,transcriber's note3 ,page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces1 e4g4 #ii4 ,they have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book4 ,,philosophy ,,and ,,religion ,six ,lectures ,delivered at ,cambridge by ,,hastings ,,rashdall ,d4 ,litt4 7,oxon471 ,d4,c4,l4 7,dunelm47 ,fellow of the ,british ,academy ,fellow and ,tutor of ,new ,college1 ,oxford ,london3 ,duckworth ,co4 #c ,henrietta ,st4 ,covent ,garden #aiji ,all rights reserved v ,,general ,,introduction ,,to ,,the ,,series ,man has no deeper or wider interest than theology2 none deeper1 for however much he may change1 he never loses his love of the many questions it covers2 and none wider1 for under whatever law he may live he never escapes from its spacious shade2 nor does he ever find that it speaks to him in vain or uses a voice that fails to reach him4 ,once the present writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame as a statesman and a man of letters1 and he said1 ',every day ,i live1 ,politics1 which are affairs of ,man and ,time1 interest me less1 while ,theology1 which is an affair of ,god and ,eternity1 interests me more4' ,as with him1 so with many1 though the many feel that their interest is in theology and not in dogma4 ,dogma1 they know1 is but a series of resolutions framed by a council or parliament1 which they do not respect any the more because the parliament was composed of ecclesiastically-minded persons2 while the theology which so interests them is a discourse touching ,god1 though the ,being so named is the ,god man conceived as not only related to himself and his world but also as rising ever higher with the notions of the self and the world4 ,wise books1 not in dogma but in theology1 may therefore be described as the supreme vi need of our day1 for only such can save us from much fanaticism and secure us in the full possession of a sober and sane reason4 ,theology is less a single science than an encyclopaedia of sciences2 indeed all the sciences which have to do with man have a better right to be called theological than anthropological1 though the man it studies is not simply an individual but a race4 ,its way of viewing man is indeed characteristic2 from this have come some of its brighter ideals and some of its darkest dreams4 ,the ideals are all either ethical or social1 and would make of earth a heaven1 creating fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a goodly sisterhood2 the dreams may be represented by doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the will of ,god on the other4 ,but even this will cannot make sin luminous1 for were it made radiant with grace1 it would cease to be sin4 ,these books then1--which have all to be written by men who have lived in the full blaze of modern light1--though without having either their eyes burned out or their souls scorched into insensibility1--are intended to present ,god in relation to ,man and ,man in relation to ,god4 ,it is intended that they begin1 not in date of publication1 but in order of thought1 with a ,theological ,encyclopaedia which shall show the circle of sciences co-ordinated under the term ,theology1 though all will be viewed as related to its central or main idea4 ,this relation of ,god to human knowledge will then be looked at through mind as a communion of ,deity with humanity1 or ,god in fellowship vii with concrete man4 ,on this basis the idea of ,revelation will be dealt with4 ,then1 so far as history and philology are concerned1 the two ,sacred ,books1 which are here most significant1 will be viewed as the scholar1 who is also a divine1 views them2 in other words1 the ,old and ,new ,testaments1 regarded as human documents1 will be criticised as a literature which expresses relations to both the present and the future2 that is1 to the men and races who made the books1 as well as to the races and men the books made4 ,the ,bible will thus be studied in the ,semitic family which gave it being1 and also in the ,indo-,european families which gave to it the quality of the life to which they have attained4 ,but ,theology has to do with more than sacred literature2 it has also to do with the thoughts and life its history occasioned4 ,therefore the ,church has to be studied and presented as an institution which ,god founded and man administers4 ,but it is possible to know this ,church only through the thoughts it thinks1 the doctrines it holds1 the characters and the persons it forms1 the people who are its saints and embody its ideals of sanctity1 the acts it does1 which are its sacraments1 and the laws it follows and enforces1 which are its polity1 and the young it educates and the nations it directs and controls4 ,these are the points to be presented in the volumes which follow1 which are all to be occupied with theology or the knowledge of ,god and ,his ways4 ,a4 ,m4 ,f4 ',o4' ix ,,preface ,these ,lectures were delivered in ,cambridge during the ,lent ,term of last year1 on the invitation of a ,committee presided over by the ,master of ,magdalene1 before an audience of from three hundred to four hundred ,university men1 chiefly ,under-graduates4 ,they were not then1 and they are not now1 intended for philosophers or even for beginners in the systematic study of philosophy1 but as aids to educated men desirous of thinking out for themselves a reasonable basis for personal ,religion4 ,the ,lectures--especially the first three--deal with questions on which ,i have already written4 ,i am indebted to the ,publisher of ,contentio ,veritatis and the other contributors to that volume for raising no objection to my publishing ,lectures which might possibly be regarded as in part a condensation1 in part an expansion of my ,essay on ',the ultimate basis of ,theism4' ,i have dealt more systematically with many of the problems here discussed in an ,essay upon ',personality in ,god and ,man' contributed to ,personal ,idealism 7edited by ,henry x ,sturt7 and in my ',theory of ,good and ,evil4' ,some of the doctrinal questions touched on in ,lecture ,,vi4 have been more fully dealt with in my volume of ,university ,sermons1 ,doctrine and ,development4 ,questions which were asked at the time and communications which have since reached me have made me feel1 more even than ,i did when ,i was writing the ,lectures1 how inadequate is the treatment here given to many great problems4 ,on some matters much fuller explanation and discussion will naturally be required to convince persons previously unfamiliar with ,metaphysic3 on others it is the more advanced student of ,philosophy who will complain that ,i have only touched upon the fringe of a vast subject4 ,but ,i have felt that ,i could not seriously expand any part of the ,lectures without changing the whole character of the book1 and ,i have been compelled in general to meet the demand for further explanation only by the above general reference to my other books1 by the addition of a few notes1 and by appending to each chapter some suggestions for more extended reading4 ,these might of course have been indefinitely enlarged1 but a long list of books is apt to defeat its own purpose3 people with a limited time at their disposal want to know which book to make a beginning upon4 ,the ,lectures are therefore published for the most xi part just as they were delivered1 in the hope that they may suggest lines of thought which may be intellectually and practically useful4 ,i trust that any philosopher who may wish to take serious notice of my views--especially the metaphysical views expressed in the first few chapters--will be good enough to remember that the expression of them is avowedly incomplete and elementary1 and cannot fairly be criticized in much detail without reference to my other writings4 ,i am much indebted for several useful suggestions and for valuable assistance in revising the proofs to one of the hearers of the ,lectures1 ,mr4 ,a4 ,g4 ,widgery1 ,scholar of ,st4 ,catherine's ,college1 ,cambridge1 now ,lecturer in ,university ,college1 ,bristol4 ,h4 ,,rashdall4 ,,new ,,college1 ,,oxford1 ,jan4 #f1 #aiji4 xii ,,contents ,,lecture ,i ,,mind ,,and ,,matter1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #a #a4 ,is ,materialism possible8 ,there is no immediate knowledge of ,matter2 what we know is always ,self ,matter4 ,the idea of a ,matter which can exist by itself is an inference3 is it a reasonable one8 #b4 ,no4 ,for all that we know about ,matter implies ,mind4 ,this is obvious as to secondary qualities 7colour1 sound1 etc472 but it is no less true of primary qualities 7solidity1 magnitude1 etc474 ,relations1 no less than sensations1 imply ,mind1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #h #c4 ,this is the great discovery of ,berkeley1 though he did not adequately distinguish between sensations and intellectual relations1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ab #d4 ,but ,matter certainly does not exist merely for our transitory and incomplete knowledge3 if it cannot exist apart from ,mind1 there must be a universal ,mind in which and for which all things exist1 i4e4 ,god1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #af #e4 ,but ,theism is possible without ,idealism4 ,the impossibility of ,materialism has generally been recognized 7e4g4 by ,spinoza1 ,spencer1 ,haeckel74 ,if the ultimate ,reality is not ,matter1 it must be utterly unlike anything we know1 or be ,mind4 ,the latter view more probable1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ai #f4 ,it is more reasonable to explain the lower by the higher than vice versa1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #bf ,,lecture ,,ii ,,the ,,universal ,,cause1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #bi #a4 ,we have been led by the idealistic argument to recognize the necessity of a ,mind which thinks the world4 ,insufficiency of this view4 xiii #b4 ,in our experiences of external ,nature we meet with nothing but succession1 never with ,causality4 ,the ,uniformity of ,nature is a postulate of ,physical ,science1 not a necessity of thought4 ,the idea of ,causality derived from our consciousness of ,volition4 ,causality,activity1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ca #c4 ,if events must have a cause1 and we know of no cause but ,will1 it is reasonable to infer that the events which we do not cause must be caused by some other ,will2 and the systematic unity of ,nature implies that this cause must be ,one ,will1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #da #d4 ,moreover1 the analogy of the human mind suggests the probability that1 if ,god is ,mind1 there must be in ,him1 as in us1 the three activities of ,thought1 ,feeling1 and ,will1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #dd #e4 ,the above line of argument can be used by the ,realist who believes matter to be a thing-in-itself2 but it fits in much better with the ,idealistic view of the relations between mind and matter1 and with the tendency of modern physics to resolve matter into ,force1 4 #dh #f4 ,testimony of ,spencer and ,kant to the theory that the ,ultimate ,reality is ,will1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ea #g4 ,is ,god a ,person8 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ed ,,lecture ,,iii ,,god ,,and ,,the ,,moral ,,consciousness1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #eh #a4 ,the empirical study of ,nature 7'red in tooth and claw'7 can tell us of purpose1 not what the purpose is4 ,the only source of knowledge of the character of ,god is to be found in the moral ,consciousness4 #b4 ,our moral judgements are as valid as other judgements 7e4g4 mathematical axioms71 and equally reveal the thought of ,god1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #fb #c4 ,this does not imply that the moral consciousness is not gradually evolved1 or that each individual's conscience is infallible1 or that our moral judgements in detail are as certain as mathematical judgements1 or that the detailed rules of human conduct are applicable to ,god1 4 4 #fc xiv #d4 ,corollaries3 7a7 ,belief in the objectivity of our moral judgements logically implies belief in ,god1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #fi 7b7 ,if ,god aims at an end not fully realized here1 we have a ground for postulating ,immortality1 4 4 4 4 4 4 #gg 7c7 ,evil must be a necessary means to greater good1 4 4 #gi #e4 ,in what sense this 'limits ,god4' ,omnipotenceability to do all things which are in their own nature possible1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ha ,,lecture ,,iv ,,difficulties ,,and ,,objections1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #hg #a4 ,is the world created8 ,there may or may not be a beginning of the particular series of physical events constituting our world4 ,but1 even if this series has a beginning1 this implies some previous existence which has no beginning4 #b4 ,is the whole-time series infinite8 ,time must be regarded as objective1 but the 'antinomies' involved in the nature of ,time cannot be resolved1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ij #c4 ,are ,spirits created or pre-existent8 ,the close connexion and correspondence between mind and body makes for the former view4 ,difficulties of pre-existence--heredity1 etc41 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ic #d4 ,an ,idealism based on ,pre-existence without ,god is open to the same objections and others4 ,such a system provides no mind 7a7 in which and for which the whole system exists1 or 7b7 to effect the correspondence between mind and body1 or 7c7 to allow of a purpose in the ,universe2 without this the world is not rational1 4 #if #e4 ,the human mind 7i4e4 consciousness7 not apart of the divine ,consciousness1 though in the closest possible dependence upon ,god4 ,the ,universe a ,unity1 but the ,unity is not that of ,self-,consciousness1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #aja #f4 ,there is no 'immediate' or 'intuitive' knowledge of ,god4 ,our knowledge is got by inference1 like knowledge of our friend's existence1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #ajf xv #g4 ,religion and ,psychology4 ,it is impossible to base ,religion upon ,psychology or 'religious experience' without ,metaphysics1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #aaa #h4 ,summary3 the ultimate nature of ,reality1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #aah ,note on ,non-theistic ,idealism1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #abh ,,lecture ,v ,,revelation1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #abg #a4 ,there is no special organ of religious knowledge1 but religious knowledge has many characteristics which may be conveniently suggested by the use of the term 'faith1' especially its connexion with character and ,will4 #b4 ,the psychological causes of religious belief must be carefully distinguished from the reasons which make it true4 ,no logic of discovery4 ,many religious ideas have occurred in a spontaneous or apparently intuitive way to particular persons1 the truth of which the philosopher may subsequently be able to test by philosophical reflection1 though he could not have discovered them1 but they are not necessarily true because they arise in a spontaneous or unaccountable manner1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #acd #c4 ,false conceptions of ,revelation and true4 ,all knowledge is in a sense revealed1 especially religious and moral knowledge3 but spiritual insight varies4 ,need of the prophet or religious genius1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #aci #d4 ,reasoned and intuitive beliefs may both be 'revealed1' 4 4 #adc #e4 ,degrees of truth in the historical religions4 ,dependence of the individual upon such religions4 ,christianity occupies a unique position1 because it alone combines an ethical ideal which appeals to the universal ,conscience with a ,theism which commends itself to ,reason4 ,the truth of ,christianity is dependent upon its appeal to the moral and religious consciousness of the present1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #adh xvi ,,lecture ,,vi ,,christianity1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #aeg #a4 ,the claim of ,christianity to be the special or absolute ,religion not dependent upon miracles4 #b4 ,ritschlian ,theologians right in resting the truth of ,christianity mainly upon the appeal made by ,christ to the individual ,conscience3 but wrong in disparaging 7a7 philosophical arguments for ,theism1 7b7 the relative truth of non-,christian systems1 7c7 the value of ,doctrine and necessity for ,development1 4 4 4 4 4 #afa #c4 ,christian doctrine 7esp4 of the ,logos7 is an attempt to express the ,church's sense of the unique value of ,christ and ,his ,revelation4 ,the necessity for recognizing development both in ,christian ,ethics and in ,theology1 4 4 #afd #d4 ,some reflections on our practical attitude towards ,christian doctrine4 ,some means of expressing the unique position of ,christ wanted4 ,the old expressions were influenced by philosophy of the time1 but not valueless4 ,illustrations4 ,need of re-interpretation and further development1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 #afh #e4 ,the doctrine of continuous ,revelation through the ,spirit is a part of ,christianity1 and the condition of its acceptance as the final or absolute ,religion1 4 4 4 #ahe #a ,,philosophy ,,and ,,religion ,,lecture ,i ,,mind ,,and ,,matter ,i have been invited to speak to you about the relations between ,religion and ,philosophy4 ,to do that in a logical and thoroughgoing way it would be necessary to discuss elaborately the meaning first of ,religion and then of ,philosophy4 ,such a discussion would occupy at least a lecture1 and ,i am unwilling to spend one out of six scanty hours in formal preliminaries4 ,i shall assume1 therefore1 that we all know in some general way the meaning of ,religion4 ,it is not necessary for our present purpose to discuss such questions as the definition of ,religion for purposes of sociological investigation1 or the possibility of a ,religion without a belief in ,god1 or the like4 ,i shall assume that1 whatever else may be included in the term ,religion1 ,christianity may at least be included in it2 and that what you are practically most interested in is the bearing of ,philosophy upon the ,christian ideas concerning the #b being and nature of ,god1 the hope of ,immortality1 the meaning and possibility of ,revelation4 ,when we turn to ,philosophy1 ,i cannot perhaps assume with equal confidence that all of you know what it is4 ,but then learning what ,philosophy is--especially that most fundamental part of ,philosophy which is called ,metaphysics--is like learning to swim3 you never discover how to do it until you find yourself considerably out of your depth4 ,you must strike out boldly1 and at last you discover what you are after4 ,i shall presuppose that in a general way you do all know that ,philosophy is an enquiry into the ultimate nature of the ,universe at large1 as opposed to the discussion of those particular aspects or departments of it which are dealt with by the special ,sciences4 ,what you want to know1 ,i take it1 is--what rational enquiry1 pushed as far as it will go1 has to say about those ultimate problems of which the great historical ,religions likewise profess to offer solutions4 ,the nature and scope of ,philosophy is best understood by examples3 and therefore ,i hope you will excuse me if without further preface ,i plunge in medias res4 ,i shall endeavour to presuppose no previous acquaintance with technical ,philosophy1 and ,i will ask those who have already made some serious study of ,philosophy kindly to remember that ,i am trying to make myself intelligible to those who have not4 ,i shall #c not advance anything which ,i should not be prepared to defend even before an audience of metaphysical experts4 ,but ,i cannot undertake in so short a course of lectures to meet all the objections which will1 ,i know1 be arising in the minds of any metaphysically trained hearers who may honour me with their presence1 many of which may probably occur to persons not so trained4 ,and ,i further trust the ,metaphysicians among you will forgive me if1 in order to be intelligible to all1 ,i sometimes speak with a little less than the akribeia at which ,i might feel bound to aim if ,i were reading a paper before an avowedly philosophical ,society4 ,reservations1 qualifications1 and elaborate distinctions must be omitted1 if ,i am to succeed in saying anything clearly in the course of six lectures4 ,moreover1 ,i would remark that1 though ,i do not believe that an intention to edify is any excuse for slipshod thought or intellectual dishonesty1 ,i am speaking now mainly from the point of view of those who are enquiring into metaphysical truth for the guidance of their own religious and practical life1 rather than from the point of view of pure speculation4 ,i do not1 for my own part1 believe in any solution of the religious problem which evades the ultimate problems of all thought4 ,the ,philosophy of ,religion is for me not so much a special and sharply distinguished branch or department of #d ,philosophy as a particular aspect of ,philosophy in general4 ,but many questions which may be of much importance from the point of view of a complete theory of the ,universe can be entirely1 or almost entirely1 put on one side when the question is1 ',what may ,i reasonably believe about those ultimate questions which have a direct and immediate bearing upon my religious and moral life2 what may ,i believe about ,god and ,duty1 about the world and its ultimate meaning1 about the soul and its destiny8' ,for such purposes solutions stopping short of what will fully satisfy the legitimate demands of the professed ,metaphysician may be all that is necessary1 or at least all that is possible for those who are not intending to make a serious and elaborate study of ,metaphysic4 ,i have no sympathy with the attempt to base ,religion upon anything but honest enquiry into truth3 and yet the professed ,philosophers are just those who will most readily recognize that there are--if not what are technically called degrees of truth--still different levels of thought1 different degrees of adequacy and systematic completeness1 even within the limits of thoroughly philosophical thinking4 ,i shall assume that you are not content to remain at the level of ordinary unreflecting ,common-sense or of merely traditional ,religion--that you do want 7so far as time and opportunity serve7 to get to the bottom of things1 #e but that you will be content in such a course as the present if ,i can suggest to you1 or help you to form for yourselves1 an outline--what ,plato would call the hypotyposis of a theory of the ,universe which may still fall very far short of a finished and fully articulated metaphysical system4 ,i suppose that to nearly everybody who sets himself down to think seriously about the riddle of the ,universe there very soon occurs the question whether ,materialism may not contain the solution of all difficulties4 ,i think1 therefore1 our present investigation had better begin with an enquiry whether ,materialism can possibly be true4 ,i say 'can be true' rather than 'is true1' because1 though dogmatic ,materialists are rare1 the typical ,agnostic is one who is at least inclined to admit the possibility of ,materialism1 even when he does not1 at the bottom of his mind1 practically assume its truth4 ,the man who is prepared to exclude even this one theory of the ,universe from the category of possible but unprovable theories is not1 properly speaking1 an ,agnostic4 ,to know that ,materialism at least is not true is to know something1 and something very important1 about the ultimate nature of things4 ,i shall not attempt here any very precise definition of what is meant by ,materialism4 ,strictly speaking1 it ought to mean the view that nothing really exists but matter4 ,but the existence1 in some sense or #f other1 of our sensations and thoughts and emotions is so obvious to ,common-sense that such a creed can hardly be explicitly maintained3 it is a creed which is refuted in the very act of enunciating it4 ,for practical purposes1 therefore1 ,materialism may be said to be the view that the ultimate basis of all existence is matter2 and that thought1 feeling1 emotion--consciousness of every kind--is merely an effect1 a by-product or concomitant1 of certain material processes4 ,now if we are to hold that matter is the only thing which exists1 or is the ultimate source of all that exists1 we ought to be able to say what matter is4 ,to the unreflecting mind matter seems to be the thing that we are most certain of1 the one thing that we know all about4 ,thought1 feeling1 will1 it may be suggested1 are in some sense appearances which 7though we can't help having them7 might1 from the point of view of superior insight1 turn out to be mere delusions1 or at best entirely unimportant and inconsiderable entities4 ,this attitude of mind has been amusingly satirised by the title of one of ,mr4 ,bradley's philosophical essays--'on the supposed uselessness of the ,soul4'#a ,in this state of mind matter presents itself as the one solid reality--as something undeniable1 something perfectly intelligible1 something1 too1 which is pre-eminently #g important and respectable2 while thinking and feeling and willing1 joy and sorrow1 hope and aspiration1 goodness and badness1 if they cannot exactly be got rid of altogether1 are1 as it were1 negligible quantities1 which must not be allowed to disturb or interfere with the serious business of the ,universe4 ,from this point of view matter is supposed to be the one reality with which we are in immediate contact1 which we see and touch and taste and handle every hour of our lives4 ,it may1 therefore1 sound a rather startling paradox to say that matter--matter in the sense of the ,materialist--is something which nobody has ever seen1 touched1 or handled4 ,yet that is the literal and undeniable fact4 ,nobody has ever seen or touched or otherwise come in contact with a piece of matter4 ,for in the experience which the plain man calls seeing or touching there is always present another thing4 ,even if we suppose that he is ,justified in saying ',i touch matter1' there is always present the ',i' as well as the matter4#b ,it is always and inevitably matter mind that he knows4 ,nobody ever can get away from this ',i1' nobody can ever see or feel what matter is like apart from the ',i' which knows #h it4 ,he may1 indeed1 infer that this matter exists apart from the ',i' which knows it4 ,he may infer that it exists1 and may even go as far as to assume that1 apart from his seeing or touching1 or anybody else's seeing or touching1 matter possesses all those qualities which it possesses for his own consciousness4 ,but this is inference1 and not immediate knowledge4 ,and the validity or reasonableness of the inference may be disputed4 ,how far it is reasonable or legitimate to attribute to matter as it is in itself the qualities which it has for us must depend upon the nature of those qualities4 ,let us then go on to ask whether the qualities which constitute matter as we know it are qualities which we can reasonably or even intelligibly attribute to a supposed matter-in-itself1 to matter considered as something capable of existing by itself altogether apart from any kind of conscious experience4 ,in matter1 as we know it1 there are two elements4 ,there are certain sensations1 or certain qualities which we come to know by sensation1 and there are certain relations4 ,now1 with regard to the sensations1 a very little reflection will1 ,i think1 show us that it is absolutely meaningless to say that matter has the qualities implied by these sensations1 even when they are not felt1 and would still possess them1 even supposing it never had been and never would be felt by any one whatever4 ,in a world in which #i there were no eyes and no minds1 what would be the meaning of saying that things were red or blue8 ,in a world in which there were no ears and no minds1 there would clearly be no such thing as sound4 ,this is exactly the point at which ,locke's analysis stopped4 ,he admitted that the 'secondary qualities'--colours1 sounds1 tastes--of objects were really not in the things themselves but in the mind which perceives them4 ,what existed in the things was merely a power of producing these sensations in us1 the quality in the thing being not in the least like the sensations which it produces in us3 he admitted that this power of producing a sensation was something different from1 and totally unlike1 the sensation itself4 ,but when he came to the primary qualities--solidity1 shape1 magnitude and the like--he supposed that the qualities in the thing were exactly the same as they are for our minds4 ,if all mind were to disappear from the ,universe1 there would henceforth be no red and blue1 no hot and cold2 but things would still be big or small1 round or square1 solid or fluid4 ,yet1 even with these 'primary qualities' the reference to mind is really there just as much as in the case of the secondary qualities2 only the fact is not quite so obvious4 ,and one reason for this is that these primary qualities involve1 much more glaringly and unmistakably than the secondary1 something which is not mere sensation--something which #aj implies thought and not mere sense4 ,what do we mean by solidity1 for instance8 ,we mean partly that we get certain sensations from touching the object--sensations of touch and sensations of what is called the muscular sense1 sensations of muscular exertion and of pressure resisted4 ,now1 so far as that is what solidity means1 it is clear that the quality in question involves as direct a reference to our subjective feelings as the secondary qualities of colour and sound4 ,but something more than this is implied in our idea of solidity4 ,we think of external objects as occupying space4 ,and spaciality cannot be analysed away into mere feelings of ours4 ,the feelings of touch which we derive from an object come to us one after the other4 ,no mental reflection upon sensations which come one after the other in time could ever give us the idea of space1 if they were not spacially related from the first4 ,it is of the essence of spaciality that the parts of the object shall be thought of as existing side by side1 outside one another4 ,but this side-by-sideness1 this outsideness1 is after all a way in which the things present themselves to a mind4 ,space is made up of relations2 and what is the meaning of relations apart from a mind which relates1 or for which the things are related8 ,if spaciality were a quality of the thing in itself1 it would exist no matter what became of other things4 ,it would be quite possible1 therefore1 #aa that the top of this table should exist without the bottom3 yet everybody surely would admit the meaninglessness of talking about a piece of matter 7no matter how small1 be it an atom or the smallest electron conceived by the most recent physical speculation7 which had a top without a bottom1 or a right-hand side without a left4 ,this space-occupying quality which is the most fundamental element in our ordinary conception of matter is wholly made up of the relation of one part of it to another4 ,now can a relation exist except for a mind8 ,as it seems to me1 the suggestion is meaningless4 ,relatedness only has a meaning when thought of in connection with a mind which is capable of grasping or holding together both terms of the relation4 ,the relation between point ,a and point ,b is not in point ,a or in point ,b taken by themselves4 ,it is all in the 'between'3 'betweenness' from its very nature cannot exist in any one point of space or in several isolated points of space or things in space2 it must exist only in some one existent which holds together and connects those points4 ,and nothing1 as far as we can understand1 can do that except a mind4 ,apart from mind there can be no relatedness3 apart from relatedness no space3 apart from space no matter4 ,it follows that apart from mind there can be no matter4 ,it will probably be known to all of you that the #ab first person to make this momentous inference was ,bishop ,berkeley4 ,there was1 indeed1 an obscure medieval schoolman1 hardly recognized by the historians of ,philosophy1 one ,nicholas of ,autrecourt1 ,dean of ,metz1#c who anticipated him in the fourteenth century1 and other better-known schoolmen who approximated to the position2 and there are1 of course1 elements in the teaching of ,plato and even of ,aristotle1 or possible interpretations of ,plato and ,aristotle1 which point in the same direction4 ,but full-blown ,idealism1 in the sense which involves a denial of the independent existence of matter1 is always associated with the name of ,bishop ,berkeley4 ,i can best make my meaning plain to you by quoting a passage or two from his ,principles of ,human ,knowledge1 in which he extends to the primary qualities of matter the analysis which ,locke had already applied to the secondary4 ',but1 though it were possible that solid1 figured1 moveable substances may exist without the mind1 corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies1 yet how is it possible for us to know this8 ,either we must know it by ,sense or by ,reason4--,as for our senses1 by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations1 ideas1 or those things that are immediately perceived by sense1 call them what you will2 but they do not inform us that things exist #ac without the mind1 or unperceived1 like to those which are perceived4 ,this the ,materialists themselves acknowledge4--,it remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external things1 it must be by ,reason inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense4 ,but what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind1 from what we perceive1 since the very patrons of ,matter themselves do not pretend there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas8 ,i say it is granted on all hands--and what happens in dreams1 frenzies1 and the like1 puts it beyond dispute--that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now1 though there were no bodies existing without resembling them4 ,hence1 it is evident the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas2 since it is granted they are produced sometimes1 and might possibly be produced always in the same order we see them in at present1 without their concurrence4 99 99 99 99 99 99 ',in short1 if there were external bodies1 it is impossible we should ever come to know it2 and if there were not1 we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now4 ,suppose--what no one can deny possible--an intelligence without the help of external bodies1 to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that you are1 imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his mind4 ,i ask whether that intelligence hath not all the reason to believe the existence of corporeal substances1 represented by his ideas1 and exciting them in his mind1 that you can possibly have for believing the same thing8 ,of this there can be no #ad question--which one consideration were enough to make any reasonable person suspect the strength of whatever arguments he may think himself to have1 for the existence of bodies without the mind4'#d ,do you say that in that case the tables and chairs must be supposed to disappear the moment we all leave the room8 ,it is true that we do commonly think of the tables and chairs as remaining1 even when there is no one there to see or touch them4 ,but that only means1 ,berkeley explains1 that if we or any one else were to come back into the room1 we should perceive them4 ,moreover1 even in thinking of them as things which might be perceived under certain conditions1 they have