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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46476 ***</div>

<div class="box">
<p class="center"><big><b><i>John Fiske's Writings</i></b></big>.</p>
<hr class="small"/>

<p class="hang"><b>MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS</b>: Old Tales and Superstitions
interpreted by Comparative Mythology. 12mo,
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<p class="hang"><b>OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY.</b> Based on
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<p class="hang"><b>THE UNSEEN WORLD</b>, and other Essays. 12mo,
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<p class="hang"><b>EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST.</b> 12mo,
$2.00.</p>

<p><b>DARWINISM</b>, and other Essays. 12mo, $2.00.</p>

<p class="hang"><b>THE DESTINY OF MAN</b>, viewed in the Light of His
Origin. 16mo, $1.00.</p>

<p class="hang"><b>THE IDEA OF GOD</b>, as affected by Modern Knowledge.
A Sequel to "The Destiny of Man." 16mo, $1.00.</p>


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<p class="hang"><b>AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS</b>, viewed from the
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<div class="chap"/>

<h1>THE IDEA OF GOD AS AFFECTED<br />
BY MODERN KNOWLEDGE</h1>

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<p class="p2 center"><big><span class="smcap">By</span> JOHN FISKE</big></p>

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<p class="p2 center"><small>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br />
<b><i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge</i></b></small><br />
1886</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<p class="center space-above">
    <small>Copyright, 1885,</small><br />
    <span class="smcap">By JOHN FISKE</span>.</p>

<p class="center"> <i><small>All rights reserved.</small></i></p>


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    Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton &amp; Co.</small></p>

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    <p class="center space-above">To<br />
    MY WIFE,</p>

    <p class="center"><small>IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE SWEET SUNDAY MORNING<br />
    UNDER THE APPLE-TREE ON THE HILLSIDE,<br />
    WHEN WE TWO SAT LOOKING DOWN INTO FAIRY WOODLAND PATHS,<br />
    AND TALKED OF THE THINGS<br />
    SINCE WRITTEN IN THIS LITTLE BOOK,<br />
<b><i>I now dedicate it</i></b>.</small></p>


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<h2 class="no-break"><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE">PREFACE.</a></h2>

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<p class="drop-capi"><span class="smcap">When</span> asked to give a second address
before the Concord School
of Philosophy, I gladly accepted
the invitation, as affording a proper occasion
for saying certain things which I had
for some time wished to say about theism.
My address was designed to introduce the
discussion of the question whether pantheism
is the legitimate outcome of modern
science. It seemed to me that the
object might best be attained by passing
in review the various modifications which
the idea of God has undergone in the past,
and pointing out the shape in which it is
likely to survive the rapid growth of modern
knowledge, and especially the establishment
of that great doctrine of evolution
which is fast obliging us to revise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
our opinions upon all subjects whatsoever.
Having thus in the text outlined the idea
of God most likely to be conceived by
minds trained in the doctrine of evolution,
I left it for further discussion to decide
whether the term "pantheism" can properly
be applied to such a conception.
While much enlightenment may be got
from carefully describing the substance of
a philosophic doctrine, very little can be
gained by merely affixing to it a label;
and I could not but feel that my argument
would be simply encumbered by the introduction
of any question of nomenclature
involving such a vague and uninstructive
epithet as "pantheism." Such epithets
are often regarded with favour and freely
used, as seeming to obviate the necessity
for that kind of labour to which most people
are most averse,&mdash;the labour of sustained
and accurate thinking. People are
too apt to make such general terms do
duty in place of a careful examination of
facts, and are thus sometimes led to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>
strange conclusions. When, for example,
they have heard somebody called an "agnostic,"
they at once think they know all
about him; whereas they have very likely
learned nothing that is of the slightest
value in characterizing his opinions or his
mental attitude. A term that can be applied
at once to a Comte, a Mansel, and a
Huxley is obviously of little use in the
matter of definition. But, it may be asked,
in spite of their world-wide differences, do
not these three thinkers agree in holding
that nothing can be known about the nature
of God? Perhaps so,&mdash;one cannot
answer even this plain question with an
unqualified yes; but, granting that they
fully agree in this assertion of ignorance,
nevertheless, in their philosophic attitudes
with regard to this ignorance, in the use
they severally make of the assertion, in the
way it determines their inferences about all
manner of other things, the differences are
so vast that nothing but mental confusion
can come from a terminology which would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
content itself by applying to all three the
common epithet "agnostic." The case is
similar with such a word as "pantheism,"
which has been familiarly applied to so
many utterly diverse systems of thought
that it is very hard to tell just what it
means. It has been equally applied to
the doctrine of "the Hindu philosophers
of the orthodox Brahmanical schools," who
"hold that all finite existence is an illusion,
and life mere vexation and mistake,
a blunder or sorry jest of the Absolute;"
and to the doctrine of the Stoics, who
"went to the other extreme, and held that
the universe was the product of perfect
reason and in an absolute sense good."
(Pollock's "Spinoza," p. 356.) In recent
times it has been commonly used as a
vituperative epithet, and hurled indiscriminately
at such unpopular opinions as do
not seem to call for so heavy a missile as
the more cruel term "atheism." The
writer who sets forth in plain scientific
language a physical theory of the universe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span>
is liable to be scowled at and called an
atheist; but, when the very same ideas are
presented in the form of oracular apophthegm
or poetic rhapsody, the author is
more gently described as "tinctured with
pantheism."</p>

<p>But out of the chaos of vagueness in
which this unhappy word has been immersed
it is perhaps still possible to extract
something like a definite meaning.
In the broadest sense there are three possible
ways in which we may contemplate
the universe.</p>

<p><i>First</i>, we may regard the world of phenomena
as sufficient unto itself, and deny
that it needs to be referred to any underlying
and all-comprehensive unity. Nothing
has an ultimate origin or destiny;
there is no dramatic tendency in the succession
of events, nor any ultimate law to
which everything must be referred; there
is no reasonableness in the universe save
that with which human fancy unwarrantably
endows it; the events of the world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>
have no orderly progression like the scenes
of a well-constructed plot, but in the manner
of their coming and going they constitute
simply what Chauncey Wright so
aptly called "cosmical weather;" they drift
and eddy about in an utterly blind and
irrational manner, though now and then
evolving, as if by accident, temporary combinations
which have to us a rational appearance.
This is Atheism, pure and unqualified.
It recognizes no Omnipresent
Energy.</p>

<p><i>Secondly</i>, we may hold that the world of
phenomena is utterly unintelligible unless
referred to an underlying and all-comprehensive
unity. All things are manifestations
of an Omnipresent Energy which
cannot be in any imaginable sense personal
or anthropomorphic; out from this
eternal source of phenomena all individualities
proceed, and into it they must all
ultimately return and be absorbed; the
events of the world have an orderly progression,
but not toward any goal recog<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span>nizable
by us; in the process of evolution
there is nothing that from any point of
view can be called teleological; the beginning
and end of things&mdash;that which is
Alpha and Omega&mdash;is merely an inscrutable
essence, a formless void. Such a view
as this may properly be called Pantheism.
It recognizes an Omnipresent Energy, but
virtually identifies it with the totality of
things.</p>

<p><i>Thirdly</i>, we may hold that the world of
phenomena is intelligible only when regarded
as the multiform manifestation of
an Omnipresent Energy that is in some
way&mdash;albeit in a way quite above our
finite comprehension&mdash;anthropomorphic
or quasi-personal. There is a true objective
reasonableness in the universe; its
events have an orderly progression, and, so
far as those events are brought sufficiently
within our ken for us to generalize them
exhaustively, their progression is toward a
goal that is recognizable by human intelligence;
"the process of evolution is itself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>
the working out of a mighty Teleology of
which our finite understandings can fathom
but the scantiest rudiments" ("Cosmic
Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 406); it is indeed
but imperfectly that we can describe the
dramatic tendency in the succession of
events, but we can see enough to assure
us of the fundamental fact that there is
such a tendency; and this tendency is the
objective aspect of that which, when regarded
on its subjective side, we call Purpose.
Such a theory of things is Theism.
It recognizes an Omnipresent Energy,
which is none other than the living God.</p>

<p>It is this theistic doctrine which I hold
myself, and which in the present essay I
have sought to exhibit as the legitimate
outcome of modern scientific thought. I
was glad to have such an excellent occasion
for returning to the subject as the
invitation from Concord gave me, because
in a former attempt to expound the same
doctrine I do not seem to have succeeded
in making myself understood. In my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span>
"Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," published
in 1874, I endeavoured to set forth
a theory of theism identical with that
which is set forth in the present essay.
But an acute and learned friend, writing
under the pseudonym of "Physicus," in
his "Candid Examination of Theism"
(London, 1878), thus criticizes my theory:
In it, he says, "while I am able to discern
the elements which I think may properly
be regarded as common to Theism and to
Atheism, I am not able to discern any
single element that is specifically distinctive
of Theism" (p. 145). The reason for
the inability of "Physicus" to discern any
such specifically distinctive element is that
he misunderstands me as proposing to divest
the theistic idea of every shred of
anthropomorphism, while still calling it a
theistic idea. This, he thinks, would be
an utterly illegitimate proceeding, and I
quite agree with him. In similar wise my
friend Mr. Frederick Pollock, in his admirable
work on Spinoza (London, 1880),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span>
observes that "Mr. Fiske's doctrine excludes
the belief in a so-called Personal
God, and the particular forms of religious
emotion dependent on it" (p. 356). If
the first part of this sentence stood alone,
I might pause to inquire how much latitude
of meaning may be conveyed in the
expression "so-called;" is it meant that I
exclude the belief in a Personal God as it
was held by Augustine and Paley, or as it
was held by Clement and Schleiermacher,
or both? But the second clause of the
sentence seems to furnish the answer; it
seems to imply that I would practically do
away with Theism altogether.</p>

<p>Such a serious misstatement of my position,
made in perfect good faith by two
thinkers so conspicuous for ability and candour,
shows that, in spite of all the elaborate
care with which the case was stated
in "Cosmic Philosophy," some further explanation
is needed. It is true that there
are expressions in that work which, taken
singly and by themselves, might seem to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span>
imply a total rejection of theism. Such
expressions occur chiefly in the chapter entitled
"Anthropomorphic Theism," where
great pains are taken to show the inadequacy
of the Paley argument from design,
and to point out the insuperable difficulties
in which we are entangled by the conception
of a Personal God as it is held by
the great majority of modern theologians
who have derived it from Plato and Augustine.
In the succeeding chapters, however,
it is expressly argued that the total
elimination of anthropomorphism from the
idea of God is impossible. There are some
who, recognizing that the ideas of Personality
and Infinity are unthinkable in combination,
seek to escape the difficulty by
speaking of God as the "Infinite Power;"
that is, instead of a symbol derived from
our notion of human consciousness, they
employ a symbol derived from our notion
of force in general. For many philosophic
purposes the device is eminently useful;
but it should not be forgotten that, while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span>
the form of our experience of Personality
does not allow us to conceive it as infinite,
it is equally true that the form of our experience
of Force does not allow us to
conceive it as infinite, since we know force
only as antagonized by other force. Since,
moreover, our notion of force is purely a
generalization from our subjective sensations
of effort overcoming resistance, there
is scarcely less anthropomorphism lurking
in the phrase "Infinite Power" than in the
phrase "Infinite Person." Now in "Cosmic
Philosophy" I argue that the presence
of God is the one all-pervading fact of life,
from which there is no escape; that while
in the deepest sense the nature of Deity
is unknowable by finite Man, nevertheless
the exigencies of our thinking oblige us to
symbolize that nature in some form that
has a real meaning for us; and that we
cannot symbolize that nature as in any
wise physical, but are bound to symbolize
it as in some way psychical. I do not here
repeat the arguments, but simply state the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span>
conclusions. The final conclusion (vol. ii.
p. 449) is that we must not say that "God
is Force," since such a phrase inevitably
calls up those pantheistic notions of blind
necessity, which it is my express desire to
avoid; but, always bearing in mind the
symbolic character of the words, we may
say that "God is Spirit." How my belief
in the personality of God could be more
strongly expressed without entirely deserting
the language of modern philosophy
and taking refuge in pure mythology, I
am unable to see.</p>

<p>There are two points in the present
essay which I hope will serve to define
more completely the kind of theism which
I have tried to present as compatible with
the doctrine of evolution. One is the
historic contrast between anthropomorphic
and cosmic theism regarded in their modes
of genesis, and especially as exemplified
within the Christian church in the very
different methods and results of Augustine
on the one hand and Athanasius on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span>
other. The view which I have ventured
to designate as "cosmic theism" is no invention
of mine; in its most essential features
it has been entertained by some of
the profoundest thinkers of Christendom
in ancient and modern times, from Clement
of Alexandria to Lessing and Goethe
and Schleiermacher. The other point is
the teleological inference drawn from the
argument of my first Concord address on
"The Destiny of Man, viewed in the Light
of his Origin."</p>

<p>When that address was published, a
year ago, I was surprised to find it quite
commonly regarded as indicating some
radical change of attitude on my part,&mdash;a
"conversion," perhaps, from one set of
opinions to another. Inasmuch as the
argument in the "Destiny of Man" was
based in every one of its parts upon arguments
already published in "Cosmic Philosophy"
(1874), and in the "Unseen
World" (1876), I naturally could not
understand why the later book should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span>
impress people so differently from the
earlier ones. It presently appeared, however,
that none of my friends who had
studied the earlier books had detected any
such change of attitude; it was only people
who knew little or nothing about me, or
else the newspapers. Whence the inference
seemed obvious that many readers
of the "Destiny of Man" must have contrasted
it, not with my earlier books which
they had not read, but with some vague
and distorted notion about my views which
had grown up (Heaven knows how or why!)
through the medium of "the press;" and
thus there might have been produced the
impression that those views had undergone
a radical change.</p>

<p>It would be little to my credit, however,
had my views of the doctrine of evolution
and its implications undergone no development
or enlargement since the publication
of "Cosmic Philosophy." To carry such a
subject about in one's mind for ten years,
without having any new thoughts about it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span>
would hardly be a proof of fitness for philosophizing.
I have for some time been
aware of a shortcoming in the earlier work,
which it is the purpose of these two Concord
addresses in some measure to remedy.
That shortcoming was an imperfect appreciation
of the goal toward which the
process of evolution is tending, and a consequent
failure to state adequately how the
doctrine of evolution must affect our estimate
of Man's place in Nature. Nothing
of fundamental importance in "Cosmic
Philosophy" needed changing, but a new
chapter needed to be written, in order to
show how the doctrine of evolution, by
exhibiting the development of the highest
spiritual human qualities as the goal toward
which God's creative work has from
the outset been tending, replaces Man in
his old position of headship in the universe,
even as in the days of Dante and
Aquinas. That which the pre-Copernican
astronomy naively thought to do by placing
the home of Man in the centre of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span>
the physical universe, the Darwinian biology
profoundly accomplishes by exhibiting
Man as the terminal fact in that stupendous
process of evolution whereby
things have come to be what they are.
In the deepest sense it is as true as it ever
was held to be, that the world was made
for Man, and that the bringing forth in
him of those qualities which we call highest
and holiest is the final cause of creation.
The arguments upon which this
conclusion rests, as they are set forth in
the "Destiny of Man" and epitomized in
the concluding section of the present essay,
may all be found in "Cosmic Philosophy;"
but I failed to sum them up there
and indicate the conclusion, almost within
reach, which I had not quite clearly seized.
When, after long hovering in the background
of consciousness, it suddenly flashed
upon me two years ago, it came with such
vividness as to seem like a revelation.</p>

<p>This conclusion as to the implications
of the doctrine of evolution concerning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span>
Man's place in Nature supplies the element
wanting in the theistic theory set
forth in "Cosmic Philosophy,"&mdash;the teleological
element. It is profoundly true
that a theory of things may seem theistic
or atheistic in virtue of what it says of
Man, no less than in virtue of what it says
of God. The craving for a final cause is
so deeply rooted in human nature that no
doctrine of theism which fails to satisfy it
can seem other than lame and ineffective.
In writing "Cosmic Philosophy" I fully
realized this when, in the midst of the
argument against Paley's form of theism,
I said that "the process of evolution is
itself the working out of a mighty Teleology
of which our finite understandings
can fathom but the scantiest rudiments."
Nevertheless, while the whole momentum
of my thought carried me to the conviction
that it must be so, I was not yet able to
indicate <i>how</i> it is so, and I accordingly left
the subject with this brief and inadequate
hint. Could the point have been worked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span>
out then and there, I think it would have
left no doubt in the minds of "Physicus"
and Mr. Pollock as to the true character
of Cosmic Theism.</p>

<p>But hold, cries the scientific inquirer,
what in the world are you doing? Are
we again to resuscitate the phantom Teleology,
which we had supposed at last
safely buried between cross-roads and
pinned down with a stake? Was not Bacon
right in characterizing "final causes"
as vestal virgins, so barren has their study
proved? And has not Huxley, with yet
keener sarcasm, designated them the <i>hetairæ</i>
of philosophy, so often have they
led men astray? Very true. I do not
wish to take back a single word of all that
I have said in my chapter on "Anthropomorphic
Theism" in condemnation of
the teleological method and the peculiar
theistic doctrines upon which it rests. As
a means of investigation it is absolutely
worthless. Nay, it is worse than worthless;
it is treacherous, it is debauching to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span>
the intellect. But that is no reason why,
when a distinct dramatic tendency in the
events of the universe appears as the
<i>result</i> of purely scientific investigation,
we should refuse to recognize it. It is the
object of the "Destiny of Man" to prove
that there is such a dramatic tendency;
and while such a tendency cannot be regarded
as indicative of purpose in the
limited anthropomorphic sense, it is still,
as I said before, the objective aspect of
that which, when regarded on its subjective
side, we call Purpose. There is a
reasonableness in the universe such as to
indicate that the Infinite Power of which
it is the multiform manifestation is psychical,
though it is impossible to ascribe
to Him any of the limited psychical attributes
which we know, or to argue from
the ways of Man to the ways of God.
For, as St. Paul reminds us, "who hath
known the mind of the Lord, or who hath
been his counsellor?"</p>

