[ p. 217 ]
Things new and old. ‘To us the history of philosophy has become a part of philosophy itself, because we have learned to look on the speculations of earlier times, not as dogmatic systems to be accepted or rejected, but rather as the first stages in the progressive evolution of a thought of which, in a further stage, we ourselves are the organs and interpreters. Hence follow two important consequences. On the one hand, we are freed to some extent from Historical partisanship, since we do not expect to find direct support for our own ideas in any past system ; yet, on the other hand, we are enabled to feel a living interest in all such systems, as containing aspects or elements of the truth which we seek to discover. We are pledged to show that the system which we regard as true is the result of a synthesis in which those aspects or elements are combined.’ (E. Caird, Phil. of Kant, i. 68.)
This general attitude of mind, which our modern [ p. 218 ] historic method has produced, is as important in theology asin philosophy. There, too, we are at once the children and the critics of the past,—the past which is never obsolete, or of merely antiquarian interest, but a necessary element in the life and knowledge of to-day. In the present case, both the antiquity and the adaptability of the arguments for a personal God must be borne in mind. The arguments in question are so fundamental as to have commended themselves to man, as soon as he began seriously to reflect upon religion; and at the same time so inexhaustible as to admit of continual adaptation, to the ideas and idiosyncrasies of every successive age. They thus combine the authority of age with the versatility of youth; and the fact of this combination multiplies their force. If the patristic and scholastic passages, in the following notes, are compared with those from later writers, it will be noticed that they indicate a substantial identity of doctrine; remaining unaltered in its essence, though continuously modified in form.
‘L’esprit humain, sans doute, va s’étendre 4 des objets nouveaux, et briller avec plus d’éclat dans quelquesuns de ses rayons; mais il ne changera pas ses lois. Il approfondira ses acquisitions antérieures ; il complétera, vérifiera ce qu’il avait déja trouvé, et, selon une admirable expression de la Sainte Ecriture, il renouvellera la sagesse ; mais nous verrons que la lumitre n’a pas changé, et que la sagesse renouvelée est, en effet, toujours ancienne et toujours nouvelle.” (Gratry, Con. de Dieu, i. 356.)
[ p. 219 ]
Science and Theology equally anthropomorphic. ‘There are but three forms under which it is possible to think of the ultimate or immanent principle of the Universe,— Mind, Life, Matter: given the first, it is intellectually thought out: the second, it blindly grows: the third, it mechanically shuffles into equilibrium. From what school do we draw these types of conception? from our home experiences? if it is because we are rational, that we see reason around us, no less is it because we are alive, that we believe in the living, and because we have to deal with our own weight and extension, that we make acquaintance with material things. Take away these properties of the ego, and should we ever find what they are in the non-ego? Assuredly not. Man is equally your point of departure, whether you discern in the cosmos an intellectual, a physiological, or a mechanical system: and the only question is whether you construe it by his highest characteristics, or by the middle attributes which he shares with other organisms ; - or by the lowest, that are absent from no physical things. . . In every doctrine, therefore, it is still from our microcosm that we have to interpret the macrocosm : and from the type of our humanity, as presented in selfknowledge, there is no more escape for the pantheist or the materialist, than for the theist. Modify them as you may, all causal conceptions are. born from within, as reflections or reductions of our personal, animal, or physical activity: and the severest science is, in this sense, just as anthropomorphic as the most ideal theology.’ (Martineau, A Study of Religion, i. 336.)
[ p. 220 ]
‘That knowledge, or what passes for knowledge, soon gets… beyond the data of perception and the powers of imagination, is a fact which comes to the surface more prominently in Theology perhaps than in Science. I am not aware that this is because there is any essential philosophic difference between these two great departments of knowledge. It arises rather from the fact that, for controversial purposes, it has been found convenient to dwell on the circumstance that our idea of the Deity is to a certain extent necessarily anthropomorphic, while the no less certain, if somewhat less obvious, truth that our idea of the external world is also anthropomorphic, does not supply any ready argumentative weapon… The world as represented to us by Science can no more be perceived or imagined than the Deity as represented to us by Theology, and… in the first case, as in the second, we must content ourselves with symbolical images, of which the thing we can most certainly say is that they are not only inadequate, but incorrect.’ (A. Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt, xii. 244.)
‘We recognize… psychological anthropomorphism, from the Ideas of Plato, to the immanent dialectic of the cosmical process of Hegel, and to the unconscious Will of Schopenhauer.’ (Helmholtz, Thought in Medicine, Popular Scientific lectures, vol. ii.)
‘By the necessity of language it would seem that any definition of the conception of God must, so far as it is not pure negation, suggest either a being human in respect of the highest attributes of humanity, or else some being inferior to humanity. Take, for example, the well-known definition (how skilfully and gracefully advocated every one knows) that God is “the Eternal, [ p. 221 ] not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” Now, what is meant here by the word makes? For the word necessarily calls up three, and only three, kinds of “making”; either “ making” voluntarily, as a man makes; or “making” instinctively, as a beast makes; or “making” neither voluntarily nor instinctively, but unconsciously, just as an eddy or current may be said to “‘make.” Of these three kinds of “making,” which is meant? If the first, you are anthropomorphic; if the second, you are zoomorphic; if the third, you are azoomorphic, Supposing each of these three hypotheses to be dangerous, I should prefer the first as the least dangerous, But if you say that you prefer not to define what sort of “making” you mean, and that you will leave this an open question, then I should reply that such a use of words rather conceals than reveals thought, and conveys (as perhaps indeed it is intended to convey) no revelation whatever of the nature of God, (Abbot, Through Nature to Christ, i. 44-)
‘. , . Those who, out of a conscientious regard for the interests of Science, have felt themselves compelled to derive Organic Life from blind chance, and purposeless matter . . . have invested their original principles with so much reason and power of internal development, that nothing but the caprice of their terminology which keeps to the names of Matter, Mechanism, and Accident, for what other people call Spirit, Life, and Providence, seems to prevent them from relapsing into notions which they had before strenuously opposed,’ (Lotze, Metaphysic, § 236, E. T.)
‘Surely it is too plain for words that all our thought and all our feeling must de anthropomorphic. The proposal [ p. 222 ] to avoid anthropomorphism is as absurd as the suggestion that we should take an unbiassed outside view of ourselves by jumping out of our skin.’ (Riddles of the Sphinx, by a Troglodyte, p. 145.)
The introspective method. ‘Internal observation has for its matter intuition and the objects intuited, the feelings, the perceptions, and all that a man perceives within himself. Hence internal observation is the source of the initial sciences of philosophy, Ideology and Psychology. External observation is the starting-point of all the physical sciences. To the faithful, practical application of this principle must be ascribed the wonderful progress made by the physical and mechanical sciences in modern times; and it is to the neglect of internal observation that is due the backward condition of those sciences which rest on it. The strangest feature in the case is, that these sciences were even dwarfed and loaded with most superficial prejudices by those very persons who with most ostentation proclaimed the method of observation and experience. The reason was that they prized external observation, but did not know internal observation. They preached and lauded observation in general, at the same time ignoring that species of observation which would have been most useful to them. Directing their attention only to external observation, which is valid only for material things, and not for mind (spirito), they arrived at two unfortunate [ p. 223 ] results; (1) They sterilized the metaphysical sciences by rejecting certain things not supplied by external experience ; (2) They materialized and wasted these sciences, transferring to the sphere of spiritual things what was derived from external observation, and could belong only to material things.’ (Rosmini, Logic, § 951, qu. by T. Davidson.)
‘As we recede further back, we pass more and more into the dark: of our childhood, a few broken gleams from vivid moments yet remain: of our infancy all trace is gone; and of that human period we can affirm nothing psychological, except by inference or conjecture from observations newly made on others. As this is a much more precarious source of knowledge, we are warranted in saying that our confidence in it should be graduated accordingly ; and that our imaginary constructions drawn from it should be severely tested by the immediate contents of our existing or unforgotten self-consciousness. Instead of this superior deference to our most assured inner experience, I find a disposition . . . to take liberties with the testimony of our present thought and feeling, and put it out of court, or give it a colouring not its own, on the ground that it has grown old and is no longer what it was, and that it is of very little use appealing to so altered a state of psychological facts… The empirical analysis assumes an amount of alteration in our ideas from first to last, and takes the benefit of it, which I believe to be wholly unwarranted ; and, in trusting the form which they present in our matured intelligence, we are less likely to be deceived, than in reverting to the crude type of even their rightly construed germs.’ (Martineau, A Study of Religion, ii. 213.)
[ p. 224 ]
Self-consciousness. Self-consciousness may be called the form of personality. It is that which converts animal appetites into human desires (see note 5) and which alone makes freedom possible (see note 6) ; while its self-diremption, its combination of unity with plurality, of identity with difference, separates it, oto caedo, from the material order, and therefore from the jurisdiction of the sciences which deal with that order, and constitutes it a spiritual thing. The introspective Augustine developed the significance of self-consciousness more fully than any of his predecessors in the Western world ; while the schoolmen did little more than clothe his thoughts upon the subject, in more accurate and appropriate phraseology.
‘Quo pacto se aliquid scientem scit, quae se ipsam nescit ? neque enim alteram mentem scientem scit, sed se ipsam. Scit igitur se ipsam, etc. etc.’ (Aug. De Tri S23)
The following scholastic passages are quoted by Kleutgen.
‘ Anima rationalis secundum actum proprium nata est super se reflecti cognoscendo se et amando.’ (St. Bonav. In Hb, ii, dist. xix. a. ¥.q. 1.)
‘Intellectus intelligit se; quod non contingit in aliqua virtute, cujus operatio fit per organum corporale.’ (Id. Ib.)
‘Nullus sensus se ipsum cognoscit nec suam operationem: visus enim non videt seipsum nec videt se videre; sed hoc superioris potentiae est. Intellectus [ p. 225 ] autem cognoscit seipsum, et: cognoscit se intelligere.’ (St. Thom. Contr. Gent. lib. ii. c. 66. n. 4.)
‘Un’ alma sola,
Che vive e sente e sé in sé rigira,’ (Dante, Purg. 25, 73.)
