THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.
All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness
in religion deisidaimonesterois.--ST. PAUL.
As a prelude and preparation for the study of the religion of the
Athenians, it may be well to consider religion in its more abstract and
universal form; and inquire in what does religion essentially consist;
how far is it grounded in the nature of man; and especially, what is
there in the mental constitution of man, or in his exterior conditions,
which determines him to a mode of life which may be denominated
_religious?_ As a preliminary inquiry, this may materially aid us in
understanding the nature, and estimating the value of the religious
conceptions and sentiments which were developed by the Greek mind.
Religion, in its most generic conception, may be defined as a form of
thought, feeling, and action, which has the _Divine_ for its object,
basis, and end. Or, in other words, it is a mode of life determined by
the recognition of some relation to, and consciousness of dependence
upon, a _Supreme Being_. This general conception of religion underlies
all the specific forms of religion which have appeared in the world,
whether heathen, Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian.
That a religious destination appertains to man as man, whether he has
been raised to a full religious consciousness, or is simply considered
as capable of being so raised, can not be denied. In all ages man has
revealed an instinctive tendency, or natural aptitude for religion, and
he has developed feelings and emotions which have always characterized
him as a religious being. Religious ideas and sentiments have prevailed
among all nations, and have exerted a powerful influence on the entire
course of human history. Religious worship, addressed to a Supreme Being
believed to control the destiny of man, has been coeval and coextensive
with the race. Every nation has had its mythology, and each mythologic
system has been simply an effort of humanity to realize and embody in
some visible form the relations in which it feels itself to be connected
with an external, overshadowing, and all-controlling Power and Presence.
The voice of all ancient, and all contemporaneous history, clearly
attests that the _religious principle_ is deeply seated in the nature of
man; and that it has occupied the thought, and stirred the feelings of
every rational man, in every age. It has interwoven itself with the
entire framework of human society, and ramified into all the relations
of human life. By its agency, nations have been revolutionized, and
empires have been overthrown; and it has formed a mighty element in all
the changes which have marked the history of man.
This universality of religious sentiment and religious worship must be
conceded as a fact of human nature, and, as a universal fact, it demands
an explanation. Every event must have a cause. Every phenomenon must
have its ground, and reason, and law. The facts of religious history,
the past and present religious phenomena of the world can be no
exception to this fundamental principle; they press their imperious
demand to be studied and explained, as much as the phenomena of the
material or the events of the moral world. The phenomena of religion,
being universally revealed wherever man is found, must be grounded in
some universal principle, on some original law, which is connate with,
and natural to man. At any rate, there must be something in the nature
of man, or in the exterior conditions of humanity, which invariably
leads man to worship, and which determines him, as by the force of an
original instinct, or an outward, conditioning necessity, to recognize
and bow down before a Superior Power. The full recognition and adequate
explanation of the facts of religious history will constitute a
_philosophy of religion_.
The hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious
phenomena of the world are widely divergent, and most of them are, in
our judgment, eminently inadequate and unsatisfactory. The following
enumeration may be regarded as embracing all that are deemed worthy of
consideration.
I. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in SUPERSTITION, that is,
in a _fear_ of invisible and supernatural powers, generated by ignorance
of nature.
II. The phenomenon of religion is part of that PROCESS or EVOLUTION OF
THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity), which gradually unfolding itself in
nature, mind, history, and _religion_, attains to perfect
self-consciousness in philosophy.
III. The phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEELING--_the
feeling of dependence and of obligation_; and that to which the mind, by
spontaneous intuition or instinctive faith, traces this dependence and
obligation we call God.
IV. The phenomenon of religion had its outbirth in the spontaneous
apperceptions of REASON, that is, the necessary _à priori ideas of the
Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being_,
which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful and
contingent phenomena of the world.
V. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in EXTERNAL REVELATION, to
which _reason_ is related as a purely passive organ, and _heathenism_ as
a feeble relic.
As a philosophy of religion--an attempt to supply the rationale of the
religious phenomena of the world, the first hypothesis is a skeptical
philosophy, which necessarily leads to _Atheism_. The second is an
idealistic philosophy (absolute idealism), which inevitably lands in
_Pantheism_. The third is an intuitional or "faith-philosophy," which
finally ends in _Mysticism_. The fourth is a rationalistic or
"spiritualistic" philosophy, which yields pure _Theism_. The last is an
empirical philosophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and
culminates in _Dogmatic Theology_.
In view of these diverse and conflicting theories, the question which
now presents itself for our consideration is,--does any one of these
hypotheses meet and satisfy the demands of the problem? does it fully
account for and adequately explain all the facts of religious history?
The answer to this question must not be hastily or dogmatically given.
The arbitrary rejection of any theory that may be offered, without a
fair and candid examination, will leave our minds in uncertainty and
doubt as to the validity of our own position. A blind faith is only one
remove from a pusillanimous skepticism. We can not render our own
position secure except by comprehending, assaulting, and capturing the
position of our foe. It is, therefore, due to ourselves and to the cause
of truth, that we shall examine the evidence upon which each separate
theory is based, and the arguments which are marshalled in its support,
before we pronounce it inadequate and unphilosophical. Such a criticism
of opposite theories will prepare the way for the presentation of a
philosophy of religion which we flatter ourselves will be found most in
harmony with all the facts of the case.
I. _It is affirmed that the religious phenomena of the world had their
origin in_ SUPERSTITION, _that is, in a fear of unseen and supernatural
powers, generated from ignorance of nature_.
This explanation was first offered by Epicurus. He felt that the
universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which demands a cause;
and he found it, or presumed he found it not in a spiritual God, which
he claims can not exist, nor in corporeal god which no one has seen, but
in "phantoms of the mind generated by fear." When man has been unable to
explain any natural phenomenon, to assign a cause within the sphere of
nature, he has had recourse to supernatural powers, or living
personalities behind nature, which move and control nature in an
arbitrary and capricious manner. These imaginary powers are supposed to
be continually interfering in the affairs of individuals and nations.
They bestow blessings or inflict calamities. They reward virtue and
punish vice. They are, therefore, the objects of "sacred awe" and
"superstitious fear."
Whate'er in heaven,
In earth, man sees mysterious, shakes his mind
With sacred awe o'erwhelms him, and his soul
Bows to the dust; the cause of things conceal
Once from his vision, instant to the gods
All empire he transfers, all rule supreme,
And doubtful whence they spring, with headlong haste
Calls them the workmanship of power divine.
For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live
Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind
How things are swayed; how, chiefly, those discerned
In heaven sublime--to SUPERSTITION back
Lapses, and fears a tyrant host, and then
Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do,
While yet himself nor knows what may be done,
Nor what may never, nature powers defined
Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass:
Hence wide, and wider errs he as he walks.[41]
[Footnote 41: Lucretius, "De Natura Rerum," book vi. vs. 50-70.]
In order to rid men of all superstitious fear, and, consequently, of all
religion, Epicurus endeavors to show that "nature" alone is adequate to
the production of all things, and there is no need to drag in a "divine
power" to explain the phenomena of the world.
This theory has been wrought into a somewhat plausible form by the
brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious
phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development
of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have been
the first to discover the great law of the three successive stages or
phases of human evolution. That law is thus enounced. Both in the
individual mind, and in the history of humanity, thought, in dealing
with its problems, passes, of necessity, through, first, a
_Theological_, second, a _Metaphysical_, and finally reaches a third, or
_Positive_ stage.
In attempting an explanation of the universe, human thought, in its
earliest stages of development, resorts to the idea of living personal
agents enshrined in and moving every object, whether organic or
inorganic, natural or artificial. In an advanced stage, it conceives a
number of personal beings distinct from, and superior to nature, which
preside over the different provinces of nature--the sea, the air, the
winds, the rivers, the heavenly bodies, and assume the guardianship of
individuals, tribes, and nations. As a further, and still higher stage,
it asserts the unity of the Supreme Power which moves and vitalizes the
universe, and guides and governs in the affairs of men and nations. The
_Theological_ stage is thus subdivided into three epochs, and
represented as commencing in _Fetichism_, then advancing to
_Polytheism_, and, finally, consummating in _Monotheism_.
The next stage, the _Metaphysical_, is a transitional stage, in which
man substitutes abstract entities, as substance, force, Being _in se_,
the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theological conceptions.
During this period all theological opinions undergo a process of
disintegration, and lose their hold on the mind of man. Metaphysical
speculation is a powerful solvent, which decomposes and dissipates
theology.
It is only in the last--the _Positive_ stage--that man becomes willing
to relinquish all theological ideas and metaphysical notions, and
confine his attention to the study of phenomena in their relation to
time and space; discarding all inquiries as to causes, whether efficient
or final, and denying the existence of all entities and powers beyond
nature.
The first stage, in its religious phase, is _Theistic_, the second is
_Pantheistic_, the last is _Atheistic_.