<p>It is in this sense that I accept Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[Pg xxv]</a></span>
Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable.
How far my interpretation agrees with his
own I do not undertake to say. On such
an abstruse matter it is best that one
should simply speak for one's self. But in
his recent essay on "Retrogressive Religion"
he uses expressions which imply
a doctrine of theism essentially similar to
that here maintained. The "infinite and
eternal Energy from which all things proceed,"
and which is the same power that
"in ourselves wells up under the form of
consciousness," is certainly the power
which is here recognized as God. The
term "Unknowable" I have carefully refrained
from using; it does not occur in
the text of this essay. It describes only
one aspect of Deity, but it has been seized
upon by shallow writers of every school,
treated as if fully synonymous with Deity,
and made the theme of the most dismal
twaddle that the world has been deluged
with since the days of mediæval scholasticism.
The latest instance is the wretched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[Pg xxvi]</a></span>
positivist rubbish which Mr. Frederic Harrison
has mistaken for criticism, and to
which it is almost a pity that Mr. Spencer
should have felt called upon to waste his
valuable time in replying. That which
Mr. Spencer throughout all his works regards
as the All-Being, the Power of which
"our lives, alike physical and mental, in
common with all the activities, organic
and inorganic, amid which we live, are but
the workings,"&mdash;this omnipresent Power
it pleases Mr. Harrison to call the "All-Nothingness,"
to describe it as "a logical
formula begotten in controversy, dwelling
apart from man and the world" (whatever
all that may mean), and to imagine its worshippers
as thus addressing it in prayer,
"O <i>x</i><sup>n</sup>, love us, help us, make us one with
thee!" If Mr. Harrison's aim were to
understand, rather than to misrepresent,
the religious attitude which goes with such
a conception of Deity as Mr. Spencer's,
he could nowhere find it more happily expressed
than in these wonderful lines of
Goethe:&mdash;</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[Pg xxvii]</a></span></p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Weltseele, komm, uns zu durchdringen!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Dann mit dem Weltgeist selbst zu ringen<br /></span>
<span class="i6">Wird unsrer Kräfte Hochberuf.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Theilnehmend führen gute Geister,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Gelinde leitend, höchste Meister,<br /></span>
<span class="i6">Zu dem der alles schafft und schuf."<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>Mr. Harrison is enabled to perform his
antics simply because he happens to have
such a word as "Unknowable" to play
with. Yet the word which has been put
to such unseemly uses is, when properly
understood, of the highest value in theistic
philosophy. That Deity <i>per se</i> is not
only unknown but unknowable is a truth
which Mr. Spencer has illustrated with all
the resources of that psychologic analysis
of which he is incomparably the greatest
master the world has ever seen; but it
is not a truth which originated with him,
or the demonstration of which is tantamount,
as Mr. Harrison would have us
believe, to the destruction of all religion.
Among all the Christian theologians that
have lived, there are few higher names
than Athanasius, who also regarded Deity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[Pg xxviii]</a></span>
<i>per se</i> as unknowable, being revealed to
mankind only through incarnation in
Christ. It is not as failing to recognize
its value that I have refrained in this essay
from using the term "Unknowable;" it is
because so many false and stupid inferences
have been drawn from Mr. Spencer's
use of the word that it seemed worth while
to show how a doctrine essentially similar
to his might be expounded without introducing
it. For further elucidation I will simply
repeat in this connection what I
wrote long ago: "It is enough to remind
the reader that Deity is unknowable
just in so far as it is not manifested to
consciousness through the phenomenal
world,&mdash;knowable just in so far as it is
thus manifested: unknowable in so far as
infinite and absolute,&mdash;knowable in the
order of its phenomenal manifestations;
knowable, in a symbolic way, as the Power
which is disclosed in every throb of the
mighty rhythmic life of the universe;
knowable as the eternal Source of a Moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[Pg xxix]</a></span>
Law which is implicated with each action
of our lives, and in obedience to which lies
our only guaranty of the happiness which
is incorruptible, and which neither inevitable
misfortune nor unmerited obloquy
can take away. Thus, though we may not
by searching find out God, though we may
not compass infinitude or attain to absolute
knowledge, we may at least know all
that it concerns us to know, as intelligent
and responsible beings. They who seek
to know more than this, to transcend the
conditions under which alone is knowledge
possible, are, in Goethe's profound
language, as wise as little children who,
when they have looked into a mirror, turn
it around to see what is behind it." ("Cosmic
Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 470.)</p>

<hr class="tb" />

<p>The present essay must be regarded as
a sequel to the "Destiny of Man,"&mdash;so
much so that the force of the argument
in the concluding section can hardly be
appreciated without reference to the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[Pg xxx]</a></span>
book. The two books, taken together,
contain the bare outlines of a theory of
religion which I earnestly hope at some
future time to state elaborately in a work
on the true nature of Christianity. Some
such scheme had begun vaguely to dawn
upon my mind when I was fourteen years
old, and thought in the language of the
rigid Calvinistic orthodoxy then prevalent
in New England. After many and extensive
changes of opinion, the idea assumed
definite shape in the autumn of 1869, when
I conceived the plan of a book to be entitled
"Jesus of Nazareth and the Founding of
Christianity,"&mdash;a work intended to deal
on the one hand with the natural genesis
of the complex aggregate of beliefs and aspirations
known as Christianity, and on the
other hand with the metamorphoses which
are being wrought in this aggregate by
modern knowledge and modern theories
of the universe. Such a book, involving
a treatment both historical and philosophical,
requires long and varied prep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[Pg xxxi]</a></span>aration;
and I have always regarded my
other books, published from time to time,
as simply wayside studies preliminary to
the undertaking of this complicated and
difficult task. While thus habitually shaping
my work with reference to this cherished
idea, I have written some things
which are in a special sense related to it.
The rude outlines of a very small portion
of the historical treatment are contained
in the essays on "The Jesus of History,"
and "The Christ of Dogma," published in
the volume entitled "The Unseen World,
and Other Essays." The outlines of the
philosophical treatment are partially set
forth in the "Destiny of Man" and in the
present work.</p>

<p>It amused me to see that almost every review
of the "Destiny of Man" took pains
to state that it was my Concord address
"rewritten and expanded." Such trifles
help one to understand the helter-skelter
way in which more important things get
said and believed. The "Destiny of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[Pg xxxii]</a></span>
Man" was printed exactly as it was delivered
at Concord, without the addition,
or subtraction, or alteration of a single
word. The case is the same with the
present work.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><span class="smcap">Petersham</span>, <i>September 6, 1885</i>.</p></blockquote>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
<img src="images/pg_xxxii.jpg" width="75" height="63" alt="" />
</div>


<hr class="chap"/></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii">[Pg xxxiii]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_xxxiii_a.jpg" width="400" height="78" alt="" />
</div>



<h2 class="no-break"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS.</a></h2>


<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="toc">
<tr><td class="tdrt"> <i>I.</i></td><td align="left"><i>Difficulty of expressing the Idea of God so that it can be readily understood</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_35"><i>35</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>II.</i></td><td align="left"><i>The Rapid Growth of Modern Knowledge</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_46"><i>46</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>III.</i></td><td align="left"><i>Sources of the Theistic Idea</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_62"><i>62</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>IV.</i></td><td align="left"><i>Development of Monotheism</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_72"><i>72</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>V.</i></td><td align="left"><i>The Idea of God as immanent in the World</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_81"><i>81</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>VI.</i></td><td align="left"><i>The Idea of God as remote from the World</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_87"><i>87</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>VII.</i></td><td align="left"><i>Conflict between the Two Ideas, commonly misunderstood as a Conflict between Religion and Science</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_97"><i>97</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>VIII.</i></td><td align="left"><i>Anthropomorphic Conceptions of God</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_111"><i>111</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>IX.</i></td><td align="left"><i>The Argument from Design</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_118"><i>118</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>X.</i></td><td align="left"><i>Simile of the Watch replaced by Simile of the Flower</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_128"><i>128</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>XI.</i></td><td align="left"><i>The Craving for a Final Cause</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_134"><i>134</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>XII.</i></td><td align="left"><i>Symbolic Conceptions</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_140"><i>140</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>XIII.</i></td><td align="left"><i>The Eternal Source of Phenomena</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_144"><i>144</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdrt"><i>XIV.</i></td><td align="left"><i>The Power that makes for Righteousness</i></td><td class="tdrb"><a href="#Page_158"><i>158</i></a></td></tr>
</table></div>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
<img src="images/pg_xxxiii_b.jpg" width="75" height="66" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>


<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_035a.jpg" width="400" height="84" alt="" />
</div>


<p class="center"><big>THE IDEA OF GOD</big>.</p>

<hr class="small"/>


<h2 class="no-break"><a name="I" id="I">I.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>Difficulty of expressing the Idea of God so
that it can be readily understood.</i></p>

<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-i.jpg" width="50" height="49" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi2"><span class="smcap">In</span> Goethe's great poem, while Faust
is walking with Margaret at eventide
in the garden, she asks him
questions about his religion. It is long
since he has been shriven or attended
mass; does he, then, believe in God?&mdash;a
question easy to answer with a simple yes,
were it not for the form in which it is put.
The great scholar and subtle thinker, who
has delved in the deepest mines of philosophy
and come forth weary and heavy-laden
with their boasted treasures, has framed
a very different conception of God from
that entertained by the priest at the con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>fessional
or the altar, and how is he to
make this intelligible to the simple-minded
girl that walks by his side? Who will
make bold to declare that he can grasp an
idea of such overwhelming vastness as the
idea of God, yet who that hath the feelings
of a man can bring himself to cast
away a belief that is indispensable to the
rational and healthful workings of the
mind? So long as the tranquil dome of
heaven is raised above our heads and the
firm-set earth is spread forth beneath our
feet, while the everlasting stars course in
their mighty orbits and the lover gazes
with ineffable tenderness into the eyes of
her that loves him, so long, says Faust,
must our hearts go out toward Him that
upholds and comprises all. Name or describe
as we may the Sustainer of the
world, the eternal fact remains there, far
above our comprehension, yet clearest and
most real of all facts. To name and describe
it, to bring it within the formulas
of theory or creed, is but to veil its glory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
as when the brightness of heaven is enshrouded
in mist and smoke. This has
a pleasant sound to Margaret's ears. It
reminds her of what the parson sometimes
says, though couched in very different
phrases; and yet she remains uneasy
and unsatisfied. Her mind is benumbed
by the presence of an idea confessedly too
great to be grasped. She feels the need
of some concrete symbol that can be readily
apprehended; and she hopes that her
lover has not been learning bad lessons
from Mephistopheles.</p>

<p>The difficulty which here besets Margaret
must doubtless have been felt by every
one when confronted with the thoughts by
which the highest human minds have endeavoured
to disclose the hidden life of
the universe and interpret its meaning. It
is a difficulty which baffles many, and they
who surmount it are few indeed. Most
people content themselves through life
with a set of concrete formulas concerning
Deity, and vituperate as atheistic all con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>ceptions
which refuse to be compressed
within the narrow limits of their creed.
For the great mass of men the idea of
God is quite overlaid and obscured by innumerable
symbolic rites and doctrines
that have grown up in the course of the
long historic development of religion. All
such rites and doctrines had a meaning
once, beautiful and inspiring or terrible
and forbidding, and many of them still
retain it. But whether meaningless or
fraught with significance, men have wildly
clung to them as shipwrecked mariners
cling to the drifting spars that alone give
promise of rescue from threatening death.
Such concrete symbols have in all ages
been argued and fought for until they have
come to seem the essentials of religion;
and new moons and sabbaths, decrees of
councils and articles of faith, have usurped
the place of the living God. In every age
the theory or discovery&mdash;however profoundly
theistic in its real import&mdash;which
has thrown discredit upon such symbols<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
has been stigmatized as subversive of religion,
and its adherents have been reviled
and persecuted. It is, of course, inevitable
that this should be so. To the half-educated
mind a theory of divine action
couched in the form of a legend, in which
God is depicted as entertaining human
purposes and swayed by human passions,
is not only intelligible, but impressive. It
awakens emotion, it speaks to the heart,
it threatens the sinner with wrath to come
or heals the wounded spirit with sweet
whispers of consolation. However mythical
the form in which it is presented,
however literally false the statements of
which it is composed, it seems profoundly
real and substantial. Just in so far as it
is crudely concrete, just in so far as its
terms can be vividly realized by the ordinary
mind, does such a theological theory
seem weighty and true. On the other
hand, a theory of divine action which, discarding
as far as possible the aid of concrete
symbols, attempts to include within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
its range the endlessly complex operations
that are forever going on throughout the
length and breadth of the knowable universe,&mdash;such
a theory is to the ordinary
mind unintelligible. It awakens no emotion
because it is not understood. Though
it may be the nearest approximation to
the truth of which the human intellect is
at the present moment capable, though
the statements of which it is composed
may be firmly based upon demonstrated
facts in nature, it will nevertheless seem
eminently unreal and uninteresting. The
dullest peasant can understand you when
you tell him that honey is sweet, while a
statement that the ratio of the circumference
of a circle to its diameter may be
expressed by the formula &pi; = 3.14159
will sound as gibberish in his ears; yet
the truth embodied in the latter statement
is far more closely implicated with every
act of the peasant's life, if he only knew
it, than the truth expressed in the former.
So the merest child may know enough to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
marvel at the Hebrew legend of the burning
bush, but only the ripest scholar can
begin to understand the character of the
mighty problems with which Spinoza was
grappling when he had so much to say
about <i>natura naturans</i> and <i>natura naturata</i>.</p>

<p>For these reasons all attempts to study
God as revealed in the workings of the
visible universe, and to characterize the
divine activity in terms derived from such
study, have met with discouragement, if
not with obloquy. As substituting a less
easily comprehensible formula for one that
is more easily comprehensible, they seem
to be frittering away the idea of God,
and reducing it to an empty abstraction.
There is a further reason for the dread
with which such studies are commonly regarded.
The theories of divine action accepted
as orthodox by the men of any age
have been bequeathed to them by their
forefathers of an earlier age. They were
originally framed with reference to as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>sumed
facts of nature which advancing
knowledge is continually discrediting and
throwing aside. Each forward step in
physical science obliges us to contemplate
the universe from a somewhat altered point
of view, so that the mutual relations of its
parts keep changing as in an ever-shifting
landscape. The notions of the world and
its Maker with which we started by and
by prove meagre and unsatisfying; they
no longer fit in with the general scheme
of our knowledge. Hence the men who
are wedded to the old notions are quick to
sound the alarm. They would fain deter
us from taking the forward step which
carries us to a new standpoint. Beware
of science, they cry, lest with its dazzling
discoveries and adventurous speculations
it rob us of our soul's comfort and leave
us in a godless world. Such in every age
has been the cry of the more timid and
halting spirits; and their fears have found
apparent confirmation in the behaviour of
a very different class of thinkers. As there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
are those who live in perpetual dread of
the time when science shall banish God
from the world, so, on the other hand,
there are those who look forward with
longing to such a time, and in their impatience
are continually starting up and proclaiming
that at last it has come. There
are those who have indeed learned a lesson
from Mephistopheles, the "spirit that
forever denies." These are they that say
in their hearts, "There is no God," and
"congratulate themselves that they are
going to die like the beasts." Rushing
into the holiest arcana of philosophy, even
where angels fear to tread, they lay hold
of each new discovery in science that modifies
our view of the universe, and herald
it as a crowning victory for the materialists,&mdash;a
victory which is ushering in the
happy day when atheism is to be the creed
of all men. It is in view of such philosophizers
that the astronomer, the chemist,
or the anatomist, whose aim is the dispassionate
examination of evidence and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
unbiased study of phenomena, may fitly
utter the prayer, "Lord, save me from my
friends!"</p>

<p>Thus through age after age has it fared
with men's discoveries in science, and with
their thoughts about God and the soul.
It was so in the days of Galileo and Newton,
and we have found it to be so in the
days of Darwin and Spencer. The theologian
exclaims, if planets are held in
place by gravitation and tangential momentum,
and if the highest forms of life
have been developed by natural selection
and direct adaptation, then the universe
is swayed by blind forces, and nothing is
left for God to do: how impious and terrible
the thought! Even so, echoes the favourite
atheist, the Lamettrie or Büchner
of the day; the universe, it seems, has
always got on without a God, and accordingly
there is none: how noble and cheering
the thought! And as thus age after
age they wrangle, with their eyes turned
away from the light, the world goes on to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
larger and larger knowledge in spite of
them, and does not lose its faith, for all
these darkeners of counsel may say. As
in the roaring loom of Time the endless
web of events is woven, each strand shall
make more and more clearly visible the
living garment of God.</p>

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</div>


<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_046a.jpg" width="400" height="76" alt="" />
</div>


<h2 class="no-break"><a name="II" id="II">II.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>The Rapid Growth of Modern Knowledge.</i></p>

<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-a.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">At</span> no time since men have dwelt
upon the earth have their notions
about the universe undergone so
great a change as in the century of which
we are now approaching the end. Never
before has knowledge increased so rapidly;
never before has philosophical speculation
been so actively conducted, or its results
so widely diffused. It is a characteristic
of organic evolution that numerous progressive
tendencies, for a long time inconspicuous,
now and then unite to bring about
a striking and apparently sudden change;
or a set of forces, quietly accumulating in
one direction, at length unlock some new
reservoir of force and abruptly inaugurate
a new series of phenomena, as when water
rises in a tank until its overflow sets whirl<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>ing
a system of toothed wheels. It may
be that Nature makes no leaps, but in this
way she now and then makes very long
strides. It is in this way that the course
of organic development is marked here and
there by memorable epochs, which seem to
open new chapters in the history of the
universe. There was such an epoch when
the common ancestor of ascidian and amphioxus
first showed rudimentary traces of
a vertebral column. There was such an
epoch when the air-bladder of early amphibians
began to do duty as a lung.
Greatest of all, since the epoch, still hidden
from our ken, when organic life began upon
the surface of the globe, was the birth of
that new era when, through a wondrous
change in the direction of the working of
natural selection, Humanity appeared upon
the scene. In the career of the human
race we can likewise point to periods in
which it has become apparent that an immense
stride was taken. Such a period
marks the dawning of human history, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
after countless ages of desultory tribal warfare
men succeeded in uniting into comparatively
stable political societies, and
through the medium of written language
began handing down to posterity the record
of their thoughts and deeds. Since that
morning twilight of history there has been
no era so strongly marked, no change so
swift or so far-reaching in the conditions of
human life, as that which began with the
great maritime discoveries of the fifteenth
century and is approaching its culmination
to-day. In its earlier stages this modern
era was signalized by sporadic achievements
of the human intellect, great in themselves
and leading to such stupendous results as
the boldest dared not dream of. Such
achievements were the invention of printing,
the telescope and microscope, the
geometry of Descartes, the astronomy of
Newton, the physics of Huyghens, the
physiology of Harvey. Man's senses were
thus indefinitely enlarged as his means of
registration were perfected; he became<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
capable of extending physical inferences
from the earth to the heavens; and he made
his first acquaintance with that luminiferous
ether which was by and by to reveal the
intimate structure of matter in regions far
beyond the power of the microscope to
penetrate.</p>

<p>It is only within the present century that
the vastness of the changes thus beginning
to be wrought has become apparent. The
scientific achievements of the human intellect
no longer occur sporadically: they follow
one upon another, like the organized
and systematic conquests of a resistless
army. Each new discovery becomes at
once a powerful implement in the hands
of innumerable workers, and each year
wins over fresh regions of the universe
from the unknown to the known. Our own
generation has become so wonted to this
unresting march of discovery that we already
take it as quite a matter of course.
Our minds become easily deadened to its
real import, and the examples we cite in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
illustration of it have an air of triteness.
We scarcely need to be reminded that all
the advances made in locomotion, from the
days of Nebuchadnezzar to those of Andrew
Jackson, were as nothing compared to the
change that has been wrought within a few
years by the introduction of railroads. In
these times, when Puck has fulfilled his
boast and put a girdle about the earth in
forty minutes, we are not yet perhaps in
danger of forgetting that a century has not
elapsed since he who caught the lightning
upon his kite was laid in the grave. Yet
the lesson of these facts, as well as of the
grandmother's spinning-wheel that stands
by the parlour fireside, is well to bear
in mind. The change therein exemplified
since Penelope plied her distaff is far less
than that which has occurred within the
memory of living men. The developments
of machinery, which have worked such
wonders, have greatly altered the political
conditions of human society, so that a huge
republic like the United States is now as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
snug and compact and easily manageable
as the tiny republic of Switzerland in the
eighteenth century. The number of men
that can live upon a given area of the
earth's surface has been multiplied manifold,
and while the mass of human life has
thus increased its value has been at the
same time enhanced.</p>

