But all this is anticipation. First then :
The World as a theatre for the display of power,
physical or metaphysical. This is the World of
Doubt.

II.

Let us begin our study of the powers that work to-
gether in the supposed external reality, by accepting
for a moment, without criticism, the notion of this
supposed external world from which scientific expe-
rience sets out. Let us say : there it is, an objective
world of moving matter, subject to certain laws. All
the powers are but manifestations or forms of mat-
ter in motion. Planets revolve, comets come and go,
tides swell and fall, clouds rise and rivers flow to the
sea, lightning flashes, volcanoes are active, living be-
ings are born, live, and die, all exemplifying certain
universal principles, that are discoverable by experi-
ence, that are capable of being used to predict the
future, and that are related to one another in such a

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 239

way as to show us a vast connected whole, the nat-
ural universe. This matter however is dead ; these
laws are ultimate given truths. We did not make
them, cannot see why just they and none other were
from the beginning ; we must accept them as they
are. The whole world is a vast machine. A mind
powerful enough might be possessed of the knowl-
edge that La Place, and, in our own generation, Prof.
Du Bois Eeymond, have so finely described as the
scientific ideal. Such a mind might have an univer-

o

sal formula, in its possession, a key to the mysteries
of the succession of phenomena. Such a being could
then, using this formula, calculate all events, as as-
tronomers now predict eclipses. At every instant
multitudes of air pulsations quiver about us. These,
in all their forms, our mind possessed of this univer-
sal formula, would have been able to predict ages
ago, just as certainly as you now can predict that the
sun will rise to-morrow morning. All is predeter-
mined : the glitter of every ice crystal on your frozen
window-panes on a winter morning, the quiver of
every muscle in the death agony of the fish that you
pull out of a mountain-stream, the falling of every
yellow leaf in the autumn woods, — each of these
events could have been foreseen, mathematically cal-
culated, and fully described, by one able to use the
universal formula, and possessed, myriads of aeons
ago, of an exact knowledge of the positions of the
atoms of the original nebula from which our great
stellar system condensed. Such is the natural world.
What religious aspect can this vast machine pos-
sess ? What room is there for a higher element to

240 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

be introduced into this mass of dead mathematical
facts? The answer of some representatives of sci-
ence in our day is well known to us. Whatever else
is doubtful, say such men, there stands fast the great
law of progress. Evolution in the physical world
becomes actual progress in the world of human life.
The world, under the influence of all these far-reach-
ing laws, is actually growing forever better. Thus
natural law agrees with morality. Thus there is a re-
ligious aspect to the mechanical laws of the universe.

Let us consider once more the law of progress.
We spoke of it in a previous chapter. There it did
not help us. For we wanted to agree upon the na-
ture of morality. We were not helped towards such
agreement by the knowledge that there is in the
world a physical evolution. For we could not tell
what ought to be, merely by considering what is.
We had first to agree upon a moral law, before we
could decide whether evolution is actually progress.
But now, perhaps, we can make use of the law of
evolution to aid our inquiry into the religious aspect
of reality. For now, having defined what the good
is, we may estimate whether the world is growing to-
ward the good. And if the world is 'morally pro-
gressing, then one great demand of the religious con-
sciousness is fulfilled. Then there is a power not
ourselves that works for righteousness. Or is this
really the consequence of the law of evolution ?

The first answer is that if there is any tendency
at work in the world that as time goes on more and
more helps men in their struggle towards morality,
this tendency is indeed, as far as it goes, what we

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 241

want to find. And if such a tendency is found, as
we are told, in evolution, the result is in just so
far encouraging. Although the external world still
often hinders moral growth, yet, we are told, as evo-
lution reaches higher and higher stages, the world
comes to harmonize more and more with man's moral
growth. This also seems to be what we seek. In
time morality will become a natural product of early
childhood. Men will be born with characters that
we now seek in vain to develop by a life-time of la-
bor. Natural evolution, then, does help moral prog-
ress, and the world is more moral to-day than ever
before. This then is to be the religious aspect of
the outer world. Does it contain enough of the truth
of things to content us ?

We are far from doubting the scientific worth of
the natural laws that have been discovered of late
years, and that have made so clear to us the great
truth of far-reaching physical evolution. But let us
reflect before we accept these facts as furnishing any
deeply important contribution to our present prob-
lem. We thoroughly believe in evolution ; but we
must take, in these matters, a very high position.
If the world of powers apart from man is to have a
religious aspect, then this aspect must belong to this
world as a whole. A minor power for good is not
enough. It will not suffice to find that one bit of
reality fights for our moral needs while another bit
of reality fights against them, unless we can in some
way harmonize these conflicting aspects, or unless
we can show that they that be with us are not only
more important or significant than they that be

16

242 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

against us, but are really the deepest truth of things.
Else we shall be left face to face with a gloomy world
of conflict, where the good and bad are mingled in
hopeless confusion. If such a world is the fact, we
must accept that fact ; but we cannot then say that
we have made sure of an answer to our religious
needs. Now suppose that in examining the world
we found two tendencies at work, equally fundamen-
tal, equally active, fairly balanced in power, produc-
ing in the long run equally permanent, equally tran-
sient results, but always in deadly antagonism to each
other, the one making for moral goodness, the other
for moral evil. Suppose that the world appeared as
the theatre and the result of this struggle of the good
and of the evil principles, could we say that we had
found in these facts a religious aspect of reality ?
We should hardly answer in the affirmative. So
long as we must fix our minds on this struggle of
equally balanced powers, we could not find the world
a religiously encouraging vision. We should either
have to regard the world in some other and higher
aspect, or we should have to give up regarding it as
religiously interesting. An answer to our moral
needs that is drowned by a hubbub of opposing
noises can be no harmonious song. Now we affirm
that so long as you look upon the world as a growth
in time, as a product of natural forces, as an histor-
ical development, you can never make it certain, or
even probable, that this world is not such a scene of
endless warfare. Hence the progress that you may
observe can never overbalance the probability that
this progress is a transient and insignificant fact, in

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 243

the midst of a chaos of confused tendencies. There-
fore progress on this planet for a few thousands or
millions of years indicates nothing about any true
harmony between nature and morality.

Let us call attention to one aspect, well-known,
yet often neglected in recent discussions of a few
familiar facts. Modern science is justly sure of
physical evolution, but is no less sure that evolu-
tion on this planet is a process that began at a
period distant by a finite and in fact by a not very
great time from the present moment. That our
planet was a nebulous mass at a date at most some-
where between twenty millions and one hundred mil-
lions of years ago, we have all heard, and we have
also had explained to us some of the proofs of this
fact. Our planet is still imperfectly cooled. At a
comparatively recent period in the history of this
stellar universe, this little point of it was a spheroid
of glowing vapor, from which the moon had not yet
been separated. The present heat of the earth is an
indication of its youth. Furthermore, what our
planet is to become in time, the moon itself tells us,
having cooled, by reason of its small size, more rap-
idly than we have done. Cold and dead, waterless,
vaporless, that little furrowed mass of rock deso-
lately rolls through its slow days, looking with pas-
sionless stare at our stormy, ardent earth, full of mo-
tion and of suffering. What that mass is, our earth
shall become. And progress here will cease with
the tides. All these are the commonplaces of pop-
ular science. Progress then, as we know it here, is
a fact of transient significance. Physical nature

244 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

permits progress rather than renders it necessary.
Progress is an incident of a certain thermal process,
a kind of episode in the history of the dissipation
of the energy of our particular mass of matter, and
thus, in so far as we yet know, a present occurrence
just in our neighborhood, a local item in the news of
the universe. Now these are the familiar facts whose
meaning we want to enforce in an often neglected
aspect.

But, one says, all this has been anticipated hun-
dreds of times. It is really unfair to insist upon
such things. For at least here, at least now, the
world does realize our moral needs by showing us
progress. Is not this all that we need? May we
not be content with the few millions of years of
growth that remain to our race before the earth
grows cold ? Is it not foolish to look into futurity
so curiously ? What matters it whether chaos comes
again in far-off ages ?

But we still insist. We desire, vainly or justly,
yet ardently, that the world shall answer to our
moral needs not by accident, not by the way, not for
a time, but from its own nature and forever. If we
can see that present progress is an indication of the
nature of the universe, that the present is a symbol
or a specimen of eternity, we shall be content. But
if this is not so, if present progress is seen to be a
mere accident, an eddy in the stream of atoms, then
present progress is a pleasant fact to contemplate,
but not a fact of any deep significance. Still we
shall be crying in the darkness for support and find-
ing none. For nature will say to each of us : "I

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 245

give support to thy moral needs so long as the tem-
perature of thy earth crust is high enough to prevent
thy oceans from being absorbed, so long as the ra-
diant heat of the sun is given out in sufficient quan-
tities to keep thee warm. When the next stage is
reached, I propose to freeze and to dry thy fair
home and all thy moral needs, until there shall be
nothing found on thy planet lovelier than the ruined
crags of thy hills as they glimmer in the last red
rays of a torpid sun. What is thy progress to me?"
Notice then where our real difficulty lies. The as-
pect of the facts that we now mean is this. It is
not because progress is to endure on this planet for
a short or for a long time, but because the world in
which this progress is so to end seems, thus re-
gardgd, wholly indifferent to progress, — this is the
gloomy aspect. To-day, even while progress is so
swift and sure, at this moment, we are living in a
world for which, as science displays it to us, this
progress is as indifferent and unessential as the
fleeting hues of an evaporating soap-bubble. Is the
physical fact of progress, thus regarded, a moral
help to us ?

Yet men turn away from these plain and often-
mentioned facts to all sorts of fantastic dreams of a
coming golden age. They make of future humanity
a saintly people, living in devotion, or a merry peo-
ple, always dancing to waltzes yet undreamt of, or a
scientific people, calculating by some higher algebra
the relative positions and motions of the molecules
in the rocks on the other side of the moon. Every
dream of progress is to be realized in that blessed

246 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

time, and we are invited to praise a nature that
could produce all this blessedness by pure physical
law. Now we must indeed wish well for the men of
the year A. D. 1,000,000, but we can receive no re-
ligious support from the knowledge that if all goes
right and if the sun keeps well at work, the men of
that time will be better than we are. For still the
world as a whole gives no support to our real moral
needs, for only by a happy accident will this blessed-
ness be possible. Or, in short, two tendencies are
seen before us in the world, one working for evo-
lution, for concentration of energy in living beings,
for increase of their powers, for progress ; the other
for dissipation of energy, for death, for the destruc-
tion of all that is valuable on our earth. We learn
that the latter tendency has triumphed quite .near
us, on the moon. We hear that it is certain in
time to triumph on the earth, and that the other ten-
dency is to be only of transient superiority. We
know that its present predominance here is, phys-
ically speaking, a happy accident, which a cosmical
catastrophe might at any moment bring to an end.
And now we are asked to see in this combination of
facts a religious aspect. For the writer's part, he
refuses to regard it as anything but an interesting
study in physics. He delights in it as science, but
it has nothing to do with religion. Yet some people
talk of a Religion of Evolution.

But no doubt believers in universal progress are
ready with hypotheses that shall show how signifi-
cant a fact progress really is. A world that has
progressed so many millions of years doubtless has

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 247

resources of which we know nothing. There are all
the stars with their vast stores of energy. Possibly
they are infinite in number. Progress ceasing just
here may flash out in renewed brilliancy elsewhere.
Who knows what is in store for the future, when
the present seemingly chaotic arrangement of the
stars gives way to vastly higher organized systems
of interacting bodies, in whose light life shall flour-
ish eternally ?

Well, all this we can all fancy as well as our
scientific neighbors. Nobody would call such dreams
scientific, but they are logically possible dreams,
and they are very beautiful. But they have one
terrible negative consideration against them. This
progress is either conceived as having gone on
through infinite past time, or else it has no genuine
significance for the true nature of the universe. A
world that has now grown, now decayed, that has
sometimes progressed, sometimes become worse, is a
world in which progress is an accident, not an essen-
tial feature. But now, if progress has gone on
through infinite time, it has so gone on as to make
possible, after all this infinite time, just the misery
and imperfection that we see about us. Let us re-
member that fact. This poor life of ours is in the
supposed case the outcome of infinite ages of growth.
That must be our hypothesis, if we are to cling to
progress as an essential truth about the world. Very
well then, all our temptations, all our weakness, our
misery, our ignorance — the infinite past ages have
ended in fashioning them. Our diseases, our fears,
and our sins — are they perfect ? If not, then what

248 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

is the meaning of endless progress toward perfec-
tion ? For we are an outcome of this infinite prog-
ress. Another infinity of progress is not certain
then to remove such imperfections. Here is prog-
ress put to the simple test. Is it the removal of
evil ? Then can infinite progress, as facts show us,
pass by with evil yet unremoved. And if progress
is not the removal of evil, then what means prog-
ress ? Is not the temporary removal of evil more
probably a mere occasional event in the history of
the world?

It is surprising that we ever think of talking
about universal progress as an essential fact of the
popularly conceived external world. If nothing cer-
tain can be made out about it, still the world as a
whole seems, as far as we can judge by the above
considerations, so indifferent to progress, that it is
marvelous to behold the religious comfort that, in
their shallow optimistic faith, so many amiable peo-
ple take, while they wax fervent over the thought of
progress. Let us have clear ideas about the matter.
What is in the true nature of reality is as eternal
as reality itself. Then progress is either an unes-
sential, insignificant aspect of reality, or it is eter-
nal. If progress has been eternal, then either the
world was in the beginning infinitely bad, or else
infinite progress has been unable to remove from the
world the finite quantity of evil that was always in
it. For here in the empirical world is evil now — if
indeed there is any empirical world at all — plenty
of evil unremoved.

If you found a man shoveling sand on the sea-

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 249

shore, and wheeling it away to make an embank-
ment, and if you began to admire his industry, see-
ing how considerable a mass of sand he had wheeled
away, and how little remained in the sand-hill on
which he was working, you might still check your-
self to ask hirn : " How long, O friend, hast thou
been at work ? " And if he answered that he had
been wheeling away there from all eternity, and
was in fact an essential feature of the universe, you
would not only inwardly marvel at his mendacity,
but you would be moved to say : " So be it, O friend,
but thou must then have been from all eternity an in-
finitely lazy fellow." Might we not venture to suspect
the same of our law of universal physical progress ?

But let us already hint by anticipation one fur-
ther thought. Why is not any purely historical view
of the world open to the same objection ? If the his-
tory began by some arbitrary act of will at some
time not very long since, then this history, viewed
by itself apart from the creative act, may be intelli-
gible enough in its inner unity and significance, al-
though an arbitrary act of will can be no true expla-
nation. But the whole physical world cannot be
regarded at once as a complete, self -existent whole,
with an eternity of past life, and as, in its deepest
truth, an historical process of any sort. For it is of
the essence of an intelligible historical process to
have, like a tragedy in Aristotle's famous account of
tragedy, a beginning, a middle, and an end. An in-
finite series of successive acts cannot be one organic
historical process. Either this everlasting series of
facts has no significance at all, or else it must have

250 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

had essentially the same significance all the way
along. So, if the world is infinite in time, it can-
not as a whole have, strictly speaking, any history.
The longest continued story in the most thrilling of
the cheap weeklies reaches, as we are given to un-
derstand, a conclusion at some time. Imagine an
infinite continued story, with the poor lovers eter-
nally weeping and quarreling, and you will see what
an infinite historical process in the world would
mean. It would of course be an eternal repetition
of the same thing, no story at all. If the world, re-
garded in time, cannot as a whole have any genuine
history at all, it is then hopeless to look in the
world's history, as distinct from the world's nature,
for anything of fundamental religious significance.

And so we are thrown back to our starting-point.
This splendid conception of science, this world of
unalterable mechanical law, in which all things that
happen are predetermined from all eternity, this
mathematical machine, has a real history no more
than the ebbing and flowing sea-tides would have
from day to day any history, apart from the fact
that they once did not so ebb and flow at all. Eter-
nally repeated rhythms, or ceaseless new combi-
nations of elements, clash of atoms, quiver of ether
waves, mechanical changes forever ; but no eternal
progress, no historical sense to the whole, — that
seems the conception of the physical world as a
whole to which we are driven. It is a strictly math-
ematical, a physically intelligible, conception, but
what religious significance has it ? Yet such is the
conception that we must have of any eternal phys-
ical process.

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 251

We have gone through this thorny path of prob-
lems, because we want already to indicate one thing
as the result of it all, namely, that not what the
present world has come from, not what it is becom-
ing, not what it will be by and by, but what it eter-
nally is, must furnish us with the deepest religious
aspect of reality. All else is subordinate. We do
not care so much to know what story anybody has
to tell us about what has happened in the world, as
to know what of moral worth always is in the world,
so that whatever has happened or will happen may
possess a religious significance dependent on its rela-
tion to this reality. That which changes not, wherein
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, that
must give us the real religious truth upon which all
else will depend. A particular event in the world
may have a religious significance, but that signifi-
cance will depend on the relation of this event to
eternal truth. And the eternal truth is what we
want to know.

Therefore our search will become somewhat nar-
rowed, whenever at least we grow fully convinced of
this truth. The " power that makes for righteous-
ness " will become a conception of doubtful religious
value. An eternal power, that with all its past
eternity of work cannot yet quite vindicate right-
eousness ? Perhaps we shall have to find the relig-
ious aspect of things elsewhere. But let us leave, at
all events, the world of pure science.

As we do so some objector may interpose the as-
sertion that we have generalized too hastily in speak-
ing of the insignificance of the historical aspect of

252 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

things ; for, after all, we have been talking of nat-
ural science. Let us turn then to the more philo-
sophical theories of the powers that are at work in
this supposed external world of metaphysics. There
are philosophical theories that try to show us of what
hidden reality this mechanical world of ours is the
mere appearance, or phenomenal symbol. Let us
see if any of them can give a religious interpretation
to the powers that rule the world.

III.

We pass, then, from the scientific to the more
metaphysical view of the world. What can we hope
from realistic metaphysics? Let us first consider
the value of that philosophic view nowadays most
frequently held, namely, what in general is called
Monism. We hear nowadays, with almost weari-
some repetition, of Matter and Spirit, of Force and
Intelligence, of Motion and Sensation, as being op-
posite aspects, or faces, or manifestations, of one ul-
timate Reality, until we wonder whether clear think-
ing is not in danger of losing itself altogether in
the contemplation of a mere empty form of words.
From whispers and low mutterings with bated breath
about the inscrutable mystery of the ultimate unity
of Being, one turns with satisfaction to efforts to-
wards some intelligible account of the sense in which
all things can be regarded as manifestations of one
Power or actual Existent. Yet in truth even these
efforts, in so far as they consider the world of the
Powers, have thus far failed to satisfy the demands

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 253

of criticism. Where they are clearly stated they are
inadequate. Where they resort to figures of speech
and tell us about the two sides of the shield, or the
convexity and concavity of the same curve, as illus-
trations of the ultimate oneness of nature amid the
various manifestations of experience, there these ef-
forts merely sink back into the primitive incoherency
so dear to all pre-Kantian metaphysics. The same
curve is, indeed, convex and concave ; but matter
and spirit are simply not the two faces of a curve,
and the relevant circumstance on which this meta-
phor turns will never be clear to us until we learn,
quite literally, wholly apart from fables about shields,
just how, in what sense, and by what evidence, mat-
ter and mind are known to be of like substance.
And that we must do, ere this hypothesis can have
for us a religious value. The failure of dogmatic
Monism, if it should take place, ought, indeed, not
to throw us over into the arms of an equally dog-
matic Dualism ; but we must refuse to accept the
monistic hypothesis until it has been freed from all
trace of mysticism. We shall here follow the plan
announced at the outset of the chapter, and confine
our attention to the realistic Monism, that regards
the events in the external world as the results of the
action of the one Power. A very different form of
monism we shall ourselves hereafter maintain. But
just now we deal in negations.

Let us begin with the attempts that have been
made to interpret the results of modern physical sci-
ence in a monistic sense, by regarding the ultimate
physical or chemical units as endowed with some

254 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

form of actual or potential consciousness. Organ-
isms of the highest sort are combinations of atoms.
The whole is the sum of its parts. Why may not
the mental possessions of these highest organisms
be the sum of the indefinitely small mental powers
of the atoms ? An atom in motion may be a thought,
or, if that bo saying far too much of so simple a
thing, an atom in motion may be, or may be endowed
with, an infinitesimal consciousness. Billions of
atoms in interaction may have as their resultant quite
a respectable little consciousness. Sufficiently com-
plex groups of these atoms of Mind-Stuff (to use
Professor Clifford's ingenious terminology) might
produce a great man. One shudders to think of the
base uses to which the noble mind-stuff of Shake-
speare might return ; but the theory tries to be an
expression of natural phenomena, not merely an aes-
thetic creation, and must not pause before such con-
sequences. And, if it be the truth, might it not
somehow, no matter in what way, be made of relig-
ious value ? Or otherwise, if true, might it not end
our vain search for a religion ?

Such is an outline that will suggest to the initiated
thoughts common to several modern theories of be-
ing. Are these theories in a fair way to satisfy crit-
ical needs ? The writer is not satisfied that they
are. Time does not permit any lengthy discussion
of the matter here, but let us remind ourselves of the
considerations that will most readily occur to any
one that is disposed for a moment to accept one of
these modern forms of monism. Even if they prom-
ised us the religious aspect that we seek, we could
not accept them. As it is, we need not fear them.

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 255

Can our consciousness be regarded as an aggre-
gate of elementary facts, such as sensations or as
atoms of pleasure and pain ? If so, what aggregate
of sensations forms a judgment, such as, " This man
is my father ? " Evidently here is indeed an aggre-
gate of sensations represented, but also something
more. What is this more? A product, it may be
said, formed through association from innumerable
past experiences. Granted for the moment ; but the
question is not as to the origin of this consciousness,
but as to its analysis. This judgment, whereby a
present sensation is regarded as in definite relation
to real past experiences, as a symbol, not merely of
actual sensations now remembered, not merely of fu-
ture sensations not yet experienced, but of a reality
wholly outside of the individual consciousness, this
fact of acknowledging something not directly pre-
sented as nevertheless real — is this act possibly to
be regarded as a mere aggregate of elementary men-
tal states? Surely, at best, the act can be so re-
garded only in the sense in which a word is an ag-
gregate of letters. For and in the one simple mo-
mentary consciousness, all these elements exist as
an aggregate, but as an aggregate formed into one
whole, as the matter of a single act. But in them-
selves, without the very act of unity in which they
are one, these elements would be merely an aggre-
gate, or, in Mr. Gumey's apt words,1 " a rope of
sand." Our mental life then, as a union of innum-
erable elements into the one Self of any moment, is
more than an aggregate, and can never be explained
as an aggregate of elementary atoms of sensation.

1 Mind for April, 1881, article, " Monism."

256 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Nor may we say that the ultimate atomic states of
consciousness may be, as it were, chemically united
into a whole that is more than an aggregate. Phys-
ical atoms in space, if endowed with sufficiently
numerous affinities, may unite into what wholes you
will; but a mental fact is a mental fact, and no
more. An ultimate independent unit of conscious-
ness, conceived after the analogy of a sensation, can
have to another like unit only one of three relations :
it may coexist with this other unit, or it may pre-
cede or follow it in time. There is no other relation
possible. Affinity, or attraction, or approach of one
pain or pleasure, of one sensation of pressure or of
motion to another, is a meaningless jingle of words,
unless, indeed, such an expression is used to name
figuratively the relations that in and for a compar-
ing, contrasting, uniting, and separating active con-
sciousness, two ideas are made to bear. Thus, then,
this atomic monism brings us no nearer than before
to the relation between the data of consciousness and
the facts of physical nature. For the rest, how me-
chanical science can be satisfied to regard its mate-
rial points as nothing but independently existing
fragments of mind, whose whole being is intensive ;
how, out of these intensive units, space-relations are
to be constructed at all — these questions we may
for the present neglect. Atomic monism, a synthe-
sis, or, rather, a jumble of physiological psychology
with doctrines that are incompatible with any sci-
ence whatever, has never answered these questions,
and doubtless never will.

But let us not be over-hasty. There are other

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 257

forms of monism now extant. The purely material-
istic monism, for which the hard and extended atoms
of naive realism are already and in themselves po-
tentially mind, the old-fashioned materialism of days
when Mind-Stuff and physiological psychology were
alike undreamed of, may indeed be neglected.
That doctrine needed not critical philosophy, of more
than a very undeveloped sort, to do away with it
once for all. Modern monism knows of supposed
atoms that are in their ultimate nature psychical ;
and of supposed psychical forces or agents that, when
seen from without, behave much like extended atoms.
But the old fragment of matter that, being no more
than what every blacksmith knows as matter, was
yet to be with all its impenetrability and its inertia
a piece of the soul, has been banished from the talk
of serious philosophers. There remain, then, the
numerous efforts that see in the world the expression
of psychical powers as such, not mere mind-stuff
atoms, but organized wholes, related in nature to
what we know by internal experience as mind, yet
higher or lower, subtler or mightier, wiser or more
foolish, than the human intelligence. These views
may be divided into two classes : those that see in
nature the manifestations of a logical or intelligent
power, and those that see in it the manifestations of
an alogical or blind, though still psychical power.
Each of these classes again may be subdivided ac-
cording as the power is conceived as conscious or as
unconscious in its working. How do these ontolog-
ical efforts stand related to critical thought ?

First let us consider logical monism. Since hu-

17

258 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

man intelligence is itself an activity, a working to-
wards an end, and since the logical monist thinks
the external universe after the analogy of the human
reason, the constant tendency is for him to conceive
the world as a process whereby his World Spirit
makes actual what was potential. Modern science,
in fact, when viewed speculatively, though it does not
confirm, yet lends itself easily to such efforts, and
we can always, if we choose, imagine the evolution
of the organic kingdom as possibly the process of
self - manifestation of one eternal rational Power.
Only in this way we are very far from a satisfactory
ontology. A world, the work or the child of the uni-
versal reason, developing in time, how can any re-
flective mind be content with this account of things ?
The universal reason surely means something by its
process, surely lacks something when it seeks for
higher forms. Now, on a lower stage the universal
reason has not yet what it seeks, on the higher stage
it attains what it had not. Whence or how does it
obtain this something ? What hindered the possible
from being forthwith actual at the outset ? If there
was any hindrance, was this of the same nature with
the universal reason, or was it other? If other,
then we are plunged into a Dualism, and the good
and evil principles appear once more. But if there
was no external hindrance, no illogical evil principle
in existence, then the universal reason has irration-
ally gone without the possible perfection that it
might possess, until, after great labor, it has made
actual what it never ought to have lacked. The in-
finite Logos thus becomes no more than the " child

THE WORLD OF DOUBT, 259

playing with bubbles " of the old philosopher.
Everything about the process of evolution becomes
intelligible and full of purpose — except the fact
that there should be any process at all where all was
in, and of, and for the universal reason at the outset.
The infinite power has been playing with perfection
as a cat with a mouse, letting it run away a few
aeons in time, that it might be caught once more in a
little chase, involving the history of some millions of
worlds of life. Is this a worthy conception ? Nay,
is it not a self - contradictory one ? Evolution and
creative Reason — are they compatible? Yes, in-
deed, when the evolution is ended, the hurly-burly
done, the battle lost and won ; but meanwhile — ?
In short, either evolution is a necessity, one of the
twelve labors of this Hercules-Absolute, or else it is
irrational. In the one case the Absolute must be
conceived as in bonds, in the other case the Logos
must be conceived as blundering. Both conceptions
are rank nonsense: This kind of Monism will not
satisfy critical demands.

And then there is the objection, stated by Scho-
penhauer, and by we know not how many before
him, and that we have already insisted upon, namely,
that every historical conception of the world as a
whole, every attempt to look upon Being as a ra-
tional process in time, as a perpetual evolution from
a lower to a higher, is beset by the difficulty that
after an infinite time the infinite process is still in
a very early stage. Infinitely progressing, always
growing better, and yet reaching after all this eter-
nity of work only the incoherent, troublous, blind

260 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

imperfection that we feel in ourselves, and that we
see in every dung-heap and sick-room and govern-
ment on the earth, in every scattered mass of nebu-
lous matter, in every train of meteor-fragments in
the heavens — what is this but progress without a
goal, blind toil? The world would be, one might
think, after an infinity of growth, intensively infi-
nite at every point of its extent. We mortals see
no one point in the physical universe where one
viewing things as we in this chapter have chosen to
do, namely, from outside, might lay his hand and
say : Here the ideal is attained.

Yet we should be very far from dreaming of ac-
cepting the opposing dogmatic theorem, the antith-
esis of this sublime Antinomy, namely, " The world
is the product of an irrational force. The One is
blind." Schopenhauer undertook the defense of
this antithesis, and, in bad logic, as we all know, he
somewhat surpassed even that arch blunderer, the
universal Will of his own system. This Will, after
all, desired a good deal of trouble, and got his wish.
But Schopenhauer desired a consistent statement,
and, with all his admirable ingenuity and learning,
he produced a statement whose inconsistencies have
been exposed too often to need much more discus-
sion. No ; to the defenders of the alogical hypoth-
esis, as a dogmatic doctrine, it has not yet been
given to make out more than the purely negative
case that we have stated above. Dogmatic panlo-
gisin can be assaulted, with much show of success.
The opposite doctrine has not yet been dogmatically
maintained without even worse confusion.

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 261

Panlogism and Alogism are difficult enough in
themselves, but how much worse becomes their con-
dition when, as in the " Philosophy of the Uncon-
scious," of Von Hartmann, either one of them, or a
hybrid of the two, is burdened with yet another hy-
pothesis, namely, that the One Being is unconscious,
and yet in nature psychical. Founding himself on
certain physiological facts, very doubtfully inter-
preted, on a monstrous perversion of the mathemat-
ical theory of probabilities, on an ingenious view of
the history of philosophy, on a like ingenious criti-
cism of Kant, Von Hartmann has expounded an on-
tological doctrine of which, after all, serious thought
can make nothing. This unconscious being, exist-
ent not for itself, for it is conscious of nothing, nor
for others, because all else is a part of it (and, for
the rest, nobody ever thought of it before Von Hart-
mann), shall be the maker and upholder of the uni-
verse. Surely all this is a philosophy of round
squares, and is not to be taken very seriously.

Of course the previous criticism is absurdly inad-
equate to the magnitude of the problems involved,
and is intended only as the merest sketch, dogmat-
ically stated, of critical objections to certain ontolo-
gies. Seeming irreverence, in this hasty style of
doing battle, must be pardoned. Only against im-
perfect metaphysic as such do we war. Critical
philosophy holds no theoretical opinion sacred, just
as it regards no earnest practical faith as other than
sacred. The question is here not yet what we are
to believe, but what we can in argument maintain,
and what our method of search ought to be. Abso-

262 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

lute and Infinite, Logos and not Logos, Mind-Stuff
and Spirit — what are they all for critical philoso-
phy, but, in the first place, mere ideas, conceptions
of reason, to be mercilessly analyzed without regard
for consequences ?

One way remains whereby this realistic monism
can still hope to reach a satisfactory statement of the
world-problem. Suppose that, once for all, the his-
torical form of statement is abandoned, while the no-
tion of the Reason as a power is retained. This may
be done in either of two ways. The universal reason
may be conceived as manifesting itself in time, but
not in a series of events that are united as the parts
of a single process. The world-life may be conceived
not as a single history, but as an eternally repeated
product of the One reason, a process ever renewed
as soon as finished, an infinite series of growing and
decaying worlds — worlds that are like the leaves
of the forest, that spring and wither through an eter-
nity of changing seasons. The rationality of the
world-process is thus saved for our thought by the
hypothesis that reason is not like a belated traveler,
wandering through the night of time, seeking for
a self-realization that is never reached, but, rather,
like the sun that each day begins afresh his old
task, rejoicing as a giant in the fullness of his at-
tained power. Whoever regards the world as it now
is as plainly a sufficient expression of infinite ra-
tional power, is at liberty to accept this hypothesis ;
but he must prepare to answer those of his object-
ors to whom reason means perfection, and to whom
the world of sense will not appear as just at present
more perfect than the world of Candidas experi-

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 263

ences. For every one but the blind optimist there
is difficulty in regarding this wind-swept battle-field
of human action as obviously and altogether a drama
of unhindered infinite reason, to be repeated with
unwearying tautology through an unending future.
Thus, then, we are tossed back and forth between
the possibilities suggested by our hypothesis. " The
world is the manifestation of infinite reason ; "
good, then, but how ? " The world is a rational
growth from lower to higher" How, then, is this
possible if the infinite reason rules all and desires
the higher ? Was it not always at the goal ? So,
then : " The world is not one process merely, but
an eternal repetition of the drama of infinite reason,
which, as infinite, is thus always active and always
at the goal.7' But this hypothesis is seemingly over-
thrown by the appearance of the least imperfection
or irrationality in nature. The first starving fam-
ily, or singed moth, or broken troth, or wasted ef-
fort, or wounded bird, is an indictment of the uni-
versal reason, that, always at the goal, has wrought
this irrational wrong. The other possible hypothe-
sis leaves us, after all, in the same quandary. Time
may be a mere "mirage." For the eternal One
there is, then, no process ; only fact. This notion
of a timeless Being is, no doubt, very well worth
study. But, then, the eternal One is thus always at
the goal, just as in the other case. The One, we
should think, cannot be infinite and rational and yet
productive of the least trace of wrong, absurdity,
error, falsehood. Again our Monism fails. For,
after all, the world has been viewed by us only from
without ; and so remains dark.

264 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

IV.

Our monism fails, namely, to establish itself on
any ground of experience. Absolute refutation is
indeed not yet thus attained, for the defender of
the hypothesis of an infinite reason always has at
his disposal the suggestions of the ancient theodicy,
modified to suit his needs. He can say : " The par-
tial evil is, somehow, we cannot see how, universal
good." Or, again, " Evil results from the free-will
of moral agents, who have to suffer for their own
chosen sins." The latter answer, a very plausible one
in its own sphere, is for the general problem insig-
nificant. That there is free-will we do not dispute,
and that free-will, if it exists, is a cause of much
mischief is undoubted. Yet if the universe is so
made that the free-will of the slave-driver, or of the
.murderer, or of the seducer, or of the conqueror,
works untold ill to innocent victims, then the fault
of the suffering of the victims rests not wholly with
the evil-doer, but partly with the order of the world,
which has given him so much power, such a wide
freedom to do the mischief that he desires. The
world in which such things happen must justify its
religiously inspiring nature in some other way.

The other answer, that partial evil is universal
good, we have to regard as a much deeper answer,
shallow as have been the uses often made of it in the
past. But if it is to be a valid answer, it must take
a particular form. The words are usually spoken
too glibly. Their meaning, if they are to have any,
we must very carefully consider, ere we can dare to

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 265

accept them. Only from a higher point of view
shall we in fact be able to apply them. In the
world of the Powers they find no resting-place.

How can a partial evil be an universal good?
Only in certain cases. The notion plainly is that
the evil in the external world of popular thought
is, as known to us, only a part of the whole, and
the whole, it is said, may be in character opposed to
the part. This must indeed be the case, if the world
as a whole is to be the work of an Infinite Reason.
For if so, the evil must be, not merely a bad lesser
part that is overbalanced by the goodness of the
larger half of the world, but non-existent, save as a
separate aspect of reality, so that it would vanish
if we knew more about the truth. This is what the
saying asserts : not that evil is overbalanced by good
(for that would leave the irrational still real), but
that evil is only a deceitful appearance, whose true
nature, if seen in its entirety, would turn out to be
good. One could not say of a rotting apple, however
small the rotten spot as yet is, that the partial rot-
tenness is the universal soundness of the apple. If
I have but one slight disorder in but one of my
organs, still you cannot say that my partial disorder
must be universal health. The old optimists did not
mean anything so contradictory as that. They meant
that there is no real evil at all ; that what seems to
me to be evil, say toothaches, and broken households,
and pestilences, and treasons, and wars, all that to-
gether is but a grand illusion of my partial view.
As one looking over the surface of a statue with a
microscope, and finding nothing but a stony surface,

266 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

might say, how ugly ! but on seeing the whole at a
glance would know its beauty; even so one seeing
the world by bits fancies it evil, but would know it
to be good if he saw it as a whole. And the seem-
ing but unreal evil of the parts may be necessary in
order that the real whole should be good. Such is
the position of our optimists. This is the Platonic-
Augustinian doctrine of the unreality of evil.

The logical possibility of all this we do not for the
first either dispute or affirm. But we are dealing
with a world of difficulties, and we can only point
out the antecedent difficulty of this theory. If the
world of experience simply lacked here and there in-
terest, or positive signs of rational perfection, then
one might well compare it to the statue, that seen
only piecemeal, and through a microscope applied
to its surface, would wholly lack the beauty that ap-
pears when all is viewed at once. Then one might
say, with great plausibility, that if perceptible har-
mony is simply lacking to our partial view, the great
whole may still be a grand harmony. But the
trouble lies in the seemingly positive character of
evil. Not simple lack of harmony, but horrible dis-
cord, is here. How the tortures of the wounded on
a field of battle can anyhow enter into a whole in
which, as seen by an absolute judge, there is actually
no trace of evil at all, this is what we cannot under-
stand. It seems very improbable. Only absolute
proof will satisfy us. And of course, as has been
indicated, by some of our examples above, it is not
the quantity of any evil (if an evil be a quantity at
all), but the quality of it, that makes us urge it in

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 267

opposition to the claims of reason to be the ruler of
all things. Any evil will do, if it seems to be a real
and positive evil. For then it seems positively at
war with reason.

Actually, however, theodicies and kindred efforts,
whether monistic or not, in trying to vindicate the
rational in the world have seldom consistently main-
tained this high and slippery ground of the theory
of Plato and of St. Augustine. Far from declaring
that all physical evil is and must be apparent, the
popular theodicies have often consented to accept
the reality of this positive evil, and to minimize its
significance by certain well-worn, and, for the pur-
poses of this argument, contemptible devices. They
have pointed out that the evil in the world, though
a reality separate from the good, exists as a means to
good. Or, again, they have said that evil is neces-
sary as something outside of the good, setting it off
by way of contrast. Both devices, if applied to a
world in which good and evil are conceived as sepa-
rate entities, are unworthy of philosophic thinkers.

