I have been invited to speak to you about the relations between
Religion and Philosophy. To do that in a logical and thoroughgoing way
it would be necessary to discuss elaborately the meaning first of
Religion and then of Philosophy. Such a discussion would occupy at
least a lecture, and I am unwilling to spend one out of six scanty
hours in formal preliminaries. I shall assume, therefore, that we all
know in some general way the meaning of Religion. It is not necessary
for our present purpose to discuss such questions as the definition of
Religion for purposes of sociological investigation, or the possibility
of a Religion without a belief in God, or the like. I shall assume
that, whatever else may be included in the term Religion, Christianity
may at least be included in it; and that what you are practically most
interested in is the bearing of Philosophy upon the Christian ideas
concerning the {2} being and nature of God, the hope of Immortality,
the meaning and possibility of Revelation. When we turn to Philosophy,
I cannot perhaps assume with equal confidence that all of you know what
it is. But then learning what Philosophy is--especially that most
fundamental part of Philosophy which is called Metaphysics--is like
learning to swim: you never discover how to do it until you find
yourself considerably out of your depth. You must strike out boldly,
and at last you discover what you are after. 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 large, as opposed to the discussion
of those particular aspects or departments of it which are dealt with
by the special Sciences. What you want to know, I take it, is--what
rational enquiry, pushed as far as it will go, has to say about those
ultimate problems of which the great historical Religions likewise
profess to offer solutions. The nature and scope of Philosophy is best
understood by examples: and therefore I hope you will excuse me if
without further preface I plunge _in medias res_. I shall endeavour to
presuppose no previous acquaintance with technical Philosophy, 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 not. I shall {3} not advance anything which I should
not be prepared to defend even before an audience of metaphysical
experts. But I cannot undertake in so short a course of lectures to
meet all the objections which will, I know, be arising in the minds of
any metaphysically trained hearers who may honour me with their
presence, many of which may probably occur to persons not so trained.
And I further trust the Metaphysicians among you will forgive me if, in
order to be intelligible to all, 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 Society.
Reservations, qualifications, and elaborate distinctions must be
omitted, if I am to succeed in saying anything clearly in the course of
six lectures.
Moreover, I would remark that, though I do not believe that an
intention to edify is any excuse for slipshod thought or intellectual
dishonesty, 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 life, rather than from the point of view of
pure speculation. I do not, for my own part, believe in any solution
of the religious problem which evades the ultimate problems of all
thought. The Philosophy of Religion is for me not so much a special
and sharply distinguished branch or department of {4} Philosophy as a
particular aspect of Philosophy in general. But many questions which
may be of much importance from the point of view of a complete theory
of the Universe can be entirely, or almost entirely, put on one side
when the question is, 'What may I reasonably believe about those
ultimate questions which have a direct and immediate bearing upon my
religious and moral life; what may I believe about God and Duty, about
the world and its ultimate meaning, about the soul and its destiny?'
For such purposes solutions stopping short of what will fully satisfy
the legitimate demands of the professed Metaphysician may be all that
is necessary, or at least all that is possible for those who are not
intending to make a serious and elaborate study of Metaphysic. I have
no sympathy with the attempt to base Religion upon anything but honest
enquiry into truth: 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 thought,
different degrees of adequacy and systematic completeness, even within
the limits of thoroughly philosophical thinking. 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 (so
far as time and opportunity serve) to get to the bottom of things, {5}
but that you will be content in such a course as the present if I can
suggest to you, or help you to form for yourselves, 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 system.
