Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/264

Rh 246 THEISM God being conceived to be what man would wish himself to be ; Schleiermacher has argued that a feeling of absolute dependence, of pure and complete passiveness, is our evidence for the presence of an infinite energy, an infinite being; Mansel has represented the feeling of dependence and the conviction of moral obligation as the sources of the religious consciousness ; Pfleiderer represents reli gion as a response to the sense of conflict and contradiction between man s feelings of dependence and of freedom ; Rauwenhoff traces its origin to respect (Achtung), the root also of moral conduct and of family life ; others have referred it to specific ethical feelings ; and many have represented it to be essentially love. The number of these attempts and the diversity of these results are explained by the complexity of religious feeling. In religion all the feelings which raise man above the merely animal condition are involved. Man is not religious by any one feeling or by a few feelings, but by the whole constitution of his emotional nature. His heart, with all its wealth of feelings, has been made for God, Hence all the theories referred to have easily been shown to be one-sided, and to have exaggerated the significance and influence in religion of particular emotional elements, but hence also they all contain more or less important portions of the truth, and have all contri buted towards a knowledge of the full truth. Man is not only, however, disposed by all his chief sentiments for religion, but all these sentiments, when normally and healthfully developed, tend towards theism. It is only in a theistic form of religion that they can find true rest and satisfaction. One God can alone be the object of the highest devotional fear, can alone be regarded as ideally perfect, or as a being on whom the worshipper is absolutely dependent, can alone be loved with the whole heart and esteemed with undivided reverence, can alone be recognized as the sole author of the moral law, the alone good. The theories which trace the origin of religion to feeling have the merit of recognizing that religion is not an affair of mere intellect ; that the Divine could not even be known by men if they had not feelings and affections as well as intellectual powers ; that, if God be love, for example, He can only be known by love ; that, if He have moral attributes, we must have moral feelings in order to be able to recognize them. On the other hand, in so far as those theories represent religion as reducible to mere feeling or as independent of intel lect, they have the fault of overlooking that all the feelings included in religion presuppose apprehensions and judgments, and are valid only in so far as they have the warrant of intelligence. It is as much an error, however, to account for religion by any one intellectual principle as by any one emotional element. Religion has no one special seat, such as "the central point of unity behind conscious ness," imagined by Schleiermacher; no "special organ," such as "conscience" was supposed to be by Schenkel; and no one special principle of cognition, such as the law of causality has been repre sented to be by several philosophers and theologians. All the ultimate principles of cognition are involved in religion, and all lead, if consistently followed far enough, to theism. The whole head as well as the whole heart has been made for religion, and for the perfect form of religion. Max Muller, in his Hibbert Lectures, traces the idea of God to a special faculty of religion "a subjective faculty for the apprehension of the infinite," "a mental faculty, which, independent of, nay, in spite of, sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the infinite under different names and under varying disguises." This view will not bear, perhaps, a close scrutiny. The infinite, as an implicit condition of thought, is not more involved in religious than in other thought. We cannot think anything as finite without implying the infinite. Space cannot be thought of except as extensively, nor time except as pro- tensively, infinite. As a condition of thought, the infinite is in volved in religious knowledge only so far as it is involved in all knowledge. On the other hand, as an explicit object of thought, it is not present in the lower forms of religion at all, which exist only because the thought of infinity is not associated in the religious consciousness with that of Deity, except where reflexion is some what highly developed; and, even in the highest stages of religion, it is only apprehended as one aspect of Deity. Infinity is not God, but merely an attribute of the attributes of God, and not even an exclusively Divine attribute. The hypothesis that the idea of God is gained by intuition or vision is proved to be erroneous by the fact that the idea of God, and the process by which it is reached, are capable of being analysed, and therefore not simple, and like wise by the variety and discordance of the ideas of God which have been actually formed. The apprehension of God seems to be only possible through a process which involves all that is essential in the human constitution will, affection, intelligence, conscience, reason, and the ideas which they supply cause, design, goodness, infinity, &c. These are so connected that they may all be embraced in a single act and coalesce in one grand issue. During the last thirty years there has beeu more psychological investigation as to the origin and nature of religion than during all previous history, and the whole tendency of it has been to set aside all solutions which represent man as religious only in virtue of particular senti ments or principles, and to make manifest that the psychology of religion is that of the entire human nature in a special relationship. The best of the later investigations