For consider the first device. " Evil is a reality,
not an illusion, but it is a means to good. There-
fore in the world as a whole, good triumphs. There-
fore reason, which desires the good, is the One
Ruler." But first, to mention a lesser objection,
the basis in experience for this view is surely very
narrow. Much evil exists whose use as a means we
cannot even faintly conceive. But grant this point.
Then the real evil is a means to a separate and ex-
ternal good end. But if the end was good, why was
it not got without the evil means ? Only two answers

268 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

are possible to this, in case the evil is separate from
the good. Either the One Reason was driven to
take just this way, and could take no less expensive
one ; or the One Reason, not being bound to this
road, still arbitrarily chose to take it instead of a
better. But either answer is fatal. Was the One
Reason unable to do better ? Then it is not the only
power at work. The Monism fails. The Reason
was bound. But he who binds the strong man is
stronger than he. If, however, the One chose this
way rather than a better, then the One chose evil for
its own sake. The dilemma is inevitable.

To exemplify : If pain is an evil, and if the evil
of the pain caused you by a burn, or cut, or bruise
is justified by saying that all-wise nature makes your
skin sensitive to the end that you may be helped in
keeping it whole ; then the obvious answer is, that
if nature is all-wise and all-powerful and benevolent
towards you, it was her business to find a way of
keeping your skin in general whole, without entail-
ing upon you the tortures of this present injury. If
a machine that we make runs poorly, we are not dis-
posed to blame ourselves, in case we are sure that
we have done our very best with it. But the ma-
chines of all-wise nature must not run with destruc-
tive friction, unless all-wise nature intends destruc-
tive friction. The same remark applies to all the
eloquent speeches about the educative value of our
sufferings. If nature could make us perfect without
suffering, and if suffering is not itself an organic
part of our perfection, but only an external means
thereto, then it was nature's rational business to de-

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 269

velop us differently. But if nature could not perfect
our characters save through this imperfect means,
then nature's means were limited. Nature was not
all-powerful. Reason had some irrational power be-
yond it that it could not conquer. Even so we can-
not yet run certain engines without smoke. When
we are more civilized, we shall abolish smoke, be-
cause we shall get more power over the processes of
combustion. At present, by this hypothesis, nature
can only make characters perfect through suffering,
this smoke of the engine of life. So much the worse
for nature, unless indeed, in some unknown way,
suffering is really no true evil at all, but itself a
perfection that, if seen from above, would become
plainly universal good. And does that as yet look
probable ?

Even worse is the other device often suggested
for explaining evil. " Evil is a reality, but it is use-
ful as a foil to good. The two separate facts, good
and evil, set each other off. By its contrast, evil
increases the importance of good." When this re-
mark is made about us personally with our limita-
tions of body and circumstance, with our relativity
of feeling and of attention, the remark has some
psychological interest. Made to justify the supposed
universal reason, the remark is childish. Always,
indeed, it is possible that evil as a separate entity
may be made out to be an illusion ; and that good
and evil have some higher unity that involves the
perfection of the world. But if evil is real, and sep-
arate from goodness, then the talk about explaining
it as a useful contrast is of no worth in the present

270 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

argument. For we ask : Could not the One create
a perfect good save by making good more attractive
as set off against the foil evil ? Shall we say that
Reason could do better than to depend upon this
contrast? Then why the evil? If, however, the
One Reason could not do better, but had to use the
contrast, then the One was less powerful in its de-
vices than is the maker of a concert - programme,
who has no need to introduce into his concert any
saw-filing or tin-trumpeting or pot-scraping to set off
the beauty of his songs and symphonies. But as a
fact of experience, is most evil seemingly even thus
useful ? Are the sick needed to make the healthy
joyous ? Was Judas necessary in order that Jesus
should show himself wholly good ? Tradition, in
this latter case, says yes, and adds the mystical
speech about the need that the offense should come.
But what enlightened man nowadays will have it
that, supposing good and evil to be separate facts,
there can be logically possible nothing thoroughly
good, in case some of this evil were removed? Could
not Jesus have been what he was without Judas ?
One doubts here the fact of the necessity of the evil,
even in our own little lives; and one is indignant
at the trifling that supposes so weak a device as
mere external contrast to be the sole device at the
disposal of the One Reason. Yet this weak hypoth-
esis of good and evil as externally contrasting sepa-
rate entities is, after all, provokingly near in form
to what we shall hold to be the true solution of the
great problem. But that solution is still far away
from us and from this world of sense.

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 271

Thus far, then, monism seems, if not an impos-
sible, still a decidedly doubtful, view of the world.
Its value as furnishing religious support seems small.
We cannot yet by experience prove that the rational
power is supreme in the world ; and we fail to make
clear to ourselves a priori how it should be supreme.
So far we remain agnostics. Our only escape would
seem to be through the still doubtful doctrine of the
unreality of EviL And that way seems very dark.

V.

Dualistic Theism here confronts us, the doctrine
in which the wise of so many ages have found so
much support, the doctrine of a Father, separate
from the world of created finite beings, who directs
all things, pities and loves his children, and judges
with supreme truthfulness all human acts. The re-
ligious value of this doctrine, on one side at least,
nobody can possibly question. The Father, as Jesus
conceives him, has in a very high sense the charac-
ter that we desire to find in reality. To be sure,
there is the other side. This God of the dualistic
view is seemingly limited. As a Father pitieth his
children, so this God pitieth. But this pity seems to
be the love of one who yet cannot or will not save
us from all our evil. And if the evil is a reality,
and is meant to work for our good, still there is the
unanswerable objection that if the Father is not
bound by an irrational power beyond him, he need
not have put us into so evil a state, but might have
wrought us our good in some less painful and dan-

272 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

gerous way. In fact, the only plausible explanation
of real evil, in case there is separate evil in the
world, an explanation which shall yet be consistent
with the Father's power and goodness, is the pre-
viously mentioned explanation, that, if beings were
created, as we are, free, they must needs be also
free to choose the evil. But this explanation only
serves to explain the evil that has directly resulted
from free choice, that directly affects those who
made the choice, and that was distinctly foreseen
by them when they chose it. No other evil is justi-
fiable as a result of free-will ; all other evil seems
absolutely mysterious, when viewed with reference
to God's goodness ; and very little of the evil that
we experience in this world is the direct result of
the deliberate choice of those who suffer it. It is
hardly necessary to illustrate these facts, which, like
the most of the present chapter, belong to the best-
known and most frequently misrepresented of the
matters of human controversy. The poor of great
cities, the men who inherit loathsome diseases, the
naturally weak of will, the insane, the sufferers in
accidents, the soldiers led to slaughter, the slaves,
the down-trodden peasants and laborers of the world :
all these, whose ills are simply inconceivable in
might, have no more brought all this on themselves
of their own free-will, than have the healthy and
happy, the heirs of wealth, the ever-joyous, earned
for themselves the good fortune to which they are
born. A man can do much with and for himself ;
but the best part of him, and commonly of his envi-
ronment, is determined by birth. And for most of

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 273

that " with which the face of man is blackened," the
power is thus responsible which no free-will of man
has made. This evil must either be an organic ele-
ment in a real higher perfect unity of the world, or
else free-will is no explanation or justification for its
existence.

But really, the intelligent reader needs, when we
get to this most familiar part of our discussion, no
very lengthy repetition of the old story. His mind
is doubtless made up already, and he will desire only
a brief reminder of the chief points that have to do
with this question and with those questions most
nearly related thereto.

If, then, the doctrine of God's Fatherhood is to
be religiously useful to us, we must make up our
minds whether the Father that we seek is to be the
omnipotent Ruler of things, or only a limited Power,
or again, something else that is not power. In the
last mentioned case, he belongs to that aspect of the
world which we just now purposely exclude from
consideration. If the Father is a Power, then we
all know the old but eternally fresh dilemma about
his nature. He is either infinite or limited. If he
is infinite, we find arising all the difficulties just sug-
gested in our consideration of the hypothesis of an
Infinite Reason, and one other difficulty, worse, if
anything, than they all. That difficulty we shall
mention soon again. But if, on the other hand, the
Father is to be conceived as a limited power, if we
are to accept some sort of modern Manicheanism,
then no a priori disproof of the possibility of the
hypothesis can be offered ; since, a priori, any finite

18

274 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

power you please is a possibility ; but our great
trouble will then lie in the fact that only experience
can establish such an hypothesis, which by its very
nature needs a posteriori proof. And experience,
as summed up in science, has in fact simply no need
of that hypothesis. Hence we shall be left alto-
gether in doubt, at least while we study the World
as Power.

Such is the argument in its most general state-
ment. Now as to the points in greater detail. The
great difficulty mentioned above as lying in the way
of the hypothesis of an infinite creative power is a
difficulty in the conception of creation itself. Crea-
tion, for the popular conception, certainly involves
producing a thing of some kind by a creative act,
the thing produced existing forthwith outside of the
creator. To give up this separation of creator and
product is to become pantheistic. And with monism
we are not here concerned. But now the idea of
an infinite creative Power outside of his products
involves more than one difficulty. We shall not
dwell on the old difficulty that this infinite Power
would become finite as soon as there was in existence
something outside of it. We shall proceed at once
to a more fruitful and serious difficulty, which we
find in the fact that the concept of producing an ex-
ternal thing involves, of necessity, a relation to a
Law, above both producer and product, which de-
termines the conditions under which there can be
a product at all. The creative power must then
work under conditions, however magical and myste-
rious its acts may be. And working under condi-

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 275

tions, it must be finite. No device for minimizing
the meaning of this separation of creative power and
created thing will really escape the difficulty result-
ing. And this difficulty will appear in all cases
of supposed creation. It may be summed up once
more in the statement that any creative power in act,
just as much needs explanation in some higher law
and power as does the thing created itself, so that
whatever creates a product external to itself becomes
thereby as truly dependent a power as we ourselves
are. Let us exemplify.

" Let there be light" shall represent a creative
act. If the light that results is simply a fact in God,
then our difficulty is avoided, but the very concep-
tion of a power creating anything external to itself
is abandoned. Then one becomes frankly pantheis-
tic, and identifies all things with the creative power.
But if the light is not the creative act, but sepa-
rate from it, then you have an insurmountable diffi-
culty in the conception. For the power that makes
the fiat is not itself the created thing, but, as it were,
this power finds the product as a result of t\&fiat.
God saying, Fiat lux, finds that this act, this word,
or whatever process it symbolizes as actually happen-
ing in the divine mind, is followed by the external
appearance of something, namely, light. Now as
creator of light, God is not yet conceived as the
creator of those conditions under which just this
fiat could be followed by just these consequences.
But the external success of the j#a£ presupposes ex-
ternal conditions under which the fiat can succeed.
Just as when I say, " let there be light," and pro-

276 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

duce it by my own fiat plus the necessary physical
acts, even so the conceived Deity in the conceived
case, though needing no other means save his fiat,
has yet needed that, and has found his fiat a suffi-
cient cause of this external change from darkness to
light. But just as my success in making light needs
explanation by the laws of an external world, so
God's success in making it also needs explanation, in
the case thus conceived, although his means are sup-
posed to have been less complex than mine have to
be. He too is put by this conception in a world of
law external to himself, the laws of this world being
such as require that, in order to produce light as an
external fact he shall perform a certain act, the fiat.
These laws secure him success, in the supposed case,
under just these conditions. The fiat may itself be
whatever process you will.

But how then did these conditions arise ? How
is it that God is able to make light as an existence
external to himself? The external conditions on
which his present success depends may indeed have
been again created by himself. Even so a man could
now possibly make some ingenious mechanism, com-
pounded of telephones and what else you will, so as
to be able to light a whole building by the impulse
produced by some very simple act, e. g., by speaking
the words, " Let there be light," against some pre-
pared membrane. But then we are involved in just
the same difficulties. As the man's mechanical skill
would imply a conformity to laws of nature preced-
ing his present power to make light by the word of
his mouth, even so, if God's creative power has pre-

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 277

viously created the conditions of the success of this
his present fiat, the same questions would arise about
those conditions, and so on ad infinitum. Always
even the infinite series of acts would imply, at every
step of the regress, God working upon a nature ex-
ternal to himself, and so God as a finite power, sub-
ject to the laws that let him work.

But then may we not hereupon accept the doctrine
of God's infinity, and say that this infinite power is
identical with its products ? Shall we not be panthe-
ists of the old-fashioned sort, and yet keep the doc-
trine of God's Fatherhood? The attempt is hope-
less. And the difficulties in the way of the religious
use of the pantheistic hypotheses have already been
considered. Furthermore, many theistic thinkers
have felt the force of an old set of arguments that,
in this country and recently, Professor Bowne, in his
" Metaphysics," has more than once set forth at
length, namely, the thought that, if God can be as
Creator identical with his other creations, he cannot
as a Power well be identical with us, who feel our-
selves to be also creative powers, and not mere forms
or acts in any other power. But if we are separate
from God, then in this class of cases his creation of
us involves all the difficulties before pointed out.
When he made us, his fiat was successful beyond
himself. The success needs a preexistent law, or, if
you will, a preexistent power outside of him, to ex-
plain it ; just exactly as my power to move my hand
or to wink my eye implies a whole universe of being
outside of me in order to give my will just this posi-
tion of authority. Merely assume in your thought

278 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

these conceptions, namely, a power that acts and an
external product resulting from its acts ; and at once
you need a higher power and a higher law, external
to the first power, to explain how the first power,
acting in just this way, could achieve just this exter-
nal result. Hence either God creates nothing exter-
nal to himself, or else, in creating, he works under
the laws that presuppose a power higher than him-
self, and external to himself. In the briefest form :
Acts that produce external changes imply adjust-
ment of means to ends. The creation of external
things is such an act. Unless an actor is identical
with the product itself, he must therefore be subject
to the external conditions of adjustment, i. e., he
must be finite.

Certain thinkers are accustomed to suppose that
they honor God by having obscure and self-contra-
dictory ideas about him. Hence they avoid all of
the foregoing difficulties by calling the creative act
a mystery. Now there are mysteries and mysteries.
We do not know how trees grow, nor why the planets
obey the law of gravitation. But we are sure that
they do. On the other hand, we do not know how
squares can be round ; but we happen in this case
to perceive that squares cannot be round. Now if
somebody tells me that God is a round square, and
appeals to me to consider reverently whether piety
allows me to assert, in view of the mystery of God's
being, that God is not a round square, my answer is
very plain. I say at once that it must be as irrever-
ent to call God absurd and self -contradictory in his
nature as to call him anything else discreditable ;

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 279

and that I, for my part, hesitate not to declare very
frankly that though I know very little about God, I
am sure that he is no round square. Now even so,
an absurd and self-contradictory account of the act
of creation must not be allowed to escape us by
pleading that creation is a mystery, and that nobody
can see how God makes things. For, mysterious as
creation may be, we can be sure that if creation is of
such a nature as to involve an external power and an
external law, outside of God's creative power itself,
then God is himself not infinite. And we can be
equally sure that unless God as creator is identical
with his products, the idea of a creative act does in-
volve just such a power preceding the act and out-
side of God himself. The device then by which so
many thinkers seek to escape from this well-known
and ancient net of dialectics, seems for us necessarily
unsuccessful. There are mysteries that we have rev-
erently to accept, and before long we ourselves shall
find such, and we shall be glad to bow before them.
But if creation is indeed such a mystery, at all events
a self-contradiction about creation is not such a mys-
tery.

VI.

We have dwelt at length on one of the alterna-
tives of Theism. Disheartened, and without any en-
thusiasm, we turn to the other. Must we after all
remain content in our religion without any assur-
ance of the supremacy of the good ? Must we be con-
tent with this halting half Theism of the empirical
Design- Argument? If we must be, we must be. But

280 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

what if that too should fail us ? Let us at least try
it. This unsatisfactory view says : " What powers
there may be in the world we can never wholly know.
But we think that there is evidence that they that
be for the moral law are more than they that be
against it. And this evidence is given us by the em-
pirically discerned marks of benevolent design about
us in the world." This view, whatever its relig-
ious worth, is at all events capable only of empirical
proof, and pretends only to such a rank. And it is
in discussing this hypothesis, in the dim light of the
weary centuries of dispute about it, that one comes
at last fully to feel the bitterness of the doubt that,
like a tormenting disease, assails and eternally must
assail one who tries to be content with this dreary vis-
ible world in which we have been so far vainly seek-
ing for comfort. Wrangle upon wrangle, ceaseless
balancing of probabilities this way and that, opinions
and ridicule and abuse forever, and no result : such
is this empirical teleology that seeks a world-manu-
facturer, and cannot discover him. Let us take up
the miserable business just where we happen to
find it.

There is no doubt about this, that the doctrine of
evolution has rendered the popular empirical proof
of a special designing power much harder than we
used to suppose. And when we pass to this aspect
of our question, we must confess at once that we have
nothing to say which can be new to any reader of
modern discussion. This empirical teleology will al-
ways remain a doubtful subject for human inquiry.
Any dogmatic disproof of intelligent finite powers

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 281

or daemons above us must be regarded as impossi-
ble. The only question to be here solved is the
possibility of purely inductive proof of the existence
of such higher intelligent agencies. And here, as
we hold, just the ancient difficulties as to the proof
of any empirical teleological theory survive, and are,
in spite of all that recent writers have done, rather
increased by our knowledge of the facts of evolution.
Especially does evolution make the empirical hypoth-
esis of the existence of any finite and good daemonic
power, intelligently and morally working in the
world, continually more and more obscure. For
first, as to the intelligence of the higher powers, what
the theory of evolution has done for us in this re-
spect is simply to make us feel that we know not,
and cannot yet even guess, how much what we em-
pirically call bare mechanism can do to simulate the
effects of what, in an equally empirical and blind
way, men call intelligence. Therefore no empirical
design-argument has longer anywhere nearly the
same amount of persuasive power that it once seemed
to have. The matter stands thus : An empirical de-
sign-argument might very plausibly reason that, if I
find a child's blocks arranged to make a house or to
spell words, I can assume that some designing human
hand has so placed them. But the inductive force
of the argument rests on my previous knowledge
that nothing is so apt to put blocks in that order,
in this present visible world, as just a designing
human hand. But if I discovered certain physical
conditions that did very frequently work, and that
did often so arrange blocks, then I should no longer

282 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

consider the given arrangement good proof of human
design. Even so, until I see that natural selection
can simulate the designing power of human beings,
I may be disposed to regard a given case of appar-
ent design in nature as a fair inductive proof of
some great carpenter or watch-maker working there.
But the induction, never overwhelming, becomes very
weak when I learn that there are so-called physical
conditions such as we or chance can produce, which,
however, do nevertheless result in things that my eye
would have called full of design. For then I am led
to feel as if I could pass no judgment at all upon
concrete cases. Yet only by concrete cases can an
empirical hypothesis be proved. Therefore unless a
pebble proves design an eye does not prove design.
But design, we hear, is not incompatible with evo-
lution. Of course not. And if there is a designer,
who works through evolution, then indeed he shows
wonderful foresight and mastery. But the question
is, not what is compatible with evolution, but what
can be proven from bare experience. And what the
modern man has very justly come to see is that mere
experience must leave him in utter doubt about
what powers, intelligent or not intelligent, are the
sources of all our experience. We can find laws ;
but they take us only a short way. And the more
we know about nature, the less inclined we feel to
dogmatize on the basis of mere experience about
what powers are behind the scenes. They may be
intelligent, and they may be what we call in this
world of sense mechanical. But as finite powers,
given in experience, we men know them solely by

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 283

their effects. And their effects are very remote
hints of their real nature. It is really painful to
read the elaborate wastes of effort made in our day
to prove that some theological dogma about some
power beyond experience is not refuted by expe-
rience. As if such proof made anybody's creed
either more or less doubtful. A really well-founded
Theism would not be, in this tedious way, eternally
on the defensive.

But there is the other aspect of the matter. An
intelligent power, were it admitted, would not need to
be moral. If there is design, is the designer demon-
strably good ? Let us pass over to that question.

VII.

If evolution has done anything for us, it has
tended to increase our sense of the mystery of the
world of experience, and therefore the philosoph-
ically minded religious student is in truth, for yet
this other reason, weary of all this empirical Theism,
namely, because he despairs of finding out, by such
an empirical process, anything about the actual pur-
poses of any designer, even if there be a designer.
To study English literature in the rubbish heaps of
a book-binder's work-shop, would seem to a wise man
a much more hopeful undertaking than to seek any
one notion of the real plan on which this world is
made from a merely empirical study of our little
fragment of nature. Science is right in abandoning
such undertakings wholly and for all its now prob-
able future work. Religion must find the religious

284 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

aspect of reality in a totally different direction. The
higher the realities that we study, the harder the
task. The heavens declare very many things not
wholly clear to us ; but the earth and man declare,
as natural facts, very many more and more confusing
things. Only a poetical abstraction can show us any
one plan of religious value in the world of sense,
any one declaration of anybody's glory therein. An
equally strong opposing interest would find just as
good evidence for what it sought if it should hold
another view of what is designed. Nature is, so re-
garded, a confused hum of voices. " Nature," says
one voice, " is meant to provide bountifully for the
wants of sentient life." " Therefore," says another
voice, " all the weak, the sick, the old, must starve,
and all the carnivorous destroy their neighbors."
" Nature aims at the evolution of the highest type of
life," says the first voice. " Therefore," it is replied,
" she bountifully provides swarms of parasites of all
sorts to feed on higher life." " Nature desires or-
der and unity," says the voice from the heavens.
" Therefore she makes meteors and comets," replies
the echoing voice. — And if now the Fiend appears,
and suggests, as the only satisfactory design-hypoth-
esis, something of this sort, how could experience
answer him ? — " Nature," he says, " is designed by
a being who delights in manifold activity of all sorts,
in variety of organization throughout the world, in
the fine contrasts of the numberless forms of sentient
life, and in whatever means vigor. He likes to see
many living creatures, and he likes to see them fight.
He likes the sight of suffering, as well as of joy ;

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 285

because both mean variety of action. He delights in
the triumphs of the victors, in the groans of the con-
quered, in the sportiveness of young animals, in the
writhing of a poor beast that dies in torture, in the
insidious struggle for existence that the Entozoa
carry on, in the hopeless sighs that men send up to
him in their woe, and in the ideal raptures and
agonies of saints, artists, and lovers. All these things
he likes, because they are just so many forms of ex-
istence. He wants plenty of life and vigor to con-
template, as a boy wants stiff soap-suds to make
pretty bubbles for his pleasure as he lies idle. This
being is doubtless finite (like his brother, the Sete-
bos of the inimitable monologue that Browning has
put into Caliban's mouth). But just now he reigns
hereabouts, even as Caliban's Setebos reigned in the
island. And his designs are so obviously shown in
nature, that anybody ought to believe in him who
simply looks at the facts of experience."

Of this horrible doctrine we apprehend that ex-
perience as such offers no disproof. For all that
science can say, we might be in the hands of just
such a demon. Hence it behooves religious students
to cease looking for the living God among the dead
facts of physical science, and to betake themselves
to their own proper field. Science simply leaves all
such hypotheses utterly doubtful. Our little corner
of the world may have become what it is in any one
of numberless physically definable ways. And, if
designed, its immediate purpose may be any one of
numberless purposes. It is not probable that expe-
rience can tell us much about that matter. Science

286 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

is very right in appealing to experience with wholly
different aims, namely, for the sake of understanding
the laws of the sequence of phenomena, to the 'end
that we may be able to know what the world-plan,
however it may be formed, does actually render us
capable of accomplishing just now and here in our
concrete dealings with things. And if science, in
doing all this, has to make certain postulates, and to
accept them on faith, then such faith, though it needs
indeed a deeper foundation, is at least not identical
with the presumption that, undertaking not simply
to postulate, but to prove beyond doubt, pretends to
discover with certainty, from bare experience, that
the world -maker's plans do agree with our plans.
After all, such empirical Theism is assuming its
safest and most characteristic form when it appears
no longer as a genuine investigator, but poses as the
defendant's attorney, takes prudent refuge behind the
rules of debate, and demands that other people shall
assume the burden of proof, and either show it to be
certainly false, or else accept it for the sake of pro-
priety.

VIII.

We turned to the supposed external World of
Powers, and we have found it either dumb, or else
given to dark and doubtful speeches. The Powers
may indeed be somehow of the highest worth. But
to us, even if we accept unquestioningly the supposed
external world, the worth of it all seems doubtful,
and more so the longer we study the matter. The
partial evil may be universal good ; but we could not

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 287

in this external world see how, nor could we find
proof of the fact. What a Power causes, that the
power seems responsible for. And so the Powers
that cause the inestimable might of evil in the world
seem of very doubtful religious worth.

We have already suggested in outline why this
doubtful result was to be expected. These Powers
were assumed to exist apart from our thought, in
time and space, and to work in time. They have,
as workers in time, no certain and eternal signifi-
cance. A single Infinite Power is, properly speak-
ing, a misnomer. If a power produces something
that is external to itself, then the very idea of such
an occurrence implies another power, separate from
the first, and therefore limiting it. If however the
power is identical with its own products, then the
name power no longer properly belongs to it. For,
as we shall see when we come to speak of the world
in its other aspect, namely, as eternal, the conceptions
of power and product, of cause and effect, and of
all like existences, are found to be only subordinate
to the highest conception of the world as Thought.
For the Eternal Thought are all these powers ; but
in themselves they belong to the flux of things.
Each one of them says, Not in me, when you ask it
for the significance of the world as a whole. Each
power says : " I work here along with the others.
I fight, I strive, I conquer, I obey, I seek my ends
as I can. But beyond me are the conditions that
limit me. " And these conditions are the other
powers. The world of powers is the world of the
children of the dragon's teeth. Their struggles are

288 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

endless. The only religion that they can teach is the
religion of endurance and of courage. Or one may
compare them to the warriors in king Atli's house.
Only the all-seeing Eternal Thought can possibly
discover their significance. Of themselves they are
just the fighters in the blood and dust of the ban-
queting hall.

All this we just now affirm without full proof.
But our previous discussion has been one long illus-
tration of it. You find or think you find in the
world a religiously valuable power or tendency at
work. But at once there stands beside it its sworn
foe. Is it Evolution that you have found ? There
stands beside it Dissolution. Is it the tender care of
a fatherly nature for the very sparrows ? Then ap-
pears beside it the cruelty and deceit of nature. Is
it the beauty of the world that suggests a power-
loving beauty? Nay, but the rottenness and the
horror of natural disease and decay assert as boldly
the workings of a power that hates beauty. Are
all these seeming powers just mere phantoms, whose
truth is in the laws of physics ? Then the world is
a vast wreck of colliding molecules. Are these pow-
ers real tendencies ? Then their fight is seemingly
endless. The world of the powers is indeed full of
physical law, because and only because its facts are
found, by means of thought that has a deeper foun-
dation, to be cases of certain general rules. But
for our religious purpose, this world of the powers
seems a chaos.

" But," says some one, " all this is no disproof of
the existence of a real but to us not perfectly clear

THE WORLD OF DOUBT. 289

harmony of all the powers. This is simply absence
of proof." Yes ; but if proof is what we want, and
if every single power sends us beyond itself for the
interpretation of the meaning of the whole, we can-
not hope to grasp that meaning so long as we avoid
studying the world in its eternal aspect. The pow-
ers themselves make and unmake. We understand
them not. They remind us of the night-scene of
Faust : —

Faust. Was weben die dort um den Rabenstein ?
Mephistopheles. Weiss nicht was sie kochen uiid schaffen.
Faust. Schweben auf, schweben ab, neigen sich, beugen sich.
Mephistopheles. Erne Hexenkunst.
Faust. Sie streuen und weihen.
Mephistopheles. Vorbei ! Vorbei !

And if we will hear the wisdom of Mephistopheles
about all this, he has elsewhere given his view, which,
as an opinion about the world of powers by one of
the more authoritative powers in it, is worthy of
as much respect as any other suggestion from an
equally limited being : —

" Was soil uns dann das ewige Schaffen !

Geschaffenes zu nichts hinwegzuraffen !
' Da ist's vorbei ! ' Was ist daran zu leseu ?

Es ist so gut als war'es nicht gewesen.

Und treibt sich doch im Kreis, als wenn es ware.

Ich liebte mir dafiir das Ewig-Leere."

And possibly it would be hard for us to be sure of
much more meaning in this world of powers as such,
than Mephistopheles has found.

For us, we turn, not with despair, but with hope,
elsewhere. We go to seek the Eternal, not in ex-
perience, but in the thought that thinks experience.

19

290 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Our hope is not less because we have found in the
temporal a world of doubt. Our song is simply
the " Good-by proud world, I'm going home" of
the religious minds of all ages. The truly religious
elements of theism are not hurt by the destruction
of traditions about theistic arguments. It is only an
example of shallow thought when either the destruc-
tive or the constructive thinkers imagine that the bat-
tle is decided if the world of the powers is judged
in one way or in another. Religion is as independ-
ent of all that as Sirius is independent of the north
wind.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES.

Das bestandige Wetzen der Messer 1st langweilig, wenn man Nichts
zu schneiden vorhat. — LOTZE, Metaphysik.

What 's so false as truth is
False to thee ?

BROWNING.

IF the reader has become thoroughly weary of the
world of doubt, we are only glad of the fact. Armed
with a genuine philosophy, a man may indeed go
back to that world, and find in it an expression of
ideal truth in empirical form. We hope to have
such a right ourselves in time ; but, without a well
thought out philosophy, a man venturing into the
world of empirical facts to find there any religious
significance actually discovers himself to be in a nest
of hornets ; and he deserves as much. We desired
to bring the reader to feel this with us ; else our
own prudent flight from that world to another might
seem to him unnecessary. Now we are ready to
come nearer to our former question. What right
has any one to assume that empirical external world
at all as having any absolute truth ? " O thou that
hast troubled us," we may say, " what art thou at
bottom more than our own assumption ? " What
right has that external world to be the sole region

292 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

where we could seek the religious truth, when per-
chance the external world, as we assumed it, is not
a truth at all ? Let us consider once more our steps.
Perchance the religiously inspiring reality is in some
higher world. If we are only skeptical enough, per-
chance we shall find that Reality. Then, indeed,
the old assumption of an external world of empir-
ical facts may remain a part of our future thought,
but it will get a new sense, and occupy a new place.

The first answer that occurs to this our question
about the meaning of the external world that has
so far troubled us, is this : The assumed world is
no fixed datum, to which we are bound to submit at
all hazards, but a postulate, which is made to sat-
isfy certain familiar human needs. If this postulate
is found to have no religious significance, we may
supplement the doubt thus arising by remembering
that we who postulated once have the right to postu-
late again. Our religiously satisfactory truth may
be reached, not by hypotheses about powers in the
empirical world, but by a deeper faith in something
that is eternal, and behind or above the world of the
senses.

This view gives us a new world, the world of the
Postulates. We cannot be content to remain in this
world, but we must pass through it on our way up-
wards. Let us hear it described.

I.

The world of Doubt has passed before us, a huge
mass of inexplicable facts. Here and there we find

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 293

a connection ; we hope that we shall soon find more
connection ; but still the vast plan, if indeed there
be a plan, we search for in vain. But now, strangely
enough, all this doubt affects in no wise the willing
trustfulness of our devotion to the interests, not only
of common life, but also of science. The doubt con-
fuses -us only when we talk of religion. That the
world as a whole is dark, nobody admits more cheer-
fully than does the modern scientific man, even when
he looks to his science for all his religious consola-
tion. For he seeks no consolation save what the
phenomena as such furnish. But his philosophical
doubt about the ultimate foundation of science is
no check to his scientific ambition. He believes in
science just as ardently as if he did not in the very
first breath of each new philosophical dispute de-
clare that the real world is unknowable. His faith
in the methods of his specialty is as firm as his in-
difference to all extra - scientific speculation. His
work is in fact done with a kind of instinctive con-
fidence in himself and his fellows. The instinct is
no doubt highly trained, but it remains an instinct,
and a delightful one it is to him. The untrained
instincts of the unscientific man must indeed be crit-
icised and altered in many respects ere they can
serve the purposes of science ; but, after all the crit-
icisms and alterations, the instinct remains with al-
most all men an instinct, — useful, pleasing, yes, in-
dispensable ; but its philosophical justification few
people care to know, while its self-confidence every
scientific essay, or lecture, or instructor will attest.
Why now is it that, trusting as we all do this scien-

\Z9£> THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

tific instinct, we all feel it hard to give a like trust
to the religious instinct, whose most general tendency
is to have some sort of faith in the goodness of
things? Why is it that the doubtfulness and the
contradictions of the real world seem to everybody
to throw a cloud upon religion, even when it is not
supernatural religion, but to have no significance
whatever for the bases of science? This scientific
notion of a world of law, all of whose facts could
conceivably be predicted by one formula, why does
that remain in our minds untouched by the doubts
of the skeptical philosophers, while the same skep-
ticism at once seems to remove from us that trust in
the moral goodness of things which religion has
tried to establish in our hearts? Shall the world
be indifferent to one set of our ideals, and not to
another ? Shall the moral value of things be dark,
and not also their value for the purposes of science ?
Why is the one doctrine so different from the other ?
I You are placed in a world of confusion, and you as-
' sert that in its ultimate and eternal nature it answers
your moral needs. That seems presumptuous. You
did not make that world. How do you know whether
it cares for your moral ideals ? Very well then, be
impartial. You are placed in a world of confusion,
and you assert that it answers your intellectual
needs, namely, that it is a world of order, whose
facts could be reduced to some rational and intelligi-
ble unity. What business have you to do that ? In
both cases you transcend experience. Nature gives
you in experience partial evil that you cannot in all
cases perceive to be universal good. Nature also

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 295

gives you in experience partial chaos that you can-
not in all cases perceive to be universal order. But
unwaveringly you insist that nature is orderly, that
the chaos is an illusion ; and still you do not feel
ready to insist that the partial evil is universal good.
Why is this so ? Is the ethical side of reality less
important than the other? Or is it the very im-
portance of the religious aspect of things that makes
us more ready to doubt the truth of this aspect ?

Such questions occur to us as suggesting a possi-
ble way out of our difficulties. It is not exactly our
desired way, but is it not possibly a good way ? Sci-
ence, namely, uses a certain kind of faith, whenever
such faith is practically necessary. This scientific
faith is indeed no faith in particular uninvestigated
facts, but it is a faith in general methods and princi-
ples. The creed of science knows of no dogmas
about unexperienced single facts, as such ; but it does
know of dogmas about the general form of the laws
that must be assumed to govern all experience. Now
why may not religion be reduced to certain essential
general and fundamental moral demands, that we
must make in the presence of reality ? Why are not
these a legitimate, yes, a morally necessary object of
faith ? Why, as the scientific man postulates a the-
oretical rationality in the world, may not we postu-
late a moral rationality in the world ? These ques-
tions stand in our path. Might not the answer to
them transform our barren doubts into something
less disheartening ?

We see what all this supposed religious faith
would mean. It would not be a faith in any partic-

296 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ular facts of experience that might have for us per-
sonally a selfish value, whether greater or less. It
would be, like the scientific faith, wholly general. It
would demand that the world in its entirety should
be regarded as in some higher sense morally ra-
tional. It would say : The real world must be, what-
ever its true nature, at least as high in the moral
scale as my highest ideals of goodness. Have we a
right to such a faith ? Let us cautiously consider
this point.

But at once we must distinguish the proposed re-
ligious faith from what we should call mere blind
faith. Blind faith in what we cannot establish is
indeed inadmissible. But then, is there not another
kind of faith, the kind that Kant used in his prac-
tical philosophy ? To this may we not now turn ?
Perhaps the world of the powers, approached in the
usual way, is dark, but the world for the practical
reason may be opened in another way. Kant said, in
effect : " Such and such supersensual realities, of re-
ligious significance, cannot be theoretically proven ;
but we can see why we ought to postulate their ex-
istence, that is, we can see wliy we ought to act as
if they existed. Behind the veil of sense, we must
postulate that there is an intelligible world, in which
all is harmony, and in which the highest good is
realized." May we not also try with Kant to do
this ?

We shall in any case find this effort, an effort
that has been so often made since Kant, a subject
well worth our study and careful examination. In
truth it is not by itself satisfactory ; but we shall

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 297

see that it enters as one moment into the higher
view that we shall hereafter reach. So, in our own
way, we shall now try to answer the question sug-
gested to us by Kant's method. Does not then the
'religious aspect of the world lie in the fact that, do
, spite the contradictions of the world of sense, we
may, and indeed, morally speaking, must postulate,
that the Eternal, of which this world is the mere
show, is in itself absolutely righteous? We shall
not be able to answer this question with a simple
affirmative ; but still, postulates must enter in some
wise into every moment of our lives, and must there-
fore have some value in religion.

II.

In the last chapter we sought for a demonstration
of religious truth, and found none. But perhaps it
was not demonstration that we should have sought.
Possibly religion may be content to rest on postu-
lates.

A postulate is a mental way of behavior. In so
far it is like all other thought. In general, to be-
lieve that a thing exists is to act as if it existed.
But the act may be forced upon one, or it may be
freely chosen. One cannot fail to act upon the prin-
ciple that 2 + 2 i= 4, so soon as he perceives it. But
one may voluntarily determine to act in a given way,
not being rationally forced so to do, and well know-
ing the risk. In such cases one voluntarily takes
to himself the form of belief called a postulate.
Thus, apart from any philosophic theory, we all pos-

298 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

tulate a certain kind of uniformity in nature. We
do so, whenever we reflect upon the matter, volun-
tarily. For we then say that surprises are always
possible, and that any law may have exceptions, but
that we must act as if we knew certain laws to have
no possible exceptions. Postulates, however, are not
blind faith. Postulates are voluntary assumptions
of a risk, for the sake of a higher end. Passive faith
dares not face doubt. The postulate faces doubt,
and says : " So long as thou canst not make thyself
an absolute and certain negative, I propose to act as
if thou wert worthless, although I do well see thy
force." Blind faith is emotion, and often cowardly
emotion. The postulate is deliberate and courageous
volition ._ Blind faith says : " I dare not question."
The postulate says : " I dare be responsible for as-
suming." Examples of both are very common.
Blind faith the fond parent has, who says of his
wicked son : " I know tfeat he must be good, hence
I will not suspect him, nor train him ; I will not
watch him, nor warn others against him." A pos-
tulate the wise parent makes, who sends his full-
grown son boldly out into the world, with the best
attainable safeguards, saying : " It is useless to keep
him longer in leading-strings, or to protect him from
the world. It is now his place to fight his own bat-
tles, since I have done what I could to get him ready.
I postulate that he will win the fight ; I treat him,
and must treat him, as if he were sure to win, al-
though T well know the risks." The sea-captain
beginning his voyage postulates that he can get
through. The general postulates that he will be

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 299

victorious. The Prime Minister of a country postu-
lates that he can do his country better service than
could the Opposition. We all postulate that our
lives are worth the trouble. Yet we all know per-
fectly well that many just such postulates must in
the nature of things be blunders. But they imply
not blind faith, but active faith. With blind faith
little good is done in the world ; without active faith,
expressed in postulates, very little practical good
can be done from day to day. Blind faith is the
ostrich behind the bush. The postulate stands out.
like the lion against the hunters. The wise shall live
by postulates.