The proofs offered by Comte in support of this theory are derived:
I. _From Cerebral Organization_. There are three grand divisions of the
Brain, the Medulla Oblongata, the Cerebellum, and the Cerebrum; the
first represents the merely animal instincts the second, the more
elevated sentiments, the third, the intellectual powers. Human nature
must, therefore, both in the individual and in the race, be developed in
the following order: (1.) in animal instincts; (2.) in social affections
and communal tendencies; (3.) in intellectual pursuits. Infant life is a
merely animal existence, shared in common with the brute; in childhood
the individual being realizes his relation to external nature and human
society; in youth and manhood he compares, generalizes, and classifies
the objects of knowledge, and attains to science. And so the infancy of
our race was a mere animal or savage state, the childhood of our race
the organization of society, the youth and manhood of our race the
development of science.
Now, without offering any opinion as to the merits of the phrenological
theories of Gall and Spurzheim, we may ask, what relation has this order
to the law of development presented by Comte? Is there any imaginable
connection between animal propensities and theological ideas; between
social affections and metaphysical speculations? Are not the
intellectual powers as much concerned with theological ideas and
metaphysical speculations as with positive science? And is it not more
probable, more in accordance with facts, that all the powers of the
mind, instinct, feeling, and thought, enter into action simultaneously,
and condition each other? The very first act of perception, the first
distinct cognition of an object, involves _thought_ as much as the last
generalization of science. We know nothing of _mind_ except as the
development of thought, and the first unfolding, even of the infant
mind, reveals an intellectual act, a discrimination between a self and
an object which is not self, and a recognition of resemblance, or
difference between _this_ object and _that_. And what does Positive
science, in its most mature and perfect form, claim to do more than "to
study actual phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and
succession."
Cerebral organization may furnish plausible analogies in favor of some
theory of human development, but certainly not the one proposed by Aug.
Comte. The attempt, however, to construct a chart of human history on
such an _à priori_ method,--to construct an ideal framework into which
human nature must necessarily grow, is a violation of the first and most
fundamental principle of the Positive science, which demands that we
shall confine ourselves strictly to the study of actual phenomena in
their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and succession. The history of
the human race must be based on facts, not on hypotheses, and the facts
must be ascertained by the study of ancient records and existing
monuments of the past. Mere plausible analogies and _à priori_ theories
based upon them, are only fitted to mislead the mind; they insert a
prism between the perceiving mind and the course of events which
decomposes the pure white light of fact, and throws a false light over
the entire field of history.
2. _The second order of proof is attempted to be drawn from the
analogies of individual experience_.
It is claimed that the history of the race is the same as that of each
individual mind; and it is affirmed that man is _religious_ in infancy,
_metaphysical_ in youth, and _positive_, that is, scientific without
being religious, in mature manhood; the history of the race must
therefore have followed the same order.
We are under no necessity of denying that there is some analogy between
the development of mind in the individual man, and in humanity as a
whole, in order to refute the theory of Comte. Still, it must not be
overlooked that the development of mind, in all cases and in all ages,
is materially affected by exterior conditions. The influence of
geographical and climatic conditions, of social and national
institutions, and especially of education, however difficult to be
estimated, can not be utterly disregarded. And whether all these
influences have not been controlled, and collocated, and adjusted by a
Supreme Mind in the education of humanity, is also a question which can
not be pushed aside as of no consequence. Now, unless it can be shown
that the same outward conditions which have accompanied the individual
and modified his mental development, have been repealed in the history
of the race, and repeated in the same order of succession, the argument
has no value.
But, even supposing it could be shown that the development of mind in
humanity has followed the same order as that of the individual, we
confidently affirm that Comte has not given the true history of the
development of the individual mind. The account he has given may perhaps
be the history of his own mental progress, but it certainly is not the
history of every individual mind, nor indeed, of a majority even, of
educated minds that have arrived at maturity. It would be much more in
harmony with facts to say childhood is the period of pure receptivity,
youth of doubt and skepticism, and maturity of well-grounded and
rational belief. In the ripeness and maturity of the nineteenth century
the number of scientific men of the Comtean model is exceedingly small
compared with the number of religious men. There are minds in every part
of Europe and America as thoroughly scientific as that of Comte, and as
deeply imbued with the spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, which are not
conscious of any discordance between the facts of science and the
fundamental principles of theology. It may be that, in his own immediate
circle at Paris there may be a tendency to Atheism, but certainly no
such tendency exists in the most scientific minds of Europe and America.
The faith of Bacon, and Newton, and Boyle, of Descartes, Leibnitz, and
Pascal, in regard to the fundamental principles of theology, is still
the faith of Sedgwick, Whewell, Herschel, Brewster, Owen, Agassiz,
Silliman, Mitchell, Hitchcock, Dana, and, indeed of the leading
scientific minds of the world--the men who, as Comte would say, "belong
to the élite of humanity." The mature mind, whether of the individual or
the race, is not Atheistical.
3. _The third proof is drawn from a survey of the history of certain
portions of our race._
Comte is far from being assured that the progress of humanity, under the
operation of his grand law of development, has been uniform and
invariable. The majority of the human race, the vast populations of
India, China, and Japan, have remained stationary; they are still in the
Theological stage, and consequently furnish no evidence in support of
his theory. For this reason he confines himself to the "élite" or
advance-guard of humanity, and in this way makes the history of humanity
a very "abstract history" indeed. Starting with Greece as the
representative of ancient civilization, passing thence to Roman
civilization, and onward to Western Europe, he attempts to show that the
actual progress of humanity has been, on the whole, in conformity with
his law. To secure, however, even this semblance of harmony between the
facts of history and his hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts
very much as Procrustes treated his victims,--he must stretch some, and
mutilate others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The natural
organization of European civilization is distorted and torn asunder. "As
the third or positive stage had accomplished its advent in his own
person, it was necessary to find the metaphysical period just before;
and so the whole life of the Reformed Christianity, in embryo and in
manifest existence, is stripped of its garb of _faith_, and turned out
of view as a naked metaphysical phenomenon. But metaphysics, again, have
to be ushered in by theology; and of the three stages of theology
Monotheism is the last, necessarily following on Polytheism, as that,
again, on Fetichism. There is nothing for it, therefore, but to let the
mediæval Catholic Christianity stand as the world's first monotheism,
and to treat it as the legitimate offspring and necessary development of
the Greek and Roman polytheism. This, accordingly, Comte actually does.
Protestantism he illegitimates, and outlaws from religion altogether,
and the genuine Christianity he fathers upon the faith of Homer and the
Scipios! Once or twice, indeed, it seems to cross him that there was
such a people as the Hebrews, and that they were not the polytheists
they ought to have been. He sees the fact, but pushes it out of his way
with the remark that the Jewish monotheism was 'premature.'"[42]
[Footnote 42: Martineau's Essays, pp. 61, 62.]
The signal defect of Comte's historical survey, however, is, that it
furnishes no evidence of the general prevalence of Fetichism in
primitive times. The writings of Moses are certainly entitled to as much
consideration and credence as the writings of Berosus, Manetho, and
Herodotus; and, it will not be denied, they teach that the faith of the
earliest families and races of men was _monotheistic_. The early Vedas,
the Institutes of Menu, the writings of Confucius, the Zendavesta, all
bear testimony that the ancient faith of India, China, and Persia, was,
at any rate, pantheistic; and learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic
as well as European, confidently affirm that the ground of the
Brahminical, Buddhist, and Parsist faith is _monotheistic_; and that
_one_ Being is assumed, in the earliest books, to be the origin of all
things.[43] Without evidence, Comte assumes that the savage state is the
original condition of man; and instead of going to Asia, the cradle of
the race, for some light as to the early condition and opinions of the
remotest families of men, he turns to Africa, the _soudan_ of the earth,
for his illustration of the habit of man, in the infancy of our race, to
endow every object in nature, whether organic or inorganic, with life
and intelligence. The theory of a primitive state of ignorance and
barbarism is a mere assumption--an hypothesis in conflict with the
traditionary legends of all nations, the earliest records of our race,
and the unanimous voice of antiquity, which attest the general belief in
a primitive state of light and innocence.
[Footnote 43: "The Religions of the World in their Relation to
Christianity" (Maurice, ch. ii., iii., iv.).]
The three stages of development which Comte describes as necessarily
successive, have, for centuries past, been simultaneous. The
theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific elements coexist now,
and there is no real, radical, or necessary conflict between them.
Theological and metaphysical ideas hold their ground as securely under
the influence of enlarged scientific discovery as before; and there is
no reason to suppose they ever had more power over the mind of man than
they have to-day. The notion that God is dethroned by the wonderful
discoveries of modern science, and theology is dead, is the dream of the
"_profond orage cérébral_" which interrupted the course of Comte's
lectures in 1826. As easily may the hand of Positivism arrest the course
of the sun, as prevent the instinctive thought of human reason
recognizing and affirming the existence of a God. And so long as ever
the human mind is governed by necessary laws of thought, so long will it
seek...
[Transcriber's note: In the original document, page 64 is a duplication
of page 63. The real page 64 seems to be missing.]
