CHAPTER VIII.

THE OBJECTIVE ELEMENT.

The general result which has thus been reached by the decomposition of religion into its ultimate constituents must now be rendered somewhat more specific by illustrative examples tending to explain the character of the power the idea of whose existence forms the foundation of the religious sentiment, and such examples will tend to throw light upon the question whether the admission of such a power is or is not a necessity of thought. For the proof of necessity is twofold; _a posteriori_ and _a priori_. We may show by the first mode that certain assumptions are always made under certain conditions as a matter of fact; not that they are always made by every human being, but that given the appropriate grade of culture, the beliefs in question arise. And we may show by the second that no effort of ours is able to separate certain ideas which have become associated in our minds; that the association persists under every strain we can put upon it, and that the resulting belief is therefore a necessary part of the constitution of the mind. Both modes of proof must be attempted here.

Now, in the first place, it must be remarked that few, if any, of the nations of the world are wholly destitute of some religious creed; and that those which have been supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be without it, have generally been savage tribes of the lowest grade of culture. So slender is the evidence of the presence of a people without some theological conception that it may be doubted whether the travelers who have reported such facts have not been misled, either by inability to comprehend the language, or unfamiliarity with the order of thought, of those with whom they conversed.

Sometimes the absence of religion seems to be predicated of a people which does not present an example of the kind of belief which the European observer has been accustomed to consider as religious. An instance of this is afforded in Angas' account of "Savage Life in Australia." Of the Australians he states that "they appear to have no religious observances whatever. They acknowledge no Supreme Being, worship no idols, and believe only in the existence of a spirit whom they consider as the author of ill, and regard with superstitious dread." So that in the very act of denying a religion to these people he practically ascribes one to them. They, like Christians, appear to acknowledge a powerful spirit; and if they dwell upon the evil side of his works more than upon the good side, it is to be remembered that Christians too consider their deity "as the author of ill" by his action in cursing Adam with all his posterity; and that they too regard him "with superstitious dread" as a being who will send them to eternal torture if they fail to worship, to think, and to act as he enjoins them. Immediately after this, the author informs us that the Australians constantly carry firesticks at night, to repel malignant spirits, and that they place great faith in sorcerers who profess to "counteract the influence of the spirits" (S. L. A., vol. i. p. 88). So that their destitution of "religious observances" is in like manner merely comparative.

Very little, if any, belief in deity appears to exist in Kamtschatka. Steller, who has described the creed of its inhabitants, states that they believe in no providence, and hold that they have nothing to do with God, nor he with them (Kamtschatka, p. 269). Whether this amounts to a denial of his existence I cannot say. They have, however, another element of religion, belief in a future state, as will afterwards appear.

In primitive religions the abstract form of Deity is often filled up with the concrete figures of departed relatives. Indeed this is one of the modes in which that form acquires definiteness, becoming comprehensible to the savage mind from this limitation of its generality. Thus in Fiji, although a supreme God and various other gods exist, the ancestors appear to be the most popular objects of worship. Deceased relations of the Fijians (according to Seemann) take their place at once among the family gods (Viti, p. 389-391). Another author confirms this testimony. In Sandwich Island, in the Fijian group, he states that there are no idols. "The people worship the spirits of their ancestors" (N. Y., p. 394). In Savage Island again they pay their forefathers similar homage, and remark that they once had an image which they worshiped, but that they broke it in pieces during an epidemic which they ascribed to its influence (Ib., p. 470). Among the Kafirs the spirits of the dead are believed to possess considerable power for good and evil; "they are elevated in fact to the rank of deities, and (except where the Great-Great is worshiped concurrently with them) they are the only objects of a Kafir's adoration" (K. N., p. 161).

Similar evidence is given by Acosta in reference to Peru. In that country there existed a highly-developed and elaborated worship of the dead. The bodies of the Incas, or governors of Peru, were kept and worshiped. Regular ministers were devoted to their service. Living Incas had images of themselves constructed, termed brothers, to which, both during the life-time of their original and after his death, as much honor was shown as to the Incas themselves. These images were carried in procession designed to obtain rain, and fair weather, and in time of war. They were also the objects of feasting and of sacrifices (H. I., b. 5, ch. vi). But the adoration of the dead was not of such exclusive importance in Peru as in some countries of inferior culture, and the most prominent positions in their system were occupied by the Sun and the soul of the world, Pachacamac, who was in fact their highest God (C. R. b. 2, ch. iii).

These last examples introduce us to the more general conception of deity which, in all religions but the very lowest, is found along with the belief in supernatural beings of an inferior class, and in some of them overshadows and expels it. The Peruvians, as just stated, assigned the first rank to him whom they conceived to have created and to animate the universe. The Fijians adored a supreme Being Degei or Tangaroa. Lastly, the "Great-Great," mentioned in the above quotation from Shooter, is a being who seems from the somewhat contradictory evidence of travelers to have been regarded as God by some of the Kafirs, but to have been wholly neglected by others. Thus, in a passage quoted from a work of Captain Gardiner's by Canon Callaway, we find a conversation of the writer's with a native, in which the latter denies all knowledge of deity whatever, and expresses a vague notion that the things in the world may "come of themselves." Of another tribe the same writer asserts that "they acknowledged, indeed, a traditionary account of a Supreme Being, whom they called Ookoolukoolu (literally the Great-Great), but knew nothing further respecting him, than that he originally issued from the reeds, created men and cattle, and taught them the use of the assagai." Canon Callaway is apparently of opinion that the word Unkulunkulu was not in use among the natives of South Africa in the sense of God until it was introduced by Captain Gardiner (R. S. A., vol. i. pp. 54, 55). Considerable suspicion is thus thrown upon any statements in which this name is employed for the Creator. If, however, we may accept a statement of Shooter's, "the Kafirs of Natal have preserved the tradition of a Being whom they call the Great-Great and the First Appearer or Exister." According to this writer "he is represented as having made all things," but this tradition "is not universally known among the people." A chief who was asked about Unkulunkulu, the Great-Great, knew nothing about him, but one of his old men, when a child, "had been told by women stooping with age that there was a great being above." There is also "a tribe in Natal which still worships the Great-Great, though its recollection of him is very dim." This tribe calls upon Unkulunkulu in the act of sacrifice and in sickness (K. N., pp. 159, 160). While this testimony leaves it doubtful whether Unkulunkulu is worshiped at all, except by this single tribe, the traditions collected by Canon Callaway in the first volume of his valuable work point to the presence of a well-marked legend of creation in which that deity figures as the originator of human life. True, he is also spoken of as the first man, and in this fact we have the probable reconciliation of the view which treats him as the Supreme Being, with that which denies that his name was used with this signification. Unkulunkulu was the primæval ancestor of mankind, but he was also the Creator. Ancestor-worship finds its culmination in him. But he has been much neglected in comparison with minor deities, and the word Unkulunkulu has been applied to the ancestor of special tribes instead of to the ancestor of all mankind.

The general result seems to be that some, though not all of the Zulus, have in their minds a more or less definite idea of a First Cause of existence, but that this First Cause is not worshiped and is but little spoken of. Thus, an old woman questioned by an emissary of Canon Callaway's related this:—

"When we spoke of the origin of corn, asking, 'Whence came this?' the old people said, 'It came from the Creator who created all things. But we do not know him.' When we asked continually, 'Where is the Creator? for our chiefs we see?' the old men denied, saying, 'And those chiefs too whom we see, they were created by the Creator.' And when we asked, 'Where is he? for he is not visible at all. Where is he then?' we heard our fathers pointing towards heaven and saying, 'The Creator of all things is in heaven. And there is a nation of people there too'" (R. S. A., vol. i. p. 52).

