Chapter II: The Philosophy of Religion (1)

All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness
in religion deisidaimonesterois.--ST. PAUL.

As a prelude and preparation for the study of the religion of the Athenians, it may be well to consider religion in its more abstract and universal form; and inquire in what does religion essentially consist; how far is it grounded in the nature of man; and especially, what is there in the mental constitution of man, or in his exterior conditions, which determines him to a mode of life which may be denominated _religious?_ As a preliminary inquiry, this may materially aid us in understanding the nature, and estimating the value of the religious conceptions and sentiments which were developed by the Greek mind.

Religion, in its most generic conception, may be defined as a form of thought, feeling, and action, which has the _Divine_ for its object, basis, and end. Or, in other words, it is a mode of life determined by the recognition of some relation to, and consciousness of dependence upon, a _Supreme Being_. This general conception of religion underlies all the specific forms of religion which have appeared in the world, whether heathen, Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian.

That a religious destination appertains to man as man, whether he has been raised to a full religious consciousness, or is simply considered as capable of being so raised, can not be denied. In all ages man has revealed an instinctive tendency, or natural aptitude for religion, and he has developed feelings and emotions which have always characterized him as a religious being. Religious ideas and sentiments have prevailed among all nations, and have exerted a powerful influence on the entire course of human history. Religious worship, addressed to a Supreme Being believed to control the destiny of man, has been coeval and coextensive with the race. Every nation has had its mythology, and each mythologic system has been simply an effort of humanity to realize and embody in some visible form the relations in which it feels itself to be connected with an external, overshadowing, and all-controlling Power and Presence. The voice of all ancient, and all contemporaneous history, clearly attests that the _religious principle_ is deeply seated in the nature of man; and that it has occupied the thought, and stirred the feelings of every rational man, in every age. It has interwoven itself with the entire framework of human society, and ramified into all the relations of human life. By its agency, nations have been revolutionized, and empires have been overthrown; and it has formed a mighty element in all the changes which have marked the history of man.

This universality of religious sentiment and religious worship must be conceded as a fact of human nature, and, as a universal fact, it demands an explanation. Every event must have a cause. Every phenomenon must have its ground, and reason, and law. The facts of religious history, the past and present religious phenomena of the world can be no exception to this fundamental principle; they press their imperious demand to be studied and explained, as much as the phenomena of the material or the events of the moral world. The phenomena of religion, being universally revealed wherever man is found, must be grounded in some universal principle, on some original law, which is connate with, and natural to man. At any rate, there must be something in the nature of man, or in the exterior conditions of humanity, which invariably leads man to worship, and which determines him, as by the force of an original instinct, or an outward, conditioning necessity, to recognize and bow down before a Superior Power. The full recognition and adequate explanation of the facts of religious history will constitute a _philosophy of religion_.

The hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world are widely divergent, and most of them are, in our judgment, eminently inadequate and unsatisfactory. The following enumeration may be regarded as embracing all that are deemed worthy of consideration.

I. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in SUPERSTITION, that is, in a _fear_ of invisible and supernatural powers, generated by ignorance of nature.

II. The phenomenon of religion is part of that PROCESS or EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity), which gradually unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and _religion_, attains to perfect self-consciousness in philosophy.

III. The phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEELING--_the feeling of dependence and of obligation_; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition or instinctive faith, traces this dependence and obligation we call God.

IV. The phenomenon of religion had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of REASON, that is, the necessary _à priori ideas of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being_, which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful and contingent phenomena of the world.

V. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in EXTERNAL REVELATION, to which _reason_ is related as a purely passive organ, and _heathenism_ as a feeble relic.

As a philosophy of religion--an attempt to supply the rationale of the religious phenomena of the world, the first hypothesis is a skeptical philosophy, which necessarily leads to _Atheism_. The second is an idealistic philosophy (absolute idealism), which inevitably lands in _Pantheism_. The third is an intuitional or "faith-philosophy," which finally ends in _Mysticism_. The fourth is a rationalistic or "spiritualistic" philosophy, which yields pure _Theism_. The last is an empirical philosophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and culminates in _Dogmatic Theology_.

In view of these diverse and conflicting theories, the question which now presents itself for our consideration is,--does any one of these hypotheses meet and satisfy the demands of the problem? does it fully account for and adequately explain all the facts of religious history? The answer to this question must not be hastily or dogmatically given. The arbitrary rejection of any theory that may be offered, without a fair and candid examination, will leave our minds in uncertainty and doubt as to the validity of our own position. A blind faith is only one remove from a pusillanimous skepticism. We can not render our own position secure except by comprehending, assaulting, and capturing the position of our foe. It is, therefore, due to ourselves and to the cause of truth, that we shall examine the evidence upon which each separate theory is based, and the arguments which are marshalled in its support, before we pronounce it inadequate and unphilosophical. Such a criticism of opposite theories will prepare the way for the presentation of a philosophy of religion which we flatter ourselves will be found most in harmony with all the facts of the case.