....eur, and consequently to develop its true philosophy. Its
fundamental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is confined
to the observation and classification of sensible phenomena--that is, to
changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon
self-observation and self-reflection, is a "mere illusion; and logic and
ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are
altogether baseless." Spiritual entities, forces, causes, efficient or
final, are unknown and unknowable; all inquiry regarding them must be
inhibited, "for Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into
causes at all."
II. The second hypothesis offered in explanation of the facts of
religious history is, _that religion is part of that_ PROCESS OR
EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (_i.e._, the Deity) _which, gradually
unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to the
fullest self-consciousness in philosophy_.
This is the theory of Hegel, in whose system of philosophy the
subjective idealism of Kant culminates in the doctrine of "_Absolute
Identity_." Its fundamental position is that thought and being, subject
and object, the perceiving mind and the thing perceived, are ultimately
and essentially _one_, and that the only actual reality is that which
results from their mutual relation. The outward thing is nothing, the
inward perception is nothing, for neither could exist alone; the only
reality is the relation, or rather synthesis of the two; the essence or
nature of being in itself accordingly consists in the coexistence of two
contrarieties. Ideas, arising from the union or synthesis of two
opposites, are therefore the _concrete realities_ of Hegel; and the
_process_ of the evolution of ideas, in the human mind, is the process
of all existence--_the Absolute Idea_.
_The Absolute_(die Idée) thus forms the beginning, middle, and end of
the system of Hegel. It is the one infinite existence or thought, of
which nature, mind, history, religion, and philosophy, are the
manifestation. "The absolute is, with him, not the infinite _substance_,
as with Spinoza; nor the infinite _subject_, as with Fichte; nor the
infinite _mind_, as with Schelling; it is a perpetual _process_, an
eternal thinking, without beginning and without end."[44] This _living,
eternal process of absolute existence is the God of Hegel_.
It will thus be seen that the _Absolute_ is, with Hegel, the sum of all
actual and possible existence; "nothing is true and real except so far
as it forms an element of the Absolute Spirit."[45] "What kind of an
Absolute Being," he asks, "is that which does not contain in itself all
that is actual, even evil included?"[46] The Absolute, therefore, in
Hegel's conception, does not allow of any existence out of itself. It is
the _unity_ of the finite and the infinite, the eternal and the
temporal, the ideal and the real, the subject and the object. And it is
not only the unity of these opposites so as to exclude all difference,
but it contains in itself, all the differences and opposites as elements
of its being; otherwise the distinctions would stand over against
absolute as a limit, and the absolute would cease to be absolute.
God is, therefore, according to Hegel, "no motionless, eternally
self-identical and unchangeable being, but a living, eternal _process_
of absolute self-existence. This process consists in the eternal
self-distinction, or antithesis, and equally self-reconciliation or
synthesis of those opposites which enter, as necessary elements, into
the constitution of the Divine Being. This _self-evolution_, whereby the
absolute enters into antithesis, and returns to itself again, is the
eternal _self-actualization_ of its being, and which at once constitutes
the beginning, middle, and end, as in the circle, where the beginning is
at the same time the end, and the end the beginning."[47]
[Footnote 44: Morell, "Hist, of Philos., p. 461."]
[Footnote 45: "Philos. of Religion," p. 204.]
[Footnote 46: Ibid., chap. xi. p. 24.]
[Footnote 47: Herzog's _Real-Encyc._, art. "Hegelian Philos.," by
Ulrici.]
The whole philosophy of Hegel consists in the development of this idea
of God by means of his, so-called, dialectic method, which reflects the
objective life-process of the Absolute, and is, in fact, identical with
it; for God, says he, "is only the Absolute Intelligence in so far as he
knows himself to be the Absolute Intelligence, _and this he knows only
in science_ [dialectics], _and this knowledge alone constitutes his true
existence._"[48] This life-process of the Absolute has three "moments."
It may be considered as the idea _in itself_--bare, naked, undetermined,
unconscious idea; as the idea _out of itself_, in its objective form, or
in its differentiation; and, finally, as the idea _in itself_, and _for
itself_, in its regressive or reflective form. This movement of thought
gives, _first_, bare, naked, indeterminate thought, or thought in the
mere antithesis of Being and non-Being; _secondly_, thought
externalizing itself in nature; and, _thirdly_, thought returning to
itself, and knowing itself in mind, or consciousness. Philosophy has,
accordingly, three corresponding divisions:--1. LOGIC, which here is
identical with metaphysics; 2. PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE; 3. PHILOSOPHY OF
MIND.
[Footnote 48: "Hist, of Philos.," iii. p. 399.]
It is beyond our design to present an expanded view of the entire
philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world a _new_ logic, it
may be needful to glance at its general features as a help to the
comprehension of his philosophy of religion. The fundamental law of his
logic is the _identity of contraries or contradictions_. All thought is
a synthesis of contraries or opposites. This antithesis not only exists
in all ideas, but constitutes them. In every idea we form, there must be
_two_ things opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear
conception. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of darkness;
good can not be thought except in opposition to evil. All life, all
reality is thus, essentially, the union of two elements, which,
together, are mutually opposed to, and yet imply each other.
The identity of Being and Nothing is one of the consequences of this
law.
1. _The Absolute is the Being_ (das Absolute ist das Seyn), and "the
Being" is here, according to Hegel, bare, naked, abstract,
undistinguished, indeterminate, unconscious idea.
2. _The Absolute is the Nothing_ (das Absolute ist das Nichts). "Pure
being is pure abstraction, and consequently the absolute-negative, which
in like manner, directly taken, is _nothing_." Being and Nothing are the
positive and negative poles of the Idea, that is, the Absolute. They
both alike exist, they are both pure abstractions, both absolutely
unconditioned, without attributes, and without consciousness. Hence
follows the conclusion--
3. _Being and Nothing are identical_ (das Seyn und das Nichts ist
dasselbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being _is_ Being--the
Anders-seyn--which becomes _as_ Being to the Seyn. Nothing is, in some
sense, an actual thing.
_Being_ and _Nothing_ are thus the two elements which enter into the one
Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both together combine to form a
complete notion of bare production, or the _becoming_ of something out
of nothing,--the unfolding of real existence in its lowest form, that
is, of _nature_.
The "_Philosophy of Nature_" exhibits a series of necessary movements
which carry the idea forward in the ascending scale of sensible
existence. The laws of mechanics, chemistry, and physiology are resolved
into a series of oppositions. But the law which governs this development
requires the self-reconciliation of these opposites. The idea,
therefore, which in nature was unconscious and ignorant of itself,
returns upon itself, and becomes conscious of itself, that is, becomes
_mind_. The science of the regression or self-reflection of the idea, is
the "_Philosophy of Mind_."
The "_Philosophy of Mind_" is subdivided by Hegel into three parts.
There is, first, the subjective or individual mind (_psychology_); then
the objective or universal mind, as represented in society, the state,
and in history (_ethics, political philosophy,_ or _jurisprudence_, and
_philosophy of history_); and, finally, the union of the subjective and
objective mind, or _the absolute mind_. This last manifests itself again
under three forms, representing the three degrees of the
self-consciousness of the Spirit, as the eternal truth. These are,
first, _art_, or the representation of beauty (æsthetics); secondly,
_religion_, in the general acceptation of the term (philosophy of
religion); and, thirdly, _philosophy_ itself, as the purest and most
perfect form of the scientific knowledge of truth. All historical
religions, the Oriental, the Jewish, the Greek, the Roman, and the
Christian, are _the successive stages in the development or
self-actualization of God_.[49]
It is unnecessary to indicate to the reader that the philosophy of Hegel
is essentially pantheistic. "God is not a _person_, but personality
itself, _i.e._, the universal personality, which realizes itself in
every human consciousness, as so many separate thoughts of one eternal
mind. The idea we form of the absolute is, to Hegel, the absolute
itself, its essential existence being identical with our conception of
it. Apart from, and out of the world, there is no God; and so also,
apart from the universal consciousness of man, there is no Divine
consciousness or personality."[50]
[Footnote 49: See art. "Hegelian Philosophy," in Herzog's _Real-Encyc._,
from whence our materials are chiefly drawn.]
[Footnote 50: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 473.]
This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and conflicts with
the actual facts of man's religious nature and religious history. If the
word "religion" has any meaning at all, it is "a mode of life determined
by the consciousness of dependence upon, and obligation to God." It is
reverence for, gratitude to, and worship of God as a being distinct from
humanity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of God--a
stage in the development or self-actualization of God. Viewed under one
aspect, religion is the self-adoration of God--the worship of God by
God; under another aspect it is the worship of humanity, since God only
becomes conscious of himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is
that upon which his entire method proceeds, viz., "the identity of
subject and object, being and thought." Against this false position the
consciousness of each individual man, and the universal consciousness of
our race, as revealed in history, alike protest. If thought and being
are identical, then whatever is true of ideas is also true of objects,
and then, as Kant had before remarked, there is no difference between
_thinking_ we possess a hundred dollars, and actually _possessing_ them.
Such absurdities may be rendered plausible by a logic which asserts the
"identity of contradictions," but against such logic common sense
rebels. "The law of non-contradiction" has been accepted by all
logicians, from the days of Aristotle, as a fundamental law of thought.
