Chapter IV: Immortality (2)

Those wonderful races of the Mediterranean, who achieved--at least some of them--such great things in all that counts for civilization, became at the last most extravagant sceptics, not only formulating, but also very generally living up to, the conviction of ignorance and forgetfulness of reality. Everything which their long past had gathered for them they resigned--or let me say crucified--and themselves they threw, as if with an investor's recklessness, upon a world of chance or fate, upon a world seemingly of empty forms in all human relations, a world of disguises for license and of mere conceits of moral power and religious piety. Sensuous mysticism and pantheism, formalism of all kinds, Stoicism, Epicureanism, legalism, and cosmopolitanism were crosses upon which one people and another, one class and another, nailed their long-cherished devotions, their love of God and man and nature, of temple and family and country. A great doubting, then, was truly theirs. A great sacrificial offering was their preparation for Christianity. In a way, with a completeness that seems to have no parallel in history, they put their talents to the bankers--despairing, of course, but hoping also, [p.266] if only their doubting, when it came, may be supposed as genuine as their earlier believing. From the North and from the East and from the South their good men came, and their rich and their wise, and laid what they had at the feet of the life that was new born.

People read their histories so differently. The pagan doubt, the Christian revelation and belief, the conversion of the pagan world to Christianity, the Renaissance, in which the conversion was in a sense reversed, and the Reformation mean such different things to different people. Some must still have it that paganism, or pre-Christianism, ended in absolutely blind despair, in the avowal of complete failure--as if such despair or failure could ever find words for its own utterance; that Christianity came into a hopelessly pagan world wholly from without, came into a world of nothing but unmixed doubt, and brought with it nothing but unmixed belief; that the conversion was a sort of conquest, by a power all its own capturing the pagans, so wholly unnerved as to be quite incapable even of a futile resistance; that the Renaissance, restoration as it was of the pagan life and thought, was at best a great condescension on the part of Christendom and at worst an unfortunate return to the pagan idols; and that in the Reformation the Christian Religion Militant did but retreat upon the Bible as its impregnable fortress. But such history can hardly be our history here. For us the rise and the progress of Christianity have had quite a different character. To strike at the foundation of that whole structure the pagan doubting was too articulate. It was, also, too earnest. It was too genuine. The races did indeed resign, as with [p.267] an investor's recklessness, all that they had, but their recklessness was not unmixed. Their doubting had hope in it as well as despair. It still loved the spirit of what had been even when it betrayed the letter. It had its martyrs, too, as well as its suicides; its sense of life as well as its enervating fear of death. Say what you will, then, a great, warm, yearning belief dwelt within it. And so, just because the pagan doubting was too earnest and too genuine and too articulate, because it was, in truth, a great sacrificial offering, the crucifixion on Calvary was also too true to life at Athens and Alexandria, as well as to life at Jerusalem, and the resurrection of the spirit was too true to life at Rome; they were too true to mean anything but fulfilment and achievement. Everywhere, in every place and in every department of life, the letter had been rejected; but everywhere also--and this, nothing else, was the true conversion to Christianity--the spirit was accepted. Acceptance of the spirit, too, meant that in good time the letter would be restored, as indeed at the Renaissance it surely was.

Christianity, therefore, came when the times were ripe for it. It came not from without, but deeply from within the pagan life of the Mediterranean. Moreover, if in this way, not in that other way, we must read the rise of Christianity, then we must read both the Renaissance and the Reformation under the same light. The Renaissance, as was just said, brought a restoration of the letter; but, necessarily, of the letter under the light of the spirit, of the letter transfigured. The Renaissance, so dramatically manifested in the Crusades, was only Christendom returning to its [p.268] birthplace. With its crusades to Jerusalem, to all the old capitals, to the pagan ideas and institutions, to the ancient languages and literatures, Christianity rediscovered itself in the past, winning back in this way some of its childhood, curing a homesickness that a worldly church had made it feel, securing for itself such a deep experience as comes to a man who, after years of wandering and forgetting, has returned to the home of his infancy. And as for the Reformation--if indeed this was a retreat, shall we say, of a defeated religion upon the Bible, its supposed impregnable fortress--we need only to remember the pagan origin, the Hebrew and the Greek inspiration, and the Roman atmosphere of that sacred book.

