//x
THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE VISION
OF GOD : WITH OTHEE ESSAYS
IN PHILOSOPHY
Then, if that is his motive, he will not be a statesman.
By the dog of Egypt, he will ! in the city which is his own he
certainly will, though in the land of his birth perhaps not, unless he
have a divine call.
I understand ; you mean that he will be a ruler in the city of
which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only ; for 1 do
not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth ?
In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks,
which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own
house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in
fact, is no matter ; for he will live after the manner of that city,
having nothing to do with any other.
I think so, he said.
—Plato, Republic, 592 (tr. Jowett).
The Study of Nature and the Vision of God
with Other Essays in Philosophy
BY
GEORGE JOHN BLEWETT
Ryerson Professor of Moral Philosophy in Victoria College, Toronto
Sometime Rogers Memorial Fellow of Harvard University
^ I
TORONTO *^\ \
WILLIAM BRIGGS
M CM VII
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand nine hundred
and seven, by GEORGE JOHN BLEWETT, at the Department of Agriculture.
MORTVIS MEIS
PREFACE.
IN the endeavour of man to draw near to that ultimate reality
with which it is his salvation to make himself at one — the endeavour
which is on its practical side religion, on its theoretical side philos
ophy and theology — there is an elemental distinction between two
tendencies or methods. The one, to find God, denies the world. The
other retains the world, but when God is found the world becomes
new ; or rather, in finding God the world also is found, for the knowl
edge of God is the ultimate truth about the world. To trace these
tendencies, in the broad outline of their historical relations of con
flict and of combination, was once the hope of the present writer.
Such a study, if it could have been undertaken successfully, would
have done two things: would have cast light on the forms which in
human history the religious endeavour to be at one with God has
assumed; and would have marked out for students, in an elementary
but yet fundamental way, the ground-currents of the history of
philosophy and theology. But it is now almost certain that that
plan will never, even in briefest outline, be carried through ; and so a
number of essays, written at different times and under different
circumstances as studies toward it, are published here as separate
papers. Each can be read by itself; yet, since there is enough of
the original plan in the separate parts to give them a certain unity,
it would be better to take them together as forming a single historical
discussion. For this reason a short introduction has been prefixed,
stating the main point of the discussion and the relation of each of
the papers to it.
The essay on Spinoza is the property of Harvard University, and
is published here by permission of President Eliot.1 This is only a
single instance of the kindness with which through many years that
great university has treated Canadian students ; though we came to
1 A few changes have been made.
vii
PEEFACE
her as strangers, she admitted us ungrudgingly to the use of her wide
resources, and by a hospitality more generous than can be told in
words bound to herself our hearts. I can scarcely record here the
names of all those who at Harvard, whether by mastery in the things
of the mind, or by personal kindness, placed me in their debt; but
those who have a better right than I can perhaps allow me to refer
with a gratitude made deeper by the sense of loss, to the gifted lady
who left all the world of New England poorer when she was taken
in sudden death from the place at the side of Professor Palmer which
she filled with such grace and power.
I am deeply indebted also to several of those who in old-world
universities are carrying forward the greater traditions of philosophy ;
nor is my sense of obligation lessened by the fact that they would
disapprove of many things in these pages. The thoughtfulness of
Professor Kiilpe, and the charm of his grave sincerity, brightened for
me a time at Wiirzburg when work was almost out of question.
To the kindness of the Master of Balliol I must refer with the special
reverence and gratitude due to one whose venerable primacy in
philosophy among English-speaking men makes him " our father Par-
menides." And I must mention one other name : that of the late
Thomas Hill Green, whose living voice I had never the happiness to
hear, but whose Prolegomena to Ethics — since Cudworth's day the
greatest single piece of constructive work in the British literature
of metaphysic and ethics — was my " introduction " to the study of
philosophy.
But the masters in the schools of philosophy will find no fault
with me, if with the deepest gratitude of all I mention an influence
other than their own, though not alien to it — that of three men who
live now in God: Lesslie Matthew Sweetnam, who bore without
flinching a fiery trial of pain, and went early to death, giving his
own life in the attempt to save by operation that of a helpless stranger
—being in his death what he had been in life, a prince among the
surgeons of his day, and a man whose character was a magnificence
of the spirit ; John Petch, sometime Professor of French in Victoria
College, Toronto, who throughout the long and painful illness which
preceded his death, showed to those who waited upon him the same
viii
PBEFACE
affectionate consideration and gentle courtesy that (joined with the
finest sense of honour) had become in the days of his strength the
settled habit of his mind; and my father, a brave and gifted man,
who endured wrong in silence, and in spite of a frail body and the
cruelty of circumstance discharged with fidelity the greater human
duties, and to whom at last there came gently the grace of sudden
death. To these three men, who were strong enough not to play the
rebel's part when their doom was hard, but had their hope in God,
and did with their might their work upon the earth, the pages which
follow are inscribed; and it is the writer's grief that to their dear
and lamented names he is not able to erect a more worthy monument.
VICTORIA COLLEGE,
TORONTO, January, 1907.
IX
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE VISION OP GOD 15
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 111
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 201
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM - 249
ERIGENA : THE DIVISION OF NATURE - 269
Erigena's general position 271 — 280
The four Forms of Nature 280—331
The first Form 281—282
The procession from the first Form to the second - 282 — 298
The procession from the second Form to the third 298 — 310
The return of all things— the fourth Form of Nature 310—331
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 333
CONCLUSION - - 349
INTRODUCTORY
WHEN some great Christian kingdom has along its borders no
rest from war, many young citizens — the lion being still supreme in
them1 — can recognise but one service of the state. The watch upon
the frontier, with its discipline of arms and its incessant energies of
defense and attack, is to them at once the duty of a man and the
meaning of citizenship and the ideal life. But the years bring a
graver wisdom; the man who went out eagerly to the tented
field — if he has retained the clear sense of devotion to the state,
and has not become merely subdued to the trade of war — comes
more and more to see that, great as is his present service to the state,
there is another, quieter and greater. The ultimate strength of the
state lies otherwhere: in patient processes and structures of industry
and commerce and legislation ; in unnumbered school-rooms ; in those
ancient houses where learning is cherished for its own sake, and for
their own sake the sciences are cultivated, and out of piety the memory
of far-off benefactors is kept alive ; above all, in the " relations dear "
of the homes, with their " charities of father, son, and brother," and
their establishment in uprightness and integrity of the characters of
those who presently are to do the world's work and shape the world's
life; and in those companions of the homes, without which homes
are scarcely homes at all, the parish churches that with sacraments
and holy observances and the making of habitual prayer lie close to
our mortal life from its beginning to its close: — parish churches
where the vows of baptism are made for little children; and with
Morning Prayer and Evensong the growing life is reminded day by
day of the heavenly glory which is its end; and to each relationship
of life, with all that is in it of labour or sacred promise or discipline
of grief, there is brought by solemn offices the assistance of the
heavenly grace; and all, at last, the young with the old, the poor
side by side with the great, lay themselves down together to their sleep
i Plato, Republic, 588.
2 1
INTRODUCTORY
in the shadow of the ancient walls. In these things is the strength
and true life of the state; nay, these things are the state; and to
them the man upon the frontier — if he is a man indeed, and the times
are not too grim— makes soon or late his way, leaving the vigil upon
the border to the younger men with whom the inward and spiritual
voices of the rational soul have not yet come to mastery and the call
of the trumpet remains the one voice of duty.
In our day there has been something similar to this in the com
monwealth of philosophy. It too has had its border-warfare: the
strife between those who had, and those who had not, grasped the
ancient and cardinal insight of philosophy, that if you would under
stand the nature of the world you must understand the relation of the
world to the soul. That insight received its first systematic applica
tion, in a form singularly impressive and splendid, from Plato. And
to win it again and learn how to carry it once more to its systematic
application, has been precisely the work of recent philosophy ; a work
undertaken upon the impulse and suggestion of Immanuel Kant.
Kant compelled us to see that in any attempt to form a view of the
world we must remember from the beginning that the facts of the
world — all facts that any man of science can in any sense inves
tigate — are facts for self-consciousness. To say that anything is
capable of undergoing scientific investigation is to say that it is
capable of becoming present to, of being comprehended by, of having
its nature and structure expressed in forms of, the self-conscious spirit
which is man. To say that material objects can be known is to say
that material objects are capable of entering into organic union with
self-conscious intelligence. Indeed, it is not doing justice to the
facts of the case to say merely that in knowledge there is a union of
subject and object. Throughout the whole process of gaining knowl
edge the mind itself is active; active in shaping the impressions
which are given to us into that objective order of facts in which we
live and which we call the world. So that the subject actually bears
a part in constructing its own object and its own objective order.
Hence, until you have studied that activity of mind, you do not under
stand how your world has come to be what it is; you do not under-
2
INTRODUCTORY
stand the nature and structure of the world of your actual life. To
try to understand the nature of the world without reference to the
activity of the self-conscious subject, is like trying to solve a problem
in neglect of .its central factor or to pronounce final verdict upon a
case in forgetfulness of the most immediately relevant part of the
evidence. Nothing, that is to say, worthy of being called a scientific
view of the world — in technical terms, nothing worthy of being called
a metaphysic — is possible to a man until he considers the relation of
subject and object; or, to state the case more narrowly, until he
considers the fact of knowledge and raises the question of the possi
bility of knowledge.1
But in the age immediately preceding our own, philosophy found
i The statement, in the above paragraph, of the character of our experience, is simply
a statement of fact. It is not metaphysic ; but it clears the ground for metaphysic, by
describing the object with which the metaphysician begins, and the conditions of whose
possibility he seeks to understand.
In our own day, this clearing of the ground for metaphysical construction has been
effected by the psychologists in a way more primary— if such an expression may be
allowed— than was possible to Kant, moving painfully as he did under his accumulation
of inherited burdens. For the psychologist, as he goes on with his analysis, never comes
to any object other than the psychical object ; in other words, the realities of individual
experience are always psychical realities. Hence, any one who passes from psychology to
metaphysic is at once in position to argue that, since the process to be explained is
altogether psychical, that which explains its possibility must likewise be psychical ; and
this, in whichever way the individual experience is supposed to be related to the greater
(or total) reality whose nature the metaphysician seeks to know— whether as effect to
cause, or as part to whole, or as a product or reproduction to a source whose relation to
the product is not adequately expressed by the category of cause and effect.
The psychologist, as such, has, of course, no concern about metaphysic at all. His
business is simply to observe the facts and processes of individual experience as these
actually are. But if he performs that task with accuracy, his work— whether he intends
it or no— clears the ground for metaphysical construction as it never has been cleared
before ; and this puts every department of philosophy under a great debt to him.— In
referring to this contribution of the psychologist to metaphysic, I am thinking, of course,
not of the older psychology — which was a mixture of metaphysic and psychological
observation in which neither component came to its right — but of the psychology which
is psychology and nothing else ; the psychology which, in the logical order of the sciences,
is the first of the sciences of observation. This is often called the " new," or " experi
mental," psychology. But the adjectives are not needed. When the psychologist applies
methods of exact measurement to such psychical phenomena as admit of exact measure
ment, he is doing only what any man of science ought to do. The fact that certain
elements and certain processes in our experience admit of fairly exact measurement, does
not make experience and the experienced world any the less spiritual or any the more
mechanical.— In this connexion I should refer, with warm admiration, to the name of
Professor Kirschmann of the University of Toronto. I do this, not as in any sense sug
gesting that Professor Kirschmann would approve of the views expressed in these pages ;
but as indicating my own gratitude to him and to his teaching.
3
INTRODUCTORY
itself face to face with views of the world which were formed by
absolutely the opposite procedure and yet were threatening to dom
inate the world. For there are more metaphysicians in the world
than the Platonists and the Kantians. All men are metaphysicians
by nature ; and most men impatient and hasty metaphysicians. They
rush into metaphysic from whatever scientific ground they happen
to have been working upon, and construct metaphysical systems with
whatever categories they have been accustomed to use, without con
sidering that there is an intervening question — this question of the
possibility of knowledge, and of the relation of the categories to
nature. The physicist, for example, when he obeys the human
impulse to be metaphysical, is tempted simply to treat the physical
point of view as the ultimate one, and the categories of physical
science as the ultimate categories — the ultimate principles of explana
tion of the world. Without quite seeing what he is doing — for since
he scorns the word " metaphysic," it is easy for him to imagine that
he also scorns the thing — he gets a metaphysic of his own at one
stroke, by simply taking his physics as metaphysic. That the facts
of our experience have relations other than the physical; that an
investigation of these might lead to a deeper knowledge of the facts,
and even to a re-interpretation of the physical relations themselves;
that there is an inquiry (epistemology) which seeks to conduct pre
cisely this investigation: — this he does not see, and, not seeing it,
enters boldly and easily upon a world-view which is blind to all
aspects of the world but one ; and so we get that hasty and premature
metaphysic which, when it puts the emphasis at one point, is called
Materialism; when at another point, the mechanical view of the
world. Then come other men of science who see that materialistic
and mechanical views are not adequate as explanations of the world
of our experience, but who yet will have nothing to do with the
epistemological problem; these, finding the way of advance barred
to themselves, assert that it is barred to all men; and thus we get
the final development of this type of metaphysic, the development
seen in the various forms of Agnosticism.1
i The Agnosticism here meant is that which may be called Agnosticism for its own
sake; not that which, in ancient and mediaeval times, was simply one of the momenta
of Mysticism.
4
INTKODUCTOKY
These types of metaphysic have in our day exercised an immense
influence. In the first place they have been powerful through a sort
of transferred glory : the men who have urged them upon us are in
many ways our benefactors ; are members of that great host to whose
untiring labour and magnificent achievement in physical and natural
science we are all of us — and none of us more than the theologians —
profoundly indebted. And in the second place their influence has
been wide because the movement of thought already described, the
movement of thought by which one drifts into them from the modern
scientific consciousness, is so easy and so natural. Certain principles
of explanation used upon certain aspects of reality prove splendidly
successful; what more easy than to take for granted that these are
the supreme principles in the whole arsenal of man's mind? And
that view once taken, the conclusions follow directly : either you apply
these principles to the explanation of the whole process of the universe,
and so gain a materialistic or mechanical view of the world; or you
see that there are facts which these principles cannot explain, and then
you say that, since these principles are the supreme principles of
science, those facts are incapable of scientific explanation and lie
beyond the horizon of human knowledge altogether. But, however
easy such a movement of thought be, or however attractive to human
nature, the present-day student of philosophy who knows his own
field — which amounts to saying, who has entered into metaphysic by
the gateway of epistemology — has no choice but to insist that views
formed in this way are premature, uncritical, dogmatic; they
announce their conclusions without having investigated a great prob
lem which is not merely relevant but fundamental.
That is to say, to return to the comparison of a moment ago, such
a student recognises in views of this sort the hostile encampments
upon the frontier; barbarians having nature's own strength in them
and therefore magnificent in intellectual and spiritual potentialities,
but seeking to destroy the ancient civilisation of church and state
in which alone can the nature in them or in any man come to its true
fulfilment. And while he is still young he is likely to feel it his
special vocation to take up the conflict with these; always he is
devising some new and clearer statement of Platonic or Kantian
5
INTRODUCTORY
epistemology, such as will set out in plain light the immense and yet
rudimentary fallacy of which they are habitually guilty, and without
which their systems and their outlook upon the world would never
have come into being at all. But as he grows older he finds that he
himself has something to learn; riot a new lesson exactly, but a new
temper. To him as well as to others that graver wisdom of the years
is brought ; his heart begins to apprehend, and to respond to, a greater
call. If his vocation is to be fulfilled in its integrity, he must pass
on to those constructive labours that regard nothing save truth in her
eternal form. And to take part in such labours there is but one way :
he must turn to the ancient and catholic homes of his great science,
must make them the dwelling-place of his mind, in their faith and
in the power of their still light must at once look upon and participate
in the struggle and fate of man. It is necessary, indeed, that the
controversy upon the marches be maintained. But that work of serv
ing God with the sword he may well leave to younger men. In the
kingdom of the intellect, the greater service of God is that of those
who in peaceful labour draw nearest to His glory ; and so, for himself,
in the years that are left, he will turn toward that central region
where, in their own native and appropriate forms, the greater things
of philosophy stand in peace, and the spirits of the masters abide in
the temples which they themselves have built. There he will dwell,
and will seek, so far as he can, both to live over again in himself the
great histories which have been enacted there, and to keep the access
to those homes of light open to whatever men may be led by trouble
of mind or by an inner vocation to turn their faces that way.
But this central and catholic region of philosophy — what is it
like ? In a moment we shall have to consider the great division which
is found in it. But first we must note the distinguishing characters
in which all its structures and labours share, and which make it, with
all its divisions, still one realm. These characters are, in the main,
two; two characters which may seem very broad, very fugitive, very
impalpable, to the man who looks upon the matter from the outside;
but the opposite of fugitive or impalpable to the man who looks out
upon philosophy from its own central point of view. In the first
G
INTEODUCTOEY
place, the philosophies which belong here, however radically they differ
from one another in other respects, agree in this — they are a wisdom
of the soul. They remember that reality is the seat and home of the
soul, and that, therefore, in forgetfulness of the soul reality can never
be understood or rightly interpreted. In the second place, they agree
also in this, that to them truth and life are one. With whatever
differences among themselves, they constitute that greater philosophy
which, at one and the same time and by one and the same impulse,
seeks to know reality and to enter into union with it. On the one
side, such philosophy is what the Germans call Wissenschaft, what
Plato and Aristotle with a still severer exaltation of meaning called
eniGTrj^rf, and what in these pages (contrary to the ordinary usage
of English men of thought) will be called science. On this side,
seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge, it endeavours to com
prehend intellectually the world of which it is itself a part. But the
same impulse and the same passion has as its other side the endeavour
to be at one with the reality which it has scientifically apprehended.
It seeks to take, as its way, the way of that reality; seeks to take the
nature of that reality as its guide, the law and informing spirit of that
reality as its law and its spirit. And so it is a principle of the unity
of life; it seeks the unity of life by seeking that union with ultimate
reality in which science and religion are one.
But, as already has been indicated, within the limits of the greater
philosophy which has these distinguishing characters, there is a cer
tain profound and thoroughgoing division. In the attempt to appre
hend the true nature of reality, and consequently in the endeavour
to bring the life of man into accord with reality, there have been
two great methods, two great tendencies, the distinction between
which is not broken down by the fact that historically they have
entered into the most manifold relations of combination and of con
flict with each other. The division arises, as all great human
divisions arise, from the existence of divergent tendencies in human
nature itself, and of radical differences in the experience, happy or
tragic, which falls to the lot of individuals and races. And since it
arises in the effort to apprehend ultimate reality, it is a division
elemental and ultimate — the most radical of all the divisions known
7
INTEODUCTOEY
to human nature and human life, and the one that must always be
kept in mind, as a sort of ground-plan, in any attempt to understand
the spiritual history of man. The tendencies themselves, however,
and the two types of philosophy to which they give rise, we must seek
to understand somewhat more fully.
Each of the two types of philosophy is a movement from the
changing and transient facts of the experienced world to a principle
which is one and eternal; or, as this would usually be expressed, is
a movement from the world to God. But each makes that movement
in its own way. The one, in moving from the world to God, does not
forget the world from which it started. When it finds the explanation
of the world in a vision of God, it returns to the world, and seeks to
give to the facts of the world their true interpretation in the light
of that vision of God. The facts of the world and of our life are to
it elements in a divine plan, the history of the world a process in
which an eternal purpose is being realised. The nature of God —
and therefore, however veiled by cloud and storm, the nature of the
world — is that for which human language has no single word,1 but
which may be expressed by putting together the three words, reason,
righteousness, love. And in unity with that true or ultimate nature
of the universe lies the way of life for man; in character, unity with
the divine character ; in action, unity with the divine purpose. Since,
furthermore, the purpose of God is the ultimate law of the world,
since the plan of God realises itself in and through the history of the
world, that character and action in which man seeks to become at one
with God must be character and action in this present world, not out
of it. It is in and through the ways of this present life, in and
through the " daily round " and the " common task/' in and through
the regular forms and relationships, the normal duties and affections,
of human work and human homes, that a man must make himself at
one with the eternal reality. Even as there is "no other genuine
enthusiasm for humanity," so also, to extend the late Professor
Green's well-known statement, there is on this view no other genuine
enthusiasm for God and for the eternal, than one "which has
travelled the common highway of reason — the life of the good neigh-
1 Unless it be the word "spirit," in its concrete sense.
8
INTBODUCTOKY
bour and the honest citizen — and can never forget that it is still only
a further stage of the same journey."
The other tendency follows just the opposite procedure. In
moving toward God it leaves the world behind. For the reality,
knowledge of which is truth, and union with which is the way of
life — is it not something essentially different from these present
appearances ? — if not, why are we dissatisfied with these appearances ?
What, indeed, sets us at all upon that quest which, as thinking, is
philosophy, but as a life is religion, save precisely this, that the
appearances which constitute our present experience and our present
world are profoundly unsatisfactory? They are transient — they fleet
away and leave life empty for the man that trusted in them.
Logically, they are self-contradictory. Morally and religiously they
are inadequate, if indeed they do not stand absolutely condemned.
Then how shall we define reality save by denying of it the characters
of the appearances which make up our experience? And so reality
comes to be conceived, not as that which at once explains and con
tains the things and forms of our present life, the home of them and
the truth of them, their law and their informing spirit, but as some
thing which exists purely in itself and cannot be given to us under
the ordinary forms of our thinking. On the contrary, it can be
described only by denying of it all the characteristics of what can be
so given to us. It is true that the men who seek reality by this
method usually have, explicitly or implicitly, formal definitions of it —
definitions of which the ancient and ever-recurring one, that " sub
stance is that which for its existence stands in need of nothing but
itself," is a type. But no positive or concrete characterisation is
possible — when reality is described as one, eternal, unchangeable,
these are not so much positive characters as negations of the multi
plicity, the diversity, the change and transience, of that which is given
to us and is our experience. For, as we have just seen, the very
method by which the real is sought to be reached makes impossible
any attempt to tell what its positive content or nature is. The forms,
the energies, the activities, which are manifest in our experience,
and make our world what it is — what you know about reality is that
it is not these. There is a reality, indeed — that is your first and
9
INTRODUCTORY
profoundest conviction as a denier of this false world in the name of
the truly real;1 and that reality needs for its existence nothing save
itself ; but you are sure that it/ as it is in itself, is never given to you,
and cannot be given to you, under the ordinary form of your
experience. And so, in your search for reality, you must say of any
natural or intellectual or moral form known to man's present
experience, " It is not that."
In a word, this philosophy, when it has gained its goal and its
rest in God, remembers the world no more, except as a dream and
an illusion which, at the coming of the vision of God, has vanished
back into its own native and original nothingness. Reality is that
which the world of our experience is not. And as reality is conceived,
so also is the true way of life conceived. All that you can say of the
consciousness or experience which is at one with reality, is that it is
not our present consciousness; that it has no kinship in form or
procedure with the normal consciousness manifest in man's ordinary
science and labour, religion and society; that even such terms as
" consciousness " or " experience " can be applied to it only by
accommodation.
Of all the divisions or distinctions that are found in human
experience and have been influential in shaping the world's history,
this is — in the sense of being first and elemental — the most important.
Its fullest and most concrete expression of itself has been, of course,
in religion. On the one side stand religions like Brahmanism (and,
in a modified sense, Buddhism) — the religion of men who deny the
world and seek to become one with a reality which is not the changing
world;2 on the other, religions like Christianity, which see that it is
only in God and unto God that the world reaches its truth and reality.
Indeed, if one were speaking of Christendom — still more, if one were
speaking of the church — rather than of Christianity, one would have
to say that its history is a history precisely of the conflict of these
two tendencies within one body. And naturally, as to some extent
1 Though you may feel compelled to object to all possible human ways of expressing
that conviction.
2 "You let your boat drop quietly down the Ganges to-day, and along its banks the
silent figures sit like carved brown statues, hour after hour, day after day, with eyes open
and fixed on vacancy, clearing themselves of all thought, emotion, and desire, that, being
emptied of self, they may see God."— [I cannot find the reference.]
10
INTRODUCTORY
we have seen already, this deepest distinction in man's practical life
has expressed itself also, in every age and in numberless ways, in
his endeavour rationally to comprehend himself and his life, whether
that attempt be called philosophy or theology. Indeed, the man who
attempts to understand the history of philosophy, or of theology (in
the ancient sense of the term), without understanding this distinction
and its place in those histories, is like a man of science who should
examine the surface of some great current, without penetrating to the
forces that actually have determined and actually are determining
its nature and its flow.
Of these two great types of religion, of theology, of philosophy,
the one which, in seeking its home in God, follows in the way just
indicated the via negativa, is commonly called Mysticism. To it the
nature of God is altogether beyond the categories of our intelligence ;
the vision of God, which is the light of the soul, is altogether above
the ways and activities of our understanding; the rest in God, which
is the blessedness of the soul, is altogether apart from the ordinary
forms of our experience. Hence the name is quite appropriate. The
true, the real, the One, — words cannot utter it nor thought conceive
it; how, then, shall the man who seeks it describe himself to the
ordinary intelligence? and how shall the ordinary intelligence express
its judgment concerning him ? Obviously there is but one way. He,
whether as he attempts to describe himself to it, or as it judges him,
is a Mystic; and his way of life is Mysticism. The other tendency,
when formulated as a philosophy, is known historically as Idealism.
Its first world-historical master was Plato; from one of his great
words the name itself is taken. As a view of the world, it was in
part explicitly wrought out by him, in part made possible by him to
later men of thought who worked, on the one hand, with more
powerful categories and therefore with greater opportunities for self-
consistency, but on the other hand with less of inspiration, less of
political and moral and religious passion. But Idealism, in this
greater sense of the name,1 the modern world has had almost to
conquer anew for itself. And he who made the reconquest possible,
1 As distinct from the Sensationalism of the English School, which also, because it is a
" way of ideas " (in the sense of that word so unhappily used hy John Locke) has been
called Idealism.
11
INTKODUCTOKY
though he did his work stumblingly and with all possible awkward
ness, was Immanuel Kant.
This, then, is the first great division — and the most radical of
all possible divisions — within the " church catholic " of philosophy.
It is the. extreme and complete opposition of the via negativa to that
positive or synthetic method which insists that the true universal is
at once the home and the explanation of the particulars, and which,
therefore, when it has gained a vision of God, seeks to use that vision
as the light which gives a true vision of the world. But this first
division is not all; there is a second and lesser to be considered — one
within Idealism. For the via negativa, where it does not secure that
full triumph which (as at once a metaphysic and a way of life) is
Mysticism, is sometimes able to cross over into the field of its
opponent and secure a partial victory there. These are the cases
where it cannot win men away from believing that the forms of reason
express the nature of reality — that ultimate reality is perfect reason.
But it does lead them to believe that you must separate pure reason
from sensation and sense-experience, and then accept that pure reason
alone as expressing the nature of reality. So that you have reality
as a world of abstract pure reason, and pure reason in man appre
hending it; and then you somehow have another world, the sense-
world, and corresponding to it, man's sense-experience. And the true
way of life is to renounce this lower world and all its ways, and to
live only in that upper world. — This way of thinking may, for con
venience of reference, be called Abstract Idealism ; in distinction from
it, the fully-developed type may be called Concrete Idealism — Hegel
called it Absolute Idealism.
We have, then, to sum up, a twofold opposition of the great ten
dencies which we have been considering: first, their extreme oppo
sition, giving us Mysticism and Idealism; secondly, their lesser
opposition within the field of Idealism, giving us Abstract and Con
crete Idealism.1
i When the distinction between these two types of philosophy and of religion is stated
—and not only stated, but insisted upon— a very old question is likely to recur in a new
form : Of what value is the distinction between the inner kingdom of philosophy and its
borderland contentions, if that inner kingdom itself is rent apart by divisions of the most
12
INTRODUCTORY
It is with this central and catholic region of philosophy, and with
this twofold opposition of fundamental tendencies within it, that the
following papers are in the main concerned. Most of them were
written as separate studies; a fact which gives to each its own angle
of approach, and involves, also, a certain amount of repetition. But
they had a common purpose;1 and when taken together have still a
certain unity of plan, which may be indicated as follows. — The first
two essays deal with the main antithesis itself, that between Idealism
and Mysticism: — the first outlining, in simple form, and with refer
ence to the life of our own day, the Idealistic position; while the
second, in the historical discussion of what is there called Spinoza's
"first metaphysic," traces the development of Mysticism. The
remaining papers are studies in the history of Idealism, with special
reference to the conflict of tendencies just described — the lesser con
flict within Idealism, the greater between Idealism and Mysticism.
The history is studied, not consecutively, but by turning to those
great masters in ancient and mediaeval thought in whom the forces
that operate throughout the whole history are seen working with
special clearness and intensity. In Plato is seen, for instance, the
fundamental kind? The doubt implied in such a question is, however, not justified ; its
unfairness can be shown — if it is allowable to ride a parable so hard — by turning once
more to the comparison suggested earlier in the text. In the country there spoken of, the
observer would soon have become aware of the existence of political parties. And as he
looked upon the "fell incensed points " of their stubborn opposition, he might easily be
tenanted to say that the division between these parties was a far more fundamental
one than that between citizens within and hardy barbarians without. And yet, in one
most important respect, he would be wrong. For, no matter how radical the opposition
of those parties, their members have after all the most important things of life in com
mon ; they have a common speech, a common literature, common arts and education, a
common religion— in one word, a common citizenship. The two parties are kindred to
each other in a sense in which neither of them is kindred to that race of other blood that
troubles the marches. And so here. Mysticism and Ide ilism are certainly as far apart
as any types of philosophy or of religion can possibly be. But they agree in this: they
know that the quest for the unity of existence and the quest for the true end and home of
the soul are one and the same quest. Out of one and the same impulse proceed their
effort after the intellectual apprehension of reality, and their effort, whether by ordinary
or extraordinary experience, after the union of the soul with that reality.— Of course, the
other side of the matter should not be forgotten. Barbarian and citizen, though without
a common citizenship, have a common human nature ; it lies within the potentialities of
the barbarian's soul to become a citizen. So too, the Materialist or the Agnostic need
only do justice to himself, and to the intellectual impulses already at work within him,
to become an Idealist.
i See Preface, p. vii.
13
INTRODUCTORY
founding of Idealism as a systematic view of the world and of life.
Then, when Greek thought, as one of the constituent elements of the
mind of the church, had gone out into the wide world, the strife, or
rather the combination, of Idealism with Mysticism is seen in
Erigena; and the struggle between the two types of Idealism in St.
Thomas.
14
THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE
VISION OF GOD
THE STUDY OF NATUBE AND THE
VISION OF GOD.
AMONG the leaders of the English people in the nineteenth century
there was one strangely devoid of the qualities and habits that we
have grown accustomed to look for in a modern leader of modern
men, and strangely out of accord with what the world regards as the
genius of England. He was no captain of industry. He was the
head of no princely merchant house. He was not a statesman; not
a jurist; not one of the proconsuls of England, who establish her
peace abroad in seats of ancient anarchy. He had no part in the
labours of commerce, of war, of civil administration, by which Britain
has done for parts of the modern world what Eome, with more con
tinuous but 'more selfish energies, did for the whole of the ancient.
From all these, the circles in which the leaders of England habitually
move and the works at which they habitually labour, he turned
deliberately and resolutely away. He made no quest of any sort after
personal popularity. His voice was not heard in the streets; and
when, from quiet places and chosen retreats, he spoke to the people
of England, it was with warning and grave rebuke. Every word
revealed a great gulf: on one side that solitary man; on the other,
the customary life, the habitual thoughts, the characteristic activities,
of his race. And in the presence of that gulf there came to Cardinal
Newman's lips no single syllable of concession or of compromise.
Once, indeed, he had been in more intimate contact with English
life and English thought and English institutions. Virtually, though
not in name, he had been the leader of the chivalry of the Church
of England in its battle with modern Liberalism ; and had guided the
first steps of that ecclesiastical revolution which has exercised upon the
life of the great body of Englishmen an influence more widely form-
3 17
THE STUDY OF JSTATUBE
ative than they themselves know. But those days were now done.
That leadership had been laid aside, and for ever. He had with
drawn from the noises of the world, and had sat him down in the
quiet of an institution, itself in its very nature repugnant to the
temper of England and alien to her settled thoughts. It seemed as
if his influence upon the men of England were shattered for ever and
by his own act. But what really came to pass was that that influence
gradually took on a new life. It became more impalpable, less obtru
sive, less noticeable; became something which few journalists would
have remembered in enumerating the " forces of the day." But it
became profounder, instinct with a power more truly essential and
therefore more abiding. And it became so, because it became more
broadly and simply human, more free from party interests and party
accidents, more deeply rooted in the elementary material of life. The
change in the character of the influence was due to a change which
had come to the man himself who exercised it. A great division had
passed out of his life. True, there were still difficulties for him.
The policy of the Eoman Curia in the days of Pius might grieve him
deeply. But it could never shatter the very foundations of his life,
as once the attitude and the decisions of the Anglican bishops had
done. In spite of all difficulties the fact remained that the much-
tried spirit had found its home. Equably and strongly it moved
henceforth on its way, like some star which at its true altitude and
in its appointed and established orbit sweeps steadily forward " without I
haste and without rest." In that deep assurance of soul Newman ;
turned, as was natural, more and more to the things that are truly j
catholic; more and more to the things that do not belong to parties
and do not pass away with parties ; more and more to the things that,
being eternal, are, in the words used a moment ago, broadly and
simply human. It is true, he remained an uncompromising advocate
of the Eoman view of the church and the Eoman interpretation of
history. But — though he himself would indignantly have repudiated
the distinction — his influence as such an advocate came to be the least
important part of his influence; his deepest power upon his genera
tion was not that which he exerted as a prophet of the specifically
Eoman ideal in its conflict with the spirit of the time and with the
18
AND THE VISION OF GOD
spirit of England. His true significance as a leader and benefactor
of the English race came more and more to lie, not in any party
advocacy, but in the fact that, in an age devoted to material prosperity
and to the objects and interests of a materialised life, he, with no
particle of submission to the spirit of the age, was a pilgrim of eternity
and a prophet of eternity.
And this came to be recognised by the men of clearest eyes in
England; specially by one sane and wise critic of life who was
separated by the whole diameter of human thought from Newman's
political and ecclesiastical views, but had long had his finger upon
the pulse of England and was grateful for every spiritual benefaction
to her stubborn race. " There are deaths yet to come," wrote the
late Richard Holt Hutton in the Spectator when Newman died,
" which will agitate the English world more than Cardinal Newman's ;
but there has been none, and will be none, so far as I know, that will
leave the world that really knew him with so keen a sense of depriva
tion, of a white star extinguished, of a sign vanished, of an age impov
erished, of a grace withdrawn. To many, and to many who are not
Eoman Catholics, it will seem the nearest approach in their own
experience to what the death of the Apostle John must have been
to the Church of the Fathers, when the closing words of his epistle,
1 Little children, keep yourselves from idols/ were still ringing in
their ears. . . . Though he served and was at rest, the mere
knowledge that he was living in the quiet Oratory at Edgbaston
helped men to realise that the spiritual world is even more real than
the material world, and that in that lonely, austere, and yet gracious
figure, God had made a sign to Great Britain that the great purpose
of life is a purpose to which this life hardly more than introduces us."
But it is best of all through his own words that we shall under
stand him. The remarkable description of his own " special Father
and Patron," St. Philip Neri, with which he brings to a close his
Lectures upon the Idea of a University, is really a revelation of
himself. " He lived " — so the great words run — " in an age as traitor
ous to the interests of Catholicism as any that preceded it, or can
follow it. He lived at a time when pride mounted high, and the
senses held rule; a time when kings and nobles never had more of
19
THE STUDY OF NATURE
state and homage, and never less of personal responsibility and peril ;
when mediaeval winter was receding, and the summer sun of civilisa
tion was bringing into leaf and flower a thousand forms of luxurious
enjoyment; when a new world of thought and beauty had opened
upon the human mind, in the discovery of the treasures of classic
literature and art. He saw the great and gifted, dazzled by the
Enchantress, and drinking in the magic of her song ; he saw the high
and wise, the student and the artist, painting, and poetry, and sculp
ture, and music, and architecture, drawn within her range, and
circling round the abyss : he saw heathen forms mounting thence,
and forming in the thick air : — all this he saw, and he perceived that
the mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with science, not
with protests and warnings, not by the recluse or the preacher, but
by means of the great counter-fascination of purity and truth.
And so he contemplated as the idea of his mission, not
the propagation of the faith, nor the exposition of doctrine, nor the
catechetical schools; whatever was exact and systematic pleased him
not; he put from him monastic rule and authoritative speech, as
David refused the armour of his king. No; he would be but an
ordinary individual priest as others: and his weapons should be but
unaffected humility and unpretending love. All he did was to be done
by the light, and fervour, and convincing eloquence of his personal
character and his easy conversation. He came to the Eternal City
and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually
grew up around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials from
without. He did not so much seek his own as draw them to him.
He sat in his small room, and they in their gay worldly dresses, the
rich and the well-born, as well as the simple and the illiterate, crowded
into it. In the mid-heats of summer, in the frosts of winter, still
was he in that low and narrow cell at San Girolamo, reading the
hearts of those who came to him, and curing their souls' maladies
by the very touch of his hand. It was a vision of the Magi wor
shipping the infant Saviour, so pure and innocent, so sweet and
beautiful was he; and so loyal and so dear to the gracious Virgin
Mother. And they who came remained gazing and listening, till at
length, first one and then another threw off their bravery, and took
20
AND THE VISION OF GOD
his poor cassock and girdle instead : or, if they kept it, it was to put
haircloth under it, or to take on them a rule of life, while to the world
they looked as before."
Such was St. Philip; and such, with a touch of lofty personal
distinction unknown to Philip, was Cardinal Newman. But such
character and such influence come to no man by accident. Newman
in the Oratory was what he was, because of what his own inner heart
had been while he was still an Anglican. And what that was we
have earlier words of his own to show us. In his last days as an
Anglican, when the pain was heavy upon him of his approaching
separation from the friends of his youth and from the Church which
he loved and from the University which had been his home,1 the
words, " Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the
evening," seem to have been often in his mind. Twice he preached
from them; and each sermon was a revelation of the inner and
supreme principle of his own life.
" ' Blessed are they,' y: — so ran the conclusion of the first —
" ( Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have
right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the
city/ Blessed will they be then, and only they, who with the
Apostle have ever had on their lips and in their hearts the question,
' Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?' whose soul ' hath broken out
for the very fervent desire that it hath alway unto His judgments ' ;
who have ' made haste and prolonged not the time to keep His com
mandments ' ; who have not waited to be hired, nor run uncertainly,
nor beaten the air, nor taken darkness for light and light for darkness,
nor contented themselves with knowing what is right, nor taken com
fort in feeling what is good, nor prided themselves in their privileges,
but set themselves vigorously to do God's will.
" Let us turn from shadows of all kinds — shadows of sense, or
shadows of argument and disputation, or shadows addressed to our
imagination and tastes. Let us attempt, through God's grace, to
advance and sanctify the inner man. We cannot be wrong here.
Whatever is right, whatever is wrong, in this perplexing world, we
i " Trinity had ne ver been unkind to me. There used to be much snap-dragon growing
on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there,and I had for years taken it as the emblem
of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University."— A pologia, p. 237.
• - 21
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
must be right in ' doing justly, in loving mercy, in walking humbly
with our God/ in denying our wills, in ruling our tongues, in soften
ing and sweetening our tempers, in mortifying our lusts ; in learning
patience, meekness, purity, forgiveness of injuries and continuance
in well-doing."
The second was preached just after his resignation of the living
of St. Mary's. He himself, and what life meant for him — both stand
revealed in the form which his sorrow took as he uttered what was
really his farewell to all that had been dear to him upon the earth ; to
the Church of England, to his University, to his friends. — " 0 mother
of saints ! 0 school of the wise ! 0 nurse of the heroic ! of whom
went forth, in whom have dwelt, memorable names of old, to spread
the truth abroad, or to cherish and illustrate it at home ! 0 thou
from whom surrounding nations lit their lamps ! 0 virgin of Israel !
wherefore dost thou now sit on the ground and keep silence, like one
of the foolish women who were without oil on the coming of the
Bridegroom? Where is now the ruler in Sion, and the doctor in the
temple, and the ascetic on Carmel, and the herald in the wilderness,
and the preacher in the market-place? ... 0 my mother,
whence is this unto thee, that thou hast good things poured upon
thee and canst not keep them, and bearest children, yet darest not
own them? Why hast thou not the skill to use their services, nor
the heart to rejoice in their love ? How is it that whatever is generous
in purpose, and tender or deep in devotion, thy flower and thy
promise, falls from thy bosom and finds no home within thine arms?
Who hath put this note upon thee to have ' a miscarrying womb and
dry breasts/ to be strange unto thine own flesh, and thine eye cruel
towards thy little ones ? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy womb,
who would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear as though a
portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence — at best thou dost but
endure, as if they had no claim but on thy patience, self-possession,
and vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou mayst. Thou makest
them ( stand all the day idle ' as the very condition of thy bearing
with them; or thou biddest them to be gone where they will be more
welcome; or thou sellest them for nought to the stranger that passes
by. ...
22
AND THE VISION OF GOD
" And, 0 my brethren, 0 kind and affectionate hearts, 0 loving
friends, should you know any one whose lot it has been, by writing
or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act; if he
has ever told you what you knew about yourselves or what you did
not know; has read to you your wants or feelings, and comforted
you by the very reading; has made you feel that there was a higher
life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see; or
encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring,
or soothed the perplexed; if what he has said or done has ever made
you take interest in him, and feel well inclined towards him;
remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and
pray for him, that in all things he may know God's will, and at all
times he may be ready to fulfil it."
A little earlier than Newman — in the great and troubled days,
fateful for the whole of humanity, which ushered in the century to
which Newman belonged — there had stood among the leaders of
England another man, whose life moved in another air than
Newman's, but in that other air had followed a strangely parallel
course. In early manhood he too had undergone a struggle that
shook him to the centre of his being, but at the same time unchained
and aroused the mighty powers that were sleeping in him — a struggle
in which he had mingled his fate with causes and institutions
that go beyond the individual and take in the world. And when his
soul had found its peace, he too had taken up his dwelling apart
from the noises of the world ; not, however, in a cloistral society, but
in the company of still lakes and whispering woodland and solemn
mountains, above him the alternate gloom and glory of the English
sky and round about him the dalesmen's homes and the dalesmen's
life. He too, through quiet years, had held like Newman high
counsel with his own soul and had lifted up his heart to the powers
that inhabit eternity ; nay, in this he had gone beyond Newman ; for
he held counsel with nature also, and made his communion with her
a means toward — or rather, a form of — communion with the eternal.
And he too had spoken to the men of his generation; had spoken
with a voice that in authority, in loftiness, in austerity, was equal to
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
Newman's own, and far surpassed Newman's in the catholicity of
elementary and simple human interest, and in the timeless and ageless
power of beauty. True, if you had met him face to face he would
not have made such conquest of you as Newman habitually made
of all who met him — unless, indeed, you were one of the few that
without allurement of external charm can be won to a mighty spirit
by its own native greatness. Newman's unfailing distinction, his
luminous ease, his unerring sense of fitness, his refined and winning
charm, his personal attractiveness, the splendour of his gentleness
and the splendour of his austerity — what trace of these was there, or
what equivalent for them, in that conversation which (save with
Coleridge and one or two others) was no medium of expression either
for the peace or for the passion of the intense and brooding soul of
Wordsworth ? And yet this gaunt and rugged man, with the " severe,
worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if
he sa"w something in objects more than the outward appearance), an
intense, high, narrow forehead, a Eoman nose, cheeks furrowed by
strong purpose and feeling " — this gaunt and rugged man is perhaps
the greatest name in the spiritual history of the English race in the
nineteenth century. He did that supreme thing which from the
beginning of the world until now few men have done : he looked upon
i the world and upon the life of man with absolute directness and
clearness of gaze. The abstractness of the special sciences, the pas
sions of sectarian theology, the limitations which the spirit of the
time is able to force upon men — it was as if these things simply were
not, when Wordsworth, strong in his solitude at the heart of things,
and immovable by the anger of his age, turned his eyes upon man, and
upon man's soul, and upon the facts and conditions of human life,
and expressed that which he saw in a poetry which fulfilled his own
great and most accurate definition and was "the breath and finer
spirit of all knowledge — the impassioned expression which is in the
countenance of all Science."
For Wordsworth's attempt was something quite other than to
dream about nature, and to weave beautiful fancies around certain
of its more winning aspects, and in those dreams and fancies to find
a refuge from life or a solace for life. He sought, in the most
24
AND THE VISION OF GOD
genuine sense of the term, to know nature; sought to penetrate to
its real character and to grasp its ultimate meaning. This he sought
to do by long watching and resolute thought; by sympathetic vision;
by that contemplation which is a " revealing agency " ;* by a com
munion with nature which was like the friendship of a human heart
with a human heart or the companionship of a spirit with a spirit.
With a combination of meditation and perception, unparalleled in
the history of human insight save by Plato — meditation resolute to
the point of stubbornness in its perseverance and laboriousness, per
ception that with the unclouded directness of intuition penetrated to
the inner nature of its object — he looked upon nature and looked
upon life ; and, looking, saw God in man, and saw nature as the form
of a spirit kindred in character to the spirit which is man, and
friendly to man in the great purposes of his life. And so, in Words
worth's eyes, man's life, in its ordinary and daily course, in its
elemental duties and charities and delights, in its natural relation
ships and natural surroundings, took on beauty and sacredness: —
took on the tenderest beauty and the deepest sacredness that God
can give or the universe contain. And this beauty and sacredness
of the ordinary life, of the ordinary duties and charities of life, of
the ordinary natural surroundings of life, Wordsworth felt not merely
for himself. He was able to make others feel it. He had (though
not continuously, nor without startling variations in degree) that
gift which to such high and severe natures is not always given — the
gift of artistic beauty, at times in its absolutely highest order of
elementary tenderness and elementary simplicity. So that he was
able to cast about our ordinary life, and about the nature which is
its earthly home, the supreme consecration of poetic light. And this
in a way peculiarly his own: not with that lavish prodigality of the
poetic imagination which at one stroke puts the object that it beau
tifies out of touch with our ordinary thought and beyond the horizon
of our daily life ; but with a " stern spiritual frugality "2 which at
1 F. W. H. Myers, Wordsworth, p. 131. Compare the whole chapter, pp. 124-153 ; and
chapters IV. -VI. in Mr. Walter Raleigh's admirable volume (Wordsworth : London, 1903).
2 R. H. Hutton, Literary Essays (Macmillan, 1896), p. 91.
25
THE STUDY OF NATURE
once beautifies and sanctifies its object, and yet leaves that object
a genuine and integral part of our human life upon the human earth.1
These two men stand, then, each in his own way, as the repre
sentatives of one great principle — that a divine presence is the reality
of the world, and that the consciousness of that presence is the
supreme illumination for a man's soul.
"Each in his own way," I have said. And indeed, while that
truth toward which they turn is one, no two men upon the earth
could well be more different in the way in which they apprehend it,
or in the quarters from which they turn their faces toward it. For
the ways by which the soul enters into union with greater or with
ultimate truth are many; and among those many ways are two which
stand radically opposed. If, for instance, you would be face to face
with the heavenly splendour of the dawn, you may go out into the
free fields, where all the dewdrops are lustrous for very purity and
in the absolute stillness of early morning the great trees stand in
their solitary and monumental peace unroused to the tumult of the
day. There you may take your stand, and there you may front the
heavenly glory, and there, looking upon it, you may know yourself
for a part of it, and may recognise that a city greater than Siena is
opening to you her heart and in speech not alien to your own is
declaring to you once more your citizenship in her. That you may
do. But you may do something very different. You may have
come to distrust yourself utterly and hopelessly; perhaps because
others taught you that it is right to do so; perhaps because of long
pain and long failure. And hence you may never have dared — or
never have learned — to go about in the world with the open heart and
the seeing eye and the undaunted step of a son in his father's house.
Bather you have withdrawn from the world and have submitted
yourself to an authority greater than yourself; and when morning
i Wordsworth's poetry was "not properly an augury, but an interpretation. It led
man up to the recognition of his own greatness, as universalised by communion with
nature and intercourse with his kind. It was conversant, not with subtleties of the
imagination, but with the great, the obvious, the habitual, with the common earth, the
universal sky, the waters rolling evermore, the abiding social powers that lift man out of
his animal self, and render him 'magnanimous to correspond with heaven'; with these
restored to the ancient glory that belongs to them in their intelligible relations, but from
which the prone and poring gaze of a false philosophy had during a century of conceit
been diverted." (T. H. Green, Works, Vol. III., p. 120.)
26
AND THE VISION OF GOD
comes it is only through the gateway or the deep window of some
monastic enclosure that you can turn your eyes eastward. And the
unyielding outline of that cloistral stone it is that then determines
and defines what part of that heavenly glory, and how much of it, you
shall see.
The former way of viewing the nature which is in man and in the
material order was Wordsworth's. That, in fact, to the man who
looks with intelligent eyes upon the spiritual history of mankind, is
what the name "Wordsworth" stands for. From the beginning
until now, he is the supreme instance of it among the races that
speak English; if not among all the races of the world. But
Newman's method was the other. Himself as an individual he had
distrusted; especially had distrusted the power of his own individual
intellect to reach ultimate truth. And yet there was in him an
imperious demand for the very truth which he distrusted his own
power of attaining, and for the guidance which such truth alone can
give to life. From the beginning it had been his prayer and his
passionate desire that his soul might be with the saints ; not standing
alone in mere individuality, nor left to its own caprices and mistakes,
nor wasted in some blind alley of the world's affairs, nor lost in some
wandering by-path of mistaken thoughts; but with the saints — with
the men by whose labours the central path in the history of man has
been driven through the midst of the years. And slowly there had
dawned upon him that mighty vision which to such a man has the
power of absolute compulsion. An institution august with solem
nities of ancient prayer, august with a thousand sanctities and a
thousand heroic memories, august with mighty names innumerable
and mighty deeds, the home of saints and the guardian of belief,
drew him to herself and subdued to herself all his heart and made
him in humility and obedience her son. To her, with a sense of
gladness and of rest, he gave himself and gave the keeping of his
life. And so he found rest; and having found rest was able to do,
more positively and constructively than before, the work which it lay
in him to do for the men of his day.
But the price was a dear one ; and it was paid still more by those
who sat at his feet than by himself. For in precisely that side of
27
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
his work which most deeply concerned the men of England, his true
strength was veiled. The things that he himself had learned so
thoroughly, and that all men need to learn — things universal, essen
tial, elemental, catholic — he preferred to base upon the authority of an
earthly dogma and an earthly institution ; and to mingle with them, in
obedience to that same authority, things not universal, not essential,
not elemental, and therefore not catholic. So that those who hear
him have always to separate that in his words which belongs to essen
tial eternity from that which belongs to the party interest of a magnifi
cent but sectarian priesthood.
And to this so radical difference between the two men in their
method of apprehending truth, there corresponded a difference in
their manner of expressing it. Wordsworth, having " seen into
the life of things " by that sort of companionship with them which
passes over into a comprehension of their inner and ultimate reality,
was, in his expression of what he had thus seen, a poet. And that
in the true and most strict sense of the word. He was not a man
who wrought out a system of philosophy or of theology, and then
gave to it an alien garb of more or less successful rhythmic utterance.
He was not even a man who lived — to use Mr. Stopford Brooke's
fine metaphor1 — in that " mingled region " of poetry where " its
waves and currents near the coast receive the deep streams of religious
and philosophic thought." His voyage and his home were upon its
" central and lonely deep," where poetry is poetry and nothing else.
Hence when Wordsworth is here spoken of as among the greatest
of the spiritual leaders of the English race, the Wordsworth that is
meant is Wordsworth the poet. He was a captain of the spirit, was
among the greatest of all captains of the spirit, because he exercised,
and in exercising, supremely a certain supreme function — the function
of the sacred poet. But Newman, meeting God in the inner heart,
was as characteristically and as inevitably a prophet, in the strictest
sense of that great word. To impress — I had almost said, to force —
his consciousness of a divine presence and a divine commandment
upon the men of his generation, making no slightest particle of con
cession either to their practical or to their theoretical materialism,
i Hibbert Journal, No. 1 (October, 1902), p. 62.
28
AND THE VISION OF GOD
was the supreme business of his life. Kesolutely he set the whole
of life in the light of ultimate eternity. Unflinchingly he insisted
that every interest, every ambition, every affection, every dominant
fashion and accepted tendency, should answer at that bar for its life.
Authoritatively, uncompromisingly, in season and out of season, that
voice and that pen, and, above all, that solitary and devoted life,
declared that we men are living our lives in a divine presence; and
that that divine presence is the one essential reality with which in our
lives we have to do, and obedience to its purpose and commandment
the one business of life which can claim in any sense to be of
importance.
Different enough, then, the two men were: — different in individual
habit and personal presence; different in the region and climate of
their minds ; different in their ways, as of approaching and appre
hending, so also of expressing, truth. But here our main concern
is not with these differences but with that in which they agreed;
with their consciousness of a divine presence and of that presence
as the ultimate reality of the world and of our life.
II.
Once, among the men from whom we moderns draw our blood and
our speech, and in whose places we now stand, such a consciousness,
under the more limited of the two forms just described, dominated life.
A "consciousness of a divine presence and of that presence as the
ultimate reality of the world and of our life," and a consequent con
sciousness of the supremacy of spiritual interests, were central and
determinative among the forces that made the mediasval world what
it was. So far as the religious spirit of their time lived in them,
mediaeval men habitually looked upon themselves as members of an
eternal order and citizens of an eternal kingdom. They worked " as
seeing One who is invisible," and as "not being disobedient to a
heavenly vision." They remembered that in order to live we must
die, and that in every department of life the divine ordinance is the
cross with its principle of self-renunciation and of living " not to be
29
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
ministered unto, but to minister." They lived " under the power of
the world to come;" and if this present world showed itself to their
understanding as the foe of that world, they did not shrink from the
separation, but made strong their souls, and denied the present world
and all its love, and walked in it as strangers and pilgrims. This
was in their hearts ; and in the great confession of their day, the book
De Imitatione Christi, it spoke itself into words for ever; but it
was no mere maxim for meditation and confession — it was a genuine
principle of unity of life. For that generation as truly as any other
" went forth unto its work and to its labour until the evening " : —
nay, more truly, for the middle age stands as in all the history of the
world pre-eminently the age of great workmen ; not of great machines,
nor of great financial combinations standing over against sullen and
reluctant labourers, but of great workmen and of the delight in
craftsmanship which great workmen can feel. And that which was
in their hearts and in their confession — that habitual remembrance
of God and craving to be at one with Him, that incessant and
insistent vision of a world to come and of a divine order which
earthly eyes cannot apprehend but which is manifest in the cross —
was also in their action and achievement. They worked greatly in
the field of the intellect; and the effort was to gather all science
into one thoroughly-articulated knowledge of God, which in part
should illuminate, but still more should rebuke, the ways of this
present world. They worked with equal greatness in the field of art;
and there too — though it is specially in art that the human soul
rejoices in its own powers and in the exercise of them for their own
sake — they were under the banner of the world to come. For when
they painted, it was the judgment, the heaven, the hell, which give to
this life its awful significance; or it was the saints in their conflict
with the world; or our 'Lord submitting Himself to the helplessness
of infancy, or undergoing the death of the cross, or rising in that
resurrection which showed another world triumphant over the ways
of this. Or when they built — and- they were for the sustained
spiritual passion that animated their work the greatest builders in
the history of the world — their building culminated in houses
of prayer which lift themselves almost out of connexion with the
30
AND THE VISION OF GOD
earth and express in the most stately of all man's languages the
majesty of heavenly things and the upward movement of the soul
in prayer toward that majesty. Even when they sang, romance and
folk-song — the delight of the young in earthly love, and the illumina
tion of this present life by the na'ive imagination — were felt to stand
half-unconsecrated without the gate, while within the singing was
that of men whose vigil was for another country and whose love was
set upon a farther shore. And as were the works so were the men.
If a man arose, at once to embody the ideals of the age and to dom
inate its higher imagination, it was Bernard controlling Europe from
that lowly cell where as the proper business of his life he sought the
mystic vision of God; or it was Francis, with his humility, his self-
denial, his pity and tenderness and loving ministration to the poor,
his canticle of praise to our Lord for " our sister, the death of the
body " and for " all those who forgive one another for His love's
sake." Pilgrims of eternity, encamped for one troubled night upon
this shore — such the men over whom the spirit of that age had power
felt themselves to be. The " lyrical cry " of their life was that of
Israel ; but the cry wrung from solitary hearts in Israel by the afflic
tions of the righteous and the measureless prosperity of the wicked
and the desperation and disaster of Israel's struggle for racial exist
ence, had become in them a settled conviction and an habitual temper :
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but thee ?
And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
My flesh and my heart faileth :
But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
God was the strength of their heart; God and the world to come
were the realities that filled their thought. And precisely from this
arose what we have just had to see : though the world was not their
home, yet, so far as they looked upon it at all, they were worthy
workmen in its affairs. The fact that they viewed the world from a
point high above it, gave them alike in thought and in action a
double strength: gave them, first, the loftiness of mind which arises
out of a great devotion — and the devotion of the unworldly to their
31
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
causes is, as the inner soul of action, a power unspeakably greater
than ambition; gave them, secondly, the spirit of comprehensive
unity. Not only did they seek the unity, under a divine idea, of the
intellectual outlook upon life; they sought a still greater goal — the
unity, in a divine order, of the social organisation of life. The con
scious or unconscious aspiration after that twofold unity was, to their
mind its inner power, to their society the highest of its organising
principles.
In this way — a way narrow but profound and masterful — a con
sciousness of the supremacy of the spirit and of spiritual interests
once dominated life. And of the men who bore that consciousness
we are the children; we stand in the succession of their blood and of
their labour. But we view the world and live our life in a temper
radically different from theirs. The men amongst us who view life
in a way similar to theirs, or in a way kindred to theirs but broader,
are not the representative men, the men whose spirit is an expression
and epitome of a temper which clearly or unclearly is common to us
all — the men who are to our day what Bernard or Francis was to
his. It is true (now that the immediate personal conflicts are over)
that we are very willing to listen to such men as Newman ; still more
willing to listen to such men as Wordsworth. Indeed we listen to
them with an urbanity, a completeness of intellectual toleration, which
in mediaeval days one at least of them would have looked for in vain.
We give them, in fact, everything they ask — except the one supreme
thing which they demand most of all. We appreciate the excellence
of their literary workmanship. We do justice to the height of their
characters. We are grateful to them for the grace and the dignity
which they have added to our life, and for the honour accruing from
their work to the English tongue. We listen gladly to the one as the
bearer of a poetic vision. We hearken respectfully to the other as the
prophet of what, with the forbearing courtesy of well-bred men but
with hearts untouched, we call mystic piety. Only let us view them
as a specially noble sort of dreamers, weaving around the hard core
of the actual reality of things a garment of fancy and high emotion
which adorns and dignifies its surface but can make no claim to
32
AND THE VISION OF GOD
express its true nature: — then they are quite intelligible to us;
indeed, with our sense of the bareness and hardness of our life, not
only intelligible but very estimable. But as soon as we are told that
their words are the plain and simple truth about our world, and about
the meaning of our life in it, and about our actual everyday affairs;
as soon as we are told that their valuation of the things we modern
men are all striving for is the true valuation: — at that instant we
feel a great gulf fixed between us and them; a gulf so deep as to
preclude either mutual understanding or mutual sympathy or a com
mon aim in life.
So radical is the difference in temper between us and the mediaeval
men whose children we are. But a glance at the history which lies
between us and them will show that the change was inevitable. For
in their position there lay a double difficulty. They forgot certain
great works of God which cannot be forgotten without shattering
soon or late the man or the age or the institution that forgets them.
First, they forgot the natural world. With all their understanding
of the supremacy of the spirit and of spiritual interests, they did not
understand that nature also teaches that supremacy, and is herself,
to those who know her as she is, and are able to use her wisely, a
means toward it. And because their position thus did injustice to
nature and the natural order, the time came when the man of science,
the poet, and the ordinary man, had, each in his own way, to rebel
against it. Secondly, save to rebuke it, they almost forgot the natural
soul of man. But that soul contains powers which soon or late must
come to their right: powers of affection and of passion; artistic
powers and powers of the systematic intellect; and that power of
initiative which makes man, like the God from whom he comes, in
his own order a creator and founder. To a few of these capacities
of the natural soul, the mediseval system, it is true, gave magnificent
scope — specially in the art of building; but most of them it scorned
or repressed; and, by its tendency to change faith from an energy
of the divinely illuminated individual soul into a systematic creed
laid down by an authoritative institution, it sinned so deeply against
human nature as to drive men at last into the modern position that
the only illumination worth having is that of a free man, that even
4 33
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
a heavenly vision is not to be received unless it come as to a free
spirit.
So that the man who studies history, however much he love that
age of great workmen and of great workmanship and of great souls
whose citizenship was in heaven, has to insist that the age could not
continue. And, at first sight, the student of history seems able to
go still farther ; seems able to point out the way in which the advance
should have been made. It should have been by growth, not by rebel
lion and revolution. The principle should not have been thrown away
because it had been practised too narrowly. With the great achieve
ment of mediaeval men a complete break should not have been made.
Their light should not have been treated as though it were merely and
simply darkness; rather it should have been retained in its integrity
but freed from its limitations. Men should live still as citizens of
the world to come, but recognising that of the world to come the
present world is an organic part. The divine idea should still be
seen as the one important reality in human life; but it should be
remembered that the stage in the realisation of that idea at which we
men can directly and sincerely labour, is the one found in the causes
and activities which make up the life of a normal man in this present
world — the life of the good neighbour, good citizen, good churchman.
Or, to put all this in one word, the true way of advance from the
mediaeval position was to pass from the type of insight and of
spiritual consciousness represented in modern form by Newman to
that represented by Wordsworth.
But whatever the reason be, the history of the universe — so far,
at any rate, as the history of man on this earth is a part of it and
an index to its nature — does not go on by any such direct and easy
method. The God from whom we come shows Himself in His work
a Lord of Hosts. He develops the powers of His creatures and the
life of His universe by calling forth the mighty opposites that He has
implanted in the natures of things, so that each develops its truth
and its power against the other, until at last the very stress and pain
of the conflict lead men to that still wider truth in which justice is
done to the incomplete truth which each side had and was developing.
Fortunately or unfortunately, it is as true in the kingdom of the
34
AND THE VISION OF GOD
spirit as it is in the physical order that plain daylight is a thing
most complex. All the great kinds of light (if one may so speak)
have to be discovered and set in their places, by hard labour — some
times by hard fighting and many wounds and wanderings — before
that day can come in which all the types of light will blend in the
illumination which alone in the full sense of the word can be called
truth.
And so it was that the spiritual splendour which in the mediaeval
dawn of our history gleamed through cloud and storm and over the
brute earth, was not, in the direct fashion mentioned an instant ago,
to deepen into a more inclusive day. Age after age was to come, each
in its own way a very antithesis to the mediaeval. First came the
Renaissance. Men flung themselves with absolute delight upon the
resources of this present life, and for the first time after many cen
turies lived as masters and lords of this present world. New worlds
they discovered in themselves; new worlds across the sea; and in the
products of ancient culture, the most alluring of all their new worlds.
They loved the world, and the sorrow in their words was because
upon all the objects of their delight they found it written that the
world and the fashion of it pass away. Augustine's mourning
was that he had lived in the things of the world so long and had
found God so late : " I have loved Thee late, Thou Beauty so old
and so new; I have loved Thee late!" But the deep undernote of
lament in the greater Renaissance writings was because the glorious
children of the earth, in the midst of their life found themselves to
be in death. And yet their love of the world was no ignoble passion ;
their delight in the things of the world had in it such a magnificence
of mind that it was a religion rather than a slavery; and to-day, it
is the better men and not the worse who in hidden places of their
souls have still the banner of the Renaissance flying. But already,
unknown to the men of the Renaissance, profounder and more terrific
forces than their view of life comprehended, were " toiling in the
gloom," and soon throughout Europe, first in religion and then in
political affairs, the trumpets were calling to war. In the end that
war exhausted or destroyed nearly all that was noble in the forces
which had given rise to it, and left for the close of the seventeenth
35
THE STUDY OF NATURE
century and the earlier part of the eighteenth, a world degraded and
desolate, a world that slowly regained the solid comforts of life, and
acquired a certain hard and polished culture, but in which, probably
to a greater extent than in any other Western century since Eome fell,
the visible and established elements of society, churches and theo
logians, rulers and ruled, forgot God. And then came our own day.
It dawned at Paris; dawned in blood, and with mighty passions-
passions social and political and one might almost say religious,
which spread their energy throughout the world; but it proved in
the end, and not unnaturally, to be the day of the scientific intellect.
That intellect had long been held in check: alike in the age of
passionate devotion to the humanities, and in the age of war, and
in the hard age that had no place either for the enthusiasms of the
pure intellect or for the devotion of the mind to nature. But now
at last it came to its own; or rather, as is usual in such cases, to
more than its own. Without the lofty Renaissance passion, without
the special Renaissance delight in life, free also from much of the
eighteenth-century hardness of spirit, it set itself to master the world.
As an investigating intellect, it made itself at home with the facts
and laws of nature ; as a contriving intelligence, it reduced the powers
of nature to practical uses — bringing in at last the day of which Bacon
prophesied with such large magnificence of speech, but which prob
ably he would view with a certain lordly contempt, if, with Eliza
bethan memories, he were suddenly to come to life in it.
Such an intervening history places more than the mere lapse of
time between us and the mediaeval men who won from chaos, and
established with settled forms and laws, that living and thinking
which it is now our business to carry on. When we compare our
mind, and the world of our life, with their world and their mind,
we may sum up the loss and gain in two broad statements. First,
while both in spirit and in skill of hand we are poorer workmen than
the mediaeval men were, yet we have a mastery of this present world
which they had not. We have explored, as they could not, the possi
bilities of the present life, and have entered, both intellectually and
practically, into possession of the two great kingdoms which it con
tains — on the one side, the kingdom of nature with its powers; on
36
AND THE VISION OF GOD
the other, the kingdom of humane culture and of the higher passions
and affections. Other men might use the materials which the world
affords in building great houses of prayer to testify of another world
and by their very majesty to shame into nothingness the vanities of
this; we have found that those materials can be used in erecting and
adorning mansions for the present habitation of our own souls. And,
having such houses for our souls, we cannot regard ourselves, while
upon the earth, as strangers and sojourners. Eather we feel ourselves
to be citizens of no mean city; a city which we have placed on sure
foundations by taking as the servants of our life the powers of nature,
and as the tutors of our minds the laws of nature.
But secondly, in this very conquest of the world we have to a
great extent become lost in the world. We have made the earth our
own ; but have become too much confined to it. It goes, indeed, with
out saying, that the latter does not follow logically from the former.
For the discovery of the greatness of the present life is absolutely
no reason for ceasing to live the great present life under the power of
some still greater life to come. The connexion, as already has been
indicated, is one not of logic in the narrower sense, but of that greater
logic which is history. The Eenaissance revolt contributed to it in
one way; the Thirty Years' War in another; the eighteenth century
in still another. And we ourselves managed badly; we flung our
selves so eagerly into the new fields and the new life that our hands
became subdued to what they were working in. But here it is with
the fact, rather than with the fault, that we are concerned. And
the fact may be considered as moving in two spheres, a narrower and
a wider.
(«)
The narrower sphere is that of thought. Here the new situation
consists in a changed view of the field of knowledge. The things
that we regard as certain — the things that are the objects of reliable
and indisputable insight — are things strictly of this world. We have
the knowledge of nature; that is assured and established science.
Some of us feel that this assured science permits something farther;
something which, if any one so chooses, may be called a knowledge
37
THE STUDY OF JSTATUKE
of God, but would more properly be called a faith or a hope. Others
of us believe that our science of nature does not permit such farther
"knowledge" or "faith." But what we all seem agreed upon is
that the two are essentially different things ; the knowledge of nature
;, and the knowledge of God cannot be regarded as essentially akin, as
two stages in one growing insight, or as two levels in one and the
same structure.
In this shattering of the former unity of science, and this limita
tion of knowledge in the strict sense of the term to one of the frag
ments, the leading influence has been the modern study of nature.
But we must notice with special care how the exertion of such an
influence has been rendered possible. It has been made possible,
not from one side but from two : from the side of the men of natural
science themselves; and from the side of the theological leaders of
the church.
First, from the side of the men of science. The movement of
thought by which many of these passed from their knowledge of
nature to a materialistic or agnostic view of the world has already
been described.1 It is sufficient here to indicate the result. This
was the placing before modern men of a teaching about life and the
world, which was not new, indeed, but which now took on a new power.
For it was inculcated now by men deservedly of great influence ; men
of wide knowledge, of disciplined mind, of undoubted honesty, the
leaders in the most striking and most evidently successful of the
intellectual labours of modern times. Moreover the movement of
thought by which it was now reached (though really involving a
great oversight) was so direct that the resultant view seemed to be
based immediately upon established and indisputable science. That
the physical process is continuous and its sum of energy constant;
that it must lead our planet soon or late to a dead eternity in which
self-conscious life can have no footing: — these (so that resultant
view may be stated) are the things that are beyond doubt, and upon
them anything which is to be a sober and reliable wisdom for the
conduct of life must base itself. Hence it is no longer open to us
to regard ourselves as other than beings of the present world; nor
1 Supra, pp. 4, 5.
AND THE VISION OF GOD
to regard as other than visionary any view which makes " the great
purpose of life " to be " a purpose to which this life hardly more than
introduces us." If you would know the true character and meaning
and destiny of human life, there is but one way to gain the knowledge :
you must consider the total system of which that life is a part; that
is to say, you must consider the system of natural facts, out of which
it arises and in which it is lived. If you ask : But was it not those
very facts that Wordsworth considered? the answer comes in very
direct words : "His views were a poet's fancies ; fancies clad in
beauty, but none the less fancies. And the dreams of a poet, or the
visions of hearts that cling to life and to love, cannot take precedence
of established and disinterested knowledge. Such knowledge it is
that we have in the sciences of nature, and it affords no ground for
visions and hopes that go beyond this present life. Modern science,
in one word, has shattered old religion."
But as was indicated above, the fact that the modern scientific *'
movement has contributed to the materialisation of thought and of
life has been^made possible, not only from the side of the men of
science, but also from the side of the theological leaders of the church.
And the latter is the greater and the sadder story. Theology, upon
the older conception of it, included all knowledge. It meant the
whole of science brought to the unity of a supreme and ultimate
principle; brought to unity in and as a knowledge of God. Hence
the theologians were bound by their own conception of their task
to be catholic-minded, to be hospitable to all the orders of science.
The notion of theology as a single special science standing among
the other special sciences, and at war with some of them, was a
notion which — if they could have formed it — they would have rejected
as monstrous. On the contrary, it was only by taking all the sciences
as their " parish," and considering each as part of the knowledge of
God, that they could fulfil their function. Hence — inevitable as was
their failure to complete their science — they were qualified by the very
nature of their attempt to perform one great service for humanity.
If there came an intellectual movement — whether the recovery of
Aristotelian treatises or the founding of new sciences — bringing with
it a body of knowledge new but convincing to tfye age, they, as theo-
39
THE STUDY OF NATURE
logians, were the men at once obliged and qualified to receive it, to
interpret it, and to set it in its place in the one knowledge of God.
It was precisely such a work of interpretation that the modern
world needed from its theologians. There had come a great, a trium
phantly successful, scientific movement, giving us a better acquaint
ance than ever before with that work of God which is the natural
world. The duty of theology was to receive with catholicity of mind
that new body of science, to penetrate to its real significance, and so
to give it its place in the one body of man's knowledge of God. To
have received in that way the sciences of nature, to have viewed sub
specie aeternitatis their work, and so to have given to them their
" divine interpretation " — this, and this alone, would have given us
what we needed. For what we needed was not polemic, but a point
of view from which we could look upon both sides of the conflict, and
see into the ultimate harmony in one rational world of the great
truths which seemed to have come from radically different worlds and
to be in death-struggle with each other.
That we needed; and that the theology of Albert or of Thomas,
recognising its high prerogative of being the guide of the human race
in those spiritual crises which the revolutions of time bring forth,
would have striven with all its might to give. But the greater prin
ciples and greater procedures of those masters had long ceased to
obtain; their conception of theology, with its demand for a compre
hensive view of the world and consequently for a catholic attitude
toward all sciences that deal with the world, had long been forgotten ;
or if remembered, was remembered with grave dislike. " Systematic
theology/' as it was when the minds were being formed of those who
are now doing the world's work, would have been remarkable to St.
Thomas chiefly for its limitations, for its absent problems and absent
provinces; he would have shuddered alike ^ at the narrowness of its
scope and at its dread of the greater enginery of the intellect. It is
impossible, indeed, to enter here into anyTengt^y comparison of the
new conception and place of theology with the old. But the essential
nature of the difference may be very briefly indicated :
Just as, upon the highest conception of the matter, religion arises
from the practical passion after God, so theology arises from the
40
AND THE VISION OF GOD
intellectual passion after God. But the knowledge of God means all
knowledge; to know God means also to know the world; unless you
are a Mystic, there is no such thing for you as a knowledge of God
which is not also science of the world. And if you urge that with
you theology is less proud, and renounces so high an endeavour ; that
the one thing you are intent upon is the salvation of the soul; that
your one function as a theologian is to cast intellectual light upon
the course of that salvation and thus, even though it be indirectly,
to assist in it : — your new definition of your science still does not free
you from the obligation to walk in its greater way. For what is the
salvation of the soul ? That question you can answer only by raising
another: What is the soul? What the salvation of the soul is,
depends on what the soul itself is; unless you know what the soul is,
you do not know either what its salvation properly consists in, or how
wide the scope of that salvation is. But if you would know what
the soul is, you are brought by a double road to a demand for the
knowledge of God. First, to know what the soul is, you must
know the true nature of the world, of which the soul is a part, and
in whose order and conditions the soul lives its life and has its place
to fill ; and thus to know the world you must know God whose char
acter is the ultimate character of the world, and whose purpose is
the ultimate law of its order. Secondly, and directly, if you would
know what the soul is, you must apprehend the nature of its source,
that is, of God, and the nature of the end for which He made it, the
attaining of which is its salvation. So that theology, in order to be
a wisdom of salvation, must be a wisdom of the soul, a wisdom of the
world, a wisdom of God. And the scientific or constructive order of
these should be noted. Whether the first and impelling interest of
the theologian is in the soul or in God, that which is first in the order
of scientific construction is God. In anything which is to be a
"system" of theology, the knowledge of God — that is to say, the
theistic view of the world — must stand as the prius of the knowledge
of salvation. Unless theology is to be blind, unless it is to build its
upper structure without giving any attention to its foundations, it
must begin by working out, with all the completeness possible to such
an intellect as man's, the theistic view of the world; and in its sub-
41
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
sequent work, soteriology or eschatology, it must take up no positions
inconsistent with the principles of that theistic view. Whichever
interest, then, sets us upon the work of theology, with whichever con
ception of it we approach it, we are brought, first or last, to the fact
that, in order to discharge any of its functions, it must be that highest
and final science which is at once a wisdom of God and of the world —
of God as realising His purpose in and through the history of the
world; of the world as at once the scene and the process of a divine
activity.
It is in this regard that theology upon the medieval conception
of it, and modern professional theology, are essentially diverse. The
view which mediaeval theologians took of their work approximated
to that just described. Hence they were profoundly in earnest about
the theistic view of the world. They may not have succeeded — per
haps no man can succeed — in working out such a view consistently;
but at any rate the attempt was made as the first and fundamental
labour of theology, and to it was devoted the whole energy of one of
the greatest of intellectual generations. By one and the same inten
tion their theology was a wisdom of God and a wisdom of the universe.
' But modern systematic theology, at the time when the sciences of
nature were beginning to dominate the intellectual field, was dis
tinguished by nothing more than by a great timidity about the theistic
view of the world; nothing was farther from its thoughts than to be
a wisdom of the universe. How anything so contrary to nature as
this — for theology afraid of theism is like mathematics afraid of being
mathematical — could come to be, is a long story the main outlines
of which are easily traceable by the student but cannot except in a
brief reference be noted here. In broad terms, the change was simply
a part of the general and inevitable breaking up of the mediaeval •
unity of thought and life. Theology became separated, on the one
side from metaphysic and from the metaphysical mind, on the other
from the special sciences. And that meant that it lost from both
sides its capacity for discharging its older function — its function of
receiving scientific knowledge and giving it its divine interpretation.
And then too, this tendency of theology to become a smaller thing
both in its intellectual soul and in its outward extent, was fostered
42
AND THE VISION OF GOD.
by another aspect of modern life — the dividedness of the church.
Theology no longer had " centre everywhere." In some of the
churches " systematic theology " fell into the background altogether,
the institution preferring to stand in its own living and continuous
strength. While, where it did survive, it was usually with an unhappy
procedure. Instead of seeking first the knowledge of God,' and then
basing upon that its account of salvation, it came more and more to
have as its centre of gravity, came more and more to be " built
around," a certain forensic scheme of soteriology. That scheme, as
a matter of historical fact, was not fairly drawn from any of the
chief theological sources. It had almost no connexion with the actual
mind of Jesus as shown in the Evangelia. It did no justice to St.
Paul's great philosophy of the world and of history, which centres
in the views (1) that the supreme principle of the order of the uni
verse is the eternal Christ — in Christ the universe consists — and (2)
that God's attitude toward man, as revealed in Christ, is one of grace/
not of that requirement of legal satisfaction for wrong done which is
the exact opposite of grace. It stood at an unspeakable remove from
St. John's view of Jesus — that He is the Word in whom the character
of the Father and His attitude toward men and the world stand
revealed ; that, in other words, He came into the world not to change
the Father's attitude toward men, but came because of it and to reveal
it. Eather it had arisen under the influence of Eoman Law and of
the Eoman legal and political mind (with Jewish law in the back
ground), and had been fostered in the West by ideas and procedures
belonging to the primitive jurisprudence of the Germanic peoples.
But though so largely heathen in its origin, it had come to be regarded
as Christian because it was so tenaciously held by Christians, and
because it could be supported by a careful selection of passages from
St. Paul. For the men in question, this forensic scheme of soteriology
was theology; and anything beyond it they were inclined to dread.
Of necessity they called themselves theists; but, while they could be
severe upon those who were not called by that name, there was
nothing from which they shrank with a deeper repugnance than the
bringing out into clear light of the meaning and the implications of
the theistic view of the world. But precisely that theistic view it was
43
THE STUDY OF NATURE
which, seriously held and seriously developed, would have enabled
them to receive the new knowledge of nature and to make it at home
as part of the knowledge of God. For what the intelligent theist
knows is precisely this: that just because God dwells in eternity, He
is the informing spirit, the home and the goal, of the world that now
is; that of Him the natural order is a visible Word, and therefore
the study of nature the study of a part of his thought; that in the
actual history of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow He is at work
realising an eternal purpose, and through a thousand channels is call
ing upon men to work along with Him; that He is the nearest of
all things to each man's heart, seeking to win each man's heart to
Himself and to become its supreme principle and central energy—
the Father, in a thousand ways and by a thousand appeals seeking to
win the hearts of His prodigal children back to Himself and to
engage them in the great works at which He Himself is working.
Such theism, however, they could not enter upon, much less develop
into clear articulation as a view of nature and of history. It lay too
far from that with which their minds were filled — the view of the
universe as a court of law; of the divine administration of the uni
verse as consisting in the transactions and expedients of such a court;
of the death of Jesus as central in those transactions, greatest among
those expedients.
As was said before, the question is one of fact, not one of fault.