entered our minds and so proclaimed their ideal or mind-implying character4 ,to prove that things exist without the mind we should have to conceive of things as unconceived or unthought of4 ,and that is a feat which no one has ever yet succeeded in accomplishing4 ,here is ,berkeley's own answer to the objection3 ',but1 say you1 surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees1 for instance1 in a park1 or books existing in a closet1 and nobody by to perceive them4 ,i answer1 you may so1 there is no difficulty in it2 but what is all this1 ,i beseech you1 more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees1 and #ae at the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them8 ,but do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the while8 ,this therefore is nothing to the purpose3 it only shews you have the power of imagining or forming ideas in your mind2 but it does not shew that you can conceive it possible the objects of your thought may exist without the mind4 ,to make out this1 it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of1 which is a manifest repugnancy4 ,when we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies1 we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas4 ,but the mind1 taking no notice of itself1 is deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind1 though at the same time they are apprehended by1 or exist in1 itself4 ,a little attention will discover to any one the truth and evidence of what is here said1 and make it unnecessary to insist on any other proofs against the existence of material substance4'#e ,berkeley no doubt did not adequately appreciate the importance of the distinction between mere sensations and mental relations4 ,in the paragraph which ,i have read to you he tends to explain space away into mere subjective feelings3 in this respect and in many others he has been corrected by ,kant and the post-,kantian ,idealists4 ,doubtless we cannot analyse away our conception of space or of substance into mere feelings4 ,but relations imply mind no less than sensations4 ,things are no mere #af bundles of sensations2 we do think of them as objects or substances possessing attributes4 ,indeed to call them 7with ,berkeley71 'bundles of sensations' implies that the bundle is as important an element in thinghood as the sensations themselves4 ,the bundle implies what ,kant would call the intellectual 'categories' of ,substance1 ,quantity1 ,quality1 and the like4 ,we do think objects3 but an object is still an object of thought4 ,we can attach no intelligible meaning to the term 'object' which does not imply a subject4 ,if there is nothing in matter1 as we know it1 which does not obviously imply mind1 if the very idea of matter is unintelligible apart from mind1 it is clear that matter can never have existed without mind4 ,what then1 it may be asked1 of the things which no human eye has ever seen or even thought of8 ,are we to suppose that a new planet comes into existence for the first time when first it sails into the telescope of the astronomer1 and that ,science is wrong in inferring that it existed not only before that particular astronomer saw it1 but before there were any astronomers or other human or even animal intelligences upon this planet to observe it8 ,did the world of ,geology come into existence for the first time when some eighteenth-century geologist first suspected that the world was more than six thousand years old8 ,are all those ages of past #ag history1 when the earth and the sun were but nebulae1 a mere imagination1 or did that nebulous mass come into existence thousands or millions of years afterwards when ,kant or ,laplace first conceived that it had existed8 ,the supposition is clearly self-contradictory and impossible4 ,if ,science be not a mass of illusion1 this planet existed millions of years before any human--or1 so far as we know1 any animal minds--existed to think its existence4 ,and yet ,i have endeavoured to show the absurdity of supposing that matter can exist except for a mind4 ,it is clear1 then1 that it cannot be merely for such minds as ours that the world has always existed4 ,our minds come and go4 ,they have a beginning2 they go to sleep2 they may1 for aught that we can immediately know1 come to an end4 ,at no time does any one of them1 at no time do all of them together1 apprehend all that there is to be known4 ,we do not create a ,universe2 we discover it piece by piece1 and after all very imperfectly4 ,matter cannot intelligibly be supposed to exist apart from ,mind3 and yet it clearly does not exist merely for our minds4 ,each of us knows only one little bit of the ,universe3 all of us together do not know the whole4 ,if the whole is to exist at all1 there must be some one mind which knows the whole4 ,the mind which is necessary to the very existence of the ,universe is the mind that we call ,god4 #ah ,in this way we are1 as it seems to me1 led up by a train of reasoning which is positively irresistible to the idea that1 so far from matter being the only existence1 it has no existence of its own apart from some mind which knows it--in which and for which it exists4 ,the existence of a ,mind possessing universal knowledge is necessary as the presupposition both of there being any world to know1 and also of there being any lesser minds to know it4 ,it is1 indeed1 possible to believe in the eternal existence of limited minds1 while denying the existence of the one ,omniscient ,mind4 ,that is a hypothesis on which ,i will say a word hereafter4#f ,it is enough here to say that it is one which is not required to explain the world as we know it4 ,the obvious prima facie view of the matter is that the minds which apparently have a beginning1 which develope slowly and gradually and in close connexion with certain physical processes1 owe their origin to whatever is the ultimate source or ground of the physical processes themselves4 ,the order or systematic interconnexion of all the observable phenomena in the ,universe suggests that the ultimate ,reality must be one ,being of some kind2 the argument which ,i have suggested leads us to regard that one ,reality as a spiritual ,reality4 ,we are not yet entitled to speak of this physical ,universe as caused #ai by ,god3 that is a question which ,i hope to discuss in our next lecture4 ,all that ,i want to establish now is that we cannot explain the world without the supposition of one universal ,mind in which and for which all so-called material things exist1 and always have existed4 ,so far ,i have endeavoured to establish the existence of ,god by a line of thought which also leads to the position that matter has no independent existence apart from conscious mind1 that at bottom nothing exists except minds and their experiences4 ,now ,i know that this is a line of thought which1 to those who are unfamiliar with it1 seems so paradoxical and extravagant that1 even when a man does not see his way to reply to it1 it will seldom produce immediate or permanent conviction the first time he becomes acquainted with it4 ,it is for the most part only by a considerable course of habituation1 extending over some years1 that a man succeeds in thinking himself into the idealistic view of the ,universe4 ,and after all1 there are many minds--some of them1 ,i must admit1 not wanting in philosophical power--who never succeed in accomplishing that feat at all4 ,therefore1 while ,i feel bound to assert that the clearest and most irrefragable argument for the existence of ,god is that which is supplied by the idealistic line of thought1 ,i should be sorry to have to admit that a man #bj cannot be a ,theist1 or that he cannot be a ,theist on reasonable grounds1 without first being an ,idealist4 ,from my own point of view most of the other reasons for believing in the existence of ,god resolve themselves into idealistic arguments imperfectly thought out4 ,but they may be very good arguments1 as far as they go1 even when they are not thought out to what seem to me their logical consequences4 ,one of these lines of thought ,i shall hope to develope in my next lecture2 but meanwhile let me attempt to reduce the argument against ,materialism to a form in which it will perhaps appeal to ,common-sense without much profound metaphysical reflection4 ,at the level of ordinary common-sense thought there appear to be two kinds of ,reality--mind and matter4 ,and yet our experience of the unity of ,nature1 of the intimate connexion between human and animal minds and their organisms 7organisms governed by a single intelligible and interconnected system of laws7 is such that we can hardly help regarding them as manifestations or products or effects or aspects of some one ,reality4 ,there is1 almost obviously1 some kind of ,unity underlying all the diversity of things4 ,our world does not arise by the coming together of two quite independent ,realities--mind and matter--governed by no law or by unconnected and independent systems of law4 #ba ,all things1 all phenomena1 all events form parts of a single inter-related1 intelligible whole3 that is the presupposition not only of ,philosophy but of ,science4 ,or if any one chooses to say that it is a presupposition and so an unwarrantable piece of dogmatism1 ,i will say that it is the hypothesis to which all our knowledge points4 ,it is at all events the one common meeting-point of nearly all serious thinkers4 ,the question remains1 ',what is the nature of this one ,reality8' ,now1 if this ultimate ,reality be not mind1 it must be one of two things4 ,it must be matter1 or it must be a third thing which is neither mind nor matter1 but something quite different from either4 ,now many who will not follow the idealistic line of thought the whole way--so far as to recognize that the ultimate ,reality is ,mind--will at least admit that ,idealists have successfully shown the impossibility of supposing that the ultimate ,reality can be matter4 ,for all the properties of matter are properties which imply some relation to our sensibility or our thought4 ,moreover1 there is such a complete heterogeneity between consciousness and unconscious matter1 considered as something capable of existing without mind1 that it seems utterly impossible and unthinkable that mind should be simply the product or attribute of matter4 ,that the ultimate ,reality cannot be what we mean by matter has been admitted by the most naturalistic1 #bb and1 in the ordinary sense1 anti-religious thinkers--,spinoza1 for instance1 and ,haeckel1 and ,herbert ,spencer4 ,the question remains1 ',which is the easier1 the more probable1 the more reasonable theory--that the ultimate ,reality should be ,mind1 or that it should be something so utterly unintelligible and inconceivable to us as a tertium quid--a mysterious ,unknown and ,unknowable--which is neither mind nor matter8' ,for my own part1 ,i see no reason to suppose that our inability to think of anything which is neither matter nor mind but quite unlike either is a mere imperfection of human thought4 ,it seems more reasonable to assume that our inability to think of such a mysterious ,x is due to there being no such thing4#g ,our only way of judging of the ,unknown is by the analogy of the known4 ,it is more probable1 surely1 that the world known to us should exhibit something of the characteristics of the ,reality from which it is derived1 or of which it forms a manifestation1 than that it should exhibit none of these characteristics4 ,no doubt1 if we were to argue from some small part of our experience1 or from the detailed characteristics of one part of our experience to what is beyond our experience2 if1 for instance #bc 7,i am here replying to an objection of ,hoeffding's71 a blind man were to argue that the world must be colourless because he sees no colour1 or if any of us were to affirm that in other planets there can be no colours but what we see1 no sensations but what we feel1 no mental powers but what we possess1 the inference would be precarious enough4 ,the ,anthropomorphist in the strict sense--the man who thinks that ,god or the gods must have human bodies--no doubt renders himself liable to the gibe that1 if oxen could think1 they would imagine the gods to be like oxen1 and so on4 ,but the cases are not parallel4 ,we have no difficulty in thinking that in other worlds there may be colours which we have never seen1 or whole groups of sensation different from our own3 we cannot think that any existence should be neither mind nor matter1 but utterly unlike either4 ,we are not arguing from the mere absence of some special experience1 but from the whole character of all the thought and experience that we actually possess1 of all that we are and the whole ,universe with which we are in contact4 ,the characteristic of the whole world which we know is that it consists of mind and matter in close connexion--we may waive for a moment the nature of that connexion4 ,is it more probable that the ultimate ,reality which lies beyond our reach should be something which possesses the characteristics of mind1 or that it should #bd be totally unlike either mind or matter8 ,do you insist that we logically ought to say it might contain the characteristics of both mind and matter8 ,there is only one way in which such a combination seems clearly thinkable by us1 i4e4 when we represent matter as either in the idealistic sense the thought or experience of mind1 or 7after the fashion of ordinary realistic ,theism7 as created or produced by mind4 ,but if you insist on something more than this1 if you want to think of the qualities of matter as in some other way included in the nature of the ultimate ,reality as well as those of mind1 at all events we could still urge that we shall get nearer to the truth by thinking of this ultimate ,reality in its mind-aspect than by thinking of it in its matter-aspect4 ,i do not believe that the human mind is really equal to the task of thinking of a ,reality which is one and yet is neither mind nor matter but something which combines the nature of both4 ,practically1 where such a creed is professed1 the man either thinks of an unconscious ,reality in some way generating or evolving mind1 and so falls back into the ,materialism which he has verbally disclaimed2 or he thinks of a mind producing or causing or generating a matter which when produced is something different from itself4 ,this last is of course ordinary ,theism in the form in which it is commonly #be held by those who are not ,idealists4 ,from a practical and religious point of view there is nothing to be said against such a view4 ,still it involves a ,dualism1 the philosophical difficulties of which ,i have attempted to suggest to you4 ,i confess that for my own part the only way in which ,i can conceive of a single ultimate ,reality which combines the attributes of what we call mind with those of what we know as matter is by thinking of a ,mind conscious of a world or nature which has no existence except in and for that ,mind and whatever less complete consciousnesses that may be4 ,i trust that those who have failed to follow my sketch of the arguments which lead to this idealistic conclusion may at least be led by it to see the difficulties either of ,materialism or of that kind of agnostic ,pantheism which1 while admitting in words that the ultimate ,reality is not matter1 refuses to invest it with the attributes of mind4 ,the argument may be reduced to its simplest form by saying we believe that the ultimate ,reality is ,mind because mind will explain matter1 while matter will not explain mind3 while the idea of a ,something which is neither in mind nor matter is both unintelligible and gratuitous4 ,and this line of thought may be supplemented by another4 ,whatever may be thought of the existence of matter apart from mind1 every one will #bf admit that matter possesses no value or worth apart from mind4 ,when we bring into account our moral judgements or judgements of value1 we have no difficulty in recognizing mind as the highest or best kind of existence known to us4 ,there is1 surely1 a certain intrinsic probability in supposing that the ,reality from which all being is derived must possess at least as much worth or value as the derived being2 and that in thinking of that ,reality by the analogy of the highest kind of existence known to us we shall come nearer to a true thought of it than by any other way of thinking possible to us4 ,this is a line of argument which ,i hope to develope further when ,i come to examine the bearing upon the religious problem of what is as real a part of our experience as any other--our moral experience4 ,i will remind you in conclusion1 that our argument for the existence of ,god is at present incomplete4 ,i have tried to lead you to the idea that the ultimate ,reality is spiritual1 that it is a ,mind which knows1 or is conscious of1 matter4 ,i have tried to lead you with the ,idealist to think of the physical ,universe as having no existence except in the mind of ,god1 or at all events 7for those who fail to follow the idealistic line of thought7 to believe that the ,universe does not exist without such a ,mind4 ,what further relation exists between physical nature and this ,universal ,spirit1 ,i shall hope in the next lecture #bg to consider2 and in so doing to suggest a line of argument which will independently lead to the same result1 and which does not necessarily presuppose the acceptance of the idealistic creed4 ,,literature ,the reader who wishes to have the idealistic argument sketched in the foregoing chapter developed more fully should read ,berkeley's ,principles of ,human ,knowledge4 ,for the correction of ,berkeley's sensationalistic mistakes the best course is to read ,kant's ,critique of ,pure ,reason or the shorter ,prolegomena to any future ,metaphysic or any of the numerous expositions or commentaries upon ,kant4 7,one of the best is the ',reproduction' prefixed to ,dr4 ,hutchison ,stirling's ,text-book to ,kant47 ,the non-metaphysical reader should1 however1 be informed that ,kant is very hard reading1 and is scarcely intelligible without some slight knowledge of the previous history of ,philosophy1 especially of ,locke1 ,berkeley1 and ,hume1 while some acquaintance with elementary ,logic is also desirable4 ,he will find the argument for non-sensationalistic ,idealism re-stated in a post-,kantian but much easier form in ,ferrier's ,institutes of ,metaphysic4 ,the argument for a theistic ,idealism is powerfully stated 7though it is not easy reading7 in the late ,prof4 ,t4 ,h4 ,green's ,prolegomena to ,ethics1 ,book ,i4 ,in view of recent realistic revivals ,i may add that the earlier chapters of ,mr4 ,bradley's ,appearance and ,reality still seem to me to contain an unanswerable defence of ,idealism as against ,materialism or any form of ,realism1 though his ,idealism is not of the theistic type defended in the above lecture4 ,the idealistic argument is stated in a way which makes strongly for ,theism by ,professor ,ward in ,naturalism and ,agnosticism--a work which would perhaps be the best sequel to these lectures for any reader #bh who does not want to undertake a whole course of philosophical reading3 readers entirely unacquainted with ,physical ,science might do well to begin with ,part ,,ii4 ,a more elementary and very clear defence of ,theism from the idealistic point of view is to be found in ,dr4 ,illingworth's ,personality ,human and ,divine4 ,representatives of non-idealistic ,theism will be mentioned at the end of the next lecture4 #a ,mind1 vol4 iv4 7,u4,s471 #ahhe4 #b ,i do not mean of course that in the earliest stages of consciousness this distinction is actually made2 but1 if there are stages of consciousness in which the ',i' is not realized1 the idea of matter or even of an 'object' or 'not-self' existing apart from consciousness must be supposed to be equally absent4 #c ,i have dealt at length with this forgotten thinker in a ,presidential ,address to the ,aristotelian ,society1 printed in their ,proceedings for #aijg4 #d ,principles of ,human ,knowledge1 pt4 i41 ,sections #ah1 #bj4 #e ,principles of ,human ,knowledge1 pt4 #a41 ,section #bc4 #f ,see ,lecture ,,iv41 pp4 #if-aja1 #abc-f4 #g ,i have attempted to meet this line of argument somewhat more adequately1 in the form in which it has recently been taken up by ,professor ,hoeffding in his ,philosophy of ,religion1 in a review in the ,review of ,theology and ,philosophy for ,november1 #aijg 7vol4 iii474 #bi ,,lecture ,,ii ,,the ,,universal ,,cause ,in my last lecture ,i endeavoured to show that matter1 so far from constituting the ultimate ,reality1 cannot reasonably be thought of as existing at all without mind2 and that we cannot explain the world without assuming the existence of a ,mind in which and for which everything that is not mind has its being4 ,but we are still very far from having fully cleared up the relation between the divine ,mind and that ,nature which exists in it and for it3 while we have hardly dealt at all with the relation between the universal ,mind and those lesser minds which we have treated--so far without much argument--as in some way derived from1 or dependent upon1 that ,mind4 ,so far as our previous line of argument goes1 we might have to look upon the world as the thought of ,god1 but not as caused by ,him or due to ,his will4 ,we might speak of ,god as 'making ,nature1' but only in the sense in which you or ,i make ,nature when we think it or experience it4 #cj ',the world is as necessary to ,god as ,god is to the world1' we are often told--for instance by my own revered teacher1 the late ,professor ,green4 ,how unsatisfactory this position is from a religious point of view ,i need hardly insist4 ,for all that such a theory has to say to the contrary1 we might have to suppose that1 though ,god is perfectly good1 the world which ,he is compelled to think is very bad1 and going from bad to worse4 ,to think of ,god merely as the ,mind which eternally contemplates ,nature1 without having any power whatever of determining what sort of ,nature it is to be1 supplies no ground for hope or aspiration--still less for worship1 adoration1 imitation4 ,i suggested the possibility that from such a point of view ,god might be thought of as good1 and the world as bad4 ,but that is really to concede too much4 ,a being without a will could as little be bad as he could be good3 he would be simply a being without a character4 ,from an intellectual point such a way of looking at the ,universe might be more intelligent or intelligible than that of pure ,materialism or pure ,agnosticism2 but morally and religiously ,i don't know that1 when its consequences are fully realized1 it is any great improvement upon either of them4#a #ca ,moreover1 even intellectually it fails to satisfy the demand which most reflecting people feel1 that the world shall be regarded as a ,unity of some kind4 ,if ,god is thought of as linked by some inexplicable fate to a ,nature over which ,he has no sort of control--not so much control as a mere human being who can produce limited changes in the world1--we can hardly be said to have reduced the world to a ,unity4 ,the old ,dualism has broken out again3 after all we still have ,god and the world confronting one another2 neither of them is in any way explained by the other4 ,still less could such a world be supposed to have a purpose or rational end4 ,for our own mere intellectual satisfaction as well as for the satisfaction of our religious needs we must go on to ask whether we are not justified in thinking of ,god as the ,cause or ,creator of the world1 as well as the ,thinker of it4 ,this enquiry introduces us to the whole problem of ,causality4 ,the sketch which ,i gave you last time of ,bishop ,berkeley's argument was a very imperfect one4 ,bishop ,berkeley was from one point of view a great philosophic iconoclast1 though he destroyed only that he might build up4 ,he destroyed the superstition of a self-existing matter3 #cb he also waged war against what ,i will venture to call the kindred superstition of a mysterious causal nexus between the physical antecedent and the physical consequent4 ,on this side his work was carried on by ,hume4 ,berkeley resolved our knowledge into a succession of 'ideas4' ,he did1 no doubt1 fall into the mistake of treating our knowledge as if it were a mere succession of feelings3 he ignored far too much--though he did not do so completely--that other element in our knowledge1 the element of intellectual relation1 of which ,i said something last time4 ,here1 no doubt1 ,berkeley has been corrected by ,kant2 and1 so far1 practically all modern ,idealists will own their indebtedness to ,kant4 ,even in the apprehension of a succession of ideas1 in the mere recognition that this feeling comes after that1 there is an element which cannot be explained by mere feeling4 ,the apprehension that this feeling came after that feeling is not itself a feeling4 ,but can ,i detect any relation between these experiences of mine except that of succession8 ,we commonly speak of fire as the cause of the melting of the wax1 but what do we really know about the matter8 ,surely on reflection we must admit that we know nothing but this--that1 so far as our experience goes1 the application of fire is always followed by the melting of the wax4 ,where this is the case we do1 from the point of view of #cc ordinary life1 speak of the one phenomenon as the cause of the other4 ,where we don't discover such an invariable succession1 we don't think of the one event as the cause of the other4 ,i shall be told1 perhaps1 that on this view of the nature of ,causality we ought to speak of night as the cause of day4 ,so perhaps we should1 if the result to which we are led by a more limited experience were not corrected by the results of a larger experience4 ,to say nothing of the valuable correction afforded by the polar winter and the polar summer1 we have learned by a more comprehensive experience to replace the law that day follows night by the wider generalisation that the visibility of objects is invariably coincident upon the presence of some luminous body and not upon a previous state of darkness4 ,but between cases of what we call mere succession and what is commonly called causal sequence the difference lies merely in the observed fact that in some cases the sequence varies1 while in others no exception has ever been discovered4 ,no matter how frequently we observe that a sensation of red follows the impact upon the aural nerve of a shock derived from a wave of ether of such and such a length1 we see no reason why it should do so4 ,we may1 no doubt1 make a still wider generalization1 and say that every event in ,nature is invariably preceded by some definite complex of conditions1 #cd and so arrive at a general law of the ,uniformity of ,nature4 ,and such a law is undoubtedly the express or implied basis of all inference in the ,physical ,sciences4 ,when we have once accepted that law 7as the whole mass of our experience in the purely physical region inclines us to do71 then a single instance of ,a ,b ,c being followed by ,d 7when we are quite sure that we have included all the antecedents which we do not know from other experience to be irrelevant7 will warrant our concluding that we have discovered a law of nature4 ,on the next occasion of ,a ,b ,c's occurrence we confidently predict that ,d will follow4 ,but1 however often we have observed such a sequence1 and however many similar sequences we may have observed1 we are no nearer to knowing why ,d should follow ,,abc3 we can only know that it always does3 and on the strength of that knowledge we infer1 with a probability which we do no doubt for practical purposes treat as a certainty1 that it always will4 ,but on reflection we can see no reason why a wave of ether of a certain length should produce red rather than blue1 a colour rather than a sound4 ,there1 as always1 we discover nothing but succession1 not necessary connexion4 ,these cases of unvaried succession among phenomena1 it should be observed1 are quite different from cases of real necessary connexion4 ,we don't want to examine thousands of instances of two #ce added to two to be quite sure that they always make four1 nor in making the inference do we appeal to any more general law of ,uniformity4 ,we simply see that it is and always must be so4 ,mill no doubt tells us he has no difficulty in supposing that in the region of the fixed stars two and two might make five1 but nobody believes him4 ,at all events few of us can pretend to such feats of intellectual elasticity4 ,no amount of contradictory testimony from travellers to the fixed stars1 no matter whether they were ,bishops of the highest character or trained as ,professors of physical ,science1 would induce us to give a moment's credence to such a story4 ,we simply see that two and two must make four1 and that it is inconceivable they should ever1 however exceptionally1 make five4 ,it is quite otherwise with any case of succession among external phenomena1 no matter how unvaried4 ,so long as we confine ourselves to merely physical phenomena 7,i put aside for the moment the case of conscious or other living beings7 nowhere can we discover anything but succession2 nowhere do we discover ,causality in the sense of a necessary connexion the reversal of which is inconceivable4 ,are we then to conclude that there is no such thing as ,causality1 that in searching for a cause of everything that happens1 we are pursuing a mere will o' the wisp1 using a mere vox nihili which has #cf as little meaning for the reflecting mind as fate or fortune8 ,surely1 in the very act of making the distinction between succession and causality1 in the very act of denying that we can discover any causal connexion between one physical phenomenon and another1 we imply that we have got the idea of ,causality in our minds2 and that1 however little we may have discovered a genuine cause1 we could not believe that anything could happen without a cause4 ,for my own part1 ,i find it quite possible to believe that a phenomenon which has been followed by another phenomenon #iiii times should on the #aj1jjjth time be followed by some other phenomenon4 ,give me the requisite experience1 and belief would follow2 give me even any adequate evidence that another person has had such an experience 7though ,i should be very particular about the evidence71 and ,i should find no difficulty in believing it4 ,but to tell me that the exception to an observed law might take place without any cause at all for the variation would seem to be pure nonsense4 ,put the matter in another way4 ,let us suppose an empty world1 if one can speak of such a thing without contradiction--let us suppose that at one time nothing whatever had existed1 neither mind nor matter nor any of that mysterious entity which some people find it possible to believe in which is #cg neither mind nor matter4 ,let us suppose literally nobody and nothing to have existed4 ,now could you under these conditions rationally suppose that anything could have come into existence8 ,could you for one moment admit the possibility that after countless aeons of nothingness a flash of lightning should occur or an animal be born8 ,surely1 on reflection those who are most suspicious of a priori knowledge1 who are most unwilling to carry their speculations beyond the limits of actual experience1 will be prepared to say1 ',no1 the thing is utterly for ever impossible4' ,ex nihilo nihil fit3 for every event there must be a cause4 ,those who profess to reject all other a priori or self-evident knowledge1 show by their every thought and every act that they never really doubt that much4 ,now1 it would be just possible to contend that we have got the bare abstract concept or category of ,causality in our minds1 and yet that there is nothing within our experience to give it any positive content--so that we should have to say1 ',every event must have a cause1 but we never know or can know what that cause is4 ,if we are to talk about causes at all1 we can only say ,the ,unknowable is the cause of all things4' ,such a position can be barely stated without a contradiction4 ,but surely it is a very difficult one4 ,nature does not generally supply us with categories of thought1 while it gives us no power #ch or opportunity of using them4 ,it would be like holding1 for instance1 that we have indeed been endowed with the idea of number in general1 but that we cannot discover within our experience any numerable things2 that we have got the idea of #a1 #b1 #c1 #d1 etc41 but have no capacity whatever for actually counting--for saying that here are three apples1 and there four marbles4 ,and1 psychologically1 it would be difficult to find any parallel to anything of the kind4 ,nature does not first supply us with clearly defined categories of thought1 and then give us a material to exercise them upon4 ,in general we discover these abstract categories by using them in our actual thinking4 ,we count beads or men or horses before we evolve an abstract idea of number1 or an abstract multiplication table4 ,it is very difficult to see how this idea of ,cause could possibly have got into our heads if we had never in the whole course of our experience come into any sort of contact with any actual concrete cause4 ,where then1 within our experience1 if not in the succession of external events1 shall we look for a cause--for something to which we can apply this category or abstract notion of causality8 ,i answer ',we must look within3 it is in our experience of volition that we actually find something answering to our idea of causal connexion4' ,and here1 ,i would invite you not to think so much of our consciousness of actually #ci moving our limbs4 ,here it is possible to argue plausibly that the experience of exercising causality is a delusion4 ,i imagine that1 if ,i will to do so1 ,i can move my arm2 but ,i will to stretch out my arm1 and lo6 it remains glued to my side1 for ,i have suddenly been paralysed4 ,or ,i may be told that the consciousness of exerting power is a mere experience of muscular contraction1 and the like4 ,i would ask you to think rather of your power of directing the succession of your own thoughts4 ,i am directly conscious1 for instance1 that the reason why ,i am now thinking of ,causality1 and not 7say7 of ,tariff ,reform1 is the fact that ,i have conceived the design of delivering a course of lectures on this subject2 the succession of ideas which flow through my mind as ,i write or speak is only explicable by reference to an end--an end which ,i am striving to bring into actual being4 ,in such voluntarily concentrated purposeful successions of thought ,i am immediately exercising causality3 and this causality does further influence the order of events in physical nature4 ,my pen or my tongue moves in consequence of this striving of mine1 though no doubt for such efforts to take place other physical conditions must be presupposed1 which are not wholly within my own control4 ,i am the cause1 but not the whole or sole cause of these physical disturbances in external nature3 ,i am a cause but not an uncaused cause4 #dj ,my volition1 though it is not the sole cause of the event which ,i will1 is enough to give me a conception of a cause which is the sole cause of the events4 ,the attempt is of course sometimes made1 as it was made by ,hume1 to explain away this immediate consciousness of volition1 and to say that all that ,i immediately know is the succession of my subjective experiences4 ,it may be contended that ,i don't know1 any more than in the case of external phenomena1 that because the thought of my lecture comes first and the thought of putting my pen into the ink to write it comes afterwards1 therefore the one thought causes the other4 ,hence it is important to point out that ,i have a negative experience with which to