I. _It is affirmed that the religious phenomena of the world had their origin in_ SUPERSTITION, _that is, in a fear of unseen and supernatural powers, generated from ignorance of nature_.

This explanation was first offered by Epicurus. He felt that the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which demands a cause; and he found it, or presumed he found it not in a spiritual God, which he claims can not exist, nor in corporeal god which no one has seen, but in "phantoms of the mind generated by fear." When man has been unable to explain any natural phenomenon, to assign a cause within the sphere of nature, he has had recourse to supernatural powers, or living personalities behind nature, which move and control nature in an arbitrary and capricious manner. These imaginary powers are supposed to be continually interfering in the affairs of individuals and nations. They bestow blessings or inflict calamities. They reward virtue and punish vice. They are, therefore, the objects of "sacred awe" and "superstitious fear."

Whate'er in heaven,
In earth, man sees mysterious, shakes his mind
With sacred awe o'erwhelms him, and his soul
Bows to the dust; the cause of things conceal
Once from his vision, instant to the gods
All empire he transfers, all rule supreme,
And doubtful whence they spring, with headlong haste
Calls them the workmanship of power divine.
For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live
Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind
How things are swayed; how, chiefly, those discerned
In heaven sublime--to SUPERSTITION back
Lapses, and fears a tyrant host, and then
Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do,
While yet himself nor knows what may be done,
Nor what may never, nature powers defined
Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass:
Hence wide, and wider errs he as he walks.[41]

[Footnote 41: Lucretius, "De Natura Rerum," book vi. vs. 50-70.]

In order to rid men of all superstitious fear, and, consequently, of all religion, Epicurus endeavors to show that "nature" alone is adequate to the production of all things, and there is no need to drag in a "divine power" to explain the phenomena of the world.

This theory has been wrought into a somewhat plausible form by the brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have been the first to discover the great law of the three successive stages or phases of human evolution. That law is thus enounced. Both in the individual mind, and in the history of humanity, thought, in dealing with its problems, passes, of necessity, through, first, a _Theological_, second, a _Metaphysical_, and finally reaches a third, or _Positive_ stage.

In attempting an explanation of the universe, human thought, in its earliest stages of development, resorts to the idea of living personal agents enshrined in and moving every object, whether organic or inorganic, natural or artificial. In an advanced stage, it conceives a number of personal beings distinct from, and superior to nature, which preside over the different provinces of nature--the sea, the air, the winds, the rivers, the heavenly bodies, and assume the guardianship of individuals, tribes, and nations. As a further, and still higher stage, it asserts the unity of the Supreme Power which moves and vitalizes the universe, and guides and governs in the affairs of men and nations. The _Theological_ stage is thus subdivided into three epochs, and represented as commencing in _Fetichism_, then advancing to _Polytheism_, and, finally, consummating in _Monotheism_.

The next stage, the _Metaphysical_, is a transitional stage, in which man substitutes abstract entities, as substance, force, Being _in se_, the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theological conceptions. During this period all theological opinions undergo a process of disintegration, and lose their hold on the mind of man. Metaphysical speculation is a powerful solvent, which decomposes and dissipates theology.

It is only in the last--the _Positive_ stage--that man becomes willing to relinquish all theological ideas and metaphysical notions, and confine his attention to the study of phenomena in their relation to time and space; discarding all inquiries as to causes, whether efficient or final, and denying the existence of all entities and powers beyond nature.

The first stage, in its religious phase, is _Theistic_, the second is _Pantheistic_, the last is _Atheistic_.

The proofs offered by Comte in support of this theory are derived:

I. _From Cerebral Organization_. There are three grand divisions of the Brain, the Medulla Oblongata, the Cerebellum, and the Cerebrum; the first represents the merely animal instincts the second, the more elevated sentiments, the third, the intellectual powers. Human nature must, therefore, both in the individual and in the race, be developed in the following order: (1.) in animal instincts; (2.) in social affections and communal tendencies; (3.) in intellectual pursuits. Infant life is a merely animal existence, shared in common with the brute; in childhood the individual being realizes his relation to external nature and human society; in youth and manhood he compares, generalizes, and classifies the objects of knowledge, and attains to science. And so the infancy of our race was a mere animal or savage state, the childhood of our race the organization of society, the youth and manhood of our race the development of science.

Now, without offering any opinion as to the merits of the phrenological theories of Gall and Spurzheim, we may ask, what relation has this order to the law of development presented by Comte? Is there any imaginable connection between animal propensities and theological ideas; between social affections and metaphysical speculations? Are not the intellectual powers as much concerned with theological ideas and metaphysical speculations as with positive science? And is it not more probable, more in accordance with facts, that all the powers of the mind, instinct, feeling, and thought, enter into action simultaneously, and condition each other? The very first act of perception, the first distinct cognition of an object, involves _thought_ as much as the last generalization of science. We know nothing of _mind_ except as the development of thought, and the first unfolding, even of the infant mind, reveals an intellectual act, a discrimination between a self and an object which is not self, and a recognition of resemblance, or difference between _this_ object and _that_. And what does Positive science, in its most mature and perfect form, claim to do more than "to study actual phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and succession."