Perhaps (though few nowadays care to believe it) it is well for us,
when we study history, to carry our hearts — our humanity, not our
partisanship — back with us to the bygone struggles, and mourn for
the mistakes of the dead as for our own sins. But however that be,
one thing is clear: we ought, in dealing with the past, to turn as
much as possible from the easy work of fault-finding to the more
difficult but more honourable task of seeking to trace a wisdom of the
ages at work through all the apparent confusion and wrong. And
this is specially important in dealing with the present point. For,
as was noted a moment ago, the modern disintegration of theology was
part of the general modern disintegration of the mediaeval unity of
thought and of life. And that deep and far-reaching disintegration
may in the end have a good result; the "hidden wisdom of the
44
AND THE VISION OF GOD
world," in whose service all the generations stand — even those which
"know it not" — may be, or rather must be, at work in it. Indeed,
some at least of the signs of this have long been visible. Many of the
sundered factors, forced to stand alone — each erected into a solitary
kingdom, and compelled to find a whole world in itself in order to
live at all — have entered into deeper possession of themselves and of
their own resources; science, for instance, ceasing for a time to look
upon God, has entered with a new freedom and a new fulness upon the
mastery of nature; while literature, with new powers of sympathy
and passion and insight, has recovered and has glorified whole regions
of the soul that long had lain in neglect. And of this enriching and
deepening of life in its estranged and severed aspects, the result is
that if a new integration of thought and of life — a new intellectual
and social integration — should in any future be achieved, it would
be one vastly richer than the mediaeval. All those powers of human
nature — industrial, commercial, political, literary, scientific, humani
tarian — that have swung away from religion, will be seen to have
swung out in a great circle which at last will bring man back, with
wider life and larger heart, to God. Such a synthesis, indeed, does
seem to be drawing nearer on the intellectual side ; being aided, from
the one direction, by the Idealistic interpretation of science ; and from
the other direction, by the historical study of the Bible — a study
which, by setting the mind of Christ in its place of supremacy, makes
it possible for virtually every genuine power of human nature and of
the world to reconcile itself to God and find its fitting place and its
true being in the one world-work of God. But on the social side, if
one confine one's self to actual achievement as distinct from beliefs
and ideals, one has to say that the struggle is as yet more in evidence
than the synthesis; in some regards, indeed, though happily not in
all, the gulfs between class and class, interest and interest, seem, if
possible, to be growing deeper.
But we must return to the special point here in question. Whether
the fact be regarded with hope and therefore resolutely accepted and
even welcomed, or whether it be judged with grief and anger, the fact
itself remains that when, through the triumphant advance of the
scientific point of view, the time of intellectual crisis came to modern
45
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
men, the theologians had neither the requisite equipment of ideas, nor
the requisite intellectual vision of God, to enable them to perform the
function which at such a time they owe the world. It was not in
them to receive the modern scientific movement, to view its results
sub specie quadam aeternitatis, and thus to give them, so far as is
possible to the human intellect, their " divine interpretation." In
this situation some of us were able to trust stubbornly to our own
hearts and to the religion from which our fathers had drawn their
heroic strength; and so were able to steer straight on through the
intellectual chaos. Others of us, who could not rest in a division of
the heart from the intelligence, obeyed an inward call and made a
journey — perilous and beneficent, as all true journeys are — to far-off
schools; and there; from the Kantians or from Plato, gained the
insights to which those who taught us with authority ought to have
brought us. But those are exceptional cases. The important thing
is to notice the effect upon the general modern mind. It came to
this: that when men of science, whose, work compelled us to respect
them, drew from their indisputable acquaintance with nature the con
clusion that the religious view of man and of life and of the world could
no longer stand, we were in a position where we could not fairly resist
them; in a sense their battle was won before they began the attack.
For, in so far as the most of us had a reasoned view of the world at
all, a reasoned outlook upon the nature and structure of the cosmos
in which we live, a reasoned apprehension of the character of that
continuity which runs like fate through its entire history and all its
processes, it was precisely from those men of science that we had
received it. Who else was there to give it to us? And that was not
all. We not only received it from them, but we received it in. their
sense, and from the point of view of their sciences ; for there was no
higher interpretation which showed a genuinely scientific spirit and
could therefore be convincing to an age of scientific mind.1
i The wisdom which leads on the ages is greater than our dreams, and we may trust
that even in its sternness it is kindlier than our fairest imaginations ; else it might be
permissible for a man to dream how well it would have been for us all, if, in the day when
the sciences of nature were coming forward, those who guided the thought of the church
had been men of Origen's spirit.
46
AND THE VISION OF GOD
(ft)
But if in the realm of thought there has come to be a gulf between
the science that knows the earth and the faith that looks to heaven,
much more does the separation of earth and heaven find place in the
practical conduct of life. There is to be found the true " modern
Materialism." We have become materialised in our ambitions and
ideals; the ultimate and controlling purpose of life is too little the
promotion of a good which is eternal and common to all, too much
the attaining of that material good which passes rapidly away and the
possession of which by one man frequently involves the exclusion of
others from it. To state the case more broadly, we have fallen into
bondage to what older men were wont to call " the spirit of the
world" — the spirit which always is individualistic and selfish, and
usually is earthly and mercenary. It was pointed out above that
mediaeval religion, precisely because it set men high above the earth,
gave them a spirit of comprehensive unity in dealing with the things
of the earth; led them to the idea of the unity, in a divine order, of
the whole social organisation of life. But the spirit of the world
exerts just the opposite influence. It begins by setting each man
upon the search after his own individual good; and ends by leaving
him incapable of devoting himself to any good save that which is
earthly and material.
One of the instances of this dominance of practical materialism
and of the spirit of the world — the instance that must stand here as
representative of all the rest — is perhaps the saddest thing in modern
life. Because the leaders of modern industrial society make material^
interests supreme in their lives, great masses of other men are com
pelled to make material considerations, in their most elementary and
most brutal form, supreme in their lives. For while the modern
manner of living is more humane than the mediaeval, yet, in the
modern industrial organisation of society, the gaining of the liveli
hood itself is, for whole classes of the people, a harder, a more pre
carious, in many cases a more absolutely hopeless, matter than it was
in mediaeval society, and precisely for that reason claims all the
energies of life, leaving none for higher things.
47
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
Such the modern position has come to be. In the realm of
thought, indeed, as already has been indicated, the last quarter of a
century has brought a great improvement. We are looking with wiser
eyes upon the sciences of nature — because we ourselves have become
more scientific; and because, in growing more scientific, we have
found that the spirit of Christ and the spirit of science go naturally
together, like love and light. In that sense, the first intensity of the
intellectual conflict is past. And one of the signs of this calls for
special notice. Of the ways in which the mind of the church has
become more scientific, and in becoming so has apprehended the kin
ship of the spirit of Christ and the spirit of science, the most impor
tant (leaving aside the general fact of an increasing spaciousness in
thought and therefore in intellectual sympathy) lies in the growth
of that scientific study known as Biblical Theology. Biblical Theol
ogy arose when the scientific spirit, by its own natural and legitimate
advance, entered into the church and took possession of the key to the
whole theological situation — namely, of the sources. And this means
that it is from the scientific spirit that modern theology has received
its greatest benefaction — the restoration to it of Christ as He actually
was, and of His mind as it actually was manifested. It is a thing
full of hope for both the church and the world that in theology the
dominance of invented systems with their proof-texts — systems which
were the expressions and the symbols of schools, and sects, and par
ties, or even of individuals — is slowly passing away, and the mind
of Jesus, as gathered from His recorded teaching and action, and
from the Christian consciousness, is more and more becoming
determinative.1
But while the first intensity of the conflict is thus past on the
intellectual side, the conflict itself is not yet over. Not only for many
individual minds, thinking honestly their own thoughts and seeking as
best they can the light necessary to life, but also for many influential
groups of teachers and of learners, the two sides are still in antithesis.
On the one side religion, not by any commendation of the theologians
i In all such discussions concerning theology and the mind which is desirable as the
mind of the chairch, it is of course to be remembered that, important as theology is, it is
not the supreme thing ; the chosen dwelling-place of the spirit of Christ always has been,
always will be, in pure and simple hearts which love Him and live in that love.
48
AND THE VISION OF GOD
but by intrinsic power of its own, makes still the appeal which twice
at least has mastered the world; and the former wisdom, the wisdom
mediaeval and Platonic, whose knowledge was of the soul and whose
vision was of the home of the soul, finds still to be its prophets men
over whom the spirit of the time has no dominion, a Wordsworth or
a Newman. But on the other side the scientific mind and the science
which is its work stand over against religion and over against the
older wisdom as unreconciled powers, equally resolute, equally mas
terful, and to many minds greater in power of immediate and con
vincing verification. It is a great conflict; and yet it is the lesser
half of the spiritual struggle into which every modern man is born;
over against it stands its greater counterpart, the conflict in the realm
of practice, where, in opposition to the spirit of the cross, there stand
the spirit of the world, and that far-reaching materialisation of life
which the spirit of the world, working with mightier instruments than
ever before, has effected.
III.
Men who are in earnest about their citizenship in the world, when
they find themselves in the thick of the struggle just referred to,
soon learn one thing : the only power that can overcome the spirit of
the world is something as practical as itself; is the spirit which has
seen and chosen the better part, and lives in the world "not to be
ministered unto, but to minister " — the spirit of those who have looked
upon their Lord and serve Him by more than speech. So that the
only value that can be ascribed to discussion and argument is a sec-\'
ondary value. But that value, though secondary, is by no means
slight. For we must remember that thought and practice do not
stand apart; they are related as soul and body. And in particular,
the practical spirit of religion needs clear eyes. There is no
religion — no religion such as can change the world — without vision;
to choose the better part men must look beyond the earth and apprehend
heavenly realities. And though such apprehension need not be dis
tinctly intellectual in form, yet, in at least some of the members of
every society, it ought to rise to the form of that penetrating and
5 49
THE STUDY OF NATURE
systematic thought which is able to look upon the world and assure
itself what the reality of the world actually is — whether it is a mate
rialistic or a spiritual order, whether it is good, or simply indifferent
to good, or an eternal dualism of good and evil. And what has
already been said will show that in our day the problem for such
thought — the problem for " philosophy "• —has been brought to a very
pointed form : What is the ultimate meaning for life and religion of
scientific knowledge of nature?
To the apparent conflict, then, between the science which knows
nature and the religion which has as its inner impulse a vision of
God, we must now turn. The first thing to be noticed is that such
a conflict is scarcely a case of truth against falsehood. It is rather
a case of divided knowledge and divided insight; a case of truth
against truth. Men placed in such circumstances are sure to have
recourse to many " working solutions " ; to the faith that dares, or
to the stubborn manliness that clings to ancient morality or religion
in spite of intellectual confusion. These are measures of war,
inevitable upon an obscure and troubled battlefield ; and the men who
adopt them often serve greatly their day and society. But the fact
remains that such attitudes afe not adequate solutions. And what is
necessary to such an adequate solution is equally clear. In a division
of the sort now in question, where one side is based upon a certain
order of science, the only solution which can be finally satisfactory
consists in more or higher science; consists, that is to say, in gaining
by a genuinely scientific method a point of view high enough to give
a comprehensive outlook over both the warring sides and over the
territory upon which their warfare is waged. For it is unjust to
take your stand within one side, as within a closed circle, and then
from within that closed circle to pass judgment upon positions which
lie outside and are based upon a different order of principles. That
is to say, it is unjust to take one's stand within the " natural science
consciousness " and in its name summarily to brush aside the con
sciousness of which Wordsworth is in one way, and Newman in another
way, a type. And it is equally unjust to call for the flat supersession
of the scientific consciousness, on the ground that some other con
sciousness—poetic, moral, religious— has the right of way. Neither
50
AND THE VISION OF GOD
of these procedures constitutes a solution of the problem. In neither
can a thoughtful and honest mind rest permanently or take up its
ultimate abode. The first is the hasty — occasionally the contemp
tuous — evasion of the problem by refusing to recognise the existence
and weight of one of the two sides ; and such a procedure contradicts
that very spirit of science in the name of which it is undertaken.
The second is the makeshift of spiritual desperation.1 By this it is
riot meant that poetic intuition and religious vision have no place in
man's life. On the contrary, his ordinary life in its whole range of
daily thought and daily work, is a pitiable thing without them. And
even in conflicts such as are here in question, men have more than
once or twice done great and genuine service by taking their stand
upon poetic intuition and religious vision, and in their name defying
both the scientific and the commercial consciousness. How this can
be so, we shall a little farther on be in better position to see. In the
meantime, what we have to notice is that such an attitude is not a
permanent solution. To settle down permanently into^uch an atti
tude — worse still, to speak authoritatively to the thinking men of
your generation and have nothing but such an attitude to commend
to them — is simply to set one closed circle against another closed
circle; is simply to solidify the opposed ranks in their opposition.
What is required for a permanent solution is that the critical and /*
disinterested reason, walking in the way of science and in the spirit
of science, should strive forward toward its goal; that is to say,
toward a view of the world as one. Such a view, if only it could be
gained (and — as we shall see — it can be gained) would enable us to
do both of the things which are necessary to an adequate solution. It
would enable us, first, to recognise whatever truth there may be on
each side; nay, to do more, to give that truth a deeper meaning and
a fuller interpretation by setting it in its place in a system of wider
truth. And how much this latter consideration means may be seen
by remembering one thing : if each side has its truth, if loth of the
opposed sides are really elements in one truth and one life, each having
i And when employed as a method of theology, is something worse ; is a makeshift of
desperation on the part of men who ought to be the masters and kings of the whole V
intellectual situation, but have allowed themselves to be driven to bay in a corner of their
own realm.
51
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
its own great place and great right, then we may be sure that each
can also contribute to the power and breadth of the other; for great
truths are not self-contained; they answer to one another and con
tribute to one another. Secondly, it would enable us to understand
the limitations under which each of the sides apprehended and
envisaged its own truth — limitations which shut each side away from
the other and made each accuse the other of blindness or even of
falsehood. And understanding these limitations means (as Hegel so
steadily insisted) a very great deal more than merely stating the
fact of their existence. It means understanding how they came to
be; how they are inevitably bound up with certain special points of
view, so that the men who live habitually at these points of view are
subject to the corresponding limitations of outlook upon the world.
Such a method would enable us to recognise truth wherever there is
truth to be recognised; and not merely to recognise it, but (what is
more difficult) to do justice to it. In particular it would enable us
to leave the established laws and principles of natural and physical
science standing in .their full inner integrity and at the same time
to take them up as harmonious elements in a system of truth wider
than themselves; a system in whose wider light their ultimate sig
nificance for life and for the meaning of life would become manifest.
And that would put us in position to correct precisely the order of
mistakes with which we are here concerned; not mistakes in matters
of fact (a sort of mistakes which scientific men are not given to
making) ; but mistakes in interpretation, mistakes in applying the
principles and the points of view of the special sciences to life and to
the problem of the meaning of life.
Indeed, the demand for such a solution might be stated wholly
from the side of science itself. For it is the presupposition of all
science and of all endeavour after science — it is the presupposition of
every step in every scientific investigation— that the world is one, a
single system of interrelated facts; and that therefore knowledge is
one, a single system of related insights. Hence the ultimate truth
about any one part of the world, or about the scientific principles
employed in the study of it, becomes manifest only from the centre ;
only from a point of view which commands the whole field and which
52
AND THE VISION OF GOD
is gained, not so much by the study of fact after fact in detail as by
apprehending the inner nature of the total system. And it is pre
cisely when truths appear to conflict that it is most important to
remember this; most important of all when the conflict is such as
that between the "natural science consciousness" and the religious
consciousness, where the two sides appear to stand so far apart, and
yet each is so deeply rooted in existing reality.
The task, then, which faces the man who has taken into his heart
that for which Wordsworth and Newman stand, and who at the same
time finds himself compelled whether he will or no to be an intel
lectual citizen of the modern world, may be summed up thus. — First
he has to attempt to comprehend the ultimate significance for the v
problem of the meaning of life, of the modern scientific knowledge
of nature. Secondly, to do this he must seek to gain a point of view
from which, in some genuine sense of the words, the world can be
seen as one, life viewed as a whole, facts comprehended sub specie
quadam aeternitatis. Thirdly, the quest of that point of view must v
be carried on in a genuinely scientific temper. Rebuke of science;
evasion of the demands of the scientific spirit ; the " flat supersession
of the scientific consciousness " in the name of the religious conscious
ness ; the attempt to follow some by-path or "short cut " upon which
one hopes to get past the scientific position without the danger of
being taken prisoner : — all these are ab initio forbidden.1 In a word,
i One of these attempts to "get past the scientific position " is so fundamentally bad
as to deserve special mention— the endeavour to justify belief in God by seeking to find
gaps in the continuity of nature. It is true that a God thus made manifest— made mani
fest not by the greatness and harmony of nature, not by its abiding law and continuous
order, but by its rents and gaps— would be no worthy object of religious devotion. But
that is only the beginning of the matter. Once you shatter the continuity of nature, you
shatter Imore than Materialism. You shatter the possibility of all science whatever.
You open up the gulf of universal scepticism, and Materialism disappears in it, it is true,
but along with it disappear Theism and theology and the rational basis for every sort of
religion except two, between which men will continue to choose according to their
individual dispositions— Stoicism (as a practical temper, not as a philosophy) and
Epicureanism.
In a word, in insisting upon the continuity of nature, men of science have been better
theologians than the theologians themselves. If God exists at all, He is the God of all
nature and of every natural law. There are no gaps in His workmanship, no breaches of
continuity in His activity. All nature is an activity of His, and every natural law a
principle of that activity. If the theologians would be true to theology, what they have
to do is to protest, not against the 'principle of continuity, but against too narrow a
reading of it and too narrow an application of it to reality. The principle of continuity is
53
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
the attempt to discover the ultimate significance for life of our knowl
edge of nature should be carried through with fidelity to the scientific
spirit; and the view finally gained of the ultimate meaning of our
science of nature should be, in a genuine sense of the words, a farther
stage of science itself.
IV.
But in approaching this task one is approaching no new or purely
modern task. To gain insight into the significance, for the problem
of the meaning of life, of the fact that man has science of nature;
and so to gain that insight that it shall be a farther stage of the same
science : — upon this attempt, or upon a greater which includes it, has
been directed the longest and most continuous of all the labours of the
human mind. Each intellectual era has come to the problem in its
own way; in its own way has stated the problem, in its own way
attempted the solution; and the struggle upward through inadequate
categories has been slow and stubborn. Hence the special pleader or
the hasty critic can easily arrange a clever argument for the charge
that the imagined insight of each age stands in contradiction to that
of the others, and that therefore the wholo history establishes nothing.
But as a matter of fact that history has the unity which arises from
a central and catholic line of development. And the man who is
willing, and who is able, by historical study, to repeat that develop
ment in his own thinking and live it over again in his own soul—
the man who illuminates his soul with the wisdom of the ages, and
grows into that illumination as the ages themselves grew into it — is
the man who, when the problem here at issue falls upon him, can
conduct most intelligently his own, wrestle with it, and can best be
a guide to others.
For what the great men of thought who in their succession con
stitute that " central and catholic line " have seen, is precisely that
unworthily treated if it is limited to certain physical and chemical processes. The true
field of the principle of continuity is the total history in time, the total evolution, of the
universe. And as so viewed, it is simply one way of apprehending the essential ration
ality of God and of the divine action in nature and in history. In this— and I think only
in this— lies the basis for a worthy constructive doctrine of miracle. (See the acute
discussion in Mr. Balfour's Foundations of Belief, 1897, p. 316 seq.)
54
AND THE VISION OF GOD
such a farther stage of science as was referred to above is possible.
And not only that it is possible, but also that the human intellect
must seek after it unless the human intellect is to live in treason
against the scientific spirit. They have seen, in the first place, that
man's knowledge of the material order implies a greater whole of
knowledge, from whose point of view the world is seen as a whole and
man's life in its true meaning; and in the second place, that that
greater whole of knowledge is a fulfilment of man's knowledge of
nature, not a revolt against it, nor a contradiction of it.
The age-long labour in which the " masters of them that know "
endeavoured to fulfil the scientific demand which they had thus appre
hended, cannot, of course, be described or outlined here. But cer
tain of the outstanding facts of its history, if noted at this point,
will enable us to orient ourselves in the courts of philosophy, and to
apprehend the nature of the tradition that has grown up there.1
That tradition*- entered, almost at its beginning, into conscious
possession of its own true nature as an effort after the unity of life.
For the mind which gave rise to philosophy and science, and presided
over the beginnings of their tradition, and informed the construction
of their first great monuments, was that of the Greeks; and the
graver genius of that race-^even while its cities, by divisions without
and within, were working out for themselves irremediable ruin-
sought to rise above the divisions of thought and of practice ; sought
to see life " steadily," to see it " whole," and to discover, at
once for the individual and the state,, the true unity of life. That
unity the Greek — so far as the deeper genius of Hellas prevailed in him
— sought by proportion. He would bring life to unity, not by
extirpating all interests save one — driving out religion, for instance,
in the name of science, or the good in the name of the beautiful, or
the expert in government in the name of democracy — but rather by
i For the younger student of philosophy, the historical study that does this has, in
addition to the value noted earlier in the text, this special value : it puts him in position
to make with more intelligence his estimate of the present-day voices that claim hia
attention. For in this as in every age, some of the writers in philosophy are so related to
the traditional development that their own individual strength is at once rooted in and
reinforced by the incalculable strength of the central and catholic past ; while others, who
astonish their day with inventions of their own, represent in philosophy the merely
individual and therefore the transient.
55
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
giving to each legitimate interest and capability of the soul, its due
and proportionate place — primary or secondary, as the case might be —
in the single system of an harmoniously ordered life. The life
which results when a single limited interest, or a single unbridled
tendency of human nature, takes complete possession of a human
soul and of a human body, he refused to call a human life; and
any social order which would make such life inevitable to the
various classes of enfranchised citizens he looked upon as essentially
vicious. In the state, according to the ideal of it, each citizen was
to perform freely and devotedly the function for which nature fitted
him; and so the life, on the one hand of the state, on the other of
each individual citizen in it, was to reach completeness both of
development and of efficiency. Unity of life; completeness of life;
and the securing of these by harmonious co-operation of natural powers
in which each helps the others by doing with excellence its own work : —
this was at once his ideal of life and his principle for the organisation
of the state.
Furthermore, the Greek mind in its scientific workmanship was
thoroughly disinterested. Greek men of science and Greek men of
thought were wont to look upon the facts of life and the facts of the
world with clear and direct eyes; they saw things just as they are
and described them exactly as they found them. The notion that
truth — truth in the grave and deep sense of the word — could have ill
consequences in the practical life, had no place with them. By the
very nature of the mind in them they were free from the vice of doing
violence to the scientific conscience in order to conduct special plead
ings for ethical and theological positions. Indeed, it is precisely for
that reason that the Greek mind has contributed, as to the cause of
science, so also, and even more profoundly, to the cause of goodness.
For hostility to science, or even alienation from it, in the interest of
morality or religion, is as injurious to these themselves as to science;
nay, is even more injurious; for it works them a triple injury. It
exposes their fundamental principles to suspicion as fearing the light.
It shatters the unity and integrity of life ; and incompleteness of life
means incompleteness of morality and of religion. And — the deepest
injury of all — it steals away from them that which is at once their
56
AND THE VISION OF GOD
eyesight,, their interpreter, and their intellectual soul, and thus leaves
them to the mercy of the dogmatic and the priestly mind.
These qualities of the Greek spirit made the interpretation of life
which it wrought out a thing of supreme value for ever to the men
who, for the business of living life, wish to clear their eyes and clear
their intelligence. That interpretation took two main forms : a more
literary, in the work of the tragedians, who in huge and majestic
symbols of ancient legend expressed their sense of the operation in
man's life of a necessity greater than man, so that the blind choices,
the hasty movements of the individual will, bring in their train inex
orable fate — fate clad always in terror, but sometimes dimly seen to
the poet's faith to be the form of a great righteousness; and a more
scientific, in the work of certain great men of thought who carried
farther than the poets the attempt to understand the nature of that
necessity, and found it to be eternal, and, in the highest sense
of the words, rational and righteous. By singular good fortune to
humanity, this latter interpretation came to share, at its culmination
in Plato, in one great feature of the former : came to add to its own
intrinsic value as a guide of life a manner of expression fitted to win
men's hearts. For while Plato had, in its very highest form, the
disinterested scientific temper of the Greeks, and their clearness of
intellectual vision, he was more than a great scientific intellect con
templating life. He was one of the most human of men. He knew
life by walking in its ways, by sharing in its greater struggles, by
enduring its greater sorrows. Yet his vision was driven beyond the
horizon of this world; alike by the discovery of his intellect
and by the demand of his soul for a home truly appropriate to
its nature, he was led to contemplate an eternity and a perfection,
which are not of this world, though they are the truth of it and the
standard for judging all its affairs. And in this ascent of his soul
the characteristic genius of his race did not desert him, though its
lighter elements were rebuked and fled. He remained a Greek seeking
for integrity of life and delighting in the exercise of all the faculties
of the soul; an artist, with the artist's instinct for apprehending and
expressing beauty; a poet, able to find earthly words for realities
unspeakable, and for the things of eternity a voice that passes into
57
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
human hearts "with lightning and with music." So that when in
Plato the graver spirit of Hellas entered into full and critical pos
session of itself, and put into words that which it had learned con
cerning the world and concerning life, the words went forth to later
generations clad, in addition to their scientific 'truth, with a threefold
power — that of humanity, that of beauty, that of religious passion.
But though Plato's words were at once the profoundest and the
most human of all the words that have been spoken in the schools of
philosophy, the two world-ages which followed did not take him as
their teacher. The mediaeval world, indeed, might have seemed the
very world for the reception of Plato. For the men of that world
were actually achieving — to them the supreme business of life was
to achieve — the very thing which had lain closest of all to Plato's
heart, and which he had called for from the Greeks in vain : the sub
jection of the sensuous world to the super sensuous, the making of the
wh6le order of the state, the whole course of individual education,
the whole structure and organisation of society, a " service of the
invisible world."1 But, for one thing, of the corpus of the Platonic
writings little beyond the Timaeus was known. For another thing,
the dominant party made religion inseparable from the church, and
the men who laboured in the task of giving to the world its divine
interpretation were churchmen. And these, when they required an
intellectual organon for their immense endeavour, found in Aristotle
a system remarkably well adapted to their needs. If it had somehow
been possible for them to gain a comprehension of Plato as he truly
is, they would probably have found him a very troublesome friend.
For a spiritual power, incalculable, unfathomable, not to be fettered
or led, is a thing which does not commend itself to the typical church
man. And that is precisely what Plato is. For, in the first place,
he is always a dialectician; and his dialectic allows your mind no
rest except in ultimate and essential eternity. And in the second
place, as we shall see later,2 although he is not a Mystic, yet Mysticism
can be learned from him; and Mysticism makes short work of
external organisation, of material symbols, of churchly observances.
i Windelband, Platon, 3te. Auflage, S. 169.
2 Infra, pp. 214-232.
58
AND THE VISION OF GOD
At the same time, there is in mediaeval thought much more Platonism
than we usually fancy; partly because the mediaeval temper led inde
pendently to it; partly because, in choosing Aristotle as their master,
the mediaeval theologians chose, next to Plato himself, the best Pla-
tonist in the world. And if Aristotle did not reach the height of the
Platonic temper, his mediaeval pupils could contribute that directly
from their own hearts.
With the modern world the case has been different. It could
know Plato if it would ; and from the Eenaissance onward it has had
many ardent disciples of Plato. But its temper has in the main
been un-Platonic; and in its science it began by breaking radically
with the past. The world of Descartes and Bacon, in the extremity
of its revolt against the mediaeval, would have nothing to do with
any science but its own; would begin all over again the work of
understanding the nature of the world; would fight its scientific
battles altogether from its own beginning, altogether in its own
fashion. The outcome was remarkable. When one penetrates to
the great currents that beneath the troubled surface have driven for
ward as steadily and as irresistibly as if Necessity herself were in
them,1 what one finds is an almost exact parallelism with the course
of Greek thought. The Eleatic and the Sophist are accurately in
their places ; the Eleatic (in Spinoza) with much of the old Par-
menidean dignity; the Sophist with almost the old procedure in his
scepticism. And at last the specifically modern way of approaching
and stating the problem was set by a very un-Hellenic Socrates —
Immanuel Kant.2 His work was that of a pioneer. It furnished
1 As a matter of fact, necessity was in them ; the logical necessity which governs the/
dialectic evolution of the categories.
2 Whether as a mere fact of history, or an instance of how the inner wisdom of history,
working under the form of dialectic development, enlists the individual in its service,
this parallelism between the course of Greek thought and that of modern, is very striking.
Both began at the beginning ; or rather, Thales actually did, and Descartes tried-
Both settled with stubborn resoluteness to the attempt to understand the world from the
point of view of the category of substance. With the Greeks this culminated in Par.
menides, with the moderns in Spinoza. Finally in each case the lesson was learned (being
soundly emphasised by the rise of scepticism— Gorgias and Protagoras and Hume) that an
ontology cannot be constructed off-hand ; that a trustworthy theory of reality can be
gained only through, and in, and as, a theory of knowledge. The learning of this lesson is
connected in the one case with the name of Socrates, in the other with that of Kant.
And in each case the learning of this lesson meant that philosophy entered auf den
sichern Gang der Wissenschaft. With the Greeks Plato and Aristotle followed ; with us,
the present period, in which every metaphysician who is in the main course of philosophy
and not in some eddy or side-stream, proceeds from the point of departure set by Kant.
59
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
little more than a beginning. And in Kant's own writings even that
beginning was sadly obscured. It was loaded down with masses of
alien material and with needless dualisms; and it suffered especially
> because Kant dropped his own fundamental insight half-way, and so
drew from it almost the opposite of its legitimate conclusions.
Indeed, something like this was to be expected; for that insight was
the gain of Kant's old age, the long-delayed reward of a lifetime in
which that acute and penetrating intellect worked through the dog
matic and empirical and sceptical and sentimental philosophies of
the day and found rest in none of them. But, under whatever weight
of alien and obscuring matter, the beginning was there. And the
task set for the modern mind by it has been accepted and pushed
resolutely through. The carrying of the Kantian beginning — if you
will, of the Kantian suggestion — forward to its legitimate conclusion
.>has been the special task of metaphysic in the period of philosophy
in which we now live.
In Germany this was done by a succession of men of thought, the
/ last and greatest of whom was Hegel. Of him it is sufficient to say
that each of the great intellectual ages has given to the world an
encyclopaedic philosopher — a man who, so far as was possible to the
human mind, gathered into himself all the science of his day, and
interpreted it from the point of view of an insight into the ultimate
nature of reality, and so made it in the true sense of the word a
system: the Greek age gave Aristotle; the mediaeval, Aquinas; the
modern, Hegel.
But though Hegel's is the one name that ranks with Aristotle's
and with that of Aquinas; and though he has written very deeply
upon many of the more capacious minds of the day his own great
conviction that God actually is at work in His world, and that the
divine reasonableness actually is present in the structure of the uni
verse, in the laws of nature, in the course of history; yet he is likely
never to become a great and familiar teacher of the human race, such
as Aristotle and Aquinas have been and are and will be. In par
ticular — and this is what specially concerns ourselves — he will never
in any direct sense be the great teacher of what for want of some better
name we must call Anglo-Saxondom. For one thing, his writings
60
AND THE VISION OF GOD.
are often needlessly obscure and difficult; and the unhappy form in<.
which it was necessary for his editors to issue a great part of them
has not helped the matter. For another thing, there is a feature of
his work which is peculiarly distasteful to the "Anglo-Saxon" — or
at any rate to the specifically English — intellect : the technical appar
atus, useful as it really is, is so enormous that sometimes it smothers
the very content for whose expression it was devised; while at other
times it carries Hegel, rather than Hegel it — at which times the man
of thought appears to be mounted upon a very high horse indeed.1
t At the same time many of us would bring to our work in the world a graver and
more comprehensive wisdom if we could avoid one mistake : we let Hegel's high words,
his masterful and comprehensive procedure, drive us into rebellion against him and all
that he represents ; and so we are blinded to the fact that there are things which we need
to learn and which his Idealism has to teach.
An example will show what is meant. Lotze and Paulsen, the one in an earlier and
more irreconcilable way, the other in a later and more moderate, fought the battle of the
steady everyday consciousness against the thoroughgoing procedure and vast results of
the "speculative philosophy." But in doing this they lost sight of the fact that the very
thing needed in order to give coherence to their own philosophical construction is the
Kantian epistemology as clarified and systematised by Hegel. In them philosophy was
unnecessarily crippled ; not altogether, but to some extent, philosophy in them defeats
itself; in the name of the ordinary consciousness and of everyday interests, of the "solid
ground " and of "plain facts," they recoil from precisely those scientific insights which
show us what those everyday interests and ordinary facts really are— the body, namely, of
an eternal reason, the media through which and in which an eternal purpose is being
realised.
But men such as these bring to their criticism of the " speculative philosophy " a fine
and high temper. " Sit anima mea cum illo" one has to say of such a man even while
arguing against him. But one occasionally meets a very different type of critic : the man
who makes it part of his duty to pass in review the " masters of them that know " simply
to find a flaw in each and then throw them all aside and return triumphantly within the
circle of his own sectarian — or individual — theology. To such a man Hegel is usually
the most special of all his bugbears. But with such an attitude the student who in
dealing with the world of thought seeks its greater wisdom and its greater virtues — and
only he who is such a student to-day is worthy to be a leader of the intellect of the church
to-morrow— will have nothing to do. Reverently he will approach the world's masters in
science and philosophy ; he will keep himself from the ingratitude that in the presence of
the great workmen of the intellect seeks only to discover the imperfections of their work ;
he will endeavour to make his way through transient, and often inappropriate, forms of
expression.to the inner and abiding meanings, and to do justice to the truths that great
men of old reached out after but were not able to grasp clearly and express happily; and
so from each one — still more from all of them viewed as forming one great history and
one great development— he will carry away for himself a worthy harvest of insight
worthily gained.
The fabt that in Germany itself there is no " Hegelian school " is often referred to, and
various inferences adverse to " Hegelianism " drawn from it. But in the first place the
Hegelian view of the world is not dead ; it has become part of that intellectual air which
we all are breathing, and which without Hegel would have been a very different and a
much poorer thing. And in the second place, one of the facts of German life should be
61
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
Hence the most trustworthy of the men of thought who in Eng
lish-speaking countries have bent to the work of carrying Kant's
beginning forward to its conclusion, while they have learned much
from Hegel and directly or indirectly are under profound debt to
him, are not " Hegelians " ; are not followers of Hegel in the strict
sense of discipleship.1 From the point of departure which Kant set
for us all, they have gone forward with the sober caution of their
race, and have steadily avoided any such immense technical apparatus
remembered. In Germany the " great masters "—those upon whom the young men form
their minds— are usually living men ; you migrate from university to university, look
upon their faces, hear them read. The advantages of this are instantly apparent. But it
does not seem to be equally well understood that such a state of affairs has at least some
disadvantages. These were never better summed up than once by the young man who
later became Dr. Pusey : " There is probably no people among whom the mighty dead are
so soon forgotten, or the great names of the present day so unduly exalted, as in Germany,
and this because the knowledge of the mass of each generation is derived for the most
part exclusively from living sources." (See Liddon's Life of Pusey, 1893, Vol. I., p. 230.)
For young students it may not be a mistake to enter into Hegel's system by working
backwards ; that is to say, by beginning with the Philosophy of History (which as
Jowett remarked to Tennyson "is just 'the increasing purpose that through the ages
runs' buried under a heap of categories ") and the Philosophy of Right. Then,— and all
the better if with the help of Mr. Baillie's, and Mr. M'Taggart's, valuable exposition
and discussion— the Logic can be attempted. Of introductory statements of Hegel's
thought and of its significance, the best remains, and is likely long to remain, that by the
Master of Balliol. The handbook by Professor Mackintosh couples with attractive points
one grave defect. It is described in the preface as a handbook and evidently was intended
to be such. But in a handbook one thing is essential : it must be an exposition, an expla
nation, an interpretation, in the simplest and directest form possible, of the system in
hand. To that one purpose all the writer's literary powers and virtues should be subordi
nate and contributory. But Professor Mackintosh's discussion, while having any number
of incidental virtues— it is most interesting and suggestive, full of bright sayings and
happy passages— lacks precisely this essential quality of a handbook. One might almost
say that so far from being primarily an exposition of Hegel and of the Hegelian view of
the world, it is an exposition of its author's own opinions, and a somewhat unfair criticism
of Hegel in the light of them. And the treatment is very unequal. At some points
(whether in dealing with Hegel or with the British teachers called, not quite fairly,
" Hegelians ") the author writes like a son of the house describing to the public the objects
of a long and intimate knowledge ; at others, with a strange hardness and externality,
almost (if the comparison may be pardoned) like a stranger who stands outside and throws
stones at the windows.
i With regard to this, Professor Mackintosh, in the handbook referred to in the
preceding note, does not act quite as fairly as in this age, when party names mean so
unjustly much, is desirable. To call men "Hegelians" who are Hegelians only in the
same sense that they are Platonists and Aristotelians, is not an example of Professor
Mackintosh's rule (op. cit. p. 86) that " a well-chosen class name is the first step to knowl
edge." The story of Hegel's influence upon British thought might have been written
without the application of a party name to men who lived above party. And the unfair
ness is all the graver that the name is applied in the face of protests from the men
themselves who are chiefly concerned.
62
AND THE VISION OP GOD
as that of Hegel. This has involved, it is true, the loss of much that ••
was possible to him; the great sweep of his system, his vast and
orderly outlook upon history, upon nature, upon all the departments
of man's life and society. But there has been a corresponding gain;
and that no mean one; for the fundamental problems, at any rate,
have been treated; and treated with a simplicity, an intellectual
severity and self-control, which put the discussion within reach of
many to whom Hegel himself is ein 'Buck mil sieben Siegeln.
Among these men there are several toward whom the present
writer cherishes an affectionate gratitude which grows deeper with
every year that separates him from the days when he sat at their
feet. But it is upon the name of a man whose face he has never
seen that he desires at this point specially to dwell. The late Pro-
fessor Green had not the special gifts of the men to whom reference
has just been made: not the remarkable blending of profundity and
subtle keenness which characterises one of them; not that union of
philosophic insight with the whole breadth of humane learning which
gives charm to all the work of another; not the vast and systematic
range of thought which makes a third the representative of philosophy
in its true greatness as a rationally articulated view of the world and
of life. These things Green had not; for his life was weighted with
labour and his day was short. But his life and his teaching had two
features which make the mention of his name specially appropriate
in the present connexion. In the first place, he cannot fairly be
called the prophet of any " school." It is true, he approached the
question of the meaning of life from the point which Kant has made
inevitable for modern thought. But in the investigation itself, the
considerations which he brings forward and the arguments which he
employs are elementary, are primary and simple; and just for that
reason are fundamental, and hold for all life under all circumstances.
So that while in one sense the discussion is Kantian, yet in a still
deeper sense to apply party names — Kantian, Neo-Kantian,
Hegelian — to it, is as impossible as to apply party names to the first
and elementary principles of any great science. And in the second
place, while Green was, in life and character, English of the English,
and by that character and life spoke with Englishmen heart to heart,
63
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
yet there was operative in him precisely the most valuable tendency
of the Greek mind — its tendency toward unity and integrity of life.
The fragments of writing that he left behind him give, if read intelli
gently, a systematic outlook upon life — they contain both a system of
fundamental principles and an application of these to the under
standing of nature and of history. But that is the lesser side of
the matter; if he did not, in any finished or technical sense, write
a system of philosophy, he lived one. What his biographer has to
record is, as Mr. Nettleship so well says,1 " a fact which has never
been common and which is especially rare in England, the fact of a
life in which philosophy was reconciled with religion on the one side
and politics on the other ; the life of a man to whom reason was faith
made articulate, and for whom both faith and reason found their
highest expression in good citizenship." It is in men such as this
that philosophy is most clearly seen doing the work that it ought to
do in every age, but specially in an age like our own; for in such men
philosophy becomes the philosophic mind, and the philosophic mind
leads to a life and a work in which the contending elements and
warring truths of the age are seen reconciled and working with
united power.
V.
The great argument which thus, from its clear beginnings in
Hellas, passed onward through the ages with all those turns and
retreats, and yet with that very real continuity of development, cannot
be presented in a few pages. Its full meaning can be gathered only
by living through, in one's own soul, the long course of the history
in which it struggled into possession of its many insights. But a
sense of its import can be conveyed, and an indication of its procedure
and conclusions given, by a brief outline of its modern form — the
form which it has taken in the school of Kant, but which nevertheless
is so simple and elementary as to stand above party affiliations. In
attempting to draw up such a statement, one of Green's writings is
specially useful ; the ensuing outline was suggested by, and in places
i In the Memoir prefixed to Vol. III. of the Collected Works, p. xi.
64
AND THE VISION OF GOD
follows quite closely, the argument worked out with great simplicity
but also with great thoroughness in the Prolegomena to Ethics.
We must begin with something which, as already has been noticed,1
was to the greater masters of philosophy at once a first insight and
an impulse to farther insight. In order that our experience of every
day things may be what it actually is, reality must be greater than in
our everyday experience it seems to be.2 Or, to put this into the
narrower and more modern form which exactly meets the problem
now before us, the natural and physical sciences, by the very fact of
their existence, imply and call for a whole of knowledge wider than
themselves. For all science is a tracing out of the relations of the
facts and events of the world to one another. The laws of nature
which men of science formulate are statements of those abiding rela
tions ; and the total system of such relations is the order of the world.
But suppose the natural and physical sciences to have fully accom
plished their work. There would still remain a relation to be investi
gated — the relation of all those facts and events to the knowing
intelligence. Every thing, every event, every relation, which a man
of science investigates, enters by the very fact of being known and
investigated into a relation with intelligence — into that organic union
with intelligence which from the side of the intelligence itself is
called knowledge or science. To say that such a thing as natural
and physical science exists, is to say that mind and the world, subject
and object, have entered into organic connexion; the knowing intel
ligence has gone out into the world, has traversed it, penetrated it,
made itself at home in it — and in doing so has realised and fulfilled
its own nature as intelligence ; or putting it in another way, has taken
the world, or parts and beginnings of the world, into itself, and that
not as a mere outside article drawn into an empty container, but as
an organic part of its own structure. This relation everything in the
world that is or ever can be an object of scientific investigation, sus
tains or is capable of sustaining; and to say this, is to say that science
must advance to the investigation of the relation in question. For
1 Supra, pp. 54, 55.
2 I have tried to work this out more fully in the paper on Plato, infra, pp. 203-247
(especially pp. 208-214).
6 65
THE STUDY OF NATURE
if science be the tracing out of the relations which the constituent
parts or factors of the world bear to one another, then it is the flattest
of treasons against the scientific spirit to say, "We will investigate
certain classes of the relations which make up the world's order; but
with the relations that fall outside those classes we will have nothing
to do." The existence of science is the existence of this relation —
this relation of things to intelligence, of object to subject — and the
capacity for this relation is part of the nature of things. And a
relation which thus exists and is of the nature of things must be
investigated. To refuse to investigate it would be a turning of
science aside from its regular and legitimate path of advance in
knowing the world ; would be as genuinely a crime against the spirit
of science as to refuse to investigate the laws of the tides, or of the
planetary orbits, or of the development of organic types.
The relation, then, involved in that organic connexion of objects
and intelligence which is science, must be investigated. And the
question with which to begin the investigation is a very simple one:
How is such a relation possible ?
First of all, let us see what as mere matter of fact the relation
amounts to. All science and all endeavour after science presuppose,
as already has been pointed out, that the world is one, a single system
of facts and relations. Furthermore, scientific statements, once they
are truly and adequately formulated, are timelessly valid ; can be
handed on from generation to generation, and stand firm independently
of time and the passage of time. This implies that the ultimate order
of that cosmos which it is the business of science to know is an eternal
or timeless order, a single system of fixed and unalterable relations.
The upbuilding of science is a process wherein man " enters into " or
"makes himself at home in" or, more accurately still, "reproduces
in and as his own thought," that system of related facts which we
call " the world," that system of eternal or timeless relations which
we call " the order of the world." And in doing this, man acts the
part of a permanent subject who (1) holds many diverse facts in
orderly relation in the unity of a single conscious grasp, and (2) in
so doing distinguishes himself from the various facts which he thus
presents to himself — distinguishes himself from those facts in the
66
AND THE VISION OF GOD
very activity of at once distinguishing them from, one another and yet
relating them all together in the unity of one scientific view. And
must so distinguish himself from them; for to carry on such an
activity at all — to hold, in and as one conscious experience, a vast
variety of facts, keeping each one in its own distinctness, and yet
relating them all together with a continually growing accuracy — the
subject must, in a certain genuine sense, be above each and every one
of the particular facts present to him ; must, to use a metaphor which
is not the truth but hints at the truth, be both the judge to whom,
and the court in which, they are all present.
With this the question we began with is seen to have two sides.
First, how is such a world possible ? Secondly, how are we to account
for the subject who knows that world — the self-conscious subject, able
(partially, indeed, and discursively, but still with ever-growing com-*/
pleteness) to reproduce that order of nature in his own thought?
First, then, how is such a world possible? The world that men
of science investigate is, as every step of their work presupposes and
implies, "one connected world." It is a single system. But what
does that mean ? It means two things : in the first place each of the
facts or constituent parts of the world is related to every other — the
total system of those relations being the " order of the world " ; in
the second place, each fact or part is maintained in the distinctness
and integrity of its own existence, no one of them being in the order
of nature fused or confounded with any other. But how can that
be? In the first place, can it be explained by supposing that each of
the ultimate constituent parts of the world — atom, monad, or what
ever it is — institutes and maintains the total system of its relations
with every other part? Here, indeed, there is no space to discuss
such a theory at length. But it is not necessary. Let a man get
clear to his mind all that such a theory means — each atom (or elec
tron, or monad, or whatever the ultimate constituent part is supposed
to be) from eternity an independent and omniscient consciousness
which at each instant (1) knows the movements (or other activities)
of all the other atoms in the universe and knows exactly what it should
do to adjust itself to those movements, and (2) upon its own initia
tive and in its own power executes the adjustment — let a man get this
67
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
clear to his mind and he is not likely to continue to hold the theory.
The solution given by such a theory has no relation to the problem
which is being solved : it seeks to solve the problem of " the Many
and the One " (or rather the Many in the One) by giving us a Many
without a One at all. The theory which brings to this problem of
the " one connected world " a solution that really does solve, and
therefore must be accepted, lies in the other direction. We must
hold, that is to say, that the existence of such a thing as a " connected
world " implies a " principle of union " which does two things. It
links all the facts together into the unity of one system. But at the
same time and by the same activity it maintains each of them in its
distinctness, not fusing or confounding them together. And to do
this it must distinguish itself from each and all of those facts or
events or elements which it thus both relates together and keeps dis
tinct. To it they all are present: and since it is only through that
presence to it that they have their places in the one system and so are
what they are, it may be said on the one hand that their presence to
it is their reality; and on the other hand that it is the source and
home alike of them and of their relations to one another.1
But can science find anything of which it dare assert such an
activity? Are we acquainted, in the whole circle of our experience,
with anything which can exercise such an activity and so can be such
a "principle of union"? The answer is that we are. Intelligence,
r self-consciousness, spirit, — or whatever other name you may wish to
apply to that which the man of science himself essentially is — is pre
cisely such a principle of union and exercises precisely such an
activity. To hold many facts, many elements, together in the unity
of one grasp, to relate them together and yet to keep each in its dis
tinctness — this is precisely what it is the essential nature of self-
conscious spirit to do. But in applying this principle to the solution
of our problem we must remember that in us men self-consciousness
or spirit exercises its power of synthesis only imperfectly. Our
knowledge is fragmentary; our minds in their advance, though not
i This problem of the " one connected world " is, in some form or other, the problem of
all metaphysicians— even of David Hume. But it is interesting to note with what special
clearness, and how early, it came forward in Greek thought, as the problem of the Many
and the One.
68
AND THE VISION OF GOD
in their essential function, discursive. Our world is, in one sense,
a world given to us, and in apprehending it we pass from fact to
fact; in mastering one part of it we have to leave other parts out of
sight. But self-conscious spirit, as the principle of union of the
world, cannot be fragmentary or discursive. It must be a single
eternal spirit, to which the total system of things is present in one
eternally complete grasp ;x and present, not as given to it, but as con
stituted by it — constituted by it in an activity in which it acts alto
gether from itself.
So, then, the case thus far stands. We came face to face with a
problem : How can such a thing as a connected world exist ? Of the
two roads along which a solution can be sought we found ourselves
absolutely shut up to one — that which demands a "principle of
union." And something which by its very nature can act as such a
principle we found ourselves to be acquainted with. We have, then,
a problem ; we have a principle adequate to its solution ; and we have
but one such principle. To the straightforward scientific intellect,-
when it faces such a -situation, there is but one course : to accept the
principle and proceed with its farther application.
We must say, then, that the world, as a single system of facts, is
the activity of a single eternal spirit, which by one and the same
activity maintains the facts in their distinctness and links them
together in one system; and which, to do this, must distinguish
itself from each and all of the facts which it thus constitutes — being
thus the source and home of the whole order of the world, or (to use
the technical language of philosophy), in the sense already indicated
the subject of the world.
But, as we saw, in order to explain how science is possible more
is necessary than an account of how the objective world is possible.
For science is the coming together of the soul and the world; is the
organic union of subject and object. The world, we have been forced
to say, is a system of facts present to an eternal spirit; it is the
thought or activity of an eternal spirit. What then can man be, who
in his science reproduces as his own thought that thinking of the
eternal spirit? Here, again, there is no space to do justice to the
1 Totum si mul, as mediaeval men of thought were wont to say.
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THE STUDY OF NATURE
argument. All that is possible is to sum up in the briefest form
its conclusion. The knowing subject cannot be accounted for by
reference to any of those objects, of whose very existence as objects
of scientific study its own synthetic activity is a necessary condition.
NOT can it be " derived " from any of the elements of its own experi
ence (such as feelings or sensations) ; for of the very existence of
these as elements of a human experience, its synthetic activity is, once
more, a necessary condition. It can be accounted for only upon the
view that the eternal subject of the world has reproduced itself — or
let us rather say, Himself1 — in and as the human subject; has repro
duced Himself in such a way that, under whatever limitations,2 the
constitutive principles of our minds correspond to the constitutive
i With regard to this verbal usage, it is perhaps worth while to say one thing : the
important matter is not what pronoun a man chooses, but what he really means. When a
writer (1) expresses the conclusion that the supreme principle of the world is an eternal
spirit— a single self-conscious and self -determining spirit, the eternal subject of the world,
perfect in intelligence and reason ; (2) indicates that that eternal subject constitutes the
whole order of nature, and that, in order to constitute any fact at all, it must distinguish
itself from each and all of the facts which it constitutes ; (3) makes clear that he derives
that conception, which for him illuminates the world, from a consideration of the nature
and essential activity of spirit as found in man ; (4) points out that that spirit is present
among men, is active in the whole of history, winning human hearts to itself, and through
them leading the race of men onward to an ultimate issue of divine love and divine
righteousness :— at such a writer both the Manichsean and the Materialist, each from his
own point of view, may have cause to feel enraged ; but the theologian who is a Theist
surely should recognise in him a friend, and more than a friend. It is a great pity that
men who really are agreed in the principles that lie at the basis both of their thought and
of their conduct, should stand apart because they do not understand one another's speech
—some using a dogmatic dialect which loves ancient usages of Schools and Councils,
others a tongue which has grown up in the atmosphere of science and seeks above all things
(often with too violent a forgetfulness of the past) for accuracy. When we are so unhappy
as to have to work by words rather than by action and affection, we ought, for the sake
both of one another and of the truth, to do two things : we ought to set down our concep
tions with clearness, articulating them definitely into their constituent elements so as to
bring to light those subconscious meanings which we all hold and which shape our con
clusions (and our lives) much more than we think ; and we ought to remember that most
words have had histories — the word person, for instance, has taken on technical and sharply
limited meanings in two great developments, that of Roman Law, and that of the
theological doctrine of the Trinity— or to take another instance, the word substance
expresses the category which has revealed itself in history as of all categories the one
specially consecrated to Pantheism. Our Lord's was the better way, when, in speaking of
the nature of God, He used the 'word Spirit, and in speaking of the relation of God to
men, the word Father.
2 Limitations whose character may be suggested by pointing out, for instance, that we
live in time; that an animal body is organic to the process of the development of our
spirits; that the appointed conditions of that process of development are such that we
enter only by hard labour, and by struggles and sorrows which go beyond all hardness of
labour, into our inheritance of knowledge and of character.
70
AND THE VISION OF GOD
principles of that thought or activity of His which is the world. For
that reason, and only for that reason, are we men able to make our
selves at home in the nature which He constitutes, whether when, as
children, we played amongst its flowers, or when we investigate it
scientifically, or when, in times of happiness and still more in times
of trouble and of loss, we find in it a companion and stay of our
spirits: — just as a reader is able to study a book, and gradually to
enter into its meaning, and gradually to have his mind strengthened
and uplifted by it, because, and only because, the constitutive prin
ciples of his mind and being are in their essential character the same
as those of the writer of the book.
Such, then, is the account which must be given, on the one hand
of the world which is known, on the other hand of the soul which
knows. But the two questions to which these are answers were the
two sides of the one question: How is knowledge possible? And it
is when we come back to that question in its unity, and put our two
answers together as the answer to it, that we see the deepest strength
of the whole argument and of the conclusion to which it leads. Man
is able to know nature — to have science of nature — only because there
is an essential likeness between man and nature. The soul is able to
go out into the world and make itself intellectually at home in the
world — is able to take the world into itself and reproduce in and as
its own thought that system of facts and laws which is nature —
because, and only because, nature is really what the soul is, a spiritual
existence; because, and only because, nature is the thought of God
and man is the child of God, able, no matter how imperfectly and
gradually, to think his Father's thoughts after Him.1
That insight has never been better stated than in words which
tradition ascribes to a man of science. Kepler, seeing that the power
which carried on the stellar movements was acquainted with, and
acted in the most exact accordance with, those mathematical prin
ciples which he himself had worked out in the council-chamber of his
own pure reason, turned, it is said, from his telescope with the
exclamation, " I think Thy thoughts after Thee, 0 God/' Cases of
i This is often expressed by saying that science is spirit finding itself in nature ; and
that spirit can find itself in nature, only because nature itself is spirit.
71
THE STUDY OF NATURE
this sort, which nowadays occur ever more frequently — cases in which
men of science come to conclusions mathematically (i.e., by the way
of the pure reason), and then, turning to the telescope or to the labor
atory, find that these conclusions are true of nature — are very marked
instances of the community of the intelligence which is nature with
the intelligence which is man. But the same view of the world and
of the soul which is needed to explain the possibility of these, is
needed to explain any knowledge of nature by man at all, even though
it be but the little child's knowledge of the flowers among which it
plays, or the primitive shepherd's rough acquaintance with the laws of
wind and weather or the ways of plant and animal life.
What we have seen so far we may, then, sum up in this way : ( 1 )
The system or process of nature is a divine activity; is, if you will,
part of the divine thought. (2) Our sciences of nature are the
thinking of the thoughts of One who is invisible — a thinking of God's
thoughts after Him. The growth of these sciences may be described,
from our side, as our gradual entering into, or comprehending of, or
making ourselves at home in, the content of the divine mind; and
from the divine side, as God's gradual impartation of His thought
to us. (3) And this process of thinking God's thoughts after Him,
of reading the book which He has written — the book whose syllables
are the growth of the flowers, and the ordered march of the stars, and
the age-long development of animal organisms — is possible to us
because, and only because, God has reproduced Himself in us;
because, and only because, we are His children, made, intellectually,
in His likeness, having our essential cognitive principles the same as
the principles of the divine intelligence; because, and only because,
to use an accurate but easily misunderstood expression, the human
mind is potentially the divine mind.
So, then, even if we stopped, at this point of the metaphysician's
regress upon the conditions of experience, we could affirm at least this
much : — In every step and at every stage both of the nature which is
known and of man's activity in knowing it, the presence and activity
of the Eternal is implied. The whole process of the building up of
the natural and physical sciences is a co-working of man with God,
of the human mind with the divine mind. It is a participation of
72
AND THE VISION OF GOD
man in the Eternal Reason; is, for him who is willing to see the
meaning of his own endeavours after science, part of the process
whereby God becomes our dwelling-place and the home of our spirits.
So that, even while the movement of history and the growth of mind
are stripping away from cleric and priest and altar something of their
awful splendour and long-asserted, compelling power, the sciences of
nature have a sanctity which is immediate and cannot by any move
ment of history or change of institutions be shaken. For the courts
of science, whether the men who labour in them recognise it or no,
are sacred with the most immediate presence of the ultimate God.
And their sanctity is but part of a wider sanctity. To him who is
able to see the meaning and significance of science, every ray of light
that the man of science flashes from his mirror, every minutest
animal cell that he examines under his microscope, together with his
own power of knowing these objects, is a witness that the world hev
dwells in is at once the activity and the temple of the Most High God.
Newman to some extent apprehended this. " Every breath of
air," he somewhere says, " and ray of light and heat, every beautiful
prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of
the robes of those whose faces see God." But this is rather the word
of the preacher catching a momentary glimpse of the glory of his
God revealed in alien realms, than any assured and thoroughgoing
vision of the real being of nature. For, in the first place, Newman
the churchman (using that word for a moment as Newman himself
would have used it) loyal to the very letter of the dogma of his
church, could scarcely look otherwise than askance upon nature, and
upon the sciences of nature, and upon the independent endeavour of
philosophy to penetrate to the ultimate meaning both of nature and
of man's knowledge of nature. And secondly — a worthier reason-
he felt so acutely the revelation of God in conscience and in man's
inner heart,1 that he tended to overlook the revelation of God in
nature, and to have no eyes for the fact that all knowledge of nature
is in ultimate analysis knowledge of God, and is possible to man only
through and as God's impartation of Himself to man.
i See his description of his early religious feelings on p. 4 of the new edition of the
Apologia: . . . "making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and
luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator, j
73
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
But in Wordsworth we find both adequate vision — I had almost
said, adequate comprehension — and adequate expression. The per
ception of what nature truly is; and the companion perception of
what the true strength of our human life is : — these are the ani
mating and informing soul of his poetry.1 That the contemplation
of nature, the love of nature, the companionship with nature, is a
companionship in which we lay aside our mortality, a companionship
in which God imparts his mind to man and man's mind comes to
dwell in its own proper home, its home in God : — this is the essential
principle of Wordsworth's vision of nature. It is in this companion
ship with nature that we become living souls and see into the life of
things, and the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary
weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened, and we become
aware of a deeper presence than before we had known, something
far more deeply interfused than our first rapturous acquaintance with
nature, our first delight in her glory of sound and colour, had taught
us —
Something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; •
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
And it is Wordsworth's special crown of glory that with him this
vision of the divinity of nature became also a vision of the sacredness
of the ordinary life of man with its natural relationships, its natural
duties, its natural charities. For him the heavenly light rested, as
upon the lakes and silent hills, so also upon the elemental constituents
of the life of man. The two together formed the one object of his
work as a poet. For these as for those, he sought — not to bring a
consecration of poetic light from without — but to penetrate to, and
interpret, the heavenly nature which is their genuine being.
i Perhaps one ought rather to say that these are the light of his poetry, the truth and
insight which his poetry expresses ; while its warmth, the restrained but immense power
that is in it, comes from his own English heart— a heart most affectionate, and trained
(like Plato's) by long discipline of tragic passion and deep peace.
74
AND THE VISION OF _ GOD
Upon this it is worth while to pause a moment longer. For it
explains a fact most significant in itself and, to men of the church,
full of instruction. It may appear remarkable in the extreme that
men, for religions sake, should take refuge from a prophet with a
poet. And yet, when Newman is the prophet and Wordsworth the
poet, that is what, to a certain extent and in a certain regard, we
ordinary men living the ordinary life have to do. For (even leaving
aside the fact that Newman, with all the intensity of his vision of the
divine, came at last to look upon a single narrowly defined institu
tion as the one thing in this world directly and distinctly of divine
foundation), the very intensity of his vision of the unity of this life
with the life to come dimmed his eyes to the unity of man with
nature, and to the value of nature and of the natural man to God.
But the unity of man with nature, and the unity of nature with God,
Wordsworth saw with the clear vision of a daily and affectionate
friendship.
Hence it is, too, that while we are still young Newman's lesson is
the easier to learn and is the one that specially wins us ; but when we
grow older it is more and more to Wordsworth that we turn both for
illumination and support. When we are young, and our hearts beat
high, and the burden of the daily life has not fully come upon us,
it is easy for us to despise the vanities of the world. It is easy to
turn away from the noises of the earth, and from the littlenesses of
the " practical life/' and to enter upon that short and direct road to
the heavenly glory which consists in repudiating the earth and' all
its ways. But when we grow older, and life itself puts us in our
places, and we are grappling day by day with the tasks of the
ordinary life, and either in them or not at all must fulfil the vocation
which we have from God; then we learn with a continually deepen
ing gratitude to receive Wordsworth's lesson of the essential sacred-
ness of the natural relationships, of the natural charities and affec
tions, of the natural surroundings, of our daily life. It is not that •
Newman ever loses his high spiritual majesty in the eyes of any man
who has once apprehended it; it is that Wordsworth comes nearer to
us, and dwells with us in our daily cares, and illuminates our daily
and natural life with divine and eternal light, showing us nature
75
THE STUDY OF NATURE
and natural affection as a work of the grace of God and as a medium
for the farther impartation of that grace to us.
But we must return to the argument itself. For the point
reached a moment ago was one at which we cannot stop. The insight
so far gained compels us to take a further step. And to that step
we are driven whether we view the matter from the divine or from
the human side.
First from the divine side. We have seen that the order of the
world in accordance with which the world's history proceeds, is con
stituted by an eternal spirit who is the subject of the world; in a
^word, we have seen that the world is the thought or activity of God.
But spirit, in any activity which has the form of time, proceeds
teleologically. It "sees the end from the beginning," and in
view of that end it arranges the beginning, arranges the essential
conditions, the informing order and constitution of the whole process.
It is involved, then, in the position already reached — nay, it is involved
in anything that can be called Theism — that that whole activity of God
in which Tie constitutes the order of the world and maintains the world,
proceeds in view of an end or r*Ao<r.
Or if we start from the human side we come to precisely the same
point and almost by the same road. For man's life, so far at any rate
as he enters into his moral and intellectual heritage, is a process of
development ; nature itself, which is at once the beginning, the home,
and the stubborn material, of our life, being a medium which God
uses in what may be described indifferently as the communication of
His mind to us, or as the development of our own minds. And so
there arises the question : In a world-order which is rational, which
is constituted by an eternal and self-conscious Reason, what can be
the significance of such a possibility of human development? what
can be the meaning of the fact that the form into which our life is
cast is the form of development ? Here also the position already
reached leaves us but one possible answer. The eternal subject of the
world, who does not act wantonly or blindly or irrationally, who does
not make experiments, and to whom it is impossible to institute a
beginning that forgets its end, has constituted the world, with its
76
AOT) THE VISION OF GOD
possibility of human development, in view of a rAos which would
be a true and genuine fulfilment of the beings and the capacities that
are the subjects of the development.
From both sides, then, we are brought to the conception of an end
or Tt\os in view of which God proceeds in that activity by which the^
order of the world is constituted and the process of the world's history
made possible. And the next step of the argument whose course and
whose conclusions are being noted here, is an attempt to understand
more particularly what that rtkos can be. Since the order of the
world in which we now live is constituted in view of that rAo?, cer
tain conclusions concerning the latter are possible from a considera
tion of the former. Two of these may in the briefest possible form
be indicated here. In the first place, that "far-off divine event"
consists in a perfect society, a fully realised "kingdom of God/' in
which the capabilities of men, moral, intellectual, artistic, developed
only in part — often scarcely at all, and sometimes worse than not at -
all — in this world, reach their true and full development; and in
which one person does not enter into his good at the expense of
another ; but on the contrary the good of all is the good which each one
seeks, and therefore the attainment of his good by any individual "
means to that extent the attainment of the good by all. In the
second place, the perfection of personal character which is implied in
the perfection of that society, is not only present to the divine mind
as an idea; it exists, fully and eternally realised, in the divine char-
art or. In moral character, God Himself is, in eternal completeness,
that toward which it is the vocation of the sons of God to grow ; such
is the End which is at once the promise of our life, and the measure
of its genuine value, and the standard which sets in a light more awful
than that of any day of wrath its present distance from its goal. So
that science, in the last saying which it makes possible, places us
among those multitudes of men who, with a sorrow upon which a
great hope is dawning, listen to that other saying which is at once the
judgment and the inspiration of their lives: "Ye shall be perfect,"
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
This then is, from the divine side, the rf'Ao? of the world; from
the human side, it is man's eternal vocation. And the way of the ful-
77
THE STUDY OF NATIJEE
filment of that vocation is the way of the cross; the way, as the
greatest of modern metaphysicians so steadily insisted, of " dying in
order to live"; the way of that self -surrender in which men yield
themselves up to be the organs of the eternal purpose, and become, if
one may thus express it, subordinate centres of the activity of the
divine will, realising their own true freedom and coming genuinely
" to have life in themselves " precisely in the measure that they appre
hend the divine purpose, and obey the vocation which the very
existence of that purpose constitutes for man.
With this latter insight — the insight that men come truly to be
themselves, that they realise their true freedom and come genuinely
to have life in themselves, only as they implicitly or explicitly appre
hend the divine purpose and obey the vocation which the existence of
such a purpose constitutes — the broad and general argument whose
course we have in this section been following, comes full circle.
From a problem of human life it began, and now it returns upon
human life. On the field of human history — which in the last
analysis means on the field of man's daily life — the eternal subject
of the world is operating toward the realisation of His purpose;1 but
not by iron assertion and enforcement of sovereignty ; nor by mechan
ical action of the divine will or the divine grace upon man, such as
in the common conception of things a physical force exercises upon
a physical object. Rather the divine mind operates in human history
toward the realisation of its purpose, by imparting to the human mind
ideas and strivings which, however imperfect, are in a certain genuine
sense "representatives to man" of the eternal ideal, and which,
becoming operative powers in men's lives, lead human history on
toward its goal. The historical process of the realisation of the divine
idea is worked out, that is to say, neither by mechanical action nor by
"mere sovereignty" on God's part, but in and through that which
when viewed from man's side, is "man's devotion to the highest
ideal that he knows," and which when viewed from God's side may
be described as " God reconciling the world to Himself."2 In other
1 1 am stating this from the point of view of philosophy and in the language of
philosophy ; and am so stating it because it is a conclusion of philosophy. But it may not
be amiss to refer to such passages of Scripture as John v. 17.
2 Cf. (under the qualification mentioned in the last note) Col. i. 20 ; 2 Cor. v. 18, 19.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
words, the divine idea realises itself in history by an impartation of
itself in which it wins men as free spirits to its service. By impulses
planted in man's nature; by the appeal that suffering makes, and by
all the efforts undertaken to alleviate it; by natural affection and
all "the charities of father, son, and brother"; by the institutions,
the needs, the opportunities, of society and social life; by prophetic
energies aroused in solitary and burning hearts; by the ideals that
under the pressure of some great need arise in men's minds, and
move upon the face of a people's life, and win to their service its suc
cessive generations; in a word, in all that can be described as the
natural development of morality and the natural growth of society;
and in that in which divine revelation culminates — the character and
action of Jesus, wherein the ideal for human life, and the constitutive
principle, the eternal and ultimate law, of the whole order of the
universe,1 stand revealed in absolute simplicity for all men's appre
hension: — in all this the divine idea has been at work, and is at
work, winning to itself all men that can be won, and through them
leading onward the course of history and introducing into time the
principles and the powers of eternity.2
1 Cf. Col. i. 16, 17 (R.V.).
2 I may perhaps be allowed a single historical reference. The great deterministic
theologies (one hesitates to use party names like " Calvinistic " or " Augustinian ") tended
to make the divine purpose execute itself in almost the same way as the force which
drives a machine fulfils itself through the various parts of the machine, none of which
have " life in themselves " or any will of their own or any energy different from the energy
of the one total machine of which they are parts. Against these deterministic theologies,
which were really great one-sided philosophies, Arminianism was a protest, not so much
of the philosophic intellect of man as of his outraged moral nature. And, as such a
protest, it never worked out adequately the great truth which it had felt keenly rather
than apprehended rationally. Indeed, it has been almost ostentatiously non-philosophical
—seeking for practice without seeking for the reason of practice, and being historically
less able to secure that very practice than its grim but convinced opponent. But the
philosophy of the matter is clear. And it is one in which Calvinist and Arminian may
very well unite. God is certainly supreme in His world ; the divine plan certainly supreme
in history. In its resolute and unflinching affirmation of that, Augustinian and Calvin
istic theology had its hands upon a great truth ; and in that fact lies the explanation of its
immense practical power and efficiency. But, understood truly, that divine plan prevails,
not as the sovereignty of an iron machine over its parts, but by " reconciling men to
itself " ; by winning to itself the hearts and wills of men so that they devote themselves
to it to be its organs, and it has in them the spontaneous and yet subordinate centres of its
work of realising itself.
But the men whose thoughts have lived with the past struggles of the human mind to
understand the ways of God, even while under the leadership of a modern metaphysician
70
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
VI.
Such, then, is the point of view of that " greater whole of knowl
edge " which the natural and physical sciences by their very existence
imply and call for. What is gained from that point of view is an
insight, not into the complete detail of the system of the world, but
into its essential and ultimate nature : in that sense it is a " knowledge
of the world as a whole/' And such a knowledge of the world as a
whole is an interpretation of the meaning of life; for it is an account
of the true character of that order of the world by which the condi
tions of our life are set. Whether this knowledge be called theology
(as finding the truth of the world in God), or philosophy of nature,
or philosophy of mind, matters little. For man is the son of God;
and nature is that thought of God which is God's medium in com
municating His mind to man, and thus developing in man man's own
mind. So that to know nature, God and man must be known ; and to
know man, God and nature must be known. Any one of the three —
theology; philosophy of mind; philosophy of nature — in order to be
itself must be the other two; and to the extent that it is not, it
they point out that those antithetic views can be unified in a more comprehensive truth,
know that the schools of theology themselves have something better to show than one
sided systems. Among those who have inquired concerning the relation of the world's
history— the relation of the wills, the characters, the fates, of individuals and societies—
to the divine nature, there is a greater than either Augustine or the Remonstrant against
Augustine. If we are to be disciples in the schools of theology at all, the minds that are
deepest and the hearts that most love God and live most in that love, will go back, it
seems to me, past both these men of the West to that great and undying light which was
the soul of Origen. If the word theology be taken in its strict sense as the human
scientific wisdom which seeks to know God and to interpret the facts of the world in the
light of that knowledge, Origen is the greatest of theologians. Greatest because he saw
two things : that the conception of the divine nature is the supreme principle in theology ;
and that the divine nature is love. He was not subject to that habit to which the Western
mind continually (and very naturally) gave way; the habit of confining God's love, and
all the communicative and disciplinary energies of that love, within th.e barriers of
artificial legal requirement. To apprehend the meaning for theology of the love of God,
one must one's self live in that love ; and live in it with width of heart and spaciousness
of mind. And to say that is precisely to describe Origen. In contrast with the spirit of
Origen, the tragedy of Western theology lies in the fact that it has been too much the
work of the political and legal (indeed of the positively lawyer-like) mind, which in
theology tends to view the rectifying of the relation of the sinful human race to God as a
matter of mere transactions ; transactions carried through by steps which are not ethical
realities but rather are forensic conventions, external, artificial, unreal. Not that the
West has been without hearts that have lived in the love of God. That which is deepest
and most vital in the life of the West has been brought into being precisely by such
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
ceases to have the form of science and becomes the voice of authority.
For the world is one; the ultimate order of the world is one; the
knowledge of that ultimate order is one; and that one knowledge is
at once theology and philosophy of mind and philosophy of nature.
With the emphasis at one point, it is theology (in the sense noted a
moment ago) ; with the emphasis at another point, it is philosophy
of mind (which, in the only useful or respectable sense of the term,
means philosophy of history and of society, with all that history and
society include of moral and intellectual endeavour) ; with the
emphasis at still another point, it is philosophy of nature.
And this knowledge, by whatever name it is called, is made pos
sible to us by the fact that the " masters of them that know," in their
long endeavour to understand nature, have steadily refused to stop
half-way in the knowledge of nature; have refused to be contented
with a study of the detailed facts of nature as mere facts ; have stub
bornly endeavoured to penetrate to the true character of nature as
an order or system ; and have found that the scientific gateway to this v
knowledge is the gateway of epistemology. For to the insight into
the ultimate character of nature they made their way by considering
the fact that nature is knowable to man; by dealing (to put the same
hearts. But they have been mystics, or saints, or laborious parish priests, or sisters of
mercy, or, better still, laymen and laywomen living in the daily round and the common
task as "friends of God" and therefore as friends of man— seldom theologians as
theologians.
As one contemplates this history one cannot but wish that its sundered elements had
somehow been united : the Western church, the Eastern theology ; the Teutonic races,
the Greek mind. But with whatever regret one looks upon the past, one must still
remember that in its course is a hidden wisdom greater than our own. And though
Origen's intellect was one of the most spacious that ever has existed upon the earth ;
though he loved much, and his heart was pure, and his theology also was therefore pure—
not tainted by human hatreds nor sophisticated by the use of legal conventions ; yet the
history decided that the future was to be not with him but with the great African who
was passionate in sin, passionate in piety, passionate in devotion to the church, passionate
in maintaining the many diverse positions to which his subtle intellect was led, and who
mastered the mind of the Western generations to whom it was not given to respond to the
unflawed saintliness which was the character of Origen nor to the untroubled and con
sistent light which was his mind.
But if the theologians of the past are to be of real service to us— and they can be—
we must walk with them as their companions, not as their slaves. Hence it is not the
need of the day that Origen should be set on Augustine's disputed throne. In theology
there has already been too much of human masters and of their schools. The world of
to-day ought to be occupying itself— and is coming more and more to occupy itself—
with the New Testament, and with that Son of man and of God, of whom, and of whose
work upon human hearts, it is the value of the New Testament to be a record.
7 81
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
thing in other words) with the question, raised naively by Socrates,
almost solved by Plato, reinstated for modern thinking by Kant,
" How is knowledge possible ?"
But when this point of view is reached, and this insight into the
essential character of the world's order gained, the endeavour of
reason to know the world is still not at its end. For what we have
done is this: we have found man partly possessing, partly striving
to possess, science of the detailed facts and laws of the world ; and by
inquiring how such science is possible we have gained an insight into
the true character of the world and of its order. But that at once
puts upon the scientific reason the obligation to turn back to the details
of the world and to endeavour to give them, in the light and under the
guidance of the insight just referred to, their higher and further
interpretation. In other words, if you have seen that there is a divine
plan of the world, logically you cannot stop. You have to go on to ask
- what that plan is : which involves nothing less than to ask what the
place is, in that plan, of each of the particular parts of the total
system ; of each law of nature ; of each determining condition of man's
life; of each great era and decisive event in history; nay, even of
each decisive feature and event in each man's individual life.
To put it epigrammatically, when philosophy reaches its goal its
work is still not finished. The movement so far described, the
movement from the multiplicity of the facts of the world to the
eternal nature and eternal constitution of the world, might be called
a movement from the circumference to the centre. But when the
centre is gained, philosophy, whether as pure science or as a prac
tical temper, cannot cease from its labour. From the centre it must
return to the circumference, but bearing with it the light gained at
the centre, and seeking by the aid of that light to comprehend more
truly the details of the circumference. It must attempt, that is to
say, to give to the particular facts of the world, the particular facts
of nature and of history, their " divine interpretation " ; must
attempt to view them not only as facts to be described and classified,
but also as elements or factors in a divine and rational plan. To
use an ancient terminology, the first movement of philosophy is
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AND THE VISION OP GOD
along the upward way — the 6<5os arco — but as soon as this move
ment has gained a vision of its goal, philosophy must turn to the
downward way — theotfos narcso — and return to the world, but bring
ing with it a new light for the understanding of the world.1
And this demand is intensified from another side. Do not
human history and human society themselves contradict this account
of the essential constitution of the world and this view of man's his-/-
tory as a process in which an eternal purpose, divine and divinely
rational, is being realised? When human society and human history
are what they are, so wasteful of life, so filled with oppression of the
weak by the strong, so tainted with mean and hideous vices, so con
fused and doubtful in the whole struggle of good with evil, how can
they be interpreted as a process in which a divine purpose is being
realised and a city of God built up: — a city of God, in which each
member becomes all that he has it in him, in virtue of his divine
origin, to be; and in which the achieving of the good by one con
tributes to (or rather, in its measure ts) the achieving of it by all?
It is obvious that within the limits of an essay nothing more can
be done than to indicate in the most summary fashion the general
situation in which the intellect finds itself when it confronts this
immense — nay, this infinite — field.2 Such an indication, may be
given by considering three points.
(A) To begin with the simplest matter, it may be noted that the
main divisions of the field are fairly well marked out. On the one
side stands philosophy of nature; not simply in the sense of an
1 Such a demand for the return of philosophy or theology from God to the world, is
binding upon that Idealistic type of philosophy whose central argument was indicated in the
preceding section . And it is thus binding because that philosophy, setting out to understand
the world, finds in God and in a divine plan at once the explanation of the world and the
truth of the world. But the other type of philosophy with which we are concerned in
this book— the philosophy (or theology, or religion,— for it is all three) of the via negativa
—is, it will be understood, not subject in the same sense to this demand. For the essence
of its method is, that it proceeds from the world to God, not by the synthetic movement
of Idealism, but by denying the world altogether. Hence for it there can be no return
from God to the world in the sense indicated above, but only the ineffable mystic rest in
God. (Cf . supra, pp. 9, 10, and infra, pp. 116-150 ; 215 seq. ; 274 seq.)
2 But it should be understood at the outset that both the intellectual obligation to this
task, and the pressure of the cruel problems which intensify it, fall, not merely upon some
special type of philosophy, but upon everything that can be called Theism.
83
THE STUDY OF NATUKE
inquiry into the ultimate and essential character of the physical
order;1 but in the extended sense of an attempt to give to the details
of that order their " divine interpretation " — their interpretation as
A parts or elements in the total divine plan. On the other side stands
philosophy of history. And here also the inquiry is not in the simple,
but in the extended, sense. That is to say, the question at issue is
not simply the question how history is possible; is not simply the
question how that process is possible in which man, an intelligent
and active spirit, lives in organic union with the material order and
its laws, and yet devotes himself through his generations to the
realising of spiritual and social ideals, and so makes history.2 It is
rather the endeavour to see the stages and events of man's past history
in their true meaning and their true light as steps in the divine plan
of the world.
Each of the two may be said to begin with broad and general
problems and to advance from these to particular problems. The
general problems are closely allied to the elementary and primary
argument outlined in the preceding section; and can be pursued by
the human intellect with some degree of scientific success and profit.
But the particular problems require for their solution a minute knowl
edge of the details of the divine plan, not attainable in any such
experience as that of man upon the earth. In the philosophy of
nature, for instance, the first and easiest of the more general prob
lems arises from that character of the physical order which more than
any other has impressed the modern mind: the unbroken orderliness
which prevails in it, the unchangeableness and inviolability of its
laws. This problem indeed takes us only a step beyond the general
Idealistic argument already outlined; the conclusions reached in that
argument suggest at once both the rational necessity of this "con
tinuity " of the material order, and the possible limitations of it. And
that from whichever side one views the spatial world : whether (a) as
an expression of the divine nature, or (ft) as one of the media by
which God communicates to man, and develops in man, man's own
1 For that inquiry would be simply a special application of the general and elementary
argument outlined above in §V.
2 For that, once more, would involve simply the argument of §V.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
mind. From the former point of view, the spatial order is regarded
with reference to its source; and appears as necessarily sharing in
the absolute orderliness and rationality of that source. From the
latter point of view it is regarded with reference to its end. That
end is the development of reason in man; and the medium by which
reason is communicated must itself have rationality and the orderli
ness of rationality. The source is reason; the end is the develop
ment of reason ; any medium employed by such a source toward such
an end can scarcely be other than a systematic embodiment of reason.
It is perfectly true that we men in our best endeavours struggle
toward ends imperfectly conceived ; perfectly true that the best means
we can fashion for ourselves do not fully express even those imperfect
conceptions; for we have to work upon materials of which we are
not as yet fully (or even approximately) masters. But God is under
neither limitation. The divine ends and the divine media and instru
ments., when known as they truly are, are all alike expressions of the
divine nature. There is a limitation indeed. But it is not in God.
