Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/88

72 third, or final form of consciousness is that in which the object and the self appear, each in its proper form, as distinct yet in essential relation, and, therefore, as subordinated to the consciousness of God, which is recognized as at once the presupposition and as the end of both. Here, for the first time. . . God is known in the true form of his idea. For. . . the idea of God is one with the unity which is at once the presupposition, the limit, and the goal of our divided consciousness of the world and of ourselves" (I, 195).

The verification of this law of religious evolution in the history of religion is the business of the present lectures. The historical value of a scheme which brackets Buddhism, Stoicism and Judaism as examples of "subjective religion," and which finds in the development of Christianity itself a repetition of the triple movement of universal religious evolution, might well be seriously questioned. It is a philosophy of history of the well-known Hegelian type, a logic into whose moulds the facts will only fit after a good deal of pressure. But, although such a scheme is too abstract and a priori to accommodate itself to the refractory historical matter, and we often long, as we read, for Aristotle's 'Lesbian rule,' we need not question its utility as providing a point of view from which the facts of religious history may very profitably be studied. It proves itself especially serviceable when brought to bear upon the transition from Judaism to Christianity, though even here one cannot help feeling the logical strain.

The interest of the enquiry centres in the third stage of religious evolution, that of Christianity, the absolute and universal form of religion, "the religion of spirit." It is here that the philosophical value of the entire scheme must be tested. What, then, is the idea of God "in its own proper form"? "God must be represented not merely as an object or as a subject, but as, what in idea He is, the spiritual principle of unity which is above the distinction of subject and object, as it is above all other distinctions, and which is at once the presupposition and the goal, the beginning and the end, of our finite lives" (II, 160). He is otherwise described as "a principle of life manifested in each" finite being, as "a principle of good, working in the world" (II, 76), as "the highest universal through which everything else is known" (I, no).

The critical evaluation of this doctrine of God would carry me far beyond the limits of the present review. I can only state the impression which the whole of Professor Caird's discussion of the question has left upon my mind; and this is that he has fallen into