are much more thorough and comprehensive than any of earlier date. 1 The agnosticism originated by Kant has been one of the distinc- Kantian tive and prominent phenomena in the history of religion and theism agnosti- during the 19th century. It sprang out of an earlier agnosticism, cisrn. Hume and his predecessors admitted that the conditions of thought otherwise, the categories of experience or ideas of reason were in appearance necessary and objectively valid, but in reality only arbitrary and subjective, their seeming necessity and objectivity being illusory, and consequent on mere repetitious and accidental associations of sensations and feelings. Kant showed that they were not only seemingly but really necessary to thought, and irresolvable into the particular in experience. He denied, however, that we are entitled to consider them as of more than subjective applicability, that what we necessarily think must necessarily be, or be as we think it. He affirmed all knowledge to be confined to experience, the phenomenal, the conditioned. It was quite in accordance with this view of the limits of knowledge that he should have denied that we can know God, even while he affirmed that we cannot but think of God. It was by no means in obvious harmony with it that he should have affirmed that we must, on moral grounds, retain a certain belief in God. Sir W. Hamilton and Dean Mansel followed Kant in holding that we can have no knowledge of God in Himself, as knowledge is only of the relative and phenomenal. They strove to show that the notions of the unconditioned, the infinite, the absolute, are mere negations of thought, which destroy themselves by their mutual contradictions and by the absurdities which they involve. Yet both of these philosophers held that there is a revelation of God in Scripture and conscience, and that we are bound to believe it, not indeed as teaching us what God really is, but what He wishes us to believe concerning Him. Herbert Spencer, adopting Kant s theory of the limits of knowledge, and regarding as decisive Hamilton and Mansel s polemic against the philosophies of the Absolute, has concluded that the only truth underlying professed revelations, positive religions, and so-called theological sciences is the existence of an unknowable and unthinkable cause of all things. In the view of the Positivist the unknowable itself is a metaphysical fiction. The Kantian doctrine has had a still more extensive influence in Germany than in Britain, and German philosophers and theologians have displayed great ingenuity in their endeavours to combine with it some sort of recognition of God and of religion. Fries, De Wette, and others have relegated religion to the sphere of faith, Schleiermacher and his followers to that of feeling, Ritschl and his school to that of ethical wants, F. A. Lange to that of imagination, &c. Their common aim has been to find for piety towards God a special place which they can fence off from the rest of human nature, so as to be able to claim for religion independence of reason, speculation, and science, a right to existence even although necessarily ignorant of the object of its faith, feeling, moral sense, or phantasy. 2 The movement indicated has led to no direct conclusion which has obtained, or is likely to obtain, general assent. It has had, however, a very important indirect result. It has shown how interested in, and dependent on, a true criticism or science of cognition are theism and theology. It has made increasingly manifest the immense significance to religion of the problem as to the powers and limits of thought which Kant stated and discussed with so much vigour and originality. Hence research into what the Germans call "die erkenntnisstheoretischen Grundsatze" the philosophical bases of theism has been greatly stimulated and advanced by the movement. This is an enormous gain, which more than compensates for sundry incidental losses. Kant s solu tion of the problem which he placed in the foreground of philosophy has not been found to be one in which the mind can rest. From his agnosticism down to the very empiricism which it was his aim to refute descent is logically inevitable. The agnosticism of piety has in no form been able to discover a halting place, a spot on 1 Among recent disquisitions as to the psychological origin of the religious consciousness and the conception of God may be specified Pfleiclerer s in last ed. of his Religionsphilosophie; Biedermann s In last cd. of his Dogmatik; W. Hermann s in his Die Religion im Verhiiltnisi zum Welterkennen widzur Sittlich- kcit, 1879 ; Kaftan s in his Das Wesen der chr. Religion, 1881 ; Lipsius s in his Philosophic und Religion, 1885; and Uauwenhoff s in his "Ontstaan van den Godsdienst," Theol. Tijdichr., Hay 1885. 2 Among works in which it is denied that the real nature of God can be known are Kant s Kr. d, r. V. ; Fichte s A r. aller Offi-nbarvng Schltiermacher s Reden, Dialektik, and Glaubenslehre ; Trendelenburg s Log. I ntersuchungen, ii. xx.-xxiv.; Hamilton s Lect. on Met., and Discussions ; Mansel s Hampton Lect., and Philosophy of the Conditioned; H. Spencer s First Principles; and the writings of Lange, Hitschl, and other Neo-Kantists. Among works in which the real cog- noscibility of God is affirmed are Calderwood s Ph. of the Infinite ; C. Hodge s Sys. T/i.,.; M Cosh s Int. of the Mind, Phil. Series, &amp;lt;kc.; II. IS. Smith s Intr. to Ch. Th., and Fuith and Philosophy; Maurice s What is Revelation 1 ; Young s Province of Reason ; and Harris s Phil. liases of Theism. See also L. Robert, De la Certitude, &c., 1880; 0116-Laprune, Dela Certitude Morale, 1880 ; G. Derepas Lcs Theorief de I Inconnaissable, 1883 ; G. JJatheson, in Can the Old faith Lire with the A eic!, 1885 ; R. T. Smith, Man s Knowledge of Man and of God, 1886 ; Schramm, Die Erkennbarkeit Gvttcs, 1S7C ; and Bertling, Die Erkennbarkeit Gottes, 1885.