It is in the minds of us men who are seeking to apprehend God.
In the philosophy of nature, then, general problems of this sort
are not hopeless. But beyond them lies that which is almost hope
less: the endless range of particular problems; the task of compre
hending the place and meaning, in the divine plan, of each particular
law of nature and each particular stage and event of natural being.
In this (for a reason presently to be stated), little is possible to us
except conjecture. Such conjectures have indeed been made — from
Aristotle's day to Schelling's ; and often they have been both brilliant
and happy. But they are always to be ranked as probability or as
prophecy, and not as assured insight gained in the court of the
philosophic reason by methods appropriate to that court.
And so in the philosophy of history. We have already seen1 how
upon the field of history the divine mind operates upon and in and
through the human mind; how to the human mind the divine mind
imparts ideas and energies which are in some genuine sense repre
sentatives of the T&OS eternally present to God; how these become
operative powers in human history and lead forward upon its way,
i §V, ad fin.
85
THE STUDY OF NATURE
in religion and morality, in art and science, in society and the state,
the spiritual development of mankind. The human intellect may
?work with some success (in Hegel has worked with some success)
in tracing broadly this growing impartation of divine ideas through
the main stages of history — Oriental, Greek, Roman, Mediaeval,
Renaissance and Reformation, eighteenth century, French Revolu
tion and its era. But when we pass on to ask the exact " divine
interpretation" of each particular event, it must be said (again for
a reason to be stated presently) that we are going beyond the limits
of the knowledge that is possible upon the earth. In such matters
7 we must be content for the present to live by faith, and by that illu
mination, poetic or prophetic, which to men of faith is not denied.
(B) But when this statement has been made, it is necessary as
a matter of fairness to remind ourselves of the fact which was stated
near the beginning of the present section : namely, that the endeavour
itself is a legitimate endeavour of the scientific reason. And that
not merely in the sense that its problem can be stated without
absurdity or self-contradiction; but in the sense that science must
advance to it or remain radically incomplete. It lies directly upon
the road along which science advances to the knowledge of the world;
it not only forms an integral stage of the journey of science, it is the
last and culminating stage. It is absolutely necessary to the com
pleteness of the scientific knowledge of the world, absolutely necessary
to that penetrating and thoroughly articulated knowledge of the world
which it is part of the business of reason to acquire. And this last and
culminating stage the scientific intellect must somewhere and some
time enter upon, unless it is to turn aside from its work of knowing
the world as the world truly is. Nay, more than this must be said.
Not the scientific intellect merely, but the total soul of man must
sometime and somewhere enter upon (or at any rate progress for ever
toward) an experience of this type, unless it is to turn away from its
true goal — that union with reality, that union with God, in which
faith becomes one with reason, and perfect activity is guided by
perfect science.
And however remote such a consideration as that may appear,
any philosophical writer whose speech is English ought resolutely to
86
AND THE VISION OF GOD
insist upon it. For, at the point now in question, the sober and prac
tical genius of the Anglo-Saxon race turns instinctively away froim/
the further investigations of philosophy to the practical life.
" Enough," the men of that race instinctively say, " of this too proud
and too daring journeying of the reason into eternity. Once we are
assured that modern science of nature does not take away from us
the vision of God and of the ( far-off divine event ' which is His pur
pose, but on the contrary confirms by its very existence that vision,
we will turn again to the field to which we properly belong, to the
practical life." This is the native and characteristic attitude toward
philosophy of the genius of England, as it speaks through those of
her sons who, for the solution of the intellectual difficulties that beset
their moral and religious devotion, have found themselves compelled
to go to the schools of philosophy. In one sense, indeed, the men
who embody that genius have no philosophy; their traditional
" school," the school of Locke and the Mills, stands, as a philosophy,
at no great remove from being the sorriest thing under heaven. But {
in a greater sense, they have philosophy: they have the philosophic
mind — the feeling for eternity, the sense for the reasonableness of
things and for ordering life in accordance with that reasonableness.
But this philosophic mind they have expressed in their own way:
not in technical writings, nor in system-making; but in something
better, in customs and institutions, in the concrete deed rather than
in the abstract word. The majestic, yet reserved and moderate, eleva
tion of the prayers of their great church; the ancient peace of their
churchyards ; the mingled dignity and simplicity of their family life ;
their mighty works of war 4ind of peace, of commerce and of justice,
done throughout all the world: — these are the works of their
philosophy.
Such a national character is not a thing to be lamented. On the
contrary, no man can live his life with integrity — the inchoate integ
rity possible upon the earth — without to a very great degree turning
in that fashion from those " further investigations of philosophy."
Yet such a national character makes it all the more necessary to
insist upon the statement just made, that whether with reference to
the scientific intellect merely, or to the whole nature of man, that
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THE STUDY OP NATUKE
further stage of philosophy must somewhere and sometime be entered
upon. For while the English are right in feeling that reason
^embodied in institutions is a greater thing than rational insight
expressed in words, yet — if for the moment a Canadian may lay aside
the restraint due from him and speak with the freedom of an Eng
lishman at home — they run a double danger. In the first place, they
are in continual danger of sinning against the spirit of science.
And no power upon the earth — whether it be the genius and charac
teristic temper of a great people, or the proud spirit of ecclesiastical
theology — can, without self-destruction, permanently repudiate the
scientific spirit, or permanently oppose it, or permanently draw a
line and say that thus far it shall come and no further.1 But in the
second place, they are exposed to a still greater danger in the very
field of their strength — the field of the practical life. Alike in their
institutions and in their conduct, obstinate unreason and authority
without intelligence too easily secure a footing; even when they are
saved by the stubborn and half-instinctive devotion to righteousness
which is their better angel, they are almost lost again for lack of
devotion to wisdom. They labour hard in all quarters of the earth,
performing the tasks laid upon them by that wisdom of the world
which compels all the peoples to its service. But they labour blindly,
in obedience rather to practical instincts and to their tenacious and
masterful hearts, than to clear visions of the enlightened intelligence ;
and so they achieve great things, but in their greatest works make
themselves often the fools of fate rather than its intelligent servants.
They load upon their shoulders burdens from all the ends of the
. earth, and so accomplish the works of the world-spirit; but seldom is
any vision of its purpose in their eyes, seldom the joy of its free
service in their hearts. Doggedly and masterfully and blindly they
struggle forward, animated by a spirit that is mixing itself with time
and leading the centuries to a goal beyond the horizon; but even in
thus playing their part and fulfilling their great vocation, they too
often forget to be the sons of the hidden wisdom and remain only its
strong slaves. They serve God, but " know it not " ; they work His
i The intellectual spirit that England needs, if her genius is to do justice to itself, is
the intellectual spirit of Origen— or of her own forgotten son, Cudworth.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
works, but look not upon His face. God fulfils Himself through
their labours; but they themselves stand in constant danger of being
exiles from God.
(C) But, this being once for all understood, we can return with
clear consciences to the fact with which we are at this point specially
concerned: namely, that the achievement of this ultimate goal of
science is beyond our present powers, and beyond the horizon of our
present life. If achieved by us at all, it must be through some such
development of our capacities of reason as only a life to come can
afford. Why this is, and what the loss or gain of it for us men is,
may be seen by considering two points.
(1) The inquiry whose course was outlined in the preceding sec
tion was an inquiry into the ultimate nature, the true character, of
the world. The conclusion was that the " material order " is
really a spiritual system, or rather a factor in a spiritual system;
that the world has its source in a divine and eternal reason; that
there is a divine plan of the world. That conclusion was gained by
the reason moving easily and securely through an elementary and
absolutely simple argument. So that it is a conclusion both easy and
safe ; no man who has once really comprehended the facts and argu
ments which lead to it can well cease from holding it in some form.
But what we have now come face to face with is something very
different. It is no longer the question, What is the true nature of
the world ? It is rather the question, The truth of the world con
sisting in a divine plan, how are we to interpret each of the facts and
events of our present world as elements in that plan? And that is a
problem as difficult to the human intellect in its present condition
as the other is easy. For let it be considered what it involves to state
the exact place and meaning of any one element of a great system in
the total plan of that system. It involves knowing the system in all
the completeness of its detail. Only so can you exactly estimate the
place of any one detail among all the others. And to the extent that
your knowledge falls short of that kind of completeness, to that
extent is your interpretation of the place and meaning of particular
facts and events conjecture rather then science, faith rather than
knowledge. It may be most brilliant and most happy conjecture;
89
THE STUDY OF NATURE
the soul of man may apprehend the meaning of the soul of the world,
even as some most fragmentary mirror in the remotest of the stellar
spaces may receive and reflect the ray of the central sun; and so the
conjecture may even rise to the level of such a faith, of such a
prophetic interpretation of history, as a wise and good man might
very rightly be willing to build his life upon. But for all that, to the
extent to which the total plan in the particularity of its detail is not
known, such interpretation of particular facts remains, as was said,
probability rather than certainty, conjecture rather than science, faith
rather than knowledge. And the extent to which, upon the earth,
we are thus ignorant of the " total plan in the particularity of its
detail," may be seen by considering a single fact : in the present life
we move among beginnings; that which is to come after, only in the
light of which can these beginnings be seen in their full significance,
is hidden from our direct acquaintance.
But if this is so, what ought we to do with regard to philosophy of
nature and philosophy of history in this more extended sense? Shall
we throw them summarily overboard as endeavours merely and simply
hopeless? To a question of this sort many will give, instantly and
decidedly, an affirmative reply. But the men whose opinion in such
a matter is best worth having will be held back from that summary
procedure by one consideration. It is well for the human race to be
kept mindful how great a thing its endeavour to know the world
really is. Hence it is well that in each great intellectual era there
should be men leading the forlorn hope of science into the field now
in question; men great enough to compel respect for themselves and
their work. Indeed, each of the three great intellectual eras has had
such men. In particular, the three men whose names have already
been mentioned together — Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel — were such men.
Each worked his way to ultimate principles, and then in the light of
those principles proceeded to survey all the provinces of experience;
and thus attempted to form all the science of his day into its " encyclo
paedia." And in connection with this there is one specially notable
point. One of the three — Aquinas — was no solitary prophet of the
comprehensive spirit of philosophy to a gainsaying age. He was a
philosopher because of his age, and in his philosophy reflected the
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
temper of it. And the instructive thing is that the same compre
hensive and organising spirit which led the thinking of the age to its
culmination in an encyclopaedic philosophy, led to something equally
great on the practical side. It led to a partial success — partial of
necessity, but probably greater than at any time since has been
achieved — in dealing with that practical problem with which the
whole life of humanity upon the earth is a wrestle; the problem,
namely, of working out a social order in which every man has a place
— a definite station with definite duties. Just because from this
questing of the intellect into eternity we are about to turn back to the
" every-day practical life," we ought all the more keenly to remember
that the age in which men walked most confidently in those fields of
philosophy from which we are here turning away, was an age in
several most important respects greater than our own in this very
matter of practical achievement.
(2) But, in the second place, if reason enters here upon a field
where for most of us the footing is precarious and where only an
elect few can do work which compels respect ; if the work of philosophy
changes at this point from the gaining of assured insight by an argu
ment of absolute simplicity, to the laborious and uncertain work of
interpreting details whose total scheme is not open to our vision : — so
also at this point does man's need of rational insight change. If we
may believe that there is a divine plan of the world, a plan rational^
and righteous, then it is no long step and no illogical step to the
belief that if we organise our lives according to the best reason and
the best righteousness open to our vision upon the earth, we shall be
putting ourselves upon a pathway whose end will be the organisation
of our lives according to the reason and the righteousness of the city
" whose pattern is laid up in heaven." For, as already we have seen,
the divine idea does not dwell apart from human history. The
supreme principle of the divine mind is, and must be, the supreme
law of that whole activity of God which is the world and the history
of the world. But that divine idea, as also we have seen, does not
act upon human history like a mechanical power upon material bodies.
It acts by imparting itself to men, and shaping their spirits, and
winning them to itself; thus it becomes at once the source and the
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THE STUDY OF JSTATUKE
nourishment of all development of reason among men and of all
human effort after righteousness. And so the reason and the
righteousness that men have so far been able to grow into must be
looked upon as at once the result of, and the representative of, and
the pathway toward, the reason and the righteousness that are perfect
and eternal. And if this be true, we need not mourn greatly that the
exact " divine interpretation " of the particular events of history and
the particular facts of nature is hidden from us. The life of faith is
justified. " Assure us," so we may say, " assure us that there is a
divine plan of the world; that over all things rules, and through all
history operates supremely, an eternal spirit who is living reason and
living righteousness. Assure us that the ultimate power of the world
is the perfection of that goodness after which we struggle so imper
fectly; and that, therefore, the goodness which is to us a goal far-off
and dimly understood is in truth both the ultimate reality of the
world and the immanent law and ' hidden wisdom 9 of the world's
process — a ( wisdom' which may indeed be veiled under forms hard
in the extreme for such a creature as man to read, and may indeed,
in its clashes with the ' creative will ?l of man, seem cruel to its own
servants, but none the less is working effectually and lovingly toward
its goal. Assure us that the world is not in its real constitution a
non-moral order which cares nothing for moral and rational ends and
awaits with nature's stern patience the day when we men shall have
perished and ' all things shall be once more as if we and all the
labours of our morality and of our religion never had been ' ; but that,
on the contrary, the eternal power which constitutes the conditions of
our life is more interested than even we ourselves can be in the causes
of human goodness ; so that when a man sets himself about that work
to which the present state of the human race incessantly calls everyone
who is willing to hear — the work of saving men from the evils
without them and within them, and of rousing in their hearts devotion
to the causes of goodness — he is not dashing himself against an
eternal and hopeless barrier, either in God or in nature, but rather is
in line with the supreme power, the supreme law, the supreme pur
pose, of the world. — Assure us of these things and we will fight the
i T. H. Green, Works, Vol. III., p. 278.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
battle of life, if not in the strength of complete knowledge, at any
rate in the strength of hope and of faith. We will not lament that
after a certain point the journeying of the reason into eternity
becomes perilous or even impossible. At whatever point the check
comes, we have at any rate learned enough to enable us to labour in
faith, devoting ourselves to the causes of present-day reason and
present-day righteousness, and trusting that in so doing we are making
ourselves organs and instruments — nay, sons and fellow-workers — of
the eternal righteousness. It matters little — at any rate it will not
drive us to rebellion or to despair — that concerning the exact and
eternal meaning of each detail we are for the present in the dark.
We are willing enough to fight for a time in the dark, or on a border-
ground between light and dark, if only we can assuredly believe that
the order of the world which sets all these conditions of our life is
in ultimate analysis a reasonable order, and that the supreme power
of the world is really favourable to us in our struggle after the good
ness of ourselves and of our fellows. If only we can know that
nature and history have a ' divine interpretation/ we will turn back
to the labours and the battles of the practical life, willing enough that
the full details of that interpretation should for a time be hidden
from our eyes."
VII.
Such, then, in a brief outline of its elements, are the stages and
conclusions of the greatest and safest argument which man has been
able to work out concerning the nature of the world and the meaning
of his life in it; an argument which had for the first of its world-
prophets Plato, but owes its specifically modern formulation and con
duct to an insight won partially and laboriously in old age by
Immanuel Kant. The ultimate explanation of the world and of our
life (so it finds) is an eternal spirit and an idea or purpose — the
Good — which that spirit is realising in the process of the world.
Eeality — the universe — is a society of spirits; that eternal spirit and
the lesser spirits in whom the eternal spirit reproduces himself. The
existence of " material " objects means their being present to that
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THE STUDY OF NATUKE
eternal self-consciousness and their having a place in the system of
that divine thought. Our sciences of nature, with the mathematical
and physical sciences which logically precede the "natural sciences/'
are, when viewed from below, an entry of ours into the content of
the eternal mind; when viewed from above, an impartation of that
mind to us, by which our own minds are developed ; are, in one word,
a divine impartation meeting a human effort. Morality, in the true
form of its idea, is the devotion of us men to the service of that divine
idea or purpose which is being realised in the history of the world,
but which, as we have seen, makes its way toward its own realisation
not by acting mechanically upon men, but by winning them as free
spirits to its service. And religion, when it becomes truly itself, is
the greater whole of which such morality is a part ; is the eif ort after
unity, in affection, in character, in activity, with the eternal spirit
who is the subject of the world. So that the history in time of the
universe, when seen as it truly is, is a process in which an eternal
spirit realises an eternal purpose by imparting himself : — reproducing
himself in spirits that are finite, and free in so far as their finitude
permits; and winning those spirits to himself; and communicating
himself to them both intellectually and morally, not only through
the visions of poets and prophets, but also through every effort of the
man of science after knowledge and of the good man after goodness;
and so making possible the attainment of that City of God which is
the r^Aos" of all his action and therefore the supreme law and imma
nent principle of the whole process.1
These are conclusions of philosophy; and therefore, in stating
them the language of philosophy has been used. But it, like all tech
nical language, has a certain reticence ; so that it may be advisable to
re-state in one or two sentences of more familiar tone, the conclusion
which has just been summed up. To say, then, that the universe is
a society of spirits, an eternal spirit and the lesser spirits in whom
he has under limitations reproduced himself, is to say that the
i This might be summed up technically by saying that one and the same thing is the
supreme principle alike of Being, and of Knowledge, and of Morality and Religion. It is
his clear insight into this and his steady insistence upon it, that make Plato the greatest
teacher in the schools of philosophy ; and the one most salutary to the divided and dis
tracted modern mind. (Cf. Philosophical Lectures and Remains of Richard Lewis
Nettleship, 1st ed., Vol. II., p. 218 seq.)
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
universe is a family, and that the relation between its members and
the eternal spirit who is at once their source and their home is the
relation of sonship and fatherhood. And that Father is — not merely
has, but is — all rational and moral perfection. That is to say, reason,
righteousness, and love, are at the heart of things; are the immanent
law both of the constitution of the world and of the process of the
world. And the reason, the righteousness, and the love, which are
thus at the heart of the world, are one thing and not three things ; for
each in order to be itself has to be the other two. Eeason without
love and righteousness would be merely a hard logic. Eighteousness
devoid of reason and love would be but an arbitrary and iron-clad
law, such as would intensify all evil and thus defeat its own aim/ And
love without righteousness and reason would be no love at all, but some
thing quite contrary to love — a weak and foolish indulgence working
continual injury to its own object. In God reason, righteousness, and
love, are one thing ;x and in their undivided unity they are at once the
i When one has apprehended this, it is at first with anger, but presently— when the
long upward struggle of humanity through many different levels of thinking toward the
light, has made its appeal to one's heart— with a feeling very different from anger, that
one remembers the way in which Western theology, after the Reformation as well as
before, frequently dealt with the divine attributes. That theology was developed in a
legal and political atmosphere. Naturally enough it took for granted the legal view of
the relation of God to the world ; it used many specific legal conceptions, taken from
Roman or Teutonic law ; what is still more, in thinking about God it retained the habits
of the lawyer's mind— its acuteness, its argumentativeness, its delight in convenient but
unreal distinctions, its tendency to rely upon serviceable arbitrary conventions instead of
seeking pure truth for its own sake. Hence it was easy for this theology to rend apart the
unity of the divine nature ; easy for it almost to view the divine nature as a battle-ground
of conflicting attributes— separating sharply the righteousness from the love of God,
then virtually hypostatising these abstractions, so as to set them over against each other
and thus make an opening for a forensic theory of atonement. But theology, so far as it
imprisons itself in this framework of abstractions, does not know God ; though the men
who made the theology may have loved Him. To come at the matter from another angle
—one very relevant to the mind of the church at the present hour— such theology, though
it held the Bible in great reverence, did not know the Bible. It was, in the correct though
not in the sectarian use of the term, un-Evangelical ; it did not know, and was not based
upon, the mind of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. For in the Gospels what Jesus
continually insists upon, throughout His work of revealing and establishing the Kingdom of
God, whose King is a Father, is His own unity with the Father. In His whole mission to
the world, He is one with the Father ; that mission and that work, therefore, express the
mind and attitude of the Father ; they are not a forensic expedient for changing that
mind and attitude. Jesus, to use St. John's great expression, is the Word, in whom the
character of God and His mind toward man are spoken forth : and that puts out of court
for ever the idea that the mission of Jesus to the world either represented or made possible
a change in the mind of the Father toward men. Hence it is, that as Biblical Theology—
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THE STUDY OF NATUKE
nature of God and the law of every divine act; and therefore the
immanent principle of that order of the universe which the divine
activity constitutes.
These conclusions and the argument which leads to them have in
the preceding sections been stated as matters that belong simply to the
courts of the reflective reason. As such, they represent what any
scientific inquiry represents — the intellect of man at its legitimate
work of trying to understand the world it lives in. And that attempt
needs no special defense or apology. To the endeavour to understand
his world man is called by the laws and powers of his own nature ; so
that the effort itself is not merely a legitimate one, but is an integral
and essential part of that activity by which man develops his own
being, and comes truly to be man, and so fulfils his divine vocation.
But the greatest of all the masters who have worked in those
courts of the reflective reason would not have left the matter upon
that footing. To Plato, as his whole life and the whole body of his
writings at every point make manifest, philosophy meant a temper
and a character as well as an activity of the scientific intelligence.
And it meant these three, not as standing apart, but as joined
together in that indissoluble unity in which each shares the nature
of the others and each contributes to the perfection of the others. It
meant a life in which philosophy, as an activity and a vision of the
intellect, has passed over into the " philosophic mind," and that mind
has become the guide of conduct. Whether with Greeks or with
moderns, the sounder any man is in character, the more unwilling he
is that truth and life should stand apart. The integrity of his charac
ter compels him to seek for unity in his life ; compels him, if he has
apprehended a profound view of life, to seek to transmute that view of
life into life itself.1
the science which studies the types of Biblical teaching from their own point of view and
upon their own scale of internal proportion— makes its way in the thought of the church,
and compels the church more and more to return to the mind of its Founder, those
forensic structures which it was the delight of the political and legal mind of the West to
build in the courts of theology cease to be either the home or the prison-house of the souls
that seek to enter upon their true relationship to God.
i In this no name can rank with Plato's. Yet we men of the West ought with piety to
recall the name of one who helped to found philosophy among ourselves— the brave
Roman to whom philosophy meant not only knowledge, but uprightness in action and
AND THE VISION OF GOD
And not only is this essential to integrity of personal character.
It is demanded also by the nature of truth simply as truth. Here,
indeed, we are brought to a point about which misapprehensions
cluster ; misapprehensions so passionate that it is advisable to set down
both sides of the question. — (1) Philosophy does not create life. For
philosophy is primarily science. It is an effort to understand. It no
more professes to create the world whose ultimate nature it seeks to
apprehend, or the life whose meaning it inquires after, than (for
instance) chemistry professes to create those elements and those rela
tions of elements which are the object of its investigations. The soul
of man is by its original nature scientific, artistic, practical; and in
its practice capable of morality and religion. Hence the life of man
is a life scientific, a life artistic, a life practical, a life moral, a life
religious. This is the given object, and what philosophy does is to
attempt to understand it ; is to attempt to apprehend the meaning of
that life, and the nature of the world in which it is lived and by
which its conditions are set. The man who urges that philosophy
cannot create religion, and then finds in that the ground for an
habitual dislike of philosophy or a passionate warfare against it,
simply misapprehends the whole situation. And such a misappre
hension, it ought to be understood, is a revelation of the man himself.
But (2) philosophy can be of use in guiding life where life already
exists. For truth, simply by being itself, has power over the soul.
To make truth merely cold and dead; to deny that the visions of
reason can afford any awakening or inspiration to the moral and
religious nature; to regard light as nothing and heat as everything;
to set science and life, knowledge and goodness, truth and religion,
radically apart : — this is to shiver man's nature into blind and crippled
fortitude in affliction, and who handed on his lesson to be a consolation to many a saddened
heart in the troubled West. Philosophy, so Boethius learned and taught, is the love and
pursuit of that wisdom which is the quickening mind and primeval principle of things ;
is in some sort a fellowship with it, so that the intelligent mind is at once illuminated by
it and drawn back into it. So that philosophy, in being the pursuit of wisdom, is a pursuit
of divinity. For that wisdom which is the eternal principle of the world imposes the
worthiness of its own divinity upon all the souls that occupy themselves with it, and
brings them to the force and purity of their own true nature ; and thus arises not only
a truth of speculations and thoughts, but also a holy chastity of acts. (See the finely
sympathetic account, and specially the analysis of the De Consolatione, in Maurice. The
foregoing sentences are from Maurice's statement of the conception of philosophy found
in the first dialogue In Porphyrium. )
8 97
THE STUDY OF NATURE
fragments, instead of recognising that the true power and perfection
of that nature consist in a unity in which each part contributes to all
the others. The man who habitually does it, and imagines that he is
serving religion thereby, may mean well. But it ought to be pointed
out to him that, to the extent to which this tendency dominates him
and is not counteracted by other and sounder things in his work, to
that extent he is making himself really a valuable servant to only one
kind of religion — that which, having no truth in it, wishes to have
nothing to do with truth.1
We can see then, to return to a statement of a moment ago, how
from both sides — from philosophy as intellectual truth, from the
integrity of character which forbids men to let truth and life stand
apart — there is a compulsion to the attempt " to transmute one's
* view of life into life itself." Indeed it is only for the men who
recognise that compulsion, or rather it is only in such men, that
philosophy does its true and full work. And to attempt to gain some
hint or glimpse of how in such men philosophy turns, through the
" philosophic mind," back into life, is the last thing that we have here
to do.
It can, indeed, be only a glimpse. But it is worth while to try to
gain even a glimpse. For what the philosophic mind brings to our
life, is the habit of regarding and valuing the goods of life from the
point of view of that eternal purpose which man's life is intended to
realise. And never was the need of that habit so great, whether on
the part of the leaders of society or on the part of the general body
of its members, as now. For the resources of society, both intellectu
ally and still more in the subjection of natural powers to man's use,
are greater than ever before. But owing to the assertion, throughout
>the whole of society, of the individual in his private and selfish
interests, those resources are most wastefully used. A few specially
i Of course, in thinking of truth as a guide of life and an inspiration for life, the fact
noted in the introduction must be kept in mind. There is a tendency in us all to overlook
the radically important distinction between abstract and concrete truth. A man of
science, for instance, who deals with some one aspect of reality in strict isolation from the
others, easily forgets the abstract-ness of his own special science ; easily is tempted to
think that its principles give the final account of the world and of our life. Thus we get
those " premature and hasty " world-views of which Materialism and the mechanical
view of the world are examples. (Cf. supra, pp. 4, 5.)
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
skilful or fortunate men possess them — frequently to their own inner
evil — in large measures; while to many they are only very scantily
available, or not at all. And the solutions so far wrought out are
tainted by the evil itself which they seek to cure; for they are only
those partial and bitter solutions which separately organised classes
are able to win and to maintain at the point of the sword.
In the first place, then, the men in whom philosophy has become
the philosophic mind have learned the first and most fundamental of
all practical lessons. They have learned what the true business of
life is. Stated on its positive side, it is the winning of men's hearts
to those causes of goodness (goodness as including " all science, all
art, every virtue and all perfection") which are the causes of God,
and in the service of which men at one and the same time fulfil their
divine vocation and come to be truly themselves. It is only as taking
its appropriate place in that endeavour that any resource of nature
which man has mastered, or any power of his own mind or heart or
hand, is rightly used.
But secondly, in what they have learned concerning the world, such
men have not only an illumination with regard to what the business
of life is. They have also in it certain great sources of strength and
of steadiness as they turn to the actual performance of that business
of life. To begin with, they have what for want of some better name
one must call the strength of hope — the strength of a faith which
reason justifies. For they have learned that however Manichsean the
present appearance of our life may be, there is no Manichseism at the
eternal heart of things. They have learned that there is no eternal
moral dualism in the universe, such as can set to the endeavour of
good men after goodness (not their own individual goodness merely,
but the goodness of all their race) a hopeless limit or a final defeat.
For what they have seen is this : that the legitimate and inevitable
onward course of the scientific reason, the legitimate and inevitable
onward course of that attempt to know the world, of which physical
and natural science is one stage, ethical and social science another
stage, brings us at last to the vision of a God who is over all and in
all, and by union with whom men may enter upon courses of minis
tration to their fellows, which shall be checked by no eternal limit
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THE STUDY OF JSTATUBE
nor defeated by any eternal barrier. For to Him goodness is of
absolute value; it is the end for which He constituted and keeps in
existence all His worlds. And as His end can be defeated by no other
god greater than He, still less can it be defeated by any change in
Himself or in His attitude toward men. At no point whether in
this world or in any world, can He either forget the end for which
He made the world, or lay aside the character which makes Him love
and welcome the effort of His creature after goodness. He cannot
at any point lay aside the character in which reason and righteousness
and love are one; cannot at any point turn away for ever from good
men in their struggle for the world's goodness, and thenceforward
return to them for ever the answer : Hitherto shall you come, but no
further; and here shall all power of self-sacrifice, and all passionate
striving of love, and all devotion to the extension of the Kingdom of
God and of good, eternally be stayed. On the contrary, it is His very
nature, as the source and home and end and ultimate power of the
world, at once to make possible and to respond to for ever, that
prayer which not only ascends from the depths of man's sin and from
his extremities of conflict and of defeat, but is also the normal and
habitual " human cry " :
Cast me not away from thy presence;
And take not thy holy spirit from me.
So that these men go forward into life — into life as life is, with its
anguish of burdened and fragmentary and broken labours, its still
profounder anguish of evil triumphant and good causes beaten back —
knowing that even if the worst come to the worst the ultimate truth
of the world still forbids any paralysis of despair. They have that
same source of unfathomable strength which the Stoics and the men
of Geneva had : they know that they are devoted to the cause which in
all history is supreme and final, that they are in line with the ultimate
law, the eternal and present purpose, of the world; so that even
though they seem to the view of this world to be defeated and to
perish, yet really the universe is with them and the stars in their
courses are fighting for them.1 And in addition to this, they have
i As Wordsworth knew ; and the knowledge was part of his poetical being. The
sonnet to Toussaint L'Ouverture brings it to very pointed expression ; but it is always in
Wordsworth's mind.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
what the Stoics had only in part and the men of Geneva scarcely
allowed themselves at all — a vision of the essential rationality of the
supreme power. And with essential rationality, essential kindliness;
for while eternal reason may seem to us men an austere thing,
teaching by the discipline of changeless laws, and bringing without
fail to every human soul the consequences of its own deeds, yet in the
ultimate truth of things such reason is with love, and love with such
reason, interchangeable; and the form of their co-operant action is
righteousness.
And so these men, in so far as they are able to make their way of
life respond to what they know about the world, bring to the battle of
life a certain grave and unyielding courage, a certain patient steadi
ness. They have looked upon eternal ideas, which are greater realities
than all the " hard facts " and all the " actualities " of to-day, and
which are at last to subdue to themselves these facts, and all facts,
and to make them obedient servants in a realm where the eternal ideal
is at once the real and the soul of all reality. Men who have seen such
things, and are able to rejoice in them, are not likely to be cowards.
And eyes that gaze habitually into eternity are wont to be steady eyes
and to impart to the soul behind them the steadiness of the eternal
objects upon which habitually they are fixed. " God is patient," so a
great saying runs, " because He is eternal." The things that drive us
to the edge of despair — the good that we see so clearly, but cannot
bring to pass ; the warfare of the brute facts of the world against that
in us and in our fellows which is gentlest and touched most with
heavenly light; the strange failures and defeats that here shatter a
good cause or yonder blast into deformity an individual life; 'the
unspeakable meannesses and cruelties that are practised by the strong
and the fortunate against the weak and the defenseless — meannesses
and cruelties of which the world is full, and in presence of which a
man's indignation scarcely can keep itself from falling to wild anger ;
above all, the lives that are born in evil, and pass to the life to come
never having known anything but evil: — these things do not mean
that God and the good have a power over against them able to defeat
them. Nor do they mean that God is absent from the world, and
that we must give up the ancient teaching that " God worketh until
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THE STUDY OF NATURE
now." They mean the patience of a vast design. In presence of them
the man who is devoted to goodness has to remember that in all such
things there is ultimately but one question; it is not a question of
death or of time; it is a question of God. And with God there is no
failure ; it would be easier for the heavens and the earth to pass away
and all things to come to nothingness, than for any single act, done
in any age for righteousness' sake or for love's, to fail of its due
result.
Such a " philosophic mind " is not the first power of life. Love
and devotion are the first powers of life — and the last. And love and
devotion can work in the dark ; with blind eyes they have done their
most heroic deeds. But soon or late their very nature leads them to
this calmness and patience of minds that see present things in the light
of the eternal. For soon or late their nature leads them to look upon
God; and, looking upon Him, they learn to see things under the
form of eternity. And then their " last enemy " is overcome ; for
from the point of view of eternity our enemies and our tyrants are
seen to be our friends. But the best way to understand this is to
state it in the terms of a more ancient conception. Our life is a
wrestle with a power not ourselves ; a stern and unfailing power that
with no shadow of weakness goes straight onward in its way, over
the hearts of men, over the plans of men, over the prayers of men.
Men of science are content nowadays to call it Law, but in their older
language they called it Necessity; ancient poets called it Fate. To
human life it is present in many forms : sometimes as an iron limita
tion ; sometimes as a foundation to be built upon ; sometimes as a task
master bringing to men labours that they would not have chosen and
responsibilities such as appall the soul; always as a law to be obeyed
and fulfilling itself with absolute exactness upon the disobedient. It
can never be evaded : nor can any man overcome it save by submitting
to it and taking it as the law of his own being. But such unity of the
individual soul with the necessity that operates in the world and in
the history of the race, is doubly difficult to attain. The very capaci
ties that make us human set us beyond that easy and perfect obedience
to necessity which is within the power of the leaf or the tide or the
star; and furthermore, however willing our hearts might be, its
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
operation in history proceeds with so vast a movement that as it
works upon the individual life it manifests rather its crushing power
than its law or its goal. And so we dash ourselves against it with that
pain, that blind and hopeless agony, that mad indignation as against a
fundamental injustice in things, which has made its cry heard in
human literature from the beginning until now.1
But in so far as a man is able to see the world and our life " under
the aspect, as it were, of eternity," he looks upon necessity at its
source; and looking upon it there, sees it in its true nature. It is
eternal and rational and righteous ; for it is the earthward aspect of the
divine reason, the form which the divine action takes on to eyes that
are not yet able to read it clearly. Unfailingly and unfalteringly it
" reaches from end to end, sweetly and strongly ordering all things."
Only when viewed from below does it appear mechanical and without
a soul. Its vast plan we cannot, indeed, grasp in detail. But we can
know its nature; we can know that Fate is the wisest of all things,
and that in that " history of the world " which is " the world's court
of judgment " the decisions which ultimately are given need no
reversal.
And the man who knows this, knows that necessity is the disciplin
arian of the soul, and is therefore his friend. He knows that necessity
is the source at once of the greatness, the difficulty, and the security,
of the good man's life. It is the source of the difficulty of that life;
for it brings the soul to desperate passes — it makes its journey long
and stern and its conversion a lifelong process in which each upward
step leads to the unveiling of greater issues and the opening of wider
struggles. It is the source of the greatness of that life; for it
is by his long struggle with necessity — the struggle in which
victory is won only by apprehending the wisdom behind that inexorable
face, and submitting to it, or rather growing up into it — that man
comes to be man, that the greater powers of his nature are developed,
the greater achievements of his spirit wrought out. For it is upon a
system of necessity which no individual will can break down or throw
into confusion, that all orderly labour, mental or physical, is based;
of such necessity literature, in its higher forms, strives to picture the
i Cf., for instance, Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, 2nd ed., p. 145 seq.
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incidence upon life ; science is a study of its ways in nature, philosophy
an attempt to penetrate to its real character ; the theology which does
not deal with it may indeed be happy, but is happy because it is still
a child. The necessity which lies beyond the control of the individual
will and is " the hidden wisdom of the world " is, in fact, the form
which the love that works throughout the whole process of the universe
assumes in order to become the schoolmaster of the human soul.1 And
as necessity is thus the source of the difficulty and the greatness of
the good man's life, so is it also the source of its security. For it is the
last law — and the first — of necessity, that ultimately the fate of every
soul shall be an absolutely righteous and rational fate — righteous and
rational as righteousness and reason are in God. In the end no soul
that lives will have anything of which it can rightly complain ; without
possibility of error every man will come at last to his own place.
And in addition to the necessity which thus is present in nature
and history, and shapes for the individual the unchangeable conditions
of his life, there acts upon the good man a necessity of a different
order. It is that moral necessity which arises out of the very char
acter of human life. We are citizens in a temporal and earthly order.
But our vocation has its home in eternity, and in its demands knows
nothing of the limitations of time. So that to the good man — to
every man who is not a coward, evading the demands of the world
upon him — life itself is a continual call to the bearing of a burden
impossible to be borne, to the performance of duties that are beyond
man's power. What ought to be done, again and again we cannot do,
or more often can do only in part; and we come down to the grave
weary men who have struggled hard and at the last are but unprofitable
servants. But the insight into the nature of that other necessity sets
this also in the true light ; like the other, it is in its very sternness and
oppression the ally of the man whose soul is turned toward goodness.
Here, as there, when we enter into the heart of what seemed a power
inexorable and indifferent, what we find is the deep heart of a friend
— a friend too wise to make any mistake, too kind to admit even the
slightest particle of weakness or indulgence into that system of things
i One cannot pass on without referring to the noblest of the modern expressions of
this— that contained in Tennyson's In Memoriam.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
which is the framework of our life. If man's vocation goes beyond
his opportunities, if his " ought " stretches on infinitely beyond his
powers, so that after a long struggle he finds himself still an unprofit
able servant, there is even in this no cause for lament or for complaint
of injustice. That life should be an endeavour to overtake a vocation
which runs beyond human powers and human opportunities is better
for us, is infinitely more worthy both of God and of man, than that
we should remain untroubled children for ever, with only such duties
laid upon us as our powers are adequate to perform. Only through a
life so constituted and through such struggle can children of time and
of the earth rise out of their childhood, and enter upon their inherit
ance and their true being as citizens of eternity; and better the
breaking of the heart than failure from that citizenship.
So that, in the presence of evil and of necessity, the men who have
passed from philosophy to the philosophic mind are like soldiers who,
in the midst of some long struggle, have looked through the struggle
and have seen behind it eternal powers and eternal destiny. And with
that, so far as their character responds to their knowledge, their
courage takes on a new character; to the old stubborn tenacity which
out of mere manliness could not yield, there comes a lofty intellectual
soul of vision and of hope.
But this new order of courage in the presence of evil and of
necessity is only a single aspect of what the soul comes to be, as truth
and life become one. Along with it goes another quality of the soul ;
a quality less stern and therefore apparently less high. But really it
is both higher and more difficult. For it is one of those virtues of
comprehension which always are harder of attainment than the virtues
of conflict. It is what may be called the virtue of catholicity; the
strength and steadiness which catholicity of mind gives to a man in
presence of the contending parties, contending interests, contending
solicitations, of the world. For let us remember once more what the
philosophy here in question has to teach us, both about the business of
our lives, and about the world we are living in. The constitutive
principle of reality — so it teaches — and therefore the condition of all
knowledge and the regulative principle for all conduct, is the good.
And the good is one ; it consists in a perfect society, a civitas Dei, the
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7 character of whose individual members is that character which is
already and eternally real in God. Furthermore, it is (as the ultimate
principle of the divine activity) at once the animating purpose and
the inner unity and the " hidden wisdom " of the world. The
troubled process which is life and history is a field wherein it wins
men to itself, and, by imparting itself to them and so making them
truly men, works out its own realisation. So that there is in all life
and in all history one supreme object for the devotion of all men.
It is only as being a stage in the realisation of that divine idea, it is
/ only as being a step toward the bringing into being of that civitas Dei,
that any duty is a duty at all, or any labour worthy of being done, or
any cause deserving of support, or any institution worthy of loyalty.
At all times and in all places and for all men that divine idea is the
one determination of the path of duty. It therefore is the one object
of endeavour that is truly catholic; the causes that make for it are
the only truly catholic causes ; devotion to it and to those its causes is
the one true catholicity; and the man to whom such devotion is the
supreme and organising principle of life is the one true catholic.
This does not mean any aloofness from life. Nor does it mean that
life is to be reduced to a flat monotony of devotion to an indivisible
One. On the contrary, as many as are the capabilities of human nature,
so many are the pathways of the divine idea toward its realisation.
But it does mean that there is eternally in God an end or good, as wide
as life, which is at once the constitutive principle of the world's order,
- and the true guide and goal of human action: and, as such, is the
standard of judgment for all human causes and purposes and enthusi
asms ; for all subjection of the immortal spirit to the body ; for all use
of the resources of life in vain display ; for all sectarian divisions ; for
all that political and social selfishness which puts individual interest
before general welfare ; for all those ideals and passions and ambitions
which set men apart from one another, and break the unity of society
in church and state, and lead to the oppression of man by man or
class by class.
Something, then, such as this, is what philosophy means when it
becomes the philosophic mind. But what has been said is only a hint.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
Other qualities of that mind might have been spoken of; its willing
ness, for instance, to recognise the presence of God — in nature, in the
movement of history, in those great lay activities and virtues which
sometimes the religious despise. But in particular one thing — and
that the most important of all — which might have been dwelt upon,
has not been dwelt upon. We saw that the universe is really a great
family — a society composed of an eternal spirit and the lesser spirits
in whom the eternal spirit reproduces himself, for whom he sets a
vocation, and to whom, in science and in art, in morality and in
religion, he more and more imparts himself, reconciling them to
himself, winning their hearts back to himself, and by that
reconcilement and that impartation enabling them to become
truly themselves. But such a view of the universe is a call to
personal affection and personal devotion, and to all the energies and
powers, to all the passion and all the achievement, of such devotion
and such affection. And if that view of the universe be philosophy, i
the philosophic mind must in the true form of its idea be the same as
the religious mind — the mind which in the activities and energies of
a supreme affection seeks to become more and more at one with God
and with that purpose of God which is the ultimate law alike of the
world and of man's being. But of that no mention has been made, in
the attempt to give the reader some glimpse of what philosophy is
when it passes over into the philosophic mind, and transmutes itself
into life and temper and character, and so does its full work. And
for that silence there was a reason. It is only in some world to come,
when the philosophic mind, and the moral mind, and the religious
mind, have all risen to the true form of their idea, that we shall be
able to see them as one and the same. For our present world the fact
stands that such affection as is here in question is commonly roused
in men in a way which does not begin in intellectual vision. Speaking
broadly and allowing for a few striking exceptions, the work of
philosophy in this respect has been, not so much to rouse in men the
love of God, as to do a certain work for those who already, and by
other of the divine agencies of reconciliation, have been led to make
that love the supreme principle of the practical life: — namely, to
clear their eyes, and to give an intellectual soul to the vision of their
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THE STUDY OF NATUKE
faith, and to cast upon their world and upon their path through it a
broad illumination of rational light.
We must say, then, that philosophy, in its greater and clearer
forms, leads us to see that the love of God should be the supreme
principle of life. But we must also say that philosophy in those
greater and clearer forms is the possession of a few. What is needed
for the whole wide race is something that in human form and human
affection can lie close at man's heart, that can illuminate with personal
example all the events and relations of his life, that can be received
by the simplest and the weakest, in a way not possible to that which is
primarily an endeavour of the intellect and a construction of the
scientific reason.
And in this connexion there is in the history of philosophy a most
remarkable fact. There came an age in which, for many high and
pure souls, philosophy had no choice but to undertake the guidance of
life ; in fact the need was so profound that philosophy, for the sake of
the practical life, had even to set about the task of purifying religion.1
In the greatest of her masters philosophy rose to meet the call. The
intellectual and moral splendour with which the task was discharged,
they most admire who know the story best. Indeed the man must be
very narrow in sympathies, or very ungrateful, who can look with
merely fault-finding eyes upon what philosophy was, and upon what
philosophy did, as she tried to meet that awful need of the spirit
which already in Plato's day was descending over Greece. But pre
cisely in that day, precisely when philosophy, called to bear a burden
too great for her, summoned all her powers and rose to her most starry
splendour, with the genius of prophecy, the genius of art, the genius
of science, labouring together in her courts and at her command —
precisely then it was that her spokesmen wrote in her records a double
cry : the cry for a revelation beyond his own ; and the high resolve of
the natural soul to make the best of the stern situation, so long as that
higher revelation was denied by heaven to men. " I will tell you my
difficulty/' — so Plato makes Simmias to speak in the Phaedo2 — " and
Cebes will tell you his. I feel myself (and I daresay that you have
i Cf. Republic, 377 E seq.
2 85 C. (tr. Jowett).— Socrates, it will be remembered, is about to die.
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AND THE VISION OF GOD
the same feeling) how hard or rather impossible is the attainment of
any certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And
yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about
them to the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had
examined them on every side. For he should persevere until he has
achieved one of two things : either he should discover, or be taught the
truth about them ; or, if this be impossible I would have him take the
best and most irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the raft
upon which he sails through life — not without risk, as I admit, if he
cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry
him."
Plato did not know that for the desire of which he had been a
prophet, there was to come a fulfilment more genuine than he had
dreamed : not in a great argument, sounding onward in a voyage that
few could follow; but in a life that had dwelled where Plato desired
the philosophic soul to dwell — in the bosom of eternity — and came to
man with a kindliness, with a simplicity and directness of humanity,
with a " loveliness of perfect deeds," which every burdened man, and
every little child,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef,
can apprehend. And Plato did not know that, soon after that life
passed from among men, He who had lived it was to be apprehended
" under the form as it were of eternity " by two great masters of
life and of thought. The one declared that in Him the universe
consists; that He is the supreme law of the whole history of man
and of the whole system and process of the world. The other, using
the same word that Plato had used, declared that He was the Word,
the divine Word, which reveals the eternal to men and gives them
such vision as man needs of that divine idea which is at once the law
of the world's order, and the condition of all knowledge, and the good
for all human endeavour. He is the manifestation of the ultimate
God; and in Him is summed up the law of the world; for these two
things are one, each involving the other. But these great offices He
discharged upon the earth, not in the form of some blinding
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THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE VISION OF GOD
majesty which could have taught us only our own nothingness, but as
a man, who in purity of heart and in simplicity lived for others ; lived
for us all, and from the Galilaean fields and from His cross speaks
still to the hearts of those for whom He lived. And as His appeal
comes to us, some of us look upon Him early, and love Him, and
walk in His way. But others of us go out proudly and in strength
to our work, and suddenly, we know not how, are in the grasp of
powers greater than ourselves, and come to the end of the day broken
men; and beneath the gathering shadow, with the house of life in
ruins about us, turn to Him, and receive from Him hope that rises
above the scene of our defeat, and the gift of peace, and power at last
to overcome the world.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA.
I.
IN our effort to apprehend that reality of things which is also the
truth of our life, new insights come but slowly to full possession of
themselves. A new method, a new category, a new point of view,
seldom comes to its right in a single man or a single generation.
Through many men a school labours toward a goal not clearly appre
hended at the beginning; a goal from which the founders, could they
have seen it, might have turned in dismay. But the method more and
more does justice to itself; the tendency enters more and more fully
into its own meaning; and at last the man arises in whom the school
finds at once its culmination and its end. The system of thought
which such a man leaves behind him has more than the purely
scientific interest. It marks a finished stage in one great side of that
human pilgrimage through time which is history; it takes on the
dignity, the grave and moving interest, of a concluded chapter of
human fate. A given tendency in man's long endeavour to know
himself for the thing he is and to shape his life according to that
knowledge, has been carried to its utmost limit; a given method
employed to its utmost power. All that this tendency, all that this
method, can do, it has done. It began as best it could. It worked
its way forward through its stages, clarifying itself and learning to
be true to itself as it advanced. And now it has assumed its final
shape; has made manifest at last the meaning which was in it.
Henceforward, in that " history of the world " which is " the world's
court of judgment," it abides, an achieved fact, standing face to face
with its opponents and awaiting verdict.
There have been three chief instances of this in modern thought.
One stands strangely in the midst of its school. David Hume carried
to their logical conclusion the point of view and the method of
9 113
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
English empiricism; and by doing so showed their hopeless inade
quacy to the task of understanding how our experience can be what
it actually is. But Hume, with all his acuteness of intelligence, did
his work as a man whose first love was fame, not as a man who had
devoted himself to the service of ultimate truth; and after his day
the school, unable to learn the lesson that looks out from his pages,
went on with the old watchwords, the old point of view, the old
method. The second instance is a work vaster in design, nobler in
spirit. In his encyclopedic view of the embodied reason which is the
structure and the history of the world, Hegel carried forward to its
due use as a world-principle that synthetic character and activity of
intelligence which Kant in his own rigid and cramped way had
brought forward in inquiring into the possibility of human knowl
edge. But the third — earliest of the three in time and moving in
the atmosphere of a more primitive type of thought — was in many
respects the most striking of all. Once in the history of the Western
world, and once only, the leaders in thought and science broke delib
erately through the continuity that links together the successive
generations, and turned with disgust and anger from the results
accumulated by the labour of the ages gone. In dealing with the
highest problem of science, they would return to the very beginning
and by the use of a new method would comprehend nature and pene
trate to the truth concerning man.1 Such was the Cartesian attempt.
But the full significance of the Cartesian method and the Cartesian
categories was not worked out by Descartes himself. Geulincx, and
the great name of Malebranche, mark further stages in the process
by which the endeavour initiated by Descartes entered into possession
of its own meaning. But the man to whom it was given to complete
this process — the man who spoke the last word of this philosophical
school, and made clear to the world for ever the final outcome and
meaning of the Cartesian way of attacking the ultimate problems of
science— was Benedict de Spinoza, a solitary man who was pure in
heart and cared nothing for wealth, or social position, or fame, but
loved truth, and for its sake was willing to be driven from his
father's house and to earn a sternly simple fare by grinding lenses.
i Cf. supra, p. 59.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
It is true that the Cartesians were not aware of this relation of
Spinoza to their school ; true that Spinoza himself was scarcely aware
of it. Malebranche is ready to anathematise Spinoza; and Spinoza
occasionally protests in very sharp terms against this or that particu
lar doctrine of Descartes. But that does not alter the case. All
these men of thought were seized, as Kuno Fischer so aptly reminds
us, " by the powers of whom it is said nolentem trahunt " ; though
they themselves did not know it, they were all labouring at a single
task, and moving through the different stages of a single journey.
f; ' \ II.
This lonely man it was, then, who spoke the last word of that type
of thinking with which the modern world began when it revolted
from the mediaeval and proceeded to build anew the house of life and
of thought. That last word he spoke so resolutely that the world was
enabled — or rather compelled — to pass on to those other thoughts in
the midst of which we men of to-day live. So that Spinoza is one of
the founders of the present-day world ; and yet he stands far from our
daily companionship. He helped to make us what we are; and yet
to most of us he seems unspeakably remote, a solitary and monu
mental name, a vast but far-off power.
But there is another interest, if possible one still deeper, connected
with the name of Spinoza. In thought — and in life — there is, as
already we have seen,1 a division profounder than that into historical
stages and schools; there is a distinction of fundamental tendencies,
an antithesis, simple, radical, primitive, which at once underlies,
and expresses itself through, the differences of the schools; the dis
tinction, namely, between the thought (and the religion) which in
finding God finds the light and truth of the world, and that which, to
find God, leaves the world behind. And what gives to Spinoza this
second and profounder interest is a twofold relation which he bears
to that elemental and radical antithesis. On the one hand, he is the
last of the very few supremely great voices through whom that side
of the antithesis for which the modern world thinks it has no place
i Supra, p. 7 seq.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
has found express, and at the same time orginal,1 formulation for
itself. But, on the other hand, while the tendency in question secures
in him this express and unmistakable utterance for itself, he is forced
to go beyond it, and so in his system it is seen standing face to face
with its great and age-long opponents.
Such is the historical position of Spinoza. Of the two relations
which make up that position — the relation to the Cartesian philoso
phy, the relation to Mysticism — the one mentioned last is logically
the first, in the sense that that elemental antithesis is deeper than
the division into historical periods and schools. So that, in seeking
to view Spinoza in his historical position, it is to that fundamental
distinction that we must turn first. And to understand it as it appears
in Spinoza, we must first endeavour to understand it as it is in itself
and for its own sake. To do that, we must consider two things : first
how it arises; secondly, its chief appearances in history.
III.
In attempting to understand how that distinction arises we have
to consider, first what the fundamental instinct and presupposition
of all scientific work is, secondly the two ways in which that instinct
may fulfil itself when science reaches its final or metaphysical stage.
First, then, the endeavour of any particular " special science " is to
find unity of principle in the phenomena with which it deals. And
the endeavour of science as a whole — or, in the words just used, the
endeavour of science in its metaphysical stage — is to see the world
as one. It is true that in this, its last and highest task, science some
times falls by the way; and falls with so decided a motion that it
remains fixed where it has fallen. That is to say, certain meta
physicians and certain schools of metaphysic, regard their work as
i Original, not as standing out of relation to earlier men of thought— that were to deny
•what has just been affirmed— but as being the outcome of the independent working of
Spinoza's own mind upon the material furnished to it, whether by previous thinkers or by
his own experience of life. The word is inserted to exclude teachers such as Schopenhauer,
whose formulation of this same tendency can scarcely be called an original movement,
but is rather a revival of an ancient system and a delivering over of the Kantian episte-
mology to it to be its handmaid.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
completed before they have reached a One at all. They remain to
the end with a multitude of eternal " distinct existences " on their
hands. It is true, too, that systems formed in this way — monad-
ologies, sensationalisms, atomisms — have taken a very great place
in the history of philosophy. And still farther, they have been very
useful there. But the true nature of that usefulness should be recog
nised. The man who understands that the search of science, from
its lowest stage to its highest, is a search after unity, will also
understand what the genuine significance is, of a pluralistic termina
tion of the scientific endeavour; namely, that the science which so
terminates has taken as a highest and ultimate category some
principle which is not powerful enough to link together the stubbornly
diverse factors of the world. That is to say, the pluralistic systems
are reductiones ad absurdum of the methods which have produced
them. And it is for this very reason that the usefulness of these
systems in the history of philosophy has been so great. They have
been stages on the way to insight. At certain times they have made
clear — to those who could understand — the inadequacy and inner
hollowness of some popular school or of some trusted method. At
other times they have deepened the problem for some too hasty
monism, setting over against its thesis a stubborn and resolute
antithesis. In a word, they have been steps, worked out often with
great keenness and acuteness, in that long dialectic process which is
the history of philosophy.
But, as already has been noted, the very nature of the attempt of
science — the very nature of such a thing as a search after law in the
diversities of the world — involves that, unless that scientific attempt
is to be false to itself, its last and highest view of the world must be
a view in which the world is seen as one. So that, granting to the
full the usefulness of the pluralistic systems in the dialectic develop
ment of philosophical insight, it remains that in them, as was said
above, the scientific endeavour is seen " falling by the way and
remaining fixed where it falls." But the radical and elemental dis
tinction which we are now concerned to understand, is a distinction
between the systems of philosophy which, with all their errors, have
not erred in that fashion, but have pushed their way through to a
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
unitary view of the world. And the distinction consists precisely in
the way in which they do thus push their way through to a One.
For both sides take their rise in a profound discontent — sometimes
almost purely intellectual, sometimes moral or religious as well — with
the manifoldness, the changeableness, the dividedness, the imperfec
tion and disorder, of our everyday experience. But the one side
proceeds from the unsatisfactory Many to a One whose distinctive
character is simply this — that it is not the Many. While the other
side proceeds from the unsatisfactory Many to a One which is the
Many over again — but the Many as truly or adequately known, and
in the light of that adequate interpretation seen to be no longer
unsatisfactory. On the former view, manifoldness and dividedness
are inconsistent with the One; on the latter, they are necessary to it.
To the former, the infinite excludes finitude ; to the latter, it mediates
itself through finitude — is an infinity of determinations. To the
former, again, the eternal is no home of change and of time; to the
latter, it is at once the home and the law and the informing spirit of
time and of the changing things of time. To the former, God is all
in all ; the world can be only a shadow, from which the wise man will
set himself free in order that in God he may become at one with
reality. But to the latter, the world is the process of the realisation of
divine ends, and thus is in organic connexion with God and is a true
field of labour to the sons of God.
Philosophy, in a word, is the apprehension of the unity and
eternity of all true existence. But men differ in the way in which
they pass from the diverse and changing elements of their daily
experience to their vision of that unity. To some it is a One which
is not the world, and in whose presence the world fades away. To
others it is a One which fulfils itself through the whole system of
the changes and diversities of the world; it is the light and the life
of men, and of the whole universe of experience. In both cases the
effort of man is to see truly; and to see truly by seeing under the
form of eternity. But upon the one view, the things of to-day and
to-morrow cannot endure the light of eternity; they vanish as dreams
vanish, when the soul is aroused from troubled sleep and the delusions
of the night fall from it and are gone. While to the other view the
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
things and interests of time lose indeed their fleeting and self-centred
individuality; but only to be seen in their truth as elements of
eternity. They die, but in dying find a life over which death has no
power; for now they live not unto themselves, but in the eternal and
unto the eternal. To this type of philosophy, the particular things
and interests of our experience, so far from being mere appearances
professing a reality to which they have no claim, are in truth more
real even than they seem to be. So that this philosophy is a
philosophy humane and kindly. It is hospitable to all forms of being
— though it has its sternness in insisting that each shall recognise
its place and devote itself to its own function. Every lineament in
the face of nature is dear to it; but its special delight is with man
and his history. The labour of man, the achievement of man, the
glory and the tragedy which are never far from any man's heart — it
is never weary of attempting to set these in the light of eternity and
to show them transfigured by that light. But the philosophy which
stands over against this can give no such welcome to all the half-
earthly half-heavenly content of our life. Not that it does not love
men. In its greater historical forms it has loved men with the
profoundest and most passionate of all the forms of love — that over
whelmed with the sense of tragedy ; its love being not that of delight,
but that of a great pity for the hapless creature whom it saw losing
himself in things which, not being Gpd, are nothing and worse than
nothing. But the very principle which gave such passion to its love
for man made it stand aloof from man's ordinary life. It made its
home neither with his daily affairs, nor with the humanities, nor
with nature. To pass from its great opponent to it is as if one passed
from Athens — from the thronged harbours of the Piraeus, from the
voices of statesmen and sophists and tragedians, from the gatherings
of men who delighted in life and in one another and in the exercise
of all the powers that their natures included — to some solemn temple
of Lacedaemon, standing apart in grave strength and austere majesty,
changeless from age to age, while in hollow Sparta the generations of
mortal men hastened to death.
This, then, is the deepest of those divisions that have sundered
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into diverse schools and tendencies the long attempt of man to under
stand himself and his world. It is a first and fundamental distinction
which the student must understand if he is to understand the history
of philosophy at all. That history seems crowded with a multitude of
structures; and the difference of these from one another seems as
great as their internal complexity. But when the investigator digs
down into them, what he comes upon at last is one or other — more
often both — of the two great tendencies now before us. These are
elemental in character, primitive, simple; and they are of immeasur
able antiquity ; for they are as old as the dissatisfaction of the human
soul with its imperfect being and with its momentary and transient
experiences. Their opposition has moulded the whole dialectical
evolution of man's endeavour to understand his life. From the
beginnings alike of religion and of reflective thought they, like inner
forces, have guided the main currents; and have determined the
proportions of the greater systems. The history of their warfare—
and of their combinations with each other — is, on its practical side,
the history of the religious life; and, on its theoretical side, the
history of philosophy.
So long as we understand the essential movement of these two
tendencies, it matters little what names we give them. Some designa
tions, however, we must have, if only for convenience of reference.
The broad contrast between the two, as tendencies or methods, may
be indicated by the terms " abstract " and " concrete " ; or by the
terms " analytic " and " synthetic " ; or we may borrow terms from
the older theologians, and call the one the via negativa, the other the
via affirmativa. To find names for the views of the world which arise
from these tendencies is on the one side fairly easy, on the other some
what difficult. The philosophy of the via negativa — that which in
moving toward the One denies the Many — may, when it confines itself
to pure theory, be called " abstract pantheism," or from another point
of view " acosmism."1 But when it goes beyond pure theory, and is
i A term accurate in the sense of giving a negative name to a negative movement of
thought. Yet (leaving aside Hegel's appropriate use of it in replying to those who accused
Spinoza of Atheism) it jars upon one who rememhers how exceedingly positive is the
impulse— the impulse after reality— out of which this negative movement of thought has
so often arisen.
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at once a view of reality and a way of life, it is Mysticism — the pan-
theistische My stile of that saying of Eothe which Dr. Martineau put
upon the title-page of his Spinoza,
Der pantheistischen Mystik ist wirJclich Gott alles,
Dem gemeinen Pantheismus ist alles Gott.
And having the general name of Mysticism, we need scarcely, for our
present purpose, concern ourselves with names for its various types.
For while it is true that the points of departure from which men have
proceeded to an abstract One are very various, yet the conclusion
itself, when reached, can scarcely be said to have diverse forms. To
that " lion's den " many paths may lead — some purely theoretical,
some religious — but to all of them it is a lion's den. There are differ
ent kinds of Mysticism only in the sense that men come to Mysticism
along different ways, under different impulses, in different tempers.
But on the other side the subdivisions are numerous and of the
utmost importance. For here the Many are not lost in the One, but
preserved in the One. The One is the source and constitutive
principle of the world — the principle of connexion which links its
many factors and elements together into one orderly system. Hence,
what the nature of that connexion is (and consequently what the
nature of the world, and what the nature of our life in it) depends on
the nature of the One. And that nature may be apprehended upon
many different intellectual levels — i.e., by many different categories.
For reflective thought began with simple categories which could not
do justice to the positive relation between the details of the world and
their supreme and eternal principle ; and from these, advanced to cate
gories more concrete and therefore at once more comprehensive and
more penetrating. We thus get an ascending series of views, less or more
adequate according as the category employed is less or more adequate
to that which is to be apprehended. It may be broadly stated that the
lower forms of these are dominated by the idea of necessity a tergo —
there is somehow a beginning, or cause, or substance, and from
it things " follow " or " flow down," the course of the flow being abso
lutely determined by the nature of the cause or source ; while the higher
are dominated by the conception of spirit, and the consequent
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conceptions of teleology, and of a rational necessity union with which
is true freedom. To those lower forms — since in the last analysis they
must regard all particular things as the modes which in their totality
make up the eternal One — we might apply Rothe's term, gemeiner
Pantheismus; or we might use some such name as " naturalistic Pan
theism." The higher forms are usually denoted by the name Ideal
ism, in its greater sense as defined on a previous page;1 though, as
there noted, even in Idealism we have to remember the distinction
between a more concrete form which believes that the eternal, rational
spirit fulfils its purpose through the whole process of the world, and a
more abstract form which can see God only in pure reason, and is
obliged, therefore, to condemn the world of the senses.2 With these
subdivisions, however, we are not directly concerned at this point.
What we must do here is to fix firmly in our minds the original and
fundamental distinction itself between the tendency which is abstract
and negative, and that which is affirmative and concrete.
1 Supra, p. 11. Cf. infra, pp. 209, 210.
2 To the student of " Logik "—the science whose business it is (or was) to deal with the
categories and hence to arrange the various types of philosophy in the order of their
advance from abstractness toward concreteness— this matter of classification will of
course offer no difficulties. All these tendencies and types can be arranged as stages in a
single process of logical evolution. The first— the thorough carrying out of the via
negativa—stand.s at the beginning where the categories employed are altogether abstract
(the categories of pure Being). The third stands at the end, where a highest category has
been gained which is altogether concrete (Absolute Idealism). While the remaining
forms are the stages which constitute the long road between— one of the most striking of
these being that which, as its highest category, uses the conception of causation (whether
physical or logical) in such a way as to give us a view of the universe as a great process of
necessity a tergo. Those intermediate types have the common characteristic that they
have not felt the pressure of the problem of the self ; they have not grasped the fact that
" things " (extended things as much as any other) are objects existing for and through a
self which holds together many "experiences" in the unity of one experience; to them,
in other words, man is simply a part of nature ; whatever principles are adopted as
explaining the things which seem to exist in their own right in space and time, are ipso
facto adopted as explaining man. And it is when the pressure of the problem of the self
(usually in a special form— the problem of the possibility of knowledge) is felt, that
philosophy passes upward from those intermediate types to the Idealistic. In the exam
ination of human experience a synthetic principle, self-conscious, self-distinguishing,
self-determining, is found ; and such a principle furnishes the key for the solution of the
problem how the many facts and beings of the world, without losing their particularity,
can be linked together into one reality. Self-distinguishing and self -determining spirit-
so science finds at the end of its long ascent— is the principle of unity-in-diversity which
enables us to view the universe as one, without abstracting from, or condemning as
illusion, that manifoldness of existence which is found, not only in the multiplex life of
nature, but also in the divisions of the intellectual and moral and religious life of man.
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XD. the thought of Spinoza both these tendencies are present. The
former — the tendency to the via negativa — is not only present in him,
but is that first and fundamental thing in his thinking with which
the student must begin if he is* at all to understand Spinoza as Spinoza
actually was. But in that large and sincere and open mind, the
unquestioned domination of the negative tendency was impossible. To
such forms of the other tendency as could enter his field of thought
he gave fair hearing, and dealt as he was able with the problems which
these forced upon him. Of this, the result was not so much the
renunciation of the negative tendency, as the setting of the other beside
it; or rather the setting of two forms of the other beside it. For, as
we shall see,, he set beside it, in fully articulated form, what on the
classification noted a moment ago would be called a lower type of the
positive or synthetic view. But then in certain connexions he was
driven even beyond that, and worked out doctrines which cannot
indeed be called a system, but are prophetic hints and glimpses calling
for the highest type of the concrete view, i.e., for Idealism. In order,
then, to understand him as he was and to follow his thinking along
the line of its own journey, we shall study first how he was led toward
the negative or mystic conception of reality, and then his advance
from it to the other points of view just spoken of. But — as was noted
a moment ago — to study intelligently the negative tendency as it is in
Spinoza, it will be wise first to study it on its own merits and for its
own sake. And that can best be done historically.
IV.
In the age-long effort of man to find out what he is, and what his
experience means, and what the true way of life for him is, this
abstract or negative way of thinking has shown itself times innumer
able. In some cases it has played the part of a Nemesis of thought,
appearing unbidden in the systems of those who face with inadequate
categories the ultimate problem of science.1 But these cases need not
be dwelt upon here. For, in the history of man, it has had a greater
1 A remarkable instance is the case of the development from Sir William Hamilton
through Dean Mansel to Mr. Spencer.
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part than that to play. Strange as the fact may seem, this austere
and abstract tendency, which has for its goal a formless Absolute and
an eternity devoid of time, has not only dominated the thought, but
has governed the life, of whole races and nations. Stranger still, it
has at times regenerated religion, and broken up spiritual stagnation.
It has even helped to shatter political tyrannies. And as one might
conjecture beforehand, a tendency that has taken so great a place in
the life of man has not wanted for expression in the works of the great
masters of systematic thought. Sometimes it has ruled half the
divided heart of a supreme teacher. Sometimes, on the other hand,
from a method or a point of departure in which it lay latent, it has
worked its way, with a logic as inevitable as the decrees of fate, to its
full meaning ; and then has shown itself as the fundamental and con
trolling factor in the thought of some great man, or some great school,
or some remarkable age.
The cases of the former kind are of the very deepest interest.
They stand central in the historical development of philosophy; one
might almost call them its great ganglia. Here, however, it is possible
to refer only to two of these. The first is the greater. In the thought
of Plato the negative tendency is present, confronting the affirmative ;
and there, in the presence of its opponent, it takes on, more than ever
before in the history of man and more than ever after, the characters
which are native to it — the solemnity, the unearthly splendour, the
austere Lacedaemonian grace, appropriate to the vision of an eternal
being in whose presence the weaker things of time pass away and are
not. But while it is present, and knows itself, it cannot prevail. For
in Plato, as in all the great cases of its occurrence, the negative tend
ency takes its rise in that which is the genuine beginning and the
genuine inspiration of all science, and of all philosophy, and in one
sense of all religion; namely, in the instinctive search of the spirit
which is man for the abiding and the unchangeable ; in the passion for
the eternal. But of the men who are thus animated by the passion for
the eternal — the men who, as we are wont to say, are "not of this
world "• —there are two classes. Some who are " not of this world "
are so in the literal sense. So far as they can, they walk without
transgression in the way of the negative theology. Their journey
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toward their home in God, is a journey away from this world. But
others, who are " not of this world," are for that very reason all the
more truly citizens of this world. Their knowledge that their
dwelling-place is in the eternal makes all the profounder and all the
more genuine their citizenship in that temporal order which is " a
moving image of eternity."1 And as between these alternatives
Plato's position was peculiar. A certain Dorian quality of soul
struggled in him with an Ionian intellect and with Athenian training
and tastes and interests. And the practical tragedy in his life2 partly
withdrew him from the world, partly made him all the more passion
ately earnest about the reformation of the world within the forms of
its present order. The negative tendency lay very close at his heart;
yet, upon the whole, it is the other that prevails in his philosophy.
The Ideas remain determinate forms — and determinate rational forms.
The One (i.e., the Idea of Good) does not by its presence condemn to
unreality the lower Ideas in their individual distinctness; nor for the
apprehension of it is a type of consciousness above the rational
required. And even more than that can be said. Of the two inter
pretations of Plato, that which sees the Ideas as in organic union with
man's present world and present experience, is really more true to
Plato than that which sees the Ideas as dwelling altogether apart from
the world. What Mysticism does for Plato is, not to overcome him,
but rather to give loftiness of soul, and a certain undernote of tragedy,
to his Idealism. Indeed his thought as a whole is an example of the
fact that a great and complex process often takes on a wider move
ment, a new and higher order of power, when a negative element
enters among its constituents.
The other case lies close to ourselves. A negative movement of
thought is present in the very system in which the metaphysic of the
present day recognises its proximate fountain-head — in the critical
philosophy of Immanuel Kant. But, although more than twenty
centuries had intervened — some of them filled with hard thinking,
others given to eager conquest of the world — yet the negative tendency
is in Kant far less aware than in Plato of its own true nature.
i Timaeus, 37 DE. 2 See pp. 222, 223, infra.
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Appearing first as a gulf between the categories and the materials given
in sense — and then going on through other dualisms to that final one
between the phenomena given to the understanding, and the real world
which is the field of the rational will — it operates mainly as a potent
source of difficulty and confusion ; and the first labour of the followers
of Kant was to overcome it, so that Kant's synthetic view might be
developed to its full significance.
It is hard to turn away from a more detailed study of these two
cases. But they do not give us exactly what we want here at the
beginning. What we need here is to see the negative tendency, as far
as possible, in the purity of its type ; to see it as it is in itself. What
we must do is to turn to the other great class of its appearances — those
in which, from the method or the point of departure wherein it is
latent, it advances with uninterrupted logic, moving with its own
motion, working out its own dialectic, until, as one may say, it
possesses the whole field.
Of such cases there are three in particular, which (specially when
compared with one another) show what this tendency is; show what
that meaning is, which it has in it at its beginning and develops in its
course. One of these is found in Greek thought before the problem of
the self had come clearly to view. Here the tendency shows itself in a
strictly theoretical form. It gives, as one may say, a sketch of itself
in its purely logical outline. But it did not — in that land and at that
age, it could not — enter upon the full work of a philosophy. It neither
became a guide of life, nor faced the full weight and power of its own
theoretical shortcoming. The second is* much earlier in date ; but
much fuller in articulation. Among the Hindus the negative tendency
not only works itself out with a singular completeness of logical
development, but also undertakes what has just been called " the full
work of a philosophy." It puts its shoulder to the wheel. It acts as
a guide of life, and builds up an ethic and a philosophy of religion.
While in the third case — the Neo-Platonic — it is seen at last recognis
ing its great theoretical difficulty, and erecting, in the effort to over
come that difficulty, a structure of almost monstrous vastness. — And. as
we shall see, there is a fourth case, which scarcely adds any new logical
factor, but which so well sums up in itself the main features of the
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three cases just mentioned, that it will be worth our while to take
note of it as we pass from these historical references to the direct
study of Spinoza.
(a)
What we are to see in the Greek case is the pure science, the pure
logic, of the matter, given in a very brief and elementary form, but
with perfect clearness. This case we shall best understand by consider
ing the logical position in which men inevitably found themselves when
they first attempted to be scientific in their thinking about the world.
First, the instinct after unity, the sense of the oneness of all existence,
is present ; present at the very beginning, for without it there could be
no such beginning. It may be unrecognised and unrefiected upon ; but
without its implicit operation there would be no such thing as the
search after scientific explanation at all. The mind would simply rest
each instant in the particulars of that instant. But, , secondly, the
category that can affect the unification of this most complex world,
must be a very complex and difficult category. But such a category is
not present at the beginning. Or rather, it is present only potentially
and shows itself only in flashes of prophetic intuition. As a clear
instrument of the reason, employed in building up systematic and
assured science, it is gained only as the result of a long dialectic labour
in which category after category is entered upon, used to the utmost of
its power, and finally taken up into a higher : — until at last a category
is reached by which the Many are shown as a One, with no rebels
remaining outside to prove, by the very fact of their rebellion, the
inadequacy of the category for its work of unification.
So then, at the beginning the demand for unity is present. But
the category by which the Many can be seen as One, is, in the sense just
mentioned, not present. What almost inevitably results is a stage of
.thinking in which the One runs away with the Many — or to speak more
decorously, in which the Many are lost in the One. This whelming of
the Many in the One is likely, indeed, to take place near the beginning
rather than at the beginning. Near the beginning; for there the
categories are simple, abstract, inadequate. But not precisely at the
beginning. For the denial of the manifold involves two things which
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at the very beginning can scarcely be present; first, as we shall see
presently, an unflinching, uninterrupted consistency in carrying a
given category to its extreme and absolute application; and secondly,
a high degree of speculative courage. But as soon as the scientific
intellect has taken on some considerable impetus and has come to
feel tolerably sure of itself, then we may look for such an affirmation
of the unity of being as makes its manif oldness a mere illusion.
Among the Greeks — in whose early men of thought the pure
intellect, serene and undistracted, enslaved neither by force from
without nor by superstitious fears within, stood free to work its way
without interruption through the dialectic of its categories — this
tendency came to the forefront just in the place indicated. The name
connected with its clear and full emergence is the great name of
Parmenides.
If we consider the exact situation which Parmenides faced, we
shall see both how clear his logic was, and how absolutely inevitable
wa* the conclusion to which he came. He stood face to face with the
particular things of the world, and these were not self-intelligible.
Of this plant, this cloud, this cliff that the sea is wearing down, one
has to say, " It is." But there was a time, and there will again be a
time, when one, if present, would have to say, " It is not." But
there is no rest for the intellect in such things. They do not stand
upon their own feet. They are and they are not. What is wanted is
something which will supply a footing to these things, and which at
the same time will itself have at least two characters. First, it must
be something of which you can in the fullest sense of the words say
that it is : — at no time, in no place, under no circumstances, must you
be able to say that it is not. Secondly, it must be something which is
one with itself. That is, it must always remain itself throughout all
its work of making possible these particular and transient " things "
and this changing order of "nature." If, for instance, it be some
thing which condenses itself into these stones and rarifies itself into
that vapour, it must still remain itself throughout all those trans
formations. And this second character follows directly from the
first; the "It remains itself," from the absolute "It is."
The first Greek men of science faced this problem as well as they
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could. They used such intellectual instruments, such categories, as
they had. And the category which they had was the first and simplest
of all our categories — that of Being. This category they used in
specific and very naive forms. But its essential character was always
the same : — Being is that of which you can simply affirm that it is.
Soon, however, these men of science found themselves in difficulties
of a most serious character. Their category turned a very unkindly
and very uncompromising face toward the actual existences of the
world. They were — if the illustration be not too profane — somewhat
in the position of a man who has discovered that space is two-dimen
sional. If you have found that space has but two dimensions — that all
spatial reality exists in a plane — you must leave off tying sailors' knots
and must have nothing more to do with the various gymnastic feats
which involve motion in the third dimension. And if you find your
self still doing these things you must declare that really you do not do
them; that in truth they are but illusions. For any motion is either
in that plane, or out of it ; and if it is out of it, it is unreal. Just so
it turned out to be with the category of Being. These things of time
and of sense are continually changing, continually swaying back and
forth between " is " and " is not." But Being is. In it there is no
" is not." In a word, there is no place in it for change and for things
that are subject to change. And if you try to escape the difficulty by
making the conception of Being into the conception of Substance; if
you try to keep both the Being and the things, by viewing the Being
as the substrate of the things: you help yourself not one whit. The
old difficulty simply recurs. Here is this particular thing. It either
has Being or else it has not Being. If it has Being, then it cannot
have any sort of " is not " about it — for how can " is not " get into
the pure and absolute " is " ? That is to say, it cannot, among other
things, have any change in it. But it changes even while we are
speaking about it. Therefore it has not Being. It is nothing at all.
If you appeal to your sense-experience, your sense-experience must be
declared to be at once an absurdity and an illusion. Nor can you be
permitted to attempt an escape by setting up a distinction in the thing
between Substance and Accidents. For precisely the same test
banishes the Accidents into nothingness.
10 129
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So that when .these early men of science attempt to understand
the world by means of the only categories they have securely grasped
— those of Being or of Substance — the solution, as soon as its logic is
worked out, swallows up the original problem. On the level of those
categories, the assertion that Keality is, involves the assertion that it
is One, and that the Many and the Finite and the Changeable are not.
The foregoing is simply the argument of Parmenides stated in
general terms;1 and of course with this difference that Parmenides
neither had, nor could be expected to have, any suspicion of the
possible inadequacy of his categories. He used his categories in all
good faith. He saw that from their point of view the disjunction of
being and non-being, of " is " and " is not," is absolute. He saw that
this again involved that reality is One, and its apparent manifoldness
an illusion. And this he stated in a way which is not merely clear
and convincing, but is absolutely final :
. . . " One path only is left for us to speak of, namely,
that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and
indestructible, alone, complete, immovable, and without end. Nor
was it ever, nor will it be ; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one.
For what kind of origin for it will you look for? In what way and
from what source could it have drawn its increase? I shall not let
thee say nor think that it came from what is not ; for it can neither be
thought nor uttered that what is not is. And if it came from nothing
what need could have made it arise later -rather than sooner ? There
fore must it either be altogether or be not at all. Nor will the force of
truth suffer aught to arise besides itself from that which in any way is.
Wherefore, Justice does not loose her fetters and let anything come
into being or pass away, but holds it fast. . . . How then
can what is be going to be in the future ? Or how could it come into
being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be
in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away
not to be heard of. ... Nor is it divisible. . . . More
over it is immovable. . . . without beginning and without end;
since coming into being and passing away have been driven afar off,
and true belief has cast them away. It is the same, and it rests in the
i " In general terms "—for Parmenides envisaged reality spatially. Cf. p. 131, note.
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self-same place, abiding in itself. . . . And there is not, and
never shall be, any time other than that which is present, since fate
has chained it so as to be whole and immovable. Wherefore all these
things are but the names which mortals have given, believing them to
be true — coming into being and passing away, being and not being,
change of place and alteration of bright colour."1
"Being is One and is self-identical; the many are not." So
stands the conclusion of Parmenides. But the important point for
our purpose is to note how absolutely logical, how absolutely consist
ent and consequent, is the argument by which he reaches this conclu
sion. He stood within the science of his day and accepted its
procedure. But he saw with thorough clearness what the ultimate
meaning of that procedure was. And this he stated in a form
impressive, complete, valid for ever.2 Little was left for his younger
followers to do, save to round out the system on its polemic side by
showing into what absurd positions men get themselves when they
hold to the reality of the Many, and to the truthfulness of the senses.
Early in the course of Greek thought, then, the negative tendency
stated itself with intellectual completeness and finality. And yet it
did not do among the Greeks the full work of a philosophy. It did
not enter upon the guidance of life. From the day of Parmenides
onward one does not find the most earnest men among the Greeks
being led by it to have done with the illusion of the Many, and to
seek the true fulfilment of their being in a changeless and ineffable
One. And the reason is plain. It consists partly in the fact that this
philosophy, as a philosophy, was outgrown at last by the bringing
forward of more adequate categories; and partly in the character of
1 Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1892), pp. 185-187.