And of the relation of Christianity to paganism, just one thing more. The Christian revelation, so wonderfully portrayed and enacted in the life and character of Jesus, was only an idealization, a spiritual interpretation, of the very present, the thoroughly actual life of the time, of the life that the pagans, doubting but believing, despairing but also trusting, resigning all but hoping for more, had already brought upon themselves; a life of self-denial, of common, universal humanity, all men being "members one of another," and of perfect faith. Perhaps the self-denial was bravely concealed in an accepted subjection, but it was not less real. Perhaps the common humanity was military and imperial, yet it also was real. Perhaps, too, the faith was blind and fatalistic, but it was nevertheless faith. Can faith go farther or do more than fatalism? The pagans, then, had become Christians in fact or status, and Christianity came, breathing [p.269] life into the bare fact, into the self-denial, and the broad humanity and the faith, and made these not the mere phases of bare fact or condition, but motives and ideals, manifesting them heroically in a single human life, and so in the form and with the power of a personal discovery of self.

Where genuine doubt is the God is always born.

IV.

To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted, for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally, given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper. Frenchmen, though [p.270] so neighbourly to England, have been conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical, throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this. Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history. Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this--witness their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises--or only other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this--witness the testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it now to give it point.

Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own dangers. To be candid, in the [p.271] sense of the word here intended, is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature, and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal, and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable--in a word, to nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France, again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal--if not unideal--substitute for the present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost never, something that lives in and [p.272] through God and government and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand English deism; the _laissez faire_ economics; the peculiar nature and growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science; the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English people's progressive conservatism?

The most radical doubt must eventually appeal to nature and, what is more, must sooner or later bring man to live with nature practically and responsibly, intimately and sympathetically; but candour, like the candour of the English, that never doubts without at the same time believing, lives ever with her. Perhaps the English people need to have what they seem never to have had--though the Armada threatened something of the kind, and the loss of the thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war was, not without its value--a great, overpowering disaster, a deep all-searching despair; yet, be this as it may, their part in the struggle of a life that must always doubt in order to grow is always instructive and is often inspiring.

[p.273]

V.

The sceptic has been referred to here as a member of a wonderful triumvirate, and, leaving now the field of historical illustration, we must return to that characterization. The other members of the triumvirate were the loyal defender of the formal law and the great spiritual leader. All three were said to be parties to the real life of the spirit, and the sceptic seemed to have a co-ordinate part with the others in this life. But was I not conceding too much? Certainly there are many who will wish to protest. Yet I was only making the doubter and the believer face each other squarely and honestly. _Both_ are parties to any reform. No leader or true reformer ever can neglect or betray the contentions of either. In the organizations of society professional conditions may hold the two characters apart, but vitally they always belong together. If truly we must believe in what we doubt, how can there fail to be between them, not indeed a shallow and sentimental sympathy, but a deep, heroic sympathy that is always superior to the differences of the disrupted life, of a professionally organized society, without betraying them?

At once opponents and companions--this is the truth about the doubter and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, not to you or me in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him who hides his doubts in an outward show that [p.274] almost deceives him as well as others. Of course in all matters as well as in this of intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor, law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature, have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am, and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"? The doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other; the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which each has and must feel his social rôle, but, at most and worst, they are only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"--instead of off at some tangent.