Cerebral organization may furnish plausible analogies in favor of some theory of human development, but certainly not the one proposed by Aug. Comte. The attempt, however, to construct a chart of human history on such an _à priori_ method,--to construct an ideal framework into which human nature must necessarily grow, is a violation of the first and most fundamental principle of the Positive science, which demands that we shall confine ourselves strictly to the study of actual phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and succession. The history of the human race must be based on facts, not on hypotheses, and the facts must be ascertained by the study of ancient records and existing monuments of the past. Mere plausible analogies and _à priori_ theories based upon them, are only fitted to mislead the mind; they insert a prism between the perceiving mind and the course of events which decomposes the pure white light of fact, and throws a false light over the entire field of history.

2. _The second order of proof is attempted to be drawn from the analogies of individual experience_.

It is claimed that the history of the race is the same as that of each individual mind; and it is affirmed that man is _religious_ in infancy, _metaphysical_ in youth, and _positive_, that is, scientific without being religious, in mature manhood; the history of the race must therefore have followed the same order.

We are under no necessity of denying that there is some analogy between the development of mind in the individual man, and in humanity as a whole, in order to refute the theory of Comte. Still, it must not be overlooked that the development of mind, in all cases and in all ages, is materially affected by exterior conditions. The influence of geographical and climatic conditions, of social and national institutions, and especially of education, however difficult to be estimated, can not be utterly disregarded. And whether all these influences have not been controlled, and collocated, and adjusted by a Supreme Mind in the education of humanity, is also a question which can not be pushed aside as of no consequence. Now, unless it can be shown that the same outward conditions which have accompanied the individual and modified his mental development, have been repealed in the history of the race, and repeated in the same order of succession, the argument has no value.

But, even supposing it could be shown that the development of mind in humanity has followed the same order as that of the individual, we confidently affirm that Comte has not given the true history of the development of the individual mind. The account he has given may perhaps be the history of his own mental progress, but it certainly is not the history of every individual mind, nor indeed, of a majority even, of educated minds that have arrived at maturity. It would be much more in harmony with facts to say childhood is the period of pure receptivity, youth of doubt and skepticism, and maturity of well-grounded and rational belief. In the ripeness and maturity of the nineteenth century the number of scientific men of the Comtean model is exceedingly small compared with the number of religious men. There are minds in every part of Europe and America as thoroughly scientific as that of Comte, and as deeply imbued with the spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, which are not conscious of any discordance between the facts of science and the fundamental principles of theology. It may be that, in his own immediate circle at Paris there may be a tendency to Atheism, but certainly no such tendency exists in the most scientific minds of Europe and America. The faith of Bacon, and Newton, and Boyle, of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Pascal, in regard to the fundamental principles of theology, is still the faith of Sedgwick, Whewell, Herschel, Brewster, Owen, Agassiz, Silliman, Mitchell, Hitchcock, Dana, and, indeed of the leading scientific minds of the world--the men who, as Comte would say, "belong to the élite of humanity." The mature mind, whether of the individual or the race, is not Atheistical.

3. _The third proof is drawn from a survey of the history of certain portions of our race._

Comte is far from being assured that the progress of humanity, under the operation of his grand law of development, has been uniform and invariable. The majority of the human race, the vast populations of India, China, and Japan, have remained stationary; they are still in the Theological stage, and consequently furnish no evidence in support of his theory. For this reason he confines himself to the "élite" or advance-guard of humanity, and in this way makes the history of humanity a very "abstract history" indeed. Starting with Greece as the representative of ancient civilization, passing thence to Roman civilization, and onward to Western Europe, he attempts to show that the actual progress of humanity has been, on the whole, in conformity with his law. To secure, however, even this semblance of harmony between the facts of history and his hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts very much as Procrustes treated his victims,--he must stretch some, and mutilate others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The natural organization of European civilization is distorted and torn asunder. "As the third or positive stage had accomplished its advent in his own person, it was necessary to find the metaphysical period just before; and so the whole life of the Reformed Christianity, in embryo and in manifest existence, is stripped of its garb of _faith_, and turned out of view as a naked metaphysical phenomenon. But metaphysics, again, have to be ushered in by theology; and of the three stages of theology Monotheism is the last, necessarily following on Polytheism, as that, again, on Fetichism. There is nothing for it, therefore, but to let the mediæval Catholic Christianity stand as the world's first monotheism, and to treat it as the legitimate offspring and necessary development of the Greek and Roman polytheism. This, accordingly, Comte actually does. Protestantism he illegitimates, and outlaws from religion altogether, and the genuine Christianity he fathers upon the faith of Homer and the Scipios! Once or twice, indeed, it seems to cross him that there was such a people as the Hebrews, and that they were not the polytheists they ought to have been. He sees the fact, but pushes it out of his way with the remark that the Jewish monotheism was 'premature.'"[42]

[Footnote 42: Martineau's Essays, pp. 61, 62.]