2 The statement in the text deals with the abiding significance of Parmenides'
argument, as a purely intellectual form of the logic of Mysticism. Of course, with
Parmenides, as with most men who stand early in great histories, we must distinguish
between the atmosphere in which an argument moves, and the essential significance of
the argument which moves in that atmosphere. The atmosphere in which Parmenides'
argument moved, was one of naive Realism ; he envisaged his One as a corporeal sphere ;
and in doing so, did not quite carry out his own principle (v. Burnet,pp. 342, 343, § 141). But
his argument itself, in its use of categories, in its movement from conception to conception,
goes beyond all naive Realism ; goes beyond all Realism of any sort, and leads straight
toward Mysticism.
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Greek life. In the life of the Hellenes, perfection of body and power
of soul answered to fulness of opportunity. They lived under the
clearest of skies. They were served generously by their land and by
their sea. They had, among their inherited treasures, the "greatest
births of time " in literature and in art, and they were engaged almost
daily in placing beside these, companion-pieces that were worthy of
them. Life they knew and the joy of life, and over its resources
exercised a supreme and easy mastery. Nor did they esteem their
life the less, that the Mede and the Canaanite had appeared among
them, and Marathon and Salamis and Himera had become names
for ever. Such a race, living such a life, was not likely, till its greater
day was done, to furnish apt pupils for the lesson that the thronging
interests of life are vanity and illusion, and that wisdom lies in with
drawing from them and seeking rest in a reality which knows neither
change nor manifold.
But there was a race whose life had come to be burdened by the
weight of an immeasurable and hopeless, pain. And there the thinking
that walks in the via negativa entered upon the full function of a
philosophy. It gave to the generations of a great race their theoretical
view of reality; it shaped — and it shapes — their morality and their
religion. Hegel, thinking of the spirits of the nations as existent and
particular individuals, tells us that they stand around the throne of
the universal spirit, the spirit of the world, as perfecters of its
actuality and witnesses and ornaments of its splendour.1 Each race,
like an attendant spirit, fulfils by its intellectual and by its moral
labours, its part in the one work of world-history. In this great
division and delegation of the tasks of world-history, it would almost
seem as if the one specially committed to the Hindu race was the full
development through all its stages — was the full articulation both as
an intellectual and as a moral system — of the philosophy of the
negative way. The steps in that long labour of thought by which this
was accomplished we have now to trace.
i Philosophy of Eight, § 352 ; cf. § 340.
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(ft)
The first step takes us back to the very fountain-head of the
science of the Aryan peoples. The Vedic poet stands where all orderly
human science stood at its beginning. He stands face to face with
the facts and forces of nature — with sky and sun, storm-wind and
dawn; and he feels that these, as he finds them, are not self -intelli
gible ; he feels that, as they stand, they do not exist in their own right.
And the first step which he takes in healing this unsatisfactoriness of
the facts present to him, is one in which the scientific instinct and the
religious instinct go hand in hand. He personifies those facts and
gives to them, as thus personified, the attributes of deity.
But in connexion with this, the Yedic poets did one of the most
remarkable things in human history. What this was, can best
be shown by contrasting the two great lines of thought that took their
rise from the original homeland of the Aryans — the Greek and the
Vedic. The Greeks very early separated their gods from the natural
phenomena of which they were personifications, and humanised them
— gave to them abiding individualities, clear, definite, characteristic,
personal.1 While this remains the case, the gods, whatever they may
be to the religious consciousness, are of little value to the scientific or
philosophic consciousness — the consciousness which seeks to make
the world intelligible and needs principles of explanation for doing
so. If indeed an advance toward unity were to be made, by making
some god supreme — whether Zeus or 'AvdyKij or Erinys — then there
would be at least a possibility of the scientific consciousness finding
the principle of unity that it needs. But such an advance the early
Greeks can scarcely be said to have made. The consequence was that
the scientific consciousness had to wait for long ages, and finally,
with the Ionic physicists, to make an altogether new beginning on its
own account.
But when we turn back to the Vedic line, we find something quite
different. It has been pointed out times innumerable that in the Vedic
hymns whatsoever deity the poet addresses is viewed for the time
being as God, supreme, unlimited, absolute ; and this even when other
i E. Caird, Evolution of Religion (1893), vol. I., p. 264 seg.
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deities are being at the same time mentioned by name. Varuna, for
instance, is addressed as Lord of all, Lord of heaven and earth,
upholding the whole order of nature, and guardian too of the moral
order of the world. The breaking of his laws is sin. The penitent
sinner is to pray for mercy to him. But presently Indra or Agni is
addressed in the same way.
This fact is one of the commonplaces of present-day knowledge.
But what has not always been made so clear is the mental condition
out of which it arises. What it means is this : the Vedic poet, how
ever religious he may be, has never ceased to have that in him which
is nothing other than the genuine spirit of philosophy, nothing other
than the genuine movement of the scientific consciousness. He feels,
no matter how dimly, the oneness of nature. Some one principle, he
feels, some one power, is expressing itself through all this variety of
wonderful and appalling phenomena. But the only forms which he
had at his command for purposes of scientific expression, were those
forms which he had struck out for himself by personifying those very
phenomena — Indra and Agni and Varuna, Ushas and the Maruts,
and the rest of Yagwavalkya's " three and three hundred, three and
three thousand " gods.1 But then comes the trouble that no one of all
these forms is adequate to the expression of the principle or power
which the Vedic thinker, dimly enough at first, but with a demand
that grows continually clearer, is groping after. No one of them — for
it expresses itself in them all; of all of them it is the source. And
so ihe first expedient is to use all those forms, now one, now another.
A sage, Yaska by name, who lived many centuries later, puts the logic
of the case into a sentence — It is owing to the greatness of the deity
that the Divine Self is celebrated as if it were many.2
But such a procedure has an almost inevitable logical outcome.
As time goes by and reflective thought comes forward, while poetic
intuition and poetic nature-worship recede, two things come into ever
1 "How many gods are there?" asks Vidagdha Sakalya of Yaflwavalkya. The first
answer is "three and three hundred, three and three thousand." But this number is
steadily reduced— to thirty-three— to one and a half— finally to one. This one is Brahman
and his name is " That. "— Brth. Upanishad, III. 9. 1-9. (Sacred '-Books of the East, vol.
XV., pp. 139-142.)
2 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, (London, 1894), p. 27.—
Yaska lived circa 500 B.C.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
clearer consciousness. First, that what is really being sought for is
One. Secondly, that this One is not to be identified with any of the
forms just referred to — not with Varuna the Heaven, nor with Indra
the giver of rain, nor with Agni the fire, nor with the appalling
Maruts, the storm-winds. The oneness will be ever more strongly and
clearly insisted upon. But to any definite determination or qualifica
tion of it, the answer will come to be — and did come to be — " Neti,
neti."1 In a word, the goal that lay straight ahead was an abstract
One and an illusory manifold. And to this goal the thinkers of India
advanced with a logic that neither flinched nor failed. " Sir, tell me
Brahman," said Vashkalin. Thereupon Bahva became quite still.
When Vashkalin had asked a second and a third time, Bahva replied :
"I am teaching you indeed, but you do not understand. Silent is
that Self."2
Such was the first great step taken by the thought of India. Its
inner movement is not greatly different from that which we met with
in the case of Parmenides. Its search after the One moves in the
logical region of the category of Being. And it does what on the level
of that category is inevitable. It absolutely disjoins " is " and " is
not."3 And it is thereupon obliged to exclude from reality the deter
minations which involve an element of " is not." But the next great
step which the thought of India took, goes far beyond this, and is of
incalculable importance. It builds the bridge which the metaphysic
of the via negativa needs, to enable it to advance to the work of con
structing an ethic and a theory of religion. In dealing with Par-
1 " Neti "—it is not thus. See Brih. Up. II. 3. 6. (Sacred Books of the East, vol.
XV., p. 108): III. 9. 26 (ib. pp. 148, 149) : IV. 2. 4 (ib. p. 160) : IV. 4. 22 (ib. p. 180) : IV. 5. 15 (ib.
p. 185).
2 Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXXVIII., p. 157.— Cf. Max Muller, Three Lectures
on the Feddnta Philosophy, p. 84.
3 " • In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is (TO ov) one only, without
a second. Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not (TO /LCT) 6i>) one
only, without a second ; and from that which is not, that which is was born.
' But how could it be thus, my dear ? ' the father continued. ' How could that which is
be born of that which is not ? No, my dear, only that which is, was in the beginning, one
only, without a second.
' It thought, may I be many . . .' "
— .KTiand. Up. VI. 2. 1, 2, 3. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. L, p. 93.— Cf. Max Muller,
Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, p. 35.)
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
menides two reasons were pointed out which prevented his philosophy
from becoming to the Greek race a guide of life. Those were both,
in a sense, external to his philosophy. They barred the way against
it from without. But if these had both been absent, there was still
a third reason, internal to the system of Parmenides, which would
have tended to hold it back from becoming a guide of life. If I am
convinced that the changing and the manifold are illusion ; and if by
actual experience I have found the life which involves these to be very
evil — so evil that life and sorrow are one same thing; and if from
that illusion and that evil I wish to be delivered by finding rest in the
One; then, whether the logic of my philosophy allows it or not, I
must believe in, some sort of organic connexion between myself and the
One by withdrawal into which or absorption into which I am to find
rest. But such a connexion Parmenides could not assert. For, as we
have seen, the problem of the self simply did not exist for him at all.
To the teachers of India, however, the problem of the self became a
keen and pressing one. And so they were able to make the great
advance which rendered possible the application of the negative
metaphysic to the burdened life of India : — they asserted a connexion,
nay they asserted an identity, between the self in man and the One
which is the true and only reality.
The expedient by which this identification of the self of man with
the One — with Brahman — was effected, was very violent. But it was
closely in line with the general procedure of the negative meta
physic. And not only that ; but when once a race of thinkers to whom
the problem of the self is present, have taken the first great step in
the via negativa — have made the advance to an indeterminate One —
then this second step is demanded by an inexorable necessity. This
necessity the clear-eyed dialecticians of India were neither unable to
see, nor afraid to face. On the level of the categories which abso
lutely disjoin "is" and "is not," Being must be One; no sort of
exception or division could in any way be admitted. Yet the self had
taken such a place in their thinking that it could not be summarily
dismissed as this fleeting cloud, or that fading plant, could be dis
missed — namely, as illusion. So that the situation had come to be
this. — Being is One, without division. Yet the self in man cannot
136
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
be dismissed. Then what can that self be? It cannot be considered
either as a part, or as a modification, of the One. That would be to
attribute finitude and division to Brahman. Nor can the human self
be anything different from Brahman ; for Brahman is all in all, " one
without a second." In a word, there is no alternative but to identify
the two. And that, moreover, not in the sense of calling the human
self a part of Brahman; but in the sense of an absolute identification
— the whole of Brahman is the human self.1
But do not the manifest finitude and dividedness of our human
experience recalcitrate against such an identification? Yet the
identification must be made; and the thinkers who lead the way from
Veda to Vedanta cut through the difficulty by a piece of that resolute
surgery which the metaphysic of the via negativa knows so well how to
practise. They conceive the soul as they conceive the ultimate and
only reality with which it is to be identified — namely, in an abstract
way. The manifold experiences of the soul, its manifold activities of
thought and of sense, of memory and of imagination — these are but
a veil, and behind this veil dwells the true self of which we can say
nothing except that it is. The apparent dualism of the relation of
subject and object, whether in sense-experience or in self-conscious
ness, is ruled out altogether from the true Self. "... When
the Self only is all this, how should he see another, how should he
smell another, how should he taste another, how should he salute
another, how should he hear another, how should he touch another,
how should he know another? How should he know Him by whom
he knows all this? That Self is to be described by No, no! He is
incomprehensible for he cannot be comprehended; he is imperishable
for he cannot perish ; he is unattached for he does not attach himself ;
unfettered, he does not suffer, he does not fail. How, 0 beloved,
should he know the Knower?"2
This, too, was made all the easier by the very term which was used
to denote the self or soul. The term atman which was used to denote
the soul of man, had been originally, as Max Miiller tells us, " a mere
pronoun free from any metaphorical taint, and asserting nothing
i Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy, pp. 90-92.
2 Brth. Up. IV. 6. 15. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 185.)
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
beyond existence or self-existence." It meant ipse, and as used to
express the essence of man or of God, its idea was simply ipseitas.
Man was Giv atman, the living, and God was Parama-atman, the
highest ipse. And the absolute identity of these two abstract essences
was not hard to affirm.
Thus, then, the great identification was made, and the " Tat tvam
asi" — "Thou art it" — and the "Aham brahmasmi" — "I am Brah
man " — become the watchwords of this second main step in the logical
evolution of the negative metaphysic in India. " . . . There
fore now also, he who thus knows that he is Brahman, becomes all
this, and even the Devas cannot prevent it, for he himself is their Self.
Now if a man worships another deity [i.e., a Deity external to the
Self in him] thinking the deity is one and he another, he does not
know.1 . . . He who perceives therein [in the " ancient,
primeval Brahman"] any diversity, goes from death to death."2
And with this the way was prepared for the advance to ethics and
to religion. A self which could be called God, but which could also
be called man, was left standing. But the finite, the manifold, the
changeable, were expelled from reality and cast into the limbo of
vanity and nothingness. " In one half verse," says the Vedantist, " I
shall tell you what has been told in thousands of volumes : — Brahman
is true, the world is false, man's soul is Brahman and nothing else.
There is nothing worth gaining, there is nothing worth enjoying,
there is nothing worth knowing but Brahman alone; for he who
knows Brahman, is Brahman."3
With this, then, the thought of the Vedantists went forward on its
great way, to be the guide of life and of religion, not to India alone
but to lands even more populous. Upon that, however, as we are
chiefly concerned with the inner logical movement of the metaphysic
of the negative tendency, we cannot here dwell at any length. But a
hint at the vast width of that guidance and at its profound signifi
cance in human history, may be given by a brief reference to two
1 Brfli. Up. I. 4. 10. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 88.)
2 Brih. Up. IV. 4. 19 (cf. 18— Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 179).
3 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, pp. 172, 173. Cf . the King's
statement of the vanity of life, in the beginning of the Maitrayana-Brahmana-
Upanishad. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 288 seq.)
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
things. The first of these is seen in the " Forest Schools " of Brah-
manism. When a man's hair had become white and he saw his
children's children, then he withdrew to the forest. The Vedic hymns
which hitherto had been to him so absolutely sacred and so absolutely
unquestioned, were replaced by the negative and abstract theology of
the Upanishads. And instead of the careful ceremonial observances
of his earlier life, and its performance of civic and domestic duties,
he sought only to free himself from the personal and the individual,
and thus to find his true self in the Eternal Self, in the One, in
Brahman;1 sought, in a word, to verify in life that which the
Upanishads taught him as theory — Tat tvam asi, thou art it. The
second is seen in an ethical teaching which went far beyond the
bounds of India. Gautama had been trained in the negative meta-
physic of Hinduism. And though he spoke later like one who has
repudiated all metaphysic, yet it is fair to say that his doctrine of
Nirvana expresses the ultimate ethical implication of the metaphysic
of the Vedanta. The very intensity of his compassion for a life
which is essentially vain led him to make his moral teaching as abso
lutely negative as a moral teaching inspired by compassion well can
be. Indeed the morality whose goal is Nirvana is so negative that
there is no place in it even for asceticism; or if there is, it is only
as a means in subduing Trishna.2 For the extirpation of Trishna is
the cessation of the formation of Karma. And with that Nirvana is
gained.
/
Thus in India the negative tendency worked through the process
of its logical evolution and entered upon the full work of a
philosophy. It seems indeed a far cry from Veda to Yedanta. The
brightness of the early Aryan hymns which rejoice to watch Indra
" cleaning the mountains " or " rousing his strength in a moment like
the whirlwind rushing along with thundering clouds," and are glad
at the presence of the Dawn, " the mother of the morning clouds,
clad in her garments of light," " shining on us like a young wife, rous-
1 See Max Miiller, Origin and Growth of Religion, (Hibbert Lectures), p. 364 seq.
Cf. Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, pp. 19, 20.
2 Trishna— desire, yearning, thirst ; whatever causes life to be a process of activity.
139
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
ing every living being to go to his work,"1 — this seems far separated
from the grey, worn thought of the Upanishads. Yet we have seen
that the process which led from the one to the other was a process of
thorough logical continuity. When, in a Hindu family, the young
son was being trained in the strictest Vedic orthodoxy while the
grandfather dwelt apart in the forest meditating upon a theology in
which the Vedic deities could find no place, this was not mere incon
sistency or contradiction. It was the symbol of the connexion
between the early and the late stages of a single development.
Indeed the Vedantists and the Eleatics are alike proofs that in all
the history of thought there are few logicians so consequent, few
dialecticians so strict, as those whose fate it is to conduct from its
premisses to its conclusion the ratiocination of the negative
philosophy.
And yet for Vedantist and Eleatic alike there remained a great
problem. Each regarded reality from a given point of view — that of
the categories of Being. Each developed the ultimate consequence of
that point of view: the Eleatic by a curt intellectual argument of
incisive and summary completeness; the Vedantist by a vaster and
more commanding process which touched the whole of life. Each
came to the inevitable conclusion: reality is an indivisible and
changeless One; the Many, an illusion. But that at once raises the
question : " If reality is a changeless and indivisible One, how can it
give rise to even an illusory appearance of a manifold?"
And that question received no satisfactory answer from either
school. Zeno, to whom the matter was a purely intellectual one,
replies cheerfully enough : " Your experience of a manifold and of
change must be an illusion; for, as I can show you, such an experi
ence involves the most absurd contradictions." But that does not
meet the case. Granted that my experience is an illusion, still how
does even an illusory experience of change and of manifoldness come
to be at all, when reality is a One, unchanging and indivisible ?
i See the hymn to Indra, translated by Max Miiller, Origin and Growth of Religion
(Hibbert Lectures), pp. 287-289; and the hymn to the Dawn in the second edition
(London, 1868) of his Chips from a German Workshop, vol. I., pp. 36, 37. These may also
be found in " The Hymns of the Rigveda translated with a popular commentary " by
Ralph T. H. Griffith ; the hymn to Indra (R-V. IV. 17) in vol. II. (Benares, 1890), pp. 118,
119 ; the hymn to the Dawn (R-V. VII. 77) in vol. III. (Benares, 1891), p. 97.
140
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
Nor can the Vedantist find any satisfactory way of escape.
" AJiam Irahmasmi" he says, " I am Brahman." But if so, whence
come the limitations under which the self in man labours? The
answer is, that they are due to the Upadhis — the obstructions.1 But
whence come these? The answer is, once more, from Avidya,
nescience. And Avidya comes to be conceived, not merely as
personal ignorance, but a great independent cosmical power, which
is able for a time to overshadow Brahman itself.2 But how can
Avidya thus affect Brahman, who is all in all, " one without a
second," subject to nothing outside it, because there is nothing outside
it?3 The Vedantist can only answer that it is so.4 And when
pressed as to how such a thing can be so, he can only fall back on the
plan of Zeno ; he can only attempt to involve his adversary in a self-
contradiction. It is self -contradictory, he urges, to seek to know what
Avidya is. It is as though a man should endeavour to see darkness by
means of a far-shining torch.5
Here, then, is the great theoretical or scientific difficulty of the
metaphysic of the via negativa. The world of manifoldness and
change refuses to be driven out of court. Whether as real or as
illusory, it demands to be accounted for.
And this indicates to us what we must next do. We are attempt
ing to see how this metaphysic has behaved in the field of the history
of philosophy, in order that thereby we may get at its inner move
ment and genuine significance. We must, then, turn next to some
instance where it felt the full weight of the problem just noticed,
and put forth its whole power in the endeavour to solve it.
1 These are, as Deussen says (On the Philosophy of the Veddnta, Bombay, 1893, p. 12),
"our whole psychological apparatus." Cf. the same author's System des Veddnta (Leip
zig, 1883), S. 326 seq.
2 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, p. 97. Avidya in this sense
came later to be called May& (ibid. p. 128).
3 Ibid. p. 97.
* Ibid. p. 97.
5 Ibid. p. 99.— Cf. Deussen 's "... bleibet nichts ubrig, als an die Negativitat de
Begriffes der Avidya zu erinnern."— Das System des Veddnta (Leipzig, 1883), S. 326.
141
THE MBTAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
(r)
Such an instance we shall find by turning to one of those sad
periods in our history, where the student, for the pity and the anger
which gather at his heart, scarcely can keep his way. The great age
of Greece was past. The work of the Greek race, as a race, had long been
accomplished in East and in West. Rome herself was coming to the
worst hours of her evil day. Life was a burden; a burden met by
the few with the last wantonness of luxury, by the many with the
dumb and hopeless patience which is the only refuge of the oppressed
when the methods of revolutionary madness are not possible. The
religious instinct was coming forward in its most negative form;
namely, as a profound and passionate craving for deliverance from
the evils and vicissitudes of life, from the perils and changes and
agonies of the world. And along with this, science had entered upon
a decrepid and decadent old age. Its instruments for carrying the
manifold and the changing back into unity and eternity were as weak
as the religious yearning for the One and the Eternal was strong.
Under such circumstances it is no wonder that the metaphysic of the
via negativa once more became dominant among men.
But with all this there went another fact. The manifold world
could scarcely be dismissed as Zeno and the Vedantists had dismissed
it. For the period now in question was the old age of a great
civilisation. Many generations of labour, of culture, of splendid
achievement, of orderly polity and developing institutions, had fixed
and confirmed the hold of the world upon the minds of men. And so
it is just here, in thife troubled battle-ground upon the edge of dark
ness, where the religion and the science of the ancient world were
going down to death together, clad in monstrous garments of the
East — just here in the spiritual confusions which centred in Alexan
dria and in Syria but whose echoes were heard even in Rome and in
Athens — that we shall find the negative philosophy in full struggle
with its own great theoretical crux. This indeed is seen within the
Christian Church as well as without it — in the Gnostics as well as
in the Neo-Platonists. But it is with the latter, whose thought is
seen at its greatest in the system of Plotinus, that we shall find the
logic of the situation most conveniently shown.
142
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
•
On the one hand, Plotinus holds firmly to the negative or
abstract view of the One. The One is unity without multiplicity,
pure Being without change or becoming ; nay, indeed, it is " beyond "
even the category of Being. "It neither is" he says, "nor is it
something, nor is it anything, but it is over all. All the categories
are negatived; it has no magnitude, is not infinite."1
And yet, in the very next sentences, he goes on to say that the
One is " the eternal source of virtue and the source of divine love,
around which all moves, by which everything directs its course, in
which vovs and self -consciousness ever have their beginning and
their end." In a word he allows a place for the manifold world ; and
views it as in some way having its source in the One.
Here, then, is the very situation which we wished to find — an
instance in which the negative metaphysic, while holding to its view
of the One, nevertheless finds a place for the world of manifoldness
and change. Let us ask, then, by what means Plotinus accomplished
this. What were his fundamental logical expedients?
They were mainly two. One was the theory of emanation. This,
however, in spite of the great place which it took in the thinking of
that age, is little more than a metaphor; and indeed only by meta
phors2 was it made to convey any intelligible meaning.
But the other was one of the most ingenious logical devices ever
hit upon by the contriving intellect of man. Plotinus sets up the
idea of a sort of one-ended relation — or rather of a relation, all of
whose motion is in one direction. As between the two terms of the
relation, it is a relation when you go from the lower to the upper.
But when you go from the upper to the lower, it is no relation at all.
i Enn. VI. Bk. IX.— To deal systematically with Plotinus, one would have to ask first
how he came to his view of the One as indeterminate. The answer would show us some
thing new in the history of the negative tendency ; new, however, not in character, but
only in swiftness of movement. For Plotinus reached his view of the One, not by an
unsparing dialectic argument working out the implications of a realistic beginning, but
by concentrating such argument into the immediate affirmation of an intellectual
intuition which apprehends the unity of experience and sets that unity, as the true reality
over against the particular and finite. (See Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr., vol. I., p.
239, and compare the excellent discussion in Caird's Evolution of Theology in the Greek
Philosophers.) For our present purpose, however, it is not necessary to go into this.
zl£.g., the snow emits cold ; and yet the snow remains itself, identical, undiminished.
So, too, a luminous body with its light, or a flower with its fragrance.
143
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
To the lower term or member it is a relation, the lower being
dependent upon the higher for its whole existence and meaning. But
to the higher it is not a relation at all, in any sense which imposes
metaphysical obligation or responsibility. " It is that," says Plotinus,
of the One conceived as the Good, " on which all depends, and which
all things desire and have as principle, and which they are all in want
of, while it itself has lack of nothing, is sufficient for itself, and is
the measure and limit of all; which out of itself gives the rovs, and
essence, and soul, and life, and the activity of reason. . . . But
it is itself by no means that of which it is the principle/'1
Thus, in Plotinus, the negative tendency wrestles with its own
great theoretical shortcoming. A sort of reality is given to the
manifold world. And at the same time the One remains nearly,
though not quite, in accord with the negative conception of it. It
has ceased, indeed, to be " all in all." But at any rate it remains a
One which excludes all multiplicity, and is changeless and self-
sufficient.
It is easy enough to point out the inadequacy of this solution.
Metaphors, as such, are not metaphysic. And the idea of something
which is a relation of B to A, but not of A to B, can only be called
self -contradictory. With such criticism, however, we are not at this
point concerned. Our business here is to learn what the negative
tendency really is and really means; and to learn this by observing
how it has behaved in the field of history.
The three great cases so far examined have shown us what the
inner movement, and the genuine meaning, of this tendency are.
With this we can pass on intelligently to Spinoza. But first we
should turn for a moment to the period between Plotinus and the
beginnings of specifically modern philosophy. For among the various
appearances of the negative tendency in that period, there is one, the
outline of which will give us a convenient summary of the chief
points so far brought to light.
i Enn. I. Bk. 8.
144
THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA
The whole mediaeval period, indeed, is one vast illustration of
this last and deepest of the distinctions that have arisen in thought
and life as men seek to make themselves at one with ultimate and
eternal reality. And that whether we regard the men of thought, or
their methods of thinking, or the practical life which in part they
shaped and which in part shaped them — a life half control of the
world, half renunciation of the world. In the intense and passionate
reasonings of Augustine which set the problems and laid the basis for
mediaeval thought ; in the penetrating and radical insights of Erigena ;
in the massive thought of St. Thomas, where the doctrine of the
simplicitas1 of the Divine nature crosses and thwarts the insight
that all things, and all the determinations of things, have their being
and their home in God ;2 in Nicolas of Cusa, whose view of the world
may be taken as the last great expression of the mediaeval spirit : — in
all these the negative tendency is seen, one hardly knows whether to
say in conflict or in combination with its opponents. These men all
knew that the universal is the principle of reality; and that there
fore the universal of universals is the ultimate object of all science
and the true end of all conduct. Nor were they blind to the fact
that that highest universal, that final unity of all things, must be a
concrete and synthetic principle, the source and home and law of all
the particulars of the world. But in attempting to reach that highest
universal they were exposed — for reasons which we shall see later,3
1 This simplicitas is a oneness which excludes diversity. Diversity must be excluded
from the Divine nature ; for else the Divine nature would be a " compositum," and " omne
compositum postering est suis componentibus et dependens ex eis." Moreover " omne
compositum causam habet." (See Summa Theol. I. 3. 7 ; and cf. I. 11. 1.— "unum non
addit supra ens rem aliquam, sed tantum negationem divisionis" ; cf. also Contra
Gentiles, Bk. I. cap. 18.)
2 This may fairly be called the deepest insight in the philosophy of St. Thomas. It
may be seen, for instance, by taking together the following doctrines and considering the
consequences of their synthesis.— (1) God has " propriam cognitionem de omnibus rebus."
(Contra Gentiles, I. 50.— cf. 67-71— and cf. also the parallel passages in the Summa Theol.
e.g., I. 14. 9-13.) (2) Scientia Dei est causa rerum. (Summa Theol. I. 14. 8.) (3) But
" int elligere " is "the activity or energising (actus) of an intelligence which exists in
itself and does not pass over into anything extrinsic to it, as, for instance, heating passes
over into that which is heated." (Contra Gentiles, I. 45. 1.)— I have attempted at a later
page to work this out more fully (infra, pp. 336-341).
3 Infra, pp. 218, 219.
11 145
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
were specially exposed — to the temptation which always waits upon
that endeavour: the temptation to have recourse to the simple and
easy expedient of stripping away from the given particulars their
differentiating peculiarities and retaining only the common element.
Such a process, as it ascends through the stages of widening univer
sality, strips away all determinations, and leaves us at the end with
an altogether abstract and empty Absolute. In the presence of such
an Absolute, if you are possessed by the instinct and passion of
religion, there is but one type of religion still open to you — the
mystical. And if you have felt keenly the imperfection and the
sorrows of the world, you may refuse to grieve that your logic calls
you and your fellows to such a goal; indeed, in bringing you to that
goal, your sense of the evil of the world has probably been more
influential than your logic.
But over those great names we must pass. To two of them we
shall return later, but here we must confine ourselves to a single
mediaeval instance; one, however, which in interest and attraction
yields not even to those. In the thinking of those " dear friends of
God," the mediaeval Mystics, the philosophy of the via negativa
assumes the most winning form which it has ever had in the history
of man. In its logical movement it remains true to type. It shows
that keen dialectical development from realistic grounds and
methods, which has characterised so many of its great historical
appearances. But to this it added a grace that has won the reluctant
hearts of later and more earthly generations. And the height of its
moral passion made it a power effective for the regeneration of the
religious life of the day — a religious life externalised, hardened,
tending, by that tragedy which waits upon priestly churches, to lose
itself in the vast forms of the very structure which it had been
building up through long centuries to be its home.
So complete, indeed, is the evolution of the negative philosophy
in the hands of the Mystics within the mediaeval church, that we shall
find united in their thinking nearly all those main features and
characters which so far we have discovered by studying widely diverse
cases. A rapid enumeration of the main points in their teaching
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will thus afford us that brief summing up of the whole position which
we wish to make before passing on to Spinoza.
(1) As they make their way from the particulars given in
experience to a vision of the highest universal,, they do not take the
particulars along with them so that when the universal is gained
the particulars are seen transformed in its light and displayed as
genuine elements of the eternal. Rather they gain their One as did
Parmenides and the Vedantists, by being fully in earnest with the
category, or point of view, of Pure Being, and by rigorously carrying
that point of view to its last conclusions. Eckhart was a master of
the Scholastic learning; what he did, as a man of thought, was to
give complete right of way to tendencies and methods already
.present in Scholastic Realism,1 until at last he passes beyond the
distinction between the God who knows and the begotten or created
world which He knows to that ultimate and purely unitary Godhead
in which there is neither knowledge nor action ( " never did it look
upon deed"), neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost. Windelband
has pointed out that what held the great Schoolmen back from work
ing out this development themselves, was the high value which
Augustine had taught them to set upon personality.2 But with
teachers who were led, by just their keen feeling for personality and
for the sorrows and evils which it brings, to wish for its suppression
rather than for its encouragement, this check was taken away, and
the realistic logic, hastening forward to its conclusion, came to the
goal where all logic is hushed. The ultimate reality has no deter
mination or quality; is, in Philo's word, anoio^. Not merely is it
above reason ; but even Being, the emptiest of all categories, is regarded
as too particularised a conception for it, and it is declared to be
beyond Being. It is not " Icht " but " Nicht." " . . . There
fore," says the author of the Theologia Germanica, "we do not give
a name to the Perfect, for it is none of these. The creature as
creature cannot know nor apprehend it, name or conceive
it. . . . In what measure we put off the creature, in the same
measure are we able to put on the Creator; neither more nor less."3
i Cf. 145, 146, supra ; and 218, 219, infra. 2 Hist. Philos. tr. Tufts (1893), p. 340.
3 Theologia Germanica, tr. Miss Winkworth, chap. I.
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And again "... He who findeth satisfaction in aught which
is this and that, findeth it not in God; and he who findeth it in God,
findeth it in nothing else, but in that which is neither this nor that,
but is All. For God is One, and must be One, and God is All and
must be All. And now what is, and is not One, is not God; and
what is and is not All and above All, is also not God, for God is One
and above One, and All and above All. Now he who findeth full
satisfaction in God, receiveth all his satisfaction from One source,
and from One only, as One. And a man cannot find all satisfaction
in God, unless all things are One to him, and One is All, and some
thing [some particular thing] and nothing (icht und niM) are alike."1
(2) But no sooner has this point been reached than they are
face to face with their great problem — the problem set by the mani
fold and determinate world, whose divine and angelic orders are
declared by theology, and whose earthly facts are given in experi
ence. This they see clearly, and set themselves to the task of deriving
the universe of particular existences from that ultimate which cannot
even be described as Being, which can as well be called non-Being
as Being. In that still and formless quiet, a movement of self-
apprehension and self-utterance is declared to take place. Thus arises
a double outflowing. First, there is an outflowing of that which is
God, and in this the Godhead of the Christian religion comes to be.
Secondly, there is an outflowing of that which is not God (and there
fore is mere nothing) ; by this all the world of creatures arises.2 Into
the details of this account we are, however, not obliged to go.3 What
concerns us is the fact that the situation itself was understood, and
was deliberately faced. It should be noted, however, that the very
first step in the solution — the postulated self-apprehension and self-
1 Theologia Germanica, tr. Miss Winkworth, chap. XLVL— Of course, in the Theologia,
Germanica, an intensely practical book written in the Western Church, one must not look
for the negative view in an un contradicted form. The same is to be said of the De
Tmitatione Christi.
2 If we overlap three centuries, and the sundering gulf of the Reformation, we find the
same attempt on a still more Titanic scale in the vast imaginations of Bohme's cosmogony
and cosmology. But one must note how, in Bohme's hostility to the doctrine of a creation
out of nothing, there comes forward the desire for a positive or concrete doctrine of
creation— i.e., a doctrine that will show an organic relation between the creature and the
very nature of God.
3 References to Pfeiffer are given by Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., p. 549.
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utterance — contradicts the original account of the ultimate reality.
It is a salto mortale; the gulf is impassable, but it is to be taken as
crossed.
(3) And this account of the origin of the world of creatures
involves a view of the self in man similar to that worked out by the
Vedantists. For the account given of that outflowing from God by
which the creature comes to be, implies that what makes the creature
a creature — what distinguishes him, or it, from God — is really
nothing at all. If we could strip away these nothingnesses and get
at the genuine reality of the creature — what Eckhart called the
"Spark" the point or apex of the soul which is divine and makes
salvation possible — that reality would be nothing other than the one
eternal reality of God. " ' Thou sayest/ " the author of the Theologia
Germanica imagines the objector to say, " ' beside the Perfect there
is no substance, yet sayest again, that somewhat floweth out from it:
now is not that which hath flowed out from it something beside it?'
Answer : This is why we say, beside it, or without it [outside of it]
there is no true Substance. That which hath flowed forth from it, is
no true Substance and hath no Substance except in the Perfect, but
is an accident, or a brightness or a visible appearance, which is no
Substance, and hath no Substance except in the fire whence the
brightness flowed forth, such as the sun or a candle."1
(4) Finally, all this is carried forward to its ethical and
religious application. These nothingnesses which separate us, as
creatures, from God — these qualities and determinations, this being
"here" and "now," which make us to be creatures, and hide from
us our home in God — let us strip them away. " Thou shalt sink thy
thine-ness and thy thine shall become a mine in his mine," says
Eckhart to the soul2 in describing the process of its salvation; a
process summed up in that virtue of Abgeschiederiheit, in which by
heroic struggle the moveless inner divine man subdues to himself the
1 Miss Winkworth's translation, chap. I.— Note the Neo-Platonic idea of emanation in
the last sentence, contained, characteristically, in a metaphor.— Note too that what to the
Vedantist was an express view of the self, is here only the implication regarding the self,
of the general doctrine as to the creature. (Cf. Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I.,
pp. 549, 550.)
2 See Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., p. 552. Cf. the reference (p. 219 infra)
to Professor Royce's paper on Eckhart.
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outer man who is a creature of desire and change ; though the intense
and practical character of Eckhart's religious endeavours made it diffi
cult enough for him to remain consistently at this point of view. The
same teaching, though again with the same qualification, is found in
the Theologia Germanica. " Now mark : when the creature claimeth
for its own anything good, such as Substance, Life, Knowledge, Power,
and in short whatever we should call good, as if it were that, or
possessed that, or that were itself, or that proceeded from it — as
often as this cometh to pass, the creature goeth astray. What did the
devil do else, or what was his going astray and his fell else, but that
he claimed for himself to be also somewhat, and would have it that
somewhat was his, and somewhat was due to him? This setting up
of a claim, and his I and Me and Mine, these were his going astray,
and his fall. And thus it is to this day."1 " Behold on this sort
must we cast all things from us, and strip ourselves of them ; we must
refrain from claiming anything for our own."2 " For if the left eye
be fulfilling its office toward outward things ; that is, holding converse
with time and the creatures; then must the right eye be hindered in
the working" [i.e., "seeing into eternity"].3 "Let no one suppose,
that we may attain to this true light and perfect knowledge, or life
of Christ, by much questioning, or by hearsay, or by reading and
study, nor yet by high skill and great learning. Yea, so long as a
man taketh account of anything which is this or that, whether it be
himself, or any other creature; or doeth anything, or frameth a
purpose, for the sake of his own likings, or desires, or opinions, or
ends, he cometh not unto the life of Christ."4 "Be assured, he who
helpeth a man to his own will, helpeth him to the worst that he can."5
And with this may be compared the great lesson De contemptu
omnium vantitatum mundi which a Kempis is never weary of incul
cating, and the lesson that we must withhold our minds from all the
creatures in order that we may find the Creator; for that which is
not God is nothing, and is to be accounted as nothing.
i Miss Winkworth's translation, chap. II. 2 Ibid. chap. V.
3 Ibid. chap. VII. 4 Ibid. chap. XIX. 5 Ibid. chap. XXXIV.
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V.
Such was the attempt, in the thought and in the life of the older
world, to rise by the negative way from appearances to reality. The
four cases which we have examined show the inner logic of that
endeavour; show the essential contradiction which vexes it; and show
something more — to what practical efficiency in evil days, and to
what clear shining of heavenly light in the soul, it was possible for
men to rise by that bleak and apparently hopeless road of denial.
When we leave those ages behind us and come to our own, it seems
as if the last possibility of mystic thought or life had departed. The
air is different. For good and for evil, the world has made us its
own. And yet Mysticism, alike in its logic and in its life, has had its
place among us ; and in both aspects has been surprisingly true to its
ancient type. As a practical spirit it has passed, as of old, "like
night from land to land," in unexpected places finding out its own,
leaving, to mark its course, here and there a starry name but usually
only the atmosphere of its peace. In the Church of England, in
Germany — though not now as once — and specially among the
Friends, it has laid its finger upon its chosen, and in them has given
to the modern world well-nigh its most admirable type of character.
And once at least it moved with terrific energies; many an English
man, in the civil war, struck hard with the sword, and showed no '
mercy in victory, nor lost hope in defeat, because he had in him as
an inner fire the same instinct that in earlier days led men to the
silent life — the instinct for the immediate ascent of the soul to God.
On the -speculative side, the history is easier to trace ; for there
the mystic conception of ultimate reality came forward in the place
determined by that secular logic which leads philosophy through its
epochs. Hence the mystic view of reality, as it appeared in modern
thought, was at once new and old: old, in that it unconsciously
repeated an ancient situation and an ancient movement of thought —
for Mysticism is really the one theology of which men ought to say
" semper eadem " ; new, in that it is original and independent, arising
from its own modern sources and moving by its own impulses. It
was a stage — a stage integral, essential, necessary — in the working
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out of a scientific process which began with the beginning of the
modern world. In Greece the first men of science had, as we have
already seen, to begin at the very beginning. And in the long-drawn
carrying out of the attempt which they initiated, the thought of Par-
menides not merely occupies a place; it occupies a place logically
inevitable, performs a function logically necessary. In modern
thought there has been something very similar. Those who stood at
the beginning of the modern period held it necessary that science and
philosophy should do their work all over again ; should go back to the
very beginning and make their start once more from that point;
should, from the very bottom, build themselves up altogether anew.
And the long working out of the endeavour thus initiated proceeded,
as among ancient Greeks, so among modern Europeans, with strict
logical continuity. In the latter case, as in the former, there came a
point where the negative view showed itself as a necessary and
inevitable stage in the logical evolution. And at that point stood
Spinoza.
But the life of the first era of modern Europe was a much more
complex thing than that of the age in which Greek science began to
be. This is reflected in the way in which the negative metaphysic
takes its rise in Spinoza's thought; and is reflected in another
thing which we shall have to study a little later — the way, namely,
in which, in Spinoza's thinking, it has to share its throne with its
great opponents, as with Eleatics and Yedantists it had not to do.
For, as we study its genesis in Spinoza, the first factor that we
find is a moral and religious one. Experience, as he tells us in the
remarkable opening pages of his treatise on Method,1 had taught him
that " all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile."
Further reflection convinced him that if he "could really get to the
root of the matter " he " would be leaving certain evils for a certain
good." He " thus perceived that he was in a state of great peril "
and he "compelled himself to seek with all" his "strength for a
remedy however uncertain it might be ; as a sick man struggling with
i Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, I have followed Elwes' translation (2nd ed.
revised) of Spinoza's "Chief Works," save where references to some other edition or
translation are given.
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THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA
a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him
unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek such a remedy with
all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein." He was
able to see, however, what the source of all these evils is, and so in
what direction the way of escape from them must lie, if any such way
of escape there be. " All these evils," he says, " seem to have arisen
from the fact that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend
on the quality of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved,
no quarrels will arise concerning it — no sadness will be felt if it perishes
— no envy if it is possessed by another — no fear, no hatred, no dis
turbances of the mind. All these arise from the love of what is
perishable, such as the objects already mentioned [riches, fame,
pleasures of sense]. But love toward a thing eternal and infinite
feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any
sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all
our strength."
With Spinoza then, as with Vedantist and Neo-Platonist and
medieval Mystic, it is primarily a moral or religious passion which
sets him at work. It is a passion after that Eternal, by making our
home in which we shall be delivered from the vanities and the evils
of this life. But if we are to understand that fact aright, we must
give careful heed to three other facts. First, when a man undertakes
a scientific task, he has to work with scientific instruments no matter
whether the interest that set him at the work was primarily a moral
and religious, or primarily an intellectual, one; and therefore the
work itself must in the first instance be studied and be judged as
science. Secondly, Spinoza's was a mind of such an order, that his
religious interest made him work all the more truly in the scientific
spirit. Just because the stake was so great, therefore the science
must be as accurate as possible. Just because it was a matter of life
and death in the deepest sense of those words, therefore logic must
have its uttermost right and do its uttermost work. But, thirdly,
even more than that is true. Spinoza's nature was as truly scientific
as it was truly religious. He was animated by the scientific passion
as truly as by the. religious. He had the instinct for rationalising the
world, as truly as the longing after an eternal object for his love.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
All these three counts require us to consider his system as a piece of
rational science — as a logical structure. And in doing that, our
first endeavour must be, with him as with Parmenides or Eckhart, to
understand the logical situation in which he found himself and which
gave him his point of departure. What that situation was we may
see by considering carefully just what Descartes had done in his
attempt to begin at the very beginning and to build up thence a
science which should be trustworthy because from beginning to end
no untested material had been admitted.
Descartes, then, after stripping away all traditions, all doctrines,
all principles, which lie in any way open to doubt, still finds one
thing which emphatically is. It so truly is, that even in attempting
to doubt its existence, one asserts its existence. Cogito, ergo sum. I,
the thinker, am. Or, as we should probably say nowadays:
" Thought is."
So far, good. But the really important question is : What did
Descartes do with the cogito when he had got it? This may best be
seen by comparing what Descartes did with what a later philosophy
did. This later philosophy perceived that in the cogito — in all
thought, though it be the kind of thought called doubt, or even
though it be the kind involved in sense-perception — there is involved,
on the one hand, a subjective consciousness, and on the other, an
objective consciousness in which certain principles are operative.
But this consciousness of objects and that consciousness of self are
seen to be correlative, neither being possible apart from the other;
so that they constitute together a consciousness which is truly one
and not two. • This consciousness, then, this cogito, in which many
facts and operations are thus present in one self-conscious grasp, is
a true and veritable Many-in-One ; in it is found a genuine principle
of unity-in-diversity. And with this, the problem of the Many and
the One at which science and philosophy have been labouring from
the beginning, comes at last to its solution -in the conception of a
supreme self-consciousness, or spirit, who is the subject of the world.
Now there is, it is true, something in Descartes' treatment of the
cogito which looks straight in this direction. And that something a
modern student, trained in the school of Platonic or Hegelian Ideal-
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
ism, would at once seize upon as the deepest and most valuable insight
of the Cartesian philosophy. It lies in the fact that to Descartes our
highest category is the conception of God. In all our judging — when
we doubt or criticise, when we find things to be imperfect or finite —
there is involved an explicit or implicit conception of a being perfect
and infinite; only through the conception of the perfect and infinite
can we judge anything to be finite or imperfect. In other words, our
consciousness of God is the impelling element in all our knowledge.
It is, so to speak, the vital soul of the cogito. Without it there could
be no such thing as knowledge or thinking at all. r^
But to this insight that an explicit or implicit consciousness of
God constitutes the very essence of the cogito, and is the basis of all
knowledge, neither Descartes nor his age could do justice. Nor was
it to be expected that they should. There is no royal road to meta-
physic as reasoned science. If men are to use a higher category as
an assured instrument of orderly and abiding scientific insight, they
must first work their way through the stubborn dialectic of the lower
categories. So it was in Greek philosophy; and the case was not
otherwise with the philosophy of modern Europe. So that what we
must deal with here is not that idealistic Descartes whom a Platonist
or a Kantian may very rightly dig up out of the Meditations; it is
the Descartes whom that age received; and in particular it is the
Descartes who furnished to Spinoza his point of departure. We must
inquire very carefully what that Descartes did with the indubitable
reality which he had found even in the midst of doubt — with that
vital union of subject and object which he summed up in the word
cogito.
And first we must notice that in his attempt to found science and
philosophy anew, he began at the beginning in a far more rudi
mentary sense than he himself imagined. In dealing with the
cogito, the Descartes that we are here concerned with drew his point
of view and his principles of explanation from the first and lowest
of the families of the categories. He went to the categories of Being
and employed in particular the category of Substance; adopted, that
is to say, the method of explanation in which the pure, eternal,
unchangeable, uncompounded Being is, in some way, put under or
1E5
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
behind the visible and changing qualities with which in our experi
ence we have directly to deal, and is viewed as the substrate of those
qualities. The result of this was that he ended by splitting the
co git o into two. That is, he sharply sundered the subjective con
sciousness and the consciousness of objects. Each he treated by
itself; but of course, since they were viewed as co-ordinate realities,
used the same category and followed the same schema in each case.
In dealing with the subjective consciousness, he conceived the ego,
which is the subject of the cogito, as a substance — a " thinking
thing" — and " thought " was its attribute. Of this attribute, the
various states of mind (ideas, feelings, volitions, and so on) are
modifications. What leads him to this, is just the perception that
these latter, these " states of consciousness " which he comes in the
end to call modifications, cannot stand alone. They are not self-
intelligible. Per aliud, non per se, concipiuntur. And so we are
referred back, and back, and back, until we come to something which
fulfils the great requirement; something quod per se concipitur.
This is thought. But even yet Descartes is not quite satisfied.
Thought can be conceived through itself, it is true. But yet, there is
an ego which is the subject of the cogito; an ego whose essence and
nature it is to be a thinking thing. And so we get the complete
scheme: — the substance or thinking thing; its attribute, thought;
and the descending orders of the modifications of this attribute —
modes, and modes of modes, and modes of these again as far as you
choose to go. Thus, then, Descartes dealt with the subjective con
sciousness. But, next, he finds a great order of facts or qualities
which he does not feel able to assign to the subjective consciousness,
and these he simply casts out of the cogito altogether.1 Here also
the same line of reflexion is followed out; the same search made
after something which can stand alone and be conceived through
itself. And this gives us the same general form on this side as on the
other: — a substance (body), its attribute (extension), and the
various modifications of this attribute.
Furthermore, these two spheres are quite independent of each
other. Each of these two substances can exist, and be conceived,
1 See especially Meditation VI.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
without the help of the other. Indeed it is of the nature of sub
stances to be mutually exclusive.1 And the attributes are as radically
opposed to each other, are as mutually exclusive, as the substances.
Extension is not conscious; thought is not extended. In a word,
whatever thought is, that extension is not ; and whatever extension is,
that thought is not. If anything falls within one, it falls without
the other.
But this absolute disjunction plunges us at once into difficulties.
For in our actual experience these two orders of being most certainly
come into connexion with each other. I, the thinking thing, have
an experience of extended things. We have, then, a double problem
on our hands. First, an empirical problem: By what expedient is
that connexion as a matter of fact brought about? And secondly, a
metaphysical problem : How, ultimately, is the possibility itself of
that connexion to be accounted for ? Descartes' answer to the former,
seen in his theory of the passions and in his view of the function
of the pineal gland, need not concern us here. But his answer to
the latter is of radical importance.
What he did not do, in this answer, was to remove the difficulty
itself by recognising the organic connexion of thought and the
extended world. Gassendi in his Objections forced Descartes to the
point where to a student of to-day this recognition seems unavoid
able. But it was beyond the power of the philosophy of that age to
make the recognition in any vital way. A few sentences from the
argument between Gassendi and Descartes will show how the matter
stood. " . . . parceque <Tun cote," Descartes had said in the
sixth Meditation,2 " j'ai une claire et distincte idee de moi-meme, en
tant que je suis seulement une chose qui pense, et non etendue, et
1 One finds such statements as, for instance, the following— " Sed jam dicendum est
quo pacto ex hoc solo quod unam substantiam absque altera dart & distincte intelligam,
certus sim unam ab alia excludi. Nempe haec ipsa est notio substantiae, quod per se, hoc
est absque ope ullius alterius substantiae possit existere, nee ullus unquam qui duas
substantias per duos diversos conceptus percepit, non judicavit illas esse realiter dis-
tinctas." (Responsiones quartae, p. 124— Second Elzevir edition.)-Indeed from the point
of view of "Being" substances must be mutually exclusive. This Parmenides saw
clearly ; and then, with his principle that in the real there is no " is not," leapt at once to
the conclusion that the real is one indivisible substance.
2 Cousin's edition (Paris : Levrault, 1824-26), tome I., p. 332. In the Elzevir edition, the
fifth and seventh "Objections and Replies" (the fifth being the discussion with Gassendi)
are given as an Appendix.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
que (Tun autre j'ai une idee distincte du corps, en tant qu'il est
seulement une chose etendue et qui ne pense point, il est certain que
moi, c'est-a-dire mon ame par laquelle je suis ce que je suis, est entiere-
ment et veritablement distincte de mon corps, et qu'elle pent etre
ou exister sans lui." Gassendi, in the course of his argument, raises
this point,1 " . . . mais suppose, comme vous dites, que vous
soyez une chose qui n'est point etendue, je nie absolument que vous
en puissiez avoir 1'idee. Car, je vous prie, dites-nous comment vous
pensez que 1'espece ou 1'idee du corps qui est etendu puisse etre
regue en vous, c'est-a-dire en une substance qui n'est point etendue ?"2
Descartes' answer is rather a clever parrying of the difficulty than a
solution of it. — " Je reponds a cela qu'aucune espece corporelle n'est
regue dans 1'esprit, mais que la conception ou 1'intellection pure des
choses, soit corporelles, soit spirituelles, se fait sans aucune image
ou espece corporelle."3 So that to the end Descartes held to the
mutual independence, the mutual exclusiveness, of thought and
extension.
And what he did do, in endeavouring to meet the difficulty, was
this. He made the two substances, of which extension and thought
are the respective attributes, subordinate, and premised, to effect
their connexion with each other, a third substance which is God.
" By substance," he says, " we can conceive nothing else than a thing
which exists in such a way as to stand in need of nothing beyond
itself in order to its existence. And, in truth, there can be conceived
but one substance which is absolutely independent, and that is
God. . . . Created substances, however, whether corporeal or
thinking, may be conceived under this common concept [of sub
stance] for these are things which in order to their existence, stand in
need of nothing but the concourse of God."4 Thinking substance and
extended substance, then, are not independent of God. But their
independence of each other Descartes maintains stoutly and to the end.
It was this thinking, then, and the logical situation which arose
1 With regard, as he points out, not to "corps en general," but to "corps massif et
grOSSlGF-
2 Ed. cited, tome II., p. 224.
3 Ed. cited, tome II. , p. 297.
4 Principles, I. 51, 52, tr. Veitch (Blackwood).
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
out of this thinking, that furnished to Spinoza his scientific point of
departure. True, Spinoza brought with him elements which ortho
dox Cartesians would have repudiated with becoming severity-
elements from ben Maimon; from Chasdai Creskas; especially from
Ibn Ezra, and through him from that heretical Jew pantheist,
Avicebron; possibly even from Bruno. True also, he brought to the
Cartesian philosophy, deep spiritual passions of a kind to which it
was a stranger. And true, moreover, he often states in strangely
sharp and pointed language his opposition to this or that tenet of
Descartes.1 But the fact remains that the logical situation created
by Cartesianism was Spinoza's scientific point of departure; and
that by Spinoza's work the fundamental lines in the movement of
Cartesian thought were' carried forward to their logical conclusion.
That he himself had no special intention to do this ; that he did not
regard his own system as standing in any very intimate connexion
with the Cartesian system: — these things do not settle the question.
And to urge either his occasional sharp criticisms of Descartes, or the
bitter repudiation of him by the orthodox Cartesian schools, as a
reason for refusing to regard him as the man of thought who revealed
the ultimate meaning of the Cartesian categories and the Cartesian
method, is to miss the genuine core of the situation because of some
of its external incidents : — is to miss the main set of the tide because
of one or two of its prominent and rather noisy eddies. Spinoza
lived, whether he would or no, in the Cartesian current. In his long
and quiet meditations, the Cartesian, thought ripened and worked
itself out. And the outcome was that he became to the first stage of
modern philosophy what Parmenides had been to the first stage of
Greek philosophy — the man who made clear the goal toward which
its method led, and the view of the world which lay implicit in its
working principle.
The position into which Spinoza was thus brought is what we
have now to consider. The advance which he made upon the Cartesian
position may be briefly outlined as follows :
In the first place he saw that there was really no need at all for
Descartes to set up his hopeless problem of the connexion of two
i E.g., Eth. beginning of Pt. III. and especially beginning of Pt. V.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
substances which are independent of each other. For what Descartes
had on the one side was really nothing more than an attribute and its
modifications. And what he had on the other side was likewise really
nothing more than an attribute' and its modifications. There was no
need at all to put a distinct substance behind each of these attributes.
Indeed to do so was to misuse the category of substance itself. For a
substance is precisely that which is needed as the support or the
home of a variety of attributes; it is the single substrate required to
bring the many attributes back into unity of existence. What
Descartes should have said, then, was very simple: there is one sub
stance, and in that one substance both these attributes inhere.
So that Spinoza's assertion that substance is One, simply com
pletes the evolution of Descartes' thought. To Descartes substance is
that " which so exists as to stand in need of nothing beyond itself in
order to its existence." But upon that definition— unless we assert the
existence of a plurality of absolutely independent universes or monads
• — there can be but one substance. And this, as was noted above,
Descartes himself saw. There can be conceived, he admitted, but
one substance which is absolutely independent [i.e., which really does
fulfil the definition], and that is God. We perceive that all other
things can exist only through the concourse of God [i.e., according
to the definition are not substances at all] . But he avoided the force
of this, and avoided the transformation of his system which it
required, by adding that the term substance does not apply to God
and the creatures univoce; " that is, no signification of this word can
be distinctly understood which is common to God and them."1
Descartes, that is to say, at once retains and does not retain the scheme
of the world which he had worked out by the use of the category of
substance. But the excommunicated Jew with his piercing intelli
gence could not remain, as the loyal (and, let me insist, sincere) son
of the church remained, in such a position. That which Descartes
admitted, Spinoza insisted upon, and put in its proper place in the
system. For him, from the beginning, reality is One Substance. And
this is the first great step, the first main position, in Spinoza's meta-
physic.
1 See Principles, I. 51.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
This first step consisted, it will be seen, in a stricter use of the
fundamental Cartesian category, not in an advance from it to a
higher category. In other words, Spinoza did not correct Descartes
by insisting upon a more accurate treatment of the cogito. He did
not point out that the objective consciousness — that of which the
consciousness of extended objects is one aspect — is correlative to the
subjective consciousness. He did not point out, to put the same
thing in another way, that extension is relative to thought, exists for
thought, and so comes within the sphere of thought. Such a correc
tion as that, it was left for Kant to make. What Spinoza did was to
take his stand upon the Cartesian category and insist upon a more
thoroughgoing application of it. And this fact is of the very highest
importance for Spinoza's whole system. For it not only gave the
first step in it; but it also, as we have now to see, determined the
second step. And this second step was, if possible, more important
than the first; leads directly, indeed, to the negative conclusion; or
rather, is the negative conclusion.
What that second step was, an illustration will help to make plain.
I assert, let us say, that self-consciousness is the highest principle of
science — that reality consists in a single self-conscious and self-
determining spirit, and in its activities which are the world and the
history of the world. Thereupon an objector challenges me. " Self-
consciousness the highest principle of science ? But exactly what does
that tell me? What do I know of the nature of self-consciousness?"
But to this I can at once make an answer : Tat tvam asi — thou art
it. Now it is just this question which Spinoza had to face as soon as
he had taken that first step which we have just seen. Eeality is One
Substance. Be it so ; but what does that tell us ? What can we know
about the nature of the One Substance?
And the key to this situation lay in the fact already indicated;
the fact, namely, that the category of substance itself, by which
Spinoza had shown himself so determined to abide, involves an answer
to this question. This Parmenides had seen, and had worked out
with clear and unflinching logic. This also Spinoza saw and worked
out; and, by doing so, gained the great regulative principle of his
philosophy.
12 161
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
This point we must consider very carefully. We shall best com
prehend Spinoza's procedure here by comparing it with that of the
earlier historical instances which we have studied. We have seen
that the thinking which moves on the level of the categories of Being
has to make an absolute disjunction of " is " and " is not." The " is "
is a pure " is," and there is no place for any " is not " in it. But
from this two things at once follow. First, the true and veritable
Being is apart from all change ; for no " is not " can ever creep in to
bring about any alteration. Secondly, that true and veritable Being
must be apart from all limitations or determinations; for these also
involve an element of " is not." This Parmenides saw and his whole
system was simply the formulation of this single insight. This, too,
the mediaeval Mystics saw; as is specially evident in their doctrine of
the creature. That procession from God by which the creature comes
to be, is, they said, a procession of that which is not God, i.e., is a
procession of non-Being. Which is just to say that Being belongs to
God alone, and that the determinations which make the creature
seem to be an individual distinct from God, are really nothing at all.1
It is this very same line of thought which Spinoza at this point
follows out. First of all he sees that determination involves an ele
ment of " is not." But this insight has at least two possible mean
ings. To a man who stands at a certain logical level, it has one
significance. To a man who stands at a certain other logical level, it
has an altogether different significance. It will be advisable, in order
to understand exactly what it meant for Spinoza, to set these two
meanings side by side.
The first is expressed more exactly by saying that affirmation
involves negation. Affirmation and negation are correlative. Each,
for its own existence, requires the other. If you characterize any
thing as " this " you distinguish it from " that." But — and this is
the key to the whole matter — it is just because a thing can be such
a " this " that it can have a place and a function in the system of the
universe at all. So that there is a sense in which determination is
negation. But this insight receives all its meaning from the still
i A conclusion to which, as we have seen, the Vedantists also come ; and by an
argument that differs more in -mode of expression than in logical content.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
deeper insight which goes along with it. For the universe is seen to
be a determinate system — a system articulated in inner determina
tions; and the kind of negation involved in determination is seen to
be necessary to the existence of a universe at all.
But that is not what the principle meant to Spinoza. His
thought moves in the region of the Being-categories. And there the
" is not/' so far from being considered necessary to reality, has to be
cast out of reality altogether. A spatial illustration may make this
somewhat more clear. Imagine a cubic foot of space in some definite
position — say, at your right hand. Now, what is it that prevents
you, considered as the possessor of that defined portion of space, from
having the whole of space ? It is the determinations — the limitations
which give to that piece or fragment of space its size and shape. If
these particular limitations, and all limitations of this kind, were
annihilated, you would have the whole of space. If we carry through
an argument of this sort, not with regard to space merely, but with
regard to reality as a whole, we get Spinoza's own conception of the
meaning of his great principle. This or that particular thing — so he
felt — is a piece or fragment of reality. But if all the limitations, all
the determinations, which make it " this " or " that," were swept
away, then you would have not a piece or fragment of reality, but
reality itself. A particular thing is the One Substance with the
greater part — in most cases, indeed, with nearly all — of its reality
negated by determinations.1 Such, then, was to Spinoza the principle,
Omnis determinatio est negatio. And such a principle, so construed,
leads him at once to the principle that the One Substance is indeter
minate.2 Every determination is viewed as a negation of reality.
Therefore the One Eeality is beyond all determinations.
1 See, for instance, his explanation in a letter to Jarig Jellis (Ep.L.), of the doctrine that
figure is negation. "This determination [figxire] therefore does not appertain to the
thing according to its being, but on the contrary is its non-being." (Elwes, vol. II., pp. 369,
370.) So that the application of the term modus to particular things is literally consistent.
A particular thing is a mode or manner in which the One Substance exists. And it is
precisely the determinations which bring it about that, in the particular thing, the One
Reality exists, not in its wholeness, but only in this very partial mode or manner. The
full carrying out of this would have given the Mystics' doctrine of the creature, or the
Vedantists' doctrine of the human self.
2 See, for example, the second letter to Huyghens (Ep. XXXVI.)— "Now since the
nature of God is not confined to a certain sphere of being, but exists in being, which is
absolutely indeterminate, so His nature also demands everything which perfectly ex
presses being ; otherwise His nature would be determinate and deficient."— (Elwes, vol.
II., p. 357-italics mine.)
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
So far, then, Spinoza has done exactly what Vedantist and Eleatic
and Mystic did. He has worked, as they did, with a category which
belongs to the general family of the Being-Categories. He has taken,
as they did, three great steps which represent the strictest and most
faithful working out of the logic of that category. First, he has con
ceived reality as a One — a One whose unity excludes all dividedness or
multiplicity. Secondly, he has affirmed that all determinations are
negations of reality. Thirdly, he has declared the One to be therefore
indeterminate.
These principles can serve, and, as we already know, several times
have served, as the ground-lines of a system of philosophy. They
are not merely consistent with one another, but are a rigidly consist
ent development of the inner meaning of that category which fur
nishes the original point of departure. They need only to be more
minutely explicated, and to be applied to the problems of practice, in
order to give such a full-orbed and thoroughgoing system as is found
in the Vedanta or in the school of Eckhart. In dealing with Spinoza,
then, let us set these three great positions together, as representing a
single factor or movement in his thought. And this movement in, or
aspect of, his thinking, let us call his " first metaphysic."
But now, will Spinoza give to these principles just that develop
ment and application which would round them out into such a system
as we have seen in Yedantist and Mystic ? Our study of those earlier
systems has shown us what direction such development and applica
tion would have to take. There remain yet a fourth and a fifth step.
The fourth step would proceed as follows. — All determinations are
negations of reality. Therefore the separateness from the One which
the particular things and beings of the world appear to have by
reason of their determinations, is, after all, an illusory separateness.
The One alone is, and what distinguishes us from it is really nothing
at all.1 This, when fully articulated, would give us a doctrine like
the Yedantist doctrine of the self, or the Mystic doctrine of the
creature. Then the fifth step would advance to the ethical and
religious application of all this — similar, for instance, to what we
i Indeed, with regard to one order of determinations, Spinoza did virtually affirm this.
In the letter to Jarig Jellis referred to above (p. 163, note) he called the determination of
figure " the non-being of the thing."
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
have already seen in the teaching of Eckhart or in the more con
sistent teaching of the " Forest Schools." With this, the system as
a system would be fully rounded out. The only thing that would
still remain to be constructed would be its Apologetic — its defence of
itself against that great theoretical objection which, as we have seen,
always troubles systems of this kind.
VI.
"Will Spinoza round out those three principles into a com
plete system of negative philosophy?" The answer is, that he did
not. And that sets us two problems. First, why did he not?
Secondly, what did he do instead?
Why he did not is easy to see. In the first place, as we have
already so fully seen, in a philosophical development of this kind, no
sooner do you reach an abstract Absolute, than you have a great
theoretical problem on your hands. The finite and manifold world
comes battering at your gate. And with this problem, in one form or
the other, you must deal. For if you say that the finitude and mani-
foldness which separate us from the One are really nothing at all,
and that therefore we really are not separated at all, are not really
finite, are not really manifold; then the answer comes : " But we seem
to be finite; and our world seems to be manifold and subject to
change." And if you reply : " Yes, but that seeming is an illusion,"
then you are still in difficulty. For at once the question arises : " In
a One which is absolutely without division, without change, without
negation, in a One which is eternal and perfect, how has such an
illusion come to be?"
Zeno, indeed, and even the Vedantists, could cut through this by
an easy method — by involving the objector himself in self-contradic
tions. But such a way of escape was not in accordance with
Spinoza's temper. And moreover, in the Europe of his day, there
was an influence at work which gave to the problem now in question
an almost overpowering weight. Since the Eenaissance the manifold
world had been taking hold on men as never before. With regard
to a vast variety of interests, the soul of man had been kept " asleep "
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
for no small number of centuries, and now in its awakening was
intolerably " hungry." For one thing, men were turning with almost
passionate eagerness to the study of the physical order of nature.
And their devotion to such inquiries made the finite world seem to
them an ordered and veracious thing, whose reality was not lightly
to be disputed. It should be noted, too, that they were devoting
themselves particularly to those mathematical studies upon which
any scientific conquest of nature that is to be secure, must be based.
And in these mathematical and physical studies certain great ways
of viewing things were brought very decidedly forward. First, there
was the feeling that what explained the world was present in the
world. Its laws and causes were immanent laws and causes. In your
search for explanations you were not to go away from the world to
something outside of it or beyond it. Secondly, there was a growing
sense of the necessity of the laws operative in the world — a necessity
conceived at first mathematically rather than mechanically or physi
cally, in so far as there is a distinction between these points of view.1
It was not merely that Spinoza lived in an age which was resound
ing with the work of such men. It was not merely that he numbered
such men among his friends and correspondents.2 It was not merely
that his mind was so large and open that it could not turn a dead
surface toward any great intellectual influence, and so sincere that
it could not lightly dismiss any great difficulty. But it was that he
himself, in a very true sense, was one of these men. This scientific
tendency, with its devotion to the manifold world, with its view of
that world as genuinely real and the home of eternal laws and
inviolable necessities — this tendency possessed Spinoza's soul to its
very core. Not that it made him a physicist. But it exercised a great
influence on his metaphysical thinking. In a word, the tendency
which once had been great in the world, and the tendency which was
now coming to be great in the world — the tendency which moves away
from the manifold world to an abstract Absolute, and the tendency
which sees the manifold world actuated by an immanent and inviolable
1 Cf. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of its History (Eng. tr. from 2nd
German ed.), pp. 40, 41.
2 E.g., Christian Huyghens-or even Oldenburg.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
necessity— had come face to face ; and their battleground was the soul
of this Jew. But in that calm and self-disciplined mind there was
no outcry or tumult. The result simply was that by the side of that
"first metaphysic" which we have been studying, there arose
another. This we may call Spinoza's "second metaphysic."
The leading principles and the inner structure of this second
system, it must now be our task very briefly to study. This we can
most conveniently do by considering two chief topics: first, the
method upon which Spinoza, in this part of his thinking, worked;
secondly, the "world-scheme" built up by the use of that method.
And in dealing with the latter we shall have to discuss the relation of
this "second metaphysic" to the "first metaphysic"; for Spinoza
himself regarded his thinking as a single system, and did not believe
that its leading factors and principles fall apart into two or three
distinct systems.
The significance of the method which Spinoza followed in this
second metaphysic of his may be brought to clearer light by a com
parison. When men of science fling themselves upon the manifold
world of our experience, in the endeavour to make it intelligible as a
manifold, the process which they carry through is one of discovering
unity and eternity in that manifold. That the facts of the world
change on our hands, that they are one thing at one time and another
thing at another time, is precisely what makes men of science dissatis
fied and sets them at work ; they cannot leave facts, and the successive
changes of facts, standing isolated. They link them together by
searching for — and actually discovering — those permanent and
unchanging relations, the formulations' of which we call "laws of
nature." And in this labour there can never be rest, until the whole
manifold world is seen as a single system: — is seen as a unity which
is also an eternity; for the principles which mediate the unity, and
govern all the manifoldness and change, are eternal principles.
But to say this is to say that the method of scientific men is a
odos avoo — a "way up." They begin with particulars, opaque, frag
mentary, evanescent, altogether unsatisfactory to the intellect. But
from these they climb up to continually wider views of the laws which
are operating in them. And as they thus go up, they carry the
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
particulars along with them ; and these hecome transformed — become,
at each upward step, more stable, more law-full, more satisfactory,
in every way to the intellect. Then, if in this process we reach a
point where the whole system of existence is seen as transparently
intelligible — is seen as rational through and through — we can, if we
wish, turn and pursue a 6&os HCXTGO • We can come down, bringing
our highest light with us, and illuminating particular spheres of
existence with it. But — a point particularly to be noted — we can
thus " come down," only because we had first laboured through the
" way up." For precisely the value of that " highest idea " to which
the upward way led us, precisely the feature of it which makes it
possible for us so to apply it as we "come down," lies in this, that
as we worked through the " way up " we found it in the particulars,
and gradually disentangled it, gradually brought it out into a light
that grew clearer as we went higher. Precisely the reason that we
can apply the highest idea as we " come down," is that it is not some
new thing, brought down from above and alien to the facts. On the
contrary, it was always in the facts. The only difference is that in
"coming down" one is applying with clear and easy intelligence
something which in " going up " one was gaining with pain and trouble.
The " way up " is what nowadays we usually call the " synthetic
method." Eeally it is a method of combined analysis and synthesis.1
The "way down " on the other hand is a method of pure analysis,
made possible by preceding synthesis. Historically, however, the
analytic method has frequently attempted to stand alone, and in so
doing has played in human thought a great but not altogether a
happy part. Standing thus alone, it is cut off from its true source
and support ; its conjunction with the " way up " is broken ; and then
it becomes a method peculiarly dangerous — all the more dangerous,
that it is exceedingly attractive to just such minds as Spinoza's. In
this form, it starts with some idea as a premiss, and confines itself
strictly to the task of getting out of that premiss what is in it. All
matter not contained in that original premiss must with the utmost
severity be kept out of the conclusion. And if any such matter does
i There are people who take a perverse pleasure in calling it "the inductive method."
But the historical English use of the term " induction " unfits it for such an application.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
creep in, the method considers itself to that extent to have failed.
But of the " synthetic method " almost the opposite is true. It is
precisely the mark of this method to get more into the conclusion
than was apparent in the original point of departure. For it recog
nises that its proper business is to get " ideas " (or categories) and
"facts" properly joined together; and this process of bringing to
facts the ideas that illuminate them and that draw to light the reason
hidden in them,, grows continually both in breadth and in depth as
it goes on. The material dealt with in any given investigation comes
to mean more and more as the investigation goes on. The original
premisses are being continually " reconstituted." The " ideas " get
both deeper and wider — increase both in connotation and in denota
tion. And the " facts " continually take on wider relations and
greater significance. With the " analytic method " the object of
investigation remains fixed, fast, .unchangeable from the beginning.
With the " synthetic method," the more you deal with the object of
investigation the larger it becomes under your hands.
The analytic method in that strict form Spinoza deliberately
adopted. About the question of method he had thought seriously,1
and in the treatise De Intellectus Emendations gives us his conclu
sion on the subject — his Organon. The treatise may be described as,
among other things, a plea for the use of the " way down " without
any " way up " ; at least, without any " way up " in the sense
described above. There is an " origin and source of the whole of
nature," from which, as one may put it, the whole process of nature
flows down. And if we are to have a " faithful image of nature,"
our mind must have a highest idea which represents that origin and
source, and then, from that highest idea, must deduce the whole
descending series of ideas which will accurately represent to us the
process of nature.2 Furthermore Spinoza thinks — or rather, he
seems to take for granted — that if we are to have a " faithful image
of nature," the logical movement of our ideas must proceed in the
1 See Martineau, Study of Spinoza (1882), p. 46 seq. The fact (ibid. pp. 48, 49) that the
De Intellectus Emendatione', which originally had taken the lead of the Ethics, was
gradually dropped, and at last left unfinished, is very significant. As it is, the treatise
ends with a problem which, upon the basis there laid down, is impossible of solution.
2 Elwes, vol. II., pp. 15, 16.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
same direction as the logical1 movement of nature. Just as the whole
process of nature flows down from its " origin and source," so must
our ideas flow down from the highest idea which represents that
" source." It does not seem to him permissible that our mind should
reverse the order; should, in attempting to form a "faithful image
of nature/' begin with the lowest particulars and run backward along
the course of their outward flow from their " origin," and so form at
last a " highest idea " corresponding to that " origin."
This, it is true, at once raises the question : " But how, without
such a otfds- avco as has been described, are you to get that highest
idea at all?" And Spinoza actually does consider this difficulty
under one of its specific forms. He imagines an objector to say : " In
order to be certain that your highest idea is really a true idea, you
will need a proof. But that will call for a still higher idea ; in fact,
will lead to an infinite regress and so reduce the whole situation to
absurdity." Spinoza's answer to the mere demand for " proof " is
very admirable. But he does not see the deeper question which is
involved. His answer comes to this : " Supposing a man to have
gained that idea, and to be actually usdng it in the victorious ration
alisation of nature — such a man would not be troubled at all about
your miserable question of proof." " Truth would make itself mani
fest and all things would flow, as it were, spontaneously toward him."2
But the very finality of his answer to the mere brute demand for
proof apparently blinds Spinoza to the fact that he has nowhere
clearly and consciously told us how we are to get that so indispensable
" highest idea."
X But then, how, on his own method, is he to construct a world-
scheme? If he is to do so, a highest idea he must have. And since
he actually has done so, a highest idea presumably he did have. The
answer is that he did have a highest idea, and did proceed from it to
the elaboration of a world-scheme. But the way in which he got at
that highest idea was peculiar. In part it was the outcome of a long
course of reflection, the process of which had, so to speak, died away,
leaving the conclusion standing out like a self-evident and eternal
J ! For with Spinoza the movement of nature is a logical movement.
2 Elwes, vol. II., p. 16.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
truth. This conclusion he formulates into a certain number of
definitions — two or three of which contain the gist of the whole
matter — and puts these at the head of his world-scheme just as
Euclid put his axioms at the beginning of his book on geometry. In
part, again, the highest idea was got by taking over a certain concep
tion from that aspect of his thinking which we have called his " first
metaphysic." That first metaphysic had culminated in the view
that reality is One Substance. And with One Substance the " second
metaphysic " sets out. As we shall see more fully a little later, these
two substances appeared to Spinoza to be one and the same thing,
and so he never doubts the genuine unity of his own thinking. But
really the two are radically different things. The transition from the
first to the second metaphysic is not the logically continuous transi
tion from one part of a unitary system to the next. It is, on the
contrary, a transition in which the central conception undergoes a
most subtle, but also a thoroughly fundamental, change. The one
indeterminate substance becomes the One Substance with infinite
attributes. What blinded Spinoza to the greatness of this change
was probably the fact that he held in both cases to his great regulative
principle, Omnis determinatio est negatio — every determination (i.e.f
ascription of determinate limits, of definite characters and qualities)
is a negation of reality. He did not see that the use which he made
of this principle in the second case was really a denial of the principle
itself.
With this, then, we may proceed to consider the ground-lines of
the world-scheme itself, which in its elaboration constitutes the body
of his " second metaphysic."
The first point which we have to consider is how he expresses that
highest idea which, in the way already indicated, he puts at the head
of his philosophical scheme of the manifold world. First, under the
names causa sui and substantia, he brings forward the idea of a being,
unconditioned and self-existent — a being which contains within itself
the ground of its own existence and the ground of its own intelli
gibility.1 Then, under the name God, he enriches this uncondi-
1 Eth. Pt. I. defs. I. and III. Erdmann points out (Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 59)
that the expression causa sui has no reference to a process of self -creation, but means
" the unconditioned."
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
tioned and self-existent being with infinite attributes1 — an attribute
having been previously defined as that which the intellect perceives
as constituting the essence of substance.2
Then from this starting-point, he goes on to the things which
are not self-referring but are other-referring. These — the various
individual (i.e., particular) things and beings of the world — are
viewed as modi; that is, as limited " manners of existence " of the
attributes of God.3
Furthermore, the particular way in which God expresses himself
in modes depends absolutely on the necessity of the divine nature.
That is to say, the system of particular things, the order of the mani
fold world, is an order of the strictest necessity and most inviolable
law. The manifold universe, so to speak, flows down from the one
source along channels absolutely determined by the nature of that
source.4 In a teleological system, it is true, there is also necessity;
for the end is the supreme law of that whole process in which it is
being realised. But in such a system as that now before us there is
absolutely no place for teleology or for the teleological kind of
necessity.5 The strict and inviolable necessity of this system is a
necessity altogether a tergo.
And so the great category of this metaphysic is the category of
cause. But we shall altogether fail to understand Spinoza if we take
his continually recurring term "cause" in the sense in which we
ordinarily use the term " efficient cause/' As Erdmann points out,6
Spinoza's term "cause" means mathematical or logical cause. His
relation of "cause and effect" is our relation of "ground and con
sequent." In a word, the universe is to the Spinoza of the "second
metaphysic," a great process of analytic logic in which the nature
of God is the original premiss, from which processes of endless
"causation" flow forth.
1 Eth. Pt. L, def. VI.
2 Ibid. def. IV.— Mr. Hale White translates: "that which the intellect perceives of
substance, as if constituting its essence."
3 Eth. I. 25. Cor. with the reference to prop. 15 and def. V.
4 This is every where in Spinoza; but see especially his statement of the necessity of
the world's procession from God, in a letter to Hugo Boxel (Ep. LIV).
5 See the Appendix to Pt. I. of the Ethics.
6 Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 58.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
Such is the skeleton of this part or aspect of the thought of
Spinoza. His amplification of it into a detailed system is exceed
ingly elaborate ; and to one who simply takes his stand within it, and
judges it by its own standards, offers material for almost endless
question and criticism. To take a single instance: what is the rela
tion of the One Substance to the Attributes? The definition of
" attribute/'1 so far from giving us a clear view, may itself fairly be
called a nest of almost hopeless problems; problems which centre in
the question of the place ascribed to the intellect in Spinoza's scheme
of reality.2 But from all these questions of the internal criticism of
the " second metaphysic " we must here turn away. It is not merely
that the discussion of them would exceed, a score of times over, all
possible limits of space. But it would scarcely be in line with the
task here in hand — that, namely, of getting at the main lines, the
fundamental movements and tendencies, in Spinoza's thought, and
of viewing these in the light of the general history of philosophy.
Before passing on, however, one thing may be noted. Graphic
illustrations of rational doctrines are usually very treacherous helps.
But the attempt to envisage spatially this world-scheme of Spinoza's
second metaphysic is somewhat useful. Sir Frederick Pollock's
illustration,3 supplemented by that of Professor Erdmann,4 may be
used. Let us imagine an infinite number of infinite plane surfaces
parallel to one another (the attributes). Each of these is ruled with
an intricate and ' continually varying pattern made up of geometrical
figures of definite shapes (the modes — particular things and individ
uals) ; and the number of figures in the pattern is infinite (infinite
modes). The planes are different from one another — let us say, are
of different colours. But the pattern, and the changes that keep
taking place in it, are identically the same for every plane. Let it
be understood, too, that if you ask for the proximate " cause " of any
1 Eth. I. def. IV.
2 The two chief interpretations of the definition— which involve interpretations of
Spinoza's whole world -scheme— are Erdmann's and Kuno Fischer's. More, I think, can be
said for Erdmann's than is nowadays usually taken for granted. See, however, the
exposition of Spinoza's position in Joachim's excellent Study of the Ethics of Spinoza
(Clarendon Press, 1901), pp. 17-27.