Should some one awake to new views come to me and ask which I would have him do, break away from his traditions and all that they involve or hold to them, I could only say, in the first place, that, whichever way he turned, he would have some, though only some, justification, for he could not be either right or wrong exclusively; in the second place, that his decision [p.275] not only must be made, and made strongly, one way or the other, but must also be his, not mine; and in the third place, that no decision should ever be an absolutely final settlement. Decisions are only means to action, and as such they can settle nothing finally. They are not even protocols of peace, often being, on the contrary, merely signals for firing at closer range. Sometimes I know they seem even like real treaties, providing the terms of a permanent harmony, and they appear to determine just where the parties to them really stand. But, after all, they do but bring the conflict home, making it domestic or personal instead of settling it. So once more to my inquirer I may say only this: Choose; fight; fight fair; fight with yourself as well as with your enemy; with your belief, not merely with his dogma; or with your doubt, not merely with his dishonesty. So fighting you and he will truly be at once opponents and companions.

VI.

Is life, then, only a comedy? Is it no better than one of those well-conducted duels that save the honour of all, concerned but bring injury to no one? Let me say, in these last pages, that life appears to be three things, to which I should like to call attention. It truly and seriously is a comedy; secondly, it is poetic; and lastly, it has all the gravity and earnestness of duty. Its very tragedy comprises all of these. An old teacher of mine, a much respected and somewhat old-fashioned professor at one of our larger universities,[2] [p.276] once published a book entitled, _Poetry, Comedy and Duty_. Exactly what his reasons were for associating these apparently incongruous phases of life I do not recall, but the man and his title have remained pleasantly and significantly in my memory, and the reasons which follow, in substance if not in form, can not be very far from his.

Thus, as to the comedy of life, we need only to reflect that where extremes always meet, where there is always conflict, but conflict of such a nature that the parties to it not only may change sides, but also in a genuine sense are always on both sides, in such a life politics cannot be alone in making strange bedfellows, but the opportunity for comic situations must be unlimited. A life in which reality has no residence, and truth no place where to lay its head, in which fools may utter wisdom and the wise may speak folly, in which reformers are easily confused with transgressors and death itself is said to be life, is bound to be richly and deeply humorous. Of such a life there can be no understanding, into it there can be no insight, without the keenest sense of humour. To say no more, that doubter and believer are companions as well as opponents, is cause for a deal of merriment--at least among the gods.

But life's comedy is also a poem, and no one save a poet can truly comprehend it. Even a metaphysician must be not merely a humorist, but also a poet; perhaps he must be more the poet than any other. Poetry is the portrayal of life through suggestion of harmony, or poise, among its conflicting elements. Nor can life be seen, or known, in any more direct [p.277] way; only the balance of opposites, which always makes the poem, can possibly present it to our ken. Commonly men feel this when they insist that all portrayal of life, or of reality in general, must be dualistic. Dualism, be it the theologian's or the moralist's or the metaphysician's, the statesman's or the scientist's, never is and never can be anything but so much poetry; richly and deeply significant always, and always alive with what is real, but always poetry, never prose. Can a reality, that is real only if, to the forms of experience, it is always a _tertium quid_, can such a reality ever be present to any other than a poet's consciousness? Reality is not knowable face to face; it is beyond the reach of positive knowledge; though dwelling in, and informing all knowledge, it can never come to the surface of knowledge; for so, to its own betrayal, it would take sides and get a habitation and a name. True, by analogies one may conceive it, as the religious man thinks of God's personality, or as the philosopher thinks of the unity of his world, or as the scientist thinks of nature's law; but the analogies are always so many tethers, and are accordingly necessarily partial, whereas no whole can ever be quite in kind with any of its parts. We may conceive reality, then, by the use of analogy--that is, by projecting what we do know of one or another side of life beyond its natural sphere; but such projection, at least for him who has both insight and humour, who feels the limits of his knowledge and the grandly transcendent way in which he has used his knowledge for the crossing of some chasm, and the solution of some conflict in his life, is poetry. For [p.278] him who is lacking in both insight and humour, who sees just what he sees and no more, who insists on making reality accord literally with his own formal experience, it is only prose. Prose is simply formally consistent experience, experience that is wholly bound to some determined standpoint, and, being this, in what it presents--that is, in its subject-matter--it is always, not adequate and inclusive, but partial and narrow and one-sided to reality. Prose, in short, sacrifices wholeness, that is to say, depth and breadth of view, to mere formal consistency. Poetry, at least in its subject-matter, is above formal consistency and above partiality. Through its very license poetry bears the message of what is real and whole. Poetry forever prefers reality to prosaic peace.