<p>In these various applications of physical
theory to the industrial arts, countless
minds, of a class that formerly were not
reached by scientific reasoning at all, are
now brought into daily contact with complex
and subtle operations of matter, and
their habits of thought are thus notably
modified. Meanwhile, in the higher regions
of chemistry and molecular physics the
progress has been such that no description
can do it justice. When we reflect that a
fourth generation has barely had time to
appear on the scene since Priestley discovered
that there was such a thing as oxygen,
we stand awestruck before the stupendous
pile of chemical science which has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
reared in this brief interval. Our knowledge
thus gained of the molecular and
atomic structure of matter has been alone
sufficient to remodel our conceptions of
the universe from beginning to end. The
case of molecular physics is equally striking.
The theory of the conservation of
energy, and the discovery that light, heat,
electricity, and magnetism are differently
conditioned modes of undulatory motion
transformable each into the other, are not
yet fifty years old. In physical astronomy
we remained until 1839 confined within
the limits of the solar system, and even
here the Newtonian theory had not yet won
its crowning triumph in the discovery of
the planet Neptune. To-day we not only
measure the distances and movements of
many stars, but by means of spectrum
analysis are able to tell what they are made
of. It is more than a century since the
nebular hypothesis, by which we explain
the development of stellar systems, was
first propounded by Immanuel Kant, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
it is only within thirty years that it has
been generally adopted by astronomers;
and among the outward illustrations of its
essential soundness none is more remarkable
than its surviving such an enlargement
of our knowledge. Coming to the geologic
study of the changes that have taken place
on the earth's surface, it was in 1830 that
Sir Charles Lyell published the book which
first placed this study upon a scientific
basis. Cuvier's classification of past and
present forms of animal life, which laid
the foundations alike of comparative anatomy
and of palæontology, came but little
earlier. The cell-doctrine of Schleiden and
Schwann, prior to which modern biology
can hardly be said to have existed, dates
from 1839; and it was only ten years before
that the scientific treatment of embryology
began with Von Baer. At the present
moment, twenty-six years have not
elapsed since the epoch-making work of
Darwin first announced to the world the
discovery of natural selection.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>

<p>In the cycle of studies which are immediately
concerned with the career of mankind,
the rate of progress has been no less
marvellous. The scientific study of human
speech may be said to date from the flash
of insight which led Friedrich Schlegel in
1808 to detect the kinship between the
Aryan languages. From this beginning
to the researches of Fick and Ascoli in
our own time, the quantity of achievement
rivals anything the physical sciences can
show. The study of comparative mythology,
which has thrown such light upon
the primitive thoughts of mankind, is still
younger,&mdash;is still, indeed, in its infancy.
The application of the comparative method
to the investigation of laws and customs,
of political and ecclesiastical and industrial
systems, has been carried on scarcely
thirty years; yet the results already obtained
are obliging us to rewrite the history
of mankind in all its stages. The
great achievements of archæologists&mdash;the
decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
of cuneiform inscriptions in Assyria and
Persia, the unearthing of ancient cities,
the discovery and classification of primeval
implements and works of art in all quarters
of the globe&mdash;belong almost entirely
to the nineteenth century. These discoveries,
which have well-nigh doubled for us
the length of the historic period, have
united with the quite modern revelations
of geology concerning the ancient glaciation
of the temperate zones, to give us an
approximate idea of the age of the human
race<a name="FNanchor_1_3" id="FNanchor_1_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_3" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and the circumstances attending its
diffusion over the earth. It has thus at
length become possible to obtain something
like the outlines of a comprehensive
view of the history of the creation, from
the earliest stages of condensation of our
solar nebula down to the very time in
which we live, and to infer from the characteristics
of this past evolution some of
the most general tendencies of the future.</p>

<p>All this accumulation of physical and
historical knowledge has not failed to re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>act
upon our study of the human mind
itself. In books of logic the score of centuries
between Aristotle and Whately saw
less advance than the few years between
Whately and Mill. In psychology the
work of Fechner and Wundt and Spencer
belongs to the age in which we are now
living. When to all this variety of achievement
we add what has been done in the
critical study of literature and art, of classical
and Biblical philology, and of metaphysics
and theology, illustrating from
fresh points of view the history of the human
mind, the sum total becomes almost
too vast to be comprehended. This century,
which some have called an age of
iron, has been also an age of ideas, an era
of seeking and finding the like of which
was never known before. It is an epoch
the grandeur of which dwarfs all others
that can be named since the beginning
of the historic period, if not since Man
first became distinctively human. In their
mental habits, in their methods of inquiry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
and in the data at their command, "the
men of the present day who have fully
kept pace with the scientific movement are
separated from the men whose education
ended in 1830 by an immeasurably wider
gulf than has ever before divided one progressive
generation of men from their predecessors."<a name="FNanchor_2_4" id="FNanchor_2_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_4" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
The intellectual development
of the human race has been suddenly, almost
abruptly, raised to a higher plane
than that upon which it had proceeded
from the days of the primitive troglodyte
to the days of our great-grandfathers. It
is characteristic of this higher plane of development
that the progress which until
lately was so slow must henceforth be
rapid. Men's minds are becoming more
flexible, the resistance to innovation is
weakening, and our intellectual demands
are multiplying while the means of satisfying
them are increasing. Vast as are
the achievements we have just passed in
review, the gaps in our knowledge are immense,
and every problem that is solved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
but opens a dozen new problems that await
solution. Under such circumstances there
is no likelihood that the last word will soon
be said on any subject. In the eyes of
the twenty-first century the science of the
nineteenth will doubtless seem very fragmentary
and crude. But the men of that
day, and of all future time, will no doubt
point back to the age just passing away
as the opening of a new dispensation, the
dawning of an era in which the intellectual
development of mankind was raised to
a higher plane than that upon which it had
hitherto proceeded.</p>

<p>As the inevitable result of the thronging
discoveries just enumerated, we find ourselves
in the midst of a mighty revolution
in human thought. Time-honoured creeds
are losing their hold upon men; ancient
symbols are shorn of their value; everything
is called in question. The controversies
of the day are not like those of
former times. It is no longer a question
of hermeneutics, no longer a struggle be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>tween
abstruse dogmas of rival churches.
Religion itself is called upon to show why
it should any longer claim our allegiance.
There are those who deny the existence
of God. There are those who would explain
away the human soul as a mere
group of fleeting phenomena attendant
upon the collocation of sundry particles of
matter. And there are many others who,
without committing themselves to these
positions of the atheist and the materialist,
have nevertheless come to regard religion
as practically ruled out from human
affairs. No religious creed that man has
ever devised can be made to harmonize in
all its features with modern knowledge.
All such creeds were constructed with reference
to theories of the universe which
are now utterly and hopelessly discredited.
How, then, it is asked, amid the general
wreck of old beliefs, can we hope that the
religious attitude in which from time immemorial
we have been wont to contemplate
the universe can any longer be main<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>tained?
Is not the belief in God perhaps
a dream of the childhood of our race, like
the belief in elves and bogarts which once
was no less universal? and is not modern
science fast destroying the one as it has
already destroyed the other?</p>

<p>Such are the questions which we daily
hear asked, sometimes with flippant eagerness,
but oftener with anxious dread. In
view of them it is well worth while to
examine the idea of God, as it has been
entertained by mankind from the earliest
ages, and as it is affected by the knowledge
of the universe which we have acquired
in recent times. If we find in that
idea, as conceived by untaught thinkers in
the twilight of antiquity, an element that
still survives the widest and deepest generalizations
of modern times, we have the
strongest possible reason for believing that
the idea is permanent and answers to an
Eternal Reality. It was to be expected
that conceptions of Deity handed down
from primitive men should undergo seri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>ous
modification. If it can be shown that
the essential element in these conceptions
must survive the enormous additions to
our knowledge which have distinguished
the present age above all others since man
became man, then we may believe that it
will endure so long as man endures; for it
is not likely that it can ever be called upon
to pass a severer ordeal.</p>

<p>All this will presently appear in a still
stronger light, when we have set forth the
common characteristic of the modifications
which the idea of God has already undergone,
and the nature of the opposition between
the old and the new knowledge with
which we are now confronted. Upon this
discussion we have now to enter, and we
shall find it leading us to the conclusion
that throughout all possible advances in
human knowledge, so far as we can see,
the essential position of theism must remain
unshaken.</p>


<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_062a.jpg" width="400" height="77" alt="" />
</div>


<h2 class="no-break"><a name="III" id="III">III.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>Sources of the Theistic Idea.</i></p>

<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-o.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">Our</span> argument may fitly begin with
an inquiry into the sources of the
theistic idea and the shape which
it has universally assumed among untutored
men. The most primitive element
which it contains is doubtless the notion
of <i>dependence</i> upon something outside of
ourselves. We are born into a world consisting
of forces which sway our lives and
over which we can exercise no control.
The individual man can indeed make his
volition count for a very little in modifying
the course of events, but this end
necessitates strict and unceasing obedience
to powers that cannot be tampered
with. To the behaviour of these external
powers our actions must be adapted under
penalty of death. And upon grounds no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
less firm than those on which we believe
in any externality whatever, we recognize
that these forces antedated our birth and
will endure after we have disappeared
from the scene. No one supposes that he
makes the world for himself, so that it is
born and dies with him. Every one perforce
contemplates the world as something
existing independently of himself, as something
into which he has come, and from
which he is to go; and for his coming
and his going, as well as for what he does
while part of the world, he is dependent
upon something that is not himself.</p>

<p>Between ancient and modern man, as
between the child and the adult, there can
be no essential difference in the recognition
of this fundamental fact of life. The
primitive man could not, indeed, state the
case in this generalized form, any more
than a young child could state it, but the
facts which the statement covers were as
real to him as they are to us.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> The prim<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>itive
man knew nothing of a world, in the
modern sense of the word. The conception
of that vast consensus of forces which
we call the world or universe is a somewhat
late result of culture; it was reached
only through ages of experience and reflection.
Such an idea lay beyond the
horizon of the primitive man. But while
he knew not the world, he knew bits and
pieces of it; or, to vary the expression, he
had his little world, chaotic and fragmentary
enough, but full of dread reality for
him. He knew what it was to deal from
birth until death with powers far mightier
than himself. To explain these powers, to
make their actions in any wise intelligible,
he had but one available resource; and
this was so obvious that he could not fail
to employ it. The only source of action
of which he knew anything, since it was
the only source which lay within himself,
was the human will;<a name="FNanchor_3_5" id="FNanchor_3_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_5" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and in this respect,
after all, the philosophy of the primeval
savage was not so very far removed from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
that of the modern scientific thinker. The
primitive man could see that his own actions
were prompted by desire and guided
by intelligence, and he supposed the same
to be the case with the sun and the wind,
the frost and the lightning. All the forces
of outward nature, so far as they came
into visible contact with his life, he personified
as great beings which were to be
contended with or placated. This primeval
philosophy, once universal among men,
has lasted far into the historic period, and
it is only slowly and bit by bit that it has
been outgrown by the most highly civilized
races. Indeed the half-civilized majority
of mankind have by no means as
yet cast it aside, and among savage tribes
we may still see it persisting in all its
original crudity. In the mythologies of
all peoples, of the Greeks and Hindus and
Norsemen, as well as of the North American
Indians and the dwellers in the South
Sea islands, we find the sun personified
as an archer or wanderer, the clouds as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
gigantic birds, the tempest as a devouring
dragon; and the tales of gods and heroes,
as well as of trolls and fairies, are made
up of scattered and distorted fragments
of nature-myths, of which the primitive
meaning had long been forgotten when
the ingenuity of modern scholarship laid
it bare.<a name="FNanchor_4_6" id="FNanchor_4_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_6" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> See <a href="#A">note A</a> at the end of the volume.</p></div>

<p>In all this personification of physical
phenomena our prehistoric ancestors were
greatly assisted by that theory of ghosts
which was perhaps the earliest speculative
effort of the human mind. Travellers
have now and then reported the existence
of races of men quite destitute of religion,
or of what the observer has learned to
recognize as religion; but no one has ever
discovered a race of men devoid of a belief
in ghosts. The mass of crude inference
which makes up the savage's philosophy
of nature is largely based upon the hypothesis
that every man has <i>another self</i>, a
double, or wraith, or ghost. This "hypothesis
of the <i>other self</i>, which serves to ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>count
for the savage's wanderings during
sleep in strange lands and among strange
people, serves also to account for the presence
in his dreams of parents, comrades,
or enemies, known to be dead and buried.
The other self of the dreamer meets and
converses with the other selves of his dead
brethren, joins with them in the hunt, or
sits down with them to the wild cannibal
banquet. Thus arises the belief in an
ever-present world of ghosts, a belief which
the entire experience of uncivilized man
goes to strengthen and expand."<a name="FNanchor_5_7" id="FNanchor_5_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_7" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Countless
tales and superstitions of savage races
show that the hypothesis of the other self
is used to explain the phenomena of hysteria
and epilepsy, of shadows, of echoes,
and even of the reflection of face and gestures
in still water. It is not only men,
moreover, who are provided with other
selves. Dumb beasts and plants, stone
hatchets and arrows, articles of clothing
and food, all have their ghosts;<a name="FNanchor_6_8" id="FNanchor_6_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_8" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> and when
the dead chief is buried, his wives and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
servants, his dogs and horses, are slain
to keep him company, and weapons and
trinkets are placed in his tomb to be used
in the spirit-land. Burial-places of primitive
men, ages before the dawn of history,
bear testimony to the immense antiquity
of this savage philosophy. From this
wholesale belief in ghosts to the interpretation
of the wind or the lightning as a
person animated by an indwelling soul and
endowed with quasi-human passions and
purposes, the step is not a long one. The
latter notion grows almost inevitably out
of the former, so that all races of men
without exception have entertained it.
That the mighty power which uproots
trees and drives the storm-clouds across
the sky should resemble a human soul is
to the savage an unavoidable inference.
"If the fire burns down his hut, it is because
the fire is a person with a soul, and
is angry with him, and needs to be coaxed
into a kindlier mood by means of prayer
or sacrifice." He has no alternative but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
to regard fire-soul as something akin to
human-soul; his philosophy makes no distinction
between the human ghost and the
elemental demon or deity.</p>

<p>It was in accordance with this primitive
theory of things that the earliest form of
religious worship was developed. In all
races of men, so far as can be determined,
this was the worship of ancestors.<a name="FNanchor_7_9" id="FNanchor_7_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_9" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The
other self of the dead chieftain continued
after death to watch over the interests of
the tribe, to defend it against the attacks
of enemies, to reward brave warriors, and
to punish traitors and cowards. His favour
must be propitiated with ceremonies
like those in which a subject does homage
to a living ruler. If offended by neglect
or irreverent treatment, defeat in battle,
damage by flood or fire, visitations of famine
or pestilence, were interpreted as
marks of his anger. Thus the spirits animating
the forces of nature were often
identified with the ghosts of ancestors, and
mythology is filled with traces of the con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>fusion.
In the Vedic religion the <i>pitris</i>,
or "fathers," live in the sky along with
Yama, the original <i>pitri</i> of mankind: they
are very busy with the weather; they send
down rain to refresh the thirsty earth, or
anon parch the fields till the crops perish
of drought; and they rush along in the
roaring tempest, like the weird host of the
wild huntsman Wodan. To the ancient
Greek the blue sky Uranos was the father
of gods and men, and throughout antiquity
this mingling of ancestor-worship with
nature-worship was general. With the
systematic development of ethnic religions,
in some instances ancestor-worship
remained dominant, as with the Chinese,
the Japanese, and the Romans; in others,
a polytheism based upon nature-worship
acquired supremacy, as with the Hindus
and Greeks, and our own Teutonic forefathers.
The great divinities of the Hellenic
pantheon are all personifications of
physical phenomena. At a comparatively
late date the Roman adopted these divin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>ities
and paid to them a fashionable and
literary homage, but his solemn and heartfelt
rites were those with which he worshipped
the <i>lares</i> and <i>penates</i> in the privacy
of his home. His hospitable treatment
of the gods of a vanquished people
was the symptom of a commingling of the
various local religions of antiquity which
insured their mutual destruction and prepared
the way for their absorption into a
far grander and truer system.<a name="FNanchor_8_10" id="FNanchor_8_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_10" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
<img src="images/pg_071.jpg" width="75" height="68" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_062a.jpg" width="400" height="77" alt="" />
</div>



<h2 class="no-break"><a name="IV" id="IV">IV.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>Development of Monotheism.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-s.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">Such</span> an allusion to the Romans,
in an exposition like the present
one, is not without its significance.
It was partly through political circumstances
that a truly theistic idea was
developed out of the chaotic and fragmentary
ghost theories and nature-worship of
the primeval world. To the framing of
the vastest of all possible conceptions, the
idea of God, man came but slowly. This
nature-worship and ancestor-worship of
early times was scarcely theism. In their
recognition of man's utter dependence
upon something outside of himself which
yet was not wholly unlike himself, these
primitive religions contained the essential
germ out of which theism was to grow;
but it is a long way from the propitiation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
of ghosts and the adoration of the rising
sun to the worship of the infinite and
eternal God, the maker of heaven and
earth, in whom we live, and move, and
have our being. Before men could arrive
at such a conception, it was necessary for
them to obtain some integral idea of the
heaven and the earth; it was necessary
for them to frame, however inadequately,
the conception of a physical universe.
Such a conception had been reached by
civilized peoples before the Christian era,
and by the Greeks a remarkable beginning
had been made in the generalization
and interpretation of physical phenomena.
The intellectual atmosphere of Alexandria,
for two centuries before and three
centuries after the time of Christ, was
more modern than anything that followed
down to the days of Bacon and Descartes;
and all the leaders of Greek thought since
Anaxagoras had been virtually or avowedly
monotheists. As the phenomena of nature
were generalized, the deities or super<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>human
beings regarded as their sources
were likewise generalized, until the conception
of nature as a whole gave rise to
the conception of a single Deity as the
author and ruler of nature; and in accordance
with the order of its genesis, this
notion of Deity was still the notion of a
Being possessed of psychical attributes,
and in some way like unto Man.</p>

<p>But there was another cause, besides
scientific generalization, which led men's
minds toward monotheism. The conception
of tutelar deities, which was the most
prominent practical feature of ancestor-worship,
was directly affected by the political
development of the peoples of antiquity.
As tribes were consolidated into
nations, the tutelar gods of the tribes became
generalized, or the god of some leading
tribe came to supersede his fellows,
until the result was a single national deity,
at first regarded as the greatest among
gods, afterwards as the only God. The
most striking instance of this method of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
development is afforded by the Hebrew
conception of Jehovah. The most primitive
form of Hebrew religion discernible
in the Old Testament is a fetichism, or
very crude polytheism, in which ancestor-worship
becomes more prominent than
nature-worship. At first the <i>teraphim</i>, or
tutelar household deities, play an important
part, but nature-gods, such as Baal,
and Moloch, and Astarte, are extensively
worshipped. It is the plural <i>elohim</i> who
create the earth, and whose sons visit the
daughters of antediluvian men. The tutelar
deity, Jehovah, is originally thought of
as one of the <i>elohim</i>, then as chief among
<i>elohim</i>, and Lord of the hosts of heaven.
Through his favour his chosen prophet
overcomes the prophets of Baal, he is
greater than the deities of neighbouring
peoples, he is the only true god, and thus
finally he is thought of as the only God,
and his name becomes the symbol of monotheism.
The Jews have always been one
of the most highly-gifted races in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
world. In antiquity they developed an
intense sentiment of nationality, and for
earnestness and depth of ethical feeling
they surpassed all other peoples. The
conception of Jehovah set forth in the
writings of the prophets was the loftiest
conception of deity anywhere attained before
the time of Christ; in ethical value
it immeasurably surpassed anything to be
found in the pantheon of the Greeks and
Romans. It was natural that such a
conception of deity should be adopted
throughout the Roman world. At the beginning
of the Christian era the classic
polytheism had well-nigh lost its hold upon
men's minds; its value had become chiefly
literary, as a mere collection of pretty stories;
it had begun its descent into the
humble realm of folk-lore. For want of
anything better people had recourse to
elaborate Eastern ceremonials, or contented
themselves with the time-honoured
domestic worship of the <i>lares</i> and <i>penates</i>.
Yet their minds were ripe for some kind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
of monotheism, and in order that the Jewish
conception should come to be generally
adopted, it was only necessary that
it should be freed from its limitations of
nationality, and that Jehovah should be
set forth as Sustainer of the universe and
Father of all mankind. This was done by
Jesus and Paul. The theory of divine action
implied throughout the gospels and
the epistles was the first complete monotheism
attained by mankind, or at least by
that portion of it from which our modern
civilization has descended. Here for the
first time we have the idea of God dissociated
from the limiting circumstances
with which it had been entangled in all
the ethnic religions of antiquity. Individual
thinkers here and there had already,
doubtless, reached an equally true conception,
as was shown by Kleanthes in his
sublime hymn to Zeus;<a name="FNanchor_9_11" id="FNanchor_9_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_11" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> but it was now
for the first time set forth in such wise as
to win assent from the common folk as
well as the philosophers, and to make its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
way into the hearts of all men. Its acceptance
was hastened, and its hold upon
mankind immeasurably strengthened, by
the divinely beautiful ethical teaching in
which Jesus couched it,&mdash;that teaching,
so often misunderstood yet so profoundly
true, which heralded the time when Man
shall have thrown off the burden of his
bestial inheritance and strife and sorrow
shall cease from the earth.<a name="FNanchor_10_12" id="FNanchor_10_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_12" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>