3 Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1899), pp. 156, 157.
4 Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 62.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
one of those geometrical figures, or of any change in it, the answer is
to be given by referring to the figures around it and to their changes.
That is to say, God is the source or " cause " of the whole system
of the manifold world — in other words, that whole system, viewed
in its unity, is God ; but the proximate " cause " of any particular
thing or event is to be looked for in the other particular things and
events. And both these orders of causation proceed with absolute
necessity.
It remains to say a word about the relation to each other of these
two parts or aspects of Spinoza's thinking which have in the preced
ing pages been so sharply distinguished. First, let it be distinctly
understood how the distinction is arrived at. As a critical reader
goes through Spinoza's writings, he becomes conscious that in them
there are distinct tendencies, distinct points of view. These are not
set apart from each other; nor does one appear later than another.
On the contrary, they are intertwined. On a single page, even in a
single paragraph or sentence, they appear together. Spinoza himself
does not even feel that there is such a distinction; he believes that
his system is one and continuous. Yet there is such a distinction.
Indeed it is more than distinction. It is contradiction. The appear
ance together of the contradictory views and tendencies is really
only juxtaposition, only external union, never a genuine reconcilia
tion. And what has here been attempted is to bring the distinction
and contradiction out into clear consciousness, by disentangling the
tendencies in question, formulating them, and thus setting them, in
their systematic forms, in sharp contrast with each other.
But an objector may urge : when all this is done, are the " first
metaphysic" and the "second metaphysic " really so different from
each other? Have you not in each the same starting-point — unica
substantia — and the same great regulative principle — Omnis deter-
minatio est negatio? So that Spinoza's thought is one continuous
system after all. The answer is, that the regulative principle is used
so differently as to become really a different principle. In the one
case it requires you to say that Substance has no attributes what
ever. In the other it leads to the declaration that Substance cannot
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
have a limited number of attributes, nor attributes of a non-infinite
kind. And with this the Substance itself becomes different. The
Substance with which the " second metaphysic " begins is not truly
the Substance with which the " first metaphysic" ends.
In connexion with this, however, there is a peculiar Spinozistic
doctrine which it is worth our while to notice. Plotinus had to face
much the same situation. He had an abstract One. And he also had
a rational cosmogony and cosmology. But, as we saw, he had a most
ingenious logical principle by which these two were enabled to live
together in peace. " It," he said of the One, " is by no means that
of which it is the principle." The powers and beings of the manifold
universe are altogether dependent upon it. But it goes its way in
the most absolute independence of them, and so retains all its
characters — its negative characters — as an abstract One.1 Now there
is something very much like this in Spinoza. " An effect," he says,
" differs from its cause precisely in that which it has from its
cause."2 And he uses this principle to show that intellect and will,
in any sense in which men use these attributes, cannot pertain to
God who is the sole cause of all things. That is to say, he uses it
for the very same purpose which Plotinus had served by the principle
noted above; he uses it to enable the abstract One to be the source
of a manifold order and yet remain an abstract One. It is an
expedient closely akin to that of Plotinus; so closely akin, indeed,
that it falls under the same condemnation. It is subtle ; it is ingeni
ous; but it forgets the implications of the conception itself of
relation. You cannot have a relation which works only one way;
which binds B to A, but not A to B.
1 St. Thomas has the same problem, though a very different method of solving it. The
Divine nature is characterised by simplicitas. Yet in God is a multitudo intel-
lectorwn. How can this be? St. Thomas answers by an elaborate doctrine based upon
the principle that the Divine nature itself is God's forma intelligibilis ; the Divine intel
ligence has but one intelligible form— its own nature (v. infra, pp. 344, 345).
2 Eth. 1. 17. echol.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
VII.
So far, then, for this aspect of Spinoza's philosophy. But no
sooner have we seen what it was, than we are once more face to face
with a difficulty. Just as in the metaphysical views expressed by
that Spinoza whose spiritual affinity is with Eleatic and Vedantist
and Mystic, there was a great theoretical crux, so here, in the meta
physical views expressed by the Spinoza whose spiritual affinity is
with the Eenaissance and post-Kenaissance men of science, there is a
great theoretical difficulty. And just as in the first case that large
and open and sincere mind faces the difficulty and attempts to solve
it, so here does he face it and attempt to solve it.
First, let us see what the present difficulty is. It may be stated as
follows. — On the one hand, in that way of viewing the world with
which we have just been dealing, particular things and individual
beings all stand upon a level and all are actuated from behind.
Spiritual activities — the energies of thought and will — stand on pre
cisely the same level as any natural activity. Spinoza, for instance,
expressly affirms that will does not appertain to the nature of God
more than any other natural thing does, but is related to it just as
motion and rest and all other things are related to it; all alike
follow from the necessity of the divine nature and are determined by
it to exist and to act as they actually do exist and act.1 And even if
Spinoza did not expressly declare this, it would still follow from the
general point of view which he here holds. From natura naturans —
i.e., from God, the substance whose essence the intellect perceives as
consisting in infinite attributes2 — follows necessarily natura naturata,
the system of modes.3 And in natura naturata man stands on a level
with all other things, and man's actions on a level with all other
particular events. For thought is one attribute ; extension is another ;
and, to recur to the illustration mentioned on a previous page/ that
total pattern which appears on each of these planes, and on the
i Eth. I. 32. Cor. 2. 2 Eth. I. defs. VI. and IV.
3 Eth. I. 29. schol. 4 p. 173, supra.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
infinite number of other planes, flows from and is absolutely deter
mined by the necessity of the divine nature. To give a precedence to
any one of the attributes, or to break down their absolute independ
ence of one another, their absolute separateness, would be to forget
the essential principles of this " second metaphysic."
But on the other hand there is something which compels us to
do just those things — to give a precedence to one of the " attributes,"
and to break down their separation. What this is, we must now con
sider.
First, as we have already seen,1 in our experience subject and
object are correlative. The consciousness of objects and the con
sciousness of self are necessary each to the other; if either be taken
away, the other vanishes; and the development of the one is the
development of the other. But such correlation and such organic
union imply community of nature; imply that a single principle is
manifesting itself in each of the members of the relation. There
is, that is to say, community of nature and of principle between the
world given to us in experience and the self that knows the world
and acts in it and upon it. But what is that common nature of the
self and of the world ? This question we could answer if we " knew
from within " either of the members of the relation. And one of
them we do know from within; as self-conscious, we know by inner
awareness the nature of the self. So that precisely in the self lies
the key to the nature of the world. That principle or energy of which
the human soul is an inchoate form — the principle frequently in
philosophy called "thought,"2 but for which "spirit" is an apter
name — is the principle of the whole objective order, including the
order of extended things and any other order of being with which
man's intelligence can enter into relation. In other words, the unity
of the world — the world in the greater sense of the term, as that
system of things in which the human soul is an element — is the unity
of a single self-conscious experience in which, through manifoldness
1 Supra, pp. 2, 3 ; and 65. Cf. infra, pp. 208, 209.
2 In the sense of that total activity in which psychologists sometimes distinguish
" feeling," "intellect," and "will" : — a usage of the term "thought " which is convenient,
and dignified by long custom, but open to misunderstanding.
13 177
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
and diversity,, through the shock of conflict and the discipline of
unfathomable sorrows, there is being realised an ideal end, a " far-off
divine event/5
— the love
Toward which all being solemnly doth move.1
But from this certain consequences follow for the view of the
world expressed in Spinoza's " second metaphysic." First, the nature
of the manifold world is emphatically not the nature set forth by
Spinoza in this aspect of his thinking. The process which is the life
of spirit is not a process guided by a necessity that acts absolutely
a tergo. On the contrary, it leads itself on from before. It presents
ideal ends to itself, and to these it seeks to give being in the world of
achieved realities. True, the world, as a spiritual process, has neces
sity in it. But it is the necessity which arises out of the fact that the
ideal end is itself the supreme law of that process of development of
which it is the culmination and fulness. And since the source alike of
that end and of that necessity communicates its own nature to men,
men are able to adopt that necessity as the law in which their own
being finds its fulfilment. So that, on the view ultimately given by
this tendency, necessity itself is enlisted as a good soldier " under the
banner of the free spirit."2
But secondly, this same process — the life of spirit, or, as Spinoza
1 Arthur Henry Hallam, Sonnet On the Picture of the Three fates in the Palazzo
Pitti at Florence.
2 Coleridge, in his marginal annotations in Crabb Robinson's copy of Spinoza, has an
interesting reference to Spinoza's doctrine of necessity, in which he does justice to
Spinoza's distinctions of immanent necessity from external compulsion. Commenting
upon Eth. I. 28. he says : " . . . It is true he contends for Necessity ; but then he makes
two disparate classes of Necessity, the one identical with Liberty, . . . the other,
Compulsion = Slavery. If Necessity and Freedom are not different points of view of the
same thing ; the one the Form, the other the Substance, farewell to all Philosophy and to
all Ethics. It is easy to see that Freedom without Necessity would preclude all Science,
and as easy to see that Necessity without Freedom would subvert all morals ; but though
not so obvious it is yet equally true that the latter would deprive science of its main
Spring, its last ground and impulse ; and that the Former would bewilder and atheize all
morality. But never has a great man been so hardly and inequitably treated by Posterity
as Spinoza. ..."
My attention was called to Crabb Robinson's copy of Spinoza (and to Mr. Hale White's
publication of Coleridge's annotations, in the Athenceum, No. 3630, May 22, 1897) through
a charming act of kindness on the part of Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith to a stranger who
one day entered as a visitor the Library of Manchester College.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
calls it, the " attribute " thought— cannot be placed as Spinoza places
it, simply on a level with the other aspects of reality like extension.
Men cannot be viewed as standing on a level with " all other natural
things " — as having merely the same relation to the ultimate unity
that "motion and rest" have. On the contrary, the unity of exist
ence lies in the fact that the world is constituted by an eternal spirit;
and we men have, as the essence of our being, a nature and an activity
which are our own and yet are His nature and activity communicated
to us. We are, so to speak, lesser centres in that system of which He
is the supreme centre. He is in us, and we live in His life. Through
us, or rather in us and our experience, He is realising an eternal
purpose; and we, in that loyalty to domestic and social and civic
duties which is the indispensable basis and content of all goodness,
but which has not become fully itself until it has risen to the form
of the conscious love of God, can adopt that purpose of His as our
purpose, and thus enter more and more upon the fulfilment of our
vocation as sharers in the divine nature and the divine life.
So that thought itself bears witness against the place which Spinoza
has assigned to it in the world-scheme of his " second metaphysic."
And this witness is borne by all the phases and aspects of that
thought which is our experience. It is involved in the possibility of
knowledge. It is involved in ordinary or " individual " morality. It
is involved in those great structures and far-reaching activities which
we denote by such terms as " the state " and " religion."
Such, then, is the situation which the Spinoza of the " second meta
physic " has to face. What will he do ? One thing, it is evident, we
must not expect. We must not expect him to enter upon the reflective
mastery of the whole situation by grasping, the insight just noted, and
explicating it into a system of metaphysic. That was left for the men
of a later day ; Spinoza must bring Cartesianism to its goal before the
new era could begin. Descartes had broken the cogito into two, and it
was but natural that Spinoza should harden the division.1 To see the
i This is one of the chief points upon which Coleridge fastened, in the annotations
referred to above (p. 178, note). " Spinoza begins," says Coleridge, " with the Phantom of
a Thing in itself, i.e., an Object. But an Object implies a Subject as much as a S. an O. ;
therefore that only can have a chance of grounding knowledge, which assumes the actual
fact, namely X = Subject-Object = Object-Subject, Ideal-real, real-ideal! the Absolute-
179
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA.
cogito restored fully to its rights and credited with the whole of its
own possessions, we must wait for Kant and Kant's successors. But
still a certain degree of advance in this direction was possible to
Spinoza. For in certain of the aspects or manifestations of thought,
the witness which it bears to itself is specially emphatic. Three such
aspects may be noted here ; in actual experience inseparably intercon
nected, and distinguished here only for convenience of statement.
First, there is morality as in the individual man. Secondly, there is
the morality seen in the ideals and regulative principles that operate
in the life of the state. Thirdly, there is religion. These — all of
them works of thought,1 and all of them expressing the innermost
nature of thought — stand at the gate of any philosophical scheme of
reality, demanding admission and requiring that a place be made for
them which they can occupy without laying aside their essential
characters. This demand in its fulness Spinoza could not apprehend
or grant ; to do so would have been to effect that total transformation
of the philosophical scheme of things, which became possible only
after Kant and the Kantians had restored the cogito to its rights.
Something, however, Spinoza could do; and that he did. It was
never his habit to close his great intellect against any demand of
scientific sincerity. He listened to the demand now in question, and
did the best he could to meet it. The result was that he advanced to
flashes and glimpses of insight, and occasionally even to rather fully
articulated doctrines, which represent, or imply, a view of reality
different from either of the two which we have so far seen in him.
Keeping to the expression already employed, we may call this part or
aspect of his thinking his " third metaphysic."
The relation of this third metaphysic to the other two, it will be
understood, is much the same as that of those to each other. In
Spinoza's thinking they are intertwined. They appear together often
eternally foliating the Dual [so Coleridge goes on in his attempt at a speculative doctrine of
the Trinity] as this the Triad. Being + the Word = the Spirit, and then the mystery or
Love = God all in all when he hath finally submitted himself to whom all things had been
submitted" (from the annotation of Ep. II.— Spinoza to Oldenburg). Compare with this,
a sentence from the comment upon the reference to Nero's crime in Spinoza's third letter
to Blyenbergh : " The truth is, Spinoza, in common with all the metaphysicians before him
v(Bdhmen perhaps excepted), began at the wrong end— commencing with God as an Object."
i In that greater sense of the word already noted (= rational spirit).
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THE MBTAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
on the same page,, sometimes even in the same sentence; and are
never observed to speak hostile words to one another. Yet this appar
ently so close union is only external. In reality they are citizens not
merely of different, but of deeply severed, kingdoms; to genuine
reconciliation and unity they never come. If it had been Spinoza's
fate to occupy a position similar to that of Socrates — to stand at the
head of a great philosophical succession which included in itself virtu
ally all the serious and disinterested thinkers of the age — we should
probably have found in that succession three great schools, as distinct
from one another as were those which alike claimed Socrates as their
head.
Let us consider, then, the chief discussions and doctrines which
constitute this " third metaphysic." It would be very interesting to
study those occasional phrases scattered through his writings,
which have a bearing on this. For instance, in the very first sentence
of the De Intellectus Emendatione we find him resolving " to inquire
whether there might be some real good having power to communicate
itself." A few pages farther over we find him mentioning " the union
existing between the mind and the whole of nature." In the mouth
of a Kantian — or of a Platonist — such conceptions would have an
immeasurable, a world-penetrating, significance. But we should go
astray if we supposed that they had so great a meaning for Spinoza.
We shall be on safer ground if we turn at once to his discussion of
those three great works or expressions of thought, in which the inner
nature of thought simply forces itself on the attention of the observer ;
to his discussion, namely, of in^iyj^ual,.jaoialiiy, of the state, of
religion.
His elaborate discussion of the first of these cannot be reproduced
within the limits of these pages. Nor is it necessary that it should.
For it is only with the ground-lines of the discussion, only with its
controlling conceptions, that we are specially concerned.
These amount to a virtual bringing back of that ideal point of
view, and of those teleological categories, which in the " second meta-
physic " had been driven into extremest exile. This we may see by
considering the three main topics of the discussion:1 first, the con-
i Topics which are, of course, most closely interconnected.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
ception of the moral good; secondly, the doctrine of man's freedom;
thirdly, the discussion of the way of attaining to that freedom and
that good.
Under the first of these three topics we have to consider in especial
two great conceptions : that of the " summum ~bonum " ; and that of the
" conatus in suo esse perseverandi." You, as a man, have a given esse
or nature, and it is your summum bonum to maintain — or rather, as
we shall see presently, to realise and fulfil — that esse. It is true that
the mere use of these two phrases does not necessarily introduce a new
point of view. For the summum bonum might be defined to consist
simply in your position as a necessitated mode of one of the attributes ;
and the esse, likewise, as consisting simply in the nature given you by
that position. But precisely the key to the situation is that that is
just how Spinoza does not conceive them. The esse is conceived, not
as the nature given you by your mere position as a necessitated mode
in the great " causal " series, but as something against which that
position wages war and which you have to maintain in the face of
that position. And that maintenance, that fulfilment of your nature
in the face of an implacably hostile situation, is your summum bonum.
This, however, we must consider in slightly greater detail. First
of all, in man a great dualism of reason and passion is affirmed.1 But,
secondly, while the one side of this represents our position as necessi
tated modes in the great causal nexus of modes, it is precisely in the
other side that our summum bonum is to be sought. " Inasmuch as
the intellect is the best part of our being/' says Spinoza in the remark
able fourth chapter of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, " it is
evident that we should make every effort to perfect it as far as possible
if we desire to search for what is really profitable to us. For in intel
lectual perfection the highest good should consist/' " Since/' he
argues in the Ethics,2 " this effort of the mind wherewith the mind
endeavours, in so far as it reasons, to preserve its own being, is nothing
else but understanding; this effort at understanding is the first and
single basis of virtue, nor should we endeavour to understand things
-for the sake of any ulterior object . . ." "We know nothing/'
i Throughout Pts. IV. and V. of the Ethics.
2 IV. 26. dem.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
runs the next proposition, " to be certainly good or evil, save such
things as really conduce to understanding or such as are able to hinder
us from understanding." Again, " In life it is before all things useful
to perfect the understanding, or reason, as far as we can, and in this
alone man's highest happiness or blessedness consists . . ."1 And
since the good lies in understanding, it follows that " the mind's
highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue
is to know God/'2 So, then, in this dualism of reason and passion,
the good lies altogether within one of the two sides. And the other
side — the side which wars against our attaining of this good, and, in
so far as it prevails, constitutes our " bondage " — is, as was said a
moment ago, just what represents our place as modes in the great
nexus of modes. For the passions are the ways in which external
causes act upon us.3 That is to say, they represent man as the " second
metaphysic " must represent him altogether ; namely, as one mode
altogether determined by the " causal " activities of the other modes.
Spinoza states both sides of this dualism very strongly. The " bondage
of man " he states so strongly — i.e., in stating it he clings so closely
to the point of view of his " second metaphysic " — that he makes it
quite hopeless.4 But he states the other side just as strongly. And
that he does not consider the bondage hopeless he still further shows
by describing the way in which man is to deliver himself from it, and
so to attain his good.
This brings us to the second of these topics, Spinoza's view of
freedom, which is really nothing other than his conception of the
Good stated from a special point of view. To study it for its own
sake would be to undertake one of the most interesting and most
instructive tasks in the history of philosophy. But here, once more,
for the purpose of our present discussion we may sum up the matter in
a sentence or two. Spinoza conceives the freedom of man to lie pre
cisely in man's fulfilling the law of his own being and living out his
own true nature, unshackled and undisturbed by those " external
causes" to which reference was made above. But we have just seen how
i Eth. IV. Appendix (IV.).
2 Eth. IV. 28.
3 See Eth. IV. 5. Cf. the Corollary of the preceding proposition.
* In Eth. IV., take the Axiom along with propositions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
Spinoza conceives that true nature of man and that true law of man's
being. He conceives them, namely, in a way which goes far beyond
the point of view of the " second metaphysic," and makes no slight
advance in the direction of restoring to the cogito its true meaning
and its true place and function in the universe.1
And, as we might expect, we find the same tendency in Spinoza's
discussion of the third of these topics — the way of attaining to
freedom and the Good. We need not, however, dwell long upon it.
It is enough to say that Spinoza shows at length how the realm of the
understanding is to be extended over the realm of the passions;2 in
other words, how we men are to break away from, and to rise above,
the position to which we would be absolutely confined if we were really
the " modes " which the " second metaphysic " holds us to be. Eeason,
when it has risen through the ascending stages of knowledge,3 comes
to that union with God — that union with " the whole of nature " — in
which it sees all things under the aspect of eternity and necessity ; and
learns to accept them, because when thus seen they are seen as parts of
perfection. But it accepts them, not as a mere mode accepts them — i.e.,
as an external fate; in accepting them, it acts from within and of its
own accord ; for it has risen to the point of view of the eternal, and
so accepts them not only as good, but as being its Good — that in which
it fulfils its nature. And this state of the soul — in which it is no
longer swayed hither and thither by those forces from without which
act on us through the passions, but is guided solely by that highest
form of reason — is freedom.
So much, then, for the question how far Spinoza, in dealing with
individual morality, introduces a new and higher point of view into
his system. Next we have to consider the same question with regard
to his treatment of the state and of religion.
1 Spinoza's conception of freedom, in its elaborate form, is of course to be looked for in
the latter part of Eth. IV. and in Eth. V. But it comes forward in many passages in his
writings— passages often remarkable ;f or a keenness and brilliancy that contrast strik
ingly with the general calm of his pages. See, for instance. Tract. TheoL-Pol. cap. IV.
(Elwes, vol. I., pp. 58 and 66) ; letter to Isaac Orobio (Ep. XLIX.) with which cf. the keen
outburst in Eth. V. 41, schol. ; and especially Tract. Pol., II. § 7, and the letter addressed to
Schaller dealing with Tschirnhausen's objections. (Ep. LVIII.)
2 See the earlier part of Eth. V.— specially the scholium to proposition 20.
3 See pp. 191, 192 infra.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
In Spinoza's discussion of individual morality, we were specially
concerned to note how the view there taken by him lifted men above the
position of mere modes of one of the attributes. So far as this went,
it constituted a recognition alike of the true nature of the cogito and
of its true place and function in the system of reality. Now, if Spin
oza holds to the new point of view, as he advances from the individ
ual to the state, this recognition will be made both deeper and wider.
The whole insight, so to speak, will move in a wider field, and thus
the process of restoring the cogito to its rights will be carried onward
toward its conclusion.
For the state is one of the great works of the cogito; or, to employ
more modern language, it is a great structure of objective reason.
The long process of the formation of the state is one in which the
rational spirit has struggled and still is struggling, to work out a form
of organised society in the life of which that rational spirit will find
its own true home, will fulfil the law of its own being, will realise its
own essential and eternal nature. Hence, the state is not something
external to man. Nor do its laws ultimately represent a mere com
pulsion from without. On the contrary, it is only by living the life
of a member of the state that man truly becomes man at all. And
his political freedom consists precisely in belonging to a state whose
laws are, such that he can adopt them as his own laws and find in them
his guide toward the fulfilment of his own nature.
Under certain limitations this view of the state was taken for
granted by Greek citizens ; still more by Greek men of thought. Freed
from the Greek limitations, it received an elaborate and systematic
formulation from Hegel. And by at least one statesman of modern
days it was thrown into the language of practical politics — in Burke' s
great saying that the state is not a contract limited to man's lower
interests, but on the contrary is " a partnership in all science, a part
nership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and in all
perfection."
But Spinoza, when he passes from the consideration of individual
morality to the consideration of the state, does rot make this advance.
And the reason why is plain. In that very consideration of individual
morality, he conceives the good, as we have just seen, in a thoroughly
185
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
iutellectualistic way. Now, an intellectualistic good is not a selfish
good. Nor is it an individualistic good in the sense that the obtaining
of it by one man prevents the obtaining of it by others. But it is
individualistic in the sense that it can be realised by men who stand
almost alone; who live, as Spinoza himself did, in comparative
solitude. It is not necessarily a good the very striving after which
leads to, and is fulfilled in, the building up of great social structures
and the establishing of great social institutions.
Moreover, the view which Spinoza takes of the whole cogito is in
accordance with that intellectualistic view of the good. When the will
is reduced to intellect;1 and when, in the peculiar way described by
him, the intellect extends its domain over the emotions and passions : —
then the cogito which is left is not one which is driven forth by its
own nature to social activities, nor one which can find its true home
only in the life of an organised society.
Hence in Spinoza's views concerning the state we must not look
for any great advance in the direction indicated above. First, indeed,
we shall see that certain of his political positions do look in that
direction. But we shall have also to notice that in his latest writing,
the Tractatus Politicus, a theory comes forward which almost super
sedes those and swings far backward toward the point of view of the
" second metaphysic."
First, then, for the positions which imply the view that the state
stands in organic relation to the individual, and that therefore he who
would be truly a man and would truly realise man's nature, must live
in the state and perform the functions of a citizen. — These are found
particularly in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For instance, in
the fourth chapter,2 he refuses to regard legislation as in its genuine
nature a force acting on the citizen from without. He rises to one of
his rare invectives when he speaks of those whose object in obeying
law is merely the avoidance of punishment. But the man who
follows the precept suum cuique, not because he fears the gallows, but
" from a knowledge of the true reason for laws and their necessity " —
1 See Eth. II. 49. Cor. Spinoza here says that the will and the intellect are one and the
same thing. But, with him, that virtually means the reduction of the will to intellect.
2 Elwes, vol. I., p. 58.
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THE MBTAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
he it is who " acts from a firm purpose and of his own accord, and is
therefore properly called just." Again, in the sixteenth chapter, in
dealing with the duty of subjects to obey the commands of the
sovereign power, he remarks : " That state is the freest whose laws
are founded on sound reason, so that every member of it may, if he
will, be free ; that is, live with full consent under the entire guidance
of reason."1
And the attitude revealed in such hints as those is carried still
farther in what we may call his theory of the relation of church and
state. " God," he says, " has no special kingdom among men, except
in so far as He reigns through temporal rulers."2 " It is only
through " those who possess the right of ruling and legislating " that
God rules among men, and directs human affairs with equity."3 Thus
"secular rulers are the proper interpreters of divine right."4 But
from this it follows that the sovereign rulers " are the proper inter
preters of religion and piety."5 " If we would obey God rightly,"
" the outward observances of religion and all the external practices of
piety should be brought into accordance with the public peace and
well-being."6 " We cannot, therefore, doubt that the daily sacred
rites . . . are under the sole control of the sovereign power; no
one, save by the authority or concession of such sovereign, has the
right or power of administering them, of choosing others to adminis
ter them, of defining or strengthening the foundations of the church
and her doctrines; of judging on questions of morality or, acts of
piety; of receiving any one into the church or excommunicating him
therefrom, or, lastly, of providing for the poor."7 With these passages
may be taken one of wider scope from the last chapter of the treatise. —
" It follows plainly from the explanation given above of the founda
tions of a state, that the ultimate aim of government is not to rule or
restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise to free every
i Elwes, vol. L, p. 206.
2 Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. XIX. Elwes, vol. I., p. 245.
3 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 248.
4 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249.
5 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249.
6 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249.
7 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. L, p. 252.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
man from, fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other
words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury
to himself or others. No, the object of government is not to change
men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them
to develop their minds and bodies in security and to employ their
reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger or deceit, nor
watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim
of government is liberty."1
The view of the organic relation of the individual and the state
implies not only a doctrine as to what the function of the law is and
as to why we should obey the law. It implies also a doctrine concern
ing the width of state action : whatever the state can do to enable its
individual members to live truly human lives and to fulfil the nature
of man, that the state ought to do. The Spinozistic views just noted
lean toward a doctrine of this kind. But Spinoza never works his way
to a clear possession of it. Alongside such passages as those referred
to in the immediately preceding paragraphs, stand others wherein
Spinoza regards the function of the state as limited to the securing of
peace, and the guarding of the individual against the hindrances of
violence and disorder. " By human law," he says in the fourth chapter
of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,2 " I mean a plan of living
which serves only to render life and the state secure." And in the
Tractatus Politicus he says : " The quality of the state of any
dominion is easily perceived from the end of the civil state, which end
is nothing else but peace and security of life. And therefore, that
dominion is the best where men pass their lives in unity and the laws
are kept unbroken."3 Though even here it is fair to note the qualifica
tion which he presently adds :4 " When, then, we call that dominion
best, where men pass their lives in unity, I understand a human life,
defined not by mere circulation of the blood, and other qualities
common to all animals, but above all by reason, the true excellence and
life of the mind."
i Tract. TheoL-PoL cap. XX. Elwes, vol. I., pp. 258, 259.
2 Elwes, vol. I., p. 59.
3 Tract. Pol. V. § 2. Elwes, vol. I., p. 313.
4 Ibid. cap. V. § 5. Elwes. vol. I., p. 314.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
But finally, as was said above, we come, at the opening of the
Tractatus Politicus, upon a doctrine which swings decidedly back
toward the point of view of the second metaphysic. This is the great
doctrine that natural right is " potentia " ; and this doctrine roots
itself directly in the view that man is "pars naturae," i.e., in the
language of the Ethics, a mode of one of the attributes.
"... Every natural thing has by nature as much right as it
has power to exist and to operate; since the natural power of every
natural thing whereby it exists and operates, is nothing else but the
power of God which is absolutely free. And so by natural right I
understand the very laws or rules of nature, in accordance with which
everything takes place; in other words, the power of nature itself.
And so the natural right of universal nature, and consequently of every
individual thing, extends as far as its power : and accordingly, what
ever any man does after the laws of his nature, he does by the highest
natural right, and he has as much right over nature as he has power/'1
On this ground is rested man's right over nature. " If two come
together and unite their strength, they jointly have more power, and
consequently more right over nature, than both of them separately, and
the more there are that have so joined in alliance, the more right they
all collectively will possess."2 And on no different ground is rested
the right of the state over its individual members. "... As
each individual in the state of nature, so the body and mind of a
dominion have as much right as they have power. And thus each
single citizen or subject has the less right, the more the common
wealth exceeds him in power, and each citizen consequently does and
has nothing but what he may by the general decree of the common
wealth defend."3 "... Whatever he [each individual] is
ordered by the general consent, he is bound to execute, or may right
fully be compelled thereto."4 So that it is quite inconceivable that
" every citizen should be allowed to interpret the commonwealth's
decrees or laws " and thus " be his own judge."5 — It will be noted
1 Tract. Pol. II. §§ 3 and 4. Elwes, vol. I., p. 292.
2 Ibid. II. § 13. Elwes, vol. I., p. 296.
3 Ibid. III. § 2. Elwes, vol. I., p. 301.
4 Ibid. II. § 16. Elwes, vol. I., p. 297.
5 Ibid. III. (esp. § 4-Elwes, vol. I., p. 302).
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
exactly why this doctrine is referred to here. It is not for the purpose
of criticising Spinoza's strong assertion of the right of the state over
the individual. A sovereignty of the state over the individual there
must be, if civil society is to exist at all. But what we have to mark
is that the particular way in which Spinoza here gains a theory of
sovereignty, constitutes not an advance in the process of restoring the
cogito to its rights, but rather a relapse toward the point of view of
the " second metaphysic."
Let us pass, then, from Spinoza's political views to the last of the
three subjects upon which we have here to touch — namely, to his
conception of religion.1 If it was true that in the state we find the
cogito going forth from itself and building up a great objective
structure in whose life it realises its own being, even more is this same
thing true in religion. For in religion the rational spirit not only
builds up great objective structures. It not only organises men, and
establishes customs, and founds institutions. But it does all these
things, not from a point of view limited to this present life, but from the
point of view of that total or eternal life which is the real life of man.
That is, it tries to take the highest and ultimate point of view, and
from that point of view to organise man's life and to fashion man's
society. In doing this, it even seeks to make the state its minister,
and to make man's political life a phase or aspect of his total, or
religious, life. Nor, ultimately, can this be avoided. It is true, com
promises, and divisions of the field between religion and politics, may
be useful or even necessary in this present life. But ultimately
religion cannot leave outside of itself anything whatsoever which is
human. It must either seek to shape the whole life of man; or else
acknowledge that the point of view from which it is endeavouring to
organise man's life is not the highest and is not ultimate.
But it follows from this that an adequate theory of religion would
complete that process which an adequate theory of the state would
have carried part way: — the process of restoring the cogito to that
supreme place in philosophy, from which Descartes, with the best of
intentions toward it, had been the means of pulling it down. But
i With this and the immediately following paragraphs, compare what is said on pp.
195-198 infra, concerning a contribution ultimately made to religion by the "second
metaphysic."
190
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
what we have already seen will guard us from expecting any such
adequate theory from Spinoza. He really has two views of the religious
life, as Pfleiderer points out.1 And these both lead us back to the
discussions just examined,, rather than forward to a still fuller
possession of the new point of view. The one refers us to the theory
of the state. The other takes us back to the theory of the individual's
summum bonum.
In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza views religion as
obedience to the divine commands,, as a life of practical piety. This
life of piety he sunders quite sharply, indeed sunders absolutely, from
philosophical insight. If it be guided by revelation, that revelation
itself is received under the form of imagination, not under that of
reason. And, as we have already seen, its rites and outward observ
ances, are to be in accordance with the public peace and well-being,
and are therefore to be determined by the sovereign power alone; i.e.,
as the rational organisation of man's life the state is both wider and
deeper than the church and includes the church. Indeed, religion in
this sense is doubly sundered from reason. Not only is it insisted
that philosophical insight is not its basis or source (so that Philosophy
and Theology stand altogether apart). But the separation is made so
absolute that reason is regarded as incapable of showing us this way
of salvation at all.2 So that, in what is the especial work of Spinoza's
" third metaphysic " — the work, namely, of putting thought in its true
place in the system of reality — this part of his theory of religion can
scarcely be said to take us any farther than did his theory of the state.
But, besides this, Spinoza has another view of religion. This is
brought forward in those closing pages of the Ethics where the theory
of the summum bonum receives that final development which trans
forms it into a theory of religion. In the third of those three kinds of
knowledge which he has distinguished in the De Intellectus Emenda-
tione.,3 we know things under the form of eternity ; that is to say, we
1 Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of its History, (Eng. tr. from 2nd German ed.,
vol. I., p. 62).
2 Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. XV. (see especially Elwes, vol. I., p. 194 and p. 198, along with
Spinoza's annotation in loc.— Elwes, vol. I., p. 276 [25], Van Vloten et Land, vol. I., p.
625 [xxxi]).
3 See Elwes, vol. IT., p. 8 seq. Four kinds of "perception or knowledge " are men
tioned in this passage ; but Spinoza usually groups these as three (see Eth. II. 40, schol. 2 ;
V. 25-28, 31-33).
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
know them in God. But thus to know things is truly to know God.
This, furthermore, is our perfection, and we joy in it. This joy is
attended by the idea of God as its cause. And this, according to
Spinoza's definition,1 is love. Thus arises that unselfish and disinter
ested intellectual love of God2 which does not expect or endeavour to
be loved by God in return.3
In this intellectual love of God consists the essence of religion
according to Spinoza's second conception of it. How high and pure
and disinterested this conception is; how this lofty disinterestedness
is seen also in his theory of immortality ;4 how in later days great poets
and teachers were touched by it : — these are topics upon which any lover
of Spinoza would gladly linger. To turn away from them to the work
of criticism seems almost like ingratitude. Yet if we are to learn
from Spinoza that which Spinoza has to teach, we must repeat
even here the question which especially concerns us as we discuss his
" third metaphysic." How far, then, does this conception take us in
restoring the cogito to its place as a principle of philosophical explana
tion, and thus in giving to reason its due place in the system of
reality ?
The answer is, that it really takes us no farther in this direction
than did the theory of individual morality. This intellectualistic
religion is the bloom upon that intellectualistic summum ~bonum. No
more here than there can reason be pourtrayed going forth from itself
and building those great structures of church and state in which it
realises its nature and fulfils the law of its being. This, as Pfleiderer
points out,5 is the reason why Spinoza is never able to bring into
organic relation the two kinds of religion which he has described : this
intellectualistic religion to which men of disciplined mind may attain,
and which requires no institutions; and that religion of the many,
described in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which has a revela
tion, and institutions, and a social organisation.6
1 The sixth of the definitions of the emotions appended to Eth. III. Cf. III. 13. schol.
2 Eth. V. 15.
3 Eth. V. 19.
4 Eth. V. 21-23, 29-31, 3840, and specially 41.
5 Op. cit., (Eng. tr., vol. I., pp. 65, 66).
6 Now that the three tendencies in Spinoza's thinking are before us, the position of the
second relatively to the other two may be indicated in this way :— It stands midway
192
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
VIII.
Such, then, was the place occupied by Spinoza in that process of
development which is the history of philosophy. Descartes, standing
in the forefront of a new age and seized to his heart's core by its spirit,
had attempted to take his stand as if at the very beginnings of
science; had attempted to free himself from all assumptions, and to
show forth the bare fact as he found it. He could not, it is true,
annihilate the past. He could not put himself back where Vedic poet
or Ionic cpvffioXoyos had stood. The cogito became self-conscious in
him as it could not in them. But though his material was so different
from theirs, yet in dealing with it he put himself nearly upon the same
logical level as they; he used the same order of categories, and so
followed essentially the same method of conceiving reality. But while
it was thus given to him to initiate the first stage of modern philosophy,
it was not given to him to carry it through to its conclusion. To
develop the full significance of the categories which dominated it; to
carry its method through to a final result; to formulate this result
fearlessly and uncompromisingly, turning aside for no influence either
of church or of state; and thus, with the emphasis of a final word, to
make clear what the ultimate outcome is of this way of attempting to
get at the truth of our experience : — this was reserved for Spinoza.
between the first and the third in the sense that, in working out its view of the world as
one, it keeps its hold upon certain parts and aspects of the manifold, but makes abstraction
of other parts and aspects. And those of which it makes abstraction are precisely those
which, as human development goes on, come more and more to be the supreme interests
of men. Yet even in this (so long as the scientific interest in the details of the world
remains dominant) its face must be regarded as turned toward the third rather than
toward the first. For though it abstracts from the aspects of reality just referred to, and
leaves no home for them in the One (and therefore cannot in their nature find a key
to the nature of the One), yet it does this, not in the sense of making a conscious
and intentional abstraction, such as he makes who believes abstraction to be
the sole way to truth ; but only in the sense that it has never seen them, has never
felt the pressure of the problem which they raise. And such abstraction is likely to be
overcome in the end. For if any aspect at all of the manifold be admitted into the
One, the other aspects, coming forward each in its own time, may be depended upon to
enforce their claims with an emphasis that increases with the deepening of human
experience, and at last becomes irresistible. But the conscious and thoroughgoing
abstraction which the first tendency makes is a different matter. By its very nature it
lies almost beyond correction through any art of persuasion. For of what avail is logical
refutation against a man who has found that human thought and speech cannot express
that which alone is real, and in union with which is the only true life of the soul ?
14 193
THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
And this alone would make him, in the history of thought, one of
that small number of abiding figures with which it is the primary
task of the student of the history of philosophy to deal. But there is
more than that. In carrying the logic of Cartesianism forward to its
conclusion, he was no Wolff rounding out the teaching of a great
master and destroying its vitality in the process. On the contrary, his
was an original and searching intellect, having life in itself, and driven
by its own inner forces to penetrate to the elements of things. Hence
it was impossible for him to stop short with that acosmic or mystic
view which is the ultimate outcome of the Cartesian way of dealing
with experience and the experienced world. Other types of thought
found a place in his mind and won from him an adherence which was
perfectly sincere: the naturalistic spirit of modern science made its
appeal to him, and, in defiance of the logic which required an abstract
Absolute, he made the One Substance the home of innumerable modes,
and gave to each mode its conatus in suo esse perseverandi; and he
even has glimpses of the Idealistic insight that spirit or reason is the
reality of all things, and the active agent in all cosmic processes.
Of such an historical position the result is that he who makes
Spinoza his companion makes the greatest things in philosophy his
companions. On one side, he finds himself brought into touch with
the austere and immemorial thought of Vedantist and Eleatic and
Mystic. On another, he is linked, by affinity rather than by similarity,
with that long succession of men of thought whose greatest name is
still that of Democritus — the men who seek to interpret the world, or
various aspects of it, by the conception- of a natural necessity acting
a tergo.1 And on still another side — or rather in his final attitude
when he seeks to take into himself Spinoza's thought as a whole — he
finds himself with his face set toward Kant, and toward that still
greater man of thought who articulated Kant's deepest insight into a
systematic view of the world and of the world's history.
And the way in which Spinoza's system — indeed, the way in which
i Affinity but not similarity.— The Spinoza of the "second metaphysic " agrees with
these men of science in attempting to explain the actual system of things by a necessity
which (1) is immanent, (2) acts a tergo. But he differs from them in that he takes the
divine nature itself as the home and seat of this necessity. He, if one may so speak, lifts
his Democriteanism into the very nature of God, and values it as the true interpretation
of that nature.
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THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA
the whole movement from Descartes to Spinoza — thus cries out for
Kant, is in one sense the most important point of all for the student
of Spinoza. For if we would understand a system in which diverse
aspects stand unreconciled side by side, we must gain a point of view
above the diversities. We must gain a point of view from which we
can see how they came to be what they are ; and what the failure and
yet the relative justification of each is; and how they may all be
taken up into a greater and more comprehensive system which will
give to each its due without sanctioning the error which each has
when it attempts to stand alone and to make itself a finality. And
precisely the way to gain such a point of view for the study of Spinoza
is, first to make one's journey from him to Kant and Hegel ; and then
from these back again to Spinoza, in order to interpret him in the light
gained" from those who finally satisfied the need which he intensified.
But that brings us to our last question. Let us suppose that the
journey just mentioned has been made. Let us suppose that Kant
and the Kantians have done their work, and that we are viewing things
from the new point of view thus made possible to us. Is there not
still — so our question would run — a great lesson for us to learn from
Spinoza; a lesson which we can learn all the better now; which,
indeed, we could not have learned properly at all had not Kant come
to teach us ? Leaving the purely historical interest aside, and thinking
only of our own outlook upon our world, is there not still a great
reason why we should continue our pilgrimages to Spinoza? A brief
consideration of certain facts will show us that to this question we
must give an affirmative answer.
First, since Kant and Hegel, we can no longer separate God and
the world in the way which was once thought agreeable to truth and
necessary to religion. We may say that God is the subject of the
world ; or that the world is God's thought, or God's activity, or God's
objective consciousness. Or we may prefer to retain a theological term
and say that the world is a continuous creation. But however "we
phrase it, we cannot escape from the position that God and the world
stand in organic relation.
But, secondly, it follows from this that we can no longer think
highly of God by thinking meanly of the world. On the contrary, to
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
think meanly of the world is to think meanly of God. If, then, we
would retain those high thoughts concerning God which the men of
the heroic ages of religion had, we must gain high thoughts of the
world such as those men had not. And there is one aspect of
Spinoza's thought which helps us to gain just such thoughts1 — the
aspect which comes especially forward in what we have been calling
his " second metaphysic." The way upward from the medieval view of
this present world and of nature, to juster views of these, was a long
and arduous way. It called for brave soldiers in the " war of the liber
ation of humanity." Of these Spinoza was one ; and this seemingly so
anti-religious " second metaphysic " was precisely one of his instru
ments in that war. The peculiar form of the category of cause
employed in this metaphysic is indeed inadequate to the matter to be
comprehended. But even with this inadequate category Spinoza makes
plain the greatness of the world, and the majesty of those laws which
are changeless and inviolable just because they are expressions of the
necessity of the Divine nature.
" But," it may be urged, " the metaphysic in question has been the
choice weapon, not of the merely irreligious, but of the positively and
avowedly anti-religious, in all the great ages of human culture. Is
there not something paradoxical in the statement that precisely by this
metaphysic Spinoza made a great and lasting contribution to the
deepest spiritual needs of man ? You say that in Spinoza we have, on
the one side, a man of religion — a man who expresses religion ' in its
most concentrated and exclusive form . . . that attitude of the
mind in which all other relations are swallowed up in the relation of
the soul to God ' ;2 while, on the other side, we have a man of natural
istic temper whose business it was to explain nature as a system of
necessitated modes. And then you say that it is the latter, rather than
the former, who has contributed to modern religion. Surely this is
paradox. Or is your meaning simply this : that modern man can gain
from a naturalistic metaphysic what Spinoza himself frequently seems
1 Cf. p. vii. of the Preface to the second edition (1894) of Mr. Hale White's transla
tion of the Ethics.
2 From the Master of Balliol's apt definition of Mysticism (Evolution of Theology in
the Greek Philosophers, vol. II., p. 210). Cf. the following reference to Spinoza's "Athe
ism "— " In him the tendency to unity, to the infinite, to religion, overbalanced itself, till,
by mere excess it seemed to be changed into its own opposite." (Philosophy of Kant,
" -sgow, 1877, p. 43. )
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
to gain from it — the Stoic peace which, arises from the very thought of
the necessity that is in the world, and from the insight that no freedom
is desirable except the freedom obtained by adopting this necessity as
one's own law ?"
No, the answer must run, that is not what is meant. The Stoic faith
that the necessity of nature is the wisest and kindliest and most reason
able of all things ; and the resolute peace which such faith brings : —
these, it is true, one can learn from Spinoza. But what is here in view is
something different: this, namely, — present-day religion and theology
can learn, and have learned, a lesson from Spinoza, but the lesson itself
has been determined not so much by what Spinoza has to give as by
what the modern world is able to receive. For the characteristic
devotion of modern men is to their intellectual and practical citizen
ship in this present world. They cannot neglect the creature in order
to find the Creator. They cannot turn away from the world; what
they seek, alike in thought, in labour, in religion, is the mastery of it.
It is true, indeed, as already we have' had occasion to notice,1 that
Mysticism is not without its place among modern men. That ancient
spirit still passes to and fro, finding in solitary hearts and in quiet
societies its chosen, and bidding them, if they would truly live, to lose
themselves, not in the great energies of the world, but in God. And
if we had among us Mystics in the greatness of the ancient pattern — a
Bernard or an Eckhart — they might be powerful by the mere weight
of their practical example. Their devotion to ends intangible to us,
their absolute rejection of goods that we take for granted as the true
goods of life, might shock and surprise us into a re-examination of
our lives and into a questioning of our habitual " scale of values."
But the fact remains, that from Mysticism, in the full and historical
sense of the name, the modern world is virtually incapable of learn
ing. And from this it follows at once that when modern men make a
pilgrimage to Spinoza, it is not to the Spinoza of the " first meta-
physic."
But the need of which the modern world is conscious, in the realm
where thought and religion meet, is this. — What is wrought into the1
very texture of the modern mind is the idea of natural law. Hence,,
l Supra, pp. 151, 152.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
if religion is to be, not a mere partisan fighting for its existence, but
the rightful and undoubted master of life, we must be enabled to see
natural law as a way of God, and the uniformity of natural law as an
appropriate expression of the rationality of God — an appropriate
expression of a divine reason which, being absolutely perfect, cannot
be capricious or arbitrary, and which is immanent in the whole of
nature. I do not mean to say that this is the precise point of view
taken by Spinoza in his " second metaphysic " ; at any rate, it is not
the form of expression there used. But it is the lesson which the
wisest and most sensitive of modern leaders of religious thought have
been able to learn from this aspect of Spinoza's teaching — leaders of
whom Herder, who was half theologian and half poet, and, therefore,
eminently fitted to learn valuable lessons in Spinoza's school, is a
representative.1
Such, on this side of its history, has been the strange outcome of
the thought of Spinoza. It had in it a metaphysic which, to use
words already quoted, is the theoretical expression of religion " in its
most concentrated and exclusive form " ; and it had in it a metaphysic
which for centuries has been denounced as atheistic and anti-religious.
And of these two it was the latter, and not the former, which (through
men such as those just referred to — men of Herder's type) entered
beneficently into modern religious thinking, and helped in making
possible that insight which the world needed for composing the strife
between science and religion. For men who are in earnest about
religion — specially for men who are concerned with its intellectual
defense, or with interpreting it to new generations and changed minds
—few facts are more full of instruction and of warning than this. It
shows, for one thing, what mere sincerity in thinking can do. From
i It is a lesson which can be learned also from Wordsworth ; in fact, in Wordsworth it
has its highest and soundest form. And it can be learned from Goethe ; but those whose
good opinion is most worth having will not censure me if I prefer— though it would be a
happiness to be able to use gentler words in speaking of the great German to whom all
thoughtful modern men, whether they like it or no, are profoundly indebted— a single
touch of the pure heart and upright spirit of Wordsworth, to all that vast intelligence,
all that comprehension of the world from the point of view of art, for which the name
of Goethe stands. Wordsworth's spirit not only is morally higher, but it also brings a
.sounder and truer understanding of the real nature of the world. For the real nature
of the world is, if I may be allowed such an expression, passionately moral. And this
Wordsworth knew ; and so did Plato ; but Goethe did not.
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA
anything that seemed to be truth, or to be an aspect of truth, Spinoza
would not turn away. No matter how austere its countenance, he not
merely received it, but made it a welcome guest. And the result was
that, from a seemingly " anti-religious " view, later generations
learned a lesson which was in the most fundamental way serviceable
to religion. And it shows another thing: apologists who imagine
that religion can go forward only over the dead body of some scientific
truth have comprehended neither the depth nor the breadth of that
which they have taken it as their life-work to defend. Eeligion has
few more injurious friends than those who are strong in attacking
opponents, but weak in comprehending and interpreting their own
position.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM.1
IN the pathetic and winning history of Mysticism one of the most
marked features is a certain impersonality. Not that Mysticism has
been without its special champions ; in its history there are outstand
ing figures — the great and daring men of thought who clung to the
hope of union with reality,, even while they were formulating the world-
shattering logic which puts reality beyond the reach of all the normal
forms and energies of our experience. But these are not so much
individual men of thought who by their own labour make their way
to a new insight, and win a generation to it, and so become the founders
of a school and a tradition. Eather they are voices for some
thing wider than themselves ; something that works dimly in the mind
of an age, like a hidden ferment, and slowly gathers shape, and comes
at last to the spoken word. When some great race finds life an unsat
isfied hunger or a burden of pain; when some great civilisation, with
all its skill and wealth and luxury, weighs itself in the balances and
finds itself wanting; when some generation, possessed by the vision
and the passion of religion, finds its established religion a thing
external, ceremonial, priestly: — then, as by an original tendency of
human nature, and with no need of historical support or derivation, the
temper of Mysticism arises like a spirit moving upon the face of the
deep ; and, having arisen, finds its prophets. It is the business of the
Idealist to persuade and convince men, as best he can, under all cir
cumstances and in every spiritual climate; but the Mystic speaks
usually to hearts made ready for his word ; and, to them, speaks with
overwhelming power. Indeed, the passage of mystic doctrine from
land to land and age to age has seldom been more aptly described
1 1 am indebted to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for the generous permission
which has enabled me to quote from Jowett's translation,
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
than by Professor Royce,1 when he calls to our minds the words of
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner:
I pass, like night, from land to land ;
I have strange power of speech ;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me :
To him my tale I teach.
The history of Idealism has been very different. He who first
formulated it, formulated it by the energies of the constructive
reason in him ; and formulated it well-nigh for ever. To its funda
mental positions he worked his way slowly, sounding onward as
through an unknown sea ; availing himself of the diverse results of the
earlier science of his race, but going far beyond anything of which it
even had dreamed; and showing himself so pre-eminent in the power
and insight of the labouring reason that since his day Idealism has
never departed without profound loss from what is essential in his
method and teaching, nor returned without receiving the touch and
the inspiration of a new life.
In the first place, he fixed for ever the scientific point of departure
of Idealism — the question how our knowledge is possible. Then, pro
ceeding from that point of departure, he not only moved in the true
direction in his attempt to comprehend the nature of reality and the
meaning of our life, but moved so far in that true direction that the
way was made easy to all who in later days could enter into his teach
ing as it really was. And another thing he did, in which his greatness
as the founder of Idealism culminates. He stated his view of the
world with a grace of temper, an elevation of soul, a prophetic and
compelling passion, such as gave to his truth a double power and made
it to the men of later ages an illumination and an austere allurement,
a persuasion and a rebuke.
This Plato did; being one of those rare and most mighty spirits
in whom the gifts and the insights that are given singly to other men,
appear in combination, and in that combination take on a new and
greater power, each contributing to the other, each enlightening the
i The World and the Individual, First Series, p. 85.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
other, each deepening the other. First, there came to union in him
the two great scientific currents in which the constructive thinking of
the Greeks had hitherto run : the older metaphysic, Ionian or Italian,
which sought to comprehend the universe as a universe ; and the newer
Socratic " way of ideas." In this combination each side found its true
fulfilment in the other, so that, in the place of two brilliant but limited
endeavours, there arose a single complete and solidly based and
thoroughly luminous view of the world. Then, secondly, this synthesis
itself was part of a still wider synthesis. On the one side, as the
achievement just referred to indicates, he had in him the scientific
mind. He had its intellectual disinterestedness, its passion after
knowledge for its own sake, its instinct for looking straight upon facts
and seeing them with clear eyes just as they are; he inherited, in a
word, not simply the results of the previous scientific history of the
Greeks, but also their scientific temper in the very perfection of those
qualities which have made the Hellenic mind to all ages the pattern
of the scientific mind. But he was possessed also, and to the very
centre of his being, by the great practical passions: by the passion,
moral and political, which seeks to shape life and the social organisa
tion of life according to the good ; and by the religious passion which
apprehends, as the good, the ultimate principle of the universe, and
thus sets the whole of man's life in the light of a heavenly vision, and
directs all his energies to the works whose significance is eternal. And
in him those things— that disinterested scientific temper, that passion
ate devotion to the realisation of the good, and that profound religious
ness — were not warring tendencies; they were co-operating powers,
each widening the scope and deepening the character of the others.
And even this is not the limit of the union and co-operation in him of
characters that ordinarily stand apart. Along with that scientific
intellect, that moral and political and religious temper, there went
the mind of the poet, and the capacities, both receptive and active, of
the artist. And this side of his nature, once more, — in spite of the
hostility that necessarily existed between him and those artists of his
race who either were artists and nothing more, or else represented a
reason earlier and unpurified by criticism — really worked together with
the others. He was half poet ; but in him poetic intuition was a form
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
of intelligence, rather than a rival of intelligence; and so the poet
in him made him a greater, not a less, philosopher. He had the Ionian
delight in beauty, and the Ionian command over the powers by which
beauty is expressed ; but he had also the earnestness of Lacedaemon —
no Dorian saw more clearly than he the need in human life of sim
plicity, of austere discipline, of that gravity of mind which lifts a man
above luxury, above levity, above the habit of imitation. He had the
unashamed Greek joy in the whole of existence ; yet he was haunted by
a vision of eternity which condemned alike the world that now is, and
the mythology of his race, and the political order of his state. He had
the Greek delight in life, the Greek instinct for the exercise and
development of all the faculties of the soul, the catholic Greek sense
for completeness and integrity of life; yet he knew that life can
reach its true wholeness and integrity, not by leaving all its elements
and interests upon a level, but only by recognising the good, and
putting it in its place of supremacy, and arranging the whole of life
as the manifold system of its realisation.
Such was the many-sided reason that dwelt in Plato and helped to
make him the greatest figure in the long history of philosophy. But
there is still something else. A metaphysician is a man who seeks to
ascertain the true meaning of our experience. And the man who
would do that, must have more than scientific temper and scientific
ability, more than a wide mind and large capacities of reason; per
sonally and vitally he must himself possess, on all its greater and
constitutive sides, the experience into whose meaning he would inquire.
For himself, and with directness and integrity of devotion, he must
have walked in the ways of life and have taken his part in the world's
work. And this requisite, too, was fulfilled in Plato. It was not only
that he was man of science, artist, poet; not only that he sustained
the part of friend and of teacher; but his heart was linked to the
greater causes in the life of his people ; he was a citizen drawn to the
welfare of the Greek states with an intensity of earnestness that had
in it the possibility, and at last the actuality, of tragic pain. He not
only had a vision of perfection, but felt the call to realise it ; to realise
it not abstractly nor in dream, but concretely in the life of his day — -
in the education which lasts from birth till death, and in the order of
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
the state. He did not rest, as Windelband so finely points out,1 in his
gaze upon the supersensuous world; he was not one of those saints
of contemplation who " receive into themselves the great picture of
existence and contemplate it in desireless peace." On the contrary,
having brought from the eternal realm ideals for this, he took up " with
passionate courage the struggle against the powers of the earth," and
strove " with all the energies of his soul ' to improve and to convert ' the
world " ; he was — and is — " the chief of all the spirits who exercise
the energies of will." Such he was; and being such, there was no
escape for him from the wrestle with the world, no standing apart from
life, no remaining untouched by the storm of the times.
Thus, then, it was, that, while Spartan armies were going to and
fro upon the soil of Attica, there was given to the world in Plato its
most perfect example, not of philosophy only, but of the philosophic
mind. He was a great man of science; but he was more; he was a
mighty spirit, taking part in the struggle of man upon the earth, and
bringing to that struggle its illumination with eternal light. And so,
too, it was with his view of the world and of life ; it shows the intellect
working at its very highest power ; but it is more than a work of the
intellect. It is the passionate vision and creation of the entire human
soul ; a vision and creation in which the working of the greater
passions — the passion for the state, the passion for righteousness, the
passion for eternity — goes hand in hand with the highest energy of
the disinterested intellect.
In attempting to understand this philosophy of Plato's as a body
of doctrine — which involves not merely apprehending Plato's conclu
sions, but apprehending also the forces and tendencies that operated
in him to shape them — we have three things to remember at the outset.
First, Plato was an Idealist from the beginning; from the beginning
the root of the matter was in him — there were no Kantian wanderings.
But secondly, his Idealism was not complete from the beginning.
The Idealism of his early and middle years had in it an incomplete
ness which it was one of the great labours of his later years to remedy ;
1 At the close of his monograph on Plato (Frommanns Klassiker der Philosophic)— a.
brief but most admirable account, which ought to be translated into English.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
and this later work gave to the whole structure of his philosophy at
once greater depth, greater concreteness, and greater power. While
thirdly, throughout Plato's whole life the forces that make, not for
Idealism at all, but for Mysticism, acted upon him and found in his
soul a great response.
These facts give us our plan of treatment. We are to consider an
Idealist; but one whose Idealism (1) stands face to face with the
great opponent of Idealism, (2) undergoes development from within.
It will be wise to take the discussion in three steps : (1) To put down
in summary form the conclusions which constitute the Idealism of his
early and central years ; and in doing this, to note what the internal
incompleteness, just referred to, is. (2) Then to turn to the other
side, and consider the operation upon Plato, and in Plato, of the
influences that lead toward Mysticism. (3) Finally, to consider the
later stage of his philosophy, in order to see (a) how far he has made
good the incompleteness of his earlier Idealism, (/?) how far he has
overcome, and how far yielded to, the influences leading him toward
Mysticism. The two latter questions, it will be noted, do not stand
apart; they are so closely interconnected as really to form one ques
tion ; for the more clearly and fully Plato works out his Idealism, the
more completely does he overcome the tendency toward Mysticism.
First, then, from the dialogues up to and including the Republic,
we have to gather the ground-lines of the earlier Platonic Idealism,
and to set these down in the form of a brief summary.
I.
What Plato saw to begin with was that our experience, our actual
present life, in order to be what it is, must be a part in a system of
reality greater than anything that now appears to us. He saw — saw
with a clearness which simply startles an English student turning
back to him from Locke or Bentham or the Mills — that there is in our
present experience something which this present world cannot- give ;
that there operates in our experience something which that experience
itsel'f as it now stands cannot account for. For our experience involves
— one might almost say, is — the operation of conceptions which, both
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
in perfection and in universality, go beyond the particular things and
facts and events to which we apply them, and which we comprehend by
means of them. They, it must be repeated, are not merely present in
our experience ; they are active and formative in it. They are in our
minds not merely as something possessed, but as something operative;
operative in the whole process of our thinking and knowing and doing.
The straight line, for instance, the perfect circle, the perfect square,
the perfectly equiangular triangle — these conceptions and the many
similar ones which might be named, are, in the first place, actual
possessions of our minds; but not that only; they are absolutely
essential to even the most elementary process of knowing the world,
and in that process are continuously operative and continuously regu
lative. Yet this present world does not give them; there are no
straight lines or perfect circles in nature. And again, as we know
nature, so also we regulate our conduct, by conceptions which the
present world cannot give because it has them not to give. We seek
perfect truth, and justice absolute, and the courage that is complete in
wisdom ; but where are these to be found existing upon the earth ?
Here, then, in the elementary facts and the elementary form of our
scientific and moral experience, is a great problem; and this problem
is the point of departure for that great voyage of the intellect, to which
Plato, by many interests, practical even more than speculative, was
driven. As he advances from it, he works his way to a view of what
a Greek wmild call the form — a modern, the constitution or eternal
order — of the world; and to a corresponding view of the place, the
development, the true function, of the soul as a part of that eternal
world. This view we have now to consider; though, as we go on to
set it down in orderly outline, we must remember that Plato himself
nowhere presents it in one systematically articulated account ; for it
was his habit to develop now one, now another, of the many insights
which enter into it; and to develop these single insights, moreover,
by the method which best corresponds to the process and struggle and
gathering light of actual experience — the dialectic method.
(1) First, then, Plato finds the form or constitution of the world
to be essentially rational ; this is the keynote of his Idealism, and of
all Idealism. And unless Platonic Idealism, and all Idealism, is to be
15 209
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
radically misapprehended,, it must be clearly understood what it means
to say that the world is rational in its constitution. It means some
thing more than that each of the various things of the world has
independently in itself a rational nature. It means that all the things
of the world form one rational structure; form a system or process in
which reason is realised. A number of forms, each rational in the
sense of being apprehensible by reason, but simply existing side by
side, would not constitute a rational order. A rational order implies
some common purpose, some supreme principle, which is realised in
and through the total system or structure. That principle gives to
each part or element in the system its place and function, and by
giving to it its place and function gives it its meaning and reality.
So that the principle itself is at once the immanent law and con
stitutive energy — is even, in a sense, the essential reality — of the whole
system. This is true of any system, of any whole made up of parts,
which is to be called rational. Most of all is it true of that greatest of all
" ordered and organised " wholes which is the real world. If the real
world is an " ordered and organised whole," it is the realisation of some
one supreme principle, which is at once the source and the immanent
law of the structure of the world, and as such gives to each of those
individual forms that make up the system of the world, its place, its
function, its character, its reality. This principle realised and fulfilled
in the structure of the world, Plato, in accordance with Greek usage,
calls the Good. To him, that is to say, the. order or constitution of
the world consists in an hierarchy of rational forms — as he called
them, Ideas — with the Idea of Good at the head of the hierarchy. Or,
to put it in one word, the Good, as the source and law of all individual
determinations, of all individual capacities and functions, and thus of
all individual being, is the principle of reality.1
The steps in Plato's dialectic advance to this insight were of course
many. One of them we shall have to deal with later, in considering
the forces that broke in upon Plato's Idealism, and made it all the
greater by making its battle harder. Here, however, a brief hint at
the general course of this part of the Platonic argument will be
i See Philosophical Lectures and Remains of Bichard Lewis Nettleship, 1st ed., vol.
II., pp. 217-237.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
sufficient. First, Plato saw that particular objects cannot stand alone.
Their lack of an abiding form, their incessant change, their .arising
and their decay, show that they do not maintain their own being or
exist in their own right. How, then, are they to be accounted for ? At
the very lowest — making your first concession to reason as small as
you possibly can — you must go at least this far : that for each of the
kinds, for each group of similar things, there must be some one abid
ing reality which fulfils itself through them and their changes. This
abiding reality — to which Plato gave the name Idea — he, at the
beginning of his work, tended to some extent to view as the common
element that remained when the differences of the particulars were
stripped away. But more and more he came to view it as an energetic
principle, a creative power, which manifests itself in and through the
things; so that instead of our being compelled to abstract from the
differences to get it, it itself explains those differences. An Idea
might perhaps be best defined for the modern mind by saying that
each Idea, together with the things of which it is the principle, would
form the object of a special science or special department of science.1
But with this " lowest possible concession" we cannot stop. For
these constitutive principles of the various classes of existence cannot
themselves stand apart or maintain their own being. They are not
independent existences, standing side by side for ever; they must be
conceived as forming one order, one universe. And what that means
we have already seen ; they are the media or organs through which one
highest principle, one supreme creative energy, the Good, fulfils itself.
(2) The nature and operative principles of our minds correspond
to the nature and operative principles of the world ; 'thus it is that
knowledge and intelligent conduct are possible to us. The soul which
is man, is in organic union with those constitutive principles of the
world (the Ideas) — or, if you will, is in organic possession of them.
It brings them, or the potentiality of them, with it as its equipment
for the business of life, as its principles of knowledge and its standards
of conduct. This insight Plato delighted to set forth in myths of
unexampled splendour. But the meaning of the myths is plain: the
i E. Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. I., p. 119 seq.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
real world is rational; the soul is reason; therefore, science and
intelligent conduct are alike possible.
(3) But that nature of the soul, and those its operative principles,
are developed only gradually, in and by that process in which we at
once apprehend reality and come to be ourselves. In knowing the
world, the reason which is man, recognising the presence and operation
of those eternal principles in the world, comes more and more into
possession of them, and so comes more and more truly to be itself.
This apprehension of the world, in its gradual development, passes
from stage to stage of clearness; passes, as Plato at one point says,1
through three lower stages to find rest in a fourth. The first two of
these (" conjecture" and "belief"), which represent the working of
the intellect below the " scientific " level, we need not dwell upon here.
But we must notice carefully the third, and the transition from it to
the fourth. The third is what nowadays we should call the stage of
the special sciences. Its defect is that each of its special divisions has
its own point of view and its own point of departure ; so that instead
of seeing one universe in the light of one supreme principle, it almost
has several universes. Or, as one may put it, it begins too far down
the stream, and so, instead of seeing one stream, flowing from one
fountainhead, it sees only several different currents. At this
stage, then, knowledge is inaccurate in the sense of being abstract,
" unfinished," incomplete. But in the fourth stage, knowledge
becomes adequate in form to its object. For here knowledge
directs itself to that supreme principle, only in the light of
which can any particular thing whatever be truly understood;
namely, to the Good, which the whole system and structure of the
universe is intended to realise, and which, therefore, determines the
place and function — that is to say, determines the reality — of each
individual thing in the total system. So that the Good, just as it is
the principle of being, is also the principle of knowledge. With
regard both to the world and to our minds it is the principle of intel
ligence; for it is its activity, as giving to the things of the world
•definite determinations, definite places in the system, definite
functions, that makes the things of the world intelligible; and it is
i Republic, 509 D seq.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OP IDEALISM
only through an apprehension of it that our minds can enter fully and
finally into a true apprehension of things, and so become truly and
fully intelligent. Hence, too, knowledge of it (and conformity of
character to it) is the ultimate object of education; and it is in the
science which seeks to apprehend it, that education — for those who are
able to go so far — culminates.
(4) To live in accordance with that true nature of the world is
the true way of life for men. The world, as a system in which a
supreme principle, the Good, realises itself (in measure and beauty
and truth, as Plato said later),1 furnishes the pattern according to
which man should organise his life. Indeed that statement is too
weak; for the world is the whole in which man lives; so that the
Good which is the organising principle of its structure and order,
should be the organising principle for his life. That is to say, the
Good (that which the world exists to realise) is more than a pattern
for man; it is that to which men should directly devote themselves
and seek to realise. So that the Good, as it is the principle of being, and
the principle of intelligence, is also the moral end for man. Moral
ity means to know the Good which is the eternal law of the world, and
to make it the supreme principle of one's own life. But further : men
cannot realise the Good as solitary individuals. They must become
what the world is — a jcoffjuos, an " ordered and organised " society,
a state. The state, then, is a human institute for the realisation of
the Good. In accordance with that purpose and no other, the state
is to frame its constitution, to train its citizens, to educate its legisla
tors and statesmen ; — is even to limit its own size, so that the individ
ual citizen shall not be prevented from participating in the whole of its
life. And if a man is compelled to live in a state whose constitution
is evil or imperfect, let him organise his life so far as he can in
accordance with the order of the city whose " pattern is laid up in
heaven";2 it is the model for all cities, and the only model for the
man whose earthly city has an evil constitution; and, after death, it
will receive those who have been faithful to its laws.3
1 Philebus, especially 64-67.
2 Republic, 592.
3 It is interesting to note how men's thoughts answer one another across the ages.
Plato saw that our experience, in order to be what it now is, must be part of a reality
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
The foregoing statement is un-Platonic in form, but represents
fairly, in terms of modern thought, the essential principles that had
shaped themselves in Plato's mind by the time he reached middle life.
If it were permissible to select any one Platonic statement as the most
pointed expression of those principles, and of the view of the world
which they constitute, it would be the comparison, in the Republic, of
i the Idea of Good to the sun. The sun is to visible things the source
both of their being and of their visibility. Of their being, for he
makes them what they are ; he is " the author of generation and
nourishment and growth, though he himself is not generation." And
of their visibility, for he gives to them their capacity of being seen
and to the eye its capacity of seeing them. In the same way the
Idea of Good gives to all things their real and essential existence ; and,
by precisely the same creative or constitutive activity, it gives to them
that rational character — that place in a rational system fulfilling a
rational end — which is their knowableness.1 The Idea of Good,
in one word, is the principle of being, the principle of knowledge, and,
as is added a little later,'2 the principle of conduct.
II.
Such a view concerning the form or constitution of the world,
and concerning the place and development and function of the soul in
the world, is Idealism. And yet, in anything that can be called a
study of Plato, this view must stand as the beginning rather than as
the end. In philosophy, battles easily won are usually either not
worth the winning, or are won so easily because of the hard labour of
earlier men. And Plato's battle was far from easily won. He fought
over nearly the whole ground of philosophy ; that it is, in fact, which
makes him at once so deeply instructive and so infinitely suggestive.
greater than anything that now appears to us ; and so he marked out a course of lifelong
education to lead us to the knowledge of that eternal reality, and called us to "philosophy,"
i.e., to a life of political and speculative activities in which we more and more make our
society and ourselves at one with that reality. It is precisely the same insight— or one
aspect of it— that Professor Royce (The World and the Individual, First Series, p. 56) puts
into the terse statement : " We live looking for the whole of our meaning. And this
looking constitutes the process called thinking."
i 507 seq. 2 5170.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
First, as was pointed out above, in the Idealism whose main
positions have just been set down, there is a certain incompleteness.
It is incomplete in the conception of its highest principle. For it
viewed the Idea of Good as a constitutive and organising principle.
The 'Good exercises a creative energy; it is the source and home, the
ordering power, the principle of unity, of the world. But that at once
raises the question : In order to be such a principle, must not the Good
be conceived as something more than simply the Good? If it is truly
to be regarded as performing the supreme function of constituting
and ordering the world, must it not be taken up into some still higher
principle? Must it not, that is to say, be regarded as living and
active spirit; so that the world would be viewed as constituted by an
eternal spirit who is the subject of the world, whose Ideas are the
regulative forms of the world, and the supreme law of whose activity
is the Good?
To this problem Plato came in his later work. In that work he
made, indeed, what looks like a fresh start ; for he came at the problem
from a somewhat different angle of approach, and used a different
terminology. But really it is the same problem ; and really, therefore,
the advance is continuous.1 But before we go on to consider that
advance, there is another matter to be dealt with. For, as also was
noted above, throughout the whole of Plato's life, the forces that lead
men, not to Idealism at all, but to Mysticism, worked upon him ; and
upon that many-sided mind, sensitive as it was to all spiritual influ
ences, they could not be without effect. To these we must now turn ;
and in dealing with them we have to consider (A) in what form they
acted upon Plato; (B) what influence they had, whether in breaking
the unity and preventing the completeness of his Idealism, or in
setting another view alongside of it. Then, finally, we can come to
that thinking of his later years in which, so far as was possible to him,
he dealt with both the great problems that beset him; and, by a
certain development of his thought, at once put the keystone into the
arch of his Idealism, and overcame — though to the end only in part —
the mystic tendency.
1 One of the reasons for believing — what here is taken for granted— that the Parrncnidcs
(with the allied dialogues), is a genuine Platonic writing.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
(A) First, then, the influences that make for Mysticism fall into
two great classes. For Mysticism has a twofold aspect. It is a type
of speculative thought; but it is also a movement of the practical
spirit. It is an intellectual conclusion; but usually it is also a con
ception of religion and a way of life.
(1) So that we have to distinguish, first, the more purely intel
lectual ways along which men are led to Mysticism. The general
tendency manifest in these may be seen by considering the situation
in which the philosophic intellect stands at the beginning of its work.
For what sets it upon its work is the insight that experience can be
what it now is only upon the supposition that reality goes far beyond
the appearances which from moment to moment make up the fleeting
content of experience. And the work to which this insight calls
philosophy is, of course, the attempt to reach a form of consciousness
more adequate than the everyday consciousness to the apprehension of
that reality. But precisely in this beginning and in this point of
departure there lies for the intellect a great danger. It should
remember that the reality to which it is attempting to make its way, is
sought as the explanation and the illumination of the experience from
which it first set out. Or, in technical terms, it should remember that
the desired universal and the present particulars are in organic con
nexion; that the noumenal order does not stand separate from time
and from phenomena, but rather is the phenomenal order truly under
stood ; else the one is no explanation of the other. But this very thing
the intellect is tempted, not to say driven, to forget ; and that by the
nature of the situation itself. For wriaT"the mind is seeking to do is
to pass from an experience of appearances to a consciousness of
reality ; and what stands out in the foreground, and is acutely felt, is,
of course, not the likeness of the two, but tfreir difference. The
reality — in its character surely it is that which the appearances are
not. They come and go, arise and decay; it abides for ever, and is
always itself. They are chained to eye and ear; it, for its existence
and perfection, depends upon no perishing organs of flesh. Thus the
tendency arises to separate the two : what they are, it is not ; what it
is, they are not. And the two being separated," the way of the soul is
216
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
plain; in the vision of the perfect and eternal reality, it must forget,
or resist, or despise, the present world.
This tendency takes many forms and operates in many degrees of
power. A number of the purer cases of it we have already considered
in dealing with Spinoza.1 It did its work almost completely, for
instance, when, through generations of forgotten men, the Hindu
mind, moving under a burden of sad experience, sought to reach the
one fundamental reality by saying Neti, Neti — It is not so, it is not so
— to every particular form of god or goddess and to every particular
natural determination; and thus accomplished the vast march of
thought from Veda to Vedanta. Or again, it swept in perfect intel
lectual clearness, and with one arrow-like flight, to its goal, when Par-
menides sharply and abruptly set over against the world of the senses,
a reality which purely and absolutely is, and is not flawed or limited
or contaminated by any "is not." These thoroughgoing cases, as a
rule, occur either at the beginning of a great civilisation, or in its
decline : at the beginning, when the pioneers of thought, by sheer
force of speculative daring, carry one-sided methods through to their
conclusion ; in the decline, when men turn away from the evil world,
and the religious influences which we are to consider in a moment work
victoriously upon them. But the logic of Mysticism is also able to
secure a footing in the middle periods, when the great constructive
and comprehensive minds are at work. In a different way, however;
usually as .a tendency concealed in some method which is accepted
without question, but whose final significance is not perceived. In
such a method Mysticism often lies implicit, until at last some intellect,
fearless in its logic, but working in the service of the religious instinct,
carries the method relentlessly to its conclusion, and shows reality to
men as that with which they can enter into union only by renouncing
the world and all the normal forms of experience.
For our present purpose, one such method is specially important.
It is, indeed, simply a particular case of the general situation described
a moment ago. The facts and events of the world, as they are given
to us in our everyday consciousness, cannot stand alone. If we would
really understand them, we must go to something wider than them-
i Supra, pp. 126-150.
217
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
selves ; to the laws or principles which govern them, which hold them
together and make them and their changes one connected and
systematic world. In the language of philosophy, we must go to their
universals. But how are we to conceive those universals? If we
remembered that we seek the universal as an explanation of the par
ticular, we should see that the universals must be active principles of
synthesis — active and concrete principles which hold things together
into one world, and by giving to each particular its place in the world
give it its reality. The universals, that is to say, would be conceived
as at once explaining and containing both the particulars and their
differences and their relations; would be conceived as at once the
source and the home alike of the particulars, and of the relations
which link them together into one system, and of the differences whicn
mark their individuality. And the highest universal would be the
most concrete of all, being the source and home of the whole order of
the world, of all the individuals in it, and of all the relations and dif
ferences which make them individuals and yet link them together by
eternal laws in the one system of the world. But at the very beginning
of the search for universals there is something which frequently leads
us to forget all this. For the universal is something which is common
to all the members of a class ; they all share in it, and their sharing in
it is the source of their reality. But how are we to get at something
which is common to all the diverse members of a class ? Surely nothing
can be easier — simply strip away the differences and retain what is
left. It is very natural thus to take for granted that since the universal
is a form common to all the members of a class, the way to reach it
must be by abstracting from the differences of those members. But
natural as it is to drift into such a method, it puts you, as soon as you
adopt it, into the grip of the logic of denial. For as you ascend from
stage to stage, stripping away the differences from particular things
and specific conceptions, your universals become more and more
abstract, until at last you reach the end with an ineffable One which is
beyond all natural determinations and all forms of reason ; and union
with which, whether speculative or practical,1 is therefore to be attained
i Whether speculative or practical : — To the thoroughgoing Mystic, it should be
remembered, these are really one.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
only in some experience which transcends all forms of reason and all
ordinary activities of the rational spirit which is man. Thus it was,
for instance, that mediaeval Eealism with its strong tendency to ascend
to the universal by the method of abstraction, led the way to Mysti
cism. When its method was taken up by men of deep inward religion
and of an unflinching logic which not even canons and decretals could
bind, that which was left to them at the end, after they had abstracted
from the last differences — from the distinction between God the
omniscient knower, and the world, ideal or temporal, which He consti
tutes and knows ; and from the distinction between the persons of the
Trinity — was that ultimate Godhead, that " still wilderness " which
" never did look upon deed " and " where never was seen difference,
neither Father, nor Son, nor Holy Ghost."1 The same tendency, again,
was manifest when Spinoza, on one side of his thinking, carried to
the last conclusion a method and a principle which, coming from
Descartes, seemed new, but in truth were as old as mediaeval Eealism,
and in the hands of a rigorous logician had in them the same
potentiality of Mysticism. Or, to take an instance which lies at our
very doors, the abstract tendency is present in the later thinking of
Kant, and is in constant strife with that concrete or synthetic method
which is Kant's proper contribution to modern philosophy; a strife
so continuous that without reference to it, as the Master of Balliol in
almost every chapter of his great exposition has to remind us, scarcely
any leading point in Kant's critical philosophy can be understood.2
1 See the paper on Meister Eckhart in Professor Royce's Studies of Good and Evil ;
especially pp. 276-282, and the words of Sch wester Katrei as given on p. 297.