contrast the positive experience4 ,i do not always1 even as regards my own inward experiences1 assume that succession implies ,causality4 ,supposing1 as ,i speak or write1 a twinge of the gout suddenly introduces itself into the succession of my experiences3 then ,i am conscious of no such inner connexion between the new experience and that which went before it4 ,then ,i am as distinctly conscious of passivity--of not causing the succession of events which take place in my mind--as ,i am in the other case of actively causing it4 ,if the consciousness of exercising activity is a delusion1 why does not that delusion occur in the one case as much as in the other8 ,i hold then that in the consciousness of #da our own activity we get a real direct experience of ,causality4 ,when ,causality is interpreted to mean mere necessary connexion--like the mathematical connexion between four and twice two or the logical connexion between the premisses of a ,syllogism and its conclusion1--its nature is fundamentally misrepresented4 ,the essence of ,causality is not necessary connexion but ,activity4 ,such activity we encounter in our own experience of volition and nowhere else4#b ,now1 if the only cause of which ,i am immediately conscious is the will of a conscious rational being1 is it not reasonable to infer that some such agency is at work in the case of those phenomena which we see no reason to attribute to the voluntary actions of men and animals8 ,it is well known that primitive man took this step4 ,primitive man had no notion of the ',uniformity of ,nature'3 it is only very gradually that civilized man has discovered it4 ,but primitive man never doubted for one instant the law of ,causality3 he never doubted that for any change1 or at least for any change of the kind which most frequently attracted his attention1 there must #db be a cause4 ,everything that moved he supposed to be alive1 or to be under the influence of some living being more or less like himself4 ,if the sea raged1 he supposed that the ,sea-god was angry4 ,if it did not rain to-day1 when it rained yesterday1 that was due to the favour of the ,sky-god1 and so on4 ,the world for him was full of spirits4 ,the argument of primitive man's unconscious but thoroughly sound ,metaphysic is well expressed by the fine lines of ,wordsworth in the ,excursion3 ,once more to distant ages of the world ,let us revert1 and place before our thoughts ,the face which rural solitude might wear ,to the unenlightened swains of pagan ,greece4 --,in that fair clime1 the lonely herdsman1 stretched ,on the soft grass through half a summer's day1 ,with music lulled his indolent repose3 ,and1 in some fit of weariness1 if he1 ,when his own breath was silent1 chanced to hear ,a distant strain1 far sweeter than the sounds ,which his poor skill could make1 his fancy fetched1 ,even from the blazing chariot of the sun1 ,a beardless ,youth1 who touched a golden lute1 ,and filled the illumined groves with ravishment4 ,the nightly hunter1 lifting a bright eye ,up towards the crescent moon1 with grateful heart ,called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed ,that timely light1 to share his joyous sport3 ,and hence1 a beaming ,goddess with her ,nymphs1 ,across the lawn and through the darksome grove1 7,not unaccompanied with tuneful notes ,by echo multiplied from rock or cave71 #dc ,swept in the storm of chace2 as moon and stars ,glance rapidly along the clouded heaven1 ,when winds are blowing strong4 ,the traveller slaked ,his thirst from rill or gushing fount1 and thanked ,the ,naiad4 ,sunbeams1 upon distant hills ,gliding apace1 with shadows in their train1 ,might1 with small help from fancy1 be transformed ,into fleet ,oreads sporting visibly4 ,the ,zephyrs fanning1 as they passed1 their wings1 ,lacked not1 for love1 fair objects whom they wooed ,with gentle whisper4 ,withered boughs grotesque1 ,stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age1 ,from depth of shaggy covert peeping forth ,in the low vale1 or on steep mountain side2 ,and1 sometimes1 intermixed with stirring horns ,of the live deer1 or goat's depending beard1-- ,these were the lurking ,satyrs1 a wild brood ,of gamesome ,deities2 or ,pan himself1 ,the simple shepherd's awe-inspiring ,god6#c ,growing experience of the unity of ,nature1 of the interdependence of all the various forces and departments of ,nature1 have made such a view of it impossible to civilized and educated man4 ,primitive man was quite right in arguing that1 where he saw motion1 there must be consciousness like his own4 ,but we have been led by ,science to believe that whatever is the cause of any one phenomenon 7at least in inanimate nature71 must be the cause of all4 ,the interconnexion1 the regularity1 the order observable in phenomena are too great to be the result of chance or of the undesigned concurrence of a number of #dd independent agencies3 and perhaps we may go on further to argue that this one cause must be the ultimate cause even of those events which are directly and immediately caused by our own wills4 ,but that is a question which ,i will put aside for the present4 ,at least for the events of physical nature there must be one ,cause4 ,and if the only sort of cause we know is a conscious and rational being1 then we have another most powerful reason for believing that the ultimate reality1 from which all other reality is derived1 is ,mind--a single conscious ,mind which we may now further describe as not only ,thought or ,intelligence but also ,will4#d ,let me add this additional consideration in support of the conclusion that the world is not merely thought by ,god but is also willed by ,god4 ,when we talk about thought without will1 we are talking about something that we know absolutely nothing about4 ,in all the consciousness that we know of1 in every moment of our own immediate waking experience1 we find thought1 feeling1 willing4 ,even in the consciousness of animals there appears to be something analogous to these three sides or aspects of consciousness3 but at all events in developed human consciousness we know of no such thing as thinking without willing4 ,all thought involves attention1 and to attend is to will4 ,if1 therefore1 on the grounds #de suggested by the ,hegelian or other post-,kantian ,idealists1 we have been led to think that the ultimate ,reality is ,mind or ,spirit1 we should naturally conclude by analogy that it must be ,will as well as ,thought and--,i may add1 though it hardly belongs to the present argument to insist upon that--,feeling4 ,on the other hand if1 with men like ,schopenhauer and ,edouard von ,hartmann1#e we are conducted by the appearances of design in ,nature to the idea that ,nature is striving after something1 that the ultimate ,reality is ,will1 we must supplement that line of argument by inferring from the analogy of our own ,consciousness that ,will without ,reason is an unintelligible and meaningless abstraction1 and that 7as indeed even ,hartmann saw7 ,schopenhauer's ,will without ,reason was as impossible an abstraction as the apparently will-less universal ,thinker of the ,hegelian3#f while against ,schopenhauer and his more reasonable successor1 ,hartmann1 ,i should insist that an unconscious ,will is as unintelligible a contradiction as an unconscious ,reason4 ,schopenhauer and ,hegel seem to have seen1 each of them1 exactly #df half of the truth3 ,god is not ,will without ,reason or ,reason without ,will1 but both ,reason and ,will4 ,and here ,i must try to meet an inevitable objection4 ,i do not say that these three activities of the human intellect stand in ,god side by side with the same distinctness and 7if ,i may say so7 irreducibility that they do in us4 ,what feeling is for a ,being who has no material organism1 we can form no distinct conception4 ,our thought with its clumsy processes of inference from the known to the unknown must be very unlike what thought is in a ,being to whom nothing is unknown4 ,all our thought too involves generalization1 and in universal concepts 7as ,mr4 ,bradley has shown us7 much that was present in the living experience of actual perception is necessarily left out4 ,thought is but a sort of reproduction--and a very imperfect reproduction--of actual1 living1 sensible experience4 ,we cannot suppose1 then1 that in ,god there is the same distinction between actual present experience and the universal concepts employed in thinking which there is in us4 ,and so1 again1 willing must be a very different thing in a being who wills or creates the objects of his own thought from what it is in beings who can only achieve their ends by distinguishing in the sharpest possible manner between the indefinite multiplicity of things which they know but do not cause and the tiny fragment #dg of the ,universe which by means of this knowledge they can control4 ,nevertheless1 though all our thoughts of ,god must be inadequate1 it is by thinking of ,him as ,thought1 ,will and ,feeling--emancipated from those limitations which are obviously due to human conditions and are inapplicable to a ,universal ,mind--that we shall attain to the truest knowledge of ,god which lies within our capacity4 ,do you find a difficulty in the idea of partial and inadequate knowledge8 ,just think1 then1 of our knowledge of other people's characters--of what goes on in other people's minds4 ,it is only by the analogy of our own immediate experience that we can come to know anything at all of what goes on in other people's minds4 ,and1 after all1 such insight into other people's thoughts1 emotions1 motives1 intentions1 characters1 remains very imperfect4 ,the difficulty is greatest when the mind which we seek to penetrate is far above our own4 ,how little most of us know what it would feel like to be a ,shakespeare1 a ,mozart1 or a ,plato6 ,and yet it would be absurd to talk as if our knowledge of our fellows was no knowledge at all4 ,it is sufficient not merely to guide our own thoughts and actions1 but to make possible sympathy1 friendship1 love4 ,is it not so with our knowledge of ,god8 ,the ,gnosticism which forgets the immensity of the difference between the ,divine ,mind and the human is not less unreasonable--not #dh less opposed to the principles on which we conduct our thinking in every other department of life--than the ,agnosticism which rejects probabilities because we cannot have immediate certainties1 and insists on knowing nothing because we cannot know everything4 ,the argument which infers that ,god is ,will from the analogy of our own consciousness is one which is in itself independent of ,idealism4 ,it has been used by many philosophers who are ,realists1 such as ,reid or ,dr4 ,martineau1 as well as by ,idealists like ,berkeley1 or ,pfleiderer1 or ,lotze4 ,it does not necessarily presuppose ,idealism2 but it does1 to my mind1 fit in infinitely better with the idealistic mode of thought than with the realistic4 ,if you hold that there is no difficulty in supposing dead1 inert matter to exist without any mind to think it or know it1 but that only a ,mind can be supposed to cause change or motion1 you are assuming a hard and fast distinction between matter and force which the whole trend of modern ,science is tending to break down4 ,it seems to imply the old ,greek conception of an inert1 passive1 characterless hule which can only be acted upon from without4 ,the modern ,physicist1 ,i imagine1 knows nothing of an inert matter which can neither attract nor repel1 even if he does not definitely embark on the more speculative theory which actually defines the atom or the electron #di as a centre of force4 ,activity belongs to the very essence of matter as understood by modern ,science4 ,if matter can exist without mind1 there is 7from the scientific point of view7 some difficulty in contending that it cannot likewise move or act without being influenced by an extraneous ,mind4 ,if1 on the other hand1 with the ,idealist we treat the notion of matter without mind as an unintelligible abstraction1 that line of thought would prepare us to see in force nothing but a mode of mental action4 ,the ,idealist who has already identified matter with the object of thought will find no difficulty in going on to see in force simply the activity or expression or object of ,will4 ,and if he learns from the ,physicist that we cannot in the last resort--from the physical point of view--distinguish matter from force1 that will fit in very well with the metaphysical position which regards thought and will as simply two inseparable aspects of the life of mind4 ,and now ,i will return once more for a moment to the idealistic argument4 ,i have no doubt that many of you will have felt a difficulty in accepting the position that the world with which we come in contact is merely a state of our own or anybody else's consciousness4 ,it is so obvious that in our experience we are in contact with a world which we do not create2 which is what it is whether we like it or not2 which opposes itself at every turn to our desires and #ej inclinations4 ,you may have been convinced that we know nothing of any external world except the effects which it produces upon consciousness4 ,but1 you will say to yourselves1 there must have been something to cause these effects4 ,you are perfectly right in so thinking4 ,certainly in our experience of the world we are in contact with a ,reality which is not any state of our own mind1 a ,reality which we do not create but simply discover1 a ,reality from which are derived the sensations which we cannot help feeling1 and the objects which we cannot help thinking4 ,so far you are quite right4 ,but very often1 when the ,realist insists that there must be something to cause in my mind this appearance1 which ,i call my consciousness of a table1 he assumes all the while that this something--the real table1 the table in itself--is there1 inside or behind the phenomenal table that ,i actually see and feel2 out there1 in space4 ,but if we were right in our analysis of space1 if we were right in arguing that space is made up of intellectual relations#g and that #ea intellectual relations can have no being and no meaning except in and for a mind which apprehends them1 then it is obvious that you must not think of this ,reality which is the cause of our experience of external objects1 as being there1 as occupying space1 as being 'external4' ,if space be a form of our thought1 or 7in ,kantian language7 a form of our sensibility1 then the ,reality which is to have an existence in itself1 cannot be in space4 ,a reality which is not in space can no longer be thought of as matter3 whatever else matter 7as commonly conceived7 means1 it is certainly something which occupies space4 ,now we know of no kind of existence which is not in space except ,mind4 ,on the idealistic view to which ,i have been endeavouring to lead you1 we are1 indeed1 justified in saying that there is a ,reality which is the underlying cause or ground of our experiences1 but that that ,reality is one which we may describe as ,thought no less than as ,will4 ,it may interest some of you to know how near one who is often considered the typical representative of naturalistic1 if not materialistic1 modes of thought1 ultimately came to accepting this identification4 ,let me read to you a passage from one of ,mr4 ,spencer's later works--the third volume of his ,sociology3-- ',this transfiguration1 which the inquiries of physicists continually increase1 is aided by that other #eb transfiguration resulting from metaphysical inquiries4 ,subjective analysis compels us to admit that our scientific interpretations of the phenomena which objects present1 are expressed in terms of our own variously-combined sensations and ideas--are expressed1 that is1 in elements belonging to consciousness1 which are but symbols of the something beyond consciousness4 ,though analysis afterwards reinstates our primitive beliefs1 to the extent of showing that behind every group of phenomenal manifestations there is always a nexus1 which is the reality that remains fixed amid appearances which are variable2#a yet we are shown that this nexus of reality is for ever inaccessible to consciousness4 ,and when1 once more1 we remember that the activities constituting consciousness1 being rigorously bounded1 cannot bring in among themselves the activities beyond the bounds1 which therefore seem unconscious1 though production of either by the other seems to imply that they are of the same essential nature2 this necessity we are under to think of the external energy in terms of the internal energy1 gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect to the ,universe3 further thought1 however1 obliging us to recognize the truth that a conception given in phenomenal manifestations of this ultimate energy can in no wise show us what it is4'#h ,now1 ,i think this is one of the passages which would justify ,mr4 ,bradley's well-known epigram1 that ,mr4 ,herbert ,spencer has told us more about the ,unknowable than the rashest of theologians has ever ventured to tell us about ,god4 #ec ,even ,kant1 who is largely responsible for the mistakes about ,causality against which this lecture has been a protest--,i mean the tendency to resolve it into necessary connexion--did in the end come to admit that in the large resort we come into contact with ,causality only in our own ,wills4 ,i owe the reference to ,professor ,ward1 and will quote the paragraph in which he introduces it3-- ',presentation1 ,feeling1 ,conation1 are ever one inseparable whole1 and advance continuously to higher and higher forms4 ,but for the fact that psychology was in the first instance studied1 not for its own sake1 but in subservience to speculation1 this cardinal importance of activity would not have been so long overlooked4 ,we should not have heard so much of passive sensations and so little of active movements4 ,it is especially interesting to find that even ,kant at length--in his latest work1 the posthumous treatise on the ,connexion of ,physics and ,metaphysics1 only recently discovered and published--came to see the fundamental character of voluntary movement4 ,i will venture to quote one sentence3 ,we should not recognise the moving forces of matter1 not even through experience1 if we were not conscious of our own activity in ourselves exerting acts of repulsion1 approximation1 etc4 ,but to ,maine de ,biran1 often called the ,french ,kant1 to ,schopenhauer1 and1 finally1 to our own ,british psychologists1 ,brown1 ,hamilton1 ,bain1 ,spencer1 is especially due the merit of seeing the paramount importance of the active side of experience4 ,to this then primarily1 and not to any merely #ed intellectual function1 we may safely refer the category of causality4'#i ,i may add that ,professor ,ward's ,naturalism and ,agnosticism1 from which ,i have quoted1 constitutes the most brilliant and important modern defence of the doctrine which ,i have endeavoured very inadequately to set before you in this lecture4 ,it is a remarkable fact that the typical exponent of popular so-called 'scientific' ,agnosticism1 and the founder of that higher metaphysical ,agnosticism which has played so large a part in the history of modern ,philosophy1 should before their deaths have both made confessions which really amount to an abjuration of all ,agnosticism4 ,if the ultimate ,reality is to be thought of as a rational ,will1 analogous to the will which each of us is conscious of himself having or being1 he is no longer the ,unknown or the ,unknowable1 but the ,god of ,religion1 who has revealed ,himself in the consciousness of man1 'made in the image of ,god4' ,what more about ,himself we may also hold to be revealed in the human spirit1 ,i hope to consider in our next lecture4 ,but1 meanwhile1 a word may be uttered in answer to the question which may very probably be asked--,is ,god a ,person8 ,a complete answer to the question would involve elaborate discussions1 but for our present purpose the question may be answered very #ee briefly4 ,if we are justified in thinking of ,god after the analogy of a human soul--if we are justified in thinking of ,him as a self-conscious ,being who thinks1 feels1 and wills1 and who is1 moreover 7if ,i may a little anticipate the subject of our next lecture7 in relation with1 capable of loving and being loved by other such beings--then it seems most natural to speak of ,god's existence as personal4 ,for to be a self-conscious being--conscious of itself and other beings1 thinking1 willing1 feeling1 loving--is what we mean by being a person4 ,if any one prefers to speak of ,god as 'super-personal1' there is no great objection to so doing1 provided that phrase is not made 7as it often is7 an excuse for really thinking of ,god after the analogy of some kind of existence lower than that of persons--as a force1 an unconscious substance1 or merely a name for the totality of things4 ,but for myself1 ,i prefer to say that our own self-consciousness gives us only an ideal of the highest type of existence which it nevertheless very imperfectly satisfies1 and therefore ,i would rather think ,god is a ,person in a far truer1 higher1 more complete sense than that in which any human being can be a person4 ,god alone fully realizes the ideal of ,personality4 ,the essence of ,personality is something positive3 it signifies to us the highest kind of being within our knowledge--not 7as is too often supposed7 the mere limitations #ef and restraints which characterize human conscious life as we know it in ourselves4 ,if we are justified in thinking of ,god after the analogy of the highest existence within our knowledge1 we had better call ,him a ,person4 ,the word is no doubt inadequate to the reality1 as is all the language that we can employ about ,god2 but it is at least more adequate than the terms employed by those who scruple to speak of ,god as a ,person4 ,it is at least more adequate and more intelligent than to speak of ,him as a force1 a substance1 a 'something not ourselves which makes for righteousness4' ,things do not 'make for righteousness'2 and in using the term ,person we shall at least make it clear that we do not think of ,him as a 'thing1' or a collection of things1 or a vague substratum of things1 or even a mere totality of minds like our own4#aj ,,literature ,as has been explained in this ,lecture1 many idealistic writers who insist upon the necessity of ,god as a universal1 knowing ,mind to explain both the existence of the world and our knowledge of it1 are more or less ambiguous about the question whether the divine ,mind is to be thought of as willing or causing the world1 though passages occur in the writings of most of them which tend in this direction4 ',god #eg must be thought of as creating the objects of his own thought' is a perfectly orthodox ,hegelian formula4 ,among the idealistic writers 7besides ,berkeley7 who correct this--as it seems to me--one-sided tendency1 and who accept on the whole the view of the divine ,causality taken in this ,lecture1 may be mentioned ,lotze1 the #ith ,book of whose ,microcosmus 7translated by ,miss ,elizabeth ,hamilton and ,miss ,constance ,jones7 or the third ,book of his ,logic 7translation ed4 by ,prof4 ,bosanquet71 may very well be read by themselves 7his views may also be studied in his short ,philosophy of ,religion--two translations1 by the late ,mrs4 ,conybeare and by ,professor ,ladd72 ,pfleiderer1 ,philosophy and ,development of ,religion1 especially chapter v42 and ,professor ,ward's ,naturalism and ,agnosticism4 ,among the non-idealistic writers who have based their argument for the existence of ,god mainly or largely upon the consideration that ,causality is unintelligible apart from a rational ,will1 may be mentioned--among older writers ,reid1 ,essays on the ,active ,powers of ,man1 ,essay ,i4 7especially chapter v471 and among more recent ones ,martineau1 ,a ,study of ,religion4 ,flint's ,theism may be recommended as one of the best attempts to state the theistic case with a minimum of technical ,metaphysic4 ,two little books by ,professor ,andrew ,seth 7now ,seth ,pringle-,pattison71 though not primarily occupied with the religious problem1 may be mentioned as very useful introductions to ,philosophy--,the ,scottish ,philosophers and ,hegelianism and ,personality4 #a ,of course deeply religious men like ,green who have held this view did not admit1 or did not realize1 such consequences4 ,the tendency here criticized is undoubtedly derived from ,hegel1 but passages suggestive of the opposite view can be extracted from his writings1 e4g43 ',god1 however1 as subjective ,power1 is not simply will1 intention1 etc41 but rather immediate ,cause' 7,philosophy of ,religion1 ,eng4 trans41 ii4 p4 #abi74 #b ,the idea of ,causality was by ,kant identified with the idea of logical connexion1 i4e4 the relation of the premisses of a syllogism to its conclusion2 but this does not involve time at all1 and time is essential to the idea of ,causality4 ,for an admirable vindication of our immediate consciousness of ,causality see ,professor ,stout's chapter on ',the ,concept of ,mental ,activity' in ,analytic ,psychology 7,book ,,ii4 chap4 i474 #c ,excursion1 ,book ,,iv4 #d ,for the further development of this argument see ,lecture ,,iv4 #e ,see especially the earlier chapters of ,the ,philosophy of the ,unconscious 7translated by ,w4 ,c4 ,coupland74 #f ,of course passages can be quoted from ,hegel himself which suggest the idea that ,god is ,will as well as ,thought2 ,i am speaking of the general tendency of ,hegel and many of his disciples4 ,some recent ,hegelians1 such as ,professor ,boyce1 seem to be less open to this criticism1 but there are difficulties in thinking of ,god as ,will and yet continuing to speak of ultimate ,reality as out of ,time4 #g ,it may be objected that this is true only of 'conceptual space' 7that is1 the space of ,geometry71 but not of 'perceptual space1' i4e4 space as it presents itself in a child's perception of an object4 ,the distinction is no doubt from many points of view important1 but we must not speak of 'conceptual space' and 'perceptual space' as if they had nothing to do with one another4 ,if the relations of conceptual space were not in some sense contained or implied in our perceptions1 no amount of abstraction or reflection could get the relations out of them4 #h ,sociology1 vol4 iii4 p4 #agb4 #i ,naturalism and ,agnosticism1 vol4 ii4 pp4 #aia-b4 #aj ,for a further discussion of the subject the reader may be referred to my essay on ',personality in ,god and ,man' in ,personal ,idealism4 #eh ,,lecture ,,iii ,,god ,,and ,,the ,,moral ,,consciousness ,a course of purely metaphysical reasoning has led us up to the idea of ,god--that is to say1 of a conscious and rational ,mind and ,will for which the world exists and by which that world and all other spirits are caused to exist4 ,i have passed over a host of difficulties--the relation of ,god to time1 the question whether or in what sense the world may be supposed to have a beginning and an end1 the question of the relation in which ,god1 the universal ,mind1 stands to other minds1 the question of ,free-will4 ,these are difficulties which would involve elaborate metaphysical discussions3 ,i shall return to some of them in a later lecture4 ,it must suffice for the present to say that more than one answer to many of these questions might conceivably be given consistently with the view of the divine nature which ,i have contended for4 ,all that ,i need insist on for my present purpose is-- 7#a7 ,that ,god is personal in the sense that ,he is a #ei self-conscious1 thinking1 willing1 feeling ,being1 distinguishable from each and all less perfect minds4 7#b7 ,that all other minds are in some sense brought into being by the divine ,mind1 while at the same time they have such a resemblance to1 or community of nature with1 their source that they may be regarded as not mere creations but as in some sense reproductions1 more or less imperfect1 of that source1 approximating in various degrees to that ideal of ,personality which is realised perfectly in ,god alone4 ,in proportion as they approximate to that ideal1 they are causes of their own actions1 and can claim for themselves the kind of causality which we attribute in its perfection to ,god4 ,i content myself now with claiming for the developed1 rational human self a measure of freedom to the extent which ,i have just defined--that it is the real cause of its own actions4 ,it is capable of self-determination4 ,the man's actions are determined by his character4 ,that is quite consistent with the admission that ,god is the ultimate cause of a self of such and such a character coming into existence at such and such a time4 7#c7 ,i will not say that the conception of those who regard the human mind as literally a part of the divine1 so that the human consciousness is in no sense outside of the divine1 is necessarily1 for those who hold it1 inconsistent with the conception of #fj personality both in ,god and man3 ,i will only say that ,i do not myself understand such an assertion4 ,i regard the human mind as derived from ,god1 but not as being part of ,god4 ,further discussion of this question ,i reserve for my next lecture4 ,we have led up to the idea of ,god's existence4 ,but so far we have discovered nothing at all about ,his character or purposes4 ,and it is clear that without some such knowledge the belief in ,god could be of little or no value from any religious or moral point of view4 ,how are we to learn anything about the character of ,god8 ,i imagine that at the present day few people will attempt to prove the goodness or benevolence of ,god from an empirical examination of the facts of ,nature or of ,history4 ,there is1 no doubt1 much in ,history and in ,nature to suggest the idea of ,benevolence1 but there is much to suggest a directly opposite conclusion4 ,few of us at the present day are likely to be much impressed by the argument which ,paley bases upon the existence of the little apparatus in the throat by which it is benevolently arranged that1 though constantly on the point of being choked by our food1 we hardly ever are choked4 ,i cannot help reminding you of the characteristic passage3 ',consider a city-feast1' he exclaims1 'what manducation1 what deglutition1 and yet not one ,alderman choked in a century6' ,such arguments look at the matter from the point #fa of view of the ,alderman3 the point of view of the turtle and the turkey is entirely forgotten4 ,i would not for a moment speak disrespectfully of the argument from design4 ,darwinism has changed its form1 but anybody who reads ,edouard von ,hartmann's ,philosophy of the ,unconscious is not likely to rise from its perusal with the idea that the evidences of design have been destroyed by ,darwinism1 whatever he may think of ,hartmann's strange conclusion that the design can be explained by the operation of an unconscious ,mind or ,will4 ,the philosophical argument of ,mr4 ,r4 ,b4 ,haldane in ,the ,pathway to ,reality1#a and the purely biological argument of ,dr4 ,john ,haldane in his two lectures on ,life and ,mechanism1 and still more recently the brilliant and very important work of ,m4 ,bergson1 ,l',evolution ,creatrice have1 as it seems to me1 abundantly shown that it is as impossible as ever it was to explain even the growth of a plant without supposing that in it and all organic ,nature there is a striving towards an end4 ,but the argument from design1 though it testifies to purpose in the ,universe1 tells us nothing about the nature of that purpose4 ,purpose is one thing2 benevolent purpose is another4 ,nobody's estimate of the comparative amount of happiness and misery in the world is worth much2 but for my own part1 if ,i trusted simply to empirical evidence1 #fb ,i should not be disposed to do more than slightly attenuate the pessimism of the ,pessimists4 ,at all events1 ,nature is far too 'red in tooth and claw' to permit of our basing an argument for a benevolent deity upon a contemplation of the facts of animal and human life4 ,there is but one source from which such an idea can possibly be derived--from the evidence of our own moral consciousness4 ,our moral ideals are the work of ,reason4 ,that the happiness of many ought to be preferred to the happiness of one1 that pleasure is better than pain1 that goodness is of more value than pleasure1 that some pleasures are better than others--such judgements are as much the work of our own ,reason1 they are as much self-evident truths1 as the truth that two and two make four1 or that ,a cannot be both ,b and not ,b at the same time1 or that two straight lines cannot enclose a space4 ,we have every right to assume that such truths hold good for ,god as well as for man4 ,if such ,idealism as ,i have endeavoured to lead you to is well founded1 the mind which knows comes from ,god1 and therefore the knowledge which that mind possesses must also be taken as an imperfect or fragmentary reproduction of ,god's knowledge4 ,and the ,theist who rejects ,idealism but admits the existence of self-evident truths will be equally justified in assuming that1 for ,god as well as for man1 two and two must make #fc four4 ,we have just as much right to assume that our moral ideas--our ideas of value--must come from ,god too4 ,for ,god too1 as for us1 there must exist the idea1 the ultimate category of the good2 and our judgements of value--judgements that such and such an end is good or worth striving for--in so far as they are true judgements1 must be supposed to represent ,his judgements4 ,we are conscious1 in proportion as we are rational1 of pursuing ends which we judge to be good4 ,if such judgements reveal ,god's judgements1 ,god must be supposed to aim likewise at an ideal of good--the same ideal which is revealed to us by our moral judgements4 ,in these judgements then we have a revelation1 the only possible revelation1 of the character of ,god4 ,the argument which ,i have suggested is simply a somewhat exacter statement of the popular idea that ,conscience is the voice of ,god4 ,further to vindicate the idea of the existence1 authority1 objective validity of ,conscience would lead us too far away into the region of ,moral ,philosophy for our present subject4 ,i will only attempt very briefly to guard against some possible misunderstandings1 and to meet some obvious objections3 7#a7 ,it need hardly be pointed out that the assertion of the existence of the ,moral ,consciousness is not in the slightest degree inconsistent with recognising its gradual growth and development4 ,the #fd moral faculty1 like every other faculty or aspect or activity of the human soul1 has grown gradually4 ,no rational man doubts the validity--no ,idealist doubts the a priori character--of our mathematical judgements because probably monkeys and possibly primitive men cannot count1 and certainly cannot perform more than the very simplest arithmetical operations4 ,still less do we doubt the validity of mathematical reasoning because not only children and savages1 but sometimes even distinguished classical scholars--a ,macaulay1 a ,matthew ,arnold1 a ,t4 ,s4 ,evans1--were wholly incapable of understanding very simple mathematical arguments4 ,equally little do we deny a real difference between harmony and discord because people may be found who see no difference between ',god save the ,king' and ',pop goes the ,weasel4' ,self-evident truth does not mean truth which is evident to everybody4 7#b7 ,it is not doubted that the gradual evolution of our actual moral ideas--our actual ideas about what is right or wrong in particular cases--has been largely influenced by education1 environment1 association1 social pressure1 superstition1 perhaps natural selection--in short1 all the agencies by which naturalistic ,moralists try to account for the existence of ,morality4 ,even ,euclid1 or whatever his modern substitute may be1 