‘The Ego is not a mere fact, which exists as the Dogmatist conceives a ‘‘thing” to exist; it is existence and knowledge of existence in one. Intelligence not only is; it looks on at its own existence. It is for ztsedf, whereas the very notion of a thing is that it does not exist for itself, ‘but only for another—that is for some intelligence.’ (Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, p. 43.)
‘In all consciousness of self we know ourselves as persons; in all knowledge of other objects we know them as different from ourselves, and ourselves as different from them. Every man is convinced of this; no man can be made to think otherwise. If there be a God, then, as all His works proclaim, He must be different from at least one part of His works, He must be different from me. In the construction of his artificial system of a priori forms, Kant most unfortunately omitted the knowledge of a personal self, and thus speculation, in the hands of his successors, was allowed to flow out into a dreary waste of pantheism. When we restore the conviction of the separate existence of self, and the belief in our continued personality to its proper place, we are rearing an effective barrier in the way of the possible introduction of any system in which man can be identified with God or with’ anything else.’ (McCosh, Intuitions of Mind, p. 453-)
‘Is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel “Tam I.”’ (Tennyson, Higher Pantheism.)
[ p. 226 ]
Desire. ‘ Appetitus est inclinatio cognoscentis in cognttum. (St. Thom. Aq. Sum. i. 80. 1.)
‘Desire is feeling accompanied with the additional sense of self-hood—the self extends ideally beyond its limit. The self should be a synthesis of its real organism and its environment, and desire expresses this.’ (W. T. Harris, Hegel’s Logic, p. 393-)
‘Self-consciousness seems… to take into itself the content of a sensitive individuality without making it other than it was as such content. But it is obvious, from the transcendental point of view, that this conception, according to which the consciousness of self is simply filled with a content which it leaves unchanged and to which it adds nothing, is inadequate and misleading. A conscious subject cannot take into itself any particular content which it does not distinguish from itself as such subject, and which again it does not connect with all the other content present to it in its objects. Thus, the self as subject, in being conscious of the desires that belong to its individual sensibility as desires that determine it as one object among others, necessarily separates itself from those desires and from itself as such an object. In other words, while it determines itself as one object among others it by that very fact ceases to be simply one object among others. In the consciousness of my desires as particular impulses which determine me as an object in relation to other objects, there is, therefore, a separation of my will from such desires; and as a consequence, a necessity for distinguishing between the simple feeling of pleasure, which comes of the satisfaction of such desires, and the [ p. 227 ] consciousness that I am satisfied. In this way, transcendehtal reflexion forces us to recognize that the conscious self as such is not in immediate identity with the natural impulses; and therefore that its yielding. itself to them is always an act of self-determination.’ (E. Caird, Critical Phil. of Kant, ii. 199.)
‘In the consciousness of desire the self is withdrawn: from immediate union with the desire; it has the desirebefore it as a motive, which stands in relation to all! other motives through its relation to the self.’ (Id. ib, p. 217.)
‘So soon as any desire has become more than an indefinite yearning for we know not what, so soon as it is really desire for some object of which we are conscious, it necessarily involves an employment of the understanding upon those conditions of the real world which make the difference, so to speak, between the object as desired and its realization… It is only the fallacy of taking the pleasure that ensues on satisfaction of a desire to be the object of the desire, which blinds us to this.’ (T. H. Green, Proleg. to Ethics, §§ 134-5.)
The freedom of the will is the very nerve of personality ; and the variety of the terminology used by its different advocates, in different ages, must not be allowed to obscure the great philosophic tradition in which they agree, It is a case, indeed, in which the appeal to ‘ the authority of philosophy’ is of especial use. For the freedom of the will is really attacked on a priori grounds, and defended on grounds of experience; i.e. it is attacked as being inconsistent with various natural [ p. 228 ] analogies, or theoretic presumptions, and defended as being a fact of which we are directly and immediately aware. Now many a man, when he finds acute thinkers discrediting a primary verdict of his consciousness, is apt, with superfluous humility, to think they must be more clever than they seem, and therefore to defer to their authority. It is important, therefore, to draw attention to the fact that the immense weight of philosophic authority is beyond question on the other side. Schopenhauer, the ablest of modern determinists, has also appealed to his predecessors in his own support ; and a glance at his dist alone should suffice to justify the above statement. Among the not very numerous names occur Jeremiah, Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Scott.
‘All the Greek Fathers, as well as the apologists Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and the Latin author Minucius Felix, also the theologians of the Alexandrian school, Clement and Origen, exalt the aite£ovo.ov (the autonomy, self-determination) of the human soul with the freshness of youth and a tincture of Hellenistic idealism, but also influenced by a practical Christian interest… . Even Irenaeus, although opposed to speculation, and the more austere Tertullian, strongly insist upon this self-determination in the use of the freedom of the will, from the practical and moral point of view.” (Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, § 57.)
‘Ελεύθερον και αύτεξούσιον έποίησεν ό θεός άνθρωπον.’ (Ath. ad Autol. ii. 27.)
‘Liberum et sui arbitrii et suae potestatis invenio hominem a Deo institutum,’ (Tert. ad Mare. ii. 5.)
‘Definimus animam … liberam arbitrii.’ (Id. De An. 22.)
‘Homo rationabilis et secundum hoc similis Deo, [ p. 229 ] liber in arbitrio factus, et suae potestatis ipse sibi causa est.’ (Irenaeus, iv. 4. 231.)
‘Voluntas nostra nec voluntas esset, nisi esset in nostra potestate. Porro quia est in potestate,.libera est nobis.’ (Aug. De lib. ard. iii. 8.)
‘ Noli mirari, si caeteris per liberam voluntatem utimur, etiam ipsa libera voluntate per eam ipsam uti nos posse, ut quodam modo se ipsa utatur voluntas quae utitur caeteris, sicut se ipsam cognoscit ratio, quae cognoscit et caetera.’ (Id. ib. ii. 51.)
‘ Arbitrium idem est, quod judicium; ad:cujus nutum ceterae virtutes moventur et obediunt. Judieare: autem illius est, secundum rationem completam, cujus. est discernere inter justum et injustum, et inter proprium et alienum: nulla autem potentia novit, quid justum et quid injustum, nisi illa sola, quae est particeps rationis et nata est cognoscere summam justitiam, a qua est regula omnis juris: hoc autem solum est in ea substantia, quae est ad imaginem Dei, qualis ést tantum substantia rationalis. Nulla enim substantia discernit, quid proprium et quid alienum, nisi cognoscat seipsam et actum suum proprium : sed nunquam aliqua potentia seipsam cognoscit vel supra seipsam reflectitur, quae sit alligata materiae. Si igitur omnes potentiae sunt alligatae materiae et substantiae corporali praeter solam rationalem, sola illa est, quae potest se super seipsam reflectere ; et ideo ipsa sola est, in qua est plenum judicium et arbitrium in discernendo.’ (St. Bonav. In lib. ii. dist. xxy. p. ILI, qu. by Kleutgen.)
‘Nihil in homine sublimius, nihil dignius libero arbitrio: …in quo ad imaginem Dei creatus est. Principatur omnibus liberi arbitrit ultroneus consensus’ (R. de St. Victor, De Stat. Int. Hom. i. 3. 6.)
[ p. 230 ]
‘Natura rationalis, quae est Deo vicinissima, non solum habet inclinationem in aliquid sicut habent inanimata, nec solum movens hanc inclinationem quasi aliunde ei determinatam sicut natura sensibilis; sed ultra hoc hadet in potestate ipsam inclinationem, ut non sit ei necessarium inclinari ad appetibile apprehensum, sed possit inclinari vel non inclinari ; et sic ipsa inclinatio non determinatur ei ab alio, sed a se ipsa.’ (St. Thom. Aq. De Verit.,.q. 22; a: 4.) 7
‘Ista est generalis differentia hominis ex una parte, et omnium aliarum rerum et operationum illarum ‘ex parte altera, quia homo, in quantum homo operatur ex libero arbitrio, sed aliae res operantur ex necessitate.’ (Raymond de Sabunde, Theol. Waz. 82.)
‘La substance libre se détermine par elle-méme et cela suivant le motif du bien appergu par ’entendement qui Vincline sans la nécessiter.” (Leibniz, Théodicée, § 288.)
Cf. Shakespeare—
‘A free determination
Twixt right and wrong.’ (Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3.)
‘In every act of will there is an essential freedom, of which the mind is conscious. The possession of a free will is thus one of the elements which go to constitute man a moral and responsible agent… This truth is revealed to us by immediate consciousness, and is not to be set aside by any other truth whatever. It is a first truth equal to the highest, to no one of which will it ever yield. It cannot be set aside by any other truth whatever, nor even by any other first truth, and certainly by no derived truth. Whatever other proposition is true, this is true also, that man’s will is free,’ (McCosh, Intuttions of Mind, iv. 308.)
[ p. 231 ]
‘I have a real power of resisting my will’s stable spontaneous impulse. I am not its slave; though neither am I in such sense its master that I can at once compel it to desist from its urgent solicitations. I can exercise “ self-government ” and “self-restraint.” While my will’s spontaneous impulse remains both stable and powerful, I can, nevertheless, refuse to do what it prompts. I see plainly the very serious evils which will befall me, if I blindly follow its solicitation. And I feel that I can act in a way which is on the one hand accordant with reason, while on the other hand it is opposed to desire and impulse. However vehemently impulse may press me to the unreasonable course, at that very moment, in the teeth of that very impulse, I can exercise what we call “anti-impulsive effort.”’ (W. G. Ward, Philosophy of Theism, ii. 7.)
‘Though we now most commonly apply the term “will” to the direction of the conscious self to action, as opposed to a mere wish not amounting to such direction, yet the usage has been by no means uniform. … But though we cannot fix the usage of words, it is clear that the important real distinction is that between the direction of the self-conscious self to the realization of an object, its identification of itself with that object, on the one side,…and, on the other side, the mere solicitations of which a man is conscious, but with none of which he so identifies himself as to make the soliciting object his object—the object of his self-seeking—or to direct himself to its realization. . . . These other “desires” … are influences or tendencies by which the man, the self, is affected, not a motion proceeding from him. They tend to move him, but he does not move in them ; and none of them actually moves him unless the man [ p. 232 ] takes it into himself, identifies himself with it, in a way which wholly alters it from what it was as a mere influence affecting him.’ (T. H. Green, Proleg. to Ethics, §§ 143-4.)