The signal defect of Comte's historical survey, however, is, that it furnishes no evidence of the general prevalence of Fetichism in primitive times. The writings of Moses are certainly entitled to as much consideration and credence as the writings of Berosus, Manetho, and Herodotus; and, it will not be denied, they teach that the faith of the earliest families and races of men was _monotheistic_. The early Vedas, the Institutes of Menu, the writings of Confucius, the Zendavesta, all bear testimony that the ancient faith of India, China, and Persia, was, at any rate, pantheistic; and learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as European, confidently affirm that the ground of the Brahminical, Buddhist, and Parsist faith is _monotheistic_; and that _one_ Being is assumed, in the earliest books, to be the origin of all things.[43] Without evidence, Comte assumes that the savage state is the original condition of man; and instead of going to Asia, the cradle of the race, for some light as to the early condition and opinions of the remotest families of men, he turns to Africa, the _soudan_ of the earth, for his illustration of the habit of man, in the infancy of our race, to endow every object in nature, whether organic or inorganic, with life and intelligence. The theory of a primitive state of ignorance and barbarism is a mere assumption--an hypothesis in conflict with the traditionary legends of all nations, the earliest records of our race, and the unanimous voice of antiquity, which attest the general belief in a primitive state of light and innocence.

[Footnote 43: "The Religions of the World in their Relation to Christianity" (Maurice, ch. ii., iii., iv.).]

The three stages of development which Comte describes as necessarily successive, have, for centuries past, been simultaneous. The theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific elements coexist now, and there is no real, radical, or necessary conflict between them. Theological and metaphysical ideas hold their ground as securely under the influence of enlarged scientific discovery as before; and there is no reason to suppose they ever had more power over the mind of man than they have to-day. The notion that God is dethroned by the wonderful discoveries of modern science, and theology is dead, is the dream of the "_profond orage cérébral_" which interrupted the course of Comte's lectures in 1826. As easily may the hand of Positivism arrest the course of the sun, as prevent the instinctive thought of human reason recognizing and affirming the existence of a God. And so long as ever the human mind is governed by necessary laws of thought, so long will it seek...

[Transcriber's note: In the original document, page 64 is a duplication of page 63. The real page 64 seems to be missing.]

....eur, and consequently to develop its true philosophy. Its fundamental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is confined to the observation and classification of sensible phenomena--that is, to changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon self-observation and self-reflection, is a "mere illusion; and logic and ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are altogether baseless." Spiritual entities, forces, causes, efficient or final, are unknown and unknowable; all inquiry regarding them must be inhibited, "for Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes at all."

II. The second hypothesis offered in explanation of the facts of religious history is, _that religion is part of that_ PROCESS OR EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (_i.e._, the Deity) _which, gradually unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to the fullest self-consciousness in philosophy_.

This is the theory of Hegel, in whose system of philosophy the subjective idealism of Kant culminates in the doctrine of "_Absolute Identity_." Its fundamental position is that thought and being, subject and object, the perceiving mind and the thing perceived, are ultimately and essentially _one_, and that the only actual reality is that which results from their mutual relation. The outward thing is nothing, the inward perception is nothing, for neither could exist alone; the only reality is the relation, or rather synthesis of the two; the essence or nature of being in itself accordingly consists in the coexistence of two contrarieties. Ideas, arising from the union or synthesis of two opposites, are therefore the _concrete realities_ of Hegel; and the _process_ of the evolution of ideas, in the human mind, is the process of all existence--_the Absolute Idea_.

_The Absolute_(die Idée) thus forms the beginning, middle, and end of the system of Hegel. It is the one infinite existence or thought, of which nature, mind, history, religion, and philosophy, are the manifestation. "The absolute is, with him, not the infinite _substance_, as with Spinoza; nor the infinite _subject_, as with Fichte; nor the infinite _mind_, as with Schelling; it is a perpetual _process_, an eternal thinking, without beginning and without end."[44] This _living, eternal process of absolute existence is the God of Hegel_.

It will thus be seen that the _Absolute_ is, with Hegel, the sum of all actual and possible existence; "nothing is true and real except so far as it forms an element of the Absolute Spirit."[45] "What kind of an Absolute Being," he asks, "is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included?"[46] The Absolute, therefore, in Hegel's conception, does not allow of any existence out of itself. It is the _unity_ of the finite and the infinite, the eternal and the temporal, the ideal and the real, the subject and the object. And it is not only the unity of these opposites so as to exclude all difference, but it contains in itself, all the differences and opposites as elements of its being; otherwise the distinctions would stand over against absolute as a limit, and the absolute would cease to be absolute.