2 Indeed, it might almost be said that in man's effort to come to reality, Mysticism
may arise from any important error, from any important misuse of categories, provided
(1) that the method employed be that of the purely analytic logic which carries a beginning
rigorously to the conclusion, allowing no opportunity for turning back upon it to criticise
or reconstitute it ; (2) that the men be too completely possessed by intellectual gravity or
by religious passion to rest in the philosophic scepticism which would be the outcome of
the mere logic of the situation. To take a most unpromising instance — a case where the
beginning augurs anything but a mystic close— if a man, deeply religious but at the same
time keenly logical, were with implicit confidence to accept as his point of departure
almost any book of the traditional English or Scottish school of philosophy, he would
almost certainly become a Mystic ; would almost certainly come to deny the world given
to his present intelligence in the name of a reality not apprehensible by intelligence, and
to seek desperately for some way of union with that reality. Indeed, if Mr. Herbert Spencer,
retaining his philosophy, had been predominantly a man of religion rather than predomin
antly a man of science, he would have been a Mystic. — But the most remarkable of recent
219
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
In Plato both that general and this special form of the intellectual
movement toward Mysticism are found. The explanation of our
present world and of our experience in it, lies for him in a world of
perfect and eternal realities), the Ideas, which are at once rational
forms and rational energies. And, of course, he knew that the explana
tion and the thing explained must be in organic union: that world,
he knew, must be the truth of this world; this world, truly known,
must be a factor or element in the life of that, and a manifestation of
its nature. But, like all high and clear spirits who are acutely sensi
tive to the evil and the imperfection of this world, Plato is tempted to
let his soul dwell in that world, forgetting this, or despising it, or
renouncing it, as a thing only of some secondary reality which in the
presence of true reality stands condemned for ever. And to this
temptation to set the two worlds apart, the one as shadow, the other
as reality, he continually yields. Perhaps his keenest feeling is the
feeling of the difference between the real world and this present world
of the senses — this, inconstant, fleeting, full of change and decay;
that, with its unchanging perfections of reason. And this feeling, as
we are to see in a moment, was intensified by the form which the
religious passion often took in him; and by the way in which he
suffered from the resistance of his Greek world to that ideal which
represents the demand of the real world upon present society. So that,
in his central period, Plato, like Erigena, like Aquinas, like Spinoza,
like Kant — like his own pupil, Aristotle — is torn between the synthetic
and the abstract movements of thought, between theologia affirmativa
and theologia negativa. It is true that the conflict of these tendencies
assumed a very different form in him from that which it assumed in
Erigena or Aquinas, in Spinoza or Kant. It is true also that the
yielding to the negative tendency is less in him than in any of the
others just named;1 true that the promise and the power of that
thoroughgoing Idealism to which he was later to come is already in
intellectual approaches to Mysticism comes from a very different direction. It is (if I may
venture so daring a statement) that found in the keenest of modern English dialecticians,
a man of thought to whom we are all deeply indebted, Mr. F. H. Bradley. The cause of
it, which lies in his treatment of some of the higher categories, is most interesting but
cannot be discussed here.
i Even than in Aristotle, See the discussion in Caird, Evolution of Theology in the
Greek Philosophers, vol. I., especially pp. 285, 286.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
the dialogues of the central period. But none the less the strife is
there. And in the special form mentioned an instant ago — i.e., in
advancing from particulars to class-conceptions — the strife is also
there. In the earlier thinking of Plato there is a wavering between
two views of the relation of a universal to the particulars grouped
under it ; the two views, as one may say, are present in solution. The
one, regarding the universal as the common element in different
individuals, tends to seek it by abstraction, by leaving aside the differ
ences of those individuals, and to give it an existence independent and
separate ; making it, to use an expression of the later Plato, like a sail
drawn over the individual members of the class.1 The other regards it
as a synthetic principle, manifesting itself through differences, and
therefore both explaining and containing those differences. And as far
as the former prevails, it makes possible, in the way already indicated,
the logic of Mysticism.
(2) But, as we have seen, there is another order of influences
making for Mysticism — the practical or religious ; and it is only when
these co-operate with the first that Mysticism in the completeness of
its type arises. The nature of these may be indicated in this way. — To
the religious instinct and passion, in its higher development, two
directions of movement are possible; and thus in man's effort after
God two tendencies have arisen. These are seldom found in purity of
type, ordinary religious life usually containing both, though approx
imating sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other. Of these
tendencies the one which commonly is the earlier to prevail, whether
in the individual or in any deeply religious age, is dominated by the
sense of the sharp contrast between the world and God; the world as
evil, God as altogether good; or the world as nothingness and vanity,
God as all in all. But the later and more thoughtful tendency sees
that Manichseism in any form shatters religion itself; that the
religious life in its every step implies .an organic connexion between
God and the world; God being led by the goodness of His nature to
impart Himself; the world being a process wherein, by that increas
ing impartation of Himself, He realises an eternal purpose which
itself arises from His nature and is the expression of it. The religion
1 Parmenides, 131 BC.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
of this latter type is the wider and the prof (Hinder ; in a certain very
important sense, it is really the more religious. But the religion of the
former kind is usually the more intense and overmastering. It makes
ascetics and warriors; and it has in it at least the beginning of
Mysticism. For on the one hand it presupposes an eternal reality and
the possibility that man can become at one with it; and it makes the
quest after such union the supreme business of life. But on the other
hand it is convinced that upon no such ways as those of the present
world, through no such energies as those of man's natural soul, is that
union to be attained.
Now, Plato was a man profoundly religious. And both his native
character and the circumstances of his life made it inevitable that at
least occasionally, under special stress of the world's evil or the world's
tragedy, the religious temper in him should assume the first rather
than the second of the two forms just distinguished. For in him was
the grave Dorian austerity which can lift men with indignant scorn
above the allurements of the world; and the hunger after eternity
and after perfection, which in this world, or in any world made after
the fashion of this, can find no rest; and that inborn purity of mind,
observable in fine and high spirits, which turns instinctively away
from evil and seeks its home with a reality in which evil and the
trouble of evil have no place. And his outer life was fitted to develop
the world-denying instincts within. Only too well he knew the sadden
ing of the soul which comes to men who enter upon life with high
devotion to the welfare of their society .and to the great causes in
which that welfare consists, and find the world to be a body of death,
immovable by that passion, unresponsive to those purposes. It was
not merely that the men of Athens, the best of them as well as the
worst, had slain his master. But in him a high ethical and political
passion, the passion of the reformer who has gazed upon heavenly
perfection and seeks to bring it to the ways of earthly society, broke
in vain against the life of his day ; broke in vain against the pride of
the elder Dionysius; in vain against the life of Athens, where the
citizens were no longer men of Marathon, but loved comfort and
cleverness and unstable change more than righteousness; in vain
against the general political condition of the Greek world in the period
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
that runs from the day of the Thirty to the coming of the Macedonian.
And so it came to pass that through the whole course of Plato's life
there ran that same tragedy of passion and of hope which filled the
early years of Wordsworth. The passion of the prophet and of the
reformer shattered itself into despair against the circumstances of the
age, and against the brute power with which political inefficiency and
political corruption can maintain themselves against high ideals and
high character.1
(B) Thus, then, the influences that lead toward the doctrine and
life of the Mystics, acted upon the founder himself of Idealism. What
response, we must next ask, did they call forth ? what result had they
in Plato's view of reality and of the way of life ?
One thing is clear to begin with. They have influenced very deeply
the tone and expression of the Platonic philosophy. It presents itself
to its students as a many-coloured web shot through and through with
mystic motives. Not only toward what we commonly call the things
of the world, but also toward many even of the virtues in their
ordinary exercise, and toward the opinion which is at least a poten
tiality of knowledge, and toward many of the greater literary and
artistic forms, Plato takes up frequently the true Mystic's attitude of
pity and renunciation and rebuke. And he has the Mystic's strange
and compelling glory of speech, the power mingled of prophecy and
poetry, which, logically or illogically, has fallen so often to the lot of
those who use speech only for winning men to the silent life. In calling
men to the renunciation of the world, to the practice of death, his
words take on the tint of Mysticism, just as sometimes, on evenings
late in autumn, the sky that bent over the work of the day ceases to be
a thing of this world, and with stern magnificence and yet with beauty
unutterable testifies against the weariness and the ambitions of the
earth, and against the men who in these things lose themselves.
Nevertheless, the outcome in Plato was not Mysticism. It was not
to be that among men of Greek speech the great argument which Par-
menides had left a thing purely intellectual should advance to " do the
full work of a philosophy" as an ethic and a religion. Though Plato
i See the excellent statement in Windelband, Platon, especially in the first chapter
and in the concluding pages.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
revered Parmenid.es, and though of all the Hellenes he was the most
fitted in character and experience to respond to the appeal of Mysti
cism, yet the very fact that he was a Hellene made it impossible that
it should be his vocation to lift the Parmenidean view of reality into
a wisdom for the guidance of life, and to give to that wisdom its
language of irresistible persuasion. The Greek loyalty to reason and
the energies of reason; the Greek love of definite and specific form;
the Greek belief that such form is truly and essentially characteristic
of reality : — these held the field. He was not won away from his view
that the forms and energies which constitute reality are forms and
energies of reason ; and that this rationality of the real means that it
has one supreme and organising principle, the Good, without devotion
to which reason is not reason. And holding to this, he is not a
Mystic. For though he may sometimes speak of the present world
with the voice of a Mystic, yet there remains a difference which is
essential. The relation between Plato when he goes farthest toward
Mysticism, and the thoroughgoing Mystic, might be stated in this
way. — Both believe that there is a reality untroubled by change or evil
or decay. Both believe that in union with that reality lies the welfare
and blessedness of the soul. Both believe that it is beyond all reach of
sense-perception. But the Mystic goes on to add that it lies just as
much beyond all forms of reason as it does beyond sense-perception, so
that if you would apprehend it, and make it your own, and become at
one with it, it must be in an immediacy of experience which transcends
reason, transcends all ordinary forms of cognitive and moral experi
ence. While Plato urges, on the contrary, that the truly real is the
very perfection of reason, the very perfection of all rational form and
rational energy, and that it is by perfecting the reason within you —
reason in the greater sense of the word, not the mere logical intellect —
that you draw near to it. With the Mystic, to put it in a word, the
negatives directed against the present world, and against the life that
men live if they walk in its ways, are uttered in the name of a reality
above reason ; with Plato those same negatives are uttered in the name
of a reality which is the completeness of reason.
So that Plato, even though you can learn a great deal of practical
Mysticism from him if you have the right kind of soul, remains an
224
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
Idealist. Yet the influences which we have been considering were by
no means without their effect. They were not able to make the earlier
Plato a Mystic. But they were able to do something : they were able
to determine the type of his Idealism. They caused it to be of that
modified type which was sketched on an earlier page,1 under the name
of Abstract Idealism : that which regards the genuine reality and the
true home of the soul as a world of pure reason (in that larger sense of
the word already indicated), from which this present world of the
senses is separated as a realm of merely secondary reality; so that
the union of the soul with the genuine reality is to be won, its citizen
ship in that world accomplished, only by a life in which sense-experi
ence is not an integral element subserving the interests of the spirit,
but is regarded rather as an alien atmosphere to be escaped from.
In setting down the broad outlines of the earlier Platonic Idealism
we noted as a matter of fact, and without considering the explanation,
that there was an incompleteness in its conception of its highest prin
ciple. What we have now seen might almost be put in this way : that
corresponding to that incompleteness at the top, there is an incom
pleteness at the bottom; the world given to the senses is not clearly
and unwaveringly viewed as a manifestation of the highest principle,
and as a factor in its realisation of its purpose.
This, however, we must understand somewhat more fully. And
that can best be done by returning to that summary outline, and con
sidering in what way the negative tendency, when it comes to the front,
is able to modify each of the four positions there indicated.
(1) First, then, Plato often speaks as if the system of Ideas were
not so much the form, or order, or constitution, of the one universe
which we know and of which our present experience is an integral
part; but were rather a universe existing by itself and complete in
itself — the real universe; and this sensible and temporal process in
which we now live, a system having only a secondary reality. So that,
in this aspect of Plato's thought, we approach to a theory of two
worlds: one of absolutely pure reason and complete righteousness,
where without hindrance the Good perfectly realises itself ; the other
an imperfect realm of sense and time. And of this lower world Plato
i Supra, p. 12.
16 225
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
speaks in varying tones. Sometimes he makes it a shadow, or a
hindrance, or a prison. From it the good man seeks to escape,
philosophy as a " practice of death " being his way of deliverance.
At other times he views it as in some sense organically connected
with the world of Ideas. The things of this world have some share, by
participation or imitation or however it be, in the nature of the Ideas ;
so that in this world, even in the forms and activities of the " unex-
amined life,"1 some fulfilment is possible of that Idea which is the
life-giving sun of the real world — the Good.
(2) But when Plato has to deal explicitly with the question of the
possibility of knowledge, what will he do with his tendency toward a
two-world theory? For in knowledge the two worlds are together;
particular and universal .are in organic connexion. Knowledge is
really an interpreting of particulars in the light of their universals.
Or, if you have failed to see that, and regard knowledge as having to
do only with universals — so that the process of gaining knowledge is
a passing out of particulars to universals — still the very fact that you
can pass from, the one to the other shows that the two are in connexion.
What Plato does is very remarkable. He maintains — to explain the
possibility of knowledge he must maintain — his belief in the corre
spondence of the nature and principles of our minds to the nature and
principles of reality, and in the consequent capacity of our minds to
form class-conceptions which represent to us the Ideas. But when
his sense of the gulf between the two worlds is strong upon him, he
expresses that belief not scientifically, but prophetically, in myths and
parables that for blended charm and majesty stand unequalled in
literature. (The souls of men — so in these he teaches — pre-existed, and
in their pre-existence gained some glimpse, fuller or narrower, of the
Ideas. That vision, when they fell to the earth, they retained in a
sort of latent memory; and so bring with them to their present life
the potentiality of true knowledge. Under the stimulus of the things
of this world, which imitate the Ideas or share somehow in their
nature, that potentiality is realised, or may be realised; the ancient
vision, called from its latency into clear consciousness, becomes what
we call knowledge or science, but what truly is Eeminiscence. It will
i Apology, 38A.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
be observed what this really means. It means that, even when Plato
is using the speech of Abstract Idealism, the root of Concrete Idealism
is in him. For while the form of language used in such a myth as
that of the Phaedrus sets the two worlds apart, its essential meaning
joins them together.
(3) Under the influence of the separation of universal and
particular, of Idea and phenomenon, the " stages of knowledge "
come to be represented, not so much as stages in a development
in which we pass from the vague and inadequate to the clearer
and more adequate, from the abstract to the concrete, in one word,
from the particulars in isolation to the particulars seen in the light
of the Idea of Good as elements or factors in its realisation; but
rather ,as different kinds of insight relating to different orders of
objects. Knowledge and opinion are different faculties and have to do
with different kinds of subject-matter. The sphere of knowledge is
being; but the sphere of opinion is that mixture of being with non-
being (i.e., of the Idea with empty space) which is the present world.
The one is absolute and infallible, as having grasped the supreme
principle of the real world and seeing everything in its light. But the
other is relative and erring, tossing about in a region which is half
way between pure being and pure non-being.1 He who has failed to
grasp the Idea of Good which is the supreme principle of all reality
and therefore the master-light of all vision of reality — can we allow
his " opinion " to be a genuine stage on the way to knowledge ? Bather
we must say of him " that he knows neither the essence of good, nor
any other good thing; and that any phantom of it, which he may
chance to apprehend, is the fruit of opinion and not of science ; and
that he dreams and sleeps away his present life, and never wakes on
this side of that future world, in which he is doomed to sleep for
ever."2
(4) So far as the two-world theory prevails, the rule of conduct,
1 Republic, 476-480. Cf. Symposium, 202A, and even Timacus, 51D, 52.
2 Republic, 534C, tr. Davies and Vaughan. Compare the treatment of " right opinion "
in the Meno (97-100), where the tone is gentler (though possibly with a touch of irony— e.g.,
in the reference to that right opinion of statesmen which is in politics what divination is
in religion— " for diviners and also prophets say many things truly, but they know not
what they say") but the radical opposition itself is by no means obscured or given up.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
" live in accordance with the true nature of the world," comes to
mean: Eise to citizenship in the real world, and in order to do so
separate yourself from the life and the ways of this present world.
Positively, that is to say, the good man is called to a life not of this
world. While, negatively, it is held that the Good cannot be realised
under the ordinary forms of our present experience, so far as that
experience is one of time and sense ; so that " demotic virtue/' instead
of being viewed as a genuine though inadequate stage in the realisa
tion of the Good, is regarded as a phantom of virtue calling for down
right condemnation. Both these sides of the abstract tendency come
frequently to expression in Plato; but the place where they secure
their most continuous and impressive statement is — with singular
appropriateness — in the Phaedo. The man of philosophic mind " is
always pursuing death and dying," and " has had the desire of death
all his life long." But what is " the nature of that death " ? It is
that " release of the soul from the body " which enables the soul " to
exist in herself."1 For the body is a hinderer in the acquirement of
knowledge. The senses which it brings to the soul are " inaccurate
witnesses."2 So that the soul, if she attempt " to consider anything
in company with the body " is " obviously deceived " ; and if she is to
gain a revelation of true existence, must gain it in that thought in
which " the mind is gathered into herself, and none of these things
trouble her, — neither sights nor sounds nor pain nor any pleasure," in
which " she takes leave of the body and has as little as possible to do
with it," in which " she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring
after true being," in which she is free from all the troubles and evils of
the bodily life, hunger and disease, " loves, and lusts, and fears, and
fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery," " wars and fightings and
factions."3 So long as the soul uses the body as an instrument of
perception (i.e., uses the senses), she is " dragged by the body into the
region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world
spins round her, and she is like a drunkard, when she touches
change. . . . But when returning into herself she reflects, then
i 64 ABC. 2 65 A. s 65, 66.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
she passes into the other world, the region of purity, and eternity, and
immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with
them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered ;
then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with
the unchanging, is unchanging/71 It is at this existence of the soul in
herself alone, in which " the soul in herself " beholds " the realities of
things," that philosophy (in Plato's sense of the word) aims while
the soul is still cumbered with the body. " The lovers of knowledge,"
says Socrates, " are conscious that the soul was simply fastened and
glued to the body — until philosophy received her, she could only view
real existence through the bars of a prison, not in and through
herself ; she was wallowing in the mire of every sort of ignorance, and
by reason of lust had become the principal accomplice in her own
captivity. This was her original state ; and then, as I was saying, and
as the lovers of knowledge are well aware, philosophy, seeing how
terrible was her confinement, of which she was to herself the cause,
received and gently comforted her and sought to release her, pointing
out that the eye and the ear and the other senses are full of deception,
and persuading her to retire from them, and abstain from all but the
necessary use of them, and be gathered up and collected into herself,
bidding her trust in herself and her own pure apprehension of pure
existence, and to mistrust whatever comes to her through other
channels and is subject to variation; for such things are visible and
tangible, but what she sees in her own nature is intelligible and
invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks that she ought
not to resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains from pleasures
and desires and pains and fears, as far as she is able;" — delivering
herself thus from the dominion of pleasure and pain, because " each
pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to
the body, until she becomes like the body, and believes that to be true
which the body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body
and having the same delights she is obliged to have the same habits
and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure to the
world below, but is always infected by the body ; and so she sinks into
another body, and there germinates and grows, and has, therefore, no
i 79 CD.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
part in the communion of the divine and pure and simple."1 So that
philosophy, while we remain upon the earth, is a study and practice of
death. But that the long purification and deliverance may be con
summated, the body must be more than subdued ; it must die, so that
the soul may take up her dwelling altogether " in her own place alone."
And hence, when the day of death comes, the true lover of wisdom will
depart with joy, having " a firm conviction that there, and there only,
he can find wisdom in her purity."2 The soul " which is pure at
departing, and draws after her no bodily taint, having never volun
tarily during life had connexion with the body, which she is ever
avoiding, herself gathered into herself ;" — such a soul cannot " at her
departure from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds
and be nowhere and nothing," but "herself invisible, departs to the
invisible world — to the divine and immortal and rational: thither
arriving, she is secure of bliss and is released from the error and folly
of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and
for ever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the
gods."3 While, on the other hand, the virtues which do not measure
up to this level — the " demotic " virtues, the virtues of men who live
in the sphere of sense and time, and are busy with the matters of this
phantom world, and are unguided by the vision of that Good which is
the source and form of all virtue: — these cannot properly be called
virtues at all. The courage of such men is but another form of fear.
They face one evil because they fear a greater; they are courageous
because they are cowards. Similarly their utilitarian temperance is
intemperance; they abstain from one pleasure because they desire
another, overcoming pleasure in one form because they themselves are
overcome by it in some other form.4 They do not know that " the
exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or pleasure
or pain, and of the greater for the less, as if they were coins, is not
the exchange of virtue."5 Wisdom — i.e., the apprehension of the Idea
of Good and the viewing of things in its light — is the " one true coin
for which all things ought to be exchanged " ; and the virtue which is
i 82 E, 83. 2 68 B. 3 80 E, 84 B, 81A.
* 68 DE. 5 69 A.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
made up of the goods of the earth, severed from wisdom and exchanged
with one another, "is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any
freedom or health or truth in her."1
To sum up, then, what we have so far seen, we must say that the
two tendencies which have been the main currents in the greater
history of philosophy and of religion, are both present in Plato : the
synthetic, which in philosophy gives rise to what we have called
Concrete Idealism; and the abstract or negative, whose partial
triumph gives rise to Abstract Idealism, but whose complete domina
tion in a profoundly religious mind is the source of Mysticism. But
we must also note the relation in Plato of these two tendencies. The
tragedy of the world lay close at his heart; and the most impressive
thing in all his writing is his prophesying against the world. But in
spite of that, we must make no mistake about the fact that even in his
earlier and middle years his deepest loyalty is with the synthetic
tendency. True,t its victory is in this period never complete. Again
and again Plato draws the line sharp and hard between science and
opinion, between demotic morality and true virtue, between the soul
in the body and the soul freed from the body, between the real world
and the cavern of our sense-experience; again and again with sad
earnestness he exhorts men to practise death that they may truly live,
and to fly from the world to God. But with all this, the deepest
impulse of his philosophy is toward an organic connexion of our
present life, and of the system of things in which it is lived, with the
ultimate principle of reality. This, of course, is a question of the final
impression which the whole body of his writings in the periods in
question makes upon the reader. But special reference may be made
to two subjects which already have taken pre-eminent place in his
thought: the state as the greatest of human institutions for the
concrete realisation of the Good, by the bringing of men's lives out
of confusion, out of self-willed individualism, into an order which
reflects the order of eternal reality ; and still more,2 education as that
1 69 B.
2 Still more:— because with regard to the state, the facts of the world have driven him
partly to despair (Republic, 592) ; so that even in its culmination as a theory of the state,
his Idealism is touched by the breath of the theologia negativa — touched by its breath, not
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PLATO AND THE POUNDING OP IDEALISM
in which men, not by suppression of the normal energies and capacities
of their nature, but by the development and discipline of these, are
led throughout the whole of life in knowledge and in character toward
the Good.
But Plato, lover of truth for its own sake, and master of that
dialectic method which criticises its own conclusion, and brings to
light the further problems implicit in it, and corrects or enlarges it
until those problems are adequately solved, would have been some
thing less than himself if he had left his philosophy in this strife of
tendencies. Plato was a man to look his own problems in the face ; and
therefore the passage of years brought to his Idealism a steady growth
in thoroughness, in self-consistency, in mastery of its materials. He
felt that in some genuine sense everything which you cannot decisively
reject as mere unreality, mere void nothingness, must be organically
connected with the supreme principle of reality; indeed, that is the
cardinal instinct of all philosophy, and its presence in Plato compelled
him to face the problems that arose from his tendency to separate the
world of pure reason and perfect goodness from the world of sensible
and temporal experience. With these problems he dealt in his later
period, which might almost be described by saying that in it the
conflict between the two types of Idealism comes explicitly forward,
and is settled, so far as was possible to him, in favour of the Concrete.
III.
But this brings us to the third step of our work. We have to
consider that later thought of Plato in which he apparently makes a
new start, but really carries directly forward the development of his
Idealism. In approaching this it is necessary to have in mind the
exact situation in which at the beginning of that later thought he finds
himself. Hence it is advisable to note again, first, the problems which
remain for him from his earlier thinking; secondly, the positive
possessed by it, for the cause of his despair about the state lies in the folly of men, not in
any incommunicability of the Good. (Compare as a striking, though somewhat poetical,
instance of a feeling for the organic connexion of civil society with the " pattern laid up
in heaven," the assertion placed in the mouth of Socrates in the Crito of the kinship of the
Athenian laws with those of the world below.)
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
insight which he carries forward with him and upon which any
advance in solving those problems must be based. The problems, as
already we have seen, are two. ( 1 ) There is a problem connected with
the conception of the highest principle. If the Good is to be regarded
as the creative energy and organising principle of the universe, must
it not be conceived as something more than simply the Good ; namely,
as self-conscious and self-determining spirit, which constitutes the
world in view of an end — the Good — and shapes its structure and
process according to definite types and fixed laws — the Ideas?
(2) There is the problem raised for him by that negative aspect of his
system which we have just been considering — his tendency to exclude
from genuine reality the sense-world and the human experiences and
activities connected positively with it. Or, putting these two problems
together, we may say, as was noted above, that what Plato has to face
is a double incompleteness in his Idealism: an incompleteness at the
top — i.e., in its conception of the highest principle; and a correspond
ing incompleteness at the bottom — the inability to comprehend the
sense-world as an organ and manifestation of the highest reality.
Secondly, with regard to the positive insight which Plato carries
forward from his earlier Idealism to his later, what we have to
remember is this. — If you have been led to draw a line through the
universe, and to say that what is above this line is truly real, while
what is below it is unreal, or only partly real, that mistake is not
necessarily a fatal one. For if, with regard to what you do consider as
real, your method is the true one, the synthetic one, it is likely sooner
or later to break the barrier which you have erected around the field of
its operation, and to go forth to reclaim the banished parts of the
universe.1 And this is very nearly Plato's case. For, however prone
he occasionally may be to look upon the things of the sense-world with
the eyes of a Mystic, yet, as we have already seen, when he comes to
describe what to him is the genuine, the undoubtedly real, world, his
method is the thoroughly synthetic method of Concrete Idealism.
i In which case your original distinction into real and unreal, substance and shadow,
is almost certain to pass over into the perfectly sound and necessary distinction (insisted
upon in our own day by Mr. Bradley) between the degrees of reality which things have
accordingly as they are lower or higher manifestations, less or more adequate media, of
the supreme principle. Cf. Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol.
I., pp. 193-197 and 221-259.
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' PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
The real world, precisely in the name of which he sometimes denies
and denounces this present world, is to him no ineffable One. It is a
world rational and rationally organised. Eational, for it is made up
of rational forms or energies (the Ideas) and rational distinctions are
of its very essence. And rationally organised ; for it has one supreme
principle, the Good, which is a true universal of universals — no mere
abstracted common element, but ar* eternally creative energy, a truly
active and organising principle, the source and home and explanation
of all the other Ideas, of all their differences, of all their determina
tions, and therefore of their whole reality and their whole knowable-
ness. Thus we may say fairly that the central battle of Idealism is
already won in the thinking of Plato's middle period. In fact, we
have seen reason for saying more than that. As a special evidence of
how that central victory extends itself along the whole line, we have
had to mark the way in which Plato causes the interests of the ideal
world to come over and prevail concretely in this, in two great realms,
education and the state: education as advancing through orderly
stages toward the apprehension of the Idea of Good; the state as the
human institute for its concrete realisation.
We have to turn, then, to the last stage of Plato's thought. In it,
as was noted above, we seem to come upon something new. The Ideal
Theory seems to have fallen into the background, and a new inquiry to
have been made into the constitution of the world, which leads directly
to the conclusion that the world is a work of active intelligence.
Really, however, the advance is continuous, as we shall see if we follow
its own line of movement. Let us consider, then, somewhat more fully
just what the problem is, which arises for Plato out of the dualism,
the two-world theory, toward which the facts of life had in earlier
years driven him. The problem raised by the separation of the two
worlds — whether the antithesis be left sharp and hard, or modified
into something not far from organic connexion — is twofold.1 First,
how came this present world into existence at all ? Reality is with the
other world. Then this world, if it has any reality at all, must have
its source in that world. But why does that world, complete in its
i A twofold problem which, it may be observed in passing, has haunted theology even
more than philosophy.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
eternal perfection, go beyond itself, to constitute another world, its
counterpart or its shadow? What is there in its nature which impels
it thus beyond itself, and leads it to communicate itself, and drives it
to the energies of creation? Secondly, if that world is the source of
this, how is it that this world departs so far from the nature of that ?
how is it that that world has given rise to something so much unlike
itself — nay, so contradictory to itself? How from that world of
reason and purity, of blessedness and perfection, has this scene of
imperfection and pain, of sorrow and an imprisoning body, of folly
and madness, arisen ? It is with problems of which the foregoing is a
statement in modern dress, that Plato deals in the great group of
dialogues — Parmenides, Sophist, Statesman, and especially Philebus
and Timaeus — in which his philosophy, laying aside at times its
charm of expression and showing itself grey with the labour of thought,
reaches its height of metaphysical comprehension.
First, then, how came this present world into being at all? How
came the world of Ideas to go outside of itself, to go beyond its own
completeness and perfection and become the source of another world?
Here it may be advisable to pass at once to Plato's final answer, then
to come back and follow the argument by which he leads up to it.
That final answer is given by an interpretation (seen in preparation in
earlier writings) of the character of that supreme principle of the real
world, which formerly Plato had called the Idea of Good. It — or
following Plato's example in the Timaeus let us say, he — " was good,
and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free
from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as
they could be."1 That is to say, it is of the very nature of the supreme
principle to communicate itself, to impart to others its own being and
character and blessedness; so that the nature itself of the supreme
principle is the ground of the existence of beings, other than the
supreme principle, and yet sharing in its nature and, therefore, in its
reality.
So far as this conclusion prevails — we shall see presently that
Plato was not able to carry it out into all its consequences — it is
Concrete Idealism. The advance to it which we have now to consider,
1 Timaeus, 29 E.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OP IDEALISM
was a long one. Its central conception, that the supreme reality does
not stand apart, but is the fundamental energy of the whole process
of the world, and that it is so because by its very nature as goodness
it is essentially self -communicative — a conception with which Plato,
myths or no myths, is thoroughly in earnest — is already present in the
comparison of the Idea of Good to the sun1 in the latest-written section
of the Republic; and also in the criticism of Anaxagoras in the
Phaedo.2 But the dialectical conquest of it was no quick or easy
process. It is worked out in that group of dialogues which, logically
and perhaps chronologically, opens with the Parmenides and closes
with the Philebus. This great piece of dialectic has two sides ; a side
polemic, a side constructive.
The polemic side — with an occasional pause to crush the head of
materialism or sensationalism, when these happen to cross the path —
is directed in the main against that great argument of Parmenides
which shuts reality up into motionlessness for ever. The spirit of
Parmenides was very congenial to Plato, and wrote itself deeply upon
certain aspects of his earlier Idealism; "my father Parmenides,"
Plato might have said as appropriately as the Eleatic stranger of the
Sophist.3 Yet the two systems are at bottom completely irreconcilable.
If the argument of Parmenides could have secured full right of way
in Plato's mind, it must have shattered any form whatever of Idealism ;
must (considering the religiousness of Plato) have led him at last to a
complete Mysticism. So that even the earlier form of Plato's Ideal
ism was built up in the face of Parmenides. And if there was to be
any development of that earlier Idealism, it must make its way, so to
speak, over the dead body of the Parmenidean argument. The
argument of Parmenides, then, Plato shatters in the one way possible ;
namely, by attacking it at its source and taking away that radical
disjunction of being and non-being, of is and is not, upon which it is
based. This is done by showing that non-being exists and is a kind
of being; the meaning of which, in modern speech, is, that reality is
not an indivisible one, but that there are differences and distinctions
i Republic, 506 E-509. 2 97.99, especially 99. 3 241 E.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
within it; that reality, so far from being an undifferentiated and
ineffable unity, is a rational system.1
This having been done, the way is open for the constructive
advance. By a very keen argument (which, it is worthy of note,
proceeds explicitly from the question of the possibility of knowledge)
it is shown that in true being there is motion — " motion and life and
soul and mind." True being is not " devoid of life and mind." It
does not " exist in awful meaninglessness, an everlasting fixture." And
having mind and life, it must " have a soul which contains them."
And, furthermore, having life and mind and soul, it cannot " remain
absolutely unmoved."2 In the Pliilebus, the view thus prepared for
comes to pointed expression. Mind is " king of heaven and earth."
It " orders all things " ; for " all this which they call the universe " is
not " left to the guidance of unreason and chance medley," but is " as
our fathers have declared, ordered and governed by a marvellous
intelligence and wisdom."3
Thus, then, the real world comes explicitly to be conceived as a
world of rational activity, and its highest principle as at once the
supreme intelligence and supreme energy of the universe, acting in
" creation " and in " providence "4 according to its nature as reason
and goodness. And with this the view of the Timaeus, stated above —
the view that the perfect God, being good, is led by His nature to
communicate Himself and so becomes the author and father of the
universe — is made possible, not merely as a prophetic insight, but as
the culmination of a reasoned Idealism.
So far, we have been following Plato's own line of advance. But
at this point let us stop to consider how far the problems left over
from the earlier Idealism have been met in the argument just outlined.
Those problems, it will be remembered, were two : one, so to speak, at
the top, the other at the bottom, of the Platonic Idealism; one con
nected with the conception of the highest principle, the other with the
interpretation of the sense-world. And the latter breaks again into
two : ( 1 ) Upon the two-world theory, how do you account for this
i Sophist, 241 E— 260. It is interesting to compare Hegel's Logic.
i Sophist, 246-249. 3 Philebus, 28. 4 Timaeus, 30.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
present world at all — why, when the real world is eternally perfect and
complete, did it go out of itself to give rise to another world?
(2) When the real world became the source of this, why did it appar
ently contradict its own nature, giving rise to a world so different from
iself , so imperfect and so evil ? It will be seen that the argument which
we have just been following, brings forward — though it does not with
any fulness articulate — the conceptions necessary for solving the first of
these problems and the first part of the second. And it furnishes a
basis for dealing with the remaining part of the second. For such a
view makes it possible to regard this present world as in organic con
nexion with the highest principle of reality. When that principle is
viewed as active and self-determining reason, and as a goodness which
cannot remain in itself, but is led by its very nature to go out of itself
and communicate itself, it is scarcely possible to regard this present
world, and all worlds, — " all time and all existence " — as anything
other than as the field of its activity, the process in which it fulfils its
own nature by communicating itself and so realising the Good. And
such a view, if he could clearly have entered into it, would have
enabled Plato to look with eyes of faith upon those aspects of the
present world which so grieved him. Its imperfection, its struggle
and unrest, its tragedies of unrewarded toil, of baffled devotion, of
defeated righteousness, would have been accepted by him as elements
in a process in which a wisdom, too vast for us to understand its
separate steps, is fulfilling itself.
Does Plato, then, take this last step, which would have made his
Idealism as thoroughly concrete as is possible to human insight ? The
anwer falls into two parts.
First, he took up positions which look toward it, which, one might
almost say, contain it implicitly. In the Philebus, for instance, he
puts the capstone upon the argument which was outlined a moment
ago by applying it directly to man's life. The characters of the
divinely organised universe — Beauty, Symmetry, Truth1 — are to be
adopted by man as the characters to be realised in his own nature and
life. But the most striking instance of all is furnished by a work of
Plato's which is described sometimes as a falling from faith, as a
i Philebus, 65 A.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
forsaking of the height for the lowland, or even as an example of the
hollowness of philosophy which fails its disciples at the last; but
which in truth is one of the most nobly pathetic chapters in the
spiritual history of man. For that is what we must say of the Laws
when we consider the position it holds in Plato's life. Much earlier,
as was pointed out above, the essential concreteness in the temper of
his Idealism manifested itself in his devotion to the state. It had been
the greatest work of his middle life to set before his disciples a picture
of the state as it should be. Then, in later years, endeavouring to make
his presentation of the true polity more concrete, he entered upon that
magnificently conceived design which would have given an almost epic
completeness to the Republic, but of which the Timaeus is the only
finished part. The ideal state he had described. Now he would show
it taking its place and discharging its function in the world, holding
its own in struggle, and showing " by the greatness of its actions and
the magnanimity of its words in dealing with other cities a result
worthy of its training and education/'1 To this end, Timaeus was to
begin with the generation of the world and carry its story down to the
creation of man ; and then Critias was to receive the men thus created,
and show the place and life and work of the ideal state by describing
how an Athens, which once was, maintained the freedom of the whole
of Europe and Asia, when a mighty power from the Atlantic made an
expedition against them.2 But even this was not enough. The desire
to bring the ideal into some more feasible connexion with the life and
ordinary nature of man, led to another step; and that step was the
Laws. At the end of his life, when we should have expected his con
nexion with the world to be growing fainter, his aloofness from it to
be increasing — precisely then it was that Plato, seeking at least some
measure of the effective operation of the heavenly ideal in the affairs
of the earth, bent his sublime head, and turned to the daily life and
unaspiring minds of men, and outlined — in a collection of sketches
and fragments edited by some later hand — a " second-best " constitu
tion, more applicable, as he thought, to the life of this present world
than that polity which in earlier days he had sketched in strict
i Timaeus, 19 C. 2 Timaeus, 27A, 24 E.
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following of the pattern laid up in heaven. The endeavour of the
Laws is no apostasy from Idealism; it represents no loss of belief in
the heavenly pattern. But it is a recognition that there is a difference
between heaven and earth, between the eternal ideal and the present
state of human affairs ; that, therefore, it is vain to expect in one step
and by one single stroke to realise the order of heaven in the life of the
earth; for the ideal realises itself through many intermediate stages,
and the only way to fee heavenly glory is by making the best of this
present twilight. Indeed, Plato almost reverses what we commonly
take to be the normal relation of the abstract and the concrete theology
in a man's life. We usually expect that a man will begin life with
delight in this world, with thoughtless participation in its interests
and enjoyments; and then, when he grows old and the graver and
longer interests of the soul enforce their claim, that he will look away
from this world toward heaven. But Plato belongs to another order
of men. These, by native purity and loftiness of mind, aided, it may
be, by some hopeless sorrow, are brought early in life to feel that
" whatsoever is not God, is nothing, and ought to be accounted as
nothing."1 And from this they draw the great practical lessons,
de neglectu omnis creaturae, ut Creator possit inveniri, and de se
tenendo tamquam exule et peregrino super terrain.2 But as life goes
on, and reflexion deepens, and religion joins hands with reason, and
the world's great need forces itself upon the mature soul, more and
more they turn, with a certain grave and wistful devotion, to take
their places in the world and to give their hearts to its labours, its
interests, its causes. And Plato, though there was no statesman's post
for him at Syracuse or Athens, found at last his place. It has already
been noted how his defeated passion for the state answers to the
defeated political hope of Wordsworth. The parallelism holds to the
end. Each found, for the problem of his practical life and personal
activity, the same solution ; of each, one can say in Windelband's fine
expression,3 seine That ist seine Lelire. For each, the defeated passion
in him, and the mighty thoughts that had grown in the soil of that
i De Imitations Christi, III. 31. 2.
2 Ibid. III. 31, and I. 17. 1.
3 Platon, S. 29.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
defeat, found expression by voice and pen; and, iinding expression,
entered upon a field of influence greater than ever was given to
statesman entrusted with the framing of constitutions, or the
administering of affairs, in Sicily or Athens or Paris ; going forth to
be a guide and an inspiration, while the world of men continues, to
the highest hearts in every land.
There are, then, in Plato's later thought — especially in his
practical interest, his interest in education and the state — positions
which imply the organic connexion of this present world, marred
though it is by evil and unrest, with the final principle of reality.
But, as was indicated above, this is only part of the answer to the
question now before us. The other part is, that with regard to the
world of sensible experience, this implicit view is never brought to
clear articulation; on the contrary, in Plato's express doctrine the
opposite view prevails to the end.
In the last analysis, the cause of this failure clearly and unwaver
ingly to view the world of sensible experience as a manifestation of the
supreme principle of reality lies in the fact that Plato's latest
conception of that supreme principle never quite comes to its
rights. If he had been able clearly to articulate his conception of
that principle as active intelligence and self-imparting goodness
— in one word, as self-determining and self-communicating spirit — he
would have been compelled to view the sense-world, and our experience
in it, as a stage of the process in which that principle is fulfilling its
nature and realising its purpose. But only in many ages, only in
many leaders of the thought of the ages, could so great a work be
done. To no one man was so great an intellectual achievement
possible. Plato, we may say, hit the core of the solution ; but it was
scarcely given to him to go back over all his system, and in the light
of that central truth to work it into a thoroughly articulated view of
the world.
For one thing, ancient thought had not clearly apprehended the
nature of self-consciousness or spirit as it is in man himself. When
you have seen that the self-consciousness, which is man, in a sense
constitutes its own objects and so " makes nature " ; and that in doing
this it exercises a synthetic power — is an active principle of unity in
17 241
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
diversity, linking many facts into one experience and thus constituting
both the facts which make up the experience and the experience which
is made up of the facts : — then you can advance with secure footing to
the view that the principle of union implied in the existence of the
universe is a self-conscious and self-determining spirit which consti
tutes and links into one system the apparently conflicting facts of the
world, and through many stages wherein men suffer, and are blessed,
and at last become truly themselves, realises its purpose. But an
insight into the synthetic or creative energy of self-consciousness as
it is in man never became the explicit point of departure for Hellenic
thought.1 Hence, while it was possible for Plato to come to the belief
that mind is " king of heaven and earth " and " orders all things," it
was scarcely possible for him to articulate that belief into a thoroughly
organic view of the world.
We shall best see this, however, by turning to Plato's own treat
ment of the problem now before us. Granted — so that problem stands
—that the supreme principle of the real world, being good, must go
beyond itself to communicate its nature and impart its blessedness,
why must the created world be one of imperfection? Why is it not
like its source in perfection and blessedness? Has not the supreme
principle, in going out into such a world, contradicted rather than
obeyed its own nature?
The part of Plato's theory which corresponds to this question may
be put in this way. — When the supreme principle goes out of itself
upon that creative activity, into what region does it go forth ? Mani
festly into the region of non-being. So that the created world is a
mixture of being and non-being. That is to say, it is a world of
becoming, and therefore of imperfection, and of all the evils of
imperfection.
But such an answer has two possible meanings. Upon the first
meaning, the total explanation of this going out into the region of
non-being and creating there a world which is a mixture of being and
non-being and is, therefore, subject to imperfection and evil, lies in
the divine nature itself which thus goes forth. In other words, it is
affirmed that the supreme principle must begin its creative work with
i Windelband, op. cit. S. 74.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
something less than perfection — something less than completely
realised " Being " — in order to achieve its purpose at all. If it is to
fulfil its purpose, that communication of itself to other beings to
which it is impelled by its nature, must not be a creation of perfection
by perfection. For in that case the perfection of the created beings
would be, after all, a sort of sham battle; would be a sort of gaining
the goal without running. To lay aside metaphor, it would be only an
apparent perfection, being radically flawed by the fact that those who
have it, were absolutely passive in the acquiring of it. If it is really
to be their perfection, and not just a divine perfection laid upon them
from the outside, they must themselves conquer it; they must them
selves be active, must themselves labour and suffer, in the process of
its attainment. They must, therefore, begin not at the top of the
scale, but somewhere lower. In Plato's language they must begin out
in the region of non-being. Beginning there, they must work their
way toward true and pure being, by a process in which their own
labour and struggle is answered by ever increasing impartations to
them of the divine nature.
This, then, is one possible meaning of the view that creation is a
process in which being goes out into the region of non-being; and
that the world which arises is consequently a mixture of being and
non-being, an order, that is . to say, of becoming and imperfection.
And such a view is Concrete Idealism. For it sees this world of time
in organic connexion with the realities of eternity. It sees this present /
order .of things, and our human struggle upward through its imper- I
fection and evil, as a process in which, by no sham battle, but by most
real achievement, the divine nature fulfils itself by imparting itself to,
other beings.
But upon the other meaning, the explanation of the fact that the
created world is blended of being and non-being is made to lie, not in
the essential nature and conditions of the divine activity in creation,
but in the nature of the region of non-being into which that activity
goes forth. Non-being, that is to say, really is viewed as a second
eternal principle of things. It is regarded as having a nature of its
own, power of its own; as being able, by "its stubbornness, its recalci- I
trancy, its unsuitability to the divine forms which are to be impressed
243
.PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
upon it, to thwart or impede the creative energies of the divine nature,
and so to diminish the perfection of the created world. And upon the
whole it is to this view that Plato is driven. His general description
of non-being — that it is a mere potentiality of taking on form, an
incomprehensible something which receives all things;1 his particular
description of it is empty space2: — these pass over into statements
which imply that non-being is, somehow, more than a mere empty field
in which being can work, more, that is to say, than the mere possi
bility of creation. It has a power of positive resistance in it; this is
explicitly called Necessity,3 and is viewed as a co-eternal principle able
to limit and hinder the purely rational creative energy, so that the
resultant world is not purely rational, but is a mixture of sense and
reason.4
So that to the end there is a measure of dualism in Plato. Indeed,
for him there is no escape from it. For, on the one hand, he was
acutely conscious of the imperfection of the world. And, on the other
hand, in his day it was not possible for human thought to conceive the
intelligent and self-communicating goodness, which is the supreme
principle of reality, as fulfilling its purpose of self-communication by a
process which begins with something lower than its own eternal
perfection; by a process, that is to say, which, to the created beings
standing in it, is one of evolution and of the struggle and suffering
that evolution involves.
IV.
Plato's philosophy, then, was one that laboured toward concrete-
ness ; laboured toward a conception of the highest reality as a mind
perfect in reason and goodness, self-communicating, and therefore the
author and father of a universe. But to the end that effort is in part
defeated. Plato's acute sense of the evil in the present world makes
him feel that it is deeply sundered from genuine reality; while, on
the other hand, he has not entered sufficiently into possession of his
i Timaeus, 51 A. 2 Timaeus, 52. 3 Tiinaeus, 48 A, 56 C.
* Timaeus, 44 (of. Phaedo, 66).
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
highest conception to be enabled — or rather, to be compelled — to view
the supreme mind as a synthetic principle realising itself through the
total process of the world.
So that a measure of the negative theology is in him to the end.
And it makes him grave and austere. We have already seen how in
the very years when his hold upon life and his delight in its greater
energies must have been at the height, a certain stern and sad and
uncompromising aloofness marked even his devotion to the state.
Scarcely can the true statesman bear rule in the city of his birth. The
" city which is his own " has its pattern laid up in heaven. It he will
seek to behold, and in accordance with it will organise his life. But
" with any other city he will have nothing to do."1 And something of
this temper remained in him throughout life. Hardly can he reconcile
himself to the world. To the last it stands at the bar of his thought
as a product of perfect reason, but perfect reason working in an alien
realm and upon alien material and prevented thereby from fulfilling
itself; while the religious spirit in him feels instinctively that the
reality with which it longs to be at one is something far other than this
world, something far removed from the whole order of things, the
whole system of life, which has its being in space and time. And so
to the end he continues to speak in that characteristic note and tone
which in all ages has drawn to him high and pure hearts to whom the
penetrating insights of his science were a closed book — the note and
tone of the man who, having lifted up his mind to the things that are
eternal, prophesies against the world, and exhorts men to fly from the
world to God.
Thus the Greek spirit was transformed in Plato. Its mastery over
the resources of the present life, its habitual delight in the activities
of the day that now is, its quick susceptibility to every interesting
thing and every beautiful form that the world affords, its proneness
to lose itself in these and make the most of them before the evil days
come in which the pale shade has no more delight in life : — all this was
in Plato, but in him as something that stands rebuked. Always he
had disliked the volatility and fickleness of the Athenians of his day ;
always his sympathy had been with the grave strength of the men of
i Republic, 592.
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
Marathon or the austere discipline of Sparta. And upon all this there
had supervened an infinitely prof ounder spiritual power, against which
his science made gradual headway, but which it could never wholly
overcome — the tendency of a pure and high mind, and of a heart
religious with the religion of eternity, toward the absolute condemna
tion of the things of the world in the light of a vision of the heavenly
perfection.
When the genius of Greece still was young, and interpreted the
life of nature in accordance with the life of its own soul, it shaped out
in legend an unintentional prophecy of this transformation which it
was itself to undergo when its doom was descending upon it, and in
the soul of its greatest son it turned itself toward the things of
eternity. The daughter of the earth-goddess led the life of a happy
child, playing among the flowers in the meadows of Enna, lost in
momentary pleasures, absorbed in momentary griefs. Very direct and
simple was the unity of her mind with the beauty that surrounded her,
and with her home the kindly earth ; and her heart was very close to
her mother's heart — for there was no barrier of knowledge or of vision
or of experience that could come between. But when Hades suddenly
had taken her to him, and set her at his side on the inexorable throne
from which the issues of all things mortal are seen; and when
Demeter, making desolate the earth, had compelled the restitution of
her child for the happier seasons of the year: — she who returned to
Demeter's arms was not she who had gone. Persephone it was; but
no longer the happy child of the Sicilian meadows. A stately queen
she came, in her eyes the unfathomable wisdom of the kingdom of the
dead, in her bearing the majesty of the dark king her mate, at her
heart a grave astonishment as she looked upon the hapless creatures,
her mother's friends, the men who till the earth, and struggle for
things that pass away, and mourn as the objects of their foolish quests
perish in their hands. Never while the system of the universe endured
could Demeter have her child again. Henceforward she must walk
through all her genial summers, companioning, not with a happy
child, but with the majestic woman whose eyes, " imperial, disimpas-
sioned," had gazed upon uttermost mysteries and ultimate doom.
And yet it may be that Demeter, having thus undergone her fate, came
246
PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM
at last to find it good ; for it may be that the nature of the Immortal
Gods, unchangeable at her heart, caused her at last to rejoice with a
joy that had never been in her life before, when she found at her side
no longer the child that played in Enna and by night lay close to her
mother's heart, but a companion god, thinking godlike thoughts,
achieving godlike things, queen of the world of the dead.
The genius of Greece might in this almost have been speaking of
itself. The philosophy of Plato is the Persephone's journey of the
Greek spirit. In him it looked upon ultimate things, and so was led
to regard with other eyes the life of the earth. And undoubtedly the
" hidden wisdom of the world " was in this. For while it is true that
the beginnings of human life, and its divinely appointed end, are in
organic connexion, it is also true that the end is far from the begin
ning; a great journey, a mighty discipline, lie between. Earth and
heaven are parts of one universe; but earth is very different from
heaven, and the ascent is steep and long. The nature of the world, and
the meaning of life, can be known only in the light of the divinely
intended synthesis toward which the whole creation moves; but the
very vision of that synthesis is false vision unless it makes clear how
far apart the antithetic members of the system now stand, and how
vast must be the process that reconciles them in the life of the ultimate
city of God. Hence the men of the negative theology, though they
have overstated their truth and made the difference between eternal
reality and our present life absolute and hopeless, yet by their very
insistence upon the difference itself, have done profound service to
humanity. We all need their lesson; and need it the more that our
age is altogether disinclined to learn it. A few can learn it in the
school of the Mystics. But most of us, touched, if not controlled, by
the scientific mind of our day, and devoted practically to mastering the
things of the world, can learn it only as it takes on humane forms and
goes hand in hand with the synthetic spirit of science. And precisely
thus it is that it appears in the urbane but solemn teaching of the
great son of Ariston.
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM.
I.
IN considering the Idealism of Plato, we found that the positive
tendency was not able in him fully to reach its goal. Something of
the negative view remains with him to the end. In the world, he
continues to the last to feel, there is a necessity which is no manifesta
tion of the divine nature, no aspect of the divine activity, but an alien
force able to prevent the divine nature, in its creation, from mani
festing and realising itself as it does when it works in its own realm
where time and space are not. So that even in his latest and ripest
thought he still tends to condemn the present world, not only ethically,
as an order of imperfection, but metaphysically, as not being truly real.
The ultimate cause of this incompleteness of the Platonic Idealism
we must call again to mind. We saw1 that the highest conception of
Idealism is the conception of self-determining and self-communicating
spirit as the principle of union, the constitutive and governing power,
of the universe. It is only through this conception that human
thought can comprehend the possibility of the organic connexion and
unity of all existences under one supreme principle in one completely
rational world ; only through it, that is to say, that Idealism becomes
truly concrete. And we also saw that the place where man gains that
conception of spirit is his own soul. When you have apprehended the
self-consciousness which is man, as an active principle of synthesis;
and have advanced to the thought of a self-conscious spirit, not
discursive and defective as in man, but eternal and perfect, as the
universal principle of synthesis; and have come thus to regard the
order of the universe as an order constituted by that eternally active
spirit, and the process of the universe as a teleological process in which
that spirit fulfils its nature and realises its purpose by continually
i Supra, pp. 64-79.
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THE COMPLETING OP IDEALISM
increasing impartations of itself : — then at last your Idealism is in its
ground-lines self-consistent and concrete. For then, without contra
dicting your own view of the nature of ultimate reality, you can regard
this world, and the conditions of our life in it, as in organic connexion
with that ultimate reality. That eternal spirit, in going forth into a
world of space and time, is not going out into an alien realm, nor
working upon alien material, but is fulfilling its own nature ; is acting
altogether from itself, has the sources of its action altogether within
itself. While from our side, this imperfect knowledge of ours is a
stage on the way to perfect knowledge, this half-intelligent demotic
morality a stage on the way to a morality that clearly apprehends the
divine idea which it is fulfilling. The whole process of the world, in
one word — with that imperfect knowledge of ours, and that demotic
morality, as factors in it — is a process in which, stage after stage,
through the struggle necessary to genuine achievement, the divine
purpose is fulfilling itself, the Good being realised.
Plato's whole interpretation of the world as rational is a call for
such a conception. In his treatment of the Idea of Good as the
organising principle of reality, as the principle of knowledge, as the
true end for man's endeavour, he is really struggling toward it. And
at last, in the dialogues of the final period, he brings it to explicit
utterance. But yet he does not enter into full possession of it as the
instrument for the rational comprehension of the world; one great
province or aspect of the world he to the end leaves outside. He is
unable to come to a view of the whole process of the universe as an
evolution, in and through which the supreme reason, by communicating
itself, realises its purpose; rather, he tends to the end to break the
continuity between the real world, as a realm of fixed and complete
perfections, and this present world, where nothing is, but everything
with imperfection and sorrow is becoming. There must be, he knows,
some connexion between the two. But he feels that the connexion is
not continuous, not fully organic. Something which is a radical
opponent of reality has intervened to break the continuity; and how
that can be, he explains by the supposition that when the divine nature
went forth upon its creative activity it worked in a region or upon a
medium which was alien and intractable, so that the divine nature
252
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
could not do itself justice in its own creation; or rather its creation
is not altogether its own, Necessity or non-being having also a part
in it.
In Plato, then, if one may so speak, Idealism. reached its goal, but
did not quite enter into possession of it. In this sense, Plato's was a
philosophy that called upon the later world to complete it. And,
whether with or without conscious reference to Plato, the later world
took up the task. Indeed, one might almost say that the history of
Idealism falls into two great chapters : the first, the story of its founda
tion by Plato ; the second, the longer and more perplexed story of how
the philosophy thus founded entered into clearer possession of its own
highest conception, and so became better able to do justice to its view
of the world as an order of reason and of righteousness.
As soon as we pass the limits of the purely Greek age, that
second chapter in the history of Idealism becomes infinitely com
plicated. First, indeed, there comes a complete triumph of the
opposite tendency — in the mystic theology and religion which had
their most congenial home in Alexandria. And from that time on,
the whole breadth and complexity of the history of the world enters
into the history of Idealism. The rest of this book is to be given to
a consideration of two single points in that history, which, however
small a part they form of the total history, are yet sufficient
to show the breadth, the depth, the vitality, the complexity, of the
forces that worked there. But before we go on to that, a moment
should be given to the question which meets us upon the threshold
of what has just been called the " second chapter " in the history of
idealistic philosophy. What advance in the direction of making
Idealism more concrete by further articulating its highest conception,
was made within the age of Hellenic thought? Without considering
this question, on the one hand the attempt to understand Plato is left
half-finished, while, on the other hand, factors that worked in the later
history are neglected. So that at least a brief reference must be
made here, first to Aristotle, secondly to the Stoics.
Aristotle, after insisting — in fact, over-insisting — upon the dualism
in Plato, strikes directly into the pathway which leads toward the
overcoming of it ; or rather, which excludes it from the beginning.
253 :£2
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
For he comes to his constructive work with the insight that the real
world consists of formed matter; that is to say, of concrete individ
uals. And concerning the individual things and beings which thus
make up the world, two facts are clear. First, the universals which
realise themselves in these individuals, do so only gradually. Individ
ual things are not eternally or changelessly themselves. They come
to be themselves; they pass from potentiality to actuality. Secondly,
the individual things of the world do not stand upon a level. They
form a scale of being, which is the system of the universe; a scale in
which each individual is actuality to those below it, but matter or
potentiality to those above. So that the universe is one great life or
process, in the survey of which we are led upward from mere matter
or potentiality to the realisation of ever higher universals. But
secondly, in this movement from potentiality to actuality — whether
we think merely of the formation of some individual thing, or of the
total movement which is the process of the universe — there is always a
priority of the actual to the potential. And that in knowledge, in
time, and in substance. In knowledge; for it is only by seeing the
actuality which a given thing may become that I am in position to
view that given thing as potentiality at all. In time; just as the
finished house in the architect's thought must precede the shaping of
the separate timbers and stones, or as the fully completed growth of
corn must precede the corn which is used as seed. In substance;
because the end which a process is to realise is the true governing
principle of the process; because, in other words, the rtXo* of a
process is its true apxrj7 its final cause its true efficient cause.
So far, then, we have seen (1) that the process of the universe is a
process of movement upward from potentiality to actuality ; ( 2 ) that
to the existence and continuance of such a process, there is necessary
a priority of the actual to the potential. But these two insights at once
set a further problem: What is that actuality which is the prius of
this whole system — this whole continuous and eternal world-process —
of potentialities and actualities ? That prius must be eternal ; must be
self-active energy; must be actuality fully-realised and perfect —
actuality without any mixture of unactualised potentiality; must, in
a word, be an eternal and self-dependent principle, which, by its very
254
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
nature, energises perfectly and to the full height of being. But how
is such an energy to be conceived ? This Aristotle answers by his great
conception of self -consciousness. That fully-realised actuality which
is implied in the process of the world, is an eternal and completely
actualised reason which has itself for its object.
Here we seem on the very verge of the completion of Idealism,
with regard at least to the system of its conceptions. But there is
still a question to ask. That eternal self-consciousness, completely
actualised and perfect, having in its own activity its adequate object : —
will Aristotle describe it as the creative and informing energy of the
whole process of the world, so that the world is its thought, its
activity, its objective consciousness, and it, as at once transcendent
and immanent, is the source and the explanation, the home and the
end, of the world?
If Aristotle could have done this, he would have brought his great
argument to its consistent conclusion; would have done justice at
once to his principle that universal and particular must not be
separated, and to the call which his criticism of Plato makes upon
himself ; would have brought Greek thinking to its culmination in an
Idealism of thoroughly concrete type. And at times — for instance, in
his comparison of the order of the universe to the order of an army —
he does seem to put into express words precisely such a conclusion.
But though his whole argument calls for such a conclusion and
prepares the way for it, yet he cannot be said clearly and unwaver
ingly to hold it. For his own view of what reason is in its perfect
exercise, lies in the way. Eeason, he sees, to be perfect, must supply
to itself its own object. If it receives its object from without, the
result must be, in the case of the supreme reason of the universe, the
intrusion of something non-rational. Of that supreme reason we must,
therefore, believe that it is absolutely self-contained, supplying its own
object, depending on nothing from without. While reason as it is in
man must be regarded as a sort of combination in which an active
element, corresponding to the divine reason, somehow goes along with
a passive element which is connected with the body and its avenues of
sense.
The view that the self-consciousness which is the supreme reason
255
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
of the universe, must be complete within itself, supplying its own
object, is perfectly sound; might, in fact, be called an axiom. But
it does not forbid the view of Concrete or Positive Idealism that the
universe is the objective consciousness of God. Aristotle, however,
takes it precisely so as to forbid that conclusion. Like Plato, he is
acutely conscious of the imperfection of the world of our sense-
experience. It certainly must be excluded, he feels, from that system
of absolutely perfect reason which alone can form the objective
consciousness of God. So that in his conception of God, and of the
relation of the sense-world to Him, Aristotle is really more Platonic
than that very side of Plato against which his severest criticisms had
been directed. God's existence is perfect peace, exalted above all
change and becoming. He is active intelligence, but His activity
cannot be viewed as the carrying on of any such process of develop
ment as the world, nor can His intelligence have a world of change
as its object. Eather His activity is one absolutely free from
potentiality or becoming, and His knowledge one which can have no
other object than Himself as perfect being and absolute truth. He is
altogether self-contained; His blessedness consists precisely in that
knowledge in which, as absolute subject, He has Himself as His own
perfect and adequate object: — a blessedness which would lose its
perfection, its peace, its exaltation above all change, if the divine
activity went forth into any such world as that of our daily struggle,
or the divine nature manifested itself in any process of becoming.
God in His blessedness is a universe by Himself, complete, eternal,
perfect. But the world of our experience, which the whole inquiry
was undertaken to explain, and which up to this point it did explain,
is here at one stroke severed from its own ultimate principle. Steadily
the great argument had been carried forward. It had been shown
that the process of development from potentiality to actuality which
is the world, involves as its necessary prius an actuality, eternal, self-
active, having in it no unrealised potentiality; and that this can be
conceived only as self-consciousness, only as a completely actualised
reason. But when it remains only to put the capstone upon the whole
argument by saying that God is the creative and constitutive energy
of the world, and that it is through His communication of Himself
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
that individual things have natures and capacities of their own, and so
are able to exist and energise and fill their places in the system of the
world : — precisely then it is that Aristotle, in the way which we have
just seen, is led to turn round upon his own argument, and to give it
a conclusion opposite to that which its whole previous course had
called for.
Thus, then, the Aristotelian vo^ffis vor'jGeoos — the conception of
the supreme principle of reality as self-consciousness — does not lead to
a view of the organic connexion of God, as the concrete and all-
inclusive universal, with the world, and with that process of develop
ment which is the history of the world. Not, indeed, that Aristotle
evades the problem of the relation between God and the world. But
he tends to make it a relation altogether from the world's side. As a
lover moves toward a beautiful and beloved object, and is governed by
the impulse to organise his life according to its form and nature, so
the world moves toward God. In this sense, indeed, God, as the end
toward which the world moves and which it seeks to realise, is the
governing principle of the whole process of the world. But not
through any activity on the part of God Himself. His activity can
be no other than that of absolutely pure thought; and the object of
such thought can be nothing other than the perfect reason which is
Himself. In that contemplation He remains, perfect and unchange
able in blessedness for ever.1
Aristotle's view of what constitutes reason in its perfect exercise,
coupled with his sense of the imperfection of the world of our sensible
experience, was decisive, then, of the character of his Idealism. In
fact, his conception of reason was determinative, as the Master of
Balliol reminds us,2 in all the great departments of his thought. In
1 See, however, Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. II.,
pp. 11-30. Between the two interpretations, there is no difference with regard to the
broad fact that Aristotle makes a virtually complete disjunction between God and the
present world of change and contingency. The point in dispute is whether the line is
drawn above or below the universals which are seeking to realise themselves in the
things of the world— above or below what Plato would have called the Ideas. In other
words, is the object of the divine thought, the universals as a system of absolutely pure
reason, lifted above all change and contingency, or is it God Himself in a sense which
excludes these ? On the former view, the step to an organic theory would be much easier.
But, whether easy or hard, Aristotle does not take it. In the present world he continues to
recognise a contingency with which neither God nor pure reason can have any connexion.
2 The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. I., p. 287 seq.
18 257
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
his ethic it leads him to rank the Intellectual Virtues in which reason
deals purely with itself, above the Practical Virtues in which reason
is in relation with a world of sense and change. In his psychology it
leads to a disjunction of the two aspects of man's intelligence. There
is a reason,, eternal and existing separately, which makes all things.
And there is a passive or receptive reason in man, which becomes all
things. This, indeed, might seem a convenient form for working out
an organic connexion between the universal principles of the world
and the particulars of our ordinary experience. But the connexion
of the two reasons in man seems after all to be only an external one;
at the death of the body it is dissolved, passive reason perishing with
the body in relation to which it existed, active reason continuing in
that independent and unmixed existence which either is, or is like, the
divine existence. And of the disjunction which thus runs through
every part of his system, the separation of God and the world which
we have just been considering is simply the highest and final instance.
It will be noticed that the logical motives of the dualism which
thus remains in Aristotle, are the same as those we saw operative in
Plato's thought; only Aristotle draws the lines more rigidly. Like
Plato, Aristotle was keenly alive to the imperfection of the world. In
it he found something essentially non-rational — an irreducible and
intractable contingency, corresponding to that necessity of which
Plato had spoken in the Timaeus. And in each case, this works in at
once with the very natural conception that since the highest principle
of reality is absolutely perfect, it cannot be conceived as working
through, or in, any media except those that have an absolute perfection
like its own; which means for Aristotle that in spite of his own
conception of evolution as a way of nature, he cannot conceive it as a
way of God. That for created beings the only genuine perfection is
one in whose achieving they themselves have co-operated, and that
therefore the divine creative activity must begin with something less
than perfection: — this is an argument which Aristotle cannot admit.
He sees the imperfection of the world; sees the imperfection of our
experience in it ; but cannot conceive of God as working through such
imperfection toward that true perfection which is wrought out only
in struggle. God as perfect must be self-contained in the sense of
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
excluding the world of change; as complete actuality, having in
Himself no unrealised potentiality at all, He cannot have an object
lower than Himself, nor any activity lower than the contemplation
of absolute perfection; the world of becoming, while it may be
impelled by the inner principle of its life to move for ever toward Him,
cannot be His workmanship nor the temple of His indwelling.
Indeed, in view of this similarity in the inner logic of their systems,
one may almost say that the difference between Plato and Aristotle is
one rather of temper and manner than of fundamental logical motives
or of ultimate conclusions. Aristotle works his way outward from his
Idealistic centre to a great cyclopaedia of natural and social science
illuminated by Idealistic conceptions. But while Aristotle thus
delights to work upon the circumference even at the expense of
occasionally forgetting the centre, Plato prefers to remain habitually
at the centre, and only from its lofty height to view the circumference.
Hence Plato frequently tends — under the influence of the Par-
menidean cast and tendency which remained in his many-sided
intellect even after he had overcome the specifically Parmenidean
argument, and under the influence still more of the lofty religious
ness native to his character and deepened by grief and by high hope
disappointed — to put the whole of the emphasis upon the centre and
despise or even deny the circumference; thus really breaking the
unity of his system through the very intensity of his instinct for that
unity. While Aristotle, with his cooler scientific mind, gives attention
to both centre and circumference, and yet wrongs both by setting them
apart.
So far, then, for the first step in the history of Idealism after
Plato. Aristotle, seeing the defect in the Platonic Idealism, and
pointing out the way to overcome it, ends by retaining it ; ends with
the conception, not of a God who is the life of the world, and of a
world which is the activity and manifestation of God, but of a world
which has life in itself, and a God who dwells apart from it in the
solitude of absolute perfection, in the blessedness of a contemplation
in which a perfect subject gazes for ever upon a perfect object.
With Aristotle we are really at the end of strictly Hellenic
thought. Already the wide world was breaking in upon Greece and
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
another age was preparing. But before we pass on to it, we must give
a moment to the men who did so much in that preparation for it — the
Stoics. These, though their first interest was practical — the search
for a wise way of living — were genuinely great in metaphysic;
indeed, without being so, they could not have been great in ethics. In
metaphysic, however, the " root of the matter " is in a sense twofold.
There is first the instinct for the unity of all existence ; but, secondly,
the instinct for doing justice to the individual existences within that
unity and to the particular facts which make .up the life of these.
Without the first there is nothing worthy of being called philosophy ;
but the second must work with it to do justice to the wealth which
the unity really contains. Now, the Stoics were weak in the lesser
matters — and therefore in many of the greater matters — of the second.
But they were victoriously strong in the first. Platonic and Aristo
telian dualism they sweep out at one stroke. They have no doubt at all
that reality is one — and that it is rational; no doubt at all that the
supreme principle of reality is immanent in the world, and that it is
kindred in nature to the reason which is in man; no doubt at all that
man is capable of communion with it and of obedience to its ways, and
that in that communion and obedience lie his freedom and his true
way of life.
This seems a great advance. And in one sense it is a great
advance. Yet we must make clear to ourselves what it does, and what
it does not, contain. It is not enough to assert the true conclusion,
unless you make it intelligible; not enough to assert that reality is
one, unless you show how it is one. And this the Stoics were not in
position to do ; were far less in position to do than Plato or Aristotle.
Still less than Plato or Aristotle had they proceeded from an appre
hension of the reason in man as a synthetic principle — from that
apprehension which led Kant to the emphatic statement about man's
understanding that it " makes nature/' And without this they might
assert the rationality of the whole system and structure of the
universe; but they could not articulate that insight. And such
articulation is the business of systematic philosophy.
So that in the metaphysic of the Stoics we have to mark a double
defect, each side of which intensifies the other. They despised and
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
rejected certain aspects of experience., certain provinces of reality.
And, holding the view that the world is rational, they could not give
to that view its systematic articulation. But of course it is to be
remembered that the true Stoic was first of all a soldier of righteous
ness, and only secondarily a philosopher of the school. He fought in
the most cruel of all moral conflicts — that which arises from the decay
of a great civilisation. Simplicity and uprightness seemed to be gone
from the earth, luxury and wickedness everywhere to prevail. By
nothing less than a general treason of society, the causes of right
reason stood defeated. Upon the field of that lost battle, the Stoic
lived his life; and as the shadows of night grew deeper, and the
hideous forms that thrive in its darkness gathered more thickly
around, he recognised it as his vocation to form no other ties than
those of his soldier's duty, and to stand immovable at the post to which
the wisdom of the universe had assigned him.
Aristotle, then, holds that the highest reality is a self-conscious
and self-dependent spirit, existing separately from our world of
change ; while the Stoic holds precisely the complementary view, that
God is immanent in the world as its reason and its life. But Greek
thought was not able to work out, as a clearly articulated possession of
the scientific mind, the conception which, by taking up both those sides
into the unity of a more comprehensive view, would have enabled each
of them to enter into its own proper significance and to unite with the
other. That conception is not merely the conception of God as self-
conscious and, self-dependent spirit, but the further conception of Him
as the self-conscious and self-determining spirit who is the subject of
the world ; so that the world is regarded as an activity or manifesta
tion of God, the history of the world as a process in which a divine
purpose is being realised ; that purpose, again, not being arbitrarily or
externally chosen, but arising out of and expressing the divine nature
itself, and being capable of fulfilment, therefore, only by the gradual
impartation of the divine mind and nature to man. For such an
Idealism Greek thought assembled the materials; but scarcely was
able to bring them to the unity of an organic structure. This was to
some extent a matter simply of the order of time. In the history of
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
thought it is a conspicuous and much honoured part to set in place
the keystone which makes visible to all the world the unity of the
manifold building and of the varied labours that have entered into it.
But first must come the more heroic workmen who, with only the
prophetic instinct of science to guide them, lay deep foundations at
what seem hopeless distances apart. And then, too, a fully developed
Idealism requires an historical outlook such as was not possible to the
Greeks ; an outlook over successive ages and races, each doing its work
upon the earth and passing away, and thus setting the mind of the
spectator upon the search for some plan of the world or wisdom of
history. And there was still another reason; one connected, not
simply with the historical position of the Greeks, but with the intrinsic
quality of their mind. As we have seen, Idealism arises when, seeking
to know the world, you also know the soul and find in it a principle for
interpreting the world. For the place where we apprehend the char
acter of spirit as an active principle of synthesis, is in ourselves.
Unless we have apprehended the nature and activity of spirit there, we
cannot be in position to articulate clearly and consistently the insight
that spirit is the principle of synthesis, the constitutive and organising
energy, implied in the existence of the universe. But the Hellenic
mind, while devoted to the objective interests of the spirit, was disin
clined to set the individual soul before it in order to analyse its inner
processes for their own sake. The strength, the intellectual tact, the
unfailing clearness, of the Greek genius, were based in a certain large
and calm objectivity, a tendency to fix contemplation upon that
universal structure of things which was felt to be at once more real
and more worthy than the single soul in its individuality. And this
objective tendency of the Hellenic mind was the source at once of the
greatness and the incompleteness of Greek Idealism.
But this indicates to us in what direction we must look, if we
would see the Idealistic or spiritual view of the world completing itself
from within. We must look fof an age, or a type of experience, in
which the individual soul becomes a thing of supreme value, and, in a
profound and worthy sense (i.e., without sinking into mere subjectiv
ism, without losing objectivity of view and of interest) is turned in
upon itself. And precisely such a type of experience was now to
262
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
become the chief factor of human history, in a religion which, so far
as it could be faithful to the whole of itself, did not turn its eyes away
from the world, and yet was a religion of the inner spirit; a religion
in which the struggles and attainments of the inner spirit are viewed
as the most real thing in life, and therefore as that in the world which
most truly expresses the nature and meaning of the world.
II.
Such a religion — a religion that from the inner spirit goes forth
to the world and to the whole breadth of the interests of the world —
was Christianity; Christianity, at least, as it existed in the mind of
its Founder, or as it struggles in human society to be faithful to that
mind. Jesus, in His daily life and habitual consciousness, looked upon
those eternal relations of man's life which are the order and structure
of the universe, with an objectivity as large, as calm, as unfailing, as
that of the Greek mind itself; and looking thus upon them, He
expressed them in terms of the spirit. He searched the inner spirit;
but he did not shut men up to it. Freely He looked upon the world ;
freely, turning His eyes away from nothing, He regarded the whole
order and structure of it, the whole constitution of things in which
man lives, the whole array of the conditions of our life.1 And as He
looked with this clear and open gaze upon the world, not all its imper
fection, not all its evil, could make Him waver for a single instant in
His consciousness that the relations which constitute its order and the
order of man's life, are ultimately spiritual, ultimately moral — nay,
immediately spiritual, immediately moral. His consciousness of God
He habitually expressed in the words, My Father; His consciousness
of the relation of God to the human world and of the human world to
God, in the words, Our Father. Man's life, that is to say, is a com
munication of Himself on the part of God; the universe, a society of
spirits which God constitutes and administers as His family. With
1 Even with "nature" in the more restricted sense of the word— the external world,
the birds and fields and lilies— He lived as a man might live with the things of His home
(see Caird, The Evolution of Religion, vol. II., p. 122 seq.). It would indicate a truth,
were one to say that the view which Wordsworth took of nature poetically, Jesus took
religiously.
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
Him and with the ultimate realities of eternity we all stand in
intimate organic relationship : whatsoever we do to " the least of
these," we do to Jesus and therefore to the Father; or again, to
choose an instance of a different character, Jesus habitually speaks of
eternal life as a present possession.
And of such a view of the world as a system over the whole of
which the love, the righteousness, the wisdom, of the Father extend,
" reaching from end to end, sweetly and strongly ordering all things,"
— of such a view the practical attitude of Jesus was, if possible, even
more expressive than His words. He lived a life of absolute confidence
in the Father: absolute confidence in the Father's administration of
the world ; absolute confidence in the reach of that administration over
every side of man's life, over every aspect of the world and of its
history; absolute confidence in the supremacy of the Father and in
the inability of any power to defeat His purpose ; absolute confidence,
therefore, in the good, and in the impossibility that any labour for
the good can ultimately be without its due effect. This confidence in
the Father who " sends us," and in the good which is His purpose,
was the habitual mind of Jesus. He saw human life as human life
actually is ; He faced all the sufferings of men, all the sins of men, all
the sinfulness of men, and never lost hope, or fell into bitterness, or
held back in misgiving ; but remained absolutely certain that through
all this stricken and troubled process of the world's history omnipotent
goodness is at work realising its purpose. Hence He taught that the
man who really saves his life is the man who loses it by devoting
himself to that divine purpose and making himself its organ ;* and He
gave to His belief in the organic relation of the human world to God
the most decisive of all possible expressions, by seeking to win men's
hearts and to lead them toward a consciousness of God similar to His
own and toward the way of life which arises from such a consciousness.
Such a confidence in God, such a belief in the possible unity of the
affairs of the world with the divine plan, it was that Christianity
carried with it, as it went out to be the religion of the world.
Implicitly — not as a possession of the intellect, but as an inner spirit
of faith and of life — it held the view that the world and the history of
i See Caird, The Evolution of Religion, vol. II., pp. 88, 104-5, 137.
264
THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
the world stand in organic connexion with the ultimate God. But
Christianity was certain to come more and more to intellectual
possession of its implicit faith. For the world out into which it went
was that Gentile world which had inherited the intellectual spirit of
the Greeks,, and their impulse to bring implicit beliefs to the light of
day in the form of ordered science.1
But the history of this entrance of Christendom upon the intel
lectual possession of its own implicit view of God and the world, is
perhaps the most complicated of all human histories. In the first
place, there is a complexity from within. Christianity could scarcely
advance immediately to the apprehension of the organic connexion of
God and the world. It was inevitable that the advance should be, in a
sense, dialectic ; should be an advance through antithesis to synthesis.
For Christianity has in it the possibility of both the forms of the
religious temper distinguished on a previous page.2 With the acute
sensitiveness to all evil, the imperious consciousness of sin, which it
introduces into life, it tends, both with individuals and the church, to
assume at the beginning the more negative of the two forms. Under
this form, it leads men to condemn not only their sins and their sinful
tendencies, but the whole of their nature and the whole of the world.
Thus it becomes a principle of separation from the world ; and to the
negative implied in its positive gives so great a place as to obscure or
even defeat that positive itself. Such religion, too, is commonly the
religion of intense natures. Hence, when it gains hold upon the
church, it is as a rule only slowly and with struggle that the advance
beyond it is made. Soon or late, however, the advance must come.
For, in that form, Christianity, though an intense and heroic religion,
is involved in a deep contradiction with itself, with the mind of its
founder, and with reason. It cannot see the world as a work of God ;
and instead of saving it, leaves it to those of its powers which are most
unlike God. Its inner principle, that is to say, is working under
1 Hence it is strikingly appropriate that the man who formally completed Idealism in
its Platonic -type, was a Father of the church— Augustine, who on one of the many sides
of his intense and eager thought, made the Ideas (the norms upon which human thinking
proceeds, but which manifestly go beyond the individual mind, and have a universal
validity) to be forms or standards in the divine mind.
2 Supra, pp. 221, 222.
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
limitations which contradict that inner principle itself. Hence the
forces which make for human development, continually impel that
principle to fulfil itself by going beyond those limitations. Keason,
which is irreconcilably an enemy to Manichseism; experience, which
shows how genuinely great are the world and the natural mind of
man ; the love which carries the individual beyond himself and beyond
the limits of his church or order to the service of the imperfect world ;
the mind of the Founder, exerting itself in the church : — these produce
gradually their effect, and the mind of Christendom comes more and
more to apprehend that the world stands in organic connexion with
God, the things of time with those of eternity, the conditions of man's
present life with the divine plan.
But secondly, this internal complexity and struggle is deepened by
struggles and complexities from without. For Christianity became
the central stream of human history. To it, every current of
human thinking, of human passion, of human achievement, every
scientific tradition, every type of religion and of religious aspira
tion, became tributary, bringing clear or troubled waters, which
partly were received and assimilated, partly were hurried forward
in rival and contending currents. Virtually all the types, and
all the divisions, of man's science, of his philosophy, of his greater
religion, entered and exerted their influence; so that he who would
trace the development within Christendom of the conception of God
and the conception of God's relation to nature and man, would have to
make himself acquainted in the end with nothing less than the whole
scientific and religious history of the human race.
In the pages that remain, not even a beginning can be made at the
telling of that great history.1 But the impression which it is the
business of this book to convey — an impression of the two funda
mental tendencies in the endeavour of the soul to move intellectually
and practically toward reality — calls for at least some indication of the
complexity of the development now in question ; calls for at least some
glimpse of the variety of interests and insights operative in it, of the
crossing, the conflicting, the involution, of its intellectual and
emotional and moral factors.
i A condensed outline, firmly and clearly drawn, of the more positive side of it, is
given by Principal Fairbairn in Book I. of his Place of Christ in Modern Theology.
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THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM
In attempting to give such an indication, it is scarcely possible to
touch the modern world. On the practical side, the story is too hope
lessly vast; and the issues are not yet clear. On the side of thought
the history is easier to follow; and there are two specially striking
examples of the direct entanglement and conflict of the two tendencies
— Spinoza, and Kant. But with Spinoza we have already attempted to
deal. While that veiled conflict of the abstract and the concrete
movement of thought, which ran through the whole structure of
Kant's critical philosophy, has been laid bare for us by the Master of
Balliol in an exposition which is one of the masterworks of English
philosophical literature. But for the present purpose the mediaeval
world is almost more instructive than our own; because in it life and
thought went more closely hand in hand. Turning to it, we are to
attempt to deal with two single points which illustrate the wealth and
complexity of the forces at work. The one is Erigena's view of the
Division of Nature; it goes beyond the story of the inner develop
ment of Idealism, and takes us back to that ultimate antithesis with
which we were concerned on earlier pages; for it shows the Idealism
implicit in Christianity almost overborne by Neo-Platonic Mysticism.