‘Far from admitting that the play of our motives constitutes a necessity and carries off our personality, we are well aware that they are subject to our estimate, and that we choose for ourselves. We are not the theatre, and they the agents; we are the agents, and they, the data of the problems which we solve’ (Martineau, Study of Religion, i. 248.)
“No one can sincerely deem himself incapable by nature of controlling his impulses and modifying his acquired character. That he is able to make them the objects of examination, comparison, and estimate, places him in a judicial and authoritative attitude towards them, and would have no meaning if he were not to decide what influence they should have. The casting vote and verdict upon the offered motives is with him, and not with themselves; he is “free” to say “Yes” or “No” to any of their suggestions: they are the conditions of the act ; he is its agent” (Id. l.c. ii. 229.)
Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx (Appendix), ‘where the fallacy of deriving will from causation, instead of causation from will is well pointed out; e.g. ‘The will is the original and more definite archetype, of which causation is a derivative, vaguer and fainter ectype… So far from being an exception to the universal law of causation, the freedom of the will is the only case in which causation denotes a real fact and is more than a theory.’ (2. of S., p. 462.)
Cf. Maine de Biran, ‘L’idée de cause a son type primitif et unique dans le sentiment du moi, identifié [ p. 233 ] avec celui de leffort.’ (OEuvres Inédites, i. 288.) See also Chandler, The Spirit of Man, chap. iv.
Unity of the ego or self. ‘Definimus animam dei flatu natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, substantia simplicem, de suo sapientem, varie procedentem, liberam arbitrii, accedentiis obnoxiam, per ingenia mutabilem, rationalem, dominatricem, divinatricem, ex una redundantem.’ (Tertullian, De Anima, xxii.)
‘Hoc modo anima definiri potest juxta suae proprietatem naturae: anima seu animus est spiritus intellectualis, rationalis, semper in motu, semper vivens, bonae malaeque voluntatis capax. … Atque secundum officium operis sui variis nuncupatur nominibus: anima est, dum vivificat ; dum contemplatur spiritus est; dum sensit sensus est; dum sapit animus est; dum _ intelligit mens est; dum discernit ratio est; dum _ consentit voluntas est; dum recordatur memoria est. Non tamen haec ita dividentur in substantia, sicut in nominibus ; quia haec omnia una est anima.’ (Alcuin, De An. Rat. 149.)
‘Le moi est la seule unité qui nous soit donnée immédiatement par la nature; nous ne la rencontrons dans aucune des choses que nos facultés observent. Mais l’entendement qui la trouve en lui, la met hors de lui par induction, et d’un certain nombre de choses coexistantes il crée des unités artificielles.’ (M. Royer Collard, qu. in Jouffroy’s Reid, iv. 350.)
‘The union of individuality and universality in a single manifestation, with the implication that the individuality is the essential and permanent element to which the [ p. 234 ] universality is almost in the nature of an accident, is what forms the cardinal point in Personality.’ (Wallace, Proleg. to Hegel, c. xviii. p. 234-)
‘A knowledge of sequent states is only possible when each is accompanied by the “I think” of an identical apperception. Or, as it has been otherwise expressed, there is all the difference in the world between succession and consciousness of succession, between change and consciousness of change. Mere change, or mere succession, if such a thing were possible, would be, as Kant points out, first A, then B, then C, each filling out existence for the time being and constituting its sum, then vanishing tracelessly to give place to its successor— to a successor which yet would not be a successor, seeing that no record of its predecessor would remain. The change, the succession, the series can only be known to a consciousness or subject which is not identical with any one member of the series, but is present equally to every member, and identical with itself throughout. Connexion or relatedness of any sort—even Hume’s association—is possible only through the presence of such a unity to each term of the relation. Hence, while it is quite true, as Hume said, that when we enter into what we call ourselves, we cannot point to any particular perception of self, as we can point to particular perceptions of heat or cold, love or hatred, it is as undoubted that the very condition of all these particular perceptions, given along with each of them and essential to the connecting of one with another, is precisely the self or subject which Hume could not find—which he could not find because he looked for it not in its proper character, as the subject or correlate of all perceptions or objects, but as itself, in some fashion, a perception or [ p. 235 ] object added to the other contents of consciousness.’ (Seth, Hegelianism and Personatity, i. p. 11.)
‘It has been required of any theory which starts without presuppositions and from the basis of experience, that in the beginning it should speak only of sensations or ideas, without mentioning the soul to which, it is said, we hasten without justification to ascribe them. I should maintain, on the contrary, that such a mode of setting out involves a wilful departure from that which is actually given in experience. A mere sensation without ~ a subject is nowhere to be met with as a fact… It is thus, and thus only, that the sensation is a given fact ; and we have no right to abstract from its relation to its subject because this relation is puzzling, and because we wish to obtain a starting-point which looks more convenient but is utterly unwarranted by experience. In saying this I do not intend to repeat the frequent but exaggerated assertion, that in every single act of feeling or thinking there is an express consciousness which regards the sensation or idea simply as states of a self; on the contrary, every one is familiar with that absorption in the content of a sensuous perception which often makes us entirely forget our personality in view of it. But then the very fact that we can become aware that this was the case, presupposes that we afterwards retrieve what we omitted at first, viz. the recognition that the perception was in us as our state. Further… any comparison of two ideas, which ends by our finding their contents like or unlike, presupposes the absolutely indivisible unity of that which compares them… And so our whole inner world of thoughts is built up ; not as a mere collection of manifold ideas, existing with or after one another, but as a world in which these individual [ p. 236 ] members are held together and arranged by the relating activity of this single pervading principle. This then is what we mean by the unity of consciousness ; and it is this that we regard as the sufficient ground for assuming an indivisible soul.’ (Lotze, Metaphysic, bk. ill, c. i, § 241.)
For some remarks on the criticism of the ‘ Self’ contained in Bradley, Appearance and Reality, see J. S. Mackenzie, Mind, New Series, No. xi.
Personality the ultimate reality. ‘There is nothing else except itself, by which we can understand or explain personality. … The word: suggests, not so much the presence of intelligence, will, &c., but more eminently the fact of being a centre to which the universe of being appears in relation, a distinct centre of being, a subject, whereof reason, affection, will, consciousness itself, are so many—(not separate parts, but)—several aspects or activities. … Consciousness is not the ultimate fact in man except when it is tacitly taken as equivalent to self-consciousness, the realization of his own personality. Not the fact that he thinks, but the fact that he is that of which thought-capacity is an aspect or corollary, is the primary datum of all knowledge and thought. He thinks, indeed, likes, wills, acts; but that central fact of which these all are but so many partial aspects is the fact that he is a self… Personality, involving, as necessary qualities of its being, reason, will, love, is incomparably the highest phenomenon known to experience, and as such has to be related with whatever is above it and [ p. 237 ] below it by any philosophy based on experience.’ (R. C. Moberly, Church Congress, 1891.)
‘This self-personality, like all other simple and immediate presentations, is indefinable ; but it is so, because it is superior to definition. It can be analyzed into no simpler elements, for it is itself the simplest of all; it can be made no clearer by description or comparison, for it is revealed to us in all the clearness of an original intuition, of which description and comparison can furnish only faint and partial resemblances.’ (Mansel, Prolegomena Logica.)
‘The cogito of Descartes is not designed to express the phenomena of reflection alone, but is co-extensive with the entire consciousness. This is expressly affirmed in the Principia, p.1,§ 9. ‘ Cogitationis nomine intelligo illa omnia, quae nobis consciis in nobis fiunt, quatenus eorum in nobis conscientia est. Atque ita non modo intelligere, velle, imaginari, sed etiam sentire, idem est hic quod cogitare.” The dictum, thus extended, may perhaps be advantageously modified by disengaging the essential from the accidental features of consciousness ; but its main principle remains unshaken; namely, that our conception of real existence, as distinguished from appearance, is derived from, and depends upon, the distinction between the one conscious subject and the several objects of which he is conscious. The rejection of consciousness, as the primary constituent of substantive existence, constitutes Spinoza’s point of departure from the principles of Descartes, and at the same time, the fundamental error of his system.’ (Mansel, Bampt. Lect. 3, note 25.)
‘When Descartes took his cogito ergo sum as alone certain, and provisionally regarded the existence of the [ p. 238 ] world as problematical, he really discovered the essential and only right starting-point of all philosophy, and at the same time its true foundation. This foundation is essentially and inevitably the subjective, the individual consciousness. For this alone is and remains immediate ; everything else, whatever it may be, is mediated and conditioned through it, and is therefore dependent upon it.’ (Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, bk. i. chap. i, E. T.)
See also Momerie, Personality the Beginning and End of Metaphysics.
Matter an abstraction, and therefore Materialism an absurdity. ‘The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given—that is to say is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them ; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away. Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly.’ (Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, bk. i. chap. vii, E. T.)
[ p. 239 ]
‘ Realism (materialism) which commends itself to the crude understanding, by the appearance which it assumes of being matter-of-fact, really starts from an arbitrary assumption, and is, therefore, an empty castle in the air, for it ignores or denies the first of all facts, that all that we know lies within consciousness. For that the objective existence of things is conditional through a subject whose ideas they are, and consequently that the objective world exists only as idea, is no hypothesis, and still less a dogma, or even a paradox set up for the sake of discussion; but it is the most certain and the simplest truth.’ (Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, bk. i. sup. chap. i, E. T.)
‘Let it not be supposed that matter per se, can be reached by the way of inference. Whatever can be conceived inferentially, must be conceived as the object of possible, though not of actual cognition. But there is no potential knowledge, in any quarter, of matter per se… . It can be conceived only as the object of no possible knowledge ; and therefore it cannot be conceived as an inference, except on the understanding that this inference is a finding of the contradictory, or of that which cannot be conceived on any terms by any intelligence.’ (Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysics, xii. 10.)
