Chapter 9

The view of the Universe which I have endeavoured very inadequately to set before you is a form of Idealism. Inasmuch as it recognizes the existence--though not the separate and independent existence--of many persons; inasmuch as it regards both God and man as persons, without attempting {121} to merge the existence of either in one all-including, comprehensive consciousness, it may further be described as a form of 'personal Idealism.' But, if any one finds it easier to think of material Nature as having an existence which, though dependent upon and willed by the divine Mind, is not simply an existence in and for mind, such a view of the Universe will serve equally well as a basis of Religion. For religious purposes it makes no difference whether we think of Nature as existing in the Mind of God, or as simply created or brought into and kept in existence by that Mind. When you have subtracted from the theistic case every argument that depends for its force upon the theory that the idea of matter without Mind is an unthinkable absurdity, enough will remain to show the unreasonableness of supposing that in point of fact matter ever has existed without being caused and controlled by Mind. The argument for Idealism may, I hope, have at all events exhibited incidentally the groundlessness and improbability of materialistic and naturalistic assumptions, and left the way clear for the establishment of Theism by the arguments which rest upon the discovery that Causality implies volition; upon the appearances of intelligence in organic life; upon the existence of the moral consciousness; and more generally upon the enormous probability that the ultimate Source of Reality should resemble rather {122} the highest than the lowest kind of existence of which we have experience. That Reality as a whole may be most reasonably interpreted by Reality at its highest is after all the sum and substance of all theistic arguments. If anybody finds it easier to think of matter as uncreated but as always guided and controlled by Mind, I do not think there will be any religious objection to such a position; though it is, as it seems to me, intellectually a less unassailable position than is afforded by an Idealism of the type which I have most inadequately sketched.

Mr. Bradley in a cynical moment has defined Metaphysics as the 'finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.' I do not for myself accept that definition, which Mr. Bradley himself would not of course regard as expressing the whole truth of the matter. But, though I am firmly convinced that it is possible to find good reasons for the religious beliefs and hopes which have in fact inspired the noblest lives, I still feel that the greatest service which even a little acquaintance with Philosophy may render to many who have not the time for any profounder study of it, will be to give them greater boldness and confidence in accepting a view of the Universe which satisfies the instinctive or unanalysed demands of their moral, intellectual, and spiritual nature.

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NOTE ON NON-THEISTIC IDEALISM

It may perhaps be well for the sake of greater clearness to summarize my objections--those already mentioned and some others--to the system of Dr. McTaggart, which I admit to be, for one who has accepted the idealistic position that matter does not exist apart from Mind, the only intelligible alternative to Theism. His theory is, it will be remembered, that ultimate Reality consists of a system of selves or spirits, uncreated and eternal, forming together a Unity, but not a conscious Unity, so that consciousness exists only in the separate selves, not in the whole:

(1) It is admitted that the material world exists only in and for Mind. There is no reason to think that any human mind, or any of the other minds of which Dr. McTaggart's Universe is composed, knows the whole of this world. What kind of existence then have the parts of the Universe which are not known to any mind? It seems to me that Dr. McTaggart would be compelled to admit that they do not exist at all. The world postulated by Science would thus be admitted to be a delusion. This represents a subjective Idealism of an extreme and staggering kind which cannot meet the objections commonly urged against all Idealism.

(2) Moreover, the world is not such an intellectually complete system as Dr. McTaggart insists that it must be, apart from the relations of its known parts to its unknown parts. If there are parts which are unknown to any mind, and which therefore do not exist at all, it is not a system at all.

(3) If it be said that all the spirits between them know the world--one knowing one part, another another--this is a mere hypothesis, opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience, and after all would be a very inadequate answer to our difficulties. Dr. McTaggart insists {124} that the world of existing things exists as a system. Such existence to an Idealist must mean existence for a mind; a system not known as a system to any mind whatever could hardly be said to exist at all.

(4) If it be suggested (as Dr. McTaggart was at one time inclined to suggest) that every mind considered as a timeless Noumenon is omniscient, though in its phenomenal and temporal aspect its knowledge is intermittent and always limited, I reply (_a_) the theory seems to me not only gratuitous but unintelligible, and (_b_) it is open to all the difficulties and objections of the theory that time and change are merely subjective delusions. This is too large a question to discuss here: I can only refer to the treatment of the subject by such writers as Lotze (see above) and M. Bergson. I may also refer to Mr. Bradley's argument (_Appearance and Reality_, p. 50 sq.) against the theory that the individual Ego is out of time.