But while Unkulunkulu is generally considered as the Creator by the Zulus, it would appear that a neighboring people, called the Amakxosa, had heard of a "lord in heaven" even greater than him, whom they called Utikxo. According to the evidence of an old native the word Utikxo is not of foreign origin. Utikxo was appealed to when a man sneezed, and "as regards the use of Utikxo, we used to say it when it thundered, and we thus knew that there is a power which is in heaven; and at length we adopted the custom of saying, Utikxo is he who is above all. But it was not said that he was in a certain place in heaven; it was said he filled the whole heaven. No distinction of place was made" (Ib., vol. i. p. 65). In the opinion of this authority, Utikxo had been in a manner superseded by Unkulunkulu, who, because he was visible while the original power was invisible, was mistaken for the Creator and for God (Ib., vol. i. p. 67).

Testimony of a similar nature is given in regard to other regions of Africa. In Juda it is stated that the most intellectual of the great men had a confused idea of the existence and unity of a God (V. G., vol. ii. p. 160). Oldendorp states broadly that "all negro peoples believe that there is a God, whom they represent to themselves as very powerful and beneficent." He adds that among all the black nations he has known, there is none that has not this belief in God and that does not regard him as the author of the world. They call him by the same name as heaven, and it is even doubtful whether they do not take heaven for the supreme Being. "But perhaps," he adds, "they do not even think so definitely" (G. d. M., p. 318). So that the conception of the Highest God in the regions visited by this missionary is still vague and indefinite, like that we have found in Juda and in Natal.

If now we turn to another quarter of the globe we find the peculiarly degraded and ignorant Greenlanders asserting that, although they knew nothing of God before the arrival of the missionaries, yet that those of them who had reflected on the subject had perceived the necessity of creative power, and had inferred that there must be a being far superior to the cleverest man. They had, in fact, used the argument from design, and thus prepared, they had gladly believed in the God preached by the missionaries, for they found that it was he whom they had in their hearts desired to know (H. G., p. 240). A similar conviction of the existence of a supreme God prevailed in the new world when it was discovered by Europeans. Such a God was acknowledged in Mexico and Peru, as also in the less civilized regions of the North. Speaking of the American Indians, Charlevoix observes that nothing is more certain, yet nothing more obscure, than the idea which these savages have of a primæval Being. All agree in regarding him as the first Spirit, the Ruler and the Creator of the world; but when further pressed, they have nothing to offer but grotesque fancies, ill-considered fables, and undigested systems. Nearly all the Algonquin nations (he adds) call the first Spirit the Great Hare; some term him Michabou, and others Atahocan. He was apparently supposed by some to have been a kind of quadruped, and to have created the earth from a grain of sand drawn from the bottom of the ocean, and men from the dead bodies of animals (N. F., vol. iii. p. 343).

The great religions of the world have all of them (Buddhism alone excepted) acknowledged a God, whom they pictured to their minds in various ways according to the degree of their development and their powers of abstract thought. Dimly shadowed forth in the Confucian system under the title of Heaven, plainly acknowledged, yet mystically described by the Hindoos under many titles, whereof Brahma is one of the most usual, celebrated in plainer language by the classical heathens as Zeus or Jupiter, this great being appears in the three kindred creeds of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, as Jehovah, as Allah, and as God. In Buddhism, however, there is no article of faith corresponding to the belief in God. The Buddha is himself the most exalted being in the universe, and he is neither almighty nor eternal. The creation of matter as also of man appears to be unaccounted for. There is no single being who can be regarded as the ruler of all things, and the highest object of Buddhist worship. But it must not be supposed that Buddhism has escaped the universal necessity of admitting spiritual powers superior to human beings. In the first place it retained the Indian deities, such as Brahma, Indra, and others, and though, subordinating all of them to Buddha, yet left them in possession of enormous capacities. In the second place, the Buddha in fact, though not in name, assumed the rank of a God. Practically, he is far more than human. He himself determines the place, time, and manner of his incarnation. He delivers infallible doctrine. He becomes an object of adoration, receiving divine honors from his followers. And although the reigning Buddha (having entered Nirvâna) is non-existent, and cannot aid his disciples, the future Buddha, or Bodhisattva, can do so, and he is addressed in prayer for the same purposes for which a Christian would invoke the intercession of his Savior. Thirdly, it is to be remarked that Buddhism, free from the single idea of God, is not free from the multitudinous idea of supernatural essences. Its theology, so to speak, is quite full of celestial beings of various ranks and functions, who swarm around the terrestrial believers and perform all kinds of wonders. To these remarks it may be added that in Nepaul, one of the countries where Buddhism prevails, the non-theistic form has been superseded by a theistic form, in which there are divine Buddhas corresponding to the human Buddhas; the highest of these, Adi-Buddha, being equivalent to the highest God of other creeds. And it is at least noteworthy, that in Ceylon, where the non-theistic form prevails in all its purity, the people have a habit of invoking demons to their aid, and of employing the priests of these demons, in all the more important emergencies of their domestic lives.

It must not be imagined, however, that I wish to undervalue the importance of the exception which Buddhism presents to the general rule. Far from it. It ought, in my opinion, to be always borne in mind as a refutation of the statement that belief in a personal God is a necessary element of all religion. Europeans are apt to carry with them throughout the world their clear-cut notions of deity as a powerful being who created the world, put man into it, governs it in a certain manner, and assigns punishments and rewards to the souls of men in a future state. This belief appears to them so necessary and so natural that they expect to find it universally prevailing, and regard it as the indispensable foundation on which all religion must be built. Buddhism, however, the creed which, after Christianity, has probably exerted the greatest and most wide-spread influence on human affairs, knows no such article of faith; and our general ideas of the universal constituents of religion must needs be modified to embrace this fact.

Some superhuman power must, however, be recognized in every religion, and it is the manner in which this superhuman power is described, the qualities ascribed to it, its unity or plurality, its relation towards man, and similar distinctions, which serve to differentiate one form of religion from another. The degree of definiteness is one of the most important features in this differentiation. Generally speaking, the definiteness of this idea and the development of the religion vary inversely as one another. This law, however, is obscured by the continual tendency to put forward, to worship, and to speak about in ordinary cases, some inferior deity or deities, while there is lurking behind the vague idea of a higher entity who is seldom mentioned, little or never worshiped, and who possibly has no name in the language. So that the gods or idols who are worshiped by the people must not be taken as embodying the best expression of their religious thoughts. Some instances of the occurrence of this phenomenon will serve as illustrations of the foregoing statement.

On the coast of Guinea the people "have a faint idea of the true God, and ascribe to him the attributes Almighty and Omnipresent; they believe he created the universe, and therefore vastly prefer him before their idol-gods; but yet they do not pray to him, or offer any sacrifices to him; for which they give the following reasons. God, they say, is too highly exalted above us and too great to condescend so much as to trouble himself, or think of mankind: wherefore he commits the government of the world to their idols" (C. G., p. 348). The manner in which Utikxo, the highest God, is thrown into the shade by the more intelligible and human Unkulunkulu (as shown in a previous extract) is another example of the operation of this law. And it is especially noteworthy that the Amazulu have also a "lord of heaven," with attributes corresponding to those of Utikxo, for whom they have no name. Anonymity, or if not absolute anonymity, the absence of any name commonly employed in the popular language is, as we shall see, one of the most usual features of this most exalted Being. Other travelers give similar accounts of other regions of Africa. Winterbottom, who was especially acquainted with Sierra Leone and its neighborhood, says that "the Africans all acknowledge a supreme Being, the creator of the universe; but they suppose him to be endowed with too much benevolence to do harm to mankind, and therefore think it unnecessary to offer him any homage" (S. L., vol. i. p. 222). Of Dahomey we learn from Winwood Reade (a writer not likely to be partial to theism, or to discover it where it does not exist), that the natives erect temples to snakes, but "have also the unknown, unseen God, whose name they seldom dare to mention" (S. A., p. 49). In another country in Africa the same writer found that the natives worshiped numerous spirits, and believed also in an evil Genius and a good Spirit. The former they were in the habit of propitiating by religious service; but the latter "they do not deem it necessary to pray to in a regular way, because he will not harm them. The word by which they express this supreme Being answers exactly to our word God. Like the Jehovah of the Hebrews, like that word in masonry which is only known to masters and never pronounced but in a whisper and in full lodge, this word they seldom dare to speak; and they display uneasiness if it is uttered before them." The writer states that he only heard it on two occasions; once when his men cried it out in a dangerous storm, and once when having asked a slave the name for God, the man "raised his eyes, and pointing to heaven, said in a soft voice _Njambi_" (Ib., p. 250). Again, in a lecture on the Ashantees, Mr. Reade informed his hearers that "the Oji people," although believing in a supreme Being, do not worship him: while they do worship "a number of inferior gods or demons," to whom they believe the superior God, offended with mankind, has left the management of terrestrial affairs.