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
difficulties. I think, therefore, our present investigation had better
begin with an enquiry whether Materialism can possibly be true. I say
'can be true' rather than 'is true,' because, though dogmatic
Materialists are rare, the typical Agnostic is one who is at least
inclined to admit the possibility of Materialism, even when he does
not, at the bottom of his mind, practically assume its truth. The man
who is prepared to exclude even this one theory of the Universe from
the category of possible but unprovable theories is not, properly
speaking, an Agnostic. To know that Materialism at least is not true
is to know something, and something very important, about the ultimate
nature of things. I shall not attempt here any very precise definition
of what is meant by Materialism. Strictly speaking, it ought to mean
the view that nothing really exists but matter. But the existence, in
some sense or {6} other, of our sensations and thoughts and emotions is
so obvious to Common-sense that such a creed can hardly be explicitly
maintained: it is a creed which is refuted in the very act of
enunciating it. For practical purposes, therefore, Materialism may be
said to be the view that the ultimate basis of all existence is matter;
and that thought, feeling, emotion--consciousness of every kind--is
merely an effect, a by-product or concomitant, of certain material
processes.
Now if we are to hold that matter is the only thing which exists, or is
the ultimate source of all that exists, we ought to be able to say what
matter is. To the unreflecting mind matter seems to be the thing that
we are most certain of, the one thing that we know all about. Thought,
feeling, will, it may be suggested, are in some sense appearances which
(though we can't help having them) might, from the point of view of
superior insight, turn out to be mere delusions, or at best entirely
unimportant and inconsiderable entities. This attitude of mind has
been amusingly satirised by the title of one of Mr. Bradley's
philosophical essays--'on the supposed uselessness of the Soul.'[1] In
this state of mind matter presents itself as the one solid reality--as
something undeniable, something perfectly intelligible, something, too,
which is pre-eminently {7} important and respectable; while thinking
and feeling and willing, joy and sorrow, hope and aspiration, goodness
and badness, if they cannot exactly be got rid of altogether, are, as
it were, negligible quantities, which must not be allowed to disturb or
interfere with the serious business of the Universe.
From this point of view matter is supposed to be the one reality with
which we are in immediate contact, which we see and touch and taste and
handle every hour of our lives. It may, therefore, sound a rather
startling paradox to say that matter--matter in the sense of the
Materialist--is something which nobody has ever seen, touched, or
handled. Yet that is the literal and undeniable fact. Nobody has ever
seen or touched or otherwise come in contact with a piece of matter.
For in the experience which the plain man calls seeing or touching
there is always present another thing. Even if we suppose that he is
Justified in saying 'I touch matter,' there is always present the 'I'
as well as the matter.[2] It is always and inevitably matter + mind
that he knows. Nobody ever can get away from this 'I,' nobody can ever
see or feel what matter is like apart from the 'I' which knows {8} it.
He may, indeed, infer that this matter exists apart from the 'I' which
knows it. He may infer that it exists, and may even go as far as to
assume that, apart from his seeing or touching, or anybody else's
seeing or touching, matter possesses all those qualities which it
possesses for his own consciousness. But this is inference, and not
immediate knowledge. And the validity or reasonableness of the
inference may be disputed. 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 qualities. 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-itself, to matter considered as something capable of
existing by itself altogether apart from any kind of conscious
experience.
In matter, as we know it, there are two elements. There are certain
sensations, or certain qualities which we come to know by sensation,
and there are certain relations. Now, with regard to the sensations, a
very little reflection will, I think, show us that it is absolutely
meaningless to say that matter has the qualities implied by these
sensations, even when they are not felt, and would still possess them,
even supposing it never had been and never would be felt by any one
whatever. In a world in which {9} there were no eyes and no minds,
what would be the meaning of saying that things were red or blue? In a
world in which there were no ears and no minds, there would clearly be
no such thing as sound. This is exactly the point at which Locke's
analysis stopped. He admitted that the 'secondary qualities'--colours,
sounds, tastes--of objects were really not in the things themselves but
in the mind which perceives them. What existed in the things was
merely a power of producing these sensations in us, the quality in the
thing being not in the least like the sensations which it produces in
us: he admitted that this power of producing a sensation was something
different from, and totally unlike, the sensation itself. But when he
came to the primary qualities--solidity, shape, magnitude and the
like--he supposed that the qualities in the thing were exactly the same
as they are for our minds. If all mind were to disappear from the
Universe, there would henceforth be no red and blue, no hot and cold;
but things would still be big or small, round or square, solid or
fluid. Yet, even with these 'primary qualities' the reference to mind
is really there just as much as in the case of the secondary qualities;
only the fact is not quite so obvious. And one reason for this is that
these primary qualities involve, much more glaringly and unmistakably
than the secondary, something which is not _mere_ sensation--something
which {10} implies thought and not mere sense. What do we mean by
solidity, for instance? We mean partly that we get certain sensations
from touching the object--sensations of touch and sensations of what is
called the muscular sense, sensations of muscular exertion and of
pressure resisted. Now, so far as that is what solidity means, it is
clear that the quality in question involves as direct a reference to
our subjective feelings as the secondary qualities of colour and sound.
