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_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
THE MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD: A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology
of the Red Race of America. _Second edition, revised._ Large 12mo,
$2.50.
THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT: Its Source and Aim. A Contribution to the
Science and Philosophy of Religion. Large 12mo, $2.50.
THE
RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT
ITS SOURCE AND AIM
_A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SCIENCE AND
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION._
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, A.M., M.D.
_Member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Philological
Society, etc.; author of “The Myths of the New World,” etc._
[Colophon]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1876.
COPYRIGHT,
BY HENRY HOLT
1876.
JOHN F. TROW & SON, PRINTERS,
205-213 EAST 12TH ST., NEW YORK.
PREFACE
Mythology, since it began to receive a scientific handling at all, has
been treated as a subordinate branch of history or of ethnology. The
“science of religion,” as we know it in the works of Burnouf, Müller,
and others, is a comparison of systems of worship in their historic
development. The deeper inquiry as to what in the mind of man gave birth
to religion in any of its forms, what spirit breathed and is ever
breathing life into these dry bones, this, the final and highest
question of all, has had but passing or prejudiced attention. To its
investigation this book is devoted.
The analysis of the religious sentiment I offer is an inductive one,
whose outlines were furnished by a preliminary study of the religions of
the native race of America, a field selected as most favorable by reason
of the simplicity of many of its cults, and the absence of theories
respecting them. This study was embodied in “The Myths of the New World;
a Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America”
(second edition, N. Y. 1876).
The results thus obtained I have in the present work expanded by
including in the survey the historic religions of the Old World, and
submitted the whole for solution to the Laws of Mind, regarded as
physiological elements of growth, and to the Laws of Thought, these, as
formal only, being held as nowise a development of those. This latter
position, which is not conceded by the reigning school of psychology, I
have taken pains to explain and defend as far as consistent with the
plan of this treatise; but I am well aware that to say all that can be
said in proof of it, would take much more space than here allowed.
The main questions I have had before me in writing this volume have an
interest beyond those which mere science propounds. What led men to
imagine gods at all? What still prompts enlightened nations to worship?
Is prayer of any avail, or of none? Is faith the last ground of
adoration, or is reason? Is religion a transient phase of development,
or is it the chief end of man? What is its warrant of continuance? If it
overlive this day of crumbling theologies, whence will come its
reprieve?
To such inquiries as these, answers satisfactory to thinking men of this
time can, I believe, be given only by an inductive study of religions,
supported by a sound psychology, and conducted in a spirit which
acknowledges as possibly rightful, the reverence which every system
claims. Those I propose, inadequate though they may be, can at any rate
pretend to be the result of honest labor.
PHILADELPHIA, _January, 1876_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION 3
CHAPTER II.
THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 47
CHAPTER III.
THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 87
CHAPTER IV.
THE PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER 117
CHAPTER V.
THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES 155
CHAPTER VI.
THE CULT, ITS SYMBOLS AND RITES 199
CHAPTER VII.
THE MOMENTA OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 231
THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION
SUMMARY.
The distinction between the Science and the Philosophy of religion.
It is assumed (1) that religions are products of thought, (2) that
they have a unity of kind and purpose. They can be studied by the
methods of natural science applied to Mind.
Mind is co-extensive with organism. Sensation and Emotion are
prominent marks of it. These are either pleasurable or painful; the
latter _diminish_ vital motions, the former _increase_ them. This
is a product of natural selection. A mis-reading of these facts is
the fallacy of Buddhism and other pessimistic systems. Pleasure
comes from continuous action. This is illustrated by the esthetic
emotions, volition and consciousness.
The climax of mind is Intellect. Physical changes accompany thought
but cannot measure it. Relations of thought and feeling. _Truth_ is
its only measure. Truth, like pleasure, is desired for its
preservative powers. It is reached through the laws of thought.
These laws are: (1) the natural order of the association of ideas,
(2) the methods of applied logic, (3) the forms of correct
reasoning. The last allow of mathematical expression. They are
three in number, called those of Determination, Limitation and
Excluded Middle.
The last is the key-stone of religious philosophy. Its diverse
interpretations. Its mathematical expres ion[TN-1] shows that it
does not relate to contradictories. But certain concrete analytic
propositions, relating to contraries, do have this form. The
contrary as distinguished from the privative. The Conditioned and
Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable are not true
contradictions. The synthesis of contraries is theoretic only.
Errors as to the limits of possible explanation corrected by these
distinctions. The formal law is the last and complete explanation.
The relations of thought, belief and being.
THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION.
The Science of Religion is one of the branches of general historical
science. It embraces, as the domain of its investigation, all recorded
facts relating to the displays of the Religious Sentiment. Its limits
are defined by those facts, and the legitimate inferences from them. Its
aim is to ascertain the constitutive laws of the origin and spread of
religions, and to depict the influence they have exerted on the general
life of mankind.
The question whether a given religion is true or false cannot present
itself in this form as a proper subject of scientific inquiry. The most
that can be asked is, whether some one system is best suited to a
specified condition of the individual or the community.
The higher inquiry is the object of the Philosophy of Religion. This
branch of study aims to pass beyond recorded facts and local adjustments
in order to weigh the theoretical claims of religions, and measure their
greater or less conformity with abstract truth. The formal or regulative
laws of religious thought occupy it.
Theology, dogmatic or polemic, is an explanatory defence of some
particular faith. Together with mythology and symbolism, it furnishes
the material from which the Science and Philosophy of Religion seek to
educe the laws and frame the generalizations which will explain the
source and aim of religion in general.
The common source of all devotional displays is the Religious Sentiment,
a complex feeling, a thorough understanding of which is an essential
preliminary to the study of religious systems.
Such a study proceeds on the assumption that all religions are products
of thought, commenced and continued in accordance with the laws of the
human mind, and, therefore, comprehensible to the extent to which these
laws are known. No one disputes this, except in reference to his own
religion. This, he is apt to assert, had something “supernatural” about
its origin. If this word be correctly used, it may stand without cavil.
The “natural” is that of which we know in whole or in part the laws; the
“supernatural” means that of which we do not at present know in any
degree the laws. The domain of the supernatural diminishes in the ratio
of the increase of knowledge; and the inference that it also is
absolutely under the control of law, is not only allowable but
obligatory.