Strange to say, the peculiarity thus observed in the old world is precisely repeated in the new. Of the Mexicans it is stated that "they never offered sacrifices to" Tonacatecotle who was "God, Lord, Creator, Governor of the Universe," and whom "they painted alone with a crown, as lord of all." As their explanation of this conduct "they said that he did not regard them. All the others to whom they sacrificed were men once on a time, or demons" (A. M., vol. vi. p. 107, plate 1). Concerning the Peruvians, Acosta tells us that they give their deity a name of great excellence, Pachacamac, or Pachayachacic (creator of heaven and earth), and Usapu (admirable). He remarks, however, with much surprise, that they had no proper (or perhaps general) name in their language for God. There was nothing in the language of Cuzco or Mexico answering to "Deus," and the Spaniards used their own word "Dios." Whence he concludes, somewhat hastily, that they had but a slight and superficial knowledge of God (H. I., b. 5, ch. iii).

In reference to Peru, however, we have still more trustworthy evidence from a member of the governing family, or Incas. From his statements it appears that the name applied to the Highest was pronounced only on rare occasions, and then with extremest reverence. This name was Pachacamac, a word signifying "he who animates the whole world," or the Universal Soul, as it would be termed in Indian philosophy. Like other creeds that of Peru had its secondary deity, the Sun, in whose honor sacrifices were offered and festivals held, while no temples were erected, and no sacrifices offered to Pachacamac, although the Peruvians adored him in their hearts and looked upon him as the unknown God (C. R., b. 2, ch. iii).

Ancient religion presents similar facts. In his exhaustive work on Sabaeism, Chwolsohn observes that the fundamental idea of that form of faith was not, as is often supposed, astrolatry. To Shahrastani (the Arabian scholar), and many others who followed him, Sabaeism expressed the idea "that God is too sublime and too great to occupy himself with the immediate management of this world; that he has therefore transferred the government thereof to the gods, and retained only the most important affairs for himself; that further, man is too weak to be able to apply immediately to the Highest; that he must therefore address his prayers and sacrifices to the intermediate divinities, to whom the management of the world has been intrusted by the Highest." Further on, the author asks himself whether this conception was peculiar to the Harranian Sabaeans, and replies, "Certainly not. This fundamental idea is tolerably old, and in later times found admission to some extent even among the strictly monotheistic Jews.... In the heathen world this view was universally shared by the cultivated classes, at least in the first centuries of the Christian era" (Ssabismus, vol. i. p. 725).

Indian theology teems with the conception of a sublime but unknowable deity far superior to the deities of popular adoration, who has no name and whose greatness cannot be adequately expressed in human language. Indian philosophy loses itself in a sea of mystic terms when it endeavors to speak of this all-pervading and preëminent Being. Take, for example, the following from the Chândogya Upanishad, one of the treatises appended to the Sâma Veda. A father is instructing his son:—

"'Dissolve this salt in water, and appear before me to-morrow morning.' He did so. Unto him said (the father), 'My child, find out the salt that you put in that water last night.' The salt, having been dissolved, could not be made out. (Unto Swetaketu said his father), 'Child, do you taste a little from the top of that water.' (The child did so. After a while the father inquired), 'How tastes it?' 'It is saltish' (said Swetaketu)." The same result followed with water taken from the middle and the bottom. "'If so (throwing it away), wash your mouth and grieve not.' Verily he did so (and said to his father), 'The salt that I put in the water exists for ever; (though I perceive it not by my eyes it is felt by my tongue).' (Unto him) said (his father), 'Verily, such is the case with the Truth, my child. Though you perceive it not, it nevertheless pervades this (body). That particle which is the soul of all this is Truth; it is the Universal Soul. O Swetaketu, Thou art that'" (Ch. Up., ch. vi. sec. 13, p. 113).

Similar notions of an all-pervading and infinite Being are found in the Bhagavat-Gíta, a theological episode inserted in the great epical poem known as the Mahâbhârata. There Vishnu is not merely the ordinary god Vishnu of Indian theology; but the universe itself is expressed as an incarnation of that deity who is seen in everything and himself is everything. "I am the soul, O Arjuna," thus he addresses his mortal pupil, "which exists in the heart of all beings, and I am the beginning and the middle and also the end of existing things" (Bh. G., ch. x. p. 71).

Again, Vishnu thus describes himself in language which translated into ordinary prose, would serve to convey the idea embodied in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Unknowable:—

"Know that that brilliance which enters the sun and illumines the whole earth, and which is in the moon, and in fire, is of me. And I enter the ground and support all living things by my vigor; and I nourish all herbs, becoming that moisture of which the peculiar property is taste. And becoming fire, I enter the body of the living, and being associated with their inspiration and expiration, cause food of the four kinds to digest. And I enter the heart of each one, and from me come memory, knowledge, and reason" (Ib., ch. xv. p. 100).

Nor did the writers of the Veda and the commentaries thereupon omit to look above the concrete forms of the mythological gods who people their Pantheon to a more comprehensive and less comprehensible primordial Source. The gods were unfitted to serve as explanations of the origin of the universe by reason of the theory that they were not eternal, and that they came into existence subsequently to the creation of the world. The writer of a hymn in the tenth book of the Rig-Veda asserted that "the One, which in the beginning breathed calmly, self-sustained, is developed by ... its own inherent heat, or by rigorous and intense abstraction." But this Rishi avowed himself unable to say anything of creation, or even to know whether there was a creator. "Even its ruler in the highest heaven may not be in possession of the great secret." Explaining this passage, a commentator, writing at a much later date, observes that "the last verse of the hymn declares that the ruler of the universe knows, or that even he does not know, from what material cause this visible world arose, and whether that material cause exists in any definite form or not. That is to say, the declaration that 'he knows,' is made from the stand-point of that popular conception which distinguishes between the ruler of the universe and the creatures over whom he rules; while the proposition that 'he does not know' is asserted on the ground of that highest principle which, transcending all popular conceptions, affirms the identity of all things with the supreme Soul, which cannot see any other existence as distinct from itself" (O. S. T., vol. v. pp. 363, 364).

In this sentence the commentator correctly points out the distinction between the Unknown Cause of philosophic thought and the gods of popular theology, the latter being limited, and having the universe outside of and objective to them, the former comprehending it within itself, and having nothing objective whatever. And he perceives apparently that these are but different modes of conceiving the same Ultimate Essence, dependent on the varying representative capacities of those by whom they are employed.

In India, as elsewhere, this Ultimate Essence had no proper name. Sometimes it is spoken of as "That." Thus, in a passage quoted by Dr. Muir from the Taittirīya Brâhmana we find the following: "This [universe] was not originally anything. There was neither heaven, nor earth, nor atmosphere. That being non-existent (asat) resolved 'Let me be.' That became fervent," and so forth. Hereupon the commentator states that "the Supreme Spirit was non-existent only in respect of name and form, but that nevertheless it was really existing (sat)" (O. S. T., vol. v. p. 366).

