Chapter V: Some Metaphysical Implications of Ethics and Religion

§ 1. If Reality is a harmonious system, it must somehow make
provision for the gratification of our ethical,
religious, and æsthetic interests. § 2. But we cannot
assume that ethical and religious postulates are
necessarily _true_ in the forms in which our practical
interests lead us to make them. § 3. Thus, while
morality would become impossible unless on the whole
there is coincidence between virtue and happiness, and
unless social progress is a genuine fact, “perfect
virtue,” “perfect happiness,” “infinite progress” are
logically self-contradictory concepts. § 4. But this
does not impair the practical usefulness of our ethical
ideals. § 5. In religion we conceive of the ideal of
perfection as already existing in individual form. Hence
ultimately no part of the temporal order can be an
adequate object of religious devotion. § 6. This leads
to the _Problem of Evil_. “God” cannot be a finite being
within the Absolute, because, if so, God must contain
evil and imperfection as part of His nature, and is thus
_not_ the already existing realisation of the ideal. §
7. This difficulty disappears when we identify “God”
with the Absolute, because in the Absolute evil can be
seen to be mere illusory appearance. It may, however, be
true that religious feeling, to be practically
efficient, may need to imagine its object in an
ultimately incorrect anthropomorphic form. § 8. The
existence, within the Absolute, of finite “divine”
personalities, can neither be affirmed nor denied on
grounds of general Metaphysics. § 9. Proofs of the
“being of God.” The principle of the “ontological” and
“cosmological” proofs can be defended against the
criticism of Hume and Kant only if we identify God with
the Absolute. The “physicotheological proof” could only
establish the reality of finite superhuman
intelligences, and its force depends purely upon
empirical considerations of evidence 381

CHAPTER VI