(5) The theory of pre-existent souls is opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience. Soul and organism are connected in such a way that the pre-existence of one element in what presents itself and works in our world as a unity is an extremely difficult supposition, and involves assumptions which reduce to a minimum the amount of identity or continuity that could be claimed for the Ego throughout its successive lives. A soul which has forgotten all its previous experiences may have some identity with its previous state, but not much. Moreover, we should have to suppose that the correspondence of a certain type of body with a certain kind of soul, as well as the resemblance between the individual and his parents, implies no kind of causal connexion, but is due to mere accident; or, if it is not to accident, to a very arbitrary kind of pre-established harmony which there is nothing in experience to suggest, and which (upon Dr. McTaggart's theory) there is no creative intelligence to pre-establish. The theory cannot be absolutely refuted, but all Dr. McTaggart's ingenuity has not--to my own mind, {125} and (I feel sure) to most minds--made it seem otherwise than extremely difficult and improbable. Its sole recommendation is that it makes possible an Idealism without Theism: but, if Theism be an easier and more defensible theory, that is no recommendation at all.

(6) Dr. McTaggart's whole theory seems to me to waver between two inconsistent views of Reality. When he insists that the world consists of a system or Unity, he tends towards a view of things which makes the system of intellectual relations constituting knowledge or Science to be the very reality of things: on such a view there is no impossibility of an ultimate Reality not known to any one mind. But Dr. McTaggart has too strong a hold on the conviction of the supremely real character of conscious mind and the unreality of mere abstractions to be satisfied with this view. If there is no mind which both knows and wills the existence and the mutual relations of the spirits, the supreme reality must be found in the individual spirits themselves; yet the system, if known to none of them, seems to fall outside the reality. The natural tendency of a system which finds the sole reality in eternally self-existent souls is towards Pluralism--a theory of wholly independent 'Reals' or 'Monads.' Dr. McTaggnrt is too much of a Hegelian to acquiesce in such a view. The gulf between the two tendencies seems to me--with all respect--to be awkwardly bridged over by the assumption that the separate selves form an intelligible system, which nevertheless no one really existent spirit actually understands. If a system of relations can be Reality, there is no ground for assuming the pre-existence or eternity of individual souls: if on the other hand Reality is 'experience,' an unexperienced 'system' cannot be real, and the 'unity' disappears. This is a line of objection which it would require a much more thorough discussion to develope.

(7) On the view which I myself hold as to the nature of Causality, the only intelligible cause of events is a Will. The events of Dr. McTaggart's world (putting aside the very {126} small proportion which are due, in part at least, to the voluntary action of men or spirits) are not caused at all. His theory is therefore open to all--and more than all--the objections which I have urged in Lecture II. against the theory which explains the Universe as the thought of a Mind but not as caused by that Mind.

(8) It is just possible that some one might suggest that the first of my objections might be met by the allegation that there is nothing in the scheme which forbids us to suppose that the whole of Nature is known to more than one of the spirits which make up Reality, though not to all, or indeed any, of the human and non-human spirits known to us. I should reply (_a_) that the considerations which lead to the hypothesis of one omniscient Being do not require more than one such spirit, and _entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_; (_b_) such a scheme would still be open to Objection 7. If it is a speculative possibility that all Nature may exist in the knowledge of more than one spirit, it cannot well be thought of as willed by more than one spirit. If the Universe, admitted to form an ordered system, is caused by rational will at all, it must surely be caused by one Will. But perhaps a serious discussion of a polytheistic scheme such as this may be postponed till it is seriously maintained. It has not been suggested, so far as I am aware, by Dr. McTaggart himself.

(9) The real strength of Dr. McTaggart's system must be measured by the validity of his objections to a Theism such as I have defended. I have attempted to reply to those objections in the course of these Lectures, and more at length in a review of his _Some Dogmas of Religion_ in _Mind_ (N.S.), vol. xv., 1906.

[1] Cf. Flint's _Theism_, Ed. v., p. 117 and App. xi.

[2] The most illuminating discussion of time and the most convincing argument for its 'objectivity' which I know, is to be found in Lotze's _Metaphysic_, Book II. chap. iii., but it cannot be recommended to the beginner in Metaphysic. A brilliant exposition of the view of the Universe which regards time and change as belonging to the very reality of the Universe, has recently appeared in M. Bergson's L'Evolution Creatrice, but he has hardly attempted to deal with the metaphysical difficulties indicated above. The book, however, seems to me the most important philosophical work that has appeared since Mr. Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_, and though the writer has hardly formulated his Natural Theology, it constitutes a very important contribution to the theistic argument. Being based upon a profound study of biological Evolution, it may be specially commended to scientific readers.