So life is a comedy, rich and deep, and it is a poem, realistic and inclusive. It is, finally, a serious duty. To many, stern and oracular in their moral sense, the character of duty will seem not to fit at all well into a life that is always humorous, and that is never real and complete without being also poetic. But it does fit. Duty, they hold, is quite too sober ever to be mingled with humour or comedy, and quite too precise and explicit, too plainly prescribed, and in its spirit, when not in its letter, too legal ever to appeal to a poet or to be in any way associated with what appeals to him. But tell me, is the Puritan's notion of duty an accurate one? Is it the highest notion? Is it even profoundly moral? Has duty no chance at all on any other plan? In a word, are humour and poetry truly fatal to real duty? Why, even such questions must make the stern rigorists among us hope just a little, [p.279] though also these good men may still fear, for the relief that the questions seem to promise. Perhaps they mingle their hope with fear, only because, as I feel quite sure, they forget that comedy and poetry always bring more than mere relief. The real comedy and the true poetry of life are altogether too deep to do only that. They do indeed bring relief from the rigour and prosaic consistency of any specific programme or uniform, and so to any man they are always welcome, though he continue to suspect them of being wrong; but they bring also a responsibility that is fuller and larger and harder than the formal precept or prescription. Should the rigorist ever love his enemies? Not if he would be consistent. Should he ever find hope in what he fears? Should he ever laugh at his own manifest smallness? Yet these are real duties; they are great, transcendent duties; and, richly humorous as they are, only a poetic consciousness can ever appreciate them and truly feel their living obligation.

For this, our life of comedy and poetry, which is real only as it is both, no principle can come nearer to the very foundation of duty than just the principle, deeply true: _Whatever is, is right_. Men have laughed and men have wept over this truth. Was ever more perfect mingling of doubt and belief? Was ever greater jest? Or more tragic fact? But truth it is; _the_ truth of all duty; and it is life's eternal comedy--the alpha and the omega, too, of life's own poem.

[1] As a positive event in history, belonging to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Machiavellism was symptomatic of the great change of the period. Cherished institutes, whether of politics or economics, of art or morals, of the spiritual life or the intellectual life, were becoming instruments. Thus, democracy was supplanting monarchy, Protestantism Catholicism, modern science scholasticism, etc.

[2] The late Professor C.C. Everett, of Harvard University.

INDEX

A

Abstraction, of science, 58, 107; and duplicity, 61
Agnosticism, 75, 106; special dangers of, 111, 117; dogmatic and
instrumental, 120; as call for action, 125; as passion for real
life, 128
Analogy, among the sciences, 97; of individual self to environment, 155;
of universal to particular, 33, 220
Anaxagoras, 94
Anaximander, 34, 94, 147
Anti-vitalism, 147
Aristotle, 155, 156
Atomism, 97, 102

B

Babylonians, 106
Bacon, 176
Baldwin, 15
Belief, as unquestioning, 8, 194; and doubt, 53, 105, 107, 130, 133,
192, 248
Biology, 88, 90, 104, 110
Boehme, 177
Body, and soul, 227, 237; immortality of, 141, 234
Bradley, 153 n.
Burns, 94

C

Candour, of the English, 270
Carlyle, 126
Catholicism, 175
Causation, 39, 82, 83, 109, 205
Change, and habit, 15; as motive, 17; of purpose, 11
Charron, 177, 180
Chemistry, 34, 36, 88, 90, 91, 110
Christ, 51, 246, 263
Christianity, and immortality, 240; preparation for, 266; different
views of history of, 266
Christian Science, 2, 32 n.
Class, the social, 62, 126, 162; relation of, to doubt and belief, 171
Comedy, 275
Companionship, with nature, 21, 71; with man, 24; with God, 26
Contradiction, in ordinary views, 30; in idea of reality, 30;
of unity, 33; of space and time, 38; of causation, 39; of
knowledge, 41; of morality, 44; of law, 49; as of value in
experience, 4, 37, 131; and dualism, 101; as corrective of
narrowness, 100, 116, 143; as meaning action, 136; as realizing
unity, 137; as securing reality and practicality, 145; as
requiring society, 147; as not to be cultivated for its own
sake, 151; as related to person and class, 170
Conventionalism, 66, 260
Creationalism, 82, 202
Crusades, 267