‘If it could be admitted that matter and motion had an existence in themselves, or otherwise than as related to a consciousness, it would still not be by szchk matter and motion, but by the matter and motion which we know, that the functions of the soul, or anything else, can for us be explained. Nothing can be known by help of reference to the unknown. But matter and motion, just so far as known, consist in, or are determined by, relations between the objects of that connected consciousness [ p. 240 ] which we call experience. … What then is the source of these relations … the principle of union which renders them possible? Clearly it cannot itself be conditioned by any of the relations which result from its combining and unifying action. Being that which so organizes experience that the relations expressed by our definitions of matter and motion arise therein, it cannot itself be determined by those relations, It cannot be a matter or motion.’ (T. H. Green, Proleg. to Ethics, c. i. § 9.)
Personality a Mystery. Wartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious contains much that is very suggestive on the ‘unconscious’ element in human personality, to which he considers that Leibniz was the first to call due attention.
‘We attribute far too small dimensions to the rich empire of our Self, if we omit from it the unconscious region which resembles a great dark continent. The world: which our memory peoples, only reveals in its revolution, a few luminous points at a time; while its immense and teeming mass remains in shade… We daily see the conscious passing into unconsciousness ; and take no notice of the bass accompaniment which our fingers continue to play, while our attention is directed to fresh musical effects.’ (J. P. Richter, Selina, qu. by Hartmann, Introduction.)
Cf. also Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea, though both these writers precisely invert the significance of the facts in question, by attributing them to Divine [ p. 241 ] unconsciousness, instead of human limitation, Contrast the following passage from Lotze :—
‘The finite being always works with powers with which it did not endow itself, and according to laws which it did not establish—that is, it works by means of a mental organization which is realized not only in it, but also in innumerable similar beings. Hence, in reflecting on self, it may easily seem to it as though there were in itself some obscure and unknown substance—something which is in the Ego though it is not the Ego itself, and to which, as to its subject, the whole personal development is attached. And hence there arise the questions— never to be quite silenced—What are we ourselves? What is our soul? What is our self—that obscure being, incomprehensible to ourselves, that stirs in our feelings and our passions, and never rises into complete selfconsciousness ? The fact that these questions can arise shows how far personality is from being developed in us to the extent which its notion admits and requires. It can be perfect only in the Infinite Being which, in surveying all its conditions or actions, never finds any content of that which it suffers or any law of its working, the meaning and origin of which are not transparently plain to it, and capable of being explained by reference to its own nature.’ (Lotze, Microcosmus, We 9:4;)
Cf. Newman’s Sermon on ‘ The mysteriousness of our present being.’ (Par. Sermons, vol. iv.)
[ p. 242 ]
Positive and Negative Theology. ‘Εκ δύο γαρ τούτων οίονει χαρακτηρ τις ημϊν εγγινεται τού Θεού εκ τε της των άπ€μφαινόν των άρνηστως και εκ της των υπαρχόντων ομολογίας.’ (St. Basil, tom. i. Adv. Lun, 1. 10.)
This distinction, which afterwards crystallized into positive and negative (καταφατική and άποφατική) theology, is constantly emphasized by the fathers and schoolmen ; and in face of the crude objections which are often urged against dogma, it is important that its existence should be borne in mind, Patristic references to the subject will be found in Thomassin (Theol. Dogm. lib. iv.) who summarizes their teaching in the following passage :
‘Intexta implicataque sunt inter se haec omnia mysticae Patrum Theologiae capita ; quod nil proprie de Deo intelligi aut dici possit, quod sciri possit quod sit, non quid sit; quod sciri possit quid non sit, non vero quid sit; quod affirmari de eo multa possint, imo omnia per modum causae, quod omnium causa Sit ; quod aequius sit eadem omnia de eo negare, quod causa sit longe praecellentissima, cujus vix tenuissimam umbram assequuntur omnes ab ea promanantes naturae ; quod omnes negationes positionem aliquam implicent, non negantur enim de Deo quaelibet perfectiones, nisi ex sensu et conscientia perfectionis cujusdam longe eminentissimae, cujus hae sint extrema quaedam et fugientia vestigia; et vicissim positiones omnes de Deo ad negationes tandem resolvi debeant, propterea [ p. 243 ] quod nil proprie sciri aut affirmari de divina essentia potest; quod denique natura divina majore intervallo superet naturas intellectuales, quam istae corporeas. Quocirca si corpora omnia corporeasque imagines amoliri necesse est, ut natura spiritalis mentium intelligatur ; peraeque omnes mentium dotes removendae sunt, ut summa Dei natura intelligatur. (Thomassin, Theol. Dogm. lib. iv. 8. 1.)
See also, the ‘ Testimonies of Theologians’ prefixed to the fifth edition of Mansel’s Bampton Lectures, and id. lect. iv, notes 18 and 19.
For the ethical dangers to which an abstract use of the distinction may lead, cf. Dorner on Dionysius Areopagita. (Person of Christ, ii. 1. pp. 158 et seq., E. T.)
‘Wer darf ihn nennen?
Und wer bekennen :
Ich glaub’ ihn?
Wer empfinden
Und sich unterwinden,
Zu sagen: ich glaub’ ihn nicht?’ (Goethe, Faust.)
Personality legitimately predicable of God. The common objection—that since personality involves the contrast between an ego and a non-ego, a self and what is outside self, it cannot be predicated of God without implying that He is limited by something which is not Himself— is fully answered by Lotze, who maintains with undoubted truth, that we can clearly distinguish in thought between that immediate sense of self-existence which constitutes [ p. 244 ] our Ego or self, and the various forms of the non-ego which are the conditions of its realization; and can conceive the latter, which do not constitute, but only call out the attributes of the Ego, to be necessary merely on account of our finite nature, and not inseparable from personality as such. He illustrates this by the analogy of the way in which a human person, as he gradually incorporates the results of external stimuli in his memory and character, becomes in a measure self-sufficing, and can produce much both of thought and action without recourse to the external world. Thus, what is ‘only approximately possible for the finite mind, the conditioning of its life by itself, takes place without limit in God, and no contrast of an external world is necessary for Him.’ The function of the non-ego, in short, on human personality, is not to define its circumference, but to stimulate its activity, And as any possible view of God involves His containing His own principle of activity; He can unquestionably be conceived as Personal without any reference beyond Himself. (See Lotze, Microcosmus, bk. ix. c. 4, and S. Harris, Self-revelation of God, pp. 174 et seq., 210 et seq.)
At the same time it is obvious that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, with the possibilities of Divine self-determination which it involves, is a further assistance towards the conception of a Personality which is at once Infinite and yet definite. This thought is drawn out at great length by the obscure but suggestive writer Victorinus Afer (for whom see Thomassin, Theol. Dogm. Tract, ii, c. 32, and C, Gore, art. § Victorinus’ in Smith and Wace, Dict. of Christian Biography).
‘Quod est esse, Pater est. Quod species Filius … Quom autem se yidet, geminus existit et intelligitur ; [ p. 245 ] videns, et quod videtur: ipse qui videt, ipsum quod videtur ; quia se videt, hoc est igitur foras spectans, foris genitus vel existens, ut quid sit intelligat. Ergo si foris est, et sic genitus, Filius … omnia ergo filius ut omnia pater.’ (Vict. Afer, Bibl. Patr. iv. 1, pp. 188, 227, qu. by Thomassin.)
Cf. Irenaeus, ‘Bene, qui dixit ipsum immensum Patrem in Filio mensuratum; mensura enim Patris Filius, quoniam et capit eum.’ (Haer. iv. 2. 2.)
Also Origen : ‘Πεπερασμενην γάρ είναι και την δυναμιν του θ€θΰ λεκτέον, και μη προφάσει ευφημίας την περιγραφήν αυτής περιαιρετεον’ εάν γαρ η άπειρος η θεία δύναμις, ανάγκη αυτήν μηδ εαυτην νοείν.” (De Princip. ii. 9.)
As we follow this train of thought, it becomes increasingly apparent that, as Lotze says, ‘ Perfect personality is in God alone.’
‘It is not that human personality is a realized completeness to which we desire to make our conceptions of Divine Being correspond, but rather that human experience gives us indications of what Personality, in its fuller realization, would mean. Personality that lives only under material conditions in a world of dying, personality whose existence and origin are alike wholly independent of its own thought and will, and which only by degrees discovers a little as to the conditions of its own being—whatever rank it may hold in relation to other present phenomena—is plainly a most limited and imperfect form of personality. Only, then, the Supreme Being can attain the full idea of Personality. The ideals which hover behind and above human experience are suggestions, are approaches, more or less, towards that.’ (R. C. Moberly, Church Congress, 1891.)
Cf. Augustine: ‘Non audemus dicere unam essentiam, [ p. 246 ] tres substantias: sed unam essentiam vel substantiam, tres autem personas. Tamen cum quaeritur quid tres, magna prorsus inopia humanum laborat eloquium. Dictum est tamen tres personae, non ut illud diceretur, sed ne taceretur.’ (De Trin. v. 9.)
Also St. Thomas Aquinas :—
‘ Persona significat id quod est perfectissimum in tota natura, sive subsistens in rationali natura. Unde, cum omne illud quod est perfectionis, Deo sit attribuendum, eo quod ejus essentia continet in se omnem perfectionem, conveniens est ut hoc nomen, persona, de Deo dicatur, non tamen eodem modo quo dicitur de creaturis; sed excellentiori modo: sicut et alia nomina quae creaturis a nobis imposita Deo attribuuntur.’ (St. Thom. Aq. Summa, 1. 29. 3.)
Inadequate conceptions necessarily illusory, but not therefore delusive. ‘What is the theological imagination of early times? It is essentially this—that man transports himself into nature—endues the great objects or powers of nature with human feeling, human will—and so prays and worships, and hopes to propitiate, and to obtain aid, compassion, deliverance. Well, this primitive imagination is in the line of truth. We begin with throwing a man’s thought there into nature; we purify and exalt our imaginary being; we gradually release him from the grosser passions of mankind. We are, in fact, raising ourselves above the domination of those grosser passions ; and as we grow wise and just, we make the good wise and just, beneficent and humane. Meanwhile [ p. 247 ] science begins to show us this goodly whole as the creation of one Divine Artificer, And now we recognize, not without heart-beatings, that God is indeed not man, but that He has been educating man to comprehend Him in part, and to be in part like Him.