III.

But how is this postulating activity actually re-
lated to our knowledge of reality? Much more
closely than one might suppose. Very much of our
thought naturally rests upon a blind faith, or upon
what many take to be a blind faith ; but this, when
we reflect upon it with due attention to the office it
fills, is transformed before our eyes into practically
unavoidable postulates. Such are the assumptions
upon which our science rests in forming its ideal of
an " universal formula." There may indeed be some
deeper basis for these postulates of science. But
most men know nothing of this basis. And so, when
we accepted in our last chapter these postulates, we
had to admit that they are a kind of faith. If we
then nevertheless objected to certain religious doc-
trines that they rest on insufficient evidence, we did
this because they set themselves up as dogmas.

300 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

With further consideration, we might coine to accept
some one of them again in the form, not of a demon-
strable dogma, but of a practically unavoidable pos-
tulate, uncertain of course, but taken and to be taken
on risk ; just as every one of us goes through the
world taking all sorts of risks day by day. Any-
thing not contradictory may be a possible object of
postulates ; although, again, every postulate is to be
assumed only after careful criticism, and only be-
cause we cannot do better.

To do justice then to the proper office of postu-
lates in our religious theory, we must sooner or later
consider in what cases they naturally arise, what is
the proper extent of their use, what is the basis upon
which they can be made, in any special case, to rest ;
and, finally, whether, in view of all this, we can give
them any important place in our religious doctrine.
We confess at once that we want something much
better than a postulate as the basis of our religion,
in case we can get it. If postulates are to have any
part in our religion, we want them to be justified by
some ultimate religious certainty that is more than
a postulate. We shall investigate all that in time.
We shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile, what
is the work of postulates in the actual daily life of
human thought ?

Popular belief about an external world is for the
first an active assumption or acknowledgment of
something more than the data of consciousness.
What is directly given in our minds is not external.
All direct data are internal facts ; and in the strict-
est sense all data are direct. Suppose a merely pas-

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 301

sive acceptance of what is in consciousness, and you
have no belief in an external world. An addition to
the data of consciousness, a more or less clearly vol-
untary reaction, is involved in your idea of external
reality. The truth of this principle appears when
your belief in any particular object is called in ques-
tion. You hold that you see yonder a snowy moun-
tain. Your companion insists that beyond the wide
misty valley there is to be seen only a gray cloud.
You reassert your belief, and in the reassertion feel
more definitely than at first the active addition of
your own belief to the meagre data of sense. The
addition existed, however, in your first assertion.
Or again, one man is trying, perchance in sport, to
make another doubt the existence of material ob-
jects. " There is no external matter," says the first.
" There are but these states of consciousness in our
minds. Nothing beyond them corresponds to them."
The second, maintaining the position of the man of
common sense, retorts sharply : " Doubtless I cannot
refute altogether your fine-spun arguments ; but they
are nevertheless nonsense. For I persist in believing
in this world of sense. I live in it, I work for it, my
fellows believe in it, our hearts are bound up in it,
our success depends upon our faith. Only dreamers
doubt it. I am not a dreamer. Here is a stone ;
I hit it. Here is a precipice ; I fear and shun it.
My strongest conviction is concerned with the exist-
ence of this world of sense. Do your worst ; I am
not afraid of talk." Thus then by every device of
the active spirit,, by reminding himself of his most
cherished interests, of his affections and hatreds, by

802 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

arousing his social sentiments, by bodily acts, the
practical man preserves himself from fantastical spec-
ulation. When better-trained thinkers call the belief
in an external reality " a natural conviction, to be re-
tained until we are compelled to abandon it," or " a
convenient working hypothesis, to be received on the
testimony of consciousness, testimony assumed to be
trustworthy until the opposite is proven," what are
these but similar practical considerations, appeals to
the will ? Concerning data of immediate conscious-
ness such remarks would be wholly out of place.
That I see a certain color at this moment is not a
" convenient working hypothesis." Is consciousness
merely a "presumably trustworthy witness" when it
testifies to the pangs of toothache? Nobody could
balance evidence as to the reality of his sensation
qud sensation when consciousness is filled with the
sound of a street-organ. Sound, color, pang, these
are data, not merely things believed in. But the
external world — that is actively accepted as being
symbolized or indicated by the present conscious-
ness, not as being given in the present consciousness.
In short, the popular assertion of an external
world, being an assertion of something beyond the
data of consciousness, must begin in an activity of
judgment that does more than merely reduce present
data to order. Such an assertion must be an active
construction of non-data. We do not receive in our
senses, but we posit through our judgment, whatever
external world there may for us be. If there is
really a deeper basis for this postulate of ours, still,
at the outset, it is just a postulate.

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 303

All theories, all hypotheses as to the external
world, ought to face this fact of thought. If the his-
tory of popular speculation on these topics could be
written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would
be found in the behavior of the natural mind before
the question : " How dost thou know of an external
reality ? " Instead of simply and plainly answer-
ing : " I mean by the external world in the first place
something that I accept or demand, that I posit,
postulate, actively construct on the basis of sense-
data," the natural man gives us all kinds of vague
compromise answers : " I believe in the external re-
ality with a reasonable degree of confidence ; the
experience of mankind renders the existence of ex-
ternal reality ever more and more probable ; the
Creator cannot have intended to deceive us ; it is un-
natural to doubt as to external reality ; only young
people and fantastic persons doubt the existence of
the external world ; no man in his senses doubts the
external reality of the world ; science would be im-
possible were there no external world ; morality is
undermined by doubts as to the external world ; the
immovable confidence that we all have in the prin-
ciple of causality implies the fixity of our belief in
an external cause of our sensations." Where shall
these endless turnings and twistings have an end ?
The habits of the law-courts as condensed into " rules
of evidence," the traditional rules of debate, the
fashion of appealing to the " good sense " of honor-
able gentlemen opposite, the motives of shame and
fear, the dread of being called " fantastical," Philis-
tine desire to think with the majority, Philistine

304 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

terror of all revolutionary suggestions, the fright or
the anger of a man at finding some metaphysician
trying to question what seem to be the foundations
upon which one's bread winning depends, — all these
lesser motives are appealed to, and the one ultimate
motive is neglected. The ultimate motive with the
man of e very-day life is the will to have an exter-
nal world. Whatever consciousness contains, reason
will persist in spontaneously adding the thought:
"But there shall be something beyond this." The
external reality as such (e. g. the space beyond the
farthest star, any space not accessible, even whatever
is not at any moment given in so far as it is viewed
from that moment, in particular every past event) is
never a datum. We construct but do not receive
the external reality. The " immovable certainty " is
not such a dead passive certainty as that with which
we receive a pain or an electric shock. The pop-
ular assurance of an external world is the fixed de-
termination to make one, now and henceforth.

In the general popular conceptions of reality we
find then the first use of postulates. We have as yet
no justification for them. But even thus we get no
adequate idea of their use and of their number. We
must look at the facts of every-day mental life a lit-
tle more closely. For there is a curious tendency
of many to make these postulates appear something
else than what they are. Often they are interpreted
as if they were no postulates at all, but data of
sense. Often, again, their active nature is disre-
garded in yet another way, and they appear as blind
passive faith. Such in fact they must appear if we

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 805

reflect upon their mere content, and not upon the
processes by which we get them. But if we inter-
pret them rightly, we shall see that they ought to be
regarded as beliefs, taken for the first on risk, and
because the risk is worth taking.

IV.

Sometimes we hear men asserting that their be-
liefs are independent of their will. Such a man
will express himself in some such way as the follow-
ing:—

" I try to conquer prejudice ; but having done
this, I can do no more. My belief, whatever it is,
forms itself in me. I look on. My will has noth-
ing to do with the matter. I can will to walk or
eat ; but I cannot will to believe. I might as well
will that my blood should circulate."

But is this expression a fair one ? Does such a
man really remain passive in the struggle that goes
on within him ? We think not. These beliefs in
such a man have resulted, we hold, from a sort of
struggle between him and the surrounding world.
The world has tried sometimes to check his thought,
and to confine it to one channel ; sometimes to con-
fuse his thought, and to scatter it into spray before
the quick, heavy blows of innumerable, disconnected
sense apparitions. But the man, if he is a man of
energy, has controlled the current of his thought.
He has fought hard, now for freedom from oppres-
sive narrowness of thought, now for wholeness and
unity of thought ; and perhaps he has in so far con-

20

306 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

quered as to be the master of a manly and many-
sided system of doctrine. We think him responsible
for this system; and we hold that any such man
ought to admit the responsibility.

To study briefly the nature of the process involved
in all such cases will be important for our whole
doctrine. We shall see thereby how much our the-
ory of the world must itself tend to fall under the
head of the purely practical. We shall appreciate
also the limitations of ordinary thought, and the
need of some higher ideal standard to rescue us from
the pure subjectivity of mere postulates. And we
shall be contributing by the way to a question of ap-
plied ethics, the question of the morality of belief.

Every one recognizes that at least our more ab-
stract knowledge depends largely upon our own
mental activity. Knowing is not mere passive re-
ception of facts or of truths. Learning is not solely
an affair of the memory. The man that without re-
flection commits things to memory is justly com-
pared to a parrot, and might yet more justly be
compared to the sponge of Hamlet's figure : " It is
but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry
again." No knowledge, then, without active hos-
pitality in the mind that receives the knowledge.
But as soon as we recognize in mental life this our
power to modify our knowledge by means of our own
activity, just so soon do all the old comparisons of
the mind to a wax tablet, to a sheet of paper, or to
other like passive subjects of impression, lose for us
their meaning. Mental life becomes for us, in view
of these facts, a field of constant activity. The com-

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 307

monest processes of knowledge acquire a new signifi-
cance.

Two kinds of activity are concerned in the attain-
ment of knowledge. One kind consists in simply
receiving impressions from without, such as sensa-
tions, or, on a higher plane, statements of truth ; the
other consists in modifying and in organizing these
impressions. The receptive activity is partly a phys-
ical activity, since the one who receives information
must use his eyes and ears, must keep awake, must
at times move about ; and this receptive activity is
also partly made up of the mechanical processes of
the memory. Association by contiguity, or learning
by rote, is in the main a receptive process, though
this process of reception requires some active effort
on the part of the receiver. Committing words and
sentences to memory is often hard labor, as we all
of us learned when we first were tortured with ill-
wrought geographies and grammars, or with merci-
less Latin declensions and conjugations. But of the
whole of this receptive activity we shall make no
further mention in this connection. Simply receiv-
ing, keeping your mind in a submissive attitude,
turning your eyes in the proper direction, using your
ears, writing down your notes, memorizing whatever
needs memorizing — all this is essential to knowl-
edge, but has no reactive effect, does not modify the
form or the matter of your knowledge. Secondly,
however, knowledge is determined for each of us
by his own reaction upon what he receives ; and
this second mentioned kind of mental activity, that
which forms our topic at present, consists in a modi-

308 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

fication as well as in an organization of what we have
received from without. All processes of reasoning,
and so all original discoveries in science and in phi-
losophy, all speculations, theories, dogmas, controver-
sies, and not only these complex processes, but, as
we shall see, even simple judgments, commonplace
beliefs, momentary acts of attention, involve such
independent reaction upon the material furnished to
us from without. The nature of this reaction we
are further to examine.

Let us consider simpler forms of knowledge.
Sense-impressions constantly suggest to us thoughts ;
in fact, we have few thoughts that are not either im-
mediately suggested by sense - impressions, or else
sustained in their course by a continuous stream of
suitable sense-impressions. To carry on even a train
of abstract reasoning, sense-impressions either pres-
ent or repeated seem necessary as supports. But
when sense-impressions come to us, what transforms
them into thought ?

The answer is, First of all, attention, an active
mental process. The sense-impression is itself not
yet knowledge. A sense-impression to which we
give no attention slips through consciousness as a
man's hand through water. Nothing grasps and re-
tains it. Little effect is produced by it. It is un-
known. You cannot even tell what it is. For to
know what such an unnoticed impression is would
be to pay attention to it. But let us now consider
some familiar examples of the working of attention.
A simple instance will bring home to us how the
boundaries of our consciousness are crowded with un-

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 309

known impressions — unknown, because not attended
to ; but yet in some inexplicable way a part of our
consciousness, since an effort of attention serves to
bring them, any one of them, cleafly into mental
vision. At this instant you are looking at some-
thing. Now, without moving your eyes, try, by
merely attending to your visual impressions, to say
what is now in the field of vision, and where is the
boundary line of the field of vision. The experi-
ment is a little hard, because our eyes, condensed
embodiments as they are of tireless curiosity, are al-
ways restless, and rebel when you try to hold them
fast. But conquer them for an instant, and watch
the result. As your attention roams about the arti-
ficially fixed visual field, you will at first, indeed, be
confused by the vagueness of all but the centre ; but
soon you will find, to your surprise, that there are
more different impressions in the field than you at
first can distinguish. One after another, many va-
rious impressions will appear. But notice : you can
keep your attention fixed on only a portion of the
field at a time. The rest of the field is always lost
in a dim haze. You must be receiving impressions
all the time from all points of the field. But all of
these, except the few to which you pay attention,
nearly or quite disappear in the dim thickets that
seem to surround the little forest-clearing made by
our attentive consciousness. A like experiment can
be tried with the sense of hearing, when you are in
a large room full of people who are talking all around
you in many independent groups. A mass of sound
comes to your ear. Consciousness interferes to make

810 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

you pick out one or another of the series of sounds,
an act which is indeed made possible by the natural
analytic tendency of the human auditory sense, but
which does not take place without a noticeable effort
of attention. When you are learning a foreign lan-
guage, and are for a while much among those who
speak it, there comes a time when your ear and
mind are well enough trained to follow and under-
stand ordinary speakers with only a little effort of
attention ; but yet, at this stage, you are able, by
simply withdrawing your attention a mere trifle, to
let very common phrases run through your sense
without your understanding them one whit. You
can thus, by a slight change of attention, convert
the foreign language from a jargon into a familiar
speech, and back again into a jargon, just as, in the
fixed visual field, you can make yourself see an ob-
ject pretty plainly, or lose it altogether, by ceasing
to give attention.

All these instances, which could be indefinitely
multiplied, prove, first, that what we call attention
modifies the knowledge that we at any moment get ;
and secondly, that this modification, through atten-
tion, may take place without any change in the im-
pressions that at any moment come from without.
The first stage in getting knowledge from bare sense-
impressions is therefore the modification of sense by
attention — a process belonging wholly to the sub-
jective side ; i. e. to our own minds.

But what is attention ? and how does it modify
sensation? Apparently, attention in the previous
instances has been merely a power to increase or to

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 311

diminish the intensity of impressions. But is this
all that attention does ? No : there are many cases
in which attention directly affects the quality, at
least of our complex impressions. This direct modi-
fication is commonly attended by some alteration of
our emotional state. It is a familiar fact, that in
listening to a series of regular and even beats, such
as the strokes of an engine, or of a pendulum, or the
ticking of a watch, we have a tendency to modify
the impressions by introducing into their series the
more elaborate regularity of rhythm. In paying at-
tention to them, we increase, at our pleasure, the in-
tensity of every third or fourth beat as heard, and
so make a rhythm, or series of measures, out of the
actually monotonous impressions. Now attention,
which here first acts by modifying the intensity of
impressions, soon produces the effect of qualitatively
modifying our total impression of the whole series.
If I have taken the fancy to listen to the even
strokes in quadruple time, intensifying by my own
act every fourth stroke, the character of the series is
changed for me. The impressions are less monoto-
nous, and they arouse new associations. They seem
to be caused by some force that rhythmically in-
creases and decreases. Perhaps a melody, or some
phrase of a few words, arises in my mind, and per-
sists in associating itself with the strokes. Probably
some vague feeling, as of rhythmic motion through
the air, or of pleasure or of displeasure in the pres-
ence of some rhythmically moving living being, is
awakened. Qualitatively, my consciousness is thus
altered through my attention. I seem to be experi-

312 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

encing something that, as an objective reality, I do
not experience. More striking becomes this quali-
tative alteration of experience through attention,
in ca.se you bring two watches of different beat, or
a watch and a clock, and listen to both at once at
the distance of a few inches, first, perhaps, stopping
one ear to avoid confusion. Here, by attention,
you make or try to make a compound rhythm,
and this effort alters a good deal the total impres-
sion that you derive from the sound. If the two
series are such that a simple small multiple of the
interval of one gives you a simple small multiple of
the other's interval, you can combine the two series
into one rhythm, and then there is an immediate
impression as if the two series were really but the
complex ticking of one source of sound. But if the
series will not agree, there is an odd sense of some-
thing wrong, a disappointed effort to combine,
joined, perhaps, with a tendency to hasten one of the
series, so as to make it agree with the other. An-
other case where attention alters the quality of total
impressions, and not merely the intensity of any
part, appears in certain psychological laboratory ex-
periments, described by Wundt in his "Physiolo-
gische Psychologic." Here, for the sake of deter-
mining the actual time taken by an act of attention,
an observer is to make an electric signal as soon as
he becomes conscious of a certain impression, while
the impression itself is produced by an assistant at a
time exactly determined. The source of the impres-
sion is the ringing of a bell, the flash of an electric
spark, or something of the kind agreed upon at the

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 313

outset. To distinguish from one another the various
causes of the delay of the signal, the conditions of
experiment are variously modified. In one set of
experiments, the observer does not know beforehand
whether he is to experience a flash of light, or a
sound, or some sensation of touch, nor how intense
the sensation will be, nor when it will come ; but he
knows that he is to be on the lookout for one of the
three kinds of sensation. He waits, with attention
all aroused. In this case, it always takes him longer
to signal than if he knew beforehand the kind and
the strength of the coming sensation. Moreover, his
attention now makes him uneasy ; the coming sen-
sation is expected, with signs of excitement, and is
often received with a start. Here the feeling of ef-
fort that accompanies attention affects by its strength
the character of the impression received. Moreover,
in many of these experiments there appear phenom-
ena that show that attention alters our perception
of time, not merely as to length, but also as to se-
quence ; so that under circumstances, an impression
that really precedes another can appear in conscious-
ness as succeeding it. Yet more : attention some-
times serves to combine two sets of simultaneous im-
pressions, and to make them seem as if proceeding
from one source.

So much for the influence of attention alone. But
what is attention ? We reply, evidently an active
process. When impressions are modified by atten-
tion, they are actively modified. And if you ask
about the nature of this active process, the reply is,
attention, in its most elementary forms, is the same

314 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

activity that in a more developed shape we commonly
call will. We attend to one thing rather than to
another, because we will to do so, and our will is
here the elementary impulse to know. Our attention
leads us at times into error. But this error is merely
an accompaniment, the result of our will activity.
We want to intensify an impression, to bring it
within the sphere of knowledge. But in carrying
out our impulse, we do more than we meant. We not
only bring something into clearer consciousness that
was before out of clear consciousness, but we quali-
tatively modify this thing in attending to it. I want
to observe a series of beats, and in observing it, I
make one beat in three or four seem heavier than the
others, or I even alter the apparent length of one in-
terval in three or four, by making it seem longer
than the others. I observe a series of visual im-
pressions, and at the same time a series of auditory
impressions ; if there is a certain agreement between
them, I irresistibly unite these two series by my act
of attention into one series, and refer them to a com-
mon cause. And so in the other cases. Attention
seems to defeat, in part, its own object. Bringing
something into the field of knowledge seems to be
a modifying, if not a transforming, process.

We all know how this same law works on a higher
plane. Giving our whole attention for a time to a
particular subject seems necessary for the growth of
our knowledge. Yet such attention, if long kept up,
always modifies our power to know, affects our whole
mental condition, and thus injures our power to ap-
preciate the relations between the subject of our

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 315

study and the other things in the world. Constant
attention to one thing narrows our minds, until we
fail to see the very thing we are looking at. Our
lives are thus really passed in a constant flitting
from one more or less partial and distorted view of
things to another, from this one-sided judgment to
that. Change the book you are reading, and your
whole notion of the universe suffers some momentary
change also. Think this week in the fashion of
Carlyle, attending to things as he brings them to
your attention, and human life — in fact, the whole
world of being as you thought of it last week, when
you were following some other guide — becomes mo-
mentarily clouded. This truth seems out of relation
to that. Your change of attention qualitatively alters
your apprehension of truth. Attending now even to
the same things, you view them in new lights. The
alteration of mental attitude becomes confusing to
yourself. But refuse to make any such changes, set-
tle down steadfastly to some one way of regarding
all things, and your world becomes yet more misty.
You see only a few things, and those in such a bad
light that you are in danger of utter darkness. Fre-
quent change of mental view (we of course do not
mean constant change of creed or of occupation, but
only frequent alteration of the direction of our
thought) is essential to mental health. Yet this
alteration implies at least some temporary change in
our knowing powers, and so some change in our ap-
preciation of truth.

Before going on to speak of the effect of our own
activity upon our knowledge, when attention is com-

316 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

bined with active recognition of impressions, we
want to formulate the law that governs the action
of attention upon sense-impressions apart from rec-
ognition. This law seems pretty well established by
experience, and is, at all events, quite simple. It is
this : Any act of attention tends, first, to strengthen
the particular set of impressions to which it is at the
moment adapted ; and secondly, to modify those im-
pressions in such a way as shall make the total im-
pression derived from them all as simple an impres-
sion as possible. These two statements could be
reduced to one, thus : Attention constantly tends
to make our consciousness more definite and less
complex; that is, less confused and more united.
More definite, less confused attention tends to make
consciousness ; since, out of many vague impressions,
attention fixes upon one or a few, and helps them
to crowd out the others. Less complex and more
united or integrated attention makes the impressions
attended to ; as when, for the indefinite multiplicity
of the successive even beats of a watch or of an en-
gine, attention substitutes the simpler form of a ris-
ing and falling rhythm of more and less emphatic
beats, or as when two parallel series of impressions
are reduced to one, by combination. If impressions
are so complex and so imperative in their demands
as to impede greatly the simplifying and clarifying
efforts of attention, the result is a disagreeable feel-
ing of confusion, that may increase to violent pain.

This law, that our consciousness constantly tends
to the minimum of complexity and to the maximum
of defmiteness, is of great importance for all our

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 317

knowledge. Here we have a limitation that cannot
be overleaped. Whatever we come to know, what-
ever opinions we come to hold, our attention it is
that makes all our knowing and all our believing
possible ; and the laws followed by this, our own ac-
tivity of attention will thus determine what we are
to know and what we are to believe. If things have
more than a certain complexity, not only will our
limited powers of attention forbid us to unravel this
complexity, but we shall strongly desire to believe
the things actually much simpler than they are. For
our thoughts about them will have a constant ten-
dency to become as simple and definite as possible.
Put a man into a perfect chaos of phenomena, sights,
sounds, feelings ; and if the man continued to exist,
and to be rational at all, his attention would doubt-
less soon find for him a way to make up some kind
of rhythmic regularity, which he would impute to the
things about him, so as to imagine that he had dis-
covered some law of sequence in this mad new world.
And thus, in every case where we fancy ourselves
sure of a simple law of Nature, we must remember
that a good deal of the fancied simplicity may be due
in the given case not to Nature, but to the ineradi-
cable prejudice of our own minds in favor of regular-
ity and simplicity. All our thought is determined,
in great measure, by this law of least effort, as it is
found exemplified in our activity of attention.

But attention is not the only influence that goes
to transform sense-impressions into knowledge. At-
tention never works alone, but always in company
with the active process of recognizing the present

318 THE KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

as in some way familiar, and of constructing in the
present ideas of what is not present. At these two
other active processes we must very briefly glance.

Recognition is involved in all knowledge. Recog-
nition does not always mean a definite memory of a
particular past experience that resembles a present
one. On the contrary, recognition is frequently
only a sense of familiarity with something now pres-
ent, coupled with a more or less distinct applying of
some predicate to this present thing. I recognize a
horse, a landscape, a star, a friend, a piece of music,
a book, when I feel more or less familiar with the
impression of the object in question, and when, at
the same time, I predicate more or less distinctly
something of it. This, I say, is my friend, or the
north star, or Webster's Dictionary, or Smith's
horse. Or, perhaps, in recognizing, I recognize, not
merely the whole object, but one of its qualities,
or of its relation to other things. Then I say, this
is large or small, good or bad, equal or unequal to
another thing, and so on. In all these cases, recog-
nition involves a lively reaction of my mind upon ex-
ternal impressions. Recognition is not found apart
from attention, though attention may exist more or
less completely without recognition. Recognition
completes what attention begins. The attentive
man wants to know, the recognizing man knows, or
thinks that he knows. Recognition implies accom-
panying attention. Attention without recognition
implies wonder, curiosity, perplexity, perhaps terror.
But what is the law of this process of recognition ?
Does the process affect the impressions themselves

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 319

that are the basis of the recognition ? The answer
is: Very distinctly, recognition does affect the im-
pressions. The activity involved in jr^eognitiou al-
ters the data of sense, and that in almost every case.
Two of the ways in which this alteration occurs
are these: Cl^L In recognizing, we complete present
data by remembered past data, and so seem to expe-
rience more than is actually given to our senses.
Thus, then, in reading, we read over misprints (even
against our own will), thinking that we see words
when we do not see them, or when we see only parts
of them. Again : in listening to an indistinct
speaker we often supply what is lacking in the sounds
he makes, and seem to hear whole words when we
really hear but fragments of words. Or, merely
whistling a few notes, we recall to ourselves, and
seem to have present, the complex instrumental har-
mony of some music that we have heard played.
Or, in dim twilight, we imagine the form of a man,
and seem to see ifc plainly in detail, when, in fact, a
mass of shrubbery, or a coat on a chair, is the one
source of our impressions. In all these cases, the
activity of recognition alters the data of sense, by
adding to them, by filling out the sketch made by
them. (2.) However, even the qualities of sense-im-
pressions are altered according to the way in which
we recognize their objects. The colors of a landscape
are dimmer, and less significant as colors, so long
as we recognize the objects in the landscape. Look
under your arm, with head inverted, and the colors
flash out with unwonted brilliancy. For when you
so look, you lose sight of the objects as such, and

320 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

give your attention solely to the colors. Mistake a
few brown leaves in some dark corner of a garden
for some little animal, and the leaves take on for the
moment the distinctive familiar color of the animal ;
and when you discover your blunder, you can catch
the colors in the very act of fading into their dull,
dry-leaf insignificance. Many facts of this sort are
recorded by psychologists and by artists, and can be
observed by any of us if we choose. To separate a
sensation from its modifications that are produced
by recognition is not a little difficult.

Now, in both these kinds of alteration a law is
observed, very similar to the one previously noted.
The alterations of the data of sense in the moment of
recognition are alterations in the direction of simplic-
ity and definiteness of consciousness. The present
is assimilated to the past ; the new is made to seem
as familiar as possible. This reaction of the mind
upon new impressions is easily seen in our thoughts
and words in the first moment of great surprise or
fright. When Macbeth turns from his door to the
table, and sees the ghost of Banquo in his chair, his
first words are not the " Avaunt, and quit my
sight ! " wherewith he greets the second appearance
of the ghost, nor yet even the " Which of you have
done this f " that he utters as soon as he recovers
himself. No : his first conscious reaction, in pres-
ence of the horrible impression, is a quiet remark,
" The table '« full." And when they teU him that
there is a place reserved, he persists with a
" Where ? " In this scene, Shakespeare's instinct
is perfectly accurate. Our effort always is to make

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 321

the new as familiar as possible, even when this new
is inconceivably strange. It takes us some time to
realize, as we say, a great change of any sort. Rec-
ognition, however, is yet further modified by the in-
terest with which we at any moment attend to things.
But when we speak of interest, we are led to the
third kind of active modification by which our minds
determine for us what we know.

At every moment we are not merely receiving, at-
tending, and recognizing, but we are constructing.
Out of what from moment to moment comes to us,
we are building up our ideas of past and future, and
of the world of reality. Mere dead impressions are
given. We turn them by our own act into symbols
of a real universe. We thus constantly react upon
what is given; and not only modify it, but even give
it whatever significance it comes to possess. Now
this reaction takes a multitude of forms, and cannot
be fully discussed without far more than our present
space. But we can name one or two prominent
modes of reaction of mind upon sense-data in this
province of mental life.

1. Definite memory is possible only through pres-
ent active construction from the data of feeling.
Nothing can come to us certifying for itself that it
formed a part of our previous experience. When
we know a thing as past, we actively project our
idea of it into a conceived past time. Without this
active interference of our own minds, everything
would be but a present, and there would be no time
for us, only fleeting life from moment to moment.

2. Definite belief in external reality is possible

21

322 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

only through this active addition of something of
our own to the impressions that are actually given
to us. No external reality is given to us in the mere
sense-impressions. What is outside of us cannot be
at the same time within us. But out of what is in
us, we construct an idea of an external world. To
be sure this belief needs higher justification, like all
other beliefs. But at the outset it is just an activ-
ity of ours.

3. All abstract ideas, all general truths, all knowl-
edge of necessary laws, all acceptance of doctrines,
begin in like fashion, through an active process com-
ing from within. Change the fashions of our men-
tal activity, and nobody can tell how radically you
would change our whole conception of the universe.

4. All this active construction from sense-impres-
sions expresses certain fundamental interests that
our human spirit takes in reality. We want to have
a world of a particular character ; and so, from
sense-impressions, we are constantly trying to build
up such a world. We are prejudiced in favor of
regularity, necessity, and simplicity in the world ;
and so we continually manipulate the data of sense
for the sake of building up a notion of a regular,
necessary, and simple universe. And so, though it
is true that our knowledge of the world is deter-
mined by what is given to our senses, it is equally
true that our idea of the world is determined quite
as much by our own active combination, completion,
anticipation of sense experience. Thus all^ knowing
is, in a very deep sense, Jjcting ; it is, in fact, react-
ing and creation. The most insignificant knowledge

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 323

is in some sense an original product of the man who
knows. In it is expressed his disposition, his power
of attention, his skill in recognition, his interest in
reality, his creative might. Exact knowledge is, in
fact, best illustrated by cases where we ourselves
make what we know. So only is mathematical
knowledge possible ; mathematical ideas are all prod-
ucts of a constructive imagination. And so it is in
all other thought-life. Mentally produce, and thou
shalt know thy product. But we must remember,
for what we produce we are in some sense morally
responsible; and thus, in discussing the nature of
knowledge, we are trespassing on the border-land of
ethics.

To sum up all in a few words : Plainly, since ac-
tive inner processes are forever modifying and build-
ing our ideas ; since our interest in what we wish to
find does so much to determine what we do find ;
since we could not if we would reduce ourselves to
mere registering machines, but remain always build-
ers of our own little worlds, — it becomes us to con-
sider well, and to choose the spirit in which we shall
examine our experience. Every one is certain to be
prejudiced, simply because he does not merely re-
ceive experience, but himself acts, himself makes ex-
perience. One great question for every truth-seeker
is : In what sense, to what degree, with what motive,
for what end, may I and should I be prejudiced?
Most of us get our prejudices wholly from the fash-
ions of other men. This is cowardly. We are re-
sponsible for our own creed, and must make it by
our own hard work. Therefore, the deepest and

324 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

most important of all questions is the one, " For

I what art thou at work?" It is useless to reply, " I

I am merely noting down what I find in the world.

\ I am not responsible for the facts" The answer is,

" A mere note-book thou art not, but a man. These

are never simply notes; thy thoughts are always

transformed reality, never mere copies of reality.

For thy transforming activity, as well as for thy

skill in copying, thou art answerable."

V.

It is not then that postulates occur here and
there in our thoughts, but that, without postulates,
both practical life and the commonest results of the-
ory, from the simplest impressions to the most valu-
able beliefs, would be for most if not all of us ut-
terly impossible ; this it is which makes active faith
so prominent a subject for philosophical considera-
tion. An imperfect reflection makes that appear as
blind faith which ought to appear as postulate. In-
stead of saying that he takes all these things on
risk, and because they are worth the risk, the natu-
ral man is persuaded by such imperfect reflection to
say that he trusts very ardently that he is running
no risk at all. Or again : the natural man is moved
to fear any examination into the bases of his thought,
because he does not wish to discover that there is
any risk there. And so we live dishonestly with
our thoughts. Where there is a deeper basis, that
involves more than mere risk, let us find it if we can.
But where we have nothing better than active faith,

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 325

let us discover the fact, and see clearly just why it
is worth while to act in this way.

To speak more particularly of the postulates of
developed science. The ancient discussions about
the basis of physical knowledge of all sorts have
had at least this as outcome, that it is useless to pre-
tend to make science of any sort do without assump-
tions, and equally useless to undertake the demon-
stration of these assumptions by experience alone.
No one has ever succeeded in accomplishing such a
thing, and the only difference among thinkers about
these assumptions is that some think it worth while
to seek a transcendental basis for them all, while
others insist that a transcendental basis is as impos-
sible as a purely experimental basis is inadequate,
and that in consequence we can only use the form of
threat and say : Unless you make these assumptions,
the spirit of science is not in you. As for the exact
form that in more elaborate scientific work ought
to be taken by these postulates, opinion differs very
much, but an approximation to their sense may be
attempted very briefly as follows.

In addition to those postulates that, as we have
seen, accompany and condition all thinking alike,
science may be considered as making a more special
assumption. This assumption has been well defined
by Professor Avenarius, in his well-known essay on
" Die Philosophic als Denken der Welt Gemass dem
Princip des kleinsten Kraftmasses." He regards it
as an outcome of the general law of parsimony that
governs all mental work. The world of phenomena
is conceived at any stage in the simplest form, and

326 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

the reality that we accept is for us at any time the
simplest description of the phenomena as known to
us. To put this view in our own way, we might
say that the world is scientifically viewed as a per-
fectly united whole, which would, if fully known,
fully satisfy our highest mental desire for continuity
and perfect regularity of conception. Therefore it
is that the "universal formula " of the last chapter
is a conception that expresses the scientific ideal.
With less perfection, harmony, and unity of thought
about the world, science will never rest content so
long as she continues to be science. But for this
very reason science postulates that this perfect order
must be already realized in the world. It is not
merely that this order is the practically unattainable
but still necessary ideal for our reason ; but we
must postulate that this order is already present in
things, far off as our thought is from it. This pos-
tulate gives life to our scientific thought. Without
it our search for an order that need not exist is
meaningless play.

This postulated order, however, if found, would
mean for us relative simplicity and economy of con-
ception. The infinite mass of phenomena would be
conceived as one whole. The maximum of wealth
of facts would be grasped with the minimum of men-
tal effort. We postulate after this fashion that the
world loves parsimony, even as we do.

To illustrate by the case of one science. A great
master of mechanical science has called it the science
which gives the simplest possible description of the
motions in the world. If we accept this account of

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 327

mechanics, we are at once puzzled by the fact that
most mechanical theories make assumptions about
the forces at work in the world, and that all of them
predict coming facts. But forces form no part of
the experience or of -the mere description of motion.
And the future is not yet given to be described.
How then does all this agree with the definition in
question? Very well indeed. For those who as-
sume forces to explain given motions, always assume
just those forces that will directly explain, not any
description at random of the motions given in expe-
rience, but the simplest possible description. Any
motion being relative, never for our experience abso-
lute, we can assume at pleasure any point in the
world as the origin or point of reference that shall
be regarded as at rest, and so we can get an infinite
number of descriptions of any given motions. We
can make any object in the world move at any de-
sired speed or in any desired direction, simply by
altering the origin to which we shall choose to refer
its motion in our description thereof. But all these
possible descriptions are not equally useful for the
purposes of the science. Some one of them is the
simplest for all the motions of the system in ques-
tion ; and this we regard as best expressing the ac-
tual natural truth in the matter. The assumption
of just such forces as would explain this simplest
system of motions as described, satisfies us. We
say, these forces are the real ones at work. But
still we know that the forces assumed only express
in another form the fact that the description in ques-
tion is the simplest. Is this, however, really all that

328 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

the science does with the given motions ? No, one
thing more the science assumes, namely, that if the
system of motions in question is not subject to any
external influence, it will remain fundamentally and
in deepest truth the same in future, that is : The
simplest description of the given motions in a sys-
tem of bodies that is wholly independent of the ac-
tion of bodies without the system, this description
is permanent for all states of the system. This
assumption is needed before mechanical science can
venture on any prediction, or beyond mere descrip-
tion of past and present motions. This is the pos-
tulate of the uniformity of nature in its mechanical
shape.1 The complete present description of the
world would reveal the whole future of the world.

What, however, does this postulate of uniformity
express for our thought? What is the philosoph-
ical outcome of it ? It expresses for our thought the
demand that nature shall answer our highest intel-
lectual needs, namely, the need for simplicity and
absolute unity of conception. Mechanical science
can no more do without this assumption than can
any other science.

The ground that we have here very briefly passed
over is known to all readers of modern controversy.
We can only add our conviction that, as far as it
goes, the foregoing view is a perfectly fair one.
Whether or no there be any deeper basis for this

1 Professor Clifford, in his essay on Theories of the Physical
Forces, in his Lectures and Essays, vol. i., p. 109 sqq., has under-
taken to reduce this postulate to the general one of Continuity.
The philosophical outcome would be the same.

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 329

postulate, it is sure that science makes the postulate,
and does not give any deeper basis for it. For nat-
ural science it is a faith.

Now this faith, not blind faith but postulate, not
basely submitted to merely because we must submit
to it, but boldly assumed because we think it worth
the risk, wherein does it differ from what our funda-
mental religious faith would be if we made of that
also no mere dogmatic creed, but a general assump-
tion, no mere passive trust, but an active postulate ?
Beneath all the beliefs that we could not demon-
strate in our last chapter, lay the determination not
so much to prove one cast-iron system of dogmas,
as to find some element of reality that should have
an infinite worth. The world should be at least as
high as our highest conception of goodness. And
to this end the partial evil should be in deepest
reality universal good, even though our imperfect
eyes could never show to us how this could be, —
could never see through the illusion to the " image-
less truth " beneath. Therefore, although we vainly
sought among the Powers of the world for proof of
all this, may we not still hope to approach the
Eternal Eeality with these postulates, and to say :
"Though thou revealest to us nothing, yet we be-
lieve thee good. And we do so because this faith of
ours is a worthy one." Possibly then our Religion
will be just the highest form of our conduct itself,
our determination to make the world good for our-
selves, whatever baseness experience shows us in it.
Then we can say : Just as science is undaunted by
the vision of the world of confusion, so shall our re-

830 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ligious faith be undaunted by the vision of the evil
of the world. We shall war against this evil in the
trust that the highest reality is not against us, but
with us, just as we try to comprehend the world with
the faith that the highest reality is in conformity
with our private reason. In both cases we take the
risk, but we take the risk because it is worth taking,
because to take it is the highest form of activity.
As the faith of science helps to make life rational,
so the religious faith helps to make life in the high-
est sense moral, by insisting that the ideal labors of
our moral life are undertaken not alone, but in har-
mony with the world as known to the Infinite.