"Whatever is contradictory is unthinkable. A=not A=O, or A--A=O."[51]
Non-existence can not exist. Being can not be nothing.
[Footnote 51: Hamilton's Logic, p. 58.]
III. The third hypothesis affirms _that the phenomenon of religion has
its foundation in_ FEELING--_the feeling of dependence and of
obligation_; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition of
instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obligation we call God.
This, with some slight modification in each case, consequent upon the
differences in their philosophic systems, is the theory of Jacobi,
Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Mansel, and probably Hamilton. Its fundamental
position is, that we can not gain truth with absolute certainty either
from sense or reason, and, consequently, the only valid source of real
knowledge is _feeling--faith, intuition_, or, as it is called by some,
_inspiration_.
There have been those, in all ages, who have made all knowledge of
invisible, supersensuous, divine things, to rest upon an internal
_feeling_, or immediate, inward vision. The Oriental Mystics, the
Neo-Platonists, the Mystics of the Greek and Latin Church, the German
Mystics of the 14th century, the Theosophists of the Reformation, the
Quietists of France, the Quakers, have all appealed to some _special_
faculty, distinct from the understanding and reason, for the immediate
cognition of invisible and spiritual existences. By some, that special
faculty was regarded as an "interior eye" which was illuminated by the
"Universal Light;" by others, as a peculiar sensibility of the soul--a
_feeling_ in whose perfect calm and utter quiescence the Divinity was
mirrored; or which, in an ecstatic state, rose to a communion with, and
final absorption in the Infinite.
Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the "faith-philosophy,"
as it is now designated, a definite form. He assumes the position that
all knowledge, of whatever kind, must ultimately rest upon intuition or
faith. As it regards sensible objects, the understanding finds the
impression from which all our knowledge of the external flows, ready
formed. The process of sensation is a mystery; we know nothing of it
until it is past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge
of matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can not
doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act of
perception there is something actual and present, which can not be
referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are also conscious of
another class of feelings which correlate us with a supersensuous world,
and these feelings, also, must have their cause in some objective
reality. Just as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of an
external world, so there is an internal sense which gives us an
immediate knowledge of a spiritual world--God, the soul, freedom,
immortality. Our knowledge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of
the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All
philosophic knowledge is thus based upon _belief_, which Jacobi regards
as a fact of our inward sensibility--a sort of knowledge produced by an
immediate _feeling_ of the soul--a direct apprehension, without proof,
of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal.
Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by the deservedly
greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental position was that truth
in Theology could not be obtained by reason, but by a feeling,
_insight_, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called
_God-consciousness_, and in its highest form, _Christian-consciousness._
The God-consciousness, in its original form, is the _feeling of
dependence_ on the Infinite. The Christian consciousness is the perfect
union of the human consciousness with the Divine, through the mediation
of Christ, or what we would call a Christian experience of communion
with God.
Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take
account of his doctrine of _self_-consciousness. "In all
self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn,
and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). The last, however,
presupposes, for every self-consciousness, besides the ego, yet
something else from whence the certainty of the same
[self-consciousness] exists, and without which self-consciousness would
not be just this."[52] Every determinate mode of the sensibility
supposes an _object_, and a _relation_ between the subject and the
object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the
object. External sensation, the feeling, say of extension and
resistance, gives world-consciousness. Internal sensation, the _feeling
of dependence_, gives God consciousness. And it is only by the presence
of world consciousness and God-consciousness that self consciousness can
be what it is.
We have, then, in our self-consciousness a _feeling of direct
dependence_, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that
dependence we call God. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal
Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are
revealed in us."[53] The _felt_, therefore, is not only the first
religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form of the
religious spirit; whatever lays any claim to religion must maintain its
ground and principle in _feeling_, upon which it depends for its
development; and the sum-total of the forces constituting religious
life, inasmuch as it is a _life_, is based upon immediate
self-consciousness.[54]
[Footnote 52: Glaubenslehre, ch. i. § 4.]
[Footnote 53: Dialectic, p. 430.]
[Footnote 54: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 23.]
The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his
"_Limits of Religious Thought_." He maintains, with Schleiermacher, that
religion is grounded in _feeling_, and that the _felt_ is the first
intimation or presentiment of the Divine. Man "_feels_ within him the
consciousness of a Supreme Being, and the instinct to worship, before he
can argue from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and
benevolence scattered through the creation."[55] He also agrees with
Schleiermacher in regarding the _feeling of dependence_ as _a_ state of
the sensibility, out of which reflection builds up the edifice of
Religious Consciousness, but he does not, with Schleiermacher, regard it
as pre-eminently _the_ basis of religious consciousness. "The mere
consciousness of dependence does not, of itself, exhibit the character
of the Being on whom we depend. It is as consistent with superstition as
with religion; with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent
Deity."[56] To the feeling of dependence he has added the _consciousness
of moral obligation_, which he imagines supplies the deficiency. By this
consciousness of moral obligation "we are compelled to assume the
existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right
and wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity."[57] "To these two
facts of the inner consciousness the feeling of dependence, and
consciousness of moral obligation may be traced, as to their sources,
the two great outward acts by which religion, in its various forms, has
been manifested among men--_Prayer_, by which they seek to win God's
blessing upon the future, and _Expiation_, by which they strive to atone
for the offenses of the past. The feeling of dependence is the instinct
which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our existence and welfare
are in the hands of a superior power; not an inexorable fate, not an
immutable law; but a Being having at least so far the attribute of
personality that he can show favor or severity to those who are
dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope
and fear, and reverence and gratitude."[58] The feeling of moral
obligation--"the law written in the heart"--leads man to recognize a
Lawgiver. "Man can be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he
reflects in himself the law of God."[59] The conclusion from the whole
is, there must be an _object_ answering to this consciousness: there
must be a God to explain these facts of the soul.
[Footnote 55: Mansel, "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 115.]
[Footnote 56: Id., ib., p. 120.]
[Footnote 57: Id., ib., p. 122.]
[Footnote 58: Id., ib., pp. 119, 120.]
[Footnote 59: Id., ib., p. 122.]
This "philosophy of feeling," or of faith generated by feeling, has an
interest and a significance which has not been adequately recognized by
writers on natural theology. Feeling, sentiment, enthusiasm, have always
played an important part in the history of religion. Indeed it must be
conceded that religion is a _right state of feeling towards
God_--religion is _piety_. A philosophy of the religious emotion is,
therefore, demanded in order to the full interpretation of the religious
phenomena of the world.
But the notion that internal feeling, a peculiar determination of the
sensibility, is the source of religious ideas:--that God can be known
immediately by feeling without the mediation of the truth that manifests
God; that he can be _felt_ as the qualities of matter can be felt; and
that this affection of the inward sense can reveal the character and
perfections of God, is an unphilosophical and groundless assumption. To
assert, with Nitzsch, that "feeling has reason, and is reason, and that
the sensible and felt God-consciousness generates out of itself
fundamental conceptions," is to confound the most fundamental
psychological distinctions, and arbitrarily bend the recognized
classifications of mental science to the necessities of a theory.
Indeed, we are informed that it is "by means of an _independent_
psychology, and conformably to it," that Schleiermacher illustrates his
"philosophy of feeling."[60] But all psychology must be based upon the
observation and classification of mental phenomena, as revealed in
consciousness, and not constructed in an "independent" and à priori
method. The most careful psychological analysis has resolved the whole
complex phenomena of mind into thought, feeling, and volition.[61] These
orders of phenomena are radically and essentially distinct. They differ
not simply in degree but in kind, and it is only by an utter disregard
of the facts of consciousness that they can be confounded. Feeling is
not reason, nor can it by any logical dexterity be transformed into
reason.
[Footnote 60: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 21.]
[Footnote 61: Kant, "Critique of Judg.," ch. xxii.; Cousin, "Hist, of
Philos.," vol. ii. p. 399; Hamilton, vol. i. p. 183, Eng. ed.]
The question as to the relative order of cognition and feeling, that is,
as to whether feeling is the first or original form of the religious
consciousness, or whether feeling be not consequent upon some idea or
cognition of God, is one which can not be determined on empirical
grounds. We are precluded from all scrutiny of the incipient stages of
mental development in the individual mind and in collective humanity. If
we attempt to trace the early history of the soul, its beginnings are
lost in a period of blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny of memory
or imagination. If we attempt the inquiry on the wider field of
universal consciousness, the first unfoldings of mind in humanity are
lost in the border-land of mystery, of which history furnishes no
authentic records. All dogmatic affirmation must, therefore, be
unjustifiable. The assertion that religious feeling precedes all
cognition,--that "the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being,
and the instinct of worship" are developed _first_ in the mind, before
the reason is exercised, is utterly groundless. The more probable
doctrine is that all the primary faculties enter into spontaneous action
_simultaneously_--the reason with the senses, the feelings with the
reason, the judgment with both the senses and the reason, and that from
their primary and simultaneous action arises the complex result, called
consciousness, or conjoint knowledge.[62] There can be no clear and
distinct consciousness without the cognition of a _self_ and a
_not-self_ in mutual relation and opposition. Now the knowledge of the
self--the personal ego--is an intuition of reason; the knowledge of the
not-self is an intuition of sense. All knowledge is possible only under
condition of plurality, difference, and relation.[63] Now the judgment
is "the Faculty of Relations," or of comparison; and the affirmation
"_this_ is not _that_" is an act of judgment; to know is, consequently,
to judge.[64] Self-consciousness must, therefore, be regarded as a
synthesis of sense, reason, and judgment, and not a mere self-feeling
(coenæsthesis).