‘ Are not the Imagination and the Reason here strictly affiliated? We begin, as it has been boldly and truly said, by making God in our own image. What else could we do? Nature had not yet revealed herself to us in her great unity, as one whole, as the manifestation of one Power. We make God in our own image, but by-and-by, as our conceptions on every side enlarge, we find that it is God who is gradually elevating us by the expansion of our knowledge into some remote similitude with Himself. He is making us, in one sense, in His own image. This correspondence between the human and the Divine is the key-note of all religion; and Imagination, in her apparently wild and random way, had struck upon the note.
‘God is making man in His own image, when He reveals to him the creation in its true nature, when He inspires him with a knowledge of the whole, and a love for the good of the whole. But the first step in this divine instruction was precisely the bold imagination by which man threw out into nature an image of himself. The form that imagination threw into the air was gradually modified and sublimed as man rose in virtue, and nature was better understood, till at length it harmonizes with, and merges into, a truth of the reason. Was man to wait for his God and his religion till his consciousness, in all other respects, was fully developed? Or was the revelation of the great truth to be sudden? Apparently not. Man dreamt a god [ p. 248 ] first. But the dream was sent by the same Power, or came through the same law, that revealed the aftertruth.’ .(W. Smith, Thorndake, v. ii. § 6.)
‘The whole material world is a beneficent illusion to the intellect… . The very air that we breathe, and through the medium of which we see, cannot be trusted to present objects correctly to our sight. Even in the purest atmosphere the process of refraction must go on, and the sun must appear each day to rise before its time and with a slightly distorted orb. If, then, the different layers of our atmosphere, our medium of sight, have been so ordained by God that they shall always reveal to us the truth, yet leave part of the truth distorted or unrevealed, how is it unlikely that God may likewise have so constructed the several strata of the medium of His spiritual Revelation that the truth might be always more or less refracted and concealed, thus mercifully making us ever discontented with our modicum of knowledge, and, as we correct sight by the aid of Reason, so leading us to correct our interpretation of Revelation by the aid of Conscience” (E. A. Abbot, Through Nature to Christ, v. 73.)
I venture to differ gravely from some of the conclusions which Dr. Abbot draws from this principle ; chiefly in consequence of what I cannot but consider an unphilosophical view of the relation between what we call spirit, and matter; but his illustration of the principle itself and of its true bearing, is essentially important, in face of the popular tendency to treat the illusions of life as delusions, and base upon them pessimistic conclusions like those of Schopenhauer and Hartmann.
(Cf. also F. W. Robertson’s Sermon on The Illusiveness of Life.)
[ p. 249 ]
Theistic arguments. The patristic and scholastic arguments may be found in Petavius, Thomassin, or Suarez ; and are examined in their modern reference by Kleutgen, Philosophie der Vorzeit; Gratry, Connatssance de Dieu.
Among more recent books may be mentioned, Flint’s Theism (see also the references given in his note xxxvi. p. 423); Purinton’s Christian Theism; Fisher’s Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (chaps. i-iii); Ward’s Philosophy of Theism; Martineau’s Study of Religion ; J. Caird’s Philosophy of Religion; Ebrard’s Apologetics (§§ 85-89, E. T.); Knight’s Aspects of Theism; Bruce’s Apologetics ; Strong’s Manual of Theology.
The argument from the consensus gentium. In speaking of the common-sense philosophy, Hamilton remarks that ‘the argument from common sense… is not an appeal from philosophy to blind feeling. It is only an appeal from the heretical conclusions of particular philosophers, to the catholic principles of all philosophy.’ (Reid’s Works, note A. § 3.) And the same may be said of the Theistic argument from universal consent, which is in fact a special application, or departmental section of the same great principle.
The fact discovered by induction that man (with insignificant exceptions) is everywhere and always religious, [ p. 250 ] may be legitimately translated into the inference that man is instinctively, i.e. naturally or constitutionally, religious; in the sense in which St. Thomas says, ‘Dei cognitio nobis innata dicitur esse, in quantum per principia nobis innata de facili percipere possumus Deum esse’ (Opusc. 70 super Boeth. de Trin.), and accordingly we find the argument stated in both these forms. It would appear to have had influence even with Epicurus. ‘Solus enim (Epicurus) vidit, primum esse deos quod in omnium animis eorum notionem impressisset ipsa natura. Quae est enim gens aut quod genus hominum quod non habeat sine doctrina anticipationem quandam deorum.’ (Cic. N. D. qu. by Zeller, Stoics and Epicureans, c. xviii. note.) And its frequent use by the earlier fathers is, as Kleutgen points out, of especial significance, from their wide acquaintance with the pagan life and literature of their time. Cf. passages quoted in Kleutgen (Philos. der Vorzeit), and Hagenbach (History of Christian Doetrine, § 35, E. T.) e.g.
‘Τό θεός … πράγματος δυσεξήγητου έμφυτος τή φύσει των ανθρώπων δόξα.’ (Justin, Apol.. ii. 6.)
‘Πάσιν γάρ άπαξαπλώς άνθρώποις… ενεστακταί τις απόρροια θεϊκή.” (Clem. Alex. Coh. vi. 59.) Other of his phrases are ‘εμφασις φυσική—εμφύτως και άδιδάκτως,’
‘Πάσι γάρ η γνώσις του είναι θεόν υπ’ αυτού φυσικώς εγκατεσπαρτα,’ (John Damasc. De Fid. Or. i. 1.)
‘Quod colimus deus unus est . . . vultis ex animae ipsius testimonio comprobemus? quae licet carcere corporis pressa . . . quum tamen resipiscit … et sanitatem suam patitur, deum nominat, hoc solo, quia proprie verus hic unus. … O testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae.’ (Tert. Apol. c. 173; cf. De Test. An. c. 1.)
Modern investigation, as stated in the text, has immensely [ p. 251 ] strengthened the inductive basis of this argument. See the works there quoted ; also Flint’s Zheism, note 8, and the references there given.
The cosmological argument. ‘The kernel of this argument in all its forms, is that we have a positive notion of unconditioned or independent being. Such being is a presupposition of all our consciousness ; something which on reflection we find to lie at the root of our perceptions as well as our conceptions, and which thus guarantees its own reality. We discover—we do not infer—that it exists, and exists as positive and concrete. This is well stated in the following passages.
‘The conception of unconditioned being is given us, whether delusively or not, by the senses themselves ; every stable object stands out at first complete in itself, and every agent acts apparently with a power of its own ; we learn from observation and experiment that it is otherwise. The conceptions of unconditioned being and power are driven out of the material world to find their place in theology. Take, for illustration, the idea of Absolute Rest. … It was a favourite expression of some of the ancient philosophers, that God “was the cause of all motion, but partook of none.” Modern philosophers do not use this expression, but no one can object to it on the ground that we have not the idea of absolute rest, or that, because it is nowhere in the world, it may not be exemplified in God. Such ideas as those of eternal permanence, unconditioned being, self-originating act or power, are found to be misplaced when [ p. 252 ] applied to anything in the arena of ever-moving, changeful and conditioned existence; but show us that there is a legitimate arena for these ideas (as is done by demonstrating the necessary pre-existence of the idea of the whole), and we forthwith transfer them to that arena.’ (William Smith, Thorndale, p. 440.)
‘Everything of which his senses cannot perceive a limit, is to a primitive savage, or to any man in an early stage of intellectual activity, unlimited or infinite. Man sees, he sees to a certain point; and there his eyesight breaks down. But exactly where his eyesight breaks down, there presses upon him, whether he likes it or not, the perception of the unlimited or the infinite. It may be said that this is not perception, in the ordinary sense of the word. No more it is, but still less is it mere reasoning. In perceiving the infinite, we neither count, nor measure, nor compare, nor name. We know not what it is, but we know that it is, and we know it, because we actually feel it and are brought in contact with it. If it seems too bold to say that man actually sees the invisible, let us say that he suffers from the invisible, and this invisible is only a special name for the infinite… The infinite, therefore, instead of being merely a late abstraction, is really implied in the earliest manifestations of our sensuous knowledge.’ (Max Miller, Hibbert Lectures, i. 37.)
‘The true idea of the infinite is not a negation nor a modification of any other idea. The finite, on the contrary, is in reality the limitation or modification of the infinite, nor is it possible, if we reason in good earnest, to conceive of the finite in any other sense than as a shadow of the infinite.’ (Id. Lect. on Lang. ii. p. 596. Cf. Natural Religion, p. 125; Anthropological religion, [ p. 253 ] p. 106.) Cf. also McCosh, Intuitions of Mind, pp. 214-30.
Historically the argument dates from Plato and Aristotle. It is used by Diodorus of Tarsus (qu. by Hagenbach, H. of D. § 123), by Boéthius, and continually by the schoolmen, e. g.
‘Omne. ., quod imperfectum esse dicitur, id diminutione perfecti imperfectum esse perhibetur. Quo fit, ut si in quolibet genere imperfectum quid esse videatur, in eo perfectum quoque aliquid esse necesse sit. Etenim perfectione sublata, unde illud quod imperfectum perhibetur extiterit, ne fingi quidem potest. Neque enim a diminutis inconsummatisque natura rerum cepit exordium, sed ab integris absolutisque procedens, in haec extrema atque effoeta dilabitur’ (Boéthius, De Consol. Phil. iii. 10.)
‘ Quicquid est per aliud, minus est quam illud, per quod cuncta sunt alia et quod solum est per se: quare illud, quod est per se, maxime omnium est. Est igitur unum aliquid, quod solum maxime et summe omnium est,’ (Anselm, Monol. iii.)
‘Ex illo esse quod non est ab aeterno nec a semet ipso ratiocinando colligitur et illud esse quod est a semet ipso et eo quidem etiam ab aeterno. Nam si nihil a semet ipso fuisset non esset omnino unde ea existere potuissent, quae suum esse a semet ipsis non habent nec habere valent.’ (R. de St. Victor, De Trin. 18.)
