_The Craving for a Final Cause._
It appears, then, that the idea of God as remote from the world is not
likely to survive the revolution in thought which the rapid increase
of modern knowledge has inaugurated. The knell of anthropomorphic or
Augustinian theism has already sounded. This conclusion need not,
however, disturb us when we consider how imperfect a form of theism
this is which mankind is now outgrowing. To get rid of the appearance
of antagonism between science and religion will of itself be one of the
greatest benefits ever conferred upon the human race. It will forward
science and purify religion, and it will go far toward increasing
kindness and mutual helpfulness among men. Since such happy results
are likely to follow the general adoption of the cosmic or Athanasian
form of theism, in place of the other form, it becomes us to observe
more specifically the manner in which this higher theism stands related
to our modern knowledge.
To every form of theism, as I have already urged, an anthropomorphic
element is indispensable. It is quite true, on the one hand, that
to ascribe what we know as human personality to the infinite Deity
straightway lands us in a contradiction, since personality without
limits is inconceivable. But on the other hand, it is no less true
that the total elimination of anthropomorphism from the idea of God
abolishes the idea itself. This difficulty need not dishearten us, for
it is no more than we must expect to encounter on the threshold of such
a problem as the one before us. We do not approach the question in
the spirit of those natural theologians who were so ready with their
explanations of the divine purposes. We are aware that "we see as
through a glass darkly," and we do not expect to "think God's thoughts
after him" save in the crudest symbolic fashion. In dealing with the
Infinite we are confessedly treating of that which transcends our
powers of conception. Our ability to frame ideas is strictly limited by
experience, and our experience does not furnish the materials for the
idea of a personality which is not narrowly hemmed in by the inexorable
barriers of circumstance. We therefore cannot conceive such an idea.
But it does not follow that there is no reality answering to what such
an idea would be if it could be conceived. The test of inconceivability
is only applicable to the world of phenomena from which our experience
is gathered. It fails when applied to that which lies behind phenomena.
I do not hold for this reason that we are justified in using such an
expression as "infinite personality" in a philosophical inquiry where
clearness of thought and speech is above all things desirable. But I
do hold, most emphatically, that we are not debarred from ascribing
a quasi-psychical nature to the Deity simply because we can frame no
proper conception of such a nature as absolute and infinite.
The point is of vital importance to theism. As Kant has well said,
"the conception of God involves not merely a blindly operating Nature
as the eternal root of things, but a Supreme Being that shall be the
author of all things by free and understanding action; and it is this
conception which alone has any interest for us." It will be observed
that Kant says nothing here about "contrivance." By the phrase "free
and understanding action" he doubtless means much the same that is here
meant by ascribing to God a quasi-psychical nature. And thus alone, he
says, can we feel any interest in theism. The thought goes deep, yet
is plain enough to every one. The teleological instinct in Man cannot
be suppressed or ignored. The human soul shrinks from the thought
that it is without kith or kin in all this wide universe. Our reason
demands that there shall be a reasonableness in the constitution of
things. This demand is a fact in our psychical nature as positive and
irrepressible as our acceptance of geometrical axioms and our rejection
of whatever controverts such axioms. No ingenuity of argument can bring
us to believe that the infinite Sustainer of the universe will "put
us to permanent intellectual confusion." There is in every earnest
thinker a craving after a final cause; and this craving can no more be
extinguished than our belief in objective reality. Nothing can persuade
us that the universe is a farrago of nonsense. Our belief in what we
call the evidence of our senses is less strong than our faith that in
the orderly sequence of events there is a meaning which our minds could
fathom were they only vast enough. Doubtless in our own age, of which
it is a most healthful symptom that it questions everything, there are
many who, through inability to assign the grounds for such a faith,
have persuaded themselves that it must be a mere superstition which
ought not to be cherished; but it is not likely that any one of these
has ever really succeeded in ridding himself of it.
According to Mr. Spencer, the only ultimate test of reality is
persistence, and the only measure of validity among our primary beliefs
is the success with which they resist all efforts to change them. Let
us see, then, how it is with the belief in the essential reasonableness
of the universe. Does this belief answer to any outward reality? Is
there, in the scheme of things, aught that justifies Man in claiming
kinship of any sort with the God that is immanent in the world?
The difficulty in answering such questions has its root in the
impossibility of framing a representative conception of Deity; but it
is a difficulty which may, for all practical purposes, be surmounted by
the aid of a symbolic conception.