has to be taught2 but that does not show that ,geometry is an arbitrary system #fe invented by the ingenious and interested devices of those who want to get money by teaching it4 ,arithmetic was invented largely as an instrument of commerce2 but it could not have been invented if there were really no such things as number and quantity1 or if the human mind had no original capacity for recognizing them4 ,our scientific ideas1 our political ideas1 our ideas upon a thousand subjects have been partly developed1 partly thwarted and distorted in their growth1 by similar influences4 ,but1 however great the difficulty of getting rid of these distorting influences and facing such questions in a perfectly dry light1 nobody suggests that objective truth on such matters is non-existent or for ever unattainable4 ,a claim for objective validity for the moral judgement does not mean a claim for infallibility on behalf of any individual ,conscience4 ,we may make mistakes in ,morals just as we may make mistakes in ,science1 or even in pure ,mathematics4 ,if a class of forty small boys are asked to do a sum1 they will probably not all bring out the same answer3 but nobody doubts that one answer alone is right1 though arithmetical capacity is a variable quantity4 ,what is meant is merely that1 if ,i am right in affirming that this is good1 you cannot be likewise right in saying that it is bad3 and that we have some capacity--though doubtless a variable capacity--of judging which is the true #ff view4 ,hence our moral judgements1 in so far as they are true judgements1 must be taken to be reproductions in us of the thought of ,god4 ,to show that an idea has been gradually developed1 tells us nothing as to its truth or falsehood--one way or the other4 7#c7 ,in comparing the self-evidence of moral to that of mathematical judgements1 it is not suggested that our moral judgements in detail are as certain1 as clear and sharply defined1 as mathematical judgements1 or that they can claim so universal a consensus among the competent4 ,what is meant is merely 7a7 that the notion of good in general is an ultimate category of thought2 that it contains a meaning intelligible not perhaps to every individual human soul1 but to the normal1 developed1 human consciousness2 and 7b7 that the ultimate truth of morals1 if it is seen at all1 must be seen immediately4 ,an ultimate moral truth cannot be deduced from1 or proved by1 any other truth4 ,you cannot prove that pleasure is better than pain1 or that virtue is better than pleasure1 to any one who judges differently4 ,it does not follow that all men have an equally clear and delicate moral consciousness4 ,the power of discriminating moral values differs as widely as the power of distinguishing musical sounds1 or of appreciating what is excellent in music4 ,some men may be almost or altogether without such a power of moral discrimination1 just as some men are wholly #fg destitute of an ear for music2 while the higher degrees of moral appreciation are the possession of the few rather than of the many4 ,moral insight is not possessed by all men in equal measure4 ,moral genius is as rare as any other kind of genius4 7#d7 ,when we attribute ,morality to ,god1 it is not meant that the conduct which is right for men in detail ought to be or could possibly in all cases be practised by ,god4 ,it is a childish objection 7though it is sometimes made by modern philosophers who should know better7 to allege with ,aristotle that ,god cannot be supposed to make or keep contracts4 ,and in the same way1 when we claim universal validity for our moral judgements1 we do not mean that the rules suitable for human conduct would be the same for beings differently organized and constituted4 ,our rules of sexual ,morality are clearly applicable only to sexually constituted beings4 ,what is meant in asserting that these rules are universally and objectively valid is that these are the rules which every rational intelligence1 in proportion as it is rational1 will recognize as being suitable1 or conducive to the ideal life1 in beings constituted as we are4 ,the truth that permanent monogamous marriage represents the true type of sexual relations for human beings will be none the less an objectively valid ethical truth1 because the lower animals are below it1 while superior beings1 #fh it may be1 are above it4 ,universal love is none the less the absolute moral ideal because it would be absurd to say that beasts of prey do wrong in devouring other creatures1 or because war is sometimes necessary as a means to the end of love at our present imperfect stage of social and intellectual development4 ,the means to the highest good vary with circumstances2 the amount of good that is attainable in such and such circumstances varies also2 consequently the right course of conduct will be different for beings differently constituted or placed under different circumstances3 but the principles which1 in the view of a perfect intelligence1 would determine what is the right course for different beings in different circumstances will be always the same4 ,the ultimate principles of our moral judgement1 e4g4 that love is better than hate1 are just as applicable to ,god as they are to us4 ,our conception of the highest good may be inadequate2 but we certainly shall not attain to greater adequacy1 or a nearer approach to ultimate truth1 by flatly contradicting our own moral judgements4 ,it would be just as reasonable to argue that because the law of gravitation might be proved1 from the point of view of the highest knowledge1 to be an inadequate statement of the truth1 and all inadequacy involves some error1 therefore we had better assume that from the point of view of ,god there is no difference whatever #fi between attraction and repulsion4 ,all arguments for what is called a 'super-moral' ,deity or a 'super-moral' ,absolute are open to this fatal objection3 moral judgements cannot possibly rest upon anything but the moral consciousness1 and yet these doctrines contradict the moral consciousness4 ,the idea of good is derived from the moral consciousness4 ,when a man declares that from the point of view of the ,universe all things are very good1 he gets the idea of good from his own moral consciousness1 and is assuming the objective validity of its dictates4 ,his judgement is an ethical judgement as much as mine when ,i say that to me some things in this world appear very bad4 ,if he is not entitled to assume the validity of his ethical judgements1 his proposition is false or meaningless4 ,if he is entitled to assume their validity1 why should he distrust that same moral consciousness when it affirms 7as it undoubtedly does7 that pain and sin are for ever bad1 and not 7as our 'super-moral' ,religionists suggest7 additional artistic touches which only add to the aesthetic effect of the whole8 ,i shall now proceed to develop some of the consequences which 7as it appears to me7 flow from the doctrine that our belief in the goodness of ,god is an inference from our own moral consciousness3 7#a7 ,it throws light on the relations between ,religion and ,morality4 ,the champions of ethical #gj education as a substitute for ,religion and of ethical societies as a substitute for ,churches are fond of assuming that ,religion is not only unnecessary to1 but actually destructive of1 the intrinsic authority of the moral law4 ,if we supposed with a few theologians in the most degenerate periods of ,theology 7with ,william of ,occam1 some extreme ,calvinists1 and a few eighteenth-century divines like ,archdeacon ,paley7 that actions are right or wrong merely because willed by ,god--meaning by ,god simply a powerful being without goodness or moral character1 then undoubtedly the ,secularists would be right4 ,if a religious ,morality implies that ,virtue means merely 7in ,paley's words7 'the doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of ,god and for the sake of everlasting happiness' 7so that if ,god were to will murder and adultery1 those practices would forthwith become meritorious71 then undoubtedly it would be better to teach ,morality without ,religion than with it4 ,but that is a caricature of the true teaching of ,christ or of any considerable ,christian theologian4 ,undoubtedly we must assert what is called the 'independence' of the moral judgement4 ,the judgement 'to love is better than to hate' has a meaning complete in itself1 which contains no reference whatever to any theological presupposition4 ,it is a judgement which is1 and which can intelligibly be1 made by people of all religions or of none4 ,but #ga we may still raise the question whether the validity of that judgement can be defended without theological implications4 ,and ,i am prepared most distinctly to maintain that it cannot4 ,these moral judgements claim objective validity4 ,when we say 'this is right1' we do not mean merely ',i approve this course of conduct1' 'this conduct gives me a thrill of satisfaction1 a feeling of approbation1 a pleasure of the moral sense4' ,if that were all that was meant1 it would be perfectly possible that another person might feel an equally satisfactory glow of approbation at conduct of a precisely opposite character without either of them being wrong4 ,a bull-fight fills most ,spaniards with feelings of lively approbation1 and most ,englishmen with feelings of acute disapprobation4 ,if such moral judgements were mere feelings1 neither of them would be wrong4 ,there could be no question of objective rightness or wrongness4 ,mustard is not objectively nice or objectively nasty3 it is simply nice to some people and nasty to others4 ,the mustard-lover has no right to condemn the mustard-hater1 or the mustard-hater the mustard-lover4 ,if ,morality were merely a matter of feeling or emotion1 actions would not be objectively right or objectively wrong2 but simply right to some people1 wrong to others4 ,hume would be right in holding the morality of an action to consist simply in the pleasure it gives to the person who #gb contemplates it4 ,rightness thus becomes simply a name for the fact of social approbation4#b ,and yet surely the very heart of the affirmation which the moral consciousness makes in each of us is that right and wrong are not matters of mere subjective feeling4 ,when ,i assert 'this is right1' ,i do not claim personal infallibility4 ,i may1 indeed1 be wrong1 as ,i may be wrong in my political or scientific theories4 ,but ,i do mean that ,i think ,i am right2 and that1 if ,i am right1 you cannot also be right when you affirm that this same action is wrong4 ,this objective validity is the very core and centre of the idea of ,duty or moral obligation4 ,that is why it is so important to assert that moral judgements are the work of ,reason1 not of a supposed moral sense or any other kind of feeling4 ,feelings may vary in different men without any of them being in the wrong2 red really is the same as green to a colour-blind person4 ,what we mean when we talk about the existence of ,duty is that things are right or wrong1 no matter what you or ,i think about them--that the laws of ,morality #gc are quite as much independent of my personal likings and dislikings as the physical laws of ,nature4 ,that is what is meant by the 'objectivity' of the moral law4 ,now1 the question arises--',can such an objectivity be asserted by those who take a purely materialistic or naturalistic view of the ,universe8' ,whatever our metaphysical theories about the nature of ,reality may be1 we can in practice have no difficulty in the region of ,physical ,science about recognizing an objective reality of some kind which is other than my mere thinking about it4 ,that fire will burn whether ,i think so or not is practically recognized by persons of all metaphysical persuasions4 ,if ,i say ',i can cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast1' ,i try the experiment1 and ,i fail4 ,i imagine the feast1 but ,i am hungry still3 and if ,i persist in the experiment1 ,i die4 ,but what do we mean when we say that things are right or wrong whether ,i think them so or not1 that the ,moral ,law exists outside me and independently of my thinking about it8 ,where and how does this moral law exist8 ,the physical laws of ,nature may be supposed by the ,materialist or the ,realist somehow to exist in matter3 to the ,metaphysician there may be difficulties in such a view1 but the difficulties are not obvious to common-sense4 ,but surely 7whatever may be thought about physical laws7 the moral law1 #gd which expresses not any matter of physical fact but what ought to be thought of acts1 cannot be supposed to exist in a purely material ,universe4 ,an 'ought' can exist only in and for a mind4 ,in what mind1 then1 does the moral law exist8 ,as a matter of fact1 different people's moral judgements contradict one another4 ,and the consciousness of no living man can well be supposed to be a flawless reflection of the absolute moral ideal4 ,on a non-theistic view of the ,universe1 then1 the moral law cannot well be thought of as having any actual existence4 ,the objective validity of the moral law can indeed be and no doubt is asserted1 believed in1 acted upon without reference to any theological creed2 but it cannot be defended or fully justified without the pre-supposition of ,theism4 ,what we mean by an objective law is that the moral law is a part of the ultimate nature of things1 on a level with the laws of physical nature1 and it cannot be that1 unless we assume that law to be an expression of the same mind in which physical laws originate4 ,the idea of duty1 when analysed1 implies the idea of ,god4 ,whatever else ,plato meant by the 'idea of the good1' this at least was one of his meanings--that the moral law has its source in the source of all ,reality4 ,and therefore at bottom popular feeling is right in holding that religious belief is necessary to ,morality4 ,of course ,i do not mean to say that1 were #ge religious belief to disappear from the world1 ,morality would disappear too4 ,but ,i do think ,morality would become quite a different thing from what it has been for the higher levels of religious thought and feeling4 ,the best men would no doubt go on acting up to their own highest ideal just as if it did possess objective validity1 no matter how unable they might be to reconcile their practical with their speculative beliefs4 ,but it would not be so for the many--or perhaps even for the few in their moments of weakness and temptation1 when once the consequences of purely naturalistic ,ethics were thoroughly admitted and realized4 ,the only kind of objective validity which can be recognized on a purely naturalistic view of ,ethics is conformity to public opinion4 ,the tendency of all naturalistic ,ethics is to make a ,god of public opinion4 ,and if no other deity were recognized1 such a ,god would assuredly not be without worshippers4 ,and yet the strongest temptation to most of us is the temptation to follow a debased public opinion--the opinion of our age1 our class1 our party4 ,apart from faith in a perfectly righteous ,god whose commands are1 however imperfectly1 revealed in the individual ,conscience1 we can find no really valid reason why the individual should act on his own sense of what is intrinsically right1 even when he finds himself an ',athanasius contra mundum1' and when his own personal likings and inclinations #gf and interests are on the side of the world4 ,kant was at bottom right1 though perhaps he did not give the strongest reasons for his position1 in making the idea of ,god a postulate of ,morality4 ,from a more directly practical point of view ,i need hardly point out how much easier it is to feel towards the moral law the reverence that we ought to feel when we believe that that law is embodied in a personal ,will4 ,not only is religious ,morality not opposed to the idea of duty for duty's sake3 it is speculatively the only reasonable basis of it2 practically and emotionally the great safeguard of it4 ,and whatever may be thought of the possibility of a speculative defence of such an idea without ,theism1 the practical difficulty of teaching it--especially to children1 uneducated and unreflective persons--seems to be quite insuperable4#c ,in more than one country in which religious education has been banished from the primary schools1 grave observers complain that the idea of ,duty seems to be suffering an eclipse in the minds of the rising #gg generation2 some of them add that in those lands crime is steadily on the increase4 ,catechisms of civil duty and the like have not hitherto proved very satisfactory substitutes for the old teaching about the fear of ,god4 ,would that it were more frequently remembered on both sides of our educational squabbles that the supreme object of all religious education should be to instil into children's minds in the closest possible connexion the twin ideas of ,god and of ,duty6 7#b7 ,i have tried to show that the ethical importance of the idea of ,god is prior to and independent of any belief in the idea of future rewards and punishments or of a future life1 however conceived of4 ,but when the idea of a righteous ,god has once been accepted1 the idea of ,immortality seems to me to follow from it as a sort of corollary4 ,if any one on a calm review of the actual facts of the world's history can suppose that such a world as ours could be the expression of the will of a rational and moral ,being without the assumption of a future life for which this is a discipline or education or preparatory stage1 argument would be useless with him4 ,inveterate ,optimism1 like inveterate ,scepticism1 admits of no refutation1 but in most minds produces no conviction4 ,for those who are convinced that the world has a rational end1 and yet that life as we see it 7taken by itself7 cannot be that end1 the hypothesis #gh of ,immortality becomes a necessary deduction from their belief in ,god4 ,i would not disparage the educative effect of the belief in a future life even when expressed in the crude and inadequate metaphor of reward and punishment4 ,few of us1 ,i venture to think1 have reached the moral level at which the belief--not in a vindictive1 retributive1 unending torment1 but in a disciplinary or purgatorial education of souls prolonged after death--is without its value4 ,at the same time it is a mere caricature of all higher religious beliefs when the religious motive is supposed to mean simply a fear of punishment and hope of personal reward1 even of the least sensuous or material kind4 ,love of goodness for its own sake is for the ,theist identical with the love of ,god4 ,love of a ,person is a stronger force than devotion to an idea2 and an ethical conception of ,god carries with it the idea of ,immortality4 ,the wages of sin is death3 if the wages of ,virtue be dust1 ,would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly8 ,she desires no isles of the blest1 no quiet seats of the just1 ,to rest in a golden grove1 or to bask in a summer sky2 ,give her the wages of going on1 and not to die4#d ,belief in human ,immortality is1 as ,i have suggested1 the postulate without which most of us cannot #gi believe in ,god4 ,even for its own sake it is of the highest ethical value4 ,the belief in ,immortality gives a meaning to life even when it has lost all other meaning4 ',it is rather1' in the noble words of the late ,professor ,sidgwick1 'from a disinterested aversion to an universe so irrationally constituted that the wages of virtue should be dust than from any private reckoning about his own wages1' that the good man clings to the idea of ,immortality4 ,and that is not all4 ,the value of all higher goods even in this life1 though it does not depend wholly upon their duration1 does partly depend upon it4 ,it would be better to be pure and unselfish for a day than to be base and selfish for a century4 ,and yet we do not hesitate to commend the value of intellectual and of all kinds of higher enjoyments on account of their greater durability4 ,why1 then1 should we shrink from admitting that the value of character really is increased when it is regarded as surviving bodily death8 ,disbelief in ,immortality would1 ,i believe1 in the long run and for the vast majority of men1 carry with it an enormous enhancement of the value of the carnal and sensual over the spiritual and intellectual element in life4 7#c7 ,a third consequence which follows from our determining to accept the moral consciousness as containing the supreme revelation of ,god is this4 ,from the point of view of the moral consciousness #hj we cannot say that the ,universe is wholly good4 ,we have only one means of judging whether things are good or bad3 the idea of value is wholly derived from our own ethical judgements or judgements of value4 ,if we distrust these judgements1 there is no higher court to which we can appeal4 ,and if we distrust our most ultimate judgements of value1 ,i do not know why we should trust any judgements whatever4 ,even if we grant that from some very transcendental metaphysical height--the height1 for instance1 of ,mr4 ,bradley's ,philosophy--it may be contended that none of our judgements are wholly true or fully adequate to express the true nature of ,reality1 we at all events cannot get nearer to ,reality than we are conducted by the judgements which present themselves to us as immediate and self-evident4 ,now1 if we do apply these judgements of value to the ,universe as we know it1 can we say that everything in it seems to be very good8 ,for my own part1 ,i unhesitatingly say1 ',pain is an evil1 and sin is a worse evil1 and nothing on earth can ever make them good4' ,how then are we to account for such evils in a ,universe which we believe to express the thought and will of a perfectly righteous ,being8 ,in only one way that ,i know of--by supposing they are means to a greater good4 ,that is really the substance and substratum of all the ,theodicies of all the ,philosophers and all the #ha ,theologians except those who frankly trample on or throw over the ,moral ,consciousness1 and declare that1 for those who see truly1 pain and sin are only additional sources of aesthetic interest in a great world-drama produced for his own entertainment by a ,deity not anthropomorphic enough to love but still anthropomorphic enough to be amused4 ,i shall be told no doubt that this is limiting ,god4 ,a human being may1 it will be urged1 without loss of goodness1 do things in themselves evil1 as a means to a greater good3 as a surgeon1 he may cause excruciating pain2 as a statesman or a soldier1 he may doom thousands to a cruel death2 as a wise administrator of the poor law1 he may refuse to relieve much suffering1 in order that he may not cause more suffering4 ,but this is because his power is limited2 he has to work upon a world which has a nature of its own independent of his volition4 ,to apply the same explanation to the evil which ,god causes1 is to make ,him finite instead of ,infinite1 limited in power instead of ,omnipotent4 ,now in a sense ,i admit that this is so4 ,i am not wedded to the words ',infinite' or ',omnipotent4' ,but ,i would protest against a persistent misrepresentation of the point of view which ,i defend4 ,it is suggested that the limit to the power of ,god must necessarily spring from the existence of some other thing or being outside of ,him1 not created by ,him or under ,his #hb control4 ,i must protest that that is not so4 ,everybody admits that ,god cannot change the past2 few ,philosophers consider it necessary to maintain that ,god could construct triangles with their angles not together equal to two right angles1 or think it any derogation from his ,omnipotence to say that ,he could not make the sum of two and two to be other than four4 ,few ,theologians push their idea of ,freewill so far as to insist that ,god could will ,himself to be unjust or unloving1 or that1 being just and loving1 he could do unjust or unloving acts4 ,there are necessities to which even ,god must submit4 ,but they are not imposed upon ,him from without3 they are parts of ,his own essential nature4 ,the limitation by which ,god cannot attain ,his ends without causing some evil is a limitation of exactly the same nature4 ,if you say that it is no limitation of ,god not to be able to change the past1 for the thing is really unmeaning1 then ,i submit that in the same way it may be no limitation that ,he should not be able to evolve highly organized beings without a struggle for existence1 or to train human beings in unselfishness without allowing the existence both of sin and of pain4 ,from the point of view of perfect knowledge1 these things might turn out to be just as unmeaning as for ,god to change the past4 ,the popular idea of ,omnipotence is one which really does not bear looking into4 ,if we supposed the world #hc to contain no evil at all1 still there would be in it a definite amount of good4 ,twice such a world would be twice as good4 ,why is there not twice that amount of good8 ,a being who deliberately created only a good world of limited quantity--a definite number of spirits 7for instance7 enjoying so much pleasure and so much virtue--when he could have created twice that number of spirits1 and consequently twice that amount of good1 would not be perfectly good or loving4 ,and so on ad infinitum1 no matter how much good you suppose him to have created4 ,the only sense which we can intelligibly give to the idea of a divine ,omnipotence is this--that ,god possesses all the power there is1 that ,he can do all things that are in their own nature possible4#e ,but there is a more formidable objection which ,i have yet to meet4 ,it has been urged by certain ,philosophers of great eminence that1 if we suppose ,god not to be unlimited in power1 we have no guarantee that the world is even good on the whole2 we should not be authorized to infer anything as to a future life or the ultimate destiny of ,humanity from the fact of ,god's goodness4 ,a limited ,god might be a defeated ,god4 ,i admit the difficulty4 ,this is the 'greatest wave' of all in the theistic #hd argument4 ,in reply1 ,i would simply appeal to the reasons which ,i have given for supposing that the world is really willed by ,god4 ,a rational being does not will evil except as a means to a greater good4 ,if ,god be rational1 we have a right to suppose that the world must contain more good than evil1 or it would not be willed at all4 ,a being who was obliged to create a world which did not seem to him good would be a blind force1 as force is understood by the pure ,materialist1 not a rational ,will4 ,that much we have a right to claim as a matter of strict ,logic2 and that would to my own mind be a sufficient reason for assuming that1 at least for the higher order of spirits1 such a life as ours must be intended as the preface to a better life than this4 ,but ,i should go further4 ,to me it appears that such evils as sin and pain are so enormously worse than the mere absence of good1 that ,i could not regard as rational a ,universe in which the good did not very greatly predominate over the evil4 ,more than that ,i do not think we are entitled to say4 ,and yet ,justice is so great a good that it is rational to hope that for every individual conscious being--at least each individual capable of any high degree of good--there must be a predominance of good on the whole4 ,beings of very small capacity might conceivably be created chiefly or entirely as a means to a vastly greater good than any that they #he themselves enjoy3 the higher a spirit is in the scale of being1 the more difficult it becomes to suppose that it has been brought into existence merely as a means to another's good1 or that it will not ultimately enjoy a good which will make it on the whole good that it should have been born4 ,i could wish myself that1 in popular religious teaching1 there was a franker conception of this position--a position which1 as ,i have said1 is really implied in the ,theodicies of all the ,divines4 ,popular unbelief--and sometimes the unbelief of more cultivated persons--rests mainly upon the existence of evil4 ,we should cut at the roots of it by teaching frankly that this is the best of all possible ,universes1 though not the best of all imaginable ,universes--such ,universes as we can construct in our own imagination by picturing to ourselves all the good that there is in the world without any of the evil4 ,we may still say1 if we please1 that ,god is infinite because ,he is limited by nothing outside ,his own nature1 except what ,he has ,himself caused4 ,we can still call ,him ,omnipotent in the sense that ,he possesses all the power there is4 ,and in many ways such a belief is far more practically consolatory and stimulating than a belief in a ,god who can do all things by any means and who consequently does not need our help4 ,in our view1 we are engaged not in a sham warfare with an evil that is really #hf good1 but in a real warfare with a real evil1 a struggle in which we have the ultimate power in the ,universe on our side1 but one in which the victory cannot be won without our help1 a real struggle in which we are called upon to be literally fellow-workers with ,god4 ,,literature ,the subject is more or less explicitly dealt with in most of the works mentioned at the end of the last two lectures1 and also in books on ,moral ,philosophy too numerous to mention4 ,classical vindications of the authority of the ,moral ,consciousness are ,bishop ,butler's ,sermons1 and ,kant's ,fundamental ,principles of the ,metaphysic of ,morals and other ethical writings 7translated by ,t4 ,k4 ,abbott74 ,i have expressed my own views on the subject with some fullness in the third book of my ,theory of ,good and ,evil4 #a ,see especially ,book ,,ii4 ,lect4 iii4 #b ',we do not infer a character to be virtuous1 because it pleases3 but in feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner1 we in effect feel that it is virtuous4' 7,treatise1 ,part ,i1 ,section ii41 ed4 ,green and ,grose1 vol4 ii4 p4 #bdg47 ',the distinction of moral good and evil is founded in the pleasure or pain1 which results from the view of any sentiment1 or character2 and as that pleasure or pain cannot be unknown to the person who feels it1 it follows that there is just so much virtue in any character as every one places in it1 and that 'tis impossible in this particular we can ever be mistaken4' 7,ibid4 vol4 ii4 p4 #caa47 #c ,there are no doubt ways of making ,morality the law of the ,universe without what most of us understand by ,theism1 though not without ,religion1 and a ,religion of a highly metaphysical character2 but because such non-theistic modes of religious thought exist in ,buddhism1 for instance1 it does not follow that they are reasonable1 and1 at all events1 they are hardly intelligible to most ,western minds4 ,such non-theistic ,religions imply a ,metaphysic quite as much as ,christianity or ,buddhism4 ,there have been ,religions without the idea of a personal ,god1 but never without ,metaphysic1 i4e4 a theory about the ultimate nature of things4 #d ,tennyson's ,wages4 #e ,the doctrine of ,st4 ,thomas ,aquinas is ',cum possit ,deus omnia efficere quae esae possunt1 non autem quae contradictionem implicant1 omnipotens merito dicitur4' 7,summa ,theol41 ,pars ,i4 ,q4 xxv4 art4 #h47 #hg ,,lecture ,,iv ,,difficulties ,,and ,,objections ,in the present lecture ,i shall try to deal with some of the difficulties which will probably have been arising in your minds in the course of the last three2 and in meeting them1 to clear up to some extent various points which have been left obscure4 7#a7 ,creation4 ,i have endeavoured to show that the world must be thought of as ultimately an experience in the mind of ,god1 parts of which are progressively communicated to lesser minds such as ours4 ,this experience--both the complete experience which is in ,his own mind and also the measure of it which is communicated to the lesser minds--must be thought of as willed by ,god4 ,at the same time ,i suggested as an alternative view that1 even if we think of things as having an existence which is not simply in and for minds1 the things must be caused to exist by a rational ,will4 ,now the world1 as we know it1 consists of a number of changes taking place in time1 changes which are undoubtedly represented in thought as changes happening to1 or #hh accidents of1 a permanent substance1 whether 7with the ,idealist7 we suppose that this substance is merely the object of ,mind's contemplation1 or whether 7with the ,realist7 we think of it as having some sort of being independent of ,mind4 ,but what of the first of these events--the beginning of the whole series8 ,are we to think of the series of events in time as having a beginning and possibly an end1 or as being without beginning or end8 ,what in fact are we to make of the theological idea of ,creation1 often further defined as ,creation out of nothing8 ,it is often suggested both by ,idealists and by ,realists that the idea of a creation or absolute beginning of the world is unthinkable4 ,such a view seems to me to be a piece of unwarrantable a priori dogmatism--quite as much so as the closely connected idea that the ,uniformity of ,nature is an a priori necessity of thought4 ,no doubt the notion of an absolute beginning of all things is unthinkable enough3 if we think of ,god as creating the world at a definite point of time1 then we must suppose ,god ,himself to have existed before that creation4 ,we cannot think of an event in time without thinking of a time before it2 and time cannot be thought of as merely empty time4 ,events of some kind there must necessarily have been1 even though those events are thought of as merely subjective experiences involving no relation to space4 ,a beginning of existence is1 #hi indeed1 unthinkable4 ,but there is no difficulty in supposing that this particular series of phenomena which constitutes our physical ,universe may have had a beginning in time4 ,on the other hand there is no positive evidence1 for those who cannot regard the early chapters of ,genesis as representing on such a matter anything but a primitive legend edited by a later ,jewish thinker1 that it had such a beginning4 ,it is no doubt more difficult to represent to ourselves a beginning of space2 and the notion of an empty space1 eternally thought but not eternally filled up by any series of phenomena of the space-occupying kind1 represents a rather difficult1 though not 7as it seems to me7 an absolutely impossible conception4 ,the question1 therefore1 whether there was a beginning of the series of events which constitute the history of our physical world must 7so far as ,i can see7 be left an open one4 ,of course if the argument of ,lord ,kelvin be accepted1 if he is justified in arguing on purely physical grounds that the present distribution of energy in the ,universe is such that it cannot have resulted from an infinite series of previous physical changes1 if ,science can prove that the series is a finite one1 the conclusions of ,science must be accepted4#a ,metaphysic has nothing to say for or against such a view4 ,that is a question of ,physics on which #ij of course ,i do not venture to express any opinion whatever4 7#b7 ,the time-series4 ,i am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on the validity of such arguments as ,lord ,kelvin's4 ,but1 however we decide this question1 there will still remain the further and harder question1 ',is the series of all events or experiences1 physical or psychical 7not merely the particular series which constitutes our physical ,universe71 to be thought of as finite or infinite8 ,on the one hand it involves a contradiction to talk of a time-series which has a beginning3 a time which has no time before it is not time at all2 any more than space with an end to it would be space4 ,on the other hand1 we find equally1 or