Prof. Max Müller, in his essay on the Veda, has observed that after naming the several powers of nature, and worshiping them as gods, the ancient Hindu found that there was yet another power within him and around him for which he had no name. This he termed in the first instance "Brahman," force, will, wish. But when Brahman too had become a person, he called the mysterious and impersonal power "âtman," originally meaning breath or spirit, subsequently Self. "Atman remained always free from myth and worship, differing in this from Brahman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now and is worshiped as Brahman (masculine), together with Vishnu and Siva and other popular gods" (Chips, vol. i. pp. 70, 71). Distinguishing these two deities, for the convenience of English readers, as Brahm, the neuter, and Brahma, the masculine God, it is to be observed that even the latter, who holds in theology the function of Creator, is but little worshiped in India, and holds no conspicuous place in the popular mind. Thus Wilson says, "It is doubtful if Brahma was ever worshiped. Indications of local adoration of him at Pushkara, near Ajmir, are found in one Purana, the Brahma Purana, but in no other part of India is there the slightest vestige of his worship" (W. W., vol. ii. p. 63). Elsewhere the same most competent authority states "it might be difficult to meet with" any Brahma-worshipers now; "exclusive adorers of this deity, and temples dedicated to him, do not now occur perhaps in any part of India; at the same time it is an error to suppose that public homage is never paid to him." Hereupon he mentions a few places where Brahma is particularly reverenced. While, however, there may be discovered some faint traces of the worship of Brahma the Creator, and first member of the Hindu Trinity, there does not appear to be any worship whatever of the more impersonal and abstract Brahm. Brahm is related to Brahma much as the Absolute or the Unknowable of philosophy is related to the God of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. In the conception of Brahm the idea of deity is pushed to the utmost limits of which human thought is capable, and we have a being whose very exaltation above the mythological personages who pass for gods among the people precludes him from receiving the adoration of any but philosophic minds. When therefore Professor Max Müller speaks of temples dedicated to Brahm I presume that he is speaking of the temples of Brahma, the corporeal form of this unembodied idea. For Brahm is stated to be "immaterial, invisible, unborn, uncreated, without beginning or end;" to be "inapprehensible by the understanding, at least until that is freed from the film of mortal blindness;" to be devoid of attributes, or to have only purity, and to be "susceptible of no interest in the acts of man or the administration of the affairs of the universe." Conformably to these views, adds Wilson, "no temples are erected, no prayers are even addressed to the Supreme" (W. W., vol. ii. p. 91). Thus Brahma, the God, is but little worshiped; Brahm, the infinite being, and âtman, spirit, are not worshiped at all. Now Brahma, the creative and formative power, corresponds to God the Father; while Brahm and âtman, especially the latter, bear more resemblance to the Holy Ghost; a fact to be especially noted in reference to the comparison hereafter to be made between the positions occupied by the more and the less spiritual members of the Christian Trinity.

Thus we have this singular neglect of the Supreme Divinity prevailing among ancient heathens, among modern Africans, among Hindus of all ages, and among pre-Christian Mexicans and Peruvians. Do Judaism, and its offshoot, Christianity, offer no sign of a similar relegation of the highest to an invisible background? I think they do. The evidence is not indeed quite so simple as in the other cases. But it is deserving of remark that the ordinary name for God in Hebrew, Elohim, is plural, and must at one time have signified gods; while the word which is sometimes used alone, but more commonly in combination with it, is regarded as so sacred that the Jews in reading the Scriptures never pronounce it, but substitute Adonai, my lord, in its place. Owing to this ancient custom the very sound of the word יהוה has been absolutely forgotten, and Jehovah, by which we commonly render it, has been merely constructed by supplying the vowels from Adonai. Now the existence of a most holy name, but rarely used, and then only with great reverence, is a manifestation of religious feeling exactly corresponding to that related by Reade concerning the African name Njambi. Suppose that with the progress of theological dogmas and ecclesiastical usages the use of the word Njambi should be entirely dropped, its pronunciation might then be entirely lost (if, as in Hebrew, its vowel sounds were never written). And with the adoption of a monotheistic creed some name, now belonging to an idol, might be used as synonymous with Njambi. Now something of this kind may have happened with the Hebrews. There can be little doubt that the Elohim were originally gods accepted by the Hebrews as part of a polytheistic system. Deep in the minds of Hebrew thinkers lay the more abstract notion of a single God, more powerful and more mysterious than the Elohim. They called him Jahveh, or whatever else may have been the name expressed by יהוה. But as the monotheistic view triumphed over the polytheistic, the Elohim were adopted into the framework of the new religion, and in a manner subordinated to Jahveh by a process of fusion. The name of Jahveh, which must once have been in common use, was now treated as too holy to be ever uttered by mortal lips. The ancient God who had stood at the head of the system of his party, was in a certain sense withdrawn from active life, but retained as the nominal occupant of supreme authority. Whether this account is probable or not, must be left to better judges to decide, but it tends at least to bring the history of the Jewish faith into harmony with that of other religions.

Moreover, it is interesting to observe that a process extremely similar to that here imagined as occurring in the development of Judaism, was actually passed through by its younger rival. Christianity, arising in the midst of a people who had arrived at highly abstract views of deity, proceeded at once to do what so many other creeds have done, to embody the conception of divine power in a concrete object. This concrete object was in the Christian theology a man. And as generally happens in these cases, the more abstract idea was overshadowed and to some extent driven from the field by the more concrete. Christ occupies a larger place both in authorized Christian worship and in the popular Christian imagination than does his Father. The creed no doubt treats them both with equal reverence, as persons in a single God; but to understand what is truly felt and believed by the people, we must look not to the letter of their creeds, but to their actual, and above all their unconscious practice. Doing this we find first an entire absence of any special festival in honor of the Father.[97] Look at the large place occupied by the history of Jesus in ecclesiastical fast-days and feast-days. We have the Annunciation, the Nativity, the forty days of Lent, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, all referring to him. But we have quite forgotten to celebrate the creation of the human species, the expulsion from Eden, the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and other mighty works due to his Father. The weekly holiday, originally a memorial of his repose on the seventh day, has indeed been retained from Judaism; yet even here its reference has been changed from the history of the first person to that of the second by its transfer from the last day of the week to the first. But this is not all. Didron remarks that in early works of art Jesus is made to take the place of his Father in creation and in similar labors, just as in heathen religions an inferior divinity does the work under a superior one. Dishonorable and even ridiculous positions were assigned to God the Father. The more ancient artists were reluctant to paint the whole of the First Person, just as Africans, Peruvians and Hebrews were reluctant to speak his name. A mere hand or an arm is held sufficient to represent him. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, God the Father begins to manifest his figure; at first his bust only, and then his whole person. In the fourteenth century we take part in the birth and development of the figure of the eternal Father. At first equal to his Son in age and station, he begins in process of time to become slightly different, until, towards 1360, the notion of paternity is attached irrevocably to him; he is thenceforth uniformly older than his Son, and assumes the first place in the Trinity. The middle age may be divided (according to Didron) into two periods. In the first, preceding the fourteenth century, we have the Father in the image and similitude of the Son. In the second, after the thirteenth century until the sixteenth, Jesus Christ loses his iconographic distinctness, and is conquered by his Father. He in his turn puts on the likeness of the Father, becoming old and wrinkled like him (Ic. Ch., p. 148-203). Basing his conclusions on these remarkable disclosures, Michelet, in his "History of France," observes with considerable reason that from the first century until the twelfth God was not worshiped by Christians. Nay, even for fifteen centuries not a temple, not an altar was erected to him. And when he did venture to appear beside his Son in Christian art, he remained neglected and solitary. Nobody made an offering to him, or caused a mass to be said in his honor (Michelet, "Histoire de France," vol. vii. p. xlix).