To make the parallel a little clearer, we may say
that science postulates the truth of the description
of the world that, among all the possible descrip-
tions, at once includes the given phenomena and at-
tains the greatest simplicity ; while religion assumes
the truth of the description of the world that, with-
out falsifying the given facts, arouses the highest
moral interest and satisfies the highest moral needs.

All this has often been said, but it has not always
been clearly enough joined with the practical sug-
gestion that if one gives up one of these two faiths,
he ought consistently to give up tjie other. If one
is weary of the religious postulates, let him by all
means throw them aside. But if he does this, why
does he not throw aside the scientific postulates, and
give up insisting upon it that the world is and must
be rational? Yea, let him be thorough-going, and,
since the very perception of the walls of his room
contains postulates, let him throw away all these

THE WORLD OF THE POSTULATES. 331

postulates too, and dwell in the chaos of sensations
unfriended. There is no reason why he should not
do this unless he sees a deeper foundation for his
postulates. We have no mere dogmas to urge here.
Let one abandon all mere postulates if he has not
the courage to make them, but then let one consist-
ently give them all up. The religious postulates
are not indeed particular creeds. One may abandon
creeds of many sorts, and yet keep the fundamental
postulate. But if he abandons the fundamental pos-
tulate of religion, namely, that universal goodness
is somehow at the heart of things, then he ought
consistently to cease from the fundamental postu-
late of science, namely, that universal, order-loving
reason is somehow the truth of things. And to do
both is to lack the courage of rational and of moral
life.

Such is the way of the postulates. And yet we
desire to find, if we can, a more excellent way.
These postulates must be confirmed if possible, and
then subordinated to higher results. It was the
skeptical work of the last chapter to turn attention
away from false or inconclusive methods of estab-
lishing religious faith. There we saw how much
must seem, according to all the ordinary apologetic
methods, theoretically doubtful. In this chapter we
have seen how postulates, theoretically uncertain,
but practically worth the risk, are at the foundation
of our whole lives. Hereafter we shall seek to dig
beneath these foundations to that other sort of theo-
retical certainty whereof we have made mention. If
we get it, then all our work will have been worth

332 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

while. Our skepticism will have saved us from an-
tiquated methods, and from worn-out dogmas. Our
faith will have been purified by being reduced to
certain simple postulates that are not identical with
the traditional creeds, although those creeds tried to
express them. And both our skepticism and our
faith will then finally become elements of a broader
Keligious Insight.

The dead external reality, into whose darkness we
had to peer in vain for light, has indeed transformed
itself. It is no more merely dead, or merely exter-
nal. It is ours and for us. It was a world of doubt
in the last chapter, just because we made it dead
and external. Now that we have seen how it was
the expression of postulates, it seems to have become
plastic and ideal. Yet what it has gained in plas-
ticity, it has lost in authority. After all, is not this
business of postulating into the void a dangerous
one ? Is it not a hollow and empty activity this, if
we really reflect upon it ? Courage indeed we must
have ; but is religion no more than courage ? Nay ;
we must have if possible some eternal Truth, that
is not our postulate, to rest upon. Can we not get
some such comfort ? And may there not be some
higher relation of our lives to that truth, — such a
relation that the truth shall be neither the arbitrary
product of our subjective postulates, nor a dead ex-
ternal reality such as was the world of doubt ? We
are bound still to search.

CHAPTER X.

IDEALISM.

Ei? TOV oAov ovpavbv a7ro/?Ae^as TO ev eu/ai $rj(Ti rov Oeov*

ARISTOTLE, concerning the doctrine of Xenophanes.

STILL we are seeking the Eternal. Postulates
about it we must indeed make, or else we shall do
nothing. But can we not go beyond the mere postu-
lates ? Is there no other road open to the heart of
things ? In fact many other ways have been sug-
gested. The religiously interesting efforts towards
a suggestion of such ways have been the special work
of philosophical Idealism in the past. Let us then
see to what results philosophical Idealism offers to
lead us.

I.

"The world of dead facts is an illusion. The
truth of it is a spiritual life." That is what philo-
sophical idealism says. This spiritual life may be
defined in many ways. But the multitude of the
ways of defining it do not altogether obscure the
sense of the doctrine. Plato and St. Augustine and
Berkeley and Fichte and Hegel give us very various
accounts of the spiritual life that is to be at the
heart of things, but they agree about the general
thought. As to the proof of the doctrine, very many

334 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

writers have presented this idealism as a sort of prod-
uct of poetical fantasy, and have thereby helped to
bring it into disrepute. We profess no such enthu-
siasm. If we are to give any foundation for our
postulates by means of an idealistic doctrine, then
this foundation must be no mere poetic fancy, but a
well-framed philosophic doctrine, able to stand crit-
icism, and to satisfy very unemotional aims, as well
as the higher moral aims themselves. But if ideal-
ism is to receive rigid theoretical tests, we may still,
in view of our present discussion and its needs, be
helped on our way more directly if we first consider
very generally and briefly what idealism could do
for us if it were established, thereafter going on to
the theoretical consideration of its claims.

That the Eternal is a world of spiritual life is
what the idealists of the past have maintained, and
the religious force of their doctrine lay not so much
in the insight that was thus offered concerning the
nature of the powers that are in the world, as in an-
other insight. Just here idealistic doctrine and its
outcome has been seldom comprehended, even by
the idealists themselves. The world, merely viewed
as a heap of warring Powers, cannot be a world of
spiritual life. If the real world is nevertheless a
world of such spiritual life, it must be so because,
beyond and above the Powers, there is this higher
spiritual Life that includes them and watches over
them as the spectator watches the tragedy, — a Life
in which they live and move and have their being.
The characters in a tragedy do not constitute as war-
ring powers, in their separate existence, the signifi-

IDEALISM. 335

cance of the tragedy. The spectator, the overseeing
thought, for which and in which these fancied pow-
ers contend, this it is that gives them unity and sig-
nificance. Even so the highest spiritual life that /
the idealist finds in the world is not to be a power
among other powers, but a thought for which exists
all that is. Hence the deepest assertion of idealism
is not that above all the evil powers in the world
there is at work some good power mightier than
they, but rather that through all the powers, good
and evil, and in them all, dwells the higher spirit
that does not so much create as constitute them what
they are, and so include them all.

How all this is to be more fully explained, and
how it is to be justified, if at all, by idealism, we
shall see further on. But for the present we may
suggest that such idealism as this has a peculiar ad-
vantage in dealing with the problems that we found
insoluble in the discussion of the world of the Powers.
There we found a world of contending elementary
forces, A, B, C, etc. As contending powers they
must needs appear finite. If one was good, another
was or might be evil. And as we had to deal only
with the warring elements, the thought that partial
evil may, after all, be universal good seemed not
very plausible, and quite indemonstrable. The world
being the collection of the powers that are in it, the
good and evil of the whole seemed to be the sum of
the separate good and evil elements. But now we
have a thought that may make possible the existence
of universal goodness. If the tragedy as a whole is
good, although its elements are evil, so like the trag-

336 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

edy may the world be universally good if the single
evils of reality, like the single parts of the tragedy,
are elements in a whole that exists for an all-see-
ing, all-inclusive Spirit, in whom are all things, and
whose nature as a whole is good. Thus, then, if we
cannot yet see just how the partial evil is universal
good in the all-inclusive mind, we can already, from
the outset at least, fancy that it may so be. The All-
Enfolding may be good even although of necessity
there are elements in his world of infinite experience
that, separately considered, may 'be evil. So ideal-
ism offers as its theodicy not that the world contains
a surplus of good powers, or that the creative power,
when it made the devilish powers, still meant well ;
but the theodicy of idealism suggests a way in which
evil may be, after all, a partial view of an all-em-
bracing goodness.

Hence the importance, for our present discussion,
of an effort to treat calmly and critically the main
doctrine of philosophic idealism. Here at least is
some suggestion of a chance that we may, in time,
come to rise above mere postulates, and may found
a positive religious theory. For the postulates are
indeed, in themselves, not enough. We want, if
possible, to get beyond them, though we are ready to
accept them as final if we can do no better. Yet
we are still forced to begin our account of idealistic
doctrine with nothing better than postulates.

IDEALISM. 337

II.

The imperfectioD of the author's private under-
standing of deeper truth has forced him to come to
idealism in the first instance by a very straight and
easy path, that most deeper idealists would deride.
After he had by that road reached the definite con-
ception of one form of idealism, he found a further
thought by which this idealism seemed to be trans-
formed into a doctrine of greater philosophical and
religious significance. At the same time, the proof
of the doctrine first seemed to him to become clear
and all-embracing. Now a reader cares little for
the contents of an author's note-book, or for a his-
tory of his opinions ; but sometimes the exposition
of a view is a little helped by presenting it in suc-
cessive parts that follow in their order somewhat
the line of the author's own development. Hence
the present chapter shall suggest philosophic ideal-
ism as a mere hypothesis, that still only tries to ex-
press our fundamental postulates. Then we shall
go on to see what deeper foundation for it we can
find. And furthermore, our first suggestion of ideal-
ism shall be a purely theoretical conception, not
assumed to satisfy directly an ethical postulate, but
merely to express theoretical postulates about the
world. Then we shall be able to see what religious
doctrine can be built upon this foundation. This
way commends itself as avoiding the greatest dan-
ger of idealism, namely, fantastic speculation with
noble purposes, but with merely poetical methods.
Our present method shall be coldly theoretical, how-
22

338 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ever deeply our religious philosophy is concerned in
the outcome.

For the first then we shall suppose our whole task
to be the suggestion of a plausible, i. e. of a simple,
adequate, and consistent hypothesis about the nature
of external reality. Hereafter we shall consider
more critically the foundation of such hypotheses.
Provisionally, then, we shall suppose that, by a per-
fect theory of knowledge, the following result has
been reached : Human beings are able to form ideas
that correspond in some way with a real world, out-
side of themselves. That is, the sequence of human
ideas corresponds to sequences of external events, or
to relations of coexistence among external things.
The necessary or uniform connections of human
ideas correspond to regular or to universal connec-
tions among external things. Or, in the brief form
of Mr. Herbert Spencer's phraseology, to each nec-
essary relation a : b in human consciousness there
corresponds a relation A : B in the external world.
Suppose, then, that all this has been established. No
one will admit more readily than the writer that this
supposition is at this point merely tentative. Our
theory of knowledge is yet to be completed, and be-
tween its conception and its realization there are still
wide oceans of doubt. We shall, in fact, deal with
the problems of this theory in the next chapter. But
for the moment suppose admitted what scientific
thought generally takes for granted, namely, the cor-
respondence of inner and outer relations in such
wise that the former are naturally copies of the lat-
ter. And, on this foundation, suppose that we in-

IDEALISM. 339

tend to consider what hypothesis as to the nature of
the related terms A and B in the external world is,
on the whole, the most plausible.

For the sake of avoiding controversy we may for
the moment leave out of account two old questions.
We cannot really escape either, and both will sternly
confront us before we get in at the door of the tem-
ple of certainty. But here at the outset we are
playing with hypotheses, and may be absolved from
the responsibility of securing ourselves beforehand
from all possible attacks. The first is the question
of the idealists : How can any reality be conceived
unless as implying or including states of conscious-
ness ? For the moment we will waive this part of
the Berkeleyan contention altogether ; for we are not
yet concerned to prove by metaphysical analysis the
universal coincidence of consciousness and reality.
We wish merely a plausible hypothesis to be ad-
vanced as to the nature of what more popular thought
means by reality. The second question that at the
outset we avoid is the one concerning tne ground
of the assumed agreement between the external and
the internal orders of facts. Whether this ground
lies in a causal determination of our consciousness by
the external world, or in a preestablished harmony
of both, matters not. We first take our stand, then,
upon the facts admitted by popular belief. Here are
feelings, sequences of feelings, thoughts, trains of
thought, systems of scientific belief : all internal
facts. Beyond the consciousness of these internal
facts stretches (so we now assume, and only assume)
another world of facts, in which something corre-

840 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

sponds to each one of these feelings, some order of
facts to each sequence of feeling, some system of
facts and of laws to each properly constituted system
of beliefs. The external order of the world beyond
corresponds to the order of this internal world of
our consciousness, but is not this order. A plausi-
ble hypothesis is required as to the nature of this
corresponding external order.

Let us examine Berkeley's familiar hypothesis,
which, as a mere hypothesis, we can examine apart
from any study of Berkeley's philosophical argu-
ments for his idealism. According to Berkeley there
exist conscious beings, more or less like ourselves, of
whom the head and father is God. Now external to
all beings besides God there is a real world. This
real world is made up of the eternal system of God's
thoughts.

" When I deny sensible things an existence out of the
mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds.
Now it is -plain they have an existence exterior to my
mind, since I find them by experience to be independent
of it. There is some other mind wherein they exist, dur-
ing the intervals between the times of my perceiving
them ; as likewise they did before my birth, and would
do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is
true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it nec-
essarily foUows, there is an Omnipresent Eternal Mind,
which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits
them to our view in such a manner, and according to such
rules as he himself hath ordained, and are by us termed
the laws of nature." l

1 Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, III.

IDEALISM. 341

This so familiar hypothesis of Berkeley is in part
founded upon a thought that for the present we have
agreed to neglect, i. e. upon the notion of the exter-
nal world as the cause of our internal impressions.
Not being caused by myself, my ideas, reasons Berke-
ley, must have an external cause. And the only
intelligible cause is an active spirit. Yet for our
present purpose this thought is not important. We
are not asking about the cause of our conscious
states, but about the way in which we can most plau-
sibly conceive of an external world corresponding to
these states. The correspondence is assumed. Into
its ground, be it preestablished harmony or physical
influence, we do not just now inquire. Our only
criteria of plausibility, if causal explanation is
dropped, are therefore adequacy, simplicity, and con-
sistency. Is Berkeley's hypothesis consistent with
itself, and is it the simplest hypothesis possible?
Stripped of non-essential features, the hypothesis is
that there corresponds to our consciousness another
higher and farther-reaching consciousness, containing
all that is abiding in our consciousness, and much
more besides. This consciousness is in form and
matter a rational spirit, having definite purposes in
the creation and education of the various finite spir-
its. These purposes require for their accomplishment
that our conscious states should within certain limits
agree with this higher consciousness, — should corre-
spond to it in form and to a certain extent. This corre-
spondence constitutes what we mean by truth. 'There
is no external world but this other consciousness.

To Berkeley, as we know, the essential part of

342 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

this doctrine was the teleological part. That God's
thoughts and our correspondence thereto result from
and express God's purposes in creating the world,
this was for Berkeley the main point to be proven.
But if the teleological element of the doctrine be for
this first left out of account, there is another part
that we just now wish to hold fast. Our thought\
is true by reason of its correspondence to the facts\
of an actual consciousness , external to our own :\
this hypothesis has an interest apart from its origin
and from its original use. Why in philosophy should
we be afraid of doctrines because they have an as-
sociation with some dreaded theological dogma, or
with some enthusiastic and over-confident system of
the past ? About the nature of the external world
we have at the outset nothing but hypotheses. Be-
fore we test them in any very exact way, we may
with safety try to understand them. Perhaps what
seemed the wildest of them all may turn out to be
the very best. Because a certain hypothesis was
put forward rather as a demonstrable and eternal
truth than as a hypothesis, shall we reject it without
further examination ? Perhaps it may in fact turn
out to be part of the eternal truth.

The hypothesis now before us is Berkeley's with
the teleological element omitted, along with the
causal. How this external consciousness comes to
affect us, and why it takes just such forms as it does,
we say not. This we ask : What is this supposed
external consciousness ? How does it correspond to
our own ? We shall not call the supposed conscious-
ness by question-begging names. It is not for us

IDEALISM. 343

just now either absolute or divine. It is simply con-
sciousness, and external. The hypothesis is that
truth consists in some kind of correspondence be-
tween our thought and this outer reality. What
kind of correspondence ?

Two conscious beings can have corresponding
states of consciousness, without having like states.
The notes of a melody could have corresponding to
them the variations in intensity of some source of
light. The light-flashes or beats would correspond
to the notes of music by having the like rhythm ;
yet there would be no resemblance in the content.
Correspondence may be yet more obscured. The
dashes on a piece of paper that has passed under the
point of a telegraphic pen, the series of characters
printed from the press in a dozen languages, the
sounds of the voice of a reader, the series of signals
flashed from shore to a distant vessel, all these dis-
similar series of events might correspond exactly and
throughout, if it were their purpose to convey in va-
rious ways the same meaning. In order, then, that
my consciousness should correspond to some other
consciousness, external to mine, it is only necessary
that for each event or fact in my consciousness there
should exist some event or fact in the other con-
sciousness, and that some relation existing among
my conscious states should be like or parallel to the
relation existing among the conscious states external
to mine. The more numerous the points of resem-
blance between the two series of states, the closer
the correspondence. But correspondence in the ab-
stract implies only some one definite and permanent
resemblance found throughout the two series.

344 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Such being the nature of correspondence in gen-
eral, let us consider our hypothesis more in detail.
Suppose the clock yonder has some such reality as
this hypothesis supposes. There is the clock, with
its pendulum beating. For me now that clock is a
combination of sensations, joined with a belief in
certain possible sensations. For one in the same
room with me, the clock has a like existence. But
suppose that the clock has, apart from my conscious-
ness, apart from the consciousness of any other hu-
man being or animal, an existence for some other, as
yet undefined, consciousness. Suppose that for this
consciousness the clock in its whole present condi-
tion exists, not at all as a " possibility of sensations/'
but solely and in all its parts as a present group of
sensible facts, standing in definite relations. Sup-
pose that the sensible facts that constitute this clock
as it is given to this hypothetical consciousness are
in quality unlike the sensations that for me consti-
tute the clock ; but that in their relations, in their
number, in their grouping, in their differences from
one another, these sensible facts as they are for the
hypothetical consciousness agree with the sensations
and with the " possibilities of sensation " that for
me constitute the clock. Suppose that the clock as
it is in the hypothetical consciousness endures for
a considerable time, and is called the real clock.
Then when I shut my eyes or go away or die, there
exists still the real clock, i. e. the clock in the hy-
pothetical consciousness. Though all my fellows die,
there is still the real clock, independent of our con-
sciousness. The clock may for a time go on run-

IDEALISM. 345

ning ; that is, in the hypothetical consciousness there
may be a rhythm of sensible events, corresponding
to what for me, were I present, would be the rhythm
of the pendulum -beats and the movement of the
hands.

Now suppose this hypothetical consciousness ex-
tended, so that it contains facts corresponding to my
ideas of the ether-vibrations that fall upon or that
are reflected from the face of this clock. Suppose
that it further contains facts corresponding to each
of niy ideas of the relative position of this clock and
of other objects. Suppose at last that the hypothet-
ical consciousness is extended to all the facts of what
I call my universe of actual and of possible sensa-
tion. Suppose that each possible or actual exp'eri-
ence of each moment in my life or in the life of any
other animal is represented by some actual momen-
tarily present fact in the hypothetical consciousness.
Then consider the hypothetical consciousness at any
moment, and see what it will contain. Every mate-
rial atom, every wave of ether, every point of space,
every configuration of material bodies, every possible
geometrical relation, will be represented in the hypo-
thetical consciousness by some definite fact. The
relations of these facts will be in nature and in com-
plexity similar to the relations among the facts of
my actual or possible sensations. On the other
hand, the limits of my possible consciousness at any
moment will be determined by the actual conscious-
ness of this supposed universal Knowing One. What
it actually knows, I conceivably might now know.
If it is conscious of a certain series of facts, then I

846 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

might be conscious, were I now on the other side
of the moon, of living creatures there. If the hypo-
thetical consciousness contains another set of facts,
then I might be unable to find such living beings
were I there. And so with all facts of possible ex-
perience.

We can easily see how, under this supposition,
conformity to the supposed universal consciousness
will become on my part a goal of effort. Knowledge
of possible experiences is useful to me. But all pos-
sible experiences are or will be actual in the hypo-
thetical consciousness. If I am standing near a con-
cealed pitfall, or am in danger of a blow, or in dan-
ger of death from poison, that fact, translated into
ultimate terms, means, we may suppose, that in the
universal consciousness there is now the knowledge
of certain relative positions and motions of atoms.
The sequence of states in the universal consciousness
must be supposed to be a regular sequence, subject
to fixed law. But sequence does not now especially
concern us ; since we speak only of the nature of
this external consciousness. It is enough, therefore,
to point out that this supposed universal knowing
consciousness, this " Not-Ourselves," has, under the
conditions stated, all the essential characteristics of
a real world. It is beyond us ; it is independent of
us ; its facts have a certain correspondence to our
sensations. Under the supposition that by nature
we tend to be in agreement with this consciousness,
progress in the definiteness and extent of our agree-
ment with it may be both possible and practically
useful. This agreement would constitute truth.

IDEALISM. 347

No other real world need be supposed behind or
above this consciousness. Rejection of an old theory
and acceptance of a new, as when the Copernican
doctrine replaces the Ptolemaic, will mean the
growth of a belief that the new system of ideas cor-
responds more nearly than the old, not with dead
matter, but with the sequence of states in the univer-
sal consciousness. The universal consciousness it-
self will be no illusory consciousness. It will not
need a further consciousness to support it. It will
need no dead matter outside of it. Our nature leads
us to look up to it as to our model. Itself is the
pattern, looking up to no other model. The purpose/
of thought will be conformity with this perfect, un-j
trammeled thought. For us there is a little range
of actual sensation, in the midst of a vast ocean of
possible sensation. For the universal consciousness
there are at any moment only actual data. We see
the clock-face ; and for us the inside of the clock is
possible sensation only. For the supposed conscious-
ness the inside will be as much present as the out-
side. For us colors and odors suggest possible sen-
sations, which science interprets as being in the last
analysis the possible sensations known as atoms, mo-
tions, velocities, distances. For the universal con-
sciousness, these atoms, motions, velocities, and dis-
tances, or the ultimate facts to which these notions
correspond, are not possible but actual data. There
need be then, in the last analysis, no dead uncon-
scious atoms, nor yet unconscious little atom-souls,
striving, fighting, loving, uniting ; there need be in
the last analysis only a consciousness of facts corre-

348 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

spending to what we mean by motion, velocity, ex-
tension, distance, impenetrability. Corresponding
to the relation a : b in our consciousness there will
then be the external fact A : B, whereof so much is
supposed to be known : first, that the relation a : b
is somewhat like the relation A : B ; secondly, that
the terms A and B, whatever their particular char-
acter, are facts for a consciousness, and nothing
but facts for a consciousness. And the hypothetical
consciousness for which these facts are all present,
together with their manifold relations, this we may
call a World - Consciousness. An illusion in my
consciousness will mean a failure to correspond with
the world-consciousness. A truth for my conscious-
ness will be a relation a : b that corresponds with
some relation A : B in the world -consciousness.
But for the world-consciousness itself there will be
no question of its own truth or falsity. It will be
for and in itself. It will not have to create a real
world ; it will be a real world. It will not have a
Nature as its own Otherness, over against itself.
It will be in its own facts and in their sequence a
nature. As to the individual intelligences, its rela-
tion to them is so far viewed as one of independence.
Whether hereafter we shall be forced to modify our
view or not, so far we treat the individual intelli-
gences as separate from the world consciousness.
They are neither its " emanations " nor its " modes."
But their whole business and purpose will be to carry
out and to make full and definite that correspondence
with this universal consciousness upon which their
existence and their peace depend. A certain lack

IDEALISM. 349

of correspondence with the universal consciousness
on the part of any animal's ideas will be followed
by the cessation of that particular grouping of facts
in the universal consciousness that is known to us
as this animal's body. With the dissolution of this
animal's body will cease his consciousness, his chance
of disagreeing in his states with the states of the
universal consciousness, and therefore his lack of
correspondence. An ultimate law of sequence, with
which, as with all causal connection, we have here
nothing to do, thus binds the individual beings to
the World-Consciousness. The whole universe ex-
hibits the phenomenon, first, of one great conscious-
ness, embracing an infinitude of geometrical, phys-
ical, chemical, physiological facts ; and, secondly, of a
vast multitude of individual conscious beings, whose
number and sorts we shall never be able to tell, whose
destiny, however, demands of all of them a more or
less imperfect likeness between their states and the
relations thereof on the one hand, and the facts of
the universal consciousness on the other hand. The
universal consciousness, be it noted, is so called thus
far as including in its ken all ultimate mathematical
and physical facts. Of its nature beyond this we
pretend to suppose nothing. And we have not sup-
posed it to include the individual conscious beings.
Our hypothesis is not yet pantheistic, nor theistic.
We simply suppose a " Not - Ourselves " that in-
cludes all natural knowledge. This is the External
Eeality.

We have omitted, moreover, all reference to the
teleological element that is generally introduced into

350 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

any theory of a World-Spirit. So far, in fact, our
World-Consciousness is not what people mean by a
World-Spirit. A Spirit, " weaving the living robe
of Deity," our World-Consciousness is not ; for as
so far described it does nothing, it merely looks on.
It looks at its own states, and these are supposed to
be altogether its own, given from no higher source.
But as to their succession or their worth, their be-
ginning or their end, we have said nothing. This
Consciousness has these states, but we have supposed
them as yet to be attended by no emotion of pleas-
ure or of pain, by no modifying reaction of will.
This consciousness is not a Creator, it is a Seer.
As for the individual conscious beings, it does not
make or unmake them by an exercise of power.
They, on the contrary, are made and unmade ac-
cording as there arise or disappear in this universal
consciousness certain groups of data that, as repre-
sented in our mortal thought, are called organic
living bodies, with tissues, motions, structures, func-
tions. These groups pass, and with them the individ-
ual consciousness that coexisted with each. This
growth and decay is simply a law of experience, an
ultimate and inexplicable sequence. But the uni-
versal consciousness of nature, for which each of
these groups of physical facts existed, that remains.
In other words : Each animal body is represented
in the universal consciousness, and exists only in so
far as it is represented therein, or is known to its
possessor or to other animals. The individual mind
that coexists with this body has thus far no represen-
tative in the universal consciousness, but seems to

IDEALISM. 351

exist and be real for itself. With the group of facts
in the universal consciousness to which, as we say,
corresponds our idea of the body, the independent
group of facts called the animal's mind lives and
dies. The universal consciousness and the individual
minds make up together the sum total of reality.
So far and so far only do we as yet go. The sequel
will show whether we can rest content with this.

Continuing to mention the consequences of our
hypothesis, we see that the well-known questions so
often asked of idealists are no longer puzzling when
we accept such an idea as the foregoing. Such
questions are : What existed before there was any
conscious life on the planet? In what sense was
there light or heat, matter or motion, before there
were eyes to see, tactile organs to feel, animal intel-
ligence to understand these external facts? The
question of Kant too about the subjectivity of space
would seem to have been answered. Before there
were conscious beings on this planet, this planet ex-
isted only in and for the universal consciousness.
In that consciousness were facts corresponding to all
the phenomena, or possibilities of experience, that
geological science may declare to have really existed
at such a time. When the earth became filled with
life, there appeared in the universal consciousness
the data known as organisms. And at the same
time, beside the universal consciousness, somehow
related to it, there arose individual conscious beings,
whose states were more or less imperfect copies of
the universal consciousness in certain of its facts.
Even so, empty space is now existent beyond the

352 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

borders of finite observation only as a group of
states in the world-consciousness. Space is subjec-
tive, belonging to the states of the universal con-
sciousness ; and yet to us objective, since in think-
ing it we merely conform ourselves to the universal
consciousness. But the consequences of our hypoth-
esis are numberless. Enough has been said of them
for the present purpose.

Wild and airy indeed ! But why so ? The ordi-
nary uncritical Atomism is a worse hypothesis, be-
cause we never get from it the least notion of how
this eternally existent matter may look and feel when
nobody sees or feels it. The mystical " one sub-
stance with two faces " is worse, because that is no
hypothesis, only a heap of words. Schopenhauer's
" Wille " is worse, because it is only a metaphor.
The hypothesis that ascribes to the atoms independ-
ent life and volition is no more adequate than our
hypothesis, and much less simple. The old-fashioned
pantheistic " Welt-Geist " of Schelling, and of the
romantic philosophy generally, is more poetical than
our hypothesis, but that Welt-Geist is a Power ; and
no one ever comes to understand how this One Spirit,
who after all is represented as a sort of big half -con-
scious Daemon, a gigantic worker, is related to the
many individual minds. They are parts of him, or
else apart from him. In the one case their confidence
that they really exist as powers and are not " things
in his dream," is unfounded ; in the other case his
all-embracing unity is destroyed. In our hypothesis
nothing is as yet wonderful but the one miracle of the
series of orderly conscious states, following through

IDEALISM. 353

all time according to fixed laws. Beyond that all
is clear. That there should be a consciousness con-
taining ideas of all material relations, is no harder
to believe than it is to believe in the ordinary unin-
telligible world of atoms. That beside this con-
sciousness, and in fixed relation to its facts, there
should exist a great number of different series of
conscious states, each series being called an individ-
ual, this is no harder to believe than are the ordi-
nary facts of nervous physiology. In reality this
hypothesis gives us a simple expression, easily intel-
ligible, for all the facts and laws of physics, of ner-
vous physiology, and of consciousness. Take, as a
final case, Professor Clifford's well-known example of
the man looking at the candle. In the world-con-
sciousness there is the group of states c, c(, cn. . . .
That is the real candle. In the world-consciousness
there is also the group of states A, A', hn. . . . That
is the " cerebral image " of the candle, a physiolog-
ical fact. Finally, according to the laws of reality,
the existence in the world-consciousness of the facts
A, A', W, . . . grouped as they are, has coexistent
with it the group of ideas C in the man's mind.
This group C corresponds more or less completely to
the group c, cf c", ... as that group exists beyond
the man's mind, in the world-consciousness. The
group C is the man's idea of the candle. Such is
our hypothesis in a nut-shell. We urge for the mo-
ment only this in its favor : that it is simple, intelli-
gible, plausible. After all, it is but an hypothesis.
We must now follow it until we shall find it, by vir-
tue of one momentous consideration, suddenly trans-

23

354 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

formed from an hypothesis into a theory, and from
a doctrine of an eternal normal thought into a doc-
trine of an all-embracing Spirit.

III.

In several respects our hypothesis needs explana-
tion before it can well please a philosophic student.
This explanation will next lead us into a decidedly
technical discussion, and this a reader not specially
accustomed to philosophic discussions, if such a
reader we yet have, will do well to omit. We must
in fact, in the present section, more • particularly set
forth the motives that have determined us to try just
this hypothesis about Reality.

First, then, we are concerned to show why we have
left out of view the causal element that popular
thought makes so prominent in its conception of
Reality. For popular thought, the world is a Power
that causes our perceptions. But we, both here and
in our subsequent religious discussion, shall consider
the eternal not as Power, but as Thought. Why is
this ? We shall here try to explain, still regarding
the real world merely as something postulated to
meet the inner needs of our thought. Let us ask,
without as yet going beyond this point of view, what
is the deepest motive of our purely theoretic postu-
lates about reality ? Is it not to have something that
corresponds to our ideas, and so gives them truth ?
Therefore is not the postulate that reality corre-
sponds to our ideas, deeper than the postulate that a
real world causes our ideas? And so is not the

IDEALISM. 355

causal postulate in fact but a subordinate form in
our theory of the world ? To exemplify. When I
say that my thought demands some cause, C, for a
sensation, s, does not my thought even here actually
demand something prior to the principle of causa-
tion, and deeper than that ? Does not my thought
here demand that my idea c of cause in general, and
my idea r of the causal relation R between C and s,
shall a priori somehow correspond to the truth of
things ? Can I conceive of a real cause save by vir-
tue of a postulate that my conception of a real cause
is like the real cause itself ? Therefore, when men
say : " We know external Reality because we know
that our sensations need a cause, and that this cause
must be external to us," do they say more than this :
" We know (or postulate) that to one of our ideas,
namely, the idea of a necessary causal relation, there
corresponds a reality external to the idea ? " For
surely I do not know the validity of my idea of a
causal relation merely on the ground that I know
that this idea of causal relation must itself have
been caused by the real existence of causal relations
in the world. Such an attempt to justify my idea
would mean endless regress. The deeper notion
that we have of the world is therefore founded on
the insight or on the postulate that there must be,
not merely a sufficient cause for our thought, but a
sufficient counterpart thereto.

We can easily illustrate this view by considering
the nature of our thought about past time. The
judgment or assertion that there has actually been
a series of past events, is not a judgment of causal-

356 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ity. I believe in a past as I believe in a future, not
to satisfy my faith in the principle of causality, but
to satisfy my tendency to postulate an indefinite
time-stream, like in nature to my present succession
of immediately given states. I believe in a real
time, not primarily as the cause but as the counter-
part of my notion of time. How otherwise shall I
form the idea of a cause at all, unless I have already
assumed the reality of time ? A cause for my be-
lief in the past is to be conceived, if at all, only as
already a past fact. The conception that it is to cre-
ate is a condition of its own existence, unless indeed
one has admitted what we wish admitted, that, how-
ever the case may be with the belief in any one past
fact, the belief in past reality as such is prior to our
belief that our present state has been caused by the
past. But the same priority of the belief in some
agreement between my idea and the external reality,
is found in all departments of thought. A material
cause of my experience is a cause in space. But,
however I came by the idea of space, my present be-
lief in the reality of space precedes any particular
belief in a material cause for a particular sensation,
and renders the latter belief possible. The concep-
tion of reality furnished by the search for causes is
thus always subordinate to the conception of reality
furnished by our first postulate. This first postu-
late is, that our ideas have something beyond them
and like them. So at each moment of my life I
postulate a past and future of my own, like my pres-
ent consciousness, but external thereto. So my so-
cial consciousness, my original unreflective tendency

IDEALISM. 357

to work with and for other beings, implies the pos-
tulate of the external existence of my fellow-men,
like myself and like my ideas of them. So to the
present intuition of the space in the retinal field or
at my finger tips I join the postulate of an infinitely
extended not perceived space, like the perceived
space, and like my space-ideas.

The external reality conceived by us is therefore,
so far as we have yet seen, conceived through a spon-
taneous reaction of the receiving consciousness in
presence of the sense-data received. The forms of
this reaction it was the purpose of the Critical Phi-
losophy to define. The task set by Kant has not yet
been accomplished. But the fact of some reaction
seems established. And the general law of the proc-
ess seems to be that the external reality is conceived
after the pattern of the present data, with such mod-
ification as is necessary to bring the conception into
harmony with already established habits of thought,
and with the conceived results of previous experience.
The aim of the whole process seems to be to reach
as complete and united a conception of reality as is
possible, a conception wherein the greatest fullness
of data shall be combined with the greatest simplic-
ity of conception. The effort of consciousness seems
to be to combine the greatest richness of content
with the greatest definiteness of organization.

This character of our activity in forming our no-
tion of reality implies the subordination of the cau-
sal postulate to other motives. In the scientific field
the postulate of causality is predominant, because
there the notion of a world of causal sequences in

358 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

time and in space has been already built up, and
what remains is to fill out the picture by discovering
the particular sequences. But if I try to banish al-
together from my notion of external reality the idea
that it is an adequate counterpart of my subjective
states of consciousness, what will remain ? Simply
the notion of an utterly unknowable external cause
of my sensations. Of this nothing will be said, but
that it is. Science, experience, serious reflection
about reality, will utterly cease. I shall have re-
maining a kind of Disfigured Realism, where the
real will be as unknowable, as unreal as possible.
But reintroduce the omitted postulate, admit that
reality is conceived as the counterpart of my con-
sciousness, and then the principle of causality can
be fruitfully applied. Then indeed experience may
lead us to conceive the external reality as unlike
this or that suggestive sensation, unlike this or that
provisional idea. But we shall be led to new concep-
tions, and shall be able to make definite progress, so
long as we postulate some sort of likeness between
inner and outer.

In brief, as causality means uniform sequence, the
acceptance of any causal relation as real involves
a conception of the uniform sequence that is to be
accepted. When finally accepted, the sequence in
question is conceived as a real fact, wholly or par-
tially external to present consciousness, but like our
present idea of itself. Causal sequence cannot there-
fore be placed first, as giving us a totally undefined
notion of an external reality ; but second, as ena-
bling us to develop in detail the idea that reality is

IDEALISM. 359

like our own states of consciousness. Of course to
prove by sense experience that the external reality
is like our states of consciousness, this we can never
accomplish. But from the outset we have seen that
verification through experience is in this field impos-
sible. The whole of this sensuous reality, past, pres-
ent, future, all that is outside of what one now sees
and feels, all space, time, matter, motion, life beyond
this immediate experience, — all that is so far only
a postulated experience, and therefore never a da-
tum, never in detail verifiable for sense. Since we
believe in this external reality, if experience suggests
with sufficient force the idea that some causal se-
quence is real, our postulate that such suggestions
have their counterpart in an external world leads us
to regard the conceived causal sequence as an exter-
nally real fact. Not however do we first conceive of
the external reality as cause, and then in the second
place only find it to be or not to be the counterpart
of present consciousness. All our thinking is based
on the postulate that the external reality is a coun-
terpart and not merely a cause. If with time, we
drop mythological conceptions of external reality,
we do so only because, in the presence of a larger
and fuller experience, we no longer find old concep-
tions, founded largely on lower forms of emotion and
on narrower experience, adequate to our notion of
the external counterpart of consciousness. For de-
mons and entities we substitute atoms and ethereal
media, not because we abandon the position that ex-
ternal reality resembles our ideas, but because wider
experience is found to be best reduced to unity by

360 THE EELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

the latter, not by the former ideas. The atoms and
the media are themselves only provisional notions,
since more experience may be better reduced to unity,
for all we yet know, by some other ideas. But
throughout remains the postulate : external reality is
somewhat like our ideas of its nature.