God is, therefore, according to Hegel, "no motionless, eternally self-identical and unchangeable being, but a living, eternal _process_ of absolute self-existence. This process consists in the eternal self-distinction, or antithesis, and equally self-reconciliation or synthesis of those opposites which enter, as necessary elements, into the constitution of the Divine Being. This _self-evolution_, whereby the absolute enters into antithesis, and returns to itself again, is the eternal _self-actualization_ of its being, and which at once constitutes the beginning, middle, and end, as in the circle, where the beginning is at the same time the end, and the end the beginning."[47]

[Footnote 44: Morell, "Hist, of Philos., p. 461."]

[Footnote 45: "Philos. of Religion," p. 204.]

[Footnote 46: Ibid., chap. xi. p. 24.]

[Footnote 47: Herzog's _Real-Encyc._, art. "Hegelian Philos.," by Ulrici.]

The whole philosophy of Hegel consists in the development of this idea of God by means of his, so-called, dialectic method, which reflects the objective life-process of the Absolute, and is, in fact, identical with it; for God, says he, "is only the Absolute Intelligence in so far as he knows himself to be the Absolute Intelligence, _and this he knows only in science_ [dialectics], _and this knowledge alone constitutes his true existence._"[48] This life-process of the Absolute has three "moments." It may be considered as the idea _in itself_--bare, naked, undetermined, unconscious idea; as the idea _out of itself_, in its objective form, or in its differentiation; and, finally, as the idea _in itself_, and _for itself_, in its regressive or reflective form. This movement of thought gives, _first_, bare, naked, indeterminate thought, or thought in the mere antithesis of Being and non-Being; _secondly_, thought externalizing itself in nature; and, _thirdly_, thought returning to itself, and knowing itself in mind, or consciousness. Philosophy has, accordingly, three corresponding divisions:--1. LOGIC, which here is identical with metaphysics; 2. PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE; 3. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.

[Footnote 48: "Hist, of Philos.," iii. p. 399.]

It is beyond our design to present an expanded view of the entire philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world a _new_ logic, it may be needful to glance at its general features as a help to the comprehension of his philosophy of religion. The fundamental law of his logic is the _identity of contraries or contradictions_. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or opposites. This antithesis not only exists in all ideas, but constitutes them. In every idea we form, there must be _two_ things opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear conception. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of darkness; good can not be thought except in opposition to evil. All life, all reality is thus, essentially, the union of two elements, which, together, are mutually opposed to, and yet imply each other.

The identity of Being and Nothing is one of the consequences of this law.

1. _The Absolute is the Being_ (das Absolute ist das Seyn), and "the Being" is here, according to Hegel, bare, naked, abstract, undistinguished, indeterminate, unconscious idea.

2. _The Absolute is the Nothing_ (das Absolute ist das Nichts). "Pure being is pure abstraction, and consequently the absolute-negative, which in like manner, directly taken, is _nothing_." Being and Nothing are the positive and negative poles of the Idea, that is, the Absolute. They both alike exist, they are both pure abstractions, both absolutely unconditioned, without attributes, and without consciousness. Hence follows the conclusion--

3. _Being and Nothing are identical_ (das Seyn und das Nichts ist dasselbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being _is_ Being--the Anders-seyn--which becomes _as_ Being to the Seyn. Nothing is, in some sense, an actual thing.

_Being_ and _Nothing_ are thus the two elements which enter into the one Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both together combine to form a complete notion of bare production, or the _becoming_ of something out of nothing,--the unfolding of real existence in its lowest form, that is, of _nature_.

The "_Philosophy of Nature_" exhibits a series of necessary movements which carry the idea forward in the ascending scale of sensible existence. The laws of mechanics, chemistry, and physiology are resolved into a series of oppositions. But the law which governs this development requires the self-reconciliation of these opposites. The idea, therefore, which in nature was unconscious and ignorant of itself, returns upon itself, and becomes conscious of itself, that is, becomes _mind_. The science of the regression or self-reflection of the idea, is the "_Philosophy of Mind_."

The "_Philosophy of Mind_" is subdivided by Hegel into three parts. There is, first, the subjective or individual mind (_psychology_); then the objective or universal mind, as represented in society, the state, and in history (_ethics, political philosophy,_ or _jurisprudence_, and _philosophy of history_); and, finally, the union of the subjective and objective mind, or _the absolute mind_. This last manifests itself again under three forms, representing the three degrees of the self-consciousness of the Spirit, as the eternal truth. These are, first, _art_, or the representation of beauty (æsthetics); secondly, _religion_, in the general acceptation of the term (philosophy of religion); and, thirdly, _philosophy_ itself, as the purest and most perfect form of the scientific knowledge of truth. All historical religions, the Oriental, the Jewish, the Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, are _the successive stages in the development or self-actualization of God_.[49]

It is unnecessary to indicate to the reader that the philosophy of Hegel is essentially pantheistic. "God is not a _person_, but personality itself, _i.e._, the universal personality, which realizes itself in every human consciousness, as so many separate thoughts of one eternal mind. The idea we form of the absolute is, to Hegel, the absolute itself, its essential existence being identical with our conception of it. Apart from, and out of the world, there is no God; and so also, apart from the universal consciousness of man, there is no Divine consciousness or personality."[50]

[Footnote 49: See art. "Hegelian Philosophy," in Herzog's _Real-Encyc._, from whence our materials are chiefly drawn.]