It is given in three aspects by St. Thom. Aq. ; ‘ Probatur per motum dari primum moyens, secundo primum efficiens, tertio semper aliquid fuit quod est necessarium et non possibile’ (Summ, 1, 2, 3) ; and lies at the root of all the philosophy of the seventeenth century, e. g.
‘Dum in me ipsum mentis aciem converto, non modo [ p. 254 ] intelligo me essé rem incompletam et ab alio dependentem remque ad majora et majora sive meliora indefinite aspirantem, sed simul etiam intelligo illum a quo pendeo majora ista omnia non indefinite et potentia tantum, sed reipsa infinite in se habere atque ita Deum esse, totaque vis argumenti in eo est quod agnoscam fieri non posse ut existam talis naturae, qualis sum, nempe ideam Dei in me habens, nisi re vera Deus etiam existeret.’ (Descartes, t.. 3.)
‘Quas absolute format infinitatem exprimunt… . Ideas positivas prius format quam negativas.’ (Spinoza, De Intel. Emend. xv. 108.)
‘Tout ce que lesprit apercoit immédiatement et directement est ou existe… j’apercois immédiatement et directement linfini. Donc il est” (Malebranche, Entret. dun phil. chrét. p. 365.)
‘ Qw’est-ce qui a mis l’idée de l’infini dans un sujet si borné? . . . Supposons que lesprit de ’homme est comme un.miroir… Quel étre a pu mettre en nous “’image de Vinfini, si Vinfini ne fut jamais?.. Cette image de l’infini, c’est le vrai infini dont nous avons la pensée. … S’il n’était pas, pourrait-il se graver au fond de notre esprit? … . Dieu, est véritablement en lui-méme tout ce qu’il y a de réel et de positif dans les esprits, tout ce qu’il y a de réel et de positif dans les corps, tout ce qu’il y, a de réel et de positif dans les essences de toutes les créatures possibles, dont je n’ai point d’idée distincte. Il a tout l’étre du corps, sans étre borné au corps; tout Pétre de l’esprit, sans étre borné & lesprit; et de méme des autres essences possibles. Il est tellement tout étre, qu’il a tout l’étre de chacune de ces créatures, mais en retranchant la borne qui la restreint. Otez toute borne ; Otez toute différence qui resserre l’étre dans les espéces ; [ p. 255 ] vous demeurez dans l’universalité de l’étre, et, par conséquent, dans la perfection infinie de l’Etre par lui-méme.’ (Fénelon, Traité de l’Exist de Dieu, i. ii. 53; ii. v. 66.) For the fuller treatment of it, see Gratry, Connaissance de Dieu, passim. And for its criticism, E. Caird, Philosophy of Kant.
The Teleological argument. This argument falls natutally into two divisions: use and beauty; of which latter Mozley says (Sermon on Nature): ‘When the materialist has exhausted himself in efforts to explain utility in nature, it would appear to be the peculiar office of beauty to rise up suddenly as a confounding and baffling extra, which was not even formally provided for in his scheme. … Physical science goes back and back into nature, but it is the aspect and front of nature which gives the challenge; and it is a challenge which no backward train of physical causes can meet.’
It should be noticed that this aesthetic aspect of the argument from design is that to which the Fathers, with their evidently intense appreciation of nature, chiefly appeal, e. g.
‘Ούδί χρη τα τοιαντα πειράσθαι άποδεικνυναι, φανεράς οΰσης της Θείας πρόνοιας εκ τε της ίφεως των δρωμένων πάντων τεχνικών καί σοφών ποιημάτων, και των μεν τάξει γινομένων των δε τάξει φανερονμένων.’ (S, Clem. Alex. Strom. v.)
‘Τοδ μεν γάρ είναι θεόν και την πάντων ποιητικήν τε καί συνεκτικήν αιτίαν κα’ι οψις διδάσκαλος και δ φυσικός νόμος· η μεν τοις όρωμένοις προσβάλλουσα και πεπηγόσι καλώς και δδεύονσι και άκινητως, ΐνα όντως ειπω9 κινονμένοις κα’ι φερομένοις* δ δε διά [ p. 256 ] των όρωμενων καί τεταγμενών τον αρχηγόν τούτων σνλλογιζομενος.’ (St. Greg. Naz. Orat. 28. n. 6.)
‘… εστι πάλιν και από των φαινομένων την περί τον Θεού γνωσιν καταλαβεϊν3 της κτίσεως ώσπερ γράμμασι διά της τάξεως και αρμονίας τον έαντης δεσπότην και ποιητην σημαινονσης καί βοωσης’ (St. Athan. Ad Gen. 34.)
‘Εκ μεγεθονς και καλλονής κτισμάτων άναλόγως 6 γενεσιουργός θεωρείται.’ (Id. Ib. 44.)
‘Deum quippe Patrem ex magnitudine et pulchritudine creaturarum potest quis intelligere, et a conditionibus conditor consequenter agnoscitur.’ (St. Jerom. In Gal. 3, 2)
‘Quis mundum intuens Deum esse non sentiat ?’ (St. Hilar. In Psalm. 52.)
For further quotations, which might be multiplied indefinitely, see Landriot, Le Christ de la Tradition, and Hagenbach, H. of Doctrine. z
The later schoolmen would seem to have thought more of the utilitarian aspect of design, and hence laid themselves open to the attacks of Bacon and Spinoza. Cf.
‘ Necessitas naturalis inhaerens rebus, qua determinantur ad unum est impressio quaedam Dei dirigentis ad finem…, nmecessitas naturalis creaturarum demonstrat divinae providentiae gubernationem,’ (St. Thom. Summ. 1. 103, 2. 7.)
‘Naturalia tendunt in fines determinatos… Quum ergo ipsa non praestituant sibi finem, quia rationem finis non cognoscunt, oportet quod eis praestituatur finis ab alio, qui sit naturae institutor. Hic autem est, qui praebet omnibus esse et est per se necesse esse, quem Deum dicimus. Non autem posset naturae finem praestituere nisi intelligeret. Deus igitur est intelligens.’ (Id. Contr. Gent. i. 43. 6.)
[ p. 257 ]
The real strength of the argument consists in the way in which, as pointed out by Mozley, these two absolutely independent things are inextricably interwoven. ‘Nature, while she labours at her work, sleeps like a picture,’ a fact which is fatal to dysteleology. For modern treatments of the. question, see Janet, Fizal Causes; (E. T.) Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious (whose array of facts may be safely trusted to refute his inferences) ; Le Conte, Evolution ; Mozley, Essay on Design and Sermon on Nature; Ebrard’s Apologetics, §§ 144-155; Flint (esp. Notes 13-21); J. Croll, The Philosophical Basis of Evolution (esp. c. 19); Riddles of the Sphinx (c. 7, §§ 17-22).
The Ontological Argument. This argument, which might perhaps best be described as the. argument from the reality of thought, must be distinguished from the cosmological argument which in fact it underlies, but with which it has often been confused in statement. Anselm, for instance, runs the two into each other, and is neither the first nor the best exponent of the Ontological argument, with which he is sometimes exclusively credited. St. Augustine is its best early exponent in his treatise, De libro arbitrio. The following quotation will illustrate his reasoning, though it is somewhat diffuse and difficult to condense,
‘Si quid melius quam id quod in mea natura optimum est (sc. ratio) invenire potuero Deum esse dixerim… Nullo modo negaveris esse incommutabilem veritatem haec omnia quae incommutabiliter vera sunt continentem, [ p. 258 ] quam non possis dicere tuam vel meam, vel cuiusquam hominis, sed omnibus incommutabilia vera cernentibus, tanquam miris modis secretum et publicum lumen, praesto esse ac se praebere communiter: omne autem quod communiter omnibus ratiocinantibus atque intelligentibus praesto est, ad ullius eorum proprie naturam pertinere quis dixerit?..Promiseram autem, si meministi, me tibi demonstraturum esse aliquid, quod sit mente nostra atque ratione sublimius. Ecce tibi est ipsa veritas… . Tu autem concesseras, si quid supra mentes nostras esse monstrarem, Deum te esse confessurum, si adhuc nihil esset superius… Si…aliquid est excellentius, ille potius Deus est: si autem non est, iam ipsa veritas Deus est.’ (Aug. De lib. arb. ii. 14-39.)
Cf. Anselm, ‘Cum veritas quae est in rerum existentia sit effectus summae veritatis, ipsa quoque causa est veritatis quae cognitionis est, et eius quae est in propositione.’ (De Ver. ix.)
‘Ex superioribus habemus quod ipsa sapientia idem sit quod divina substantia.’ (R. de St. Victor, De Trin. i, 22.) ;
Cf. the following modern statements:
‘The ontological argument—the argument from thought to being—when relieved of its imperfect syllogistic … form, is simply the expression of that highest unity of thought and being, which all knowledge presupposes as its beginning and seeks as its end. Idealism, in the sense that all things and beings constitute a system of relations which finds its unity in mind, that every intelligence contains in it the form of the universe, and that, therefore, all knowledge is but the discovery of that which is already our own—the awaking of a self-consciousness, which involves at the same time [ p. 259 ] a consciousness of God—this idealism is the real meaning of the ontological argument, and the only meaning in which it is defensible’ (E. Caird, Crit. Phil. of Kant, ii 13.)
‘The real pre-supposition of all knowledge, or the thought which is the Arius of all things, is not the individual’s consciousness of himself as individual, but a thought or self-consciousness which is beyond all individual selves, which is the unity of all individual selves and their objects, of all thinkers and all objects of thought. Or, to put it differently, when we are compelled to think of all existences as relative to thought, and of thought as prior to all, amongst the existences to which it is prior is our own individual self. We can make our individual self, just as much as other things, the object of thought. We can not only think, but we can think the individual thinker. We might even say that, strictly speaking, it is not we that think, but the universal reason that thinks in us. In other words, in thinking, we rise to a universal point of view, from which our individuality is of no more account than the individuality of any other object. Hence, as thinking beings, we dwell already in a region in which our individual feelings and opinions, as such, have no absolute worth, but that which alone has absolute worth is a thought which does not pertain to us individually, but is the universal life of all intelligences, or the life of universal, absolute intelligence.