A second assumption must be that there is a unity of kind and purpose in
all religions. Without this, no common law can exist for them. Such a
law must hold good in all ages, in every condition of society, and in
each instance. Hence those who explain religious systems as forms of
government, or as systems of ethics, or as misconceived history, or as
theories of natural philosophy, must be prepared to make their view good
when it is universally applied, or else renounce the possibility of a
Science of Religion; while those who would except their own system from
what they grant is the law of all others, violate the principles of
investigation and thereby the canons of truth.
The methods of science are everywhere alike. Has the naturalist to
explain an organism, he begins with its elements or proximate principles
as obtained by analysis; he thence passes to the tissues and fluids
which compose its members; these he considers first in a state of
repose, their structure and their connections; then he examines their
functions, the laws of their growth and action; and finally he has
recourse to the doctrine of relations, _la théorie des milieux_, to
define the conditions of its existence. Were such a method applied to a
religion, it would lead us first to study its psychological elements,
then the various expressions in word and act to which these give
occasion, next the record of its growth and decay, and finally from
these to gather the circumstantials of human life and culture which led
to its historic existence.
Some have urged that such a method should not be summoned to questions
in mental philosophy. To do so, say they, is to confound things
distinct, requiring distinct plans of study. Such a criticism might have
had weight in the days when the mind was supposed to inhabit the body as
a tenant a house, and have no relation to it other than that of a casual
occupant. But that opinion is antiquated. More than three-fourths of a
century ago the far-seeing thinker, Wilhelm von Humboldt, laid down the
maxim that the phenomena of mind and matter obey laws identical in
kind;[6-1] and a recent historian of science sums up the result of the
latest research in these words:
“The old dualism of mind and body, which for centuries struggled in vain
for reconciliation, finds it now, not indeed in the unity of substance,
but in the unity of laws.”[6-2]
It is, therefore, as a question in mental philosophy to be treated by
the methods of natural science, that I shall approach the discussion of
the religious sentiment. As it is a part, or at least a manifestation of
mind, I must preface its more particular consideration with some words
on the mind in general, words which I shall make as few and as clear as
possible.
At the beginning of this century, the naturalist Oken hazarded the
assertion: “The human mind is a memberment of infusorial
sensation,”[7-1] a phrase which has been the guiding principle of
scientific psychology ever since. That in the course of this memberment
or growth wholly new faculties are acquired, is conceded. As the union
of two inorganic substances may yield a third different in every respect
from either; or, as in the transition of inorganic to organic matter,
the power of reproduction is attained; so, positively new powers may
attend the development of mind. From sensations it progresses to
emotions, from emotions to reason. The one is the psychical climax of
the other. “We have still to do with the one mind,whose[TN-2] action
developes itself with perception, through discrimination, till it
arrives at notions, wherein its most general scheme, ‘truth and error,’
serves as the principle.”[8-1]
Extravagant as Oken’s expression seemed to many when it was published,
it now falls short of the legitimate demands of science, and I may add,
of religion. _Mind is co-extensive with organism_; in the language of
logic, one “connotes” the other; this statement, and nothing short of
it, satisfies the conditions of the problem. Wherever we see Form
preserved amid the change of substance, _there_ is mind; it alone can
work that miracle; only it gives Life. Matter suffers no increase;
therefore the new is but a redistribution of the old; it is new in
_form_ only; and the maintenance of form under changes of substance is
the one distinguishing mark of organism. To it is added the yet more
wonderful power of transmitting form by reproduction. Wherever these
are, are also the rudiments of mind. The distinction between the animal
and the vegetable worlds, between the reasoning and unreasoning animals,
is one of degree only. Whether, in a somewhat different sense, we should
not go yet further, and say that mind is co-extensive with motion, and
hence with phenomena, is a speculative inquiry which may have to be
answered in the affirmative, but it does not concern us here.
The first and most general mark of Mind is sensation or common feeling.
In technical language a sensation is defined to be the result of an
impression on an organism, producing some molecular change in its nerve
or life centres. It is the consequence of a contact with another
existence. Measured by its effects upon the individual the common law of
sensation is: Every impression, however slight, either adds to or takes
from the sum of the life-force of the system; in the former case it
produces a pleasurable, in the latter a painful sensation. The
exceptions to this rule, though many, are such in appearance only.[9-1]
In the human race the impression can often be made quite as forcibly by
a thought as by an act. “I am confident,” says John Hunter, the
anatomist, “that I can fix my attention to any part, until I have a
sensation in that part.” This is what is called the influence of the
mind upon the body. Its extent is much greater than used to be imagined,
and it has been a fertile source of religious delusions. Such sensations
are called subjective; those produced by external force, objective.
The immediate consequent of a sensation is _reflex action_, the object
of which is either to avoid pain or increase pleasure, in other words,
either to preserve or augment the individual life.
The molecular changes incident to a sensation leave permanent traces,
which are the physical bases of memory. One or several such remembered
sensations, evoked by a present sensation, combine with it to form an
Emotion. Characteristic of their origin is it that the emotions fall
naturally into a dual classification, in which the one involves
pleasurable or elevating, the other painful or depressing conditions.
Thus we have the pairs joy and grief, hope and fear, love and hate, etc.
The question of pleasure and pain is thus seen to be the primary one of
mental science. We must look to it to explain the meaning of sensation
as a common quality of organism. What is the significance of pleasure
and pain?
The question involves that of Life. Not to stray into foreign topics, it
may broadly be said that as all change resolves itself into motion,
and, as Helmholtz remarks, all science merges itself into mechanics, we
should commence by asking what vital motions these sensations stand for
or correspond to.
Every organism, and each of its parts, is the resultant of innumerable
motions, a composition of forces. As such, each obeys the first law of
motion, to wit, indefinite continuance of action until interfered with.
This is a modification of Newton’s “law of continuance,” which, with the
other primary laws of motion, must be taken as the foundation of biology
as well as of astronomy.[11-1]
The diminution or dispersion of organic motion is expressed in
physiological terms as _waste_; we are admonished of waste by _pain_;
and thus admonished we supply the waste or avoid the injury as far as we
can. But this connection of pain with waste is not a necessary one, nor
is it the work of a _Providentia particularis_, as the schoolmen said.
It is a simple result of natural selection. Many organisms have been
born, no doubt, in which waste did not cause pain; caused, perhaps,
pleasure. Consequently, they indulged their preferences and soon
perished. Only those lived to propagate their kind in whom a different
sensation was associated with waste, and they transmitted this
sensitiveness increased by ancestral impression to their offspring. The
curses of the human race to-day are alcohol, opium and tobacco, and they
are so because they cause waste, but do not immediately produce painful
but rather pleasurable feelings.
