Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/105

 HENRY SIDGWICK, Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations. 91 beliefs there seems to be no evidence in the historic period of a clear general tendency in the changes to promote the preservation of the social organism in which they take place. Christianity, for example, did not preserve the Eoman Empire. Mere preservation in short gives us no guidance and does not represent what is ordinarily understood by social progress. Illegitimate as it may be for the pure Sociologist, we cannot avoid having recourse to the notion of ' welfare,' and we must pass beyond particular societies to consider mankind as a whole. " We cannot, I think, measure social progress by any narrower conception than that of conducive- ness to the welfare of humanity at large" (p. 216). The discus- sion of this ultimate End belongs to Practical Philosophy not to Sociology. The concluding pages of the eleventh lecture contain a discussion of Comte's Law of the Three Stages. Admitting a large element of truth in the doctrine, if we are permitted for Theology and Metaphysics to substitute ' crude theology ' and ' bad metaphysics,' Sidgwick points out that there can be no opposition between Theology and Science ' as soon as the Divine Will is conceived as a Will in which there is no caprice or irregularity and a Will whose order may without limit be investigated by human minds,' and there can be no real collision between Metaphysics and the sciences because they move in different regions and may be regarded as mutually complementary. Science is often supposed to be anti-teleological, but the sociological interpretation of the earlier stages of social development in the light of the later is eminently teleological ; and in contemplating the advance of scientific know- ledge (on which Comtian Sociology lays most stress) " we find ourselves irresistibly led to assume as real a completer knowledge, comprehending and going indefinitely beyond the imperfect and fragmentary knowledge possessed by human minds " (230). The concluding lecture deals, as was indicated at the outset, with the problem presented by the divergence between ' what is ' and ' what ought to be '. This is the fundamental problem of Eational Theology, whose task is "to bring our knowledge of what is into coherent relation to our systematic thought as to what ought to be, through the conception of God as a Being in whose righteous will what ought to be actually is" (p. 238). Anything like adequate discussion of this vast issue is naturally impossible in the six or eight pages devoted to it, and a review can do no more than note the general conclusions arrived at by an intellect at once cautious, intrepid and reverent. Eational Theology regards the laws of phenomena as a manifestation of divine ordering intellect, and the fulfilment of the rules of Duty as the realisation of the Divine Will. These Sidgwick regards as .' necessary assumptions for the religious consciousness, but he does not consider that they really solve the problem, "since we inevitably ask why God's power does not cause the complete realisation of ideal Eight". It may be argued that the divine