‘What, then, we have thus reached as the true meaning of the ontological proof is this: that, as spiritual beings, our whole conscious life is based on a universal selfconsciousness, an absolute spiritual life, which is not a mere subjective notion or conception, but which [ p. 260 ] carries with it the proof of its necessary existence or reality.’ (J. Caird, Introd. to Phil. of Rel. v. § 3.)
Cf. E. Caird, Kant, chap. xiii.and Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics, § 26 et seq.; W. T. Harris, Hegel’s Logic, chap. xxxi.
The Moral Argument. ‘It is the circumstance that man is possessed of a distinct will which suggests the idea that God is not a mere law or principle, but a person with a power of voluntary determination. It is in consequence of his possessing an inherent and positive freedom that man is led to look upon God as also free, and this in a higher and more absolute sense, inasmuch as there can be nothing to lay restraint upon his liberty. May we not go a step further, and maintain that the possession of voluntary power and freedom on the part of man, is not only fitted to suggest, but is a proof, that the God from whom they proceeded has a will, and that this will is free’ (McCosh, Intuitions of the Mind, p. 453.)
This argument is powerfully stated by Cardinal Newman.
‘It is obvious that Conscience is the essential principle and sanction of religion in the mind. Conscience implies a relation between the soul and a something exterior, and that, moreover, superior to itself; a relation to an excellence which it does not possess, and to a tribunal over which it has no power. And since the more closely this inward monitor is respected and followed, the clearer, the more exalted, and the more varied its dictates become, and the standard of excellence [ p. 261 ] is ever outstripping, while it guides our obedience, a moral conviction is thus at length obtained of the unapproachable nature, as well as the supreme authority of That, whatever it is, which is the object of the mind’s contemplation. THere, then, at once, we have the elements of a religious system ; for what is religion but the system of relations existing between us and a Supreme Power, claiming our habitual obedience.’ (Newman’s University Sermons, ii.)
‘Conscience . . . is something more than a moral sense… it always implies what that sense only sometimes implies . . . the recognition of a living object; towards which it is directed. Inanimate things cannot stir our affections; these are correlative with persons. If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear. If, on doing wrong, we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same sunny serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight which follows on our receiving praise from a father, we certainly have within us the image of some person, to whom our love and veneration look, in whose smile we find our happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom we direct our pleadings, in whose anger we are troubled and waste away. These feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being: we are not affectionate towards a stone, nor do we feel shame before a horse ora dog; we have no remorse or compunction on breaking mere human law: yet, so it is, conscience excites all these painful emotions, confusion, foreboding, [ p. 262 ] self-condemnation; and, on the other hand, it sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation, and a hope, which there is no sensible, no earthly object to elicit. “The wicked flees, when no one pursueth”: then why does he flee? whence his terror? Who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his-heart? If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the object to which his perception is directed must be Supernatural and Divine.’ (Grammar of Assent, p. 107.)
It may be interesting to notice that the relation between this and the Teleological argument, of which so much has been made since Kant, is forcibly expressed by Raymond of Sabunde, e. g.
‘Quoniam homo, in quantum homo, est talis naturae, quod facit opera sua talia ad quae de natura sua sequitur meritum vel demeritum, et per consequens debetur eis praemium vel poena… necesse est quod sit aliquis supra hominem maior, qui possit hoc remunerare vel punire, et correspondere sibi secundum opera sua. Si enim non esset aliquis, qui posset hoc facere, sequeretur quod homo esset frustra et in vanum, quia opera eius essent frustra, quia ultra alia opera aliarum rerum sunt praemialia et punibilia, et si nullus sit qui correspondeat operibus suis praemiando, sequitur, quod totum universum est frustra et inordinatum, quia omnia inferiora serviunt homini, et sunt propter hominem, et homo est pars principalis universi. Et si homo est frustra, sequitur, quod totum residuum est frustra. Et tamen videmus ad sensum, quod omnia inferiora usque ad hominem sunt ordinata, et tamen homo non ordinavit illa, Sequitur ergo, quod etiam homo erit ordinatus. Et etiam sequitur quod aliquis respondebit homini secundum [ p. 263 ] eius naturam.’ (Raymond de Sabunde, Z. Wat. Tit. 83.)
‘Homo in quantum homo habet liberum arbitrium, per quod facit opera meritoria seu demeritoria. Et ideo necesse est, quod in natura sit aliquis praemiator vel punitor: … hoc autem clamat totum universum, cuius homo principalior pars existit: et etiam opera hominum hoc requirunt, qui volunt habere debitum, scil. poenum vel praemium.’ (Id., Tit. 86.)
In this connexion it is important to recognize the unquestionable primacy assigned by Kant to the practical reason, as he is sometimes misrepresented on the point.
‘ The doctrine of freedom, and the absolute supremacy ’ of the moral order of the world, or the doctrine of the primacy of practical reason, rests with Kant upon firm ground. The moral proof for the existence of God stands or falls with this doctrine. Regarding the zheoretical demonstrability of God’s existence, Kant held different views at different stages of his philosophical inquiry. . . . But, however differently he may have thought on this point—namely, the knowableness of God—there was not a moment in the course of the development of his philosophical convictions when he denied, or even only doubted, the reality of God.’ (Kuno Fischer’s Critique of Kant, c. ii. § 3, E. T.)
‘We have to remember that the Critique of Pure Reason, after all, is only the first stage in the process of Kant’s thought, and that its main value is to prepare the way for the second stage, which is contained in the Critique of Practical Reason. If knowledge of the objects of the Ideas of reason is denied by Kant to be possible, it is only to make room for faith. We can [ p. 264 ] think the noumenal, and we can believe in it, though we know only the phenomenal. And this exclusion of knowledge, if, in one aspect of it, it means the limitation of our intelligence, as capable only of understanding that which is given to it through sense, in another aspect of it, points to the infinity of our nature, as subjects who are conscious of themselves, and who, as so conscious, are not subjected to the limitations which they impose on all the objects they know. The limitation of knowledge to phenomena is thus the liberation of the noumena, and especially of the noumenal subject, from the conditions to which all phenomenal objects are subjected. Experience is not a closed circle ; for the very principles on which it rests point to something that is not included within it; and alongside of the realm of nature and necessity, or rather as an opposite counterpart to it, Kant forthwith proceeds to set up the realm of morality and freedom.’ (E. Caird, Philosophy of Kant, ii. p. 141. Cf. also i. pp. 228 et seq.)
Morality the condition of spiritual insight. ‘Γενέσθω δή πρώτον θεοειδής πάς εί μελλει θεάσασθαι θεόν τε καί καλόν.’ (Plotinus, Enn. i. 6. 9.)
‘Fideli menti multae undique rationes occurrunt, multa denique argumenta emergunt.’ (R. de St. Victor, De Cont. 3.)
‘Vera fides liberat et magnificat ipsum intellectum, [ p. 265 ] quia non constringit eum intra terminos, intra quos ratio -habet eum terminatum.’ (R. Lulli, De Con. Dei, x. 36.)
Cf. passages qu. by Hagenbach (H. of Doct. § 35. 7-)
This principle should be too axiomatic to need statement, but is in fact continually ignored in popular controversy. The following statements from grave reasoners may, therefore, be worth quoting.
‘Tis not, therefore, for want of sufficient evidence that men disbelieve the great truths of religion; but plainly for want of integrity, and of dealing ingenuously and impartially with themselves.’ (Clarke, Evidences, p. xv. Cf. Being and Attributes, ad init.) .
‘Inattention, among us, to revealed religion, will be found to imply the same dissolute immoral temper of mind, as inattention to natural religion.’ (Butler, Analogy, Conclusion.)
Primitive man. The theory of evolution has raised questions respecting the primitive condition of man, which had never occurred to earlier thinkers. For passages bearing on the theological treatment of the subject, cf. Hagenbach (Hist. of Christian Doct. §§ 61, 175, 245). It will be noticed that some of the earlier writers are much freer and more philosophical on the point than the later; e.g. Origen, ‘Εν τοίς δοκούσι περί τοϋ Αδάμ είναι φυσιολογεί Μωϋσής τά περί τής τοϋ άνθρώπου φύσεως.’ (Cont. Cels. iv. 40.) While, among the later, the unwarranted position referred to in the text is more [ p. 266 ] common among the Protestant writers, whose tendency to exaggerate the effects of the fall, led them also to exaggerate the elevation of the unfallen state. With these contrast the language of Bellarmine: ‘Non magis differt status hominis post lapsum Adae a statu eiusdem in puris naturalibus, quam differt spoliatus a nudo, neque deterior est humana natura, si culpam originalem detrahas, neque magis ignorantia et infirmitate laborat, quam esset et laboraret in puris naturalibus condita.’ (De Gratia, tom. iv. c. 2, Pr. 4.)
Natural Religion. (Christianity) ‘is a religion in addition to the religion of nature; it does not supersede or contradict it; it recognizes and depends on it, and that of necessity: for how possibly can it prove its claims except by an appeal to what men have already ? be it ever so miraculous, it cannot dispense with nature ; this would be to cut the ground from under it; for what would be the worth of evidence.in favour of a revelation which denied the authority of that system of thought, and those methods of reasoning, out of which those evidences necessarily grew?’ (Newman’s Grammar of Assent, p. 383.)
Cf. Augustine. ‘Res ipsa quae nunc Christiana religio nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio generis humani, quousque ipse Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera religio quae iam erat coepit appellari Christiana.’ (Refract. i. 12. 3.)
The translation of the Sacred Books of the East (ed. M. Müller) will enable the ordinary reader to form a fairer estimate of the oriental religions—their weakness, [ p. 267 ] and their strength—than can possibly be gathered from any manual or summary, or collection of elegant extracts.
Cf. also the various Hibbert and Gifford Lectures, Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites (and, in connexion with the latter, Fraser’s Golden Bough). For a Bibliography, see Tiele’s Outlines, and Schrader’s Manual,
For a comparison between Christianity and other religions, see Hardwick, Christ and other Masters (which would require modifications in the present day) ; Wordsworth, Bampton Lectures, The One Religion ; Copleston, Buddhism in Ceylon.