Pain, as the sensation of waste, is the precursor of death, of the part
or system. By parity of evolution, pleasure came to be the sensation of
continuance, of uninterrupted action, of increasing vigor and life.
Every action, however, is accompanied by waste, and hence every pleasure
developes pain. But it is all important to note that the latter is the
mental correlative not of the action but of its cessation, not of the
life of the part but of its ceasing to live. Pain, it is true, in
certain limits excites to action; but it is by awakening the
self-preservative tendencies, which are the real actors. This
physiological distinction, capable of illustration from sensitive
vegetable as well as the lowest animal organisms, has had an intimate
connection with religious theories. The problems of suffering and death
are precisely the ones which all religions set forth to solve in theory
and in practice. Their creeds and myths are based on what they make of
pain. The theory of Buddhism, which now has more followers than any
other faith, is founded on four axioms, which are called “the four
excellent truths.” The first and fundamental one is: “Pain is
inseparable from existence.” This is the principle of all pessimism,
ancient and modern. Schopenhauer, an out-and-out pessimist, lays down
the allied maxim, “All pleasure is negative, that is, it consists in
getting rid of a want or pain,”[13-1] a principle expressed before his
time in the saying “the highest pleasure is the relief from pain.”
Consistently with this, Buddhism holds out as the ultimate of hope the
state of Nirvana, in which existence is not, where the soul is “blown
out” like the flame of a candle.
But physiology demolishes the corner-stone of this edifice when it shows
that pain, so far from being inseparable from existence, has merely
become, through transmitted experience, nearly inseparable from the
progressive cessation of existence. While action and reaction are equal
in inorganic nature, the principle of life modifies the operation of
this universal law of force by bringing in _nutrition_, which, were it
complete, would antagonize reaction. In such a case, pleasure would be
continuous, pain null; action constant, reaction hypothetical. As,
however, nutrition in fact never wholly and at once replaces the
elements altered by vital action, both physicians and metaphysicians
have observed that pleasure is the fore-runner of pain, and has the
latter as its certain sequel.[14-1]
Physiologically and practically, the definition of pleasure is, _maximum
action with minimum waste_.
This latter generalization is the explanation of the esthetic emotions.
The modern theory of art rests not on a psychological but a
physiological, and this in turn on a physical basis. Helmholtz’s theory
of musical harmony depends on the experimental fact that a continued
impression gives a pleasant, a discontinuous an unpleasant sensation.
The mechanics of muscular structure prove that what are called graceful
motions are those which are the mechanical resultant of the force of
the muscle,--those which it can perform at least waste. The pleasure we
take in curves, especially “the line of beauty,” is because our eyes can
follow them with a minimum action of its muscles of attachment. The
popular figure called the Grecian figure or the walls of Troy, is
pleasant because each straight line is shorter, and at right angles to
the preceding one, thus giving the greatest possible change of action to
the muscles of the eye.
Such a mechanical view of physiology presents other suggestions. The
laws of vibratory motion lead to the inference that action in accordance
with those laws gives maximum intensity and minimum waste. Hence the
pleasure the mind takes in harmonies of sound, of color and of odors.
The correct physiological conception of the most perfect physical life
is that which will continue the longest in use, not that which can
display the greatest muscular force. The ideal is one of extension, not
of intension.
Religious art indicates the gradual recognition of these principles.
True to their ideal of inaction, the Oriental nations represent their
gods as mighty in stature, with prominent muscles, but sitting or
reclining, often with closed eyes or folded hands, wrapped in robes, and
lost in meditation. The Greeks, on the other hand, portrayed their
deities of ordinary stature, naked, awake and erect, but the limbs
smooth and round, the muscular lines and the veins hardly visible, so
that in every attitude an indefinite sense of repose pervades the whole
figure. Movement without effort, action without waste, is the
immortality these incomparable works set forth. They are meant to teach
that the ideal life is one, not of painless ease, but of joyous action.
The law of continuity to which I have alluded is not confined to simple
motions. It is a general mathematical law, that the longer anything
lasts the longer it is likely to last. If a die turns ace a dozen times
handrunning, the chances are large that it will turn ace again. The
Theory of Probabilities is founded upon this, and the value of
statistics is based on an allied principle. Every condition opposes
change through inertia. By this law, as the motion caused by a
pleasurable sensation excites by the physical laws of associated motions
the reminiscences of former pleasures and pains, a tendency to
permanence is acquired, which gives the physical basis for Volition.
Experience and memory are, therefore, necessary to volition, and
practically self restraint is secured by calling numerous past
sensations to mind, deterrent ones, “the pains which are indirect
pleasures,” or else pleasurable ones. The Will is an exhibition under
complex relations of the tendency to continuance which is expressed in
the first law of motion. Its normal action is the maintenance of the
individual life, the prolongation of the pleasurable sensations, the
support of the forces which combat death.
Whatever the action, whether conscious or reflex, its real though often
indirect and unaccomplished object is the preservation or the
augmentation of the individual life. Such is the dictum of natural
science, and it coincides singularly with the famous maxim of Spinoza:
_Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur._
The consciousness which accompanies volitional action is derived from
the common feeling which an organism has, as the result of all its parts
deriving their nutrition from the same centre. Rising into the sphere of
emotions, this at first muscular sensation becomes “self-feeling.” The
Individual is another name for the boundaries of reflex action.
Through memory and consciousness we reach that function of the mind
called the intellect or reason, the product of which is _thought_. Its
physical accompaniments are chemical action, and an increase of
temperature in the brain. But the sum of the physical forces thus
evolved is not the measure of the results of intellectual action. These
differ from other forms of force in being incommensurate with extension.
They cannot be appraised in units of quantity, but in quality only. The
chemico-vital forces by which a thought rises into consciousness bear
not the slightest relation to the value of the thought itself. It is
here as in those ancient myths where an earthly maiden brings forth a
god. The power of the thought is dependent on another test than physical
force, to wit, its _truth_. This is measured by its conformity to the
laws of right reasoning, laws clearly ascertained, which are the common
basis of all science, and to which it is the special province of the
science of logic to give formal expression.
Physical force itself, in whatever form it appears, is only known to us
as feeling or as thought; these alone we know to be real; all else is at
least less real.[18-1] Not only is this true of the external world, but
also of that assumed something, the reason, the soul, the ego, or the
intellect. For the sake of convenience these words may be used; but it
is well to know that this introduction of something that thinks, back
of thought itself, is a mere figure of speech. We say, “_I_ think,” as
if the “I” was something else than the thinking. At most, it is but the
relation of the thoughts. Pushed further, it becomes the limitation of
thought by sensation, the higher by the lower. The Cartesian maxim,
_cogito ergo sum_, has perpetuated this error, and the modern philosophy
of the _ego_ and _non-ego_ has prevented its detection. A false reading
of self-consciousness led to this assumption of “a thinking mind.” Our
personality is but the perception of the solidarity of our thoughts and
feelings; it is itself a thought.