But while the first Person of the Trinity has now obtained, especially in Protestant countries, a degree of recognition which he did not always enjoy, there remains behind another Person, who is more abstract, more spiritual, more undefinable than either the Father or the Son. Formally included in the liturgies of the Church, having an office established in his honor, churches dedicated to his name, this member of the Trinity has nevertheless been strangely neglected by all Christian nations. Nobody practically worships the Holy Ghost; nobody pays him especial attention; nobody appears to be much concerned about his proceedings. Artists have treated him with a degree of indifference which they have never manifested towards Jesus Christ. Not only have they sometimes forgotten to include the Holy Ghost in their representations of the Godhead, but they have omitted him even from a scene where he had the best possible claim to figure, namely, the reception of the Spirit by the apostles at the feast of Pentecost. Elsewhere they have not completely left him out, but have placed him in an attitude of subordination and indignity, evincing but scant respect, as where an artist had depicted an angel as apparently restraining the impetuosity of the dove by holding its tail in both his hands. While in the Catacombs it was the Father who was suppressed, in the Trinities of the twelfth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries it is the Holy Ghost who is found to be missing. "Thus," observes the Roman Catholic author to whom I am indebted for these facts, "the Holy Ghost has sometimes had reason to complain of the artists" (Ic. Ch., p. 489-495).

Were this Person, in fact, disposed to be punctilious, it is not only artists, mere reflectors of the general sentiment, but the whole Christian world of whom he would have reason to complain. So little does he occupy the ordinary thoughts of Christians, that Abailard gave the greatest offense by naming a monastery after him, and this procedure of the great theologian remains, I believe, a solitary example in ecclesiastical history of such an honor being paid to the Paraclete. Yet surely he who bears the great office of the Comforter is deserving of some more express recognition than he now receives! What is the cause of this universal oblivion? I suspect it is that which leads to the neglect by the Africans of their highest god, namely, his entire innocuousness. We saw that various tribes, while omitting to worship a benevolent deity, who will never do them any kind of harm, address their prayers to a class of gods who are described by travelers as demons, or evil spirits, but whom they no doubt regard as mixtures of good qualities with bad; capable of propitiation by prayer, but resentful of irreverence. Now the Father and the Son correspond in some degree to these inferior gods. Not that they are actively malevolent, but they have certain characteristics of a terrifying order. God the Father is throughout the Bible the author of chastisements and scourges. God the son, merciful though he be, yet intimates that he will return to judge the world, and that he will disavow those who are not truly his disciples, thus consigning them to the secular arm of God the Father, who will condemn them to eternal punishment. But God the Spirit has no share in these horrors. Whenever he appears upon the scene, he is quiet, gentle, and inoffensive; and these qualities, combined with the absence of the more definite personality possessed by his colleagues, have effectually ensured his comparative insignificance in Christian worship and in Christian thought.

While this has been the course of affairs in reference to the persons in the Trinity—who, though dogmatically one, are popularly and practically three—a simultaneous displacement of all its members by still more comprehensible objects of worship has been going on. First in rank among these stands the Virgin Mary, so universally worshiped in Catholic countries. After her come the mass of saints, some of general, some of local celebrity; but who, no doubt, receive, each from his or her particular devotees, a far larger share of devotional attention than the Father or the Son themselves. For they are requested to intercede with these more exalted potentates; and we naturally pay more regard to our intercessors, show them more assiduous respect, feel towards them more gratitude, than we do to those with whom they intercede, and who stand too far above us to be approached directly by us. Keightley, in his "History of England," expresses himself as shocked by the far larger share of the offerings of the pious received at Canterbury by the altar of Thomas-à-Becket than was received by the altars of the Virgin and of the Son. The proportion is as follows:—In one year St. Thomas received £832, 12s. 3d.; the Virgin £63, 5s. 6d.; Christ only £3, 2s. 6d. Next year the martyr had £954, 6s. 3d.; Mary £4, 1s. 8d.; and Christ nothing at all. This relation is perfectly natural. Thomas-à-Becket was the local saint. He stood nearer to the people, was more intelligible to their minds, than the Virgin Mary; and the latter, again, was more intelligible to them than Jesus Christ, whose mystic attributes she did not share. This fact does but illustrate the common tendency of mankind to neglect the worship of the highest deity recognized in their formal creed, and to offer their prayers and their sacrifices to idols of lower pretensions and more human proportions.

That which, as the upshot of these speculations, we are chiefly concerned to note, is that religion everywhere contains, as its most essential ingredient, the conception of an unknown power; which power, thus offered by religion to the adoration of mankind, becomes the object of a double tendency: a tendency on the one hand to preserve it as a dim idea, represented to the mind under highly abstract forms; a tendency on the other hand, to bring it down to common comprehension by presenting it to the senses under concrete symbols. But under all images, however material; under all embodiments, however gross; the central thought of a power hidden behind sensible phenomena, unknown and unknowable, still remains.

So far then as historical inquiry throws light upon the answer to the second question in the previous chapter, that answer will be in the affirmative. It renders it at least highly probable that the common elements of religion are, from their universal or all but universal prevalence, "a necessary and therefore permanent portion of our mental furniture." Nor is this conclusion invalidated by the hypothetical objection that there are races without a religion at all. Granting the fact, it admits of an explanation quite consistent with this view. For the races which are destitute of the religious idea may be so, not because they are superior to it, and can do without it, but because they are inferior to it, and have not yet perceived it. Thus, the savage nations who cannot count beyond their fingers, prove nothing against the necessity of numerical relations. Even though they cannot add their ten toes to their ten fingers, and thus make twenty, yet the moment we perceive that ten plus ten equals twenty, we perceive also that this relation is an absolute necessity, and it remains an unalterable fact in our intellectual treasury. No inability on the part of the savage to understand us can shake our conviction. Now the same thing may hold good of the ultimate elements of religious feeling. These also, when once the conditions are realized in thought, may prove necessary beliefs. Whether they are so or not is a question for philosophy. To the examination of that question we must now proceed.

* * * * *

Religion, as the foregoing analysis has shown, puts forward as its cardinal truth the conception of a power which is neither perceptible by the senses nor definable by the intellect. For sensible perception requires a material object and a material organ; and intellectual definition requires an object which can be compared with other objects that are like it, discriminated from others that are unlike it, and classified according to that likeness and that unlikeness. In either case therefore the object must be a phenomenon having its place among phenomena, whether those of the sensible or those of the intelligible sphere. But if the power accepted by religion be neither perceptible nor definable, are we obliged to believe in the existence of so abstract an entity at all, or may we reject it as a figment of the human brain?

Perhaps we shall best be able to discover whether such a belief is necessary or not by endeavoring to do without it, and to frame a consistent conception of the universe from which it is entirely excluded.

There are various ways in which such a conception might be attempted. We may regard the world from the platform of Realism or from that of Idealism, and the nature of our Realism or of our Idealism may vary with the special school of thought to which we may belong. Realism in the first instance admits of two main subdivisions: into Common, or as Mr. Spencer calls it, Crude Realism, and into Metaphysical Realism; and these two forms of it require separate treatment.