<p>We shall presently see that in its fundamental
features the theism of Jesus and
Paul was so true that it must endure as
long as man endures. Changes of statement
may alter the outward appearance of
it, but the kernel of truth will remain the
same forever. But the shifting body of religious
doctrine known as Christianity has
at various times contained much that is
unknown to this pure theism, and much
that has shown itself to be ephemeral in its
hold upon men. The change from polytheism
to monotheism could not be thoroughly
accomplished all at once. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
Christianity spread over the Roman world
it became encrusted with pagan notions
and observances, and a similar process
went on during the conversion of the Teutonic
barbarians. Yuletide and Easter and
other church holidays were directly adopted
from the old nature-worship; the adoration
of tutelar household deities survived in the
homage paid to patron saints; and the
worship of the Berecynthian Mother was
continued in that of the Virgin Mary.<a name="FNanchor_11_13" id="FNanchor_11_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_13" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
Even the name <i>God</i>, applied to the Deity
throughout Teutonic Christendom, seems
to be neither more nor less than <i>Wodan</i>,
the personification of the storm-wind, the
supreme divinity of our pagan forefathers.<a name="FNanchor_B_1" id="FNanchor_B_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_1" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_B_1" id="Footnote_B_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_1"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> See <a href="#B">note B</a>. at the end of the volume.</p></div>

<p>That Christianity should thus have retained
names and symbols and rites belonging
to heathen antiquity was inevitable.
The system of Christian theism was the
work of some of the loftiest minds that have
ever appeared upon the earth; but it was
adopted by millions of men and women, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
all degrees of knowledge and ignorance, of
keenness and dullness, of spirituality and
grossness, and these brought to it their
various inherited notions and habits of
thought. In all its ages, therefore, Christian
theism has meant one thing to one
person, and another thing to another.
While the highest Christian minds have
always been monotheistic, the multitude
have outgrown polytheism but slowly;
and even the monotheism of the highest
minds has been coloured by notions ultimately
derived from the primeval ghost-world
which have interfered with its purity,
and have seriously hampered men in
their search after truth.</p>

<p>In illustration of this point we have now
to notice two strongly contrasted views of
the divine nature which have been held
by Christian theists, and to observe their
bearings upon the scientific thought of
modern times.</p>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_046a.jpg" width="400" height="76" alt="" />
</div>



<h2 class="no-break"><a name="V" id="V">V.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>The Idea of God as immanent in the World.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-w.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi"><span class="smcap">We</span> have seen that since the primitive
savage philosophy did not
distinguish between the human
ghost and the elemental demon or deity,
the religion of antiquity was an inextricable
tangle of ancestor-worship with nature-worship.
Nevertheless, among some peoples
the one, among others the other,
became predominant. I think it can hardly
be an accidental coincidence that nature-worship
predominated with the Greeks and
Hindus, the only peoples of antiquity who
accomplished anything in the exact sciences,
or in metaphysics. The capacity for
abstract thinking which led the Hindu to
originate algebra, and the Greek to originate
geometry, and both to attempt elaborate
scientific theories of the universe,&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
this same capacity revealed itself in the
manner in which they deified the powers
of nature. They were able to imagine the
indwelling spirit of the sun or the storm
without help from the conception of an
individual ghost. Such being the general
capacity of the people, we can readily understand
how, when it came to monotheism,
their most eminent thinkers should have
been able to frame the conception of God
acting in and through the powers of nature,
without the aid of any grossly anthropomorphic
symbolism. In this connection it is
interesting to observe the characteristics
of the idea of God as conceived by the
three greatest fathers of the Greek church,
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius.
The philosophy of these profound
and vigorous thinkers was in large measure
derived from the Stoics. They regarded
Deity as immanent in the universe, and
eternally operating through natural laws.
In their view God is not a localizable personality,
remote from the world, and acting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
upon it only by means of occasional portent
and prodigy; nor is the world a lifeless
machine blindly working after some preordained
method, and only feeling the presence
of God in so far as he now and then
sees fit to interfere with its normal course
of procedure. On the contrary, God is the
ever-present life of the world; it is through
him that all things exist from moment to
moment, and the natural sequence of events
is a perpetual revelation of the divine wisdom
and goodness. In accordance with
this fundamental view, Clement, for example,
repudiated the Gnostic theory of the
vileness of matter, condemned asceticism,
and regarded the world as hallowed by the
presence of indwelling Deity. Knowing
no distinction "between what man discovers
and what God reveals," he explained
Christianity as a natural development from
the earlier religious thought of mankind.
It was essential to his idea of the divine
perfection that the past should contain
within itself all the germs of the future;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
and accordingly he attached but slight value
to tales of miracle, and looked upon salvation
as the normal ripening of the higher
spiritual qualities of man "under the guidance
of immanent Deity." The views of
Clement's disciple Origen are much like
those of his master. Athanasius ventured
much farther into the bewildering regions
of metaphysics. Yet in his doctrine of the
Trinity, by which he overcame the visible
tendency toward polytheism in the theories
of Arius, and averted the threatened danger
of a compromise between Christianity and
Paganism, he proceeded upon the lines
which Clement had marked out. In his
very suggestive work on "The Continuity
of Christian Thought," Professor Alexander
Allen thus sets forth the Athanasian point
of view: "In the formula of Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, as three distinct and coequal
members in the one divine essence,
there was the recognition and the reconciliation
of the philosophical schools which
had divided the ancient world. In the idea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
of the eternal Father the Oriental mind
recognized what it liked to call the profound
abyss of being, that which lies back of all
phenomena, the hidden mystery which lends
awe to human minds seeking to know the
divine. In the doctrine of the eternal Son
revealing the Father, immanent in nature
and humanity as the life and light shining
through all created things, the divine reason
in which the human reason shares, there
was the recognition of the truth after which
Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics were
struggling,&mdash;the tie which binds the creation
to God in the closest organic relationship.
In the doctrine of the Holy Spirit
the church guarded against any pantheistic
confusion of God with the world by upholding
the life of the manifested Deity as essentially
ethical or spiritual, revealing itself
in humanity in its highest form, only in so
far as humanity recognized its calling and
through the Spirit entered into communion
with the Father and the Son."</p>

<p>Great as was the service which these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
views of Athanasius rendered in the fourth
century of our era, they are scarcely to be
regarded as a permanent or essential feature
of Christian theism. The metaphysic
in which they are couched is alien to the
metaphysic of our time, yet through this
vast difference it is all the more instructive
to note how closely Athanasius approaches
the confines of modern scientific thought,
simply through his fundamental conception
of God as the indwelling life of the universe.
We shall be still more forcibly struck with
this similarity when we come to consider
the character impressed upon our idea of
God by the modern doctrine of evolution.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
<img src="images/pg_086.jpg" width="75" height="71" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_158a.jpg" width="400" height="86" alt="" />
</div>



<h2 class="no-break"><a name="VI" id="VI">VI.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>The Idea of God as remote from the World.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-b.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">But</span> this Greek conception of divine
immanence did not find favour with
the Latin-speaking world. There
a very different notion prevailed, the origin
of which may be traced to the mental
habits attending the primitive ancestor-worship.
Out of materials furnished by
the ghost-world a crude kind of monotheism
could be reached by simply carrying
back the thought to a single ghost-deity
as the original ancestor of all the others.
Some barbarous races have gone as far as
this, as for example the Zulus, who have
developed the doctrine of divine ancestors
so far as to recognize a first ancestor, the
Great Father, Unkulunkulu, who created
the world.<a name="FNanchor_12_14" id="FNanchor_12_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_14" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The kind of theism reached
by this process of thought differs essen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>tially
from the theism reached through the
medium of nature-worship. For whereas
in the latter case the god of the sky or
the sea is regarded as a mysterious spirit
acting in and through the phenomena, in
the former case the phenomena are regarded
as coerced into activity by some
power existing outside of them, and this
power is conceived as manlike in the crudest
sense, having been originally thought
of as the ghost of some man who once
lived upon the earth. In the monotheism
which is reached by thinking along these
lines of inference, the universe is conceived
as an inert lifeless machine, impelled
by blind forces which have been
set acting from without; and God is conceived
as existing apart from the world in
solitary inaccessible majesty,&mdash;"an absentee
God," as Carlyle says, "sitting idle
ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside
of his universe, and 'seeing it go.'" This
conception demands less of the intellect
than the conception of God as immanent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
in the universe. It requires less grasp of
mind and less width of experience, and it
has accordingly been much the more common
conception. The idea of the indwelling
God is an attempt to reach out toward
the reality, and as such it taxes the powers
of the finite mind. The idea of God
external to the universe is a symbol which
in no wise approaches the reality, and for
that very reason it does not tax the mental
powers; there is an aspect of finality
about it, in which the ordinary mind rests
content and complains of whatever seeks
to disturb its repose.</p>

<p>I must not be understood as ignoring
the fact that this lower species of theism
has been entertained by some of the loftiest
minds of our race, both in ancient and
in modern times. When once such an
ever-present conception as the idea of God
has become intertwined with the whole
body of the thoughts of mankind, it is
very difficult for the most powerful and
subtle intelligence to change the form it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
has taken. It has become so far organized
into the texture of the mind that it
abides there unconsciously, like our fundamental
axioms about number and magnitude;
it sways our thought hither and
thither without our knowing it. The two
forms of theism here contrasted have slowly
grown up under the myriad unassignable
influences that in antiquity caused nature-worship
to predominate among some
people and ancestor-worship among others;
they have coloured all the philosophizing
that has been done for more than
twenty centuries; and it is seldom that a
thinker educated under the one form ever
comes to adopt the other and habitually
employ it, save under the mighty influence
of modern science, the tendency of
which, as we shall presently see, is all in
one direction.</p>

<p>Among ancient thinkers the view of
Deity as remote from the world prevailed
with the followers of Epikuros, who held
that the immortal gods could not be sup<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>posed
to trouble themselves about the paltry
affairs of men, but lived a blessed life
of their own, undisturbed in the far-off empyrean.
This left the world quite under
the sway of blind forces, and thus we find
it depicted in the marvellous poem of Lucretius,
one of the loftiest monuments of
Latin genius. It is to all appearance an
atheistic world, albeit the author was perhaps
more profoundly religious in spirit
than any other Roman that ever lived,
save Augustine; yet to his immediate
scientific purpose this atheism was no
drawback. When we are investigating
natural phenomena, with intent to explain
them scientifically, our proper task is simply
to ascertain the physical conditions
under which they occur, and the less we
meddle with metaphysics or theology the
better. As Laplace said, the mathematician,
in solving his equations, does not
need "the hypothesis of God."<a name="FNanchor_13_15" id="FNanchor_13_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_15" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> To the
scientific investigator, as such, the forces
of nature are doubtless blind, like the <i>x</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
and <i>y</i> in algebra, but this is only so long
as he contents himself with describing
their modes of operation; when he undertakes
to explain them philosophically, as
we shall see, he can in no wise dispense
with his theistic hypothesis. The Lucretian
philosophy, therefore, admirable as a
scientific coördination of such facts about
the physical universe as were then known,
goes but very little way as a philosophy.
It is interesting to note that this atheism
followed directly from that species of theism
which placed God outside of his universe.
We shall find the case of modern
atheism to be quite similar. As soon as
this crude and misleading conception of
God is refuted, as the whole progress of
scientific knowledge tends to refute it, the
modern atheist or positivist falls back
upon his universe of blind forces and contents
himself with it, while zealously shouting
from the housetops that this is the
whole story.</p>

<p>To one familiar with Christian ideas, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
notion that Man is too insignificant a creature
to be worth the notice of Deity seems
at once pathetic and grotesque. In the
view of Plato, by which all Christendom
has been powerfully influenced, there is
profound pathos. The wickedness and
misery of the world wrought so strongly
upon Plato's keen sympathies and delicate
moral sense that he came to conclusions
almost as gloomy as those of the Buddhist
who regards existence as an evil. In the
Timaios he depicts the material world as
essentially vile; he is unable to think of
the pure and holy Deity as manifested
in it, and he accordingly separates the
Creator from his creation by the whole
breadth of infinitude. This view passed
on to the Gnostics, for whom the puzzling
problem of philosophy was how to explain
the action of the spiritual God upon the
material universe. Sometimes the interval
was bridged by mediating æons or
emanations partly spiritual and partly material;
sometimes the world was held to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
be the work of the devil, and in no sense
divine.<a name="FNanchor_14_16" id="FNanchor_14_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_16" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> The Greek fathers under the
lead of Clement, espousing the higher theism,
kept clear of this torrent of Gnostic
thought; but upon Augustine it fell with
full force, and he was carried away with
it. In his earlier writings Augustine
showed himself not incapable of comprehending
the views of Clement and Athanasius;
but his intense feeling of man's
wickedness dragged him irresistibly in
the opposite direction. In his doctrine
of original sin, he represents humanity as
cut off from all relationship with God, who
is depicted as a crudely anthropomorphic
Being far removed from the universe and
accessible only through the mediating offices
of an organized church. Compared
with the thoughts of the Greek fathers
this was a barbaric conception, but it was
suited alike to the lower grade of culture
in western Europe, and to the Latin political
genius, which in the decline of the
Empire was already occupying itself with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
its great and beneficent work of constructing
an imperial Church. For these reasons
the Augustinian theology prevailed,
and in the Dark Ages which followed it
became so deeply inwrought into the innermost
fibres of Latin Christianity that
it remains dominant to-day alike in Catholic
and Protestant churches. With few
exceptions every child born of Christian
parents in western Europe or in America
grows up with an idea of God the outlines
of which were engraven upon men's minds
by Augustine fifteen centuries ago. Nay,
more, it is hardly too much to say that
three fourths of the body of doctrine currently
known as Christianity, unwarranted
by Scripture and never dreamed of by
Christ or his apostles, first took coherent
shape in the writings of this mighty Roman,
who was separated from the apostolic
age by an interval of time like that which
separates us from the invention of printing
and the discovery of America. The
idea of God upon which all this Augus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>tinian
doctrine is based is the idea of a
Being actuated by human passions and
purposes, localizable in space and utterly
remote from that inert machine, the universe
in which we live, and upon which
He acts intermittently through the suspension
of what are called natural laws.
So deeply has this conception penetrated
the thought of Christendom that we continually
find it at the bottom of the speculations
and arguments of men who would
warmly repudiate it as thus stated in its
naked outlines. It dominates the reasonings
alike of believers and skeptics, of
theists and atheists; it underlies at once
the objections raised by orthodoxy against
each new step in science and the assaults
made by materialism upon every religious
conception of the world; and thus it is
chiefly responsible for that complicated
misunderstanding which, by a lamentable
confusion of thought, is commonly called
"the conflict between religion and science."</p>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_168.jpg" width="400" height="85" alt="" />
</div>


<h2 class="no-break"><a name="VII" id="VII">VII.</a></h2>

<p class="hang"><i>Conflict between the Two Ideas, commonly misunderstood
as a Conflict between Religion and Science.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-i.jpg" width="50" height="49" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi2"><span class="smcap">In</span> illustration of the mischief that
has been wrought by the Augustinian
conception of Deity, we may
cite the theological objections urged against
the Newtonian theory of gravitation and
the Darwinian theory of natural selection.
Leibnitz, who as a mathematician but little
inferior to Newton himself might have
been expected to be easily convinced of the
truth of the theory of gravitation, was
nevertheless deterred by theological scruples
from accepting it. It appeared to him
that it substituted the action of physical
forces for the direct action of the Deity.
Now the fallacy of this argument of Leibnitz
is easy to detect. It lies in a meta<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>physical
misconception of the meaning of
the word "force." "Force" is implicitly
regarded as a sort of entity or dæmon which
has a mode of action distinguishable from
that of Deity; otherwise it is meaningless
to speak of substituting the one for the
other. But such a personification of
"force" is a remnant of barbaric thought,
in no wise sanctioned by physical science.
When astronomy speaks of two planets as
attracting each other with a "force" which
varies directly as their masses and inversely
as the squares of their distances apart, it
simply uses the phrase as a convenient
metaphor by which to describe the manner
in which the observed movements of the
two bodies occur. It explains that in presence
of each other the two bodies are observed
to change their positions in a certain
specified way, and this is all that it
means. This is all that a strictly scientific
hypothesis can possibly allege, and this is
all that observation can possibly prove.
Whatever goes beyond this and imagines<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
or asserts a kind of "pull" between the
two bodies, is not science, but metaphysics.
An atheistic metaphysics may imagine
such a "pull," and may interpret it as the
action of something that is not Deity, but
such a conclusion can find no support in
the scientific theorem, which is simply a
generalized description of phenomena. The
general considerations upon which the belief
in the existence and direct action of
Deity is otherwise founded are in no wise
disturbed by the establishment of any such
scientific theorem. We are still perfectly
free to maintain that it is the direct action
of Deity which is manifested in the planetary
movements; having done nothing
more with our Newtonian hypothesis than
to construct a happy formula for expressing
the mode or order of the manifestation.
We may have learned something new concerning
the manner of divine action; we
certainly have not "substituted" any other
kind of action for it. And what is thus
obvious in this simple astronomical example<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
is equally true in principle in every case
whatever in which one set of phenomena
is interpreted by reference to another set.
In no case whatever can science use the
words "force" or "cause" except as metaphorically
descriptive of some observed or
observable sequence of phenomena. And
consequently at no imaginable future time,
so long as the essential conditions of human
thinking are maintained, can science even
attempt to substitute the action of any
other power for the direct action of Deity.
The theological objection urged by Leibnitz
against Newton was repeated word for
word by Agassiz in his comments upon
Darwin. He regarded it as a fatal objection
to the Darwinian theory that it appeared
to substitute the action of physical
forces for the creative action of Deity. The
fallacy here is precisely the same as in
Leibnitz's argument. Mr. Darwin has
convinced us that the existence of highly
complicated organisms is the result of an
infinitely diversified aggregate of circum<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>stances
so minute as severally to seem
trivial or accidental; yet the consistent
theist will always occupy an impregnable
position in maintaining that the entire
series in each and every one of its incidents
is an immediate manifestation of the creative
action of God.</p>