These three manifestations of mind--sensations, emotions and
thoughts--are mutually exclusive in their tendencies. The patient
forgets the fear of the result in the pain of the operation; in intense
thought the pulse falls, the senses do not respond, emotions and action
are absent. We may say that ideally the unimpeded exercise of the
intellect forbids either sensation or emotion.
Contrasting sensation and emotion, on the one side, with intellect
on the other, feeling with thought, they are seen to be polar or
antithetical manifestations of mind. Each requires the other for its
existence, yet in such wise that the one is developed at the expense
of the other. The one waxes as the other wanes. This is seen to
advantage when their most similar elements are compared. Thus
consciousness in sensation is keenest when impressions are strongest;
but this consciousness is a bar to intellectual self-consciousness,
as was pointed out by Professor Ferrier in his general Law of
consciousness.[20-1] When emotion and sensation are at their minimum,
one is most conscious of the solidarity of one’s thoughts; and just in
proportion to the vividness of self-consciousness is thought lucid and
strong. In an ideal intelligence, self-consciousness would be
infinite, sensation infinitesimal.
Yet there is a parallelism between feeling and thought, as well as a
contrast. As pain and pleasure indicate opposite tendencies in the
forces which guide sensation and emotion, so do the true and the untrue
direct thought, and bear the same relation to it. For as pain is the
warning of death, so the untrue is the detrimental, the destructive. The
man who reasons falsely, will act unwisely and run into danger thereby.
To know the truth is to be ready for the worst. Who reasons correctly
will live the longest. To love pleasure is not more in the grain of man
than to desire truth. “I have known many,” says St. Augustine, “who like
to deceive; to be deceived, none.” Pleasure, joy, truth, are the
respective measures of life in sensation, emotion, intellect; one or the
other of these every organism seeks with all its might, its choice
depending on which of these divisions of mind is prominently its own. As
the last mentioned is the climax, truth presents itself as in some way
the perfect expression of life.
We have seen what pleasure is, but what is truth? The question of Pilate
remains, not indeed unanswered, but answered vaguely and
discrepantly.[21-1] We may pass it by as one of speculative interest
merely, and turn our attention to its practical paraphrase, what is
true?
The rules of evidence as regards events are well known, and also the
principles of reaching the laws of phenomena by inductive methods. Many
say that the mind can go no further than this, that the truth thus
reached, if not the highest, is at least the highest for man. It is at
best relative, but it is real. The correctness of this statement may be
tested by analyzing the processes by which we acquire knowledge.
Knowledge reaches the mind in two forms, for which there are in most
languages, though not in modern English, two distinct expressions,
_connaitre_ and _savoir_, _kennen_ and _wissen_. The former relates to
knowledge through sensation, the latter through intellection; the former
cannot be rendered in words, the latter can be; the former is reached
through immediate perception, the latter through logical processes. For
example: an odor is something we may certainly know and can identify,
but we cannot possibly describe it in words; justice on the other hand
may be clearly defined to our mind, but it is equally impossible to
translate it into sensation. Nevertheless, it is generally agreed that
the one of these processes is, so far as it goes, as conclusive as the
other, and that they proceed on essentially the same principles.[22-1]
Religious philosophy has to do only with the second form of knowledge,
that reached through notions or thoughts.
The enchainment or sequence of thoughts in the mind is at first an
accidental one. They arise through the two general relations of nearness
in time or similarity in sensation. Their succession is prescribed by
these conditions, and without conscious effort cannot be changed. They
are notions about phenomena only, and hence are infinitely more likely
to be wrong than right. Of the innumerable associations of thought
possible, only one can yield the truth. The beneficial effects of this
one were felt, and thus by experience man slowly came to distinguish the
true as what is good for him, the untrue as what is injurious.
After he had done this for a while, he attempted to find out some plan
in accordance with which he could so arrange his thoughts that they
should always produce this desirable result. He was thus led to
establish the rules for right reasoning, which are now familiarly known
as Logic. This science was long looked upon as a completed one, and at
the commencement of this century we find such a thinker as Coleridge
expressing an opinion that further development in it was not to be
expected. Since then it has, however, taken a fresh start, and by its
growth has laid the foundation for a system of metaphysics which will be
free from the vagaries and unrealities which have thrown general
discredit on the name of philosophy.
In one direction, as applied logic and the logic of induction, the
natural associations of ideas have been thoroughly studied, and the
methods by which they can be controlled and reduced have been taught
with eminent success. In this branch, Bentham, Mill, Bain, and others
have been prominent workers.
Dealing mainly with the subjects and materials of reasoning, with
thoughts rather than with thinking, these writers, with the tendency of
specialists, have not appreciated the labors of another school of
logicians, who have made the investigation of the process of thinking
itself their especial province. This is abstract logic, or pure logic,
sometimes called, inasmuch as it deals with forms only, “formal logic,”
or because it deals with names and not things, “the logic of names.” It
dates its rise as an independent science from the discovery of what is
known as “the quantification of the predicate,” claimed by Sir William
Hamilton. Of writers upon it may be mentioned Professor De Morgan, W.
Stanley Jevons, and especially Professor George Boole of Belfast. The
latter, one of the subtlest thinkers of this age, and eminent as a
mathematician, succeeded in making an ultimate analysis of the laws of
thinking, and in giving them a symbolic notation, by which not only the
truth of a simple proposition but the relative degree of truth in
complex propositions may be accurately estimated.[24-1]
This he did by showing that the laws of correct thinking can be
expressed in algebraic notation, and, thus expressed, will be subject to
all the mathematical laws of an algebra whose symbols bear the uniform
value of unity or nought (1 or 0)--a limitation required by the fact
that pure logic deals in notions of quality only, not of quantity.
This mathematical form of logic was foreseen by Kant when he declared
that all mathematical reasoning derives its validity from the logical
laws; but no one before Professor Boole had succeeded in reaching the
notation which subordinated these two divisions of abstract thought to
the same formal types. His labors have not yet borne fruit in proportion
to their value, and they are, I believe, comparatively little known. But
in the future they will be regarded as epochal in the science of mind.
They make us to see the same law governing mind and matter, thought and
extension.