Common Realism is the primitive opinion of uneducated and of unreflecting persons, and is in fact simply the absence of any genuine opinion at all. They, I imagine, regard the external objects by which they are surrounded as so many actual entities, not only having an independent existence of their own, but an existence like that which they possess in our consciousness. Thus, an egg they would take to be in reality a white, brittle, hard thing on the outside, having a certain shape, size, and weight, and containing inside the shell a quantity of soft whitish and yellowish substance with a given taste. These qualities, not excepting the taste, taken along with any other qualities that may be disclosed by more careful inquiry, they would conceive to constitute the whole of the egg. It is the same with other objects. What we perceive by our senses is thought by them to be a copy of the real things as they exist in nature, much as the retina of the eye, regarded from without, is seen to contain a copy in miniature of the surrounding scene. Common Realism, however, while it tacitly takes for granted an infinite number of separate entities, cannot account either for the origin of those entities or for their nature. Nor has it any account to give of the origin of life, for material things are in this system utterly destitute of life, and indeed opposed to it. They are precisely what our senses inform us of, and nothing more. Hence they furnish no answers to the questions: How did this world come into being, and how did it reach its present shape? How do men come to exist in it; for matter contains no vitality and no power of infusing vitality into itself? Therefore it is that the adherents of Common Realism are invariably driven back upon a superior being, whom they term a Creator, and who supplies the motive impulse which is wanting in their world.

Metaphysical Realism professes to be the improvement of scholars upon the unsifted notions of the vulgar. It is the system to which, in its earlier and cruder form, Berkeley a century ago gave what once appeared to be its death-blow, but what may perhaps turn out to have been a wound sufficiently severe to cause prolonged insensibility, but not absolute extinction. It is not, however, with the purpose of completing the work of destruction, but of examining whether it affords a possible escape from the necessity of the religious postulate, that I refer to it here. Metaphysical Realists perceived clearly enough that the apparent qualities of sensible objects could not be the objects themselves. Even if they did not recognize this with regard to all the apparent qualities, they did so with regard to those termed "secondary," such as taste, smell, and color. Later representatives of the school, such as Kant, extended the process by which this conclusion was reached to all apparent qualities, whatsoever. Below the apparent qualities, however, these thinkers assumed a substance, "_substantia_," in which they inhered, and by which they were bound together, so as to constitute the object. And this substance—something unperceived underlying the qualities perceived—was their notion of matter. Observe now the position we have arrived at. No sooner does Realism abandon the untenable hypothesis that the qualities of the object are the object itself, than it is driven upon the assumption of an utterly unknowable and inconceivable entity; a matter which is not perceptible by any of our senses, which is below, or in addition to, phenomena concerning which we can predicate nothing, and whose relation to the qualities it is supposed to support we cannot understand. But the necessity of some such assumption is the very assertion implied in all forms of religious faith. Realism, then, does not escape the pressure of this necessity, even though the entity it assumes is not precisely of the same character.

But is the difference in its character one that tells in favor of this variety of Realism, or in favor of religion? Assuredly substance, or matter, imagined as the bond between apparent qualities, is not an easier, simpler, or more intelligible conception than that of a universal power as the origin, source, or objective side of all physical phenomena. Granting even that the latter conception cannot be represented to the mind, a representation of the former is equally impossible. But does it explain the facts better? Let us see. In the first place, we must demand an accurate definition of what this supposed matter is. Is it passive, inanimate, incapable of independent action, and unable to develop out of itself the living creatures which in some way have come to exist? If so, we plainly require another entity in addition to matter, both to account for the active forces of our universe, and to originate the phenomenon of life. For if the qualities of body need a substratum, so also do those of mind. If it be held that the power from which mind emanates be the same as that which is evinced in so-called physical forces, then we have two distinct, if not independent, substances, beings, or whatever we may prefer to call them: matter, pervading material objects in their statical condition, and force or life, pervading both consciousness and material objects in their dynamical condition. Or if the first be regarded as sufficient to account for motion as well as matter, then we have still two powers, one subsisting throughout the physical, the other throughout the mental world. How are these two substances related to one another? Is the substance of mind supreme, governing its material colleague? or is that of matter at the head of affairs, and that of mind subordinate? or are they equal and coördinate authorities, as in the Gnostic philosophy? Suppose we endeavor to elude these difficulties by the assertion that there is nothing else but the unperceivable substratum supporting material objects, and that in this all modes of existence take their rise, we are met by further and still more troublesome questions. For if, under the manifestations of this substance we include consciousness, then the distinction between matter and mind has vanished, and in calling this substance matter we are simply giving it an unmeaning name. In fact, it is a substance supporting not only the qualities of bodies, but also the chemical, electric, molar, molecular, and other forces throughout the universe, as well as sensation, thought, and emotion. Matter in short does everything which deity can be required to do; it originates motion; it produces living creatures; it feels; it thinks; it lives. Thus we have but stumbled upon God in an unexpected quarter. Suppose, however, that we take what is in this system the easier and more natural hypothesis of a substance of matter, a substance of mind, and a still more hidden power superior to both, and from which both are derived, then we have but abandoned the perplexing questions raised by metaphysical Realism to take refuge in the religious position from which it seemed to offer a plausible deliverance.

Does Idealism help us? Idealism is of several forms. That represented by Berkeley need not occupy us here, for Berkeley not only admitted, but expressly asserted, the existence of an all-comprehending Power, and without this his philosophy would have appeared to himself unmeaning and incomprehensible. Nor need we stop to examine that more recent species of Idealism, as I hold it to be, which its illustrious author, Mr. Herbert Spencer, has christened Transfigured Realism. Whatever differences may exist between Spencer and Berkeley—and I believe them to be more apparent than real—they are at one in the cardinal doctrine that sensible phenomena are but the varied manifestations of this ultimate Power. All such Idealism as this is in harmony with religion. But there are two forms which seem to be at variance with it, one of which I will term Moderate, and the other Extreme Idealism.

Moderate Idealism agrees with Berkeley in dismissing to the limbo of extinct metaphysical creatures the substance supposed to lurk beneath the apparent qualities of bodies. It holds that there is no such substance, and that these qualities, and therefore bodies themselves, exist only in consciousness. But it differs from Berkeley in omitting to provide any source whatever, external to ourselves, from which these bodies can be derived. Not only are they in their phenomenal aspect mere states of our own consciousness, but they have no other aspect than the phenomenal one, and are in themselves nothing but phenomena. Rather inconsistently, this school of Idealism does not push its reasoning to its natural results, but concedes to other human beings something more than a merely phenomenal existence. Nothing exists but states of consciousness; but those peculiar states of my consciousness which I term men and women may be shown, by careful reasoning, to possess (in all probability) an existence of their own, even apart from my seeing, hearing, or feeling them. The process by which we reach this conclusion "is exactly parallel to that by which Newton proved that the force which keeps the planets in their orbits is identical with that by which an apple falls to the ground."[98]

Those peculiar modifications of color, and that special mode of filling up empty space which I term "my friend," do indeed seem, if we push matters to an extreme, to come into existence only when he enters my room, and to cease to exist the moment he quits it. If he has any further vitality, it is only in the shape of that state of consciousness which is known as recollection. But Moderate Idealism escapes from this consequence, on the ground that modifications of body and outward actions, since they are connected with feelings in ourselves, must be connected with feelings also in the case of those other phenomena which we term human beings, and perhaps in the case of those we term animals.[99] But if this be so, how did so extraordinary a fact as that of consciousness arise? _Ex hypothesi_, there was nothing before it. Did it then suddenly spring into being, full-grown like Minerva, but, unlike Minerva, with no head of Jupiter to spring from? Or was it a gradual growth, and if so, from what origin? Go back as far as you will, you can find nothing but consciousness, and that the consciousness of limited beings (either men or animals); and it is no less difficult to conceive the beginning, from nothing at all, of the least atom of conscious life, than to conceive that of the profoundest philosopher. Observe, there is no world of any kind, and in this no-world (the contradiction is unavoidable) there suddenly arises, from no antecedent, a consciousness of external objects which are no-objects. Geology upon this theory is a myth; so is that branch of astronomy which treats of the formation of our planetary system from nebular matter. Stars, suns, planets, and crust of the earth only arose when they were perceived, and will cease to be when there is no living creature to perceive them any longer. Since, however, conclusions like these are in reality unthinkable, whatever efforts metaphysicians may make to think them, Moderate Idealism must of necessity complete its fabric by the admission of a Power from which both consciousness and the objects of consciousness have taken their rise. Should it persist in denying anything but a mental reality to the objects of consciousness, it must still suppose an unknown source from which consciousness itself has been derived; otherwise it will entangle itself in two unthinkable propositions. First, that before men (or animals) existed there was absolute nothingness, an idea which we cannot frame; secondly, that where there was nothing at one moment there was the next moment something, a process which we _cannot_ realize without supposing a time antecedent to that something, and which we _may not_, without the contradiction of introducing time in the midst of nothingness, realize by supposing a time antecedent to that something.