[3] Such a view is expounded in Dr. Schiller's early work _The Riddles of the Sphinx_ and in Professor Howison's _The Limits of Evolution_. The very distinguished French thinker Charles Renouvier (_La Nouvelle Monadologie_, etc.), like Origen, believed that souls were pre-existent but created.

[4] I use the word 'causally connected' in the popular or scientific sense of the word, to indicate merely an actually observed psycho-physical law.

[5] In part, perhaps, also to a mistaken theory of predication, which assumes that, because every fact in the world can be represented as logically a predicate of Reality at large, therefore there is but one Substance or (metaphysically) Real Being in the world, of which all other existences are really mere 'attributes.' But this theory cannot be discussed here.

[6] In _The New Theology_.

[7] _E.g._ by Mr. Bradley in _Appearance and Reality_ and still more uncompromisingly by Professor A. E. Taylor in _The Problem of Conduct_, but I rejoice to find that the latter very able writer has recently given up this theory of a 'super-moral' Absolute.

[8] I think it desirable to mention here that Professor Watson's account of my views in his _Philosophical Basis of Religion_ completely misrepresents my real position. I have replied to his criticisms in _Mind_, N.S. No. 69 (Jan. 1909).

[9] This is sometimes denied by Philosophers, but I have never been able to understand on what grounds. If I know _a priori_ the existence of other men, I ought to be able to say _a priori_ how many they are and to say something about them. And this is more than any one claims.

[10] In _Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion d'apres La Psychologie et l'histoire_.

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LECTURE V

REVELATION

I have tried in previous lectures to show that the apprehension of religious truth does not depend upon some special kind of intuition; that it is not due to some special faculty superior to and different in kind from our ordinary intellectual activities, but to an exercise of the same intellectual faculties by which we attain to truth in other matters--including, however, especially the wholly unique faculty of immediately discerning values or pronouncing moral judgements. The word 'faith' should, as it seems to me, be used to express not a mysterious capacity for attaining to knowledge without thought or without evidence, but to indicate some of the manifold characteristics by which our religious knowledge is distinguished from the knowledge either of common life or of the physical Sciences. If I had time there would be much to be said about these characteristics, and I think I could show that the popular distinction between knowledge and religious {128} faith finds whatever real justification it possesses in these characteristics of religious knowledge. I might insist on the frequently implicit and unanalysed character of religious thinking; upon the incompleteness and inadequacy of even the fullest account that the maturest and acutest Philosopher can give of ultimate Reality; upon the merely probable and analogical character of much of the reasoning which is necessarily employed both in the most popular and in the most philosophical kinds of reasoning about such matters; and above all upon the prominent place which moral judgements occupy in religious thought, moral judgements which, on account of their immediate character and their emotional setting, are often not recognized in their true character as judgements of the Reason. Most of the mistakes into which popular thinking has fallen in this matter--the mistakes which culminate in the famous examination-paper definition of faith as 'a means of believing that which we know not to be true'--would be avoided if we would only remember, with St. Paul and most of the greater religious thinkers, that the true antithesis is not between faith and reason but between faith and sight. All religious belief implies a belief in something which cannot be touched or tasted or handled, and which cannot be established by any mere logical deduction from what can be touched or tasted or handled. So far from implying {129} scepticism as to the power of Reason, this opposition between faith and sight actually asserts the possibility of attaining by thought to a knowledge of realities which cannot be touched or tasted or handled--a knowledge of equal validity and trustworthiness with that which is popularly said to be due to the senses, though Plato has taught us once for all[1] that the senses by themselves never give us real knowledge, and that in the apprehension of the most ordinary matter of fact there is implied the action of the self-same intellect by which alone we can reach the knowledge of God.