Not the least important result thus achieved was in emphasizing the
contrast between the natural laws of mental association, and the laws of
thinking which are the foundation of the syllogism.
By attending to this distinction we are enabled to keep the form and the
matter of thought well apart--a neglect to do which, or rather a studied
attempt to ignore which, is the radical error of the logic devised by
Hegel, as I shall show more fully a little later.
All applied logic, inductive as well as deductive, is based on formal
logic, and this in turn on the “laws of thought,” or rather of thinking.
These are strictly regulative or abstract, and differ altogether from
the natural laws of thought, such as those of similarity, contiguity and
harmony, as well as from the rules of applied logic, such as those of
agreement and difference. The fundamental laws of thinking are three in
number, and their bearing on all the higher questions of religious
philosophy is so immediate that their consideration becomes of the last
moment in such a study as this. They are called the laws of
Determination, Limitation and Excluded Middle.
The first affirms that every object thought about must be conceived as
itself, and not as some other thing. “A is A,” or “_x_ = _x_,” is its
formal expression. This teaches us that whatever we think of, must be
thought as one or a unity. It is important, however, to note that this
does not mean a mathematical unit, but a logical one, that is, identity
and not contrast. So true is this that in mathematical logic the only
value which can satisfy the formula is a concept which does not admit of
increase, to wit, a Universal.
From this necessity of conceiving a thought under unity has arisen the
interesting tendency, so frequently observable even in early times, to
speak of the universe as one whole, the το παν of the Greek philosophers;
and also the monotheistic leaning of all thinkers, no matter what their
creed, who have attained very general conceptions. Furthermore, the
strong liability of confounding this speculative or logical unity with
the concrete notion of individuality, or mathematical unity, has been,
as I shall show hereafter, a fruitful source of error in both religious
and metaphysical theories. Pure logic deals with quality only, not with
quantity.
The second law is that of Limitation. As the first is sometimes called
that of Affirmation, so this is called that of Negation. It prescribes
that a thing is not that which it is not. Its formula is, “A is not
not-A.” If this seems trivial, it is because it is so familiar.
These two laws are two aspects of the same law. The old maxim is, _omnis
determinatio est negatio_; a quality can rise into cognition only by
being limited by that which it is not. It is not a comparison of two
thoughts, however, nor does it limit the quality itself. For the
negative is not a thought, and the quality is not _in suo genere
finita_, to use an expression of the old logicians; it is limited not by
itself but by that which it is not. These are not idle distinctions, as
will soon appear.
The third law comes into play when two thoughts are associated and
compared. There is qualitative identity, or there is not. A is either B
or not B. An animal is either a man or not a man. There is no middle
class between the two to which it can be assigned. Superficial truism as
this appears, we have now come upon the very battle ground of the
philosophies. This is the famous “Law of the contradictories and
excluded middle,” on the construction of which the whole fabric of
religious dogma, and I may add of the higher metaphysics, must depend.
“One of the principal retarding causes of philosophy,” remarks Professor
Ferrier, “has been the want of a clear and developed doctrine of the
contradictory.”[28-1] The want is as old as the days of Heraclitus of
Ephesus, and lent to his subtle paradoxes that obscurity which has not
yet been wholly removed.
Founding his arguments on one construction of this law, expressed in the
maxim, “The conceivable lies between two contradictory extremes,” Sir
William Hamilton defended with his wide learning those theories of the
Conditioned and the Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable, which
banish religion from the realm of reason and knowledge to that of faith,
and cleave an impassable chasm between the human and the divine
intelligence. From this unfavorable ground his orthodox followers,
Mansel and Mozley, defended with ability but poor success their
Christianity against Herbert Spencer and his disciples, who also
accepted the same theories, but followed them out to their legitimate
conclusion--a substantially atheistic one.
Hamilton in this was himself but a follower of Kant, who brought this
law to support his celebrated “antinomies of the human understanding,”
warnings set up to all metaphysical explorers to keep off of holy
ground.
On another construction of it, one which sought to escape the dilemma of
the contradictories by confining them to matters of the understanding,
Hegel and Schelling believed they had gained the open field. They taught
that in the highest domain of thought, there where it deals with
questions of pure reason, the unity and limits which must be observed in
matters of the understanding and which give validity to this third law,
do not obtain. This view has been closely criticized, and, I think, with
justice. Pretending to deal with matters of pure reason, it constantly
though surreptitiously proceeds on the methods of applied logic; its
conclusions are as fallacious logically as they are experimentally. The
laws of thought are formal, and are as binding in transcendental
subjects as in those which concern phenomena.
The real bearing of this law can, it appears to me, best be derived from
a study of its mathematical expression. This is, according to the
notation of Professor Boole, _x_^{2}=_x_. As such, it presents a
fundamental equation of thought, and it is because it is of the second
degree that we classify in pairs or opposites. This equation can only be
satisfied by assigning to _x_ the value of 1 or 0. The “universal type
of form” is therefore _x_(1-_x_)=0.
This algebraic notation shows that there is, not two, but only one
thought in the antithesis; that it is made up of a thought and its
expressed limit; and, therefore, that the so-called “law of
contradictories” does not concern contradictories at all, in pure logic.
This result was seen, though not clearly, by Dr. Thompson, who indicated
the proper relation of the members of the formula as a positive and a
privative. He, however, retained Hamilton’s doctrine that “privative
conceptions enter into and assist the higher processes of the reason in
all that it can know of the absolute and infinite;” that we must, “from
the seen realize an unseen world, not by extending to the latter the
properties of the former, but by assigning to it attributes entirely
opposite.”[31-1]
The error that vitiates all such reasoning is the assumption that the
privative is an independent thought, that a thought and its limitation
are two thoughts; whereas they are but the two aspects of the one
thought, like two sides to the one disc, and the absurdity of speaking
of them as separate thoughts is as great as to speak of a curve seen
from its concavity as a different thing from the same curve regarded
from its convexity. The privative can help us nowhere and to nothing;
the positive only can assist our reasoning.
This elevation of the privative into a contrary, or a contradictory, has
been the bane of metaphysical reasoning. From it has arisen the doctrine
of the synthesis of an affirmative and a negative into a higher
conception, reconciling them both. This is the maxim of the Hegelian
logic, which starts from the synthesis of Being and Not-being into the
Becoming, a very ancient doctrine, long since offered as an explanation
of certain phenomena, which I shall now touch upon.