<p>In this connection it is worth while to
state explicitly what is the true province of
scientific explanation. Is it not obvious
that since a philosophical theism must regard
divine power as the immediate source
of all phenomena alike, therefore science
cannot properly explain any particular
group of phenomena by a direct reference
to the action of Deity? Such a reference
is not an explanation, since it adds nothing
to our previous knowledge either of the
phenomena or of the manner of divine
action. The business of science is simply
to ascertain in what manner phenomena
coexist with each other or follow each
other, and the only kind of explanation
with which it can properly deal is that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
which refers one set of phenomena to
another set. In pursuing this, its legitimate
business, science does not touch on
the province of theology in any way, and
there is no conceivable occasion for any
conflict between the two. From this and
the previous considerations taken together
it follows not only that such explanations
as are contained in the Newtonian and
Darwinian theories are entirely consistent
with theism, but also that they are the only
kind of explanations with which science
can properly concern itself at all. To say
that complex organisms were directly
created by the Deity is to make an assertion
which, however true in a theistic
sense, is utterly barren. It is of no profit
to theism, which must be taken for granted
before the assertion can be made; and it
is of no profit to science, which must still
ask its question, "How?"<a name="FNanchor_15_17" id="FNanchor_15_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_17" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>

<p>We are now prepared to see that the theological
objection urged against the Newtonian
and Darwinian theories has its roots<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
in that imperfect kind of theism which
Augustine did so much to fasten upon the
western world. Obviously if Leibnitz and
Agassiz had been educated in that higher
theism shared by Clement and Athanasius
in ancient times with Spinoza and Goethe
in later days,&mdash;if they had been accustomed
to conceive of God as immanent
in the universe and eternally creative,&mdash;then
the argument which they urged with
so much feeling would never have occurred
to them. By no possibility could such an
argument have entered their minds. To
conceive of "physical forces" as powers of
which the action could in any wise be "substituted"
for the action of Deity would in
such case have been absolutely impossible.
Such a conception involves the idea of God
as remote from the world and acting upon
it from outside. The whole notion of what
theological writers are fond of calling "secondary
causes" involves such an idea of
God. The higher or Athanasian theism
knows nothing of secondary causes in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
world where every event flows directly
from the eternal First Cause. It knows
nothing of physical forces save as immediate
manifestations of the omnipresent
creative power of God. In the personification
of physical forces, and the implied
contrast between their action and that of
Deity, there is something very like a survival
of the habits of thought which characterized
ancient polytheism. What are
these personified forces but little gods who
are supposed to be invading the sacred
domain of the ruler Zeus? When one
speaks of substituting the action of Gravitation
for the direct action of Deity, does
there not hover somewhere in the dim
background of the conception a vague
spectre of Gravitation in the guise of a rebellious
Titan? Doubtless it would not be
easy to bring any one to acknowledge such a
charge, but the unseen and unacknowledged
part of a fallacy is just that which is most
persistent and mischievous. It is not so
many generations, after all, since our an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>cestors
were barbarians and polytheists;
and fragments of their barbaric thinking
are continually intruding unawares into
the midst of our lately-acquired scientific
culture. In most philosophical discussions
a great deal of loose phraseology is used, in
order to find the proper connotations of
which we must go back to primitive and
untutored ages. Such is eminently the
case with the phrases in which the forces
of nature are personified and described
as something else than manifestations of
omnipresent Deity.</p>

<p>This subject is of such immense importance
that I must illustrate it from yet
another point of view. We must observe
the manner in which, along with the progress
of scientific discovery, theological arguments
have come to be permeated by
the strange assumption that the greater
part of the universe is godless. Here again
we must go back for a moment to the
primeval world and observe how behind
every physical phenomenon there were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
supposed to be quasi-human passions and
a quasi-human will. Now the phenomena
which were first arranged and systematized
in men's thoughts, and thus made the subject
of something like scientific generalization,
were the simplest, the most accessible,
and the most manageable phenomena; and
from these the conception of a quasi-human
will soonest faded away. There are savages
who believe that hatchets and kettles
have souls, but men unquestionably outgrew
such a belief as this long before they
outgrew the belief that there are ghost-like
deities in the tempest, or in the sun and
moon. After many ages of culture, men
ceased to regard the familiar and regularly-recurring
phenomena of nature as immediate
results of volition, and reserved this
primeval explanation for unusual or terrible
phenomena, such as comets and eclipses,
or famines and plagues. As the result of
these habits of thought, in course of time,
Nature seemed to be divided into two antithetical
provinces. On the one hand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
there were the phenomena that occurred
with a simple regularity which seemed to
exclude the idea of capricious volition; and
these were supposed to constitute the realm
of natural law. On the other hand, there
were the complex and irregular phenomena
in which the presence of law could not so
easily be detected; and these were supposed
to constitute the realm of immediate
divine action. This antithesis has forever
haunted the minds of men imbued with
the lower or Augustinian theism; and such
have made up the larger part of the Christian
world. It has tended to make the
theologians hostile to science and the men
of science hostile to theology. For as scientific
generalization has steadily extended
the region of natural law, the region which
theology has assigned to divine action has
steadily diminished. Every discovery in
science has stripped off territory from the
latter province and added it to the former.
Every such discovery has accordingly been
promulgated and established in the teeth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
of bitter and violent opposition on the part
of theologians. A desperate fight it has
been for some centuries, in which science
has won every disputed position, while
theology, untaught by perennial defeat,
still valiantly defends the little corner that
is left it. Still as of old the ordinary theologian
rests his case upon the assumption
of disorder, caprice, and miraculous interference
with the course of nature. He
naively asks, "If plants and animals have
been naturally originated, if the world as a
whole has been evolved and not manufactured,
and if human actions conform to
law, what is there left for God to do? If
not formally repudiated, is he not thrust
back into the past eternity, as an ultimate
source of things, which is postulated for
form's sake, but might as well, for all
practical purposes, be omitted?"<a name="FNanchor_16_17" id="FNanchor_16_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_17" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>

<p>The scientific inquirer may reply that
the difficulty is one which theology has
created for itself. It is certainly not science
that has relegated the creative activ<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>ity
of God to some nameless moment in
the bygone eternity and left him without
occupation in the present world. It is not
science that is responsible for the mischievous
distinction between divine action
and natural law. That distinction is historically
derived from a loose habit of
philosophizing characteristic of ignorant
ages, and was bequeathed to modern times
by the theology of the Latin church.
Small blame to the atheist who, starting
upon such a basis, thinks he can interpret
the universe without the idea of God! He
is but doing as well as he knows how, with
the materials given him. One has only,
however, to adopt the higher theism of
Clement and Athanasius, and this alleged
antagonism between science and theology,
by which so many hearts have been saddened,
so many minds darkened, vanishes
at once and forever. "Once really adopt
the conception of an ever-present God,
without whom not a sparrow falls to the
ground, and it becomes self-evident that
the law of gravitation is but an expression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
of a particular mode of divine action. And
what is thus true of one law is true of all
laws."<a name="FNanchor_17_18" id="FNanchor_17_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_18" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> The thinker in whose mind divine
action is thus identified with orderly action,
and to whom a really irregular phenomenon
would seem like a manifestation of sheer
diabolism, foresees in every possible extension
of knowledge a fresh confirmation of
his faith in God. From his point of view
there can be no antagonism between our
duty as inquirers and our duty as worshippers.
To him no part of the universe
is godless. In the swaying to and fro of
molecules and the ceaseless pulsations of
ether, in the secular shiftings of planetary
orbits, in the busy work of frost and raindrop,
in the mysterious sprouting of the
seed, in the everlasting tale of death and
life renewed, in the dawning of the babe's
intelligence, in the varied deeds of men
from age to age, he finds that which awakens
the soul to reverential awe; and each
act of scientific explanation but reveals an
opening through which shines the glory of
the Eternal Majesty.</p>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_046a.jpg" width="400" height="76" alt="" />
</div>



<h2 class="no-break"><a name="VIII" id="VIII">VIII.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>Anthropomorphic Conceptions of God.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-b.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">Between</span> the two ideas of God
which we have exhibited in such
striking contrast, there is nevertheless
one point of resemblance; and
this point is fundamental, since it is the
point in virtue of which both are entitled
to be called theistic ideas. In both there
is presumed to be a likeness of some sort
between God and Man. In both there is
an element of anthropomorphism. Even
upon this their common ground, however,
there is a wide difference between the two
conceptions. In the one the anthropomorphic
element is gross, in the other it
is refined and subtle. The difference is
so far-reaching that some years ago I proposed
to mark it by contrasting these two
conceptions of God as Anthropomorphic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
Theism and Cosmic Theism. For the
doctrine which represents God as immanent
in the universe and revealing himself
in the orderly succession of events,
the name Cosmic Theism is eminently
appropriate: but it is not intended by
the antithetic nomenclature to convey the
impression that in cosmic theism there
is nothing anthropomorphic.<a name="FNanchor_18_19" id="FNanchor_18_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_19" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> A theory
which should regard the Human Soul as
alien and isolated in the universe, without
any links uniting it with the eternal
source of existence, would not be theism
at all. It would be Atheism, which on
its metaphysical side is "the denial of
anything psychical in the universe outside
of human consciousness." It is far
enough from any such doctrine to the
cosmic theism of Clement and Origen, of
Spinoza and Lessing and Schleiermacher.
The difference, however, between this cosmic
conception of God and the anthropomorphic
conception held by Tertullian and
Augustine, Calvin and Voltaire and Paley,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
is sufficiently great to be described as a
contrast. The explanation of the difference
must be sought far back in the historic
genesis of the two conceptions. Cosmic
theism, as we have seen, was reached
through nature-worship with its notion of
vast elemental spirits indwelling in physical
phenomena. Anthropomorphic theism
is descended from the notion of tutelar
deities which was part of the primitive ancestor-worship.
In the process by which
men attained to cosmic theism, physical
generalization was the chief agency at
work; but into anthropomorphic theism,
as we have seen, there entered conceptions
derived from men's political thinking.
For such a people as the Romans,
who could deify Imperator Augustus in
just the same way that the Japanese have
deified their Mikado, it was natural, and
easy to conceive of God as a monarch enthroned
in the heavens and surrounded
by a court of ministering angels. Such
was the popular conception in the early<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
ages of Christianity, and such it has
doubtless remained with the mass of uninstructed
people even to this day. The
very grotesqueness of the idea, as it appears
to the mind of a philosopher, is an
index of the ease with which it satisfies
the mind of an uneducated man. Many
persons, no doubt, have entertained this
idea of God without ever giving it very
definite shape, and many have recognized
it as in great measure symbolic: yet nothing
can be more certain than that untold
thousands have conceived it in its
full intensity of anthropomorphism. Alike
in sermons and theological treatises, in
stately poetry and in every-day talk, the
Deity has been depicted as pleased or
angry, as repenting of his own acts, as
soothed by adulation and quick to wreak
vengeance upon silly people for blasphemous
remarks. In those curious bills of
expenses for the mediæval miracle-plays,
along with charges of twopence for keeping
up a "fyre at hell mouthe," we find<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
such items as a shilling for a purple coat
for God. In one of these plays an angel
who has just witnessed the crucifixion
comes rushing into Heaven, crying, "Wake
up, almighty Father! Here are those
beggarly Jews killing your son, and you
asleep here like a drunkard!" "Devil take
me if I knew anything about it!" is the
drowsy reply. Not the slightest irreverence
was intended in these miracle-plays,
which were the only dramatic performances
tolerated by the mediæval church,
for the sake of their wholesome educational
influence upon the common people.
In the light of such facts, one sees that
the representations of the Deity as an old
man of august presence, with flowing hair
and beard, by the early modern painters,
must have meant to all save the highest
minds much more than a mere symbol.
Until one's thoughts have become accustomed
to range far and wide over the
universe it is doubtless impossible to
frame a conception of Deity that is not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
grossly anthropomorphic. I remember distinctly
the conception which I had formed
when five years of age. I imagined a narrow
office just over the zenith, with a tall
standing-desk running lengthwise, upon
which lay several open ledgers bound in
coarse leather. There was no roof over
this office, and the walls rose scarcely five
feet from the floor, so that a person standing
at the desk could look out upon the
whole world. There were two persons at
the desk, and one of them&mdash;a tall, slender
man, of aquiline features, wearing spectacles,
with a pen in his hand and another
behind his ear&mdash;was God. The other,
whose appearance I do not distinctly recall,
was an attendant angel. Both were
diligently watching the deeds of men and
recording them in the ledgers. To my
infant mind this picture was not grotesque,
but ineffably solemn, and the fact that
all my words and acts were thus written
down, to confront me at the day of judgment,
seemed naturally a matter of grave
concern.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>

<p>If we could cross-question all the men
and women we know, and still more all
the children, we should probably find that,
even in this enlightened age, the conceptions
of Deity current throughout the civilized
world contain much that is in the
crudest sense anthropomorphic. Such, at
any rate, seems to be the character of the
conceptions with which we start in life.
With those whose studies lead them to
ponder upon the subject in the light of
enlarged experience, these conceptions become
greatly modified. They lose their
anthropomorphic definiteness, they grow
vague by reason of their expansion, they
become recognized as largely symbolic,
but they never quite lose all traces of
their primitive form. Indeed, as I said a
moment ago, they cannot do so. The utter
demolition of anthropomorphism would
be the demolition of theism. We have
now to see what traces of its primitive
form the idea of God can retain, in the
light of our modern knowledge of the universe.</p>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>


<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_062a.jpg" width="400" height="77" alt="" />
</div>


<h2 class="no-break"><a name="IX" id="IX">IX.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>The Argument from Design.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-t.jpg" width="50" height="49" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">The</span> most highly refined and scientific
form of anthropomorphic theism
is that which we are accustomed
to associate with Paley and the
authors of the Bridgewater treatises. It
is not peculiar to Christianity, since it
has been held by pagans and unbelievers
as firmly as by the devoutest members of
the church. The argument from design
is as old as Sokrates, and was relied on
by Voltaire and the English deists of the
eighteenth century no less than by Dr.
Chalmers and Sir Charles Bell. Upon this
theory the universe is supposed to have
been created by a Being possessed of intelligence
and volition essentially similar to
the intelligence and volition of Man. This
Being is actuated by a desire for the good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
of his creatures, and in pursuance thereof
entertains purposes and adapts means to
ends with consummate ingenuity. The
process by which the world was created
was analogous to manufacture, as being
the work of an intelligent artist operating
upon unintelligent materials objectively
existing. It is in accordance with this
theory that books on natural theology, as
well as those text-books of science which
deem it edifying to introduce theological
reflections where they have no proper
place, are fond of speaking of the "Divine
Architect" or the "Great Designer."</p>

<p>This theory, which is still commonly
held, was in high favour during the earlier
part of the present century. In view of
the great and sudden advances which
physical knowledge was making, it seemed
well worth while to consecrate science to
the service of theology; and at the same
time, in emphasizing the argument from
design, theology adopted the methods of
science. The attempt to discover evi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>dences
of beneficent purpose in the structure
of the eye and ear, in the distribution
of plants and animals over the earth's
surface, in the shapes of the planetary
orbits and the inclinations of their axes,
or in any other of the innumerable arrangements
of nature, was an attempt at
true induction; and high praise is due to
the able men who have devoted their energies
to reinforcing the argument. By far
the greater part of the evidence was naturally
drawn from the organic world, which
began to be comprehensively studied in
the mutual relations of all its parts in the
time of Lamarck and Cuvier. The organic
world is full of unspeakably beautiful
and wonderful adaptations between organisms
and their environments, as well
as between the various parts of the same
organism. The unmistakable end of these
adaptations is the welfare of the animal
or plant; they conduce to length and completeness
of life, to the permanence and
prosperity of the species. For some time,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
therefore, the arguments of natural theology
seemed to be victorious along the
whole line. The same kind of reasoning
was pushed farther and farther to explain
the classification and morphology of plants
and animals; until the climax was reached
in Agassiz's remarkable "Essay on Classification,"
published in 1859, in which every
organic form was not only regarded as a
concrete thought of the Creator interpretable
by the human mind, but this kind
of explanation was expressly urged as a
substitute for inquiries into the physical
causes whereby such forms might have
been originated.</p>

<p>In its best days, however, there was a
serious weakness in the argument from
design, which was ably pointed out by
Mr. Mill, in an essay wherein he accords
much more weight to the general argument
than could now by any possibility
be granted it. Its fault was the familiar
logical weakness of proving too much.
The very success of the argument in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
showing the world to have been the work
of an intelligent Designer made it impossible
to suppose that Creator to be at
once omnipotent and absolutely benevolent.
For nothing can be clearer than
that Nature is full of cruelty and maladaptation.
In every part of the animal
world we find implements of torture surpassing
in devilish ingenuity anything
that was ever seen in the dungeons of the
Inquisition. We are introduced to a
scene of incessant and universal strife, of
which it is not apparent on the surface
that the outcome is the good or the happiness
of anything that is sentient. In
pre-Darwinian times, before we had gone
below the surface, no such outcome was
discernible. Often, indeed, we find the
higher life wantonly sacrificed to the lower,
as instanced by the myriads of parasites
apparently created for no other purpose
than to prey upon creatures better
than themselves. Such considerations
bring up, with renewed emphasis, the ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>lasting
problem of the origin of evil. If
the Creator of such a world is omnipotent
he cannot be actuated solely by a desire
for the welfare of his creatures, but must
have other ends in view to which this is
in some measure subordinated. Or if he
is absolutely benevolent, then he cannot
be omnipotent, but there is something in
the nature of things which sets limits to
his creative power. This dilemma is as
old as human thinking, and it still remains
a stumbling-block in the way of any theory
of the universe that can possibly be
devised. But it is an obstacle especially
formidable to any kind of anthropomorphic
theism. For the only avenue of escape
is the assumption of an inscrutable
mystery which would contain the solution
of the problem if the human intellect
could only penetrate so far; and the more
closely we invite a comparison between
divine and human methods of working, the
more do we close up that only outlet.</p>

<p>The practical solution oftenest adopted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
has been that which sacrifices the Creator's
omnipotence in favour of his benevolence.
In the noblest of the purely
Aryan religions&mdash;that of which the sacred
literature is contained in the Zendavesta&mdash;the
evil spirit Ahriman exists
independently of the will of the good
Ormuzd, and is accountable for all the sin
in the world, but in the fullness of time
he is to be bound in chains and shorn of
his power for mischief.<a name="FNanchor_19_20" id="FNanchor_19_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_20" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> This theory has
passed into Christendom in the form of
Manichæism; but its essential features
have been adopted by orthodox Christianity,
which at the same time has tried to
grasp the other horn of the dilemma and
save the omnipotence of the Deity by paying
him what Mr. Mill calls the doubtful
compliment of making him the creator of
the devil. By this device the essential
polytheism of the conception is thinly
veiled. The confusion of thought has
been persistently blinked by the popular
mind; but among the profoundest think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>ers
of the Aryan race there have been two
who have explicitly adopted the solution
which limits the Creator's power. One of
these was Plato, who held that God's perfect
goodness has been partially thwarted
by the intractableness of the materials he
has had to work with. This theory was
carried to extremes by those Gnostics who
believed that God's work consisted in redeeming
a world originally created by the
devil, and in orthodox Christianity it gave
rise to the Augustinian doctrine of total
depravity, and the "philosophy of the plan
of salvation" founded thereon. The other
great thinker who adopted a similar solution
was Leibnitz. In his famous theory
of optimism the world is by no means
represented as perfect; it is only the best
of all possible worlds, the best the Creator
could make out of the materials at hand.
In recent times Mr. Mill shows a marked
preference for this view, and one of the
foremost religious teachers now living,
Dr. Martineau, falls into a parallel line<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
of thinking in his suggestion that the
primary qualities of matter constitute a
"datum objective to God," who, "in shaping
the orbits out of immensity, and determining
seasons out of eternity, could
but follow the laws of curvature, measure,
and proportion."<a name="FNanchor_20_21" id="FNanchor_20_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_21" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>