[Footnote 62: Cousin, "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 357; vol. ii. p.
337.]
[Footnote 63: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 88.]
[Footnote 64: Hamilton, "Metaphys.," p. 277]
A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of
reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at
least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of
resistance can not give the notion of without the à priori idea of
space. The feeling of movement of change, can not give the cognition of
event without the rational idea of time or duration. Simple
consciousness can not generate the idea of personality, or selfhood,
without the rational idea of identity or unity. And so the mere "feeling
of dependence," of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea of
God, without the rational à priori idea of the Infinite, the Perfect,
the Unconditioned Cause. Sensation is not knowledge, and never can
become knowledge, without the intervention of reason, and a concentrated
self feeling can not rise essentially above animal life until it has,
through the mediation of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a
Supreme Being ruling over nature and man.
Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its _pathological_ form, it may
indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can
not, itself, reveal an _object_, any more than the feeling of hunger can
reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of
any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive
yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which
can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured
by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively
apprehended by the reason, before the feeling can have any significance.
Regarded in its _moral_ form, as "the feeling of obligation," it can
have no real meaning unless a "law of duty" be known and recognized.
Feeling, alone, can not reveal what duty is. When that which is right,
and just, and good is revealed to the mind, then the sense of obligation
may urge man to the performance of duty. But the right, the just, the
good, are ideas which are apprehended by the reason, and, consequently,
our moral sentiments are the result of the harmonious and living
relation between the reason and the sensibilities.
Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of
dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He
has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral
obligation," which he thinks "compels us to _assume_ the existence of a
moral Deity." We think his "fact of religious intuition" is as
inadequate as Schleiermacher's to explain the whole phenomena of
religion. In neither instance does feeling supply the actual knowledge
of God. The feeling of dependence may indicate that there is a Power or
Being upon whom we depend for existence and well-being, and which Power
or Being "we call God." The feeling of obligation certainly indicates
the existence of a Being to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr.
Mansel calls a "moral Deity." But in both instances the character, and
even the existence of God is "_assumed_" and we are entitled to ask on
what ground it is assumed. It will not be asserted that feeling alone
generates the idea, or that the feeling is transformed into idea without
the intervention of thought and reflection. Is there, then, a _logical_
connection between the feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the
idea of the Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous
Governor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-relation
between _the feeling_ and the _idea_, so that when the feeling is
present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind? This latter
opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept it as the
statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not regard it as an
account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human mind. The idea of
God as the First Cause, the Infinite Mind, the Perfect Being, the
personal Lord and Lawgiver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the
world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is
manifestly a complex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed
in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a
simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation of the
whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe,
and the primitive intuitions of the reason,--a logical inference from
the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion
which regards the feelings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of
reason as uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates
into mysticism--a mysticism "which pretends to elevate man directly to
God, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its power, it really
deprives man of that which enables him to know God, and puts him in a
just communication with God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite
truth."[65]
[Footnote 65: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 110.]
The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted
from the union of _thought_ and _feeling_--the living and harmonious
relation of reason and sensibility; and a philosophy which disregards
either is inadequate to the explanation of the phenomena.
IV. The fourth hypothesis is, _that religion has had its outbirth in the
spontaneous apperceptions of_ REASON; that is, in the necessary, à
priori ideas of the infinite, the perfect, the unconditioned Cause, the
Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the
changeful, contingent phenomena of the world.
This will at once be recognized by the intelligent reader as the
doctrine of Cousin, by whom _pure reason_ is regarded as the grand
faculty or organ of religion.
Religion, in the estimation of Cousin, is grounded on _cognition_ rather
than upon feeling. It is the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of duty
in its relation to God and to human happiness; and as reason is the
general faculty of all knowing, it must be the faculty of religion. "In
its most elevated point of view, religion is the relation of absolute
truth to absolute Being," and as absolute truth is apprehended by the
reason alone, reason "is the veridical and religious part of the nature
of man."[66] By "reason," however, as we shall see presently, Cousin
does not mean the discursive or reflective reason, but the spontaneous
or intuitive reason. That act of the mind by which we attain to
religious knowledge is not a _process of reasoning_, but a pure
appreciation, an instinctive and involuntary movement of the soul.
[Footnote 66: Henry's Cousin, p. 510.]
The especial function of reason, therefore, is to reveal to us the
invisible, the supersensuous, the Divine. "It was bestowed upon us for
this very purpose of going, without any circuit of reasoning, from the
visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite, from the
imperfect to the perfect, and from necessary and eternal truths, to the
eternal and necessary principle" that is God.[67] Reason is thus, as it
were, the bridge between consciousness and being; it rests, at the same
time, on both; it descends from God, and approaches man; it makes its
appearance in consciousness as a guest which brings intelligence of
another world of real Being which lies beyond the world of sense.
Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being directly and
immediately, without any intervening medium. To assert this would be to
fall into the error of Plotinus, and the Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is
the offspring of God, a ray of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be
identified with God. Reason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly,
and by the interposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a
manifestation of God. "Truth is incomprehensible without God, and God is
incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human
intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."[68]
Incapable of contemplating God face to face, reason adores God in the
truth which represents and manifests Him.
[Footnote 67: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 103.]
[Footnote 68: Id., ib., p. 99.]
Absolute truth is thus a revelation of God, made by God to the reason of
man, and as it is a light which illuminates every man, and is
perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal and perpetual
revelation of God to man. The mind of man is "the offspring of God,"
and, as such, must have some resemblance to, and some correlation with
God. Now that which constitutes the image of God in man must be found in
the reason which is correlated with, and capable of perceiving the truth
which manifests God, just as the eye is correlated to the light which
manifests the external world. Absolute truth is, therefore, the sole
medium of bringing the human mind into communion with God; and human
reason, in becoming united to absolute truth, becomes united to God in
his manifestation in spirit and in truth. The supreme law, and highest
destination of man, is to become united to God by seeking a full
consciousness of, and loving and practising the Truth.[69]
[Footnote 69: Henry's Cousin, p. 511, 512.]
It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions by which
this philosophy of religion is to be tested are--
1st. _How will Cousin prove to us that human reason is in possession of
universal and necessary principles or absolute truths?_ and,
2d. _How are these principles shown to be absolute? how far do these
principles of reason possess absolute authority?_
The answer of Cousin to the first question is that we prove reason to be
in possession of universal and necessary principles by the analysis of
the contents of consciousness, that is, by psychological analysis. The
phenomena of consciousness, in their primitive condition, are
necessarily complex, concrete, and particular. All our primary ideas are
complex ideas, for the evident reason that all, or nearly all, our
faculties enter at once into exercise; their simultaneous action giving
us, at the same time, a certain number of ideas connected with each
other, and forming a whole. For example, the idea of the exterior world,
which is given us so quickly, is a complex idea, which contains a number
of ideas. There is the idea of the secondary qualities of exterior
objects; there is the idea of the primary qualities; there is the idea
of the permanent reality of something to which you refer these
qualities, to wit, matter; there is the idea of space which contains
bodies; there is the idea of time in which movements are effected. All
these ideas are acquired simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, and
together form one complex idea.
The application of analysis to this complex phenomenon clearly reveals
that there are simple ideas, beliefs, principles in the mind which can
not have been derived from sense and experience, which sense and
experience do not account for, and which are the suggestions of reason
alone: the idea of the _Infinite_, the _Perfect_, the _Eternal_; the
true, the beautiful, the good; the principle of causality, of substance,
of unity, of intentionality; the principle of duty, of obligation, of
accountability, of retribution. These principles, in their natural and
regular development, carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and
reveal to us a world of real being beyond the world of sense. They carry
us up to an absolute Being, the fountain of all existence--a living,
personal, righteous God--the author, the sustainer, and ruler of the
universe.
The proof that these principles are absolute, and possessed of absolute
authority, is drawn, first, from the _impersonality of reason_, or,
rather, the impersonality of the ideas, principles, or truths of reason.
It is not we who create these ideas, neither can we change them at our
pleasure. We are conscious that the will, in all its various efforts, is
enstamped with the impress of our personality. Our volitions are our
own. So, also, our desires are our own, our emotions are our own. But
this is not the same with our rational ideas or principles. The ideas of
substance, of cause, of unity, of intentionality do not belong to one
person any more than to another; they belong to mind as mind, they are
revealed in the universal intelligence of the race. Absolute truth has
no element of personality about it. Man may say "my reason," but give
him credit for never having dared to say "_my_ truth." So far from
rational ideas being individual, their peculiar characteristic is that
they are opposed to individuality, that is, they are universal and
necessary. Instead of being circumscribed within the limits of
experience, they surpass and govern it; they are universal in the midst
of particular phenomena; necessary, although mingled with things
contingent; and absolute, even when appearing within us the relative and
finite beings that we are.[70] Necessary, universal, absolute truth is a
direct emanation from God. "Such being the case, the decision of reason
within its own peculiar province possesses an authority almost divine.