It may further be pointed out that, though neither religious knowledge nor moral knowledge are mere emotion, they are both of them very closely connected with certain emotions. Great moral discoveries are made, not so much by superior intellectual power, as by superior interest in the subject-matter of Morality. Very ordinary intelligence can see, when it is really brought to bear upon the matter, the irrationality or immorality of bad customs, oppressions, social injustices; but the people who have led the revolt against these things have generally been the people who have felt intensely about them. So it is with the more distinctly religious knowledge. Religious thought and insight are largely dependent upon the emotions to which religious {130} ideas and beliefs appeal. The absence of religious thought and definite religious belief is very often (I am far from saying always) due to a want of interest in Religion; but that does not prove that religious thought is not the work of the intellect, any more than the fact that a man is ignorant of Politics because he takes no interest in Politics proves that political truth is a mere matter of emotion, and has nothing to do with the understanding. Thought is always guided by interest--a truth which must not be distorted with a certain modern school of thought, if indeed it can properly be called thought, into the assertion that thinking is nothing but willing, and that therefore we are at liberty to think just what we please.

And that leads on to a further point. Emotion and desire are very closely connected with the will. A man's moral insight and the development of his thought about moral questions depend very largely upon the extent to which he acts up to whatever light he has. Vice, as Aristotle put it, is _phthartike arches_--destructive of moral first principles. Moral insight is largely dependent upon character. And so is religious insight. Thus it is quite true to say that religious belief depends in part upon the state of the will. This doctrine has been so scandalously abused by many Theologians and Apologists that I use it with great hesitation. I have no sympathy {131} with the idea that we are justified in believing a religious doctrine merely because we wish it to be true, or with the insinuation that non-belief in a religious truth is always or necessarily due to moral obliquity. But still it is undeniable that a man's ethical and religious beliefs are to some extent affected by the state of his will. That is so with all knowledge to some extent; for progress in knowledge requires attention, and is largely dependent upon interest. If I take no interest in the properties of curves or the square root of -1, I am not very likely to make a good mathematician. This connexion of knowledge with interest applies in an exceptional degree to religious knowledge: and that is one of the points which I think many religious thinkers have intended to emphasize by their too hard and fast distinctions between faith and knowledge.

Belief itself is thus to some extent affected by the state of the will; and still more emphatically does the extent to which belief affects action depend upon the will. Many beliefs which we quite sincerely hold are what have been called 'otiose beliefs'; we do not by an effort of the will realize them sufficiently strongly for them to affect action. Many a man knows perfectly that his course of life will injure or destroy his physical health; it is not through intellectual scepticism that he disobeys his {132} physician's prescriptions, but because other desires and inclinations prevent his attending to them and acting upon them. It is obvious that to men like St. Paul and Luther faith meant much more than a mere state of the intellect; it included a certain emotional and a certain volitional attitude; it included love and it included obedience. Whether our intellectual beliefs about Religion are energetic enough to influence action, does to an enormous extent depend upon our wills. Faith is, then, used, and almost inevitably used, in such a great variety of senses that I do not like to lay down one definite and exclusive definition of it; but it would be safe to say that, for many purposes and in many connexions, religious faith means the deliberate adoption by an effort of the will, as practically certain for purposes of action and of feeling, of a religious belief which to the intellect is, or may be, merely probable. For purposes of life it is entirely reasonable to treat probabilities as certainties. If a man has reason to think his friend is trustworthy, he will do well to trust him wholly and implicitly. If a man has reason to think that a certain view of the Universe is the most probable one, he will do well habitually to allow that conviction to dominate not merely his actions, but the habitual tenour of his emotional and spiritual life. We should not love a human being much if we allowed ourselves habitually to {133} contemplate the logical possibility that the loved one was unworthy of, or irresponsive to, our affection. We could not love God if we habitually contemplated the fact that His existence rests for us upon judgements in which there is more or less possibility of error, though there is no reason why we should, in our speculative moments, claim a greater certainty for them than seems to be reasonable. The doctrine that 'probability is the guide of life' is one on which every sensible man habitually acts in all other relations of life: Bishop Butler was right in contending that it should be applied no less unhesitatingly to the matter of religious belief and religious aspiration.

The view which I have taken of the nature of faith may be illustrated by the position of Clement of Alexandria. It is clear from his writings that by faith he meant a kind of conviction falling short of demonstration or immediate intellectual insight, and dependent in part upon the state of the will and the heart. Clement did not disparage knowledge in the interests of faith: faith was to him a more elementary kind of knowledge resting largely upon moral conviction, and the foundation of that higher state of intellectual apprehension which he called Gnosis. I do not mean, of course, to adopt Clement's Philosophy as a whole; I merely refer to it as illustrating the point that, properly considered, faith is, or rather includes, a particular kind or stage {134} of knowledge, and is not a totally different and even opposite state of mind. It would be easy to show that this has been fully recognized by many, if not most, of the great Christian thinkers.