[Footnote 50: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 473.]

This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and conflicts with the actual facts of man's religious nature and religious history. If the word "religion" has any meaning at all, it is "a mode of life determined by the consciousness of dependence upon, and obligation to God." It is reverence for, gratitude to, and worship of God as a being distinct from humanity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of God--a stage in the development or self-actualization of God. Viewed under one aspect, religion is the self-adoration of God--the worship of God by God; under another aspect it is the worship of humanity, since God only becomes conscious of himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is that upon which his entire method proceeds, viz., "the identity of subject and object, being and thought." Against this false position the consciousness of each individual man, and the universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in history, alike protest. If thought and being are identical, then whatever is true of ideas is also true of objects, and then, as Kant had before remarked, there is no difference between _thinking_ we possess a hundred dollars, and actually _possessing_ them. Such absurdities may be rendered plausible by a logic which asserts the "identity of contradictions," but against such logic common sense rebels. "The law of non-contradiction" has been accepted by all logicians, from the days of Aristotle, as a fundamental law of thought. "Whatever is contradictory is unthinkable. A=not A=O, or A--A=O."[51] Non-existence can not exist. Being can not be nothing.

[Footnote 51: Hamilton's Logic, p. 58.]

III. The third hypothesis affirms _that the phenomenon of religion has its foundation in_ FEELING--_the feeling of dependence and of obligation_; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition of instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obligation we call God.

This, with some slight modification in each case, consequent upon the differences in their philosophic systems, is the theory of Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Mansel, and probably Hamilton. Its fundamental position is, that we can not gain truth with absolute certainty either from sense or reason, and, consequently, the only valid source of real knowledge is _feeling--faith, intuition_, or, as it is called by some, _inspiration_.

There have been those, in all ages, who have made all knowledge of invisible, supersensuous, divine things, to rest upon an internal _feeling_, or immediate, inward vision. The Oriental Mystics, the Neo-Platonists, the Mystics of the Greek and Latin Church, the German Mystics of the 14th century, the Theosophists of the Reformation, the Quietists of France, the Quakers, have all appealed to some _special_ faculty, distinct from the understanding and reason, for the immediate cognition of invisible and spiritual existences. By some, that special faculty was regarded as an "interior eye" which was illuminated by the "Universal Light;" by others, as a peculiar sensibility of the soul--a _feeling_ in whose perfect calm and utter quiescence the Divinity was mirrored; or which, in an ecstatic state, rose to a communion with, and final absorption in the Infinite.

Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the "faith-philosophy," as it is now designated, a definite form. He assumes the position that all knowledge, of whatever kind, must ultimately rest upon intuition or faith. As it regards sensible objects, the understanding finds the impression from which all our knowledge of the external flows, ready formed. The process of sensation is a mystery; we know nothing of it until it is past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge of matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can not doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act of perception there is something actual and present, which can not be referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are also conscious of another class of feelings which correlate us with a supersensuous world, and these feelings, also, must have their cause in some objective reality. Just as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of an external world, so there is an internal sense which gives us an immediate knowledge of a spiritual world--God, the soul, freedom, immortality. Our knowledge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All philosophic knowledge is thus based upon _belief_, which Jacobi regards as a fact of our inward sensibility--a sort of knowledge produced by an immediate _feeling_ of the soul--a direct apprehension, without proof, of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal.

Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by the deservedly greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental position was that truth in Theology could not be obtained by reason, but by a feeling, _insight_, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called _God-consciousness_, and in its highest form, _Christian-consciousness._ The God-consciousness, in its original form, is the _feeling of dependence_ on the Infinite. The Christian consciousness is the perfect union of the human consciousness with the Divine, through the mediation of Christ, or what we would call a Christian experience of communion with God.

Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take account of his doctrine of _self_-consciousness. "In all self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn, and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). The last, however, presupposes, for every self-consciousness, besides the ego, yet something else from whence the certainty of the same [self-consciousness] exists, and without which self-consciousness would not be just this."[52] Every determinate mode of the sensibility supposes an _object_, and a _relation_ between the subject and the object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the object. External sensation, the feeling, say of extension and resistance, gives world-consciousness. Internal sensation, the _feeling of dependence_, gives God consciousness. And it is only by the presence of world consciousness and God-consciousness that self consciousness can be what it is.

We have, then, in our self-consciousness a _feeling of direct dependence_, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that dependence we call God. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are revealed in us."[53] The _felt_, therefore, is not only the first religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form of the religious spirit; whatever lays any claim to religion must maintain its ground and principle in _feeling_, upon which it depends for its development; and the sum-total of the forces constituting religious life, inasmuch as it is a _life_, is based upon immediate self-consciousness.[54]

[Footnote 52: Glaubenslehre, ch. i. § 4.]