If we are led astray by it, we must be led astray by a light from
heaven."[71]
[Footnote 70: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 40.]
[Footnote 71: Id., "Lectures," vol. ii. p. 32.]
The second proof is derived from _the distinction between the
spontaneous and reflective movements of reason_.
Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary; reflection is
personal, spontaneity is impersonal; reflection is analytic, spontaneity
is synthetic; reflection begins with doubt, spontaneity with
affirmation; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to
all; reflection produces science, spontaneity gives truth. Reflection is
a process, more or less tardy, in the individual and in the race. It
sometimes engenders error and skepticism, sometimes convictions that,
from being rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems,
it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by
the force of habit, as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous
intuition is the true logic of nature,--instant, direct, and infallible.
It is a primitive affirmation which implies no negation, and therefore
yields positive knowledge. To reflect is to return to that which was. It
is, by the aid of memory, to return to the past, and to render it
present to the eye of consciousness. Reflection, therefore, creates
nothing; it supposes an anterior operation of the mind in which there
necessarily must be as many terms as are discovered by reflection.
Before all reflection there comes spontaneity--a spontaneity of the
intellect, which seizes truth at once, without traversing doubt and
error. "We thus attain to a judgment free from all reflection, to an
affirmation without any mixture of negation, to an immediate intuition,
the legitimate daughter of the natural energy of thought, like the
inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the
prophet." Such is the first act of knowing, and in this first act the
mind passes from _idea to being_ without ever suspecting the depth of
the chasm it has passed. It passes by means of the power which is in it,
and is not astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished
when by reflection it returns to the analysis of the results, and, by
the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the opposite of
what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. "Hence comes the strife
between sophism and common sense, between false science and natural
truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of which come from free
reflection."[72]
It is this spontaneity of thought which gives birth to _religion._ The
instinctive thought which darts through the world, even to God, is
natural religion. "All thought implies a spontaneous faith in God, and
there is no such thing as natural atheism. Doubt and skepticism may
mingle with reflective thought, but beneath reflection there is still
spontaneity. When the scholar has denied the existence of God, listen to
the man, interrogate him, take him unawares, and you will see that all
his words envelop the idea of God, and that faith in God is, without his
recognition, at the bottom, in his heart."[73]
Religion, then, in the system of Cousin, does not begin with reflection,
with science, but with _faith_. There is, however, this difference to be
noted between the theory of the "faith-philosophers" (Jacobi,
Schleiermacher, etc.) and the theory of Cousin. With them, faith is
grounded on sensation or _feeling_; with him, it is grounded on
_reason_. "Faith, whatever may be its form, whatever may be its object,
common or sublime, can be nothing else than the _consent of reason_.
That is the foundation of faith."[74]
[Footnote 72: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 106.]
[Footnote 73: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 137.]
[Footnote 74: Ibid., vol. i. p. 90.]
Religion is, therefore, with Cousin, at bottom, pure Theism. He thinks,
however, that "true theism is not a dead religion that forgets precisely
the fundamental attributes of God." It recognizes God as creator,
preserver, and governor; it celebrates a providence; it adores a
perfect, holy, righteous, benevolent God. It holds the principle of
duty, of obligation, of moral desert. It not only perceives the divine
character, but feels its relation to God. The revelation of the
Infinite, by reason, moves the feelings, and passes into sentiment,
producing reverence, and love, and gratitude. And it creates worship,
which recalls man to God a thousand times more forcibly than the order,
harmony, and beauty of the universe can do.
The spontaneous action of reason, in its greatest energy, is
_inspiration_. "Inspiration, daughter of the soul and heaven, speaks
from on high with an absolute authority. It commands faith; so all its
words are hymns, and its natural language is poetry." "Thus, in the
cradle of civilization, he who possessed in a higher degree than his
fellows the gift of inspiration, passed for the confidant and the
interpreter of God. He is so for others, because he is so for himself;
and he is so, in fact, in a philosophic sense. Behold the sacred origin
of prophecies, of pontificates, and of modes of worship."[75]
[Footnote 75: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 129.]
As an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human
intelligence, the doctrine of Cousin must be regarded as eminently
logical, adequate, and satisfactory. As a theory of the origin of
religion, as a philosophy which shall explain all the phenomena of
religion, it must be pronounced defective, and, in some of its aspects,
erroneous.
First, it does not take proper account of that _living force_ which has
in all ages developed so much energy, and wrought such vast results in
the history of religion, viz., the _power of the heart_. Cousin
discourses eloquently on the spontaneous, instinctive movements of the
reason, but he overlooks, in a great measure, the instinctive movements
of the heart. He does not duly estimate the feeling of reverence and awe
which rises spontaneously in presence of the vastness and grandeur of
the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe
is a symbol and shadow. He disregards that sense of an overshadowing
Presence which, at least in seasons of tenderness and deep sensibility,
seems to compass us about, and lay its hand upon us. He scarcely
recognizes the deep consciousness of imperfection and weakness, and
utter dependence, which prompts man to seek for and implore the aid of a
Superior Being; and, above all, he takes no proper account of the sense
of guilt and the conscious need of expiation. His theory, therefore, can
not adequately explain the universal prevalence of sacrifices, penances,
and prayers. In short, it does not meet and answer to the deep longings
of the human heart, the wants, sufferings, fears, and hopes of man.
Cousin claims that the universal reason of man is illuminated by the
light of God. It is quite pertinent to ask, Why may not the universal
heart of humanity be touched and moved by the spirit of God? If the
ideas of reason be a revelation from God, may not the instinctive
feelings of the heart be an inspiration of God? May not God come near to
the heart of man and awaken a mysterious presentiment of an invisible
Presence, and an instinctive longing to come nearer to Him? May he not
draw men towards himself by sweet, persuasive influences, and raise man
to a conscious fellowship? Is not God indeed the _great want_ of the
human heart?
Secondly, Cousin does not give due importance to the influence of
revealed truth as given in the sacred Scriptures, and of the positive
institutions of religion, as a divine economy, supernaturally originated
in the world. He grants, indeed, that "a primitive revelation throws
light upon the cradle of human civilization," and that "all antique
traditions refer to an age in which man, at his departure from the hand
of God, received from him immediately all lights, and all truths."[76]
He also believes that "the Mosaic religion, by its developments, is
mingled with the history of all the surrounding people of Egypt, of
Assyria, of Persia, and of Greece and Rome."[77] Christianity, however,
is regarded as "the summing and crown of the two great religious systems
which reigned by turn in the East and in Greece"--the maturity of
Ethnicism and Judaism; a development rather than a new creation. The
explanation which he offers of the phenomena of inspiration opens the
door to religious skepticism. Those who were termed seers, prophets,
inspired teachers of ancient times, were simply men who resigned
themselves wholly to their intellectual instincts, and thus gazed upon
truth in its pure and perfect form. They did not reason, they did not
reflect, they made no pretensions to philosophy they received truth
spontaneously as it flowed in upon them from heaven.[78] This immediate
reception of Divine light was nothing more than the _natural_ play of
spontaneous reason nothing more than what has existed to a greater or
less degree in every man of great genius; nothing more than may now
exist in any mind which resigns itself to its own unreflective
apperceptions. Thus revelation, in its proper sense, loses all its
peculiar value, and Christianity is robbed of its pre-eminent authority.
The extremes of Mysticism and Rationalism here meet on the same ground,
and Plotinus and Cousin are at one.
[Footnote 76: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 148.]
[Footnote 77: Ibid., vol. i. p. 216.]
[Footnote 78: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 661.]
V. The fifth hypothesis offered in explanation of the religious
phenomena of the world is that they had their origin _in_ EXTERNAL
REVELATION, _to which reason is related as a purely passive organ, and
Ethnicism as a feeble relic_.