But something more than this is implied in our idea of solidity. We
think of external objects as occupying space. And spaciality cannot be
analysed away into mere feelings of ours. The feelings of touch which
we derive from an object come to us one after the other. No mental
reflection upon sensations which come one after the other in time could
ever give us the idea of space, if they were not spacially related from
the first. It is of the essence of spaciality that the parts of the
object shall be thought of as existing side by side, outside one
another. But this side-by-sideness, this outsideness, is after all a
way in which the things present themselves to a mind. Space is made up
of relations; and what is the meaning of relations apart from a mind
which relates, or _for_ which the things are related? If spaciality
were a quality of the thing in itself, it would exist no matter what
became of other things. It would be quite possible, therefore, {11}
that the top of this table should exist without the bottom: yet
everybody surely would admit the meaninglessness of talking about a
piece of matter (no matter how small, be it an atom or the smallest
electron conceived by the most recent physical speculation) which had a
top without a bottom, or a right-hand side without a left. 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 another. Now can a relation exist except for a mind? As
it seems to me, the suggestion is meaningless. 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 relation. The relation
between point A and point B is not _in_ point A or _in_ point B taken
by themselves. It is all in the 'between': 'betweenness' from its very
nature cannot exist in any one point of space or in several isolated
points of space or things in space; it must exist only in some one
existent which holds together and connects those points. And nothing,
as far as we can understand, can do that except a mind. Apart from
mind there can be no relatedness: apart from relatedness no space:
apart from space no matter. It follows that apart from mind there can
be no matter.
It will probably be known to all of you that the {12} first person to
make this momentous inference was Bishop Berkeley. There was, indeed,
an obscure medieval schoolman, hardly recognized by the historians of
Philosophy, one Nicholas of Autrecourt, Dean of Metz,[3] who
anticipated him in the fourteenth century, and other better-known
schoolmen who approximated to the position; and there are, of course,
elements in the teaching of Plato and even of Aristotle, or possible
interpretations of Plato and Aristotle, which point in the same
direction. But full-blown Idealism, in the sense which involves a
denial of the independent existence of matter, is always associated
with the name of Bishop Berkeley.
I can best make my meaning plain to you by quoting a passage or two
from his _Principles of Human Knowledge_, in which he extends to the
primary qualities of matter the analysis which Locke had already
applied to the secondary.
'But, though it were possible that solid, figured, moveable substances
may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of
bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we must
know it by Sense or by Reason.--As for our senses, by them we have the
knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are
immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do
not inform us that things exist {13} without the mind, or unperceived,
like to those which are perceived. This the Materialists themselves
acknowledge.--It remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all
of external things, it must be by Reason inferring their existence from
what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason can induce us
to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we
perceive, since the very patrons of Matter themselves do not pretend
there is any _necessary_ connexion betwixt them and our ideas? I say
it is granted on all hands--and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and
the like, puts it beyond dispute--that it is possible we might be
affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies
existing without resembling them. Hence, it is evident the supposition
of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas; since
it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be
produced always in the same order we see them in at present, without
their concurrence.