[Footnote 53: Dialectic, p. 430.]

[Footnote 54: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 23.]

The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his "_Limits of Religious Thought_." He maintains, with Schleiermacher, that religion is grounded in _feeling_, and that the _felt_ is the first intimation or presentiment of the Divine. Man "_feels_ within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being, and the instinct to worship, before he can argue from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and benevolence scattered through the creation."[55] He also agrees with Schleiermacher in regarding the _feeling of dependence_ as _a_ state of the sensibility, out of which reflection builds up the edifice of Religious Consciousness, but he does not, with Schleiermacher, regard it as pre-eminently _the_ basis of religious consciousness. "The mere consciousness of dependence does not, of itself, exhibit the character of the Being on whom we depend. It is as consistent with superstition as with religion; with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent Deity."[56] To the feeling of dependence he has added the _consciousness of moral obligation_, which he imagines supplies the deficiency. By this consciousness of moral obligation "we are compelled to assume the existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity."[57] "To these two facts of the inner consciousness the feeling of dependence, and consciousness of moral obligation may be traced, as to their sources, the two great outward acts by which religion, in its various forms, has been manifested among men--_Prayer_, by which they seek to win God's blessing upon the future, and _Expiation_, by which they strive to atone for the offenses of the past. The feeling of dependence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a superior power; not an inexorable fate, not an immutable law; but a Being having at least so far the attribute of personality that he can show favor or severity to those who are dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope and fear, and reverence and gratitude."[58] The feeling of moral obligation--"the law written in the heart"--leads man to recognize a Lawgiver. "Man can be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of God."[59] The conclusion from the whole is, there must be an _object_ answering to this consciousness: there must be a God to explain these facts of the soul.

[Footnote 55: Mansel, "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 115.]

[Footnote 56: Id., ib., p. 120.]

[Footnote 57: Id., ib., p. 122.]

[Footnote 58: Id., ib., pp. 119, 120.]

[Footnote 59: Id., ib., p. 122.]

This "philosophy of feeling," or of faith generated by feeling, has an interest and a significance which has not been adequately recognized by writers on natural theology. Feeling, sentiment, enthusiasm, have always played an important part in the history of religion. Indeed it must be conceded that religion is a _right state of feeling towards God_--religion is _piety_. A philosophy of the religious emotion is, therefore, demanded in order to the full interpretation of the religious phenomena of the world.

But the notion that internal feeling, a peculiar determination of the sensibility, is the source of religious ideas:--that God can be known immediately by feeling without the mediation of the truth that manifests God; that he can be _felt_ as the qualities of matter can be felt; and that this affection of the inward sense can reveal the character and perfections of God, is an unphilosophical and groundless assumption. To assert, with Nitzsch, that "feeling has reason, and is reason, and that the sensible and felt God-consciousness generates out of itself fundamental conceptions," is to confound the most fundamental psychological distinctions, and arbitrarily bend the recognized classifications of mental science to the necessities of a theory. Indeed, we are informed that it is "by means of an _independent_ psychology, and conformably to it," that Schleiermacher illustrates his "philosophy of feeling."[60] But all psychology must be based upon the observation and classification of mental phenomena, as revealed in consciousness, and not constructed in an "independent" and à priori method. The most careful psychological analysis has resolved the whole complex phenomena of mind into thought, feeling, and volition.[61] These orders of phenomena are radically and essentially distinct. They differ not simply in degree but in kind, and it is only by an utter disregard of the facts of consciousness that they can be confounded. Feeling is not reason, nor can it by any logical dexterity be transformed into reason.

[Footnote 60: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 21.]

[Footnote 61: Kant, "Critique of Judg.," ch. xxii.; Cousin, "Hist, of Philos.," vol. ii. p. 399; Hamilton, vol. i. p. 183, Eng. ed.]

The question as to the relative order of cognition and feeling, that is, as to whether feeling is the first or original form of the religious consciousness, or whether feeling be not consequent upon some idea or cognition of God, is one which can not be determined on empirical grounds. We are precluded from all scrutiny of the incipient stages of mental development in the individual mind and in collective humanity. If we attempt to trace the early history of the soul, its beginnings are lost in a period of blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny of memory or imagination. If we attempt the inquiry on the wider field of universal consciousness, the first unfoldings of mind in humanity are lost in the border-land of mystery, of which history furnishes no authentic records. All dogmatic affirmation must, therefore, be unjustifiable. The assertion that religious feeling precedes all cognition,--that "the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, and the instinct of worship" are developed _first_ in the mind, before the reason is exercised, is utterly groundless. The more probable doctrine is that all the primary faculties enter into spontaneous action _simultaneously_--the reason with the senses, the feelings with the reason, the judgment with both the senses and the reason, and that from their primary and simultaneous action arises the complex result, called consciousness, or conjoint knowledge.[62] There can be no clear and distinct consciousness without the cognition of a _self_ and a _not-self_ in mutual relation and opposition. Now the knowledge of the self--the personal ego--is an intuition of reason; the knowledge of the not-self is an intuition of sense. All knowledge is possible only under condition of plurality, difference, and relation.[63] Now the judgment is "the Faculty of Relations," or of comparison; and the affirmation "_this_ is not _that_" is an act of judgment; to know is, consequently, to judge.[64] Self-consciousness must, therefore, be regarded as a synthesis of sense, reason, and judgment, and not a mere self-feeling (coenæsthesis).