almost equally1 unthinkable the hypothesis of an endless series of events in time3 a series of events1 which no possible enumeration of its members will make any smaller1 presents itself to us as unthinkable1 directly we regard it as expressing the true nature of a positive reality1 and not as a mere result of mathematical abstraction4 ,here then we are presented with an antinomy--an apparent contradiction in our thought--which we can neither avoid nor overcome4 ,it is one of the classical antinomies recognized by the ,kantian ,philosophy--the only one1 ,i may add1 which neither ,kant himself nor any of his successors has done anything to attenuate or to remove4 #ia ,kant's own attempted solution of it involved the impossible supposition that the past has no existence at all except in so far as it is thought by some finite mind in the present4 ,the way out of this difficulty which is popular with post-,kantian ,idealists is to say that ,god is ,himself out of time1 and eternally sees the whole series at once4 ,but1 in the first place1 that does not get over the difficulty3 even if ,god does see the whole series at once1 ,he must see it either as limited or as endless1 and the old antinomy breaks out again when we attempt to think either alternative4 ,and secondly1 when you treat a temporal series as one which is all really present together--of course it may all be known together as even we know the past and the future--but when you try to think of ,god as contemplating the whole series as really present altogether1 the series is no longer a time-series4 ,you have turned it into some other kind of series--practically 7we may say7 into a spacial series4 ,you have cut the knot1 instead of unravelling it4 ,i have no doubt that the existence of this antinomy does point to the fact that there is some way of thinking about time from which the difficulty disappears3 but we are1 so far as ,i can see1 incompetent so to resolve it4 ,philosophers resent the idea of an insoluble problem4 ,by all means let them go on trying to solve it4 ,i can only say that ,i find no difficulty in showing the futility #ib of any solution of the time-difficulty which ,i have so far seen4 ,for the present at least--,i strongly suspect for ever--we must acquiesce on this matter in a reverent ,agnosticism4 ,we can show the absurdity of regarding time as merely subjective2 we can show that it belongs to the very essence of the ,universe we know2 we can show that it is as 'objective' as anything else within our knowledge4 ,but how to reconcile this objectivity with the difficulty of thinking of an endless succession no ,philosopher has done much to explain4 ,for religious purposes it seems enough to believe that each member of the time-series--no matter how many such events there may be1 no matter whether the series be endless or not--is caused by ,god4 ,the more reflecting ,theologians have generally admitted that the act of divine ,conservation is essentially the same as that of ,creation4 ,a ,god who can be represented as 'upholding all things by the power of his word' is a creative ,deity whether the act of creation be in time1 or eternally continuous1 or 7if there were any meaning in that phrase7 out of time altogether4#b #ic 7#c7 ,the creation of spirits4 ,it may seem to some of you that ,i may have so far left out1 or too easily disposed of1 an important link in our argument4 ,i have given reasons for thinking that the material world cannot be explained without the assumption of a universal ,consciousness which both thinks and wills it4 ,i have assumed rather than proved that the lesser minds1 in which the divine experience is partially reproduced1 are also caused to exist and kept in existence by the same divine ,will4 ,but how1 it may be said1 do we know that those minds did not exist before the birth of the organisms with which upon this planet they are connected8 ,the considerations which forbid our thinking of matter as something capable of existing by itself do not apply to minds4 ,a consciousness1 unlike a thing1 exists 'for itself1' not merely 'for another'3 a mind is not made what it is by being known or otherwise experienced by another mind3 its very being consists in being itself conscious3 it is what it is for itself4 ,it is undoubtedly impossible positively to disprove the hypothesis of eternally pre-existent souls4 ,sometimes that hypothesis is combined with ,theism4 ,it #id is supposed that ,god is the supreme and incomparably the most powerful1 but not the only1 self-existent and eternal ,spirit4 ,this hypothesis--sometimes spoken of as ,pluralism#c--;has many attractions3 from the time of ,origen onwards the idea of ,pre-existence has seemed to many to facilitate the explanation of evil by making it possible to regard the sufferings of our present state as a disciplinary process for getting rid of an original or a pre-natal sinfulness4 ,it is a theory not incapable of satisfying the demands of the religious ,consciousness1 and may even form an element in an essentially ,christian theory of the ,universe3 but to my mind it is opposed to all the obvious indications of experience4 ,the connexion between soul and body is such that the laws of the soul's development obviously form part of the same system with the laws of physical nature4 ,if one part of that system is referred to the divine ,will1 so must the whole of it be4 ,the souls1 when they have entered animal bodies1 must be supposed to be subject to a system of laws which is of one piece with the system of physical laws4 ,if the physical part of the world-order is referred to the divine ,will1 the psychical part of it must be equally referred to #ie that ,will4 ,the souls might1 indeed1 conceivably have an independent and original nature of their own capable of offering resistance to the divine intentions4 ,but we see1 to say the least1 no indications of a struggle going on between an outside divine ,will and independent beings not forming a part of the divine scheme4 ,at all events1 the result of this struggle1 if struggle there be1 is 7so far as we can observe7 a system1 complete and orderly1 within the psychical sphere as much as within the purely physical sphere4 ,and in particular the body is exactly fitted to the soul that is to inhabit it4 ,we never find the intellect of a ,shakespeare in connexion with the facial angle of a negro2 bodies which resemble the bodies of their parents are connected with souls between which a similar resemblance can be traced4 ,if the souls existed before birth1 we must suppose those souls to be kept waiting in a limbo of some kind till a body is prepared suitable for their reception4 ,we must suppose that among the waiting souls1 one is from time to time selected to be the offspring of such and such a matrimonial union1 so as to present 7as it were7 a colourable appearance of being really the fruit of that union4 ,further1 before birth the souls must be steeped in the waters of ,lethe1 or something of the kind1 so as to rid them of all memory of their previous experiences4 ,such a conception seems to #if me to belong to the region of ,mythology rather than of sober philosophical thought4 ,i do not deny that ,mythology may sometimes be a means of pictorially or symbolically envisaging truths to which ,philosophy vaguely points but which it cannot express in clearly apprehensible detail4 ,but such a ,mythology as this seems to be intellectually unmotived and unhelpful4 ,it is not wanted to explain the facts3 there is nothing in our experience to suggest it1 and much which is prima facie opposed to it4 ,it really removes no single difficulty3 for one difficulty which it presents some appearance of removing1 it creates a dozen greater ones4 ,it is a hypothesis which we shall do well to dismiss as otiose4 7#d7 ,non-theistic ,idealism4 ,somewhat less unmotived1 if we look upon it from a merely intellectual point of view1 is the theory of pre-existent souls without a personal ,god4 ,many1 if not most1 of you probably possess more or less acquaintance with the views of my friend1 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart4 ,i cannot here undertake a full exposition or criticism of one of the ablest thinkers of our day--one of the very few ,english thinkers who is the author of a truly original metaphysical system4 ,i can only touch--and that most inadequately--upon the particular side of it which directly bears upon our present enquiry4 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart is an ,idealist2 he recognizes the #ig impossibility of matter without mind4 ,for him nothing exists but spirits1 but he does not recognize the necessity for any one all-embracing or controlling ,spirit3 the only spirits in his ,universe are limited minds like those of men and animals4 ,he differs1 then1 from the ,pluralist of the type just mentioned in getting rid of the hypothesis of a personal ,god side by side with and yet controlling the uncreated spirits4 ,and he differs further from all ,pluralists in not treating the separate spirits as so many centres of consciousness quite independent of1 and possibly at war with1 all the rest3 the spirits form part of an ordered system3 the world is a unity1 though that unity is not the unity which belongs to self-consciousness4 ,he recognizes1 in the traditional language of ,philosophy1 an ,absolute1 but this ,absolute is not a single spiritual ,being but a ,society3 or1 if it is to be called a single spiritual ,being1 it is a ,being which exists or manifests itself only in a plurality of limited consciousnesses4 ,this scheme is1 ,i admit1 more reasonable than ,pluralism4 ,it does1 nominally at least1 recognize the world as an ordered system4 ,it gets rid of the difficulty of accounting for the apparent order of the ,cosmos as the result of a struggle between independent wills4 ,it is not1 upon its author's pre-suppositions1 a gratuitous theory3 for a mind which accepts ,idealism and rejects ,theism it is the only #ih intelligible alternative4 ,but ,i must confess that it seems to me open to most of the difficulties which ,i have endeavoured to point out in ,pluralism1 and to some others4 ,in the first place1 there is one1 to my mind1 great and insuperable difficulty about it4 ,as an ,idealist1 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart has to admit that the whole physical world1 in so far as it exists at all1 must exist in and for some consciousness4 ,now1 not only is there1 according to him1 no single mind in which the system can exist as a whole1 but even all the minds together do not apparently know the whole of it1 or 7so far as our knowledge goes7 ever will4 ,the undiscovered and unknown part of the ,universe is then non-existent4 ,and yet1 be it noticed1 the known part of the world does not make a perfectly articulated or 7if you like the phrase7 organic system without the unknown part4 ,it is only on the assumption of relations between what we know and what we don't know that we can regard it as an orderly1 intelligible system at all4 ,therefore1 if part of the system is non-existent1 the whole system--the system as a whole--must be treated as non-existent4 ,the world is1 we are told1 a system2 and yet as a system it has 7upon the hypothesis7 no real existence4 ,the systematic whole does not exist in matter1 for to ,dr4 ,mc,taggart matter is merely the experience of ,mind4 ,what sort of existence1 then1 can an undiscovered planet possess till it is #ii discovered8 ,for ,dr4 ,mc,taggart has not provided any mind or minds in and for which it is to exist4 ,at one time1 indeed1 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart seemed disposed to accept a suggestion of mine that1 on his view1 each soul must be omniscient2 and to admit that1 while in its temporal aspect1 each soul is limited and fallible in its knowledge1 it is at the same time supertemporally omniscient4 ,that is a conception difficult beyond all the difficulties of the most arbitrary and self-contradicting of orthodox patristic or scholastic speculations4 ,but1 as ,dr4 ,mc,taggart does not now seem disposed to insist upon that point1 ,i will say no more about it except that to my mind it is a theory which defies all intellectual grasp4 ,it can be stated2 it cannot be thought4 ,further1 ,i would remind you1 the theory is open to all the objections which ,i urged against the ,pre-existence theory in its pluralistic form4 ,i have suggested the difficulties involved in the facts of heredity--the difficulty of understanding how souls whose real intellectual and moral characteristics are uncaused and eternal should be assigned to parents so far resembling them as to lead almost inevitably to the inference that the characteristics of the children are to some extent causally connected with those of the parents4#d ,now the ,pluralist can #ajj at least urge that for this purpose ingenious arrangements are contrived by ,god--by the ,one ,spirit whom he regards as incomparably the wisest and most powerful in the ,universe4 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart recognizes no intelligence capable of grappling with such a problem or succession of problems4 ,but this particular matter of the assignment of souls to bodies is only a particular application of a wider difficulty4 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart contends that the ,universe constitutes not merely a physical but a moral order4 ,he would not deny that the ,universe means something2 that the series of events tends towards an end1 an end which is also a good2 that it has a purpose and a final cause4 ,and yet this purpose exists in no mind whatever1 and is due to no will whatever--except to the very small extent to which the processes of physical nature can be consciously directed to an end by the volitions of men and similarly limited intelligences4 ,as a whole1 the ,universe is purposed and willed by no single will or combination of wills4 ,i confess ,i do not understand the idea of a purpose which operates1 but is not the purpose of a ,mind which is also a ,will4 ,all the considerations upon which ,i dwelt to show the necessity of such a ,will to account for the ,universe which we know1 are so many arguments against ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's scheme4 ,the events of ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's ,universe are1 upon the view of ,causality which ,i #aja attempted to defend in my second lecture1 uncaused events4 ,nevertheless1 as a ,philosopher1 ,i am deeply grateful to ,dr4 ,mc,taggart4 ,not only does his scheme on its practical side seem to me preferable to many systems which sound more orthodox--systems of vague pantheistic ,theism in which ,morality is treated as mere 'appearance' and personal ,immortality deliberately rejected--but it has done much intellectually to clear the air4 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart seems to me right in holding that1 if ,god or the ,absolute is to include in itself all other spirits1 and yet the personality or self-consciousness of those spirits is not to be denied1 then this ,absolute in which they are to be included cannot reasonably be thought of as a conscious being1 or invested with the other attributes usually implied by the term ,god4 ,and this leads me to say a few words more in explanation of my own view of the relation between ,god and human or other souls4 ,to me1 as ,i have already intimated1 it seems simply meaningless to speak of one consciousness as included in another consciousness4 ,the essence of a consciousness is to be for itself3 whether it be a thought1 a feeling1 or an emotion1 the essence of that consciousness is what it is for me4 ,every moment of consciousness is unique4 ,another being may have a #ajb similar feeling3 in that case there are two feelings1 and not one4 ,another mind may know what ,i feel1 but the knowledge of another's agony is 7fortunately7 a very different thing from the agony itself4 ,it is fashionable in some quarters to ridicule the idea of 'impenetrable' souls4 ,if 'impenetrable' means that another soul cannot know what goes on in my soul1 ,i do not assert that the soul is impenetrable4 ,i believe that ,god knows what occurs in my soul in an infinitely completer way than that in which any human being can know it4 ,further1 ,i believe that every soul is kept in existence from moment to moment by a continuous act of the divine ,will1 and so is altogether dependent upon that ,will1 and forms part of one system with ,him4 ,on the other hand ,i believe that 7through the analogy of my own mind and the guidance of the moral consciousness7 ,i do know1 imperfectly and inadequately1 'as in a mirror darkly1' what goes on in ,god's ,mind4 ,but1 if penetrability is to mean identity1 the theory that souls are penetrable seems to me mainly unintelligible4 ,the acceptance which it meets with in some quarters is due1 ,i believe1 wholly to the influence of that most fertile source of philosophical confusion--misapplied spacial metaphor4#e ,it seems easy to talk about a mind being #ajc something in itself1 and yet part of another mind1 because we are familiar with the idea of things in space forming part of larger things in space--,chinese boxes1 for instance1 shut up in bigger ones4 ,such a mode of thought is wholly inapplicable to minds which are not in space at all4 ,space is in the mind3 the mind is not in space4 ,a mind is not a thing which can be round or square3 you can't say that the intellect of ,kant or of ,lord ,kelvin measures so many inches by so many3 equally impossible is it to talk about such an intellect being a part of a more extensive intellect4 ,the theory of an all-inclusive ,deity has recently been adopted and popularized by ,mr4 ,campbell1#f who has done all that rhetorical skill combined with genuine religious earnestness can do to present it in an attractive and edifying dress4 ,and yet the same ,logic which leads to the assertion that the ,saint is part of ,god1 leads also to the assertion that ,caesar ,borgia and ,napoleon ,buonaparte and all the wicked ,popes who have ever been white-washed by episcopal or other historians are also parts of ,god4 ,how can ,i worship1 how can ,i strive to be like1 how can ,i be the better for believing in or revering #ajd a ,being of whom ,caesar ,borgia is a part as completely and entirely as ,st4 ,paul or our ,lord himself8 ,hindoo ,theology is consistent in this matter4 ,it worships the destructive and the vicious aspects of ,brahma as much as the kindly and the moral ones3 it does not pretend that ,god is revealed in the ,moral ,consciousness1 or is in any exclusive or one-sided way a ,god of ,love4 ,if it be an 'ethical obsession' 7as has been suggested7 to object to treat ,immorality as no less a revelation of ,god than ,morality1 ,i must plead guilty to such an obsession4 ,and yet without such an 'obsession' ,i confess ,i do not see what is left of ,christianity4 ,there is only one way out of the difficulty4 ,if we are all parts of ,god1 we can only call ,god good or perfect by maintaining that the deliverances of our moral consciousness have no validity for ,god1 and therefore can tell us nothing about him4 ,that has been done deliberately and explicitly by some ,philosophers3#g the distinguished ,theologians who echo the language of this ,philosophy have fortunately for their own religious life and experience1 but unfortunately for their philosophical consistency1 declined to follow in their steps4 ,a ,god who is 'beyond good and evil1' can be no fitting object of #aje worship to men who wish to become good1 just1 merciful4 ,if the cosmic process be indifferent to these ethical considerations1 we had better 7with honest ,agnostics like ,professor ,huxley7 make up our minds to defy it1 whether it call itself ,god or not4 ,but it is not so much on account of its consequences as on account of its essential unmeaningness and intellectual unintelligibility that ,i would invite you to reject this formula ',god is all4' ,certainly1 the ,universe is an ordered system3 there is nothing in it that is not done by the ,will of ,god4 ,and some parts of this ,universe--the spiritual parts of it and particularly the higher spirits--are not mere creations of ,god's will4 ,they have a resemblance of nature to ,him4 ,i do not object to your saying that at bottom there is but one ,substance in the ,universe1 if you will only keep clear of the materialistic and spacial association of the word ,substance3 but it is a ,substance which reveals itself in many different consciousnesses4 ,the theory of an all-inclusive ,consciousness is not necessary to make possible the idea of close and intimate communion between ,god and men1 or of the revelation in and to ,humanity of the thought of ,god4 ,on the contrary1 it is the idea of ,identity which destroys the possibility of communion4 ,communion implies two minds3 a mind cannot have communion with itself or with part of itself4 ,the two may also in a #ajf sense be one2 of course all beings are ultimately part of one ,universe or ,reality3 but that ,reality is not one ,consciousness4 ,the ,universe is a unity1 but the unity is not of the kind which constitutes a person or a self-consciousness4 ,it is 7as ,dr4 ,mc,taggart holds7 the unity of a ,society1 but of a ,society 7as ,i have attempted to argue7 which emanates from1 and is controlled by and guided to a preconceived end by1 a single rational ,will4#h 7#e7 ,the intuitive theory of religious knowledge4 ,in other quarters objection will probably be taken to my not having recognized the possibility of an immediate knowledge of ,god1 and left the idea of ,god to be inferred by intellectual processes which1 when fully thought out1 amount to a ,metaphysic4 ,it will be suggested that to make religious belief dependent upon ,reason is to make it impossible to any but trained ,philosophers or ,theologians4 ,now there is no doubt a great attractiveness in the theory which makes belief in ,god depend simply upon the immediate affirmation of the individual's own consciousness4 ,it would be more difficult to argue against such a theory of immediate knowledge or intuition if we found that the consciousness of all or most individuals does actually reveal to them #ajg the existence of ,god3 though after all the fact that a number of men draw the same inference from given facts does not show that it is not an inference4 ,you will sometimes find ,metaphysicians contending that nobody is really an ,atheist1 since everybody necessarily supposes himself to be in contact with an ,other of which he is nevertheless a part4 ,i do not deny that1 if you water down the idea of ,god to the notion of a vague 'something not ourselves1' you may possibly make out that everybody is explicitly or implicitly a believer in such a ,deity4 ,i should prefer myself to say that1 if that is all you mean by ,god1 it does not much matter whether we believe in ,him or not4 ,in the sense in which ,god is understood by ,christianity or ,judaism or any other theistic ,religion it is unfortunately impossible to contend that everybody is a ,theist4 ,and1 if there is an immediate knowledge of ,god in every human soul1 this would be difficult to account for4 ,neither the cultivated nor the uncultivated ,chinaman has apparently any such belief4 ,the ignorant ,chinaman believes in a sort of luck or destiny--possibly in a plurality of limited but more or less mischievous spirits2 the educated ,chinaman1 we are told1 is for the most part a pure ,agnostic4 ,and ,chinamen are believed to be one-fifth of the human race4 ,the task of the ,missionary would be an easier one if he could #ajh appeal to any such widely diffused intuitions of ,god4 ,the ,missionary1 from the days of ,st4 ,paul at ,athens down to the present1 has to begin by arguing with his opponents in favour of ,theism1 and then to go on to argue from ,theism to ,christianity4 ,i do not deny--on the contrary ,i strongly contend--that the rational considerations which lead up to ,monotheism are so manifold1 and lie so near at hand1 that at a certain stage of mental development we find that belief independently asserting itself with more or less fullness in widely distant regions of time and space2 while traces of it are found almost everywhere--even among savages--side by side with other and inconsistent beliefs4 ,but even among theistic nations an immediate knowledge of ,god is claimed by very few4 ,if there is a tendency on the part of the more strongly religious minds to claim it1 it is explicitly disclaimed by others--by most of the great ,schoolmen1 and in modern times by profoundly religious minds such as ,newman or ,martineau4 ,its existence is in fact denied by most of the great theological systems--,catholic1 ,protestant1 ,anglican4 ,theologians always begin by arguing in favour of the existence of ,god4 ,and even among the religious minds without philosophical training which do claim such immediate knowledge1 their creed is most often due 7as is obvious to the outside observer7 to the influence of environment1 of education1 of social #aji tradition4 ,for the religious person who claims such knowledge of ,god does not generally stop at the bare affirmation of ,god's existence3 he goes on to claim an immediate knowledge of all sorts of other things--ideas clearly derived from the traditional teaching of his religious community4 ,the ,protestant of a certain type will claim immediate consciousness of ideas about the forgiveness of sins which are palpably due to the teaching of ,luther or ,st4 ,augustine1 and to the influence of this or that preacher who has transmitted those ideas to him or to his mother3 while the ,catholic1 though his training discourages such claims1 will sometimes see visions which convey to him an immediate assurance of the truth of the ,immaculate ,conception4 ,even among ,anglicans we find educated men who claim to know by immediate intuition the truth of historical facts alleged to have occurred in the first century1 or dogmatic truths such as the complicated niceties of the ,athanasian ,creed4 ,these claims to immediate insight thus refute themselves by the inconsistent character of the knowledge claimed4 ,an attempt may be made to extract from all these immediate certainties a residual element which is said to be common to all of them4 ,the attempt has been made by ,professor ,james in that rather painful work1 the ,varieties of ,religious ,experience4 ,and the residuum turns out to be something so vague that1 if not #aaj absolutely worthless1 it is almost incapable of being expressed in articulate language1 and constitutes a very precarious foundation for a working religious creed4 ,the truth is that the uneducated--or rather the unanalytical1 perhaps ,i ought to say the metaphysically untrained--human mind has a tendency to regard as an immediate certainty any truth which it strongly believes and regards as very important4 ,such minds do not know the psychological causes which have led to their own belief1 when they are due to psychological causes3 they have not analysed the processes of thought by which they have been led to those beliefs which are really due to the working of their own minds4 ,most uncultivated persons would probably be very much surprised to hear that the existence of the friend with whose body they are in physical contact is after all only an inference4#i ,but surely1 in the man who has discovered that such is the case1 the warmth of friendship was never dimmed by the reflection that his knowledge of his friend is not immediate but mediate4 ,it is a mere prejudice to suppose that mediate knowledge is in any #aaa way less certain1 less intimate1 less trustworthy or less satisfying than immediate knowledge4 ,if we claim for man the possibility of just such a knowledge of ,god as a man may possess of his brother man1 surely that is all that is wanted to make possible the closest religious communion4 ,it is from the existence of my own self that ,i infer the existence of other selves1 whom ,i observe to behave in a manner resembling my own behaviour4 ,it is by an only slightly more difficult and complicated inference from my own consciousness that ,i rise to that conception of a universal ,consciousness which supplies me with at once the simplest and the most natural explanation both of my own existence and of the existence of the ,nature which ,i see around me4 7#f7 ,religion and ,psychology4 ,i do not deny that the study of religious history1 by exhibiting the naturalness and universality of religious ideas and religious emotions1 may rationally create a pre-disposition to find some measure of truth in every form of religious belief4 ,but ,i would venture to add a word of caution against the tendency fashionable in many quarters to talk of basing religious belief upon ,psychology4 ,the business of ,psychology is to tell us what actually goes on in the human mind4 ,it cannot possibly tell us whether the beliefs which are found there are true or false4 ,an erroneous #aab belief is as much a psychological fact as a true one4 ,a theory which goes on1 by inference from what we observe in our own minds1 to construct a theory of the ,universe necessarily involves a ,metaphysic1 conscious or unconscious4 ,it may be urged that the reality of religious experience is unaffected by the question whether the beliefs associated with it are true or false4 ,that is the case1 so long as the beliefs are supposed to be true by the person in question4 ,but1 when once the spirit of enquiry is aroused1 a man cannot be--and ,i venture to think ought not to be--satisfied as to the truth of his belief simply by being told that the beliefs are actually there4 ,it may be contended1 no doubt1 that religious experience does not mean merely a state of intellectual belief1 but certain emotions1 aspirations1 perhaps 7to take one particular type of religious experience7 a consciousness of love met by answering love4 ,to many who undergo such experiences1 they seem to carry with them an immediate assurance of the existence of the ,being with whom they feel themselves to be in communion4 ,that1 on the intellectual presuppositions of the particular person1 seems to be the natural--it may be the only possible--way of explaining the feeling4 ,but even there the belief is not really immediate3 it is an inference from what is actually matter of experience4 ,and it is1 unhappily1 no less a matter of well-ascertained #aac psychological fact that1 when intellectual doubt is once aroused1 such experiences no longer carry with them this conviction of their own objective basis4 ,the person was really under the influence of an intellectual theory all along1 whether the theory was acquired by hereditary tradition1 by the influence of another's mind1 or by personal thought and reflection4 ,when the intellectual theory alters1 the same kind of experience is no longer possible4 ,i will not attempt to say how far it is desirable that persons who are perfectly satisfied with a creed which they have never examined should 7as it were7 pull up the roots of their own faith to see how deep they go4 ,i merely want to point out that the occurrence of certain emotional experiences1 though undoubtedly they may constitute part of the data of a religious argument1 cannot be held to constitute in and by themselves sufficient evidence for the truth of the intellectual theory connected with them in the mind of the person to whom they occur4 ,they do not always present themselves as sufficient evidence for their truth even to the person experiencing them--still less can they do so to others4 ,equally unreasonable is it to maintain1 with a certain class of religious philosophers1 that the religious experience by itself is all we want2 and to assume that we may throw to the winds all the theological or other beliefs which have actually been associated #aad with the various types of religious experience1 and yet continue to have those experiences and find them no less valuable and no less satisfying4 ,if there is one thing which the study of religious ,psychology testifies to1 it is the fact that the character of the religious experience 7though there may be certain common elements in it7 varies very widely with the character of the theoretical belief with which it is associated--a belief of which it is sometimes the cause1 sometimes the effect1 but from which it is always inseparable4 ,the ,buddhist's religious experiences are not possible to those who hold the ,christian's view of the ,universe3 the ,christian's religious experiences are not possible to one who holds the ,buddhist theory of the ,universe4 ,you cannot have an experience of communion with a living ,being when you disbelieve in the existence of such a ,being4 ,and a man's theories of the ,universe always at bottom imply a ,metaphysic of some kind--conscious or unconscious4 ,sometimes the theory of a ,religion which shall be purely psychological springs from pure ignorance as to the meaning of the terms actually employed by the general usage of philosophers4 ,those who talk in this way mean by ,psychology what1 according to the ordinary philosophic usage1 is really ,metaphysic4 ,for ,metaphysic is simply the science which deals with the ultimate nature of the ,universe4 #aae ,at other times attempts are made by people of more or less philosophical culture to justify their theory4 ,the most widely influential of such attempts is the one made by ,m4 ,auguste ,sabatier4#aj ,this attempt has at least this much in its favour--that it is not so much to the ordinary experience of average men and women that ,m4 ,sabatier appeals as to the exceptional experiences of the great religious minds4 ,he lays the chief stress upon those exceptional moments of religious history when a new religious idea entered into the mind of some prophet or teacher1 e4g4 the unity of ,god1 the ,fatherhood of ,god1 the brotherhood of ,man4 ,here1 just because the idea was new1 it cannot 7he contends7 be accounted for by education or environment or any other of the psychological causes which obviously determine the traditional beliefs of the great majority4 ,these new ideas1 therefore1 he assumes to be due to immediate revelation or inspiration from ,god4 ,now it is obvious that1 even if this inference were well grounded1 it assumes that we have somehow arrived independently at a conception of ,god to which such inspirations can be referred4 ,the ,psychology of the human mind cannot assume the existence of such a ,being3 if we infer such a ,being from our own mental experience1 that is not immediate but #aaf mediate knowledge4 ,it is a belief based on inference1 and a belief which is1 properly speaking1 metaphysical4 ,the idea of a ,religion which is merely based upon ,psychology and involves nothing else is a delusion3 all the great ,religions of the world have been1 among other things1 metaphysical systems4 ,we have no means of ascertaining their truth but ,reason1 whether it assume the form of a rough common-sense or of elaborate reasoning which not only is ,metaphysic but knows itself to be so4 ,reason is then the organ of religious truth4 ,but then1 let me remind you1 ,reason includes our moral ,reason4 ,that really is a faculty of immediate knowledge2 and it is a faculty which1 in a higher or lower state of development1 is actually found in practically all human beings4 ,the one element of truth which ,i recognize in the theory of an immediate knowledge of ,god is the truth that the most important data upon which we base the inference which leads to the knowledge of ,god are those supplied by the immediate judgements or intuitions of the ,moral ,consciousness4 ,and here let me caution you against a very prevalent misunderstanding about the word ,reason4 ,it is assumed very often that ,reason means nothing but inference4 ,that is not what we mean when we refer moral judgements to the ,reason4 ,we do not mean that