This is the theory of the school of "dogmatic theologians," of which the
ablest and most familiar presentation is found in the "Theological
Institutes" of R. Watson.[79] He claims that all our religious knowledge
is derived from _oral revelation alone_, and that all the forms of
religion and modes of worship which have prevailed in the heathen world
have been perversions and corruptions of the one true religion first
taught to the earliest families of men by God himself. All the ideas of
God, duty, immortality, and future retribution which are now possessed,
or have ever been possessed by the heathen nations, are only broken and
scattered rays of the primitive traditions descending from the family of
Noah, and revived by subsequent intercourses with the Hebrew race; and
all the modes of religious worship--prayers, lustrations,
sacrifices--that have obtained in the world, are but feeble relics,
faint reminiscences of the primitive worship divinely instituted among
the first families of men. "The first man received the knowledge of God
by sensible converse with him, and that doctrine was transmitted, with
the confirmation of successive manifestations, to the early ancestors of
all nations."[80] This belief in the existence of a Supreme Being was
preserved among the Jews by continual manifestations of the presence of
Jehovah. "The intercourses between the Jews and the states of Syria and
Babylon, on the one hand, and Egypt on the other, powers which rose to
great eminence and influence in the ancient world, was maintained for
ages. Their frequent dispersions and captivities would tend to preserve
in part, and in part to revive, the knowledge of the once common and
universal faith."[81] And the Greek sages who resorted for instruction
to the Chaldean philosophic schools derived from thence their knowledge
of the theological system of the Jews.[82] Among the heathen nations
this primitive revelation was corrupted by philosophic speculation, as
in India and China, Greece and Rome; and in some cases it was entirely
obliterated by ignorance, superstition, and vice, as among the
Hottentots of Africa and the aboriginal tribes of New South Wales, who
"have no idea of one Supreme Creator."[83]
[Footnote 79: We might have referred the reader to Ellis's "Knowledge of
Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature;" Leland's
"Necessity of Revelation;" and Horsley's "Dissertations," etc.; but as
we are not aware of their having been reprinted in this country, we
select the "Institutes" of Watson as the best presentation of the views
of "the dogmatic theologians" accessible to American readers.]
[Footnote 80: Watson, "Theol. Inst," vol. i. p. 270.]
[Footnote 81: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 31.]
[Footnote 82: See ch. v. and vi., "On the Origin of those Truths which
are found in the Writings and Religious Systems of the Heathen."]
[Footnote 83: Ibid., vol. i. p. 274.]
The same course of reasoning is pursued in regard to the idea of duty,
and the knowledge of right and wrong. "A direct communication of the
Divine Will was made to the primogenitors of our race," and to this
source _alone_ we are indebted for all correct ideas of right and wrong.
"Whatever is found pure in morals, in ancient or modern writers, may be
traced to _indirect_ revelation."[84] Verbal instruction--tradition or
scripture--thus becomes the source of all our moral ideas. The doctrine
of immortality, and of a future retribution,[85] the practice of
sacrifice--precatory and expiatory, are also ascribed to the same
source.[86] Thus the only medium by which religious truth can possibly
become known to the masses of mankind is _tradition_. The ultimate
foundation on which the religious faith and the religious practices of
universal humanity have rested, with the exception of the Jews, and the
favored few to whom the Gospel has come, is uncertain, precarious, and
easily corrupted tradition.
[Footnote 84: Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. ii. p. 470.]
[Footnote 85: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 11.]
[Footnote 86: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 26.]
The improbability, inadequacy, and incompleteness of this theory will be
obvious from the following considerations:
1. It is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so
essential to the well-being of the human race, so necessary to the
perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and
immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as
tradition is admitted, even by Mr. Watson, to be.
The human mind needs the idea of God to satisfy its deep moral
necessities, and to harmonize all its powers. The perfection of humanity
can never be secured, the destination of humanity can never be achieved,
the purpose of God in the existence of humanity can never be
accomplished, without the idea of God, and of the relation of man to
God, being present to the human mind. Society needs the idea of a
Supreme Ruler as the foundation of law and government, and as the basis
of social order. Without it, these can not be, or be conserved.
Intellectual creatureship, social order, human progress, are
inconceivable and impossible without the idea of God, and of
accountability to God. Now that truths so fundamental should, to the
masses of men, rest on tradition _alone_, is incredible. Is there no
known and accessible God to the outlying millions of our race who, in
consequence of the circumstances of birth and education, which are
beyond their control, have had no access to an oral revelation, and
among whom the dim shadowy rays of an ancient tradition have long ago
expired? Are the eight hundred millions of our race upon whom the light
of Christianity has not shone unvisited by the common Father of our
race? Has the universal Father left his "own offspring" without a single
native power of recognizing the existence of the Divine Parent, and
abandoned them to solitary and dreary orphanage? Could not he who gave
to matter its properties and laws,--the properties and laws through
whose operation he is working out his own purposes in the realm of
nature,--could not he have also given to mind ideas and principles
which, logically developed, would lead to recognition of a God, and of
our duty to God, and, by these ideas and principles, have wrought out
his sublime purposes in the realm of mind? Could not he who gave to man
the appetency for food, and implanted in his nature the social instincts
to preserve his physical being, have implanted in his heart a "feeling
after God," and an instinct to worship God in order to the conservation
of his spiritual being? How otherwise can we affirm the responsibility
and accountability of all the race before God? Those theologians who are
so earnest in the assertion that God has not endowed man with the native
power of attaining the knowledge of God can not, on any principle of
equity, show how the heathen are "without excuse" when, in involuntary
ignorance of God, they "worship the creature instead of the Creator,"
and violate a law of duty of which they have no possible means to attain
the barest knowledge.
2. This theory is utterly inadequate to the explanation of the
_universality_ of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas.
Take, for example, the idea of God. As a matter of fact we affirm, in
opposition to Watson, the universality of this idea. The idea of God is
connatural to the human mind. Wherever human reason has had its normal
and healthy development[87], this idea has arisen spontaneously and
necessarily. There has not been found a race of men who were utterly
destitute of some knowledge of a Supreme Being. All the instances
alleged have, on further and more accurate inquiry, been found
incorrect. The tendency of the last century, arbitrarily to quadrate all
the facts of religious history with the prevalent sensational
philosophy, had its influence upon the minds of the first missionaries
to India, China, Africa, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific. They
_expected_ to find that the heathen had no knowledge of a Supreme Being,
and before they had mastered the idioms of their language, or become
familiar with their mythological and cosmological systems, they reported
them as _utterly ignorant of God_, destitute of the idea and even the
name of a Supreme Being. These mistaken and hasty conclusions have,
however, been corrected by a more intimate acquaintance with the people,
their languages and religions. Even in the absence of any better
information, we should be constrained to doubt the accuracy of the
authorities quoted by Mr. Watson in relation to Hindooism, when by one
(Ward) we are told that the Hindoo "believes in a God destitute of
_intelligence_" and by another (Moore) that "Brahm is the one eternal
_Mind_, the self-existent, incomprehensible Spirit". Learned and
trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as European, however, confidently
affirm that "the ground of the Brahminical faith is Monotheistic;" it
recognizes "an Absolute and Supreme Being" as the source of all that
exists.[88] Eugene Burnouf, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Koeppen, and
indeed nearly all who have written on the subject of Buddhism, have
shown that the metaphysical doctrines of Buddha were borrowed from the
earlier systems of the Brahminic philosophy. "Buddha." we are told, is
"_pure intelligence_" "_clear light_", "_perfect wisdom_;" the same as
Brahm. This is surely Theism in its highest conception.[89] In regard to
the peoples of South Africa, Dr. Livingstone assures us "there is no
need for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the
existence of a God, or of a future state--the facts being universally
admitted.... On questioning intelligent men among the Backwains as to
their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and of a future state,
they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a
tolerably clear conception on all these subjects."[90] And so far from
the New Hollanders having no idea of a Supreme Being, we are assured by
E. Stone Parker, the protector of the aborigines of New Holland, they
have a clear and well-defined idea of a "_Great Spirit_," the maker of
all things.
[Footnote 87: Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. i. p. 46.]
[Footnote 88: Maurice, "Religions of the World," p. 59: _Edin.
Review_,1862, art "Recent Researches on Buddhism." See also Müller's
"Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. ch. i. to vi.]
[Footnote 89: "It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both
atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism
is an indefinite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense
every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the
gods of the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a
Supreme Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the
Brahmans admit, in some form or another, the existence of an Absolute
and Supreme Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to
exist."--Müller, "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. pp. 224,5.
Buddha, which means "intelligence," "clear light," "perfect wisdom," was
not only the name of the founder of the religion of Eastern Asia, but
Adi Buddha was the name of the Absolute, Eternal Intelligence.--Maurice,
"Religions of the World," p. 102.]
[Footnote 90: "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa," p.
158.]
Now had the idea of God rested _solely_ on tradition, it were the most
natural probability that it might be lost, nay, _must_ be lost, amongst
those races of men who were geographically and chronologically far
removed from the primitive cradle of humanity in the East. The people
who, in their migrations, had wandered to the remotest parts of the
earth, and had become isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after
the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a
spontaneous and native intuition of the mind,--a necessity of thought. A
fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater
tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the
sensible world, and yet, even in regard to the events of history, the
persistence and pertinacity of tradition is exceedingly feeble. The
South Sea Islanders know not from whence, or at what time, their
ancestors came. There are monuments in Tonga and Fiji of which the
present inhabitants can give no account. How, then, can a pure, abstract
idea which can have no sensible representation, no visible image, retain
its hold upon the memory of humanity for thousands of years? The Fijian
may not remember whence his immediate ancestors came, but he knows that
the race came originally from the hands of the Creator. He can not tell
who built the monuments of solid masonry which are found in his
island-home, but he can tell who reared the everlasting hills and built
the universe. He may not know who reigned in Vewa a hundred years ago,
but he knows who now reigns, and has always reigned, over the whole
earth. "The idea of a God is familiar to the Fijian, and the existence
of an invisible superhuman power controlling and influencing nature, and
all earthly things, is fully recognized by him."[91] The idea of God is
a common fact of human consciousness, and tradition alone is manifestly
inadequate to account for its _universality_.