* * * * * *
'In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should
ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very
same reasons to think there were that we have now. Suppose--what no
one can deny possible--an intelligence _without the help of external
bodies_, to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that
you are, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his
mind. I ask whether that intelligence hath not all the reason to
believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his
ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for
believing the same thing? Of this there can be no {14} question--which
one consideration were enough to make any reasonable person suspect the
strength of whatever arguments he may think himself to have, for the
existence of bodies without the mind.'[4]
Do you say that in that case the tables and chairs must be supposed to
disappear the moment we all leave the room? It is true that we do
commonly think of the tables and chairs as remaining, even when there
is no one there to see or touch them. But that only means, Berkeley
explains, that if we or any one else were to come back into the room,
we should perceive them. Moreover, even in thinking of them as things
which might be perceived under certain conditions, they have entered
our minds and so proclaimed their ideal or mind-implying character. To
prove that things exist without the mind we should have to conceive of
things as unconceived or unthought of. And that is a feat which no one
has ever yet succeeded in accomplishing.
Here is Berkeley's own answer to the objection:
'But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine
trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and
nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you may so, there is no
difficulty in it; but what is all this, I beseech you, more than
framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and
{15} at the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may
perceive them? But do not you yourself perceive or think of them all
the while? This therefore is nothing to the purpose: it only shews you
have the power of imagining or forming ideas in your mind; but it does
not shew that you can conceive it possible the objects of your thought
may exist without the mind. To make out this, it is necessary that
_you_ conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of, which is a
manifest repugnancy. When we do our utmost to conceive the existence
of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own
ideas. But the mind, _taking no notice of itself_, is deluded to think
it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the
mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by, or exist in,
itself. A little attention will discover to any one the truth and
evidence of what is here said, and make it unnecessary to insist on any
other proofs against the existence of _material substance_.'[5]
Berkeley no doubt did not adequately appreciate the importance of the
distinction between mere sensations and mental relations. In the
paragraph which I have read to you he tends to explain space away into
mere subjective feelings: in this respect and in many others he has
been corrected by Kant and the post-Kantian Idealists. Doubtless we
cannot analyse away our conception of space or of substance into mere
feelings. But relations imply mind no less than sensations. Things
are no mere {16} bundles of sensations; we do think of them as objects
or substances possessing attributes. Indeed to call them (with
Berkeley), 'bundles of sensations' implies that the bundle is as
important an element in thinghood as the sensations themselves. The
bundle implies what Kant would call the intellectual 'categories' of
Substance, Quantity, Quality, and the like. We do think objects: but
an object is still an object of thought. We can attach no intelligible
meaning to the term 'object' which does not imply a subject.
If there is nothing in matter, as we know it, which does not obviously
imply mind, if the very idea of matter is unintelligible apart from
mind, it is clear that matter can never have existed without mind.
What then, it may be asked, of the things which no human eye has ever
seen or even thought of? Are we to suppose that a new planet comes
into existence for the first time when first it sails into the
telescope of the astronomer, and that Science is wrong in inferring
that it existed not only before that particular astronomer saw it, but
before there were any astronomers or other human or even animal
intelligences upon this planet to observe it? 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 old? Are all those ages of past {17} history, when the earth and
the sun were but nebulae, a mere imagination, or did that nebulous mass
come into existence thousands or millions of years afterwards when Kant
or Laplace first conceived that it had existed? The supposition is
clearly self-contradictory and impossible. If Science be not a mass of
illusion, this planet existed millions of years before any human--or,
so far as we know, any animal minds--existed to think its existence.
And yet I have endeavoured to show the absurdity of supposing that
matter can exist except for a mind. It is clear, then, that it cannot
be merely for such minds as ours that the world has always existed.