D

Death, 141, 151, 239
Deduction, 97
Democritus, 65
Development, special, transferable, 165
Descartes, 6, 172, 196, 251, 254
Dichotomy, 101
Dogmatism, and fear, 9; and belief, 194
Doubt, as widespread, 1, 7; actual, if possible, 6; as essential to
consciousness, 9; and habit, 14; as making life real, 18; and
feeling of dependence, 21; as Basking company, 21, 255; as mediator
between old and now, 25; and atheism, 27; and belief, 55, 105, 130,
133, 192, 248, 273; as investment for gain, 259; and candour, 270
Dualism, 64, 101, 147, 209
Duplicity, of science, 61; of life, 118
Duty, 47, 278

E

Education, and interest, 18 n.
Emerson, 144
Energism, 147
England, peculiar scepticism in, 269
Environment, as source of conduct, 46; social environment and personal
individual, 169, 231
Epicureanism, 116, 265
Epistemology, 92
Evil, and good, 45, 133, 150, 276
Evolution, 78, 202, 246
Experience, unity of, 160
Experimentalism, 68

F

Fatalism, 49
Fear, and dogmatism, 9
France, peculiar scepticism in, 271
Freedom, of will, 47; of thought, 211, 227

G

Galilei, 177
Genius, 168, 196, 263
God, Descartes' proof of, 181; fallacy in D.'s proof of, 189;
D.'s idea of, 186, 190; sceptic's idea of, 26, 187, 190, 203;
death of, 237; birth of, 269

H

Habit, and doubt, 14
Hebrews, 25, 264
Hedonism, 64, 147, 265
Hegel, 20, 147
Heraclitus, 147, 152
Hering, 147
Hero-worship, 243
History, standpoint of, 79; of Christianity, different views of, 266
Hope, even in doubt, 13, 19, 37, 48, 53, 105
Horace, 21
Hypotheses, working, 89, 93, 258

I

Idealism, 65, 147
Illusions, 2, 23 n., 254
Immortality, 141, 234
Impostor, the, 253
Individualism, 72, 116
Individuality, 155, 165, 224
Induction, 72, 97
Industrialism, 222
Infinity, 52, 102, 142
Institutions and institutionalism, 16, 59, 260
Interest theory, in education, 18 n.

J

Jesuits, 172
Jesus, 51, 246, 263
Jews, 25, 264
Jurisprudence, standpoint of, 13, 47

K

Kant, 110, 147
Knowledge, contradictory views of, 41; of law, and freedom, 51, 212;
and the unknowable, 106

L

Labour, division of, in special relation of person and class, 163;
division of, in experience, 232
Law, standpoint of, 13; courts of, 47; contradiction in idea of, 49;
and nature, 51, 218
Lawlessness, 51, 141, 261
Leadership, 168, 196, 263
Leibnitz, 133, 154, 210
Lessing, 19
Louis XIV, 172
Luther, 174

M

Macaulay, 270
Machiavelli, 66, 261, 263
Malebranche, 198
Materialism, 65, 147, 175
Mathematics, 88, 91, 96, 133, 177, 215
Mechanic, the, as social type, 228; peculiar death of, 238
Mechanicalism, 82, 218
Method, Socratic, 71; historical, 95; experimental, 84, 95;
mathematical, 96
Miracles, 53, 246
Monism, 147
Montaigne, 172, 176, 184
Münsterberg, 109 n., 112, 119
Mysticism, 176