We have been betrayed by the doctrine that we
have combated into forms of speech that do not ade-
quately express the Critical notion of reality. We
hasten to complete our conception by adding the
omitted elements. External reality is like our con-
ceptions of it ; so much, we have seen, is universally
postulated (postulated, be it noticed, not directly ex-
perienced, not forced upon us from without). But
the kind of likeness still remains to be defined. Can
the external reality be conceived as being, although
in nature like our conscious states, yet in no neces-
sary relation to consciousness, as being neither a con-
sciousness nor for a consciousness ? The answer is
the whole struggle of idealistic thought, the whole
progress of philosophical analysis in modern times.
One cannot go over the field again and again for-
ever. The state of the controversy can be roughly
stated thus : When the notion of external reality
is based solely upon the application of the notion of
causality, all degrees of likeness or unlikeness be-
tween thought and things are assumed, according to
the tastes of individual thinkers. External reality
is once for all absolved from the condition of being
intelligible, and becomes capable of being anything
you please, a dead atom, an electric fluid, a ghost, a
devil, an Unknowable. But if the subordinate char-

IDEALISM. 361

acter of this postulate of causality is once under-
stood, the conception of reality is altered. What i's
real must be not only vaguely correspondent to an
ill-defined postulate, but in a definite relation of like-
ness to my present consciousness. That this is the
actual postulate of human thought is shown by those
systems themselves that ignore the postulate of like-
N»ess, and has been illustrated in the foregoing. But
what forms does this postulated likeness take ? For
the first, the postulated likeness between my idea
and the external reality may be a likeness between
my present conscious state and a past or future state
of my own, or between this present state and the
conscious state of another being. The whole social
consciousness implies the postulate of a likeness be-
tween my ideas and an actual consciousness external
to mine, fashioned in my own image. But the sec-
ond generally recognized form in which the postu-
late of the likeness of internal and external appears
is the form according to which I postulate that a
present idea of my own is not like one of my own
past or future states, not like any actual past or
future state in another being of my own kind, but
like a possible experience. That our ideas can ade-
quately express possibilities of sensation that are
actually never realized, either in ourselves or in any
other known creature, this is a familiar postulate of
natural science. The laws of nature are generally,
as is admitted by all, what Lewes called " ideal con-
structions," expressing experiences for us never real-
ized, but permanently possible. And so extended is
the use of the concept of possible experience, that, as

362 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

we know, Mill in one of his most interesting chap-
ters gave " permanent possibility of sensation " as
an adequate definition of matter.

Now the position of modern phenomenism is, that
by these two postulates, or forms of the one postu-
late of Likeness, the whole notion of external reality
is exhausted.

The external world means, according to this posi-
tion, the possible and actual present, past, and fut-
ure content of consciousness for all beings. And
this result of modern phenomenism we regard, thus
far, as the most acceptable postulate about the world.
Either as postulate or as demonstrable theory the
position is maintained by all the modern idealists.
You can find it, for example, stated in Fichte's " Bes-
timmung des Menschen " and other shorter philo-
sophic essays (less successfully, we think, though
much more at length, in the two larger expositions
of the " Wissenschaftslehre), in the Hegelian "Pha-
nomenologie," in Schopenhauer's " Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung," in Terrier's " Institutes of Meta-
physic," in J. S. Mill's " Examination of Hamilton,"
in Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's " Time and Space "
and " Philosophy of Eeflection," in M. Renouvier's
" Logique G6nerale," in lesser books innumerable,
for example, in Professor Baumann's " Philosophic
als Orientirung iiber die Welt " (in the first chapter),
in Professor Schuppe's " Erkenntnisstheoretische
Logik," in Professor Bergmann's " Reine Logik."
Not of course that all this multitude of thinkers, dif-
ferent in method, in ability, in aim, in everything
but in the fact that they are post-Kantian idealists,

IDEALISM. 363

would accept the foregoing statement as a fairly
complete account of their doctrines. Some of them
would laugh at the simplicity of our terms. But, we
choose to mention so confused a list to show how, in
the midst of the greatest variations, they all agree
about one fundamental truth, namely, that thought,
when it inquires into its own meaning, can never
rest satisfied with any idea of external reality that
makes such reality other than a datum of conscious-
ness, and so material for thought. Sensualism and
the most transcendent a priori speculation agree in
coming at last to flee in ceaseless unrest from every
support for an external reality that may seem to
offer itself beyond the bounds of consciousness. This
phenomenism of post-Kantian speculation we accept,
as at all events the simplest and least contradictory
postulate.

So much, then, for one motive of our hypothesis
about the world-consciousness. Reality appears as
the object either of an actual or of a possible con-
sciousness. But there remains in this definition
of the postulate still one obscure point. What is
meant by possible consciousness ? What can there
be for consciousness beyond the grand total of all
actual past and future states of consciousness in all
beings ? For what purpose and by what right shall
we build a world of possibility above or beside the
world of actual experience ? This question seems
too little appreciated and too much evaded by most
thinkers. When Mill called matter a "permanent
possibility of sensation," he left room open for the
puzzling question : But what is this creature called

364 THE EELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

a possibility? Is it an actual fact? Then what
actual fact? If not actual, then in being a mere
possibility matter is non-existent.

This scholastic character of the abstract noun
" possibility " was remarked and criticised by Pro-
fessor Max Miiller in an article in "Mind," III.1
We shall not find in most writers on this subject less
scholastic or better defined terms for naming the
same aspect of the postulate of external reality. In
fact, if we suppose that one surveys the whole range
of actual consciousness, past, present, and future, and
postulates no facts that are not for and in conscious-
ness, it is difficult to see what will be the meaning
of any added "possible reality." Possible, for the
first, is anything that one conceives, in so far as one
conceives it at all. I could possibly have wings and
a long tail, an hundred eyes, and a mountain of gold.
All that is possible, but in what sense? In this
sense, that I do actually imagine myself as possess-
ing these things. " Empty possibilities," or " imag-
inations as one would," are facts of consciousness in
so far forth as they are imagined ; and they have no
other existence. The world of truth is not enriched
by these possibilities, whose whole existence is in
the actual conscious idea of them. But not in this

1 P. 347. " If therefore Mill and his followers imagine that by
defining Matter as the permanent possibility of sensation, and Mind
as the permanent possibility of feeling, they have removed the dif-
ficulty of Kant's Ding an sick, they are mistaken. Their possibil-
ity of sensation, if properly analyzed, means things or substances
which can become objects of sensation." Professor Miiller's result
is not one that we can wholly accept ; his criticism of the word
possibility is important.

IDEALISM. 365

sense is matter to be a "permanent possibility of
sensation." The icebergs in the polar seas are to be
real, not in so far as I now imagine them, but in so
far as there exists or holds good the law, that were
I present I should see them, were I to touch them I
should feel them, and that both seeing and feeling
would be determined in certain ways beyond the
control of my will. The pages of that closed book,
the bones inside the body of that cat, my own brain,
the molecules of the oxygen that I am breathing, all
these, in so far as they are not now actually in my
consciousness, are to be still real as " possible expe-
riences." But what kind of unreal reality is this
potential actuality ?

If we inquire into the motive that leads us to
postulate these possible experiences, we shall find it
to be the familiar and universal wish to apply the
postulate of uniformity to our confused actual ex-
perience. Our actual experience is not always gov-
erned by obvious laws of regular sequence. But in
postulating consciousness beyond our own immediate
data, we are led, by our known prejudice in favor of
unity and simplicity, to postulate that the real suc-
cessions of facts are uniform, whatever may be the
case with the fragments of reality that fall within
our individual experience. I see an apple fall, and
no more than that. But I postulate that if I could
have had experience of all the facts, I should have
observed a series of material changes in the twig on
which the apple hung, that would have sufficed to
restore the broken uniformity and continuity of my
experiences. In this way it is that, as remarked

366 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

above, the conception of causal sequence does not
create, but organizes and perfects, our notion of ex-
ternal reality. There is something beyond our expe-
rience, namely, another experience ; that is the first
postulate. Experiences form an uniform and regular
whole of laws of sequence. That is the other postu-
late, subordinate to the first. This postulate helps
to form for us our idea of the material world beyond
individual consciousness ; an idea that science ac-
cepts for its uniformity, without inquiring further
into its nature, while a more critical reflection de-
clares that the facts assumed as existent beyond the
range of individual conscious beings are " possible
experiences."

This assumption of " possible experiences," an as-
sumption made to satisfy the postulate of uniform-
ity, was expressed, in our hypothesis of a world-
consciousness, by the supposition of an universal
actual experience. Why? We answer, because
the assumed "possible experiences" themselves, by
ideally filling up the gaps of actual experience, are
intended to lead us to the conception of one uniform
absolute experience. This absolute experience, to
which all facts would exhibit themselves in their
connection as uniformly subject to fixed law, is
conceived as " possible." But once again, what does
that mean ? Is the meaning only the empty tautol-
ogy that if all the gaps and irregularities of indi-
vidual experience were got rid of by means of con-
necting links and additional experiences, these gaps
and irregularities would disappear ? Is the mean-
ing only this, that if there were an absolute expe-

IDEALISM. 367

rience of an absolutely regular series of facts, this
experience would be absolute and uniform ? Or
again, is it enough to say that any possible experi-
ence, an iceberg in the polar sea, my brain, the in-
side of yonder book, exists for me only as " my rep-
resentation " ? Of course, I know of it only what I
conceive of it, yet I postulate that it has some real-
ity beyond my representation. This postulate is for
us in this preliminary discussion a fact, of which we
want to know, not the justification (for we still seek
none higher than the fact itself of the postulate),
but the meaning. I know of my fellow only what
I conceive of him. Yet I postulate that my con-
ception of him is like him, whereas I do not postu-
late that my conception of a dragon is like any real
animal. Just so I postulate that my conception of
the " possible experience " called an atom, or the
North Pole, is valid beyond my experience, and be-
yond the actual experience of any known animal.
But I do not postulate that my conception of the
possibility that future men might have wings and
tails is like any future reality whatever, or in any
way valid beyond my conception.

Here, then, is our dilemma. Matter as a mere
possibility of experience is more than any animal's
known actual experience. And yet this matter is to
be real for consciousness. Nor is it to be real for
consciousness simply in so far as the possible expe-
rience is represented or conceived. The reality con-
sists not merely in the representation in present con-
sciousness of a possible experience, but in the added
postulate that this conception is valid beyond the

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

present consciousness. How is this postulate to be
satisfied unless by assuming an actual world-con-
sciousness ?

Let us sum up the conditions to which we have
here subjected our theory of reality. External real-
ity was to be postulated, not given ; existent for us
because we willed it to be. To a portion of our con-
scious states we ascribed a validity beyond the pres-
ent. This ascription of validity was to constitute
our whole knowledge of the external world ; for ex-
ample, our belief in our own past and future states,
in our neighbor's existence, and in the existence of
»space, of matter, and of inotion. Such an external
reality was always conceived as more or less com-
pletely the counterpart of our idea of it, and hence,
as in nature, like the facts of our consciousness.
The idea that we at any moment form of the real-
ity beyond ourselves was the expression of the effort
to reduce to unity the present sense-data and the
present conception of our own past experience. This
reduction to unity took place in certain forms. Thus
we conceived the external reality as in space and in
time, and, in the second place, as in causal relation
to ourselves. The conception of causal relations
thus projected into the external reality becomes,
when completed, the conception of a completely
united and uniform whole of facts. We conceived
the external reality as subject to fixed laws of se-
quence, certainly existent, even though, in our lim-
ited experience, they be undiscoverable. As subject
to such laws the external reality was a whole, pos-
sessing organic unity. But the external reality was

IDEALISM. 369

also conceived as being real for consciousness and
real only for consciousness. The external reality,
being an organic whole, must therefore be conceived
as the object of an absolute experience, to which all
facts are known, and for which all facts are subject
to universal law. But there thus has arisen an ob-
scurity in our theory of reality. The real is to be
only for consciousness. Consciousness, however, is
popularly thought as existent in our fellow-beings.
And yet the postulated reality is to be an organic
whole, containing series of facts that to these beings
are known only as possible, not as actual, experiences.
We are then in this position. To complete our
theory, we " want a hero." Not, to be sure, a Don
Juan, but a hypothetical subject of the " possible
experiences." This hypothetical subject we have pos-
tulated only as a hypothesis. That is, its existence
is not yet seen to be a necessary result even of the
postulate that there is an external reality. One can
form other hypotheses. But this hypothesis has the
advantage of being simple and adequate. Moreover,
to assume a consciousness for which the "possible
experiences " are present facts, is to do no more than
our theory seems to need ; whereas any other hypoth-
esis (Berkeley's theological hypothesis, for example,
in its original form) seems to assume more than
is so far demanded by our theoretical conception
of reality. For the sake then of expressing one as-
pect of our fundamental postulate, we suggest what
of course we have not yet proven, that all the con-
ceived " possible experiences " are actual in a Con-
sciousness of which we so far suppose nothing but

24

370 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

that it knows these experiences, or knows facts corre-
sponding in number and in other relations to these
experiences. Thus our idealistic doctrine in this its
first form is explained and defended.

IV.

But all this hypothesis needs the deeper confirma-
tion that we are here seeking for our philosophic
doctrines. How is any such idealism to be estab-
lished ? And then, if established, how is this notion
of a passionless eternal thought to be transformed
into anything that can have a religious value ? What
we have advanced as hypothesis, expressing the pos-
tulates of popular thought, is to receive such ad-
ditions and such foundation as shall fit it to rank
as a reasonable philosophic theory of reality. So
far it has been a wish of ours, and we have not even
shown that it is a pious wish. Can we make of this
All-Knower a religiously interesting Spirit? And
what shall we do with his still vag-ue relation to the

o

single conscious lives that are to get truth by agree-
ing with him ? If he is not in deepest truth a power
that makes them, then so far there is a strange, dark,
inexplicable necessity, determining somehow their
harmony with him. Plainly, though we find it best
to approach our doctrine by this road, we have not
yet reached the heart of the mystery.

There is one haunting thought that now must be
permitted to come for a time out of its hiding-
place and to confront us. It says : " All this postu-
lating how vain and worthless, this hope for a proof

IDEALISM. 371

of your doctrine how absurd, when your very hy-
pothesis shuts up your human thought as it were in
a cage. As you state the relation of the Universal
Consciousness in which exists the physical world,
and the individual consciousness of the particular
thinker, you make indeed the truth of this individ-
ual thought dependent on its agreement with that
all-seeing thought, but as you so far utterly separate
the individual thought from the all-seeing thought,
you make impossible any sort of transition from one
to the other. This individual can never go out of
himself, to meet that Infinite thought, and to see if
he agrees with it. You put the model all-embracing
thought M in a relation to the poor human thought
A, in which no transfer of thought really takes place,
but still you give to h the command that it shall
copy M. Then you postulate that which is by your
hypothesis unknowable, namely, that this correspond-
ence has been attained, and this empty postulate you
call a philosophy. After all, say what you will of
the beauty and nobility and courage of postulates,
all this seems a rather wearisome business. For
the postulates appear the vainest of all things when
viewed in the light of the very theory that they are
to establish."

This objection is a common -sense one, and formid-
able. But, like all philosophic skepticism, rightly
understood it will be our best friend. Possibly, in-
deed, we shall have to complete somehow our notion
of the relation of the individual minds to the all-em-
bracing mind ; but meanwhile let us take the objec-
tion in its worst form. What does it lead to when

372 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

carried to its fullest extent ? It leads to absolute
skepticism. It says : " Perhaps then, after all, the
relations of our individual thought are such that
there is possible for us no foundation whatever for
our postulates. They are all in the air. Everything
is doubtful. We may be in error everywhere. Cer-
tainty about the real world beyond is unattainable."
At this point then we are face to face with the utter-
most theoretical skepticism. What shall we do with
it ? Why, just what we did with ethical skepticism
in an earlier chapter. We must receive it in a
friendly spirit, and must find out what it means and
assumes. It will, in fact, transform this far-off ex-
ternal world of the postulates into a true world of
Spiritual Life.

One thing this skepticism implies, — one thing so
simple as generally to escape notice among the as-
sumptions of our thought. It implies that we can be
in error about an external world. Therefore even
this extreme skepticism assumes that there is a differ-
ence between true and false statements about nature.
But now what is involved in saying that a statement
is either true or false ? To affirm, to deny, to doubt,
all imply a real distinction between truth and error ;
all three then involve in common the assumption
that there is such a distinction. That which is in-
volved alike both in the truth and in the falsity of
a statement must itself be certainly true, and cannot
be doubted. But what is this assumption implied in
the very assertion that a statement about an external
world is or may be false? This inquiry we must
make if we are to understand our own skepticism.

IDEALISM. 373

If we begin this inquiry, we are met at once by a
very vexatious paradox. There seems to be an as-
pect in which all sincere judgments are true. Let
us remember the fable of the knights and the shield.
Each accused the other of lying. To each the oth-
er's account seemed deliberate falsehood. Yet each
spoke the truth. Only neither expressed himself
fully. Each should have said, " The shield as it ap-
pears from my side is golden " or " is silver." But
each left out the qualification. Each said the shield,
simply. And hence the battle.

But this commonplace about the knights and the
shield begins to worry us, when we reflect upon it,
by becoming altogether too general in scope. Do
we, in fact, ever make sincere assertions about things
save as they appear to us ? If I say, " Sugar is pleas-
ant to the taste," and my neighbor says, " Sugar is
hateful to the taste," is this a conflict of veracity ?
May we not both of us be sincere and truthful in
what we say ? And are color-blind men lying when
they say that there is no difference in color between
strawberries and the leaves of the strawberry plant
when seen in certain lights ? But why is it not just
so with all the rest of the things that people say ?
If you are sincere in what you say, are you not al-
ways in your assertions simply relating how your
ideas appear to you and are grouped ? If you say
that nothing happens without a cause, do you not
mean that what you conceive by the word cause is
conceived by you as in connection with every event
that you now have in mind ? If you say that a
straight line is the shortest distance between two

374 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

points, do you not mean that what you now conceive
under the name straight line agrees with what you
now mean by shortest distance ? Very well then,
how can there be any direct opposition between two
sincere statements ? Your neighbor says that Dar-
winism is absurd. You say that Darwinism is true.
Where now is in fact the controversy ? He says
that he has two ideas in mind ; namely, an idea of
what he chooses to call Darwinism, and an idea of
what he chooses to call absurdity. He says that
these two ideas agree, just as the knight said that
his shield (i. e. the shield as seen by him) was silver.
You say that your idea of Darwinism agrees with
your idea of truth, as the other knight said that the
shield as seen by him was golden. Why fight about
it ? Thus all statements appear to be narratives of
what goes on in our own minds. If they are sincere,
if we mean them, who shall doubt that they are all
true ? Can any of us make assertions that are more
than clear accounts of how we put our own ideas
together? Why may not the thief before the judge
sincerely say : " O judge, my idea of what I call
chicken-stealing agrees with my idea of what I call
virtue " And the judge may truthfully reply : " O
rascal, my idea of what I call your chicken-stealing
agrees with my idea of what I call detestable petty
larceny." Are these two opinions really opposed, so
that one is true, the other erroneous? Are these
not rather different aspects of the universe ? What
is truth, moral or physical ? Is not every investiga-
tion, every argument, every story, every anticipation,
every axiom, every delusion, every creed, every de-

IDEALISM. 375

nial, just a mere expression of a present union of
ideas in somebody ? Where do two assertions meet
on common ground, so that one can be really true,
the other really false ? Have different judgments,
in different minds or made at different times, any
real common object at all? If they have not, how
can there be any truth or falsity at all ?

This paradox is wild enough if you look at it
fairly. And yet many thinkers actually have main-
tained it under various disguises as the doctrine of
what is called the Total Relativity of Truth. Hav-
ing himself passed through and long tried to hold
and to rationalize this doctrine of Relativity, the
author has some right to say something in opposition
to it. What he has to say can be very briefly put.
In its paradoxical form as above stated, the doctrine
may be made plausible, and is a suggestive paradox,
but it is certainly meaningless. If there is no real
distinction between truth and error, then the state-
ment that there is such a difference is not really false,
but only seemingly false. And then in truth there
is the distinction once more. Try as you will, you
come not beyond the fatal circle. If it is wrong to
say that there is Absolute Truth, then the statement
that there is absolute truth is itself false. Is it how-
ever false only relatively, or is it false absolutely ?
If it is false only relatively, then it is not false abso-
lutely. Hence the statement that it is false abso-
lutely is itself false. But false absolutely, or false
relatively ? And thus you must at last come to some
statement that is absolutely false or absolutely true,
or else the infinite regress into which you are driven

376 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

makes the very distinction between absolute and rel-
ative truth lose all its meaning, and your doctrine of
total Relativity will also lose meaning. " No abso-
lute truth exists," — can you say this if you want to ?
At least you must add, " No absolute truth exists
save this truth itself, that no absolute truth exists."
Otherwise your statement has no sense. But if you
admit this truth, then there is in fact an absolute
distinction between truth and error.

And when we here talk of an " absolute " distinc-
tion between truth and error, we mean merely a
"real" distinction between truth and error. And
this real distinction the fiercest partisan of relativ-
ity admits ; for does he not after all argue for rela-
tivity against " absolutists," holding that he is really
right, and they really wrong.

Yet, sure though we feel of the distinction, the
paradox and its plausibility remain. How have
different judgments, made at different times, any
real common object at all? If they have none,
then where is the postulated distinction of truth and
error ? What shall we do with our paradox ? In
what sense can a private opinion of one man be a
genuine error ? There must be such a thing as real
genuine error, or else even our very skepticism fails
to have the least sense, and we fall back into the
utterly irrational chaos of not being able with truth
to say whether we doubt that we are doubting. But
yet how shall we explain the possibility of error ?
For here is an unique and fundamental postulate.

The next chapter shall be devoted to a more special
and detailed study of this problem. But already

IDEALISM. 377

we shall venture to suggest our solution. It is one
that needs possibly some little consideration, and the
reader will pardon us if we already state it, although
we shall repeat it in another form hereafter. In
fact, it is a critical matter for our whole discussion.
Here, in fact, will be the point where we shall pass
from idealism as a bare hypothesis, expressing pos-
tulates, to idealism as a philosophic doctrine, rest-
ing upon the deepest possible foundation, namely,
on the very difference between truth and error itself.
Our logical problem will become for us a treasure-
house of ideal truth. But just now we make only a
suggestion, to which as yet we can compel no agree-
ment.

When one says even the perfectly commonplace
thing that not all assertions are equally true, that is,
that not all of them agree with the objects with which
they mean to agree, he really makes an assumption
upon which all thinking, all controversy, all the
postulates that we previously studied, all science, all
morality depend ; and, as we maintain, this assump-
tion is : That the agreement or the disagreement
of his judgments with their intended objects exists
and has meaning for an actual thought, a con-
sciousness, to which both these related terms are
present, namely, both the judgment and the object
wherewith it is to agree. So that, if my thought
has objects outside of it with which it can agree or
disagree, those 'objects and that agreement can have
meaning, can be possible, only if there is a thought
that includes both my thought and the object where-
with my thought is to agree. This inclusive thought

378 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

must be related to my thought and its objects, as
my thought is related to the various partial thoughts
that it includes and reduces to unity in any one of
my complex assertions. For only by some such
unity as this can this higher thought compare my
judgment with its object, and so constitute the
relation that is implied in the truth or in the error
of my thought. So, in the commonplace assump-
tion that a statement of mine can agree or can fail
to agree with its real object, when this object is
wholly outside my thought, in this assumption, with-
out which you can make no rational statement, is
contained implicitly the assumption that all reality,
spiritual and material, is present in its true nature
to an all-embracing, intelligent thought, of which
mine is simply one subordinate part or element.
In truth, as we shall come to see, regarded in itself,
my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas.
That is the view of all so-called subjective idealism.
But if my mind can be concerned only with its own
ideas, then sincerity and truth are identical, truth
and error will be alike impossible. What I talk
about will be my ideas ; their objects will be them-
selves other ideas of mine, and meaning only these
ideas when I make assertions, I cannot fail to make
correct assertions about these, the objects that I
mean. But thus controversy, progress towards
truth, failure to get truth, error, refutation, yes,
doubt itself, will all cease to have any meaning
whatsoever. But if my thought is related to a
higher thought, even as the parts of one of my
thoughts are related to the whole thought, then

IDEALISM. 379

truth and error, as objective truth and objective
error, are possible, since my thought and its object,
both as I think this object and as it is, are together
in the universal thought, of which they form ele-
ments, and in which they live and move and have
their being. As my thoughts have a unity more or
less complete in themselves, so all thoughts and ob-
jects must be postulated as in unity in that thought
for which is the whole universe. As I can say to
myself with solely subjective truth, .This line that
I mentally picture is in truth shorter for me than
that, and to say otherwise is to speak falsely ; even
so my statement, All straight lines are in all cases
shortest lines between their extremities, is true ob-
jectively, and its contradictory false only in case
both the world of possible straight lines and iny
thoughts about this world are known to a higher
thought, are in fact members of a higher thought,
which, comparing what I cannot compare, making
a synthesis of what is to me separate, unifying what
is for me diverse, finds my thought really true or
false.

This is the barest outline of a proof by which, in
the next chapter, we shall try to reach the position
which some call absolute or objective idealism. We
shall find this theory as just set forth a necessary
assumption, which we shall make because we want
to think clearly, and because we find nothing else
that even suggests an answer to the critical questions
that trouble us as to the nature of thought. We
shall not substitute this conception of reality for the
scientific conception. On the contrary, this concep-

380 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

tion will merely undertake, presupposing the scien-
tific spirit, to include the scientific conception of
the world in one that will, as a whole, better satisfy
the needs of this scientific spirit itself. Our theory
will give us no a priori account of facts of expe-
rience, but a theory of that which makes experience,
as a whole, possible. This theory, which we offer as
the one rational account of the nature of truth, is
the doctrine that the world is in and for a thought,
all-embracing, all-knowing, universal, for which are
all relations and all truth, a thought that estimates
perfectly our imperfect and halting thoughts, a
thought in which and for which are we all. No
other view, as we shall affirm, offers any chance of
a philosophy, nor any hope of even a rational sci-
entific notion of things.

The reader may be impatient to see, in detail, the
argument by which we undertake to establish such a
thesis as the foregoing. Of that argument he shall
get enough in another chapter. But we ask him to
wait yet a moment, while we hint to him the conse-
quences, for our religious theory, that will flow from
our hypothesis when we have got it more certainly
in our minds.

The ambiguous relation of the conscious individ-
uals to the universal thought in the foregoing first
statement of our idealism, will be decided in the
sense of their inclusion, as elements, in the universal
thought. They will indeed not become " things in
the dream " of any other person than themselves,
but their whole reality, just exactly as it is in them,
will be found to be but a fragment of a higher

IDEALISM. 381

reality. This reality will be no Power, nor will it
produce the individuals by dreaming of them, but
it will complete the existence that in them, as sep-
arate beings, has no rational completeness. This
will be our first result.

Then will follow other thoughts. In so far as
there is any objective truth in moral conceptions,
this truth is eternally known to this all-embracing
thought. If there be moral or immoral acts, they
are forever known and judged in and by this all-
embracing conscious thought. And thus we shall
have found Job's longed-for, perfect, all -knowing
judge. " He knoweth the way that I take." Here
is an absolute estimate, objectively present in the
world, an estimate of all your good and evil deeds.
You are a part of the universal life. Your thoughts
are parts of the whole. Your acts form an element
in the universe that the great Judge knows. All of
you then is known and justly estimated by the ab-
solute thought that embraces all possible truth, and
for whom are all relations, present, past, and future
of all possible beings, acts, and thoughts in all places.
If there be any virtue, this virtue is known to the
infinite thought of the universe. If there be any
vice, that vice is estimated, in all its infinite base-
ness, by the infinite consciousness. Inasmuch as ye
do good unto the least of these, ye do it with the
universal consciousness as onlooker; your work is
all accomplished in the presence of the Absolute.

With this truth before us, we shall be ready to
leave unsolved our problems about this or that
Power, about this or that future state, about the

382 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

fallen angels, or about the historical justification of
God's ways. The world of Divine Life will be in
deepest truth not a Power at all, but the Infinite
Knowing One, for whom are all the powers, but who
is above them all, beyond them all, — no striving
good principle that cannot get realized in a wicked
world, but an absolute Judge that perfectly estimates
the world. In the contemplation of this truth we
may find a religious comfort.

And then, by all this, we shall make the postu-
lates of our previous chapter appear in a new light.
The postulates, we said, express the conditions
under which we are determined to do our work.
They are expressions of the spirit of courageous
devotion to the highest. They find and can find no
perfect verification in experience. They dwell in
part on the unseen. But they do not resist verifi-
cation, if any can be offered from a higher source.
But this, our new doctrine, if we truly get to it,
will offer them their higher verification. Their
office will not thereby be vacated or abolished.
They will forever remain the maxims of our work.
But they will no longer be just leaps in the dark.
We shall see that when science assumes rationality,
and religion assumes goodness, as at the heart of
things, they have neither of them acted vainly. We
shall then have reason to go on assuming both, and
to regulate our lives accordingly. Faith of some
sort will continue to be our meat and drink ; but it
will be faith with a philosophical foundation.

The reader will pardon us for having detained
him so long in the study of idealism as a bare postu-

IDEALISM. 383

late, when we have a more serious doctrine behind.
The inveterate prejudices and misunderstandings to
which idealistic theories fall prey, furnish our excuse
for trying to reconcile ourselves to an imperfect form
of idealism as a mere postulate, before going on to
set forth an absolute idealism as a demonstrable
theory.

CHAPTER XL

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR.

On ne sert dignement la philosophie qu'avec le m&ne feu qu'on sent
pour une maitresse. — ROUSSEAU, Nouvelle Heloise.

WE have before us our theorem, and an outline
of its proof. We are here to expand this argument.
We have some notion of the magnitude of the is-
sues that are at stake. We had found ourselves
baffled in our search for a certainty by numerous
difficulties. We had found only one way remaining
so far quite clear. That was the way of postulat-
ing what the moral consciousness seems to demand
about the world beyond experience. For many
thinkers since Kant, that way has seemed in fact
the only one. They live in a world of action.
" Doubt," they say, " clouds all theory. One must
act as if the world were the supporter of our moral
demands. One must have faith. One must make
the grand effort, one must risk all for the sake of
the great prize. If the world is against us, still we
will not admit the fact until we are crushed. If the
cold reality cares naught for our moral efforts, so be
it when we come to know the fact, but meanwhile
we will act as if legions of angels were ready to sup-
port our demand for whatever not our selfish inter-
est, but the great interest of the Good, requires."

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 385

Such is the view of the men whose religion is founded
upon a Postulate.

We, too, felt that such faith is religious. We
were willing to accept it, if nothing better could be
found. But we were not content with it. Life has
its unheroic days, when mere postulates fail us. At
such times we grow weary of toiling, evil seems ac-
tually triumphant, and, worse than all, the sense
that there really is any perfect goodness yet unat-
tained, that there is any worth or reason in our
fight for goodness, seems to desert us. And then it
will indeed be well if we can get for ourselves some-
thing more and better than mere postulates. If we
cannot, we shall not seek to hide the fact. Better
eternal despondency than a deliberate lie about our
deepest thoughts and their meaning. If we are not
honest, at least in our philosophy, then are we wholly
base. To try once more is not dishonest.

So we did make the effort, and, in the last chap-
ter, we sketched a result that seemed nearly within
our reach. An unexpected result this, because it
springs from the very heart of skepticism itself.
We doubted to the last extremity. We let every-
thing go, and then all of a sudden we seemed to find
that we could not lose one priceless treasure, try as
we would. Our wildest doubt assumed this, namely,
that error is possible. And so our wildest doubt as-
sumed the actual existence of those conditions that
make error possible. The conditions that determine
the logical possibility of error must themselves be
absolute truth, that was the treasure that remained
to us amid all our doubts. And how rich that treas-

25

386 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ure is, we dimly saw in the last discussion. That
dim insight we must now try to make clearer. Per-
haps our previous discussion has shown us that the
effort is worth making.

Yet of one thing the reader shall be warned. The
path that we travel is hereabouts very thorny and
stony. It is a path of difficult philosophical inves-
tigation. Nobody ought to follow it who does not
desire to. We hope that the reader will skip the
whole of this chapter unless he wants to find even
more of dullness than the rest of this sleepy^ book
has discovered to him. For us, too, the arid way
would seem hard, were it not for the precious prize
at the end of it.

I.

The story of the following investigation shall first
be very briefly told. The author had long sought, es-
pecially in the discussions of Kant's " Kritik," and
in the books of the post-Kantians, for help in see-
ing the ultimate principles that lie at the basis of
knowledge. He had found the old and well-known
troubles. Experience of itself can give no certainty
^about general principles. We must therefore, said
Kant, bring our own principles with us to experi-
ence. We know then of causation, because causa-
tion is a fundamental principle of our thought,
whereby we set our experience to rights. And so
long as we think, we shall think into experience the
connection of cause and effect, which otherwise would
not be there. But hereupon the questions arose that
have so often been asked of Kant and the Kantians.

THE POSSIBILITY OF EREOR. . 38T

Why just these principles and no others ? " That
is inexplicable," replies Kant. Very well, then,
suppose we give up applying to experience those ar-
bitrary principles of ours. Suppose we choose to
stop thinking of experience as causally connected.
What then ? " But you cannot stop," says Kant,
" Your thought, being what it is, must follow this
one fashion forever." Nay, we reply, how knowest
thou that, Master ? Why may not our thought get
a new fashion some day ? And then what is now
a necessary principle, for example, that every event
has a cause, would become unnecessary or even non-
sensical. Do we then know a priori that our a
priori principles must always remain such ? If so,
how come we by this new knowledge ?

So Kant leaves us still uncertain about any fun-
damental principles upon which a sure knowledge
of the world can be founded.

Let us, then, examine a little deeper. Are there
any certain judgments possible at all? If one is
skeptical in a thorough - going way, as the author
tried to be, he is apt to reach, through' an effort to
revise Kant's view, a position something like the fol-
lowing, — a provisional position of course, but one
that results from the effort to accept nothing with-
out criticism : " Kant's result is that our judgments
about the real world are founded on an union of
thought and sense, thought giving the appearance of
necessity to our judgment, sense giving the material.
The necessity of any judgment amounts then only to
what may be summed up in the words : So the pres-
ent union of thought and sense makes things ap-

388 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

pear. If either thought or sense altered its charac-
Iter, truth would alter. Hence every sincere judg-
j ment is indeed true for the moment in which it is
I made, but not necessarily true for other moments.
/ We only postulate that it is true for other moments."
! " And so," to continue this view, " it is only by
I means of postulates that our thought even seems to
have any unity from moment to moment. We live
in the present. If our thought has other truth or
falsity than this, we do not know it. Past and fu-
ture exist not for this present. They are only pos-
tulated. Save as postulated, they have no present
meaning."

When he held and expressed this view, the author
is free to admit that he was not always clear whether
he ought to call it the doctrine of the relativity of
truth or not. It might have avoided the absurdities
of total relativity by taking form as a doctrine that
the present moment's judgment is really true or
false, for a real past and future, but that we, being
limited to present moments, can never compare our
judgments with reality to find whether our judg-
ments are true or false. But although this inter-
pretation is possible, this view often did express it-
self for the author as the doctrine of the total rela-
tivity of truth. The latter doctrine to be sure has
no real meaning, but the author used with many
others to fancy that it had.

To apply the view to the case of causal relations.
" We continually postulate," the author used to
point out, " we demand, without being able to prove
it, that nature in future shall be uniform." So,

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 389

carrying out this thought, the author used to say :
" In fact future nature is not given to us, just as the
past is not given to us. Sense-data and thought
unite at every instant afresh to form a new judgment
and a new postulate. Only in the present has any
judgment evident validity. And our postulate of
causal relation is just a way of looking at this world
of conceived past and future data. Such postulates
avoid being absurd efforts to regulate independent
facts of sense, because, and only because, we have in
experience no complete series of facts of sense at all,
only from moment to moment single facts, about
which we make single judgments. All the rest we
must postulate or else do without them." Thus one
reaches a skepticism as nearly complete as is pos-
sible to any one with earnest activity of thought in
him. From moment to moment one can be sure of
each moment. All else is postulate.

From the depths of this imperfectly defined skep-
ticism, which seemed to him provisionally the only
view he could adopt, the author escaped only by ask-
ing the one question more : "If everything beyond
the present is doubtful, then how can even that doubt
be possible ? " With this question that bare relativ-
ity of the present moment is given up. What are
the conditions that make doubt logically intelligible ?
These conditions really transcend the present mo-
ment. Plainly doubt implies that the statement
doubted may be false. So here we have at least one
supposed general truth, namely, " All but the im-
mediate content of the present moment's judgment,
being doubtful, we may be in error about it." But

390 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

what then is an error? This becomes at once a
problem of exciting interest. Attacking it, the au-
thor was led through the wilderness of the following
argument.

II.

Yet before we undertake this special examination
of the nature of error, the reader must pardon us
for adding yet another explanatory word. The diffi-
culty of the whole discussion will lie in the fact that
we shall be studying the possibility of the plainest
and most familiar of commonplaces. Common sense
hates to do such things, because common sense thinks
that the whole matter is sure from the outset. Com-
mon sense is willing to ask whether God exists, but
unwilling to inquire how it is possible that there can
exist an error about anything. But foreseeing that
something is to follow from all this, we must beg
common sense to be patient. We have not the
shadow of doubt ourselves about the possibility of
error. That is the steadfast rock on which we build.
Our inquiry, ultra-skeptical as it may at moments
seem, is into the question : How is the error possi-
ble ? Or, in other words : What is an error ? Now
there can be little doubt that common sense is not
ready with any general answer to such a question.
Error is a word with many senses. By error we
often mean just a statement that arouses our antipa-
thy. Yet we all admit upon reflection, that our an-
tipathy can neither make nor be used to define real
error. Adam Smith declares, with common sense on
his side, in his " Theory of the Moral Sentiments," l
i Part L, sect, i., chap, iii., near the beginning.

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 391

that : "To approve or disapprove of the opinions of
others is acknowledged, by everybody, to mean no
more than to observe their agreement or disagree-
ment with our own." Yet no one would accept as a
definition of error the statement that : Error is any
opinion that I personally do not like. Error has
thus a very puzzling character. For common sense
will readily admit that if a statement is erroneous,
it must appear erroneous to every " right mind " that
is in possession of the facts. Hence the personal
taste of one man is not enough to define it. Else
there might be as many sorts of error as there are
minds. It is only the " right mind " whose personal
taste shall decide what is an error in any particular
case. But what then is a normal mind ? Who is the
right-minded judge ? There seems to be danger that
common sense shall run at this point into an infinite
regress. I say : That opinion is an error. What
do I mean ? Do I mean that I do not like that
opinion ? Nay, I mean more. I mean that I ought
not to like or to accept it. Why plight I not? Be-
cause the ideally right-minded person would not,
seeing the given facts, hold that opinion about them.
But who is the ideally right-minded person ? Well,
common sense may answer, It is my ideal person,
the right-minded man as I conceive him. But why
is my ideal the true ideal ? Because I like it ? —
Nay, because, to the ideal judge, that kind of mind
would seem the ideal. But who is the ideal judge ?
And so common sense is driven from point to point,
unable to get to anything definite.