A thought and its privative alone--that is, a quality and its
negative--cannot lead to a more comprehensive thought. It is devoid of
relation and barren. In pure logic this is always the case, and must be
so. In concrete thought it may be otherwise. There are certain
propositions in which the negative is a reciprocal quality, quite as
positive as that which it is set over against. The members of such a
proposition are what are called “true contraries.” To whatever they
apply as qualities, they leave no middle ground. If a thing is not one
of them, it is the other. There is no third possibility. An object is
either red or not red; if not red, it may be one of many colors. But if
we say that all laws are either concrete or abstract, then we know that
a law not concrete has all the properties of one which is abstract. We
must examine, then, this third law of thought in its applied forms in
order to understand its correct use.
It will be observed that there is an assumption of space or time in many
propositions having the form of the excluded middle. They are only true
under given conditions. “All gold is fusible or not,” means that some is
fusible at the time. If all gold be already fused, it does not hold
good. This distinction was noted by Kant in his discrimination between
_synthetic_ judgments, which assume other conditions; and _analytic_
judgments, which look only at the members of the proposition.
Only the latter satisfy the formal law, for the proposition must not
look outside of itself for its completion. Most analytic propositions
cannot extend our knowledge beyond their immediate statement. If A is
either B or not B, and it is shown not to be B, it is left uncertain
what A may be. The class of propositions referred to do more than this,
inasmuch as they present alternative conceptions, mutually exhaustive,
each the privative of the other. Of these two contraries, the one always
evokes the other; neither can be thought except in relation to the
other. They do not arise from the dichotomic process of classification,
but from the polar relations of things. Their relation is not in the
mind but in themselves, a real externality. The distinction between such
as spring from the former and the latter is the most important question
in philosophy.
To illustrate by examples, we familiarly speak of heat and cold, and to
say a body is not hot is as much as to say it is cold. But every
physicist knows that cold is merely a diminution of heat, not a distinct
form of force. The absolute zero may be reached by the abstraction of
all heat, and then the cold cannot increase. So, life and death are not
true contraries, for the latter is not anything real but a mere
privative, a quantitative diminution of the former, growing less to an
absolute zero where it is wholly lost.
Thus it is easy to see that the Unconditioned exists only as a part of
the idea of the Conditioned, the Unknowable as the foil of the Knowable;
and the erecting of these mere privatives, these negatives, these
shadows, into substances and realities, and then setting them up as
impassable barriers to human thought, is one of the worst pieces of work
that metaphysics has been guilty of.
The like does not hold in true contrasts. Each of them has an existence
as a positive,and[TN-3] is never lost in a zero of the other. The one is
always thought in relation to the other. Examples of these are subject
and object, absolute and relative, mind and matter, person and
consciousness, time and space. When any one of these is thought, the
other is assumed. It is vain to attempt their separation. Thus those
philosophers who assert that all knowledge is relative, are forced to
maintain this assertion, to wit, All knowledge is relative, is
nevertheless absolute, and thus they falsify their own position. So
also, those others who say all mind is a property of matter, assume in
this sentence the reality of an idea apart from matter. Some have argued
that space and time can be conceived independently of each other; but
their experiments to show it do not bear repetition.
All true contraries are universals. A universal concept is one of
“maximum extension,” as logicians say, that is, it is without limit. The
logical limitation of such a universal is not its negation, but its
contrary, which is itself also a universal. The synthesis of the two can
be in theory only, yet yields a real product. To illustrate this by a
geometrical example, a straight line produced indefinitely is, logically
considered, a universal. Its antithesis or true contrary is not a
crooked line, as might be supposed, but the straight line which runs at
right angles to it. Their synthesis is not the line which bisects their
angle but that formed by these contraries continually uniting, that is,
the arc of a circle, the genesis of which is theoretically the union of
two such lines. Again, time can only be measured by space, space by
time; they are true universals and contraries; their synthesis is
_motion_, a conception which requires them both and is completed by
them. Or again, the philosophical extremes of downright materialism and
idealism are each wholly true, yet but half the truth. The insoluble
enigmas that either meets in standing alone are kindred to those which
puzzled the old philosophers in the sophisms relating to motion, as, for
instance, that as a body cannot move where it is and still less where it
is not, therefore it cannot move at all. Motion must recognise both time
and space to be comprehensible. As a true contrary constantly implies
the existence of its opposite, we cannot take a step in right reasoning
without a full recognition of both.
This relation of contraries to the higher conception which logically
must include them is one of the well-worn problems of the higher
metaphysics.
The proper explanation would seem to be, as suggested above, that the
synthesis of contraries is capable of formal expression only, but not of
interpretation. In pursuing the search for their union we pass into a
realm of thought not unlike that of the mathematician when he deals with
hypothetical quantities, those which can only be expressed in symbols--,
√1 for example,--but uses them to good purpose in reaching
real results. The law does not fail, but its operations can no longer be
expressed under material images. They are symbolic and for speculative
thought alone, though pregnant with practical applications.
As I have hinted, in all real contraries it is theoretically possible to
accept either the one or the other. As in mathematics, all motion can be
expressed either under formulas of initial motion (mechanics), or of
continuous motion (kinematics), or as all force can be expressed as
either static or as dynamic force; in either case the other form
assuming a merely hypothetical or negative position; so the logic of
quality is competent to represent all existence as ideal or as material,
all truth as absolute or all as relative, or even to express the
universe in formulæ of being or of not-being. This perhaps was what
Heraclitus meant when he propounded his dark saying: “All things are
_and_ are not.” He added that “All is not,” is truer than “All is.”
Previous to his day, Buddha Sakyamuni had said: “He who has risen to the
perception of the not-Being, to the Unconditioned, the Universal, his
path is difficult to understand, like the flight of birds in the
air.”[37-1] Perhaps even he learned his lore from some older song of the
Veda, one of which ends, “Thus have the sages, meditating in their
souls, explained away the fetters of being by the not-being.”[37-2] The
not-being, as alone free from space and time, impressed these sages as
the more real of the two, the only absolute.
The error of assigning to the one universal a preponderance over the
other arose from the easy confusion of pure with applied thought. The
synthesis of contraries exists in the formal law alone, and this is
difficult to keep before the mind. In concrete displays they are forever
incommensurate. One seems to exclude the other. To see them correctly we
must there treat them as alternates. We may be competent, for instance,
to explain all phenomena of mind by organic processes; and equally
competent to explain all organism as effects of mind; but we must never
suppose an immediate identity of the two; this is only to be found in
the formal law common to both; still less should we deny the reality of
either. Each exhausts the universe; but at every step each presupposes
the other; their synthesis is life, a concept hopelessly puzzling unless
regarded in all its possible displays as made up of both.