<p>But indeed it is not necessary to refer
to the problem of evil in order to show
that the argument from design cannot
prove the existence of an omnipotent and
benevolent Designer. It is not omnipotence
that contrives and plans and adapts
means to ends. These are the methods
of finite intelligence; they imply the overcoming
of obstacles; and to ascribe them
to omnipotence is to combine words that
severally possess meanings into a phrase
that has no meaning. "God said, Let
there be light: and there was light." In
this noble description of creative omnipotence
one would search in vain for any
hint of contrivance. The most the argument
from design could legitimately hope<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
to accomplish was to make it seem probable
that the universe was wrought into
its present shape by an intelligent and benevolent
Being immeasurably superior to
Man, but far from infinite in power and
resources. Such an argument hardly rises
to the level of true theism.<a name="FNanchor_21_22" id="FNanchor_21_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_22" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>


<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
<img src="images/pg_045.jpg" width="75" height="91" alt="" />
</div>
<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_128a.jpg" width="400" height="67" alt="" />
</div>



<h2 class="no-break"><a name="X" id="X">X.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>Simile of the Watch replaced by Simile of
the Flower.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-i.jpg" width="50" height="49" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi2"><span class="smcap">It</span> was in its own chosen stronghold
that this once famous argument
was destined to meet its
doom. It was in the adaptations of the
organic world, in the manifold harmonies
between living creatures and surrounding
circumstances, that it had seemed to find
its chief support; and now came the Darwinian
theory of natural selection, and in
the twinkling of an eye knocked all this
support from under it. It is not that the
organism and its environment have been
adapted to each other by an exercise of
creative intelligence, but it is that the
organism is necessarily fitted to the environment
because in the perennial slaughter
that has gone on from the beginning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
only the fittest have survived. Or, as
it has been otherwise expressed, "the
earth is suited to its inhabitants because
it has produced them, and only such
as suit it live." In the struggle for existence
no individual peculiarity, however
slight, that tends to the preservation of
life is neglected. It is unerringly seized
upon and propagated by natural selection,
and from the cumulative action of such
slight causes have come the beautiful
adaptations of which the organic world is
full. The demonstration of this point,
through the labours of a whole generation
of naturalists, has been one of the most
notable achievements of modern science,
and to the theistic arguments of Paley
and the Bridgewater treatises it has dealt
destruction.</p>

<p>But the Darwinian theory of natural selection
does not stand alone. It is part
of a greater whole. It is the most conspicuous
portion of that doctrine of evolution
in which all the results hitherto<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
attained by the great modern scientific
movement are codified, and which Herbert
Spencer had already begun to set forth
in its main outlines before the Darwinian
theory had been made known to the world.
This doctrine of evolution so far extends
the range of our vision through past and
future time as entirely to alter our conception
of the universe. Our grandfathers,
in common with all preceding generations
of men, could and did suppose
that at some particular moment in the
past eternity the world was created in very
much the shape which it has at present.
But our modern knowledge does not allow
us to suppose anything of the sort. We
can carry back our thoughts through a
long succession of great epochs, some of
them many millions of years in duration,
in each of which the innumerable forms
of life that covered the earth were very
different from what they were in all the
others, and in even the nearest of which
they were notably different from what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
they are now. We can go back still farther
to the eras when the earth was a
whirling ball of vapour, or when it formed
an equatorial belt upon a sun two hundred
million miles in diameter, or when the
sun itself was but a giant nebula from
which as yet no planet had been born.
And through all the vast sweep of time,
from the simple primeval vapour down to
the multifarious world we know to-day, we
see the various forms of Nature coming
into existence one after the other in accordance
with laws of which we are already
beginning to trace the character and
scope. Paley's simile of the watch is no
longer applicable to such a world as this.
It must be replaced by the simile of the
flower. The universe is not a machine,
but an organism, with an indwelling principle
of life. It was not made, but it has
grown.</p>

<p>That such a change in our conception
of the universe marks the greatest revolution
that has ever taken place in human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
thinking need scarcely be said. But even
in this statement we have not quite revealed
the depth of the change. Not only
has modern science made it clear that the
varied forms of Nature which make up the
universe have arisen through a process of
evolution, but it has also made it clear
that what we call the laws of Nature have
been evolved through the self-same process.
The axiom of the persistence of
force, upon which all modern science has
come to rest, involves as a necessary corollary
the persistence of the relations between
forces; so that, starting with the
persistence of force and the primary qualities
of matter, it can be shown that all
those uniformities of coexistence and succession
which we call natural laws have
arisen one after the other in connection
with the forms which have afforded the
occasions for their manifestation. The
all-pervading harmony of Nature is thus
itself a natural product, and the last inch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
of ground is cut away from under the theologians
who suppose the universe to have
come into existence through a supernatural
process of manufacture at the hands
of a Creator outside of itself.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
<img src="images/pg_xxxii.jpg" width="75" height="63" alt="" />
</div>


<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>


<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_172.jpg" width="400" height="80" alt="" />
</div>


<h2 class="no-break"><a name="XI" id="XI">XI.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>The Craving for a Final Cause.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-i.jpg" width="50" height="49" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi2"><span class="smcap">It</span> appears, then, that the idea of
God as remote from the world is
not likely to survive the revolution
in thought which the rapid increase
of modern knowledge has inaugurated.
The knell of anthropomorphic or Augustinian
theism has already sounded. This
conclusion need not, however, disturb us
when we consider how imperfect a form
of theism this is which mankind is now
outgrowing. To get rid of the appearance
of antagonism between science and religion
will of itself be one of the greatest
benefits ever conferred upon the human
race. It will forward science and purify
religion, and it will go far toward increasing
kindness and mutual helpfulness
among men. Since such happy results<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
are likely to follow the general adoption
of the cosmic or Athanasian form of theism,
in place of the other form, it becomes
us to observe more specifically the manner
in which this higher theism stands related
to our modern knowledge.</p>

<p>To every form of theism, as I have already
urged, an anthropomorphic element
is indispensable. It is quite true, on the
one hand, that to ascribe what we know
as human personality to the infinite Deity
straightway lands us in a contradiction,
since personality without limits is inconceivable.
But on the other hand, it is no
less true that the total elimination of anthropomorphism
from the idea of God
abolishes the idea itself. This difficulty
need not dishearten us, for it is no more
than we must expect to encounter on the
threshold of such a problem as the one
before us. We do not approach the question
in the spirit of those natural theologians
who were so ready with their explanations
of the divine purposes. We are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
aware that "we see as through a glass
darkly," and we do not expect to "think
God's thoughts after him" save in the
crudest symbolic fashion. In dealing with
the Infinite we are confessedly treating of
that which transcends our powers of conception.
Our ability to frame ideas is
strictly limited by experience, and our experience
does not furnish the materials for
the idea of a personality which is not narrowly
hemmed in by the inexorable barriers
of circumstance. We therefore cannot
conceive such an idea. But it does
not follow that there is no reality answering
to what such an idea would be if it
could be conceived. The test of inconceivability
is only applicable to the world
of phenomena from which our experience
is gathered. It fails when applied to that
which lies behind phenomena. I do not
hold for this reason that we are justified
in using such an expression as "infinite
personality" in a philosophical inquiry
where clearness of thought and speech is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
above all things desirable. But I do hold,
most emphatically, that we are not debarred
from ascribing a quasi-psychical nature
to the Deity simply because we can
frame no proper conception of such a nature
as absolute and infinite.</p>

<p>The point is of vital importance to theism.
As Kant has well said, "the conception
of God involves not merely a blindly
operating Nature as the eternal root of
things, but a Supreme Being that shall be
the author of all things by free and understanding
action; and it is this conception
which alone has any interest for us." It
will be observed that Kant says nothing
here about "contrivance." By the phrase
"free and understanding action" he doubtless
means much the same that is here
meant by ascribing to God a quasi-psychical
nature. And thus alone, he says,
can we feel any interest in theism. The
thought goes deep, yet is plain enough to
every one. The teleological instinct in
Man cannot be suppressed or ignored.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
The human soul shrinks from the thought
that it is without kith or kin in all this
wide universe. Our reason demands that
there shall be a reasonableness in the constitution
of things. This demand is a fact
in our psychical nature as positive and irrepressible
as our acceptance of geometrical
axioms and our rejection of whatever
controverts such axioms. No ingenuity of
argument can bring us to believe that the
infinite Sustainer of the universe will "put
us to permanent intellectual confusion."
There is in every earnest thinker a craving
after a final cause; and this craving
can no more be extinguished than our
belief in objective reality. Nothing can
persuade us that the universe is a farrago
of nonsense. Our belief in what we call
the evidence of our senses is less strong
than our faith that in the orderly sequence
of events there is a meaning which our
minds could fathom were they only vast
enough. Doubtless in our own age, of
which it is a most healthful symptom
that it questions everything, there are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
many who, through inability to assign the
grounds for such a faith, have persuaded
themselves that it must be a mere superstition
which ought not to be cherished;
but it is not likely that any one of these
has ever really succeeded in ridding himself
of it.</p>

<p>According to Mr. Spencer, the only ultimate
test of reality is persistence, and the
only measure of validity among our primary
beliefs is the success with which
they resist all efforts to change them. Let
us see, then, how it is with the belief in
the essential reasonableness of the universe.
Does this belief answer to any outward
reality? Is there, in the scheme of
things, aught that justifies Man in claiming
kinship of any sort with the God that
is immanent in the world?</p>

<p>The difficulty in answering such questions
has its root in the impossibility of
framing a representative conception of
Deity; but it is a difficulty which may, for
all practical purposes, be surmounted by
the aid of a symbolic conception.</p>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
<div class="chapter-beginning">

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_062a.jpg" width="400" height="77" alt="" />
</div>


<h2 class="no-break"><a name="XII" id="XII">XII.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>Symbolic Conceptions.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-o.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">Observe</span> the meaning of this distinction.
Of any simple object
which can be grasped in a single
act of perception, such as a knife or a
book, an egg or an orange, a circle or a
triangle, you can frame a conception which
almost or quite exactly <i>represents</i> the object.
The picture or visual image in your
mind when the orange is present to the
senses is almost exactly reproduced when
it is absent. The distinction between the
two lies chiefly in the relative vividness
of the former as contrasted with the relative
faintness of the latter. But as the
objects of thought increase in size and in
complexity of detail, the case soon comes
to be very different. You cannot frame
a truly representative conception of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
town in which you live, however familiar
you may be with its streets and houses,
its parks and trees, and the looks and demeanour
of the townsmen; it is impossible
to embrace so many details in a single
mental picture. The mind must range to
and fro among the phenomena in order
to represent the town in a series of conceptions.
But practically what you have
in mind when you speak of the town is
a fragmentary conception in which some
portion of the object is represented, while
you are well aware that with sufficient
pains a series of mental pictures could be
formed which would approximately correspond
to the object. That is to say, this
fragmentary conception stands in your
mind as a <i>symbol</i> of the town. To some
extent the conception is representative,
but to a great degree it is symbolic. With
a further increase in the size and complexity
of the objects of thought, our conceptions
gradually lose their representative
character, and at length become purely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
symbolic. No one can form a mental
picture that answers even approximately
to the earth. Even a homogeneous ball
eight thousand miles in diameter is too
vast an object to be conceived otherwise
than symbolically, and much more is this
true of the ball upon which we live, with
all its endless multiformity of detail. We
imagine a globe and clothe it with a few
terrestrial attributes, and in our minds
this fragmentary notion does duty as a
symbol of the earth.</p>

<p>The case becomes still more striking
when we have to deal with conceptions of
the universe, of cosmic forces such as light
and heat, or of the stupendous secular
changes which modern science calls us to
contemplate. Here our conceptions cannot
even pretend to represent the objects;
they are as purely symbolic as the algebraic
equations whereby the geometer expresses
the shapes of curves. Yet so long
as there are means of verification at our
command, we can reason as safely with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
these symbolic conceptions as if they were
truly representative. The geometer can
at any moment translate his equation into
an actual curve, and thereby test the results
of his reasoning; and the case is
similar with the undulatory theory of light,
the chemist's conception of atomicity, and
other vast stretches of thought which in
recent times have revolutionized our knowledge
of Nature. The danger in the use
of symbolic conceptions is the danger of
framing illegitimate symbols that answer
to nothing in heaven or earth, as has happened
first and last with so many short-lived
theories in science and in metaphysics.
Forewarned of this danger, and
therefore&mdash;I hope&mdash;forearmed against it,
let us see what a scientific philosophy has
to say about the Power that is manifested
in and through the universe.</p>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>



<div class="chapter-beginning">
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_046a.jpg" width="400" height="76" alt="" />
</div>




<h2 class="no-break"><a name="XIII" id="XIII">XIII.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>The Eternal Source of Phenomena.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-w.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi"><span class="smcap">We</span> have seen that before men could
arrive at the idea of God, before
out of the old crude and fragmentary
polytheisms there could be developed
a pure and coherent theism, it was necessary
that physical generalization should
have advanced far enough to enable them,
however imperfectly, to reason about the
universe as a whole. It was a faint
glimpse of the unity of Nature that first
led men to the conception of the unity of
God, and as their knowledge of the phenomenal
fact becomes clearer, so must
their grasp upon the noumenal truth behind
it become firmer. Now the whole
tendency of modern science is to impress
upon us ever more forcibly the truth that
the entire knowable universe is an im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>mense
unit, animated throughout all its
parts by a single principle of life. This
conclusion, which was long ago borne in
upon the minds of prophetic thinkers, like
Spinoza and Goethe, through their keen
appreciation of the significance of the
physical harmonies known to them, has
during the last fifty years received something
like a demonstration in detail. It
is since Goethe's death, for example, that
it has been proved that the Newtonian
law of gravitation extends to the bodies
which used to be called fixed stars. That
such was the case was already much more
than probable, but so lately as 1835 there
were to be found writers on science, such
as Comte, who denied that it could ever
be proved. But a still more impressive
illustration of the unity of Nature is furnished
by the luminiferous ether, when
considered in connection with the discovery
of the correlation of forces. The fathomless
abysses of space can no longer be
talked of as empty; they are filled with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
a wonderful substance, unlike any of the
forms of matter which we can weigh and
measure. A cosmic jelly almost infinitely
hard and elastic, it offers at the same time
no appreciable resistance to the movements
of the heavenly bodies. It is so
sensitive that a shock in any part of it
causes a "tremour which is felt on the
surface of countless worlds." Radiating
in every direction, from millions of centric
points, run shivers of undulation manifested
in endless metamorphosis as heat,
or light, or actinism, as magnetism or electricity.
Crossing one another in every imaginable
way, as if all space were crowded
with a mesh-work of nerve-threads, these
motions go on forever in a harmony that
nothing disturbs. Thus every part of the
universe shares in the life of all the other
parts, as when in the solar atmosphere,
pulsating at its temperature of a million
degrees Fahrenheit, a slight breeze instantly
sways the needles in every compass-box
on the face of the earth.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>

<p>Still further striking confirmation is
found in the marvellous disclosures of
spectrum analysis. To whatever part of
the heavens we turn the telescope, armed
with this new addition to our senses, we
find the same chemical elements with
which the present century has made us
familiar upon the surface of the earth.
From the distant worlds of Arcturus and
the Pleiades, whence the swift ray of light
takes many years to reach us, it brings
the story of the hydrogen and oxygen, the
vapour of iron or sodium, which set it in
motion. Thus in all parts of the universe
that have fallen within our ken we find
a unity of chemical composition. Nebulæ,
stars, and planets are all made of the same
materials, and on every side we behold
them in different stages of development,
worlds in the making: here an irregular
nebula such as our solar system once was,
there a nebula whose rotation has at
length wrought it into spheroidal form;
here and there stars of varied colours mark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>ing
different eras in chemical evolution;
now planets still partly incandescent like
Saturn and Jupiter, then planets like Mars
and the earth, with cool atmospheres and
solid continents and vast oceans of water;
and lastly such bodies as the moon, vapourless,
rigid, and cold in death.</p>

<p>Still nearer do we come toward realizing
the unity of Nature when we recollect
that the law of evolution is not only
the same for all these various worlds, but
is also the same throughout all other orders
of phenomena. Not only in the development
of cosmical bodies, including
the earth, but also in the development of
life upon the earth's surface and in the
special development of those complex manifestations
of life known as human societies,
the most general and fundamental
features of the process are the same, so
that it has been found possible to express
them in a single universal formula. And
what is most striking of all, this notable
formula, under which Herbert Spencer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
has succeeded in generalizing the phenomena
of universal evolution, was derived
from the formula under which Von Baer
in 1829 first generalized the mode of development
of organisms from their embryos.
That a law of evolution first partially
detected among the phenomena of
the organic world should thereafter not
only be found applicable to all other orders
of phenomena, but should find in this application
its first complete and coherent
statement, is a fact of wondrous and startling
significance. It means that the universe
as a whole is thrilling in every fibre
with Life,&mdash;not, indeed, life in the usual
restricted sense, but life in a general
sense. The distinction, once deemed absolute,
between the living and the not-living
is converted into a relative distinction;
and Life as manifested in the organism
is seen to be only a specialized form
of the Universal Life.</p>

<p>The conception of matter as dead or inert
belongs, indeed, to an order of thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
that modern knowledge has entirely outgrown.
If the study of physics has taught
us anything, it is that nowhere in Nature
is inertness or quiescence to be found.
All is quivering with energy. From particle
to particle without cessation the
movement passes on, reappearing from
moment to moment under myriad Protean
forms, while the rearrangements of particles
incidental to the movement constitute
the qualitative differences among things.
Now in the language of physics all motions
of matter are manifestations of
force, to which we can assign neither beginning
nor end. Matter is indestructible,
motion is continuous, and beneath both
these universal truths lies the fundamental
truth that force is persistent. The farthest
reach in science that has ever been
made was made when it was proved by
Herbert Spencer that the law of universal
evolution is a necessary consequence of
the persistence of force. It has shown us
that all the myriad phenomena of the uni<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>verse,
all its weird and subtle changes, in
all their minuteness from moment to moment,
in all their vastness from age to
age, are the manifestations of a single animating
principle that is both infinite and
eternal.</p>

<p>By what name, then, shall we call this
animating principle of the universe, this
eternal source of phenomena? Using the
ordinary language of physics, we have just
been calling it Force, but such a term in no
wise enlightens us. Taken by itself it is
meaningless; it acquires its meaning only
from the relations in which it is used. It
is a mere symbol, like the algebraic expression
which stands for a curve. Of
what, then, is it the symbol?</p>

<p>The words which we use are so enwrapped
in atmospheres of subtle associations
that they are liable to sway the direction
of our thoughts in ways of which we
are often unconscious. It is highly desirable
that physics should have a word
as thoroughly abstract, as utterly emptied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
of all connotations of personality, as possible,
so that it may be used like a mathematical
symbol. Such a word is Force.
But what we are now dealing with is by
no means a scientific abstraction. It is
the most concrete and solid of realities,
the one Reality which underlies all appearances,
and from the presence of which
we can never escape. Suppose, then, that
we translate our abstract terminology into
something that is more concrete. Instead
of the force which persists, let us speak
of the Power which is always and everywhere
manifested in phenomena. Our
question, then, becomes, What is this infinite
and eternal Power like? What kind
of language shall we use in describing it?
Can we regard it as in any wise "material,"
or can we speak of its universal and
ceaseless activity as in any wise the working
of a "blind necessity"? For here, at
length, we have penetrated to the innermost
kernel of the problem; and upon
the answer must depend our mental attitude
toward the mystery of existence.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>