So much, then, to show in general that common

392 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

sense does not know what an error is, and needs
more light upon the subject. Let common sense not
disturb us, then, in our further search, by the con-
stant and indignant protest that error must some-
how exist, and that doubt on that subject is nonsense.
Nobody has any doubts on that subject. We ask
only how error exists and how it can exist.

For the rest, what follows is not any effort to
demonstrate in fair and orderly array, from any one
principle or axiom, what must be the nature of er-
ror, but to use every and any device that may offer
itself, general analysis, special example, comparison
and contrast of cases, — anything that shall lead us
to the insight into what an error is and implies.
For at last, immediate insight must decide.

We shall study our problem thus. We shall
take either some accepted definition of error, or
some special class of cases, and we shall ask : How
is error in that case, or in accordance with that defi-
nition, possible ? Since error plainly is possible in
some way, we sh^Jl have only to inquire : What are
the logical conditions that make it possible ? We
shall take up the ordinary suppositions that com-
mon sense seems to make about what here deter-
mines the possibility of error. We shall show that
these suppositions are inadequate. Then the result
will be that, on the ordinary suppositions, error
would be impossible. But that result would be
absurd, if these were the only possible suppositions.
Hence the ordinary suppositions must somehow be
supplemented. When, therefore, we seem to say in
the following that error is impossible, we shall mean

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 393

only, impossible under the ordinary suppositions of
common sense. What supplement we need to these
suppositions, our argument will show us. In sum
we shall find the state of the case to be this : Com-
mon sense regards an assertion as true or as false
apart from any other assertion or thought, and solely
in reference^ to its own object. For common sense
each judgment, as a separate creation, stands out
alone, looking at its object, and trying to agree with
it. If it succeeds, we have truth. If the judgment
fails, we have error. But, as we shall find, this view
of common sense is unintelligible. A judgment can-
not have an object and fail to agree therewith, un-
less this judgment is part of an organism of thought.
Alone, as a separate fact, a judgment has no intelli-
gible object beyond itself. And therefore the pre-
suppositions of common sense must be supplemented
or else abandoned. Either then there is no error,
or else judgments are true or false only in reference
jto a higher inclusive thought, which they presuppose,
and which must, in th<TTast analysis, be assumed as
Infinite and all-inclusive. This result we shall reach
by no mystical insight, by no revelation, nor yet by
any mere postulate such as we used in former dis-
cussions, but by a simple, dry analysis of the mean-
ing of our own thought.

The most formidable opponent of our argument
will be, after all, however, not common sense, but
that thought mentioned in the last chapter, — the
thought that may try to content itself with some-
what plausible jargon, and to say that : " There is
no real difference between truth and error at all,

394 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

only a kind of opinion or consensus of men about
a conventional distinction between what they choose
to call truth and what they choose to call error"
This view, as the author has confessed, he once tried
to hold. Still this meaningless doctrine of relativ-
ity is not the same as the view that contents itself
with the postulates before discussed. That view
might take, and for the author at one time did take,
the possible and intelligible form thus expressible :
" Truth and error, though really distinguishable,
are for us distinguished only through our postu-
lates, in so far as relates to past and future time*'
Such views, while not denying that there is real
truth, despair of the attainability for us of more than
momentary truth. But the doctrine of Total Rela-
tivity, this view above expressed, differs from gen-
uine skepticism. It tries to put even skepticism to
rest, by declaring the opinion, that there is error, to
be itself an error. This is not merely a moderate
expression of human limitations, but jargon, and
therefore formidable, because jargon is always unan-
swerable. When the famous Cretan declared all
statements made by Cretans to be in all cases lies,
his declaration was hard to refute, because it was
such honest - seeming nonsense. Even so with the
statement that declares the very existence of error
to be an erroneously believed fancy. No consensus
of men can make an error erroneous. We can only
find or commit an error, not create it. When we
commit an error, we say what was an error already.
If our skeptical view in previous chapters seemed to
regard truth and error as mere objects of our postu-

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 895

lates, that was only because, to our skepticism, the
real truth, the real error, about any real past and
future, seemed beyond our reach, so that we had
to content ourselves with postulates. But that real
error exists is absolutely indubitable.

This being the case, it is evident that even the
most thorough-going skepticism is full of assump-
tions. If I say, " There may be no money in that
purse yonder," I assume the existence of the purse
yonder in order to make just that particular doubt
possible. Of course, however, just that doubt may
be rendered meaningless by the discovery of the
actual non-existence of that particular purse. If
there is no purse yonder, then it is nonsensical either
to affirm or to deny that it contains money. And
so if the purse of which I speak is an hallucination
of mine, then the doubt about whether, as an actu-
ally existent purse, it has money in it, is deprived
of sense. My real error in that case would lie in
supposing the purse itself to exist. If, however, I
abandon the first doubt, and go on to doubt the real
existence of the purse, I equally assume a room, or
some other environment, or at all events the universe,
as existent, in order to give sense to my question
whether the purse has any being in this environment
or in this universe. But if I go yet further, and
doubt whether there is any universe at all outside of
my thought, what does my doubt yet mean ? If it
is to be a doubt with any real sense, it must be a
doubt still with an object before it. It seems then
to imply an assumed order of being, in which there
are at least two elements, my lonely thought about

396 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

an universe, and an empty environment of this
thought, in which there is, in fact, no universe,
But this empty environment, whose nature is such
that my thought does wrong to suppose it to be an
universe, what is that ? Surely if the doubt is to
have meaning, this idea needs further examination.
The absolute skepticism is thus full of assumptions.
The first European thinker who seems to have
discussed our present problem was Plato, in a too-
much-neglected passage of the " Thesetetus," 1 where
Socrates, replying to the second definition of knowl-
edge given by Theaetetus, namely, knowledge is
True Opinion, answers that his great difficulty has
often been to see how any opinion can possibly be
false. The conclusion reached by Plato is no very
definite one, but the discussion is deeply suggestive.
And we cannot do better here than to pray that the
shade of the mighty Greek may deign to save us
now in our distress, and to show us the true nature
of error.

HI.

Logicians are agreed that single ideas, thoughts
viewed apart from judgments, are neither true nor
false. Only a judgment can be false. And if a
reasoning process is" said "tirHbe^Talsepthe real error
lies still in an actual or suppressed assertion. __A_
fallacy is a false assertion that a certain conclusion
follows from certain premises. EM£LLj^utherefa¥e
generally defined as a judgmentJJiak_^^
with itsjobjectT In the^erro^oias judgment, suK~

1 Plato, Th.t p. 187 sqq.

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 397

ject and predicate are so combined as, jin jbhe^object,
the corresponding elements are not combine^. And
thus the judgment comes to be false. Now, in this
definition, nothing is doubtful or obscure save the
one thing, namely, the assumed relation between the
judgment and its object. The definition assumes as
quite clear that a judgment has an object, wherewith
it can agree or not agree. And what is meant by
the agreement would not be obscure, if we could see
what is meant by the object, and by the possession of
this object implied in the pronoun its. What then
is meant by its object ? The difficulties involved in
this phrase begin to appear as soon as you look
closer. First then the object of the assertion is as
such supposed to be neither the subject nor the pred-
icate thereof. It is external to the judgment. It
has a nature of its own. Furthermore, not all judg-
ments have the same object, so that objects are very
numerous. But from the infinity of real or of pos-
sible objects the judgment somehow picks out its
own. Thus then for a judgment to have an object^
there must be something about the judgment that
shows what one of the external objects that are be-
yon (TTtself this judgment does pick out^ as jits own.
But this something that gives the judgment its ob-
ject can only be the intention wherewith the judg-
ment is accompanied. A judgment has as object
only whatjt intends to have as object.. It has to
conform only to that to which it wants to conform.
But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of
what one intends. One can, for instance, intend a
deed or any of its consequences only in so far as he

398 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

foresees them. I cannot be said to intend the acci-
dental or the remote or even the immediate conse-
quences of anything that I do, unless I foresaw that
they would follow ; and this is true however much
the lawyers and judges may find it practically neces-
sary to hold me responsible for these consequences.
Even so we all find it practically useful to regard
one of our fellows as in error in case his assertions,
as we understand them, seem to us to lead to conse-
quences that we do not approve. But our criticisms
of his opinions, just like legal judgments of his acts,
are not intended to be exact. Common sense will
admit that, unless a man is thinking of the object of
which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no
real error by merely failing to agree with the object
that I have in mind. If the knights in the fable
judge each other to be wrong, that is because each
knight takes the other's shield to be identical with
the shield as he himself has it in mind. In fact
neither of them is in error, unless his assertion is
false for the shield as he intended to make it his
object.

St> then judgments err only by disagreeing with
their intended objects, and they can intend an object
only in so far forth as this object is known to thg
thought that makes tiie judgment. Such, it would
seem, is the consequence of the common-sense view.
But in this case a judgment can be in error only
if it is knowingly in error. That also, as it seems,
follows from the common-sense suppositions. Or, if
we will have it in syllogistic form : —

Everything intended is something known. The

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 399

object even of an erroneous judgment is intended.
.'. The object even of an error is something known.

Or: Only what is known can be erred about.
Nor can we yet be content with what common sense
will at once reply, namely, that our syllogism uses
known ambiguously, and that the object of an erro-
neous judgment is known enough to constitute it the
object, and not enough to prevent the error about it.
This must no doubt be the fact, but it is not of itself
clear ; on the contrary, just here is the problem. As
common sense conceives the matter, the object of a
judgment is not as such the whole outside world of
common sense, with all its intimate interdependence
of facts, with all its unity in the midst of diversity.
On the contrary, the object of any judgment is just
that portion of the then conceived world, just that
fragment, that aspect, that element of a supposed
reality, which is seized upon for the purposes of just
this judgment. Only such a momentarily grasped
fragment of the truth can possibly be present in any
one moment of thought as the object of a single as-
sertion. Now it is hard to say how within this arbi-
trarily chosen fragment itself there can still be room
for the partial knowledge that is sufficient to give to
the judgment its object, but insufficient to secure to
the judgment its accuracy. If I aim at a mark with
my gun, I can fail to hit it, because choosing and
hitting a mark are totally distinct acts. But, in the
judgment, choosing and knowing the object seem in-
separable. No doubt somehow our difficulty is solu-
ble, but we are here trying first to show that it is a
difficulty.

400 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

To illustrate here by a familiar case, when we
speak of things that are solely matters of personal
preference, such as the pleasure of a sleigh-ride, the
taste of olives, or the comfort of a given room, and
when we only try to tell how these things appear to
us, then plainly our judgments, if sincere, cannot be
in error. As these things are to us, so they are.
We are their measure. To doubt our truthfulness
in these cases is to doubt after the fashion of the
student who wondered whether the star that the as-
tronomers call Uranus may not be something else
after all, and not really Uranus. Surely science does
not progress very far or run into great danger of
error so long as it employs itself in discovering such
occult mysteries as the names of the stars. But our
present question is, How do judgments that can be
and that are erroneous differ in nature from these
that cannot be erroneous ? If astronomers would be
equally right in case they should agree to call Ura-
nus Humpty Dumpty, why are not all judgments
equally favored ? Since the judgment chooses its
own object, and has it only in so far as it chooses it,
how can it be in that partial relation to its object
which is implied in the supposition of an erroneous
assertion ?

Yet again, to illustrate the difficulty in another
aspect, we can note that not only is error impossible
about the perfectly well-known, but that error is
equally impossible, save in the form of direct self-
contradiction, about what is absolutely unknown.
Spite of the religious awe of some people in pres-
ence of the Unknowable, it is safe to say, somewhat

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 401

irreverently, that about a really Unknowable nobody
could make any sincere and self -consistent assertions
that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions
about the Unknowable would of necessity be mean-
ingless. And being meaningless, they could not well
be false. For instance, oiie could indeed not say
that the Unknowable contemplates war with France,
or makes sunspots, or will be the next Presidential
candidate, because that would be contradicting one's
self. For if the Unknowable did any of these things,
it would no longer be the Unknowable, but would
become either the known or the discoverable. But
avoid such self - contradiction, and you cannot err
about the Unknowable. For the Unknowable is sim-
ply our old friend Abracadabra, a word that has no
meaning, and by hypothesis never can get any. So
if I say that the Unknowable dines in vacuo with
the chimera, or is Humpty Dumpty, I talk nonsense,
and am therefore unable to make a mistake. Non-
sense is error only when it involves self-contradiction.
Avoid that, and nonsense cannot blunder, having no
object outside of itself with which it must agree.
But all this illustrates from the other side our diffi-
culty. Is not the object of a judgment, in so far as
it is unknown to that judgment, like the Unknowa-
bles for that judgment ? To be in error about the
application of a symbol, you must have a symbol that
symbolizes something. But in so far as the thing
symbolized is not known through the symbol, how
is it symbolized by that symbol? Is it not, like the
Unknowable, once for all out of the thought, so that
one cannot just then be thinking about it at all, and

26

402 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

so cannot, in this thought at least, be making blun-
ders about it ? But in so far as the thing symbolized
is, through the symbol, in one's thought, why is it
not known, and so correctly judged ? All this in-
volves that old question of the nature of symbols.
They are to mean for us more than we know that
they mean. How can that be ? No doubt all that
is really possible, but how ?

IV.

We follow our difficulty into another department.
Let us attempt a sort of provisional psychological
description of a judgment as a state of mind. So
regarded, a judgment is simply a fact that occurs in
somebody's thought. If we try to describe it as an
occurrence, without asking whence it came, we shall
perhaps find in it three elements, — elements which
are in some fashion described in Ueberweg's well-
known definition of a judgment as the " Conscious-
ness about the objective validity of a subjective
union of ideas." Our interpretation of them shall be
this : The elements are : The Subject, with the ac-
companying shade of curiosity about it ; the Pred-
icate, with the accompanying sense of its worth in
satisfying a part of our curiosity about the subject ;
and the Sense of Dependence, whereby we feel the
value of this act to lie, not in itself, but in its agree-
ment with a vaguely felt Beyond, that stands out
there as Object.

Now this analysis of the elements of a judgment is
no explanation of our difficulties ; and in fact for

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 403

the moment only embarrasses us more. But the na-
ture of the difficulty may come home to us somewhat
more clearly, if we try to follow the thread of this
analysis a little further. Even if it is a very imper-
fect account, it may serve to lead us up to the true
insight that we seek into the nature of error. Let
us make the analysis a little more detailed.

In its typical form then, the judgment as a mental
state seems to us to begin with a relatively incom-
plete or unstable or disconnected mass of conscious-
ness, which we have called the Subject, as it first be-
gins to be present to us. This subject-idea is at-
tended by some degree of effort, namely, of atten-
tion, whose tendency is to complete this incomplete
subject by bringing it into closer connection with
more familiar mental life. This more familiar life is
represented by the predicate-idea. If the effort is
successful, the subject has new elements united to it,
assumes in consciousness a defmiteness, a coherency
with other states, a familiarity, which it lacked at the
outset of the act of judgment ; and this coherency it
gets through its union with the predicate. All this
is accompanied further by what one for short may
call a sense of dependence. The judgment feels it-
self not alone, but looks to a somewhat indefinite ob-
ject as the model after which the present union of
ideas is to be fashioned. And in this way we ex-
plain how the judgment is, in those words of Ueber-
weg's definition, " the consciousness about the objec-
tive validity of a subjective union of ideas."

N™y rn fl m^ro nnmplnti'oxLpf subject-idea through
the addition of a predicate-idea, the judgment is sim-

404 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ply a mental phenomenon, having interest only to
the person that experiences it, and to a psychologist.
But as true or as false the judgment must be viewed
in respect to the indefinite object of what we have
called the sense of dependence, whereby the judg-
ment is accompanied. Seldom in any ordinary judg-
ment does this object become perfectly full and
clear ; for to make it so would often require many,
perhaps an infinite, series of judgments. Yet, for the
one judgment, the object, whether full and clear or
not, exists as object only in so far forth as the sense
of dependence has defined it. And the judgment is
true or false only with reference to this undefined ob-
ject. The intention to agree with the object is con-
tained in the sense jy(L dependence upon the object^
and remains for this judgment incomplete, like the
object itself. Somewhat vaguely this single actTin-
tends to agree with this vague object.

Such being the case, how can the judgment, as
thus described, fairly be called false ? As mere psy-
chological combination of ideas it is neither true nor
false. As accompanied by the sense of dependence
upon an object, it would be false if it disagreed with
its imperfectly defined object. But, as described,
the only object that the judgment has is this imper-
fectly defined one. With this, in so far as it is for
the moment defined, the judgment must needs agree.
In so far as it is not defined, it is however not object
for this judgment at all, but for some other one.
What the imperfect sense of dependence would fur-
ther imply if it existed in a complete instead of in
an incomplete state, nobody can tell, any more than

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 405

one can tell what towns would grow up by a given
rain-pool, if it were no pool, but a great lake. The
object of a single judgment, being what it is, namely,
a vaguely defined object, present to this judgment, is
just what it is for this judgment, and the judgment
seems once for all to be true, in case it is sincere.

Some one may here at once answer that we neg-
lect in this description the close interdependence of
various judgments. Thought, some one may say, is
an organic unity. Separated from all else but its
own incompletely defined object, a single judgment
cannot be erroneous. Only in the organic unity of
a series of judgments, having a common object, is
the error of one of them possible. We reply that
all this will turn out to be just our result. But the
usual supposition at the outset is that any judgment
has by itself its own object, so that thereby alone,
apart from other judgments, it stands or falls. And
thus far we have tried to show that this natural sup-
position leads us into difficulty. We cannot see
how a single sincere judgment should possibly fail
to agree with its own chosen object. But enough of
our problem in general. We must consider certain
classes of errors more in detail. Let us see how, in
these special classes of cases, we shall succeed in ver-
ifying the natural presupposition of common sense,
which regards error as possible only when our object
is not wholly present to mind, and which assumes
that a judgment can have an object that is yet only
partially present to mind. In choosing the classes of
cases, we shall first follow common sense as to their
definition. We shall take just the assumptions of

406 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

daily life, and shall show that they lead us into diffi-
culty. We are not for the first bound to explain
why these assumptions are made. That common
sense makes them is enough.

But let the reader remember : The whole value of
our argument lies in its perfect generality. How-
ever much we dwell on particular classes of errors,
we care nothing for the proof that just those errors
are inexplicable, but only for the fact that they il-
lustrate how, without some entirely new hypothesis,
absolutely all error becomes impossible. This or
that class of judgments may be one in which all the
judgments are relative, but the total relativity of
our thought implies an incomprehensible and contra-
dictory state of things. Any hypothesis about error
that makes total relativity the only admissible view,
must therefore give place to some new hypothesis.
And our illustrations in the following are intended
to show that just what constitutes the difficulty in
respect of these illustrations, makes the existence of
any error inexplicable without some new hypothesis.

V.

The class of errors that we shall first take seems,
to common sense, common enough. It is the class
known as errors about our neighbor's states of mind.
Let us then, for argument's sake, assume without
proof that our neighbors do exist. For we are not
here concerned to answer Solipsism, but merely to
exemplify the difficulties about the nature of error.
If our neighbors did not exist, then the nature of

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 407

the error that would lie in saying that they do exist
would present almost exactly the same difficulties.
We prefer, however, to begin with the common-sense
assumption about ourselves and our neighbors as
separate individuals, and to ask how error can then
arise in judging of our neighbors' minds.

In the first place then : Who is my neighbor ?
Surely, on the assumptions that we all make, and
that we made all through the ethical part of our dis-
cussion, he is no one of my thoughts, nor is any part
of him ever any part of my thought. He is not my
object, but, in Professor Clifford's phrase, an " eject,"
wholly outside of my ideas. He is no " thing in my
dream," just as I am not in his dream.

Yet I make judgments about him, and he makes
them about me. And when I make judgments about
him, I do so by having in my thought some set of my
own ideas that, although not himself, do yet, as I
say, represent him. A kind of dummy, a symbol, a
graven image of my own thought's creation, a phan-
tom of mine, stands there in me as the representa-
tive of his mind ; and all I say about my neighbor's
inner life refers directly to this representative. The
Scottish philosophy has had much to say to the world
about what it calls direct or presentative, as opposed
to representative, knowledge of objects. But surely
the most obstinate Scottish philosopher that ever ate
oatmeal cannot hold so tenaciously by his national
doctrine as to say that I have, according to common
sense, anything but a representative knowledge of
my 'neighbor's thoughts and feelings. That is the
only sort of knowledge that common sense will re-

408 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

gard as possible to me, if so much as that is possible0
But how I can know about this outside being is not
now our concern. We notice only that our difficulty
about error conies back to us in a new form. For
how can I err about my neighbor, since, for this com-
mon-sense view, he is not even partly in my thoughts ?
How can I intend that as the object of my thought
which never can be object for me at all ?

But not everybody will at once feel the force of
this question. We must be more explicit. Let us
take the now so familiar suggestion of our great hu-
morist about the six people that take part in every
conversation between two persons. If John and
Thomas are talking together, then the real John and
Thomas, their respective ideas of themselves, and
their ideas of each other, are all parties to the con-
versation. Let us consider four of these persons,
namely, the real John, the real Thomas, John as
Thomas conceives him, and Thomas as John con-
ceives him. When John judges, of whom does he
think? Plainly of that which can be an object to
his thoughts, namely, of his Thomas. About whom
then can he err ? About his Thomas ? No, for he
knows him too well. His conception of Thomas is
his conception, and what he asserts it to be, that it
is for him. About the real Thomas ? No, for it
should seem, according to common sense, that he has
nothing to do with the real Thomas in his thought,
since that Thomas never becomes any part of his
thought at all. u But," says one, " there must be
some fallacy here, since we are sure that John can
err about the real Thomas." Indeed he can, say

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 409

we ; but ours is not this fallacy. Common sense has
made it. Common sense has said : " Thomas never
is in John's thought, and yet John can blunder
about Thomas." How shall we unravel the knot ?

One way suggests itself. Mayhap we have been
too narrow in our definition of object. Common
sense surely insists that objects are outside of our
thought. If, then, I have a judgment, and another
being sees both my judgment and some outside ob-
ject that was not in my thought, and sees how that
thought is unlike the object in some critical respect,
this being could say that my assertion was an error.
So then with John and Thomas. .If Thomas could
know John's thoughts about him, then Thomas could
possibly see John's error. That is what is meant
by the error in John's thought.

But mere disagreement of a thought with any ran-
dom object does not make the thought erroneous.
The judgment must disagree with its chosen object.
If John never has Thomas in thought at all, how
can John choose the real Thomas as his object ? If
I judge about a penholder that is in this room, and
if the next room is in all respects like this, save for
a penholder in it, with which my assertion does not
agree, who, looking at that penholder in that other
room, can say that my judgment is false ? For I
meant not that penholder when I spoke, but this
one. I knew perhaps nothing about that one, had
it not in mind, and so could not err about it. Even
so, suppose that outside of John there is a real
Thomas, similar, as it happens, to John's ideal
Thomas, but lacking some thought or affection that

410 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

John attributes to his ideal Thomas. Does that
make John's notion an error ? No, for he spoke and
could speak only of his ideal Thomas. The real
Thomas was the other room, that he knew not of,
the other side of the shield, that he never could qon-
ceive. His Thomas was his phantom Thomas. This
phantom it is that he judges and thinks about, and
his thoughts may have their own consistency or in-
consistency. But with the real other person they
have nothing to do. The real other is not his ob-
ject, and how can he err about what is not object
for him ?

Absurd, indeed, some one will reply to us. John
and Thomas have to deal with representative phan-
toms of each other, to be sure ; but that only makes
each more apt to err about the real other. And the
test that they can err is a very simple one. Suppose
a spectator, a third person, to whom John and
Thomas were both somehow directly present, so that
he as it were included both of them. Then John's
judgment of his phantom Thomas would be by this
spectator at once compared with the real Thomas,
and even so would Thomas's judgment of John be
treated. If now John's phantom Thomas agreed
with the real Thomas, then John's ideas would be
declared in so far truthful ; otherwise they would be
erroneous. And this explains what is meant by
John's power to err about Thomas.

The explanation is fair enough for its own pur-
pose, and we shall need it again before long. But
just now we cannot be content with it. For what
we want to know is not what the judgment of a

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 411

third thinker would be in case these two were some-
how not independent beings at all, but things in
this third being's thought. For we have started out
with the supposition of common sense that John
and Thomas are not dreams or thoughts of some
higher third being, but that they are independent
beings by themselves. Our supposition may have
to be given up hereafter, but for the present we
want to hold fast to it. And so John's judgment,
which we had supposed to be about the independ-
ently existing Thomas, has now turned out to be
only a judgment about John's idea of Thomas. But
judgments are false only in case they disagree with
their intended objects. What, however, is the ob-
ject of John's judgment when he thinks about
Thomas ? Not the real Thomas, who could not pos-
sibly be an object in another man's thoughts. John's
real object being an ideal Thomas, he cannot, if sin-
cere, and if fully conscious of what he means by
Thomas, fail to agree in his statements with his own
ideal. In short, on this our original supposition,
John and Thomas are independent entities, each of
which cannot possibly enter in real person into the
thoughts of the other. Each may be somehow rep-
resented in the other's thoughts by a phantom, and
only this phantom can be intended by the other
when he judges about the first. For unless one talks
nonsense, it should seem as if one could mean only
what one has in mind.

Thus, like the characters in a certain Bab ballad,
real John, real Thomas, the people in this simple
tale, are total strangers to each other. You might

412 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

as well ask a blind man to make true or false judg-
ments about the real effects of certain combinations
of colors, as to ask either John or Thomas, defined
as common sense defines them, to make any judg-
ments about each other. Common sense will assert
that a blind man can learn and repeat verbally cor-
rect statements about color, or verbally false state-
ments about color, but, according to the common-
sense view, in no case can he err about color-ideas
as such, which are never present to him. You will
be quite ready to say that a dog can make mistakes
about the odors of the numberless tracks on the
highway. You will assure us, however, that you
cannot make mistakes about them because these
odors do not exist for you. According to the com-
mon-sense view, a mathematician can make blunders
in demonstrating the properties of equations. A
Bushman cannot, for he can have no ideas correspond-
ing to equations. But how then can John or Thomas
make errors about each other, when neither is more
present to the other than is color to the blind man,
the odor of the tracks on the highway to the dog's
master, or the idea of an equation to a Bushman?
Here common sense forsakes us, assuring us that
there is such error, but refusing to define it.

The inconsistency involved in all this common-
sense view, and the consequences of the inconsistency,
will appear yet better with yet further illustration.
A dream is false in so far as it contains the judgment
that such and such things exist apart from us ; but
at least in so far as we merely assert in our dreams
about the objects as we conceive them, we make true

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 413

assertions. But is not our actual life of assertions
about actual fellow-beings much like a dream to
which there should happen to correspond some real
scene or event in the world ? Such correspondence
would not make the dream really " true," nor yet
false. It would be a coincidence, remarkable for an
outside observer, but none the less would the dreamer
be thinking in his dream not about external objects,
but about the things in his dream. But is not our
supposed Thomas so and only so in the thought of
John as he would be if John chanced to dream of
a Thomas that was, to an external spectator, like the
real one ? Is not then the phantom Thomas, John's
only direct object, actually a thing in John's thought?
Is then the independent Thomas an object for John
in any sense ?

Yet again. Let us suppose that two men are shut
up, each in a closed room by himself, and for his
whole life ; and let us suppose that by a lantern con-
trivance each of them is able at times to produce on
the wall of the other's room a series of pictures.
But neither of them can ever know what pictures he
produces in the other's room, and neither can know
anything of the other's room, as such, but only of
the pictures. Let the two remain forever in this re-
lation. One of them, A, sees on his wall pictures,
which resemble more or less what he has seen in his
own room at other times. Yet he perceives these to
be only pictures, and he supposes them to represent
what goes on in another room, which he conceives as
like his own. He is interested, he examines the phe-
nomena, he predicts their future changes, he passes

414 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

judgment upon them. He may, if you like to con-
tinue the hypothesis, find some way of affecting
them, by himself acting in a way mysterious to him-
self so as to produce changes in B's actual room,
which again affect the pictures that the real B pro-
duces in A's room. Thus A might hold what he
would call communication with his phantom room.
Even so, B lives with pictures before him that are
produced from A's room. Now one more supposi-
tion, namely, that A and B have absolutely no other
means of communication, that both are shut up alto-
gether and always have been, that neither has any
objects before him but his own thoughts and the
changing pictures on the wall of his room. In this
case what difference does it make whether or no the
pictures in A's room are actually like the things
that could be seen in B's room ? Will that make
A's judgments either true or false? Even if A,
acting by means that he himself cannot understand,
is able to control the pictures on his wall by some
alteration that he unconsciously produces in B's
room and its pictures, still A cannot be said to have
any knowledge of the real B and his room at all.
And, for the same reason, A cannot make mistakes
about the real room of B, for he will never even
think of that real room. He will, like a man in a
dream, think and be able to think only of the pic-
tures on his wall. And when he refers them to an
outside cause, he does not mean by this cause the real
B and his real room, for he has never dreamed of the
real B, but only of the pictures and of his own inter-
pretation of them. He can therefore make no false

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 415

judgments about B's room, any more than a Bushman
can make false judgments about the integral calculus.

If to our present world there does correspond a
second world somewhere off in space, a world exactly
like this, where just the same events at every instant
do actually take place, still the judgments that we
make about our world are not actually true or false
with reference to that world, for we mean this world,
not that one, when we judge. Why are not John's
Thomas and the real Thomas related like this world
and that second world in distant space ? Why are
not both like the relation of A's conceived phantom
room and B's real room ? Nothing of either real
room is ever present to the other. Each prisoner
can make true or false judgments if at all, then,
only about the pictures on his wall ; but neither
has even the suggestion that could lead him to make
a blunder about the other's, real room, of which he
has and can have not the faintest idea.

One reason why we fail to see at once this fact
lies in the constant tendency to regard the matter
from the point of view of a third person, instead of
from the point of view that we still implicitly attrib-
ute to A and B themselves. If A could get outside
of his room once and see B's room, then he could
say : " My picture was a good one," or the reverse.
But, in the supposed case, he not only never sees B's
room, but he never sees anything but his own pic-
tures, never gets out of his room at all for any pur-
pose. Hence, his sole objects of assertion being his
pictures, he is innocent of any power to err about
B's room as it is in itself, even as the man born blind

416 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

is innocent of any power to err about the relations
of colors.

Now this relation of A and B, as they were sup-
posed to dwell in their perpetual imprisonment, is
essentially like the relation that we previously pos-
tulated between two independent subjects. If I can-
not have you in my thought at all, but only a picture
produced by you, I am in respect to you like A con-
fined to the pictures produced from B's room. How-
ever much I may fancy that I am talking of you, I
am really talking about my idea of you, which for
me can have no relation whatever to the real you.
And so John and Thomas remain shut up in their
prisons. Each thinks of his phantom of the other.
Only a third person, who included them both, who
in fact treated them as, in the Faust-Epilogue, the
Pater Seraphicus treats the selige Kndbzn (Er
nimmt sie in sich, says, the stage direction) — only
such an inclusive thought could compare the phan-
toms with the real, and only in him, not in them-
selves, would John and Thomas have any ideas of
each other at all, true or false.

This result is foreign to our every-day thought, be-
cause this every-day thought really makes innocent
use of two contradictory views of the relations of
conscious beings. On the one hand we regard them
as utterly remote from one another, as what Pro-
fessor Clifford called ejects ; and then we speak of
them as if the thoughts of one could as such become
thoughts of the other, or even as if one of them
could as an independent being still become object
in the thought of the other. No wonder that, with

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 417

such contradictory assumptions as to the nature of
our relations to our neighbors, we find it very easy
to make absurd statements about the meaning of
error. The contradiction of common sense has in
fact just here much to do with the ethical illusion
that we called the illusion of selfishness. To clear
up this point will be useful to us, therefore, in more
ways than one.

VI.

Disappointed once more in our efforts to under-
stand how error is possible, we turn to another class
of cases, which lie in a direction where, at least for
this once, all will surely be plain. Errors about
matters of fact or experience are certainly clear
enough in nature. And as this class of errors is
practically most important, the subtleties of our pre-
vious investigation may be dismissed with light heart
so soon as we have gotten rid of the few little ques-
tions that will now beset us. It is to be noted that
all errors about material objects, about the laws
of nature, about history, and about the future, are
alike errors about our actual or possible experiences.
We expect or postulate an experience that at the
given time, or under the given conditions, turns out
to be other than it was postulated or expected to be.
Now since our experiences not now present are objec-
tive facts, and capable of clear definition, it would
seem clear that error concerning them is an easily
comprehensible thing.

But alas ! again we are disappointed. That er-
rors in matters of experience are common enough is

27

418 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

indubitable, but equally evident becomes the diffi-
culty of defining what they are and how they are
possible. Take the case of error about an expected
future. What do we mean by a future time? How
do we identify a particular time ? Both these ques-
tions plunge us into the sea of problems about the
nature of time itself. When I say, Thus and so
will it be at such and such a future moment, I pos-
tulate certain realities not now given to my con-
sciousness. And singular realities they are. For
they have now no existence at all. Yet I postulate
that I can err about them. This their non-existence
is a peculiar kind of non-existence, and requires me
to make just such and such affirmations about it.
If I fail to correspond to the true nature of this
non-existent reality, I make an error ; and it is pos-
tulated not merely that my present statement will
in that case hereafter turn out false or become false,
but also that it is now false, is at this moment an
error, even though the reality with which it is to
agree is centuries off in the future. But this is not
all the difficulty. I postulate also that an error in
prediction can be discovered when the time comes
by the failure of the prediction to verify itself. I
postulate then that I can look back and say : Thus
and thus I predicted about this moment, and thus
and thus it has come to pass, and this event con-
tradicts that expectation. But can I in fact ever
accomplish this comparison at all ? And is the com-
parison very easily intelligible ? For when the event
comes to pass, the expectation no longer exists. The
two thoughts, namely, expectation and actual expe-

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 419

rience, are separate thoughts, far apart in time.
How can I bring them together to compare them, so
as to see if they have the same object ? It will not
do to appeal to memory for the purpose ; for the
same question would recur about the memory in its
relation to the original thought. How can a past
thought, being past, be compared to a present thought
to see whether they stand related ? The past thought
lived in itself, had its own ideas of what it then
called future, and its own interpretation thereof.
How can you show, or intelligently affirm, that the
conception which the past expectation had of its
future moment is so identical with the conception
which this present thought has of this present mo-
ment, as to make these two conceived moments one
and the same ? Here in short we have supposed two
different ideas, one of an expected future, the other
of an experienced present, and we have supposed
the two ideas to be widely separated in time, and by
hypothesis they are not together in one consciousness
at all. Now how can one say that in fact they relate
to the same moment at all ? How is it intelligible
to say that they do ? How, in fine, can a not-given
future be a real object of any thought; and how,
when it is once the object thereof, can any subse-
quent moment be identified with this object ?

A present thought and a past thought are in fact
separate, even as were John and Thomas. Each
one means the object that it thinks. How can they
have a common object ? Are they not once for all
different thoughts, each with its own intent ? But
in order to render intelligible the existence of error

420 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

about matters of fact, we must make the unintelligi-
ble assumption, so it would seem, that these two dif-
ferent thoughts have the same intent, and are but
one. And such is the difficulty that we find in our
second great class of cases.

VH.

So much for the problem, both in general and in
some particular instances. But now may not the
reader insist, after all, that there can be in this wise
no errors whatever ? Contradictory as it seems, have
we not, after all, put our judgments into a position
whence escape for us is impossible ? If every judg-
ment is thus by its nature bound up in a closed cir-
cle of thought, with no outlook, can any one come
afterwards and give it an external object ? Perhaps,
then, there is a way out of our difficulty by frankly
saying that our thoughts may be neither truths nor
errors beyond themselves, but just occurrences, with
a meaning wholly subjective.

We desire the reader to try to realize this view of
total relativity once more in the form in which, with
all its inherent absurdities, it now comes back to us
for the last time. It says, " Every judgment, A is
B, in fact does agree and can agree only with its
own object, which is present in mind when it is made.
With no external object can it agree or fail to agree.
It stands alone, with its own object. It has neither
truth nor error beyond itself. It fulfills all its inten-
tions, and is true, if it agrees with what was present
to it when it was thought. Only in this sense is
there any truth or falsity possible for our thought."

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 421

But once more, this inviting way out of the diffi-
culty needs only to be tried to reveal its own contra-
dictions. The thought that says, " No judgment is
true beyond itself," is that thought true beyond it-
self or not ? If it is true beyond itself, then we have
the possibility of other truth than the merely subjec-
tive or relative truth. If it is false, then equally we
have objective falsity. If it is neither true nor false,
then the doctrine of relativity has not been affirmed
at all as a truth. One sets up an idea of a world of
separate, disorganized thoughts, and then says, " Each
of them deals only with its own object, and they have
no unity that could make them true or false." But
still this world that one thus sets up must be the
true world. Else is there no meaning in the doc-
trine of relativity. Twist as one will, one gets not
out of the whirlpool of thought. Error must be real,
and yet, as common sense arranges these judgments
and their relations to one another, error cannot be
real. There is so far no escape.

The perfectly general character of the argument
must be understood. One might escape it if it ap-
plied to any one class of errors only. Then one
would say : " In fact, the class of cases in question
may be cases that exclude the possibility of both
truth and error." But no, that cannot be urged
against us, for our argument applies equally to all
possible errors. In short, either no error at all is
possible, or else there must be possible an infinite
mass of error. For the possibilities of thought being
infinite, either all thought is excluded once for all
from the possibility of error, or else to every possi-

422 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ble truth there can be opposed an infinite mass of
error. All this infinite mass is at stake upon the
issue of our investigation. Total relativity, or else
an infinite possibility of truth and error ; that is
the alternative before us. And total relativity of
thought involves self-contradiction.