Ethnic Inspiration. For numerous passages illustrating the Indian and Greek views of Inspiration, see Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. iii. c. 2. The principle upon which the recognition of such inspiration rests, is stated by Cardinal Newman in the following passage:
‘When religion of some sort is said to be natural, it is not meant that any religious system has been actually traced out by unaided Reason. We know of no such system, because we know of no time or country in which human Reason was unaided. ‘Scripture informs us that revelations were granted to the first fathers of our race, concerning the nature of God and man’s duty to Him, [ p. 268 ] and scarcely a people can be named, among whom there are not traditions, not only of the existence of powers exterior to this visible world, but also of their actual interference with the course of nature, followed up by religious communications to mankind from them. ‘The Creator has never left Himself without such witness as might anticipate the conclusions of Reason, and support a wavering conscience and perplexed faith. No people (to speak in general terms) has been denied a revelation from God, though but a portion of the world has enjoyed an authenticated revelation.’ (Newman’s University Sermons, ii.)
Cf. Bede: ‘In quantum vero vel gustum aliquem sapientiae cuiuslibet vel virtutis imaginem habebant totum hoc desuper acceperunt; non solum munere primae conditionis, verum etiam quotidiana eius gratia, qui creaturam suam nec se deserentem deserens, dona sua, prout ipse iudicaverit hominibus et magna magnis et parva largitur parvis.’ (Exp. in Cant. Cant., Opp. ix. 197.)
The Incarnation. It has been impossible, within the compass of the present lectures, to do more than indicate in outline the relation of the Incarnation to their general argument. But this deficiency may be more than supplemented by reference to the treatment of the subject in the Bampton Lectures for 1891. (C. Gore, The Incarnation.)
[ p. 269 ]
The following passage contains a concise summary of the argumentative position :
‘The evidence for the authority of Jesus Christ is essentially of a cumulative character ;… we decline to consider any portion of it in entire isolation from the rest. It is true that when He entered on His work, and made His first appeal to one nation, He based that appeal very largely on the Scriptures of the earlier Dispensation, But even then His fulfilling of the Scriptures, His concentration in His Person, and His teaching of every ray which had enlightened His Jewish ancestors, did not constitute more than a small portion of the evidence which convinced His first followers ; the appeal of those first followers to the Gentile world of their day travelled far beyond the narrower region of His fulfilment of the earlier Dispensation; the Roman world submitted itself to Him on the ground of the correspondence of His work, of the appeal of His Death and Resurrection, of the exact adaptation of His teaching to primary needs of human nature, independent altogether of the Jewish Scriptures; and our own belief in Him and His Religion appeals, again, to what I would call with all reverence, His actual, historical contribution to the advance of human progress, to the permanence of all that He has done for human life under aspects the most varied, individual, national, world-wide; to His ability tested through the centuries, to supply every need of humanity—whether those of individual souls in the spiritual wants of their inmost being, or those of society at large, on the highest scale of its organization. It is by taking all these things into account that we arrive at our belief in His Person.’ (Churchmen and the Higher Criticism: a Charge, by L. G. Mylne, Bishop of Bombay: Bombay, 1893.)
[ p. 270 ]
The supernatural dignity of man. ‘The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind. That surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me that I have any… . Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm or little body, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us ; something that was before the elements, and pays no homage to the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God, as well as scripture.’ (Sir Thomas Browne, Rel. Med.)
Cf. Pascal. ‘Tous les corps, le firmament, les étoiles, la terre et les royaumes, ne valent pas le moindre des esprits, car il connoit tout cela, et soi-méme ; et le corps, rien. Et tous les corps, et tous les esprits ensemble, et toutes leurs productions, ne valent pas le moindre mouvement de charité, car elle est d’un ordre infiniment plus élevé. De tous les corps ensemble on ne sauroit tirer la moindre pensée: cela est impossible, et d’un autre ordre. Tous les corps et les esprits ensemble ne sauroient produire un mouvement de vraie charité: cela est impossible, et d’un autre ordre tout surnaturel.’ (Pensées, ii, 10.1.) Cf. Browning (Paracelsus, pp. 185192.)
‘All tended to mankind,
And, man produced, all has its end thus far;
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God. Pronostics told
Man’s near approach; so in man’s self arise [ p. 271 ]
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendour ever on before
In that eternal circle life pursues.’
Such statements may be called rhetorical, but rhetoric in this case merely means the emotional statement of a rational conviction. This conviction, as argued in the text, is the necessary presupposition of the Incarnation. ‘He is worthy that Thou shouldest do this for him’; and was so regarded by the Fathers, who continually emphasize the thought of man being created in the image and likeness of God. CE passages in Hagenbach (H. of D. § 56).
The conceptions of Divine and human personality vary together. ‘Belief in the personality of man and belief in the personality of God stand or fall together. A glance at the history of religion would suggest that these two beliefs are for some reason inseparable. Where faith in the personality of God is weak, or is altogether wanting, as in the case of the pantheistic religions of the East, the perception which men have of their own personality is found to be, in an equal degree, indistinct. The feeling of individuality is dormant. The soul indolently ascribes to itself a merely phenomenal being. It conceives of itself as appearing for a moment, like a wavelet on the ocean, to vanish again in the all-ingulfing essence whence it emerged. Recent philosophical theories which - substitute matter, or an “ Unknowable,” for the self-conscious Deity, likewise dissipate the personality of man as ordinarily conceived. If they deny that God is a Spirit, [ p. 272 ] they deny with equal emphasis that man is a spirit. The pantheistic and atheistic schemes are in this respect consistent in their logic; but of man’s perception of his own personal attributes, arises the belief in a personal God. On this fact of our own personality the validity of the arguments for theism depends.’ (G. P. Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 1.)
Psychological illustrations of the doctrine of the Trinity. Numerous physical illustrations of the Trinity are employed by the Fathers (for which see Thomassin, Theol. Dogm., Tract ii. c. 26), but they can never be pressed, without risk of passing into Sabellianism; whereas the psychological illustrations, which are obviously the more fundamental, have no such attendant danger. Cf. passages quoted in Hagenbach (H. of C. D., §§ 42, 43), to which the following may be added.
‘Ωσπέρ δέ τον Αόγον έκ των καθ ημάς άνάλογικως έπ της νπ^ρκπμίνης γνωμν φύσως κατά τον αυτόν τρόπον καί τη πρ του Πν€υματος έννοια προσαχθησόμίθα σκιάς τινας και μιμηματα της άφράστου δννάμςως έν τη καθ’ ημάς θ€ωρουντ€ς φνσ€ι.’ (Greg. Nys. Orat. Cat. 2.)
‘Ante omnia Deus erat solus… quia nihil aliud extrinsecus praeter illum. Ceterum ne tunc quidem solus ; habebat enim secum quam habebat in semetipso rationem, suam scilicet…Quae ratio sensus ipsius est. Hanc Graeci Adyov dicunt, quo vocabulo etiam sermonem appellamus. . . . Idque quo facilius intellegas ex teipso ante recognosce, … Vide cum tacitus tecum ipse congrederis ratione, hoc ipsum agi intra te, occurrente ea tibi cum sermone ad omnem cogitatus tui motum, ad [ p. 273 ] omnem sensus tui pulsum… Ita secundus quodammodo in te est sermo, per quem loqueris cogitando, et per quem cogitas loquendo; ipse sermo alius est. Quanto ergo plenius hoc agitur in Deo … . quod habeat in se etiam tacendo rationem, et in ratione sermonem ? - + » quem secundum a se faceret agitando intra se.’ (Tert. Adv. Prax. c. v.)
‘Nos quidem in nobis, tametsi non aequalem, imo valde longeque distantem, neque coaeternum, et quo brevius totum dicitur, non eiusdem substantiae, cuius est Deus, tamen qua Deo nihil sit in rebus ab eo factis natura propinquius, imaginem Dei, hoc est summae illius Trinitatis, agnoscimus, adhuc reformatione perficiendum, ut sit etiam similitudine proxima. Nam et sumus, et nos esse novimus, et id (nostrum) esse ac nosse diligimus. In his autem tribus quae dixi, nulla nos falsitas verisimilis turbat. Non enim ea, sicut illa quae foris sunt, ullo sensu corporis tangimus, velut colores videndo, sonos audiendo, odores olfaciendo, sapores gustando, dura et mollia contrectando sentimus, quorum sensibilium etiam imagines eis simillimas, nec iam corporeas, cogitatione versamus, memoria tenemus, et per ipsas in istorum desideria concitamur: sed sine ulla phantasiarum vel phantasmatum imaginatione ludificatoria, mihi esse me, idque nosse et amare certissimum est. ae (Aur, De Cin, Dei, xi. 26. Cf. De Trin. 1. ix.)
‘Habet anima in sua natura imaginem sanctae Trinitatis in eo quod intelligentiam, voluntatem et memoriam habet. Una est enim anima quae mens dicitur, una vita, et una substantia, quae haec tria habet in se: sed haec tria non sunt tres vitae; sed una vita; nec tres mentes sed una mens: consequenter utique nec tres substantiae sunt, sed una substantia … in his tribus [ p. 274 ] unitas quaedam est: intelligo me intelligere, velle, et meminisse ; et volo me intelligere et meminisse et velle ; et memini me intelligere et velle et meminisse.’ (Alcuin, De An. Rat. 147.)
‘Habet igitur mens rationalis cum se cogitando intelligit, secum imaginem suam ex se natam, id est cogitationem sui ad suam similitudinem, quasi sua impressione formatam, quamvis ipsa se a sua imagine non nisi ratione sola separare possit, quae imago eius verbum eius est. Hoc itaque modo, quis neget summam sapientiam, cum se dicendo intelligit, gignere consubstantialem sibi similitudinem suam, id est verbum suum? Quod verbum, licet de re tam singulariter eminenti proprie aliquid satis convenienter dici non possit, non tamen inconvenienter sicut similitudo, ita et imago, et figura et character eius dici potest.’ (Anselm, Monol. c. xxxiii.)
DIVINE IMMANENCE. An Essay on The Spiritual Significance of Matter. Second Impression. Demy 8vo, 7s. 6a.
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SERMONS PREACHED IN A COLLEGE CHAPEL, with an Appendix. Second Edition, Crown 8vo, 55.
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