Our minds come and go. They have a beginning; they go to sleep; they
may, for aught that we can immediately know, come to an end. At no
time does any one of them, at no time do all of them together,
apprehend all that there is to be known. We do not create a Universe;
we discover it piece by piece, and after all very imperfectly. Matter
cannot intelligibly be supposed to exist apart from Mind: and yet it
clearly does not exist merely for _our_ minds. Each of us knows only
one little bit of the Universe: all of us together do not know the
whole. If the whole is to exist at all, there must be some one mind
which knows the whole. The mind which is necessary to the very
existence of the Universe is the mind that we call God.
{18}
In this way we are, as it seems to me, led up by a train of reasoning
which is positively irresistible to the idea that, so far from matter
being the only existence, it has no existence of its own apart from
some mind which knows it--in which and for which it exists. The
existence of a Mind possessing universal knowledge is necessary as the
presupposition both of there being any world to know, and also of there
being any lesser minds to know it. It is, indeed, possible to believe
in the eternal existence of limited minds, while denying the existence
of the one Omniscient Mind. That is a hypothesis on which I will say a
word hereafter.[6] It is enough here to say that it is one which is
not required to explain the world as we know it. The obvious _prima
facie_ view of the matter is that the minds which apparently have a
beginning, which develope slowly and gradually and in close connexion
with certain physical processes, owe their origin to whatever is the
ultimate source or ground of the physical processes themselves. The
order or systematic interconnexion of all the observable phenomena in
the Universe suggests that the ultimate Reality must be one Being of
some kind; the argument which I have suggested leads us to regard that
one Reality as a spiritual Reality. We are not yet entitled to speak
of this physical Universe as _caused_ {19} by God: that is a question
which I hope to discuss in our next lecture. 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 exist, and always have existed.
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 mind, that at bottom nothing
exists except minds and their experiences. Now I know that this is a
line of thought which, to those who are unfamiliar with it, seems so
paradoxical and extravagant that, even when a man does not see his way
to reply to it, it will seldom produce immediate or permanent
conviction the first time he becomes acquainted with it. It is for the
most part only by a considerable course of habituation, extending over
some years, that a man succeeds in thinking himself into the idealistic
view of the Universe. And after all, there are many minds--some of
them, I must admit, not wanting in philosophical power--who never
succeed in accomplishing that feat at all. Therefore, 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 thought, I should be sorry to have to admit that a man {20} cannot
be a Theist, or that he cannot be a Theist on reasonable grounds,
without first being an Idealist. 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 out. But they may be
very good arguments, as far as they go, even when they are not thought
out to what seem to me their logical consequences. One of these lines
of thought I shall hope to develope in my next lecture; 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 reflection.
At the level of ordinary common-sense thought there appear to be two
kinds of Reality--mind and matter. And yet our experience of the unity
of Nature, of the intimate connexion between human and animal minds and
their organisms (organisms governed by a single intelligible and
interconnected system of laws) is such that we can hardly help
regarding them as manifestations or products or effects or aspects of
some one Reality. There is, almost obviously, some kind of Unity
underlying all the diversity of things. 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
law. {21} All things, all phenomena, all events form parts of a single
inter-related, intelligible whole: that is the presupposition not only
of Philosophy but of Science. Or if any one chooses to say that it
_is_ a presupposition and so an unwarrantable piece of dogmatism, I
will say that it is the hypothesis to which all our knowledge points.
It is at all events the one common meeting-point of nearly all serious
thinkers. The question remains, 'What is the nature of this one
Reality?' Now, if this ultimate Reality be not mind, it must be one of
two things. It must be matter, or it must be a third thing which is
neither mind nor matter, but something quite different from either.
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 matter. For all the
properties of matter are properties which imply some relation to our
sensibility or our thought. Moreover, there is such a complete
heterogeneity between consciousness and unconscious matter, considered
as something capable of existing without mind, that it seems utterly
impossible and unthinkable that mind should be simply the product or
attribute of matter. That the ultimate Reality cannot be what we mean
by matter has been admitted by the most naturalistic, {22} and, in the
ordinary sense, anti-religious thinkers--Spinoza, for instance, and
Haeckel, and Herbert Spencer. The question remains, 'Which is the
easier, the more probable, the more reasonable theory--that the
ultimate Reality should be Mind, 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 matter?'