The other is an aspect of Aquinas' conception of the relation of the
world to God. It shows us that implicit Idealism struggling toward
a thorough expression of itself, but crossed just at the culmination by
a dualism very similar in motive to that of Plato and Aristotle.
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ERIGENA : THE DIVISION OP NATURE
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE.
MEN more different than Erigena and Spinoza it would be hard
to imagine ; or philosophies more different in atmosphere and outward
appearance than Spinoza's with its severity of science, and Erigena's
with its radiance of mystic passion. Yet in the inner logic of the two
philosophies there is a similarity: each in its own way shows us the
affirmative method and the negative dwelling together in a single
mind. This was due in part to the very nature of their endeavour.
As men of philosophy and of religion, they strove to see the world
as One; strove to pass from present appearances to eternal reality.
But, as we so often have seen,1 there are in such a movement of thought
two possibilities. We may see that the present appearances must
somehow be in organic connexion with eternal reality; for else the
world is hopelessly rent in twain, and the very unity that we set out
to find is lost. But, on the other hand, we may be so overwhelmed by
the difference^between reality in its oneness and perfection, and the
appearances in their dividedness and evil, that we refuse to regard
these appearances as real at all ; they are deceptions — shadows of the
cave — coloured veils breaking up the pure light of the One. And
between the two possibilities, thus inherent in the very nature of their
task, both Erigena and Spinoza divided their hearts. But the form
which this division of mind assumed was determined for each by his
own special circumstances ; in each case there was a preceding history
leading to the presence and combination of the two tendencies in one
outlook upon the world. For Spinoza there stood on the one side the
modern attempt to apprehend reality by the use of the category of
Substance — the Cartesian tradition, whose last prophet is shut up to
the belief that reality is One Substance, and all manifoldness an
illusion. On the other stood the newly-developed physical science,
whose temper and point of view formed part of Spinoza's very soul.
i Cf. supra, pp. 7-11 ; p. 83 note ; p. 117 .s-ey. ; p. 216 sty/.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
With Erigena, the diverse traditions that made up his intellectual
inheritance lay closer to historical religion. First, there was the early
history of Christian theology : the Apologists had wrought out a large-
hearted theory of divine revelation, of God's manifestation of Himself
in general and special forms to all the world; and then Fathers and
Councils had formulated the doctrine of the Trinity. But along with
this Christian theology and strangely interwoven with it, there came
another type of thought : the philosophy which called itself by Plato's
name, but really was the summing up and the testament of the ancient
civilisation that had gone down to death, and in dying had turned its
eyes away from the world to an absolutely transcendent God.
Such a combination of Christianity and Neo-Platonism might have
seemed beyond possibility. For whether viewed as theologies, seeking
to pass from the manifoldness of the world to an apprehension of its
eternal unity, or as religions seeking the way of life by which man
becomes at one with that supreme principle, the two represent the
greatest possible opposition of method and tendency. Extreme
opposites they were, too, by historical position. Neo-Platonism was at
once the ultimate vision and the dying voice of the ancient world;
Christianity was the vital life of the new. And this opposition of
nature had manifested itself in open hostility of action? Neo-Platon
ism, in the stress of its conflict, had made alliance with the cult of the
ancient gods. Nothing could better have marked the Neo-Platonist's
sense of the irreconcilableness of his theology with the Christian ; nor,
in the eyes of the Catholic theologian, could more thoroughly have
displayed Neo-Platonism as damned beyond all hope.
But though the old world was gone, and relapse into any of its
faiths or worships was regarded as the sin of sins, yet its mind could
not die. The Mysticism, with which in its old age it had sought to rise
above itself, neither did nor could pass out of the minds of men. In
part Christianity overcame it ; but in part it infused itself into Chris
tianity. And so strong is the impulse of the human mind to bring to
unity all the insights and beliefs that have place in it, that the com
bination even of these opposites was soon attempted. No sooner had
the great world-conflict been fought and settled, no sooner had history,
in a Justinian, given its decisive answer to the endeavour of Julian,
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
than the Areopagite sought to give to a modified Neo-Platonism a
standing within the church. And the Areopagite did not stand alone ;
he had many teachers and compeers — Monophysite monks, for instance,
such as the real Stephen bar Sudaili and the phantom Heirotheus.
But the passion of the conflict was still deep enough to sharpen the
critical sense against books " unknown to Cyril and Athanasius." This
ghost of Neo-Platonism, in its Christian dress, could but wander
forward through the years, here and there (as in the case of Maximus
the Confessor) speaking home to an elect heart, but by the great body
of the orthodox misunderstood, suspected, or even condemned.
None the less, the combination was to take place. When Julian
and Justinian and the Areopagite all were gone, and the northern races
were seated beyond possibility of overthrow in the West — while Mercia
still was disputing with her rivals the supremacy of England, and
there were yet nearly forty years to the birth of Alfred the West-Saxon
— there was growing up, probably in some corner of Ireland with a
cloister school, the man who was to stand at the beginning of the
greater labours of mediaeval theology. But he was not to stand there
merely as a churchman systematising canonic doctrine. He received
into himself both the traditions now in question — the Christian
theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the Neo-Platonism
contained in the mystical theology of Dionysius. These he welded into
a system which sounds the note and contains the motives of each of
the two great sides of mediseval thought — the mystic side and the
scholastic ; but which does much more. For Erigena was, in the strict
sense of the word, a secular figure, a man who belongs to the ages ; in
him the great histories that had gone before him found a voice again ;
while with his endeavour to see the whole process of the world as a
spiritual process, he from his ninth century may speak, as Noack
points out,1 to the men of the nineteenth with their Hegel. Nature
and history seem to have worked together in setting him in his fateful
place. He was a Christian ; by training, a theologian in the succession
of Christian theologians. But by special kinship of nature he was
fitted to receive, and, so far as was possible to a man who in his subtle
and unusual genius must have stood almost alone, to introduce as a
i In the Vorwort to his German translation of the De Divisione Naturae.
19 273
EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
factor in the life of the West, that older theology to which God is all
in all and the world an emanation from which the wise man will seek
to return into God Himself.
Eor the mind of Erigena was dominated by that which was central
to the logic of Neo-Platonism, and which in some form is central to
all philosophy — the instinct for unity. And by that instinct in both
its forms. As a philosophic or scientific instinct, it constrained him
to view the world, and all the history and process of the world, as
one — as one reality, issuing from one source, and in all its steps and
stages remaining one. While as a religious passion, the passion for
unity with God, it joined itself with the philosophic instinct to
strengthen the demand that, as all things proceed from God, all things
must in the end return to God.
But the instinct for unity has two ways of fulfilling itself. First
,it may conceive the unity of all existence as a unity which mediates
itself through diversity: — the unity which a system, for instance, has
by reason of its highest principle, or which a process has by reason of
the purpose that is realised in it. Or, secondly, it may conceive the
unity of the real as the solid, undifferentiated unity which rejects from
itself all manifoldness, all diversities, all distinctions. Of the two
conceptions, the latter is the easier to form; particularly in early
thought. Hence the man who is dominated by precisely the central
impulse of all science and of all philosophy, often conceives the unity
that he seeks as of the latter type. And from this, for the man of
intellectual clearness and speculative courage, the consequences follow
at once. The One is, and nothing else is. Then what is the manifold
world of our experience? It is illusion. And if the inquirer is a
religious man, he has to go a step farther. The welfare of the soul
lies with reality. The duty of a true man, therefore, is to lift himself
out of the illusion in which ordinary human life is spent. He must
seek a new type of experience, a new form of consciousness, in which
he enters into union with reality ; in which he lays aside the finitude
and manifoldness of human individuality, and without distinction or
division of essence becomes one with God.
The key to Erigena's position is that he cannot enter clearly into
the former of these two ways of philosophy, nor yet commit himself
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
unreservedly to the latter. Cannot enter clearly into the former : for
he does not possess, in clear mastery, those " categories of organic
unity " which enable human thought to retain all the manif oldness of
the given world, and yet view that wTorld as having the genuine unity
of a system or process in which a single principle is manifesting itself,
a single purpose being realised. Nor can he commit himself
unreservedly to the latter. For his mind was not only subtle and acute.
It was comprehensive also, delighting to traverse all the ranges of
existence. And his spirit seems to have been affectionate; seems to
have cast out many tendrils that clung about the things and persons
of the manifold world; as frequently his parabolae with their keen eye
for the face of nature, show, or the tender dedication subinde dilectis-
simo tibi; frater in Christo Wulfade, et in studiis sapientiae coopera-
tori, at the close of the De Divisione Naturae. But behind all such
personal reasons stands the greater historical one — his inheritance of
Christianity and of Christian theology. His vision of the Lord Christ
taking upon Him the form of our mortal life, forbade him to dismiss
the world of our present struggle as unreality and illusion.
So that Erigena's work was done under almost the greatest strain
that can come upon a man in the courts of philosophy. By imperious
necessities of thought within, by great histories without, he was com
pelled to be faithful both to the Many and to the One; and at the
same time he was not clearly master of those categories which would
have enabled him not merely to keep both the Many and the One, but
to see each as necessary to the other. Hence he was in a continual
struggle to keep faithful to his belief in the unity of existence, and at
the same time to do justice to the diverse facts of that manifold world
which was given to his singularly open-eyed and sensitive spirit. And
what he built up under the pressure of that struggle was a system that
has virtually all the great conceptions and tendencies and traditions
of Alexandrian and mediaeval thought woven into it. But Erigena did
this as no mere eclectic, piecing together into an unstable structure
materials afforded by the histories that he inherited. He was in
himself a great speculative genius. And his spirit is in the system
that he constructed. In all that age of great philosophies and
theologies which reaches from Augustine to Cusanus, it has no equal
275
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
for its swift and free ascent of the secular consciousness to its home in
God, or for the unfailing speculative passion with which it carries
through the idea of the whole world as a procession from
God. And it is the more remarkable as having taken form in the
ninth century — as if, through grey and cloudy twilight of earliest
morning there should break, for one fugitive moment and with the
many-coloured radiance that speaks of evening rather than of morning,
the flame of day.
The dialogue in which Erigena presents this system is long, com
plicated, self -involved. Continually the argument returns upon itself ;
yet not with the mere vexatious iteration of some of the later School
men, but with an emphasis that always is new and with a " subtle
flame " of speculation that maintains itself to the end. To this
dialogue — the five books De Divisione Naturae — we must now turn,
and attempt to follow in some systematic way the essential movement
of its thought.1
First, in general terms, how did Erigena meet the situation just
described? He keeps both sides, we must answer; and does this by
means of an expedient that came to him from an earlier history.
First, he keeps the unity. To say this, indeed, is only to say that
he is Erigena and a philosopher. Always he is asserting it, or taking
it for granted, or labouring to reduce to it the stubborn opposites of
the world. The very title of his book, which seems to indicate multi
plicity, really points toward unity. The object of his thinking, the
object of philosophy and theology, he calls Nature. But by Nature
Tie means TO nav, the totality of being viewed as one; and by the
Forms into which Nature is divided he means the aspects which that
<one reality has somehow come to present. But secondly, as we shall
i The references are to the edition of Floss (Migne, vol. 122 of the Latin Patrology).—
"It is a question whether Erigena, with his passion for the point of view of eternity, did
•not (in speaking of the Word) frequently write ingenitus where Floss reads unigenitus.
Except at one or two points (where Erigena, in his scorn for the human body as con
trasted with the angelic, is driven beyond his usual fine sensitiveness and allows the
language with which he condemns the brute in man, itse'f to take on a touch'of brutality),
J have made the translations very literal. This ha^ been done in the hope of conveying a
more accurate impression of the man himself in his ninth century thought. But in one
way it is scarcely fair to him ; the depth and acuteness of his mind would be better shown
if his thoughts were turned into the present-day language of philosophy.
276
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
see more fully in dealing with the second and third Forms of Nature,
he also keeps the manifold; though no man need imagine that the
manifold which a mediaeval theologian, and a disciple of the Areopa-
gite at that, leaves standing, is quite the same as the manifold of
ordinary experience.
But, retaining thus a manifoldness within reality, has he not
shattered his own fundamental doctrine of the unity of Nature ? The
answer is, as indicated a moment ago, that he escapes the difficulty
altogether, by bringing up a great distinction from that inheritance of
theological tradition which was his intellectual field and home. This
is the distinction between that which is and that which is not; and
the consequent distinction between the methods of apprehending these
two kinds of reality. The opening sentences of the De Divisione
Naturae, in which Erigena chooses for the totality of things the great
word Nature, show Nature as divided into the things that are and the
things that are not:
Master. — Often — as I ponder, with such diligence of inquiry as my powers
admit, upon the fact that the first and highest division of all things which
can either be perceived by mind or transcend its reach, is into those that
are and those that are not — there presents itself to me, as the general name
of all these, the term which in Greek is tyvoig-, but in Latin Natura. Or do
you view the matter otherwise ?
Scholar. — Nay, I agree ; for I, too, find it thus, when I enter upon the path
of rational investigation.
Master. — Nature, then, as we have said, is the general name for all things
which are and which are not.
That which is is the reality able to present itself in ordinary human
experience ; the reality apprehensible by human reason, and declared,
therefore, by that reason to have existence. But there is a reality
which stands high above all the categories of reason, and of which,
therefore, reason can only say that it is not. This reality which is
beyond the grasp of mind and can, therefore, in all thinking and
speaking, be referred to only in negative terms of which the is not is
the summing up, is the true and genuine reality. And with it, though
human thought and speech can find no name for it except Nothing
277
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
and no description of it except that it is not, yet a union of the soul
is possible ; a union with which Erigena deals at length, but which we
cannot consider at this point. Corresponding to this distinction within
Nature is a distinction in theological method. There is, first, affirma
tive theology, which of the divine essence predicates what is; not
meaning, indeed, that the divine essence is anything of that which
is, but that all qualities and existences which have their source in it
can be predicated of it. While negative theology denies that the divine
essence falls in the province of that which is; i.e., of that which can
be thought or spoken.1 You can say, for instance, that God is truth,
inasmuch as He is the creator and original cause of that truth in
which all things that are true participate. But, on the negative
method, you deny that God is truth, because He is more than truth
and is exalted above everything that can be thought or said, above
everything of which it can at all be said that it is.2 And of these two
methods or procedures of theology, the preference must be given to
the negative. For what the affirmative procedure does, is, as a working
compromise, to effect a sort of transfer: it carries the methods of
human thinking into a realm where properly they have no place.
Categories like Essence, Wisdom, Truth, it applies where categories are
not applicable. In strict propriety, it is only the via negativa that can
be adopted in investigating the exalted and incomprehensible nature of
God. If men must have a name for that nature, let them use the word
that expresses the inability of thought to conceive it and of speech to
utter it — the word Nihil. For God, being exalted above all that can
be thought or uttered, can properly be affirmed only by the denial of
1 I. 13, 14. The argument of chapter 14 is one that has taken a great place in the
history of theologia negativa. God is viewed as coincidentia oppositorum. Hence you
must not attribute one side of an opposition or antithesis to God without the other.
But human thought— so Erigena takes for granted, whatever deeper view may be implicit
in him— has no conceptions which take up into unity both sides of these oppositions.
Hence human thought is precluded from attributing qualities to God at all, and has to
regard Him as altogether beyond the categories. It will be noted, that with these opposi
tions, e.g., Essence and Nothingness, Eternity and Time, Light and Darkness, Erigena
does not regard the latter as merely a denial of the former, but views both as positive.
Then since God is the source of both, affirmative theology must predicate both of Him ;
which can only mean that He is above both, and that therefore (as is noted in the text) the
true procedure for theology is the negative procedure.
2 IV. 5.
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUEE
all that is; and is better known by non-knowledge.1 Thus, then, the
negative method avails us more than the affirmative, in our inevitable
attempt to characterise the ineffable essence of God. For affirmative
theology is a carrying over of qualities or predicates from the creatures
to the Creator ; but the denials of negative theology, moving far above
every creature, are valid of the Creator in and for Himself.2 Hence
it is that Erigena adopts the exhortation of the Areopagite to
Timotheus his friend : " If thou art strong for journeying in the
realm of mystic contemplation, forsake the senses and the operations
of the intellect, and both the things of sense and the things that are
invisible, and all that is and is not, and so far as in thee lieth be
restored in non-knowledge to the unity of that which is above all
essence and all science. For thus, in the immeasurable and uncondi
tional passing of the soul beyond thyself and all things, forsaking all
things, and from all things being set free, shalt thou ascend to the
superessential ray of the divine darkness."
This division of Nature into that which is and that which is not,
with the corresponding distinction between the methods of theology, is
the expedient which sets Erigena free from his initial and funda
mental difficulty. First, it leaves him free to assert the very highest
doctrine of unity; a doctrine of unity which sets him at the side of
Vedantist and Neo-Platonist. But secondly, it also leaves him free to
give a place within reality to the manifold — the manifold of our
experience, together with that higher system of forms and principles,
of persons and energies, requisite for the explanation of our experi
ence. And this simultaneous honouring of the two great and appar
ently antithetic necessities — the necessity for unity, asserted imperi
ously by the philosophic and theological intellect; and the necessity
of recognising the actual manifold of our experience — can take place
without fear of rational attack. For Nature as one (i.e., God as
original source) is above all grasp of reason. If it be objected: Does
1 III. 20 and 22. Erigena feels so keenly that knowledge conditions and limits its
object, that he is not content with denying that human reason can know God. He even
constructs, under certain modifications, a doctrine that God cannot know Himself (II. 28).
But in estimating the real significance of such a view, we must remember that for
Krigena knowledge is defined by the ten Aristotelian categories.
2 IV. 5,
279
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
not your retention of the manifold contradict your doctrine of unity?
the answer is : You cannot say that, for reason cannot enter here ; the
nature of the One is riot to be limited by the application to it of the
categories.1
Thus a " Division " — really not so much " of Nature," as of the
aspects which Nature presents to minds like ours2 — is effected. There
is, first, Nature as One. It is above the categories ; we cannot ration
ally comprehend it, though we must affirm its unity. There is,
secondly, Nature as Manifold. This is the field wherein reason can
profitably employ itself; and Erigena — as if rejoicing that his funda
mental Mysticism is not after all to call him away from the courts of
science to mystic quietude — flings himself upon it with all the powers
of his subtle and eager mind and all the resources of his intellectual
inheritance. As he considers it, he finds within it a great distinction.
There are, first, the universals — eternal and energetic types; what
Plato called Ideas, but Erigena calls primordial causes. Secondly,
there are the effects of these causes, effects of which some at least are
temporal and visible.
But even this is not the end. The instinct for unity still has a
work to do, and here it is especially supported by the religious instinct.
If it is a demand of reason that there should be a unitary source of all
things, it is a demand both of reason and of religion that there should
be a unitary end of all things. So that the final Form of Nature is
that in which there is no more procession — no more forth-going — of
creatures in classes and kinds, but all things, in quiet, rest in God as
an undivided and unchangeable One.3
Thus the "Division of Nature" comes at last to be fourfold.
First, there is Nature as One — Nature as creating, but not created,
1 It is interesting to compare the somewhat similar situation in Kant. Moral reason
asserts a categorical imperative. And that assertion, so Kant thinks, the scientific reason
cannot challenge, because scientific reason cannot enter into the realm of noumena.
2 Cf. infra, pp. 304-307 and 314-316 (especially 315).— At the beginning of the third Book,
the second Form of Nature is referred to as " the second way of viewing universal Nature,
and, so to speak, its form or appearance."— In Spinoza, on the interpretation of those who
in dealing with the definition of "Attribute" (Eth. I. def. IV.) emphasise the tanguam,
there is a similar situation, arising out of similar logical motives.
3 II. 2.
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
God as the original source of all things; secondly, the aboriginal
causes — Nature as created and creating ; thirdly, the effects of these —
Nature as created, but not creating; fourthly, Nature as One again,
when all process or emanation from the original One has returned to
its source, and God is all in all.
To the consideration of these four Forms of Nature, the De
Divisione Naturae is given. Of the first, as it is in itself, there is, of
course, nothing to be said, except in the way of amplifying the negative
position already indicated. This Erigena specially does in the first
Book, a great part of which is occupied by an extended proof of the
inapplicability of the ten Aristotelian categories to God. The Book
concludes by insisting once more upon the greater truth of the negative
theology. " And this is the Confession, prudent and catholic and for
our salvation, which we are to make concerning God: — that we may
first, in the affirmative way, using names or words, predicate all things
of Him, not properly, but by a certain transfer; but that all these
may again with full propriety be denied of Him according to the
negative way. For it is more correct to deny, than to affirm, that God
is anything of that which is predicated of Him."1 " ... Of
God nothing can properly be predicated, because He is above every
thought, above every characterisation in form of sense or intelligence ;
better is He known through non-knowledge ; His absence of knowledge
is the true wisdom ; more truly and more credibly is He denied in all
than affirmed. For whatsoever thou deniest of Him thou deniest
truly ; but in no wise does that which our reason establishes about Him
stand fast in reality. If trjiou provest (appro!) averis, imaginest thyself
to have proven) that He is this or that, thou shalt stand in the end
convicted of falsehood, because He is nothing of all those things which
are, or which can be said or thought. If, however, thou declarest that
He is neither this, nor that, nor any definite thing (nee hoc, nee illud,
nee ullum), then thy truthfulness shall be made manifest because He
is nothing of all those things which are and which are not. To him no
man can draw near, unless first, making strong the path of the soul, he
i I. 76.— Erigena likes to call affirmative theology cataphatic, negative theology
apophatic.
281
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
leaves behind him all the senses, and the activities of the understand
ing, and all the things of sense, together with the whole of that which is
and which is not, and so far as in him lies is restored in non-knowledge
to unity with Him who is far above every essence and all thought;
for whom neither ^reason nor thinking is suitable, nor can He be
uttered or understood, nor is there for Him name or word."1
And yet something positive must be said about the first Form of
Nature. For Erigena is simply not capable of affirming a One above
the categories, and a Many subject to the categories, and then merely
leaving these side by side, with the statement that nothing can be said
affirmatively of the One, and that therefore the only thing for us to do
is to describe the Manifold as we find it. So that, although the first
Form of Nature is above the categories, yet Erigena does after all
make it an object of positive philosophical investigation; he considers,
namely, its outgoing or procession into the lower Forms, and so gives
us a view of the universe of particular beings, as unfolded from an
original unity.
That is to say, Erigena turns to affirmative theology. The very
next sentence after the passage just quoted, goes on : " But, on the
other hand, as we have often said, without precisely contradicting
reason, all the things which are, from the highest to the lowest, can be
predicated of God, in the way of a certain similarity, or dissimilarity,
or contrariety, or opposition, since all the things which may be predi
cated of Him have their source in Him." Then the second Book
makes a formal transition to the theology of affirmation, in which, in
our reflective consideration of the universe, we may by a sort of
transfer apply the terms and methods of our human science to God,
" since everything which has its being in Him and from Him, may
with piety and reason be predicated of him."2 Later in the second
Book, the same transition is again indicated; for while in the De
Divisions Naturae there is an orderly plan and advance, yet the
book is like a gleaming web', in which all the strands are present at
the beginning and continually are reappearing. So that after dealing
in the earlier part of the second Book with the procession of the
primordial causes from God, and with the nature of man, — drawing
i I. 66. 2 II. i.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
his doctrines with inimitable exegesis from " divinissimus propheta,
Moisen"1 — he turns back to the inapplicability of the categories to
God; and to God's non-knowledge which is " ineffable understanding/'
the " true and highest wisdom " f then returns to the doctrine of the
Trinity thus : " Let us now turn again to theology, which is the first
and chiefest part of wisdom. Rightly is it called so, because it is
concerned either solely or principally with the contemplation of the
divine nature. It falls into two parts, an affirmative and a negative,
which in Greek are called uara<pariKi] and ano^acuuf. In the
first Book we dealt with negative theology, denying upon assured
grounds that the ten categories — together with all genera, forms,
numbers, and accidents — can properly be predicated of God. In this
present Book we have also proceeded according to the negative way, as
the order of our problem demanded; and have taken up the position,
that God in His essence understands nothing of all that, which is and
is not, because He transcends every essence; that He absolutely does
not know what He is (since He is in no wise determined or condi
tioned), or of what quantity or quality He is (since no such deter
mination attaches to Him and He is in nothing to be understood) ;
and that He in Himself absolutely cannot be comprehended in that
which is and that which is not : — a sort of non-knowledge which stands
high above all knowledge and understanding. But now let us attempt
to gain an insight into the other part, into affirmative theology, under
the leadership of Him, who is sought and seeks to be sought; who
comes to meet the souls that seek Him, and desires to be found. This
part of theology it is which, with regard to the divine nature, considers
what may with a certain propriety be brought forward, and be under
stood by reason if it go prudently."3
We have already noted the forms or stages under which Erigena
considers the procession by which the one eternal Nature gives rise to
a manifold reality. The first stage in the forth-going process — what
Erierena calls the second Form of Nature — contains a multitude of
O
existences, the causae primordiales. These are perfect; are purely
1 II. 15.
2 II. 2S.—Ipsius enim ignorantia incffabilis cst intelligentia. . . . Ipsa itague
ignorantia summa ac vera est sapientia.
3 H. 30.
283
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
intelligible, unmixed with space or time; are at once creative
energies and the archetypes after which the things of this world are
found; — in a word, are Platonic Ideas. Yet Erigena is never weary
of insisting that this second Form of Nature is a unity. That is to
say, he really views it as a system — a system of intelligible forms, a
xoffj^os vorjTOS. Then the third Form, into which the second
proceeds, contains the actual things and beings of this present world.
We shall best understand Erigena's position in this — shall best
set before our minds both the difficulties that he faced, and the
solutions that he found for them — if we turn back for a moment to
Neo-Platonism, and alongside the solutions that Plotinus worked out
for the difficulties which beset him, place the solutions that Erigena
worked out for precisely the same difficulties. The One of Plotinus,
like Erigena's first Form of Nature, is absolutely a unity; it rejects
from itself all diversity and manifoldness. And it is absolutely
transcendent; so that reason can attain to no comprehension of it.
Yet the manifold world of our experience is left standing ; and, since
dualism is intolerable, that absolutely transcendent principle is
necessarily regarded as the source of it. But then arises at once the
problem : How can the One remain in its absolute transcendence and
absolute self-containedness, and yet give rise to this present world?
The steps in Plotinus' attempt to solve this problem we have already
had to consider.1 First, he has two devices for enabling him to regard
the One as giving rise to something beyond itself, and yet as remaining
in its absolute unity. One of these devices consists in metaphor; the
procession of some further reality from the One is emanation, which
leaves the source precisely what it was before — as fragrance does the
flower from which it comes, or light the flame, or cold the snow. The
other is that most ingenious of logical devices, the conception of one-
ended relationship: "It (the One) is by no means that of which it
is the principle." Thus the passage is made from the One to that
which, in Plotinus' system, corresponds to the second Form of Nature
in Erigena's; to the rovs. This is viewed as at once one and many.
It is a Hoafj.0* vorjros, a place of intelligible forms, the home of the
Ideas or archetypes after which the things of the visible world are
i Supra, pp. 142-144.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
made; i.e., at this point Plotinus weaves into his system the Platonic
theory of Ideas. And as the roCs is an emanation from the One, so
it is itself the source of a farther emanation, and thus we are led at
last to our present world.
But such a view involves difficulties, of which we must here notice
three. (1) There is the difficulty in deriving the rous from the One
at all. (2) There is a difficulty in what may be called the internal
constitution of the vovs. As an emanation from the One it also is
One; but toward the world — as containing the Ideas or archetypes of
the world — it is many. But the two sides of the conception are not
adequately held together. The rovs is a one; and it is a many; but
what the principle or energy of synthesis is, which thus enables a one
to be at the same time a many, Plotinus does not and cannot explain.
(3) The difficulty in the relation of the One to the rovs recurs in the
relation of the rovs to the world below it. How does the rovs go
beyond itself to give rise to the manifold world of our sense-experi
ence? This difficulty is almost the same as that in Plato's earlier
Idealism with regard to the relation of the Ideas to the manifold
things of sense.
These difficulties are all in a sense contained in the first. Any
adequate solution of it would almost certainly involve the solution of
the others. But precisely that first difficulty it is which is absolutely
hopeless. When God or reality is defined in the Neo-Platonic way as
absolutely one, absolutely self-contained, absolutely transcendent,
there is no possibility whatever of advancing to a manifold world.
You are shut up to the position of the Vedantist and of Parmenides.
There simply is no such thing as a manifold world. Belief in it is an
illusion ; and a wise man's business is to free himself from the illusion.
But, as we have seen,1 Plotinus could not take up that position. He
cannot deny the existence of the manifold world, and therefore is
compelled to attempt in the way just noticed a derivation of it from
the One. But the derivation is altogether unsatisfactory. The meta
phors do not help us; metaphors may illustrate arguments, but are
not themselves arguments. And the conception of a one-ended
relationship must be rejected as contradicting the very idea of
1 Supra, p. 142.
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
relationship. What really lies behind these devices is the fact that in
Plotinus there are two types of thinking: the mystic thinking to
which reality is an absolutely self-contained One admitting no multi
plicity; and the thinking which views the One as the source of the
manifold world. The same two types of thinking are in Spinoza ; we
have already had to study the way in which he makes the transition
from the one to the other — the way in which Spinoza the Mystic, with
his One Substance that can have no determinations., passes over into
Spinoza the Pantheist to whom that indeterminate One has become the
self-determining energy of an orderly and systematic world.1 One
might almost say that the chief difference between the two is that in
Plotinus the Mystic predominates, in Spinoza the Pantheist. And
the same two types of thinking are in Erigena; only with him it is
hard to say which predominates. In fact, he is completely in earnest
with both. On almost every page can be found the ideas which
represent the two sides : the idea of God — the first Form of Nature —
as absolutely transcending our knowledge, and as that absolute unity
which repels all diversity ; and the idea of God " pouring Himself
forth," and so giving rise to the various orders of existence which
make up the universe. And he does not seem to have seen, how incom
patible these types of thinking are. There are, indeed, indications of
the gulf and attempts to bridge it.2 But upon the whole the battle
never is fought out. On the contrary, Erigena may be said to give
himself completely to each of the two sides. And for this he ought
not to be condemned as a man involved in mere self-contradiction.
For, in doing it, what he really does is to prophesy the Idealism which
1 Supra, pp. 165-175.
2 Here and there are statements, for instance, which remind one of the device of
Plotinus : It is by no means that of which it is the principle. The divine wisdom, says
Erigena, " without measure is the measure of all, without number is the number of all,
without weight is the weight or order of all " (III. 16). To the "grounds " of things— the
primordial causes— he applies the distinction of Dionysius : " first they are, and then they
are grounds" (II. 36). Again he frequently avails himself of a distinction that reminds
one of Mr. Spencer — the possibility of knowing that something is, while it remains quite
impossible to know what it is (e.g., III. 28). Sometimes, again, he declares that it is a
" mystery " ; or appeals to the darkening of our minds since the fall. But upon the whole,
as is said in the text, he simply leaves the two types of thinking side by side. Indeed, he
does this in set phrase: "the ineffable manifoldness of the divine unity— for God is in
Himself manifold unity." (. . . de ineffdbili divinae unitatis multiplicitate—Deus est
enim unum multiplex in seipso—III. 17).
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
stands above both Mysticism and Pantheism, being able by its organic
categories, to do justice alike to the unity of the divine nature and the
manifoldness of the world, .alike to the transcendence and the imman
ence of God. In accepting each side as true he really recognised that
truth was greater than either.1
The conception of the procession or forthpouring of God, as the
source of the universe of creatures, is everywhere in Erigena. We
must be content, however, with two passages ; two great passages one
would call them, were it not that the De Divisione Naturae is crowded
from beginning to end with such passages. One occurs about midway in
the third Book. God, he says (following Dionysius), cannot be called
this or that, because He is all and in all. Then he goes on to trace
the process in which God goes beyond Himself and yet remains Him
self. " Descending first from the superessentiality of His nature, in
which He can but be called Non-Being, He is created of Himself
[undergoes a creation at His own hands] in the primordial causes,
and becomes the beginning of every essence and of all life, of every
understanding, and of all things that enlightened contemplation
perceives (gnostica considerat theoria) in the primordial causes.
Then, descending out of the primordial causes, which occupy, as it
were, a middle station between God and the creature, that is, between
that ineffable superessentiality which stands high above every thought,
and the revealed Nature which is essentially cognisable for pure spirits,
i It may be advisable— especially in view of the loose and irresponsible way in which
the term "Pantheism" i« frequently used— to point out once more the exact relation of
the three types of thought referred to in the above paragraph. Pantheism i~ the extreme
opposite of Mysticism ; while Idealism, when it is really dominant and not simply a
servant of some other view, does justice to the truth of both. Mysticism sees reality as
an incommunicable One before which all the apparent things of our experience fade into
nothingness. Pantheism (of which Spinoza's "second metaphysic" is a type), on the
contrary, views God as unfolding Himself into a world of particular things and facts, all
of which therefore are real with the reality of God, but none of which can be called
"individuals," since each is simply a mode of the one divine Substance. Mysticism, in a
word, is the theology of absolute transcendence. Pantheism ihe theology of absolute
immanence. While Idealism doe^ justice to both the two sides by viewing God as a self-
determining and self-communicating spirit— Himself a perfect individual, imparting
Himself and so giving rise to imperfect or "created" individuals. Again, Mysticism is
negative theo'ogy; while Pantheism and Idealism, though in very different ways, are
affirmative theologies. In dealing with the first Form of Nature, Erigena is a Mystic; in
dealing wilh the second and third Forms, he might almost be called a combination of
Idealist and Pantheist ; and we shall have later to ask whether in dealing with the fourth
Form, he returns to the Mysticism of the first.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
he ' becomes } in the effects of those causes, and is made manifest in
His theophanies. Thence, through the manifold forms of those effects,
He proceeds, even to that last order of collective nature, in which
bodies are contained. And as in this order he goes forth into all
things, He makes all and becomes all in all, and returns into Himself
by calling all things back into Himself, and while He comes to be
[enters upon conditioned existence, as one might say in the termin
ology of a modern school] in all things, He does not cease to be above
all. All things He makes out of nothing,1 inasmuch as out of His
superessentiality He brings forth essences; living beings out of His
exaltation above life; intellects out of His transcendence of the
intellect; out of the negation of everything which is and is not, the
affirmation of all that is and is not. By this also we are most clearly
taught the return of all things into the cause, out of which they
proceeded, when all things turn back again into God, as air into light,
when God will be all in all ; not, indeed, as if God were not even now
all in all, but because, since the transgression of human nature and its
banishment from its seat in Eden — that is to say, from the height of
the spiritual life, and from the apprehension of clearest wisdom — into
the profoundest deep of ignorance, no one save by divine grace is
enlightened, or is able — rapt with Paul to the height of the hidden
things of God — to discern with the intent gaze of true understanding
how God is all in all ; for the cloud of fleshly thoughts and the gloomy
twilight of vain imaginations lie between, and the penetrating genius
of the soul, weakened by unreasoning passions and baffled by the
splendours of transparent truth, expends itself upon the accustomed
shadows of the corporeal world. For it is not open to us to believe
that the heavenly essences, who never have left their state of eternal
blessedness, can recognise in the whole of creation anything else but
only God Himself, since they, lifted high above all sense and thought,
see all things in God and in the primordial causes, without needing any
i For this "nothing," it will of course be understood, Erigena has a meaning. The
" nothing" out of which the world is made, he proves (III. 20-23) to be the superessential
God Himself. For "all things have their becoming from God and through God and in
God " ; and if God is to be viewed as cause and the world as effect, then " there does not
pass over from the cause into its effects anything which is alien to the true and proper
nature of the cause."
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
work of nature for the knowledge of truth, — for they alone enjoy the
ineffable grace of the eternal light."1
The other, and more extended, of the two passages occurs earlier
in the third Book. Erigena is dealing with the " participation " which
exists among the orders of natural being. But before taking this
passage we should note the express definition of " participation " given
in another chapter. All things that are, says Erigena — following
" that supreme theologian, Dionysius the Areopagite, illustrious
bishop of Athens " — all things that are and all things that are
not, are to be understood as nothing other than participation in
the divine essence. This participation is itself nothing other than
the reception or assumption of the essence which is participated
in; and such reception implies, or rather is, the "pouring out
of the divine wisdom which is to all things their substance and
their essence and whatever under the form of nature is to be
perceived in them."2 But in the passage which we are now to
consider Erigena is thinking of that participation as the principle of
the ordering of the whole universe. Each order of natural being
participates in that which is above it and is participated in by that
below it ; except that God, who is highest, is participated in, but does
not participate; while "bodies/7 which are lowest, participate, but
are not participated in. From their original ground in the divine
Wisdom, the orders of being descend in a series of natural gradations ;
among their " participations " the all-creative wisdom " has estab
lished wonderful and ineffable harmonies by which all things are
brought to the accord and friendship, or to the peace and love, or to
whatever else be the true name for this unifying of all things." But
what can this " participation " be ? It is nothing other, is the answer,
than the derivation of a next-following essence from that which
precedes it, and the bestowal of being from a first to that which stands
next to it. And then Erigena goes on to show how, through such
bestowal, the orders of the universe have their being. As a river
1 III. 20.
2 III. 9.— The Master goes on to call the Scholar's attention to the opinion of Dionysius
de processione Dei per omnia, et mansione in seipso, in a letter to Titus the priest who
had asked what the house of Wisdom is, and what its mixing-bowl and its meat and
drink.
20 289
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
streams from its source,, and its waters for ever and, without loss of
continuity make their way downward through the longest channel, so
" the divine goodness, and essence, arid life, and wisdom, and all that
in the source of all exists, pour forth, first in the primordial causes,
and make these to be; and then hasten down, in some ineffable way,
through the primordial causes into the effects of these, through the
self-harmonious orders of the universe, always flowing down through
the higher to the lower; and return by the most secret pores of nature,
and by the most hidden path, to their source again. From that source
is every good thing, every essence, all life, all sense, all reason, all
wisdom, every genus, every species, all beauty, all order, all unity, all
equality, all difference, all place, all time, both everything which is
and everything which is not, both everything which is thought and
everything which is perceived by sense and everything which is above
sense and thought. The immutable motion in itself of the highest
and triune and sole true goodness, and its simple multiplicity, and its
inexhaustible pouring forth from itself, in itself, to itself, are the
cause of all things, nay rather, are all things. For if the being thought
of all things (intellectus omnium] is all things, and if the divine
goodness alone thinks all things, then that divine goodness itself is
alone all things, because it is the sole gnostic power which knew
all things before they were all things, and knew all things not
outside of itself — for outside of itself there is nothing — but has
all things within itself. For it encompasses all things, and nothing
is within it, in so far as it is true, but itself, because it alone is
true. The other things which are said to be, are its theophanies,
which truly subsist in it. And so God is everything which truly
is, because He Himself makes all things and becomes in all things,
as saith St. Dionysius the Areopagite. For everything" — here
Erigena exhausts the power of metaphor in insisting that the world
which is known is the manifestation of the God who cannot be
known — " everything which is thought or perceived by sense is
nothing other than the appearance of Him who does not appear, the
manifestation of the hidden, the affirmation of the denied, the compre
hension of the incomprehensible, the utterance of the ineffable, the
approach of the inaccessible, the apprehension of the unintelligible,
290
EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
the body of the incorporeal,, the essence of that which is above essence,
the form of that which has no form, the measure of the immeasurable,
the number of the innumerable, the weight of that which is devoid of
weight, the coming into gross matter of the spiritual, the visibility of
the invisible, the possession of place by that which is beyond place, the
taking on of time-form by that which is above time, the denning of
the infinite, the circumscribing of that which cannot be compassed,
and whatever else is thought or comprehended by pure intellect, or
cannot be held within the bounds of memory, or escapes the pene
trating insight of the soul/'1 Then Erigena goes on to show, in the
most interesting way, that we men have in our own nature as intelli
gences, an example of precisely such an activity of self-manifestation.
Alone, invisible, absolute in itself, our thought is yet able to go forth
from itself, and to incorporate itself in sounds and signs, and to enter
into the depth of others' hearts, and mingle itself with other minds,
and become one with that to which it is joined — and yet it remains
always itself, and in uniting itself with others does not relinquish its
own simplicity. But this brings us to an aspect of Erigena's thought
(his Idealism) which we are not yet in position to discuss. What we
have at this point to consider is something very different : namely, that
when Erigena proceeds to work out his view of the universe in its
descending scale of existences as arising from an outflowing, a pouring
forth, of itself on the part of the divina bonitas, he is in much better
position than Plotinus. His view of the absolute unity and transcend
ence of God places him, at the beginning, in the same logical situation
as Plotinus, and with the same difficulties to face. But he inherited
that which Plotinus did not ; the tradition of Christian theology. And
this in a form peculiarly favourable to his endeavour} for the theology
to which he turned by affinity of soul, was that last great world-labour
of the Greek spirit, the theology of the East. True, he quotes contin
ually from the Areopagite and from Maximus the Confessor; but he
constructs no fantastic hierarchy; a singularly clear and piercing
reason guides him, even when he is denying that reason can know
ultimate reality. True, again, he could not live in the West and escape
Augustine's influence; yet he is able to deal critically even with
i in. i.
291
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
Augustine. But the man to whom really he reaches his hands across
the ages is Origen. And the theology which really had power over his
mind was that theology whose central and determinative conception is
the idea of the divine nature manifesting itself in the Word. This
theology of the Logos and the Trinity it is that guides Erigena in this
greater half of his thought which sees the incommunicable One as the
God who goes forth from Himself,, communicates Himself, and gives
rise to a universe which in the ordered scale of its existences is full of
harmony and beauty, and in its natural arrangements testifies of
spiritual truths. So that Erigena is able to bring to the difficulties
that beset him and Plotinus alike, a solution which tends as truly to
be concrete as that of Plotinus to be abstract. Where Plotinus is
compelled to deal in abstract Ideas, Erigena deals in living energies,
living powers, living affections. The system of Erigena comes, in
fact, to be a Neo-Platonic framework filled with Idealistic content.
The second Book is formally given to the consideration of " the
procession of the creatures from the first and unitary cause of all
things through the primordial essences (which, before all things, are
established by it and in it and through it) into the diverse classes, and
forms, and numbers, of things, to infinity."1 At the same time — so
the Master warns the Disciple — we shall find in the course of that
discussion many a thing introduced about the return of the creatures
to their beginning and goal ; for the procession and the return of the
creatures are so intimately connected as to appear inseparable; about
the procession nothing worthy or reliable can be advanced without at
the same time considering the return of the creatures and the final
unifying of all things. Then the Master begins the discussion of the
first stage of the outgoing of the divine nature in this way : " As the
second Form of universal Nature, there appears (enitet, shines forth),
as was said above, that which is created and creates, and which accord
ing to my belief is to be understood as consisting only in the
primordial causes of things. These primordial causes of things are
called by the Greeks TtpwroTVTta, that is, primordial patterns, or
TrpoopiGfAara, that is, predestinations or determinings (definitiones) ;
or again, Oeia OeXr/jjara, that is, divine volitions; and also ideal,
1 IT. 2.
292
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
that is, kinds or forms in which the unchangeable grounds of all
things to be created, were already present. Concerning these we shall
speak more in detail in the course of our work, and bring forward
testimonies from the holy Fathers. Not wrongly, however, are they
called by those names ; for the Father, that is, the beginning and origin
of all things, constituted already in His Word (namely, in the only-
begotten Son) the grounds of all things which were to be created,
before he constituted them into genera, and species, and numbers, and
differences, and all those other things which in created Nature either
can be seen and are seen, or on account of their loftiness cannot be
seen, and are not seen,, but none the less are/'1
The original forms, then — the beginnings, the causes, the Ideas —
of all things, the Father constituted in the Son. And constituted them
eternally. " What is to be gathered/' Erigena asks, te from that word
of the theologian: In the beginning God created? Art thou to under
stand from these words, that the Father first begot His Word, and
then made the heavens and the earth in Him? Or has He begotten
His Word eternally, and in Him eternally made all things, so that the
procession of the Word from the Father, through begetting, in no wise
goes before that procession of all things out of nothing which is
accomplished in the Word through creation? Or, to put it more
plainly: have the primordial causes not always been in the Word of
God in which they have been made? and was the Word when as yet the
causes were not? Or are they co-eternal with Him, so that the Word
never existed without the causes which have their ground in Him? and
is then that which is said of a precedence of the Word to the causes
grounded in Him, spoken altogether in the sense, that the Word
creates the causes, and they by the Word and in the Word are created ?'3
The decision is in favour of the latter view; "for," as the Disciple
says, " I do not see how a begetting of the Word from the Father can:
precede in time the creation of all things from the Father in the Word
and through the Word. Rather I must believe that the begetting of
the Word and the creation of all things in the Word, are co-eternal,
since no one can be right in believing that in God there is anything
accidental or any temporal motions or processions. . . . Since to
1 II. 2
293
EfilGENA.: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
God it is not accidental to be the Beginning, therefore He was never
without that of which He is the beginning."1 And the primordial
causes which are thus eternal in the Word are likewise., in that Word,
both one and many, both a unity and a manifold. A passage in the
third Book in which this unity-in-diversity of the primordial causes
is set forth, is specially interesting both for itself and for the argu
ment which it concludes.2 The Disciple is in a perplexity: in the
unbegotten Word, or Wisdom, of the Father the primordial causes are
eternal; in that Word or Wisdom, too, all things that proceed are
eternal; then how can the world have been created, as the church
teaches us, out of nothing? For how can anything be eternal, which
was not before it originated ? And how can that be in eternity which
begins to be in and with time? The Disciple, following a line of
thought which is present in Plato and Aristotle, is inclined to take
refuge in a theory of " formless matter/' The primordial causes are
eternal in the Wisdom of the Father ; but the formless matter in and
through which those causes pass over into their effects — i.e., into the
genera and species of which the world is made up — is not thus eternal
in God, and is not to be numbered among the active " causes." But
Erigena sees clearly that if such formless matter plays a part in the
constituting of the world, it must also be numbered among the causes
which are eternal in God; and points out the contradiction in the
position of the " secular philosophers " who make formless matter a
principle outside of God and co-eternal with Him. He gives them
credit for taking up such a position out of their high conception of
God, as a being who can have no' connexion with formless matter. But
his own vision is more comprehensive and more daring: both the
formlessness of things, and their forms, with everything, whether
essential or accidental, which those forms contain, are created of the
-one All-cause. From the one universal ground or source everything
which is, and which is not, flows forth: whether in the primordial
causes which, at once and all together (semel et simul), eternally are
made in the only-begotten Word of God; or in the formless matter
from which the primordial causes have taken occasion to appear in
visible creation; or in the effects of those primordial causes — effects
1 II. 20. 2 HI. 5.9.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
in which this world from its beginning to its end runs its course in
natural order under the guidance of divine providence. But this only
shifts the Disciple's perplexity into another quarter. How can the
world be eternal in God when Eternity and Becoming stand opposed?
That which becomes stands in antithesis to that which is eternal:
how., then, can the world be at once eternal and yet in process of
becoming? In reply it is pointed out that in God there is nothing
accidental. Therefore, if He is Creator,, He is not so accidentally;
it must be of the essence of His nature to be Creator; and, therefore,
He is Creator eternally. That which is eternal, therefore, and that
which has come to be, are not diverse, but are one and the same; in
the Word of God, the universe is eternal, and yet it is at the same
time a process of becoming.1 Then Erigena sums up the argument
with a statement to this effect. — The grounds of all things, so far as
they are understood in the superessential nature of the Word, are
eternal. For whatever exists substantially in the divine Word, just
because it is nothing other than the Word itself, must necessarily be
eternal. So, then, the Word itself and the unitary and yet manifold
highest ground of the whole created universe are one and the same.
The only-begotten Son of God is, as the term AGIOS' indicates, at once
Word and ground and cause : the Word, for through Him the Father
spoke the becoming of all things; the ground, for He Himself is the
first exemplar [the Idea] of the whole visible and invisible universe —
in Him the Father saw all that He willed to come to be, before it had
i Cf. III. 16. "... all things visible and invisible, eternal and timeless, and eternity
itself, and time, and places, and distances, and all that is named under the categories of sub
stance or of accident, and in general terms what things soever the whole created universe
contains, are at once, in the only-begotten Word of God, both eternal and made. In them
neither does the eternity precede the becoming, nor the becoming the eternity; the
eternity is created and the being created is eternal in the dispensation of the Word. For
all things which in the order of the ages seem to come temporally or spatially into being
through generation have eternally been made, all together and at once, in the Word of the
Lord. It is not to be believed that they first begin to be when their arising in this world
is perceived." Substantially they were always in the Word of the Lord ; and their arising,
and perishing in the order of space and time through generation, that is, through the
reception of the accidental, was always in the Word of God, in which that which is to
become already has become. The divine Wisdom includes all times, so that everything
which in the nature of things has a temporal origin, in it precedes and eternally subsists.
For it without measure is the measure of all, without number is the number of all, with
out weight is the weight or order of all ; nay, is time and age, is past and present and
future."
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EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
yet become ; the cause, for the occasions to all things subsist eternally
and unchangeably in Him. And since the Son of God is thus Word
and ground and cause, it is not inappropriate to say : the unitary and
yet in itself infinitely manifold creative ground and cause of the whole
created universe, is the Word of God ; or conversely, the Word of C od
is the unitary and yet in itself infinitely manifold creative ground and
cause of the created universe. Unitary (simplex), because the totality
of all things in Him is indivisible and inseparable; assuredly the
Word of God is the indivisible and inseparable unity of all things,
because He Himself is all things. Manifold, however, it may also
without incorrectness be called, because it pours itself out to infinity
through all things ; and this outpouring is itself the subsistence of all
things, for " it reaches from end to end sweetly and strongly ordering
all things" (as is declared in the Psalm: velociter currit sermo ejus).
The Word remains comprehended in itself and unitary, because in it
all things are one. While it remains in itself as something complete,
and more than complete, and separate from all things, yet it extends
itself into all things, and that extension of itself is all things. The
outpouring, or extension, or " running " of the Word goes [logically]
before all things, and is the cause of the existence of all things, and is
all things. For, as Erigena emphatically says, there could be no more
despicable and pitiable death of the rational soul than even to think,
concerning the All-creator, such an abominable monstrosity as that
there is a space or time (or, he might have added, matter) already
prepared out into which the Word of God in its creative activity
proceeds.
This belief that God eternally constituted the primordial causes in
the Word, and that in the Word they are one, stands central to
Erigena's theory of the world and its derivation from God. He does
not deal explicitly with the relation of the Word to the original c.id
ultimate God, nor with the question whether that ultimate God has
manifested or communicated Himself in the Word. Such a question
could but be ruled out of court by a theologian who with regard to the
first and ultimate God follows the via negativa.1 So that with regard
i After the formal transition from negative to affirmative theology in the passage
quoted above (11.30; see p. 283 supra), Erigena turns directly to the doctrine of the
Trinity and goes on to say that the Father may not inappropriately be identified with the
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EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
to the three difficulties of Plotinus mentioned above, we must say that
the first stands also for Erigena; stands, in fact, for all negative
theology whatsoever. At the same time it should be pointed out that
Erigena, inheriting and employing in the way just noted the Logos-
doctrine of Greek theology, needed but to go one step farther than he
actually did — needed but to view the Logos as not only the principle
of unity of the second Form, but as also its principle of relation with
the first — in order to overcome the negative theology altogether. But
that was not to be expected. With Erigena — as with many of the
greatest medieval theologians — to give up the negative theology would
have 'been to give up half of his soul. But when once he has passed
from the first Form of Nature to the second, it illuminates the whole
way for him. It enables him to solve at once what we have called the
second difficulty of Plotinus ; for he can view the causae primordiales,
the Ideas, as one in Christ ; in Him the ideal world, the second Form
of Nature, consists ;l He is the living principle of synthesis in which
the primordial causes^-are at once many and one.1 <:
"cause of causes." There are other passages which seem to touch upon this; but they
really deal with the inner relationships of the Trinity. Eckhart's problem of the relation
of God (the Trinity) to the Godhead— which is precisely the problem at issue here— Erigena
does not face. Indeed, as already has been pointed oiit, his treatment of the first Form of
Nature, if it be allowed to stand, absolves him from the obligation to deal with it.
i How this can be, Erigena bluntly confesses that he does not know. "How all things
have their ground in the Word of God, let him explain who can. I confess that I do not
know. And I am not ashamed not to know, when I hear the Apostle say Qui solus habes
immortalitatem, et lucem habitas inaccessibilcm, — just as if he were aiming from far afe
our present investigation." (III. 16.)
What is really behind such a statement is the fact that Erigena is not able to use the
organic categories to show how a spiritual system is both a many and a one. And a still
graver evidence of the same fact is the way in which Erigena at times almost loses the
manifoldness of the Ideas or primordial causes in their unity. "The grounds of the
things which God has created in Himself (i.e., which the Father has created in the Son)
are"— so Erigrna takes for granted in the course of one of his arguments— "one in Him
without division ; they admit no defining of the proper substance through proper differ
entiae or through accidental determinations, for it is only in their effects, not in themselves,
that they suffer these." (II. 28.) " In themselves the first causes are one, and simple, and
through no known order determined or separated from one another ; such determination
or separation they undergo in their effects. Even as in the unit, while in it all the
particular numbers by one principle subsist, yet no single number is distinguished from
another, since in it they are a unity, and a simple unity, and not a unity compounded of
many members (for while out of the unit all the multiplication of the numbers proceeds
to infinity, yet the unit is by no means composed of the manifold numbers which proceed
from it, as if by a sort of counting the>e together into one) :— even so the primordial
causes, while they are understood as contained in the principle of all things, that is to say,
in the only-begotten (al. unbegjtten) Word of God, are a simple and undivided unity ; as
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
And it likewise places within his reach a solution of what was
noted as the third difficulty of Plotimis. The existence of the
primordial causes in the Word makes it easy to view them as having
a living and a creative energy, such as enables them to proceed beyond
themselves and give rise to the particular things and beings of our
present world. Or, rather, it is the Word itself that in them, proceeds
to another stage in its outpouring of itself,1 and gives rise to another
order of natural existences — to what Erigena calls the third Form of
Nature.
At the close of the second Book there is a passage which sums up
Erigena's view of the second Form of Nature as a world of ideal
energies lying between the ultimate reality and our present order of
things, and also indicates the transition between those Ideas and the
present world; a passage which is interesting, also, as showing with
special distinctness the blending in Erigena of the two great labours
which the Greek spirit performed after it had been driven from its
home and was losing itself among the Gentiles — the theology of
Plotinus, the theology of Nica?a. " The primordial causes, then, as I
said before, are what the Greeks call Ideas ; that is, the eternal species
or forms and the unchangeable principles after which and in which
the world visible and invisible is formed and governed. Hence by
the Greek sages they came rightly to be called TrpoororvTra, that is,
original types or pattern-forms, which the Father made in the Son,
and which l>y the Holy Ghost are distributed into their effects and
made manifold. They are called, too, Trpoopicr/uara, that is, predeter
minations (or foreordinations) ; for in them whatever things by divine
soon, however, as they proceed into their infinitely manifold effects, they take on their
vast and orderly plurality; not as if the cause of all things were not also order and
arrangement, or as if arrangement in itself were not to be counted among the principles
of things, when it is by participation in it that all orderly things receive their order; but
because every order appears as one and simple, and is distinguished by no differences, in
the highest All-cause and in the first participation in it, where all orders are unvarying
from themselves, forming an indissoluble unity whence the manifold order of all things
flows down." (III. 1.)
i Not only, Erigena urges (e.g. in III. 16), are all things at once eternal and "become"
(facta) in the divine Word, but the divine Word itself makes everything and in everything
becomes. It alone is the essence of the existent, the movement and separation of things
that are distinct, the indissoluble connexion of the mingled and compounded, the
foundation of the established ; in a word, in all things it becomes all.
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providence are coming to be or have come to be or shall come to be
are all together and at once and unchangeably predestined. For
nothing in the visible and invisible creature arises in natural wise
except what in them before all times and places is predetermined and
foreordained. In like manner, they are wont to be called by philoso
phers Oeia 6s Xr//j<xTa, that is, divine volitions; for all things that
God willed to make, He made in them primordially and causally ; and
all things that are to come into being, came into being in them before
the ages. And, therefore, they are said to be the principles of all
things, because all things that in the creature, whether visible or
invisible, are perceived by sense or thought, subsist by participation in
them. They themselves, however, are participations in the one All-
cause, the highest and holy Trinity, and hence are said to exist in
themselves, because between them and the one cause of all things no
creature intervenes. And while they subsist unchangeably in it, they
are the primordial causes of other causes which follow upon them to
the uttermost limits of the whole created and infinitely manifolded
Nature ; " infinitely," I say, not in respect of the Creator, but of the
creature — for the end of the multiplication of the creatures is known
to the Creator alone, because He Himself and no other is that end.
These primordial causes, then, which divine sages call the principles
of all things, are Goodness in itself, Essence in itself, Life in itself,
Wisdom in itself, Truth in itself, Thought in itself, and so with Reason,
Power, Righteousness, Welfare, Magnitude, Omnipotence, Eternity,
Peace, and all the powers and principles, which all together and at once
the Father made in the Son, and according to which the order of all
things from the highest to the lowest is framed (texitur), — that is,
from the intellectual creature which, after God, is nearest to God,
down to that last order of all things in which bodies are contained.
For that which is good is so through participation in the Good in
itself ; that which subsists essentially and substantially subsists through
participation in Essence in itself; that which lives possesses life
through participation in Life in itself. So, too, that which is wise and
intelligent and reasonable, is so only through participation in Wisdom
in itself, Intelligence in itself, Reason in itself. And the same of the
others. For there is in Nature no power, whether universal or
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EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
particular, which does not proceed, by an ineffable participation, from
the primordial causes/'1
The position indicated in the italicised words of the foregoing
passage, Erigena makes more explicit elsewhere. Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, he says, are three causes in one cause. The Father is
the begetting cause of the only-begotten Son, who on His side " is
the cause of all the primordial causes, which in Him are created by
the Father. The same Father is the cause of the Holy Ghost, who
proceeds from Him through the Son, and the Holy Ghost in turn is
the cause of the dividing, manifolding, and distributing, of all the
causes created by the Father in the Son, into their universal, special,
and proper effects, according to Nature and according to Grace."2 Or
again, in another connexion, " If, then, there is nothing to be perceived
in the nature of created things except what is given them by the
Creator, it follows that the creature, with regard alike to its essence
and its accidents, is nothing other than a gift of the Creator ; and the
dispensation of the gifts theology ascribes to the Holy Ghost as His
peculiar function. All, therefore, that the Father does in the Son, the
Holy Ghost dispenses, and, as He will, divides to each thing its own.
Seest thou not, then, how theology is able to attribute severally to the
substances or persons of the divine Goodness, as it were, their special
properties? The Father (so it affirms) does all; in the Word,
universally, essentially, and simply, all the primordial causes of things
have eternally their origin; the primordial causes originating in the
AYord, the Spirit distributes, like seeds with power of growth, into
their effects — i.e., into the genera and species, the numbers and distinc
tions, whether of celestial and spiritual essences altogether without
bodies, or of essences clad with purest spiritual bodies constituted of
the simplicity of the universal elements, or of the sensible existences of
this visible world — existences universal or particular, separate in
space, movable in time, differing in quality and quantity."3 And this
view of the function of the Holy Ghost as one of the persons of the
Trinity, can be proven, as Erigena remarks (a few sentences before
the passage just quoted), from the testimony of the Apostle (Alii per
S.piritum datur sermo sapientiae , alii ... 1 Cor. xii. 8-11), or
i IF. 36 (italics mine). 2 n. 32. 3 II. 22.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
from the Book of Genesis, where it says : Et Spiritus Dei fovebat
aquas. For to what other purpose could the Spirit of God have
cherished and made fruitful and nourished the waters (which upon
Erigeiia's allegorical interpretation are the causae primordiales) , than
to distribute and arrange, according to the distinctions of classes and
forms, of wholes and parts, and of all numbers, that reality (the
causae primordiales) which in the Word was created in uniformity,,
unity, and simplicity?
The causae primordiales which are one, as created by the Father
in the Word, are, then, made manifold and distributed into their
effects by the Holy Ghost. For Erigena, a living and continuous divine
energy is thus both the principle of unity of the Ideas, and the source
of that expansive power and creative energy by which they proceed
from themselves and give rise to the orders of particular being which
make up the third Form of Nature. This transition from the Ideas
to the things of the present world had been a difficulty both for Plato
and for Plotinus. Plato, as we have seen, worked his way steadily
toward a solution of it. He came more and more to regard the
hierarchy of the Ideas not so much as a universe complete in itself,
abiding for ever in static perfection, and by that perfection rebuking
this second universe in which we live; but rather as the order, the
rational constitution, of the one universe to which all reality belongs.
And this he could do, because he more and more came to regard the
Ideas, not as mere forms of static perfection, but as creative energies
sharing in the nature of that supreme principle which is at once the
source of their reality and the principle of their organisation. While
Plotinus, in tracing the descent from the vovs through the world-soul
to the world of particulars, can but bring up the same logical devices
that he had already used in attempting to bridge a similar, but
profounder, gulf — that between the One and the vovs. But for
Erigena, the Christian theology of the Greeks makes possible that
which to the pagan theology of the Greeks was not possible. The self-
manifesting and self-communicating Father pours Himself forth
through all the descending stages of existence, constituting the Ideas
in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost distributing them into their effects.
It is not an easy task to reduce any aspect of Erigena's thought to
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
cold and systematic statement. And within the limits of the present
discussion it is simply not possible to consider the details of the
gigantic cosmogony which he works out in dealing with the third
Form of Nature. From the causae primordiales — not out of nothing
—proceed the four universal elements.1 These mediate between the
purely spiritual primordial causes and particular bodies.2 So that
matter is viewed as arising from the combination of incorporeal exis
tences. For qualities and quantities which in themselves are incorpor
eal,, by coming together bring into being formless matter, which by
the addition of incorporeal forms and colours takes shape in diverse
bodies (literally, "is moved into diverse bodies" — compare Aris-
totle'a HirrjGis).3 Then by distinguishing in compounded bodies,
(1) the matter, (2) the immanent or individual form, (3) the
essential or general (and therefore separable) form, he brings forward
what is really Plato's and Aristotle's problem of the relation of form
and matter, with the connected problem of the relation of essential and
contingent.4 Man, again, he views as created in the image of God, and
therefore as containing within himself all created existences from the
heavenly to the animal — so that " in man God has created the whole
visible and invisible creature." " Although it remains to this day
hidden, how far the first estate of man reaches, since his transgression
by revolt from the heavenly light, still there is nothing naturally
present in the celestial essences which does not subsist essentially in
man." " The whole sensible world is created in him ; no part of it can
be found, whether corporeal or incorporeal, which in created man does
not subsist, feel, live, and become incarnate."5
With the details of this part of Erigena's system, however, — and
with the great allegorical exposition by which he brings both this and
other parts of his system out of the opening chapters of Genesis — it is
impossible here to deal. But although we cannot go into the details,
yet if we are to understand Erigena at all, we must consider the
broad movement of thought, and the chief logical motives, in this part
1 III. 14.
2 III. 26. Compare the phrase in III. 27. "... the threefold creation of the world,
namely, in its grounds (rationibus), its universal elements, its particular and compounded
bodies."
3 III. 14. 4 HI. 27. ?> IV. 7 seq.
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EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
of his account of the world. For what it contains is precisely that
dualism which we have already seen in Plato and Aristotle, and which
haunts theology to this day; the dualism that arises from the sense,
on the one side, of the perfection of God as the source of the world;
on the other side, of the imperfection of the world which has come
from that God.
That dualism may be said to be absolutely inevitable for all
affirmative theology which is not able to view the process of the world
and of man's spiritual history, from the point of view of development
or evolution. And this conception and point of view, it should be
understood, is not forced upon theology from the outside. It is called
for from within.^- For anything that can be called affirmative theology
at all, must view God as a self -communicating being; as a being
whose nature it is to impart his nature. And that means that God
must give rise to spiritual beings of a nature kindred to His own, and
must impart Himself to them. But such impartation on God's part
means struggle on their part. For unless in some very real sense
they earn their own life and achieve their own perfection — unless, in
one word, they " have life in themselves " — they cannot be regarded
as beings to whom God imparts Himself. They would have simply
a life and a perfection laid upon them from the outside; would have
no life or perfection of their own. They would, in fact, in their
unsuffering and untormented innocence, be (morally, if not meta
physically) modes of the divine substance, rather than spirits made in
the likeness of God — spirits in whom God reproduces Himself, and to
whom, therefore, and only therefore, He can impart Himself. So
that, as we have already seen,1 affirmative theology must view God in
creation as making the actual, empirical beginning with something
less than His own eternal perfection, and from that beginning leading
created beings onward through a process of development, which
from God's side may be described as an ever-increasing impartation
of Himself, but from man's side as a desperate struggle upward
through evil. But Plato and Aristotle — all the more remarkably in
Aristotle's case because he does see evolution in nature — cannot admit
such a view. Any result of the divine activity, any creation of God,
i Supra, p. 82 seq. Cf. p. 242 seg. and p. 258.
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EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
they instinctively feel, must have eternally in it the absolute and final
perfection of God; if a creation-theory can be admitted at all, it
must view the perfect and timeless maker as making a timelessly per
fect work. But the world actually present to us is an order of becom
ing, and is full of imperfection. Hence Plato is forced to a dualism
(the admission of a co-eternal impeding principle in creation), which
Aristotle hardens and makes more decisive. And for Erigena in his
affirmative theology, this situation is intensified and made most aculc.
For he sees this present world as intimately in connexion with God;
in fact, as he emphatically puts it, what God creates in the second
and third Form of Nature is Himself; in those Forms, God
" becomes," God " is created." Hence, for Erigena, if one may so
express it, God in the world and the evil in the world stand directly
face to face, and the problem that troubled Plato and Aristotle is
intensified to the utmost.
We must briefly consider the presence in Erigena of each of the
two insights whose opposition thus constitutes the ultimate — and des
perate — problem of theology and philosophy. It is understood, of
course, that in doing so we are confining ourselves to Erigena's
affirmative theology; for the negative theologian, when he has
reached his goal, has delivered himself even from this problem; he
has but to be still, having come to his rest in God.
First, Erigena never wavers from the height of his assertion of
the unity, and eternity, and divinity, of Nature through all its Forms.
This does not mean that he deifies the rocks and trees. It means that
for him God is all in all ; it means that he has penetrated beyond the
appearance of the things of the earth to their reality, and has found
that reality to be God. In all creation God creates Himself; in all
becoming it is God that becomes. All the four Forms of Nature are
the procession of God, from Himself, through Himself, to Himself.
"... To God there is nothing future, for He includes (con-
dudat) within Himself all times together with their content, and is
the beginning, the middle, and the end, the extent and course and
return of all things." "Thou compellest us now to confess," the
Scholar presently replies, " that God is all — all that is said to be
eternal, all that is said to have become. For if the divine will and
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
the divine vision are essential and eternal, and, for God, being,
willing, and seeing, are not different things, but one thing, and that
superessential; if, furthermore, all that makes up the object of his
willing and seeing can reasonably be understood as nothing other
than Himself, since a simple nature can admit in itself nothing
which it itself is not: then beyond all dispute no other conclusion
remains than to confess that the one God is all in all. ... If the
nature of the divine Goodness," the Scholar farther admits, " is
distinct from that which God saw as something destined to become,
and made, — saw thus, and made, in Himself — then the simplicity of
the divine nature is rent apart, if an Other is understood in it which
is not itself. But this is absolutely impossible. And if the divine
nature is not distinct from that which it saw in itself as something
to be made; if it is, rather, one and the same divine nature, whose
simplicity is inviolable, and whose unity is indivisible; then with
certainty it follows that God is everywhere all, and wholly in every
thing, at once the maker and that which is made, the seer and that
which is seen, at once the time and place and essence and substance
and accidents of all things; in short, is everything which truly is or
is not; superessential in the essences, supersubstantial in the substances,
high above every creature as Creator, and within every creature as
created [in the creature God creates Himself], and underneath every
creature as subsistent [or, as substratum] , beginning to be from Him
self, moving Himself through Himself, and moved to Himself, and
resting in Himself, made infinitely manifold in Himself through
genera and species, without any loss of the simplicity of His nature,
and calling back into Himself the infinity of His manifoldness. For
in Him all things are one." " Now I see/' is the Master's answer,
" that in place of thy doubts clear insight has come, and that thou
wilt no longer hesitate to confess that all things are at once ' become '
and eternal (et facta et eterna), and that everything which is seen
truly to subsist in them is nothing other than the ineffable nature
of the divine Goodness." . . . "The conclusion is, that in all
things, it [the divine nature] alone truly and properly is; and
nothing which is not that nature truly properly is. . . . So that
we ought not to regard God and the creature as two existences distinct
•21 305
EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
from each other; rather they are one and the same. For the creature
subsists in God, and God in wonderful and ineffable wise is created
in the creature; revealing Himself; the invisible making Himself
visible, the incomprehensible making Himself comprehensible, the
hidden, open, the unknown, known; the God above form and appear
ance making Himself beautiful in form, gracious in appearance; the
superessential making Himself essential, the supernatural, natural,
the simple, complex; the God exalted above accidental qualities mak
ing Himself subject to such qualities, and becoming such a quality;
the infinite making Himself finite, the uncircumscribed, circum
scribed, the supertemporal, temporal, the superlocal, local ; the Creator
of all being created in all, and the Maker of all made in all; so that
the eternal begins to be, and the immutable is changed into all
(immobilis movetur in omnia) and in all things becomes all. And
this I say, not with reference to the incarnation of the Word, and His
becoming man, but with reference to the ineffable condescension of
the Supreme Goodness, which is Unity and Trinity, into the things
which are, in order that they may be, nay, in order that it may be
itself in all things from the highest to the lowest, always eternal,
always ( become/ eternal of itself, ' become ' in itself ; while eternal,
not ceasing to be become ; while become, not ceasing to be eternal ; and
making itself of itself. For it needs not some other matter, which
is not itself, in order therein to make itself; else would it seem pow
erless, and imperfect in itself, if from some other where it received
aid for its appearance and perfection. From Himself, then, God
received the occasions to His theophanies — which is to say, divine
appearances — for ' of Him, and through Him, in Him, and to Him,
are all things/ And therefore the matter itself, of which the world
is said to have been made, is from Him and in Him; and He is in
it so far as it is regarded as having existence."1
So that all things are divine and are a to turn simul in God. That
of which God made the world He took no other where than from Him
self, and " neither sought spaces outside of Himself, in which to create,
nor paid regard to times, in order in their intervals to complete His
work, but made all things in Himself; since He is the space of all
i III. 17.
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
things, and the time of times, and the age of ages, accomplishing
all things together and making all things in the twinkling of an eye.
For both those things which in the course of the ages have come to
birth, and those that even now are coming to birth, and those whose
birth is still to come, are all together and at once made in Him, in
whom past and present and future are all together, and all at once,
and all one."1 " God saw, then, that it was good, that is to say, God
saw Himself in all things as the good. For God saw nothing but!
Himself, because outside of Him there is nothing, and all that is in
Him is Himself, and his vision of Himself is simple and has its form
from none other than Himself."2
But over against this vision of the theologian to whom God is all
and in all, and all cognisable things theophanies, stands the life of
the present world. And as Erigena looks upon it, the problem is
forced upon him which has been forced upon all the greater theo
logians from Plato downward : How — and why — has evil come to have
a place in a world whose source is altogether good? Erigena sees —
what any one who deserves the name of theologian must see — that the
werld is one as coming from one source; and that, therefore, in ulti- y^
mate analysis, all the elements or factors of the world have their1
ground in one character and subserve one purpose. But, then, what
account can one give of the place of evil in such a world? And if
you can give no account — if you cannot see even the beginning or
promise of an explanation — what right have you to retain your funda
mental conception of the unity of all existence? — if you thus are
really a Manicha?an, what right, for instance, have you to call your
self a Theist?
We must distinguish, of course, between an empirical account
of the origin of evil and a metaphysical account. The empirical
account simply describes as a matter of fact how evil comes to be;
the metaphysical seeks for the ground of evil, where all things must
somehow have their ground — in ultimate eternity. An empirical
account Erigena easily gives: evil arises from "perverse motions of
the free will."3 In modern language, evil is the correlate of man's
freedom. And when it is recognised that freedom on the part of man
i III. 27. 2 HI. 28. 3 See, e.g., IV. 5.
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EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
is necessary to any genuine self-communication on the part of God,
the way is prepared for the metaphysical account which has already
been referred to,1 and which, grave as are its difficulties,, is at least
free from self-contradiction — one part of it does not deny the other
part.
But Erigena does not advance to this point of view ; though there
are hints of it in him2 — as, indeed, there arc in him hints of nearly
everything in philosophy. On the contrary, he breaks at last that to
which he so passionately held, the belief in the inviolable unity of all
existence. He falls into a dualism resembling, not in expression,
indeed, but in logical motive, that of Plato and Aristotle. Evil
becomes to him what the " Necessity " of the Timaeus is to Plato, or
contingency to Aristotle — virtually a co-eternal principle which inter
feres with the perfection of the created world. The very intensity of
his idea of unity coupled with his lack of clearly-possessed organic
categories, drives him into the following position. — (1) Evil, alike
in its origin and in its being, lies outside of (C Nature." " God, then,
does not know evil. For if He knew evil, evil would necessarily be in
the nature of things. For the divine knowledge is the cause of all
things which are. . . . The cause of the essence of these things is
the divine knowledge, and, therefore, if God knew evil, then evil would
be perceived substantially in something; evil would participate in the
good, and thus from strength and goodness defect and evil would
proceed. But that this is impossible, true wisdom teaches."3 (2) How
anything which thus has no place in Nature, which, indeed, contradicts
1 Supra, p. 242 seq.; p. 258 ; p. 303. Cf. p. 82 seg.
2 One of the >e— which may be said to present the theory in question in its static form
(the form. Stoic and Leibnizian, which views evil as contributing to good, not as the
negative factor involved in Development, but rather as the imperfection which presents
itself when you 'ook at the single finite individual instead of at the whole)— is specially
striking: "How," an objector is imagined to say, "can God, exalted high over a1], invis
ible, incorporeal, incorruptible, descend from Himself; and create Himself in all things,
in order to be all in all ; and, in His forthgoing. advance to the last visible hatefulnesses
and corruptions, to the meanest forms and species, of this world, in order to be in these,
if He is all in all?" "He,"ru' s the answer, "who so speaks, knows not that in the total
universe of the creature there can be nothing hateful, that it no evil can mar, that it by
no error can be deceived or led astray. For what concerns only a part, Gnd does not
permit to become in the whole, since, upon a view of the whole, neither is [what had
seemed] hatefulness hateful, nor does any evil injure, nor any error mislead." (III. 20.)
3 1.28.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
and opposes Nature, could come into existence at all — for, of course,
there are no sources outside of Nature — is a "mystery." Yet even
here Erigena has a glimpse of a solution; a glimpse to which only a
doctrine of development as a divine method could do justice. " Every
thing which in ' natural ' wise is created in man, remains of necessity
eternally inviolate and uncorrupted. . . . The rational and intel
lectual nature, although it was not willingly deceived, yet could be
beguiled, especially since it had not yet received the perfection of the
form which — destined as that nature was to a course of transformation
ending in theosis, that is to say, deification — it was to have received
through the merit of obedience (perfectionem . . . quam merito
obedientiae esset acceptura in theosin, deificationem dico, transfor-
manda) .'J1 (3) Evil, once it had thus by perverse motions of the will
arisen, explains the dividedness and imperfection of the third Form of
Nature. A single passage of many will make Erigena's view clear.
" For, as reason teaches, this would not have fallen apart into its
manifold sensible species, and into the motley diversity of its parts, if
God had not foreseen the fall and ruin of the first man, who forsook
the unity of his nature; to the end that man — at least after his fall
from the spiritual realm to the corporeal, from the eternal to the
temporal, from the incorruptible to the perishable, from the highest
to the lowest, from the spiritual man to an animal, from a simple
nature to the distinction of the sexes, from angelic dignity and multi
plication to the shame of the birth of our corruptible bodies — being
admonished by a penalty so dire, might come to recognise his pitiable
ruin, and seek to return to the condition of his pristine dignity by
repentance and the putting off of his pride and by the fulfilment of
the divine laws which he had transgressed. For it cannot be believed
that the most divine charity of the Creator has thrust sinful man down
into this world as if through some movement of wrath or desire of
vengeance; since true reason shows us that the divine Goodness is
free from these non-essential qualities (his accidentibus] . Rather it
can have happened only in consequence of an ineffable principle and
of mercy incomprehensible; to the end that man — though by the
choice of his free will he had refused to maintain himself in the
i TV. o.
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EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
dignity of his nature — taught by punishment, should seek the grace
of his Creator; and, obeying by the help of that grace the divine
commands which earlier he had neglected out of pride, careful and
cautious and mindful of his earlier negligence and of his proud
humiliating fall, should turn back toward his ancient state, from
which — preserved by grace and by the free choice of his own will — he
should not fall again, nor wish to fall, nor be able to fall."1
Such, then, is Erigena7 s account of the forthgoing of the divina
bonitas, and of the Forms of Nature which thus arise: the second
Form, the world of Ideas, a system of perfect types and perfect
energies ; the third Form, our present world, the result partly of the
farther procession of the divine goodness, partly of man's sin. With
this, we have to turn to the last of the* Forms of Nature, that in which
all things return to their source in God. In the light of what we have
just seen, this will be not only the natural return of all things to their
source, but also their redemption from evil. And if Erigena is to be
understood, special attention must be given to this part of his thought.
Just as we do not understand Dante at all if we read only the
Inferno — because "it is interesting, while no person can live in the
white light of the Paradiso " — so we shall not understand Erigena at
all, nor indeed any mediasval theologian, unless we walk with him while
he unfolds his highest hope and ultimate vision.
But before turning to this we must stop for a moment upon an
aspect of Erigena's thought, which is very important, but which the
course of the discussion so far has given us no opportunity to bring
forward. This is what we may call his Idealism. The whole of that
reality about which it is possible for science or philosophy to make
affirmations is, he sees, of the nature of thought. And to this Idealism
he comes from both sides : from the side of the material order ; from
the side of God. In the first Book, in dealing with the inapplicability
of the ten categories to God, he works out a sort of " immaterialism " ;
he reduces the corporeal to the incorporeal. Matter is a combination
of incorporeal qualities and quantities. And the form which holds it
together is incorporeal. And this immaterialism passes over into
i II. 12.
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express Idealism when it is said that space is arrangement or order,
and therefore subsists only in the mind ; space is a definition, and its
determinations must be the activity of a rational and thinking nature ;
space is something thought in the soul, and is therefore incorporeal.
Hence, indeed, it is, as Gregory of Nyssa says, that from a God whose
nature is that of thought or spirit, a "material" world can come.1
While from the side of God, he equally maintains that all created
existence is of the nature of thought. " God," he says, in dealing with
the problem of evil, " does not know that which is, because it subsists ;
but it subsists because God knows it. The cause of the essence of that
which is, is the divine knowledge."2 " The knowledge of the saints in
the Wisdom of the Father," he says again, " is the creation of them.
For the perception in God of all things is the essence of all things."3
In a word, God's knowledge of an existence is that existence. Or, to
put the same conception into more modern terms, the objective reality
of anything means its presence in the divine mind. It will, of course,
be understood that this does not necessarily deny selfhood — real
individuality or the germ of it — to created beings; and, therefore, is
not necessarily Pantheism.