we can prove that things are right or #aag wrong3 we mean precisely the opposite--that ultimate moral truth is immediate1 like the truth that two and two make four4 ,it might1 of course1 be contended that the same ,reason which assures me that goodness is worth having and that the whole is greater than the part1 assures us no less immediately of the existence of ,god4 ,i can only say that ,i am sure ,i have no such immediate knowledge1 and that for the most part that knowledge is never claimed by people who understand clearly the difference between immediate knowledge and inference4 ,the idea of ,god is a complex conception1 based1 not upon this or that isolated judgement or momentary experience1 but upon the whole of our experience taken together4 ,it is a hypothesis suggested by1 and necessary to1 the explanation of our experience as a whole4 ,some minds may lay most stress upon the religious emotions themselves2 others upon the experience of the outer world1 upon the appearances of design1 or upon the metaphysical argument which shows them the inconceivability of matter without mind2 others1 again1 may be most impressed by the impossibility of accounting in any way for the immediate consciousness of duty and the conviction of objective validity or authority which that consciousness carries with it4 ,but in any case the knowledge1 when it is a reasonable belief and not based merely upon authority1 involves #aah inference--just like our knowledge of our friend's existence4 ,the fact that my friend is known to me by experience does not prevent his communicating his mind to me4 ,i shall try to show you in my next lecture that to admit that our knowledge of ,god is based upon inference is not incompatible with the belief that ,god has spoken to man face to face1 as a man speaketh to his friend4 ,at this point it may perhaps be well1 for the sake of clearness1 to summarize the position to which ,i have tried to lead you4 ,i have tried to show that the material ,universe cannot reasonably be thought of as having any existence outside1 or independently of1 ,mind4 ,it certainly does not exist merely in any or all of the human and similar minds whose knowledge is fleeting1 and which have1 there is every reason to believe1 a beginning in time4 ,we are bound then to infer the existence of a single ,mind or ,consciousness1 which must be thought of as containing all the elements of our own ,consciousness--,reason or ,thought1 ,feeling1 and ,will--though no doubt in ,him those elements or aspects of ,consciousness are combined in a manner of which our own minds can give us but a very faint and analogical idea4 ,the world must be thought of as ultimately the thought or experience of this ,mind1 which we call ,god4 ,and this ,mind must be thought #aai of as not only a ,thinker1 but also as a ,cause or a ,will4 ,our own and all other minds1 no less than the events of the material ,universe1 owe their beginning and continuance to this divine ,will3 in them the thought or experience of the divine ,mind is reproduced in various degrees2 and to all of them is communicated some portion of that causality or activity of which ,god is the ultimate source1 so that their acts must be regarded as due mediately to them1 ultimately to ,god4 ,but1 though these minds are wholly dependent upon and in intimate connexion with the divine ,mind1 they cannot be regarded as parts of the divine ,consciousness4 ,reality consists of ,god and all the minds that ,he wills to exist1 together with the world of ,nature which exists in and for those minds4 ,reality is the system or society of spirits and their experience4 ,the character and ultimate purpose of the divine ,mind is revealed to us1 however inadequately or imperfectly1 in the moral consciousness2 and the moral ideal which is thus communicated to us makes it reasonable for us to expect1 for at least the higher of the dependent or created minds1 a continuance1 of their individual existence1 after physical death4 ,pain1 sin1 and other evils must be regarded as necessary incidents in the process by which the divine ,will is bringing about the greatest attainable good of all conscious beings4 ,the question whether our material ,universe1 #abj considered as the object of ,mind1 has a beginning and will have an end1 is one which we have no data for deciding4 ,time-distinctions1 ,i think1 must be regarded as objective--that is to say1 as forming part of the nature and constitution of the real world2 but the antinomy involved either in supposing an endless succession or a beginning and end of the time-series is one which our intellectual faculties are1 or at least have so far proved1 incapable of solving4 ,the element of inadequacy and uncertainty which the admission of this antinomy introduces into our theory of the ,universe is an emphatic reminder to us of the inadequate and imperfect character of all our knowledge4 ,the knowledge1 however1 that we possess1 though inadequate knowledge1 is real knowledge--not a sham knowledge of merely relative or human validity2 and is sufficient not only for the guidance of life but even for the partial1 though not the complete1 satisfaction of one of the noblest impulses of the human mind--the disinterested passion for truth4 ',now we see in a mirror darkly'2 but still we see4 ,the view of the ,universe which ,i have endeavoured very inadequately to set before you is a form of ,idealism4 ,inasmuch as it recognizes the existence--though not the separate and independent existence--of many persons2 inasmuch as it regards both ,god and man as persons1 without attempting #aba to merge the existence of either in one all-including1 comprehensive consciousness1 it may further be described as a form of 'personal ,idealism4' ,but1 if any one finds it easier to think of material ,nature as having an existence which1 though dependent upon and willed by the divine ,mind1 is not simply an existence in and for mind1 such a view of the ,universe will serve equally well as a basis of ,religion4 ,for religious purposes it makes no difference whether we think of ,nature as existing in the ,mind of ,god1 or as simply created or brought into and kept in existence by that ,mind4 ,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 absurdity1 enough will remain to show the unreasonableness of supposing that in point of fact matter ever has existed without being caused and controlled by ,mind4 ,the argument for ,idealism may1 ,i hope1 have at all events exhibited incidentally the groundlessness and improbability of materialistic and naturalistic assumptions1 and left the way clear for the establishment of ,theism by the arguments which rest upon the discovery that ,causality implies volition2 upon the appearances of intelligence in organic life2 upon the existence of the moral consciousness2 and more generally upon the enormous probability that the ultimate ,source of ,reality should resemble rather #abb the highest than the lowest kind of existence of which we have experience4 ,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 arguments4 ,if anybody finds it easier to think of matter as uncreated but as always guided and controlled by ,mind1 ,i do not think there will be any religious objection to such a position2 though it is1 as it seems to me1 intellectually a less unassailable position than is afforded by an ,idealism of the type which ,i have most inadequately sketched4 ,mr4 ,bradley in a cynical moment has defined ,metaphysics as the 'finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct4' ,i do not for myself accept that definition1 which ,mr4 ,bradley himself would not of course regard as expressing the whole truth of the matter4 ,but1 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 lives1 ,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 it1 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 moral1 intellectual1 and spiritual nature4 #abc ,,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 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart1 which ,i admit to be1 for one who has accepted the idealistic position that matter does not exist apart from ,mind1 the only intelligible alternative to ,theism4 ,his theory is1 it will be remembered1 that ultimate ,reality consists of a system of selves or spirits1 uncreated and eternal1 forming together a ,unity1 but not a conscious ,unity1 so that consciousness exists only in the separate selves1 not in the whole3 7#a7 ,it is admitted that the material world exists only in and for ,mind4 ,there is no reason to think that any human mind1 or any of the other minds of which ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's ,universe is composed1 knows the whole of this world4 ,what kind of existence then have the parts of the ,universe which are not known to any mind8 ,it seems to me that ,dr4 ,mc,taggart would be compelled to admit that they do not exist at all4 ,the world postulated by ,science would thus be admitted to be a delusion4 ,this represents a subjective ,idealism of an extreme and staggering kind which cannot meet the objections commonly urged against all ,idealism4 7#b7 ,moreover1 the world is not such an intellectually complete system as ,dr4 ,mc,taggart insists that it must be1 apart from the relations of its known parts to its unknown parts4 ,if there are parts which are unknown to any mind1 and which therefore do not exist at all1 it is not a system at all4 7#c7 ,if it be said that all the spirits between them know the world--one knowing one part1 another another--this is a mere hypothesis1 opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience1 and after all would be a very inadequate answer to our difficulties4 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart insists #abd that the world of existing things exists as a system4 ,such existence to an ,idealist must mean existence for a mind2 a system not known as a system to any mind whatever could hardly be said to exist at all4 7#d7 ,if it be suggested 7as ,dr4 ,mc,taggart was at one time inclined to suggest7 that every mind considered as a timeless ,noumenon is omniscient1 though in its phenomenal and temporal aspect its knowledge is intermittent and always limited1 ,i reply 7a7 the theory seems to me not only gratuitous but unintelligible1 and 7b7 it is open to all the difficulties and objections of the theory that time and change are merely subjective delusions4 ,this is too large a question to discuss here3 ,i can only refer to the treatment of the subject by such writers as ,lotze 7see above7 and ,m4 ,bergson4 ,i may also refer to ,mr4 ,bradley's argument 7,appearance and ,reality1 p4 #ej sq47 against the theory that the individual ,ego is out of time4 7#e7 ,the theory of pre-existent souls is opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience4 ,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 supposition1 and involves assumptions which reduce to a minimum the amount of identity or continuity that could be claimed for the ,ego throughout its successive lives4 ,a soul which has forgotten all its previous experiences may have some identity with its previous state1 but not much4 ,moreover1 we should have to suppose that the correspondence of a certain type of body with a certain kind of soul1 as well as the resemblance between the individual and his parents1 implies no kind of causal connexion1 but is due to mere accident2 or1 if it is not to accident1 to a very arbitrary kind of pre-established harmony which there is nothing in experience to suggest1 and which 7upon ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's theory7 there is no creative intelligence to pre-establish4 ,the theory cannot be absolutely refuted1 but all ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's ingenuity has not--to my own mind1 #abe and 7,i feel sure7 to most minds--made it seem otherwise than extremely difficult and improbable4 ,its sole recommendation is that it makes possible an ,idealism without ,theism3 but1 if ,theism be an easier and more defensible theory1 that is no recommendation at all4 7#f7 ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's whole theory seems to me to waver between two inconsistent views of ,reality4 ,when he insists that the world consists of a system or ,unity1 he tends towards a view of things which makes the system of intellectual relations constituting knowledge or ,science to be the very reality of things3 on such a view there is no impossibility of an ultimate ,reality not known to any one mind4 ,but ,dr4 ,mc,taggart 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 view4 ,if there is no mind which both knows and wills the existence and the mutual relations of the spirits1 the supreme reality must be found in the individual spirits themselves2 yet the system1 if known to none of them1 seems to fall outside the reality4 ,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 ',monads4' ,dr4 ,mc,taggnrt is too much of a ,hegelian to acquiesce in such a view4 ,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 system1 which nevertheless no one really existent spirit actually understands4 ,if a system of relations can be ,reality1 there is no ground for assuming the pre-existence or eternity of individual souls3 if on the other hand ,reality is 'experience1' an unexperienced 'system' cannot be real1 and the 'unity' disappears4 ,this is a line of objection which it would require a much more thorough discussion to develope4 7#g7 ,on the view which ,i myself hold as to the nature of ,causality1 the only intelligible cause of events is a ,will4 ,the events of ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's world 7putting aside the very #abf small proportion which are due1 in part at least1 to the voluntary action of men or spirits7 are not caused at all4 ,his theory is therefore open to all--and more than all--the objections which ,i have urged in ,lecture ,,ii4 against the theory which explains the ,universe as the thought of a ,mind but not as caused by that ,mind4 7#h7 ,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 ,reality1 though not to all1 or indeed any1 of the human and non-human spirits known to us4 ,i should reply 7a7 that the considerations which lead to the hypothesis of one omniscient ,being do not require more than one such spirit1 and entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem2 7b7 such a scheme would still be open to ,objection #g4 ,if it is a speculative possibility that all ,nature may exist in the knowledge of more than one spirit1 it cannot well be thought of as willed by more than one spirit4 ,if the ,universe1 admitted to form an ordered system1 is caused by rational will at all1 it must surely be caused by one ,will4 ,but perhaps a serious discussion of a polytheistic scheme such as this may be postponed till it is seriously maintained4 ,it has not been suggested1 so far as ,i am aware1 by ,dr4 ,mc,taggart himself4 7#i7 ,the real strength of ,dr4 ,mc,taggart's system must be measured by the validity of his objections to a ,theism such as ,i have defended4 ,i have attempted to reply to those objections in the course of these ,lectures1 and more at length in a review of his ,some ,dogmas of ,religion in ,mind 7,n4,s471 vol4 xv41 #aijf4 #a ,cf4 ,flint's ,theism1 ,ed4 v41 p4 #aag and ,app4 xi4 #b ,the most illuminating discussion of time and the most convincing argument for its 'objectivity' which ,i know1 is to be found in ,lotze's ,metaphysic1 ,book ,,ii4 chap4 iii41 but it cannot be recommended to the beginner in ,metaphysic4 ,a brilliant exposition of the view of the ,universe which regards time and change as belonging to the very reality of the ,universe1 has recently appeared in ,m4 ,bergson's ,l',evolution ,creatrice1 but he has hardly attempted to deal with the metaphysical difficulties indicated above4 ,the book1 however1 seems to me the most important philosophical work that has appeared since ,mr4 ,bradley's ,appearance and ,reality1 and though the writer has hardly formulated his ,natural ,theology1 it constitutes a very important contribution to the theistic argument4 ,being based upon a profound study of biological ,evolution1 it may be specially commended to scientific readers4 #c ,such a view is expounded in ,dr4 ,schiller's early work ,the ,riddles of the ,sphinx and in ,professor ,howison's ,the ,limits of ,evolution4 ,the very distinguished ,french thinker ,charles ,renouvier 7,la ,nouvelle ,monadologie1 etc471 like ,origen1 believed that souls were pre-existent but created4 #d ,i use the word 'causally connected' in the popular or scientific sense of the word1 to indicate merely an actually observed psycho-physical law4 #e ,in part1 perhaps1 also to a mistaken theory of predication1 which assumes that1 because every fact in the world can be represented as logically a predicate of ,reality at large1 therefore there is but one ,substance or 7metaphysically7 ,real ,being in the world1 of which all other existences are really mere 'attributes4' ,but this theory cannot be discussed here4 #f ,in ,the ,new ,theology4 #g ,e4g4 by ,mr4 ,bradley in ,appearance and ,reality and still more uncompromisingly by ,professor ,a4 ,e4 ,taylor in ,the ,problem of ,conduct1 but ,i rejoice to find that the latter very able writer has recently given up this theory of a 'super-moral' ,absolute4 #h ,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 position4 ,i have replied to his criticisms in ,mind1 ,n4,s4 ,no4 #fi 7,jan4 #aiji74 #i ,this is sometimes denied by ,philosophers1 but ,i have never been able to understand on what grounds4 ,if ,i know a priori the existence of other men1 ,i ought to be able to say a priori how many they are and to say something about them4 ,and this is more than any one claims4 #aj ,in ,esquisse d'une ,philosophie de la ,religion d'apres ,la ,psychologie et l'histoire4 #abg ,,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 intuition2 that it is not due to some special faculty superior to and different in kind from our ordinary intellectual activities1 but to an exercise of the same intellectual faculties by which we attain to truth in other matters--including1 however1 especially the wholly unique faculty of immediately discerning values or pronouncing moral judgements4 ,the word 'faith' should1 as it seems to me1 be used to express not a mysterious capacity for attaining to knowledge without thought or without evidence1 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 ,sciences4 ,if ,i had time there would be much to be said about these characteristics1 and ,i think ,i could show that the popular distinction between knowledge and religious #abh faith finds whatever real justification it possesses in these characteristics of religious knowledge4 ,i might insist on the frequently implicit and unanalysed character of religious thinking2 upon the incompleteness and inadequacy of even the fullest account that the maturest and acutest ,philosopher can give of ultimate ,reality2 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 matters2 and above all upon the prominent place which moral judgements occupy in religious thought1 moral judgements which1 on account of their immediate character and their emotional setting1 are often not recognized in their true character as judgements of the ,reason4 ,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 remember1 with ,st4 ,paul and most of the greater religious thinkers1 that the true antithesis is not between faith and reason but between faith and sight4 ,all religious belief implies a belief in something which cannot be touched or tasted or handled1 and which cannot be established by any mere logical deduction from what can be touched or tasted or handled4 ,so far from implying #abi scepticism as to the power of ,reason1 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 senses1 though ,plato has taught us once for all#a that the senses by themselves never give us real knowledge1 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 ,god4 ,it may further be pointed out that1 though neither religious knowledge nor moral knowledge are mere emotion1 they are both of them very closely connected with certain emotions4 ,great moral discoveries are made1 not so much by superior intellectual power1 as by superior interest in the subject-matter of ,morality4 ,very ordinary intelligence can see1 when it is really brought to bear upon the matter1 the irrationality or immorality of bad customs1 oppressions1 social injustices2 but the people who have led the revolt against these things have generally been the people who have felt intensely about them4 ,so it is with the more distinctly religious knowledge4 ,religious thought and insight are largely dependent upon the emotions to which religious #acj ideas and beliefs appeal4 ,the absence of religious thought and definite religious belief is very often 7,i am far from saying always7 due to a want of interest in ,religion2 but that does not prove that religious thought is not the work of the intellect1 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 emotion1 and has nothing to do with the understanding4 ,thought is always guided by interest--a truth which must not be distorted with a certain modern school of thought1 if indeed it can properly be called thought1 into the assertion that thinking is nothing but willing1 and that therefore we are at liberty to think just what we please4 ,and that leads on to a further point4 ,emotion and desire are very closely connected with the will4 ,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 has4 ,vice1 as ,aristotle put it1 is phthartike arches--destructive of moral first principles4 ,moral insight is largely dependent upon character4 ,and so is religious insight4 ,thus it is quite true to say that religious belief depends in part upon the state of the will4 ,this doctrine has been so scandalously abused by many ,theologians and ,apologists that ,i use it with great hesitation4 ,i have no sympathy #aca with the idea that we are justified in believing a religious doctrine merely because we wish it to be true1 or with the insinuation that non-belief in a religious truth is always or necessarily due to moral obliquity4 ,but still it is undeniable that a man's ethical and religious beliefs are to some extent affected by the state of his will4 ,that is so with all knowledge to some extent2 for progress in knowledge requires attention1 and is largely dependent upon interest4 ,if ,i take no interest in the properties of curves or the square root of -#a1 ,i am not very likely to make a good mathematician4 ,this connexion of knowledge with interest applies in an exceptional degree to religious knowledge3 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 knowledge4 ,belief itself is thus to some extent affected by the state of the will2 and still more emphatically does the extent to which belief affects action depend upon the will4 ,many beliefs which we quite sincerely hold are what have been called 'otiose beliefs'2 we do not by an effort of the will realize them sufficiently strongly for them to affect action4 ,many a man knows perfectly that his course of life will injure or destroy his physical health2 it is not through intellectual scepticism that he disobeys his #acb physician's prescriptions1 but because other desires and inclinations prevent his attending to them and acting upon them4 ,it is obvious that to men like ,st4 ,paul and ,luther faith meant much more than a mere state of the intellect2 it included a certain emotional and a certain volitional attitude2 it included love and it included obedience4 ,whether our intellectual beliefs about ,religion are energetic enough to influence action1 does to an enormous extent depend upon our wills4 ,faith is1 then1 used1 and almost inevitably used1 in such a great variety of senses that ,i do not like to lay down one definite and exclusive definition of it2 but it would be safe to say that1 for many purposes and in many connexions1 religious faith means the deliberate adoption by an effort of the will1 as practically certain for purposes of action and of feeling1 of a religious belief which to the intellect is1 or may be1 merely probable4 ,for purposes of life it is entirely reasonable to treat probabilities as certainties4 ,if a man has reason to think his friend is trustworthy1 he will do well to trust him wholly and implicitly4 ,if a man has reason to think that a certain view of the ,universe is the most probable one1 he will do well habitually to allow that conviction to dominate not merely his actions1 but the habitual tenour of his emotional and spiritual life4 ,we should not love a human being much if we allowed ourselves habitually to #acc contemplate the logical possibility that the loved one was unworthy of1 or irresponsive to1 our affection4 ,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 error1 though there is no reason why we should1 in our speculative moments1 claim a greater certainty for them than seems to be reasonable4 ,the doctrine that 'probability is the guide of life' is one on which every sensible man habitually acts in all other relations of life3 ,bishop ,butler was right in contending that it should be applied no less unhesitatingly to the matter of religious belief and religious aspiration4 ,the view which ,i have taken of the nature of faith may be illustrated by the position of ,clement of ,alexandria4 ,it is clear from his writings that by faith he meant a kind of conviction falling short of demonstration or immediate intellectual insight1 and dependent in part upon the state of the will and the heart4 ,clement did not disparage knowledge in the interests of faith3 faith was to him a more elementary kind of knowledge resting largely upon moral conviction1 and the foundation of that higher state of intellectual apprehension which he called ,gnosis4 ,i do not mean1 of course1 to adopt ,clement's ,philosophy as a whole2 ,i merely refer to it as illustrating the point that1 properly considered1 faith is1 or rather includes1 a particular kind or stage #acd of knowledge1 and is not a totally different and even opposite state of mind4 ,it would be easy to show that this has been fully recognized by many1 if not most1 of the great ,christian thinkers4 ,one last point4 ,it is of the utmost importance to distinguish between the process by which psychologically a man arrives at a religious or other truth and the reasons which make it true4 ,because ,i deny that the truth of ,god's existence can reasonably be accepted on the basis of an immediate judgement or intuition1 ,i do not deny for one moment that an apparently intuitive conviction of the truth of ,christianity1 as of other religions1 actually exists4 ,the religious belief of the vast majority of persons has always rested1 and must always rest1 very largely upon tradition1 education1 environment1 authority of one kind or another--authority supported or confirmed by a varying measure of independent reflection or experience4 ,and1 just where the influence of authority is most complete and overwhelming1 it is least felt to be authority4 ,the person whose beliefs are most entirely produced by education or environment is very often most convinced that his opinions are due solely to his own immediate insight4 ,but even where this is not the case--even where the religious man is taking a new departure1 revolting against his environment and adopting a religious belief absolutely at variance with the established #ace belief of his society--,i do not contend that such new religious ideas are always due to unobserved and unanalysed processes of reasoning4 ,that in most cases1 when a person adopts a new creed1 he would himself give some reason for his change of faith is obvious1 though the reason which he would allege would not in all cases be the one which really caused the change of religion4 ,there may be other psychological influences which cause belief besides the influence of environment3 in some cases the psychological causes of such beliefs are altogether beyond analysis4 ,but1 though ,i do not think ,m4 ,auguste ,sabatier justified in assuming that a belief is true1 and must come directly from ,god1 simply because we cannot easily explain its genesis by the individual's environment and psychological antecedents1 it is of extreme importance to insist that it is not proved to be false because it was not adopted primarily1 or at all1 on adequate theoretical grounds4 ,a belief which arose at first entirely without logical justification1 or it may be on intellectual grounds subsequently discovered to be inadequate or false1 may nevertheless be one which can and does justify itself to the reflective intellect of the person himself or of other persons4 ,and many new1 true1 and valuable beliefs have undoubtedly arisen in this way4 ,even in physical ,science we all know that there is no ,logic of discovery4 ,it #acf is a familiar criticism upon the ,logic of ,bacon that he ignored or under-estimated the part that is played in scientific thinking by hypothesis1 and the consequent need of scientific imagination4 ,very often the new scientific idea comes into the discoverer's mind1 he knows not how or why4 ,some great man of ,science--,i think1 ,helmholtz--said of a brilliant discovery of his1 ',it was given to me4' ,but it was not true because it came to ,helmholtz in this way1 but because it was subsequently verified and proved4 ,now1 undoubtedly1 religious beliefs1 new and old1 often do present themselves to the minds of individuals in an intuitive and unaccountable way4 ,they may subsequently be justified at the bar of ,reason3 and yet ,reason might never have discovered them for itself4 ,they would never have come into the world unless they had presented themselves at first to some mind or other as intuitions1 inspirations1 immediate ,revelations3 and yet 7once again7 the fact that they so present themselves does not by itself prove them to be true4 ,i may perhaps illustrate what ,i mean by the analogy of ,poetry4 ,i suppose few people will push the sound-without-sense view of ,poetry to the length of denying that poets do sometimes see and teach us truths4 ,no one--least of all one who is not even a verse-maker himself--can1 ,i suppose1 analyse the intellectual process by which a poet #acg gets at his truths4 ,the insight by which he arrives at them is closely connected with emotions of various kinds3 and yet the truths are not themselves emotions1 nor do they in all cases merely state the fact that the poet has felt such and such emotions4 ,they are propositions about the nature of things1 not merely about the poet's mental states4 ,and yet the truths are not true because the poet feels them1 as he would say--no matter how passionately he feels them4 ,there is no separate organ of poetic truth3 and not all the things that poets have passionately felt are true4 ,some highly poetical thoughts have been very false thoughts4 ,but1 if they are true1 they must be true for good logical reasons1 which a philosophical critic may even in some cases by subsequent reflection be able to disentangle and set forth4 ,yet the poet did not get at those truths by way of philosophical reflection3 or1 if he was led to them by any logical process1 he could not have analysed his own reasoning4 ,the poet could not have produced the arguments of the philosopher3 the philosopher without the poet's lead might never have seen the truth4 ,i am afraid ,i must not stay to defend or illustrate this position3 ,i will only say that the poets ,i should most naturally go to for illustration would be such poets as ,wordsworth1 ,tennyson1 and ,browning1 though perhaps all three are a little #ach too consciously philosophic to supply the ideal illustration4 ,i do not think it will be difficult to apply these reflections to the case of religious and ethical truth4 ,all religious truth1 as ,i hold1 depends logically upon inference2 inference from the whole body of our experiences1 among which the most important place is held by our immediate moral judgements4 ,the truth of ,theism is in that sense a truth discernible by ,reason4 ,but it does not follow that1 when it was first discovered1 it was arrived at by the inferences which ,i have endeavoured to some extent to analyse1 or by one of the many lines of thought which may lead to the same conclusions4 ,it was not the ,greek philosophers so much as the ,jewish prophets who taught the world true ,monotheism4 ,hosea1 ,amos1 the two ,isaiahs probably arrived at their ,monotheism largely by intuition2 or 7in so far as it was by inferential processes7 the premisses of their argument were very probably inherited beliefs of earlier ,judaism which would not commend themselves without qualification to a modern thinker4 ,in its essentials the ,monotheism of ,isaiah is a reasonable belief2 we accept it because it is reasonable1 not because ,isaiah had an intuition that it was true2 for we have rejected many things which to ,isaiah probably seemed no less self-evidently true4 ,and yet it would be a profound mistake to assume that #aci the philosophers who now defend ,isaiah's creed would ever have arrived at it without ,isaiah's aid4 ,i hope that by this time you will have seen to some extent the spirit in which ,i am approaching the special subject of to-day's lecture--the question of ,revelation4 ,in some of the senses that have been given to it1 the idea of ,revelation is one which hardly any one trained in the school--that is to say1 any school--of modern ,philosophy is likely to accept4 ,the idea that pieces of information have been supernaturally and without any employment of their own intellectual faculties communicated at various times to particular persons1 their truth being guaranteed by miracles--in the sense of interruptions of the ordinary course of nature by an extraordinary fiat of creative power--is one which is already rejected by most modern theologians1 even among those who would generally be called rather conservative theologians4 ,i will not now argue the question whether any miraculous event1 however well attested1 could possibly be sufficient evidence for the truth of spiritual teaching given in attestation of it4 ,i will merely remark that to any one who has really appreciated the meaning of biblical criticism1 it is scarcely conceivable that the evidence for miracles could seem sufficiently cogent to constitute such an attestation4 ,in proof of that ,i will merely appeal to the modest1 apologetic1 tentative tone in which #adj scholarly and sober-minded theologians who would usually be classed among the defenders of miracles--men like the ,bishop of ,ely or ,professor ,sanday of ,oxford--are content to speak of such evidences4 ,they admit the difficulty of proving that such miraculous events really happened thousands of years ago on the strength of narratives written at the very earliest fifty years after the alleged event1 and they invite us rather to believe in the miracles on the evidence of a ,revelation already accepted than to accept the revelation on the evidence of the miracles4 ,i shall have a word to say on this question of miracles next time2 but for the present ,i want to establish1 or rather without much argument to put before you for your consideration1 this position2 that the idea of revelation cannot be admitted in the sense of a communication of truth by ,god1 claiming to be accepted not on account of its own intrinsic reasonableness or of the intellectual or spiritual insight of the person to whom it is made1 but on account of the historical evidence for miraculous occurrences said to have taken place in connexion with such communication4 ,the most that can reasonably be contended for is that super-normal occurrences of this kind may possess a certain corroborative value in support of a ,revelation claiming to be accepted on other grounds4 ,what place then is left for the idea of ,revelation8 #ada ,i will ask you to go back for a moment to the conclusions of our first lecture4 ,we saw that from the idealistic point of view all knowledge may be looked upon as a partial communication to the human soul of the thoughts or experiences of the divine ,mind4 ,there is a sense then in which all truth is revealed truth4 ,in a more important sense1 and a sense more nearly allied to that of ordinary usage1 all moral and spiritual truth may be regarded as revealed truth4 ,and in particular those immediate judgements about good and evil in which we have found the sole means of knowing the divine character and purposes must be looked on as divinely implanted knowledge--none the less divinely implanted because it is1 in the ordinary sense of the words1 quite natural1 normal1 and consistent with law4 ,nobody but an ,atheist ought to talk about the unassisted human intellect3 no one who acquiesces in the old doctrine that ,conscience is the voice of ,god ought either on the one hand to deny the existence of ,revelation1 or on the other to speak of ,revelation as if it were confined to the ,bible4 ,but because we ascribe some intrinsic power of judging about spiritual and moral matters to the ordinary human intellect1 it would be a grievous mistake to assume that all men have an equal measure of this power4 ,because we assert that all moral and spiritual truth comes to men by #adb ,revelation1 it does not follow that there are not degrees of ,revelation4 ,and it is one of the special characteristics of religious and moral truth that it is in a peculiar degree dependent upon the superior insight of those exceptional men to whom have been accorded extraordinary degrees of moral and spiritual insight4 ,even in ,science1 as we have seen1 we cannot dispense with genius3 very ordinary men can satisfy themselves of the truth of a hypothesis when it is once suggested1 though they would have been quite incompetent to discover that hypothesis for themselves4 ,still more unquestionably are there moral and spiritual truths which1 when once discovered1 can be seen to be true by men of very commonplace intellect and commonplace character4 ,the truths are seen and passed on to others1 who accept them partly on authority1 by way of social inheritance and tradition2 partly because they are confirmed in various degrees by their own independent judgement and experience4 ,here then--in the discovery of new spiritual truth--we encounter that higher and exceptional degree of spiritual and ethical insight which in a special and pre-eminent sense we ought to regard as ,revelation or ,inspiration4 ,here there is room1 in the evolution of ,religion and ,morality1 for the influence of the men of moral or religious genius--the ,prophets1 the ,apostles1 the ,founders and ,reformers of ,religions3 and1 since #adc moral and spiritual insight are very closely connected with character1 for the moral hero1 the leader of men1 the ,saint4 ,especially to the new departures1 the turning-points1 the epoch-making discoveries in ethical and religious progress connected with the appearance of such men1 we may apply the term ,revelation in a supreme or culminating sense4 ,it is1 as it seems to me1 extremely important that we should not altogether divorce the idea of ,revelation from those kinds of moral and religious truth which are arrived at by the ordinary working of the human intellect4 ,the ultimate moral judgements no doubt must be intuitive or immediate1 but in our deductions from them--in their application both to practical life and to theories about ,god and the ,universe--there is room for much intellectual work of the kind which we commonly associate rather with the philosopher than with the prophet4 ,but the philosopher may be also a prophet4 ,the philosophically trained ,greek ,fathers were surely right in recognizing that men like ,socrates and ,plato were to be numbered among those to whom the ,spirit of ,god had spoken in an exceptional degree4 ,they too spoke in the power of the indwelling ,logos4 ,but still it is quite natural that we should associate the idea of ,revelation or ,inspiration more particularly with that kind of moral and intellectual discovery which comes to exceptional men by way #add of apparent intuition or immediate insight4 ,we associate the idea of inspiration rather with the poet than with the man of ,science1 and with the prophet rather than with the systematic philosopher4 ,it is quite natural1 therefore1 that we should associate the idea of ,revelation more especially with religious teachers of the intuitive order like the ,jewish prophets than with even those philosophers who have also been great practical teachers of ,ethics and ,religion4 ,but it is most important to recognize that there is no hard and fast line to be drawn between the two classes4 ,the ,jewish prophets did not arrive at their ideas about ,god without a great deal of hard thinking1 though the thinking is for the most part unexplicit and the mode of expression poetic4 ',their idols are silver and gold2 even the work of men's hands4 4 4 4 ,they have hands and handle not2 feet have they and walk not3 neither speak they through their throat4' ,there is real hard reasoning underlying such noble rhetoric1 though the ,psalmist could not perhaps have reduced his argument against ,polytheism and ,idolatry to the form of a dialectical argument like ,plato or ,st4 ,thomas ,aquinas4 ,in the highest instance of all--the case of our ,lord ,jesus ,christ himself--a natural instinct of reverence is apt to deter us from analysing how he came by the truth that he communicated to men2 but1 though ,i would not deny that the deepest #ade truth came to him chiefly by a supreme gift of intuition1 there are obvious indications of profound intellectual thought in his teaching4 ,recall for a moment his arguments against the misuse of the ,sabbath1 against the superstition of unclean meats1 against the ,sadducean objection to the ,resurrection4 ,i want to avoid at present dogmatic phraseology2 so ,i will only submit in passing that this is only what we should expect if the early ,church was right in thinking of ,christ as the supreme expression in the moral and religious sphere of the ,logos or ,reason of ,god4 ,the thought of great religious thinkers is none the less ,revelation because it involves the use of their reasoning faculties4 ,but ,i guarded myself against being supposed1 in contending for the possibility of a philosophical or metaphysical knowledge of ,god1 to assume that religious truth had always come to men in this way1 or even that the greatest steps in religious progress have usually taken the form of explicit reasoning4 ,once again1 it is all-important to distinguish between the way in which a belief comes to be entertained and the reasons for its being true4 ,all sorts of psychological causes have contributed to generate religious beliefs4 ,and when once we have discovered grounds in our own reflection or experience for believing them to be true1 there is no reason why we should not regard all of them as #adf pieces of divine revelation4 ,visions and dreams1 for instance1 had a share in the development of religious ideas4 ,we might even admit the possibility that the human race would never have been led to think of the immortality of the soul but for primitive ideas about ghosts suggested by the phenomena of dreams4 ,the truth of the doctrine is neither proved nor disproved by such an account of its origin2 but1 if that belief is true and dreams have played a part in the process by which man has been led to it1 no ,theist surely can refuse to recognize the divine guidance therein4 ,and so1 at a higher level1 we are told by the author of the ,acts that ,st4 ,peter was led to accept the great principle of ,gentile ,christianity by the vision of a sheet let down from heaven4 ,there is no reason why that account should not be historically true4 ,the psychologist may very easily account for ,st4 ,peter's vision by the working in his mind of the liberal teaching of ,stephen1 the effect of his fast1 and so on4 ,but that does not prevent us recognizing that vision as an instrument of divine ,revelation4 ,we at the present day do not believe in this fundamental principle of ,christianity because of that dream of ,st4 ,peter's2 for we know that dreams are not always truth or always edifying4 ,we believe in that principle on other grounds--the convincing grounds 7among others7 which ,st4 ,luke puts into ,st4 ,peter's mouth #adg on the following morning4 ,but that need not prevent our recognizing that ,god may have communicated that truth to the men of that generation--and through them to us--partly by means of that dream4 ,the two principles then for which ,i wish to contend are these3 7#a7 that ,revelation is a matter of degree2 7#b7 that no ,revelation can be accepted in the long run merely because it came to a particular person in a peculiarly intuitive or immediate way4 ,it may be that ,m4 ,auguste ,sabatier is right in seeing the most immediate contact of ,god with the human soul in those intuitive convictions which can least easily be accounted for by ordinary psychological causes2 in those new departures of religious insight1 those unaccountable comings of new thoughts into the mind1 which constitute the great crises or turning-points of religious history4 ,but1 though the coming of such thoughts may often be accepted by the individual as direct evidences of a divine origin1 the ,metaphysician1 on looking back upon them1 cannot treat the fact that the psychologist cannot account for them1 as a convincing proof of such an origin1 apart from our judgement upon the contents of what claims to be a revelation4 ,untrue thoughts and wicked thoughts sometimes arise equally unaccountably3 the fact that they do so is even now accounted for by some as a sufficient proof of direct diabolic suggestion4 ,when we have judged the #adh thought to be true or the suggestion to be good1 then we1 who on other grounds believe in ,god1 may see in it a piece of divine revelation1 but not till then4 ,from this point of view it is clear that we are able to recognize various degrees and various kinds of divine revelation in many different ,religions1 philosophies1 systems of ethical teaching4 ,we are able to recognize the importance to the world of the great historical ,religions1 in all of which we can acknowledge a measure of ,revelation4 ,the fact that the truths which they teach 7in so far as they are true7 can now be recognized as true by philosophic thought1 does not show that the world would ever have evolved those thoughts1 apart from the influence of the great revealing personalities4 ,philosophy itself--the ,philosophy of the professed philosophers--has no doubt contributed a very important element to the content of the historical ,religions2 but it is only in proportion as they become part of a system of religious teaching1 and the possession of an organized religious community1 that the ideas of the philosophers really come home to multitudes of men1 and shape the history of the world4 ,nor in many cases would the philosophers themselves have seen what they have seen but for the great epoch-making thoughts of the great religion-making periods4 ,and the same considerations which show the importance of religious movements in the #adi past tend also to emphasize the importance of the historical ,religion and of the religious community in which it is enshrined in modern times4 ,because religious truth can now be defended by the use of our ordinary intellectual faculties1 and because all possess these faculties in some degree1 it is absurd to suppose that the ordinary individual1 if left to himself1 would be likely to evolve a true religious system for himself--any more than he would be likely to discern for himself the truths that were first seen by ,euclid or ,newton if he were not taught them4 ,to under-estimate the importance of the great historical ,religions and their creators has been the besetting sin of technical religious ,philosophy4 ,metaphysicians have in truth often written about ,religion in great ignorance as to the real facts of religious history4 ,but because we recognize a measure of truth in all the historical ,religions1 it does not follow that we can recognize an equal amount of truth in all of them4 ,the idea that all the ,religions teach much the same thing--or that1 while they vary about that unimportant part of ,religion which is called doctrine or dogma1 they are all agreed about ,morality--is an idea which could only occur to the self-complaisant ignorance which of late years has done most of the theological writing in the correspondence columns of our newspapers4 ,the real student of comparative #aej ,religion knows that it is only at a rather advanced stage in the development of ,religion that ,religion becomes in any important degree an ethical teacher at all4 ,even the highest and most ethical ,religions are not agreed either in their ,ethics or in their ,theology4 ,not only can we recognize higher and lower ,religions2 but the highest ,religions1 among many things which they have in common1 are at certain points diametrically antagonistic to each other4 ,it is impossible therefore reasonably to maintain that fashionable attitude of mind towards these ,religions which my friend ,professor ,inge once described as a sort of honorary membership of all ,religions except one's own4 ,if we are to regard the historical ,religions as being of any importance to our own personal religious life1 we must choose between them4 ,if we put aside the case of ,judaism in its most cultivated modern form1 a form in which it has been largely influenced by ,christianity1 ,i suppose there is practically only one ,religion which would be in the least likely to appeal to a modern philosophical student of ,religion as a possible alternative to ,christianity--and that is ,buddhism4 ,but ,buddhist ,ethics are not the same as ,christian ,ethics4 ,buddhist ,ethics are ascetic3 the ,christianity which ,christ taught was anti-ascetic4 ,in its view of the future1 ,buddhism is pessimistic2 ,christianity is optimistic4 ,much as #aea ,buddhism has done to inculcate ,humanity and ,charity1 the principle of ,buddhist ,humanity is not the same as that of ,christianity4 ,humanity is encouraged by the ,buddhist 7in so far as he is really influenced by his own formal creed7 not from a motive of disinterested affection1 but as a means of escaping from the evils of personal and individual existence1 and so winning ,nirvana4 ,we cannot at one and the same time adhere to the ,ethics of ,buddhism and to those of ,christianity1 though ,i am far from saying that ,christians have nothing to learn either from ,buddhist teaching or from ,buddhist practice4 ,still less can we at one and the same time be ,atheists with the ,buddhist and ,theists with the ,christian2 look forward with the ,buddhist to the extinction of personal consciousness and with the ,christian to a fuller and more satisfying life4 ,to take an interest in comparative ,religion is not to be religious2 to be religious implies a certain exclusive attachment to some definite form of religious belief1 though it may of course often be a belief to which many historical influences have contributed4 ,i have been trying to lead you to a view of ,revelation which recognizes the existence and the importance of those exceptional religious minds to whom is due the foundation and development of the great historical ,religions1 while at the same time we refuse1 in the last resort1 to recognize any #aeb revelation as true except on the ground that its truth can be independently verified4 ,i do not mean to deny that the individual must at first1 and may quite reasonably in some cases throughout life1 accept much of his religious belief on authority2 but that is only because he may be justified in thinking that such and such a person1 or more probably such and such a religious community1 is more likely to be right than himself4 ,rational submission to authority in this or that individual postulates independent judgement on the part of others4 ,i am far from saying that every individual is bound to satisfy himself by personal enquiry as to the truth of every element in his own ,religion2 but1 if and so far as he determines to do so1 he cannot reasonably accept an alleged revelation on any other ground than that it comes home to him1 that the content of that ,religion appeals to him as true1 as satisfying the demands of his intellect and of his conscience4 ,the question in which most of us1 ,i imagine1 are most vitally interested is whether the ,christian ,religion is a ,religion which we can accept on these grounds4 ,that it possesses some truth1 that whatever in it is true comes from ,god--that much is likely to be admitted by all who believe in any kind of ,religion in the sense in which we have been discussing ,religion4 ,the great question for us is1 ',can we find any reason for the modern man #aec identifying himself in any exclusive way with the historical ,christian ,religion8 ,granted that there is some truth in all ,religions1 does ,christianity contain the most truth8 ,is it in any sense the one absolute1 final1 universal ,religion8' ,that will be the subject for our consideration in the next lecture4 ,but meanwhile ,i want to suggest to you one very broad provisional answer to our problem4 ,christianity alone of the historical ,religions teaches those great truths to which we have been conducted by a mere appeal to ,reason and to ,conscience4 ,it teaches ethical ,monotheism2 that is to say1 it thinks of ,god as a thinking1 feeling1 willing ,consciousness1 and understands ,his nature in the light of the highest moral ideal4 ,it teaches the belief in personal ,immortality1 and it teaches a ,morality which in its broad general principles still appeals to the ,conscience of ,humanity4 ,universal ,love it sets forth as at once the central point in its moral ideal and the most important element in its conception of ,god4 ,in one of those metaphors which express so much more than any more exact philosophical formula1 it is the ,religion which teaches the ,fatherhood of ,god and the brotherhood of man4 ,and these truths were taught by the historical ,jesus4 ,no one up to his time had ever taught them with equal clearness and in equal purity1 and with the same freedom from other and inconsistent teachings3 #aed and this teaching was developed by his first followers4 ,amid all aberrations and amid all contamination by heterogeneous elements1 the society or societies which look back to ,christ as their ,founder have never in the worst times ceased altogether to teach these truths2 and now they more and more tend to constitute the essence of ,christianity as it is to-day--all the more so on account of the ,church's gradual shuffling off of so many adventitious ideas and practices which were at one time associated with them4 ,christianity is and remains the only one of the great historical ,religions which has taught and does teach these great truths in all their fullness4#b ,these considerations would by themselves be sufficient to put ,christianity in an absolutely unique position among the ,religions of ,mankind4 ,i have so far been regarding our ,lord ,jesus ,christ simply as a teacher of religious and ethical truth4 ,i think it is of fundamental importance that we should begin by regarding him in this light4 #aee ,it was in this light that he first presented himself to his fellow-countrymen--even before 7in all probability7 he claimed to be the fulfiller of the ,messianic ideal which had been set before them by the prophets of their race4 ,and ,i could not1 without a vast array of quotation1 give you a sufficient impression of the prominence of this aspect of his work and personality among the earlier ,greek ,fathers4 ,even after the elaborate doctrines of ,catholic ,christianity had begun to be developed1 it was still primarily as the supremely inspired ,teacher that ,jesus was most often thought of4 ,when the early ,christians thought of him as the incarnate ,logos or ,reason of ,god1 to teach men divine truth was still looked upon as the supreme function of the ,logos and the purpose of his indwelling in the historical ,jesus4 ,but from the first ,jesus appealed to men as much more than a teacher4 ,it is one of the distinctive peculiarities of religious and ethical knowledge that it is intimately connected with character3 religious and moral teaching of the highest kind is in a peculiar degree inseparable from the personality of the teacher4 ,jesus impressed his contemporaries1 and he has impressed successive ages as having not only set before man the highest religious and moral ideal1 but as having in a unique manner realized that ideal in his own life4 ,even the word 'example' #aef does not fully express the impression which he made on his followers1 or do justice to the inseparability of his personality from his teaching4 ,in the religious consciousness of ,christ men saw realized the ideal relation of man not merely to his fellow-man but also to his heavenly ,father4 ,from the first an enthusiastic reverence for its ,founder has been an essential part of the ,christian ,religion amid all the variety of the phases which it has assumed4 ,the doctrine of the ,christian ,church was in its origin an attempt to express in the philosophical language of the time its sense of this supreme value of ,christ for the religious and moral life of man4 ,as to the historical success and the present usefulness of these attempts1 ,i shall have a word to say next time4 ,meanwhile1 ,i would leave with you this one thought4 ,the claim of ,christianity to be the supreme1 the universal1 in a sense the final ,religion1 must rest mainly1 in the last resort1 upon the appeal which ,christ and his ,religion make to the moral and religious consciousness of the present4 ,,literature ,see the works mentioned at the end of the next ,lecture1 to which1 as dealing more specially with the subject of ,lecture v41 may be added ,professor ,sanday's ,inspiration1 and ,professor ,wendt's ,revelation and ,christianity4 #a ,throughout his writings1 but pre-eminently in the ,theoetetus4 #b ,if it be said that ,judaism or any other ,religion does now teach these truths as fully as ,christianity1 this may possibly apply to the creed of individual members of these ,religions1 but it can hardly be claimed for the historical ,religions themselves4 ,i should certainly be prepared to contend that even such individuals lose something by not placing in the centre of their ,religion the personality of him by whom they were first taught1 and the communities which have been the great transmitters of them4 ,but in this course of lectures ,i am chiefly concerned with giving reasons why ,christians should remain ,christians1 rather than with giving reasons why others who are not so should become ,christians4 #aeg ,,lecture ,,vi ,,christianity ,in my last lecture ,i tried to effect a transition from the idea of religious truth as something believed by the individual1 and accepted by him on the evidence of his own ,reason and ,conscience to the idea of a ,religion considered as a body of religious truth handed down by tradition in an organized society4 ,the higher ,religions--those which have passed beyond the stage of merely tribal or national ,religion--are based upon the idea that religious truth of enduring value has been from time to time revealed to particular persons1 the ,founders or ,apostles or ,reformers of such religions4 ,we recognized the validity of this idea of ,revelation1 and the supreme importance to the moral and religious life of such historical revelations1 on one condition--that the claim of any historical ,religion to the allegiance of its followers must be held to rest in the last resort upon the appeal which it makes to their ,reason and ,conscience3 though the individual may often be #aeh quite justified in accepting and relying upon the ,reason and ,conscience of the religious ,society rather than upon his own4 ,the view which ,i have taken of ,revelation makes it quite independent of what are commonly called miracles4 ,all that ,i have said is quite consistent with the unqualified acceptance or with the unqualified rejection of miracles4 ,but some of you may perhaps expect me to explain a little more fully my own attitude towards that question4 ,and therefore ,i will say this much--that1 if we regard a miracle as implying a suspension of a law of nature1 ,i do not think we can call such a suspension a priori incredible2 but the enormous experience which we have of the actual regularity of the laws of nature1 and of the causes which in certain states of the human mind lead to the belief in miracles1 makes such an event in the highest degree improbable4 ,to me at least it would seem practically impossible to get sufficient evidence for the occurrence of such an event in the distant past3 all our historical reasoning presupposes the reign of law4 ,but it is being more and more admitted by theologians who are regarded as quite orthodox and rather conservative1 that the idea of a miracle need not necessarily imply such a suspension of natural law4 ,and on the other hand1 decidedly critical and liberal theologians are more and more disposed to admit #aei that many of the abnormal events commonly called miraculous may very well have occurred without involving any real suspension of natural law4 ,recent advances in psychological knowledge have widened our conception of the possible influence of mind over matter and of mind over mind4 ,whether an alleged miraculous event is to be accepted or not must1 as it seems to me1 depend partly upon the amount of critically sifted historical evidence which can be produced for it1 partly upon the nature of the event itself--upon the question whether it is or is not of such a kind that we can with any probability suppose that it might be accounted for either by known laws or by laws at present imperfectly understood4 ,to apply these principles in detail to the ,new ,testament narratives would involve critical discussions which are outside the purpose of these lectures4 ,i will only say that few critical scholars would deny that some recorded miracles even in the ,new ,testament are unhistorical4 ,when they find an incident like the healing of ,malchus's ear omitted in the earlier1 and inserted in the later redaction of a common original1 they cannot but recognize the probability of traditional amplification4 ,at the same time few liberal theologians will be disposed to doubt the general fact that our ,lord did cure some diseases by spiritual influence1 or that an appearance of our ,lord to the disciples--of whatever nature--actually #afj did occur1 and was the means of assuring them of his continued life and power4 ,at all events ,i do not myself doubt these two facts4 ,but at least when miracles are not regarded as constituting real exceptions to natural law1 it is obvious that they will not prove the truth of any teaching which may have been connected with them2 while1 even if we treat the ,gospel miracles as real exceptions to law1 the difficulty of proving them in the face of modern critical enquiry is so great that the evidence will hardly come home to any one not previously convinced1 on purely spiritual grounds1 of the exceptional character of our ,lord's personality and mission4 ,this being so1 ,i do not think that our answer to the problem of miracles1 whatever it be1 can play any very important part in ,christian ,apologetic4 ,when we have become ,christians on other grounds1 the acts of healing may still retain a certain value as illustrating the character of the ,master1 and the ,resurrection vision as proclaiming the truth of ,immortality in a way which will come home to minds not easily accessible to abstract argument4 ,the true foundation not merely for belief in the teaching of ,christ1 but also for the ,christian's reverence for his ,person1 must1 as it seems to me1 be found in the appeal which his words and his character still make to the ,conscience and ,reason of mankind4 ,this proposition would be #afa perhaps more generally accepted if ,i were to say that the claim of ,christ to allegiance rests upon the way in which he satisfies the heart1 the aspirations1 the religious needs of mankind4 ,and ,i should be quite willing to adopt such language1 if you will only include respect for historic fact and intellectual truth among these religious needs1 and admit that a reasonable faith must rest on something better than mere emotion4 ,fully to exhibit the grounds of this claim of ,christ upon us would involve an examination of the ,gospel narratives in detail3 it would involve an attempt to present to you what was this teaching1 this character1 this religious consciousness which has commanded the homage of mankind4 ,to attempt such a task would be out of place in a brief course of lectures devoted to a particular aspect of ,religion--its relation to ,philosophy4 ,here ,i must assume that you feel the spiritual supremacy of ,christ--his unique position in the religious history of the world and his unique importance for the spiritual life of each one of us--2 and go on to ask what assertions such a conviction warrants us in making about his person and nature1 what in short should be our attitude towards the traditional doctrines of the ,christian ,church4 ,you may know something of the position taken up in this matter by the dominant school of what ,i may call believing liberal ,theology in #afb ,germany--the school which takes its name from the great theologian ,ritschl1 but which will be best known to most ,englishmen in connexion with the name of ,prof4 ,harnack1 though it may be well to remember that ,harnack is nearer to the left than to the right wing of that school4 ,the fundamental principle of that school is to base the claims of ,christianity mainly upon the appeal which the picture of the life1 teaching1 character1 and personality of ,christ makes to the moral and religious consciousness of mankind4 ,their teaching is ,christo-centric in the highest possible degree3 but they are almost or entirely indifferent to the dogmatic formulae which may be employed to express this supreme religious importance of ,christ4 ,in putting the personal and historical ,christ1 and not any doctrine about him1 in the centre of the religious life ,i believe they are right4 ,but this principle is sometimes asserted in an exaggerated and one-sided manner4 ,in the first place they are somewhat contemptuous of ,philosophy1 and of philosophic argument even for such fundamental truths as the existence of ,god4 ,i do not see that the subjective impression made by ,christ can by itself prove the fact of ,god's existence4 ,we must first believe that there is a ,god to be revealed before we can be led to believe in ,christ as the supreme ,revealer4 ,i do not believe that the modern world will permanently accept a view of the ,universe #afc which does not commend itself to its ,reason4 ,the ,ritschlians talk about the truth of ,religion resting upon value-judgements4 ,i can quite understand that a value-judgement may tell us the supreme value of ,christ's character and his fitness to be treated as the representative of ,god to us1 when once we believe in ,god3 but ,i cannot see how any value-judgement taken by itself can assure us of that existence4 ,value is one thing3 existence is another4 ,to my mind a ,christian ,apologetic should begin1 like the old ,apologies of ,justin or ,aristides1 with showing the essential reasonableness of ,christ's teaching about ,god and its essential harmony with the highest philosophic teaching about duty1 about the divine nature1 about the soul and its eternal destiny4 ,the ,ritschlian is too much disposed to underrate the value of all previous religious and ethical teaching1 even of ,judaism at its highest3 he is not content with making ,christ the supreme ,revealer3 he wants to make him the only ,revealer4 ,and when we turn to post-,christian religious history1 he is apt to treat all the great developments of religious and ethical thought from the time of the ,apostles to our own day as simply worthless and even mischievous corruptions of the original1 and only genuine1 ,christianity4 ,he tends to reduce ,christianity to the ipsissima verba of its ,founder4 ,the ,ritschlian dislikes ,dogma1 not because it may be at times a #afd misdevelopment1 but because it is a development2 not because some of it may be antiquated ,philosophy1 but simply because it is ,philosophy4#a ,in order to treat fairly this question of doctrinal development1 it must be remembered that what is commonly called dogma is only a part--perhaps not the most important part--of that development4 ,supreme as ,i believe to be the value of ,christ's great principle of ,brotherhood1 it is impossible to deny that1 if we look in detail at the moral ideal of any educated ,christian at the present day1 we shall find in it many elements which cannot explicitly be discovered in the ipsissima verba of ,christ and still less of his ,apostles4 ,and development in the ethical ideal always carries with it some development in a man's conception of ,god and the ,universe4 ,some of these elements are due to a gradual bringing out into clear consciousness1 and an application to new details1 of principles latent in the actual words of ,christ2 others to an infusion of ,greek ,philosophy2 others to the practical experience and the scientific discoveries of the modern world4 ,christianity in the course of nineteen centuries has gradually absorbed into itself many ideas from various sources1 #afe christianizing them in the process4 ,many ideas1 much ,hellenic ,philosophy1 many ,hellenic ideals of life1 many ,roman ideas of government and organization have thus1 in the excellent phrase of ,professor ,gardner1 been 'baptized into ,christ4' ,this capacity of absorbing into itself elements of spiritual life which were originally independent of it is not a defect of historical ,christianity1 but one of its qualifications for being accepted by the modern world as a universal1 an absolute1 a final ,religion4 ,it does not seem to me possible to recognize the claim of any historical ,religion to be final and ultimate1 unless it include within itself a principle of development4 ,let me1 as briefly as ,i can1 illustrate what ,i mean4 ,it is most clearly and easily seen in the case of ,morality4 ,if the idea of a universal ,religion is to mean that any detailed code of ,morals laid down at a definite moment of history can serve by itself for the guidance of all human life in all after ages1 we may at once dismiss the notion as a dream4 ,in nothing did our ,lord show his greatness and the fitness of his ,religion for universality more than in abstaining from drawing up such a code4 ,he confined himself to laying down a few great principles1 with illustrations applicable to the circumstances of his immediate hearers4 ,those principles require development and application to the needs and #aff circumstances of successive ages before they can suffice to guide us in the details of conduct4 ,to effect this development and application has been historically the work of the ,church which owes its origin to the disciples whom he gathered around him4 ,if we may accept the teaching of the fourth ,gospel as at least having germs in the actual utterances of our ,lord1 he himself foresaw the necessity of such a development4 ,at all events the belief in the continued work of ,god's ,spirit in human ,society is an essential principle of the ,christian ,religion as it was taught by the first followers of its ,founder4 ,take for instance the case of slavery4 ,our ,lord never condemned slavery3 it is not certain that he would have done so1 had the case been presented to him4 ,very likely his