Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/22

8 communities, even in the different members of one and the same religious community. How is it possible to recognize in this chaotic mass of phenomena the one true essence of religion? If we were to seek the notion of religion by a merely historical induction from the phenomena common to all religions, we should arrive at an abstract general notion which is without content, and in which the true essence and the highest worth of religion, as we Christians know it, is weakened and dissipated beyond recognition. This would be just as perverse as if one should attempt to determine the essence of art or morality according to that which the most barbarous savages have in common with the highest civilization. In this connection Principal Caird happily observes (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 82 ff.): "It is not that which is common to barbarism and civilization which is most truly human, but precisely that in which civilization differs from barbarism. As in the case of the individual, so in that of the race; there are many ideas which are essentially true, which yet are capable of being grasped by the human intelligence only at a certain stage of its intellectual progress. It is therefore conceivable that there may be in a religion ideas or doctrines which are essentially and absolutely true, whilst yet, in the actual experience of the world, the knowledge of them may have come at a late period of history, and even then only to a limited section of the race. Moreover, it is obvious that wherever we are obliged to introduce the notion of growth or development — wherever that which we contemplate is a thing which reaches its perfection, not by the accretion or accumulation of like materials, but by gradual evolution from the germ or embryo to the perfect organism — there the true idea of the thing cannot be got by finding out what is common to the lowest and highest and to every intermediate stage of its existence. If, therefore, in the religious history of the world, we can discover any indications of a progressive development, it is not by leaving out of view what is peculiar to Christianity — those ideas or doctrines which constitute its special glory and excellence — and taking account only of that which it has