Every way but one has been tried to lead us out
of our difficulty. Shall we now give up the whole
matter, and say that error plainly exists, but baffles
definition ? This way may please most people, but
the critical philosophy knows of no unanswerable
problem affecting the work of thought in itself con-
sidered. Here we need only patience and reflection,
and we are sure to be some day rewarded. And in-
deed our solution is not far off, but very nigh us.
We have indicated it all along. To explain how
one could be in error about his neighbor's thoughts,
we suggested the case where John and Thomas
should be present to a third thinker whose thought
should include them both. We objected to this sug-
gestion that thus the natural presupposition that John
and Thomas are separate self-existent beings would
be contradicted. But on this natural presupposition
neither of these two subjects could become object to
the other at all, and error would here be impossible.
Suppose then that we drop the natural presuppo-
sition, and say that John and Thomas are both actu-
ally present to and included in a third and higher
thought. To explain the possibility of error about
matters of fact seemed hard, because of the natural
postulate that time is a pure succession of separate
moments, so that the future is now as future non-ex-

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 423

istent, and so that judgments about the future lack
rjeal objects, capable of identification. Let us then
drop this natural postulate, and declare time once
for all present in all its moments to an universal
all-inclusive thought. And to sum up, let us over-
come all our difficulties by declaring that all the
many Beyonds, which single significant judgments
seem vaguely and separately to postulate, are pres-
ent as fully realized intended objects to the unity
of an all-inclusive, absolutely clear, universal, and
conscious thought, of which all judgments, true or
false, are but fragments, the whole being at once
Absolute Truth and Absolute Knowledge. Then all
our puzzles will disappear at a stroke, and error will
be possible, because any one finite thought, viewed
in relation to its own intent, may or may not be seen
by this higher thought as successful and adequate in
this intent.

How this absolute thought is to be related to in-
dividual thoughts, we can in general very simply de-
fine. When one says : " This color now before me
is red, and to say that it is blue would be to make a
blunder," one represents an including consciousness.
One includes in one's present thought three distinct
elements, and has them present in the unity of a sin-
gle moment of insight. These elements are, first,
the perception of red ; secondly, the reflective judg-
ment whose object is this perception, and whose
agreement with the object constitutes its own truth;
and, thirdly, the erroneous reflection, TJiis is blue,
which is in the same thought compared with the per-
ception and rejected as error. Now, viewed as sep-

424 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

arate acts of thought, apart from the unity of an in-
cluding thought, these three elements would give rise
to the same puzzles that we have been considering.
It is their presence in a higher and inclusive thought
that makes their relations plain. Even so we must
conceive the relation of John's thought to the united
total of thought that includes him and Thomas.
Real John and his phantom Thomas, real Thomas
and his phantom John, are all present as elements in
the including consciousness, which completes the in-
complete intentions of both the individuals, con-
stitutes their true relations, and gives the thought
of each about the other whatever of truth or of
[error it possesses. In short, error becomes possible
as one moment or element in a higher truth, that
is, in a consciousness that makes the error a part of
itself, while recognizing it as error.

So far then we propose this as a possible solution
for our puzzles. But now we may insist upon it as
the only possible solution. Either there is no such
thing as error, which statement is a fiat self -contra-
diction, or else there is an infinite unity of conscious
i thought to which is present all possible truth. For
suppose that there is error. Then there must be an
infinite mass of error possible. If error is possible
at all, then as many errors are possible as you please,
since, to every truth, an indefinite mass of error may
be opposed. Nor is this mere possibility enough.
An error is possible for us when we are able to make
a false judgment. But in order that the judgment
should be false when made, it must have been false
before it was made. An error is possible only when

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 425

the judgment in which the error is to be expressed
always was false. Error, if possible, is then eter-
nally actual. Each error so possible implies a judg-
ment whose intended object is beyond itself, and is
also the object of the corresponding true judgment.
But two judgments cannot have the same object save
as they are both present to one thought. For as
separate thoughts they would have separate sub-
jects, predicates, intentions, and objects, even as we
have previously seen in detail. So that every error
implies a thought that includes it and the corre-
sponding truth in the unity of one thought with the
object of both of them. Only as present to an in-
cluding thought are they either true or false. Thus
then we are driven to assume an infinite thought,
judging truth and error. But that this infinite
thought must also be a rational unity, not a mere
aggregate of truths, is evident from the fact that
error is possible not only as to objects, but as to the
relations of objects, so that all the possible relations
of all the objects in space, in time, or in the world
of the barely possible, must also be present to the
all-including thought. And to know all relations at
once is to know them in absolute rational unity, as
forming in their wholeness one single thought.

What, then., is an .error J?. An error, we reply, is
an incomplete thought, that to a higher thought,
which includes it and its intended object, is known
as having failed in the purpose that it more or less
clearly had, and that is fully realized in this higher
thought. And without such higher inclusive thought,
an assertion has no external object, and is no error.

426 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

VIII.

If our argument were a Platonic dialogue, there
would be hereabouts an interruption from some im-
patient Thrasymachus or Callicles or Polus, who
would have been watching us, threatening and mut-
tering, during all of the latter part of our discussion.
At last, perhaps, o-uorpei^as kavrov a>o-7T€p Orjptov, he
would spring upon us, and would say : " Why, you
nonsense-mongers, have you not bethought you of
the alternative that represents the reality in this
question of yours ? Namely, an error is an error,
neither to the thought that thinks it, nor of necessity
to any higher inclusive thought, but only to a possi-
ble critical thought that should undertake afterwards
to compare it with its object. An error is a thought
such that if a critical thought did come and compare
it with its object, it would be seen to be false. And
it has an object for such a critical thought. This
critical thought need not be real and actually include
it, but may be only a possible judge of its truth.
Hence your Infinite all-knower is no reality, only a
logical possibility ; and your insight amounts to this,
that if all were known to an all-knower, he would
judge error to be mistaken. And so error is what
he would perceive to be error. What does all that
amount to but worthless tautology?"

This argument of our Thrasymachus is the only
outwardly plausible objection that we fear to the
foregoing analysis, because it is the only objection
that fully expresses the old-established view of com-
mon sense about such problems. Though common

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 427

sense never formulates our present difficulty, com-
mon sense still dimly feels that to some possible
(not actual) judge of truth, appeal is made when
we say that a thing is false not merely for us, but
in very truth. And this possible judge of common
sense we have now unhesitatingly declared to be an
Infinite Actuality, absolutely necessary to constitute
the relation of truth and error. Without it there
is for our view no truth or error conceivable. The
words, This is true, or This is false, mean nothing,
we declare, unless there is the inclusive thought for
which the truth is true, the falsehood false. No
barely possible judge, who would see the error if he
were there, will do for us. He must be there, this
judge, to constitute the error. Without him nothing
but total subjectivity would be possible ; and thought
would then become purely a pathological phenome-
non, an occurrence without truthfulness or falsity,
an occurrence that would interest anybody if it
could be observed; but that, unfortunately, being
only a momentary phantom, could not be observed
at all from without, but must be dimly felt from
within. Our thought needs the Infinite Thought in
order that it may get, through this Infinite judge,
the privilege of being so much as even an error.

This, it will be said, is but reassertion. But how
do we maintain this view against our Thrasymachus ?
Our answer is only a repetition of things that we
have already had to say, in the argument for what
we here reassert. If the judgment existed alone,
without the inclusive thought to judge it, then, as it
existed alone, it either had an object, or had none.

428 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

But if it had none, it was no error. If it had one,
then either it knew what its object actually was, or it
did not know what its object was, or it partially knew
and partially did not know what its object actually
was. In the first case the judgment must have been
an identical one, like the judgment A pain is a pain.
Such a judgment knows its own object, therefore can-
not fail to agree with it, and cannot be an error. If
the judgment knew not its own object at all, then it
had no meaning, and so could not have failed to agree
with the object that it had not. If, however, this
separate judgment knew its object enough to intend
just that object, but not enough to insure agreement
with it, all our difficulties return. The possible
judge cannot give the judgment its complete object
until he becomes its actual judge. Yet as fair judge
he must then give it the object that it already had
without him. Meanwhile, however, the judgment re-
mains in the unintelligible attitude previously stud-
ied at length. It is somehow possessed of just the
object it intends, but yet does not know in reality
what it does intend, else it would avoid error. Its
object, in so far as unknown to it, is no object for
it ; and yet only in so far as the object is thus un-
known can it be erred about. What helps in all
this the barely possible judge? The actual judge
must *be there ; and for him the incomplete intention
must be complete. He knows what is really this
judgment's object, for he knows what is imperfectly
meant in it. He knows the dream, and the inter-
pretation thereof. He knows both the goal and the
way thither. But all this is, to the separate judgment
as such, a mystery.

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 429

In fact, the separate judgments, waiting for the
possible judge to test them, are like a foolish man
wandering in a wood, who is asked whether he has
lost his way. " I may have lost it," he answers.
"But whither are you going?" "That I cannot «
tell ? " " Have you no goal ? " "I may have, but
I have 110 notion what it is." " What then do you
mean ByTsaying that you may have lost the way to
this place that you are not seeking ? For you seem
to be seeking no place ; how then can you have lost
the way thither?" "I mean that some possible
other man, who was wise enough to find whither I
am trying to go, might possibly, in his wisdom, also
perceive that I am not on the way to that place. So
I may be going away from my chosen goal, although
I am unaware what goal it is that I have chosen."
Such a demented man as this would fairly repre-
sent the meaningless claim of the separate judgment,
either to truthfulness, or to the chance of error.

In short, though the partial thought may be, as
such, unconscious of its own aim, it can be so uncon-
scious only in case it is contained in a total thought
as one moment thereof.

It will be seen that wherever we have dealt in the
previous argument with the possibility of error as a
mere possibility, we have had to use the result of the
previous chapter concerning the nature of possibil-
ity itself. The idea of the barely possible, in which
there is no actuality, is an empty idea. If anything
is possible, then, when we say so, we postulate some-
thing as actually existent in order to constitute this
possibility. The conditions of possible error must

430 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

be actual. Bare possibility is blank nothingness. If
the nature of error necessarily and with perfect gen-
erality demands certain conditions, then these con-
ditions are as eternal as the erroneousness of error
itself is eternal. And thus the inclusive thought,
which constitutes the error, must be postulated as
existent.

So, finally, let one try to affirm that the infinite
content of the all-including mind does not exist, and
that the foregoing idealism is a mere illusion of ours.
He will find that he is involved in a circle from
which there is no escape. For let him return to the
position of total relativity and so say : " The infi-
nite thought is unreal for me, and hence you are
wrong." But then also he admits that we are right,
for in affirming this infinite we affirm, according to
this doctrine of total relativity itself, something that
is just as true as it seems to us to be true. The op-
posing argument is thus at each moment of its prog-
ress involved in a contradiction. Or again, let him
insist that our doctrine is not only relatively, but
really false. Then however he will fail to show us
what this real falsity is. In fact he says what all our
previous examination shows to mean, this, namely,
that an infinite thought does exist, and does expe-
rience the truth, and compares our thought with the
truth, and then observes this thought of ours to be
false, that is, it discovers that itself is non-existent.
Whoever likes this result may hold it if he can.

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 431

IX.

Now that our argument is completed as an inves-
tigation, let us review it in another way. We started
from the fact of Error. That there is error is in-
dubitable. What is, however, an error ? The sub-
stance of our whole reasoning about the nature of
error amounted to the result that in and of itself
alone, no single judgment is or can be an error.
Only as actually included in a higher thought, that
gives to the first its completed object, and compares
it therewith, is the first thought an error. It re-
mains otherwise a mere mental fragment, a torso, a
piece of drift-wood, neither true nor false, objectless,
no complete act of thought at all. But the higher
thought must include the opposed truth, to which
the error is compared in that higher thought. The
higher thought is the whole truth, of which the error
is by itself an incomplete fragment.

Now, as we saw with this as a starting-point, there
is no stopping-place short of an Infinite Thought.
The possibilities of error are infinite. Infinite then
must be the inclusive thought. Here is this stick,
this brickbat, this snow-flake : there is an infinite
mass of error possible about any one of them, and
notice, not merely possible is it, but actual. All the
infinite series of blunders that you could make about
them not only would be blunders, but in very truth
now are blunders, though you personally could never
commit them all. You cannot in fact make, a truth
or a falsehood by your thought. You only find one.
From all eternity that truth was true, that falsehood

432 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

false. Very well then, that infinite thought must
somehow have had all that in it from the beginning.
If a man doubts it, let him answer our previous dif-
ficulties. Let him show us how he can make an
error save through the presence of an actual inclu-
sive thought for which the error always was error
and never became such at all. If he can do that,
let him try. We should willingly accept the result
if he could show it to us. But he cannot. We
have rambled over those barren hills already too
long. Save for Thought there is no truth, no error.
Save for inclusive Thought, there is no truth, no
error, in separate thoughts. Separate thoughts as
such cannot then know or have the distinction be-
tween their own truth and their own falsity in them-
selves, and apart from the inclusive thought. There
is then nothing of truth or of error to be found in
the world of separate thoughts as such. All the
thoughts are therefore in the last analysis actually
true or false, only for the all-including Thought, the
I Infinite.

We could have reached the same result had we
set out from the problem, What is Truth? We
chose not to do so because our skepticism had the
placid answer ready : " No matter what truth is, for
very likely there is little or no truth at all to be had.
Why trouble one's mind to define what a fairy or a
brownie is ? " " Very well, then," we said to our
skepticism, " if that is thy play, we know a move that
thou thinkest not of. We will not ask thee of truth,
if thou thinkest there is none. We will ask thee of
error, wherein thou revelest." And our skepticism

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. ' 433

very cheerfully, if somewhat incoherently, answers,
that, " if there be little or no truth here below, there
is at least any amount of error, which as skeptics we
have all been detecting ever since we first went to
school." " We thank thee for that word, oh friend,
but now, what is an error?" Blessed be Socrates
for that question. Upon that rock philosophy can,
if it wants, build we know not yet how much.

It is enough for the moment to sum up the truth
that we have found. It is this : " All reality must
be present to the Unity of the Infinite Thought."
There is no chance of escape. For all reality is re-
ality because true judgments can be made about it.
And all reality, for the same reason, can be the ob-
ject of false judgments. Therefore, since the false
and the true judgments are all true or false as pres-
ent to the infinite thought, along with their objects,
no reality can escape. You and I and all of us, all
good, all evil, all truth, all falsehood, all things ac-
tual and possible, exist as they exist, and are known
for what they are, in and to the absolute thought ;
are therefore all judged as to their real character at
this everlasting throne of judgment.

This we have found to be true, because we tried
to doubt everything. We shall try to expound in
the coming chapter the religious value of the concep-
tion. We can however at once see this in it : The
Infinite Thought must, knowing all truth, include also
a knowledge of all wills, and of their conflict. For
him all this conflict, and all the other facts of the
moral world, take place. He then must know the
outcome of the conflict, that Moral Insight of our

28

434 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

first book. In him then we have the Judge of our
ideals, and the Judge of our conduct. He must know
the exact value of the Good Will, which for him,
like all other possible truth, must be an actually re-
alized Fact. And so we cannot pause with a simply
theoretical idealism. Our doctrine is practical too.
We have found not only an infinite Seer of physical
facts, but an infinite Seer of the Good as well as of
the Evil. He knows what we have and what we
lack. In looking for goodness we are in no wise
looking for what the real world does not contain.

This, we say, we have found as a truth, because
we tried to doubt everything. We have taken the
wings of the morning, and we have fled ; but be-
hold, we are in the midst of the Spirit. Truly the
words that some people have thought so fantastic
ought henceforth to be put in the text-.books as com-
monplaces of logical analysis : -

I " They reckon ill that leave me out ;
When me they fly, I am the wings,
I am the doubter and the doubt." —

Everything finite we can doubt, but not the Infinite.
(That eludes even our skepticism. The wo»ld-build-
ers, and the theodicies that were to justify them, we
| could well doubt. The apologetic devices wearied
us. All the ontologies of the realistic schools were
just pictures, that we could accept or reject as we
'chose by means of postulates. We tried to escape
them all. We forsook all those gods that were yet

• no gods ; but here we have found something that
abides, and waxes not old, something in which there

/ is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. No

THE POSSIBILITY OF ERROR. 435

power it is to be resisted, no plan-maker to Le foiled
by fallen angels, nothing finite, nothing striving,
seeking, losing, altering, growing weary ; the All-
Enfolder it is, and we know its name. Not Heart,
nor Love, though these also are in it and of it ;
Thought it is, and all things are for Thought, and in
it we live and move.

CHAPTER XII.

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT.

If them betake thyself to the ever-living and abiding Truth, the de-
sertion or death of a friend shall not make thee sad. — Imitation of
Christ.

Cum contra sapiens, quatenus ut talis consideratur, vix animo mo-
vetur, sed sui et Dei et rerum aeterna quadam necessitate conscius,
nunquam esse desinit, sed semper vera animi acquiescentia potitur. —
SPINOZA, Ethica.

WE are in a new world of Divine Life. The dark
world of the powers has passed away from our
thought. Here is the Eternal, for which all these
powers exist, in which they dwell. Here we are in
the presence of the Ideal Judge who knows all Good
and Evil. From the other side the world as we ap-
proached it had seemed so restless, so disheartening,
so deaf. The world of our postulates was a brighter
one only because we determined to make it so. But
there was something lonesome in the thought that
the postulates got, as answer from the real world,
only their own echo, and not always that. Their
world was rather their own creation than an exter-
nal something that gave them independent support.
Sometimes there seemed to be nothing solid that
could echo back anything at all. Now we seem to
look upon a truth that satisfies indeed no selfish
longings of ours, no whims of theological tradition,

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 437

no demands of our personal narrow lives. We shall

not learn in this way who is first in the kingdom of

heaven, nor how the dead are raised, nor any answer

to any other special demand of any set of men. We

\ learn, however, this at least : All truth is known to

\ One Thought, and that Infinite. What does that

imply ? Let us see.

I.

Our argument is somewhat near to the thought
that partially satisfied St. Augustine when he found
it in his Plato. That there should be a truth at all
implies, we have seen, that there should be an Infi-
nite Truth, known to an Infinite Thought ; or, in
other words, that all is for thought, and without
thought is nothing that is. We also are a part of
this infinite thought. We know not yet more of the
nature of this thought, save that it must be eternal,
all-embracing, and One. What then shall we be
able further to say about it?

To answer would be to expound a system of phi-
losophy. But we must limit ourselves here to the
necessary. And so, for the first, we shall try to
point out what this ideal and infinite life of thought
that we have found as the eternal truth of things
cannot be expected to accomplish for the purposes
of our religion, and then to consider what we may
nevertheless dare to hope from it.

It cannot be expected to furnish us an a priori
knowledge of any fact of experience, of any particu-
lar law of nature, of the destiny of any one finite be-
ing. All that remains just as dark as it was before.

438 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

We neither rejoice in this result, nor lament it. No-
body who wanders into the ideal world may expect
to find it ordered for his individual advantage ; nor
need he try to find there good investments for his
money. The Infinite does not wait for his individ-
ual approval ; although morally speaking he may do
well to get the approval of the Infinite. The Infi-
nite was not elected to office by his vote, and he
may not impeach it for disregard of his humble pe-
titions for good things, nor threaten it with want of
confidence because it does not secure passage for his
private bills. In so far as to say this is to condemn
the Real, we unhesitatingly do so. But then, as we
saw in our ethical discussion, the moral insight is not
so much concerned with private bills, as with certain
greater matters. If the moral insight wants relig-
ious support, possibly the failure of all these per-
sonal concerns of ours to find any hint of response
from the Absolute, may not render impossible the
ethical undertakings of the human spirit. If as in-
dividuals we must hear the dreadful words from the
spirit of nature : Du gleichst dem Geist den du
begreifst, nicJit mir ; still it is possible that with a
higher insight, looking upon this same spirit in its
eternal and inmost nature, we may yet come with
full reason at last to say : ErJiabner Geist, du gabst
mir, gabst mir alles, warum ich bat. For there are
demands and demands. Man, as lover, demands suc-
cess in love, and the course of the world may thwart
him ; as toiler, he demands for himself personal im-
mortality, and the course of the world may care
naught for his individual life ; as bereaved, as

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 439

mourner over his dead, he may demand for his loved
ones also this immortality, and the course of the
world may leave the fate of all his loved ones mys-
terious forever ; as lover of mankind, he may de-
mand an infinite future of blessed progress for his
race, and the law of the dissipation of energy may
give him the only discoverable physical answer to
his demand ; as just man, he may cry aloud that evil
shall cease from among men, and the wicked may
still laugh in triumph unpunished. And yet for all
this he may find some higher compensation. Agnos-
tic as he will remain about all the powers of this
world, about the outcome of all finite processes, he
will take comfort in the assurance that an Infinite
Reason is above all and through all, embracing
everything, judging everything, infallible, perfect.
To this Thought he may look up, saying : " Thou
All-Knowing One seest us, what we are, and how we
strive. Thou knowest our frame, and rememberest
that we are as dust. In thy perfection is our Ideal.
That thou art, is enough for our moral comfort.
That thou knowest our evil and our good, that gives
us our support in our little striving for the good.
Not worthless would we be in thy sight ; not of the
vile, the base, the devilish party in the warfare of
this world. Thou that judgest shalt say that we,
even in our poor individual lives, are better than
naught. Thou shalt know that in our weakness and
blindness, in our pain and sorrow, in our little days,
in our dark world, ignorant as to the future, con-
fused with many doubts, beset with endless tempta-
tions, full of dread, of hesitation, of sloth, we yet

~f440 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

sought, such as we were, to be in our own fashion
like thee ; to know the truth as thou knowest it, to
be full of higher life as thou art full, to be above
strife as thou art above it, to be of one Spirit as
thou art One, to be perfect as thou art perfect. This
thou shalt see in us, and this record shall be eternal,
like our knowledge. In thee what we vaguely aim
to conceive is clear light. In thee the peace that we
strive to find is experienced. And when we try to do
right, we know that thou seest both our striving and
our successes and our failures. And herein we have
comfort. We perish, but thou endurest. Ours is
not thy eternity. But in thy eternity we would be
remembered, not as rebels against the good, but as
doers of the good ; not as blots on the face of this
part of thy infinite reality, but as healthy leaves that
flourished for a time on the branches of the eternal
tree of life, and that have fallen, though not into
forgetfulness. For to thee nothing is forgotten."

This thought, of the Judge that never ceases to
think of us and of all things, never changes, never
mistakes, and that knows the Good simply because
that Good is an element of the Truth — perhaps this
can sustain us when all else fails. Nothing but this
may be certain ; but this, if it be not all that some
people have sought, may be a help to us. This Re-
ligion may have no such hot little fires on its altars
i as we at first longed for ; but then it is a very old
objection to the stars to say that they bake us no
bread, and only glitter up there in the dark to be
looked at. Yet even the stars are worth something
to us.

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 441

II.

But if we leave these limitations of our view, and
pass to its positive religious value, our first sense is
one of joy and freedom to find that our long sought
ideal of a perfect unity of life is here attained. Let
us look away for a moment from our finite existence,
with its doubts and its problems, to the conception
of that infinite life. In that life is all truth, fully
present in the unity of one eternal moment. The
world is no mass of separate facts, stuck one to an-
other in an external way, but, for the infinite, each
fact is what it is only by reason of its place in the
infinite unity. The world of life is then what we
desired it to be, an organic total ; and the individ-
ual selves are drops in this ocean of the absolute
truth.

Thus then, seen in the light of this our result,
the human tasks that we sketched in our ethical
discussion find their place in the objective world.
Now, and in fact for the first time, we can see what
we were really trying to accomplish through our
ideal. We were trying in a practical way to real-
ize what we now perceive to be the fullness of the
life of God. So that the one highest activity, in
which all human activities were to join, is known to
us now as the progressive realization by men of the \
eternal life of an Infinite Spirit. So whereas we
formerly had to say to men : Devote yourselves to
art, to science, to the state, or to any like work that
does tend to organize your lives into one life, we
may now substitute one absolute expression for all

442 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

those accidental expressions, and may say : Devote &
yourselves to losing your lives in the divine life.
For all these special aims that we have mentioned
are but means of accomplishing the knowledge of
the fullness of the truth. And Truth is God.

Now this precept is no barren abstraction. It
means to take hold of every act of life, however
humble and simple. " Where art thou, O man ? "
our ideal says to us. " Art thou not in God ? To
whom dost thou speak? With whom dost thou walk?
What life is this in whose midst thou livest ? What
are all these things that thou seemest to touch?
Whose is all this beauty that thou enjoyest in art,
this unity that thou seekest to produce in thy state,
this truth that thou pursuest in thy thought ? All
this is in God and of God. Thou hast never seen,
or heard, or touched, or handled, or loved anything
but God. Know this truth, and thy life must be
transformed to thee in all its significance. Serve
the whole God, not the irrationally separate part
that thy delusions have made thee suppose to be an
independent thing. Live out thy life in its full
meaning ; for behold, it is God's life." *

So, as it seems, the best that we could have wished
from the purely moral side is attained. The Di-
vine Thought it is that actually accomplishes what
we imperfectly sought to attain, when we defined
for ourselves Duty. In the Divine Thought is per-
fectly and finally realized the Moral Insight and the^
Universal Will of our ethical discussion. And this
insight and will are not realized as by some Power,
that then should set about to accomplish their ful-

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 443

fillment externally. But in the infinite, where all is
eternally complete, the insight is both present and
fulfilled ; the universal will gets what it seeks.
There is no lack there, nor hesitation, nor striving,
nor doubt, nor weariness ; but all is eternally per-
fect triumph.

Now this, though it sounds mystical enough to
our untrained common sense, is no mere poetry of
thought. It is the direct philosophical outcome of
what we have found by a purely logical process.
The driest thought, the simplest fragment of ration-
ality, involves this absolute, infinite, and perfect
thought. And this it involves because it involves
the possibility of .error, and because, as separate from
the infinite, this possibility of error in a single thought
becomes unintelligible and contradictory. We did
all that we could to escape this conclusion. We
wandered in the thickets of confusion and contra-
diction, until there was no chance of finding there a
further pathway. And then we turned to see, and
behold, God was in this place, though we had known
it not. The genuine God that we thus found was no
incomplete, struggling God, whom we might pity in
his conflict with evil, but the all-embracing thought,
in which the truth is eternally finished. And this
God it is that we now see as the complete realization ^r
of our own ideal, as of all worthy ideals.

For consider if you will this element in our con-
ception of this Thought. Can this infinite know it-
self as imperfect, or as not possessing some object
that it knows to be good ? This is impossible, and
doubly so. Not only does the conception of an In-

444 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

finite, in which and for which are all things, wholly
exclude the possibility of any good thing beyond
the Infinite itself, but also in still another way does
the same truth appear. For if you suppose that this
infinite thought desires some perfection G, that it
has not, then either it is right in supposing this per-
fection to be truly desirable, or it is wrong. In
either case the previous argument of Chapter XI.
shows us that the truth or the falsity of this judg-
ment of desire about G must exist as known truth
or falsity for a higher thought, which, including the
thought that desires, and itself actually having this
desired good thing, compares the desired object with
the conception of the thought that desires it, and
judges of them both. Above the desire, then, must
in every case exist the satisfaction of the desire in a
higher thought. So that for the Infinite there can
be no unsatisfied desire. Unsatisfied desire exists
only in the finite beings, not in the inclusive Infinite.
The world then, as a whole, is and must be ab-
solutely good, since the infinite thought must know
what is desirable, and knowing it, must have present
in itself the true objects of desire. The existence
of any amount of pain or of other evil, of crime or
of baseness in the world as we see it, is, thus viewed,
no evidence against the absolute goodness of things,
rather a guaranty thereof. For all evil viewed ex-
ternally is just an evidence to us finite beings that
there exists something desirable, which we have not,
and which we just now cannot get. However stub-
born this evil is for us, that has naught to do with
the perfection of the Infinite. For the infinite did

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 445

not make this evil, but the evil, together with the
making of it, which indeed was also in its separate-
ness evil, — all this is a phenomenon for the infinite
thought, which, in knowing this evil, merely knows
the absolute desirableness of that which it also pos-
sesses, namely, the absolutely good.

We have used here an argument that could not be
used in our study of the " World of Doubt." When
we there thought evil to be possible for the world as
a whole, we conceived that a being who knew all the
world would yet desire something better. But what
would this imply ? It implies that this being would
desire a state of things different from the existing
one, and would do so believing that state to be better
than the existing one. But would he truly know
this desired state to be better, or would he only hope
so ? Who truly knows the value of a state save the
one that possesses it ? Knowledge is of the present.
Therefore this being would not really know the bet-
ter state, unless it were already actual for him. But
in that case he would include not only the present
world, but the perfect world, and his total state
could not be one of discontent. So the other alter-
native remains. Our supposed being would only
hope the desired state to be better than what was
real already for him. But would his hope be a true
one ? If so, then it could only be true in case this
perfection is already realized in a higher thought.
For the Infinite then the question, " Is there any-
thing better than what exists ? " must be nonsense.
For him the actual and the possible fall together in
one truth ; and this one truth cannot be evil.

446 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

On another side, our conception gives us religious
support. The imperfection of the purely moral view
lay in part in the fact that there was an inner incom-
pleteness about the very definition of our ideal, as
well as a doubt about its attainability. This inner
incompleteness must however be removed in and for
the Infinite Mind. In dealing with the work of life,
we came to a point where we said, thus far we can
see our way, but beyond that our ideal remains in-
complete. We must have faith, so we implied, that
if we attained so much of the ideal social condi-
tion, the way from that point onward would become
clear. But now we see why the way would of neces-
sity become clear to one whose knowledge of life
were broad enough and deep enough. For in the
Infinite that includes all life, that rests above all
finite strife in the absolute attainment of the ideal,
there can be no incompleteness, no torso of an ideal,
but a perfect knowledge of what is most excellent.
Those faint foreshadowings of a perfect life that art
and science and social work show to us, must be for
the Infinite no faint foreshadowings, but absolute
certainty and perfect clearness. Hence by our re-
ligious doctrine we get not merely the assurance that
such ideals as we have are realized for the Infinite ;
but, better than this, we get our first full assurance
that our incomplete ideals have an actual completion
as ideals. For we thus get our first full assurance
that there is in the highest sense any definite ideal
at all. Pessimism, as we have seen, implies either
doubt about what the ideal state is, or unavoidable
lack of that state. And the Infinite can be no Pes-
simist in either sense.

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 447

The religious comfort that a man can get from
contemplating all this truth is indeed very different
from the consolation of the separate individual as
such that many people want their religion to give
them. And this very fact furnishes us a good test
of moral sincerity. The religious comfort that we
find is no comfort save to the truly religious spirit in
us. It says to us : " You that have declared youf
willingness to serve moral ideals because they are
such, does this help you to know, not of a goodly
place where you personally and individually shall
live without tears forever as a reward for your ser-
vices, but of an eternal Judge that respects in no
whit your person, before whom and in whom you are
quite open and perfectly known, who now and for
all eternity sees your good and your evil, and esti-
mates you with absolute justice ? This blaze of in-
finite light in which you stand, does it cheer you ?
If it does, then you are glad to learn that above all
your struggles there is the eternal Victory, amid all
your doubts there is the eternal Insight, and that
your highest triumph, your highest conception, is
just an atom of the infinite truth that all the time is
there. But if all this is true of you, then you do love
the ideal for its own sake. Then it is not your tri-
umph that you seek, but the triumph of the Highest.
And so it is that you rejoice to learn how this that is
best in the world not only will triumph, but always
has triumphed, since, as you now learn, for God the
highest good is thus a matter of direct experience."

The writer remembers well, how some years since,
while all this doctrine seemed to him shrouded in

448 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

doubt, he heard a very thoughtful and pious friend
maintain that the greatest comfort to be got from a
belief in God is the sense that however much the
world may misjudge us, however much even our best
and closest friends may misunderstand us, there is
one perfect all-knowing Thought that comprehends
us far better than we comprehend ourselves. Good-
ness is, in that thought, estimated at its full worth.
Nothing is hidden from the Judge. And what we
are, He knoweth it altogether. The present view
seems to the author to meet the conditions that his
friend here had in mind. Theism as a doctrine that
there is a big power that fights and beats down
other powers in the service of the good, is open to all
the objections before suggested. This warrior, why
does he not win? This slayer of evil things, this
binder of Satan, who boasts that all things will yet
be put under his feet, — has he not had all eternity
in which to put all things under his feet, and has
he done it yet ? He may be indeed good, but some-
how disaster seems to pursue him. Religious com-
fort in contemplating him you can have if you be-
lieve in him, but always you feel that this comfort is
shadowed by the old doubt ; is he after all what we
want him to be, the victorious ruler of the world ?
But if we leave the eternally doubtful contemplation
of the world as a heap of powers, and come to the
deeper truth of the world as Thought, then these
doubts must disappear.

Yet to show that this is true, we must dwell upon
doubts a little longer, and must compare our present
view of the solution of the problem of evil with the
views condemned in Chap. VIII.

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 449

III.

So far we have come in joyful contemplation of
the Divine Truth. But now is there not a serpent
in this Eden also ? We have been talking of the in-
finite goodness ; but after all, what shall we still say
of that finite " partial evil "of life? We seem to
have somehow proved a priori that it must be " uni-
versal good." For, as we have said, in the Infinite
Life of our ideal there can be no imperfection. This,
we have said, is the demonstration that we missed
all through our study of the world of the Powers.
Since we approached that world from without, and
never felt the pulse of its heart's blood, we had noth-
ing but doubt after doubt when we contemplated the
evil that seemed to be in it. Our efforts to explain
evil seemed hollow and worthless. There might be
some deeper truth involved in these efforts ; but we
knew it not. Well, are we right in declaring that we
have altogether overcome our difficulty now ? Ap-
parently we are as far as ever from seeing how the
partial evil can be the universal good ; we only
show, from the conception of the infinite itself, that
the partial evil must be the universal good. God
must see how ; and we know this because we know
of God. More than this we seem to be unable to
suggest.

But will this do ? Have we not forgotten one ter-

. rible consequence of our doctrine ? The partial evil

is universal good, is it? There is no evil? All

apparent imperfection is an illusion of our partial

view ? So then where is the chance to be in a free

450 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

way and of our own choice better than we otherwise
in truth should be ? Is not the arm that is raised
to strike down wickedness paralyzed by the very
thought that was to give it divine strength ? This
evil that I fight here in this finite world is a delu-
sion. So then, why fight it ? If I do good works,
the world is infinitely good and perfect. If I seem
to do evil works, the world is in truth no worse.
Seeming good is not better than -seeming evil, for if
it were, then the seeming evil would be a real defect
in God, in whose life is everything. If I have never
loved aught but God, even so I have never hated
aught but God. It is all alike. God does not need
just me. Or rather I may say, in so far as he needs
me to complete his infinite truth, he already has me
from all eternity. I have nothing to do with the
business, save to contemplate in dizzy indolence the
whirling misty masses of seeming evil, and to say
with a sort of amused reverence that they look very
ill and opaque to me, but that of course God sees
through them clearly enough somehow. The mist is
in truth crystalline water, and he has so quick a
sense as to look beyond the drops as easily as if they
were in the calm unity of a mountain lake. And
so, my religion is simply a contemplation of God's
wisdom, but otherwise an idle amusement.

So says the man who sees only this superficial
view of our doctrine. In so far as, standing once
more outside of some evil thing, we say : " That
thing yonder looks bad, but God must see it to be
good," we do indeed remain indolent, and our relig-
ion simply means a sort of stoical indifference to the

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 451

apparent distinction of good and evil. This is in
fact the proper practical attitude of even the most
earnest man in the presence of evil that he cannot
understand and cannot affect. In such matters we
must indeed be content with the passive knowledge.
Death and the unavoidable pains of life, the down-
fall of cherished plans, all the cruelty of fate, we
must learn to look at as things to us opaque, but to
God, who knows them fully, somehow clear and ra-
tional. So regarding them, we must aim to get to
the stage of stoical indifference about them. They
are to us the accidents of existence. We have no
business to murmur about them, since we see that
God, experiencing them, somehow must experience
them as elements in an absolutely perfect life. For
God we regard not as the mysterious power who
made them, and who then may have been limited to
the use of imperfect means, but as the absolute
thought that knows them ; so that, however inexpli-
cable they must now be to us, they are in themselves
nothing that God vainly wishes to have otherwise,
but they are organically joined with the rest of the
glorious Whole.

Such is indeed the only present word for us finite
minds about many of the shadows of seeming evil
that we have to behold in the world of the appar-
ently external facts. Such however is not the last
word for us about the only evil that has any imme-
diate moral significance, namely, the evil that we see,
not as an external, shadowy mist, but as a present
fact, experienced in us. Here it is that the objector
just mentioned seems really formidable to us. But

452 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

just here it is that we find the answer to him. For
in the world of our own acts we have a wondrous ex-
perience. We realize evil, we fight it, and, at the
same time, we realize our fragment of the perfect
divine life in the moment itself of struggling with
the evil. And in this wondrous experience lies the
whole solution of the ancient problem of the existence
of moral evil. For instance, I find in myself a self-
ish impulse, trying to destroy the moral insight.
Now of this evil impulse I do not say, looking at it
objectively : " It is somehow a part of the universal
good ; " but, in the moment of moral action I make
it, even in the very moment of its sinfulness, a part
of my good consciousness, in overcoming it. The
moral insight condemns the evil that it experiences ;
and in condemning and conquering this evil it forms
and is, together with the evil, the organic total that
constitutes the good will. Only through this inner
victory over the evil that is experienced as a con-
quered tendency does the good will have its being.
Now since the perfect life of God must have the ab-
solutely good will, therefore it also must be conscious
of such a victory. Thus the solution of our diffi-
culty begins to appear. And thus we reap a new
religious fruit from our ethical doctrine, to whose
main principles we must once more here refer the
reader.

t When I experience the victory of the moral in-
sight over the bad will, I experience in one indivis-
ible moment both the partial evil of the selfish im-
pulse (which in itself as a separate fact would be
wholly bad) and the universal good of the moral

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 453

victory, which has its existence only in the over-
whelming of the evil. So, in the good act, I experi-
ence the good as my evil lost in goodness, as a rebel-
lion against the good conquered in the moment of its
birth, as a peace that arises in the midst of this tri-
umphant conflict, as a satisfaction that lives in this
restless activity of inner warfare. This child of inner
strife is the good, and the only moral good, we know.

What I here have present in me when I do a good
act is an element of God's life. / here directly ex-
perience how the partial moral evil is universal
good ; for so it is a relatively universal good in me
when, overcoming myself, I choose the universal
will. The bad impulse is still in me, but is defeated.
In the choice against evil is the very life of goodness,
which would be a pale, stupid abstraction otherwise.
Even so, to take another view, in the overcoming of
our separateness as individuals lies, as we saw in the
previous book, our sense of the worth of the univer-
sal life. And what we here experience in the single
moment of time, and in the narrowness of our finite
lives, God must experience, and eternally. In our
single good acts we have thus the specimen of the
eternal realization of goodness.