answer would have been ',who made me a judge or a divider1' or ',render unto ,caesar the things that are ,caesar's4' ,no one on reflection can now fail to see the essential incompatibility between slavery and the ,christian spirit2 yet it was perhaps fourteen hundred years before a single ,christian thinker definitely enunciated that incompatibility1 and more than eighteen hundred years before slavery was actually banished from all nominally ,christian lands4 ,who can doubt that many features of our existing social system are equally incompatible with the principles of ,christ's teaching1 and that the #afg accepted ,christian morality of a hundred years hence will definitely condemn many things which the average ,christian ,conscience now allows8 ,and then there is another kind of development in ,ethics which is equally necessary4 ,the ,christian law of ,love bids us promote the true good of our fellow-men1 bids us regard another man's good as equally valuable with our own or with the like good of any other4 ,but what is this good life which we are to promote8 ,as to that our ,lord has only laid down a few very general principles--the supreme value of ,love itself1 the superiority of the spiritual to the carnal1 the importance of sexual purity4 ,these principles our consciences still acknowledge1 and there are no others of equal importance4 ,but what of the intellectual life8 ,has that no value8 ,our ,lord never depreciated it1 as so many religious founders and reformers have done4 ,but he has given us no explicit guidance about it4 ,when the ,christian ideal embraced within itself a recognition of the value and duty of ,culture1 it was borrowing from ,greece4 ,and when we turn from ,ethics to ,theology1 the actual fact of development is no less indisputable4 ,every alteration of the ethical ideal has brought with it some alteration in our idea of ,god4 ,we can no longer endure theories of the ,atonement which are opposed to modern ideas of ,justice1 though they were quite compatible with #afh patristic or medieval ideas of ,justice4 ,the advances of ,science have altered our whole conception of ,god's mode of acting upon or governing the world4 ,none of these things are religiously so important as the great principle of the ,fatherhood of ,god1 nor have they in any way tended to modify its truth or its supreme importance4 ,but they do imply that our ,theology is not and cannot be in all points the same as that of the first ,christians4 ,now with these presuppositions let us approach the question of that great structure of formal dogma which the ,church has built upon the foundation of ,christ's teaching4 ,a development undoubtedly it is2 but1 while we must not assume that every development which has historically taken place is necessarily true or valuable1 it is equally unphilosophical to assume that1 because it is a development1 it is necessarily false or worthless4 ,our ,lord himself did1 indeed1 claim to be the ,messiah2 the fact of ,messiahship was what was primarily meant by the title ',son of ,god4' ,even in the ,synoptists he exhibits a consciousness of a direct divine mission supremely important for his own race2 and1 before the close1 we can perhaps discover a growing conviction that the truth which he was teaching was meant for a larger world4 ,starting from and developing these ideas1 his followers set themselves to devise terms which should express their own sense of their ,master's unique #afi religious value and importance1 to express what they felt he had been to their own souls1 what they felt he might be to all who accepted his message4 ,even to ,st4 ,paul the term ',son of ,god' still meant primarily 'the ,messiah'3 but in the light of his conception of ,jesus1 the ,messianic idea expanded till the ,christ was exalted to a position far above anything which ,jewish prophecy or ,apocalypse had ever claimed for him4 ,and the means of expressing these new ideas were found naturally and inevitably in the current philosophical terminology of the day4 ,with the fourth ,gospel1 if not already with ,st4 ,paul1 there was infused into the teaching of the ,church a new element4 ,from the ,jewish-,alexandrian speculative ,theology the author borrowed the term ,logos to express what he conceived to be the cosmic importance of ,christ's position4 ,he accepted from that speculation--probably from ,philo--the theory which personified or half-personified that ,logos or ,wisdom of ,god through which ,god was represented in the ,old ,testament as creating the world and inspiring the prophets4 ,this ,logos through whom ,god had throughout the ages been more and more fully revealing ,himself had at last become actually incarnate in ,jesus ,christ4 ,this ,word of ,god is also described as truly ,god1 though in the fourth ,gospel the relation of the ,father to the ,word--at #agj least to the ,word before the ,incarnation--is left wholly vague and undefined4 ,from these comparatively simple beginnings sprang centuries of controversy culminating in that elaborate system of dogma which is often little understood even by its most vigorous champions4 ,you know in a very general way the result4 ,the ,logos was made more and more distinct from ,god1 endowed with a more and more decidedly personal existence4 ,then1 when the interests of ,monotheism seemed to be endangered1 the attempt was made to save it by asserting the subordination of the ,son to the ,father4 ,the result was that by ,arianism the ,son was reduced to the position of an inferior ,god4 ,polytheism had once more to be averted by asserting in even stronger terms not merely the equality of the ,son with the ,father but also the ,unity of the ,god who is both ,father and ,son4 ,the doctrine of the ,divinity of the ,holy ,ghost went through a somewhat similar series of stages4 ,at first regarded as identical with the ,word1 a distinction was gradually effected4 ,the ,word was said to have been incarnate in ,jesus2 while it was through the ,holy ,ghost that the subsequent work of ,god was carried on in human hearts4 ,and by similar stages the equality of the ,holy ,ghost to ,father and to ,son was gradually evolved2 while it was more and more strongly asserted that1 in spite of the eternal distinction of #aga ,persons1 it was one and the same ,god who revealed ,himself in all the activities attributed to each of them4 ,side by side with these controversies about the relation between the ,father and the ,word1 there was a gradual development of doctrine as to the relation between the ,logos and the human ,jesus in whom he took up his abode4 ,frequently the idea of any real humanity in ,jesus was all but lost4 ,that was at last saved by the ,catholic formula 'perfect ,god and perfect man'2 though it cannot be denied that popular thought in all ages has never quite discarded the tendency to think of ,jesus as simply ,god in human form1 and not really man at all4 ,even now there are probably hundreds of people who regard themselves as particularly orthodox ,churchmen who yet do not know that the ,church teaches that our ,lord had a human soul and a human will4 ,what are we to make of all that vast structure1 of the elaboration and complication of which the ,constantinopolitan ,creed which we miscall ,nicene and even the so-called ,athanasian ,creed give very little idea to those who do not also know something of the ,councils1 the ,fathers1 and the ,schoolmen8 ,has it all a modern meaning8 ,can it be translated into terms of our modern thought and speech8 ,for ,i suppose it hardly needs demonstration--that such #agb translation is necessary1 if it be possible4 ,i doubt whether any man in this audience who has not made a special study of the subject1 will get up and say that the meaning of such terms as 'substance1' 'essence1' 'nature1' 'hypostasis1' 'person1' 'eternal generation1' 'procession1' 'hypostatic union1' and the like is at once evident to him by the light of nature and an ordinary modern education4 ,and those who know most about the matter will most fully realize the difficulty of saying exactly what was meant by such phrases at this or that particular moment or by this or that particular thinker4 ,a thorough discussion of this subject from the point of view of one who acknowledges the supreme claims of ,christ upon the modern mind1 and is yet willing fairly to examine the traditional ,creed in the light of modern philosophical culture1 is a task which very much needs to be undertaken4 ,i doubt if it has been satisfactorily performed yet4 ,even if ,i possessed a tithe of the learning necessary for that task1 ,i could obviously not undertake it now4 ,but a few remarks on the subject may be of use for the guidance of our personal religious life in this matter3 7#a7 ,i should like once more to emphasize the fact that the really important thing1 from the point of view of the spiritual life of the individual soul1 is our personal attitude towards our ,lord himself and his teaching1 and not the phrases in which we express #agc it4 ,a man who believes what ,christ taught about ,god's ,fatherhood1 about human brotherhood and human duty1 about sin1 the need for repentance1 the ,father's readiness to forgive1 the value of ,prayer1 the certainty of ,immortality--the man who finds the ideal of his life in the character of ,jesus1 and strives by the help which he has supplied to think of ,god and feel towards ,god as he did1 to imitate him in his life1 to live 7like him7 in communion with the ,father and in the hope of ,immortality--he is a ,christian1 and a ,christian in the fullest sense of the word4 ,he will find in that faith all that is necessary 7to use the old phrase7 for salvation--for personal goodness and personal ,religion4 ,and such a man will be saved1 and saved through ,christ2 even though he has never heard of the ,creeds1 or deliberately rejects many of the formulae which the ,church or the ,churches have 'built upon' that one foundation4 7#b7 ,at the same time1 if we believe in the supreme importance of ,christ for the world1 for the religious life of the ,church and of the individual1 it is surely convenient to have some language in which to express our sense of that importance4 ,the actual personal attitude towards ,christ is the essential thing3 but as a means towards that attitude it is of importance to express what ,christ has actually been to others1 and what he ought to be to ourselves4 ,children #agd and adults alike require to have the claims of ,christ presented to them before they can verify them by their own experience3 and this requires articulate language of some kind4 ,religion can only be handed down1 diffused1 propagated by an organized society3 and a religious society must have some means of handing on its religious ideas4 ,it is possible to hold that under other conditions a different set of terms might have expressed the truth as well as those which have actually been enshrined in the ,new ,testament1 the ,liturgies1 and the ,creeds4 ,but the phrases which have been actually adopted surely have a strong presumption in their favour1 even if it were merely through the difficulty of changing them1 and the importance of unity1 continuity1 corporate life4 ,it is easier to explain1 or even if need be1 alter in some measure the meaning of an accepted formula than to introduce a new one4 ,religious development has at all times taken place largely in this way4 ,our ,lord himself entirely transformed the meaning of ,god's ,fatherhood1 ,messiahship1 the ,kingdom of ,god1 the people of ,god1 the true ,israel4 ,at all events we should endeavour to discover the maximum of truth that any traditional formula can be made to yield before we discard it in favour of a new one4 ,if we want to worship and to work with ,christ's ,church1 we must do our best to give the maximum of meaning #age to the language in which it expresses its faith and its devotion4 7#c7 ,we must insist strongly upon the thoroughly human character of ,christ's own consciousness4 ,jesus did not--so ,i believe the critical study of the ,gospels leads us to think--himself claim to be ,god1 or to be ,son of ,god in any sense but that of ,messiahship4 ,he claimed to speak with authority3 he claimed a divine mission3 he claimed to be a ,revealer of divine truth4 ,the fourth ,gospel has been of infinite service to spiritual ,christianity4 ,it has given the world a due sense of the spiritual importance of ,christ as the ,way1 the ,truth1 and the ,life4 ,perhaps ,christianity could hardly have expanded into a universal ,religion without that ,gospel4 ,but we cannot regard all that the ,johannine ,christ says about himself as the ipsissima verba of ,jesus4 ,the picture is idealized in accordance with the writer's own conceptions1 though after all its ,theology is very much simpler than the later ,theology which has grown out of it permits most people to see4 ,we must not let these discourses blind us to the human character of ,christ's consciousness4 ,and this real humanity must carry with it the recognition of the thoroughly human limitations of his knowledge4 ,the ,bishop of ,birmingham has prepared the way for the union of a really historical view of ,christ's life with a reasonable interpretation of the ,catholic #agf doctrine about him1 by reviving the ancient view as to the limitation of his intellectual knowledge2#b but the principle must be carried in some ways further than the ,bishop himself would be prepared to go4 ,the accepted ,christology must be distinctly recognized as the ,church's reflection and comment upon ,christ's work and its value1 not as the actual teaching of the ,master about himself4 7#d7 ,it must likewise be recognized that the language in which the ,church expressed this attitude towards ,christ was borrowed from ,greek ,metaphysics1 particularly from ,plato and ,neo-,platonism in the patristic period1 and from ,aristotle in the ,middle ,ages4 ,and we cannot completely separate language from thought4 ,it was not merely ,greek technical phrases but ,greek ways of thinking which were imported into ,catholic ,christianity4 ,and the language1 the categories1 the ideas of ,greek ,philosophy were to some extent different from those of modern times4 ,the most ,platonically-minded thinker of modern times does not really think exactly as ,plato thought3 the most ,catholic-minded thinker of modern times1 if he has also breathed the atmosphere of modern ,science and modern ,culture1 cannot really think exactly as ,athanasius or ,basil thought4 ,i #agg do not suppose that any modern mind can think itself back into exactly the state of mind which an ancient ,father was in1 when he used the term ,logos4 ,this central idea of the ,logos is not a category of modern thought4 ,we cannot really think of a ,being who is as distinct from the ,father as he is represented as being in some of the patristic utterances--,i say advisedly some1 for widely different modes of thought are found in ,fathers of equal authority--and yet so far one with him that we can say ',one ,god1 one spiritual ,being1 and not two4' ,nor are we under any obligation to accept these formulae as representing profound mysteries which we cannot understand3 they were simply pieces of metaphysical thinking1 some of them valuable and successful pieces of thinking1 others less so4 ,we must use them as helps1 not as fetters to our thought4 ,but1 though we cannot think ourselves back into exactly the same intellectual condition as a fourth- or fifth-century ,father1 there is no reason why we should not recognize the fundamental truth of the religious idea which he was trying to express4 ,a modern ,philosopher would probably express that thought somewhat in this manner4 ',the whole world is a revelation of ,god in a sense1 and still more so is the human mind3 all through the ages ,god has gone on revealing ,himself more and more in human consciousness1 especially through the prophets and other #agh exceptionally inspired men4 ,the fullest and completest revelation of ,himself was made once for all in the person and teaching of ,jesus1 in whom we recognize a revelation of ,god adequate to all our spiritual needs1 when developed and interpreted by the continued presence of ,god's ,spirit in the world and particularly in the ,church which grew out of the little company of ,jesus' friends4' 7#e7 ,i do not think at the present day even quite orthodox people are much concerned about the technicalities of the conciliar ,theology1 or even about the niceties of the ,athanasian ,creed4 ,they are even a little suspicious sometimes that much talk about the doctrine of the ,logos is only intended to evade a plain answer to the supreme question of the ,divinity of ,christ4 ,you will expect me perhaps to say something about that question4 ,i would first observe that the popular term 'divinity of ,christ' is apt to give a somewhat misleading impression of what the orthodox teaching on the subject really is4 ,for one thing1 it is apt to suggest the idea of a pre-existent human consciousness of ,jesus1 which would be contrary to ,catholic teaching4 ,the ,logos--the eternal ,son or ,reason of ,god--pre-existed2 but not the man ,jesus ,christ who was born at a particular moment of history1 and who is still1 according to ,catholic ,theology1 a distinct human soul perfectly and for ever united with the ,word4 #agi ,and then again1 it is apt to suggest the heretical idea that the whole ,trinity was incarnate in ,christ1 and not merely the ,word4 ,orthodox ,theology does not teach that ,god the ,father became incarnate in ,christ1 and suffered upon the ,cross4 ,and lastly1 the constant iteration of the phrase ',divinity of ,christ' tends to the concealment of the other half of the ,catholic doctrine--the real humanity of ,christ4 ,to speak of the ,god-manhood of ,christ or the indwelling of ,god in ,christ would be a truer representation even of the strictest orthodox doctrine1 apart from all modern re-interpretations4 ,but even so1 when all this is borne in mind1 it may be asked1 ,what is the real meaning of saying that a man was also ,god8 ,i would answer1 ',whether it is possible to give a modern1 intelligible1 philosophically defensible meaning to the idea of ,christ's ,divinity depends entirely upon the question what we conceive to be the true relation between ,humanity in general and ,god4' ,if 7as ,i have attempted to show7 we are justified in thinking of all human consciousness as constituting a partial reproduction of the divine ,mind2 if we are justified in thinking of human ,reason1 and particularly of the human ,conscience1 as constituting in some measure and in some sense a revelation by means of which we can rise to a contemplation of the divine nature2 if ,personality 7as we know it in man7 is the highest category within our knowledge2 then #ahj there is a real meaning in talking of one particular man being also divine2 of the divine ,reason or ,logos as dwelling after a unique1 exceptional1 pre-eminent manner in him4 ,as ,dr4 ,edward ,caird has remarked1 all the metaphysical questions which were formerly discussed as to the relation between the divine and the human nature in ,christ1 are now being discussed again in reference to the relation of ,humanity in general to ,god4 ,we cannot say intelligibly that ,god dwells in ,christ1 unless we have already recognized that in a sense ,god dwells and reveals ,himself in ,humanity at large1 and in each particular human soul4 ,but ,i fully recognize that1 if this is all that is meant by the expression 'divinity of ,christ1' that doctrine would be evacuated of nearly all that makes it precious to the hearts of ,christian people4 ,and therefore it is all-important that we should go on to insist that men do not reveal ,god equally4 ,the more developed intellect reveals ,god more completely than that of the child or the savage3 and 7far more important from a religious point of view71 the higher and more developed moral consciousness reveals ,him more than the lower1 and above all the actually better man reveals ,god more than the worse man4 ,now1 if in the life1 teaching1 and character of ,christ--in his moral and religious consciousness1 and in the life and character which #aha so completely expressed and illustrated that consciousness--we can discover the highest revelation of the divine nature1 we can surely attach a real meaning to the language of the ,creeds which singles him out from all the men that ever lived as the one in whom the ideal relation of man to ,god is most completely realized4 ,if ,god can only be known as revealed in ,humanity1 and ,christ is the highest representative of ,humanity1 we can very significantly say ',christ is the ,son of ,god1 very ,god of very ,god1 of one substance with the ,father1' though the phrase undoubtedly belongs to a philosophical dialect which we do not habitually use4 7#f7 ,behind the doctrine of the ,incarnation looms the still more technical doctrine of the ,trinity4 ,yet after all1 it is chiefly1 ,i believe1 as a sort of necessary background or presupposition to the idea of ,christ's divine nature that modern religious people1 not professionally interested in ,theology1 attach importance to that doctrine4 ,they accept the doctrine in so far as it is implied by the teaching of ,scripture and by the doctrine of our ,lord's ,divinity1 but they are not much attached to the technicalities of the ,athanasian ,creed4 ,the great objection to that ,creed1 apart from the damnatory clauses1 is the certainty that it will be misunderstood by most of those who think they understand it at all4 ,the #ahb best thing we could do with the ,athanasian ,creed is to drop it altogether3 the next best thing to it is to explain it1 or at least so much of it as really interests the ordinary layman--the doctrine of three ,persons in one ,god4 ,and therefore it is important to insist in the strongest possible way that the word ',person' which has most unfortunately come to be the technical term for what the ,greeks more obscurely called the three huostaseis in the ,godhead does not1 and never did1 mean what we commonly understand by ,personality--whether in the language of ordinary life or of modern ,philosophy4 ,i do not deny that at certain periods ,theology did tend to think of the ,logos as a distinct being from the ,father1 a distinct consciousness with thoughts1 will1 desires1 emotions not identical with those of ,god the ,father4 ,the distinction was at times pushed to a point which meant either sheer ,tritheism1 or something which is incapable of being distinctly realized in thought at all4 ,but that is scarcely true of the ,theology which was finally accepted either by ,east or ,west4 ,this is most distinctly seen in the ,summa ,theologica of ,st4 ,thomas ,aquinas3 and ,i would remind you that you cannot be more orthodox than ,st4 ,thomas--the source not only of the ,theology professed by the ,pope and taught in every ,roman ,seminary but of the ,theology embodied in our own ,articles4 ,st4 ,thomas' explanation of the ,trinity #ahc is that ,god is at one and the same time ,power or ,cause#c 7,father71 ,wisdom 7,son71 ,will 7,holy ,ghost72 or1 since the ,will of ,god is always a loving ,will1 ,love 7,amor7 is sometimes substituted for ,will 7,voluntas7 in explanation of the ,holy ,spirit4#d ,how little #ahd ,st4 ,thomas thought of the ',persons' as separate consciousnesses1 is best seen from his doctrine 7taken from ,augustine7 that the love of the ,father for the ,son is the ,holy ,spirit4 ,the love of one ,being for himself or for another is not a ,person in the natural1 normal1 modern sense of the word3 and it would be quite unorthodox to attribute ,personality to the ,son in any other sense than that in which it is attributed to the ,holy ,ghost4 ,i do not myself attach any great importance to these technical phrases4 ,i do not #ahe deny that the supremely important truth that ,god has received ,his fullest revelation in the historical ,christ1 and that ,he goes on revealing ,himself in the hearts of men1 might have been otherwise1 more simply1 to modern minds more intelligibly1 expressed4 ,there are detailed features of the patristic or the scholastic version of the doctrine which involve conceptions to which the most accomplished ,professors of ,theology would find it difficult or impossible to give a modern meaning4 ,i do not know for instance that much would have been lost had ,theology 7with the all but canonical writers ,clement of ,rome and ,hermas1 with ,ignatius1 with ,justin1 with the philosophic ,clement of ,alexandria7 continued to speak indifferently of the ,word and the ,spirit4 ,yet taken by itself this ,thomist doctrine of the ,trinity is one to which it is quite possible to give a perfectly rational meaning1 and a meaning probably very much nearer to that which was really intended by its author than the meaning which is usually put upon the ,trinitarian formula by popular religious thought4 ,that ,god is ,power1 and ,wisdom1 and ,love is simply the essence of ,christian ,theism--not the less true because few ,unitarians would repudiate it4 7#g7 ,once more let me briefly remind you that any claim for finality in the ,christian ,religion must be based on its power of perpetual development4 #ahf ,belief in the continued work of the ,holy ,spirit in the ,church is an essential element of the ,catholic ,faith4 ,we need not1 with the ,ritschlian1 contemptuously condemn the whole structure of ,christian doctrine because undoubtedly it is a development of what was taught by ,christ himself4 ,only1 if we are to justify the development of the past1 we must go on to assert the same right and duty of development in ,ethics and in ,theology for the ,church of the future4 ,in the pregnant phrase of ,loisy1 the development which the ,church is most in need of at the present moment is precisely a development in the idea of development itself4 ,but how can we tell 7it may be asked71 if we once admit that the development of ,religion does not end with the teaching of ,christ1 where the development will stop8 ,if we are to admit an indefinite possibility of growth and change1 how do we know that ,christianity itself will not one day be outgrown8 ,if we once admit that the final appeal is to the religious consciousness of the present1 we must acknowledge that it is not possible to demonstrate a priori that the ,christian ,religion is the final1 universal1 or absolute ,religion4 ,all we can say is that we have no difficulty in recognizing that the development which has so far taken place1 in so far as it is a development which we can approve and accept1 seems to us a development which leaves the #ahg ,religion still essentially the ,religion of ,christ4 ,in the whole structure of the modern ,christian's religious belief1 that which was contributed by ,christ himself is incomparably the most important part--the basis of the whole structure4 ,the essentials of ,religion and ,morality still seem to us to be contained in his teaching as they are contained nowhere else4 ,all the rest that is included in an enlightened modern ,christian's religious creed is either a direct working out of the principles already contained there1 or 7if it has come from other sources7 it has been transformed in the process of adaptation4 ,nothing has been discovered in ,religion and ,morality which tends in any way to diminish the unique reverence which we feel for the person of ,christ1 the perfect sufficiency of his character to represent and incarnate for us the character of ,god4 ,it is a completely gratuitous assumption to suppose that it will ever lose that sufficiency4 ,even in the development of ,science1 there comes a time when its fundamentals are virtually beyond the reach of reconsideration4 ,still more in practical life1 mere unmotived1 gratuitous possibilities may be disregarded4 ,it weakens the hold of fundamental convictions upon the mind to be perpetually contemplating the possibility or probability of fundamental revision4 ,we ought no doubt to keep the spiritual ear ever open that we may always be hearing what the ,spirit saith unto #ahh the ,churches4 ,but to look forward to a time when any better way will be discovered of thinking of ,god than ,jesus' way of thinking of ,him as a loving ,father is as gratuitous as to contemplate the probability of something in human life at present unknown being discovered of greater value than ,love4 ,until that discovery is made1 our ,religion will still remain the ,religion of him who1 by what he said and by what he was1 taught the world to think of ,god as the supreme ,love and the supreme ,holiness1 the source of all other love and all other holiness4 ,,literature ,the literature is here too vast to mention even the works of the very first importance3 ,i can only select a very few books which have been useful to myself4 ,the late ,sir ,john ,seeley's ,ecce ,homo may be regarded as in the light of modern research a somewhat uncritical book1 but it remains to my mind the most striking expression of the appeal which ,christ makes to the ,conscience of the modern world4 ,it has proved a veritable fifth ,gospel to many seekers after light4 ,bishop ,moorhouse's little book1 ,the ,teaching of ,christ1 will serve as an introduction to the study of ,christ's life and work4 ,a more elaborate treatment of the subject1 with which ,i am very much in sympathy1 is ,wendt's ,teaching of ,jesus4 ,the ideal life of ,christ perhaps remains to be written4 ,professor ,sanday's ,article on ',jesus ,christ' in ,hastings' ,dictionary of the ,bible may be mentioned as a good representative of moderate and scholarly ,conservatism or ,liberal ,conservatism4 ,professor ,oscar ,holtzmann's ,life of ,jesus is based on more radical1 perhaps over-radical1 criticism4 ,professor ,harnack's #ahi ,what is ,christianity8 has become the typical expression of the ,ritschlian attitude4 ,the ideas of extreme ,roman ,catholic ',modernism' may be gathered from ,loisy's l',evangile et l',eglise and ,autour d'un ,petit ,livre4 ,professor ,gardner's three books--,exploratio ,evangelica1 the shorter ,an ,historic ,view of the ,new ,testament1 and ,the ,growth of ,christianity--may be especially commended to those who wish to satisfy themselves that a thorough-going recognition of the results of historical ,criticism is compatible with a whole-hearted personal acceptance of ,christianity4 ,dr4 ,fairbairn's ,philosophy of the ,christian ,religion and ,bousset's ,what is ,religion8 are especially valuable as vindications of the supreme position of ,christianity combined with the fullest recognition of the measure of ,revelation contained in all the great historical ,religions4 ,allen's ,continuity of ,christian ,thought suggests what seems to me the right attitude of the modern thinker towards traditional dogma1 though the author's position is more decidedly ',hegelian' than mine4 ,i may also mention ,professor ,inge's contribution to ,contentio ,veritatis on ',the ,personal ,christ1' and some of the ,essays in ,lux ,hominum4 ,though ,i cannot always agree with him1 ,i recognize the high value of the ,bishop of ,birmingham's ,bampton ,lectures on ,the ,divinity of ,jesus ,christ the ,son of ,god and the accompanying volume of ,dissertations4 #a ,in their assertion of the necessity of ,development1 and of the religious community as the origin of ,development1 the teaching of the ,abbe ,loisy and the ,roman ,catholic ,modernists seems to me to be complementary to that of the ,kitschlians1 though ,i do not always accept their rather destructive critical conclusions4 #b ,in his ,essay in ,lux ,mundi 7#ahhi74 ,he has since developed his view in his ,bampton ,lectures on ,the ,incarnation of the ,son of ,god and a volume of ,dissertations on ,subjects connected with the ,incarnation4 #c ,i venture thus to translate ',principium' 7arche72 in ,abelard and his disciple ,peter the ,lombard1 the famous ,master of the ,sentences1 the word is ',potentia' 7,l4 ,i4 ,dist4 xxxiv473 and ,st4 ,thomas himself 7,p4 ,i4 ,q4 xli4 ,art4 #d7 explains ',principium' by ',potentia generandi ,filium4' #d ,thus in ,summa ,theologica1 ,pars ,i4 ,q4 xxxvii4 ,art4 #a1 the 'conclusio' is ',amor1 personaliter acceptus1 proprium nomen est ,spiritus sancti1' which is explained to mean that there are in the ,godhead 'duse processiones3 ,una per modum intellectus1 quae est processio ,verbi2 alia per modum voluntatis1 quae est processio amoris4' ,so again 7ibid4 ,q4 xlv4 ,art4 #g73 ',in creaturis igitur rationalibus1 in quibus est intellectus et voluntas1 invenitur repraesentatio ,trinitatis per modum imaginis1 inquantum invenitur in eis ,verbum conceptum1 et amor procedens4' ,in a friendly review of my ,essay in ,contentio ,veritatis1 in which ,i endeavoured to expound in a modern form this doctrine1 ,dr4 ,sanday 7,journal of ,theological ,studies1 vol4 iv41 #aijc7 wrote3 ',one of the passages that seem to me most open to criticism is that on the doctrine of the ,trinity 7p4 #dh74 ,power1 ,wisdom1 and ,will surely cannot be a sound trichotomy as applied either to human nature or ,divine4 ,surely ,power is an expression of ,will and not co-ordinate with it4 ,the common division1 ,power 7or ,will71 ,wisdom1 and ,love is more to the point4 ,yet ,dr4 ,rashdall identifies the two triads by what ,i must needs think a looseness of reasoning4' ,the ,margaret ,professor of ,divinity hardly seems to recognize that he is criticizing the ,angelical ,doctor and not myself4 ,if ,dr4 ,sanday had had the formulation of the doctrine of the ,trinity1 the result1 if less metaphysically subtle1 might no doubt have proved more easily intelligible to the modern mind2 but the 'identification' of which he complains happens to be part of the traditional doctrine1 and ,i was endeavouring merely to make the best of it for modern ,christians4 ,i add ,st4 ,thomas' justification of it1 which is substantially what ,i gave in ,contentio ,veritatis and have repeated above3 ',cum processiones divinas secundum aliquas actiones necesse est accipere1 secundum bonitatem1 et hujusmodi alia attributa1 non accipiuntur aliae processiones1 nisi ,verbi et amoris1 secundum quod ,deus suam essentiam1 veritatem et bonitatem intelligit et amat' 7,q4 xxvii4 ,art4 #e74 ,the source of the doctrine is to be found in ,st4 ,augustine1 who habitually speaks of the ,holy ,spirit as ,amor2 but1 when he refers to the ',imago ,trinitatia' in man the ,spirit is represented sometimes by ',amor1' sometimes by ',voluntas' 7de ,trin41 ,l4 xiv4 cap #g74 ,the other two members of the human triad are with him ',memoria' 7or ',mens'7 and ',intelligentia4' ,with regard to the difficulty of distinguishing ,power from ,will1 ,i was perhaps to blame for not giving ,st4 ,thomas' own word ',principium4' ,the word ',principium' means the pege theoteos1 the ultimate ,cause or ,source of ,being3 by ',voluntas' ,st4 ,thomas means that actual putting forth of ,power 7in knowing and in loving the ,word or ,thought eternally begotten by ,god the ,father7 which is the ,holy ,ghost4 ,i am far from saying that the details of ,st4 ,thomas' doctrine are not open to much criticism3 a rough correspondence between his teaching and any view of ,god's ,nature which can commend itself to a modern ,philosopher is all that ,i endeavoured to point out4 ,the modern thinker would no doubt with ,dr4 ,sanday prefer the triad ',power1 ,wisdom1 ,love1' or 7,i would suggest7 ',feeling1 including ,love as the highest form of ,feeling4' ,the reason why ,st4 ,thomas will not accept such an interpretation is that his ,aristotelianism 7here not very consonant with the ,jewish and ,christian view of ,god7 excludes all feeling or emotion from the divine nature2 ',love' has therefore to be identified with ',will' and not with ',feeling4' ,i cannot but think that the ,professor might have taken a little more trouble to understand both ,st4 ,thomas and myself before accusing either of us of 'looseness of reasoning4'