This indicates also the limits of explanation. By no means every man’s
reason knows when it has had enough. The less it is developed, the
further is it from such knowledge. This is plainly seen in children, who
often do not rest satisfied with a really satisfactory explanation. It
is of first importance to be able to recognize what is a good reason.
I may first say what it is _not_. It is not a _cause_. This is nothing
more than a prior arrangement of the effect; the reason for an
occurrence is never assigned by showing its cause. Nor is it a
_caprice_, that is, motiveless volition, or will as a motor. In this
sense, the “will of God” is no good reason for an occurrence. Nor is it
_fate_, or physical necessity. This is denying there is any explanation
to give.
The reason can only be satisfied with an aliment consubstantial with
itself. Nothing material like cause, nor anything incomprehensible like
caprice, meets its demands. Reason is allied to order, system and
purpose above all things. That which most completely answers to these
will alone satisfy its requirements. They are for an ideal of order.
Their complete satisfaction is obtained in universal types and measures,
pure abstractions, which are not and cannot be real. The _formal law_ is
the limit of explanation of phenomena, beyond which a sound intellect
will ask nothing. It fulfils all the requirements of reason, and leaves
nothing to be desired.
Those philosophers, such as Herbert Spencer, who teach that there is
some incogitable “nature” of something which is the immanent “cause” of
phenomena, delude themselves with words. The history and the laws of a
phenomenon _are_ its nature, and there is no chimerical something beyond
them. They are exhaustive. They fully answer the question _why_, as well
as the question _how_.[39-1]
For it is important to note that the word “law” is not here used in the
sense which Blackstone gives to it, a “rule of conduct;” nor yet in that
which science assigns to it, a “physical necessity.” Law in its highest
sense is the type or form, perceived by reason as that toward which
phenomena tend, but which they always fail to reach. It was shown by
Kant that all physical laws depend for their validity on logical laws.
These are not authoritative, like the former, but purposive only. But
their purpose is clear, to wit, the attainment of proportion,
consistency or truth. As this purpose is reached only in the abstract
form, this alone gives us the absolutely true in which reason can rest.
In the concrete, matter shows the law in its efforts toward form, mind
in its struggle for the true. The former is guided by physical force,
and the extinction of the aberrant. The latter, in its highest
exhibition in a conscious intelligence, can alone guide itself by the
representation of law, by the sense of Duty. Such an intelligence has
both the faculty to see and the power to choose and appropriate to its
own behoof, and thus to build itself up out of those truths which are
“from everlasting unto everlasting.”
A purely formal truth of this kind as something wholly apart from
phenomena, not in any way connected with the knowledge derived through
the senses, does not admit of doubt and can never be changed by future
conquests of the reasoning powers. We may rest upon it as something more
permanent than matter, greater than Nature.
Such was the vision that inspired the noble lines of Wordsworth:--
“What are things eternal?--Powers depart,
Possessions vanish, and opinions change,
And passions hold a fluctuating seat;
But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken,
And subject neither to eclipse nor wane,
Duty exists; immutably survive
For our support, the measures and the forms
Which an abstract intelligence supplies;
Whose kingdom is where time and space are not.”
There is no danger that we shall not know what is thus true when we see
it. The sane reason cannot reject it. “The true,” says Novalis, “is that
which we cannot help believing.” It is the _perceptio per solam
essentiam_ of Spinoza. It asks not faith nor yet testimony; it stands in
need of neither.
Mathematical truth is of this nature. We cannot, if we try, believe
that twice two is five. Hence the unceasing effort of all science is to
give its results mathematical expression. Such truth so informs itself
with will that once received, it is never thereafter alienated;
obedience to it does not impair freedom. Necessity and servitude do not
arise from correct reasoning, but through the limitation of fallacies.
They have nothing to do with
“Those transcendent truths
Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws
Even to Thy Being’s infinite majesty.”
It is not derogatory, but on the contrary essential to the conception of
the Supreme Reason, the Divine Logos, to contemplate its will as in
accord and one with the forms of abstract truth. “The ‘will of God’”
says Spinoza, “is the refuge of ignorance; the true Will is the spirit
of right reasoning.”
This identification of the forms of thought with the Absolute is almost
as old as philosophy itself. The objections to it have been that no
independent existence attaches to these forms; that they prescribe the
conditions of thought but are not thought itself, still less being; that
they hold good to thought as known to man’s reason, but perchance not to
thought in other intelligences; and, therefore, that even if through the
dialectical development of thought a consistent idea of the universe
were framed, that is, one wherein every fact was referred to its
appropriate law, still would remain the inquiry, Is this the last and
absolute truth?
The principal points in these objections are that abstract thought does
not postulate being; and that possibly all intelligence is not one in
kind. To the former objection the most satisfactory, reply has been
offered by Professor J. F. Ferrier. He has shown that the conception of
object, even ideal object, implies the conception of self in the
subject; and upon this proposition which has been fully recognized even
by those who differ from him widely, he grounds the existence of Supreme
Thought as a logical unity. Those who would pursue this branch of the
subject further, I would refer to his singularly able work.[43-1]
The latter consideration will come up in a later chapter. If it be shown
that all possible intelligence proceeds on the same laws as that of man,
and that the essence of this is activity, permanence, or
truth--synonymous terms--then the limitation of time ceases, and
existence not in time but without regard to time, is a necessary
consequence. Knowledge through intellection can alone reach a truth
independent of time; that through sensation is always relative, true
for the time only. The former cannot be expressed without the
implication of the conceptions of the universal and the eternal as
“dominant among the subjects of thought with which Logic is
concerned;”[44-1] and hence the relation which the intellect bears to
the absolute is a real and positive one.
FOOTNOTES:
[6-1] In his essay entitled, _Ueber den Geschlechtsunterschied und
dessen Einfluss auf die organische Natur_, first published in 1795.
[6-2] “Der alte Dualismus von Geist und Körper, der Jahrhunderte
hindurch nach Versöhnung gerungen, findet diese heute nicht
zwar in der Einheit der Substanz, wohl aber in der Einheit des
Gesetzes.” Dr. Heinrich Boehmer, _Geschichte der Entwickelung der
Naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung in Deutschland_, s. 201 (Gotha,
1872).
[7-1] _Elements of Physio-Philosophy_, §3589. Eng. trans., London, 1847.
[8-1] Von Feuchtersleben, _The Principles of Medical Psychology_, p. 130
(Eng. trans., London, 1847).