N

Nast, 97
Nativism, 196
Nature, return to, 22; relation of science to, 23, 56, 74; and
God, 26, 203, 271; sympathy of, 23, 203; and law, 51, 220;
as mechanical, 217; English and French views of, 271;
knowledge of law of, and freedom, 49, 212
Necessity, in conduct, 47; superstition of, 49, 212
Negativity, 3, 20, 37, 83, 85, 94, 101, 125, 133, 147
Newton, 97

O

Oratory of Jesus, 176

P

Paradoxes, in ordinary consciousness, 30; in science, 75, 98; in
religion, 103
Parallelism, 204
Paris, 172, 192, 251
Parmenides, 94
Pascal, 180
Person, nature of, 155, 165; relation to reality, 170, 184;
relation to doubt and belief, 171; part in society, 169, 231
Pharisees, 262
Physics, 87, 90; epistemological, 94
Pillsbury, 212 n.
Plato, 65, 155, 156
Poetry, 276
Positivism, 73, 106, 122
Practice, and theory, 113
Principle, and programme, 183, 191, 194
Programme, and principle, 183, 191, 194
Protagoras, 264
Protestants and Protestantism, 174, 268
Psychology, 10, 87, 91, 210, 212 n.; physical, 92
Purpose, 11, 83, 84

Q

Question of fact, in science, 83

R

Radicalism, 66
Realism, of doubter, 193; of believer, 193; in contradiction, 143
Reality, double views of, 30
Reformation, 173, 266, 267
Relative, the, 10, 136, 199, 200
Relativity, law of, 10, 136
Religion, and scepticism, 27, 184, 189, 268; as paradoxical, 103
Renaissance, 173, 268, 267
Rome, 267
Rousseau, 23, 271

S

Scepticism, 176, 265, 269
Science, as a return to nature, 23; like ordinary consciousness, 57;
as confessing to limitations, 56; defined, 58; as abstract, 58;
as a "looking before leaping," 58; and duplicity, 61, 129; method
of, and environment, 71; specialism of, 71, 84; as inductive, 72;
objectivism of, 75; technique of, 76; and real life, 80, 125, 128;
as conservative, 81; and question of fact, 83; as negative and
destructive, 83; specialism of, 71, 86; "mergers" in, 91;
physical, as self-consciousness, 94; as paradoxical, 75, 98;
agnosticism of, 106; aloofness of, in ideas of space and time and
causation, 108, 109; application of, 114; scepticism of, 23, 258
Sin, original, 131
Skill, special, as transferable, 165
Smith, Adam, 257
Socialism, 116
Society, as sought by sceptic, 21; as related to individual, 42, 165,
171, 231; and science, 23, 60; division of experience in, 60;
as real to lower organisms, 84; as medium of conflict, 147
Society of Jesus, 174
Sociology, 88
Socrates, 20, 70, 147, 263
Soldier, the, 228, 238
Sophists, 66, 262
Soul, contradiction in idea of, 35; and body, 227, 237; immortality
of, 141, 234
Space, 37, 38, 108
Specialism, blindness of, 87; in social organization, 71; of science,
71, 86; dreams of, 87; artificiality of, 87, 97; contradictions
due to, 63, 98; passing of, 128
Spinoza, 24, 147, 179, 198
Spirit, reality, or truth, as a, 152; of veracity, 105, 133, 170, 214
Stoicism, 116, 265
Supernaturalism, 32, 52, 147
Superstition, 49, 218

T

Technique, 76, 119; special, as transferable, 165
Tennyson, 89
Thales, 34
Theology, 26, 131
Time, 37, 38, 108
Training, special, as transferable, 165
Truth, spirit of, 105, 133, 170, 214

U

Unity, contradiction in idea of, 31; as expressed through
contradiction, 137; of experience, 160
Universality, of doubt, 1, 7; of human characters in general, 161
Utilitarianism, 66, 261, 263

V

Validity, spirit of, 105, 133, 153, 214
Vanini, 176, 180
Vitalism, 147

W

Will, nature of, 11; freedom of, 47; to believe, 193; in relation
to agnosticism, 121, 125

Z

Zeno, 109, 147

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