Furthermore, Erigena in his affirmative theology is not only an
Idealist in the sense of asserting that all reality which science or
philosophy can investigate is of the nature of thought or spirit. He
really possesses also the true point of departure of Idealism: he sees
that spirit as it is in man is an active principle of synthesis. He
delights to pourtray the human soul as not imprisoned in space, nor
compelled to " reach out into space," but as having — to use modern
language — a synthetic activity which is above the dividedness of space
and time, receiving at one and the same time, and into one and the
same experience, the most manifold kinds of sensation, retaining these
in memory, arranging and judging them.4 Hence, when he goes on
with equal intensity to describe the soul as simplex, free from all union
or composition of distinct parts, he can only be understood as having
a conception of the soul which he is not able clearly to express — the
conception of it as a diversity-in-unity, a principle and activity of
synthesis. The very reason which he gives in insisting upon its
1 I. 27-61. 2 II. 28. s II. 20. 4 III. 30.
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simplicity shows this. It is a simplex, free from all composition of
distinct parts, he says, because " in itself it is in its wholeness every
where throughout the whole. It is the whole life, the whole under
standing, the whole reason, the whole of sense, the whole memory,
and, as this whole, it animates, nourishes, maintains and increases the
body. As the whole soul, it, in all the senses, perceives the forms of
sensible things. As the whole soul, it deals with, distinguishes, com
bines, separates — going far beyond every bodily sense — the nature and
reason of the sensible things themselves. As the whole soul — beyond
and above every creature, and above itself as a being included in the
world of creatures — it circles in intelligible and eternal motion about
its Creator, becoming purified of all vices and imaginations." And, as
Erigena goes on, in this very simplicity, it receives distinctions and
distinct names according to its activities. In its motion about the
divine essence it is Mind and Soul and Understanding. In dealing
with the natures and causes of created things it is Keason. In
receiving sensuous images, it is Sense. As animating the body, it is
the Vital Principle. But in all these activities it is everywhere the
whole soul.1 The same insight appears in Erigena's view of the soul
as a microcosm, which we shall have to consider in another connexion.
Thus, then, Idealism is present in the De Divisione Naturae;
Erigena has both its true point of departure and its specific insights.
But neither the age that he lived in, nor the history that lay behind
him, nor his equipment of categories, permitted the Idealism in him
to come fully to its right. With his inheritance of the Christian
theology of the Greeks, he stood between two worlds, the one of which
had spoken in Plotinus and Proclus, the other of which was to speak
in Hegel. To both of those worlds his heart was given; and the
result was that Idealism was present in him not as expressing his
highest insight and last conviction, but simply as one stage in that
desperate journey of the intellect which is set for any man who is a
Mystic, and yet cannot plainly and flatly deny the reality of the
present world.
We have to return, then, to the subject already before us — the
i IV. 5. Cf. 11.
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fourth Form of Nature. It would seem at first sight as if Erigena's
work of explaining the world were already done, when he had given
his account of original reality and of the derivation of our present
world from it. But we have already seen that his instinct for unity
drives him farther. The world has come from one source, but it is
nevertheless not one. It is beset by dividedness ; and by dividedness of
a particularly unforgivable kind — sensuous manifoldness, diversity in
space and time. And worse still, it is torn apart by the dualism of
good and evil. Futhermore, to the discontent of the philosophic and
moral mind there is added the discontent of the specifically religious
mind : God must be all in all, and all things that have proceeded from
Him must return to Him.
So, then, we come to a fourth Form of Nature, which neither is
created nor creates, but in which all things rest eternally in their home
and unity in God. In attempting to deal with this, we must first
notice the general principle which guides Erigena in this part of his
work, and must then indicate very briefly the main steps in the return
of all things from their multiplicity and dividedness in the third Form
to their rest in the fourth.
To Erigena it is a general principle of Nature that things return
to their beginnings. The source from which they proceed is also their
goal. This is seen even in corporeal things; and as so seen, it
mystically intimates to us (for "there is, in my opinion, nothing
among visible and corporeal things which is not a sign of something
incorporeal and intelligible ") " the return of our nature to the source
whence it originated, and in which and through which it moves, and
to which it always strives to return. Universally in all men, whether
they be perfect or imperfect, pure or defiled, made new by knowledge
of the truth in Christ or cleaving to the old man in the darkness of
ignorance, lives one and the same natural desire for being, and well-
being, and abiding being, or, as St. Augustine briefly expresses it, the
desire to live happily and avoid misery.1 But this impulse after living
happily and having substantial existence is from Him who is eternal
and is good and is immanent in all things. And if every natural
motion, of necessity does not cease nor rest, until it has reached the
i Compare the conatus in sito esse perscverandi of Spinoza.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
goal toward which it struggles, what can avail to hinder or restrain
or bring to a stand the necessary movement of human nature, so that it
shall not be able to reach that for which it naturally strives?" And
even, " if godlike Nature has somehow through unlikeness become
remote from its source, it strives always to return thither, in order to
attain again to the likeness which it had marred. ""*•
This principle itself is made possible for Erigena by the fact that
it is really one and the same nature which is present in the first,
second, and third Forms. In the first Form, that one Nature is viewed
as the beginning and cause of all; since it has nothing preceding it
which could stand to it as cause or beginning, it is called " Nature
creating and not created." Then, in the second Form, where it is
"both created and creating," it is the same Nature. For the
primordial causes are that Nature " creating itself " and so going
forth in theophanies. And then in those theophanies it still farther
proceeds from, or unfolds, itself, coming forth from the most concealed
limits of its nature, in which it is unknown even to itself, that is to
say, recognises itself in no being because it is unconditioned and super
natural and superessential and above everything that can be thought
or not thought. When it thus descends into the principles or original
grounds of things — into the causae primordiales — and, as it were,
creates itself, it begins to be in particular and definite forms. Then,
further, it has to be considered in the last effects of the primordial
causes, wherein it is rightly viewed simply as a nature which " is
created, but does not create." In these effects it comes to the end of
its forthgoing and manifestation — its self-externalisation, as a modern
terminology would have it. Just on this account, every corporeal and
visible creature given to our senses " is wont in the Scriptures not
unjustly to be called the last trace of the divine nature (extremum
divinae naturae vestigium)" This trace "it is vouchsafed to even-
contemplative mind to gain sight of, when, like another Moses, it
ascends the height of the mount of vision; although, indeed, it can
scarcely be distinguished clearly (ad purum) even by the spirits of
the wise; for the smoke of earthly imaginations, and the tumult of
changeable things, and the gleaming illusion of the things that
i v. 3.
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suddenly are born and pass suddenly from us, stand as hindrances
in the way. Only very few — those that from earthly thoughts
wholly have set themselves free, and by virtue and knowledge are
purified — attain unto it, to know God in these visible creatures:"1
as, for instance, the patriarch Abraham did, when, guided by
the law of nature, he recognised the Creator from the revolution
of the stars; and other holy Fathers before the written kw,
and in the law — as Moses in the bush and upon the mountain-
peak. But, in addition to these three Forms, there is still another
way in which the one Nature must be viewed : " When we recognise
this same divine nature as the goal of all, beyond which there is
nothing, and in which all things eternally subsist and in their
universality are God, then we rightly call it neither created nor
creating. Not created, because it is created of no one; not creative,
because it ceases to create when all things are transformed back into
their original grounds (wherein they will remain eternally and do
remain) and cease to be known by the name creature. For God will
be all in all, and every creature, transformed into God, will enter into
shadow, as the stars at the rising of the sun. Seest thou not, then,
upon what ground one and the same nature, namely, the divine, can
be called from the point of view of the beginning not created, but
creating, but from the point of view of the end or goal neither created
nor creating?"2 In fact, it might almost be said that Erigena's
distinction of the four Forms of Nature is a device of exposition, a
device for the convenient setting forth of his view of the one system
of the one universe. The first and fourth Forms express the unity, the
1 Compare the following from II. 18 : " The first causes, then, both make their way
(proveniunt) into the things of which they are the causes, and do not forsake their source
or beginning (principium),i.e., the Wisdom of the Father, in which they have come to be,
and — remaining, so to speak, in themselves invisible, hidden for ever in the darkness of
their splendour, but in their effects brought forward as it were to the light of knowledge
—appear without ceasing." Or the following from the Scholar in V. 24 : " Far be it from
the hearts of the faithful to think that everything which has come to be in the Word of
God, is not life— life wise and eternal, without temporal beginning, without temporal end.
For both the realm of bodies, and the whole sensible creation, are, in the Word of God, life
wise and eternal, so that, in a way ineffable and incomprehensible but yet credible, every
creature lives in the Word of God, and in that Word is life ; and the divine Word— since
outside of it is nothing— moving as it were toward externality, has brought forth out of
itself all created creatures."
2 III. 23.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
second and third the diversity or manifold of types and of particulars.
And all four are alike God or in God ; for " God is the beginning, the
middle, and the end [i.e., source, process, and goal] of the whole
created universe ; not as if it were for Him three distinct things to be
beginning, middle, and goal, since these three are in Him one; but
because the movement of theological contemplation is threefold."1
And what drives Erigena to adopt so vast and complex a scheme of
exposition is the fact that he has to work into one system both the
negative and the affirmative theology.
As Erigena passes on to consider the regressus which leads to the
fourth Form of Nature, one expects him — in the light of what he had
said about the first Form of Nature — to return finally and completely
to his negative theology, to his Mysticism. And that not only as
moralist or preacher, advising men to lay aside all entanglement with
the particular and the individual, and to find their true being by
losing themselves in God; but as a metaphysician,, declaring that, as
matter of fact, the final outcome of the whole process of the created
universe will be its passage to its rest in the " still abysm " of the
ineffable God, in which all things will become God, and so become
truly themselves, by ceasing to be themselves as particular distinct
existences. In that way the Erigena of the fourth Form of Nature
would decisively complete what the Erigena of the first Form of
Nature began. But as we go on to consider the details of Erigena's
last and highest view of Nature, his view of the ultimate outcome of
the world's process, what we find is that the Idealist has gained upon
the Mystic. In the ultimate outcome of things, individuality, instead
of being negated, is made complete. Or rather individuality is in part
negated, in part affirmed. But the negation is insisted upon in the
interest of the affirmation ; it is involved, Erigena thinks, in the true
advance of human individuals to their perfection ; is involved in their
rise to their Idea, in their return to their true home in the Word.
The regressus is described as having two forms or stages. There
is, first, a universal regressus which is the work both of nature and of
grace, and, secondly, a special regressus which is granted only to pure
hearts and is the work of grace alone.2 The former is the return of
i III. 23. 2 V. 23, 36, 38, 39.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
all things to their " beginnings in Nature " ; i.e., it is the exaltation of
all things to their Ideas., their primordial causes, and is thus a general
return of the third Form of Nature to the second. This, as we have
already seen in dealing with the general principle which here guides
Erigena's thinking, he regards as the regular course of Nature. But,
in addition to that, there is a special pressure upon him to assert such
a universal return. The third Form of Nature cannot quite vindicate
itself. It must be condemned metaphysically, as a realm of sense,
subject to dividedness in time and place ; and morally, because of the
presence of evil. It is as if Nature has in' the third Form sunk below
itself, so that without possibility of exception the particular beings
into which the inviolable divine Nature has created itself, strive by
their own natural motion back to their Ideas. There are even
expressions in Erigena which seem to show him as holding this
opinion from the point of view of the, particular existences themselves.
He seems to feel that the elementary justice of the universe — that
" ultimate decency of things " in which Robert Louis Stevenson
declared he would still believe though he woke up in hell — requires
that the return to the primordial causes should be shared in by all
existences whatever. It rescues, so to speak, the individual existences
from the evils which their particular and divided life had forced upon
them, and restores them to their own true and normal — in the
Platonic sense, ideal — being. They had been something less than
themselves ; this return simply makes them themselves ; and therefore
it both is, and ought to be, undergone by all existences.
This universal return, then, means that each particular existence
is purified of the dividedness and imperfection of the third Form, and
returns to the perfection and completeness of its eternal type, and thus
rises to the second Form of Nature, all whose perfect existences — the
primordial causes — are one in the Word and therefore one in God.
Each human being, for instance, will return to the Idea of man; that
is, he will rise above the division of sex, and above the limitations of
space and time, and enter into the normal or intended completeness of
human nature. This, of course, involves a great abstraction; the
abstraction involved (on the common interpretation of Plato) in
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EBIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
passing from an individual being of this present world to its Idea.1
But this — even upon the severest interpretation — is not yet the com
plete abstraction of Mysticism. There may be a loss (Erigena would
not call it loss) of individual peculiarities in rising to the form of the
eternal type. But there is no such complete sinking of individuality
as in that mystical outcome in which all things lose themselves in the
" still wilderness where never was seen difference., neither Father, nor
Son, nor Holy Ghost," where " there are neither angels nor saints
nor choirs nor heavens," where " there is naught but God," so that
"no soul can come to God 'unless he becomes God as God was before
the soul's creation."
The universal return involves, in Erigena's view, two stages.
First, there is in general the transformation of the whole world of
sense; i.e., "the transmutation of all bodies, whether those subject to
the bodily senses, or those that by reason of their exceeding subtlety
escape the senses ;" for " in all that, which is substantially instituted
by the cause of all things, nothing will be brought to nothingness."
Secondly, there is the general return of the whole of human nature,
saved in Christ, to the pristine state of its creation, a return, as it
were, to Paradise, to the dignity of the divine image, through the
merit of Him whose blood was poured out for the common salvation
of the whole of humanity. This holds impartially of all men ; so that
no man will be robbed of those natural goods, which make up human
nature according to its Idea — which make up what was wont to be
called " Adamic perfection."2
But in dealing with such a universal return of the world and of
man, there at once arises a great difficulty. We have already seen
how the fact of evil drove Erigena into a sort of dualism in describing
the passage downward from the second Form to the Third. And now
that he is tracing the reverse movement, the movement of all things
upward from the third to the second Form, a kindred difficulty stands
in the way: there is the fact of evil; and there is the church's
doctrine of endless punishment in hell.
1 There are, however, passages in Erigena which, if carried to their logical conclusion,
would make the abstraction greater even than this. See the two passages quoted in the
note to p. 297 siipra.
2 See the concluding summary at the end of V. 30, where the first two forms belong to
the universal return ; while the third is that special return which is deificatio.
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATUKE
Erigena's discussion here is really a farther application of prin
ciples which we have already had to notice. As we have seen, he
regards Nature as one and divine through all its Forms: the first
Form is God as source; the second, God creating Himself as the
eternal types or Ideas; the third, God creating Himself as particular
existences. Hence, all that he could say of evil was, that it arises from
"perverse motions of the free will," but has no essential place in
" Nature." What he now does is to apply this principle in a form
which gives us the central principle of the theologian whom he
admired so much; Origen's great principle of the permanence of all
spiritual substance; though Erigena7 s use of it is subtle and brilliant
where Origen's was solid and profound. What God creates, urges
Erigena, cannot be anything else than the divine nature itself. And
that nature can neither perish, nor be subject to punishment.
As we go on -to notice at slightly greater length the details of the
discussion, it is due to Erigena to set special emphasis upon one thing :
this man of the ninth century, writing in an age when torture and
pain, when the temper and the habit of vengeance, were familiar
parts of life, shows in his discussion a touch of the charity of Christ,
and a vision of God as exalted above mere vengeance, which in similar
discussions in more enlightened ages have frequently been wanting.
Erigena may have fallen into grave intellectual errors; with his
intellectual inheritance it was inevitable that he should. But into two
things, which may be dead in the twentieth century, but were not dead
in the nineteenth, he did not fall : into that darkening of the divine
righteousness, which transforms it from a righteousness of God into
a " radical wrong of man " ; and into that Manichseism which, in its
very zeal to free God from all connexion with evil, really removes Him
from His place as God, by viewing a power hostile to Him as a
co-eternal principle of the universe, and as at last partly victorious
over Him and over His purpose.
Beginning with the prophetic word, lest he put forth his hand,
and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever, — in which
word " the return of human nature to the blessedness lost through sin
is most clearly promised" — Erigena goes on to remind his disciple
of the conclusion previously reached, " that the Paradise from which
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EKIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
man was banished is nothing other than human nature itself as created
in the image of God; and that it fell from this its height because it
disdained the command of God." From this it follows that " the
banishment of man from Paradise is nothing other than the loss of
the natural blessedness for whose possession he was created. For man
has not lost his nature, which, being created in the image and likeness
of God, is necessarily incorruptible ; he lost only the blessedness which
he would have attained, if he had not scorned to be obedient to God."1
As the outward form of man may be disfigured by leprosy and yet
remain the form of man, so human nature by its high-minded
disobedience is hatefully disfigured, but does not cease to be human
nature. And " when it is freed from this leprosy through the healing
grace of God, it will be called again to its pristine beauty. Nay, one
may even say, that the nature created in the image of God never has
lost, never can lose, the living strength (vigor em) of its beauty, and
the integrity of its essence. For the divine form remains unalterable
for ever; and yet, as a punishment for sin, it has become capable of
things corruptible " — capable of the change and particularity of the
present world.2 Hence, as was indicated in a passage alread}r quoted,3
we must believe that in the banishment of man from Eden, it was
God's mercy, rather than His punitive righteousness, that was active.
For it was God's purpose to regenerate and illumine man, and make
him worthy to come to the tree of life, from which he had been driven,
and to eat of it so that he might not perish," but might live eternally.
Therefore it was that the cherubim were set in their station at the
east of Eden; for the cherubim signify the Word of God, in which
the treasures of knowledge and of wisdom are hidden, and which
without interruption stands ready for man's gaze, so that human
nature may be warned and illuminated and purified and led back at
last to unflawed completeness. And likewise the flaming sword
signifies the Word of God, which consumes our sins, and purifies our
natures, and at the same time distinguishes between our nature and
that which cleaves to it through the guilt of sin, and hatefully
disfigures it, and makes it unlike the Creator. So that the flaming
sword applies itself ineffcibili sua dementia et misericordia to the
1 V. 1, 2. 2 V. 6. 3 Supra, pp. 309, 310.
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healing of human nature. Always before the eyes of our soul stand
the cherubim with the naming sword to keep the way of the tree of
life — to keep the way of the tree of life, not in the sense of forbidding
our access, but in the sense of preventing us from ever forgetting that
tree, so that continually we may have before the eyes of our spirit
both the tree itself and the way of approach to it.1
So Erigena agrees with the opinion of " the great theologian
Gregory," that " evil is not so strong that it can overcome the power
of good." It cannot, like good, proceed to infinity; it is sternly
restricted within necessary limits. It " cannot be perpetual, but by
the necessity of things is to reach an appointed bound, and is some
time to cease." Just because the divine goodness is eternal and
infinite, its opposite cannot be eternal or infinite.2
But does not this bring us, asks the Scholar, into contradiction with
the accepted teaching that human nature is partly (in the elect) to
be redeemed, partly (in the godless) to be damned to eternal fire?3
Erigena replies by asserting in accordance with the principle already
noted, that God punishes no nature which He has created, whether in
human or devilish substance ; in all creatures, God punishes only that
which He has not made, namely, the irrational motions of the perverse
will. Of the evil spirits, that alone which was created in them by God
Most High can remain, and is in no wise subject to punishment ; but
that which is not from God, namely, their evil, will perish, in order
that an evil permanent and co-eternal with the good, may not have
place in any creature whether human or angelic. The same is true of
death and misery, lest something hostile to life and blessedness, and
co-eternal with these, should arise.4 And when it is said that the last
enemy will be destroyed — the last enemy with whose destruction all
sorrow and death, all enmities and separations, will cease — this does
not mean that his substance, created of God, is to perish, but that his
hostile purpose and will, which proceed not from God, but from
himself, are to perish. He is to be destroyed, not in the sense that he
will no longer exist, but, as "the great Origen" perceived, in the
sense that he will no longer be the Enemy and Death.5
It is putting the same general position into another, and a very
i V. 2. 2 V. 26. 3 V. 27. * V. 28. 5 V. 27.
22 321
EEIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
telling, form, when Erigena urges that God is the only principle of
eternal existence, so that anything which is eternal can have its being
only in God and through God ; and, therefore, evil cannot be eternal
— cannot be an absolute and final principle of the universe.1
His discussion of "that eternal fire, the torture, the burning
sulphurous pool/' is what might be expected from the principles just
noted. In gentleness and spirituality, in freedom from heathen
imaginations and from the spirit of savagery, this theologian of the
ninth century stands far above many teachers of a later day. The
fire is that of undying memory, of late repentance, of earthly
imaginations and a love for earthly things which can no longer find
any corresponding object.2 But if it be asked how such memories and
imaginations can retain a place in " Nature " — so that that which lies
outside of Nature and is contrary to it, is endured by the power of
Nature, and within Nature is punished, Nature itself remaining
always and altogether inviolate in itself — Erigena can only answer
by the theologian's recourse to mystery; we must give place to the
incomprehensible power of God, and honour it with silence, for at its
entrance reason and insight are rebuked.3
When this sad problem has been discussed, Erigena is able to
return to the real object and delight of his thought — to tracing the
course of " Nature," the course of the normal and inviolate order of
the world. The way in which he works out the universal regressus
with which we are now concerned, may be briefly indicated as follows :
The process itself is one of synthesis or unifying. The nature
of this unifying Erigena indicates thus: "... with regard to
the unifying, this must of necessity always be heeded, that what is
seen to be lower is taken up (moveatur) into that which is higher,
that is to say, better; but a better never passes over into a meaner,
1 v. so.
2 Of the Last Judgment, too, Erigena forbids sensuous images. The book, for
instance, is that power of memory of which Augustine speaks in the words : " There is a
divine power of the understanding, through which it comes to pass that for every man
his works, whether they are good or evil, are in their totality called back into his memory,
and with marvellous quickness are looked upon by the eyes of his soul, so that the knowl
edge accuses or excuses the conscience, and thus each soul of man is judged." (Quoted
inDeDiv.Nat. V. 38.)
3 V. 32, 33.
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i.e., turns back in the renewal of the natures ; else what would come
to pass would be not unification, but division."1 In the universal
regressus this unification takes place in the two stages already referred
to : the unification of all natures in man ; and the return of
man to his natural place in the divine Word.
First, all the things of this world are created in man; so that in
man's return to the second Form of Nature, they return also; or, as
Erigena sometimes puts it, the sensible things of the present world,
being included in human nature, participate in the resurrection.2 This
view of man's position in the universe is found in many forms in
Erigena. At times, following Maximus the Confessor, he regards man
as a harmony of opposites, as the mediation and synthesis of all
creatures, in whom the extremest antitheses of Nature are brought to
unity, and through whom therefore they can advance to their final
unity in God.3 Again, man is to Erigena the microcosm that corre
sponds to the macrocosm. This insight which is essential to any
adequate theory of knowledge and usually enters philosophy in that
connexion, is to Erigena the basis of man's return to God, and of
the return of the world to God in and through man. He in one place
makes a fourfold division of all created life — angelic intellect, reason
as in man, sensible life as in animals, vitality without thought or sense
as in plants — and shows how all these, not in mere external combina
tion, but in true synthesis, are in man; so that, in the homely
expression which Erigena loves to use, man is creaturarum omnium
officina — the workshop of all the creatures — and in him the whole of
Nature is contained.4 And, Erigena thinks, this must be so; unless
it were, unless God " created every creature in man," man would not
be truly " created in the image and likeness of God."5
Then, secondly, human nature, which thus gathers up into itself all
the world, is itself taken up into the Word. " He came forth from the
Father, and came into the world, taking upon Himself the nature of
man in which the whole world consists (in qua totus mundus sub-
sistit) ; for there is nothing in the world which is not included in
ill. 8. 2V. 23. 3 II. 3-9. * III. 37 ; IV. 5.
5 IV. 7.— Erigena goes on to say, with a naivete very unusual to him, that he absolutely
does not know why, in preference to all the other visible and invisible creatures, God
should choose precisely man, as the creature to be made in His own image.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
human nature. And again He left the world and went to the Father ;
that is, by union with His Deity, which is equal to the Father, He
exalted the human nature, which He had received, high above all
things visible and invisible, above all heavenly powers, above every
thing that can be said and comprehended. For, while He saved, wholly
in Himself and wholly in the whole race of men, the whole human
nature which wholly he had taken upon Himself, establishing some
again in the previous condition of Nature [the universal regressus],
but exalting others by pre-eminence above Nature and deifying them
[the special return of pure hearts] ; yet in no other but Himself is
humanity made one with Deity in unity of substance, so as, trans
formed into Deity itself, to transcend all things."1 In another place,
after dealing with an apparent deviation in Augustine, both from his
own opinion as expressed in other writings, and from the teachings
of his predecessors among the Fathers, " Ambrosius and the theologian
Gregory/' he goes on : " I, however, who detract from no one and
strive with no one, unhesitatingly understand our Lord's own words :
I and the Father are one, as spoken not of His divinity alone, but of
His whole substance, of God and man together."2
Through Christ, furthermore, it is that man is still able to perform
this great function, even though he is fallen. For when fallen human
nature, in the darkness of its perverted will, forgot both its Creator
and its own original being; when it lay in wretched death, in the
abysmal dark of ignorance, in farthest alienation from its own true
nature and from its Creator, in shameful likeness to irrational and
mortal creatures; then "no one was able to redeem human nature
from this condition, to call it back, to renew it, and to establish it
again in that earlier state from which it had fallen; but the divine
Wisdom, which created it, and received it into unity with its own
substance in order to maintain it in that state, has freed it from all
misery. Let it not disturb thee, therefore, when it is said that human
nature is everywhere whole in itself, both the [divine] image whole in
the animal, and the animal whole in the [divine] image. Everything
which its Creator created primordially in it remains whole and
inviolate, but lies as yet concealed, awaiting the manifestation of the
1 V. 25. V. 37.
324
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
sons of God."1 The same view of Christ's general redemptive work as
the restoration of universal human nature to its beginning — i.e., to its
Idea, its primordial form as manifest in Eden — is seen when Erigena
points out that the Redeemer of the world was free from that
ignorance in which we are sunken at our birth, " not only because he
was the Wisdom of the Father, for which there is no hidden thing,
but because He took upon Him unstained humanity, in order to purify
the stained; not as if He took upon Himself some other humanity
than that which He restored, but because he alone remained without
stain in it, and was preserved for the healing of the wound of
corrupted nature in its most secret grounds. For the whole [of
Nature] came to ruin in all, — save in the case of Him in whom alone
it remained incorruptible. Therefore, He Himself is become the
greatest example of grace, not because some indulgence was made to
human nature on His account, but because He alone among all,
without previous merit, was bound in unity of substance with the
Word of God, so that in Him all the elect, drawing from the fulness
of His grace, become Sons of God and partakers of the divine
substance."2
Such, then, is the universal regressus, in which all existences are
taken up into man and man into the Word. The following passage-
one from among many — indicates the transition from the general to
the special return. " ... By the ten virgins who went to meet the
bridegroom, is represented the universal return of the whole human
rnce (totius humanae numerositatis generalis . . . reversio)
to the pristine condition of Nature; but by the five wise ones, the
special return of all the saints. For the number of the elect is a
species of the human race. So that what is indicated is not merely
the return to the ancient beginning of Nature in generalitatem
humanitatis, but also the ineffable ascent beyond Nature into God
Himself in specialitate deificationis. All, as was said, are to return
to Paradise, but not all are to eat of the tree .of life [i.e., the Word] ;
or at least, all are to receive of the tree of life, but not equally. For
only a fool is ignorant of the fact, that natural goods, of which all
will be equally partakers [in the universal return], are the fruit of
i IV. 5, 6. 2 IV. 9.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
the tree of life. For Christ,, as was discussed earlier, is called
ttav Zvhov, id est omne lignum, because He omnium bonorum
lignum est fructiferum, being Himself every good thing and the
bestower of all good. All men will enjoy his fruit through the
universal participation in the goods of Nature; but his elect, lifted
high above all Nature, will enjoy the special height of deification."1
The special return, then, takes place only for purified souls and
only through the operation of divine grace as distinct from Nature.
It consists in the return of the soul not only to its Idea — its " begin
ning in Nature " — but also its elevation, far above every natural
dignity, to its goal with God, as the cause of all things.2 This is
realised only in the men who " not merely are to ascend to the height
of the Nature present in them, but also, through the riches of the
divine grace which through Christ and in Christ is given to His
chosen, are to pass beyond all laws and limits of Nature superessen-
tially into God Himself, and become one in Him and with Him.7'3
The universal return brings all men to those natural goods of human
nature which, like all the Ideas, have their being in Christ; but this
special return brings those who participate in it to " the supernatural
grace and joy of deificatio " wherein the souls that are made perfect
are glorified by the supernatural grace of the contemplation of God."
One part of men — represented by the five foolish virgins in the
parable — will return only to Adamic perfection; to the condition of
man before he sinned, when the goods which he possessed were purely
natural and could not yet be called virtues. But the other part of
mankind will rise to that height to which man, if he had continued
free from sin, would have been lifted by grace. To this height, which
is the " spiritual marriage of the bridegroom," no one is admitted
save those whose souls are "bright with the light of wisdom and
glowing with the flames of divine love." It is above Nature, and
therefore unattainable to merely natural beauty or good. To it the
human spirit is uplifted only by "grace, and the merit of obedience
toward the divine commands, and the merit of the purest knowledge
of God which in this life it is possible to gain from Scripture and the
created world."4
1 V. 3?. 2 V. 38. 3 V. 39. 4 V. 38.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
The special regressus, which thus takes up into itself the whole
returning movement of Nature and at the same time goes beyond
Nature, Erigena is careful to trace through its stages. First, within
the limits of Nature, earthly body is transformed into vital move
ment, vital movement into sense, sense into reason, reason into spirit
" in which consists the end of the whole rational creature " ; so that
the five natural constituents of man's being, by the taking up of the
lower into the higher, become one — inferioribus semper a superioribus
consummates, non ut non sint, sed ut unum sint. Then three " super
natural and superessential " stages of ascent, which are in God, com
plete this return of the soul. Of these " the first is the passing of
spirit into the knowledge of all the things that are next below God;
the second is the transition from this science into wisdom, that is,
into the innermost vision of truth so far as it is granted to the
creature; the third and highest is the supernatural sinking (occasus —
the going down, as of the sun) of the completely purified souls into
God Himself, and, .as it were, the darkness of the incomprehensible
and unapproachable light, wherein are hidden the causes of all
things. And then will the night be bright like the day; that is, the
most hidden divine mysteries will in ineffable wise be made open to
the blessed and illuminated intelligences."1
We have already seen that the first or universal stage of the
regressus cannot be called mystical. And upon the whole the same
must be said of this. True, the purified soul is described as " sinking
into God." But the statement which immediately follows, that to
these blessed souls the most hidden mysteries will be made open, seems
to imply the retention of individual selfhood. And this reading of
the passage is distinctly confirmed by other passages. Early in the
fifth Book, Erigena, in dealing with the return of human nature,
distinguishes five stages (the number differs at different places).
The fourth is when the spirit, and the whole human nature, return to
the primordial causes ; this is, of course, the sharing of human nature
in the universal regressus, which has already been dealt with. The
fifth is when Nature itself with its causes moves itself to God, " as air
to light." Then Erigena goes on : " God will be all in all, when
1 V. 39.
327
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
nothing will be except God alone. By this I do not attempt to assert
that the substance of things is to perish, but that rather it is to return
by the steps which have been mentioned to a better condition. For
how can that perish which is destined to return to a better state?
The transformation of human nature into God is, then, not to be
regarded as a perishing of its substance, but as a wonderful and
ineffable return into that pristine condition, which it had lost through
transgression."1 A little later in the same chapter he points out that
the bodily substance will pass over into soul, " not in order that what
is may be lost, but that it may be saved in a better essence. The same
is true of the soul itself, that it so raises itself to intelligence as in it
to be preserved fairer and more like God. Not otherwise is it with
the transition, I will not say of all, but only of rational essences, into
God, in whom all things will find their goal and be one. But what
has been said about the unifying of human nature without the
destruction of the proper nature (proprietatis) of the individual
substances, we may confirm by the view of the sainted Maximus."
Then he quotes from Maximus a passage, in which it is pointed out
that when men are " deified " through the grace of the incarnate God,
" the whole man remains in soul and body through Nature, while
through grace he has become in soul and body altogether God."
" Thus," Erigena urges, "the peculiarity (proprietor) of the natures
will remain intact without prejudice to their unity, and neither will
the unity of the natures be removed by the peculiarity, nor the
peculiarity by the unity." Still later he argues that " a unifying of
human nature, with the preservation of the proprietates of the indi
vidual substances, is possible."2
IV. 8.
2 V. 13.— Such passages show Erigena reaching out after the organic categories which
neither he nor his age could possess, and for want of which his thinking was compelled to
fall apart, on the one side toward the negative theology, on the other toward the affirma
tive. And neither side could decisively prevail. For on the one hand, without the organic
and evolutionary categories the true scientific feeling for the unity of existence must lead
toward Mysticism. And on the other hand, the manifold world, with its divine presences,
absolutely refuses to be dismissed. So that Erigena is really in the grasp of logical neces
sity. He must deal with the problem of the Many and the One ; and the only possible
course was, with regard to the Many to be either a Pantheist like the Spinoza of the
" second metaphysic," or an Idealist (Erigena was both); and with regard to the One, to
be a Mystic, so far as a Christian i heologian of the ninth century, unable to call for the
ultimate extinction of individuality, could be.
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ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
In another way, also — a very different way — Erigena's conclusion
varies from that which the beginning would have led one to expect.
He began with, and throughout the whole discussion he continually
insists upon, the great and necessary thought of Nature as one ; which
implies that Nature and Grace are one, the ways of Nature being
manifestations of Grace, and Grace achieving its purposes through
the eternal orderliness of Nature. But, as we so often have had to
notice, he had not made his way, except in flashes of sudden and
brilliant insight, to the organic point of view. Hence in passing
down from the second Form to the third, he was obliged to admit a
rift in the unity of Nature — the coming into the world of something
which is absolutely unnatural, namely, evil. Then, in tracing the
reverse movement this separation necessarily reappears, and, in the
way which we have just seen, Grace is set apart from Nature as
superior to it. Erigena's thinking, in short, when its last word is
compared with its first, is at once a call for, and a prophecy of, the
day when the human mind, having entered into possession of more
adequate categories, should be able to repeat the assertion which he
made, but could not maintain: the assertion of the unity of Nature
and Grace, Law being a work of Grace, Grace being the principle of
Nature.
In the fourth Form of Nature, then, which is the outcome of the
process of the world, there is a universal return of the human race,
and of that whole creation which was made in it and for it, to the
primordial causes, and then, beyond this, there is the special return
to God Himself of those who are worthy to enjoy that pure partici
pation. In this double Sabbath — the universal Sabbath in all the
works of God, the special Sabbath of Sabbaths in holy angels and holy
men — the house of God will be filled, and in it each will find his own
place, " some below, some above, some in the heights of Nature, others
exalted above all power of 'Nature with God Himself. And thus that
great feast will be set in order and celebrated, from which the
substance of nothing that is (for substances draw their being from
God) will be shut out, and to which the defect (vitium) of nothing
that is (because defects have not their origin from God) will be
329
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
introduced. For Nature will be purified, defect winnowed away, the
substantial germs of being preserved; by the flame of the divine
judgment the chaff of transgressions will be burnt away, the concealed
things of darkness illumined, and God will be seen as all in all."1
Such was the view of the world and of our life taken by John
Scotus Erigena, a man of the ninth century. His intellect, as revealed
in the De Divisions Naturae, is an intellect subtle and powerful and
daring; one that can hold its steady way through a great argument
and yet flash into keen and original suggestions at every step. And
with all that originality went the greater qualities without which
originality is the passing novelty of a day. Habitually, Erigena's
mind sought the eternal; so much so, that one of the deepest
impressions left upon the reader's mind by the De Divisione Naturae,
in spite of all its delight in argument, is that of a strange peace which
knows nothing of contention, nothing of reviling, nothing of the
furious spirit of the theologians, nothing even of the contemporary
world — as if the book had been written in a solitude which left no
object for a man's thoughts but God and the eternal things of God.
And then, too, (probably by reason as much of instinct and native
sympathy as of knowledge), Erigena's was a comprehensive mind, in
the sense tha.t the three great theologies which have swayed human
life, but for which in his day no clear distinction and reconciliation
had been worked out, lived in it side by side. With full earnestness,
Erigena gave himself to the mystical theology, which puts God
altogether beyond the apprehension of reason, and union with God
altogether beyond the normal forms and energies of our experience.
But with equal earnestness he gave himself to the affirmative theology,
upon whose positive view of the relation of the world to God the
ordered universe appears as a self -unfolding or self-communication of
God. And this latter theology was present in him in both the forms
which historically it has assumed, the Pantheistic and the Idealistic;
forms represented in modern philosophy, the one by the Spinoza of
the " second metaphysic," the other by Hegel. For want of a clear
possession of the higher categories he is often driven, not, indeed, to
1 V. 38.
330
ERIGENA: THE DIVISION OF NATURE
Spinoza's formula of substance, attribute, and mode, but yet, none the
less really, toward the essential movement of thought of Pantheism;
is often driven to view the process of the universe as an unfolding
from above, of such a kind that the presence in it of anything not
directly and plainly of divine nature constitutes a problem of hopeless
difficulty. But he continually has glimpses of Hegel's greater way;
continually rises to the view of the history of the universe as a process
in which Absolute Eeason realises its purpose of righteousness and of
good, by " externalising and diversifying itself " ; by giving rise, that
is to say, to individual existences, to whom life and the struggle of
life are real, and through whose labours and struggles there is slowly
built up that City of God in which, just because men have come to the
fulness of their individuality, God is truly all in all.
Far apart as these three theologies lie from one another, Erigena
found in himself a kinship of soul for each of them ; to each of them
he gave himself ; and so became one of those men whose vocation it is
to attempt the impossible, and by that attempt to serve the world and
carry forward its history to new stages. But as one takes leave of
him, it is not of the subtlety and brilliance of his mind, nor even of
his remarkable historical position, that one cares last to speak. The
best final word to say of him is, that he had high thoughts concerning
God; and therefore he had high thoughts concerning man and the
destiny of man ; concerning the destiny even of the men whose souls
are most shrouded in darkness.
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THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS.
THE " Theism " of a great master of systematic theology ought in
propriety to mean the whole body of his thought. It ought to signify
his- whole view of the world and of man. For the world, and its citizen
man,, have their being from God and in God; the very individuality
and freedom of man are themselves a communication of His nature
on the part of God. And from this it follows that the view of God,
the view of the nature of the world, the view of the meaning of man's
life, are correlative views. The form which any one of them has come
to assume in one's mind determines, if one's thinking really is
systematic, the form which the others must assume. Furthermore,
that which in the order of reality is primary and determinative, is
God; and that order of reality the order of our conception ought so
far as possible to reproduce. It is true that in the way of natural
reason we rise to the apprehension of God through the world and
through our own souls. But once a conception of God is reached by
us, either it becomes the organising and determinative principle of
all our thinking about the world and man, or else our thought (for
honourable reasons, it may indeed be — when the terrible mysteries of
life have put us to silence, and we have but faith where we " cannot
know") is fragmentary and not systematic.
So that a study of the Theism of St. Thomas ought to be a study
of the whole body of his theology, down to its last discussion of nature
or the state. But that is not possible here ; it is necessary in the few
pages that remain to fall below that justice, and to confine the
discussion to St. Thomas' " conception of God " in the usual limited
meaning of that expression. In dealing with it what we shall find is,
first a doctrine concerning God which logically implies, though it
does not expressly formulate, a view akin to Concrete or Objective
Idealism; but secondly, this view crossed by a dualism similar in
motive to that which already we have seen in Plato and Aristotle —
335
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
the dualism between the perfect and eternal God, and this imperfect
and temporal world.
The references are to the smaller, or philosophical, Summa which
St. Thomas wrote " contra gentiles." Any references to the larger —
the theological — Summa are indicated by the necessary abbreviation.
In the book Contra Gentiles we find, at the point to which our
task specially leads us, the following reasoning developed. St.
Thomas has by the preceding argument been led to declare that all
things movable, all things subject to KLV^GI?, i.e., the whole process
of the phenomenal world, must be referred back tp unum primum
movens seipsum. But can we form any conception of a self -mover?
Yes, we can; and in the forty-fourth chapter of the first Book St.
Thomas proceeds to do so. That which moves itself, that in which
est movere et non moveri, does so per appetitum et appreliensionem.
But with regard to the omnium primum movens (quod Deum
dicimus), the desire cannot be for any particular or sensuous good,
for anything bonum et appetibile ut hie et mine. On the contrary,
the desire must be that of the First Mover for Himself. In all His
activities, He is Himself both the end and the source. But if God
thus desires Himself, He must be viewed as esse intelligens; in fact,
the title of the chapter now before us is Quod Deus est intelligens.
To put this into modern language God is, upon St. Thomas' view,
self-conscious and self-objectifying Eeason — Eeason which desires
and wills itself ; and this desiring and willing of itself is the bringing
into being of the world.
Then, in further developing his doctrine, St. Thomas goes on to
deal more at length with the self-knowledge of God. God, he says,
seipsum perfecte intelligit;1 furthermore since the intelligible form,
quo Deus intelligit, is nothing other than the divine essence itself,
therefore God, primo et per se solum seipsum cognoscit? And in
the theological Summa,, to these verbs intelligo and cognosco he adds
compreliendo : — Deus perfecte comprehendit seipsum?
Still further, the knowledge of God is His very nature.
Intelligere Dei est sua essential or as the theological Summa puts it,5
1 I. 47. 2 I. 48. 3 s. T. I. 14. 3. * I. 45. 5 I. 14. 4.
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THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
[Ipsum] intelligere Dei est ejus sulstantia. This, urges St. Thomas,
follows from the preceding. God is esse intelligens. But intelligere
est perfectio et actus intelligentis.
Thus, then, God is conceived as an intelligence that knows, that
perfectly comprehends, itself. And this character as intelligence is
the essential nature of God; it is the divine substance itself. The
view of Aquinas, so far, might be summed up by saying that to him
God is self-conscious, self -determining, self -objectifying Reason: self-
conscious, for He knows Himself; self-determining and self-
objectifying, for He determines Himself through Himself, is to
Himself the end of His own activities.
This brings us to the question which, for the purpose of our
present inquiry, we have to ask concerning the Thomistic Theism.
It has been our task to trace certain elemental oppositions in the
field of philosophy and theology. The first and deepest of these is
that between the negative view — which, in religious men, becomes
Mysticism — and the positive view, which, when it enters into clear
possession of its highest categories, is Idealism. Those highest
categories are the categories involved in the idea of spirit. But as
we have seen, even when these have been gained, there is still possible
a more abstract and a more concrete use of them. The self-conscious
and self -determining subject of the world may be viewed as in
organic connexion with the whole process of the world; not merely
of certain aspects of the world is God the source, but of the whole
order of the world; not merely through some fragment of it is He
realising His purpose, but through its whole process and history.
Or, again, the emphasis may be put so entirely upon pure reason that
the sense-world which has its being in space and time becomes meta
physically a hopeless problem, and ethically a realm to be withdrawn
from. Or the abstraction may be carried still farther. The fact
that self-consciousness and the objective consciousness are correlative,
that consciousness of self implies consciousness of objects, and that
without such consciousness of objects there is no such thing as self-
consciousness : — this may be forgotten, and the emphasis laid alto
gether upon the mere fact of self-consciousness, upon the mere
abstract fact that " I am I," upon the bare " I think " that attends
23 337
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
each fact indifferently without reference to the object that is thought.
Then God can but be viewed as existing in the blessedness of such a
self-contemplation as leaves the world, in some inexplicable way,
apart from Him and alien to Him; one step farther in the way of
abstraction would, in fact, give us Mysticism. These are the three
typical possibilities in the use of the category of self-consciousness as
the final principle of explanation of the world. The strife between
these — a strife often implicit and unconscious — and the advance from
the less to the more concrete, make up the inner history of Idealism.
And the failure to distinguish them clearly is the source of some of
the most troublesome difficulties that have beset Idealism in philosophy
and Theism in theology.
In what position, then, does St. Thomas, with his definite enuncia
tion of the category of self-conscious spirit, stand with reference to
these possible types ? The answer to this we have now to trace.
The conclusion of St. Thomas just noted was that God is essen
tially intelligence; intelligere Dei est sua essentia. But alongside
this we have at once to set two other conclusions. The first is a con
clusion with regard to the nature of intelligence which involves a
view of the relation between intelligence and its objects. "Intel
ligere" he says, " is the activity or energising (actus) of an intel
ligence — an activity which exists in itself, and does not pass over
into anything extrinsic to it, as, for instance, heating passes over into
that which is heated."1 This definition of intelligere at once raises
the vital question between the abstract and the organic view. For
the definition implies that whatsoever God knows is in some true
sense in God. Which, then, of the two alternatives will St. Thomas
take? If he wishes to separate God and the world in the sense of
denying that the relation of the world to God is organic, he must
deny knowledge of the world to God. While if he insists that God
knows the world, he at once makes the world intrinsic to God ; makes
the world the objective consciousness of God.
What he does is to assert explicitly and strongly that God knows
the world ; but, as we shall find, he does not see — or at any rate does
1 I. 45.
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THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
not draw — the logical consequence which this assertion carries as
soon as it is taken together with his own conception of knowledge.
God, he says., cognoscit alia a se.1 For, he argues, the cognition of
an effect is adequately possessed (sufficienter hdbetur) through the
cognition of its cause. Therefore, since God is through His own
essence the causa essendi of other things, and since He most fully
knows His own essence, it must be affirmed that He etiam alia
cognoscat. And this position is made still stronger by the next
chapter which declares that God has propriam cognitionem de rebus
omnibus? And with this propriam cognitionem de rebus omnibus
Thomas is thoroughly in earnest. In several chapters both in the
Contra Gentiles and in the theological Summa he expressly affirms
that God knows the things which are not ;3 He knows the particular
and the contingent;4 He knows the infinite;5 He knows the base and
the evil.6 And this knowledge of God which includes all things, and
is the cause of things, is not discursive;7 does not proceed by com
pounding and dividing.8 On the contrary, Deus omnia simul intel-
ligit,9 and this because He knows all things una specie inteTligibili.
If we put these two views together we at once have the positive
tendency. For with reference to all things that are, even the con
tingent and the evil, with reference even to the things that are not,
it is declared that God omnia simul intelligit. But it is also declared
that this very intelligere is " the activity or energising of an intel
ligence — an activity which exists in itself and does not pass over into
anything extrinsic to it." The world then cannot be external to
God ; the disjunction between the world and God which is the essence
of the negative tendency, is put decisively out of court; the world
becomes nothing other than the objective consciousness of God.
But did St. Thomas either fully accept, or consistently keep
himself up to, this point of view? The answer is that in part he
did, in part did not. The tendency toward the more concrete view
1 1. 49 : cf . Summa Theol. I. 14. 5, 6.
2 Another side of this linking together of the divine knowledge and the things of the
world is seen in the principle (argued, e.g., in Summa Theol. 1. 14. 8) that scientia (strictly
speaking, scientia approbationis) Dei est causa rerum.
31. 66; S. T. I. 14. 9. * I. 67 ; 8. T. I. 14. 11 and 13. * I. 69 ; S. T. I. 14. 12.
« I. 70, 71 ; S. T. I. 14. 10. 7 I. 57 ; S. T. I. 14. 7. 8 I. 58. 9 I. 55.
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THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
is found, for instance, in the statement that God is in all things, not
as though each thing were a part of His essence (so that any par
ticular thing would be a " piece " or " mode " of the Divine Being) ;
nor as an accident; but as the mover (agens) is present in that which
is moved. It is present, again, in the discussion (found in each
Summa) in which it is pointed out that the videntes Deum per
essentiam would see all things in God, and would see them not suc
cessively but omnia simul:1 — a view which is put in another way
when it is said2 that with God vivere is one and the same thing with
intelligere. In God the percept and the thing perceived and the per
ceiving itself are the same. But whatever is in God as perceived is
his life. Wherefore, since all things which are made by God are in
him as perceived (intellecta) , it follows that all things in Him are
the divine life itself. Or if we turn to the later Books of the Contra
Gentiles — references to the Contra Gentiles have so far been to the
first Book, which sets forth what would usually be called St. Thomas'
" conception of God " — we find here and there hints which look in
the same direction. In the second Book, for instance, which contains
the doctrine of creation, he insists, in dealing with the diversities
of the world, that the distinction of things from one another is not
due to accident; nor is matter the first cause of it;3 nor yet con
trariety in the first agents; but on the contrary, multiplicity and
variety, diversity .and inequality in created things, are necessary, that
by this manifoldness a perfect copy of the divine perfection might
be found.4 In the third Book, whose topic is in part Ethics and in
part the questions of Providence — of the divine government and
administration of the world — it is asserted5 that God is omnium
finis, that to know God (intelligere Deum) is the end for all intel
ligent creatures6 (whence it follows quod ultima hominis felicitas
non sit in hac vita) ;7 that to all operating agents God is the cause
of their operation (so that every operation ought to be ascribed to
God as to the first and principal agent),8 and yet that this does not
exclude free will in the part of the creature ;9 that there is a certain
coincidence of natural law and divine law.10 In the fourth Book,
1 III. 59, 60; £ T. I. 12. 8 seq. 2 s. T. I. 18. 4. 3 II. 40.
4 II. 45. 5 HI. 18. 6 HI. 25. Tin. 48.
8 III. 67. 9 III. 73. 10 III. 128 seq.
340
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
which is given to the consideration of revealed truths, we come to
the doctrine of the Trinity. But to that reference must be made at
a later point.
Such teachings show how St. Thomas can maintain the more
concrete point of view. But upon the whole an abstract view prevails;
or rather the rational foundations are laid for the concrete view, but
hopeless difficulties intervene, and the conclusion which is finally
drawn is to a very considerable extent abstract.1
The difficulties arise both from the side of the world and from
the side of God. From the side of the world, its imperfection stands
over against the eternal and changeless perfection of God. Metaphysi
cally the world is imperfect, as a divided order in time and space.
Ethically it is imperfect, as the seat of evil. Hence it has to be viewed
as in some sense disjoined from God. Yet, as the doctrines just
referred to show, St. Thomas sees that the world must be viewed as
intimately in connexion with God. And as between these two
necessities what he does is to adopt something like a Platonic theory
of Ideas. " The forms which exist in particular things," he says, in
that very chapter of the Contra Gentiles whose thesis is Quod Deus
est intelligent, " are imperfect." But everything imperfect is
derived from something perfect, for the perfect is prior in nature to
the imperfect, just as actus is prior to potentia. Hence the
imperfect forms which exist in the particular things of the
world, must be derived from actually subsisting perfect forms.
And these can subsist only in an intelligence. To St. Thomas
this is just another proof that God is esse intelligens. But what
concerns us here is that it really shows the negative tendency at
work. Instead of the order of this world, even in its imperfections,
i One result of this contrasts curiously with the position which St. Thomas has held,
and still hold*, as the guide of innumerable churchmen: in following the standard and
master of orthodoxy, we must, if we wish to keep orthodox ourselves, be careful how we
go beyond what stands written : if we take a principle from one place, and another from
another, and put them together, and adopt the conclusion which logically follows, we are
as like as not to be heretics. As an exceedingly keen-minded teacher of philosophy, to
whom I am greatly indebted, once pointed out, when St. Thomas (bv reason of the very
clearness and sincerity of his own mind) cannot escape doctrines which have heretical
implications, he gives them their place in God, but forbids them to us men. He makes
God pantheistic, but he will not let us be pantheistic; he makes God heretical to save our
orthodoxy.
341
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
being regarded as wholly organic to a divine purpose, — though we
men cannot clearly see how, because " we see not to the close " — what
is really asserted is that there are two worlds: the perfect world of
ideal forms, which exists in God, or, as St. Thomas would say, in the
Word; and this present world of imperfection. The doctrine of
Ideas, as worked out in the greater Bumma} carries the same impli
cation; though it is limited by the statement that evil has no Idea
in God, because it is known by God non per propriam rationem sed
per rationem boni.
That which intervenes between the ideal world in God, and this
imperfect world, is of course creation. But the Thomistic doctrine of
creation2 is rather a repetition of the doctrine of Ideas than an
explanation of how a perfect God could make an imperfect world, or
how the imperfection of the world can be organic to the accomplish
ment of a divine purpose. After pointing out that every being which
in any way whatsoever exists, is of God, and that the materia prima
is created by God, he goes on to discuss the question whether the
formal cause (causa exemplaris) is anything beyond God. In the
opening list of the arguments pro and contra he quotes the Augustin-
ian doctrine, ideae sunt formae principales, quae divina intelligentia
continentur, to prove that exemplaria rerum non sunt extra Deum and
then goes on : "I give the obvious answer : God is the prima causa
exemplaris of all things. And as evidence of this, let it be considered
that for the production of anything, a pattern (exemplar) is
necessary, that the effect may follow a determinate form. For the
artificer produces a determinate form in the material by reason of a
pattern upon which he looks, whether it be a pattern upon which
he gazes outwardly, or one which he conceives inwardly in his
mind. Moreover, it is manifest that the things which come to be
in the course of nature follow determinate forms. This determina
tion of forms, furthermore, must be brought back to the divine
wisdom as to a first principle — to the divine wisdom which has
conceived (excogitavit) the order of the universe which consists in the
distinction of things. And therefore it is necessary to say that in the
divine wisdom are the rationes omnium rerum which we have above
i S. T. I. 15. 2 s. T. I. 44. seg.
342
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
called (qu. 15. art. 1) Ideas, that is, pattern forms (formas exem
plar es) existing in the divine mind." Then St. Thomas goes on to
reconcile this with the doctrine we shall have presently to consider,
that of the simplicity of the divine nature; and comes to the conclu
sion that God Himself is the first exemplar of all things. But this, it
will be noticed, still leaves the disjunction. The ideal world exists in
God; and then this present world exists somehow, apart from that
ideal world, as an imperfect copy of it.
But, secondly, there were difficulties from the side of God. St.
Thomas, with the medieval theologians generally, is committed to the
doctrine of the simplicity of the divine nature; the divine nature is
such a unity as excludes diversity.1 The divine nature, St. Thomas
thinks, must be such a unity, because else it would be a compositum;
and that for many reasons is impossible; it would involve, for
instance, the possibility of dissolution, and then, too, omne composi
tum posterius est suis componeniibus?
What such a view indicates is that St. Thomas, even in formally
declaring that God is self-conscious and self-determining spirit, has
not entered into the real significance of the category which he is using.
He has failed to apprehend spirit as a principle of synthesis, of unity
in diversity; as a principle whose essential nature it is to hold many
elements together in the unity of one experience, at once distinguish
ing itself from each of those elements and each of them from one
another. But so to conceive spirit is the key to the whole theistic
view of the world. Continually St. Thomas comes near to such a
conception; but to enter clearly upon it, and to lift it to its "full
working prerogative " as a principle for the explanation of the world,
was reserved for the men who carried forward the work begun by
Immanuel Kant. So that St. Thomas is exposed to a great danger.
For the view of the divine nature as omnino simplex, if carried rigor
ously to its conclusion, would put God beyond the apprehension of our
reason, and union with God beyond the normal capacities of our
il. 18 ; cf. the discussion De Unitate Dei in the greater Summa where the first con
clusion is : unum non addit supra ens rein aliquam, sed tantum negationem divisionis
(S. T.I.I}. 1).
2 Et dependent* ex eis adds the theological Summa in its statement of these reasons
(I. 3. 7).
343
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
nature. That is to say, it would lead, according to the temper of the
man who held the view,, either to Agnosticism or to Mysticism.
Either outcome was, of course, impossible for Aquinas ; not merely on
account of his position in the church, but by reason also of his genuine
'insight into the positive character of the relation of God to the world.1
Yet when the doctrine of the simplicity of the divine nature is in the
foreground of his thought, he can save himself from such an outcome
only by ingenious expedients. Intellectus nosier, he resolutely affirms,
de Deo simplici non in vanum enunciationes format componendo et
dividendo, quamvis Deus omnino sit simplex. It is true, he admits,
that we come to knowledge of God by manifold conceptions, bonitas,
sapientia, and the like. But then, he urges, we do not attribute the
method of the knowing intellect to the things which are known — just
as, for instance, we do not attribute immateriality to a stone, although
we know it in an immaterial fashion. So, then, in our knowledge of
God, the manifoldness of conception is to be referred to ourselves, as
knowing intellects, but unity is to be referred to the God who is
known. — Later, when St. Thomas has affirmed that God has propriam
cognitionem de rebus omnibus, the same difficulty recurs. If the
divine intelligence is omnino simplex, how can there be in it multitudo
intellectorum? But here once more, instead of rising to the view
of spirit as a synthetic principle, and therefore a principle at once of
unity and of diversity, St. Thomas saves himself by an ingenious
device. He falls back upon the theory of intelligible forms. An
intelligible form is a principium formale intellectualis operationis; by
means of it the knowing intelligence knows the thing; not in such a
way that the knowing itself (intelligere ipsum) is an action passing
over into the thing known (as heating "passes over into the thing
heated "" ) ; but in such a way that the knowing remains in the
intelligence, and yet has relation to the thing which is known. But
the divine intelligence has no other intelligible form than its own
essence, which is simple, but nevertheless is the likeness of all things.
And so, by one intelligible form which is the divine nature, and by
i The Mvst'c outcome, however, ivas possible for St. Thomas' fellow-Dominican and,
in a sense, disciple, Master Eckhart.
344
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
one general concept (intentio intellecta), which is the divine Word,
many things can be known by God.1
We have already seen what is implied in St. Thomas' view of the
activity of the divine intelligence as one which exists in itself and
does not pass over into anything extrinsic to itself. Taken in con
nexion with the statement that God has propriam cognitionem de
rebus omnibus, it implies that the world is in God, so that in knowing
the world God is not going beyond Himself, is not passing over into
something extrinsic to Himself. But what we have just seen is that
from both sides — that of God, that of the world — Aquinas is led to
hold the two apart. And this is rendered easier for a theologian by
another fact. In the genuine order of science, we start with the world
of our experience, and seek to understand it; and the explanation of
it we find at last in God. And then, of course, the principle of
explanation and the thing explained must be viewed as standing in
organic connexion — unless, as sometimes happens, the scientific
inquiry forgets its own beginning. But if you start with ready-made
conceptions — God, the soul, the world — you feel at liberty to link
these together or hold them apart as the exigencies of your thought
may require. And thus to start with separate ready-made conceptions
is one of the specific dangers of the professional theologian; it is, in
fact, the essence of that theological procedure known as the dogmatic.
But, in attempting to consider how far the Theism of Aquinas is pos
itive and concrete, how far abstract and negative, we have still another
question to raise ; and that the central one. The difficulties which we
have been considering, the opposition of what seem to be necessities
of thought: — will St. Thomas find any solution for these when he
comes to deal with the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation?
In his discussion of these, if anywhere, we may expect the concrete
view to come fully to its rights. For the central conception of the
Christian view of the world is that God became man, and that thus
there was lived, under the actual conditions of human history, a life
which is the true and normal — in the strict Platonic sense, the ideal-
human life. But this involves a thoroughly concrete view. For it
i I.e. St. Thomas really puts the two sides together in God ; the diversities are put into
the divine nature, which is nevertheless declared from the outset to be a unity (see Contra
Gentiles, I. 36, 46, and 53).
345
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
implies, on the one side, that God fulfils Himself in human nature;
and on the other side, that the human nature, which in the Son of
Man rose to the true form of its own Idea, is potentially the divine
nature. Taking the discussion in the Contra Gentiles with that in
the theological Summa, one must say, however, that while St. Thomas
advances toward such a view, he does not enter fully into it. Is there
a procession in God? he asks.1 First, he notes some very interesting
counter-arguments. For instance, (1) procession signifies movement
toward the outside, but in God there is nothing movable nor extrane
ous, therefore no procession ; ( 2 ) everything which proceeds is diverse
from that from which it proceeded. But in God there is no diversity,
but the completest simplicity. Therefore in God there is no proces
sion. But, in spite of these, he holds that there is a procession in God.
Not as a cause proceeding into its effect; that would give us the
heresy of Arius. Nor as a cause carrying itself into its effect and
impressing its own likeness thereupon; that would be the opposite
heresy, the error of Sabellius. As against these Thomas holds to a
procession in God; such as appears in intelligence whose activity
remains in itself and there forms a concept — a verbum cordis, of
which the verbum vocis is a sign. Such a procession, urges Thomas,
there is in God. And it is twofold — the processio Verbi, which can be
called generatio (generatio Fili) and the processio amoris. Then he
goes on to distinguish these, the one (the generation of the Son)
taking place secundum actionem intelligibilem, the other (the proces
sion of the Spirit) secundum operationem voluntatis. But when it
comes to bring the Son, and the Father through the Son, into organic
connexion with human nature and with all the breadth of the human
world, the great monastic Doctor slackens his pace. In the fourth
Book of the Contra Gentiles2 he does, indeed, bring the doctrine of the
first Book, that God thinks Himself, into relation with the revealed
doctrine of the Word. That which was made in Him was life; i.e.,
as St. Thomas takes it, all things pre-existed in Him, so that He is
both the Likeness of God (habet Deitatem, et est verus Deus, imago
invisibilis Dei}, and the original type of all created things. But this
still leaves the great disjunction possible ; the Word is the Idea of all
1 S. T. I. 27. 2 11. 8eq.
34(5
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
things— but yet He may not be regarded as fulfilling Himself through
all things and realising His purpose in all history. In fact, one is
tempted to say that with St. Thomas, as with so many later
theologians, the other elements of his thought govern his doctrine of
the Trinity and the Incarnation, rather than the doctrine of the
Trinity and the Incarnation the other elements of his thought.
Such, in the outline of its logical motives, is St. Thomas7 concep
tion of God. So limited a statement, it is true, does not do justice
to the Thomistic Theism. As was pointed out above, if justice is to
be done to any man's Theism — to his real Theism, which may, or may
not, be identical with his professed — the whole body of his thought
must be taken into account.1 In the case of St. Thomas one would
have to consider, in particular, how genuinely the concrete tendency
comes to its right in his teleology : in his view, namely, of history as
the process of the realisation of a divine purpose; and of the state
and its laws as factors in that realisation.
But the bare logical outline now before us is enough to show that
within the system, apparently so complete and full-rounded, of the
great Dominican theologian, there is a deep division of mind. The
dualism can, indeed, almost be put down in the set terms of an
antimony. The thesis is : The world, as a single system, must have
come from God — the Manichsean view simply cannot be admitted.
Therefore, the world must, in the last analysis, be of the nature of
God; i.e., must be essentially, and upon the whole, good. And there
fore again, in some way which is difficult or impossible for the human
mind in its present state to comprehend, the imperfections of the world
must be organic to the purposes and activity of the divine perfection ;
and, therefore, still farther, the world is a true home and field of
labour for the sons of God, and the normal activities that make up
man's life in this world are man's true way home to the heavenly
glory. But over against this thesis rises the antithesis: The world,
as it stands, is manifestly imperfect, manifestly evil. Therefore, it
cannot be of God; and consequently cannot be a true home or arena
i It is no rare thing for a church teacher, who in his " Theology " has yielded to dualism
—even to the extent of Manichseism— to show himself in his Ethics and Politics a sound
ani hearty Theipt.
347
THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS
for the children of God; so that man, if he is to come to his home in
God, must renounce and forsake the world.
And this division of mind is, in St. Thomas, no mere matter of
individual thinking. He, under the form of a theological system, as
genuinely as Dante under the form of poetry, was the expression of
the mind of the Middle Ages. What that mind was — its strength
through devotion to God, its weakness through injustice to nature and
through the consequent sundering of nature and grace — I have already
attempted to indicate.1 Its vision of the glory of God was so intense
and overmastering, its sense of the evils in the world so keen, that it
was driven to a separation of the divine and the natural; and so the
very man who in modern times stood for its spirit of systematic com
prehension, could rebuke it for not being comprehensive enough, and
could say of it, that with all its zeal for the divine it made the divine
kingdom the dwelling-place of the dead, attainable only through the
gate of death ; and the natural world just as much a realm of death,
for there is no divinity in it — God being outside of nature, and there
fore, nature the grave of God.- The charge has its truth. Yet
gentler words would be still closer to truth. It would be at once more
kindly and more wise to say that, as a matter of historical fact, when
men of searching intellect and pure heart have dealt with the actual
life of the world, their conclusions have fallen in two directions and
approximated to two types : the one apprehends God as the eternal
truth and life of the world; the other apprehends Him as that reality
in the presence of which the world fades into nothingness. The
spiritual struggle of mediaeval men made them so acutely sensitive to
both demands that in their thought the opposed tendencies lose the
sense of their opposition, and are interwoven. In Erigena both views
are present, each in its extremest possible form ; but with the positive
taking upon the whole the greater place, especially at the close. In
St. Thomas, also, both views are present ; but they stand in a different
'relation, which reminds one a little of the ground-lines of Plato's
earlier Idealism. With regard to the " real " world — the world which
1 Supra, pp. 29-33.
2 Hegel, History of Philosophy, Eng. tr., vol. III., p. 94 seq. It is the scholastic mind
that Hegel has specially in view.
348
CONCLUSION
is known to angelic intelligences, but for us men is very largely a
" world to come " — the positive or Idealistic view prevails completely ;
while, with regard to the world "that now is," that Idealism is
crossed by a certain measure of the negative or abstract view. But in
spite of this deep division of the mediaeval mind, in spite of this
distance to which mediaeval men went in excluding many aspects of
the world and of our life from genuine reality, we must in fairness
keep open eyes for the fact that the essential spirit of mediaeval
thought was the spirit of unity and comprehension. The purpose of
the mediaeval mind was to bring all human knowledge to unity in a
knowledge of God ; and if this attempt was partly a success, partly a
failure, alike in the ninth century when it was made by the daring
and brilliant mind of Erigena, and in the thirteenth when it was
undertaken by the sober and massive intelligence of St. Thomas, the
reason lies, upon a last view, simply in this, that earth is not heaven
and human science not the totum simul of heavenly vision.
With this we must end our study of the two great ways in which
the apprehension of God has shaped men's attitude toward the world
and toward their own life in the affairs of the world. Mediaeval men
stood — where all men stand — between time and eternity; and it was
their labour, both in practice and in speculation, to bring their life
in time under the form of eternity. They felt the unity — the unity in
God — of all existence. Hence the inner impulse of their science was
to see the world as one ; and to see it as one by knowing God. In the
light of the knowledge of God all the contending elements and
currents of the world were to take on the form of unity and eternity.
But the material of which their life was made defeated that
349
CONCLUSION
endeavour; the struggle of life made them feel precisely the hopeless
dividedness of existence, the hopeless irreconcilability of its elements.
They had fought their way, with infinite toil and pain, up from chaos ;
with infinite toil and pain were subduing the flesh to the spirit, and
the passions of the earth to heavenly light. God and the world stood
for them far asunder; between the two they must choose; and they
chose rather to lose themselves with God than to be masters of the
world. As a man sitting in the midst of music and of dreams hears
far out in the night the call of the trumpet, and recognises his greater
vocation, and turns to the long march through the darkness, and to
the battle that with its chances of life and death waits the break of
day; so the leaders of mediaeval religion turned from the allurements
of the beautiful and terrible world, and allowed to their hearts no
love save the 'heavenly love,1 and gave themselves to the one task of
so organising society that it should be, in labour, in discipline, in
vision, a training-school for the life to come. So that the final insight
to which both their life and their science led them, defeated in part
the impulse with whicli their science began. All things of the world are
one in God; and therefore to know the world as it truly is we must
know God. But so soon as we come to a knowledge of God, we come
to that which condemns the world. Through all things there runs
the absolute and final distinction between God and that which is not
God, between heaven and the awful eternity of hell. And man, as he
looks upon God and upon that twofold issue of his own life, stands in
a strait with regard* to all the things of this world and all the appeal
which they make to his heart. We must love God; but whether we
can love Him in loving the things which He has made is a problem
of hopeless difficulty; for the things which He has made have some
how come to be full of evil. On the one hand, there is no source of
real existence but God; and, therefore, throughout the whole of
existence, with all its trouble and toil and darkness — its " desperate
and hideous years/' its " wrong too bitter for atoning " — God must
be achieving a vast design. But on the other hand, the world is evil
1 If we turn from Aquinas to Dante, the fact remains that, while Dante's love never
loses its humanity, it maintains itself only by lifting itself from earth to heaven. The
Beatrice whom Dante loved through all his greater years was the Beatrice who, among
the blessed, looked upon the face of God.
350
CONCLUSION
while God is good ; therefore, the world is alien to God, and the sons
of God must renounce it. Such was the problem laid upon mediaeval
men by that wisdom which is the inner soul of the ages, the wisdom
which allots to each mortal generation its toil, and leads each by the
burden of hopeless difficulties into a citizenship of eternity. With
that problem mediaeval men did the best that they could do: they
admitted both solutions to a place in their thought, and became at
once Idealists, serving God by mastering the world, and Mystics,
finding God by renouncing both the world and their own individuality.
For modern men the problem of life, however different in appear
ance, is not different in essence. On the one side, for us as for them,
stands the evil of the world. And its distinctively modern form — the
industrial and social selfishness which allows whole classes of human
beings to live here upon the earth in hell — is, with all its refinement,
a profounder form of evil than that savage power of the flesh which
medieval men had to overcome, as, in obedience to a light from
heaven, they lifted themselves out of their northern barbarism. But
if that which shows the world as divided and broken has taken on an
intenser form, so also has the demand for unity ; the demand, namely,
that the world shall be seen as one order of existence framed through
out for the realisation of one supreme purpose; and that, therefore,
all the interpretations of the world, scientific, moral, religious, shall
lead to a common centre. This demand arises from all sides of the
modern situation; alike from the scientific side, and from the
religious and moral. For science can admit no dualism; at every
point in its work it presupposes and implies the unity of all existence,
and the continuity of the whole cosmic process, including man and
all that makes up man's life. While theology (and still more the
religion of which theology is the intellectual expression or shadow)
with its central presupposition of the supremacy of God, just as truly
demands the unity of all existence and the continuity of the whole
process of the universe ; and that whether we interpret the supremacy
of God in Christian and paternal terms, or in Roman and forensic.
And the moral consciousness, which seems most of all to force a
dualistic belief upon the pure heart and the upright spirit, really
calls for an ultimate unity. As Plato saw, the Chief Good must be
351
CONCLUSION
one, and it must be the supreme principle of Being. It must be the
highest principle of the whole system of existence as well as of man's
moral endeavour. For in the last analysis the Good for man must be
the divine nature; and for the attainment of it — the genuine and
difficult, not the easy and fictitious, attainment of it — the whole order
of the world must be framed.
In some respects, modern thought, with all its dividedness, is in a
better position than medieval to meet that demand. For one thing,
we have a keener sense of the difficulty of the task. Mediaeval men
boldly attempted to unify reason and faith, science and revelation.
But if we moderns are acutely conscious of any one thing more than
of any other, it is that such unification must be achieved, if at all, in
some greater experience to come ubi ipsa veritas vita animae nostrae
erit. We are content to speak, not of unifying, but of reconciling.
Anything that could fairly be called the unification of science and
revelation would require completed (i.e., eternal) science, completed
revelation, and complete intellectual vision ; whereas we ourselves, and
our science, and our revelation (so far as revelation means something
apprehensible by the human spirit), are all alike incomplete in the
sense of existing under the form of time. But we can seek to recon
cile with each other the two great powers which make up our spiritual
life — the scientific reason which sees the world as an order of
continuity and changeless law, and the religious spirit which
organises life in accordance with a faith in God: — to reconcile these
in a reasoned belief that the world is a divinely-ordered system and
its history a divinely-guided process.1 Then, too, for men who see
things as they are, the steady advance of science and its strengthen
ing of its own position bring hope rather than fear. The man who
sees nature as an order of unchanging law, is better qualified to
advance to the view that the cosmic process is, in constitution and
purpose, divine and divinely rational, than is the man who sees that
i It should be understood that, if men of science have a difficulty in admitting this
belief, theologians have a still greater difficulty in holding it consistently. The intel
lectual pressure upon a theologian is a terrible one ; and the clearer his mind the more
terrible the pressure. Faith in God, and the fact of evil, constitute when taken together
tho last and most awful of all the problems by which the human mind is tried. The
theologian is always exposed to the temptation to be a Theist toward his opponents, but a
Manichsean within his own system.
352
CONCLUSION.
process as subject to arbitrary divine fiats (a view which implies that
the ordinary process of the world goes its own way upon some non-
divine level, but subject to interference from above).1 Science and
religion, in fact, by doing justice to themselves, enter into deeper
kinship with each other. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to
say that religion, since it includes the whole of life, can never do
justice to itself without taking up into itself the spirit of science.
And, to some extent, that is being done to-day. Theology, for
example, is being transformed by a genuinely scientific study of the
religious experiences and types of mind recorded in the Bible, and
specially of that mind of Jesus which is at once the fulfilment and the
illumination of those experiences; and, as so transformed, is becom
ing less and less a declaration made on the authority of the church,
and more and more an expression of the facts of actual life, and of
the faiths involved in those facts.
So that on the intellectual side the situation certainly grows more
hopeful age by age. But in the world of to-day that which stands
darkly in the way is a fact of another order. It is not a fact arising
from the essential relations between the scientific and the religious
mind. It has really little to do with any conflict between the
scientific spirit and the spirit of the organised church, or between the
scientific principle of continuity and all that love, all those hopes and
visions, which have in the heart of man a natural temple. The seat
of it is in the temper with which we live the practical life. Mediaeval
men were so intent upon God that they saw Him in and for Himself,
but did not with sufficient clearness see Him in the ordinary and the
everyday, in the phenomena of nature, in the layman's life. But we,
throughout our whole organisation of commerce and society, have so
given ourselves to ourselves that we do not like to keep God in our
thoughts at all. In a social and industrial order where the weak serve
the successful we labour proudly and masterfully, each man seeking
by " length of watching, strength of mind " to build a city for him
self. It is hard for us to give ourselves to God, and to citizenship in
the city where there is no selfishness, no impoverishing or crippling
of one life to maintain the splendour of another, but the good that
i Cf- supra, pp. 195-198; cf. p. 53, note.
24 353
CONCLUSION.
all men serve is a common good. And this habit of living each for
himself is not only the source of innumerable and cruel evils ; it even
infuses a soul of evil into the very activities which, if performed as
unto God, would be a fulfilment of His purpose.
By this it is not meant that we modern men can save ourselves
from ourselves only by returning to the mediaeval position. Still less
is it meant that we can save ourselves from the lower world which
is too much with us, only by turning back to that ancient theology
before whose overmastering vision of God the world faded into
nothingness as dreams fade at break of day. On the contrary, we can
save ourselves only by being true to that greater world which we
have discovered and made our own. But what such fidelity to the
world really involves depends upon what the world is. And the truth
of the world, the truth both of ourselves and of the world, is God;
God, and that " far-off divine event " which is the purpose of God,
are the meaning of the world. And this means that the citizenship
to which we are called is a heavenly citizenship; but it also means
that that heavenly citizenship must first be fulfilled upon the earth, in
the life in which our duties are those of the good neighbour, the
honest citizen, the devoted churchman. The perfection of human life
lies in being at one with God ; but to that oneness with God men can
come, not by departure from the world into eternal quietude, but
only by flinging themselves into the labours and causes of the history
in which God is realising His eternal purpose. The true inspiration
of a man's life is the love of God, its true object the glory of God;
but that glory is one of work and of struggle rather than of silent
peace. "We have much to learn from the mystic saint in the loneliness
of his rest in God. But his securely-guarded peace is not for us.
Even while we honour him, we must turn our faces toward a life at
once more commonplace and more divine. The man to whom the love
of God is the central impulse of life must take his place in the world,
must share in its labours and duties and affections and losses, must
undergo the fate which it has for all its citizens. And that fate is
seldom a light one. They who in the manifold relationships of life
and in the affairs of the world seek to be faithful to God and man, are
likely to come at last before God bearing deep marks of toil and
854
CONCLUSION.
storm; like ships that within them carry high and gentle hearts, but
can look for no escape from the dangers that are native to the sea,
and come at last to harbour weather-beaten, scarred by lightning and
tempest and hidden rock. To many — and they are not the forgotten
of God — is not given the life of those who dwell here upon the earth
in great peace, looking upon God, and in all the fierce storm of the
world seeing nothing but God. Most of us labour with a more
troubled blending of anguish and calm, of remorse and hope, toward
our west. But when the light of day is passing from the sky, and
through the shadow there begins to break that other light of the stars
from their infinite spaces, and the worn hands that have laboured
hard in the world's affairs begin to stretch themselves out " for love of
the farther shore," then the man as he turns to the untravelled world
which awaits him across the darkness may know at least this : already
in this world he has had his part in the realisation of a purpose of
God ; and in the world to come that which waits for him, and for his
fellows, and for all the human struggle, is not less of God, but more.
355
INDEX.
Agnosticism, 4, 344.
Apologists, the, 272.
Aquinas, see St. Thomas.
Areopagite, the, see Dionysius.
Aristotle, 7, 58, 59, 60, 90, 220, 253-259, 260, 261, 267, 294, 302, 303, 304, 308, 335.
bar Sudaili, Stephen, 273.
Boethius, 97w.
Bradley, F. H., 219w#, 233n.
Calvinism and Arminianism, 79».
Cause, the conception of, as used by Spinoza, 172.
Creation, must begin with something less than perfection, 242, 258, 303, 308.
Cf. 82 *eq.
Cudworth, 88w.
Dante, 310, 350n.
Descartes, 59, 114, 154-158, 159, 160, 161, 193, 219, 271.
Dionysius the Areopagite, 273, 277, 279, 287, 289, 290, 291.
Eckhart, Master, 147, 164, 165, 219, 344?i.
Erigena, 14, 220, 267, 271-331, 348.
Freedom and Necessity, 78, 79 (with note 2), 102-105, 178 (with note 2), 179.
—in Spinoza, 183, 184.
Goethe, 198n.
Green, T. H., 8, 26?*, 63, 64.
Hegel, 52, 60-63, 90, 114, 194, 195, 301, 312, 330, 331, 348.
Herder, 198.
Hierotheus, 273.
Hume, 59n, 113, 114.
Idealism
—compared with Mysticism, 7-12, 83n, 115-122, 287n.
—the types of, Abstract and Concrete, 12, 225, 227, 231, 232, 233, 235, 238-247,
251-263, 265, 266, 335, 337, 338-349, 350, 351.
—of Aristotle, 253-259.
—of Christianity, 262-266.
—of Erigena, see 271-331, but specially 310-312, 316 aeq., 327-331.
—of Plato, 203-247.
— in Spinoza, see 176-195.
— the Idealistic position outlined, 17- HO.
357
INDEX
Kant, 2, 46, 59, 93, 114, 125, 126, 180, 194, 195, 219, 220, 267, 342.
Manichasism, 70/», 99, 221, 266, 307, 319, 347 n, 352n.
Materialism, 4, 38, 39, 47, 53«.
Maximus the Confessor, 273, 291, 323, 328.
Mediaeval view of the world, 29-34; see also Erigeua, Mysticism, St. Thomas.
Mysticism
—compared with Idealism, 7-12, S3?i, 115-122, 287n.
—in Parmenides, 126, 127-132, 217.
—Hindu, 126, 132-141, 217.
— Neo-Platonic, 126, 141-144, 272-274; and see Plotinus.
—Mediaeval, 126, 145-150, 162, 217-219 ; and see Erigena.
—Modern, 151, 152.
—in Spinoza, 115, 116, 152-165.
—in Plato, 58, 124, 125, 214-232, 236.
—in Erigena, see 271-331.
Necessity, see Freedom.
Neo-Platonism, see Mysticism and Plotinus.
Newman, J. H., 17-23, 27, 28, 32, 50, 53, 73, 75.
Origen, SOw, 88n, 292, 319, 321.
Pantheism, 287w, 311 ; and see Spinoza and Erigena.
Parmenides, 59n, 126, 128-131, 135, 136, 152, 157>i, 159, 161, 162, 217 236 285
Of. 140, 147.
Plato, 2, 7, 11, 13, 25, 46, 57, 58, 59, 93, 94w, 96 (with note), 108, 109, 124, 125, 203-
247, 251-253, 255, 256, 257w, 258, 259, 260, 267, 272, 285, 294, 301, 302, 303,
304, 307, 308, 317, 335, 348, 351.
Plotinus, 142-144, 175, 284-286, 291, 292, 297, 298, 301, 312.
Renaissance, the, 35, 59.
Koyce, 204, 213w&
St. Thomas, 14, 40, 90, 145, 175rc, 220, 267, 335-349.
Spinoza, 59, 113-199, 219, 220, 267, 271, 286, 330,331.
Stevenson, R. L., 317.
Stoics, 253, 260, 261.
Wordsworth, 23-29, 32, 50, 53, 74, 75, lOOn, 198«.
358
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