[9-1] “The fundamental property of organic structure is to seek what is
beneficial, and to shun what is hurtful to it.” Dr. Henry Maudsley,
_Body and Mind_, p. 22.
“The most essential nature of a sentient being is to move _to_ pleasure
and _from_ pain.” A. Bain, _On the Study of Character_, p. 292 (London,
1861).
“States of Pleasure are connected with an increase, states of Pain with
an abatement of some or all of the vital functions.” A. Bain, _Mind and
Body_, p. 59.
“Affectus est confusa idea, quâ Mens majorem, vel minorem sui corporis,
vel alicujus ejus partis, existendi vim affirmat.” Spinoza, _Ethices_,
Lib. III. _ad finem_.
[11-1] The extension of the mechanical laws of motion to organic motion
was, I believe, first carried out by Comte. His biological form of the
first law is as follows: “Tout état, statique ou dynamique, tend à
persister spontanément, sans aucune altération, en resistant aux
perturbations extérieures.” _Système de Politique Positive_, Tome iv. p.
178. The metaphysical ground of this law has, I think, been very well
shown by Schopenhauer to be in the Kantian principle that time is not a
force, nor a quality of matter, but a condition of perception, and hence
it can exert no physical influence. See Schopenhauer, _Parerga und
Paralipomena_, Bd. II, s. 37.
[13-1] “Aller Genuss, seiner Natur nach, ist negativ, d. h., in
Befreiung von einer Noth oder Pein besteht.” _Parerga und Paralipomena._
Bd. II, s. 482.
[14-1] “No impression whatever is pleasant beyond the instant of its
realization; since, at that very instant, commences the change of
susceptibility, which suggests the desire for a change of impression or
for a renewal of that impression which is fading away.” Dr. J. P.
Catlow, _The Principles of Aesthetic Medicine_, p. 155 (London, 1867).
“Dum re, quem appetamus fruimur, corpus ex ea fruitione novam acquirat
constitutionem, á quá aliter determinatur, et aliæ rerum imagines in eo
excitantur,” etc. Spinoza, _Ethices_, Pars III, Prop. lix.
[18-1] “Feeling and thought are much more real than anything else; they
are the only things which we directly know to be real.”--John Stuart
Mill.--_Theism_, p. 202. How very remote external objects are from what
we take them to be, is constantly shown in physiological studies. As
Helmholtz remarks: “No kind and no degree of similarity exists between
the quality of a sensation, and the quality of the agent inducing it and
portrayed by it.”--_Lectures on Scientific Subjects_, p. 390.
[20-1] _The Philosophy of Consciousness_, p. 72.
[21-1] The Gospel of John (ch. xviii.) leaves the impression that Pilate
either did not wait for an answer but asked the question in contempt, as
Bacon understood, or else that waiting he received no answer. The Gospel
of Nicodemus, however, written according to Tischendorf in the second
century, probably from tradition, gives the rest of the conversation as
follows: “Pilate says to him: What is truth? Jesus says: Truth is from
heaven. Pilate says: Is not there truth upon earth? Jesus says to
Pilate: See how one who speaks truth is judged by those who have power
upon earth!” [ch. iii.]
[22-1] The most acute recent discussion of this subject is by Helmholtz,
in his essay entitled, “_Recent Progress in the Theory of Vision_.”
[24-1] George Boole, Professor of Mathematics in Queen’s College, Cork,
was born Nov. 2, 1815, died Dec. 8, 1864. He was the author of several
contributions to the higher mathematics, but his principal production is
entitled: _An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on which are
founded the mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities_ [London,
1854.] Though the reputation he gained was so limited that one may seek
his name in vain in the _New American Cyclopedia_ [1875], or the
_Dictionnaire des Contemporains_ [1859], the few who can appreciate his
treatise place the very highest estimate upon it. Professor Todhunter,
in the preface to his _History of the Theory of Probabilities_, calls it
“a marvellous work,” and in similar language Professor W. Stanley Jevons
speaks of it as “one of the most marvellous and admirable pieces of
reasoning ever put together” (_Pure Logic_, p. 75). Professor Bain, who
gives a synopsis of it in his _Deductive Logic_, wholly misapprehends
the author’s purpose, and is unable to appraise justly his conclusions.
[28-1] _The Institutes of Metaphysic_, p. 459, (2nd edition.)
[31-1] _An Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought_, p. 113 (New York,
1860).
[37-1] _The Dhamapada_, verse 93.
[37-2] Koppen, _Der Buddhismus_, s. 30.
[39-1] Spencer in assuming an “unknowable universal causal agent and
source of things,” as “the nature of the power manifested in phenomena,”
and in calling this the idea common to both religion and “ideal
science,” fell far behind Comte, who expressed the immovable position,
not only of positive science but of all intelligence, in these words:
“Le véritable esprit positif consiste surtout à substituer toujours
l’étude des _lois_ invariables des phénomènes à celles de leurs _causes_
proprement dites, premières ou finales, en un mot la determination du
_comment_ à celle du _pourquoi_.”--_Systèmede[TN-4] Politique Positive_,
i. p. 47. Compare Spencer’s Essay entitled, “Reasons for dissenting from
Comte.” The purposive law is the only final cause which reason allows.
Comte’s error lay in ignoring this class of laws.
[43-1] _The Institutes of Metaphysic_, 2d Ed. See also Bain, _The
Emotions and the Will_, the closing note.
[44-1] Boole, _Laws of Thought_, p. 401.
THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.
SUMMARY.
The Religious Sentiment is made up of emotions and thoughts. The
emotions are historically first and most prominent. Of all
concerned, Fear is the most obvious. Hope is its correlate. Both
suppose Experience, and a desire to repeat or avoid it. Hence a
Wish is the source of both emotions, and the proximate element of
religion. The significance of desire as the postulate of
development. The influence of fear and hope. The conditions which
encourage them.
The success of desire fails to gratify the religious sentiment. The
alternative left is eternal repose, or else action, unending yet
which aims at nothing beyond. The latter is reached through Love.
The result of love is _continuance_. Illustrations of this. Sexual
love and the venereal sense in religions. The hermaphrodite gods.
The virgin mother. Mohammed was the first to proclaim a deity above
sex. The conversion of sexual and religious emotion exemplified
from insane delusions. The element of fascination. The love of God.
Other emotional elements in religions.
The religious wish defined to be one _whose fruition depends upon
unknown power_. To be religious, one must desire and be ignorant.
The unknown power is of religious interest only in so far as it is
believed to be in relation to men’s desires. In what sense
ignorance is the mother of devotion.