But now how simple becomes the answer to that
terrible suggestion of a moment since ! How simple
also the solution of the problem of evil ! u If I want
to do evil, I cannot," said the objector ; " for God
the perfect one includes me with the rest, and so
cannot in his perfection be hurt by me. Let me do
what I will, my act can only seem bad, and cannot
be bad. All evil is illusion, hence there is no moral
difference in action possible."

454 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

" Eight indeed," we answer, " but also wrong, be-
cause half the truth. The half kills, the whole gives
life. Why canst thou not do any absolute evil ? Be-
cause thy evil intent, which, in its separateness,
would be unmixed evil, thy selfish will, thy struggle
against the moral insight, this evil will of thine is no
lonesome fact in the world, but is an element in the
organic life of God. In him thy evil impulse forms
part of a total good will, as the evil impulse of the
good man forms an element in his realization of
goodness. In God thy separateness is destroyed,
and with it thy sin as evil. For good will in the in-
finite is what the good man finds the good will to be
in himself, namely, the organic total whose truth is
the discovery of the evil. Therefore is God's life
perfect, because it includes not only the knowledge
of thy finite wicked will, but the insight into its truth
as a moment in the real universal will.

If then thou wert good, thou wouldst be good by
including the evil impulse in a realization of its
evil, and in an acceptance of the higher insight. If
thou art evil, then in thyself, as separate being, thou
art condemned, and just because thy separate evil
is condemned, therefore is the total life of God, that
includes thee with thy condemnation and with the
triumph over thee, good.

This is the ground for the solution of the problem.
To go more into detail : Evil is for us of two classes :
the external seeming evil, such as death, pain, or
weakness of character; and internal evil, namely the
bad will itself. Because we know so little, there-
fore we can never tell whether those externally seen

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 455

seeming evils are blessings in disguise, or expressions
of some wicked diabolical will-power at work about
us. Somehow then, we never know exactly how,
these seeming great evils must be in God universal
good. But with regard to the only evil that we know
as an inward experience, and so as a certain reality,
namely, the Evil Will, we know both the existence of
that, and its true relation to universal goodness, be-
cause and only because we experience both of them
first through the moral insight, and then in the good
act. Goodness having its very life in the insight
and in its exercise, has as its elements the evil im-
pulse and its correction. The evil will as such may
either be conquered in our personal experience, and
then we are ourselves good ; or it may be conquered
dot in our thought considered as a separate thought,
but in the total thought to which ours is so related,
as our single evil and good thoughts are related to
the whole of us. The wicked man is no example of
God's delight in wickedness, just as the evil impulse
that is an element in the good man's goodness, and
a very real element too, is no proof that the good
man delights in evil. As the evil impulse is to the
good man, so is the evil will of the wicked man to
the life of God, in which he is an element. And
just because the evil will is the only evil that we are
sure of, this explanation is enough.

Thus the distinction between good and evil re-
mains as clear as ever. Our difficulty about the
matter is removed, not by any barren external the-
odicy, such as were the forms of guess-work that we
criticised in a previous chapter, but by a plain reflec-

456 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

tion on the moral experience itself. Goodness as a
moral experience is for us the overcoming of experi-
enced evil ; and in the eternal life of God the reali-
zation of goodness must have the same sort of or-
ganic relation to evil as it has in us. Goodness is
not mere innocence, but realized insight. To the
wicked man we say : God is good because in think-
ing thee he damns thy evil impulse and overwhelms
it in a higher thought of which thou art a part. And
in so far as thy will is truly evil, thou art in God
just as the evil is in the good man ; thou art known
only to be condemned and overcome. That is thy
blessed mission ; and this mission of evil such as
thine is indeed an eternal one. So that both things
are true. The world is wholly good, and thou, such
as thou individually art, mayest be damnably evil if
so thou desirest.

We do not say then that evil must exist to set the
good off by way of external contrast. That view we
long since justly rejected. We say only that the
evil will is a conquered element in the good will, and
is as such necessary to goodness. Our conception of
the absolute unity of God's life, and that conception
alone, enables us to apply this thought here. No
form of dualistic Theism has any chance to apply
this, the only satisfactory theodicy. If God were
conceived as external to his creatures, as a power
that made them beyond himself, the hopeless prob-
lems and the unworthy subterfuges of the older the-
odicies would come back to torment us. As it is,
the solution of the problem of evil is given us in the
directest and yet in the most unexpected way.

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 457

Let us compare this solution with others. Evil,
said one thought, before expounded, is an illusion of
the partial view, as the shapelessness of the frag-
ment of a statue is no disproof of the real beauty of
the whole. We replied in a previous chapter to this
notion, by saying that evil seems so positive an ele-
ment in the world as to make very hard this concep-
tion of the partial evil as good universally in the
aesthetic sense in which shapelessness of parts may
coexist with a total beauty of the statue. For the
fragment of the statue is merely an indifferent bit of
stone without character. But the evil in the world
seems in positive crying opposition to all goodness.
Yet now, in the moral experience, we have found a
wholly different relation of evil part to good whole.
JMjLgood act is good just because of the evil that
exists in it as conquered element. Without the evil
moment actual in it, the total act could be at best
innocent, not good. It is good by reason of its
structure. That structure includes the evil will, but
so includes it that the whole act is good. Even so,
as we declare, God's life includes, in the organic
total of one conscious eternal instant, all life, and
so all goodness and evil. To say that God is never-
theless perfectly good is to say, not that God is
innocent, knowing of no evil whatever, and includ-
ing none ; but that he so includes the evil will in
the structure of his good will, as the good man, in
one indivisible moment, includes his evil will in his
good will ; and that God is good only because he
does so.

Again, to pass to another explanation, it has been

458 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

said that evil exists in the world as a means to good-
ness. We objected to this that it puts the evil and
the good first in separate beings, in separate acts or
moments, and then makes the attainment of the good
result dependent on the prior attainment of the sep-
arate and independently present evil. Now all that
explanation could only explain and justify the acts
of a finite Power, which, not yet possessing a given
good thing, seeks it through the mediation of some
evil. In no wise can this explanation apply to God
as infinite. He is no finite Power, nor does he make
or get things external to himself. Hence he cannot
be said to use means for the attainment of ends.
But our explanation does not make evil a means to
get the separate end, goodness. We say that the con-
nection is one of organic part with organic whole ;
that goodness has its life only in the instant of the
discovery and inner overcoming of the evil will ; and
that therefore any life is good in which the evil will
is present only as overcome, and so as lost in the
good will. We appeal to the moral experience to il-
lustrate how, when we do good, the evil will is pres-
ent as a real fact in us, which yet does not make us
as a whole bad, but just because it is present as an
overcome element, is, even for that very reason, nec-
essary to make us good. And we go on to say that
even so in God the evil will of all who sin is pres-
ent, a real fact in the Divine Life, no illusion in so
far as one sees that it exists in God and nowhere
else, but for that very reason an element, and a nec-
essary element, in the total goodness of the Univer-
sal Will, which, realized in God, is related to the

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 459

wills of the sinners as the wills of the good men are
related to their evil impulses.

The explanation that evil is needed to contrast
with goodness has already been mentioned.

Evil therefore, as a supposed real fact, separate
from goodness, and a totally independent entity, is
and must be an illusion. The objections to this
view that we previously urged in Chapter VIII. were
all applicable to the world of powers, which we
viewed and had to view externally. God's life,
viewed internally, as philosophy must view it, is not
subject to these criticisms. And the moral experi-
ence has taught us how we are to explain the exist-
ence of the only partial evil that we clearly know to
be even a partial evil, namely, the evil will. The ex-
planation is that the good act has its existence and
life in the transcending of experienced present evil.
This evil must not be an external evil, beyond the
good will, but must be experienced in the same indi-
visible moment in which it is transcended. That
this wondrous union is possible, we simply find as
fact in the moral experience. No genuine moral good-
ness is possible save in the midst of such inner war-
fare. The absence of the evil impulse leaves naught
but innocence or instinct, morally insipid and color-
less. Goodness is this organism of struggling ele-
ments. Now, as we declare, in the infinite and united
thought of God this unity of goodness is eternally
present. God's life is this infinite rest, not apart
from but in the endless strife, as in substance Hera-
clitus so well and originally taught.

460 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

IV.

The problem of the existence of evil thus treated
as our limits allow, we must return to a study of the
visible world. That we formerly refused to find re-
ligious comfort in that world, depended upon our
previous manner of approaching it. It was, so
approached, the world of doubt; but now it may
prove no longer disheartening, so that we may be
able to get in it a concrete hold of useful truth. We
must briefly sketch the process of return. Our Infi-
nite, once known, is known not as an abstraction,
but as an immediately actual object of knowledge.
His then is this visible world ; and, knowing the
fact, we return cheerfully and courageously among
the facts that before seemed dead externalities, to
find his truth in them. For our general belief in the
infinite rationality of things is useless to supersede
any jot or tittle of careful scientific study of the com-
mon world of experience. Be this aspect of the mat-
ter well understood. Some older forms of idealism
have looked coldly on experience. Ours does not.
To us, if you want to realize your ideal you must
know the means, you must study applied ethics as
well as the ideal itself ; and only from science, from
hard, dry, careful collection and collaboration of
facts, from cautious generalizations, from endless ex-
periments, observations, calculations, can mankind
hope to learn the means of realizing their ideals.^
Yet more, only from exact science can you get the
best concrete examples of that unity of conception, f
that mastery of complex details, that exhaustive per-

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 461

faction of insight, that we must attribute in an infi-
nitely complete form to our all - embracing Ideal
Thought, now that we have got it before us as our
Ideal. That all facts and relations of facts should
appear in one moment of insight to the all-knowing
thought is our postulate, and, as we have shown, it is
no mere postulate, but a necessary and absolute prin-
ciple of philosophy. We must go to exact science to
find illustrations of how all this can be in particular
cases realized. As the equation of a curve expresses
in one thought all the properties of the curve, as the
law of a physical process includes all the cases of
that process under any of the supposed conditions,
as a function of a variable may be the sum of a long
series of quantities, each one of which is a derived
function of the first multiplied by a particular coeffi-
cient, so that the one function is the united expres-
sion of the numerous separate functions : even in
such wise must the Infinite thought comprehend in
some supreme highest unity all the facts and rela-
tions of facts that are in the world of truth. For
us then the highest achievements of science are the
dim shadow of the perfection of the infinite thought.
And to science, accordingly, we must go, not for the
invention, but for the intellectual illustration of our
ideal. And science we must treat as absolute mis- *
tress of her own domain. Of the world as a whole,
of the eternal as such, of infinite past time, of the
inner truth of things, science pretends to tell and
can tell nothing. Nor does science invent, nor yet
can she prove, her own postulates, as we previously
defined them. But in the application of her postu-

462 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

lates to the facts, in the discovery of particular laws,
science is almighty. To doubt her capacity as high-
est judge in this field is flagrant contempt of court.
Science is just the Infinite Thought as far as it is
yet by us realized in the facts of nature. A priori
we can realize nothing about finite facts, save that
they must be capable of rational comprehension.
We know that the Infinite thinks them, and this is
all that we know about them. What they are, ex-
perience must tell us.

Such then are some of the restrictions imposed
upon our thought. We must now consider more
carefully how we must treat the scientific postulates
that were our only comfort in studying reality before
we reached our present insight.

When we postulated that the world must in the
best sense satisfy our fundamental intellectual needs,
we assumed what is necessary for science, but what
science itself does not satisfactorily explain. Have
we now reached any foundation for this theoretical
postulate ? We have in fact reached one. The pos-
tulate of science amounts to this, that the real con-
nections among facts must be such as would be ra-
tionally comprehensible if they were known. But
we have found in fact that all facts not only must
be rationally comprehensible, but are rationally com-
prehended, in and by the one Divine Mind. The
postulate of science expresses therefore in part and
as a mere assumption, what we now know as a whole,
and as a result of demonstration. The unity of the
Divine Thought implies that all facts, if we knew
them well enough, would appear rationally interde-

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 463

pendent, reducible to unity, a total of realities ex-
pressible as one truth. Just as in the one concept of
the nature of number is implied all the infinite series
of properties that a complete Theory of Numbers
would develop, so in the one concept of the universe,
which constitutes the Divine Mind, all the facts of
all possible experience are comprehended and are re-
duced to perfect unity. There must be then in fact a
universal formula. What this formula is we do not
see, and just because we do not see it, we have to
look here and there in experience for any traces of
the unity and rational connection of facts. Nor can
we ever be sure that a connection surmised by us is
the really rational connection of things. A law dis-
covered by us is only our attempt to imitate the Di-
vine Thought. Our attempt may in a given case
fail; our induction may be mistaken. But the
foundation of our inductive processes is the thought
that, since the real world is a perfectly rational and
united body of truth, that hypothesis which reduces
to relatively rational unity the greatest number of
facts is more apt to represent the truth of things
than any hypothesis of less scope, and of less rational
significance. Just because this natural dualism with
which we set out is a blunder, just because in fact
the world is not rent in twain by our arbitrary dis-
tinction of object and subject, but is in deepest truth
one united world, a single thought ; therefore it is
that when we consider those facts which we have
from moment to moment to regard as external, we
can be assured that there is a certain and not an
arbitrary basis for our views about them. The vis-

464 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

ible world becomes again hard reality, which we ex-
perience and try to comprehend, just because we
know that in itself this world is once for all compre-
hended.

Practically then, in dealing with the world of con-
crete facts, we must be realistic. It is our duty, for
humanity's sake, to study and to believe in this ex-
ternal world, to have faith in the great postulates of
common sense, to use all the things of the world.
But the basis of this faith common sense can never
find. And we have found it in the Absolute.

V.

Have we then discovered that something of infi-
nite religious worth of which we went in quest ? Or
can we say that our life is in vain in such a world ?
Truly our religious longing has met with a genuine
response, but it was not such a response as we at
first expected, nor such as most systems appear to
desire. Personal needs and hopes apart, most men
who make systems to satisfy the impersonal religious
longing, seek to prove that the world as a whole
progresses towards goodness, so that, in the great
consummation of this progress, evil shall certainly
and finally disappear, leaving the world as innocent
and insipid as in the days of Eden. Now we have
found a thought that makes this concept of progress
not only wholly inapplicable to the world of the in-
finite life, but wholly superfluous. If, as we insisted
above, moral goodness is not the absence, but the or-
ganic subordination, of the evil will, its overthrow in

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 465

the good will, in which it is still actually present
as subdued, then, whenever the world contains any
moral goodness, it also, and for that very reason,
contains, in its organic unity, moral evil. The
world is morally good in spite of the evil will, and
yet because of the evil will, since, as every moral ex-
perience shows us, the good will is just this trium-
phant rest in strife above the evil will. Therefore
we have no sympathy with those who expect the fu-
ture " salvation " of the world as a whole in time
through any all - pervading process. The only de-
struction of moral evil that ever takes place or can
take place is the transcendence of the evil will by
the good will in the very moment of the life of the
evil will. If moral evil were to be, as the older
systems often expect, absolutely destroyed, and the
world so freed therefrom that the evil will was totally
forgotten, then what remained would be no moral
good any more, only the laziness of an infinitely va-
cant life. Not indeed to set off the good by any ex-
ternal contrast, but to constitute a moment in the or-
ganic unity of the good act, is this evil in the world.
And the whole vast trouble about understanding its
presence arises because we usually separate it from
the very unity with goodness in which we find it
whenever we consciously do right ourselves. Then
when so separated, as we separated it in a former
chapter, moral evil, viewed as an external opaque
fact, is inexplicable, disheartening, horrible. Only
when we do right ourselves do we practically get the
solution of the problem. Only the moral man knows
how and why evil exists. For in him the evil will

30

466 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

is an essential element of his goodness. The conflicts
of morality are and must be eternal.

Our present explanation of evil in the world is,
we have seen, the only one that can both give us
the absolute religious comfort, and save us from the
terrible moral paralysis involved in destroying, for
the Infinite, the distinction between good and evil.
The moral experience itself contains the miracle of
this solution in the simplest and clearest shape.
And it relieves us of any need to long for an abso-
lute peace. For in it the distinction of good and
evil is the sharpest, the significance of the strife is
the most vivid, at the very instant when, in the strife,
the evil will, present and real still, is yet conquered
by the good will, and so lost in the universal good-
ness of the total good act. The distinction of good
will and evil will becomes thus the greatest possible ;
and yet only through the reality of this distinction in
the unity of the moral life is goodness present and
triumphant. Progress in this world as a whole is
therefore simply not needed. The good is eternally
gained even in and through the evil. How far the
actual process of evolution may in our part of the
universe extend is a matter for empirical science.

But our own ideal of human life as a " progres-
sive realization of the good," — what of that ? The
answer is obvious. The good will that is in us as a
temporal fact, not being yet fully realized or trium-
phant in us as we are in ourselves as mere finite be-
ings, must aim at complete expression of itself in
time and in us, and through us in those whom we
seem to influence. For oulyJ/n_$Q~-#eekiny to per-

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 467

feet us in whom it exists, is this good will in us good
at all. In so far as we, viewed abstractly, in our
separateness from God, are good, we then do indeed
try to realize that life of God in which we are all
the time an element. For us this is progress. This
progress is the form taken temporarily in us by the
good will. But for God this is no real progress.
Therefore is it indeed true that the moral insight in
us must lead us to aim at progress in goodness, just
as, on the other side, the rational element in us leads
us to aim at progress in knowledge. But, meanwhile,
our moral progress and our rational progress, mere
minor facts happening at a moment of time, are but
insignificant elements in the infinite life in which, as
a whole, there is and can^ be no progress, but only
an infinite variety of the forms of the good will and
of the higher knowledge.

And so consciousness has given us in concrete
form solutions of our two deepest philosophic prob-
lems. The possibility of error, necessitating an in-
clusive thought, is illustrated for us by our own con-
scious thought, which can include true and false ele-
ments in the unity of one clear and true thought at
any moment. And the possibility and necessity of
moral evil, demanding a real distinction between
good and evil, a hateful opposition that seems at first
sight fatal to our religious need for the supremacy
of goodness in the united world, is illustrated for us
in a way that solves this whole trouble, namely, in
the unity of the conscious moral act. There at the
one moment are good and evil, warring, implacable,
yet united in the present momentary triumph of the

468 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

good will. A world in which this strife, this vic-
tory, this absolute rest above the real strife and in
the midst of the real strife, is the supreme fact, is
the perfect world that religion needs. It is a world
of the true Life of God.

VI.

And our insight appeals not only to our general
religious needs. It comes with its truth home to the
individual man. It demands that we consider what
our individual life is really worth when it is lived in
the presence of this Infinite Judge. O man, what
is this thy daily life ! Thou livest for the applause
or in fear of the blame of thy neighbors. An unkind
word cuts thee to the quick. A little public favor,
or the approving word of a friend, is worth half thy
soul to thee. And all the while thou knowest not
that One infinitely greater than multitudes of neigh-
bors is here, not above thee only, nor afar in the
heavens, but pervading thy every thought. And that
all-pervading Thought judges thee as these neigh-
bors never can. Myriads of their blunders about
thee are as nothing to an atom of this infinite Truth.
That rain-drop yonder in the sunshine is not more
filled with the light, than are all the most hidden re-
cesses of thy heart filled with that Infinite Presence.
No one of us is more famous than his neighbor ; for
no one is known save by God, and to him all alike
are known. To be sure, to know this is the same
as understanding rightly, that thou art in truth what
thou art. All truth is truth because it is known by

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 469

a conscious Thought : therefore whatsoever thou art,
whether it is consciously or unconsciously existent in
thee, is known to the all-seeing Universal Conscious-
ness. But commonplace as this seems to the philos-
opher, is it not more than a mere commonplace to
thee, if thou lovest genuine righteousness ? For is it
not something to feel that thy life is, all of it, in
God and for God ? No one else knows thee. Alone
thou wanderest in a dead world, save for this Pres-
ence. These other men, how can they know thee ?
They love thee or scorn thee or hate thee, but none
of them love or scorn or hate thee for what thou art.
Whatever they hold of thee, it is an accident. If
they knew more of thee, doubtless they would think
otherwise of thee. Do they love thee ? Then they
know thee not well enough, nor do they see thy
meanness and thy vileness, thy selfishness and thy
jealousy and thy malice. If they saw these, surely
they would hate thee. But do they hate thee ?
Then thou callest them unjust. Doubtless they are
so. Some chance word of thine, a careless look or
gesture, an accident of fortune, a trifling fault, these
they have remembered ; and therefore do they hate
thee. If they knew better things of thee, perhaps
they would love thee.

Thus contradictory is thy life with them. And yet
thou must labor that the good may triumph near
thee by thy effort. Now in all this work who shall
be thy true friend ? Whose appr^v^l shall ^tip.nnr.
age thee ? Thy neighbor's ? Nay, but it is thy duty
always to suspect thy neighbor's opinion of thee.
He is a corrupt judge, or at best an ignorant judge.

470 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

He sees not thy heart. He is a respecter of persons.
He is too often a bundle of whims. If he also pro-
fesses to be trying to serve righteousness, it is thy
duty to have ready faith in his good intent, if that
be possible for thee ; but by all means doubt his
wisdom about thee, and thine about him. If he
praises thee for thy righteousness, listen not willingly
to his praise. It will deceive thee. He will most
praise thee when thou inwardly art not righteous.
If he blames thee for evil, let it warn thee ; for if
he is not right now, he doubtless soon will be. But
take it not too much to heart. He is ignorant of
thee. He talks of thee as he might talk of the other
side of the moon, unless indeed he talks of thee just
as man in general, and not as to thy particular acts.
Trust him not in all these things. Realize his needs
as thou canst, strive to aid hint in being righteous,
use him as an instrument for the extension of good-
ness ; but trust not his judgment of thee. Who
then is, as the true judge of thy worth, thy only per-
fect friend ?

The Divine Thought. There is the opinion of
thee to which thou canst look up. To be sure it is
revealed to thee only in thy consciousness of what
righteousness is and of what truth is. Nowhere else
hast thou a guide that can do more for thee than to
help to quicken thy insight. But, then, thy relig-
ious comfort is to be, not that the moral law is thun-
dered down from mountain - tops as if some vast
town-crier were talking, but that when thou seekest
to do right, the Infinite all-seeing One knows and
approves thee. If thou lovest righteousness for its

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 471

own sake, then this will comfort thee. If not, if
thou seekest sugar-plums, seek them not in the home
of the Infinite. Go among thy fellow-men and be a
successful hypocrite and charlatan, and thou shalt
have gaping and wonderment and sugar - plums
enough.

Herein then lies the invitation of the Infinite to
us, that it is, and that it knows us. No deeper sanc-
tion is there for true righteousness than this knowl-
edge that one is serving the Eternal. Yet when we
say all this, are we simply doing that which we spoke
of in the opening chapter of this work ? Are we
but offering snow to appease the religious hunger ?
Is this doctrine too cold, too abstract, too far-off ?
Cold and abstract and far-off is indeed the proof of
it. But that was philosophy. That was not the re-
ligious aspect of our doctrine, but only the prepara-
tion for showing the religious aspect of philosophy.
Is the doctrine itself, however, once gained, so re-
mote from the natural religious emotion ? What
does a man want when he looks to the world for re^
ligious support ? Does he want such applause as\
blind crowds give men, such flattery as designing!
people shower upon them, such sympathy as even the
cherished but prejudiced ]ove of one's nearest friends
pours out for him ? Nay, if he seeks merely this,
is he quite unselfishly righteous ? Can he not get
all that if he wants it, wholly apart from religion ?
And if he looks for reward, can he not get that also
otherwise ? But what his true devotion to the moral
law ardently desires is not to be alone. Approval!
for what really deserves approval he needs, approval

472 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

from one who truly knows him. Well, our doctrine
says that he gets it. Just as deep, as full, as rich, '
as true approval as expresses the full worth of his (
act, — this he has for all eternity from the Infinite.
To feed upon that truth is to eat something better j
than snow, but as pure as the driven snow. To love \
that truth is to love God.

We spoke in the former book of the boundless
magnitude of human life as it impresses itself upon
one who first gains the moral insight. To many
this first devotion to human life seems itself enough
for a religion. But then one goes beyond this point,
and says that human life has, after all, very much
that is base and petty in it. Here is not the ideal.
" Would that there were a higher life ! To that we
would devote ourselves. We will serve humanity,
but how can we worship it?" Such is the thought
of many an ardent soul that seeks no personal re-
wards in serving the good, but that does seek some
great Eeality that shall surely be worthy of service.
To such, our religious insight points out this higher
reality. You that have been willing to devote your-
selves to humanity, here is a Life greater in infinite
degree than humanity. And now is it not a help to
know that truly to serve humanity is just the same
as to serve this Infinite ? For whatever had seemed
disheartening in the baseness and weakness of man
loses its discouraging darkness now that all is trans-
figured in this Infinite light.

Let us then be encouraged in our work by this
great Truth. But let us not spend too much time
in merely contemplating this Truth. We, whose

THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT. 473

lives are to be lived injpl, — it is not good that we
should brood over even an infinite Thought. For in
our finite minds it will soon become petty, unless we
realize it chiefly through our acts. Let us then go
about our business. For every man has business;
and desire, such as they are.

As we turn away then for the time from our con-
templation, we have one last word yet as to these
practical consequences of our view. If the reader
follows us at all in our argument, we want him also
to follow us into the practical application of it to
life. To work for the extension of the moral insight
is, we have said, the chief present duty of man in so-
ciety. All else is preparation for this work, or else
is an anticipation of the higher stage when, if we
ever grow up to that level, we shall have our further
work to do in the light of the insight itself. But
this chief present work of ours, this extension of the
moral insight, is best furthered by devotion to our
individual vocations, coupled with strict loyalty to
the relations upon which society is founded. The
work thus set before us demands the sacrifice of
many ideal emotional experiences to the service of
the Highest. Our comfort however in it all must be
that the Highest is there above us, forget it as we
may. If the reader accepts all this, then with us
he has the assurance that, whatever becomes of the
old creeds in the present religious crisis, the founda-
tions of genuinely religious faith are sure.

Whenever we must pause again in our work for
religious support, and whenever we are worn out
with the jargon of the schools, we can rest once

474 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

more for a time in this contemplation of the Eternal
Truth. Hie breve plangitur. But not so is it in
God's life. Our problems may be hard, but there
all is solved. Our lives may be poor and contempt-
ible, but there all is wealth and fullness of worth.
Our efforts may often prove vain, but there naught
exists that is vanity. For the imperfection of the
finite is but the fragment of the Infinite Whole
where there is no true imperfection. Is it not a Re-
ligion to feel this ? And we shall then turn from
such a contemplation once again as we do now, to
look with fresher courage at this boundless, tossing
sea of human life about us. This is not itself the
Divine, but over it all God's winds are blowing.
And to our eyes it is boundless. Let us go down
into this great sea and toil, fearing no storm, but
seeking to find there treasures that shall be copies,
however faint, of that which is Eternal.

EPILOGUE.

YET some reader, to whom, as to the author, phil-
osophic questions are directly matters of vocation,
may possibly linger. To him are due one or two
statements more, to set at rest certain of his doubts
about our meaning. Perhaps he will ask the very
natural, yet, after all, not very fruitful, question,
" Is the foregoing theory of things Theism or Pan-
theism? Has it been your purpose to defend the
essential portions of the older Theistic doctrines, or
to alter them in favor of some newer faith ? " This
question expresses a difficulty that some plain people\
must feel when they read, not merely this book, but(
also many recent discussions. There are writers who
have undertaken to defend Theism, and who have ac-
tually in all sincerity argued for the necessity of the
Universal Thought. The plain people have reason
to suspect such of trying to substitute for the " God
of our Fathers" something else, to be called by the
same name, and so to be passed off for the same
thing. We therefore answer very plainly that we
desire to do nothing of the sort. If in the foregoing
we have on occasion used the word God, no reader
is obliged to suppose that our idea agrees with his
idea, for we have fully explained what our idea
means. We repeat : As my thought at any time,
and however engaged, combines several fragmentary

476 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

thoughts into the unity of one conscious moment, so,
we affirm, does the Universal Thought combine the
thoughts of all of us into an absolute unity of
thought, together with all the objects and all the
thoughts about these objects that are, or have been,
or will be, or can be, in the Universe. This Uni-
versal Thought is what we have ventured, for the
sake of convenience, to call God. It is not the God
of very much of the traditional theology. It is the
/God of the idealistic tradition from Plato down-
| wards. Our proof for it is wholly different from
those baseless figments of the apologetic books, the
design - argument, and the general argument from
causality. Since Kant, those arguments must be
abandoned by all critical philosophers, and we have
indicated something of their weakness. They have
been aptly compared to mediaeval artillery on a
modern battle-field. We accept the comparison.
Kant gave to modern philosophy new instruments,
and these it is our duty to apply as we can to the
old questions that the whole history of thought has
been trying to understand. Our special proof for
the existence of an Universal Thought has been
based, in the foregoing, upon an analysis of the na-
ture of truth and error as necessary conceptions. We
do not regard the Universal Thought as in any com-
monly recognized sense a Creator. A creator would
be finite, and his existence would have to be learned
from experience. The Universal Thought is infinite,
and its existence is proved independently of experi-
ence. For the rest, we have insisted that experience
furnishes no evidence of single creative powers that

EPILOGUE. 477

are at once unlimited and good. We have however
shown how all the Powers that be exist as necessary-
facts in the Infinite Thought, and how, apart from
this thought, nothing is that is. Such is our concep-
tion. It is no new one in philosophy. We have tried
with no small labor, and after teflious doubting, to
make it our own. We have independently given
our own reasons for it. And we have asserted that
here is an object of infinite religious worth.

And now we must add that we are quite indiffer-i
ent whether anybody calls all this Theism or Pan-]
theism. It differs from the commoner traditional
forms of both. Both usually consider God as a
Power, and either leave him off on one side to push
things occasionally, or to set them going at the out-
set, or else identify him with his products. The for-
mer way of conceiving God is never more than half-
philosophic. The latter way is apt to degenerate
into wholly poetical rhapsodies. We take neither
of these ways. For us Causation is a very subordi-
nate idea in philosophy. It expresses only one form
of the rational unity of things, and that an imper-
fect form. The world of the Powers is not yet an
universe. Thought must be truer than Power, com-
prehending all the Powers, and much more besides,
in its infinite unity. God as Power would be noth-
ing, or finite. God as Thought can be and is all in
all. And if this is philosophy, traditional Theism
can do what it wishes to do about the matter.

In short, the present doctrine is the doctrine that
in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. So far, said St.

478 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Augustine, Plato had gone. So far we have gone.
Beyond that, said St. Augustine, the truth was not
revealed to human wisdom, but only to humble faith.
Beyond that, with the rational consequences that we
have been able to draw from it in the foregoing, we
are frankly agnostic. If any man knows more about
the Powers in the world than science has found out
by patient examination of the facts, let him rejoice
in his knowledge. We are not in possession of such
knowledge. We believe in the Conservation of the
physical forces, in the Law of Evolution as it is at
present and for a limited past time found to express
the facts of nature, and in the fact of the Dissipation
of Energy. All this we believe as the scientifically
probable view, and we do so on the authority of cer-
tain students of physical science, who, having exam-
ined the facts, seem to agree upon so much as capa-
ble of popular exposition. We believe in such other
results of science as are known to us. But beyond
this nothing as to the Powers in the world is clear to
us. We know nothing about individual immortal-
ity, nothing about any endless future progress of our
species, nothing about the certainty that what men
call from without goodness must empirically triumph
just here in this little world about us. All that is
dark. We know only that the highest Truth is al-
ready attained from all eternity in the Infinite
Thought, and that in and for that Thought the vic-
tory that overcometh the world is once for all won.
Whatever happens to our poor selves, we know that
the Whole is perfect. And this knowledge gives
us peace. We know that our moral Vindicator liv-

EPILOGUE. 479

eth, and that in his sight all the good that we do is
not labor lost.

Yet the purpose of these chapters is not to give
at any point a mere negation, even when we speak
of the traditional theology. We do not want to ex-
aggerate our quarrel with anybody. If thinkers who
accept some traditional form of theology find truth
or help in our doctrine, we shall be glad. After
all, the religious interest wants, not so much this or
that view about some man's special creed, but a
foundation for the faith that somehow righteousness
is in deepest truth triumphant in the world. If there
is no proof, then, as we said in Chapter IX., we must
resort to the Postulates. If we can get proof, so
much the better.

Thus, however, we have suggested to ourselves an-
other question. These Postulates of Chapter IX.,
what has become of them now ? Are they wholly
lost in our insight ? No indeed. They remain just
what they were, rational forms of our activity, not
perfect in their rationality, but constantly valuable
to us in our work. The scientific postulates are not
superseded, but rather only strengthened, by the
insight into the ultimate rationality of things. They
become now the assurance that there must be a ra-
tional solution to every scientific problem, and that
the simplest solution, being the most rational, is the
most probable, in case it is actually adequate to all
the facts. Just as before, it remains true of us
finite beings that our finite external world is at each
instant the product of our activity, working with the
postulates, upon the material of our sensations. And

480 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

that activity remains as before the proper object of a
moral judgment. Only now we see that the highest
form of our activity is likely to be the one most con-
forming to the truth. What remains true of the
scientific postulates, remains true of the religious
postulates. They are not superseded. For what they
can still do for us is to insist that our idea of the In-
finite shall not remain a cold, barren abstraction,
but that we shall appeal to our experience for evi-
dence of what is truly highest and best, and that we
shall then say : " The highest conceptions that I get
from experience of what goodness and beauty are,
the noblest life that I can imagine, the completest
blessedness that I can think of, all these things are
but faint suggestions of a truth that is infinitely re-
alized in the Divine, that knows all truth. What-
ever perfection there is suggested in these things,
that He must fully know and experience." There-
fore the religious postulates can accompany us every-
where, making all our experience appear to us as an
ever-fresh lesson concerning the mind of God.

The postulates, then, we retain, with the insight.
We abandon, however, the use of these postulates
to demonstrate further special articles of faith as
to supernatural powers or events of any sort. We
know of no miracle save the Infinite himself. And
so we have no interest in many of the forms of pop-
ular idealism. To prove that this world is the home
of a Spiritual Life, many good people have been and
are concerned to prove that certain phenomena which
we see about us are in and of themselves direct evi-
dences of the spiritual nature of things. To such

EPILOGUE. 481

persons a Spirit that is not constantly producing
noteworthy effects, and so getting himself into the
newspapers, would seem unreal. Therefore, to such
persons Religious Idealism depends for its life and
warmth upon the vividness and the impressiveness
of these phenomenal indications of the action of the
great Spirit. Such persons, if they have given up
traditional superstitions, still find their delight in
dwelling on the mystery of " vital force," on the oc-
currence of all sorts of wonderful things, on the the-
ories of occult powers, or of ethereal essences. To
them one of the best evidences of the spiritual na-
ture of things is the inability of the biologist to
tell us under what conditions life could be produced
from dead matter. The mysterious nature of ner-
vous action, the influence of the mind upon the
body, and, above all, the occurrence of certain
strange emotional experiences in us, such as the vis-
ions of mystics, these are to them the main proof
that the world is divine and is full of spiritual life.
We do not sympathize with this method of idealism.
We respect its good intentions, but we are unwilling
to look upon it as rationally significant. For us it
makes absolutely no difference in our faith about
the ultimate spiritual nature of things, whether the
world that we see makes our hair stand on end or
not, or whether the biologists ever come to succeed
in making living matter or not. That we can make
a fire, does not prove the world less divine. Nor
would the truth of things be less spiritual, if we
could also manufacture not only protoplasm, but
whole whales or Shakespeares in our laboratories.

31

482 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

If we could do so, materialism as a philosophical
doctrine would remain just as absurd as it now is.
Genuine idealism, like the foregoing, is utterly care-
less whether this or that particular surprising thing
appears in the phenomenal world, since it once for
all knows that the Whole is divine, an eternal sur-
prise. It seeks no confirmation from the laborato-
ries ; but only for illustrations of rationality ; nor
for its own part does it venture to dictate to the
special workers in science what they shall find. It
is not forced to beg Nature to contain some occult
agency, some vague ethereal essence, or some myste-
rious and wondrous visible being, whose presence
shall be a guaranty to the gaping onlooker that
there exists an Ideal. All this mendicant idealism
our view rejects as unworthy of any clear-headed
thinker. It says, " Look at the facts as they are.
Study them as experience gives them. Know them
in their naked commonplace reality. But know also
that the Ideal Divine Life dwells in them and
throughout their whole boundless realm."

In Plato's " Parmenides," the young Socrates
confesses that he sometimes hesitates to say that
there is an Idea for everything, even for mud. He
is rebuked for this fear that men may laugh at him.
He is told that mud also is rational. Even so we
must fear nobody's laughter in such a matter. We
must see the Divine everywhere. And therefore we
must not be going about faithlessly looking for some-
thing that shall be wondrous enough to force us to
say " Here is God."

EPILOGUE. 483

And now, last of all, as the writer bids farewell
to this single lingering fellow-student, he cannot re-
frain from suggesting to so patient a friend one lit-
tle thought more concerning the proof that has been
given for the doctrine of these later pages of our
discussion. " Possibly it is all false," the fellow-
student may say. " This fair picture of a Truth that
is also Goodness, may be but another illusion." Be
it so, dear friend, if we have said nothing to con-
vince thee. Perchance all this our later argument
is illusion. Only remember : If it is Error, then,
as we have shown thee, it is Error because and only
because the Infinite knows it to be such. Apart
from that knowledge, our thought would be no error.
At least, then, the Infinite knows what we have at-
tributed to it. If it rejects our ideal, then doubtless
there is something imperfect, not about the Infinite,
but about our Ideal. And so at worst we are like
a child who has come to the palace of the King on
the day of his wedding, bearing roses as a gift to
grace the feast. For the child, waiting innocently
to see whether the King will not appear and praise
the welcome flowers, grows at last weary with watch-
ing all day and with listening to harsh words outside
the palace gate, amid the jostling crowd. And so
in the evening it falls fast asleep beneath the great
dark walls, unseen and forgotten ; and the wither-
ing roses by and by fall from its lap, and are scat-
tered by the wind into the dusty highway, there to
be trodden under foot and destroyed. Yet all that
happens only because there are infinitely fairer

484 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

treasures within the palace than the ignorant child
could bring. The King knows of this, yes, and of
ten thousand other proffered gifts of loyal subjects.
But he needs them not. Rather are all things from
eternity his own,

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