[Footnote 62: Cousin, "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 357; vol. ii. p. 337.]

[Footnote 63: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 88.]

[Footnote 64: Hamilton, "Metaphys.," p. 277]

A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of without the à priori idea of space. The feeling of movement of change, can not give the cognition of event without the rational idea of time or duration. Simple consciousness can not generate the idea of personality, or selfhood, without the rational idea of identity or unity. And so the mere "feeling of dependence," of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea of God, without the rational à priori idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause. Sensation is not knowledge, and never can become knowledge, without the intervention of reason, and a concentrated self feeling can not rise essentially above animal life until it has, through the mediation of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being ruling over nature and man.

Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its _pathological_ form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an _object_, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended by the reason, before the feeling can have any significance.

Regarded in its _moral_ form, as "the feeling of obligation," it can have no real meaning unless a "law of duty" be known and recognized. Feeling, alone, can not reveal what duty is. When that which is right, and just, and good is revealed to the mind, then the sense of obligation may urge man to the performance of duty. But the right, the just, the good, are ideas which are apprehended by the reason, and, consequently, our moral sentiments are the result of the harmonious and living relation between the reason and the sensibilities.

Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to _assume_ the existence of a moral Deity." We think his "fact of religious intuition" is as inadequate as Schleiermacher's to explain the whole phenomena of religion. In neither instance does feeling supply the actual knowledge of God. The feeling of dependence may indicate that there is a Power or Being upon whom we depend for existence and well-being, and which Power or Being "we call God." The feeling of obligation certainly indicates the existence of a Being to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr. Mansel calls a "moral Deity." But in both instances the character, and even the existence of God is "_assumed_" and we are entitled to ask on what ground it is assumed. It will not be asserted that feeling alone generates the idea, or that the feeling is transformed into idea without the intervention of thought and reflection. Is there, then, a _logical_ connection between the feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the idea of the Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous Governor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-relation between _the feeling_ and the _idea_, so that when the feeling is present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind? This latter opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept it as the statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not regard it as an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human mind. The idea of God as the First Cause, the Infinite Mind, the Perfect Being, the personal Lord and Lawgiver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is manifestly a complex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation of the whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe, and the primitive intuitions of the reason,--a logical inference from the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion which regards the feelings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of reason as uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates into mysticism--a mysticism "which pretends to elevate man directly to God, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives man of that which enables him to know God, and puts him in a just communication with God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth."[65]

[Footnote 65: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 110.]

The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted from the union of _thought_ and _feeling_--the living and harmonious relation of reason and sensibility; and a philosophy which disregards either is inadequate to the explanation of the phenomena.

IV. The fourth hypothesis is, _that religion has had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of_ REASON; that is, in the necessary, à priori ideas of the infinite, the perfect, the unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful, contingent phenomena of the world.

This will at once be recognized by the intelligent reader as the doctrine of Cousin, by whom _pure reason_ is regarded as the grand faculty or organ of religion.

Religion, in the estimation of Cousin, is grounded on _cognition_ rather than upon feeling. It is the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of duty in its relation to God and to human happiness; and as reason is the general faculty of all knowing, it must be the faculty of religion. "In its most elevated point of view, religion is the relation of absolute truth to absolute Being," and as absolute truth is apprehended by the reason alone, reason "is the veridical and religious part of the nature of man."[66] By "reason," however, as we shall see presently, Cousin does not mean the discursive or reflective reason, but the spontaneous or intuitive reason. That act of the mind by which we attain to religious knowledge is not a _process of reasoning_, but a pure appreciation, an instinctive and involuntary movement of the soul.

[Footnote 66: Henry's Cousin, p. 510.]

The especial function of reason, therefore, is to reveal to us the invisible, the supersensuous, the Divine. "It was bestowed upon us for this very purpose of going, without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and from necessary and eternal truths, to the eternal and necessary principle" that is God.[67] Reason is thus, as it were, the bridge between consciousness and being; it rests, at the same time, on both; it descends from God, and approaches man; it makes its appearance in consciousness as a guest which brings intelligence of another world of real Being which lies beyond the world of sense.

Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being directly and immediately, without any intervening medium. To assert this would be to fall into the error of Plotinus, and the Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is the offspring of God, a ray of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be identified with God. Reason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly, and by the interposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a manifestation of God. "Truth is incomprehensible without God, and God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."[68] Incapable of contemplating God face to face, reason adores God in the truth which represents and manifests Him.

[Footnote 67: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 103.]

[Footnote 68: Id., ib., p. 99.]