<p>The answer is that we cannot regard
the infinite and eternal Power as in any
wise "material," nor can we attribute its
workings to "blind necessity." The eternal
source of phenomena is the source of
what we see and hear and touch; it is the
source of what we call matter, but it cannot
itself be material. Matter is but the
generalized name we give to those modifications
which we refer immediately to an
unknown something outside of ourselves.
It was long ago shown that all the qualities
of matter are what the mind makes
them, and have no existence as such apart
from the mind. In the deepest sense all
that we really know is mind, and as Clifford
would say, what we call the material
universe is simply an imperfect picture in
our minds of a real universe of mind-stuff.<a name="FNanchor_22_23" id="FNanchor_22_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_23" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>
Our own mind we know directly; our
neighbour's mind we know by inference;
that which is external to both is a Power
hidden from sense, which causes states of
consciousness that are similar in both.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
Such states of consciousness we call material
qualities, and matter is nothing but
the sum of such qualities. To speak of the
hidden Power itself as "material" is therefore
not merely to state what is untrue,&mdash;it
is to talk nonsense. We are bound to
conceive of the Eternal Reality in terms
of the only reality that we know, or else
refrain from conceiving it under any form
whatever. But the latter alternative is
clearly impossible.<a name="FNanchor_23_24" id="FNanchor_23_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_24" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> We might as well try
to escape from the air in which we breathe
as to expel from consciousness the Power
which is manifested throughout what we
call the material universe. But the only
conclusion we can consistently hold is that
this is the very same power "which in
ourselves wells up under the form of consciousness."</p>

<p>In the nature-worship of primitive men,
beneath all the crudities of thought by
which it was overlaid and obscured, there
was thus after all an essential germ of
truth which modern philosophy is con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>strained
to recognize and reiterate. As
the unity of Nature has come to be demonstrated,
innumerable finite powers, once
conceived as psychical and deified, have
been generalized into a single infinite
Power that is still thought of as psychical.
From the crudest polytheism we
have thus, by a slow evolution, arrived at
pure monotheism,&mdash;the recognition of the
eternal God indwelling in the universe,
in whom we live and move and have our
being.</p>

<p>But in thus conceiving of God as psychical,
as a Being with whom the human
soul in the deepest sense owns kinship,
we must beware of too carelessly ascribing
to Him those specialized psychical attributes
characteristic of humanity, which
one and all imply limitation and weakness.
We must not forget the warning of the
prophet Isaiah: "My thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are my ways<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
higher than your ways, and my thoughts
than your thoughts." Omniscience, for
example, has been ascribed to God in
every system of theism; yet the psychical
nature to which all events, past, present,
and future, can be always simultaneously
present is clearly as far removed from the
limited and serial psychical nature of Man
as the heavens are higher than the earth.
We are not so presumptuous, therefore,
as to attempt, with some theologians of
the anthropomorphic school, to inquire minutely
into the character of the divine decrees
and purposes. But our task would
be ill-performed were nothing more to be
said about that craving after a final cause
which we have seen to be an essential
element in Man's religious nature. It
remains to be shown that there is a reasonableness
in the universe, that in the
orderly sequence of events there is a meaning
which appeals to our human intelligence.
Without adopting Paley's method,
which has been proved inadequate, we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
may nevertheless boldly aim at an object
like that at which Paley aimed. Caution
is needed, since we are dealing with a
symbolic conception as to which the very
point in question is whether there is any
reality that answers to it. The problem
is a hard one, but here we suddenly get
powerful help from the doctrine of evolution,
and especially from that part of it
known as the Darwinian theory.</p>

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<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>

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<h2 class="no-break"><a name="XIV" id="XIV">XIV.</a></h2>

<p class="center"><i>The Power that makes for Righteousness.</i></p>


<div>
  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/drop-a.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="" />
</div>
<p class="drop-capi3"><span class="smcap">Although</span> it was the Darwinian
theory of natural selection which
overthrew the argument from design,
yet&mdash;as I have argued in another
place&mdash;when thoroughly understood it will
be found to replace as much teleology as
it destroys.<a name="FNanchor_24_25" id="FNanchor_24_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_25" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Indeed, the doctrine of evolution,
in all its chapters, has a certain
teleological aspect, although it does not
employ those methods which in the hands
of the champions of final causes have been
found so misleading. The doctrine of evolution
does not regard any given arrangement
of things as scientifically explained
when it is shown to subserve some good
purpose, but it seeks its explanation in
such antecedent conditions as may have
been competent to bring about the ar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>rangement
in question. Nevertheless, the
doctrine of evolution is not only perpetually
showing us the purposes which
the arrangements of Nature subserve,
but throughout one large section of the
ground which it covers it points to a
discernible dramatic tendency, a clearly-marked
progress of events toward a mighty
goal. Now it especially concerns us to
note that this large section is just the
one, and the only one, which our powers
of imagination are able to compass. The
astronomic story of the universe is altogether
too vast for us to comprehend in
such wise as to tell whether it shows any
dramatic tendency or not.<a name="FNanchor_25_26" id="FNanchor_25_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_26" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> But in the
story of the evolution of life upon the surface
of our earth, where alone we are able
to compass the phenomena, we see all
things working together, through countless
ages of toil and trouble, toward one
glorious consummation. It is therefore a
fair inference, though a bold one, that if
our means of exploration were such that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
we could compass the story of all the systems
of worlds that shine in the spacious
firmament, we should be able to detect a
similar meaning. At all events, the story
which we can decipher is sufficiently impressive
and consoling. It clothes our
theistic belief with moral significance, reveals
the intense and solemn reality of
religion, and fills the heart with tidings of
great joy.</p>

<p>The glorious consummation toward which
organic evolution is tending is the production
of the highest and most perfect psychical
life. Already the germs of this
conclusion existed in the Darwinian theory
as originally stated, though men were
for a time too busy with other aspects of
the theory to pay due attention to them.
In the natural selection of such individual
peculiarities as conduce to the survival of
the species, and in the evolution by this
process of higher and higher creatures
endowed with capacities for a richer and
more varied life, there might have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
seen a well-marked dramatic tendency, toward
the <i>dénouement</i> of which every one
of the myriad little acts of life and death
during the entire series of geologic æons
was assisting. The whole scheme was
teleological, and each single act of natural
selection had a teleological meaning.
Herein lies the reason why the theory so
quickly destroyed that of Paley. It did
not merely refute it, but supplanted it
with explanations which had the merit of
being truly scientific, while at the same
time they hit the mark at which natural
theology had unsuccessfully aimed.</p>

<p>Such was the case with the Darwinian
theory as first announced. But since it
has been more fully studied in its application
to the genesis of Man, a wonderful
flood of light has been thrown upon the
meaning of evolution, and there appears
a reasonableness in the universe such as
had not appeared before. It has been
shown that the genesis of Man was due to
a change in the direction of the working<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
of natural selection, whereby psychical variations
were selected to the neglect of
physical variations. It has been shown
that one chief result of this change was
the lengthening of infancy, whereby Man
appeared on the scene as a plastic creature
capable of unlimited psychical progress.
It has been shown that one chief
result of the lengthening of infancy was
the origination of the family and of human
society endowed with rudimentary moral
ideas and moral sentiments. It has been
shown that through these coöperating
processes the difference between Man and
all lower creatures has come to be a difference
in kind transcending all other differences;
that his appearance upon the
earth marked the beginning of the final
stage in the process of development, the
last act in the great drama of creation;
and that all the remaining work of evolution
must consist in the perfecting of the
creature thus marvellously produced. It
has been further shown that the perfect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>ing
of Man consists mainly in the ever-increasing
predominance of the life of the
soul over the life of the body. And lastly,
it has been shown that, whereas the earlier
stages of human progress have been
characterized by a struggle for existence
like that through which all lower forms of
life have been developed, nevertheless the
action of natural selection upon Man is
coming to an end, and his future development
will be accomplished through the
direct adaptation of his wonderfully plastic
intelligence to the circumstances in
which it is placed. Hence it has appeared
that war and all forms of strife, having
ceased to discharge their normal function,
and having thus become unnecessary, will
slowly die out;<a name="FNanchor_26_27" id="FNanchor_26_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_27" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> that the feelings and
habits adapted to ages of strife will ultimately
perish from disuse; and that a
stage of civilization will be reached in
which human sympathy shall be all in all,
and the spirit of Christ shall reign supreme
throughout the length and breadth
of the earth.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>

<p>These conclusions, with the grounds
upon which they are based, have been
succinctly set forth in my little book entitled
"The Destiny of Man viewed in the
Light of his Origin." Startling as they
may have seemed to some, they are no
more so than many of the other truths
which have been brought home to us during
this unprecedented age. They are the
fruit of a wide induction from the most
vitally important facts which the doctrine
of evolution has set forth; and they may
fairly claim recognition as an integral body
of philosophic doctrine fit to stand the
test of time. Here they are summarized
as the final step in my argument concerning
the true nature of theism. They add
new meanings to the idea of God, as it is
affected by modern knowledge, while at
the same time they do but give articulate
voice to time-honoured truths which it was
feared the skepticism of our age might
have rendered dumb and powerless. For
if we express in its most concentrated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
form the meaning of these conclusions
regarding Man's origin and destiny, we
find that it affords the full justification
of the fundamental ideas and sentiments
which have animated religion at all times.
We see Man still the crown and glory of
the universe and the chief object of divine
care, yet still the lame and halting creature,
loaded with a brute-inheritance of
original sin, whose ultimate salvation is
slowly to be achieved through ages of
moral discipline. We see the chief agency
which produced him&mdash;natural selection
which always works through strife&mdash;ceasing
to operate upon him, so that, until
human strife shall be brought to an end,
there goes on a struggle between his
lower and his higher impulses, in which
the higher must finally conquer. And in
all this we find the strongest imaginable
incentive to right living, yet one that is
still the same in principle with that set
forth by the great Teacher who first
brought men to the knowledge of the true
God.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
As to the conception of Deity, in the
shape impressed upon it by our modern
knowledge, I believe I have now said
enough to show that it is no empty formula
or metaphysical abstraction which
we would seek to substitute for the living
God. The infinite and eternal Power that
is manifested in every pulsation of the universe
is none other than the living God.
We may exhaust the resources of metaphysics
in debating how far his nature
may fitly be expressed in terms applicable
to the psychical nature of Man; such vain
attempts will only serve to show how we
are dealing with a theme that must ever
transcend our finite powers of conception.
But of some things we may feel sure.
Humanity is not a mere local incident in
an endless and aimless series of cosmical
changes. The events of the universe are
not the work of chance, neither are they
the outcome of blind necessity. Practically
there is a purpose in the world
whereof it is our highest duty to learn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
the lesson, however well or ill we may
fare in rendering a scientific account of
it. When from the dawn of life we see
all things working together toward the
evolution of the highest spiritual attributes
of Man, we know, however the
words may stumble in which we try to
say it, that God is in the deepest sense a
moral Being. The everlasting source of
phenomena is none other than the infinite
Power that makes for righteousness.
Thou canst not by searching find Him
out; yet put thy trust in Him, and against
thee the gates of hell shall not prevail; for
there is neither wisdom nor understanding
nor counsel against the Eternal.</p>

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<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>


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<h2 class="no-break"><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES">NOTES.</a></h2>

<hr class="small"/>

<p class="center"><a id="A"></a>A.&mdash;MEDITATIONS OF A SAVAGE.</p>

<p>In the presence of the great mystery of existence,
the thoughts of the untutored savage are
not always so very unlike those of civilized men,
as we may see from the following pathetic words
of a Kafir, named Sekese, in conversation with a
French traveller, M. Arbrouseille, on the subject
of the Christian religion:&mdash;</p>

<p>"Your tidings," said this uncultivated barbarian,
"are what I want, and I was seeking before
I knew you, as you shall hear and judge for yourself.
Twelve years ago I went to feed my flocks;
the weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock
and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful,
because I was unable to answer them.
Who has touched the stars with his hands&mdash;on
what pillars do they rest, I asked myself. The
waters never weary, they know no other law than
to flow without ceasing from morning till night
and from night till morning; but where do they
stop, and who makes them flow thus? The clouds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
also come and go, and burst in water over the
earth. Whence come they&mdash;who sends them?
The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for
how could they do it? and why do not I see them
with my own eyes when they go up to heaven to
fetch it? I cannot see the wind; but what is it?
who brings it, makes it blow and roar and terrify
us? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday
there was not a blade in my field, to-day I
returned to the field and found some; who can
have given to the earth the wisdom and the power
to produce it? Then I buried my head in both
my hands."&mdash;Cited in <span class="smcap">Picton</span>, <i>Mystery of Matter</i>,
p. 222.</p>


<p class="center"><a id="B"></a>B.&mdash;THE NAME <i>GOD</i>.</p>

<p>None of the dictionaries offer a satisfactory explanation
of the word <i>God</i>. It was once commonly
supposed to be related to the adjective <i>good</i>, but
Grimm long ago showed that this connection is,
to say the least, very improbable. It has also
been sought to identify it with Persian <i>Khodâ</i>,
from Zend <i>qvadata</i>, Skr. <i>svadata</i>, Lat. <i>a se datus</i>,
in which the idea is that of self-existence; but this
fanciful etymology was exploded by Aufrecht. The
arrant guesswork of Donaldson, who would connect
<i>God</i> with &kappa;&alpha;&lambda;&#972;&sigmaf;, and &theta;&epsilon;&#972;&sigmaf; with &tau;&#8055;&theta;&eta;&mu;&iota; (New Cratylus,
p. 710), scarcely deserves mention in these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
days. Among the more scientific philologists of
our time, August Fick, in treating of the "Wortschatz
der germanischen Spracheinheit," simply refers
<i>God</i> to a primitive Teutonic <i>gutha</i>, and says
no more about it. (Vergl. Woerterbuch der indogermanischen
Sprachen, III. 107.) He is followed
by Skeat (Etymological Dictionary, p. 238), who
adds that there is "no connection with <i>good</i>."
Eduard Müller says: "So bedenklich die zusammenstellung
mit <i>good</i>, so fraglich ist doch auch
noch die urverwandtschaft mit pers. <i>Khodâ</i> gott,
oder skr. <i>gûdha</i> mysterium, oder skr. <i>guddha</i>
purus; Heyne: 'als sich verhüllender, unsichtbarer,
vgl. skr. <i>guh</i> für <i>gudh</i> celare.'" (Woerterbuch
der englischen Sprache, p. 456.)</p>

<p>Max Müller has much more plausibly suggested
that <i>God</i> was formerly a heathen name for the
Deity, which passed into Christian usage, like the
Latin <i>Deus</i>. (Science of Language, 6th ed. II.
317.) Following this hint, I suggested, several
years ago (North Amer. Review, Oct. 1869, p. 354),
that <i>God</i> is probably identical with <i>Wodan</i> or <i>Odin</i>,
the name of the great Northern deity, the chief
object of the worship of our forefathers. This relation
of an initial <i>G</i> to an initial <i>W</i> is a very common
one; as for example <i>Guillaume</i> and <i>William</i>,
<i>guerre</i> and <i>war</i>, <i>guardian</i> and <i>warden</i>, <i>guile</i> and
<i>wile</i>. The same thing is seen in Armorican <i>guasta</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
and Ital. <i>guastare</i>, as compared with Lat. <i>vastare</i>,
Eng. <i>waste</i>; and in the Eng. <i>quick</i>, Goth. <i>quivs</i>,
Lat. <i>vivus</i>. In Erchempert's Historia Langobardorum,
11, Pertz, III. 245, we find <i>Ludoguicus</i> for
<i>Ludovicus</i>. Not only is this relation a common
one, but there are plenty of specific instances of
it in the case of <i>Wodan</i>. In Germany we have the
town names of <i>Godesberg</i>, <i>Gudenberg</i>, and <i>Godensholt</i>,
all derived from <i>Wodan</i>. In the Westphalian
dialect, <i>Wednesday</i> ("day of Wodan") is called <i>Godenstag</i>
or <i>Gunstag</i>; in Nether-Rhenish, <i>Gudenstag</i>;
in Flemish, <i>Goenstag</i>. See Thorpe, Northern
Mythol. I. 229; Taylor, Words and Places,
323; and cf. Grimm, Gesch. der deutschen Sprache,
296. The Westphalian Saxons wrote both <i>Guodan</i>
and <i>Gudan</i>. <i>Odin</i> was also called <i>Godin</i> (Laing,
Heimskringla, I. 74), and Paulus Diaconus tells us
that the Lombards pronounced <i>Wodan</i> as <i>Guodan</i>.
In view of such a convergence of proofs, I am surprised
that attention was not long ago called to
this etymology.</p>

<p>Wodan was originally the storm-spirit or animating
genius of the wind, answering in many respects
to the Greek Hermes and the Vedic Sarameyas.
See my Myths and Myth-makers, 19, 20,
32, 35, 67, 124, 204; and cf. Mackay, Religious
Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, i. 260-273.</p>

<hr class="chap" /></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>

<div class="chapter-beginning">

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/pg_172.jpg" width="400" height="80" alt="" />



<h2 class="no-break"><a name="REFERENCES" id="REFERENCES">REFERENCES.</a></h2>
</div>
<hr class="small"/>

<p class="hang">M. M., Myths and Myth-makers, 1872; C. P., Outlines of Cosmic
Philosophy, 1874; U. W., The Unseen World, 1876; D., Darwinism
and Other Essays, 1879; E. E., Excursions of an Evolutionist,
1884; D. M., The Destiny of Man, 1884; A. P. I.,
American Political Ideas, 1885.</p>


<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_1_3" id="Footnote_1_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_3"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> E. E. 56-77.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_2_4" id="Footnote_2_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_4"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> C. P. i. 230.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_3_5" id="Footnote_3_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_5"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> C. P. i. 157, 177-179.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_4_6" id="Footnote_4_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_6"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> M. M. 18-21, <i>et passim</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_5_7" id="Footnote_5_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_7"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> M. M. 220.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_6_8" id="Footnote_6_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_8"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> M. M. 232.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_7_9" id="Footnote_7_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_9"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> M. M. 236; E. E. 251.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_8_10" id="Footnote_8_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_10"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> A. P. I. 78, 81.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_9_11" id="Footnote_9_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_11"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> U. W. 10.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_10_12" id="Footnote_10_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_12"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> D. M. 104-107.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_11_13" id="Footnote_11_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_13"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> E. E. 262.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_12_14" id="Footnote_12_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_14"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> M. M. 236.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_13_15" id="Footnote_13_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_15"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> C. P. ii. 383.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_14_16" id="Footnote_14_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_16"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> U. W. 118.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_15_17" id="Footnote_15_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_17"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> D. 5-8; C. P. ii. 283.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_16_17" id="Footnote_16_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_17"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> C. P. ii. 428.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_17_18" id="Footnote_17_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_18"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> C. P. ii. 428.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_18_19" id="Footnote_18_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_19"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> C. P. i. 183; ii. 449.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_19_20" id="Footnote_19_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_20"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> M. M. 122.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_20_21" id="Footnote_20_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_21"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> C. P. ii. 405.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_21_22" id="Footnote_21_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_22"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> C. P. ii. 381-410.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_22_23" id="Footnote_22_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_23"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> E. E. 327-336.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_23_24" id="Footnote_23_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_24"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> C. P. ii. 449.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_24_25" id="Footnote_24_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_25"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> D. M. 113; cf. C. P. ii. 406.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_25_26" id="Footnote_25_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_26"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> D. 103.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_26_27" id="Footnote_26_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_27"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> D. M. 77-95; A. P. I. 101-152.</p></div>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
<img src="images/pg_173.jpg" width="75" height="105" alt="" />
</div>

<hr class="chap" /></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a><br /><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a><br /><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a><br /><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>


<p class="center">
<big>IMPORTANT BOOKS</big><br />

<small>BY</small><br />

JOHN FISKE.<br />
</p>


<p class="hang"><b>OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY</b>, based on the Doctrine
of Evolution. With Criticisms on the Positive
Philosophy. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 465, 523, $6.00.</p>

<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">Darwin</span>, after reading this work, wrote as follows
to Mr. Fiske:&mdash;</p>