It was no doubt the vague feeling of these perplexities that forced John Stuart Mill, the most eminent defender of this school of thought, to denominate matter a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. This singular phrase well exemplifies the difficulties of his position. For is matter an external substance, existing independently, or not? If it is, then what becomes of the Berkeleyan doctrine? Mill and his followers are simply metaphysical Realists. But if not, what becomes of the permanence? It is not in us, for our sensations are not permanent; it is not in the matter, for there is none. And what is there a possibility of? Causing sensation, or having it? Not the former, for there is nothing to cause it; not the latter, for the possibility of our having sensations is a mere fact of our nature, and cannot serve to define matter. And where is the sensation located? The phraseology would seem to imply, that matter is in the permanent condition of possible feeling; just as the nerve may be in the permanent condition of possible excitation. But this would be placing sensation in the wrong quarter. And if sensation be in us, we have not a permanent possibility, but a permanent actuality of sensation. So that unless the words be construed to mean that there is outside of us a permanent something which excites sensation, of which the modes vary (for this is the sense of possibility), they have no assignable meaning whatever. Mill, in fact, had been compelled, without wishing it, to recognize an ultimate power in nature; and his perception of this truth conflicted strangely, in his candid mind, with his idealistic prepossessions.

A more consistent and rigorous form of Idealism is that which has been referred to as the strict consequence of Moderate Idealism. This form, which I will term Extreme Idealism, denies the existence of persons as well as things. The Extreme Idealist believes himself to be the only being in the universe. There is to him no period preceding his own existence; none succeeding it. Past and future, except in his own life, have no meaning for him. We cannot reason with him, for all we may say is only a transient mode of his own sensations. Obviously, to such a philosophy there is no reply but one: it is simply unthinkable. Were any one seriously to defend it, the very seriousness of his defense would prove that he did not believe it. For against what or whom would he be contending? Against a phantom of his own mind. And the more pains he took to prove to us that he believed us to have no existence but as a part of himself, the less credit should we attach to his assertions.

Philosophy, therefore, is under a logical compulsion to make the same fundamental assumption as Religion—that of an ultimate, unknown, and all-pervading Power Origin, or Cause. Science, in a variety of ways, does the same. It does so, first, in its belief of a past and a future in the history of the solar system far transcending the past and future of humanity, or indeed of any form of life whatever. Passing at a glance over our brief abode on the face of the earth, Geology pushes its researches back into a time preceding by innumerable ages the existence of mankind, while her elder sister Astronomy carries her vision to a still remoter age, when even the planet we now inhabit was but a fragment in one indistinguishable mass. But it is not only these two sciences that assume the continuance of nature quite independently of our presence or absence; every other science does the like. The botanist, the chemist, the physicist, all believe that the facts they assert are facts in an external nature, the relations of which as now discovered by their several sciences held good before man existed, and will hold good after he has ceased to exist. But to say this, is to say in effect that there is something more than the mere phenomena disclosed by investigation; namely, an external reality persisting through all time in which the varied series of phenomena take their rise.

More clearly still does Science assert some such reality in its great modern doctrine of the Persistence of Force. Not that this doctrine is entirely new; for regarded in its metaphysical rather than its physical aspect it is but an expression in the language of the day of a truth which has long been realized as a necessity of thought. It is the converse of the ancient axiom, "_Nihil ex nihilo fit_," for if nothing can be made from nothing, neither can something pass into nothing. The Persistence of Force is an expression of the fact that every cause must have an adequate effect; that in nature nothing can be lost, no particle of force pass into nonentity. Concentrated forces may be dissipated, and dissipated forces may be concentrated; or one variety of force may pass into another. But the ultimate fund of force remains ever unchangeable; nothing is ever created, nothing destroyed.

Observe, then, that Science, however cautiously it may keep within the range of the material world, however eagerly it may repudiate all investigation of ultimate causes as fruitless and unprofitable, cannot take one single step towards proving the propositions it advances without tacitly laying down an ontological entity as the basis of its demonstration. For to speak of its discoveries as laws of nature is simply to predicate a constant, unvarying force, which under like conditions always produces like results. And to declare the uniformity of nature, is merely to say that the methods of that force do not change—that it is the same now as it ever was, and will be the same throughout the eternal ages.

"Thus," writes Mr. Herbert Spencer, "by the Persistence of Force, we really mean the persistence of some Power which transcends our knowledge and conception. The manifestations, as occurring in ourselves or outside of us, do not persist; but that which persists is the Unknown Cause of these manifestations. In other words, asserting the Persistence of Force, is but another mode of asserting an Unconditional Reality, without beginning or end" (Spencer's "First Principles," § 60, p. 189).

Philosophy, or Reasoned Thought, and Science, or Reasoned Observation, have both led us to admit, as a fundamental principle, the necessary existence of an unknown, inconceivable, and omnipresent Power, whose operations are ever in progress before our eyes, but whose nature is, and can never cease to be, an impenetrable mystery. And this is the cardinal truth of all religion. From all sides then, by every mode of contemplation, we are forced upon the same irresistible conclusion. The final question still remains, Is this ultimate element of all religion "the correlative of any actual truth or not?"

But for the prevalence, in recent times, of a philosophy which denies all connection between the necessity of a belief and its truth, I should have regarded such a question as scarcely worth the answering. To say that a belief is necessary and to say that it is true, would appear to all, but adherents of the extreme experiential school, one and the same thing. But in the present day this cannot be taken for granted, and I should be the last to complain that even that which seems most obvious should be tested by adverse criticism.

Ingenious, however, as their arguments are, philosophers of this school, when driven to reason out their views, cut their own throats. They commit a logical suicide. For what is the test of truth they hold up to us in lieu of necessity? Experience. But what in the last resort does our belief in experience rest upon? Simply upon a mental necessity. Nobody can tell us _why_ he believes that the laws of nature will hold good to-morrow as they do to-day. He can indeed tell us that he has always found them constant before, and therefore expects them to remain so. But this is merely to state the belief, not to justify it. Experience itself cannot be appealed to, to support our confidence in experience. True, we habitually say that we believe such and such results will follow such and such antecedents _because_ we have always found them follow before. But our past experience is not the whole of the fact involved in the belief. It is our past experience, conjoined with the mental necessity of thinking that the future will resemble the past, that forms the convictions on which we act. Experience alone, without that mental necessity, could teach us nothing. If therefore our necessary beliefs need not be true, the belief in experience falls to the ground along with the rest, and experience cannot be put in place of necessity as a test of truth. In fact, every argument drawn from the past fallibility of the test of necessity might be retorted with tenfold force against the test of experience. Observation has constantly misled mankind, and thousands of alleged facts, accepted upon imagined experience, have been disproved by more accurate examination. Observation and reasoning combined (as they often are) are exposed to the double danger of false premises and false inferences from true premises; while the addition of an element of testimony (a circumstance common in scientific inquiries) exposes every conclusion to a threefold possibility of error. Human beings are no more exempt from the possibility of mistaken science than from that of hasty metaphysics. But as, in matters of physical research, we do not discredit the use of our eyes because their perceptions are sometimes inaccurate, so in matters of metaphysical inquiry we need not discredit the use of our minds because their apparent intuitions are now and then fallacious. In the one case, as in the other, the proper course is not to cast contempt upon the only instruments of discovery we have, but to apply those instruments again and again, omitting no precaution that may serve to correct an observation and to test an argument. But when we have done our utmost to attain whatever certainty the nature of the subject permits, we cannot reasonably turn round upon ourselves and say: "True, my eyes assure me of this fact, but human eyes have erred so often that I cannot accept their verdict;" or, "No doubt my mind forces this conclusion upon me as a necessity of thought, but so many assumed necessities have turned out not to be necessary at all that I must refuse to listen to my mind:" for this is not really the caution of science, but the rashness of philosophic theory. For we can have no higher conviction than that arising in a necessity of thought. Nothing can surpass the certainty of this. Grant that we may yet be wrong: we can never know it, and we can have no reason to think it. To oppose to a necessary belief such a train of reasoning as this:

Necessary beliefs (so-called) have often proved false:

This is a necessary belief (so-called):

Therefore it may prove false,

is in reality to seek to overthrow a strong conviction by a weak one; an intuition by a syllogism; a proposition felt immediately to be true by an inference open to discussion. Arguments like this resemble the procedure of a man who should tell us, when we meet a friend, that we cannot possibly be sure of his identity because on some previous occasion in our lives we mistook Jones for Thompson.

Exaggerated as this doctrine of the experiential school is thus seen to be, yet it has done good service by putting thinkers on their guard, not to accept as necessary and ultimate some beliefs which are only contingent and dissoluble. Two conditions must be fulfilled in order to effect a presumption of necessity. The belief must always arise under certain conditions; that is, it must be universal in the only sense in which that term can fitly be applied. Having arisen, it must be incapable of expulsion from the mind; its terms must adhere together so firmly that they cannot be parted by adverse criticism, either our own or that of others. Both these conditions are fulfilled by the fundamental postulate of religion. Given the appropriate conditions—human beings raised even a little above the lowest savagery—and it at once takes possession of their minds. After this, it persists in spite of every attempt to do without it, and the highest philosophy is compelled to give it the place of honor in the forefront of its teaching.

Observe now, that what this philosophy accepts and incorporates into its system is religion and not theology. These two must be broadly distinguished from one another. Religion might be described as the soul of which theology is the body. Religion is an abstract, indefinable, pervading sentiment; theology a concrete, well-defined, limited creed. The one is emotional; the other intellectual. The one is a constant element of our nature; the other fluctuates from generation to generation, and varies from place to place. Theology seeks to bind down religion with immovable forms. Against these forms there is constantly arising both an intellectual and an emotional protest. The intellect objects to them as untrue in the name of science (in the largest sense); the emotions struggle against them as cramping their freedom in the name of religion itself. Thus between the human mind and dogma, between the religious sentiment and dogma, there is going on a perpetual warfare. Religious sentiment is no sooner born than the tendency to limit and to define makes itself felt. It is confined within a set of dogmas, and forbidden under every species of pains and penalties to pass over its allotted bounds. Sooner or later, religious sentiment bursts through every restriction; seems for a moment to breathe the invigorating air of freedom, but falls again into the hands of new theologians, with another framework of dogmas; to be again broken through in its turn when its fettering influence can be no longer borne. In carrying on this continually renovated contest—which is seen in its highest activity in great religious reformations—the religious sentiment seeks the alliance of intellect, which latter supplies it with deadly weapons drawn from the armories of science, logic, and historical research. Thus the overthrow of theology is in great part an intellectual work. But it must not be forgotten that the very deepest hostility to theological systems is inspired by the very emotion to which these systems seek to give a formal and definite expression.

The historical progress of religion is thus in some degree a counterpart of the progress described by Heine (in the lines heading this Book) as that of his individual mind. First of all there arises in the mind of man, so soon as he begins to speculate on the world in which he lives, the idea of a Creator. He cannot conceive the existence of the material objects with which he is familiar without conceiving also some being more powerful than himself who has made them what they are. His notions of creation may be, no doubt often are, extremely limited. He may confine the operations of his God to that small portion of the universe with which he is most familiar. But that the idea of an invisible yet preëminent deity arises very early in the mental development of the human race, and remains brooding dimly above the popular idolatry, has been abundantly shown. This is the belief in God the Father. The second stage, so closely interwoven with the first as to be inseparable from it in actual history, is the incarnation of this idea. The supreme Creator is too lofty, too abstract, too great, to be held steadily before the mind and worshiped in his unclouded glory. The children of Israel cannot bear the immediate presence of Jehovah, nor can even Moses meet the brightness of his face. Hence the material shapes in which the objects of adoration are embodied. When divine attributes are given to idols; when a golden calf is taken instead of the invisible God; when the Father is said to assume the form of a man to live a human life, and die a human death, when apostles, saints, and virgins are addressed in prayer or celebrated in praise, an incarnation has occurred. In the language of the traditions we have quoted, the supreme God has gone away and left the government of the world to his inferiors. Practically, such incarnations belong to the earliest period of religion, and no popular creed has ever been entirely without them. No sooner is the religious idea conceived in the mind, than it begins to be clothed in flesh and bones. But in the order of thought these two stages are separable. For idols are not worshiped until the notion of some power which is not human, of which the nature is not understood, has arisen in the worshipers. Then a concrete expression is desired, and we have in poetical language the belief in God the Son.

Last of all comes the belief—more properly an emotion than a belief—in the Holy Spirit. With this step a far higher grade of religious sentiment is reached. For God is now conceived, not only as creating or as governing the world without, but as entering into the mind of man to inspire his actions and influence his heart. A relation which up to this point was merely external—like that of the Creator to the created, or of superior to inferior—is rendered internal and intimate. The Holy Spirit not only speaks _to_ our souls, but it speaks in them and through them. We receive, not the arbitrary command of an almighty potentate, but the inspiring force of a being who, while raising us above ourselves, is still a part, the best part, of ourselves. This indeed, in the deep imagination of the poet, makes all men noble.

Yet not in such a creed as this, sublime as it is in comparison with those that have gone before it, is the final resting-place of religious feeling. For every word or phrase in which we endeavor to give form to that feeling tends to lower and to corrupt it by the admixture of elements which are foreign to its genuine nature. To clothe this sentiment in language is itself an incarnation. For whether we speak of a Force, a Power, or a Spirit, of an ultimate Cause, or an all-pervading Essence; of the Absolute, or of the Reality beyond phenomena, these terms are but symbols of the Supreme, not the Supreme itself.

"Name ist Schall und Rauch Umnebelnd Himmelsgluth."

All that we can say is, that while we _know_ nothing but that which either our senses perceive, or our minds understand, we _feel_ that there is something more. Both the world without and the world within, both that which is perceived and that which perceives, require an origin beyond themselves. Both compel us to look, as their common source, to a Being alike unknown and unknowable, whose nature is shrouded in a mystery no eye can pierce, and no intellect can fathom.

This is the great truth which religion has presented to philosophy, and which philosophy, if she be truly (as her name implies) the love of wisdom, will not disdain to incorporate with the more recently discovered treasures belonging to her peculiar sphere. For it is not the part of wisdom to spurn as worthless even the childish lispings prompted by the profound idea that has inspired the faith of men, from that of the far past to that of the present hour, from that of the rudest African to that of the most enlightened European. Rather is it the part of wisdom to excavate that idea from amidst the strange incrustations under which it is hidden, to understand its significance, and to recognize its value. Thus may we assign to it a fitting place within the limits of a system which does equal honor, and accords equal rights, to the scientific faculty and to the emotional instinct.