[Footnote 91: "Fiji and the Fijians," p. 215.]
3. A verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of
God to an intelligence "_purely passive_" and utterly unfurnished with
any _à priori_ ideas or necessary laws of cognition and thought.
Of course it is not denied that important verbal communications relating
to the character of God, and the duties we owe to God, were given to the
first human pair, more clear and definite, it may be, than any knowledge
attained by Socrates and Plato through their dialectic processes, and
that these oral revelations were successively repeated and enlarged to
the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament church. And
furthermore, that some rays of light proceeding from this pure fountain
of truth were diffused, and are still lingering among the heathen
nations, we have no desire, and no need to deny.
All this, however, supposes, at least, a natural power and aptitude for
the knowledge of God, and some configuration and correlation of the
human intelligence to the Divine. "We have no knowledge of a dynamic
influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can
not be moved and controlled by forces and laws, unless it have
properties which correlate it with those forces and laws. And mind can
not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, unless
it have active powers of apprehension and conception which are governed
by uniform laws. The "material" of thought may be supplied from without,
but the "form" is determined by the necessary laws of our inward being.
All our cognition of the external world is conditioned by the _à priori_
ideas of time and space, and all our thinking is governed by the
principles of causality and substance, and the law of "sufficient
reason." The mind itself supplies an element of knowledge in all our
cognitions. Man can not be taught the knowledge of God if he be not
naturally possessed of a presentiment, or an apperception of a God, as
the cause and reason of the universe. "If education be not already
preceded by an innate consciousness of God, as an operative
predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture to act
upon."[92] A mere verbal revelation can not communicate the knowledge of
God, if man have not already the idea of a God in his mind. A name is a
mere empty sign, a meaningless symbol, without a mental image of the
object which it represents, or an innate perception, or an abstract
conception of the mind, of which the word is the sign. The mental image
or the abstract conception must, therefore, precede the name; cognition
must be anterior to, and give the meaning of language.[93] The child
knows a thing even before it can speak its name. And, universally, we
must know the _thing_ in itself, or image it by analogies and
resemblances to some other thing we do know, before the name can have
any meaning for us. As to purely rational ideas and abstract
conceptions,--as space, cause, the infinite, the perfect,--language can
never convey these to the mind, nor can the mind ever attain them by
experience if they are not an original, connate part of our mental
equipment and furniture. The mere verbal affirmation "there is a God"
made to one who has no idea of a God, would be meaningless and
unintelligible. What notion can a man form of "the First Cause" if the
principle of causality is not inherent in his mind? What conception can
he form of "the Infinite Mind" if the infinite be not a primitive
intuition? How can he conceive of "a Righteous Governor" if he have no
idea of right, no sense of obligation, no apprehension of a retribution?
Words are empty sounds without ideas, and God is a mere name if the mind
has no apperception of a God.
[Footnote 92: Nitzsch, "System of Christian Doctrine," p. 10.]
[Footnote 93: "Ideas must pre-exist their sensible signs." See De
Boismont on "Hallucination," etc., p. iii.]
It may be affirmed that, preceding or accompanying the announcement of
the Divine Name, there was given to the first human pair, and to the
early fathers of our race, some visible manifestation of the presence of
God, and some supernatural display of divine power. What, then, was the
character of these early manifestations, and were they adequate to
convey the proper idea of God? Did God first reveal himself in human
form, and if so, how could their conception of God advance beyond a rude
anthropomorphism? Did he reveal his presence in a vast columnar cloud or
a pillar of fire? How could such an image convey any conception of the
intelligence, the omnipresence, the eternity of God? Nay, can the
infinite and eternal Mind be represented by any visible manifestation?
Can the human mind conceive an image of God? The knowledge of God, it is
clear, can not be conveyed by any sensible sign or symbol if man has no
prior rational idea of God as the Infinite and the Perfect Being.
If the facts of order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd
the universe, and the _à priori_ ideas of an unconditioned Cause and an
infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these
facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the
work of an intelligent mind, how can any preternatural display of
_power_ produce a rational conviction that God exists? "If the universe
could come by chance or fate, surely all the lesser phenomena, termed
miraculous, might occur so too."[94] If we find ourselves standing amid
an eternal series of events, may not miracles be a part of that series?
Or if all things are the result of necessary and unchangeable laws, may
not miracles also result from some natural or psychological law of which
we are yet in ignorance? Let it be granted that man is _not_ so
constituted that, by the necessary laws of his intelligence, he must
affirm that facts of order having a commencement in time prove mind; let
it be granted that man has _no_ intuitive belief in the Infinite and
Perfect--in short, no idea of God; how, then, could a marvellous display
of _power_, a new, peculiar, and startling phenomenon which even seemed
to transcend nature, prove to him the existence of an infinite
_intelligence_--a personal God? The proof would be simply inadequate,
because not the right kind of proof. Power does not indicate
intelligence, force does not imply personality.
[Footnote 94: Morell, "Hist. of Philos." p. 737.]
Miracles, in short, were never intended to prove the existence of God.
The foundation of this truth had already been laid in the constitution
and laws of the human mind, and miracles were designed to convince us
that He of whose existence we had a prior certainty, spoke to us by His
Messenger, and in this way attested his credentials. To the man who has
a rational belief in the existence of God this evidence of a divine
mission is at once appropriate and conclusive. "Master, we know thou art
a teacher sent from God; for no man can do the works which thou doest,
except God be with him." The Christian missionary does not commence his
instruction to the heathen, who have an imperfect, or even erroneous
conception of "the Great Spirit," by narrating the miracles of Christ,
or quoting the testimony of the Divine Book he carries along with him.
He points to the heavens and the earth, and says, "There is a Being who
made all these things, and Jehovah is his name; I have come to you with
a message from Him!" Or he need scarce do even so much; for already the
heathen, in view of the order and beauty which pervades the universe,
has been constrained, by the laws of his own intelligence, to believe in
and offer worship to the "Agnostos Theos"--the unseen and
incomprehensible God; and pointing to their altars, he may announce with
Paul, "this God _whom ye worship_, though ignorantly, him declare I unto
you!"
The results of our study of the various hypotheses which have been
offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world may be
summed up as follows: The first and second theories we have rejected as
utterly false. Instead of being faithful to and adequately explaining
the facts, they pervert, and maltreat, and distort the facts of
religious history. The last three each contain a precious element of
truth which must not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an
explanation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory, taken by
itself, is incomplete and inadequate. The third hypothesis overrates
_feeling_; the fourth, _reason_; the fifth, _verbal instruction_. The
first extreme is Mysticism, the second is Rationalism, the last is
Dogmatism. Reason, feeling, and faith in testimony must be combined, and
mutually condition each other. No purely rationalistic hypothesis will
meet and satisfy the wants and yearnings of the heart. No theory based
on feeling alone can satisfy the demands of the human intellect. And,
finally, an hypothesis which bases all religion upon historical
testimony and outward fact, and despises and tramples upon the
intuitions of the reason and the instincts of the heart can never
command the general faith of mankind. Religion embraces and
conditionates the whole sphere of life--thought, feeling, faith, and
action; it must therefore be grounded in the entire spiritual nature of
man.
Our criticism of opposite theories has thus prepared the way for, and
obviated the necessity of an extended discussion of the hypothesis we
now advance.
_The universal phenomenon of religion has originated in the à priori
apperceptions of reason, and the natural instinctive feelings of the
heart, which, from age to age, have been vitalized, unfolded, and
perfected by supernatural communications and testamentary revelations_.
There are universal facts of religious history which can only be
explained on the first principle of this hypothesis; there are special
facts which can only be explained on the latter principle. The universal
prevalence of the idea of God, and the feeling of obligation to obey and
worship God, belong to the first order of facts; the general prevalence
of expiatory sacrifices, of the rite of circumcision, and the observance
of sacred and holy days, belong to the latter. To the last class of
facts the observance of the Christian Sabbath, and the rites of Baptism
and the Lord's Supper may be added.
The history of all religions clearly attests that there are two orders
of principles--the _natural_ and the _positive_, and, in some measure,
two authorities of religious life which are intimately related without
negativing each other. The characteristic of the natural is that it is
_intrinsic_, of the positive, that it is _extrinsic_. In all ages men
have sought the authority of the positive in that which is immediately
_beyond_ and above man--in some "voice of the Divinity" toning down the
stream of ages, or speaking through a prophet or oracle, or written in
some inspired and sacred book. They have sought for the authority of the
natural in that which is immediately _within_ man--the voice of the
Divinity speaking in the conscience and heart of man. A careful study of
the history of religion will show a reciprocal relation between the two,
and indicate their common source.
We expect to find that our hypothesis will be abundantly sustained by
the study of the _Religion of the Athenians_.