<div class="ps">

<p>"You must allow me to thank you for the very great interest
with which I have at last slowly read the whole of your work....
I never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker)
as you are; and I think that I understand nearly the whole, though
perhaps less clearly about cosmic theism and causation than other
parts. It is hopeless to attempt out of so much to specify what
has interested me most, and probably you would not care to hear.
It pleased me to find that here and there I had arrived, from my
own crude thoughts, at some of the same conclusions with you,
though I could seldom or never have given my reasons for such
conclusions."</p>

<p>This work of Mr. Fiske's may be not unfairly designated the most
important contribution yet made by America to philosophical literature....
His theory of the influence of prolonged infancy upon
social development (Part II., chap. xxii.) entitles Mr. Fiske's work
to be considered a distinctly important contribution to the theory
of the origin of species, and of the origin of man in particular.&mdash;<i>Academy</i>
(London).</p>

<p>His most important suggestion, that of the influence of the long
period of feeble adolescence upon man's social development, is, we
think, a permanent contribution to the development theory.&mdash;<i>Nation</i>
(New York).</p>

<p>He recognizes Mr. Spencer as his teacher and guide; but he has
moulded the doctrines of his master into a popular form, surrounded
them with fresh and vivid illustrations, pointed out their
bearing upon great practical questions of the day, and amply supplied
the reader with materials for forming an intelligent judgment
with respect to their merits. Mr. Fiske is himself a thinker of rare
acuteness and depth; his affluent store of knowledge is exhibited
on every page; and his mastery of expression is equal to his subtlety
of speculation.&mdash;<span class="smcap">George Ripley</span>, in <i>Tribune</i> (New York).</p>

<p>Mr. Fiske's work ... is the first important contribution made
by America to the evolution philosophy, ... and is well worth the
study of all who wish to see at once the entire scope and purport of
the scientific dogmatism of the day.&mdash;<i>Saturday Review</i> (London).</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
<p>The author asserts that a system of philosophy has been constructed,
out of purely scientific materials, ... which opposes a
direct negative to every one of the theorems of which Positivism is
made up.&mdash;<i>Scotsman</i> (Edinburgh).</p>

<p>Mr. Fiske is not a mere compiler from Mr. Spencer's works, nor
is he simply a popularizer of an abstruse theory. He works his
way to the chief results of Mr. Spencer's argument with independence
and self-reliance. In many places he has presented his master's
doctrine in new aspects or carried it forward to new conclusions,
while throughout he adds something to the original from
which he draws by freshness of illustration and individuality of
literary style.... It is curious to note the almost fierce persistence
with which the author returns again and again to an attack
on the doctrines of Comte.... The most striking part of Mr.
Fiske's social speculations is the hypothesis by which he proposes
to bridge over the gulf which divides the merely gregarious and
sympathetic brutes from morally constituted man (Part II., chap.
xxii.).&mdash;<span class="smcap">James Sully</span>, in <i>Examiner</i> (London).</p>

<p>Mr. Fiske is a disciple who thinks for himself, and who has no
hesitation, when necessary, in criticising him whom he acknowledges
as master.... He is so thoroughly imbued with the philosophic
spirit that his work merits a careful perusal; it has the especial
attraction of being written in excellent temper and admirable
English.&mdash;<i>Daily News</i> (London).</p>

<p>Mr. Fiske's work shows a complete and independent mastery of
the subject in all its bearings, together with a power of lucid and
vigorous exposition unexcelled in any philosophical work with
which we are acquainted.&mdash;<i>Daily Globe</i> (Boston).</p>

<p>It is our best American book on the evolution philosophy, and
deserves to rank with the productions of the great English thinkers.&mdash;<i>Index</i>
(Boston).</p>
</div>


<p class="hang"><b>DARWINISM AND OTHER ESSAYS.</b> New Edition, enlarged.
12mo, pp. 283, $2.00.</p>

<p><span class="smcap">Contents</span>: Darwinism Verified; Mr. Mivart on Darwinism;
Dr. Bateman on Darwinism; Dr. Büchner on
Darwinism; A Crumb for the "Modern Symposium;"
Chauncey Wright; What is Inspiration? Modern Witchcraft;
Comte's Positive Philosophy; Mr. Buckle's Fallacies;
Postscript on Mr. Buckle; The Races of the Danube;
Liberal Education; University Reform; A Librarian's
Work.</p>

<div class="ps">

<p>If ever there was a spirit thoroughly invigorated by the "joy of
right understanding" it is that of the author of these pieces. Even
the reader catches something of his intellectual buoyancy, and is
thus carried almost lightly through discussions which would be
hard and dry in the hands of a less animated writer.... No less
confident and serene than his acceptance of the utmost logical results
of recent scientific discovery is Mr. Fiske's assurance that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
foundations of spiritual truths, so called, cannot possibly be shaken
thereby.... Warm personal admiration and acute critical discernment
could not well be blended in finer proportions than
in the article on the lamented Mr. Wright.... The article on Mr.
Buckle's Fallacies has one aspect more remarkable than all the rest.
It was written and published when the "History of Civilization"
was new,&mdash;that is to say, when the writer was nineteen years of
age; and the years&mdash;almost nineteen more&mdash;which have elapsed
since then have rather confirmed than detracted from its value as a
piece of criticism. The judgment of posterity on the most ambitious
book of its generation, and one of the most bewildering,
was actually anticipated by a stripling, and its final rank assigned
with singular fairness and precision. Scarcely even in the style is
there a trace of immaturity.... The essay on the Races of the
Danube forcibly suggests the idea that Mr. Fiske has qualities of
mind, almost unused hitherto, which would make him an exceptionally
valuable writer of history.&mdash;<i>Atlantic Monthly.</i></p>

<p>The article on the Races of the Danube shows that Mr. Fiske has
a special talent for history.&mdash;<i>Nation</i> (New York).</p>
</div>
<hr class="tb" />

<p class="hang"><b>MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS</b>: Old Tales and Superstitions
interpreted by Comparative Mythology.
12mo, pp. 251, $2.00.</p>

<p><span class="smcap">Contents</span>: The Origins of Folk-Lore; The Descent
of Fire; Werewolves and Swan-Maidens; Light and
Darkness; Myths of the Barbaric World; Juventus
Mundi; The Primeval Ghost-World.</p>

<div class="ps">

<p>Mr. Fiske has given us a book which is at once sensible and attractive,
on a subject about which much is written that is crotchety
or tedious.&mdash;<span class="smcap">W. R. S. Ralston</span>, in <i>Athenæum</i> (London).</p>

<p>This volume is not a text-book of scientific mythology. It contains
seven essays crowded with quotations and examples, in the
abundant use of which the writer's learning is not more conspicuous
than his literary skill. Not everybody can shape and control
such wealth of material.&mdash;<i>Christian Union</i> (New York).</p>

<p>He has, as we must admit, one qualification for attaining his object,
in being completely master of his subject, and in knowing
also how to treat it in an attractive manner.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Felix Liebrecht</span>, in
<i>Academy</i> (London).</p>

<p>It is extremely interesting for its happy combination of psychologic
analysis with a study of the primitive beliefs of mankind.... A
perusal of this thorough work cannot be too strongly recommended
to all who are interested in comparative mythology.&mdash;<i>Revue
Critique</i> (Paris).</p>

<p>Mr. Fiske is a master of perspicuous explanation.&mdash;<i>World</i> (New
York).</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>

<p>Its weight of sense and its lucidity will extend Mr. Fiske's reputation
as one of the clearest-minded, most conscientiously laborious
and well-trained students in this country.&mdash;<i>Nation</i> (New
York).</p>

<p>With the capacity for profound research and the power of critical
consideration, he has a singular grace of style, and an art of
clear and simple statement, which will not let the most indifferent
refuse knowledge of the topics treated. In such a field as the discussion
of old fables and superstitions affords, we have not only to
admire Mr. Fiske for the charm of his manner, but for the justice
and honesty of his method.&mdash;<i>Atlantic Monthly.</i></p>

<p>It is both an amusing and instructive book, evincing large research,
and giving its results in a lucid and attractive style.&mdash;<span class="smcap">E. P.
Whipple.</span></p>
</div>

<hr class="tb" />

<p class="hang"><b>THE UNSEEN WORLD, AND OTHER ESSAYS.</b> 12mo,
pp. 349, $2.00.</p>

<p><span class="smcap">Contents</span>: The Unseen World; The To-morrow of
Death; The Jesus of History; The Christ of Dogma;
A Word about Miracles; Draper on Science and Religion;
Nathan the Wise; Historical Difficulties; The
Famine of 1770 in Bengal; Spain and the Netherlands;
Longfellow's Dante; Paine's St. Peter; A Philosophy
of Art; Athenian and American Life.</p>

<div class="ps">

<p>We think every one will remark, while examining this volume, the
variety of subjects treated; and if anybody has formed an opinion
that Mr. Fiske is a man who cares for nothing but myths and philosophy,
he will find occasion to correct it. Many of these papers
are critical reviews of important books widely different in their
subjects; but to each study the writer seems to have brought, besides
an excellent quality of discriminating judgment, full and
fresh special knowledge, that enables him to supply much information
on the subject, whatever it may be, that is not to be found
in the volume he is noticing. To the knowledge, analytical power,
and faculty of clear statement, that appear in all these papers, Mr.
Fiske adds a just independence of thought that conciliates respectful
consideration of his views, even when they are most at variance
with the commonly accepted ones.&mdash;<i>Boston Advertiser.</i></p>

<p>Of all the criticism and discussion called forth both in this country
and in England by that remarkable little book, "The Unseen
Universe," Mr. John Fiske's "Unseen World" is at once the most
profound, the most comprehensive, and the most lucid.... The
mere statement of a thought in his perspicuous and translucent
language gives it, in most cases, a new meaning and an added force.&mdash;<i>Appletons'
Journal.</i></p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>

<p>They are all striking compositions, and deserving of a place in
the fore rank of this kind of literature. It is not often that more
robust and healthy reading can be found between the covers of a
single volume.&mdash;<i>San Francisco Bulletin.</i></p>

<p>The vigor, the earnestness, the honesty, and the freedom from
cant and subtlety in his writing are exceedingly refreshing. He is
a scholar, a critic, and a thinker of the first order.&mdash;<i>Christian
Register.</i></p>

<p>Mr. Fiske has won for himself a foremost place among American
writers on physical science; and the present volume of essays
bears testimony not only to his ability as a physicist, but to his
versatility of mind and critical powers as well.&mdash;<i>Canadian
Monthly.</i></p>

<p>He is one of our foremost religious thinkers.&mdash;<i>Times</i> (New
York).</p>

<p>The line of argument is so plain that all can follow it, and the
style is wondrously charming.&mdash;<i>Index</i> (Boston).</p>

<p>Mr. John Fiske is a devoted student of Dante. The review of Mr.
Longfellow's work is an admirable essay upon translating Dante,&mdash;an
essay showing a very fine critical feeling and thorough knowledge
of the subject.&mdash;<i>Transcript</i> (Boston).</p>

<p>He is a scholar profoundly versed in ancient and modern lore, a
thinker familiar with all shades of thought, an observer who studies
men as well as books, and withal a writer of the purest and
most graphic English.&mdash;<i>Inter-Ocean</i> (Chicago).</p>

<p>He finely exposes the materialistic character of the book called
the "Unseen Universe," which has been so highly extolled by the
"Southern Cross" and other papers.&mdash;<i>Advertiser</i> (Maryborough,
Australia).</p>

<p>The book has a unity and charm in the clearness of the thought
and the beauty of such a style as was perhaps never before brought
to the illustration of the topics with which Mr. Fiske habitually
deals. There is something better still in the admirable spirit of his
writing; it is of all writing of its sort, probably, the most humane.... He
has already achieved a place as wholly his own as it is
eminent.&mdash;<i>Atlantic Monthly.</i></p>
</div>

<hr class="tb" />

<p class="hang"><b>EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST.</b> 12mo, pp. 379,
$2.00.</p>

<p><span class="smcap">Contents</span>: Europe before the Arrival of Man; The
Arrival of Man in Europe; Our Aryan Forefathers;
What we learn from Old Aryan Words; Was there a
Primeval Mother-Tongue? Sociology and Hero-Wor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>ship;
Heroes of Industry; The Causes of Persecution;
The Origins of Protestantism; The True Lesson of
Protestantism; Evolution and Religion; The Meaning
of Infancy; A Universe of Mind-Stuff; In Memoriam:
Charles Darwin.</p>

<div class="ps">

<p>Among our thoughtful essayists there are none more brilliant
than Mr. John Fiske. His pure style suits his clear thought. He
does not write unless he has something to say; and when he does
write he shows not only that he has thoroughly acquainted himself
with the subject, but that he has to a rare degree the art of so
massing his matter as to bring out the true value of the leading
points in artistic relief. It is this perspective which makes his
work such agreeable reading even on abstruse subjects, and has
enabled him to play the same part in popularizing Spencer in this
country that Littré performed for Comte in France, and Dumont
for Bentham in England. The same qualities appear to good advantage
in his new volume, which contains his later essays on his
favorite subject of evolution.... They are well worth reperusal.&mdash;<i>The
Nation</i> (New York).</p>

<p>These essays are all full of thought and worthy of preservation,
while several of them are entitled to rank among the very best essays
of American writers. For depth of thought, scholarship, literary
taste, critical ability, and the power of clear and vigorous
exposition <i>combined</i>, Mr. Fiske has no equal in this country and
but few equals among European writers. He does not write on a
subject until he has acquainted himself with it; and then he presents
his thought, which often has the merit of originality, with a
lucidness and attractiveness of style which make it easy to follow
him in his treatment of even difficult topics. It is a pleasure to
turn from our merely literary writers to the essays of Mr. Fiske,
whose clear thought, discriminating judgment, and philosophic
spirit, together with his fine taste and perspicuity of style, make
his writings both instructive and entertaining.&mdash;<i>Index</i> (Boston).</p>

<p>The vividness and directness of the style is second only to the
bracing and stimulating quality of the matter. This book comes
nearer than anything we now think of among American publications
to successfully popularizing the results of science without
debilitating or misinterpreting the same. The first papers of the
book particularly emulate the clearness of Huxley.... It compels
assent to the dreaded "new way of looking at things," but in
such a way that when the assent is given the dread is all gone. It
is a good book for the busy preacher on account of its wealth of
facts, so arranged as to reveal the thought that lies back of each
fact. Each conclusion suggests a lesson.&mdash;<i>Unity</i> (Chicago).</p>

<p>Mr. Fiske, under the above title, makes his excursions through
the realms of science, and evolves "evolution" in a most admirable
manner&mdash;physical and psychical&mdash;by the "testimony of the rocks,"
and with wonderful wisdom explains the origin of matter and man
so truthfully possible that it is accepted as exceedingly probable,
if not certain, by the thoughtful reader. It is fascinating to read
his proofs and speculations upon a subject grown so interesting, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
the reader is disposed to apply the same term of praise upon his
work as he bestowed upon Clifford: "Such scientific exposition as
this is as beautiful as poetry."&mdash;<i>Hartford Post.</i></p>

<p>Mr. Fiske is the master of an extremely lucid and attractive
literary style, and brings to all questions which he discusses the
fruits of a very industrious reading and examination of authorities....
Whether one agrees with him or not one cannot fail to receive
much instruction and definite intellectual impulse from the reading
of this volume.... While heartily dissenting from many of the
views advanced in this book, we commend it to all students who
care for the honest judgment of an honest man.&mdash;<i>Christian Union.</i></p>
</div>

<hr class="tb"/>

<p class="hang"><b>THE DESTINY OF MAN</b>, viewed in the Light of his
Origin. 16mo, pp. 121, $1.00.</p>

<p><span class="smcap">Contents</span>: Man's Place in Nature as affected by the
Copernican Theory; As affected by Darwinism; On the
Earth there will never be a Higher Creature than Man;
The Origin of Infancy; The Dawning of Consciousness;
Lengthening of Infancy and Concomitant Increase of
Brain Surface; Change in the Direction of the Working
of Natural Selection; Growing Predominance of the Psychical
Life; The Origins of Society and Morality; Improvableness
of Man; Universal Warfare of Primeval
Men; First checked by the Beginnings of Industrial Civilization;
Methods of Political Development and Elimination
of Warfare; End of the Working of Natural Selection
upon Man; Throwing off the Brute-Inheritance;
The Message of Christianity; The Question as to a
Future Life.</p>

<div class="ps">

<p>Mr. Fiske has long held rank as one of the most profound and exact
of American thinkers, and his little monograph will serve to
extend that deserved fame among a class of readers who are not ordinarily
interested in the literature of science. Mr. Fiske's book is,
in a word, a plea for faith in the immortality of man, based on the
doctrine of evolution. With a superb command of all the knowledge
bearing upon the philosophy of Darwinism, to which he has
himself been a noteworthy contributor, Mr. Fiske sums up in eloquent
periods the process of evolutionary creation from the origin
of infancy to the beginnings of industrial and political development
which have made human society what it is to-day; and then, looking
into the future, he foretells how natural selection, working on
the lines already marked out, shall attain its perfect work. The
whole argument, or rather exposition, is a marvel of condensation.&mdash;<i>Boston
Traveller.</i></p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>

<p>Mr. Fiske has given us in his "Destiny of Man" a most attractive
condensation of his views as expressed in his various other
works. One is charmed by the directness and clearness of his style,
his simple and pure English, and his evident knowledge of his subject.... Of
one thing we may be sure, that none are leading us
more surely or rapidly to the full truth than men like the author
of this little book, who reverently study the works of God for the
lessons which he would teach his children.&mdash;<i>Christian Union</i> (New
York).</p>

<p>Professor Fiske is always interesting. His exposition, step by
step, of the doctrine of evolution, is admirably adapted for those
prejudiced against it to read&mdash;simple, pleasant, and clear, and expressly
designed to disarm hostility by showing that it is by no
means absolutely incompatible with accepted religious beliefs&mdash;at
least, with their essential qualities.&mdash;<i>Overland Monthly</i> (San Francisco).</p>

<p>It is a remarkable contribution to the literature of religious
thought.... It will prove that evolution is at least not irreverent.... It
is packed full of learning and suggestion, in a style at once
simple and beautiful, and is worth a dozen volumes of ordinary
sermons.&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Press.</i></p>

<p>This essay will and should attract wide attention, founded as it is
upon modern science and marking the way in an advanced path in
religio-scientific inquiry. Mr. Fiske is acknowledged one of the
first of scientific thinkers, and his conclusions have more than the
usual weight.&mdash;<i>Albany Journal.</i></p>

<p>His little volume will be highly prized by those who enjoy seeing
one of the most profound themes which can occupy the attention
treated with eloquence and strength, with scientific insight and imaginative
vigor.&mdash;<i>Buffalo Commercial Advertiser.</i></p>

<p>The reverent spirit of the book, the wide range of illustrations,
the remarkable lucidity of thought and style, and the noble eloquence
that characterizes it, render this book one of striking value
and interest.&mdash;<i>Salem Gazette.</i></p>
</div>


<p class="hang"><b>THE IDEA OF GOD AS AFFECTED BY MODERN
KNOWLEDGE.</b> 16mo, $1.00.</p>
<div class="ps">
<p>This essay is a sequel to "The Destiny of Man." Its object is to
show that the indications of Science and Philosophy are theistic,
not atheistic; that while the idea of God has been greatly modified
by modern knowledge, it has not been lost or belittled, but magnified
and illuminated. The essay is prefaced by a long Introduction
of remarkable interest, and the whole book is full of significance
and charm for all thoughtful minds.</p>
</div>
<p class="center">
<span class="smcap">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO., Publishers, Boston.</span><br />
</p>

<div class="transnote">
<p>Transcriber's Notes</p>

<p>Variations in spelling and punctuation are as in the original, except
in cases of obvious typographical error.</p>


</div>

<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46476 ***</div>
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