For my own part, 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 thought. It seems more reasonable to
assume that our inability to think of such a mysterious X is due to
there being no such thing.[7]
Our only way of judging of the Unknown is by the analogy of the known.
It is more probable, surely, that the world known to us should exhibit
something of the characteristics of the Reality from which it is
derived, or of which it forms a manifestation, than that it should
exhibit none of these characteristics. No doubt, if we were to argue
from some small part of our experience, or from the detailed
characteristics of one part of our experience to what is beyond our
experience; if, for instance {23} (I am here replying to an objection
of Hoeffding's), a blind man were to argue that the world must be
colourless because he sees no colour, or if any of us were to affirm
that in other planets there can be no colours but what we see, no
sensations but what we feel, no mental powers but what we possess, the
inference would be precarious enough. 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 that, if oxen could
think, they would imagine the gods to be like oxen, and so on. But the
cases are not parallel. We have no difficulty in thinking that in
other worlds there may be colours which we have never seen, or whole
groups of sensation different from our own: we cannot think that any
existence should be neither mind nor matter, but utterly unlike either.
We are not arguing from the mere absence of some special experience,
but from the whole character of _all_ the thought and experience that
we actually possess, of all that we are and the whole Universe with
which we are in contact. 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 connexion. Is it more
probable that the ultimate Reality which lies beyond our reach should
be something which possesses the characteristics of mind, or that it
should {24} be totally unlike either mind or matter? Do you insist
that we logically ought to say it might contain the characteristics of
both mind and matter? There is only one way in which such a
combination seems clearly thinkable by us, _i.e._ when we represent
matter as either in the idealistic sense the thought or experience of
mind, or (after the fashion of ordinary realistic Theism) as created or
produced by mind. But if you insist on something more than this, 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
mind, 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-aspect.
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 both. Practically, where
such a creed is professed, the man either thinks of an unconscious
Reality in some way generating or evolving mind, and so falls back into
the Materialism which he has verbally disclaimed; or he thinks of a
mind producing or causing or generating a matter which when produced is
something different from itself. This last is of course ordinary
Theism in the form in which it is commonly {25} held by those who are
not Idealists. From a practical and religious point of view there is
nothing to be said against such a view. Still it involves a Dualism,
the philosophical difficulties of which I have attempted to suggest to
you. 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 be. 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 which, while admitting in words that the ultimate
Reality is not matter, refuses to invest it with the attributes of
mind. The argument may be reduced to its simplest form by saying we
believe that the ultimate Reality is Mind because mind will explain
matter, while matter will not explain mind: while the idea of a
Something which is neither in mind nor matter is both unintelligible
and gratuitous.
And this line of thought may be supplemented by another. Whatever may
be thought of the existence of matter apart from mind, every one will
{26} admit that matter possesses no value or worth apart from mind.
When we bring into account our moral judgements or judgements of value,
we have no difficulty in recognizing mind as the highest or best kind
of existence known to us. There is, surely, 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
being; 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 us. 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 experience.
I will remind you in conclusion, that our argument for the existence of
God is at present incomplete. I have tried to lead you to the idea
that the ultimate Reality is spiritual, that it is a Mind which knows,
or is conscious of, matter. I have tried to lead you with the Idealist
to think of the physical Universe as having no existence except in the
mind of God, or at all events (for those who fail to follow the
idealistic line of thought) to believe that the Universe does not exist
without such a Mind. What further relation exists between physical
nature and this Universal Spirit, I shall hope in the next lecture {27}
to consider; and in so doing to suggest a line of argument which will
independently lead to the same result, and which does not necessarily
presuppose the acceptance of the idealistic creed.